And james mcavoy with ed benson. Its about this couple that has just passed the phase of romantic love, all consuming love. Now theyre having to deal with grown ups problems. And its a problem with communication and grief, what happens when two people need to grieve in separate ways. And can you love someone enough to let them go. Rose the president talks about isis, and a new film called the disappearance of Eleanor Rigby when we continue. Funding for charlie rose is provided by the following theres a saying around here you stand behind what you say. Around here, we dont make excuses, we make commitments. And when you cant live up to them, you own up and make it right. Some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where its needed most. But i know youll still find it, when you know where to look. Rose additional funding provided by and by bloomberg. A provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose president obama went to mcdeal air force base in tampa earlier today. Hes being briefed by United StatesCentral Command on the fight against isis. Speaking to the troops he promised that the United States would not wage a ground war in iraq. This is not and will not be americas fight alone. One of the things weve learned over this last decade is america can make a decisive difference, but i want to be clear. The American Forces that have been deployed to iraq do not and will not have a combat mission. They will support iraqi forces on the ground, as they fight for their own country against these terrorists. Rose the president and the joint chiefs of staff suggested that u. S. Ground troops could directly engage isis. Within this partnership our advisors are intended to help the iraqis develop a mind set for the offensive and to take actions consistent with offensive. Our military advisors will help the iraqis conduct campaign planning, arrange for enabler and Logistics Support and our coalition activities. If we reached a point where i believe our advisors should accompany iraq troops on attacks against specific isil targets ill recommend that to the president. Rose joining me now is david sanger the New York TimesNational Security correspondent and aluf benn is the editorinchief of haaretz. Im pleased to have both of them back at this table. Welcome. David tell me where we are with the president according to one newspaper has turned on a dime about what hes prepared to do. I dont think the president has turned on a dime. I think the president is leaving himself every option open because i think theres a wide spread sense in the whitehouse, certainly in the pentagon that if you go into a conflict announcing what youre not going to do, which is what he did when he said there will be no combat troops on the ground. You are tying your hands, and perhaps telegraphing too much to the enemy. Now this is very consistent for president obama. He came in as a president who was going to get us out of iraq and somehow end the afghan war. The end of afghan combat mission is just a few months away. And i think its his Natural Inclination to say at the beginning of any of these were not going to have a combat role. Rose because i perceive where the American People are who have war fatigue. I dont think hes not only reading the poll, i think he agrees with the American People on this issue. Remember he is the president who used to use the line, particularly in discussing the afghan surge, that the time has come to do nation building at home. So hes got these dual tasks right now. Hes got to deal with isis. And at the same time he has to assure people theyre not going back into the iraq war. Slightly different tasks for the chairman of the joint chiefs, who has to leave open the possibility that this could be a more complicated operation. Rose he has to address the whole contingencies. He does. And he committed the ultimate washington gaffe which is he told the truth in public. And the truth here was, way dont know what this conflict with isis is going to require. And he needed to leave himself some room to escalate if he needed to, are and it was interesting, the whitehouse did not tamp that down at all. They said hes discussing contingencies and, you know, if he comes to the president , the president will think about it. Now the president s Statement Today in tampa makes you believe he will do anything short of actually putting these forces in combat. But that doesnt mean that they may not be at the combat, it doesnt mean that the c. I. A. May not be playing a role. Rose well come back to that. How is this playing in your region of the wobrd . Well here in israel where i come from, were a little bit far away from it. The isis card, Islamic State was used politically by Prime Minister netanyahu on two issues. One is he made the equation that hamas equals isis. And theres been a long held israeli argument that were on the same side with the west and with the moderate arab states against the extremists. Rose or as they say the Muslim Brotherhood in gaza. Exactly. And the other reason was israel were now having the annual budget debate. And the Defense Ministry came up with a huge request for inquest which he supports. Several reasons which has to do with internal politics and not just with economics. But one of the arguments he made for the budget increase is isis. And today premier military official gave a briefing in which he said that israel is not in the sight of isis, its far away. Were assisting the americans with intelligence and so on but its not our fight. Rose the reason i asked you the question that i asked you is because you talk to people from outside of israel in your role and previous roles at the paper. Why is there so little arab support for doing what the administration thinks is essential to have Ground Troops on the ground there that can do the job, and support it by other arab countries. you mean like arab countries rose like saudi arabia. Like they did in 1991. Rose yes. Well maybe they dont see it as enough of a threat, or perhaps they fear that there is underlying support for the isis cause which they dont want to be exposed. Rose within their countries. Within their country, within their country and they dont want to expose it by going too far. Rose how much support is in saudi arabia and these other sunnies for isis. I dont know. Rose theyre getting money from these countries in terms of private groups. Were getting money and also they are now the fighting force of the sunnis against the shiites, and people in the sunni countries may feel that this is their fight in a way against the shiites. For example, if we look at syria where isis, iraqi is more in the news here. But in syria which is also closer to home to us, isis may present itself at some point as the true fighting force of the sunnis protecting them from the assad regime. So far they havent been doing that so far in stopping that regime. Rose do they view the threat of isis as serious as the u. S. Views the threat of isis not so much the United States but to the region, if they have a successful Islamic State it will provide refuge for a whole rain of activities. If isis gets away from its plan then all these governments wont be there. Rose exactly. Isis wants to create this one big Islamic State, like the caliphate of ages ago and not keep the ruling in power and be a nice Friendly Neighbor to them. But as i said either they feel that this is not enough of a threat, you know. Isis is still far away from saudi arabia for example. In israel the main concern is about as always is about the stability of jordan and which you know undermined by Syrian Refugees from the syrian civilian war, and jordan is like the strategic depth of israel. Rose when you talk about the c. I. A. , some people say this president believes in covert action. And i guess its title 50 or article 50 gives the cia power to engage on the ground. Yes . It does. This is a president who turns to covert because he believes in the first term called the light foot printed. Something weve discussed on this show before. The lightp foot print was essentially the term to high technology, meaning drones, cyber affects, the use of special forces and covert forces who could go in and out quickly and not actually occupy a country. The president believes and i believe the evidence in the past 13 years supports that if you put a hundred or 150,000 groups in country for five or six years you end up not changing the country as much as you think you might. And you end up breeding resentment. Rose and you end up owning the problems. You end up owning the problems. So he wants to show first that this is, in this case, iraqs fight. Syrias a more complex issue because obviously he doesnt want to seem to be supporting assad after he declared this man who was responsible for 200,000 deaths by some count must leave. And secondly he wants to make it clear that the United States does not own the outcome here. But he has to some degree guide the outcome and thats the box hes in. The remarkable thing about the second term of the Obama Presidency is that the light foot print has largely failed him. The drones worked very well against alqaeda in the wide open states, in pakistan or the mountains of pakistan. Cyber worked well for a while9y. The special forces worked well in getting bin laden and attacks like that. But those have all been stymied by the kind of conflict were in here now against isis and even against the syrian civil war. What is the goal here. I hear all the discussion about armed forces, not armed forces versus light footprint. We were having a similar debate in israel during the written conflicts[because netanyahu likt obama is about cyber warfare and not action and using their own forces because Ground Forces means casualties. In Israel Military casualties, its a constrict army, have enormous impact on public opinion. But the war in gaza has shown to most israelis that you cannot win wars an from the air. What hamas did is they dug tunnels which cannot be destroyed by bombs or aircraft. Then there was the extent it was deployed and so on. The big question is what is the goal of the war against this Islamic State to destroy it and then to rebuild the border system, to rebuild the iraqi state, to rebuild the unified syrian state. This is the main question because you can destroy isis and then comes then another Bad Organization to run this area. Rose what comes first. The destruction does not come first. Rose the expectation it leads to. In the iraqi case the president was very anxious to have a government that showed some interest and inclusion before he announced air strikes in a significant way. But he cant do that in syria. We dont know what happens in syria, whether it splits up. Would like to see assad gone. Theres the knowledge when assad goes, the country may go in many different directions. D irections aluf raises the great question here. If you dont have control of the ultimate outcome, what kind of state emerges. Then the goals thattj you expres are really tactical. And i think that thats whats behind a seemingly semantic argument within the administration about whether you call this a war or whether you compare it to the war against alqaeda and so forth. And the fact that the administration didnt have the talking points together on this may simply be a talking points issue but it may indicate theyre struggling with what their long term strategic goal is. Rose do you know who the voices are of the different arguments. We dont, i dont know right now who, what the voices are of the arguments about the broader strategic element. Within the isis argument itself, this has gone across fairly traditional territory here where the pentagon has been obviously very reluctant to get into syria. If they were going to go in against isis they want to go in with enough of a show of force that isis didnt just linger as a continuing force. And i think thats the push back that you were hearing some from general dempsey. The similar argument that broke out over the summer as they were debating to what degree do you confront Vladimir Putin in ukraine. Where dempsey and others were making the case that you have to have enough of a show of force in ukraine, not necessarily with american themselves targeting the information and so forth, that putin would understand the risk of going after the nato states. So the pentagon never wants to be in a position of the assigned to simply degrade a force and not actually destroy it. We had this debate during the gaza war and there were politicians in israel who argued for like Prime Minister leiberman. Degraded is the new buzz word. Rose in israel. The best option in israel because someone needs to take care of the territory. And the vacuumthousands of miln syria and eventually you would lose any control over gaza. There is an interesting argument in this case about whether the president should have come out a week ago to declare it until the end of his presidency this becomes the major goal of American Foreign policy. There were some who left the administration who were active in the first term and part of the second who have made the case to me that the president s speech should have said look, were experienced at this. Weve dealt with the taliban, weve dealt with the pakistani taliban, were dealt with alqaeda, we will now deal with isis and what comes after isis. And were pretty good at counterterrorism and just let us go handle it rather than make it the dominant theme at a time that hes got so many other challenges to deal with, from putin to china and many others. Rose including ebola. Interestingly, yesterday he sent 3,000 troops for ebola because there may be 1500 troops in iraq right now. Rose interesting. Back to israel and hamas. Whats the status of that conflict today . Extended ceasefire. Yesterday a motor bomb exploded in israel in angaza. They said it was a ceasefire and clearly there was no israeli reaction. There are talks supposed to take place in cairoxm but that doesnt happen. Everybody lingers in trying to find out whether this takes them anywhere. Rose are any of the things hamas wanted going to happen . For example the borders will not be restricting embargoes or sanctions or whatever you call them will not be as deep . Well, not as much as hamas wanted to build a seaport and open the gaza airport. They agreed with the u. S. And Palestinian Authority on some sort of reconstruction regime. But that depends on hamas agreeing to have the Palestinian Authority present in the border crossings and even within its territory. So far its still rose talk about this. Talk about the president s mind because he clearly has come to the point that we have to do something. It is not going away. Thats right. Rose semi military footing. Thats right. And you know, he was highly resistent in the first term and even the beginning of the second to have a prolonged military presence of any kind in the middle east that would suck us back in. I think in his heart, given where he grew up, given the waive he views the future of the american economy, he believes pivot. He believes thats where americas future is. And that the middle east is something where the United States has to play and has to fillbut theres no or very lite long range benefit for the American Public in this. Rose and hes made clear that the isis struggle will go beyond his presidency. Well hes made that clear because to the rose look what happened in iraq. Going back to your question about the coalition. I believe that president obama would have loved have the United States playing the arbiter in original balance of power in the middle east. As britain did before the First World War in europe. And time and again its failed and it has to come and clear all in the middle east with the military force, and not just telling others what to do or taking one side or the other. One of the problems is that, one of the problems here is that america cannot and would not enter a full alliance, open alliance with iran. Which it may have been tilting this way, and given the isis problem, it is clearly more open about it on both sides. But still there are many impediments of america entering in alliance with iran. And therefore you have to, you cant send the iranians or the shiites to do your job against isis, you have to do it yourself. Rose its clearly some kind of information taking place between the iranians and the United States. Because they have the iranian supported militias on the ground, yes . So the real partner here is iran. Rose in some cases theres some cooperation. David, you know iran well. Well this is going to be the fascinating question. A year from now when we look back at this conflict, are we going to say that the United States did this from the air and the iranians did this from the ground and they didnt coordinate at all. Now were headed into a pretty interesting week on this. The foreign minister of iran, hes coming to new york today. Rose president of irans0p. President of irans coming next week and the president of the United States is coming next week. You remember last year they talked on the phone. Rose right. Some wanted to meet and others didnt. Thats right. And the natural progression here would be move from a phone call, which was the first ti