tv The Cycle MSNBC August 15, 2013 12:00pm-1:01pm PDT
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mohammed morsi was elected president in a democratic election. his government was not incompetent inclusive and did not respect the views of all egyptians. the united states strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by egypt's interim government and security forces. we deplore violence. he's canceled a major joint military exercise which, of course, was scheduled for next month. as a result of wednesday's crackdown that killed at least 525 people on both sides, military and pro morsi. that's the official number confirmed but there are hundreds more at mosques around cairo. today hundreds of protesters set fire to government buildings outside cairo. the military is making arrests.
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plans are underway to bury the dead. they're calling for marches despite a military curfew. all eyes are on this general, general sisi. he holds all power. he says the president's speech was a slap on the hand for general sisi calling it, quote, the least involved gesture the united states could do. the president didn't call it a coup, he didn't pull u.s. aid dollars even ignoring a reporter-shouted question about it. the white house isn't doing enough. can the u.s. attorney its back on egypt, a nation that is corner stone for middle east peace. we have ayman mohyeldin on the ground. and we have washington post correspondent matt miller. ayman, let's start with you. things are quieter today than they were why i had.
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we'll start with you. this is far from over, isn't it? >> reporter: you're absolutely correct, abby. to give you a sense how drastic the situation is changing in egypt, on the day where 15 people are killed you get a sense that it's relatively calm compared to what it was yesterday. we say 15 given some of the casualties we've been hearing. now there have been reports across the country of violence. we'll start off here in cairo where supporters of the ousted president carried out an attack on one of the government municipalitiy buildings here. the supporters of the ousted president attacked a government building using molotov cocktails. police had to intervene using tear gas. they issued a statement afterwards saying the police are going to use live ammunition or they have been authorized to use live ammunition in pushing back protesters attacking buildings or churches. in the past 24 hours there has
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been a spike in churches across the country. in addition to the protests that we're seeing, we also know that the egyptian armed forces and security forces in the sinai peninsula are coming under attack. at least seven soldiers were killed in an ambush. so overall the situation remains extremely tense. the military remains on a heightened alert and so are security forces across the country. >> matt, in terms of moving forward, is there a right answer for the united states? it seems like we are very much between a rock and a hard place. it seemed we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. many say it's because we backed the muslim brotherhood. >> i think a big problem is we were a handmaden to a military coup. we were talking to morsi saying it's time for you to go. our hands are on this. now you've got -- once you crack the democratic legitimacy, i
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understand you talked to president obama on that clip. the subtext in the woody allen footnotes is therefore had he to go and we backed the military ousting. even if we didn't like him you weren't inclusive on the stimulus package or the obama care design. that's a weird standard for the president to be offering now given how the consequences work. i don't think there's good options. we're trying to walk this fine line where obviously we want to condemn what's happening. we're not going to use coup or maintain leverage. it's a big, big mess. >> that leads to my question which is what can the umpts s. do? on the one hand does the united states really want to go into a third country in the middle east? often the other hand, can we even afford to conduct any kind of military action anywhere? >> i don't think the u.s. wants
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to see the military going into this anywhere. the egyptian military controls businesses and enterprises that account for about 20% of gdp in that country. even for the transition before away from mubarak into the interim democracy to where we are now, the constant has been that the military will not give up its status and power and privileges in the society. unfortunately what we're seeing now in the streets is the ugly face of that which is they felt an unacceptable challenge from the morsi backers. i don't think there's any way the u.s. will put military folks on the ground to try to contest this. >> but on the budget front in terms of management, we can't afford it, meaning we have financial problems here at home. >> look, if we wanted to, if we wanted to take military action in egypt, we could afford to do that. i don't think that's the barrier. the barrier is what the heck are we going to be doing sending u.s. forces into egypt now? >> right. >> so it's really a pickle. >> right. ayman, speak to how egyptians
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are viewing this situation because as matt was talking about, the way that we were able to get away with not calling this a coup was because there was public support behind removing morsi when the military did decide to take control. they did have some popular support to start with. how are they viewing this current situation? do you have a sense of public sentiment on the street changing? >> the word that is being used to describe egypt these days is polarized. there's no doubt about it. many egyptians are torn on many different sentiments. on one hand, the overwhelming majority of egyptians do not support the muslim brotherhood. they were not happy or satisfied with the way president morsi was conducting the affairs of their country. that was what led to the popular revolt we saw back on june 30th and led to his removal. on the other hand, many people are supporting the strong tactics by the military and the police. some have gone so far as to say
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the military should disband the muslim brotherhood, band them. there are other groups extremely disturbed by the violence that the military is conducting or the interim government is conducting in the name of security and stability. 500 killed. the last number or the last day that people saw this type of violence was back during the mubarak era during the 2011 revolution. that is a cause of concern for egyptians who want to see progress but don't want to see it at the expense of bloodshed of other egyptians. they're extremely polarized and divided. that's what makes it extremely fragile, to try to bring all of the perspectives on to a table to reach some kind of consensus. >> i think ayman's point there dovetails with matt's concern. what is the standard? i think a better presentation of what the president may have been
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trying to get at was that the ruling regime of morsi did not always follow a constitutional democracy in its shorter pendency. in fact, he annuled constitutional amendments that were designed to limit his power and he had open fights with the military. matt, my question to you is perhaps there's a way to look at this that doesn't involve simply saying this was a coup or not. the binary question that obviously determines a lot of our funding and that's why we talk about it that way but looks at whether either of these regimes, morsi with some democratic legitimacy and the military with street legitimacy but nothing much more are now both seriously substandard by any modern notion of democracy and human rights? >> i think that's well put, ari. we're in this moment of pure mackey mackie a developian power plays.
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once you crack that democratic legitimacy which happened in the morsi rejection. he wasn't behaving democratically enough and, thus, could be ousted, it's very tough to use the rhetoric of democracy except some kind of goal that we're trying to help egypt muddle through to. you know, i hope that behind the scenes there's serious conversations going on between the u.s. administration and the egyptian military about how they stop this kind of bloodshed immediately and move towards some kind of process that gets them back into something that will have at least a path toward democratic legitimacy or else this mess is going to continue. >> well, and ayman, as we are trying to figure out here in the u.s. our role in all of this, what does our future look like? >> well, that's a million dollar question. you want a political process that is inclusive. you certainly want one that brings together egyptians of all
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walks of life, minorities, women, all kinds of representatives both on the political spectrum and on the demographic spectrum. that's going to be very difficult. that's not something that egypt historically has been used to because really the bottom line is egyptians haven't been used to practicing politics. that in itself is ground breaking for egyptians. how to compete for power peacefully, how to share it, how to use it with a lot of responsibility. that's on one hand. worse case scenario, we can see the type of violence escalate with the extremist, more importantly ideological extremist try to use this as an opportunity to say, look, democracy doesn't work. they'll never let political islamists work. the only way to resort to our objectives is violence. if that happens, you can rest assured it will be extremely problematic for the region. egypt is the largest arab country. it is the epicenter in the arab world. what emanates here gets sent across the arab world.
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that could be a major new wave of ideological extremism that could undermine some of the countries. >> aynan mohyeldin, thanks for breaking this down for us and matt as well. we'll keep an eye on what's happening and keep you updated on any developments. up next, we'll dig into another aspect of american foreign policy, rome. much more "cycle" ahead. i'm only in my 60's...
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this week the u.s. is claiming a fight against terror. the state department has opened all of the embassies. the one in yemen has remained closed. that underscores how volatile the fight on terrorism is. with 63% of them under the age of 25. over the past 30 weeks the u.s. is now on nine drone strikes in the country. the aim is to take down suspected al qaeda operatives who are allegedly linked to the new plot and that christmas day bombing. there's wide support for them to disrupt imminent attacks but do we know if this effort is working. drone attacks are only as targeted and judicious as the incompetent telly against who provides the targets. they say it all depends on who you're working with. his latest article is featured on the cover of this month's issue. welcome, gregory. let me ask you out the gate here when you look at the escalating attacks in yemen and the reports
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that you and others have done that shows that sometimes the u.s. is getting what sometimes seems to be the wrong intelligence and marks, what is the best way to assess this. >> what we've seen is the u.s. has been bombing yemen for 3 1/2 years. they've carried out anywhere from 91 strikes to 230 strikes and they've killed about 600 to 1200 people. in that time instead of al qaeda growing smaller, what we've seen is that the organization has actually tripled in size from christmas day 2009 when they put the would-be underwear bomber on the plane down to detroit. the problem is bigger today than when the u.s. started bombing the country. >> talk to us more about that. you wrote about that in your book, the last refuge. how yemen has become the haven for al qaeda. walk us through, you know, the rise, the fall, now the resurrectire resurrection of al qaeda in all of this. >> one of the more frustrating things for me and all people is in the years after september 11th al qaeda was actually
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defeated in yemen. it wasn't until a prison break, recently we've seen prison breaks in iraq, libya, pakistan. there was a prison break in 2006 that was the genesis of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. they tunnelled out into a neighboring mosque, brushed themselves out and into freedom. al qaeda was back. that was the group that was so dangerous. as president obama has said on numerous times, that's the group that's the most active. >> they're in yemen. >> they're in yemen. they're based in yemen. one of the problems for the u.s. is there are yemenese in yemen. it was arabs in a non-arab country. the problem for the u.s. is finding out which bearded guy with a gun is a member of al qaeda and which bearded guy is simply a tribesman. >> gregory, let's talk drones because one of the reasons why al qaeda's resurgent is because we're killing people with drones and it's become basically a recruiting tool. so i guess the question is can
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we afford to not use drones but can we afford to -- i've got myself mixed up in my own question. if we don't use drones we open ourselves up to attacks. >> right. >> but if we do use drones we end up being the greatest people as a test for al dade da. >> seems like a no-win situation. >> so i think drones can be a very powerful weapon against al qaeda. there's something that gives the u.s. a great advantage. the problem is in a place like yemen, the achilles heel of the united states is that he just doesn't have good on the ground intelligence. drones work and they're a great piece of technology, but they're not -- they're a dependent piece of technology. they need the information to know which car to hit, which house to hit and when the u.s. is relying on yemeni intelligence and saudi intelligence, it gets the
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information. if the u.s. would be more judicious and sparing and accurate, then we wouldn't have the problem in which drones are sort of driving recruitment because no one is out in the street protesting when an al qaeda member gets killed. it's the civilian casualties that are the key. >> to that point you wrote on foreignpolicy.com, compounding the problem is the u.s. insistence on focusing on personalities instead of the broader network. this is what cia officials refer to as mowing the law of terrorism. it comes at the root of not attacking the system. we're not getting at the root problem. what would a different strategy look like that actually would attack the roots of the problem? >> right. so i think the obama administration isn't going to tomorrow sit down and say, we need to rethink our yemen policy, this isn't working. people have been criticizing what it is that they're doing for some time, but i think the obama administration can make sort of three basic tweaks to that that would go a long way
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towards minimizing the damage that the u.s. does while maximizing the good. the first is sort of taking the signature strikes off the table, being much more judicious in the remaining drone strikes, but second is building up human intelligence on the ground. the cia has lost a dozen years in which the cia has moved much more towards being a paramilitary organization than collecting, sifting, analyzing intelligence. by doing both of those things, that then opens up a lot of space on the ground for yemeni tribes men and clerics to take the fight to al qaeda. it's only those individuals with the standing in the society who are in a position to disrupt, dismantle and tee feet al qaeda. >> now gregory, before we let you go, i want to get your thoughts on the question did an 8-year-old spy for the united states and the answer in the
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"atlantic" in the article is not directly. the article is murky i think because the situation is so murky. you talk in there about how some al qaeda sources are more truthful than the yemeni military. there's a propaganda element. give us the cliff notes before we let you go. >> this is a case where the u.s. was after an individual. the member happens to be a member of al qaeda and a yemeni member. they utilized a little boy. the little boy planted chips on this individual whom he had come to think of as his surrogate father. the day after president obama won re-election on november 7th, 2012, there was a drone strike that killed this individual that the boy was living with. al qaeda later found out about this information, kidnapped the boy and his biological father and executed his biological father. >> fascinatinfascinating. >> wow. . gregory johnson, thank you for your reporting. up next, we are going to
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the news cycle begins with new tropical trouble in the atlantic. aaron has formed just southwest of the cape verdes islands. winds topping out at 40 miles an hour. additional strengthening is expected over the weekend. right now the gulf coast is in the clear. they've opened the flood gates for tropical rains for much of the southeast. a major milestone in the aftermath of the boston marathon bombings. the restaurant located where the attack happened is reopened. the restaurant is hosting a charity event today and will open its doors to the general public tomorrow. the owner says he knows it represents a dark time in american history but he hopes
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he's made enough changes to erase some of those bad memories. three people were killed in the april 15th attack at the marathon finish line. another 260 were killed. the number of americans applying for unemployment benefits dipped last week to its lowest level. applications have fallen 14% this year. that's a sign of dwindling layoffs and steady and modest job growth. the seemingly good news is not helping wall street. the dow is on pace for the worst week in four months. concerns that an improving jobs picture could actually spur the fed to raise those interest rates again. well, it wasn't news about bulls or bears in orleans. this morning there's a newly discovered species. the tiniest member of the raccoon family. best described as a teddy bear and a house cat. they live in the mountains of ecuador and colombia. leaping between trees, sounds like ari. one lives at the national zoo in
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washington where it was mistaken for a similar animal. that was a big surprise, obviously, for guys who do this for a living. >> there can be no more rewarding thing to do in life than discover new species of mammal. there can be no greater high, no greater reward than that kind of discovery. >> adorable. that's your news. now the spin. we all know obama care was signed into law much to the chagrin of republicans, especially the tea party, but in recent days we've seen prominent goppers, mitt romney and newt gingrich saying essentially put up or shut up. if you're going to gut obama care, what is your plan to replace it. >> we are caught up right now in the culture, you see it every single day, where as long as we're negative and as long as we're vicious and as long as we can tear down our opponent, we don't have to learn anything. and so we don't. this is a very deep problem. >> this is also a sentiment president obama expressed durgs his news conference last friday. if at first you don't succeed --
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>> might be some glitches, no doubt about it. there are going to be things where we say, you know what, we should have thought of that earlier, or this would work a little bit better, or this needs an adjustment. that was true of social security, that was true of medicare. >> all right. so i'm going to echo here what president obama was saying. you know, when you're dealing with complex issues like social security, like health care, you're not going to get it right the first time. that's exactly what president obama was saying. now we're seeing some republicans, mitt romney, newt gingrich, who i will point out are not running for re-election. they have nothing to lose when they come out and say these things. i want to echo what they're saying. i think they're right. it is insanity when you do something over and over and over again when you know the outcome. we have house republicans voting for the 20th time to repeal obama care. one, they don't have the votes to repeal it. two, they don't have the votes to repeal it and three it's the law.
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all the while things get put to the back burner, the budget. here house republicans 19% approval and you wonder why. first put some things on the table. if you're going to try to repeal something, put an alternative forward. >> it's one thing to repeal and it's one thing to watch it fail. what's happening is it's only a symptom of a larger problem for the republican party. they have no policy program. they have nothing when it comes to health care, nothing when it comes to entitlements, nothing when it comes to the deficit that goes beyond cut everything and spend nothing on no one ever again. >> they've been too busy. >> yeah, too busy. voted 40 times or 68 times depending how you're counting. they no longer know what it means to govern. the republican party -- >> they know what it means, they just don't want to do it. >> you raise a very good point. and there are people who were elected in 2010 and in 2012 who really feel like they were elected to go to washington to
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not govern. >> right. >> like they willfully don't want to know what it means to run a nation as opposed to curry favor with folks in your district. >> well, here's a dirty secret that nobody wants to say, newt gingrich included, the reason that they don't have a health care plan is because they don't want a health care plan, not such as it is. i mean, democrats, i'm generalizing here, but democrats basically believe that having some basic level of health care is a human right. i think the most for the large part of the republican party these days does not view it that way. they don't come up with another plan because they don't want a health care plan. here's what i've been thinking about though. if you really think that obama care is going to be this disaster for the country, that people are going to hate it, that prices are going to go through the roof and there's going to be no doctors, there's going to be seniors executed on death panels, if you really think that is what's going to happen, then if you want to repeal this law, you should implement it.
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then people will hate it and you can repeal it. the problem is they know that once this law goes into effect, once people actually see the benefits of obama care they are never going to let it go. it will be in place forever. it will be a democratic success. it will be a success for president obama and republicans will have been on the record doing everything they possibly can to slow it down. >> i think that's what newt gingrich and mitt romney are suggesting. let this go through. in their case they are saying we will see the things that go wrong. let this go through. >> i don't think newt is saying let it go through. i think he's saying, don't be vicious, come up with an alternative. if he's advising people to come up with an alternative, he doesn't want obama care to stand exactly as enacted. the problem with newt gingrich telling you not to be vicious is like whitey bulger telling you to walk away from a fight. this is a guy who single hand deadly took the discourse of this country to a very severe
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low. his work and memoranda which have been leaked on the internet talk about the need and the imperative to speak about your political opponent in the most personal, vicious and moral terms in order to distract from any dryer policy debate. it is not only ironic but hip critical and sad and insulting that they come around and give us this lecture when he used his power when he was actually in the game and on the field to do that. now it's easy, he has a different incentive structure as a guy who wants to be a full-time pundant. i'm not against full-time pundants, don't get me wrong. we know his record and i think we're a little smarter than that. having said that, i completely agree and endorse krystal's analysis. i would concede that the only thing working here for the republicans is the politics rather than the substance. it is true in many cases that running strongly against something is a political winner. that's true in the united
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states. there are groups like moveon.org. i don't think anyone would doubt that the tea party has had a big influence, disproportionate influence on our politics. they began as an oppositional movement not one with a list of specific reforms. occupy refers internationally. they can be more politically powerful than a five-point plan. so this works on the politics. the sad part, i'll end here, to krystal's point, it hurts so many people on politics and not on health care. >> what can be most politically powerful here is having speaker boehner talking about this. i think it's great that we have other voices speaking out but we need leadership at the top of the house. coming up, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the march on washington, rarely seen photos. time to be shown them next. la's known definitely for its traffic,
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i'm listening to this and as i'm listening i see that he's reading. mccale yeah jackson interrupted. tell him about the dream. tell him about the dream. his whole body language changed and he changed to the preacher stand. i say to the person standing next to me, whoever that was, i said, these people don't know it but they're about ready to go to church. >> i have a dream. >> that was clarence v. jones, speech writer for martin luther king jr. and the last surviving member for the planning team of martin luther king's "i have a dream" speech. talking about what it was like to be there. that interview is part of the
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trove pieces. "time" is debuting this collection of experiences. there's a special issue of the magazine and across a multi-media project they're calling "one dream." joining us is radica jones, executive editor of "time" magazine. the owning question is an obvious one. what is it about that march and that speech that has such staying power over these last 50 years? >> i think it's so many things and that's what you'll find when you explore the package. the speech itself, obviously the rhetoric and the way that dr. king delivered the speech is obviously one of the top five greatest speeches in american history. it resonates so powerfully with where we are today, too. everybody still has a dream. it's that one that's so personal and also incredibly public and
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inspirational for the public. those were the kind of principles that america was built on. for king to continue that narrative and really bring us into the 21st century is the sort of model of a more equal america, that really, for me, is the staying power and it's something that we're all still trying to achieve. >> yeah. it's a fabulous work that you put together. i could have spent the whole day playing around with it. one of the quotes to underscore what jonathan is saying about the broad reach of dr. king's speech is a quote from malala, human rights activist in pakistan, and she says that his legacy is that those words reached far beyond america's shores and the generation that he spoke about. 50 years beyond the oration, i have a dream, too. we know how profound the impact has been. how is the speech viewed and how was it covered in the context of those times? >> well, it's a fascinating
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story we learned from interviewing clarence jones. not only was the dream part improvised on that day, he has talked about -- he had given that i have a dream earlier in a speech in detroit. it was in the back of his mind. he had not put it in his prepared marks. he was giving more of a policy speech. there had been a lot of talk in the run up to the march about this question, what is it that king should do at this march? should he be more -- should he be talking more policy or should he be preaching? they went in the policy direction until the day and he's standing in front of a quarter of a million people and the perception as we learn from people that were there was that he was losing the crowd a little bit. it was the dream sequence that brought the crowd back and broud brought the crowd on its feet. that's what we remember. it's an amazing thing to think that this huge historic moment for us as americans but also as malala said, for everyone around
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the world, was an improvisation. >> so fascinating and such a wide range of voices that contributed to this. i'm not sure how you went about choosing. you have jackie robinson's wife and marco rubio and malala. >> we wanted to do everything we possibly could do to get perspective on that march and speech and so we talked to a lot of people that were there. one of the nice things is that it was 50 years ago and it was a very different country, of course. the position of blacks in america at that time. when you think back to the fact that there was still segregation on buses, people trying to get to washington and they can't travel freely across america. we wanted those perspectives from that day and we're lucky that a lot of the people involved in that movement were very young. john lewis was 23 years old. >> amazing. >> amazing. >> lincoln memorial. those people happily are still with us. on the other hand, we wanted to also hear from contemporary
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americans, people for whom the dream legacy is something that they heard about from their parents, perhaps, or other people and who have absorbed it into their own lives and into their goals for america. >> in putting this project together did you get a sense of whether the nation feels like it's taking some steps back from where we were 50 years ago? i'm thinking about the voting rights act decision. i'm thinking about the george zimmerman verdict and the reaction of the african-american community to that verdict, to the voter suppression efforts in states around the country. did you get a sense that there's feeling that, you know, 50 years later we're kind of where we started? >> i think not where we started but, yes, certainly. we've been working on this for a few months so as we were compiling the material and really getting engrossed in it, the voting rights act decision happened and george zimmerman verdict happened and people were talking about race in america as
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a struggle that is continuing. and we felt very much this line between the package that we were putting together and the conversation that people are having today. and i think it's -- you know, it's history but it is so relevant and that's really what we want people to take away. >> when is this out? >> the magazine will be on stands tomorrow. the site is up time.com/onedream. >> radica jones, thank you very much for being here. >> thank you. much more "cycle" ahead. we leave this block with the pace of that footage. this the view from one of the many buses on the way to the march. ♪ >> main street, washington. ♪ the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind ♪ ♪ the answer is blowing in the wind ♪
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wow! look at her go! she's pretty good. she's pretty good. hey, flobot, great job. oops. [ powers down ] uh-oh, flobot is broken. the "name your price" tool, only from progressive. call or click today. wars. it's thought they're often decided by which side has a superior weaponry, larger force or will power. we've learned that it's more than that. one leader with the right strategy at the right time can turn the tide and overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. david hansen says it takes a certain type of leader, a general willing to do away with conventional wisdom, gamble and have the strong-willed belief
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that in the face of total skepticism they're correct. he talks about his new book "the save i don't remember general." we will get into some of the specific generals, but i do want to ask you, are there qualities that bind these five together? >> i think they were contrarians, and that's hard for us to appreciate in an era where we sort of get lost in bureaucracies or we rely on technology, but they were foremost contrarians. they had definite opinions. they had certain ideas that were not shared by the majority and they were not awed that they were in the minority. they waited for their time and place and when the time came they excelled and when it passed they were sort of forgotten. they were in the greek sense tragic heroes. in the modern west they were something out of shane or hinu. it was a contrarian profile they shared from antiquity to the
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modern era. >> you write about general petraeus who was the man behind the iraq counterinsurgency at the time. he was very optimistic when the americans were very optimistic. he said there was political stability. shortly thereafter there was incredible backlash. they said general petraeus or general betray us. i want to ask you having done a lot of research on this, is that fair criticism? we look back at general petraeus' career, he was doing a lot of things that his commander in chief was telling him to do. >> whatever we think of the iraq war, when he went to iraq in early 2007 the war was considered almost i think by everybody left and right as lost. the iraq study group essentially recommended a withdrawal. general franks, sanchez and casey had not been able to quell the violence. it spiked at 160 -- 120 to 130
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american fatalities per month and far more wounded and yet in the space of 24 months through a variety of very controversial methods and methodologies and protocols, some of they said it was the anwar awakening or maybe the collective toll of killing from the last three or four years or maybe it was increased oil reven revenues. but whatever the particular paradigm was, when he left at the end of 2008 there were essentially no americans killed or fewer americans that were killed in iraq than were dieing from accidents in the military in peacetime theaters. yet he was not very popular before he left, and after you left, as you remember, he had some troubles. that was in tune with all of the people i studied in the book. they were unpopular before they were given their moment of command and afterwards they didn't nely end well, although i hope general petraeus fares better than matthew ridgway or others.
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>> just on a -- yeah. sorry. we have a little delay. on a personal note, i just want to say it's an honor to have you with us on the show. i think i have somewhat different politics than you, your writings on the classics, on war as a moral force, on farming are just fascinating. and so it's great to have you here. >> thank you. >> i wanted to ask you about who you mentioned. looking at his role in sort of not only defending, you know, grief but defending democracy itself, do you think we would have a bit of a different history if he'd lost some of those battles and we wouldn't have had the seeds of democracy in greece? >> i think so, because that's a good point. by september 27th of 480 there wasn't a west as we know it. there wasn't a greece as we know it. it just simply was few city states left out of the 1500. everybody else had been defeated or joined the persians. there was no greece left, no west left, and yet he was able
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by sheer force of personality to galvanize what was left in the peloponnesians say don't go down there, don't give up, we can still defeat them with democracy. he had a different vision of greece. it was an ante spartan point of view. it not only saved greece from the persians but gave athens the influence after the war, the paradigm that people followed rather than spartan oligarchy. >> you mentioned matthew ridgway, who's the person who helped stave korean war from the disasters -- from the failures of general mcarthur. but matthew ridgway had an interesting nickname which i can't say but you can. how did he get that nickname? >> well he was called old iron tits because he wore a grenade on one breast and a medical kit on the other. it was the idea of being at the front with his men in a cars mattic, dynamic way. he was very unpopular at the time. i think americans owe him more than almost any other general.
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he saved something that was entirely lost. and south korea's freedom today is incumbent on what he did in just 100 days. >> fascinating stuff. the book is "the savior generals." victor davis hanson, thank you so much. up next, abby's road forward for republicans. she's convinced there's a way. can have the freedom to move their way, in pampers cruisers. they adapt at the waist, legs and bottom, with up to 12 hours of protection, for our driest, best fitting diaper. pampers. for our driest, best fitting diaper. i don'without goingcisions to angie's list first. with angie's list, i know who to call, and i know the results will be fantastic! find out why more than two million members count on angie's list. angie's list -- reviews you can trust. humans. even when we cross our "ts" and dot our "i's", we still run into problems.
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the always predictable trump testing out the fried butner iowa. most interestingly as of late, the growing clamor of support for rand paul. in case you missed it, sarah palin appeared on another cable network this week espouse her support for team rand. >> i'm on team rand. rand paul understands. he gets the whole notion of don't tread on me, government. wraps chris christie is for big government and, you know, trying to go along to get along in so many respects. >> and msnbc's own chris matthews made this pretty bold prediction. >> so i predict the hard right is going to take over the republican party in 2016 and the nomination is going to rand paul. you watch. this is what i do for a living. >> all right. so my big question for republicans more broadly is why are we already identifying teams and choosing sides? for whatever reason, it seems like we are prematurely retreating to various sides of the political playground instead of taking ideas from all corners
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of the sand box. winning elections is about creating the broadest, most inclusive message possible. it's not about singling out various cohorts within the same party and calling them names. calling chris christie is king of bacon, for example, does not get us anywhere. i know critics will say we can't be all things to all people. we need to stick to our principles and not conform to the beliefs of the rest of the country. and yet sticking to our beliefs is important. i totally agree with that. but where is the sweet spot in all of this? isn't there a way to bring our ideas together and a way that actually helps us win elections? for instance, while parts of rand paul's platform are somewhat frightening and i don't think he'll win the gop nomination, sorry, chris,wy can't ignore some of his libertarian ideas that do resonate with a significant portion of voters, cloopding myself. things like smaller government, less intrusion into our bedrooms and a more measured approach to foreign policy. we should consider embracing some of these alternative ideas, not reject them outright simply
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because of who they come from. as ronald ray dwan put it, the person who agrees with you 80% of the time is a friend and an ally, not a 20% traitor. our goal is a party leading to the midterms and over the next 24 or so months prior to the 2016 contest should be to figure out how to take the best ideas from across the party to develop a cohesive narrative that resonates with voters. we need to get to the point where, when asked what it means to be a republican, voters don't respond with 20 different answers. and let's be honest, democrats love the spectacle. they love watching us fight with each other. and frankly, it feeds directly into their nary they've we only care about politics and not about getting the work of the people done. so fellow republicans, let's all stop pointing our weapons at each other and focus on what we actually agree on, because in the end that's frankly just good gun safety, and more importantly it's our path back to being the majority party again. martin, it's all yours. >> thank you so much. good afternoon. it's thursday, august the 15th. and while the president calls
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for an end to the escalating violence, egypt's interior ministry instructs its forces to use live ammunition against protesters. ♪ >> the numbers out of egypt are staggering. >> what looks to be a massacre. >> the united states strongly condemns the steps taken by egypt's interim government. >> what type of action can we expect from our leadership? >> we are canceling our biannual joint military exercise. >> probably the least symbolically important gesture. >> there's a tendency to assume that the united states is reason behind the curtain. >> joint exercises, kind of kabuki theater. >> the other part of this is what the president said. >> no mention of u.s. aid to egypt. >> military aid is the best stick we have. >> mohamed morsi was elected president in a democratic
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