Fight. Also, an allstar gps panel to grade the Obama Administration on how it did with this weeks major challenges isis, ebola, an an insider attack from leon panet panetta. And then, why it is that the American Economy is looking up, up, up, but most americans are very down about it. I will explain. And think you know who invented the lightbulb . Think again. But first, here is my take. When Television Host bill maher declares on the weekly show that quote the muslim world has too much in common with isis, unquote, and the author sam harris a guest on the show concurs arguing that quote, islam is the mother lode of bad ideas, unquote, i understand why people get upset. Mahar and harris made crude and overexemplifycations, and yet it is real. I know about speaking against islam is vast and e reactionary and a vast world and in places like indonesia and india have hundreds of millions of muslims who dont fit the caricature, and that is why they are guilty of overexaggeration and simp simplification, but be honest, islam has a problem today. In 2013, according to the state department, of the top ten groups who perpetrated terrorist attacks, seven were muslims, and of the top ten countries where attacks took place, zen of seven of them were muslim countries. And so there is governments that are imposed by the free exercise of religion and of the most restricted, 19 of them are mostly islam majority. There is a extreme majority, but a small amount of muslims harbor deep e reactionary attitudes toward women and militaries, and of those, there are not loud enough voices. And how many rallys have been held for pro islam . And the simple problem with mahar and harriss analogies is that it takes islam and describes it in a way that is in such a way inherent in islam. For his part sam harris describes himself as highly analytic with a phd no less and i learned in graduate school that you cannot explain a variable phenomenon with a fixed cause. So if you are asserting that islam is inherently violent and intolerant and the mother lode of bad ideas, then since islam has been around for 14 sen is cli clis, we 14 centuries, we should have seen 14 centuries of this violent behavior. He should read thad zacharys book of influence and cooperation. He explains that there have been wars, but many centuries of peace. He says that it is on the cutting edge of modernity. And so if you look at it, the islamic world is more tolerant of minorities than the christian world, and that is why there were more jews living in the middle east than other worlds, and more that 200,000. And so if the period was open, and moderate and peaceful, the this suggestions that this is not in the the religious realm. I understand that as a public influential bill maher needs to talk about the unvarnished truth, though it is a simple and overexaggerated one. But there is certainly other officials who are trying to change the world for good. Harris says he wants to encourage nominal muslims who dont take the faith seriously to reform the religion, and so that the strategy to reform islam is to tell 1. 6 billion muslims most of whom are pias and devout that the religion is evil and they should stop taking it seriously . That is not how christianity moved from the centuries of violence and crusades and witch burnings, an intolerance to the modern state. On the contrary, intellectuals and theologians celebrated those elements of christianity that were liberal and moderate and tolerant and emphasizing that and giving devout christians reason to take pride in the faith. The stakes are high in the debate. You can try to make news or you can try to make a difference. I hope that mahar starts to do the ladder. For more go to my website and read the latest column. Cnn. Com fareed. Let e lets get started. If, and it is a big if, the United States and the allies are going to defeat isis without western combat boots on the ground, they are going to have to rely heavily on the kurds, but will the kurds play along . Are the peshmerga fighters up to the task . We will ask somebody who knows. We have a leading kurdish power broker who has held powerful positions there and former Prime Minister of iraqikurdistan and the Prime Minister of all of iraq. And pleasure to have you on. Thank you for having me. And first, give us the assessment of whether the u. S. Air strikes and this military campaign is having an effect, and is isis weakerr, because on the ground so far, it is not appearing that way. Well, i think it is fair to say that these air strikes have slowed down isis advances, but nowhere enough to defeat isis. And what we see also in kobani and the neighboring syria is also a statement to the fact ha the air strikes while welcomed and important are nowhere near enough to defeat isis. And lets talk about the iraqi army, because one of the problems is that maliki, the former Prime Minister had fired a lot of good sunni generals and colonels and replaced them with shiite loyalists, and the army lost morale and they were not willing to fight. And so even though we have a new iraqi government, and the concessions that should have been made to the sunnis to draw them back have not been made. Has the army been fixed . I think that we have to be honest and direct about these issues. The iraqi army has collapsed and evaporated and this is not the take away from the good men in iraqi uniform that have been there, and fighting isis, but basically the structure and the command structure has totally evaporated and collapsed. At the end of the day, the mi military needs to be a professional institutions, and the type of leadership that we have had in iraq over the past few years has politicized the army and divided it on sectarian lines and not able to stand up to the challenge. Oanother factor that is in all of this is corruption. Iraq has access to easy money, a and this money has been often used to buy the loyal i the, and this corruption has reached the army, and in the past, it has created a shell in a sense that was not able to withstand any real pressure. Therefore, we need to really go back to the basics. What about the peshmerga . Will the kurdish army, and this is the force that protects the kurdish part of iraq, is this going to be willing to go into battle in iraq potentially into syria to fight isis since you do need an effective fighting force on the ground . Well, my own sense is that i can say this definitively, kurdistan has emerged as the most reliable partner in the coalition of the fight against isis. And a number of reasons for that, but one of the reasons that i am proud of is that kurdistan has a Tolerant Society and tolerance of views and we have isis, and so they are fighting nearly 1,000 kilometers of the lines by the kurdish, but i have to say that the mantra is that the kurdish should not be relied upon to go to mosul for the heartland of the sunni areas or baghdad. With can be there to support. We can be there to support, but at the same time the community there needs to be empowered. Because you would be seen as a foreign army yes. And one has to acknowledge this real ti. This is payback time. Over the last ten years, there were lots of communities, and particularly in the sunni a area that felt marginalized and the isis extremists have taken advantage of the gree veievance this is an incubating ground for them. The fundamental answer is to empower the communities to take on the extremists. And the final question, youre absolutely right that the kurds of iraq have proven to be the most reliable part mer for the United States for a while now. Is the payback after all of this is going to be to declare independence . Every kurd wants independence. That is the reality of the it, but i genuine byly do believe that the kurds are the ones who will have the least problem with the united iraq, a decent iraq, and to date, iraq wants to see the kurds succeed. They want to be a partner with them, and in making iraq a success, however, what is tearing them apart is corruption, sectarianism, and regional interventions, and above all, political elite that has failed to seize the moment, and building a a nation from the ashes of genocide and the terror that Saddam Hussein has left us. What a pleasure to have you on. The pleasure is all mine, sir. And next on gps the allstar panel weighs in on what they heard of the kurds and the Obama Administrations response to the threat of ebola, and enough . Too little . Too late . All when we come back. Kid hey dad, who was that man . Dad hes our broker. He helps looks after all our money. Kid do you pay him . Dad of course. Kid how much . Dad i dont know exactly. Kid what if youre not happy . Does he have to pay you back . Dad nope. Kid why not . Dad it doesnt work that way. Kid why not . Vo are you asking enough questions about the way your wealth is managed . 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Francis fumiani is one of the most interesting Public Officials to today from the department of Foreign Affairs at vanderbilt university, and how about well, i think that obama does not have a military strategy, but a bunch of tactics that are put in place, and part of the pr problem in the region and the reason that we have had trouble gather morgue people to our side, and more countries to the side is because they dont know what the end game is. The turks want him to say that al assad should be out, and he has said mitt the past, but not now, and the arabs are not sure where the president is headed, and we are hitting without any m major strategy or end game in place. And but, can air power by itself do it. Gideon . You wrote a dissertation about the military strategy, a nd thee is a long debate about this from world war ii. What can the air power achieve . Unless you are prepared to go in much, much bigr than we have thus far or plan to, no. Because you have to pin it down and then the take the ground with the ground troops. I agree with what dani said, but to be criticized for not being having no strategy, this problem cannot be solved absent a much larger and nastier intervention which i dont believe makes sense, because it is not worth for it the u. S. Interests, and while i agree with the criticisms of the administration, i wish they would back out and not talk so big, so they would ooeither bac up the big intervention on the ground. You agree . Yes f anything that we should have learned from afghanistan and iraq, we dont have the staying power and the resources and the patience to produce a particular political outcome on the ground in any part of that world. We cant gets a saud out of there, and actually, president obama overpromised by saying that he is going to destroy isis, because it is 13 years, and we have not destroyed al qaeda. And would you do the containment strategy . Well, containment is appropriate, because we should not have permanent friends and enemies in the region. What we want to do is to prevent the bad actors from harming the people that with we care about like the kurds. So we lean gaiagainst isis, and lean against assad, and we cant p pretend to have a end game for syria, because we have no idea what that would look like. And containment, and you, russell mead . Well, this is the problem that people are worrying about for some time is that the president , and his instincts are right about wanting no part of any of the horrible mess. As everybody is saying, it is, you know, only going to get uglier as you get deeper, and the trouble is that the longer you wait, the worse the optios s are including the option of trying to do nothing. And what we have seen is the president has tried to stay out, and done Everything Possible to follow gideon and franks advice, but then something happens that makes it impossible the do that and by the time that has happened all of the other options are worse than they would have been a couple of years ago. But you would favor ground troops, u. S. Ground troops going in there . It is the only way to hold ground properly . Look, we are in the awkward situation. Everybody is in many ways right. The president and the president is in a very difficult place, and he has overpromise d, and h has a history of overpromising, and walking back. Red lines in syria, and degrade and destroy, and they no longer use the word destroy when they talk about isis, and he only used it a couple of weeks ago, and so, no, frankly, there are not many people enthusiastic about the notion of ground troops, and particularly combat troops, but we do have troops on the ground already, fareed n this part of the world, and they are helping. We need to be more decisive. What should he do . Well, i have been saying it for a long time, the problem is the options three years ago were way bert than now, and we should have been using more air power then and supporting the syrian oppositi opposition then, and we should still do it. You wanted to use air power against assad which three years ago it would have helped isis. Three years ago there was no isis, and al qaeda in iraq had not morphed. It is because we were willing to stay out of this part of the world and not pick winners such as isis and al nusra, and now they have risen up. It is like a game of thrones in iraq and syria. No Political Authority or the stable strauk chur a stable s we have to let the parties fight it out, because we wont provide political order, and so the vital interest is to back uf and let it play out. It is messy and ugly, but no reason to believe it is going to be coming back to strike the u. S. In the homeland in a dramatically way, and that is a lot of exaggerated last words. Fatal last words. And we should have a course and stick to it. No reason that walter says to be drawn in. You take the agency out of the picture. And if you have a policy, stick it to it. Just because the media policies are not good, there is no reason to give a speech and sound like he is doing something bold. We are going to pivot and talk about ebola and maybe leon panetta all with this panel when we come back. On allowed me to start investing for my retirement. Transamerica made it easy. [ female announcer ] everyone has a moment when tomorrow becomes real. 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Reliably fast internet starts at 89. 95 a month. Comcast business. Built for business. We are back with the starstudded panel, and we were talk about the the fact that you use air power and going into the places and on the ground, we dont have know how to create political order, and this is what frank, that your book is a about how the u. S. Cannot create order in these places. When i think about ebola, i am thinking about the partly sense of issues and part of liberia that they dont have the capacity of the states to do what we want. As americans, we worry a lot about democracy, and we worry about constraining powerful states because of the history. But the problem, and most of the developing world is that they dont have state pow toer to be with. They dont have the capacity. So con can trolling an ep dem uk epidemic like ebola is a state Public Health issue. If you have space suits and the thing, then you can get it in control, and that is what is lacking in sierra leone and liberia and guinea as well as s sub saharan africa. And you think, that surely, good guys this there and you have a 12corner fight, and this strikes you as the triumph of hope over experience. Well, i mean, you could look at syria the way that Ronald Reagan looked at the big pile of manure and said, there must be a pony in here somewhere. Well, if there were order in syria, that would be the best that you could get, and it is unlike that are there is a order that we would like. So, this is it is not that there is some like magic policy prescription that we can just set out, and the disorder and chaos and violence in the world will go away. We live in wild times. All right. There is however a group of people who always seem to believe that there was a magic prescription that woul