Good afternoon welcome to the Heritage Foundation. We had course welcome those who join us on our website on all of these occasions. We would remind our guests here if you would be so kind to check cell phones and other mobile devices to see that they had been muted or turned off it is always appreciated. For those also watching online you can send questions or comments at any time simply emailing, and we well of course post the program on the heritage homepage. As we are all aware we are in the middle of what might be called an interesting Political Year as a Nonprofit Organization heritage of course would prefer to focus on policy and not necessarily politics but we know somethings will occur that go beyond that. But again as the disclaimer at the Heritage Foundation as a 5o1c Nonprofit Organization does not support or oppose any particular candidate for political office. Our program today is hosted by the Assignment Center for public political science. Goal of teaching those. The center focuses on the intervals. And the basics of conservative thought in public policy. Leading our discussion today is their milk assistant director. Please welcome him. Thank you. Since september 11 we had faced 89 plots against the homeland. Eleven of those which were successful. Part of it is because we are in the habit of underestimating our enemies and this comes out in subtle ways. For example, each time a terrorist attack occurs at the press in the press and the administration are quick to call them tragedies. These are without doubt this formulation points to a problem with our own psychology. Tragedy means fate as an unavoidable fate. Belief that we suffer tragedies because of fate disarms a spiritually. It says we should not take action because Mysterious Forces stronger than us ultimately dictate our circumstances. Another favorite term is that they evolve as in isis has evolved. The error here is similar. The enemy as it turns out are guided by mysterious defeat called evolution in other words, their actions are not attributed to thoughtfulness motor motive and design. It culminates in astonishing words of attorney general Loretta Lynch how should we fight terrorism, while with compassion, unity and love. This is the form of Public Education taken by the press in the ministration over the years. The excellent book the field of fight is also engaged in Public Education. But it strikes the opposite town. It shows how formidable our enemies are. It shows their conscious ambition and plan but it also shows how American Ingenuity and character are superior it shows how are many advantages over the long haul will prove stronger. Victory begins in acknowledging the nature of the enemies we face in accepting the fact that we are indeed at work. Over 33 years lt. Gen. Michael flynn has toured the highest positions most recently he was the director of dia prior to that he served for five years in iraq and afghanistan. Director of intelligence. He was credited with changing and then revolutionizing how intelligence supports operations. He also serves to the chairman of the joint chief of staff. Astonishingly he is the recipient of four bronze stars. Michael ledeen is a historian and a scholar of terrorism islam, iraq he is the offer author of 35 bucks. 35 books. He was a special advisor to the secretary of state. I will now turn to the authors we will begin with you lt. Gen. Michael flynn. Each will speak for about ten minutes or so and then we will turn it over to questions. When youre getting ready to write a book find someone who wrote 35 of them. Order up with them. Im honored to be here and it is a real honor to be up here with Michael Ledeen who is not only the coauthor of this great book and the message that it has in it for our country but he is also a great friend. I see some other friends out in the audience today. We as a nation must demonstrate willingness, resolve and determination to ensure the survival of our country is it at risk today, i dont know. Is it at risk over the next four years, it gets closer to being a higher risk than it does sitting here today. Is it at risk to survive by the middle of this century or by the end of the century, absolutely. All you have to do is study World History or study our own history in this experiment that we are a part of called the United States of america so in the book we talk about solutions and alliances and all of the things that we are facing i think it captured i think that the book speaks for itself and i hope that you take the opportunity to go out and get a copy of it and then talk about it because it is a very powerful this is probably as i have gone back and looked certainly over the last year how important this particular election is. This is not one that they can sit out we are in a historic era in our country and it is going through some big shifts and i think people need to understand where our country is at. When we talk about warfare that was my adult life was studying it. So one of the things that we are all trained on in the different individuals who had written about warfare over the history of warfare, all of these others. Its really important. And one of the tenants of some of those were military thinking and also even in the Business World is you have to know your competitor or your enemy. That has been ingrained in me and i will tell you a lot of us that have served this country it doesnt make any difference if you are an Intelligence Officer or not you must know your enemy. You cannot figure out a way to defeat them. And so we head in this book that notion about clearly defining this ideology the very cancerous ideology that we call radical islam. We can never we cant think that our enemies are 10 feet tall. We would look at these the nazis we beat. Have they won 75 years ago not that long ago we would all be plate praying at the altar of nazism. Thank god we did but we did and we called out these people the last century imperialism and communism yet today we are not allowed to necessarily do that. We have this faculty because we are a nation built on laws and i like to think that its the biggest advantage we have. All one of the freedoms is the freedom of religion. We have to be very conscious of a very determined enemy that is masking itself behind the ideology. I personally, the personal belief is that this is a political ideology based on islam. And it masks itself particularly in our country behind this religion. The very strong abuse and i will stop here and turn it over to michael the beauty of writing a book is like growing up in a family of nine in my house and sitting at a picnic table that was our dining room table. Arguing about politics with my mother. And debating in these kind of issues. So the past year and even before that as we were debating this issue and prior to this deciding to write this we have different views about different things. You want to write that down. You ought to put it down and say it. We decided to do that and the fascinating timing is everything when we were in new york with a publisher we picked yesterday the 12th of july a year ago not knowing all of this other stuff that was going on we picked the 12th because we wanted this message to get out in front of whoever was good to be the next president prior to the convention. I want people personally it is practical. Most americans cant figure out what they theyre gonna do for saturday night. The highest office in the land is broken. Everybody knows that those of us that have dabbled in it. I will stop there. Thank you very much for having us here today. I appreciate the opportunity and the time and i will turn it over to my good friend michael dean. What high price it is to be compared. But for me the most fun part of it was the section that was growing up flynn because he grew up in the house and he was one of nine siblings. And one bathroom house. They all had to be out in the same time and money. He was she was a woman who was on her way through college and got pregnant dropped out of the university raised nine children. Went back to the university an amazing woman. Thats where it comes from. Our daughter actually worked for general flint at a certain point and in the middle of the book i called her up one day and i said does he ever sleep they said you are only now beginning to understand what its like he is an extremely dynamic hard thinking Clear Thinking man i hope the book captures that. Of the various things the two main concepts i hope you will go away with today is that we are in a global war and our enemies are both radical muslims which Everybody Knows about by now but hardly anybody talks about accurately and radical secularists. Its not just one i think its not a muslim. They are in cahoots. And they Work Together and they share a Common Objective which is our destruction and our domination. Thats where were at. The alliance that we face runs worldwide. It is a huge alliance. As somebody once said they may be crazy but theyre not stupid and they are preparing for this war. They are still at it. And its very hard to discuss seriously that they had wedged against us because were all wrapped up in empty phenomena. If we are going to win this war we have to go after the doctrines that they preached and we have to expose them and certain point we take off after muslim culture and we say lets face it Everybody Knows that this is a failed civilization my favorite factoid in the modern world is translations of books into arabic and therefore the excess that they have to the literature of the world for the philosophy science. I find it is so incredible that we have more books translated into spanish last year than have been translated into arabic in the last thousand years. More than a thousand years. So they dont know and if you read the popular press in the middle east you will find all of these incredible things about why things happen and what you have to do and so forth. Anybody who wants to propaganda and have fun talking about a failed state or a failed civilization thats where you start. It is a Bottomless Pit of antidotes and chorus stories and or stories and so forth. People in that part of the world may be crazy but theyre not stupid and they know it. They know its a failure. That is one reason why so many of them are following things like ices and so forth because these people come to them and say the reason why we failed is because we are not doing it right and we have to go back to basic doctrines and followed the models that he lay down and then we will win. And in fact in the early days you would hear him say all the time we win because allah has blessed our efforts. We had divine defined support we are doing it right. And if a few people will follow us and do it right. My question is we need to be asking this openly every single time that we had challenged them on the battlefield we had one without exception we beat them in iraq we beat them in afghanistan and then we ran away. Every time we beat them what is that all about. They told us that you have to define blessing. Did they decide to support us in iraq and afghanistan. What is going on here. Then you have to go right for the heart of the dark dash doctrine. That is a big part of their core. In the global lines that we face. The same applies to these tyrants. Nobody wants to be the new north korea. He is not a global hero or inspiration. He might be admired in some quarters. What he wants nobody wants that many People Living that way. They know they were in her office they were free to live the way they chose. So it is a world made for americans it weighs out the various steps that we have to take and it has been a great privilege and a great pleasure. I hope you will have a questions for us thank you. If i may i will take the first question. This is for both otters authors what do they see in us that our weaknesses and how do they exploit them. The influence of public opinion. Is it the technologies. What are the exact weaknesses that they had identified that they are pursuing. I would say we have what were challenging these days and ive actually written about this we had forgotten how to win wars i wrote an article on it three months ago. America has forgotten how to win its worse. And there is a real weakness in our own ability to go in and use that from a pure military perspective and just crush our enemies. And when. And what we do is kind of what we are seeing right now. Two years ago we had 175 soldiers in iraq over the last two years we had been creeping up adding more and more people to the battlefield of iraq and today we are probably upwards of about 6,000 people in iraq. What is it that is happening that we cant understand that it takes a different path to actually win. And so i think our weaknesses are understanding when we go to war you go to war to win. You dont go to work to protect pizza hut or burger king or some other nonsense ive seen you could even see this for anybody that served in vietnam that might be in this room. Weve got to decide that when we go to war when we talk a little bit about it when my father served in world war ii he was a corporal in world war ii. He wasnt told go to europe for four months and then you can come back and then there will be funny and any big bases there. My father was told you can ago to war and youre not coming home until weve we won. We told us to our leadership sometime you today as a colonel in the early parts told us to our leadership that look if you go and fight these guys you are not coming home until you had one we would have fought and have a totally different strategy because believe me none of us wants to stay and those in those godforsaken places. No american wants too. Why would you give up the beauty that weve have in this country. But when people are screaming for freedom and they had attacked our way of life. Our Strategic Thinking about how we go to war and fight wars has changed fundamentally and thats a big weakness that they know. They study s. This is not a bunch of guys who have said are in shower shoes and bathrobes because twice they were beating us on the battlefield. I am sitting here today telling you that they have the Strategic Initiative and the global Strategic Initiative look at what they had been able to do globally there is a global footprint. We have to recognize that the strategy that they have assumed as a global strategy and they have taken on a very narrow tactical strategy. With to be much more strategic and they understand that weakness in our system and they fully exploit it. The short answer is what do they see in us that encourages them so much. We lack the well to win. They see a failure of wealth. They are not afraid of us. They think they can do anything they want and we will not unleash a response. Expect to win. We have all the watches they have all the time. Its not time its resolve and willingness. That is what it is. Big Decision Making survival of this country when you go back and you look at the Founding Fathers and all the experiments that we have thank god for people like abraham lincoln. One vote could have split this country in half. But the determination and the willingness and resolve and use those words because they are very precise in what we need. I will tell you the American Public will be tired if they lose. Like i said about hell to help her. We would be challenged to have a form like this. Its unlikely that we would have one. So the willingness and determination in the resolve to win is super important in any endeavor but particularly in rural warfare. Please wait for the microphone. Given some previous statements you made in the past what do you think the Obama Administration is dealing with putin. In terms of how we deal with russia and i have told russia this, they need to get i ran the heck out of there. We lost that opportunity. We missed an opportunity through the week diplomacy. It wouldve been a lot tougher to make that demand. There has to be reciprocity in a way we deal with others around the world they want something from us we need something back. And what we need is to settle the situation down in the middle east and one of the things that they talk about in this book is the 21st century alliance. And so back to your question about russia has to understand and they know this they have as big a problem with this element that we describe in this book as we do. Right now theyre on the sled and there really close to them. The funny alliance between russia and iran with to understand why. When people go my should we deal with russia we just dealt with russia on the nuclear deal why, what i would tell you is that we have to be tough, two be demanding and very precise and we have to acknowledge that there are times in our own history and certainly Going Forward where we have to pick and choose certain things that we are going to do. And a big National Election so theres a lot there to my answer to your great question but very important that we understand what is in the best interest of our country. The gentleman in the front. C my name is Michael Crossman chairman of secure chain. Im taken by your comment about about im also a historian my father thought in the second world war. On the russian front. Im an immigrant. When my father saw what happened to his country he said we are getting out of here. We are going to america. I am taken by your comments michael about vietnam, my first war. A policy of gradualism does not win. Gradual application of power does not win. And it seems to me for some time , we have tried to apply power gradually and we have only looked at it in the military sense rather than this ecological ideological political and Financial Economic sense. We are challenged and we must win if his country is going to be what it is. What are your thoughts about gradualism as an application of policy . Well