Joshua cooper explains how some people can cant see through the flood of data that we all get hit with every day and see the patterns. How we can all learn how to have a seventh sense. And waziristan. Its been called the most dangerous place in the world, and its especially inhospitable to women. So one girl there disguised herself as a boy in order to be educated and compete in sports. And she went all the way to the top. The amazing story of maria torpakai. But first here is my take. While americans have been obsessing about the president ial election, half way around the world, iraq is collapsing as a country. This weeks bombing in baghdad killing scores of people were one more reminder that the place remains deeply unstable and violent. And as iraq has spiralled downward, policymakers in washington have offered all kinds of advice on how to salvage it. But perhaps it is worth stepping back from iraq and looking at another country where america has been involved. Afghanistan. The United States has been engaged in afghanistan militarily and politically and economically for 15 years. It has had many surges of troops. It spent more than 1 trillion on the war by some estimates and it still pays a large portion of afghanistans defense budget. And yet last october the United Nations concluded that the insurgency has spread to more places in the country than at any point since 2001. Some argue in washington that 15 years is not enough. They point to south korea and germany and say the United States should simply stay in afghanistan unendingly. Im not opposed to a longterm u. S. Presence in afghanistan, especially since the countrys elected government seem to want it, but the analogy is misplaced. In germany and south korea American Forces remained to deter a foreign threat. They were not engaged in a neverending battle within the country to help the government gain control over its own people. The more appropriate analogy is vietnam. Much has been made recently of a pair of interviews on American Foreign policy. One by president obama, and the it took just weeks to defeat the old regime. But years later, despite varying approaches, all of these countries remain in chaos. Can anyone seriously argue that a few more troops here or a slightly different strategy there would have created stability and peace when you have instability in all three . Most of obamas critics want a quick plan to defeat isis or more troops or greater u. S. Intervention. They are blind to this dominant lesson of almost two decades, the failure of nationbuilding in the middle east. In syria, washingtons real dilemma would be if its strategy worked and isis were defeated, this would result in a collapse of authority in large swaths of iraq and syria that are teaming with radicalized sunnis who refuse to accept the authority of baghdad or damascus. Having led the fight, of course, washington would be forced to assert control over these territories and set up prisons to house thousands of isis fighters and provide security and economic assistance for the population, all the while fighting the inevitable insurgency. You know you are in trouble when your strategys success produces more problems than the failure. For more go to cnn. Com fareed and read my the Washington Post column this weeks. And lets get started. On friday i sat down with susan rice at the Eisenhower Executive Office building on the white house grounds. It was an important time to talk to the National Security adviser as president obama is about to head out to japan and vietnam as isis continues to wreak havoc in the world, especially the arab world, and just days after ambassador rice made controversial remarks about the lack of diversity in her own cohort, the u. S. Foreign policy community. Ambassador rice, pleasure to have you on. Great to be back. The news reports suggest that the battle against isis is not going as well as it was initially thought because it is proven more difficult to get the turks and the kurds and the iraqi army to Work Together and most importantly that the iraqi army, when it goes into places, is viewed by a lot of the sunnis on the ground there, the locals, as an army of occupation. Are these political, regional problems slowing down the fight against isis. Actually, i would argue in the last several months the isis campaign has made great progress. Weve always taken the view and had the expectation that this was going to be a longterm challenge. This was a a fight to be measured in years, not months. And that it was not going to be a linear progression. We would have progress and setbacks and progress and setbacks but over the last several months by any number of metrics i would say that things have progressed quite well. For example, we have now taken back, with the iraqi forces, 45 of the territory that isil originally controlled in Populated Areas in iraq. And about 20 of the populated territory that they controlled in syria is now out of isil hands. That is one metric. And weve taken out a number of siel leaders in iraq and syria. Weve substantially degraded the Economic Resources by hitting cash storage sites as well as Oil Infrastructure that theyve been using to raise revenue and weve seen evidence of their ability to pay their personnel at the same rates they had in previous years is diminished. So on a number of dimensions, in fact, the campaign has made real progress. But a lot of people say that particularly the effort to take mosul, the second largest city in iraq has slowed down because of this problem, the iraqi army not being viewed favorably by a lot of people. I think that is in fact, we have two significant remaining objectives. Mosul and iraq, raqqa and syria. Both of which are going to take time to to take back from isil. These are heavily and densely Populated Areas an major cities and each context will require a ground force in iraq led by the iraqi army and joined by the kurds and others to first encircle and then ultimately seize mosul. In syria, obviously we need to continue to build with our partners on the ground in syria. And an arab force with the size and the capacity to take raqqa. That is going to be in both instances something that will take time to build. Let me ask you about an interview that your deputy gave, ben rhodes, in a New York Times magazine profile. He described it it was a controversial interview, much commentary on it. In the article, the way in which rhodes and the National Security staff is portrayed on one crucial issue, the selling of the iran deal, raised a lot of criticism and people felt there was a Political Campaign that might even have misrepresented the truth in order to sell the iran deal to congress and the American Public. Do you think that is fair . No. I think it is absolutely unfair. And let me be very clear as to why. First of all, there is nothing that ben or the president or i or anybody who is involved in explaining the iran deal to the American Public said that it wasnt factually correct. If you look at that how that whole debate went down last year, there was perfect public attention, scrutiny, the documents were there for everybody to read, for members of congress to consider and debate. There was nothing that was hidden or could be hidden. It was in the publics sphere and never in my recent recollection has there been a more robust and substantive debate over an important Foreign Policy issue. So there was nothing hidden. There was nothing there was no effort to or reality of misleading. And i think that is one of the unfortunate things about that article. There was never anything other than a straightforward attempt to explain the merits of the iran deal to the American People and to congress. And in fact, those merits have been borne out by the fact that we have now successfully cut off s all of irans pathways to a nuclear weapon. Iran is far more subject to International Inspection and verification. The whole world now is able to determine through the inspection capacity of the International AtomicEnergy Agency that it is not able or in the process of moving towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. That makes the United States more safe. It makes our allies and partners in the region and the world more safe. Including israel. So it is been a net positive by any measure. And the notion that there was any ball to hide or spin to put on it, i think is really misguided. Well be back in a moment with much more with the president s National Security adviser, susan rice. Hmmmmmm. [ dreams by beck ] hmmmmm. Hmmmmm. The turbocharged dream machine. The Volkswagen Golf gti. Part of the awardwinning golf family. Ive been blind since birth. I go through periods where its hard to sleep at night, and stay awake during the day. Learn about non24 by calling 8448442424. Or visit my24info. Com. E trade is all about seizing opportunity. And id like to. Cut. Thank you, well call you. Evening, film noir, smoke, atmosphere. Bob. Youre a young farmhand and e trade is your cow. Milk it. E trade is all about seizing opportunity. Sign up at etrade. Com and get up to six hundred dollars. Tmobile is going big for small business. Youll never get charged data overages, ever. Get your own 24 7 dedicated business account team. And with double the lte coverage in the last year you can get more done in more places. Right now get 2 lines with 10 gigs each for just a 100 bucks. And for a limited time get a hot spot free, yeah free. Switch your business to tmobile work today. Youve finally earned enough on your Airline Credit card. Now you just book a seat, right . Not quite. Sometimes those seats are out of reach, costing an outrageous number of miles. Its time to switch. To the capital one venture card. With venture, youll earn unlimited double miles on every purchase, every day. And when youre ready to travel, just book the flight you want, on any airline and use your miles to cover the cost. Now thats more like it. Whats in your wallet . vo never be good. Can purina believes it can. Inspecting every ingredient for quality . Thats big. Being confident that your pets food is 100 safe . Thats big, too. Spending more healthy years with your best friend . Thats amazing. Big is exciting. Daring. For everyone. Pets dont just make life better they make it bigger. Purina. Live big. Ambassador rice, let me ask you about your commencement address. You gave a commencement address recently in florida in which you had tough words about the Foreign Policy establishment. You said it is not diverse enough. In the face of our National Security leaders, america is still not fully represented. I wasnt talking about the Foreign Policy establishment, i was talking about the National Security workforce. Those who work Civil Servants and Foreign Service officers in our state department, our Development Agencies and our Defense Department and our Intelligence Community. So these are the the u. S. Government workforce in this realm. And what i said was that we would all benefit if the Senior Leadership and indeed the rank and file of our national and file of our national skeelr Security Workforce looked more like america. One of our greatest strengths as a nation in it addition to innovation and our fearlessness, when you look at the people is the extraordinary diversity and that is an asset that serves us well as we lead the world but, it is not serving us as well as we could given that we are a country about now about 40 minority, and the leadership of our Intelligence Community and our military leadership are less than 15 minority, our senior diplomats, less than 20 minority. We can do better, and we are meanwhile producing higher numbers of welleducated, welltrained minorities that we ought to encourage to come into National Security and Foreign Policy, recognizing that those with diverse backgrounds, different ethnicities, races, religions, sexual orientations, gender, bring a perspective that may not be the perspective that has been predominant from generations ago, and thats a good thing. I think weve all learned the dangers of group think. And when you have people around the table trying to solve the Worlds Toughest problems, whether it is how to deal with isil as we discussed or Climate Change or combatting the ebola epidemic, to the extent that we have people who can bring different perspectives to bear in solving a given problem, the more likely we are to come up with more creative and Effective Solutions and solutions that are likely to be acceptable in the environments in which they need to stick. Do you think that youre that being a woman gives you a different perspective on International Relations . That is a very hard to question to answer. I think many different aspects of who i am cause me to perhaps think and analyze and perceive problems differently than others around the table. Whether that is a function of the fact that im a woman or an africanamerican, or somebody born in the 1960s and somebody who had the opportunity to go and be educated and very in very good institutions, all of the elements that combine to make me who i am, like everybody else who brings to bear their particular backgrounds and experience to a decisionmaking table, bring a different perspective. And the point i was trying to make at the commencement address at Florida International university, which, by the way, is one of the most diverse universities in the country, 60 plus hispanic, is to suggest that the more we bring the full fabric and all of its diversity to bear in our decisionmaking, whether on National Security or education or any other sphere, the better our decisions are likely to be and i also very consciously was trying to encourage young people at this university to consider careers in Public Service and in particular in National Security and Foreign Policy. You are heading out to vietnam and japan. The president will be the First American president to visit hiroshima, and your deputy ben rhodes said in his speech that he will not revisit the decision to drop the atomic bomb. I wonder why not. It seems like that is the elephant in the room. And why not discuss the what the president thinks about it . Surely the japanese must be wondering. Well, its interesting. The japanese have not asked us to come and reflect on the wisdom or not of that decision. Nor have they asked for the United States to apologize. And in any event, we would not. This is something that we think is important to do to do you think it was the correct decision to drop the atomic bomb . Yes yes im sorry. I misunderstood your question. I thought you were going to ask if i thought it was the right decision to visit hiroshima. I do you think it is the right decision to visit hiroshima. I wont give you my historians judgment on the decision. Why . Because i think it is important. Rather than to revisit that debate, the purpose of the president going to hiroshima, is one, to lift up the extraordinary cost of war as it affected civilians around the world in world war ii and continues to today. Secondly, it is very important in our judgment to reinforce what is american policy and the president s own vision of eventually achieving a World Without nuclear weapons, with the peace and security of a World Without nuclear weapons. That is something that we continue to believe is important to aspire to. And while weve made significant strides in terms of arms control agreements and securing nuclear materials, we have a long way to go. The other message of this visit is that years on from the end of world war ii, we now have an alliance and partnership with japan which is one of the strongest in the world. And while the president is in hiroshima, hell have the opportunity to visit with american servicemen and women and Japanese Service men 6 and women who are sidebyside working as allies and partners. That is also very important. So this will be a forwardlooking visit. Yes, it will happen in the context of history, but we dont think it is particularly useful to give a long discourse on the past. This is about the future. And about what we working with japan and other allies in the region can build together and in terms of nonproliferation and a safer world for all of us. And the president must have a view on whether it was a correct decision to drop the atomic bomb. Hes a man who studies history deeply. Surely he has a view. Im not saying he doesnt. Donald trump says he wants a u. N. Ambassador who will shake things up at the u. N. And get the United Nations to start actually ending conflicts in the world. You were ambassador to the u. N. Is that a reasonable requirement for the u. N. A