coming up on politicking with larry king former assistant secretary of state jamie ruben speaks out about the united states' role in the syrian crisis also has the commander in chief role been damaged former george w. bush spokesperson reed dickens and democratic strategist tanya acker face-off it's all next on politicking little larry king. to another edition of politicking on larry king joining us in studio today tanya acker the democratic strategist and reed dickens republican former republican strategist we'll get into them in a minute but we'll begin with an old friend joining us via skype from london is the

former assistant secretary of state jamie ruben he's a contributing editor to the new republic a scholar in residence at oxford's rather near american institute good to have you with us jamie thank you very much it's obvious where we're going to go with this what's your take on the obama administration's handling of the situation in syria to this minute. well it's been a real ride for those of us in the foreign policy business first to have this terrible red line crossing by bashar assad for him to actually use chemical weapons against his own people and then for the military action to be revving up and two things happened that i haven't seen in a long time first the british parliament decided here in london not to participate in a military action that the united states is going to lead and that's something i haven't seen it probably hasn't happened since vietnam and then as a partly as

a result of that you saw the decision by president obama to ask congress to to vote and we don't know it's going to happen anything can happen as you know larry the situation between the president and the congress is about as bad as it can be and we'll just have to hope that in this case congressional leadership and the members take their responsibilities more seriously than they have when it came to things like debt ceilings and others dicks where irresponsibility was the rule of the day had the parliament gone along with the prime minister the think the president would have gone ahead or would he have still gone to congress well i don't know i doubt he knows but it appears from all the news accounts that i've read and from talking to some folks in the administration that up until that vote here in london all systems were go in there were plans for military strikes to

begin as early as this weekend so. my guess is that that really shook him up that shook up his thinking and and changed his his plan. all right this is a what if but what if it's a good question so what if congress turns him down. why. if congress turns down the president in this case it would be. at all the way around first and foremost it would be. a disaster for america's credibility and respect in the world for the president united states have made a decision to graph that decision so openly that he intended to use force and for congress to firmly reject that that would be a terrible terrible precedent secondly i think the legal situation would be

extremely murky although president obama and his aides have said that they would go anyway i think if congress speaks this supreme court might hear the need to engage and i say that because by in law this supreme court has stayed out of the debate between congress and the president over who has the power to make war largely on the grounds that this has never happened where the two bodies take a different position and when one is silent as congress often is the supreme court's view has been that the president's power is strengthened so if congress were to actually vote this down. i suspect we'd see a real powerful legal debate in our country. before the supreme court and being a lawyer and a law professor and a scholar a assume the president would would await that outcome before making any

decisions and the world would be shaken its head and wondering what has happened to the world's indispensable nation that america has come to be seen as or with the years to me give me your overview running for the new republic in late may you were just the secretary of state john kerry to put the brakes on the goshi asians with russia over syria how do you assess the united states russian rule. agent's job and what damage has kerry suffered through this. well the u.s. washing relationship is really at perhaps one of the lowest point since the fall of the soviet union doing the entire period of boris yeltsin as you know larry when i served in the government there were problems between president clinton and boris yeltsin's sometimes between george bush and the first george bush and boris yeltsin but there was a firm commitment to make the end of the cold war have meaning for the rest of the

world between those two leaders and there was if not a friendship a partnership of a kind with a lot of putin in power that partnership days are long and this is someone who doesn't see america as a partner who frankly has made his decisions apparently by deciding what would in his view harm the united states not necessarily by what would be best for the future of u.s. russian relations so thing too bad that's why president obama canceled his meeting with president putin that hasn't happened since the cold war. and right now i don't see russia playing a constructive role in syria they are backing a really brutal dictator bashar assad someone who has now killed larry it's worth remembering you know when we used to talk so often on that other network you used to work or you know we talked about the humanitarian crises and bosnia and rwanda

and all those other places the u.n. is now said with over with millions of refugees and roughly a quarter of the population of syria are displaced from their homes over one hundred thousand people dead this is the worst lady worst humanitarian crisis the u.n. has faced in terms of refugees. and damage and the world really hasn't done very much. the world seems to have you know crisis but gee the iraq war the afghanistan war seems to have created a come home america attitude in many in the united states and in the administration and you know it's remarkable larry that there are four senator sensually running american foreign policy right now the president barack obama the vice president joe biden john kerry the secretary of state and chuck hagel the secretary of defense i

can't remember when that last was the case where so many prominent politicians were actually running us foreign policy but that means of our all is that they are extremely attuned to the attitudes the opinions and the politics in america and unfortunately for those of us in the foreign policy business who believe i'm america's role needs to be as strong as possible and we need to restore our standing as the indispensable nation they have seems that the american people would prefer to see us pay taking care of our own problems and not worrying so much about what goes on around the world but since there is no alternative to american leadership. and we don't lead basically nothing happens and that's why we've had so much trouble and in syria and libya and egypt and all of these countries that are going through these changes and and so much of the rest of the world it's only

american leadership that can still bring the world together not for us to act alone own but to spark the kind of cooperation and partnership that will lead world if there is be acted in unison and and peace be brought to countries like syria but as a result i think this war is going to go on for a very very long time are you are you are strong supporter of action in syria. not a supporter i would assume of boots on the ground so what do we do when i'm not and i never have dan and i think you know the era when american soldiers are deployed abroad. after i stand in iraq is obviously. it's not over but it's going to be a very very high threshold of for anyone with support that i think what we could have done it should have done over the last two years is made much clearer that we are on the side of the opposition that bashar assad is in bed and in

a strategic alliance with countries and groups that we consider really acting against the interest of the united states that's iran that's has been so iran and has sent you military units into syria to fight a alongside assad i don't think we should go that far no boots on the ground but certainly early on it would have been a very straightforward for us to have imposed some sort of limited flights on syria the nato air bases are very very close to syria once syrian pilots knew that nato aircraft were going to be in the region flying they would have not dared to face the united states and had that been done at the right time along with a diplomatic strategy i think that could have had a decisive influence on the assad regime and probably cause massive defections in the early days now it's two years later the war is got worse there war on the

ground is better we're starting to see a lebanon like situation where different factions are based on religion and ethnicity and tribe and family taking sides and it's a much more complex situation but i think we should be clear that it's the assad regime that used these chemical weapons that justified american. action it's the assad regime that has used the violence caused the war and killed its own people they are the adversary and although we may not like all the opposition figures and all the leaders we should take it choose between them but we should give them a lot more help. jamie thank you as always great seeing you nice to see you jamie ruben from london we're going to take a short break and coming up next time you and read debate on how president obama has handled this crisis don't go away.

terrorists they hide in the woods and prepare to become suicide bombers only their mothers still believe these young men can be saved. no you've gotten some fen. some of those won't sleep at night they'll follow the sons into the woods find them and return them to a peaceful life rather than what they killed almost everybody. had been able to take him away from maybe that was by chance. how does it feel to be a terrorist mother on assad if you have even the slightest chance to come home. my son takes terrorists on o.t.

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a little. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of joy and a great things out there that there had to be added brenda arquette a court of law on the ground online is a story made for the movies playing out in real life. while the bad will now get commentated tenure acar and former george w. bush spokesman read dickens reaction of the president's handled this and what they thought of jamie's remarks tanya is an attorney and commentator she worked on the two thousand and four kerry edwards campaign reid is served as white house assistant press secretary for george w. bush and this founder of the dickens' capital group what's your assessment read. so

i've been a little disappointed how we handled the situation as a nation for the last two years i think president obama was acting like professor obama and did not show a lot of decisive and clear leadership i have no idea where we stand on this issue and i think therefore the international community doesn't really know where america stands and as jamie ruben said and as condi rice has said often when the international community doesn't know where america stands on an issue it creates of a vacuum and that's not healthy the second thing is i don't think president obama should be in the business of telling the whole world exactly what we're going to do and not going to be doing militarily we're going to he said we're not going to have a poor prolonged campaign we're not going to have boots on the ground i don't think we should be giving away specifics having said that having said that i think once the president of the united states request authorization for military action especially this president united states request action congress should go about the business of approving it there should be debate privately on what the extent of

that military action and that's healthy i think the debate that happened the last two years about whether we should take action it was a healthy debate i think good arguments can be made on both sides but once the president requests action right now i think congress is behaving like five hundred fifty coke commanders in chief and that's not their role. i think that jamie rubin made a really excellent point about how the president is now seeking congressional authorization opens up this can of worms because as we all know presidents go to war affectively often i mean they've done this without going to congress and clinton did it in kosovo obama did it in libya and the notion being that they were entitled to act they were entitled to so act legally fell within the realm of their executive powers i think that by throwing this to congress at this juncture and absorbing are and you know and running the risk of perhaps getting a no vote the president you know certainly the administration is now carving out this ability that it has to act on that sound but that argument has far less force

now that they've already gone the congress so i think that's problematic but i do think that something reid said is quite important when you look at the fact that the commander in chief is now seeking authorization to a good to go to war with the foreign authority that is something that congress should really be deferential to i mean i would hearken back to bush going into iraq i mean look there were democrats i was one of them who was not a supporter of george w. bush that being and i think that in retrospect a lot of us have questions about the basis for going in but there is something to be said in my basis of the time for supporting the president at that time was that the commander in chief regardless of his party has information about foreign affairs that we just don't have and there has to be some deference paid to that what do you make of the parliament turning on camera i think it makes them look weak and indecisive i think should they vote their conscience should i

think you asked me what i think i think it makes him look weak and indecisive and i think it would make us look weak and indecisive if the congress going back to telling this point regardless of the post-war mess and aftermath in iraq the democrats and republicans were united on regime change right when the president goes to congress and. says i think we should take military action the president has access to a lot of information and this president is not a war monger this president is not going to try to take over the middle east he clearly thinks it's in our strategic national security interest and i think congress should stop talking and approve his request what about those who expressed doubt about the chemical weapons aspect we are so firm as the previous administration was so firm about weapons of mass destruction in iraq this seems like the story all over again we are so firm aren't there doubters there are some doubters but as i understand it you know the evidence is pretty conclusive that john senator kerry said the other the evidence is pretty conclusive but larry you

do raise a good point because these are exactly this kinds of conversations that we were having before we went to iraq and then as now i as a private citizen who's not a part of the national security team of the united states of america i have to trust those judgments and so when it comes to making my political decisions i vote for people whose judgment i trust i am not going to have all information i'm just not going to have it that's a great point but i will say in iraq we were debating over weapons that had been used a decade earlier and could we find them this is these are weapons that are being used so i would say to the doubters to be careful because it's an insult to your elected leaders there and they're analyzing they're analyzing weapons that are currently being used as danielle as you would have congress turns of the i think it's a mess i think if congress turns him down it will be a real rebuke of the current sitting president i think it turns the president into a bit of a paper tiger on a national stage which i think would be a tragedy actually giving the country for the country i think gives me the chills

to think about because it would be unnecessary the president is not asking for he's actually go in fight i think he said too much he's gone out of his way to say we're not going to be in a prolonged war we're not going to have boots on the ground the president is asking for the freedom to use his judged. and that's what you should give the commander in chief is the freedom to use his judgment as john kerry's a factor but it's been reduced since he's been so strong it seemed the president backed off of him. i think i don't know that his effectiveness has been reduced but what i do think is that by having been so strong at the outset he was really intending the signal where the president was going i think that the pull back isn't so much because you know john kerry having misstep there having misrepresented where the president was i think it's because the president's had to pull back now you know is that going to mean that when john kerry speaks people are going to assume that the president united states might dead or a bit hopefully not i suppose there's that respect i think that now you know

there's some political cover that kerry even has because of the u.k. vote because of what the parliament let's remember john kerry has about a thirty year track record of saying too much about too much and broke obama has not wanted to be out there and be hard indecisive on this issue so i think it naturally created some day like what about the american public what a what are they thinking how do we know what was the water poll showing i think that people are strongly opposed to this and opposed to that we know this is going into syria i think there are reasons for that we are war weary war weary but by by the same token you know i don't want to like look i think that the voices of all americans are very important but there's always been a very strong anti interventionist sentiment in america there are americans who don't want to go into world war two when we knew hitler was and what he was doing so there's always been that constituent movie joe kennedy. and lindbergh but there's a reason with country there's a reason we don't have

a direct democracy our leaders have a lot of information there's an ongoing and very healthy debate about what is the definition of our national security interest it's going to continue to get murkier mercury that again it's going to continue to be complicated and gray and that's why you elect leaders they evaluate the information. at the end of the day if you think they're wrong you vote him out but i will say this just to me be very clear if congress rejects president obama's request i think congress should be impeached but why the middle east why is the middle east been a member clinton told president clinton told me that the british and irish conflict was a piece of cake compared to the middle east. of the middle east so they have been added for so long and the problem is that you know in the last hundred years or so now they only are we coming up against these long entrenched and

transit g.'s between different tribes or you know different people within different tribes we bend and planted these new national borders so we created more difficulty on top of the difficulty that was already there and so i think that we know we created new problems without ever really solving the old problems and so now we just have you know this multi-layered conflict that you know you dig you dig apart what you pick apart one part of it and then you simply you know you've arrived on a new issue it's not that much different than my thanksgiving table you've got you've got religion politics cultural differences that go back thousands of years and so i don't think it's that much of a surprise that you've got this hodgepodge of misaligned interests and we just don't know them i mean i don't think that culturally americans have spent enough time trying to understand who these people are i mean we tend to refer to it in a very broad terms as the arab world assuming that they all speak with one voice so we don't know them and sadly i think a lot of our political leadership doesn't really know that we were talking earlier

talking backstage people a lot of people the cia will tell you in private that america is not pro-democracy we're post ability and the middle east has a reputation for being. unstable so so i think that's really what it boils down to america's always trying to achieve stability for our own national security interest in the middle east has a trucker's will be an unstable inside the parties are the republicans divided the democrats are divided on this issue too absolutely and in this case i think it's a matter of you know how a lot of times on cable news whether you're on innocent b.c. or fox we will say well all reasonable people agree well this is an issue where all reasonable people i think do agree on syria i think in the party now though you have these little like i said these little mini rock stars in the house of representatives on both sides who are really for their own kind of self-serving career goals and i think it's really dangerous and so i don't think there's a lemon in the republican party i can't speak for them party but i think in the republican party you've got all the young up and comers as as jamie said they're

not there to go along and get along they're there to shake things up but what that means a lot of times is that they're there just to have a voice an individual voice not to work as a body a legislative body and i think that on the democratic side larry you're seeing the same sort of internal conflict i mean there are progressives who are driving only opposed to any minute military intervention i think that you know if i were to speak broadly about the democratic party which i think is hard to do. one thing i would say is that i think the progressives tend to give short shrift to what it means to have american credibility damaged a bribe if other nations can use chemical weapons with impunity how on earth can we get people to come to the table on things like global emissions control and the like i mean there are things that are really democratic priorities that we need to try to implement and work with other countries internationally and if they don't believe us on this why would they believe us on anything can anything improve the obama putin relationship i don't think so not to sound like my old boss but putin's

a bad guy and that's the first that's number one and number two is russia has a lot of ambition i think i don't think they want to be a coach a code. co superpower with us i think russia has a lot of ill will towards the u.s. and as jamie said earlier you can see through their decision making in sequence they're out to do what's not just in the best interests of their own country which is understandable but what's the what's called harm the united states i think president obama was wise to cancel the meeting i think that some a clear signal i think president bush made the george w. bush made the mistake of saying he you know thought putin was a good guy i think obama you know made a mistake early on of cuddling up to them in giving some verbal newbie's and acting like they were joking around but now i think guys have been opened he's not a trustworthy guy and i think president obama should tread very lightly why is they so supportive of syria i think that russia like the united states like everybody you know go well for now they don't like chemical what warfare which is why but

they've got an institutional interest in syria you know syria you know they've got a large port in syria i mean there are reasons why the russians they are as invested in syria as you know france some say france was in iraq i mean they're glad there are economic interest their political interests and so russia is certainly going to be one of the ones that's going to be looking under the cover and or pretending to look under the cover and give an analysis of what's on the other side you know russia apparently is floating the story that out you know i don't know what how much truth is behind it or not but they're floating the story that the rebels are behind the chemical weapons use i mean russia has an institutional interest in preserving the regime and what's china's interests china's interest is china always right and i don't think that's a surprise but i think china takes a much more. methodical approach i think they're looking at the president right there looking at you can't go in and remove leaders that you don't think are good leaders so i think china is taking a much more thoughtful approach russia i think is taking a spiteful approach and i think if you're not you know it is going to be of no help

here right has the u.n. ever been of the help yes ok ok so i have said no i don't think so. so where's it all going what's the light or is there a light at about by the way of my yes was not that the u.n. is going to be of any help now but that they have in the past but certainly in russia and a veto any light at the end of the tunnel on syria i think there will have to be some military action but i don't know that i would really cause you know call that light but i think that it necessarily has to happen i think president obama has to be very careful to be developing those henry kissinger like contingency plans of how is assad going to react is he going to engage russia hezbollah i think that's what we have to be watching the seventy two hour military campaign is not as big of a concern is how assad reacts and you all notice how great his hair gets but had the george w. bush is all great now they're all great. it's not a fun job kleenex you know that being a candidates a lot easier being the president thank you all thank you thanks to my guest on the

ark and reed dickens here in the studio on earlier from london jamie ruben don't forget to follow me on twitter at kings things that's all for this week's politicking with larry king thanks for joining us. nation three couldn't take three months for charges free range month free. free. to tide free. download free broadcast b.t.o. for your media projects and free media don carty dot com. but if you're going through a moment like these policies i think sometimes people. pleasure

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