belgium, france, they can move like that. you can't move like that here. like karen was saying -- and i'm finishing up. the heavy investment in security and intelligence and whatnot. but i want to leave with what society is investing in. what is the resiliency narrative? so it will become an existential threat to you if, suddenly, you start to panic, start freaking out every time you see a muslim woman in a hijab. beaches. burkinis on it is gotten to a point where he will miss it. suddenly, a mathematics professor on a plane who is doing equations, and it looks like some scribbles, and it is, "oh my god, it's isis." i will leave it with this. isis wrote, they said, "our strategy is to destroy the gray , so peoplexistence will retaliate against muslims, and the muslims will have two choices. either leave islam or to come to

our support. because we are the only ones who are going to defend them." crazy. like mia said, unless we let it. >> don't let them. mubin: right. karen: it is time for your questions. so, the closer you are to me, the more likely i will see you. how about right over here. yes. wait for the microphone. >> so one of the things i think that we touched on in the opening statements was education, or at least prospective. i just graduated with a degree in middle eastern studies. the reason i say that is i learned just enough to know how much there is i don't know. if you could share a quick story, or statistic, that if you could, you would want americans, or people in the western world to understand instantly, if they

all could at once, what would that be? what would be the key piece of education that you would share be? >> in what context? education in? >> what they need to understand about the middle east? if there's one thing. >> or specifically, terrorism. >> start on their. mubin: ok. what is the one thing -- i would just come back to resiliency narratives. like, you are talking about in the american context? what does the public need to hear more of? >> yes. mubin: ok. yeah, at the end of the day, it is the cliche, "united we stand." it is your resiliency narrative. what are we going to do if a bomb goes off tomorrow? what is your next action that you will take? this is the reality. these are the kinds of things you need to think of. maybe it is because of the

hypervigilance that comes from his work, but i do it now. when i go to airports, i find the supporting beams. i move away from where shattering glass could get me. it is -- you know, there is a cartoon. if a bomb goes off, don't let your brain fall out at the same time. so, just resiliency narratives. the public education, the public health perspective. karen: there have been a couple of polls that have come out in the last couple of weeks about americans fearing terrorism. apparently, the sense of insecurity in the sense of terrorism has been as high at -- as it has ever been. among republicans, i should say. i think that is interesting. next question. >> well, let me -- [laughter] >> you're not getting way that easy. >> do you want to go first? >> no. i would say, in terms

of the middle east, there a few things you should know about the rules. one, things can always get worse. if you think it is bad now, just wait. i mean, my education of spending a lot of time in the middle east is, i never thought it would get that bad, and then it got worse. only rarely -- one exception i wrote about was the camp david agreement. unbelievable. 37 years of no war between israel and egypt because of an act of diplomacy. not war, an act of diplomacy. how many lives have been spared? it is hard to know. but how much worse with the middle east be if israel and egypt were still at war? the other thing is -- i do not -- i am constantly amazed at how americans, i think, are blinded by our naivete about what the middle east is like. so, i often tell stories about people that i have met to try to

educate americans about what the terms are. and i -- one woman in syria, who was my fixer, her parents had both been in political prison and her mother, for two and a half years, and her father for 15 years. he was tortured and kept in isolation. and she grew up without really knowing him. finally, he comes home to this very attractive, mature young woman, and what does he do? he beats her up and locks her in a room for two years, where she taught herself english and work for people like me, supporting her parents, who were unemployed. when i wrote recently about isis, about the american families whose children had been

killed, there was one thing i didn't write about. in the "new yorker." a girlfriend of peter cassidy, who was another young american, she was syrian. her family was alawite. she ran away to join the revolution. he said, "if you don't come back, i am going to kill your mother." she did not come back, and he killed her mother. so that is what we are dealing with. and we walk into these cultures -- i'm not saying syria is a horrible place. i love the middle east. but you have to appreciate just how different it is and how traumatized this region is. when i was in syria, it was before the arab spring. but i was writing about -- syria was so quiet.

the middle east is a volatile place. it is paradise for reporters, when they are not being killed. but syria was so quiet. and i thought, "what is going on inside the box?" i thought, people know about america because of our movies. so i would go over to syria and watch their movies and interview their filmmakers to see what their narrative was. physical abuse was the most common element in all of the movies. everyone i talked to had been beaten by their parents, by their school teachers, by their cops. this is not a single oligarch or tyrant. this was the culture of oppression that had permeated maybe from the top down, or maybe from the society up. we don't know. but if you don't know what the terms are and the kind of culture you are dealing with,

think of how dangerous it is to walk into that and try to repair it. [applause] karen: you want to answer? malcolm: i do. we've got to get through this. because that is a good question. and that was a brilliant answer there. syria used to be a lazy, slow place that nobody wanted to do missions on, ok? syria used to be dull as dishwater back in the 1980's. in the 1990's. going there." everybody wanted the exciting places -- until 2011, of course. so what advice would i give? there is a couple of them, because, again, i am an intelligence practitioner and i have different rules about how things are. but i have spent my entire career in the middle east, south asia, sub-saharan africa working this mission. the first thing i like to tell

people, certainly my students, my special operations students, because, you know -- guys like to lift heavy items and shoot people in the face. that is all they do. don't be stupid. i don't say that facetiously. there is a lot of ignorance out there. about what we are doing, where we are operating, how we are behaving. and that ignorance not only kills your fellow citizens, it kills innocent people. it kills the mission that you are going on. it kills the strategic goals of the united states. we are seeing an intense amount of stupidity this last year. this is probably your question, right? i just cannot believe, since 9/11, that one of the components of that stupidity is everyone has forgotten what has been lost in this last 15 years -- really, already? jesus christ. it's like last week to me.

we lost, between 9/11 and now, fighting this war, almost 11,000 american citizens. i think that is right. 4,493 in iraq. 2,600 in afghanistan. and 3000 american citizens in 9/11. someone add that up. it is probably closer to 10,000. but these are american citizens, soldiers, sailors, marines, intelligence officers who are dead. dead. because of our personal policy choices and our belief and our stupidity on many, many different levels. i worked in the coalition headquarters in baghdad. i literally got told, when i gave a powerpoint presentation about disarming iraq, after the nra had convinced ambassador bremmer to allow every iraqi to have an ak-47, fully automatic rifle and immigration in the

, house to defend themselves. my powerpoint slide said, "this insurgency is going on and we have lost" -- wait for it -- "29 men." i had "29" double underlined. and i was told, you are going to remove "insurgency" and that whole last slide is going. and $50 million to disarm all the potential weapons for insurgents in iraq, it is way too much money. we ended up spending $2.2 trillion. and 43,000 combat affected wounded, and maybe as many as 200,000 iraqis dead. you guys need to get used to that word. all right? it is not just people disappearing off the face of the earth. these are people who are eviscerated, dissected, blown literally into pieces, or like my friends, vaporized into a pink mist. you need to understand that everything that has happened to us -- where we are today, it is

not because "obama created isis." it is because people created stupid, uninformed decisions, where intelligence experts and arabists -- i'm an arabists, someone who speaks the language -- we were told they did not even want us on the coalition staff. they did not want anyone with middle east experience on state department staff sent to the middle east, right? that is the form of stupid we have to deal with. we have a saying in our field. "fight smarter, not harder." it sounds like a simple statement there, but it goes right to the core of this. we have this belief that i often say that -- people ask me, "how did we get here?" because -- it was not for lack of imagination. it was the imagination that they had in the bush administration, who i hold responsible for everything broken in the middle east, is that they believed tom clancy was their inspiration for everything. right?

we used to call it "tcc," tom clancy combat. "oh man, that is a tom clancy activity over there." and it was not clever from clancy. it was like, oh, we're going to there, and they will sniper one guy, and the entire middle east will realign and they will love us." number two, the famous writer has a saying that i say all the time, especially when you are dealing with trump -- think before you speak, read before you think. it is not hard to educate yourself with true and accurate information, which is of intelligence value. this book right here. the reason i am holding this book up is because -- this is your copy -- is because donald trump said to "time" magazine this month, this is the last book you read, all 540 pages of it. ok? it is not mine. this is lawrence's book.

there are hundreds of good books written since that time that will give you a hard grounding, what we call "ground truths" or "intelligence fact" about what you need to know about the middle east and sub-saharan africa. finally, although for the last 15 years -- we have been fighting in defense of islam. i don't know if anybody has told you, but we are fighting against people who want to see islam fundamentally destroyed and changed into a cultish variant, in which they are waiting to force the hand of god to bring about the return of their savior, who will then fight the antichrist, and then the prophet jesus will return, and then, the world will go to the end of time. that is their mission statement. the establishment of the caliphate was step one. it is like "the producers," find

the worst play ever written. [laughter] that is where we are. you must understand that. i say this every time i speak on television. i have special forces soldiers friends and intelligence officers who i know, at the time i go on television, they are laying in the mud next to a muslim, and they are fighting as brothers in defense of them. i have people who have given their lives for me, to keep me safe. i have put myself on the line to keep my peers out in the field, my muslim peers. when it comes to going to guns, i will go to guns for them, because they are just like all the other soldiers who are fighting against this contagion. all right? so the only problem you are going to have to deal with is, and i am sure mia will touch on this, we don't choose the aftermath of what happens in their lives. i was in libya during their rebellion in 2011. i wrote some brilliant analyses,

and i gave some incredible -- i was a field intelligence officer. i was one of those guys doing the training. i gave the transitional national government 3 billion plans, and they are brilliant because i wrote them. number one, take back all of your military bases and clean them up. hire 40,000 people to clean them up and take them back. number two, reestablish the army . put them back in there. hire everyone in the militias and put them in the army. number three, gain control of your oil fields with an oilfield protection force. none of these things were implemented. here is what they told me. "no, no, we do not want to get the tribes angry." we help them take down qadhafi. they do not want to be genocidee, they wanted their own country, and they wanted a

toyota corolla. that is what they wanted. [laughter] malcolm: what they didn't want to, they did not want us telling them what to do. we cannot control them in the end. we can do all sorts of amazing, spooky, fun activities where we have bombs, guns, and helicopter rides, but they choose their destiny. don't come back here and say, hillary clinton let them attack the embassy, or hillary clinton let them attack libya. but the libyans were responsible for libya. the iraqis are responsible for the hyper partisanship in iraq. i was there, watching them all say "let's kill all the sunnis," or "let's go kill all the shiias." none of us here is this is not "lawrence of arabia." we do not have a magic pen that creates borders. [laughter] >> what, you did it? [laughter] karen: we are almost out of time. we could have a couple more questions. i will take both of them at the same time and let the panel decide who. so this very persistent person over your has a question. >> hi, i'm a concerned american citizen voting in the presidential election this year.

i have been offered two choices. one i call "tough with tiny hands," which is, let's do military, less allies, and have a strong immigration policy. and on the other side, the weak obama-clinton strategy, which is a lot of special forces and drones with countering violent extremism. so whether either one of them wins -- for everyone on the panel, team america on the left and team canada on the right, what one thing would you recommend to whoever is the next president? >> [indiscernible] >> no, i am from mexico. [laughter] karen: ok. one more question, and then we will answer those. how about right here? raise the microphone. right here. >> this guy? karen: yes. >> hi, good evening.

is the visa waiver program currently in place with a number of european countries a threat to american national security? karen: thank you. let's start on team canada. mubin: well i can't answer that , question. i know nothing about your visa. karen: but you can answer the other one. mubin: yes. i try to be nonpartisan. i really can't take a position. i would answer the question directly and say, use intel information. use the intelligence reality. i don't care what you believe. you can hate muslims and you can hate islam and i don't care what you do in your backyard or your bedroom, but you have to rely on what works, not what sounds like it works. that is it. mia: so, i'm willing to be partisan. [laughter] mia: one of the things that struck me is the letter written

by 50 foreign policy experts that have worked with various republican administrations, from nixon until bush. one of the things i've noticed -- and i pay attention to this. when i am watching katrina pearson or corey lewandowski, they make a lot of mistakes. and, for example, thinking obama was president in 2004 when the mission changed, and colonel humahayan was killed. the reason why mr. trump has had such poor representation -- and what do they call them, stumpers? is that nobody who works in my space would actually work for him. and it is not having to do -- some of my best friends are republicans. it has nothing to do with the republican-democrat divide. it is the fact that he scares the shit out of republicans. and he scares the crap out of most of us who work in the

security field, because we listen to his rhetoric and we go, "oh my goodness, that is so wrong." so part of it is -- i am not here to tell anyone how to vote. i literally, literally have an extremely close friend who was going to vote for trump. i can't convince her otherwise, and i would not even deign try. but if you are asking me, as someone who has been doing this for over a quarter of a century, the policies that have been kind of articulated by one of the presidential candidates is incomplete. and so, promises are not the same as plans. let me go to the visa waiver. as a foreigner in this country, since 1989, i have been on almost every single visa. and i can tell you, they are very comprehensive. when i did not pay a parking ticket once and i was coming through the border, they knew.

in other words, the visa waiver program to europe, they are still checked out. people are investigated. they have to apply online. and especially, for people who are immigrating, people who are coming in on the student visa, or an immigration visa. the loophole that is being closed, which i think is important, has been the fiance-wife visa. i think that was the easiest to get, and that is now the one they focus on, and with good reason. malcolm: that is actually a very hard visa to get. mia: it is hard to prove you are actually married. they don't investigate in the sense they investigated me. malcolm: you are canadian. [laughter] love when you say, "you are canadian," everyone is like

"yeah." lawrence: i think both the candidates are naive in some respects about what kind of real problems we will be facing. i will use the example of syria where -- has there been a worse example of our failure in terms of creating an opposition army, the free syrian army? half of them are in al qaeda, and then the other half surrenders and gives up their weapons. acknowledge a couple of things about syria. one is that bashir al-assad is a mass murderer. he is an evil man. he is like stalin. and yet, he poses no threat to america. we have to accept the fact that the majority of the people talking about the assad regime are the threat that we are going to have to face. we have to probably, in order to

contain this, i think our main goal in that region is to try to limit the spread of refugees. if you think about the palestinian diaspora in 1948, 750,000 people -- that is the entire population of the original diaspora. think of all the misery they have endured and the terror that has come out of that. we have 5 million syrians. they are part of a much larger ,efugees dream, from iraq syria, nigeria. there are more refugees in the world now since world war ii. it's a tremendous reservoir for the possibility of future terrorism. and we are completely not dealing with it. we have to partner with other agents in the region. i think we have to accept some sort of relationship with russia, in terms of dealing witr

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