>> charlie: welcome to the program. tonight, mike flynn, former director of the defense intelligence agency, with a strategy to fight i.s.i.s. >> one of the things i think is an existential threat to this country is the loss of who we are, the idea about american values and what we cherish why we are the way we are, why we're so -- such a good, strong country. we have got to protect that. that's an existential threat that's not going to hit us today but over time if it erodes we have to be very careful of that and protect that. in terms of is there a one enemy out there? i've had these conversations. we enjoyed i guess, having the soviet union because it was one problem we could worry about. today we don't have that. we have ten problems we're

worrying about is. one or the other existential? i think the economic system is an existential problem and i think we have to pay close attention to that. >> charlie: fund for charlie rose is provided by the following. >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> charlie: lieutenant general mike flynn is here.

he retired as director of the defense intelligence agency this fall. he previously served as top intelligence advisor to general stanley mcchrystal in iraq and afghanistan. he is accredited with revolutionizing how intelligence is done inside the military. in 2010 he wrote a similar report called fixing intel a blueprint for making intelligence relevant in the military. it examines the military's inability to understand fundamental questions driving extremists. that paper proves relevant today. i am pleased to have mike flynn at this table for the first time. welcome. >> charlie, thanks so much for having me. >> charlie: i met you when you were a top colleague of stan mcchrystal in afghanistan. he>> he remains a great friend of mine. >> charlie: he knows something about leadership. >> big time across the board. he's doing amazing things today

for a lot of organizations and i think that will carry on for a while. >> charlie: we want to talk about i.s.i.s. we had one more example today -- >> yeah. >> charlie: -- when there is on the internet a video of the burning in a cage of a jordanian pilot who lost his plane and had to parachute out and was captured by i.s.i.s. and was the subject of an attempted exchange, which the jordanians with were prepared to do of a woman on death row in jordan. we don't know why that failed that exchange but we do know today with this video -- >> yeah, they put him inside a cage probably doused him in gasoline and they had a fuse going up to the cage and lit the thing off and then just sat there and videotaped that. so you can imagine the kind of mentality that we're dealing with when we're talking about

this islamic extremism. >> charlie: what kind of mentality are we dealing with? >> well, i think it's people that see a way of life that is so different than what we, you know, cherish around the world and sort of the contributing world today. it's the kind of existence that -- i've dealt with these guys over the last ten years. i mean their thinking and their thought pattern and the kind of ideology that they have is something that we just don't understand. >> charlie: is it drawn from the qur'an or not? >> it is to a degree drawn from the qur'an. i mean, these are individuals who are deeply -- you know, various forms of the sunni religion, whether salafists or whatever, but they absolutely believe in it and interpret it in way that supports their ideology. >> charlie: is this some modern interpretation or has it always been there in terms of what they cite as their reason

for drawing these life codes? >> i think that what we're dealing with, this is really one of these things where my personal belief on this is our failure to understand the deeply-held religious beliefs that these guys have and how they are interpreting it and how they are acting it out, that failure to understand this really very menacing ideology has led us to a mismatch in how we are executing a strategy and how we are executing even some of our campaign plans on the military side. so that lack of understanding is causing us to be somewhat confused as to how -- >> charlie: why don't we understand it? that's why we have people like you.

>> yeah. i mean i think there are some that have really taken a hard look at this thing and, from my perspective as i was going through the last -- frankly, the last ten years, and i spent five years in iraq and afghanistan, it suddenly occurred to me -- you mentioned the fixing intel report -- it occurred to me we were basically going after individuals, sort of the capture-kill you hear a lot about, instead of trying to understand why they were actually doing what they were doing. we sort of went to where are they and let's get them versus understanding why are they there. and i think we now i do believe, have individuals who are really trying to understand what it is that we're facing and it's going to be something that's going to go on for a long time. >> charlie: just tell me what the appeal is and why muslim leaders will say these are not -- they don't even want to call those members of i.s.i.s.

muslims. >> right. >> charlie: because they're saying we're muslims and we don't believe any of this. >> they're definitely muslims. >> charlie: they do believe this. >> that's right. >> charlie: and therefore they are kidnapping our religion. that's the argument they make. >> i think that's a mistake. i have been doing this a long time. as an intelligence officer, i have been asked who are we facing so we can do something about it? you have to define your enemy, otherwise you can't defeat it. >> charlie: define it for us. i think what we're facing is an islamic religious extremist organization and i.s.i.s. is a part of this but this is much broader than that. >> charlie: broader than al quaida. >> broader and far more dangerous than al quaida. when you begin to look alt at the spread from pakistan, afghanistan, to amaly, boko

haram, nigeria, a lot of these individuals grew up together particularly the leaders where they were in training camps in prince together. you look at an individual like al-baghdadi who is this quote, unquote, caliph in the islamic state -- >> charlie: he heads up the islamic state. >> yeah, twice he was in u.s. detention systems, and the second time turned over to the iraqis and they subsequently released him. so in these various places where these guys operate from they come out and they get right back at it and they have created even more leaders more groups and i think the expansion that we've seen and, frankly from our own u.s. state department, you know where i think, in 2004, we were talking about 21 designated islamic terrorist groups in that part of the world and today we're at 41.

designated islamic terrorist groups by our state department. >> charlie: what do they have in common and how are they different? >> what they have in common and this gets at the meat of how we define them. we used to say aq core was a couple of guys living in a stage in pakistan. that's been my argument. you may call them aq southeastern command or leeped -- >> charlie: al quaida. al quaida. but the core of the islamic religion is the ideology. that's the core. that's what you have to defeat. the military component, the military phenomenon, if you will, is actually not the real challenge that we have. it's more of a social cultural psychological phenomenon and has spread in terms of what we're facing it's doubled in size and scale and geographic reach and many of these individuals, particularly at the leader

level have spent time with each other in different places in this part of the world. so we have to recognize that we're not dealing with something where, like the strategy that we have at the beginning of this thing, post 9/11 where kill the top three or capture them and we'll all go home, that strategy failed and that was a strategy -- we recognized that, i think, halfway through it. >> charlie: we captured a lot of them. >> we captured a lot of the leaders and killed a lot of these individuals, but what we were doing -- and the way i kind of equate it, we were doing -- especially the special operations community and there was a sense they could do it on their own, we were the best spear fishermen in the world. so we were actually -- like you have fish in a pond, we were spear fishing for the best looking fish, right, and that's what we're really good at and we became exceptional as that, not only as an organization, but

even how we do the entire apparatus. what we really needed is net fishermen. we needed to cast a wider net with many more tools inside of that pond to catch the kind of fish and it wasn't so much to catch them to capture them, it was also to do other things, do other things sort of socially, informationally. i mean you see this video that they put out that we talked about at the beginning this is purposefully done. this is another recruiting video and it's also, in the 22-minute audiotape or the videotape they talk about the relationship between jordan and israel, to tell their ideology, the mix that they are a part of, that jordan is actually against them so it's a muslim nation against them, you know and their belief system, and they're partnered with israel. you know i mean, these guys are very slick when it comes to that. we need to be outthinking them. we need to use far more of our

imagination to defeat these guys and it's going to take a while. >> charlie: what is it we should do? first, you have to define the enemy. >> that's right, number one, you have to define the enemy. number twrks we have to org -- number two, we have to organize ourselves and have to think about how we're currently organized. we have to organize ourselves in two ways -- as a nation and as an international community. and we have to be the leader in that and lead this effort. i think certainly the international community wants that. when i say about organizing ourselves nationally, if you were to lay down on a flat map of the world, the state department the department of defense, the c.i.a., none of those organizations are actually aligned with each other. you would think, jeez they all work together. it's difficult. the best part is the relationships that we have and that's really what makes this thing work. but that alignment is not where it needs to be today and that's

something that could actually be changed. that could be adapted. the second thing internationally, in the region -- i mean and i'll use n.a.t.o. because the north atlantic treaty organization people understand that's a political alliance to do military things. so we have to get the arab nations, the contributing arab nations that keep saying they don't like what's happening and frankly, if they don't do something ain't, it's going to come back to bite them you know where, we have to help them org these almost a n.a.t.o.-like structure in the arab world to defeat this threat, this ideology. >> charlie: tom freedman said there is a debate within islam saying why to we told rate this. as you said it has to be an arab n.a.t.o., meaning an islamic n.a.t.o. against people who are hijacking the religion. >> that's right. and there has to be a really

strong message. when we throw out the word "moderate," where are the moderates? that's a great question. are the moderates the leaders of these countries? i will tell you i don't hear them enough and haven't seen them jumping up and down in the last few years saying strong comments. >> charlie: why are we allowing somebody to kill our jordanian who is a muslim? >> that's right. and that's a difficult example because he was in a -- he was placed in that role because he was fighting for an international coalition versus the indiscriminate killing they do of other muslims. but i will tell you, though when we try to compare what it is we're doing, charlie, you know, to historical examples i mean, you know, i was given a talk the other day to a group of people and we were talking about naziism -- i mean, the

nazis killed an awful lot of german citizens. so there are these trends that occur. right now we're in a trend where we have a group of very, very dangerous, very sophisticated and savvy individuals and leaders and large numbers -- this is not some one-tenth of one percent, there are a lot of them. if you just think about the number of foreign fighters that have traveled from -- i think the number is somewhere over 40 countries into syria and iraq to fight, i mean that's -- >> charlie: and they leave syria and iraq with skills -- >> right. >> charlie: -- with the capacity to kill. >> that's right. >> charlie: as we saw in paris. >> that's right. in that case, it was an al quaida in the arabian peninsula, but it's the same thing. it's the same idea. i watched a video the other day a friend sent me of a young canadian kid a young man not more than maybe 30 years old

and he left canada to go to syria and he basically was describing his life in canada playing hockey on the ponds and growing up in the high school system and he was turned by the individuals that basically he began -- he befriended and they befriended him, and he started to develop this belief system which is the belief system of islam from the versions that we're dealing with now, this extremist version of it, and he was turned to the point where he then traveled to syria and fought for i.s.i.s. so we have to look at -- you know, that video was sent to me because i'm looking at it and saying wow! i mean i have two sons and they're about the same age as that kid and i'm thinking what would ever possess a kid to turn and go and do something -- this is a kid that actually grew up and had opportunities. >> charlie: yeah, see, that's the interesting point.

frequently, the assumption is the young people who are attracted to i.s.i.s. come because, a, they have such a terrible life they're unemployed, they don't have a job or a future and all of a sudden this group appeals to them and you can go -- come with us and you will have a community, you will have a mission, you will go to heaven -- >> whatever that is. >> charlie: whatever that is. and you will be somebody and your life will have purpose. >> will have meaning. >> charlie: you're sayingeth not just the poor and dispossessed and those without jobs, it is the sons and daughters of, whatever, the middle class. >> let me give you an example of something that happened to us in iraq. this is an example of the type of people we're dealing with. we had a raid on an objective so on a tactical target, and this is in the 2005 time frame so a bit dated in terms of, you know, the time frame but it's

exactly the kind of problem that we're dealing with. this raid we knew there was going to be leaders in that, al quaida and iraq leaders. many of the guys in that raid are on the battlefield today. so there were nine of them. when we brought them all in, we were really just looking for one or two because we didn't know who the other guys were. all the individuals average age was somewhere between 45 and 50 years old. when we finally figured out who these guys were, these were individuals who were doctors, engineers, teachers, but all very devout islamic extremist ideology believers, and they were having essentially a leadership meeting and we were lucky enough that we had gotten a pretty good intelligence. >> charlie: and from your interrogation of them what did you discover? >> what we discovered was that -- you know one of the things that came out of it was and i go back into -- you know,

you mention stan -- >> charlie: stan -- stan was head of jasoc, a task force we had at the time. essentially, we're dealing with not just 20-year-old kids trying to get their "jihad on," we're actually dealing with very sophisticated guys and half of that objective weren't iraqis. they're mostly what the half waw formed of. that started to wake us up to the fact of what we were having to deal with. that's when we started to hone in on what was the foreign fighter flow then and, at that time we were probably looking at 50 to 100 foreign fighters coming in primarily from north africa some from east africa, and now 1,000 a month from 40

countries and we've already seen europe talking about their problem. i just mentioned canada. i think the f.b.i. director has come out and said we roughly equate about 100 americans that are right there. you know, we really don't know what the numbers are but the numbers you do hear it's probably higher. >> charlie: so you can't kill them all. >> you can't and that is part of the strategy that i think we have relied too much on. >> charlie: we've gone after the leaders and thought if we can get to them we can stop it. >> can't do it. >> charlie: would boots on the ground in iraq and syria with enough fire power do it? >> yeah. >> charlie: or are you saying the capacity of the ideology to recruit new members is so strong that it will take a much longer time to stop the supply? >> so the supply problem is going to remain as long as they have recruiting videos like the one they showed today. that's a recruiting video. >> charlie: why is that a

recruiting video? >> because it shows them -- you know, the tit for tat, the eye for an eye -- >> charlie: this guy dropped bombs -- >> this young man dropped bombs on behalf of the orders he was given, like a lot of american soldiers have done, and he did it and those bombs resulted in probably the burning of people. so beheading was not good enough for this guy. they were going to do what he essentially was probably doing to, you know, the people that he was trying to get, them. so there is a capacity issue in this ideology that we have to understand, we'll have to deal with. that's why it's a social or cultural phenomenon, it's really not a military one. >> charlie: but in terms of the battle taking place now, i mean, do you have to, is it essential that you retake land? >> yeah. charlie, i -- >> charlie: that they have taken including cities like mosul?

is that a first order of business? >> a quick military answer is yes but looking at this thing sort of strategically, we probably are not going to have the nation state existence that we saw only a few years ago. i mean, number one the number of displaced people inside of syria and iraq right now and the number of refugees is the most in the history of the world. i mean, it's just unbelievable. >> charlie: refugees between 2- and 3 million. >> the physical destruction of what exists now because you're talking about three years of very intense fighting, even more so than when we were there in many cases, and, so, the breakdown -- and this is something that i do believe we are beginning to see -- the breakdown of the nation state in certain areas of the world because of this is actually a real problem and i think that, in order to go back to the way things were which i don't see that happening, i don't see a

defeat of this i.s.i.s. and we have a nice, clean boundary between syria and iraq anymore i actually think we're going to see potentially a breaking apart of this thing. now, to answer your question about -- >> charlie: you think we'll see -- right now i.s.i.s. controls land between syria and iraq. >> mm-hmm. >> charlie: you think what's going to happen? remember, e.r. the former director of the defense intelligence agency, and the right hand of stan mcchrystal in iraq and afghanistan. >> and other jobs, too. >> charlie: yeah. i have been at this a long time. >> charlie: so tell me what you think's going to happen to -- >> i don't see us returning that picture on a map again in any -- >> charlie: because we can't? because of the scale of the problem right now in that region and, unless there is, as i said earlier, an international alliance that's formed and it's got to be formed pretty quickly, and our problem is we just don't

lack internationally the ajillty to move that fast to bring something like that together. i mean, how long have we been talking about building a military force or some type of force to go back to -- >> charlie: i'm asking, is there a growing recognition by saudi arabia, jordan the emirates? because one of the demands of i.s.i.s. was that jordan get out of the coalition. >> that's right. so you're going to see, i think -- i mean, there is already been attacks along the saudi border. >> charlie: yeah. so the problem is that you have a segment not just -- this is not just in iraq and the al-anbar desert or the eastern desert of syria. these are segments and these are large numbers in every one of these societies, and nations that don't deal with the social, cultural educational the

economic problems and, you know, the idea to give these individuals and their societies primarily young men something better to do, it's eventually going to come back and bite them. >> charlie: i'm asking do they recognize that? >> yeah, i think some do. >> charlie: my understanding is saudis in certain instances were -- they recognized late in the game that al quaida was a threat to them and that they were one of the targets. >> right. >>.i do believe we have to -- you know one of the things that's happened and we're not there yet we're not energy dependent yet but this has to do with what you're asking. the chain that has existed for 40 years around essentially our leg for reliance on fossil fuels or oil and gas in the middle

east, that chain is breaking apart, and, in fact, we could say that we will eventually get to energy independence in this country. so that chain has always kept us there in that region, a and we need to be in that region for certain reasons, but what has got to be directed -- and this is where the leadership piece matters -- they have to understand that they have to step up and do more because we don't want to put ten or 20 or 30,000 u.s. boots on the frowned there. we want the arab world who is having these problems do what they can do collectively together so they can either return to a sense of stability and security but to achieve prosperity charlie is going to take decades if not a generation or two. >> charlie: but part of the problem is -- >> for everybody. prosperity for everybody. >> charlie: what's the re--

resistance? why don't saudi arabia and the rest of the middle east see this as an emergency? >> i think that's part of the problem and it's even a problem right here. people kind of come and go and don't see that -- they see it as hearings that's a problem over there. the belief system we're dealing with as you saw an unbelievable attack in paris, the charlie hebdo attack, what you say is basically what we will see more of is the kind of attacks that don't just cause some tactical event to occur. i mean every time they do something like that -- and they know this, and i know this because i've talked to them about it. these attacks that they do, these sort of less than the 9/11 spectacular attacks what they do is they continue to raise fear in a society and they cause us to have to change our way of

life, our behavior for everything that we do every type of security measure that we're going through. anybody who has traveled through airports, all these things have changed because of terrorism and they will see this and do see it and they will continue to work towards achieving a means by which they're really attacking our economic system. i mean the message bin laden wrote in the late '90s was not to defeat the west through military means, but to defeat them through economic means. >> charlie: and drive them out of the middle east. >> and drive them out of the middle east. >> charlie: did you get a treasure trove when they killed him? >> yes. >> charlie: a lot of things in terms of what he thought, what he was trying to do. >> one of the things from my perspective what i wanted to know is what were they learning about us. but one of the things that struck me is the way they were capturing lessons learned. they captured a lot of lessons learned from the way zarqawi

operated in iraq, for example. zarqawi was absolutely blood thirsty. al-baghdadi and the way they're operating is different. >> charlie: wasn't he -- al-baghdadi was in the inner circle of zarqawi. i think he was released from boot camp in the 2000 time frame and became one of his effect ich lieutenants actually. there are others who were captured and are back out. >> charlie: and went back to syria. >> yeah. so i think we're recognizing that we're dealing something here that we have to come to grips with defining it, we just have to. it doesn't mean that we're any less respectful of the islamic religion, it just means hat this segment of the islamic religion the extremist group, and not a small number, they are

absolutely dedicated to destroying our way of life that's not just the u.s. way of life. we have to convince people these guys are serious and mean business. >> charlie: if the president of the united states was sitting at this table based on what you have heard him say and what you know, would he say, i understand everything you've said, mike, thank you very much, but that's exactly what we're trying to do is meet that challenge? >> yeah, i think he would probably say that but, i mean, the challenge is -- i mean, because the assessments and all of the information that is getting to the leadership, i mean, why do we, for example, when we detain somebody, gitmo, guantanamo bay where we have detainees, why do we give them a qur'an, a prayer rug and make sure that they have all the time in the world to practice their religion? >> charlie: because we have a value that says we respect freedom of religion.

>> why don't we recognize these guys are in fact islamic extremists? many of them haven't changed there. why did we bury bin laden wrapped in a white sheet in at-psomewhat respectful way? that's our value system. so i -- >> charlie: you object to both of these? >> i don't object to it. my point is that what i'm saying is that we already recognize that this is an islamic problem. >> charlie: ah, by the fact that we show respect to it and give them a qur'an, we recognize there is a connection between them -- >> we connect them. >> charlie: yeah. by the way we bury them by what we provide for them. >> we have various assessments that call them like they are. and, in fact, even in the arab world, the arab leaders, they will call it like it is. so why is it that the united states has such a difficult problem? >> charlie: do you think the president has a difficult problem? >> i do. i think he does. i think he's got a challenge with calling it like it is. >> charlie: the white house doesn't like to call it like it

is, the islamic state, as you know. they call it dash, you know. >> i know. call it like it is. let's get off the dime and call it like it is. >> charlie: which is what, one more time? >> which is islamic extremism, and they call themselves that. >> charlie: islamic -- they are islamic -- >> charlie: they say we are interpreting the qur'an as we see it. >> that's right. it's interesting because there is not like 10,000 or 50,000, there's many many more that are interpreting it like that. >> charlie: i'm straining for this but i want to make sure i understand you because of the responsibilities you've had and the access you've had and the performance you've had. if you look at the rise of naziism, did you see some parallels? >> yeah. >> charlie: there is something that's growing and all of a sudden we're going to wake up and it's much more powerful.

>> yeah. i do, to a degree. i mean, so naziism went on for you know, the better part of 15 years, really. you go back, to you know, a degree, the -- >> charlie: post-world war i. yeah. so rise was in '33 and then, of course, when we defeated them. >> charlie: we're saying it's a parallel. >> it's a deeply-held ideology. if the united states of america didn't get themselves involved in world war ii and do what we did for europe, frankly when we did it, today, had the nazis won, had hitler won there would be people praying at the altar of naziism today. and whatever that would become. because that was such a vile -- as i mentioned the nazis -- as we say, the muslims are killing mostly muslims. that's true. the nazis killed an awful lot of german citizens. so the direction --

>> charlie: a especially those that oppose them. >> yes. so the three sort of big cycles naziism we basically crushed through military means and other minor things we did. i don't want to be too generalizing on the minor side but we crushed them through military means. when you look at the political ideology of communism that took us four years, we actually defeated that through both a combination of thinking and in other actions that -- wherever communism raised its ugly head we were going to strike and we used military and intelligence and different things but it was a combination of strength and imagination. today we're trying to defeat this ideology, this religious ideology with military means. that's my sense. i think people think -- >> charlie: by boots on the ground in iraq and syria. >> right. there is other things happening, but this ideology, the only way to defeat it is by really,

really stretching our imagination and starting to think about how is it -- first why is it. so when you talk about, like grand strategy when somebody says well what's our strategy? we don't have strategy, policy tells you this is what we're going to do. strategy tells you this is how you're going to do it. there is something called grand strategy that says this is why we're going to do it. for example in 1947, we had the national security act, which was essentially was a classified document till the mid '90s. it was essentially why we needed to defeated communism. that act despite the administrations over time, each one kind of operated on their own ideology, or own political ideology but each accepted that was our mission. so what we're going to have to do, with all the other challenges we're facing chiern russia, trans-nationalnational organized

crime, the rise of iran, the other extremist groups out there, we have to have a imaginative, grand strategy that says here is why we need to defeat this idea and then decide how. >> charlie: so first why, what is our call to action. >> that's right. >> charlie: why do we have to defeat. then say how we're going to do it. >> right. >> charlie: here's what's interesting about you, to know about you and to hear you, you believe we have to be much more sophisticated about understanding the root causes of how this has come to be the problem that it is. >> mm-hmm. >> charlie: understand what motivates them understand how they think about the world and understand all of that and it has to do with religion has to do with culture, it has to do with understanding -- >> psychology. >> charlie: all of that. that's right. >> charlie: what somewould consider a sophisticated look at intelligence. >> the intelligence system is a strategic advantage for us if we use it properly and i think for

the most part we do but that's exactly the issue, to get at that. people are going to go oh we know these guys, why don't -- >> charlie: but, at the same time you're saying that's why you have to go but don't for a second think this is a solvable problem by simply military action. >> absolutely. >> charlie: because it won't with won't be effective? or because of the circumstances it's hard to get the national will to do that? >> that's right. >> charlie: not only here because of iraq and afghanistan but also in other places. in western europe. >> yeah. something else you're getting at and this is really the sort of strategic timeline we are facing because time is not on our side strategically. the closer you feet -- the closer you having to have boots on the ground, we have observed this in syria the last three or four years and to iraq the last

year and a half, we have a drum beat that says we have to do more in there. i agree, but what we do is different. >> charlie: you believe i understand we missed the opportunity to do more in syria at the moment that there was -- >> absolutely. i do. >> charlie: which is to support people who were not opposed to assad but not i.s.i.s. and lots of others. >> the closer, charlie, you move toward conflict -- so the closer, where we sit in a peaceful environment, the closer you move towards conflict the more risks you're taking, the more it's going to cost you, and you have less and less options, and if there is one thing i learned as a young officer a long time ago is the best plan to have is the one that gives you the most options at the last possible minute, and i feel like we're moving towards that. >> charlie: more options? more options. we need more -- the strategy part, how do we do it we really

need to look at a series of options. i'm not talking about, you know, military and economic. i'm talking about a combination of things that are both from a u.s. perspective because we still have to protect our self-interest as well as from an international perspective. >> charlie: here is another question. you've said that first you have to clearly -- you have to articulate a clear, unambiguous strategy and makes sure everyone understands. then you say we must create a single unified and international change of command like eisenhower in world war ii. >> exactly. >> charlie: what makes you think that -- who's going to be in that chain of command? is this going to be led by the united states? because there are a lot of other people who come to dis table and say -- they say what we need is a n.a.t.o. in the arab world. that's what you need. this is not a battle that the united states should be leading. it ought to be led by someone

else. >> yeah. you know, we should not be ashamed of being the world leader. we should not back down from being the world leader and we should not be ashamed of protecting our values and protecting our interests around the world. now, you know having said that, when i thought about that particular statement about creating a single chain of command, unified under both a national and international sort of umbrella, i mean, that is something that -- you know, and again, i used eisenhower as an example in world war ii because -- >> charlie: he was a supreme ally commander. >> he was basically told win the war in europe. >> charlie: he was told beat the nazis. >> right and use whatever resources you need. different times, but conceptually, that is still very doable. i mean the question to ask is who is in charge? i mean, today?

>> charlie: who should be in charge is what i'm asking you. you say, yes, should be be in charge because it's in our national interest. buzz iran want us to be in charge, russia saudi arabia, britain, france want us to be in charge? >> we have to look for what's common amongst all those nations and i would segment out iran because iran is actually part of the problem, a deep part of the problem. >> charlie: but they're as much an enemy of i.s.i.s. >> yeah. >> charlie: as jordan is. sure, but iran -- >> charlie: on this point they're as much an enemy of i.s.i.s. >> iran has killed more americans than al quaida has. through state-sponsors through their terrorist network called hezbollah. so we have to recognize this is a very dangerous -- i think is a very dangerous country that we have to -- >> charlie: hezbollah has

killed more americans than al quaida, let's assume, on 9/11, how many -- >> you're talking about marine beirut 283. and then another in the embassies in africa, individuals in europe in a couple of cases, and you're talking about a large number in iraq that were -- that we knew were being killed by these different types of projectiles they brought in from iran. so that's a different issue than what we were talking about. >> charlie: cooed's forces. and the the chain of command thing is interesting. because if you were to ask who is in charge and it can't be the president of the united states.

is it lloyd austin at central command? probably not. >> charlie: the military plans to retake mosul, for example. >> who do you nut there? a team of people? one, two or three? if it is, somebody still has to have the final vote. >> charlie: here's the last point you make in terms of this and then a couple more questions. we must tell the american public this is likely to last for decades. the american public gets tired of war really quickly. >> yeah. and, so, if we stop -- let's just say we're going to all go home not going to commit another soldier overseas to this effort that would be a very -- it would not be a good thing. it would be a very dangerous move to make. we have to stay engaged against this enemy. this enemy is -- what we've seen in the last month with the beheadings this latest thing

with burning this kid alive, i mean, these are individuals who are very serious very sophisticated, and for a period of time, charlie in 2006, 2007 time frame and the 2008-2009 time frame, they were actually beating the most sophisticated military in the history of the world that was put together and that was in iraq in 2006-2007 time frame, we weren't winning. >> charlie: that was before the surge? >> that was before the surge. >> charlie: and that was before -- at the height of the sectarian -- >> if there's anything i learned as an intelligence officer is never take your enemy for granted, and i don't take these guys for granted, not one bit. we can't take them for granted because of how they look. you know, i mean, what they're dressed in. you know, the way that they move on the battlefield because they're not moving in sophisticated formations, their

weapons. we look at these individuals in groups and -- look at their information campaign. >> charlie: as director of the defense intelligence agency, would you define today the biggest threat to america's national security the issue we have been talking about at this table this evening? >> yeah, great question. this is an issue about what is existential to our country, what would take our ability away from us that we cherish. the way i would answer that, charlie, is that one of the things that i think is an existential threat to this country is it loss of who we are, the idea about american values and what we cherish, why we are the way we are, why we're such a good strong country. we have got to protect that. that's an existential threat that's not going to hit us today but, over time, if it erodes, we've got to be very careful of that and protect that. in terms of is there a one enemy out there? i mean, we loved, in way -- you

know, and i've had these conversations -- we enjoyed, i guess, having the soviet union because it was one problem we could worry about. today we don't have that. we have ten problems that we're worrying about. is one or the other existential? i think the economic system is an existential problem and we have to pay very close attention to that. i don't see a military threat. i mean, there is always the one off north korea with their capabilities with nuclear weapons but -- >> charlie: did you leave government because you didn't think you were -- what? >> i -- >> charlie: you're a candid guy. >> yeah. i mean, i will tell you for me, you hire mike flynn you're going to -- you know, if you ask anybody from the time i was a lieutenant, you know are you hiring me to just sit there, you know, and watch my thumbs

twiddle? no. you're going to hire an individual who's going to come in and shake things up and look to make things bert. all of -- make things better. all of us get a part of an institution in good stead. as i looked at what we were facing and what we faced over the last decade, i was trying not to move an organization to fight the last war. that would be irresponsible. i was trying to look at the trends we were facing in the future and we were facing massive urbanization, massive amounts of population growth in the part of the world where there's not a lot of good governance. 65% of the world's population, the largest chunk is going to be in the sahara and sub is a sahara area in the next 15 to 20 years. you're talking about a country like nigeria, charlie, that has

approximately 200 million people. in the next 15 or 20 years, that country is going to surpass the united states in population and is going to be the third most populated country on the planet. >> charlie: how many years? in probably about 15 to 20 years. >> charlie: because their population rate of growth is -- >> because you have child-bearing women in that society, and then it's tragic in some cases because of the way these guys go out and seize these young women, but you have a population growth of about 6 to 10 per child-bearing women in parts of the world in the north and central part of africa, in the middle east and frankly, one of the challenges that russia has is on its periphery is the same sort of issue. so if you have these nations what we call nations, if they don't have structures government structures or it's incredibly corrupt or just lacks any form of real government -- real governance, you know, you can't have security, and people

are going to look elsewhere to do things, particularly young men who have nothing better to do, and you bring in these trans-national organized criminal cartels that are huge, multi- billion organizations in latin america, south america and clearly in africa. >> charlie: what is it important difference, and is it just tactics, between al quaida on the arabian peninsula yemen, boko haram nigeria-i.s.i.l, islamic state, iraq and syria. al quaida represented by zawahiri and osama bin laden. what's the difference today between them other than tactics? >> right. so briefly, what's not

different -- >> charlie: and ideology, i didn't mention. >> whatnot different is the ideology. the ideology is about the same. it's clear. the difference today or the difference from sort of where we were to today is i would say -- i would describe it like this -- the lines between the organizations are thicker. meaning they have thickened their network of like-minded groups and leaders and they are far better networked than they were ten years ago. and i remember sitting drawing out these guys -- i can remember sitting ten years ago, charlie, drawing these maps out and going, okay, what's the connection between this group in afghanistan and this group in east africa? you know we've had some communications, money and it was sort of a soft dotted line. that dotted line is now a big,

thick, black line and there's a lot more connections. you look at the shifting of al quaida command and control, our senior leaders out of pakistan to the arabian peninsula, that occurred a few years ago. you know, you have these other elements that are out there -- i mean boko haram is incredibly brutal. >> charlie: this is the group that takes children. >> the group in nigeria that kidnaps children. they had an attack yesterday on a village -- >> charlie: wiped out. their estimates are anywhere from 150,000 to 2,000 people killed, this is just -- 200,000 people killed, just in the last 38 hours. so the lines between the organizations and how they have worked together has thickened. we need to recognize that because it's not just starting with iraq and trying to do iraq first and then we'll deal with syria, it's understanding this wider problem that we have in trying to solve it in a way

that, you know, that actually does something and suppresses it. we're never going to quite get rid of it. you're never going to get rid of the zealots that are out there. they exist from the beginning of time. you can suppress it and you can get governments to basically meter their own problems they have and do more about it. if governments are corrupt it's not going to help. >> charlie: i leave you with two ideas. number one is this idea the united states cannot believe -- cannot be the world's policeman. >> right. >> charlie: the other idea is if not the united states, who? >> yeah. so both. it's okay to be the world leader. it's okay we're the world leader. we should not, as i said earlier -- >> charlie: i didn't say leader, i said policeman. >> but policeman means we're going to have to be the force

out there leading whatever the problem set that we're trying to solve is. so because it's about global leadership on a stage that still exists, and the united states is still the global leader and so we should not be reticent to be the leader. now how you lead, you can also be the best follower by being the best leader sometimes, and how you do it, again back to strategy and how we actually execute what it is that we're going to have to do in order to accomplish the problem, that sort of remains to be seen and i think we really need to take a look at, you know, one why we should lead. i mean, there is all sorts of reasons why we should lead and most of them are because the international community wants us to. >>to. getting al-baghdadi, the leader of the islamic state or i.s.i.s. is not going to solve the problem.

>> charlie: make a lot of people feel good. >> for 24 hours then we'll be right back at it. i've stood over many of these guys or was part of putting in detention centers prisons or killing many of these individuals and we always felt that this is just going to go on forever. and we're sort of at a place now where i think everybody is sort of going, can't we do something more about this? because this is not an academic theoretical argument, charlie. what they just did to that jordanian pilot who just basically gave his life for a muslim country is grotesque and the contributing international community should not allow that did kind of thing -- should not allow that kind of thing to happen. we've got to figure out and we've talked about a bunch of things to try to do, but i do believe the first thing is to clearly define who it is we're

facing. >> charlie: mike flynn, thank you for joining us. see you next time. for more about this program and earlier episodes visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. # captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.

report" with tyler mathisen and sue herera. blowout quarters. disney's earnings much better than expected but after a 30% run in the shares over the past year is this stock still a buy? market gusher. stocks are off to the races for the month of february. with the dow jones industrial average gaining 305 points in today's session. debt showdown. greek financer issue? mountain of debt. all that and more for tonight on "nightly business report," tuesday, february 3rd. investors must have awakened yesterday