Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20141004

President s and congress has followed, that this would lead to a paralysis of our ability to defend ourselves. All of the framers agreed about war and i dont think that is true either like bruce said. I would look at the constitutional text. I have a free copy someone gave me. I expect some place like the committee on the republic we have one. Article 1 says no state shall without the consent of congress engage in war unless actually invaded or in such eminent danger delay isnt allowed. That is the constitutional balance of powers that bruce thinks should apply between the president and congress. All you would have to do is take out the word state and put in the word president. Unless we are invaded or danger of attack. Why couldnt the framers written that if they had intended what bruce said . Instead they wrote provisions that gave some power to congress, some to the president and expected them to fight it out. I want to bring the argument to the contemporary period. I know john was involved in the authorization of military force and the broad power it gave the president and i think at first, your understanding of the authorization of military force use and the president s current request that he requires another authorization to use military force in the current situation. Could you address that . The authorization use of military force language describes the universe of targets that the president can set as those who were complicit, they can be persons, organizations, individuals who are complicit in 9 11 or harbor those who work. It isnt an authorization to go after every terrorist in the world. It is an authorization to target those who are complicit in the 9 11 organizations. The president is saying omaf auth authorizes him to bomb and express the need for Ground Troops if the air campaign doesnt work which it surely wont if we bomb with more bombs in world war ii that didnt work it will not work with isis. But the president , isis, is an opponent of alqaeda. They are rivals and didnt even exist in 2001. They fall within the aumf that congress thought they were authorizing an attack on an organization that didnt even exist at the time. That is an example of the insouciance that is president utilizes without going to war without authorization. It was the president James Madison who asked for a declaring of war. If the congress is more aggressive than the president they could have passed the bill and sent it to him. In the war of 1812, the british were able to successfully invade the United States. Harvey is from canada trying to snatch canada history there for facts. But john, the authorization of use of military forces is historically unique in that it authorizes the military forces not only for states put for organizations and persons. And that i think was unprecedented in our congressional relationship of power. Could you address that . Your understanding. I am not sure whether bruce is arguing against war or president s who act without congressional authorization. Drones, surveillance, some of those examples are terrible things and the use of collection of intelligence during war time and those are Things Congress is authorizing president ial action. When the decisions came to congress we have supported them. So sometimes you are arguing against war or the harassness of war. But if we debate on whether congress and there president have to agree that is different. Is the aumf from 2011 and i participated in the drafting so i have bias. Does it authorize use against isis and that depends on how connected isis to is alqaeda. Isis was at one point part of alqaeda and now there are reports they are fighting it each other. If they are not part of each i dont think it falls within the 2001 reportism i think it falls against the 2002 report. Resources financial and natural are there and if they intend to attack us, as they appear to, i think they fall in the the 2002 report. I think the president needs to go to the congress and explain why they fit under such statue. I dont think they are blank checks. They are broader because they are not limited by time or geography but that put us back into what it was like in september 18, 2001 when written and passed. We were not sure who attacked us yet and wanted to make sure should alqaeda evolve or transform itself into different groups, remaim itself and the authorization still be able to follow them and the people helping them, no matter what they call their organizational chart or change in goals. I promised i would save time for the audience. And i usually try to keep my promises. So why dont you stand up and say your name, who you are and any affiliations so we have a sense of where the question is coming from. You might have to take the whole thing. Well done. My name is patrick. I am an adjunct professor of law. The question i have my understanding of the constitution was that there was a financial part of this, too. They saw the kings in europe were getting their countries into war and bankrupting them. They felt they wanted to restrain the spending of the peoples money and bankrupting the country by engaging in the foreign wars so they put the authority in the congress because they did feel the king, then the executive, had a tendency to get involved in more wars. Anybody want to talk about the financial part of this . I know how much the war in iraq cost the country, for example. I just wanted to raise that. Professor, i agree with you. And that is why the power of the purse is in the hands of congress. Congress is given the authority the Sole Authority to fund the military for twoyear periods. I think that is the real check on any kind of executive war making or grandizement. I will give you one historical example i think supports this. This is the constitutional amendment that is at work. It is a specific power. The spending power. When the constitution came up for radification in virginia, which was the most important ra radfication state. Patrick henry, you know mr. Give me liberty or give me death, the bruce fein of his day, Patrick Henry made many of the same arguments saying you have created a potential monarch who is going to use power to oppose the tyranny. And James Madison, the leader of the fight for the constitution in virginia, his reply wasnt dont worry the clause is there. His answer is under the constitution the sword and the purse are separated. So the parliament can always cut off funds if the king choses to fight a war. And congress can have control over the purse and without it the president cannot wage a war. I agree it is that check. However today congress is choosing to fund the wars. Again, my point it it isnt a failure of the constitution or the democratic system. The congress and president are in agreement. What is your reaction . Madison did state the power of the purse enabled congress to readdress all of its grievances. It did so on one occasion. Vietnam war was brought to a close when Congress Said there was no more money to fight the war in china. President nixon did obey that law. There is a problem with the approach relying on the power of the purse and that is we know what happens where the president sends troops into war and they are in some kind of danger. And then it is viewed if you vote to cut off the funds you are creating danger for the troops. That script is played out repeatedly in politics. I dont see why there is anything wrong with understanding there is more one than check on president ial eagerness to go to war. I dont think with regard to what you said, john, that the congress hasnt authorized the president to use predator drones to kill american citizens on his sayso alone. When that issue arose with John Brennans election to be director of the cia it was controversial and we got a wobble answer on what he could do. The congress didnt say we are allowing the president to kill americans because he thinks they are dangerous without a review. Question in the back . Thank you. Good evening. I am ann wright a former diplomat and i resigned in 2003 in opposition to the war in iraq. All of this is personal to me as many of you all. The either intended or unintended consequences of giving legal opinions to allow a president to do essentially whatever we wants to is i think very dangerous for our country and the rest of the world. And how can we control these types of president ial decisions backed up by john yoo and a host of lawyers who in my opinion didnt serve the government and people well by the allowing of this type of overreach by the president . Thank you. I think we [applause] i think we know because it was conveyed about a year ago when president obama was poised to launch missiles into syria and the American People got awo awoken and said we dont want another war. The president retreated, congress didnt do anything and we wend ended up with destroying the chemical weapons and it was okay to kill them with other things. But the congress and president are still responsive to what American People believe are the requirements of the dangers that justify going to war. I respect your point of view. [inaudible question] let me answer the question. Each government is responsible for using their own constitutional powers. I think if there are lawyers in the executive branch the people that maintain the position and going back many decades thinking the president can use force, i expect congress to have their own lawyers and institutions and they are supposed to fight back. That is what the framers intended for the constitutional mechanisms to work. If you goback to 2011, this isnt a place where the president is saying im going to war and congress was saying dont go to war. Congress was attacking the executive for being too passive and allowing the 9 11 attacks to happen. My memory is congress and the president were in agreement in taking the fight into afghanistan and against the terrorist. I dont see this division of authority between the president and congress. We obviously have what i would say from 20042005. I dont think the constitutional system broke down in 2001 and i dont think the president and congress were in disagreement. And i dont see Signs Congress was trying to stop the president from conducting the war in anyway. If congress wanted to, they had ample powers at their disposal to do so and they chose not to exercise them and passed the amuf in 2011. A broad authorization to use force. I need to give a counter example because this is important of the model for Government Service. This is my involvement in watergate and there was a time when nixon believed your example is yourself. I was at the Justice Department at the time of watergate and the attorney general was Elliot Richardson and the president believe he had the right to fire the special prosecutor who was getting close to uncovering evidence against the president. And he said i am quitting because i am not firing cox. And then the entire department of justice in the aftermath listened to richardson and gave him standing ovation for the courage. What happened was the department would have been a cephalous without a general acting and mr. Ri ri richardson was asked to stay on. I cannot let that example go. Now you know why they asked me to do this. First, i think that i dont know if bruce would agree with this. But i think it was constitutionally in correct for the attorney general and the Deputy Attorney to say they cannot fire a prosecutor. I think judge fork did the right thing. He carried out the president s order. The president is a chief Law Enforcement office. Congress power was to impeach the president. It went to litigation nato versus fork and the judge ruled it was illegal to discharge mr. Richardson. I am with the institute for justice. And i have a question about the role of the courts specifically about the role of the courts in keeping the executive in check. They were mentioned earlier and one of the things that is remarkable about the case is that the final report, general dewits report used to support the relocation orders was based on deeply flawed information that the Justice Department knew was flawed when the argued the case. He was pardon decades after and being sent to a concentration camp. I am wondered what the facts in evidence is given the facts used to justify the actions of the executive are hidden and because of National Security allegedly would being not know about them. I think the courts should reannounce what i think this foolish doctrine of the execute branch and Foreign Affairs because they are on mission and it maybe true they have more information than the congress and judiciary. They have huge motive done. The most famous case was reynolds versus the United States. The claim of secrets and the secret report not viewed by the justice years later showed the secretary of air force lied and suggested that the report that caused the death of an engineer would disclose state secrets but there was no kind. You just showed the United States being responsible for the death. I get the answer, too, harvey . I think that was like a question hostile to my side and friendly to bruces. It was like they got to speak twice as long. No, no, i will be brief. First the courts have never decided such a question. They have consistently stayed out of the speech between congress and the president over war because they realize, one they dont want to this slippery slope argument and started addressing the question and what questions are they not going to address in war. They dont want to get pulled down and review all kinds of operational decisions. And because they realize the president in congress can fend for themselves. If you a civil libertarian you would think they would want to put their capital toward other cases and not between the two branches of government that can take care of themselves. I am not a fan of judges and i disagree when what they have dope. I have clerks of the Supreme Court and i admire individual judges but i think the judiciary did wrong things but i dont think the answer to the war power issue is to call for more intervention into the system. Paul horn, an International Economist and member of co committee. I thought bruce fein made a comment about the lack of power and i would like to hear you you would prescribe to the president and the exercises involved in the war powers transparency that would satisfy the American Voter . I dont know if i have the answer for a American Voter. But it is a good question. The concern is that we dont want to have the premature release of information in the public to harm the Operational Security and mission and what the armed forces are being asked to kerry carry out. We are having one about isis in this room right now. But you dont want to have to excessive details put in public that will be selfdefeating. That has been a problem fighting alqaeda and other terrorist groups which rely on secrecy, rely on surprise attacks on civilians by hiding themselves. So i think that what the president and congress have tried to work out over the last decades is better than i think it is pretty good as we can hope for. The president and Congress Meet together in classified settings and the president can disclose that information to congress. If congress disagrees and doesnt support they can chose not to fund it. This is how the system for cia covert action works. The executive branch comes to the Senate Intelligence committee, they were briefed on the covert actions, and congress has an implicit check on every single one if they chose not to fund it, but you have democratic behavior between the branches and maintain the ability to act secretly at the same time. You could take the perspective that Henry Simpson once had as secretary of war. He found out the United States had an Extensive Program against germany and other countries. This was a hundred years ago. He said gentlemen dont read each others mail and shutdown the program. I think that is a mistake. You could have that point of view. Everything should be in public. We should not have an nsa or no secret parts of the government fighting these enemies. But i think that would lead to a decrease in the National Security and wouldnt convince our rivals and opponents in the world to take it easy on us. I think that the transparency issue is out of whack. John suggesting it is acceptable. Are you kidding . The president bush ran this terrorist Surveillance Program for years until the new york city times sat on it for a year and published in december of 2005. Do joke. We have to make this point. The First Amendment which is to us all is also article i, section 5 which says each has a general proceeding in from time to time accepting such parties because it may in their judgment require secrecy and the yeas and nays of the members of anyhow either house on any question enters into journal. We always point out that even George Washington and the Founding Fathers realized those issues of secrecy but they also had issues of the First Amendment and thats part of attention that this debate usually brings up. Im at the institute for justice. My question is for mr. Yoo and mr. Fein. To the whole office come . [laughter] did everyone from the office get a question . We have supporters of the empire. Did they get any questions . Dont they have a group . Properly read the constitution has an assumption of liberated by the powers that are enumerated and limited in area mentioned courts should really not waste Political Capital on aging engaging in issues on the exercise of power and focus more on individual liberty but the emphasize of power doesnt dictate liberties of focusing on a contemporary example which are the authorizations post9 11, how did the implications on individual liberty make their way into the analysis . How does the executive branch do that because it seems from what we see in the aftermath that things probably didnt go as planned. So i think obviously the president takes an oath to execute the law, to take care that the laws are faithfully executed and the supreme laws of the constitution so the president has an obligation i thought he was giving me signals like he was my manager and he was telling me to throw a curveball. I think the president obviously has to carry up a constitution that is the supreme law and laws are judicial decisions or executive actions which violate the constitution are to be carried out. So the executive branch has to follow the bill of rights as well and so the primary issue that bruce has mentioned is the Surveillance Program which has obviously strong tensions with the Fourth Amendment and the right to privacy and the right against warrantless features searches and seizures. If you thought the executive branch wasnt that not paying attention to the bill of rights, didnt care about the Fourth Amendment than they shouldve just listened in on everyones phonecalls and they should have read everyones emails. Why bother . As i understand it and of course there are different conflicting accounts of exactly what happened, the nsa looked at the phone numbers. They didnt look at the actual calls. They just looked at the phone numbers. They looked at the headers of emails. They didnt look at the content of emails. For americans. For people outside the country they listen them and looked at everything they could. That is consistent with our constitutions Fourth Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court. We may not like it and we may it and be me all the citizens want broader privacy rights against electronic surveillance and we should have Congress Pass such a law. Bruce will say congress doesnt do it. Congress is outrageous. But when this came up after the Supreme Courts decision in katz and electronic surveillance Congress Passed a law in 1968 the crime control act which did set up a system to regulate electronic surveillance in some respects broader privacy beyond what the courts required. So in this case i think the executive branch tried to exercise surveillance powers as broadly as it could but consistent with the Fourth Amendment as it had been interpreted by our Supreme Court. If we want to have broader view of rice for institute of justi justice. Its a wellknown Libertarian Organization so if you want to have a broader scope of choice i think thats the job of congress. Congress congress can pass laws and required those privacy rights to be broader in internet internet age that may happen in the past. Michael hayden said after 9 11 he was summoned and told any powers you want to tell us and we will get them to you. I have reason to know that the nsas resources went right from 80 focused on surveillance for terrorism purposes, not crime purposes like big crime control act. How many lawyers do think were assigned the task of determining whether or not the Fourth Amendment was complied with . When the president s own privacy and civil Liberty Court by making around to looking at the program the president entrusted him. Not only is it not authorized by statute it doesnt work as unconstitutional. Now the cases are in the courts. We have one had had one District Court say its unconstitutional and the other one went the other way. The cases on appeal in the last court of appeals that we shouldnt always relied on the courts whatever the last word was. This was 1979. The present himself as well as congress should be alert to their obligation to understand liberty is the center of the constitutional universe not empire and when theres ambiguity we choose liberty not empire. Is a hot issue in how we understand the constitution. The order so we will all know we will go to this gentleman and then the gentleman and the glasses, the gentleman over here and the gentleman over there so everyone knows and the gentleman there. That will be the order and we will end up with george. My name is thomas and im a priest priest node and nsa whistleblower and i was indicted by the Obama Administration for espionage. My question is this for both of you. Is there anywhere in article ii of the constitution, anywhere you can cite that trumps National Security . Anywhere where article ii is more important than National Security . I apologize. I dont quite understand the question. Article ii describes executive power. I think unlike john i dont believe the use of the word executive power means going to wear. After all of article ii goes down so far as to enumerate and express powered the right to recognize ambassadors is rather a formalistic right why would it omit something as important as saying the president can go to war. Thats really hiding an elephant and a mouth. So when john is talking about what kind of language you would expect to be in there, but thats my response. Im not sure i understand National Security and article ii question. I have done a great deal on article ii. Whats the sense of this notion on article ii . I dont want to misunderstand your question but i think what you are asking is where does it say in the constitution that National Security trumps article ii or trumps the constitution. Thats how i take the question. I think that is a very valuable question. I dont think that just the claim of National Security needs itself trumps the constitution nor article ii however i also dont think our framers created constitution that would be defective that could not handle the challenges and threats placed on our government today by a threat of terrorism or by war. I dont know the particulars of your case. Im sorry that the Obama Administration prosecuted you if it was unjust. I just dont know but i dont think that the constitution that our framers would have written constitution with soap pair lies our government that could not protect the National Security. The more important question is how are the president and congress supposed to interact properly so that we maintain this balance between National Security and liberty . I dont want to be seen as arguing that liberty gets a row and National Security gets 100. The preframers were practical men and theyre supposed to be a balance between the two. Sometimes her institutions might not work out the way the framers thought in how you strike the balance properly but i dont know the facts of your case. Compared away the french constitution as a phrase which allows the state to act. The british have something called peace order and good government. This also gives the crown extraordinary power and as you pointed out theres no raison detat clause. I think that is what you are inquiring and it is an omission in our constitution is the point i think you are making. I dont mean to be associated with anyone who quotes french in public debate. [laughter] from someone from harvard i expected a little bit more. The gentleman right here with a tan suit in the glasses. I am with the Freedom Institute and my question is to ask both of you to elaborate on that point that you made that the articulation in section 10 has the implication theres no such limits on the president in section 8. Mr. Fein i trust you dont agree with evan agree agree with evan id like you to elaborate on why you dont and mr. Yoo since you seem to think the president president s restricted when it goes too far as with nixon and watergate how do secrecy and other power surrounding war is to know when one has gone too far . You might want to help explain the question. The power of the person the power to declare war. John marshall explained you dont read the constitution of the United States text like the Internal Revenue code. You need to read it with an understanding of what its broad purposes were because they understood technology would change. The world wasnt going to be a Petrified Forest and all i can say is it is unmistakable to anybody grounded in the debates of the constitution, ratification process and although worries about too many wars clogs in the arteries of war, that all those who vote to ratify believe that congress alone has the authority to initiate and the president could compel immediate attacks. I dont think we have to quibble about semantical jug way that you could do if you wanted to get really refined references to the dictionary but just go to the major point. The reason why we wanted congress to be entrusted with that power is because it doesnt have a conflict of interest executive has. You dont find in the corridors of congress anybody on the pedestal pedestal. President s come you find them everywhere and thats why you think those clauses mean exactly what they say. Understand now why bruce doesnt like robert bork. He just said we should allow the spirit of the constitution as he is telling us to override the text. The text of the constitution has this provision article i section 10 and i think i read it accurately. Bruce is response is i can tell you the spirit of the constitution is that no one would have thought that the president could wage war and im sure it would be difficult to go to war. Some of those quotations are not from ratification of the constitution. So you could get people on the revolutionary period. You can get people from the ratification period Mike Alexander hamilton but i think that stuff has not come into play until you have read the constitutional text. Im not reading it like a tax code. It says what it says and i think what strange as you have this very precise clause about starting more. And one part of the constitution used to restrict the states and when it comes to restricting the president who is a much bigger threat according to bruce in wartime because of self aggrandizement conflicts of interest why dont they repeat the cause again . Most of these people are lawyers who are participating in the drafting of a constitution. The congress has power to declare war and has power of the purse. Let me reveal however the interpretation. The First Amendment says congress, the president of the judiciary but Congress Shall make no law bridging freedom of speech. Under johns interpretation of president can issue prior restraint because you just read the word congress. And in fact johns approach took root in 1928 when the Supreme Court initially said to intercept conversations was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment because it protects persons effects. John would say fine just read the text. It doesnt say anything about conversations. In that way you the goal of the constitution and he turned it into a dictionary. The reason i focus on the constitutional text is im not so confident i have the secret about what the framers thought and a great message of the constitution. I think bruces approach requires you to agree with his version of the constitutional history history. The reason why the text is important and always a starting point is because that is what was passed. That was ratified and thats whats in writing. It doesnt require us unless we are not sure to resort resort to them broader abstract judgments about what i think the purpose of the constitution is. It allows allows you altogether the classic constitutional debate that takes place at the Supreme Court. Every monday, tuesday and wednesday about how you interpret the document . Enumerated powers and unenumerated rates. I think everyone watching should get out their constitution constitution and understand in enumerated powers for article i. Its really going to drive down the ratings. [laughter] i think its more for an education and ratings john. Thank you very much. I want to go back im sorry, im steven jordan. I run a Management Consulting firm. Are you sure its not institute for justice . [laughter] no and i have no affiliation. Thank you but i want to go back to the heart of this debate which i think is really not just about the present circumstances visavis afghanistan or iraq or isis but it really is also to the fundamental impact over power of our institutions, our executive and legislative branches in terms of what they can and cannot do visavis us ultimately. Earlier in the conversation you all talked about precedence and what was informing the founders. The two major precedence really they were drawing from where the british civil war and the british army against the Royal Air Force and the royal navy but the whole idea of parliament against monarchy on the one hand and the other one that they were really drawn against with the slippery downward slope of the empire which degenerated really into a military autocracy in which the print text was able to interpret the laws as they saw fit. On the other hand we also have eisenhowers warning about the militaryindustrial complex and the idea that all 50 states there is Economic Activity and special interests that have the potential to support congress. In what way are you concerned about Institutional Corruption affecting the course of the future of these institutions . Well i think they are very profound and serious. The money and the status that goes with being what you call a neocon or a war hawk is enormous. You are reluctant even in the government. Your know you were going to go out and criticized the National Security state because youll get a 500,000dollar contract with booze allen or somebody else and people are worried about but thereafter government career is going to look like. So the curate a state builds on itself. I think that we have a government now that exaggerates fear. Many manyfold in order to get the money to continue to come. Just think six months ago isis wasnt even a footnote in the middle east. Then suddenly it went to a regional power, then it global power interplanetary power, intergalactic power. The worst danger to the world has ever seen and now the money is appropriated there. I was going to sign up to be a member of the Free Syrian Army to become wealthy overnight to find people to give money to. The greatest dangers to fight isis but thats an example where we now have an institutionaliz institutionalized to find, not to multiply the actual danger of any Foreign Force and you can see it right now in china. Once i siskos away and al qaeda goes away if we are going to say china is the great power that we need to confront and we will be building more aircraft carriers because it builds what we call the militaryindustrial complex but the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Said Defense Budget is like a work program. They can cut these jobs out in that keeps i think the military and business. I think its an important question. I think our debate has mostly been about president versus congress and my argument has been i thought the president has a much more Constitutional Initiative and flexibility but most of the things that are going on theres agreement. So your question goes beyond that to ask are there limits on what the government itself can do and were even if in your worry. Is that the buzzer . This is such a chichi place. He would do it that way by clicking a glass. I think that your concern is that war is reading Something Like the fall and collapse of the Roman Republic into the unlike france id like to associate with people that end quote latin. Think thats a very valuables skill. [laughter] well, no. I was going to say always wear underwear which rhymes in latin. So my response i does want to make sure i understand the question. My First Response is i dont think we are an empire and if we are an empire its a funny empire. We dont have territory abroad. We dont run regimes. We can barely get a coalition of people to help us bomb a terrorist group in the middle east. If we are running an empire its a pretty sorry empire. Diplomatic historians who study the cold war, i think the classic book is called invitation to empire. The United States is an expansion of the military and stationing troops abroad was up prime demand of the countries abroad. It was just as much a poll polis was a push. They may have troops in germany and troops in japan and south korea. I dont think that those are imperial provinces of the United States. I also dont think that we are like the republicans, we dont have a functioning legislature and all the power is concentrated. I have to say it really disagreed with bruces implication that are government officials are encased in fearmongering and trying to provoke war in order to make themselves personally wealthy. For the people i work with in the government and i know only the people i work with in government whether i agree with them on the Obama Administration are the Bush Administration i think for the most part they are good hearted public citizens than they are trying to protect the nations security. Theyre not looking to say im going to work for lockheed. Im going to build f35s for lockheed and get rich. I think thats a terrible insult to the men and women in the armed forces and our government that are out there protecting the National Security which i think unfortunately rapidly dwindling resources. That is what is hurting our our security as the cuts in the Defense Budget not corruption by people in the military stoking war so they can make a personal fortune. Can i say this is just like a marxist critique of the vietnam war and im surprised to hear bruce and people in this room adopting this shallow critique of the United States. It was adopted by a marxist in the 1960s. Michael hayden and booze allen left the government. If you understand the revolving door of the Intelligence Community than you dont know whats going on. Bruxelles want to be clear about this. You are saying people in the government the highest leaders are deliberately fearmongering and provoking more so they can become wealthy . Not directly that way. Its not necessarily a direct quid pro quo. Its like mr. Mcconnell in virginia but there are subtle signals and they know its whats going to happen afterwards. They understand they will go back and thats what they do. See you think these leaders are mentioned and their highest government leaders are just as guilty as governor mcdonnell who was just convicted of corruption . Thats not what im saying saying. You can abstract understanding without direct quid pro quo. You think the people in government dont know whats available outside . I think you are very naive. Sure they know. Rather than ad hominem attacks whether to elevate debate one of the issues when the militaryindustrial complex which eisenhower said in his last speech the speech drafted allegedly by goodpaster had the initial. Because the two people coming into the presidency were kennedy and johnson and two senators it would be inappropriate for him to have the two senators castigated and strike out the congressional relationship. That notion that has been deepen our understanding of american politics and policy sense that period of eisenhower. This gentleman is very patient. Say who you are in a quick question. Thank you very much. My name is martin and im a veteran Foreign Correspondent for the Washington Times and upi. My question is primarily for bruce. I believe history shows in the past 70 years James Madison was wrong. When congress has the power of the purse that is not enough. The problem comes when congress willingly advocates the power of the person asks no questions. Congress asked no questions in 1950 when Harry Trumans spurious lay called the korean war which took it to a full war by the United States and china but it goes down in history as a police action. Thats how it got around the embarrassing need to ask congress to declare war. In 1964 Congress Asked no questions on the gulf of tonkin resolution which we now know was based on extremely at the least inaccurate information that was given to congress and policymakers to put it mildly and of course before the 2003 iraq war Congress Asked no questions again. In passing a resolution and their last two democratic secretaries of state john kerry and Hillary Clinton voted to give the powers george w. Bush needed to go to war in iraq. I think bruce made a key point before which brings up the answer to this. I would like them to expand on it. There seems to be a history of a supine congress. Is one key follow. Bruce made the vital point that supine congress as can be driven to carry out what the constitutional responsibility ought to be by Public Opinion and thats often lacking. How do we Public Opinion and make it work . I dont believe that James Madison conceived that one branch of government would become an invertebrate branch and eagerly surrender its powe powers. It was beyond his comprehension. They always say one of the reasons is because the party system was not nearly as entrenched at that time and now they loyalty is there more to the party the constitution of the United States even though theyre theyre only oath is to uphold the constitution. Also i do think might call this the psychology of empire that has emerged in the United States even if john doesnt believe having 1100 military brass is up bases abroad, i do think thats an earmark of empire even if they invite us in after we bribed them in treaty commitments to defend the countrys that are not strategically important to us. Putting that aside i do think the whole country, and this blames us, we the people, have accepted to readily the idea that we need to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy and where surrounding our liberty in exchange for these ostensible safeties. Thats simply something that madison could understand because the whole idea of the revolution revolution was liberty, individual liberty. Ultimatum ultimately you are right. Your remedy is not going to stick a backbone in your congress and thats not going to happen. So to the American People through debate, through education, through seminars and two debates like this to say nell we are standing up and we are going to pull people out of office. They take us into these wars too often that is what happened with regard to syria and it needs to happen again. Heres Something Else bruce should have said. Its getting close to 8 30. This gentleman has been in the queue for quite a while. What im going to do is give the mic to both of you who ask the questions and ill let you both have the last word. My name is George Jamison and im a consultant and a lawyer and a former retired cia lawyer. You had better run out of here now before they get you. For the record im not wealthy and i did not become wealthy during my Government Service and i did not become wealthy after my Government Service but maybe thats because i was in favor of the war in iraq. Bruce has answered part of my question by saying people can Vote Congress out of office because my comment, my question is am i wrong in thinking we had two different debates. We have a legal debate in a policy debate. John i think was arguing in favor of the constitution and the system is one that has tensions built into it and you may not like the answer. Bruce clearly doesnt like the answer so my question since he trashed the executive in a trashed congress and he trashed the courts how do you resolve the policy differences when people have watched he used the system . You can know all the debate in the world. What do you do when you have a system, are you seeking to change the system is my question . The woman in the paint. Please say who you are and your affiliation please. I am a professor at george mason university. My comment was motivated by mr mr. Yoos comments in the discussion just before the last concerning the careers of retired generals and i just want to point out that its a matter of fact of Public Record that 20 years ago or 30 years ago when generals and admirals retired they actually retired and played golf and played with her grandkids and so on. Today, according to a database of more than 700 generals and admirals on a database put together by the boston globe which my shadow has contributed many more data points predominantly retired generals and admirals no longer retire when they retire. They continue working and they continue working in the military Industrial Media etc. Complex so again this is a matter of fact of the record and mr. Yoo can have your opinions but this is about fat. Thank you. Why dont we give you both the last word. I think we are going to give you the last word. Ultimately in my judgment the destiny of the nations war and peace with we the people. If we dont get it right, if the culture doesnt get it right, the government is not going to be superior. I recall we had a period of time where white supremacy, we have jim crow for years. It was a ruling law, separate but equal. Didnt make it right even though it was the role that was prescribed by the United States Supreme Court. We need to take it in our hands and not just complain about congress and executive branch but thats part of it. And do something about it. Vote and say this is wrong but i want to do it. We did it a year ago in syria and that has to become the norm rather than the exception. Theres only so much that constitution text can do. Get the spirit of liberty does not beat in our hearts and minds every day it will die and no court or congress can save it. [applause] i will ask answer the questions really quickly. The first question, i dont disagree really. I think we are getting the policies that we voted for. I get the sense that the majority people in this room dont agree with those policies but i do think we have had a democratic process. We have had multiple election since 9 11 and our elected representatives are making these decisions. I do agree with this point numbers as part that if we dont agree with the policies we can change represent us. We are not an empire where theres a Roman Emperor telling us what to do. We voted for president obama and we voted for members of congress. On the advertisement for the database i dont like numbers. Id met that i dont do numbers. Im a lawyer specifically so i wouldnt have to do numbers but surely you know the difference between correlation and causation and just because there are generals or admirals who have the correlation of going to work for contractors after they retire does not show causation that these men and women are making decisions deliberately while in office to provoke wars, fear monger in order to enhance their employment prospects which is what i took bruce to say. Just to sum up bruce says we have the constitutional system. Our job if we agree with him is to blow people out even if different branches have different policies and the constitution is interpreted differently. That is what happened in 2008. We took i say look at the consequences consequences. Look what happened to our National Security and defense posture in the last six years and i think those are a direct result of a kind of policies that bruce is promoting. I think we are much less safe now than we were six years ago because of it. [applause] first a round of applause for everyone. I think i would like to first book people on the panel and people have mentioned thinking them further public service. One may not agree that there are many patriots and patriots are serving. I want to thank the press club and i want to say these are the types of events we think we need in order to put these issues in front and have a civil debate about what the true values are. This is a model of what we thought our democracy can and should be. I encourage you if you are adjusted and more of these types of debates at the Bar Association we have written a book called patriot debates in which we go through 10 or 12 of these issues pro and con and try to put out the issues based o on and not anger. I think we have to do with it rationally and that is what we should do for ourselves and be a model for the rest of the world. So thank you so much for being so kind, being so civil. Thank you for staying very close to timing and i want to thank you. Lets give them another round of applause. [applause] retired general tony subfourteen rick argues the u. S. Should rethink its role as the worlds police and be more skeptical about using force to solve problems. This is an hour. [applause] thank you, thank you. I wanted to talk a little bit first about how the book came about. I often get accused of maybe setting the stage for events today and i guess for an author watching whats going on now having a book like this seems like perfect timing, unfortunately. I started out to write a very different book than this. I was really thinking about the way conflict goes today compared to wars and military interventions of the past. I think all of us know we talk about the greatest generation, world war ii, the good war. We were attacked and we as a nation came together. We had clear objectives. They were men like marshall and fdr and others that were in the leadership positions. And we manage to handle it in a way that seemed very satisfying and. It was the first time in our history that the winner paid reparations when you think about it. Up until that point it was unheard of. The loser had to pay for the war but when you think about the Marshall Plan in everything we did it was the winner that took our adversaries and raise them up. Germany and japan and i think in many ways that has always been our motto. When we think about committing our military thats the good work. No worse a good of course but isnt that good war in good war in the sense that it seems just. Everything we did seem to be from the perspective of the moral high ground. The leadership was in place. We had a strategy. We havent end state so these sorts of things were said and concrete as the way we would commit our military. I think what has happened since then, the korean war, the vietnam, the vietnam war iraq afghanistan somalia and other smaller. They didnt have those sorts of clean lines. The reason we went and are difficult to understand. The way the wars were handled in the decisions were made just didnt seem to fit that model. It isnt an american way of war which basically is relatively straightforward but the kinds of complex we are into now seem not to fit that. The book i started out to right write this basically oriented to the battlefield. What do the troops go through having to adjust to this click they are trained for that good war model but they find themselves now in murky commitments, no clear political objectives. They are on the ground trying to rebuild nations in strange environments. I started it from the point of view of a soldier, marine on the ground. Something im very familiar with. As i went along and did the research and the book a couple of things struck me. One was that the troops when you are out there and with him on the ground they get it. If you go down to the village level they understand whats happening on the ground. Most of them, not all of them, adjust, adapt. Its the decisions that get made somewhere else that caused the problems. The more i started to look at this somewhere else i found how far removed from the battlefield that was. All the political decisions that are made and analyses that are made before we put boots on the ground is all the decisions and political machinations that go on while the chips are out there in the midst of these kinds of conflicts. That is why i wrote the books before the first shots are fired how america can win or lose off the battlefield. Oftentimes we get our troops in a position where they are at a disadvantage before me in a military term crossed the line of departure. So i sort of switch my focus to all these things that go on and off the battlefield and before the commitment of troops, the political pieces of this, the decisions about strategy, the setting or nonsetting objectives and right now you can see whats happening in terms of what seems to be in decision, reluctance, trying to get a grasp on whats happening. We have become a nation that is transactional and reactive to crisis as opposed to having some sort of strategic design and understanding where we want to go, how we want to employ force. Secretary clinton and secretary gates has said that our Foreign Policy is over militarized. Something that might strike you made the odd that vast majority of people feel the same way. Our nation gets commit to nationbuilding emissions that are unclear. We get bogged down in mired down. We find our military personnel trying to rebuild nice entry societies into jeffersonian democracies and free market economies. We dont have the whole of government approach and this just seems to get worse and worse as we go along. The moment i decided to to shift the half that battlefield and into this part of what goes into dealing with conflicts is a statement made by then secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. We were into iraq and things were not going well. A reporter asked rumsfeld, doesnt this look like vietnam and he bristled at that statement. He said no wars are like the last wars, no wars are like the next wars. Every war is its own in three different. I said you know i have been in the military 40 years. I see similarities. I see patterns. So that sort of triggered me to look at the patterns. What is it that you can use as a framework to examine this and look at this . First of all you can look at the reasons we intervened. We would like to thank us americans we intervened for our interests that are threatened in some way. Not so clear. The gulf of tonkin incident that didnt happen they didnt have the manufactured reasons for going to war. Back in the 20s and 30s the banana wars in the caribbean were to promote her business interests. So there are times we have gone to war for territorial Expansion Pack when we were filling out the United States so the reasons are very clear. The first part of the book talks about what i call triggering events. What are the offense . Sometimes our leadership actually creates the reason to go to war. Remember the red line in serious . We have had president s that have drawn red lines and they have had president s better articulated president ial doctrines that basically say we will fight here. Thats all well and good when you say it publicly but there are sort of the nuance of this. You sort of tell your adversary under what conditions he would fight. That adversary is the advantage is to him can create that situation to call your bluff or to force you to do something. President s need to be much more careful about red lines. I think our current president has probably learned that lesson. Sometimes we have created this situation are set the condition under which we have fought so the first part of the book deals with these areas. Its not as cut and dried. The the president our Political Leadership then says okay we have a crisis, we have a triggering event. Help me understand it. We are watching our president go do that now. Tell me about what i need to know. What are my options . Here its critically important to look at where does the advice come from . Its not as clean as the intelligence guys coming in and laying it out. I talk in the book about how different president s have handled this. Eisenhower with the solarium group. President s that have had key advisers to kissingers the brzezinskis the cheneys that dominate the advice in one way or another. President s have used again and rely on the National Security council or a handful of trusted advisers so the advice in the analysis, the intelligence which sometimes has been good and sometimes its been catastrophic in misjudging offense and how that has led us to a decision. I talk about president ial decisions in the book. Was going to the president s mind . Is there a degree of emotion . Is there Something Else that is happening in . Did this catch them by surprise or is there something beyond just the cool and cold analysis that leads to that decision and . Also a strategy that is created. Before you can decide to step onto a battlefield i can tell you this from a military generals point of view, tell me what you want me to do. I was a student at the National War College as a Lieutenant Colonel and we had a representative from Congress Come to speak to us by the name of newt gingrich. Newt said to us someday some of you will rise to higher ranks. He will be generals and your political masters are going to tell you go to this. Attacked us and intervene here. He said its critical for you to ask this question and then what . About iraq. We went and end the mission was to take out saddam. We did in three weeks. We stayed there for 10 years. Okay mr. President saddam is gone and then what . The same thing in afghanistan. Get al qaeda. We didnt Pay Attention to the mission and now ill qaeda is gone and we are standing there in the middle of afghanistan. And then what . We are still there. If you dont see this clearly through, if the political objectives are not clear, given to mission creep, the military doesnt understand what theyre supposed to do. They get bogged down in missions like nationbuilding that may be unintended in some way. Theres another part of this now that its become more critically important as we have gone on. Its what i call in the book the battle of the narrative. The nl, the enemy now has become very sophisticated. Look at isis. Look at how they handle social media, how they dominate the media. These horrific scenes of beheadings and the atrocities and genocide. A place genocide. That place a certain audience. They are recruiting just fine. There is a battle that goes on to make the case that you are right and just. Its a battle of the narrative that goes on it says to the American People i want you behind me. I call this in the book my fellow americans speech, the bully pulpit. Some of us may be old enough to remember the fireside chats. Im not, its way before my time but my father told me about them. We have had great communicators as president , people who could make the case of president s that were willing to make that decision and explain it to the American People as best he can to gain their confidence. In doing the research for the book i talk to a number of president ial advisers and i just want to talk about one example. I have had talks to us in a cabinet member that was close to president reagan during the reagan administration. Reagan with this decision to go into granada if you remember that. The beirut bombing had just occurred and of course the president was getting slammed and the Administration Administration said that or we doing in beirut with troops just sitting there . 240 summer rains and others that we lost there. The stomach and the political pressure going into a place like grenada just wasnt there. This cabinet member or the cabinet had told me the president was giving me advice. Mr. President did not go into granada. This is the worst thing you could do right now. You will never sell it to the American People and its going to be politically damaging. He told me the president turned around and said his very potential for american lives to be endangered in the Intelligence Officer that was briefing said sir there are american medical students that could be at risk. He said the decision is clear, we go in. No ifs, ands or buts of my job is to explain it to the American People. He had clear purpose in mind. However politically difficult it might be there was a higher order that went into his decisionmaking. In this case it was the rest of americans. American interest but not more than that american lives that might be a risk. This battle of the narrative now has become significant. I was doing an assessment in iraq and afghanistan for the generals out there, this is after i retired several years ago. I was amazed to see something i didnt see in my time on active duty. There were staff sections that did nothing but work the meredith, the message. We ran a communications battle now and is not just there at the operational level but at the strategic level. Its not only you versus your potential adversary. Its you versus the political opposition in your own country. Thats constantly goes on to that communication becomes extremely necessary. Now when the balloon goes up and we have to commit our military its not like you suddenly turn around and create a military. You have a military thats fair. We have a military structure. What goes into making that structure . During the cold war we pretty much could make some judgments. We know what the enemy was doing. We were an arms race. It was very expensive. Remember eisenhowers warning about the militaryindustrial complex that was growing . People often quote that speech in the first part where he said our arms must be mighty. We were in this very expensive arms race. President eisenhower was looking at a federal budget that over 50 went to defense and to National Security, over 50 which means the rest have to be split up of most other programs that were vital to our nations wellbeing. Right now its less than 15 and its actually going down. What kind of military can you afford. [inaudible question] kind of military should you have in an environment like this were like this were the threats are vague and hard to understand and difficult to protect in our Intelligence Community, what do you need . Where do you accept the risk . This is a difficult decision for pentagon and others. Im very critical of the process of making this decision in the book. I talk about that is not based on strategy. Its usually based on political decisions. When it goes to congress to decide on which programs to fund her not to fund its usually made on the basis of my district. The process of deciding where to take the risk and not to take the risk and what kind of military to step up and be rea ready, round number that image of Donald Rumsfeld out there in kuwait when that soldier asked him by god we have equipment here that can stand up against ieds, explosive devices. We are having to go to the junkyard and put pieces on an rumsfeld made that insensitive statement that you go to the war with the army you have which was an unsatisfactory answer. Unfortunately its true. We can adjust quickly sometimes with the natives but you have to have some structure. President , when the cold war really began at the end of world war ii we decided we need an military who could fight two wars, two major conflicts. Very expensive and engage in High Technology arms race with the russians and the soviet union and red china. The two wars were potentially red china and the soviet union. It means that we are going to rebuild afghanistan and iraq and rebuilding is very expensive and time consuming and takes a lot of research. And you can have is attempting to do something on the ground that the political well in the numbers of troops and the resources provided are not sufficient to do it. That is what happened to us in iraq and afghanistan and that operational design has to fit the strategy. If there is no strategy, then we are going to get into what is commonly called mission creep. And, you know, wars do not end the way that they would like us to end. Where we go and see is the nations capital, defeat the military forces, plant our flag and there is a clear winner. It doesnt happen that way anymore. So how does that work . You can declare victory and find yourself still mired down in the Mission Accomplished that didnt get quite accomplished. So the metrics that are used, how do we decide whether we are winning or losing or succeeding or failing that if you dont have a strategy or an operational design for strategy, thats very unclear. And how the wars end enact up another part of the book. Wars and sometimes because they create more problems. So Charlie Wilsons war, many of you many decided we will fix the soviet union and we went into afghanistan and we supported what became al qaeda and said that they will punish the soviet union and the soviet union will be thrown out of afghanistan. What can be worse than that . Well, we ended up with the taliban and al qaeda after doing that and i said to the committee when we were going into iraq but this is a wrong war in wrong place and wrong time and we have a mission for al qaeda that did us harm on 9 11 and they said i dont understand you, general, what can be worse than Saddam Hussein to well, look at what we have in iraq now. What do we have in iraq now . Saddam hussein was evil and bad and can something be more evil and wars . We are learning that lesson. So sometimes be careful what you wish for because the outcome could leave open ending up in a worse situation. In the military we are certainly not perfect but we study every single battle in every fight that we have been in and everywhere that we have been thrust into and we spent a lot of time some Lessons Learned and we want to understand what we did wrong or right and where the threat is. We spent a lot of time trying to get it right the next time. The commitment of the military comes in two parts. And there is a second process after the maneuver. Its what this will is about. Its about all of the political decisions that get wrapped around that. Now, we hold dear a principal that i subscribe to and that i would fight and die to protect. Civilians in the military. That is what we need and should have in any democracy and the decision to go into war and the decision to use the military, the authority on military should be resting with our people and expressed through our elective representatives and that is a principal that we hold dear and its critical to democracy. But there is not legation goes with that. Just like the military men and women who have to study and learn those lessons, build a career, go to school, be educated on how to prosecute on their level what goes on, where is that at the political level . Wordy president s and secretaries and congressmen and women understand what they need to do and where is the education and the Lessons Learned and less and less military experience exists at the military level and so we have a mismatch in the policy and the politics, they are not as steeped in the lessons we can learn as the military is on the ground and im informing the American People about this part of it. You can go to the bookstore and you can see the military history or you can pick up those books and you can see all that is written in all of the studies and the analysis and the history on how the fighting has gone off. You dont see many books on how the political decisionmaking process went. And its a flawed strategy. Where we have not understood the people and the culture under which we could understand what the political objectives are. Which i see from every sign all the way to the oval office come as a cousin the book. And well how we build strategies we can understand it, much of this is a lost art herriot i say, where are thou marshal is and where are the strategic thinkers that we used to have a map we find a reactive transactional society. We dont understand how to look as to what threatens us and where our interests are and where we should invest in and how we should react. So in summary, that is the book and right now, you know, i wrote this book a while back and i certainly didnt understand wed be in the situation right now where would be glaringly right in front of us but it is timely enough for us to look at this and see this process pretty clearly in front of us. And so thank you. [inaudible question] [inaudible question] well, absolutely. It used to be that that sort of thing stopped at our water line. That when our nation was threatened, we came together. And we finally found a way to Work Together and we saw this in the world wars and we saw this when we may have had, you know, a Democratic Administration and a Republican Congress as we did in world war ii. We brought together, truman, vandenberg, maybe different political perspectives, but certainly saw the need to defend the United States and promote our interests and they are able to come together. It adds to the problems that we have and its another element that we have in sort of these strategic holds. Might you consider leavening the political establishment by throwing your hat in the ring as a Vice President ial candidate. [applause] [laughter] and then second question is spoken seriously from the heart in terms of the need out there. And we all remember 2006 and the initiative to create free semieponymous regions in iraq and then all of a sudden it was plowed under. In retrospect, might we not be heading that way . And how did you see that proposal at the time and how does it look today . The first part of your question, since my parents are married, im not eligible for Political Office and i choose not to run. To be serious, i hate politics and im a political. Ive given up on both political parties. Id dont like either one and that is where i come from. On the second one, you know, this is a very important question that you can bring up. When i was a young lieutenant, my first assignment in vietnam was an advisor to the vietnamese marines. I wore the uniform and i spoke their language. I rarely saw another american. They operated well and when we were in areas in villages we moved in with the people. So i really got to the war from the start of the people. And i mentioned this vignette in the book. I was in one village and i was living with the village chief and his wife kindly prepared a meal. She came to me and said that, what do you want me to die for . What you want us to die for. And i thought it was such a strange question and she said why are you here and she asked about this. And we said we are going to have market economy and this is going to be great. And she pointed to saigon and said, how can i believe that when i look at what is in saigon . If you can remember, if you are old enough, rotating generals, where they are fighting and dying. One corrupt general is taking over the government and so and why dont we accept a hamid karzai in afghanistan. That becomes us and that identifies us. So to kind of get to your point, and we walked walk in and tell you how its going to be and then give you something you cant live and die for. And so this dictates how a country can be structured. Saying that you need to split it up. Well, do you . Do we know enough about that two what does he know about iraq . They may end up that the country does get split up, but eventually that has to be something where we empower the people to make those decisions and we ought not stand for corrupt governments, not if we are going to give our treasure the men and women in uniform out there to protect them and we sort of lost that standard, that is what bothers me and i think that you can offer creative alternatives to government. It may be that iraq looks like the United Arab Emirates and theres an emirate in the south and one that is that the sunni area and they come together in some looseleaf pitted federal system. But i think that they can create options to live with. But to dictate from washington that our solutions are the problem and to accept corruption, it is not the way to go without it. Putting it into perspective today, for us to understand that our friends seem to be somewhat of our enemies, like we are now aligning with the sheer lack and the rebels. And we are now changing with iran and iraq than our enemies seem to be somewhat our friends, if you were sitting and if you were obama, how would you explain this . Let me give you something in principle and then go to those specific points because i do not think that we should be cooperating with Bashar Alassad and we may have a common enemy, but that doesnt mean that we necessarily need to be in bed together. Thats part of the complexity of the situation we find ourselves in. But let me Say Something about enemies. He had a lot of enemies that are now our closest allies the first hundred years of art existence, our greatest enemy was Great Britain and now they are our greatest ally. And although i do not think that that will happen with the example for Bashar Alassad in iran because these other potential enemies have transformed them into something that is more in tune to our government style and concept of government. So its made it easier for us to cooperate. You will find yourself in this position now, look at this position . I will tell you that i was with a couple of friends from the middle east, when we were about to go into iraq after 9 11. President bush is making the case for war and he was saying something to the effect that this is a conflict that will be about the forces of read him of democracy and against the forces of authoritarianism and leadership. Saddam hussein. One friend of mine nudged me and said this will be a valid kurz versus era and you are unleashing something that we have tried to keep him down for a long time and this is a double that your going to unleash. The other friend said that this is about sunnis versus shiites and you are about to start a religious war when you do this. Now, all three are right, president bush was right and each of those people on either side was right. So did the president understand those two levels . When we say that we are partnered with assad, the al whites are supposed to align with shia but isis is a radical shiite movement, some of them are sunnis that wouldve opposed the regime in baghdad that would be more aligned and so what you are saying is that when you start peeling the onion back, you now find more complexities and a religious element and an ethnic element and becomes a much tougher effort in this environment. [inaudible question] and what is the deal with isis . I am trying to understand what hes trying to say. He didnt have a strategy. And what bothers me about that as there should be a middle east strategy and a strategy for syria and iraq and isis mightve been a wild target that they didnt expect that they had to fit an overall strategy if it meant that he didnt have a military plan were immediately responding to this, then that is not a strategy. That is an operational plan. So either he didnt have a strategy or he doesnt understand what strategy it is. Either way, im troubled by the comments and it is yet to be explained and the strategy is not just a military action but how you employ diplomacy and your power of information and influence and economic power and it encompasses all of the elements of government in power and the building of coalitions and the forming of helping governance change social problems that might help you succeed. And in addition to a military, that is just one part of it and thats not a strategy in and of itself. Yes, sir . [inaudible] sir, i think that we need more of the people that we need and we need more captain ripleys and cross fries and you are right that for conventional war you can train people in 90 to 180 days and you can get very good soldiers to have a small war and im sure youve read this in the marine corps manual. And it takes the language changing and the training taking about nine months and then about six months of practice and youre talking about four to five years that captain ripley stated to me that he had to fight tooth and nail to get him to train and he said how could he tell without that training or speaking the language and how can he tell the world marines to go in and commit suicide and give them time to blow that bridge . He couldnt have. My question is that we should have essentially a small more and a thousand bands, a million captain hoffmans and we should create this following the small wars manual and so i would like your comments. I have mentioned a lot of things and i know that you were in the same position as captain ripley. What you just said is we are going to confront and of course this is on the cold war, we are going to confront communism in a different way because the unthinkable could lead to a nuclear war and thats not going to be on the table. We sought to keep our power drive, but we have to engage daytoday on these communist inspired insurgencies. So he wanted to create a force that specialized in this and that had Language Training and he did. Special forces grown larger and two special Operations Forces or all of them commit to this and each of them have special operations. And the special forces themselves are organized into groups that specialize on parts of the world where they have the Language Training and they work day today and the specialized in that low intensity conflict that you talk about. In addition to that we created a whole another part to those who go to school to learn about the culture and the language throughout and when we first created them we had a problem. They couldnt get promoted because these were artillery officers and others that chose this as a second course and we found themselves not competitive for promotion. Many of those i commended as Central Command and we really took on the services to say that these are valuable people and we have to have a promotion track. That has changed because they are successful in their own rights and able to rise through the ranks and you are right on with what you say and we have built into our system and psychological operations of special forces and special Operations Forces and all of these commit to this and this reflects the times today but then what we have learned in iraq and afghanistan. Do you and others play chess . If so, are there any strategies that could be applicable in a political military content enact i was asked today what is my proudest achievements and i said i never learned to play golf. And probably a number the mid80s, we began to rise in popularity on many dimensions, things such as tabletop games and terrain models to very sophisticated computerbased games and we have even mixed field exercise in computerbased and others in major ways and we tested our war plans through these systems as well. Each of the services then combined in this capability, its an elaborate computerbased aiming system filled with a lot of data to get in the the capabilities that we have and the potential enemies that we have. And after vietnam we were building the force and rehabilitating the military, one of the things that we felt strongly about is that we had lost the emphasis on us and we were not measuring success of our leaders and the officers and ncos and we become great administrators and each of the services had created these tests, if you will. You are allowed to make mistakes and you can challenge yourself in this and everyone will be evaluated and that doesnt mean that there are times that you can drive things and we sort of had a renaissance in this and talking about maneuver warfare and more so than we had in the past and it was something that was sort of a regeneration of understanding what our professional wars are all about. So the answer to that question is yes. We did. I left it and it was thrown out by the Political Leadership because they said i will quote Donald Rumsfeld. This was a war plan time and time again, adjusted every year, approved by the joint chiefs of staff, and it required 380,000 troops. Why . Because we knew we had to seal the borders and you had to control the population as he rolled back the regime and if you didnt seal the borders, all kinds of crazies would come over. And you have brilliant civilians with that analysis and intelligence gave us and it will be a liberation. A cakewalk. We can do this with 100 30,000 troops. And those flowers were ak47s. If you were advising president obama about isis, what would that advice be . To give you the strategic framework, you have to drive isis out of a rock. If the airstrikes supported this, i was with them was desert storm and they need military support and military women and we are going to have to change that Security Assistance program because obviously we were devastated by the attacks. But whatever it takes, even if it takes us putting boots on the ground remember the last that desert storm . Where all the troops were on the ground and we have very few casualties . We played to our hand with overwhelming force and it is something that you hit them with a sorcerer hunters. The second thing is build up the Iraqi Military and what it would take in the support that is necessary and the third thing is the new government in iraq. This government, we had to put political pressure on and they have to be more inclusive. And the only way you will get them to stand up and fight is that they feel that they have something to fight for and tell me what im supposed to die for. The next thing you have to do is part of it. Why are we not at the u. N. Getting a resolution for the authorization of the use of voice . This allows us to build coalitions and george bush, before he went to kuwait to knock out Saddam Hussein, which we could have done on our own, james baker bill to support. We work sidebyside and we built another coalition with the british and the french and even the japanese and others he contributed two. All because we have that International Legitimacy of u. N. Resolution and if its necessary to strike into syria, i would do that as well. So these are the pieces that need to come about in the short term. You have to have something to fight for. If you look back at capital one is the a corrupt government that isnt responsive to the needs of their ethnic group or religious group, why are they going to fight despite all the training and equipment that you give them . The key to make this happen, why do they fight for america . Is a constitution and their something that we fight for and a way of life. And they have an ideology however corrupt and distorted. Yes, maam. Im interested in your comments on the war between israelis and the palestinians the just ended for the time being. I think that what has happened here is many ways you can come at it. We have signed on to be the mediator here. And we cant is given nine months as we just saw not long ago. And this requires working groups on the ground. The issues are called the final status issues like the status of jerusalem, and many others and all sorts of issues. Each of these requires extras from both sides and mediators and others to work out the details. The agreements that we have had in principle and the ones that have come about where everybody signed up to them, the people on both sides said what did that look like on the ground and what is now being . Weve never done the details. We have a quartet that works this and there is a big absence on it. The arab league should be involved because theyre going to have to sign up beyond just the russians and the European Union and the u. S. We need to open up multiple channels of communication and a private channel in a formal channel and an unofficial channel to float ideas. When we would offer ideas and think creatively about these situations, i found that that was politically difficult for the political leaders to even explore that in so what we do is you bring in retired academics and government officials and military and people say that that would be accessible. That we could live with that and im talking about a major restructuring over a considerable amount of time in the way that we mediate and bring these parties together. That needs to be done and this pick a big celebrity figure having them go out there and this is too complicated and i cannot mediate for your answer. And you are here and its a fact of life herriot nobodys going anywhere and they try to work it out. I have spent an entire day with them and i was sitting with them if they were sitting in a floor like this and they were asking me questions like this and finally one girl say if we kids can figure it out, why cant the adult map which was really hitting home to me and gave me this sort of focus that the focus is on the future and not on the past. Because of you focus on the past in principle, you cant get it done and you have to be creative and think about the future of those grandkids out there and what kind of future can they live under and how do you bring them together to he who they are, each other . They have to live under this and i would make one other point. Their legacy, if you look at them who signed a peace agreement, killed by his own people. And he was almost killed by these people. You look at people who made a tremendous offer at camp david and those that reach out for peace are willing to take the risk in this part of the world and the legacy isnt there either. They are certainly not appreciated immediately after and that is something that we have to change and its going to take a lot of courage on either side to take the risk and may be to compromise as well. There cant be a solution where one side is a winner and another is a loser. Sir . We know that the country is dysfunctional. The question is beside the middle east, do we know how things are. And dont you think also that foreignpolicy establishments are also dysfunctional . The foreignpolicy of the major powers and we are still struggling to understand it and we still have a leadership role in the world. We can see the russians have stepped back into the cold war era in their decisionmaking. The chinese are causing problems in their own region and the superpowers are not acting like adult. Not just our Foreign Policy, but certainly others. Okay, i can take one more question. You make a really good point about these different entities getting into the macs and coming up with a viable solution is going to make a difference. Meanwhile, you have political leaders who are not willing to step out of the way, it seems,