but convey a lot of show where if the real headlines with none of the mercy me live out of washington d.c. our ports of surface of the u.s. policy towards yemen has change from support of our ally in the war on terror president to quiet signals of the us thinks it's time for him to leave so is this the end of an era where the war on terror doesn't control us foreign policy then violence against the international community in afghanistan has reached a fever pitch after the burning of

a koran in central florida to rise throughout the country so could this be the end of the international community in afghanistan and republican senator lindsey graham thanks to freedom of speech should be limited in times of war but the real question is when are we not ad war and is there ever a case where freedom of speech simply goes too far i'll ask those questions to matt welsh are there and chief of reason magazine next president obama announced that he is officially running for reelection with a video sent out to his supporters today there's lumping that we noticed that was missing that message of hope and change and obama himself so will americans support the new abolish message of boring practicality then oil prices hit a two and a half year highs uncertainty in the middle east and north africa continues so what does that mean for the fragile economic recovery of the united states i'll ask our city correspondent lauren mr. now on sunday and monday to yemen saw more clashes between protesters and security forces hundreds injured with tear gas rocks and

gunfire in the city according to amnesty international over the last two months of protests in yemen at least ninety five people have lost their lives but over the weekend reports came out of the obama administration has turned its back on yemeni president and u.s. ally. turns out as ever turned its back excuse me hasn't shifted positions and decided that he must leave office but not in the public way that obama called for the removal of tunisia's ben ali or egypt or barak definitely not the same way that libya's qaddafi has been treated so why this quiet shift and what will that mean for america's counterterrorism efforts to combat al qaeda in the arabian peninsula here to discuss with me is christopher swift a fellow at the university of virginia center for national security law christopher thanks so much for being back on the show now if the reports are true with not me is that the u.s. has essentially had enough solid they're ready for him to leave but tell me why do you think they're doing it in such a quiet fashion why will obama come out make a speech and say solly you've got to go why is it all being done behind closed doors are two very significant statements that have come out of the administration

or two weeks with respect to yemen the first was the secretary of defense bob gates admitting that we don't have a plan b. for yemen but we have a plan a which is and then just just today over the weekend rather the white house coming out and saying that they think saleh needs to go the reason this is being done quite so quietly is because saleh needs to go and we really don't know how it's going to happen how can we possibly not have a plan b. if yemen is so so important strategically to us especially when it comes to counterterrorism well here's the difficulty because there's two things going on when the west looks at yemen they see three crises they see but the rebellion in the north they see the succession as movement in the south they see this attempt to recolonize the arabian peninsula in yemen as look at yemen they see an ecological crisis in. economic crisis and the demographic crisis and solly for the last ten years for better or for worse has been using the former perceptions to try to address the second category of problems only actually hasn't been addressing those

problems and in the course of our getting caught up in priming the patronage regime we haven't developed any relationships in that country that go beyond the capital sana but i'm still curious if we go back to the original question did we have a plan b. do you think when it came to to tunisia and egypt obviously we don't have a plan b. for libya because plan a seems to be quite a mired mess as well so why are we treating him so differently we're treating him differently. because yemen is a country we don't understand very well to yemen is a country that's in a state of crisis a different kind of crisis in the crises we saw in egypt the transitions we saw in tunisia or egypt or the civil war we see happening in libya today and we just give you a few statistics to give you sense of the kind of situation yemen's in right now thirty percent of the population is unemployed right forty percent of the population lives below the u.n. poverty line seventy percent of the population is twenty five or under there are

nineteen or similar statistics that we see in a lot of their country and their egon educated populations very high levels of unemployment in yemen they're not educated there are nine point nine million small arms running around in a country of about twenty three million people and unlike these other countries yemen is in the middle of an ecological crisis their water table stalling their oil revenues have dropped through the floor and the regime doesn't have any more time and the regime perhaps doesn't have too much money left of course a lot of people are speculating that sali is just pulling all the resources and all the money that the country has ordered to try to keep himself in power in order to try to pay people to come out and support him because he's pro that's exactly right so ali has run his regime and sort of a ramified network of dependency using patronage to keep very various tribal and political groups within his orbit knots. off the difficulty is that u.s. policy i should say european policy and you and i always see as well as been focused on the regime rather than focused on the society and in

a place like yemen where society is much more important than the state where these tribal and other actors really are the dominant political movers you've got to engage both the state and society part of the reason we don't have a plan is because we've been doing the former without doing enough of the latter now of course there are rumors or also as part of these very quiet reports that the obama administration has now turned their back on sollie there are quite reports that perhaps they want his current vice president to be this person that leads the transition because they feel like that will probably give them a little peace of mind they think that this is somebody that perhaps we already know at least a little bit this is somebody that will continue the counterterrorism efforts but that's very clearly not what the people a lot especially if you look at the younger population it's going to be very careful about who the people are because in yemen that i came out of and i remember he some of these younger protests right now that's very true i mean if you look at the sort of the university of leeds in yemen pretty educated and that's a very accurate characterization but if you look at the whole question of what

happens to sol a or how he how he leaves it we're using a whole bunch of different metaphors that may not apply to yemen in abdication and departure like tunisia is a possibility based on his recent behavior it seems like lots and lots of one in egypt style handover is also a possibility but in yemen unlike egypt the army in the security services don't have the trust of the people they don't have the trust of the protesters protesting in the streets in fact those that perhaps because they've been firing tear gas and killing them that well actually they're not standing down the way to decide which or what will my guess and this is because the situation if we were in yemen is extremely fluid right now is that you will see some kind of modus vivendi between the major tribes and what and yemen's general congress party the ruling party how that's going to shape up i don't know in fact. i think part of the reason the administration and no one else for that matter has a plan b. is because nobody knows how that's going to shape up either not here not in london not in new york and not in yemen either the situation is so fluid there are so many

different factions that it's hard to know which horse to back even if we could find of liable force but can we at least make an educated guess we're talking about there is this a session is that there's the who the movement in the north there so how much of the people or population might actually be influenced to go with the arabian peninsula we're going to be very very careful about overstating of height as influence it was the report out today poll was taken by the foreign policy research institute in philadelphia and they found a disturbing amount of support for al qaida as ideology in yemen but when you break down yemeni society in terms of you know who were people's loyalties are like people in every other society they have multiple loyalties the difficulty here is overstating it is presence in yemen is likely to empower it understating it puts us in a position where we can nor its ability to take advantage of the chaos that's emerging

there but can we still call this a call for democracy from the yemeni population right because we haven't seen the president at least come out and say that we support the people the way that they did into the war in egypt or is it just to fracture to even say that you know it's difficult to call the protesters in sun now right now a popular movement right there the opposition in yemen is composed of several factions and those factions themselves are composed of factions within factions be wary of the tribal dynamic on top of that and you have a society that's so profoundly decentralized that it really needs to find its own equilibrium and i think the caution you're seeing is a recognition of that and reason that perhaps the saudis should be concerned that now we've turned our back on saleh considering that they are the biggest international donor to yemen two reasons the first is yemen's popular. is extremely poor extremely young and extremely mobile and the second is the more on stable yemen becomes the more likely al qaeda is to take advantage of it unlike every

other place in the world where al qaeda operates in yemen and saudi arabia they are operating on one turf they have home field advantage that changes the game in terms of the saudis interest and it changes the game in terms of what the united states is able to do the shooter situation i kissed her i thank you very much for joining us tonight and this is a situation that could be changing by the day so a lot as they continue to watch it thank you thank you. that's time for a quick break but coming up next the violence in the riots against the international community continued in afghanistan over the weekend and spread to a number of cities so we'll get insight from someone on the ground and then we'll ask if americans should only lose their rights to free speech during war time senator lindsey graham thanks for that if. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw you don't

i'm sorry love is a big issue. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here in the us. i think the rocket readable and funny well. we have the government says the bird can safely get ready because of their freedom . hey guys welcome michel ancel on the alone a show we've heard with our guests not to say on the topic now we want to hear

audience is going to you tube the video response or the twitter first part of the question that we've posted on you tube every monday and on thursday night with the show your response is going to leave your voice he hoped. so. on friday we reported to you that the massive protest in the northern afghan city of mazar e sharif had turned violent and killed at least eight u.n. workers as protesters stormed the compound and the protesters were protesting in

response to pastor terry jones and pastor wayne sallade burning a copy of the koran and gainesville florida on march twentieth that situation is not calming down protests continued all weekend long spreading to khandahar jalalabad and kabul just to name a few cities two policemen were killed in kandahar on sunday and dozens were injured and some a positive that this means the end for the international community in afghanistan earlier today i caught up with him lynch a blogger at free range international based in la afghanistan and i first asked him if he's seen protests and violence where he's located. we had a protest filming the day. but one of the good visit you occasionally hear a guy is walking past the governor's compound one of the murder suicide vests were to go to detonate it. it didn't matter he knew going down an alleyway would towards our house so rather we got a lot of fire free afghans today grew very heads that stuff this crowd in its

tracks and it would screw. the police like in the city we had there were some across the river from history as it was or what they were a lot of close to. i'm just curious what you've been hearing because the reports have been semi conflicting in terms of what happened in mazar e sharif on friday some said there was just a bunch of angry mole as it started it now we're saying it these could have been former taliban members all of the taliban themselves having taken responsibility so you know what are the whispers where you are. oh i would never hear it is a consistent with some reports that it out which is a do is. a large group of educators when it was or three specifically to whip up a crowd. and known but it's possible. these very people were the murderers. who were were treated out of town yes good security forces are

can form throw from herat to kandahar to ferry i mean they're all over the place looking for a specific list of people so i assume it was probably something organized even if they were agitators there i mean this crowd and i being really massive in mazar e sharif is a city and the north that's been known to be peaceful over the years and you don't find taliban there so is that a really bad sign to you that we saw you know go to the to the extent that it did on friday in mazar e sharif particularly. when you don't know that mobs are mobs and in this part of the read these mobs can get maybe very fast because they're going to afford to go the i think the reason we saw him was or was specifically because most or is the city and security forces here were not did not recognize the threat that this crowd imposed knew they had been we've given them with the we're as when they try to contain her the next day oh they were going to city so fast it was over within forty five minutes so i think you i think it was or was was because it's very safe

here in the internationals or very complacent i know i was when i was up there now of course this is the first time that we've seen protests across afghanistan or american flags burned or people saying death to america but i'm just curious what role you think perhaps i mean cars i played in this because it was he that released a press release speaking about this saying that it was a crime you know against the entire muslim community a crime against the muslim religion and you know i mean karzai is somebody that might be doing things that the u.s. and international forces want them to but then when it comes to making a public appearance for the afghan people often help play an entirely different tune to try to play up his independence so do you think that perhaps he was a bit of an agitator in the situation himself. we don't know if hama. if president karzai is doing anything that we want to do it should be a it would be a better first into a recent time it was never on go he was just going to sleep over the year nine kids

are killed opportunities so there's new question that he was not exactly of any help. in your teen crowds gather gets very violent even and so i don't think he was expecting that but it certainly didn't help things it was it was it was an awful tragedy and he did nobody saw this coming yeah it certainly didn't help the fact that he can perhaps say that this is sound frames at night in florida that's doing this and it doesn't represent you know all of the troops they international forces or all of america either you know some people even concept are to say that this is the end for the international aid community if attacks on the community now become a constant but you say that. i mean i would i would say that if it if the community started being singled out and targeted this is the second time the us could singled out targeted and i don't think that that's a mistake not the aid community per se although you improvise

a lot of great you know i was a local one of our projects once going to his or we we were recruited found pages from a burglary and it get really excited with my surprise about why i had to point out this is completely inappropriate i think the grand things of a preacher going to the time when i was a pronounce it wouldn't believe the americans that bird and you know what spirit they would have laughed at that kind of accusation so the created for burning is is something which gets people in this region excited quickly. but of mobs of mob it was a mob gets going it's an ugly ugly thing but you know of course there are some cultural differences that come into play here in the us we have freedom of speech even though sometimes unfortunately can go a little too far but at the same time you know you look at the burning of a koran that's a crime in muslim country. but we didn't see protests spark up all over muslim countries in the arab world we saw them in afghanistan we saw few in pakistan so do you think of a specific lee has something to do with the fact that some of these people are just

fed up with the war going on on their land from ten years now. but i guess there's a new push to resort these new push unshielded from frustration to people when you mention again president karzai it's not like he has an effective government that serious and anybody who preceded his service or meet anybody within his country or that pakistan particular interest to build those folks are disenfranchised very good to. have a good spirit to sweep through there trying to get a record there for the last five years so. this is a trigger blocks when it comes at that specific type of education you know though i thought the united states or the american press was remarkably restrained this time and i witnessed not let's move but in america you can do these kind of things and it's not something easily explain to america to them this is this is a provocation yeah that seventy something that is sparking our fierce debate here at home as to you know the fact that we have

a freedom of speech but does it apply all the time or it's like lindsey graham says perhaps during a time of war which now we seem to be in endlessly should you be a little more careful attention to thank you very much for financing. this play here do you think sure they don't. here in the u.s. the koran burning in florida and the violent response in afghanistan or sparking a fierce debate president obama condemned the koran burning calling it an extract of extreme intolerance and bigotry general david petraeus also condemned the burning and the violence and the letter expressed hope that the people of afghanistan understand that the act of a few individuals do not represent all of the u.s. and i saw forces at the end of the day no matter how many condemnations pastor jones may get what he did is not illegal and neither general petraeus or. and obama can do anything to him or have said that they're planning to however there are a few lawmakers that wish that wasn't so senators harry reid and lindsey graham

over the weekend suggested that congress take unspecified the formal action against terri jentz what about free speech. you know i wish we could find some way to get it to hold people accountable free speech is a great idea but we're in a war. but we're in a war exception so what is it do we have free speech in this country no matter what the consequences even if it leads to death or does an endless war on terror mean that free speech no longer applies now welch editor in chief of reason magazine is here to help me answer some of those questions matt thanks so much for being here tonight me now you know it there are many things that really kill me about this statement but this whole i like free speech but we're in a war argument when i'm really not at war these days we're an endless war and not just one but three percent clearly with majority muslim countries many of whom have gone through their own sort of re formation and so there might be some touchy sensibilities about things like burning

a koran or things like dropping bombs on the population or not closing guantanamo bay or any number of different things to be touchy about and having our sense our legal sense of free speech dictator human influence to any degree at all by a back kind of heckler's veto is insane and i think what it shows is that there is a perfect wonderful link between the people who most want to start these wars in the first place which are losing graham john mccain joe lieberman the three musketeers those three people or as much. enemies of free speech in this country as we've had in the united states senate they understand but there is an essential turn ssion between the prosecution of the war which is the most liberal thing you can do as a government and the virtue of free speech which is the cornerstone. of liberal societies we don't i'm happy to bring up some of those contradictions of those hypocritical statements that people like lindsey graham also say you know that this puts american troops in danger but they don't mention the fact that yes they

guantanamo bay also puts american troops in danger that muslim countries that they continue to want to bomb also put american troops in danger they just somehow don't really put together but you know i also want to talk about the fact that you know we mentioned that now this is become an endless war on terror how many ways have our civil liberties and our free speech been eroded since then how about things like assassination list you know without due process that they want to wiretap everything that cia doesn't want warrants for anything anymore right this is special to pave use corpus association people can't give material support in a very broadly elastic up emission of bad to suspected terrorist groups i mean we still walk around on a day to day basis we feel free but we're less free as a direct result of this and it's inevitable every single war time situation in this country's history that's when there are famous clampdowns against liberties and out another woodrow wilson it happened under abraham lincoln have happened under people

who you know most people like or or give some respect to it is inevitable if we are going to be the world's policeman and constantly at war for whatever reason this is going to be a practical side effect and that's why we meaning you me anyone else we need to fight this constantly because there's always going to be this litmus test and it's not going to be the litmus test against closing guantanamo it's going to be about the individual will speech of an individual person because they have less power then a government does and so they will find a way to crackdown against that and it's totally un-american sources do you think that this time around you know that it's permanent i mean you can say sure we got rid of the nazis right you can't go back to world war two anymore but this time with his global war on terror that just seems so ominous right with that with these these enemies that we can't quite pinpoint they keep. moving around that seems like something that we're never going to get rid of completely so does that mean that our free speech you know the civil liberties that have already been taken away are

completely gone down the tubes and i think there's still room for reversal thankfully there's some muscle memory in this country and there's also some original documents that have some force and traditions behind them americans understood the supreme court decision about westboro baptist church saying that they do have a legal right and they're awful people i mean just the lowest of the low but they understood instinctively we have a different notion of free speech here than they do in canada or in western europe and that's somewhere that's in the brain out there but there's going to be a clarifying moment less for speech more for american foreign policy which is that we can't afford this anymore neil ferguson and others just pointed out well you have get this level and you're going to face crash at some point and the thing that you can cut easier than other things ultimately is military spending we can't afford to seem to have the lindsey graham approach to foreign policy period and so that's going to change the calculus very strong do you think that pastor terry jones and pastor way and the two gentlemen that actually carried out this koran burning in florida do you think they're responsible for the violence for the deaths

that we've seen in afghanistan absolutely one hundred percent hell no one what kind of crazy world we live in that people think that's even a possibility the dude burned a piece of cardboard with pulp and ink on it and i'm sorry but that's all it was the people who be headed other people and killed twenty two united nations personnel as they are responsible for those deaths period end of story there is no incitement that is a fantasy but is there some semblance of responsibility if he was a was asked by the president he was asked by trey as he was nineteen years i get to some very dates not to do this and he said the way he was given he was given incredible power by those asked my god we're going to talk to any lunatic out there who makes a cockamamie threat that he gets a call from the president you know the next ten lunatics are now going to be emboldened to do this thing because they've got. the attention that they so richly wanted and craved if we safely ignored what these people did condemn them for their actions and not for their rights to be able to do it we'd be living in

a different world it's not the responsibility of that crazy person just as it is not the responsibility of. taxi driver but someone shot ronald reagan you know it's the messages that people receive in their brains are not the responsibility of the people who send those messages how different do you think this iteration though is here we're talking about great line crazy guy to crazy man excuse me the did something that you like to consider american like to consider fringe but we saw such a discussion in this country after the shootings in arizona about this need for civility about no longer having vitriol as a part of the rhetoric and really that became a total carcassonne debate partisan bickering so how do you how do you differentiate that and what we're seeing now i don't really i mean it's the same kind of concept we are going to allege incitement here there's a more direct case for that incitement because actually you know sarah pailin was blamed for jared lochner shooting people which is insane he had nothing and he was receiving messages from sarah palin to begin with we don't know what was going on

there and then the civility argument a debate in general kind of went away in three weeks because we've moved on to wisconsin where people were you know putting nazi signs on the governor what's the spaces. now they are going to get our area we already moved out of the country to the next thing you know i mean there that civility is is a partisan question almost always it's whenever the people that you disagree with are saying something you're doing something that you disagree with suddenly you want to newtown no one by and i mean no one is consistent on these issues there is no such thing as incitement people use it as a cultural to bash their political enemy so basically you're either for free speech all the way or you're not you know and there are going to be happy if someone else on the other side is doing things that they don't like but just because we're in a war doesn't mean a free speech goes out the way if you want. about thanks so much for joining us now still to come tonight she made millions with a lefty web site and yet she claims it or site is simply above the fray more on the

war between arianna huffington and the new york times in tonight's told time segment just ahead and that obama is now running in two thousand and twelve he officially announced today that he's going to seek reelection so how is this campaign going to be different from his two thousand and eight but let's just say that there's a lot less of the hope and change and inspirational stuff will be right but. let's not forget that we are in the fourth party. i think. either one well. we're never going to be as liberal safe get ready to be completely free to go.