here because i know we are pressed for time and i only have a brief set of comments to make. i would do this more in the spirit of ginning up the discussion rather than making a formal presentation. my co-panelists have done a good job framing the issue and i agree with their perspective. want to do is to say which military steps i think are needed right now against isil. this is not to suggest this is a complete answer to the question or subject of the panel today. my colleagues have done a much better and fuller job of explaining how to think about a problem. but i want to agree with some of the spirit of saying we have an acute threat right now. isil is an abomination. everyoneuggesting that would agree with me here, but i believe we need a fairly concerted military and political strategy, working with what i hope is a new iraqi government and national unity, working with a searing opposition that we have to cultivate, more than we have in the past, and come up with a serious strategy. the obama administration, in my opinion, has done a good job in ordering it steps correctly. taking sure kurdistan was not overrun by isil. if you have any doubts about their ambitions, why would they want to go into kurdistan if they had taken ambitions? not even their fellow arabs and they saw it as a target of opportunity. they will take what they can get, including close american allies, like george and. -- jordan. i am not trying to suggest the entirety of the subject of today's panel is being addressed by my recommendations but i think we need to focus clearly on this question. to fend we have helped off the immediate threat to donestan, now that we have a nice job pressuring nouri al-maliki to step down as prime minister, in a realistic way to have a new government under another shia, and it has to be from his own party leading the government, but hopefully now getting sued me, and kurdish buy-in. as that ray -- process plays out, in addition to the announced steps of spending a half million dollars on the searing opposition which is a good idea, and congress should approve it immediately as they return next week, and that is all i was a about syria for the moment. in iraq, we need to do three things. we need to be ready to step of airstrikes. shadi is right, it is not the complete solution, but it is one. we also need to help the iraqi army get ready to do its version of a surge into the sunni arab areas of iraq that are held by isil. it may not be possible this fall. be the iraqi army needs to rebuilt and has to become capable and confident enough to do these things. i believe that will require american mentoring teams in the field with the iraqi army units. this could mean the kind of capability that we are moving towards in afghanistan, where next year we will have 10,000 people doing the sorts of things. i think that is what we need to envision for iraq next year. and afghanistan mission look similar. air power, intelligence, mentoring teams in the field, and special forces. the special forces peace is needed, i believe, because if we can do a fairly aggressive, combined set of action with iraq he special forces, i think we can take down a lot of isil targets that should be done, in my opinion, without a lot of public forewarning or trial ballooning by the administration. they should go at it once they find a moment. anddinate with the iraqis catch isil by surprise and try to make headway against these targets in the early going. because they are enmeshed in the area. it would be hard to get them out. we defined every advantage we can. to doaq he army will have the long-term protecting of the population, the long-term uprooting of isil elements. but in the early going, we need to help them with special operations raids on key weapons depots and so forth. we need this training with the syrians. it is overdue. let's get after it. on the iraq side, in addition to specialr, we need forces working with iraq he special forces in an intense campaign for a few months to go after key isil targets. and then we need to do mentoring in the field with iraq units by teams of americans dispersed with iraq he battalions throughout the country. the combined american capability maybe 10,000 people. it is not a big mission in the sense of combat units, but certainly will involve combat and casualties, but i see no alternative. i will stop there. [applause] we are going to open up the floor for questions in a brief moment. i want to invite you to get in line at the microphone over here for the question and answer period. we will take as many questions as we can. i would invite the panelists to stay where they are if their microphones are working, and hopefully they are. we continue to invite questions. .e are live in the twitterverse we are collecting some questions and we will be collecting more. refer youso like to to the csid recent statement on isis, from which i will list a sentence or 2 -- the wonton brutality of isis committed against religious minorities and local populations in iraq and syria, as well as mr. foley's murder, is in direct contravention with islamic principles and the geneva convention which states all prisoners of war -- further down, isis has been the most prominent upsurge in violence across the middle east and north africa jeopardizing populations. cases, one ofe the important contributing factors has been the unwillingness of key actors inside and outside of the region to support accountable governments. csid calls for robust support for building reconciliation, respect for human rights, and proactive protection of civilians as the best anecdote the rise ofombat extremism. democratization should not be sacrificed in the name of stability, economic development, or of defending the rights of any particular group at the expense of another. i worked in algeria for 10 years. if there is anything i learned from looking at that conflict, which inspired the creation of csid, i learned that violence begets violence. we are about to embark on new expressions of violence. that is why this panel is so important. violence does beget violence. so we have to couch violence, state violence, all kinds, in a context of political reconciliation and healthy dialogue, or the violence will make things worse. i would now like to open the floor to questions. we will take a group of three questions. first of all, give your name and affiliation. try to make it a brief question or comment and directed at one of the panel members if it can be so directed. we will take a group of three and then we will open up the answers to the questions. natasha.me is i'm a freelance journalist. my question is to mr. shadi hamid. how serious is the threat of isis in the u.s.? we can consider the beheading of james foley, that incident as a turning point in which isis declared that before they left the u.s. alone, but now they are going to go after the u.s. and launch attacks. can we take these statements seriously, is there a serious threat? >> second question. > >> on the notion of the genius i think you ing, see in indonesia, many are saying just the fact the califat has been established should be supported and celebrated. the fact they are not perfect is something secondary. but i thought i heard dr. esposito saying something about your turkish colleague mentioning something like that and the fact that you thought it was not something reasonable for accept so maybe i'd like your opinion on that issue. the second notion is the notion that the isis is a creation of the united states. this is something that was not mentioned in the panel but is something that's been circulating a lot in social media, especially in indonesia and i believe also in lebanon where the u.s. embassy, through their twitter accounts have denied this as something that was said by hillary clinton in her book "hard choices. talk about what kind of frame i don't recollect mind that would make people believe of this notion, i'd really appreciate it. thank you. >> third question? >> in response to mr. o'hannel's remarks and in part to your statement violence begets violence. i'd just point out if you look where the united states has become directly involved militarily over the last decade or so, iraq, afghanistan, pakistan, yemen, somalia, south sudan, libya, it seems we have a sort of anti-midas touch, anything that we touch turned to shit which doesn't bode well for the ukraine. >> c-span has no eight-second delay so be careful. >> i think it has an adult audience. i should have said it in french, perhaps. in light of this, shouldn't we try something new for a change and give these people a break and not interfere in the internal affairs of another country? >> i'd like to inslight shedi to answer first. >> on the question of the threat on the u.s. homeland, up until now, isis has been consumed by the near enemy, meaning in the region and particular, iraq and syria. that's what they're consumed with now what they're putting their resources and effort into. that doesn't mean they don't have ambitions to attack the u.s. or u.s. interests at some later point. they've actually been rather explicit about this and actually issued various warnings against the u.s. to this affect, that i would be more concerned at this point about europe just because the number of european foreign fighters -- and this is a part of it that's really remarkable and will reverberate in european countries. we're talking about summer between 500 -- somewhere between 500 and 1,000 citizens who have gone to the country to fight, many french citizens. so in that sense we're talking about almost like the u.n. of like militants in places like syria and iraq. many of them have european passports which means that it's easier for them to return to their home countries and obviously european passport holders have more access to the u.s. so if it's not a direct threat against a homeland or to our european partners now, it almost certainly will be in the future. and very quickly, and two other points, actually, i'm not even sure what to say about the u.s. creating isis because the kind of chain of conspiracy theorizing i'd have to go through right now is just too complex. and as someone who is used to conspiracy theories, having lived in egypt and focused on egypt for a long time, this is sort of at the egyptian level of conspiracy theorizing which is impressive. and then just on the last point of intravention, so does intravention work in these kinds of contexts? and obviously if you look specifically at iraq and afghanistan, the record isn't so good. but if you look at bosnia and kosovo and more recently libya and maybe i'm in the minority on this but i still do consider the intervention libya to be a success. it prevented mass slaughter as gaddafi's forces were marching on to benghazi and displaced a terrible regime. if anything i put more on the blame of the failure to stay engaged in libya the day after. there wasn't -- very little interest from the international community. we said gaddafi is gone and we left libyans to their own devices and i think that's another thing that will haunt this administration for a long time to come and we also can say very clearly the failure to intervene in syria earlier on has led to this particular outcome. so intervention can be dangerous depending on the context but so can nonintervention. it's nonneutral. nonintervention is a policy choice. so it should be treated as a policy choice and we have to judge it three years later and say this is the course the obama administration took in syria. did it work or did it not? and i think it's fairly clear. >> i'm going to invite mike hanlan to answer it next but before we do that, he has to leave early. he's been called away. do any people in line have a question specifically for mr. o'hanlan. would you answer the question, just you and any of the other questions that were raised? >> thank you and apolicy dwis for stepping out after this but think it's a very good question. i'm glad i got help in answering it because it's a daunting question and any of us who advocate doing more in iraq should have to face squarely the fact the american track record in recent times in the middle east is obviously mixed at best. however, i would say it's better in afinogenov that you -- afghanistan than what you'd give credit for. what broke them was the soviet invasion and then the successful pakistani intervention to that decision followed by our decision to leave and then is when the mayhem really occurred in afghanistan, far worse than what's going on now. what is going on now may or may not have a happy outcome but the fact american intervention made it worse is demonstrablyly wrong. in iraq, you have a harder case and i have a harder time coming back at you and since i'm on iraq, let me finish that point, no one will propose sending major combat units to iraq and i didn't and i wouldn't, largely for the reasons you're getting at can with the question our track record hasn't been good enough and not clear iraqi wants us in those numbers but what got iraq to this point in the last couple years are the iraqis themselves, not working well across sectarian lines and specifically prime minister maliki deserves the lion's shafer the blame. so iraq and the intervention may or may not have been worth it and the evidence probably tilts against, i would concede that but the reason iraq is in a mess today is not because of the united states but because the iraqis themselves couldn't get along and sure, maybe they'd be better off today if we'd never intervened in the first play and maybe udai hussein would be taking over his dad's man true in a succession strategy and can do that counterfactual some other time but the fact is limited amounts of military forces as the iraqis themselves would request with iraq in the lead and the iraqi army in the lead is an option we have to look at very hard. now that we have an iraqi government of national unity in the making i think would be capable of engendering sunni arab support. there is that big if. this has to continue. a body has to complete the government and we probably can't do a full-bore support of that until he has completed that task in the coming weeks, i hope. but provided that ibadi does that and he wants our help and the iraqis support it and we play a supporting role. i think we have no choice because we've seen what happened in the absence of our role in syria and in sunni arab iraq. thanks. >> let me just quickly add that hillary clinton's comments, whatever you think of hillary clinton, i'm not passing judgment on her, on this comment, were taken out of context. she was talking about blowback in afghanistan and that's been misconstrued to u.s. support for al qaeda and there have been references to the u.s. support for the free syrian army that's been twisted around in the u.s. support of isis and has been manipulation of information rather than any sort of admission by hillary clinton or anyone else. i would invite -- unless you'd like to say something right now? john would like to say something and then take the next three questions. >> with regard to my question about kalafate and the islamic state. that's something you look back upon with pride but the fast majority of muslims do not look to the creation of calafate. the islamic state is a different story. in many muslim countries there is a desire for, among some, certainly the islamists, for some kind of islamic state. but even there, it's more complicated because ishadi said in the past we have no clear paradigm for what would call an islamic state. there's no single paradigm. in terms of today if you look up and other ll organizations, they want democracy and not a secular state and some form of shiria and doesn't qualify as islamic state but there's a certain influence. muslims ink for many the notion to the appeal of calafate by isis resonates. and if you study would be the case and if it did resonate, to free them would be a hell of a lot more successful than it has been. and the final comment is with regard to the u.s. policy and whether the u.s. is behind this or that and it's out there but part of the problem we have is on the one hand we tell a story historically that we're the power and can go in and we celebrate when we can go in and do things so then you raise expectations about our being involved in what we could do. we also know that truth often is stranger than fiction and that is that often we discover the u.s. has been doing things that at least in my generation we never would have believed the u.s. would ever do and certainly wouldn't think of hat today. and i once spoke at a university and a student said the c.i.a. is doing this, this and this and they wanted my answer. i said you do realize you put out four options and there is contradiction to which the fifth student said that's their policy, part of their strategy, too. you're not going to be able to, for those that are into that kind of mentality, you're always going to see that the .s. is responsible for anything you want to say the u.s. is responsible for. >> my name is mr. mohammed and with the center for u.s. relations. and i would like to thank the fourth speaker who left us now but the question to the three speakers here, we heard from him very clearly and seems that in the mind and whatever is written in the newspaper and so on that we need an action. he talked about intelligence help and armies and actually specific geographic areas and official forces and so on. but don't you think that really the root of the matter is that we are facing an ideological confrontation? this is a war of ideas. deviated ideas maybe, fanatic ideas, and this is where the work has to be and this is what the superpowers should be thinking about, not only a short range bombing here or bombing there. why was it absent at least from what i heard and what would you like to say about that? thanks. >> question number five, stacey? >> hi, my name is stacey pollard and i'm a political scientist, often specialize in middle eastern politics but i've been doing research and consulting the department of defense for the last four years as well. and my -- first of all, i'd just like to say this is an excellent panel and feel very privileged to be here, thank you. my questions are for shedi and michelle. i had a semiquestion, i guess, for michael. i guess my frustration is with this specific discussion is that we hear over and over again this criticism that the united states, that the obama administration does not have a coherent strategy. and folks come to the table, they offer us a lot of information, you know, and it's really helpful and provocative and then close the conversation with, but we don't have a coherent strategy and we need one and then we never get to hear that expert's insights on what their cohesive strategy would look like. from my point of view, the united states is doing precisely what michael suggested. i don't see any defyation from the strategy that the united states has taken on or between the strategy that the u.s. has taken on and what is occurring on the ground in iraq. from shed isks, you closed kind of saying, you know, talking about how you help -- hope that the obama administration does , i very much it to do. agree on the points that you drove down on in terms of pressuring allies or managing allies. but how -- from your point of view, howited states -- because i think this administration has worked on it but very difficult, gain the leverage that it needs in order to do that? and that's all. >> question number six. >> good afternoon. i'm here representing mr. sharif who couldn't reach it from the nation's mosque. this problem we know is massive but the question i wanted to pose to this pan sell that oftentimes we don't address and professor esposito, you did a great job in regards to the miseducation of the muslims and what i would equate that. as a person who accepted islam willingly and freely as a youth and now as an adult, i know this is not the islam that's being taught, we all know that. every last person here is educated enough to know this is not islam but we never seem to address these individuals who step outside of the bounds of islam and equate them as criminals. because that's exactly what their actions are. it isn't right to look at a person's actions, indeed but never hear it addressed as much. and i say that, too and i'm getting to the question. i'm saying it also as a person who was once under the leadership of the honorable mohammed. we would considered a radical group ourselves but after 1975, we changed under the leadership and came into a broader undergo of islam and became more reform that now today many of our members are now judges, lawyers and everything else. what do you all see long term and short term as a way to reform much the mentality as the gentleman mentioned earlier that this is an ideological issue, what do you all see that would help change on a short term and long-term basis to re-educate many of these uneducated people who claim to be muslim? >> michelle, can i start with you? >> on the question of whether there is an ideological confrontation involved in this battle against isis, yes, there is. but the question is, what is that ideological confrontation? that is exactly what i was getting to in my remarks because as the u.s. tries to work with the allies in the region, some of them want to pose in and even quite a few people in the united states picking this up that it's a ideological confrontation between islamists and moderate are or something like that and i think it's a lot more complicated than that. there is, as i said, there's an attempt to lump in islamists who were essentially peaceful, political and so forth with those who have been very violent. so there is an ideological confrontation and the united states stands for certain things and it should be clear bout what it stands for. but it shouldn't get roped into this kind of confrontation that some of our allies would like us to. on the other question on stacey's question about what should the united states actually be doing, and you asked regarding u.s. allies, how can the u.s. gain the leverage that it needs? in my view, the united states in has a lot of leverage these relationships but chosen not to use it. we need to look at u.s. leverage properly. because the u.s. has leverage over an ally it doesn't mean the united states can force that government to do what the united states wants it to do. it doesn't mean we can make things happen in other countries and so forth. that's not what it's about. but we can scrutinize our own actions. we have control over our own actions, our own policies, and we can certainly -- first of all, we cannot support actions that we think are unconstructive, in this case, for example, actions by some of our allies that we believe will actually build radicalization and extremism in this region, so that's one thing of not supporting them. in terms of actions that those governments take and so forth, look, there are -- many of the governments in this region still depend on the united states at the end of the day for their defense. so there is a lot of leverage there and i think at my own experience as a u.s. official that very often u.s. officials don't see this, or they don't conceive of it. and so it's a matter, i think sometimes of thinking more strategically of finding refuse line of scrimmage in these relationships and being willing to use it. but the general approach the administration has had of we don't want to be responsible for solving the problems in this region, we don't want to be the ones who have to come up with the solutions, the strategies put together the coalitions all of that, is one of the things that has led us not to use this leverage because, you know, it just would be taking on more responsibility than we really want to. >> stacey stressed your question about my ideal foreign policy in two minutes, i've written about this but kind of some highlights. first of all, in 2012, many of us called for military intervention in syria, targeted air strikes, the creation of safe zones, humanitarian corridors, along with a serious effort to train and equip mainstream syrian rebel forces. that was a very clear policy prescription and it was something that was discussed for quite some time in 2012 and almost happened in 2013 and was conof the key inflection points and was late but last august we were preparing to launch military strikes and instead we accepted a chemical weapons deal that helped legitimatize and normalize the regime. this administration should not pretend this was a success. this was i think the start of a chain of events that has led to where we are today where we came to see asad as a partner and lost any seriousness when it came to confronting the regime but that's water under the bridge. now $500 million is not enough to support mainstream syrian rebel forces and is a start but i would actually recommend people check out my colleague's ken pollack's long detailed, very ambitious and provocative proposal in foreign affairs and he lays it out in detail of building a syrian rebel army. he puts the price tack at $3 billion to $10 billion a year for two to five years depending on how extensive we want it to be. that might sound unrealistic to the ordinary american viewer. which is fine but we shouldn't -- we can't do a lot of this on the cheap. if we are serious about defeating isis, then we have to rise to the occasion. if people don't want to do that, that's fine. but there are proposals out there that are possible if we had leadership in the u.s. and europe that were truly committed to addressing this. and just a couple other examples and a little bit on the lower nonmilitary scale, we indulged, we have been complicit in one of the most brutal -- with one of the most brutal regimes in the middle east, egypt. and we continue to give them billions of dollars and will presumably for the foreseeable future. and we had a legal obligation the day after the coup happened last year to cut our assistance. we did not do that and we sent a message to the egyptian military that they could literally get away with murder and they did. and what we saw shortly thereafter was one of the worst mass killings in modern history on august 14, 2013. and more generally and this touches on michelle's point, we have to use our assistance as leverage and there was no bold initiative in 2011o to say we'll incentivize reform, that we're building to give additional financial assistance to those countries that commit themselves to a democratic process, along specific benchmarks. and my colleague peter mandoville and i proposed, for example, a multilateral endowment for reform which we put initially funded at $5 billion and building enough support to get to $20 billion where the basic idea was to say more for more. and to have tailored specific benchmarks for countries in transition and if they met those benchmarks over a period of time, they would be eligible for massive infusions of financial assistance and that uld just be multilateral support for our allies and you add the world bank funding to that, but there were no bold initiatives forthcoming from this administration. >> john? >> on the coherent policy, it eems to me that an administration which has all the resources, with all the many ts in government with great economics and i remember ann slaughter speaking out, etc., the administration is responsible for coming up with that coherent policy with its coherent policy. but the possibilities are out there and the fact it didn't happen is due to other things. sometimes it means making very decisive conditions in which you can screw up and if you're concerned about your legacy, you always don't want to come off afghanistan and iraq, you don't want to really get more involved and indeed i think the administration before two or three years ago, i think president obama wanted to look more to asia, to southeast asia and not get into this entractable area of the middle east. i think that there are other things that come into play, if you're really going to be decisive with a coherent policy and my two colleagues here have made some reference to it, some hard stands are going to have to be taken with those that are our allies in terms of what they're doing and continue to do. whether it's egypt, whether it's, you know, israel, whether it's saudi arabia, etc. and i don't think that there is the will to do that. or maybe it's also that there is also a realization with some of these steps, the congress won't go along with it. i think for a variety of reasons. and the final thing is that this administration has demonstrated, which surprises me because i was a very strong supporter of president obama the first time he ran. i thought this is our last chance to really get some real stuff done based on his cairo speech and other things. its inability to be consistent has been, you know, from my point of view, really surprising and not realizing that there are incredible costs there. that little blurb i read at the end of the paper from graham fuller and then i added to. these long-term, you know, when you talk to people long-term, a number of years ago we were at carnegie and somebody from the clinton administration was asking about -- eight of us about the middle east in africa and somebody from africa did short term and long term and the guy smiled and said you don't understand, presidents don't think long term but think short term. and you know, the fact is long term comes around rather quickly, you know. it just does. you think back and it's -- i put on a t-shirt today given to me for my 50th birthday saying, you know, 50 and still perfect. that was given to me 24 years ago. look, i wouldn't have thought long term went by rather quickly. and i think if we look at not addressing palestine and israel, if we look at not addressing atheory terrace him and the signal -- you a theorytism -- atheoryityism, that they can come and do what they want and just ride it out and at a certain point they'll have to deal with you, they'll have to say well, it's a state. we have to deal with it. but then to go and, as it were, legitimate that state with comments like they're moving on to the path to democracy, we're giving them aid with saying we recognize the election. you know, we support, quote, the will of the people, you know. a lot of the people didn't like the president. as one member of congress said to a member of the obama administration, i can think of a couple presidents that could not get at times, you know, a majority in terms of percentages supporting them. does that mean that we would think that the person should be moved, pushed out undemocratically? i think there are a lot of hard choices and regrettably, i think obama's legacy, unless he acts now, would not be one to at least put some precedence out there, even if they're not totally successful about the fact that the u.s. is going to take a new look at its relationship with the region which does mean our allies have to be primarily responsible in the region for what they do but which also means that we are going to be really strong on the things that they do that are devastating. we're not going to look the other way when slaughter takes place of the magnitude that its taken in egypt and also more recently in gaza. >> we have one minute left. we're in the lightning round. i'm going to take two questions -- the discussion on the twitter sphere is really interesting. i'll take two questions and ask for quick answers. for john, what about the question of isis recruiting, for example, somalis in minnesota, how should the u.s. be dealing with isis recruiting in the states and for shadi, quick answers, how should the u.s. be dealing with isis competitors like al qaeda in the region while addressing isis. with quick answers we won't have time for the other three questions. >> the u.s. knows and has done some of some. there needs to be much closer working relationship with local communities, with local muslim communities to begin with. but that said, and one could say the same thing in europe, that said, unless you address conditions and unless the country's policy looks better for some youth, you're not giving them a reason not to be radicalized. and i think that that's also part of it. if there's a sense that u.s. policy isn't -- is actually part of the problem, etc., then you've got a situation for, you know, for some to just feel that they must act. i wouldn't exaggerate. we definitely have to be concerned about terrorism in america. but i would be more concerned with terrorists coming in, you know, than actually our domestic population. it's not that some of our population won't go out and there will be some in our population that will do something but if you actually take a look at, you know, most polls and if you're out there in communities, the vast majority of american muslims, the one thing we have is that they are so fully integrated economically, etc. so you don't have youth who feel that they are alienated, marginalized, don't have a job, etc., in the way you can have it in areas of europe which can concede disaffection. >> the last question on the issue of isis competitors. >> i'll just say that one of the -- sometimes there are really bad ideas in policy debates. i think one of them, and it really takes your breath away, is this notion suggested by some even in the administration that if we kind of take a step back and let isis and other extremists fight it out with the assad regime and hezbollah and the you'reian backers that both sides would end up weakened and i remember when i first heard this and said ok, but can't imagine anything that's turned out more long. the opposite is true and both were strengthened tremendously. this was their training ground fighting each other and became much better fighters over the course of that. and this is sort of the sarah palin position, let it all sort it outside. steven walt wrote a piece which is essentially let them bleed and he's still writing it now which i can't understand. but the obama administration policy explicitly agreed with some of those assumptions and it doesn't work that way. >> thank you so much for coming. i'd like to say that twitter is calling this a real powerhouse hamad and sposito, dunne. thank you for coming. this was a really special event. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> this week, our guest is the chief judge of the u.s. second circuit court of appeals. judge katzmann explores his views on how federal judges should interpret the laws passed by congress. judge katzmann also talked about his career, his mentor, daniel patrick moynihan, and his views on televising federal court proceedings. "q&a," tonight at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span. >> this month, c-span presents debates on what makes america great, evolution, and genetically modified foods, issues spotlight with looks at veteran healthcare, student loan debt, and campus sexual assault, new perspectives on issues including global warming, voting rights, fighting infectious disease, and food safety, and our history tour shows sights and sounds from america's historic places. find our tv schedule one week in advance at c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400, or email us at comments@c-span.org. join the conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. trumka speaks to reporters. he addresses a range of labor-related issues, including potential action on immigration , raising the minimum wage, and the 2014 and 2016 elections. the "christian science monitor's" washington bureau chief moderated the discussion. this is an hour. >> for the sake of those of you who showed up on time we will do this on time. our guest is richard trumka. this is his sixth visit with our group. thanks for coming back. our guest grew up in the pennsylvania coal field, followed his father and grandfather into the mines. he worked his way through penn state university. in 1982, he was elected president of the united mine workers of america, the youngest in history. he served three terms as president and brought the mineworkers into the cio. he ran to be secretary-treasurer on the ticket led by john sweeney. he became the dentist person to hold that position as well and served for 15 years. he was elected president of the cio in september, two thousand nine, and reelected in 2013. thus ends the biographical portion of the program, now onto the recitation of ground rules. we are on the record. no live blogging retweeting, no filing of any kind while the breakfast is underway to give us time to listen to what our guest says. th

Related Keywords

Afghanistan , Algeria , Turkey , Minnesota , United States , Kosovo , Penn State University , Pennsylvania , Syria , Indonesia , Russia , Lebanon , Washington , District Of Columbia , Pakistan , Jordan , Ukraine , Cairo , Al Qahirah , Egypt , South Sudan , Iraq , Israel , Geneva , Genè , Switzerland , Gaza , Israel General , Saudi Arabia , Libya , Somalia , France , Americans , America , Turkish , Iraqis , Syrians , Libyans , Pakistani , Egyptian , Somalis , French , Iraqi , Soviet , Syrian , American , James Foley , Shadi Hamid , Steven Walt , Nouri Al Maliki , Al Qaeda , Sarah Palin , John Sweeney , Richard Trumka , Daniel Patrick Moynihan , Hillary Clinton , Stacey Pollard ,