Transcripts For CSPAN2 Twilight Warriors 20161203

Men. Didnt teach the students, didnt have detailed responsibility anymore. The administrative board, joint administrative board, had responsibility for the progress and wellbeing of the students, the Extracurricular Activities were merged. The dorms were coresidential. So, the notion that there was a college there was frankly part of the same, like the thing that for decades, and engaged in some important endeavors for alumni and also that they a difference to students, older women who could serve as mentors, but college i think what finally happened when neil was president of harvard, linda will son president wilson, president of radcliffe, they engaged in two years of pretty quiet negotiations to try to establish as a fact what had been reality for many, many years. There wasnt a college left that never had a faculty. It had there just wasnt anything left as a real college to preserve. So the the amazing thing is that radcliffe survived survived 1,999th, not that it ended as a college. Thank you very much. [applause] to for coming, copies of the book are available in the room. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] tonight a debate on the future of the u. S. Economy, at 8 45, a history of william f. Buckleys longrunning program, identify firing line. On after are after words, former Senate Majority leader George Mitchell offers his thoughts a path for peace between israel and pal stein palastin. Good evening, and welcome to the center for Strategic International studies. Im andrew schwartz, Senior Vice President and its my honor to host James Kitfield and we are doing this in partnership with the center for the study of northwestern the center for the study of the presidency and congress. We were just talking upstairs. One of the really wonderful things about the center for the study of the presidency and congress and csis they were both founded by the late david apture. He was a remarkable man who we all loved and he lived to see this building, which was really terrific. He started over 50 years with admiral arley burk and to years we were at 18th and k, and less opulent surroundings to sale the least. Thats putting it mildly. We would have doing this book talk in basement with no windows and would never heat gotten here with pture an and to have the james James Kitfield here whos wherein another remarkable book. You know his bio. One of the best, best military reporters to ever work in this town. He is one of the best authors. He has the respect of the people that he interviews and writes about, and the respect of his readers and the respect of fellow journalists. Thank you for saying that. And certainly of the policy community, who consider him to be someone of just impeccable talent and character, and we have all learned quite a lot from James Kitfield over the years. The book is terrific, and i know that all of you, the holiday are coming up so dont buy one, buy two. For those of you at home who are watching on the webcast or cspan, theyre available on amazon, available wherever they sell books. Its a marvelous book, and i strongly recommend it. Everyone at csis will get through it by the end of the year, no doubt. Thank you for coming out on another calm evening in washington. Nothing much going on here. All quiet. But the sun is shining today and the sun is always shining on us. Were a bipartisan institution that aims to be constructive on policy and thats what we hope to talk about tonight to learn from james book and hope to take your questions. James, why dont you tell us why the name of the book bat and was the origin of the book. I thick twilight warriors. I was trying to convey that this groel terrorist movement, not a night or day, neither victory or defeat, neither war or criminality. Its a hybrid of it and its kind of this idea of perpetual conflict. So thats how i picked the name. The genesis of it was i was doing a lot of reporting around 2011, which i thought was a really watershed year for the post9 11 war on terror. Obama came into office. In the first two years he launched more drone strikes against terrorists, targeting terrorists, in pakistan than the Bush Administration had done in eight years. The joint special Operations Command had launched triple the number of strikes that it had launched each month. In the space of a year, 20102011 we killed more than half of the top 20 al qaeda lieutenants, senior level leaders. And in that year we also killed the two most want terrorists in the world, Osama Bin Laden and anwar awlaki, thed a of al qaeda in arabian peninsula. Sew reached the level of effectiveness i never seen in the coverage of what happened after 9 11, including the wars in iraq and afghanistan. So something was going on, and the same year, not by coincidence, president obama pulls of troops out of iraq, and the killed Osama Bin Laden, and ended most 9 11 wars, was keeping to a deadline to get out of afghanistan by 2014. So, clearly we were then he gave a speech in the second term in 2013, where he basically tried to define the war on terror as being over and that we had so decimated al qaeda that we could now sort of put it into a more normal threat level and get on with widening the an be tour of American Foreign policy. So there was something going on. We would trust this new targeted terrorist killings as being our main strategy against the war on terror and we could do that. That was interesting. We didnt know about the targeting and killing program. It was cloak in almost total secrecy. A few years ago, then denial not deny but failed to acknowledge what was behind the drone strikes and there were no leaks. Very few leaks. So we were relying on the new style of operations we knew nothing about. So is a journalist that intrigued me. And i also knew that this idea that al qaeda was done and that we could sort of downgrade it to a normal sort of threat, was not shared by a lot of the top intelligence guys, the top guys who actually did the targeting and killing program they killed a lot of leaders, the groups persisted, and so for those two reasons it was worth a real deep dive to see to understand this method of operation, being so successful and also understand the enemy and understand whether we this war is really over. How did we get so successful . It turns out that you mentioned prodigal soldiers, which we looked at the force that fought in the persian gulf war that was so effective of and we were still in the post vietnam malaise about the military being not very effective. And if you remember, key to that was Goldwater Nichols where they basically forced the services to stop their competition between each other and to be joined. That was a key part of the military becoming more effective. Turns out that with joint special Operations Commands task forces, Multi Agency Task forces in iraq and afghanistan, were almost perfect crucibles for forging a synergistic mod of operations and combining the skill set of intelligence agencies, joints special operations, direct action units, Law Enforcement agencies like the fbi, the dea and others, and they all operated under one roof in a war time visit a and and broke down the barriers and came up with an operation wall style who in the sum whose whole was better than the sum of its parts. The Record Number of targets that they hit did that surprise you . It did. Win one facet the day this incredible, high uptempo tempo of operations and that is because they turned the usual intelligence gathering equation on its head. Usually intelligence gathering informs operations so you gather intelligence to do operations. They were had gotten into this cycle of operations, called f3fa, find, finish, exploit, and analyze. And they that got the tempo of that was so industrial level that they start every target they fell in on gave them more targets, and just reached a virtual cycle and they were gettinged in the decisionmaking loop of al qaeda in a way that made their leaders very vulnerable. Lets talk about theres some news in the book, and its without controversy. Oh, good. But its its fascinating. In the book you talk about various characteristic officials, namely general flynn, who concluded in 2012 that the Obama Administration was seeking to suppress intelligence on islamic extremist threats in order to justify walking away from iraq, syria, afghanistan, and other countries that had fallen apart while he was president. Tell us about that. Thats one of the central tensions that i talked about earlier. This feeling amongst flynn was the chief Intelligence Officer for joint special Operations Command in iraq and afghanistan, so he was very close to the fight. Flynn, whose name is up for several jobs Donald Trumps Senior National security adviser, alter ego, and he was so he was at the Defense Intelligence agency and was seeing intelligence about the throats of at any rate from al qaeda and other groups, loot from syria and other places, well. He showed me a chart, 2004 to 2014, the number of islamic extremist groups doubled at a time when the narrative was, threats gone away, we can go back to a new normal. He saw that the intelligence went up the klain of command it was diluted until lot of the threat warnings were being sort of diluted out of the intelligence assessment. We know learn that the pentagon Inspector General investigation found there were complaints. The alarmist intelligence analysis on the groth of isis disappeared. It was at the top level of the u. S. Central command where they pointed the finger. So, one of these things where when the narrative is coming out of the who is, out of the white house. Flynn is very upset and one of the reason his didnt get to serve his to third year at the Defense Intelligence agency. Just did a profile on him. He felter there frustrated that what he thought was a growing threat was being basically perceived by the public as a dying threat and explained by the white house as sort of we won this. That cautioned a caused a lot of tension, and flynn arraignments not everyone in the Intelligence Community but flynn represented a core group that felt the enemy was not a dead, that the enemy is an ideology and all of this groupser in the black banner, whether al qaeda or isis are taliban or al alshabaab, theyre united by an ideology, connectty tissue, personnel and the threat was growing and he felt that the white house was not explaining that threat to the public. Who i did he think that. Because he was speak intelligence he saw wasnt getting into the abouts daily brief, and the president s speeches were talking about basically this seminole Counterterrorism Group was describing al qaeda is decimated. The troops are coming home. We can basically rely on this Drone Program and keep america safe and thats the new normal. And he fought back against that. Didnt believe that. Is he still fighting that fight. He Still Believes that and hes going to be a very senior person so, yeah, one thing youll see from a Trump Administration is you wont talking about the threat as being bigger than just isis or altime its an ideology and wherever it raises its head and forms a group that puts the black banner territory, that were probably going to be fighting that group because its viral, antiwestern, intoll rand of islam, like shia, and intolerant of islam, like shia, so a different narrative coming out of the trump white house. Will what will that narrative be, though in terms of fighting counterterror . I think this is you know, i dont want to speak for Lieutenant General mike flynn. The narrative is going to be this war is not over. Honestly, if you see what president obama has done the last year in a year and a half he called isis as the jv team of terrorism. He is now talking about two years ago, about the war being over, and now talking about a generational struggle. If anyone was reluctant to put troops back in iraq it was president obama but he did it because he realized what a threat isis was. He has frozen the troop withdrawal from afghanistan because taliban is coming back. I think theres a general consensus now this conflict is generationality. A different kind of conflict. Not one we can walk away from because we won. The enemy gets the military says that and this enemy is fighting. Can you walk us through the electrons formation of u. S. Counterterrorism network and its operational style . The book talks about the partnerships. So, those joint task forces joint special Operations Command, under visionary leadership, Stanley Mcchrystal and bill mick raven and now scott miller, former Delta Force Commander that ethos of breaking down the walls therefore intelligent enforcement and military, finding synergistic style of operations that merges all their tall talents into a skill set, that has been expanded to our Global Counterterrorism Network go to the national counterat theism center its like the motherlode of the network they formed, and the enemy works in networks as well. Very flat organizations go to the major nodes Like National counterterrorism center, they have multiagency inside the center, called pursuit groups looking like a task force. If you go all over the country you see joints Terrorism Task forces and combined Law Enforcement and nod america not military but the combined the intelligence in the Law Enforcement community. Thats the norm now. We have a globespanning network of cores terrorism and ones in iraq dish thats a technological the front line Delta Force Team in iraq right now, irbil, has hundreds of analysts scattered all over the world, analyzing the drone surveillance from the drones flown from the air force base in arizona, analyze the what they call the defense Common Ground system, and they call it Remote Split Operations but its created a network that can turn the folk discuss and hard stare on any please in the argentina in a matter of seconds. In the earth in a matter of seconds. In the desert storm it took three days but now tied into a network that looks like what Stan Mccrystal made and then talk to the people of the network, the people from these agencies who rotated through joint task forces of now risen through the whole system and theyre working at National Counterterrorism center and theres experience level. They only know working together and its now that ethos pumps out there the entire global u. S. Counterterrorism network. Its generally in other words that before 9 11 and the cia and fbi had considerable barriers between them to say the least, and hampered their cooperation. The atmosphere you described now has really changed and the how has it changed and how is the removal of barriers been a positive development. Well, you raised an interestg point the fbi and the cia on these joint task forces, counteror whatever, use the joke you had to check your guns at the door or else they would shoot each other. The cultures were so antagonistic each other. The fbi, the beat cop kind of image. They were like oil and water. So, when they start these joints task force toes they literally had their work stations sort of isolated by crime scene tape. So the other guys wouldnt come over there and look over their shoulder. The National Counterterrorism, they brought the agencies together and had 15 different Computer Systems on their work stations because theyre all stove piped to their mother agency, not sharing with each other. They had at these task forces finally say, look, guys you have to put all your sources on the blackboard so everyone knows each others sources and you had to make a promise you cant poach each others sources and they realized they had some of the same sources being used by two or three or four agencies and telling them different things, contradictory things, that they war getting paid and so it went from there to a verdes separate fight where they all finally said to win this fight we have to work together, and that was a huge change, and its now, like i said,percolated up throughout the entire system. So, working together of course, the post9 11 Commission Report and all the reforms broke down the allowed that sharing hat was previously from the Church Committee back in the 19507s 1970s was not allowed. The intelligence sharing is now eons above writ was at 9 11. And one reason i want to write the book, thats what good looks like and i dont want us to lose that. Now we have yale and ohio state playing on the same field. Exactly. On the same team. Exactly. Nine mean running backs, quarterbacks. Got it. What did you discover as you peeled back these veils behind the terrorist targeting program . Well, one of the things i discovered was a much more granular understand offering the enemy. One of the fascinating parts of the book is where the fbi realized that its job is to protect americans and americans are being killed by these ied cells in kabul, so, brian mccally, who i profile in the book Tell White House he is, one of the unsung, people not a name not a household name. Yeah. He is astounding special agent who got very early on one of the he is one of the visionary leaders who said we cant afford to be fighting even other. We have an enemy here we have to fight so we need to work together. So, heed in only a handful of fbi guys in afghanistan. He brings in more than 100, and goes after these ied cells killing american soldiers, and in trying to understand these ied cells, improvised explosive devices he brings in the behavioral science guys, the serial killer profilers from quantity quantico and interview the failed suicide bombers. And interviewed these guys for weeks and in other words how these guys understood how these guys were low level peasants guys in pakistan and the referee reef camps who were radicalized by a radicals imam or a mosque in pakistan and basically just brought along this all the way, told theyre going to go to heaven if they do this operation, their families are paid a certain amount of money, then they were brought to these logistics lines to could could buhle and plead up with a handler who makes the vests or the vehicle ied. So they in other words they got to understand the enemy at a real granular level and flurries theres an ideology element to the enemy and one of the profilists topped me they can feel this unseen hand manipulating these guys, and very sophisticatessed because they would if it was someone who was uneducated and they sent them after a soft target. They found someone more owed indicated and capable, puts them in teams and do more hard targets, commando teams, like in paris and brussels. So one as the profilist said know if i was picking a team to do this id pick exactly these guys and assign them the tanks they were being given. So very sophisticated enemy who understands how to recruit and radicalsize and deploy these guys in a very expert manner. Who to pick. Like i said they would pick peasants guys to do they would do children, convince the sixyearold to wear a suicide vest and told him he would spray flowers. So incredibly cynical and brutal people. They would also pick more outside indicated people, like bin laden did with the crew that did 9 11. These were highly outside indicated guys and could pull off a complexion attack like 9 11, or guys not april cable capable to do that, run him to a Police Academy and blow himself up. Why did you focus so much substance on the u. S. Interrogation program . For a couple of reasons. I was in iraq when abu ghraib broke, and saw how that upended our whole operation there. Totally all the trust that american troops and leader had built up with the iraqis startedded to go out the window because of the humiliating treatment. Recruiting incredible recruiting poster for al qaeda in iraq, and they had the numbers to proof prove it. Thats a fact. Also was embarrassed as an american, and, by the way, talked to the guys who did these interrogations and the enhanced interrogation techniques created a lot of corrupted intelligence. If youre getting waterboardded 80 times youll tell someone what you think they want to hear. So one casei have a whole chapter the first big al qaeda operative that was cap tired after 9 11, abu the only one who was actually used both techniques. The fib team got to him first and did a traditional tweaks worth of interrogation, win his confidence and break this story down and very patiently break his story down so he gives up then the cia came in and eventual he did the enhances interrogation techniques for more than three weeks and more than 80 waterboarding cases and the cia got nothing and the fbi got the fact that the master mind of the 9 11 and padilla wanted wanted to do a dirty bomb attack, so a perfect case i still see polls where americans think that torture works and the new president thinksed so, too but that its okay, and i think its wrong on both ounces. Well, both counts. The culling tour of the fbi and the cia had a difference of opinion on this. This is the interesting points because one of the things that was so critical about the synergy created in the joint task forces would understanding are what each Agency Brought to the table and the fbi these guys have been interviewing criminals and get them to spill the beans as a core capability of the fbi. Cia doesnt interrogate anyone. They have two air force psychologists who themselves have never interrogated one to design this enhanced interrogation protocol built on basically a program that we trained american troops how to resist with the communist regimes would do when they would capture you, like north korean. So that was the perfect example where they didnt understand who brought what to the table. Never the cia does brilliant stuff in terms of intelligence analysis and that makes very clear in that. When way were parking together the fbi guy would get a piece of information and the fbi is not particularly well suited to track that information do you down. Cia would come back in a day and with their an littal capables saying hes talking about this guy because we looked at the travel, et cetera, thats how they got to jose padilla, so you have to understand who brings what to the table. Cia does not not a skill set of interrogating people. What did we learn collectively from interrogations of islamist extremists . Well, we learned that their networks. Once they do they did breck this break this guy down and got to get intelligence. The template they designed the fbi from interviewing the serial killer guys, interviewing the behavioral science guys, interviewing wouldbe suicide bombers, they built a template of interrogation, understanding the motivations of an islamic extreme wist who wants to kill himself and use that as a template to interrogate or interview the wouldbe times square bomber, shahzad, the wouldbe new york subway bomber, cant remember his name tazi, so they used this template of what they have learned to sort of break these guys down in interrogations and we winds lease thighs are very sophisticated terrorist masters and very ideologically driven and their ideology is antiwestern and the ideology is violent by in intolerant bill the future and you get to a sense of the enemy and his network and they give up names and you, make connections and flush out what their networks look like. Do you think the new style of Counterterrorism Operations that you describe in book will survive the end of the post 9 11 wars in iraq and afghanistan . One reason i wrote the book is because i think it needs to and the signs arent great to be honest. We have gotten into a post war mindset where were gutting our military readiness with sequestration. What happens to mike flynn, he was asked by secretary of defense leon panetta to come back from war and to put a more a more wartime ethoses in the Defense Intelligence agency and that was a bad sign. These guys come can back from the war, were kind of amazed how the country had moved on. And they feel like the conflict is still going. So, i wrote recently in yahoo news case where you guys have thirds hid the state department calls up about an Hillary Clinton email and asked, it could be classified, and he found out about benghazi and said no. I need you to put my fbi guys back in the embassy so the congress basically has launched a criminal investigation of that, pressuring the justice department. Thats exactly the end kinds of crosstalk you want your agencies to be doing. That is Standard Operating Procedure you start criminalize the interagency cross can talk youll ruin the model. The post snowden reforms what they nsa died, the snowden review, the things that were techniques developed in iraq, at the height of the war there, realtime regional gateway, really sophisticated geolocation capabilities, really sophies tick kitted algorithms to query telephone metadata. Theyre worried theyre saying their radio ares going doc because another that and because of encryption. We are going to the society allow companies to make phones that even with a warrant you cant break into. Models is going to be less effective. No question about that. Lets go to your questions. My colleagues can pass a microphone around, i believe. Questions. Dont be shy. I know you have questions here. Couldnt possibly have explained all that. Yes, sir, right here. One over here after you. Thank you. Thank you for the talk and giving Tell White House you are. Im from csis. Of course so much specialization has been expanded since 9 11 but i would look at counterterrorism its like a very micropolitical impact, casetocase based on country so when one needs to deal with the entire perspective out there how to deal with terrorism and tackling it in everyday society, like in paris and what do you think the might through the common man on the streets, specialists who are in this field. Good question. For one thing i think that what paris and brussels reveals is that its intelligence intense intelligence sharing and cooperation that we do does not characterize the european intelligence model. So they dont talk to each other like our agencies do. And so you get have a very big problem where a terrorist comes through greece or turkey and goes into germany and then brussels and down to france, crossing Many International borders and agencies that dont talk well to each other. A gaping vulnerability because the european citizens dont have to have visas to come to this country. So europe needs to learn from the model and get over their competition between their intelligence agencies, number one. We also learned that you have to dress radicalization to some degree youve saw the United Kingdom arrest this hates preacher. Im a journalist. I live and die by free speech. But theres always a limit on free speech and inciting violence and a whole chapter in book about bledsoe, an africanamerican kid from middle class family in tennessee, became the first jihaddist, he got trouble with the law, kind of a place where he was troubled. And reached out his uncle was a muslim for farrakhans group, and he went to, a mosque that had a fundmental list preacher who behind him in and send him toenen, got arrested and spent time in prison. A lot of these guys aremasterery jihaddism. But aling baghdadi, we had him in our prison so he just touched owl those things and you can seal the process of radicalization, if you dont Pay Attention to it, then the next with a of jihaddists is being created as we talk. The question back there. Yes, maam. Laid iny purple. Hi, my name is im i had a question. I havent read your bork a good excuse. I may have already, but some something ive been curious about. About the nature of al qaeda and isis. It has been discussed a lot that al qaeda was much more difficult to penetrate because of relationships and networks, and isis you have this humongous influx of foreign fighters and kids who are playing a video game. Do you think that it has isis has penetrated by human than al qaeda, given the opportunity to because it feels like its easier would be easier to penetrate than it was to penetrate al qaeda. And if that penetration has happened, do you anticipate the results of that human, culminating sometime in the near future. A good point. Al qaeda was hard to penetrate because they were much more careful about their vetting. Baghdadi was hoping up the gates, come to the caliphate. Theres pros and cons to each side. Al qaeda has a lot longer to develop. Had almost a decade, with very little harassment from us or anyone else. So it could afford to be a little more careful. Isis developed very quickly, and decided to be very ambitious, jerry early very early on so theyre more open to infiltration. Hey with infill freighted isis . I dont know the answer to that. I would say that we it certainly hasnt been perfect infiltration because we have been surprised, really ugly surprises, like charlie hebdo, like the paris attack, the brussels attack. What were finding is rather than being the jv team of terrorism, isis is to me like al qaeda 3. 0. These are learning organizations and related and the people share lessons from fighting us for over a decade and they learned from al qaeda core, Osama Bin Laden, how you can how the strategy of attacking the west brings you the point of the are realm which is money, prestige, recruits. They learned from al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, awlakis group. Very sophisticated at social immediate and inspiring lone wolves from long distances. Both have online magazines. And they learn from al qaeda in iraq just that their brutality and how for a certain mindset that plays well. Of all the terrorist groups al qaeda in iraq was the most brutally willing to massacre civilians. They massacred tens of thousands or iraqi knowledge most she use. Isis does the same thing. We have seen this brutality and taken it to a whole new level. So i think isis is kind of al qaeda 3. 0 and now we have to worry about what 4. 0 will look like once the lose their territory. So, long answer to your question, im not sure if we have infiltrated. Know our intelligence is not where it should be because we have been surprised by them. Question right here. Im a journalist and work with james at the national a thousand years ago. Good to see you. Havent read your book yet but let me ask you who soiree latests questions. In this book do you cover cooperation between United States and all of the other major allies and how its worked out, and the related question is, now that trump has been the president elect for almost 48 hours do you have any thoughts how this is going change in the Trump Administration . The joint task forces that were in iraq and afghanistan included coalition partners. So matter of fact mike flynn was investigated from the Inspector Generals office because he was sharing intelligence with british commanders who had american units in there, which is ridiculous. Had american units underneath them in regions of afghanistan. So to that extent i covered that cooperation. In terms of going deep into our intelligence sharing between our intelligence appearings and european or other ones, theres the five is, new zealand, australia, britain, ourselves, theres very close cooperation but falls off quickly after that. We saw that with the whole how the germans were surprised by what went on with snowden. Im sorry. Your served question oh, trump. Mike flynn is trumps National Security alter ego and i interviewed him many times and know him pretty well. He views this as a connected fight. His words to in me was we can talk about decimating the core of al qaeda. To me the core is ideology. Think he is on to something. People talk about the competition between al qaeda and isis but theres hardly in difference in their world view or the ideology of the tribes so a lot of counterterrorism people are very afraid of an eventual merging of al qaeda and isis, which could still happen, because or taliban or alshabaab. A lot of the affiliates that came ive sis affiliates were form are al qaeda affiliates but isis was the brand of the day. Its not helpful to think of the groups a distinguished small groups, once you defeat that group the problem is gone. Its this pantheon of likeminded groups that share intelligence, share Lessons Learned and share a common ideology, and i think youll see trump part of his secret plan, to view it that way. Thats how mike flynn thinks. Question over there. Max. Max, i work here in the building. Question about the Trump Administration. What are the most critical counterterrorism positions that donald trump is going to be filling, and do you have any thoughts on who might be filling those positions . I dont. Ive been trying to ive been asked to figure this out by a media outall right and trying dish dont think they know themselves honestly. So its not everyone likes to speculate. The best game in town. I think that the key positions for counterterrorism are the white house counterterrorism chief, lisa monaco now, before that fran townsend. Clark, this person is the president s goto person on terrorism. So thats the key position. I think the head of the National Counterterrorism center is key. The head of the defense the dni, defense director are of national intelligence. Thank you. Its key because he has to keep focus on the big intelligence picture, but also has to stay focus owned the terrorism threat and i think clapper has been very good at that. So those are the big ones for terrorism, and of course, the military positions, the military so much is around joint special Operations Command, that is our direct, a military Counterterrorism Group so those positions are always key. Military guys are threestar generals. Those positions are key. I think thats less of a problem because the military will signal who are the people that fill that position. Those are the big ones. And i would just be guessing if i said i hadden in idea who he will had any idea who he will pick. Maam, which then this gentleman. I think she was first and then this gentleman. Hi, i am Sarah Thompson at the state department itch just had a quick question jumping awful the previous question about the characterization of this conflict, and the sense of its an ideological. Dangerous to refer to it as a war ask the terminology surrounding that, the connotations that come from that, and would you then characterize it by some other terminology or address it as upa conflict or conflict, because i think that the terminology definitely then shapes the mentality of what what youre going into, which thin affects the entire approach. So, i guess its not overly clear question no, no. I know that issue very well. Change how we approach it. You know, the Bush Administration didnt say much about islamic extremist terrorism also of. They also understood theres a negative thing at that time goes along with calling it that and the even own administration has been very reluctant to say that because it doesnt want to tar the wider muslim community. 99point something percent of which are peaceful people, with this group. As a journalist, though, there you cant deny dish dont think you can deny theres an ideal component to this ideology component and as a journalist i try to theres something about naming your enemy and understanding because its faulty thinking. For instance, if you think its just another terrorist group, when you destroy that terrorist presume and the problem over, right . When at quite is decimatessed, the problem is over, right . But the problem is not over. The ideology grows in certain kinds of conditions and those conditions, after the arab spring, were all over the place, and its doubled in size. So, i think theres a im sympathetic to the president not wanting to say that, and im fine with just journalists and other people talking about the exact nature of it. And i was very disturbed when donald trump started saying, ban all muslims. Thats exactly the kind of thing reason why the president didnt want to say bass some demagogue would pick up on that and tar the whole religion some is super unhelpful because feeds right into the enemys narrative about the war against islam in the west does a journalist we need to understand the nature of the enemy and has an ideology, and i would hope we could be sophisticated enough to understand that maybe we cant in our politics. I go back and forth on this. But there is something important about understanding the nature of the enemy and calling it what it is, but it can if you take it too far, it can be very unhelpful so we as americans have to be more sophisticated about how we talk about this, and diplomacy is you guys are on the front lines of that. I understand why the state department may be reticent to get into that kind of description where if im sitting in the pentagon, talk beings this threat i want to hear, understanding of the threat, specifically the enemy we confront, because like i said if youre not specific you can it can lead you down some bad assumptions, like these are dissecrete groups that want you to defeat them. Theyre part of a wider movement. Next tuesday, november 15 until, csisy will be releasing our commission on countering violent extremism report. A commission we con vaccined here. Chaired by former british Prime Minister tony blair and former secretary of defense leon panetta. Look for that to address your questions and addressed the languages and the root causes and addresses what it is is a temp plate, designed as a template for been working on it for over a year for the next administration to look at in terms of what irthey going to do to counter violent extremism and well be pent is to the administration and next generation of leaders in europe as well. Yes, sir. My name is the state foundation. Just want to go a little further whan shat she asked in my than what she asked. You talked about realization radicalization and ideology. United states has been occupying iraq and afghanistan almost 15 to 16 years ump im just i was born in india and we know how we fought the british and the occupied the country for almost 100 years and people were doing the same that what the al qaeda is doing, and isis is doing, and we had people like kind of time to work with the enemy and hand in hand, trying to paralyze them by peaceful method as well as working with them in the government and trying to stab them wherever you can, so that you could throw them out. So those afghanistans and those iraqis were na this countries the american presence for all this period as a foreign intervention. Foreigners must leave. And let us fight among ourselves, whether al qaeda wins or the average citizens or mr. The Prime Minister wins. Who is are is the win and who is going to rule. Given that, arent we when with put these things like im if the russians were ouching this country for 15 years, and dividing even other, fighting each other, doing the same thing that isis is doing. Do we have a question . Whats wrong with it. We have to figure out a way get to out. Then hope all these radicalization and ideology would change. I take your point. As long as were a foreign Occupying Force in a foreign lan specially muslim land there will be ash even a nationalist outbreak against us for that and point well taken. However, would also point out, we didnt occupy afghanistan in 1990s when it was giving al qaeda bases to train people to come and kill americans. They attacked ore embassies they thats true but we did not occupy afghanistan, and the taliban because of [inaudible] sorry . You against the russians. But we did knock im going to your point about occupation. We can go back on the long history of american policy which we dont have time for in the terms of occupation we trade in afghanistan the taliban let al qaeda build bases to attack the west and attacked us numerous times, culminating in 9 11. Talibans making us come back in afghanistan, if we have any doubt theyll do the exact same thing i if we dont keep the taliban game gaining power. The biggest base was in an da hard so theres no easy answer to this. I dont think occupying countries is the answer but i think the answer is not just sort of ignore these issues. We tried to ignore isis until it basically took over iraq and syria and started launching attacks in paris and brussels. So, you can i dont think occupation is the answer but i dont think ignoring the problem solves it either because we tried that and the problem still persists. My name is josh. Thank you very much for this talk. Very interesting. I worked are work as a Threat Intelligence analyst for the canadian banks. Hope you can comments on the role of twilight soldiers in the in the what . In the operation in iraq. , well, ive written about the i was over there a month ago with the chairman of though joint chiefs of staff. Were using the template in seeing you your question of the occupation very light footprint now in iraq, very small in syria. The template now is to use really the skillset of what i talked about in the discussion in the book, the joint special Operations Command developed and to marry it to proxy forces on the ground. So we are bringing the things the network does best which is advanced Intelligence Surveillance and wreck reconnaissance. Special forces teams, train and assist, command and control, and marry it to kurdish, peshmerga forces, Iraqi Security forces to Syrian Kurdish forces in syria. Thats were beer doing the same thing in somalia, bringing all those skillingsets to the African Union force, trying to stablize traumatic, thats the template, not occupation. But to find partners who we can support who themselves want to fight this there arent that many people in the world who really want to police na a seventh century fundmentallist, Islamist Society anymore. So there are willing partners out there but we have to be willing to help them. We learned the skillset that is useful to empowering proxy forces on the ground and youre going to see in mosul and and its pretty powerful. Takes time because if we had american troops you can do it quicker, but as we said theres a big downside to having big mesh footprint and we learned that, too. Time for one more question. Thanks very much. I statement steve greta. My question is about cost of military operations. Know its an issue related to risings National Debt and everything i just wonder if you think that this mud model or twilight warrior can be a more Cost Effective means of exerting u. S. Force around the world, and if so, how . I would argue thats new costly and honestly nothing in term was defense right now. Were spending less than cold war average in terms of gdp which has grown but in materials of gdp this is not a burden that we cannot bear the burden we with cannot bear with the society and what has happened in europe has changed political dynamic there are huge cost in not confronting this