but can they alone a show will get the real headlines with none of the mercy or to be live in washington d.c. our ports of service of the u.s. policy towards yemen has changed from support of our ally in the war on terror president sali to quiet signals that the u.s. thinks it's time for him to leave so is this the end of an era where the war on terror doesn't control u.s. foreign policy then violence against the international community in afghanistan has reached a fever pitch after the burning of a koran in central florida law to rise throughout the country so could this be the

end of the international community in afghanistan and republican senator lindsey graham thinks the freedom of speech should be limited in times of war but the real question is when are we not at war and is there ever a case where freedom a city simply goes too far i'll ask those questions to matt welch are there i'm 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 is one thing that we noticed that was missing that message of hope and change and obama himself so will americans support the apollo message of goring practicality then oil prices are 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 in the united states i'll ask our correspondent lauren lyster. now on sunday and monday 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 that the obama administration has turned its back on yemeni president and u.s. ally. turns out as arab turned its back is me as it shifted positions and decided that he must leave office but not in a public way that obama called for the removal of tunisia's ben ali or egypt so barak definitely not the same way that libya's khadafi 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 good to be back now if the reports are true that means that the u.s. has essentially had enough of 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 it's all a 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 the last 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 or 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 the rebellion in the north they see the succession is proven to the south they see his attempt to recolonize the arabian peninsula in yemen is 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 sanaa and 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 tunisia or its egypt that obviously we don't have a plan b. for libya because planned a seems to be quite tired that's as well so why are we treating him so differently we're treating him differently one 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 a sense of the kind of situation yemen is 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 the american dream and there 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 tables following their oil revenues are 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 in order 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 he has run his regime as 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 un fall asleep as well has 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 quiet reports that perhaps they want his current vice president to be this person that leads the transition because i 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 want especially if you look at the younger populations protesting you've got to be very careful about who the people are because in yemen that more like a native iran there is 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 and that's a very accurate characterization but if you look at the whole question of what happens to solve or how he how we use it we're using

a whole bunch of different metaphors that may not apply to yemen in abdication in departure like tunisia is a possibility but based on his recent behavior it seems like less and less of one in egypt style handover is also a possibility but in yemen unlike egypt the army and 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 because they've been firing tear gas and killing them that well actually they're not standing down the way to decide which what will my guess and this is a gas because the situation is fluid 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 as 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 wars to back even if we could find a viable force but can we at least make an educated guess we're talking about there is a session is movement there who the movements in the north there so how much of the people or population might actually be influenced to go without any evidence that we're going to be very very careful about overstating our influence there was a report out today a poll was taken by the foreign policy research institute in philadelphia and they found a disturbing amount of support for al qaida is ideology 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 ignore its ability to take advantage of the chaos that's

emerging there which 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 if they get into the media or in egypt or is it just too fractured to even say that you know it's difficult to call the protesters in sun are right now a popular movement right there that the opposition in yemen is composed of several factions and those factions themselves are composed of factions within factions the way 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 that 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 unstable 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 in saudi arabia they are operating on 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 to change the situation and christiane thank you very much for joining us tonight and this is a situation that could be changing by the day some obviously continue to watch it thank you you thank. that's time for a quick break but coming up next violence and violence against the international community continued in afghanistan over the weekend that's right to a number of cities a look at insight from someone on the ground and then we'll ask if americans should a lose their rights to free speech during wartime senator lindsey graham puts up for the day that if he wants. to get up such a story and it seems so for life please if you understand it and then he lives something else here's some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew

you don't know i'm charging bloggers a big picture. let's not forget that we have an apartheid regime right now. i think rather be the one who well. we never got the look as they're going to keep you safe get ready because of the freedom. hey guys welcome to shellings hell on wheels on a show which part of our guests have to say on the topic now i want to hear on our

audience just go on to you tube the video response for the twitter profile of a question that we've posted on you tube every monday and on thursday with the show your responses please let your voice be heard. on friday we reported to you that the massive protests in the northern afghan city of mazar e sharif have 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 saad burning a copy of the koran and gainesville florida on march twentieth situation is not calming down protests continued all weekend long spreading to conduct jalalabad and kabul just to name a few cities two policemen are killed in khandahar on sunday and dozens were injured and some are 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 form in the day. a lot of the good things that you occasionally hear a pin or two guys walking past to go to one of the murder suicide fish we're going to get it and. it didn't jewish quarter he goes down an alleyway would cause your house so we got a lot of fire from the afghans today over here is that stuff is crowded in its

tracks and it would scurry and bear the police like density but we had there were some across the river from history research it was or what they were a lot across to guage in a chair i'm just curious what you've been hearing because the reports have been some i conflicting in terms of what happened in mazar e sharif on friday some said there was just a bunch of angry more lies that started it and now they're saying that 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. both who are here it is a consistent with some reports that have been out which is that there was. a large group of educators one of them is or three specifically who will grow. unknown but it's possible. these very people were the murderers. who were were actually treated out of town yet again security forces a blue form throw from herat to kandahar took

a ferry i mean they're all over the place looking for a specific list of people so. it was or probably something organized even if they were agitators there i mean this crowd ended up 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 mosques and in this part of these. very fast because they don't have therefore to go the i think the reason we sold it was or was specifically because most or is safe city and security forces there were not we did not recognize the threat to discredit imposed knew they had been we've been in when they were as when they tried to came to her the next terry oh they were out there in the 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 area the international

the very complaisant and 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 some in 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 are the afghan people often help play an entirely different tune to try to play out 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 interval and research on time it was no longer he was as new sleep over the year and nine kids killed up to come nor is it so there's no question that

he was not exactly of any help. in ukraine crowds gather again very well and even in cool so i don't think he was expecting then but it certainly didn't help things it was it was it was that awful tragedy i mean that nobody saw this coming yeah well it certainly didn't help the fact that he can perhaps say that this is some frames in florida that's doing this and doesn't represent you know all of the troops they international forces or all of america either you know some people even gone so far to say that this is the end for the international aid community if attacks on nato meeting they now become a constant when you say that. and i would and i would i would say that if it if he started being singled out in targeted this is the second time the us been 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 oh you know i was a local one of our projects once going through was we were rebuilding found pages from grain to get really excited with my surprise about why i had to point out this was completely inappropriate i think the korean things a preacher nobody at the time when i was a because it wouldn't believe the americans have heard of her and they know what spirit they were left of that kind of a musician so the creed for burning is something which gets local people in this region excited quickly but mobs of mob it was a mob gets going it's an ugly ugly thing and 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 and that's a crime in muslim country. but we didn't see protests spark up all over muslim countries and their world we saw them in afghanistan we saw feel in pakistan so do you think it was specifically 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. there's no pushiness result there's no question it's resulted from frustration the people when you mention again president karzai it's not like he has an effective government that serious than anybody we appreciate his service are going to anybody who was in his country pakistan particularly to belittle those folks are disenfranchised to. have a good was going to because we've been through there trying to recall them for the last five years so. this is a trigger blocks when it comes at this specific type of education you know though i thought the united states. was remarkably restrained this time and i will use knuckleheads move in america you can do just kind of things that it's not something easily explained you would ask it again 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 do have

a freedom of speech but does it apply all the time or thoughts like lindsey graham says perhaps during a time of war it's now we seem to be in endlessly should you be a little more careful it's him i want to thank you very much for telling us and. it's a pleasure to be here thanks for having me on. here in the u.s. the koran burning in florida and the violent response in afghanistan are 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 acts 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 press. there are no obama can do anything to him or of said that they're planning to however there are a few lawmakers who wish that wasn't so senators harry reid and lindsey graham over the weekend suggested that congress take unspecified though formal action against

terri jentz what about free speech. you know i wish we could find some way 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 out of there in chief of reason magazine is here to help me answer some of those questions and so much for being here tonight right 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 we're not at war these days we're an endless war and not just one but three and particularly with majority muslim countries many of whom haven't gone through their own sort of reform ation 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 actually about and having our sense our legal sense of free speech dictator or even influence to any degree at all by that 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 lindsey graham john mccain joe lieberman the three musketeers those three people are as much. enemies of free speech in this country as we've had in the united states senate they understand that there is an essential tension between the prosecution of the war which is the most liberal thing you can do is governments 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

the 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 two and two together but you know i also want to talk about the fact that you know we mentioned 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 the cia doesn't want laurence for anything anymore right the suspension of habeas corpus association people can't give material support in a very broadly elastic up initially of that 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 wartime situation pat in this country's history that's when there are famous clampdowns against liberties and have another woodrow wilson it happened under abraham lincoln have happened to people who you know most people like you are 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 enough why we meaning you me anyone else 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 speech of an individual person because they have less power then the government does and so they will find a way to crackdown against that and it's totally un-american source it's but do you think of 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 the world our wine or world war two anymore but this time with this global war on terror that just seems so ominous right with 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 americans understood the supreme court decision about westboro baptist church saying that they do have a legal right and there are people i mean just the billows 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 when you have debt this level and you're going to 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 so that's going to change the calculus very strong do you think that pastor terry jones and pastor weigh in the two gentlemen that actually carried out this qur'an bearing in florida do you think they're responsible for the violence or 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 he headed to 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 if there's some semblance of responsibility if he was a was asked by the president he was asked by betray as he was nineteen years i depended on brigades not to do this and he should any 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 go. the attention that they so richly wanted and craved if we safely ignored what these people did and 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 or you know it's the messages that people receive in their brains are not the responsibility of the people who send those messages out how different do you think this is racing though is here we're talking about great one crazy guy or two crazy man excuse me the did something that you like to consider american like to consider fringe but we saw a civil 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 partisan 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 he wasn't 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 moved on to wisconsin where people were you know putting nazi signs on the governor what's his face is. now the governor we have already moved out of the country to the next thing you know i mean there 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 industry going to be happy if someone else on the other side is doing something that they don't like but just because we're in a war doesn't mean that free speech for that belief that if you have. about and so much for joining us now still to come tonight she made millions with a lefty website and that she claims that are site is simply above the fray more of the war between arianna huffington and the new york times is

a nice full time segment just ahead and obama is now running in twenty one of the officially announced today that he's going to seek reelection so how's this campaign going to be different from his two thousand and eight run to say that there's a lot less of the hope and change and inspirational stuff will be god. given we in the party. i think. either one well. we never got to keep him safe get ready for freedom.