Transcripts For CSPAN3 Hudson Institute Violent Extremism Co

acting director. >> this hearing on the 2020 census is available on c-span.org. leaving the last few minutes for a conference on countering violent extremism in qatar, iran, and the muslim brotherhood, featuring lawmakers and former intelligence officials. house homeland security committee chair mike mccaul, david petraeus, and former white house strategist steve bannon. coming up shortly, former defense secretary leon panetta. >> from the beginning, it has been devoted to the freedom, security, and prosperity of the united states and the health of its institutions. its work is especially focused on strategies for the long term, strategies that thus deal with our most abiding challenges. in its research, it draws upon a wide variety of perspectives and opinions, and it will do so today. and it covers a wide variety of policy areas. domestic, foreign, and national security. let me first of all in addition thank you all for being here and participating in this conference. i said before that this conference is important. it is so for two reasons. first, its subject, and second, the personnel that will address it. our subject is countering violent extremism. qatar, iran, and the muslim brotherhood. we will, of course, explore each of these topics, but also the overlap between them. now, i hardly need to stress the importance of the subject of violent extremism emanating from the muslim world. its gravity has been evidence to the american public ever since september 11th, 2001, when so many of our fellow citizens lost their lives. as general kelly so movingly reminded us last week, countering this threat is still taking american lives in many places around the world. most recently in west africa. nor do i need to stress that it has also had many other effects on our way of life. some big, some small. at this point, we all know that. but what i may stress and should stress is that the character of the threat has its own dynamics and has evolved over time. for example, the arab revolt of 2011 created additional dynamics that affected and still affect the terrain of this problem. its consequences included the rise of the islamic state of iraq in the levant. opportunities for the degradation of the islamic republic of iran, as well as further opportunities for their regional enablers. the purpose of this conference is to address the present phase of these dynamics and its future. where are we now and where are we headed? where should we be headed if we're not headed in the right direction? to address these crucial questions, this conference brings together a most distinguished group of participants. this is the second reason for the significance of this conference. our participants in their public and private capacities bring to bear a vast amount of experience. very hard experience, often, and thought about this grievous problem. we will begin with leon panetta. a man who as everyone knows, given lifelong and distinguished service to our country as a congressman and secretary of defense and as director of the cia. in all of those capacities and several others, he really seems to be indefatigable if you look at his resume, he's wrestled with the problems we're here to discuss. he will deliver his thoughts in conversation. mr. waymouth has also had a very distinguished career and one that has also involved great public service. ms. waymouth has been a senior editor of "the washington post" since 1986. in that capacity, she has performed the invaluable service of helping the american public understand the problems we face and the officials who are tasked with that purpose and sometimes the people who are causing the problem themselves. i think back to an interview that she did of moammar gadhafi many years ago. please join me in welcoming secretary panetta and molly waymouth. >> so good afternoon. and thank you all for coming. on behalf of the hudson institute, to what i hope will be a fascinating afternoon. and it starts off with leon panetta, whom i'm sure we will all be fascinated to hear from, considering the number of crises that are going on all over the world today. so leon, i can't help but ask you, first of all, north korea. how do you see the situation? do you think we're close to war? how do you assess north korea? >> well, first of all, my thanks to the hudson institute for inviting me here. and for having this opportunity. look, we're living in a world where there are huge number of flashpoints. and danger points. probably more flash points than we have seen since the end of world war ii. failed states in the middle east, isis, the war against terrorism. iran and their continuing support for terrorism. north korea, russia, china, cyber attacks. i mean, this is -- this is a dangerous world. and it demands very strong u.s. leadership to be -- >> your leadership and you have policies that created -- >> i don't think that's helpful. let secretary panetta finish. okay. okay. i think you should let secretary panetta finish please. [ booing ] >> okay. please. >> okay. i would like to add that i -- during this mayhem, i would -- okay. my goodness. oh, my gosh. >> okay. [ yelling ] >> okay. >> welcome to a congressional hearing. >> i would like to say, i completely forgot, i completely forgot which was my intent to introduce for secretary panetta, as everyone in the room knows, he was secretary of defense. is there any chance people will be quiet? okay. he has served the country as secretary of defense and director of the cia. so i think that gives his views -- oh, my goodness. anyway. i think that gives his views added -- a great, you know, a great scope. and it's fascinating to hear what he has to say about the crisis of our day, if members of our audience would be so kind as to just let him speak, which apparently is quite difficult. okay, leon. >> okay. >> go for it. >> shall we try again? >> yeah. >> so it obviously is a challenging time for u.s. leadership because of these danger points, and we're seeing that with north korea. north korea has been a difficult challenge for a very long time. and it's been a rogue nation, and obviously, a nation where we have been extremely concerned about their ability to develop a nuclear weapon and an icbm. which they seem to be making great progress on. and i think according to intelligence analysis, we're probably looking at not that many months before they in fact develop both an icbm capability and a miniaturized nuclear weapon that could be placed on top of an icbm. so the issue then becomes how do we -- how do we confront this challenge to our national security? the reality is that there have been military plans that have been developed over the years to try to confront north korea. the bottom line is that none of those are very good options because of the consequences. and the concern that ultimately, it could lead not only to many lives -- thousands of lives that are lost in south korea. but also it could lead ultimately to a nuclear war. and so for that reason, you know, the issue has always been, how do you try to engage north korea? and obviously, the effort has been made to try to put pressure on china because china is the one country that has a large influence in north korea, to try to get them to try to deal with north korea and get them to negotiate. that is not proven very effective. so what are we left with? i think in the end, the united states has to implement a policy of containment and deterrence, which is the approach we have been taking. but i think that in some ways, that noose of containment and deterrence has to be tightened. i think we have to obviously increase our military presence and strength in the region. we have to increase our navy presence. we have to continue to support and develop the security of south korea as well as japan. we need to develop a missile shield, an effective missile shield that can bring these missiles down. in south korea, in japan, obviously in our country. in terms of the threat of icbms. we need to continue to toughen sanctions. and i do think that if china is willing to restrict oil shipments and deal with some of the other commercial areas that they deal with in north korea, that it can have an impact on the north koreaen economy. so tight eening up those sanctis and at the same time, working with our allies, working with china, trying to see if we can't work towards some kind of negotiations with north korea. this is not going to be easy. and we have experienced that. but i think we need to push as hard as we can on the policy of deterrence and containment and try to put as much pressure on north korea as possible, recognizing that if something were to happen, we have to be prepared to obviously confront them. and also, i might mention, developing both our overtand covert capabilities to try to deal with their efforts to try to develop a larger and more effective missile system. >> how do you think the administration is doing in dealing with north korea? >> i think, you know, the concern is that there's been this exchange of rhetoric between president trump and the north korean leader. the concern i have is when you ratchet up the rhetoric between fire and fury and, you know, destroying the united states, et cetera, what it does is it increases the tension level. in korea, and you have to imagine that there are forces, we have 25,000 troops that are in south korea, along with south korean security force. the north koreans obviously have forces that are deployed along the border. and, you know, they're in a situation where because of the rhetoric, the tension has risen a great deal. and with that tension is the concern about a miscalculation or a mistake that will ultimately escalate into a greater conflict. and so my concern right now is that it would be far better to lower the volume of rhetoric and focus on developing both our strength and capacity in the region, developing better containment, developing better deterrence, and trying to deal with sanctions that can really have an impact on north korea. and impact on their economy. the main reason we ultimately brought iran to the negotiating table is because of worldwide sanctions that were put in place against iran. i think we have to think in the same way about doing that to north korea. >> so speaking of iran, do you feel that president trump's threat last week to not certify the iran bill was a mistake, and what did you think of his reasoning? basically saying iran was not complying with the according, that it was behaving very aggressively, that it was restricting navigation, et cetera. >> withdraw. -- yeah, look, in foreign policy, in defense policy, in many ways, your word counts for a lot. and when you tell somebody that you're going to do something, if you fail to stick to your word, it sends a clear message to others that as a result of that you cannot trust america as a partner. in many ways, you know, we experience that when president obama made the commitment on chemical attacks in -- >> syria. >> -- in syria with assad. that if those chemical attacks took place, we would take action. and when those chemical attacks did take place and many were lost as a result of that, the failure to actually take action at that time sent a message that we would not stand by the word on the red line. i think that had an impact in terms of credibility of the united states and the world. i think the same thing is happening now. with the failure to abide by our word on the agreement. now, obviously, there are a lot of concerns about the nuclear agreement. the failure to deal with these other issues, support for terrorism, missile development, promotion of instability in the region, et cetera. but an agreement was arrived at by the united states along with our allies. and it was signed into place. and up to this point, the agreement dealing with the nuclear side, even though temporary, is one that all of those that have been involved in the inspection process have said that from the inspection point of view, iran is technically abiding by that agreement. and, you know, we can raise a lot of concerns about other elements there, but at least with regards to the development of a nuclear weapon, they have abided by that agreement. i think as a result of that, we ought to continue to enforce that agreement. and i think congress, you know, can add, obviously, this issue has now been thrown to congress. i'm a little concerned about that because congress is having a hard time sometimes finding its way to the bathroom, much less dealing with issues that involve an area frankly that the commander in chief, as someone who ought to direct foreign policy under our system of government, that i think, you know, far better for the administration, for the president, to deal with these issues. but since the issue has now been thrown to the congress, then i think congress should hopefully develop a way to increase the enforcement of that agreement, tie sanctions to the enforcement of it, try to probably make some other recommendations about trying to take these provisions and make them permanent as opposed to temporary. and some other steps with regards to inspection. but in the end, to make clear that we're going to continue to enforce that agreement. because by enforcing that agreement, i think it then gives us the opportunity to work with our allies in trying to apply both diplomatic and economic sanctions. on iran, so that they will ultimately come to the table and negotiate on these other issues. that's not going to be easy under any circumstances, but the worst thing you can do is break your word, have iran basically say, why should i trust the united states in terms of any kind of negotiation if they're not abiding by the agreement? and therefore, you know, we're not going to -- we will not participate in that kind of negotiation. so i think it's far better, enforce the agreement, stick with our allies, and try to put both diplomatic and economic pressure on iran to ultimately try to see if we can make some progress on these other issues. >> well, that was very interesting. now, how to you feel about iran's actions in the area? and don't you think the -- or do you think the united states should be taking strong actions to contain iran? they have actually already turned lebanon, i would say, into more or less a rubber stamp in the sense that hezbollah controlled lebanon, as our audience knows. i think that many people think they would like to do the same thing now in iraq. thanks to the militias there. so do you think it's important for the united states to try to push back and contain iran? >> look, there are two important threats in the middle east. the middle east has a number of threats. we've got failed states coming out of arab spring. between syria, which just is in the middle of a continuing civil war. we have yemen, we have libya. other countries that because of their failure, become crucibles for the development of terrorism. and that creates even greater problems. so instability, failed states in the middle east, we're certainly concerned about. but we're concerned about terrorism and the threat of terrorism. isis, you know, we have had some success in dealing with isis and the caliphate, moving them out of mosul. moving them out of the areas in iraq that they had conquered, as well as raqqah now. but by no means is isis going away. and the worst thing the united states could do is declare a victory and then not confront isis. in other areas. so dealing with isis, isis fighters. they are very likely to now engage in insurgency and we'll see elements of isis not only in the middle east but north africa as well. and so isis is going to remain a real threat. and we have to confront isis. and we have to confront the influence of iran in that region as well. iran provides support for terrorism. they have supported hamas and hezbollah. and supported elements of disruption in the middle east. we know that. they continue to do that. they continue to try to promote instability in the region. their interest is to try to develop a kind of triangle there between beirut and damascus and baghdad. and we know that they're working on that. the cuds force is a force that has been involved in disrupting areas, not only in the middle east, but frankly elsewhere around the world. so, yeah, that represents a threat as well. how do we deal with that? how do we deal with that? that's obviously the fundamental issue. i believe, and i made this recommendation a lot, but it just unfortunately didn't get very far. but i strongly believe we have to develop a coalition, a middle east coalition of countries that will work together in cohesion. israel should be part of that coalition, frankly. because they, too, are concerned about isis and terrorism and iran. and that coalition made up of moderate arab countries in the region ought to be coming together to establish even a gia joint military command, identify targets, deploy forces, be able to work together with the united states as part of that coalition. work together to go after terrorist pockets and go after the leadership in terrorism in different areas, using kind of tactics that frankly when we went -- when we did the war in libya, we had 50 countries that were part of that coalition. and a lot of people, you know, were not sure if that coalition would ever work. but the reality was we developed a joint headquarters in naples. we provided the intelligence support. we identified targets. we provided those targets to norway and other countries that were participating. and we did it in a successful and effective way. i think we need to develop that same kind of coalition in the middle east to have that kind of capability. not only to deal with isis but to deal with containing iran. at the same time. and also, i might add one other aspect, which is providing stability for countries that are unstable now. i mean, you know, the united states, we never really had a strategy for dealing with the arab spring. and i think what needs to be done now is once we're able to try to deal with some of these failed states in terms of the instability, how do you stabilize these countries? how do you provide the support system so that they can govern and so that they can deal with the different challenges that each of those countries -- look, these are tribal societies. this is tough. this is not easy. but at the same time, if we don't work to provide stability in that region, then it will continue to be unstable and will continue to have to deal with the terrorist threat. so i think ultimately, some kind of unified coalition working together on these challenges makes a lot of sense. >> this past week, as you noted, raqqah fell. and also, which was a very hopeful development, and unfortunately, there was fighting in kirkuk between the peshmerga forces and the iraqi military, which was a concerning development, i would say. what is your assessment of the situation in kirkuk and the -- >> well, look, it's not good. it's not -- this is not a good situation to have, you know, arab versus kurd. particularly in iraq. look, we have been dealing with this challenge for a long time. and there was even suggestions early on when we were dealing with the situation in iraq that iraq ought to be divided between sunni and shia and kurds. and i remember going to iraq and talking with the leadership there. and almost -- i think without question, every leader i talked to said don't do that. don't do that. iraq is a nation. we need to operate as a nation. and, you know, we put in place some of the institutions to try to develop some kind of governmental system in iraq. to make it work, everybody has to participate. the kurds have to be there, the sunnis have to be there, the shias, of course, will be there. but they've got to develop the ability to work together and deal with issues. and what happened, obviously, in iraq is that you had a shia government with maliki, who basically decided they were going to get, you know, move the sunnis out, and so they moved the sunnis out of government. they moved the sunnis out of the military, and before you knew it, it became frankly the ingredients that led to the development of isis. unless they develop the ability to bring the different factions in iraq together so that they can govern together, i mean, this is a country that's got tremendous resources, for god's sakes. it's not a country that has to worry about, how are we going to be able to fund economic development? they can do it. but they've got to work together at it. and i think, you know, if sunnis or if sunnis fight shias and if shias fight kurds, and they continue to have this kind of disruption, then iraq will never be able to achieve stability. now, i was pleased that secretary tillerson was in saudi arabia and promoting greater saudi/iraq relationships to try to bolster iraq, try to limit the iranian influence in iraq. i think that's a good step. but what is needed here is for the united states to continue to push the government there, to develop the opportunity to bring the kurds and the sunnis into the government to be able to work with them in a unified iraq. that's ultimately what you want. not going to be easy. you know, we have been through a lot. the kurds, look, the kurds have -- you know, we have supported the kurds. the kurds have fought some great battles on behalf of the united states. they have sacrificed a lot. but so have others. and the time has come now where they have to make a fundamental decision. do they want to be part of a country like iraq or are they going to continue to kind of try to go off on their own? this is not, you know, this is going to be a challenge, but i worry that if the iraqis keep going after the kurds, that we'll have another civil war on our hands in that region, and we sure as hell don't need that. >> isn't iran -- i read reports that general soleimani of iran was in keirkuk last week. it looks like we left the kur k kurkook. it looks like we left the kurds in the hands of the iranians. >> there is no question, we left iraq and it created a vacuum in which iran and others took advantage of it. we can't afford to do that. we have troops there. we have helped develop their security forces. we developed a very effective security force that went after mozul and the other territories that were conquered by isis. i think the united states needs to remain there and to continue to put pressure on the government to try to resolve these other issues. otherwise, if we are not there, make no mistake about it, iran will be there. >> so it appears as if the trump administration is satisfied with trying to defeat isis in syria, but leaving president assad in power, i wondered if you felt this was a satisfactory solution to the terrible blood shed that has been going on in the area. >> i think that assad remaining in power in syria is a prescription for continuing civil war and instability in syria, that what needs to be done is that the elements that are there and now we have syrian forces who just were able to take over an important oil area in syria, you have kurdish forces there, as well. we have u.s. forces there. we have russians. we have iranians, syrians. you know, right now i think we are looking at a continuing civil war. and it's almost going to be a proxy war with the united states obviously supporting opposition forces, syrian and kurdish and iran in russia supporting assad. so we have a proxy war that is going to continue to go on. and the real question is going to be whether or not at some point there is a willingness to sit down and to try to see if they can't find a peaceful solution. we have tried. it hasn't gone very far. as long as somebody thinks they are winning it's tough to do this. and assad right now probably figures he is winning with the russian help and iranian help. i think the united states has to be a force there. i don't think united states can write off syria. i think the united states has to be a force in working with the opposition and working with the forces that are there and in making clear that the united states is not going kbairanywhe we are not going to surrender syria to russia and iran. we need to be there and play a role in working with forces to try to ultimately be a check point if nothing else to force some kind of negotiation. >> as far as i can recollect many years ago he put on a high nuclear alert and the russians with drew from the middle east for almost 30 years, but then they marched right back into syria and the obama administration did absolutely nothing, said nothing, did nothing. so i guess putin as usual is testing the envelope to see how far he can go and he stayed there. how influential do you think russia is in the middle east right now? >> russia, the reason which is this is another flash point which is that we are in a new chapter of the cold war with russia and what putin is doing. you know, putin in many ways is an easy read from an intelligence point of view and point of view of dealing with putin. putin is about russia. put putin's basic goal is to restore states of the old soviet union. that has always been his intent. he thought that when the soviet union collapsed that that was the greatest tragedy russia has experienced in its history. so putin is basically aiming at that. but and what putin will do is if he reads weakness in his opposition he will take advantage of it. that's what bullies do. they will take advantage of -- if they do not think that the other side will respond, then they will continue to take advantage of them. so that's what he did in crimea. that is why he went into the ukraine. he was not really checked in that advance there. sensing weakness again he went into syria and was not checked there. the reality is that putin is going to continue to exert an influence. now that he is -- we have a few thousand troops located in syria along with their air force. they have a substantial military presence. i think it has to be made clear that we are not going to surr d surrender the middle east to russia and we have to play a role. it means drawing lines or trying to make sure that they do not develop this relationship with iran in order to expand their influence in the middle east. so to do that you have to draw a line. you have to stick to those lines. you have to make very clear to russia that they cannot go into any of their border states and do what they did to the ukraine. and that if they do that we are going to obviously with nato enforce article 5. and that with regards to the middle east that we are going to limit their ability to expand their influence in the middle east. we have to make that clear and then you have to back it up. and if you do that they will respond. that's the way you deal with them. if you're not tough with putin, if he doesn't understand where the lines are he will continue to take advantage of you. and i think for that reason it is very important for the united states to make very clear that there are lines that he cannot cross both in the middle east as well as in europe. >> and how do you think the administration is doing with russia? >> not so good. i think you have to make those points clear. we know what russia is up to. what they tried to do here in the united states in trying to impact our election process was a cyber attack on the united states. let's face it. this was a cyber attack against our most valuable institution which is the right of american people to exercise their right to vote in an election. and they tried to go after that. and obviously we're now trying to determine just how extensive that was and how we can hopefully avoid that in the future. but you got to send a clear message to the russians that because of their aggressiveness in the ukraine, in syria and against the united states that the united states is not simply going to sit back and allow that to continue. you cannot just hope that at some point they will be nice guys. that's not the way it works. you have to be able to be very tough with them and make sure that when you say something is going to happen you damn well stick to it. and if you do that, look, i'm not one that thinks you can't negotiate with putin. yes, you can negotiate with putin. we have done that. we have had some success in the past in negotiating agreements with the russians. but you have to do that from strength not from weakness. >> that was interesting. so in wrapping up here, i guess a lot of this conference is supposed to be about there have been, of course, the gcc has been freed by the dispute between qatar and saudi arabia and the uae. i wonder if you think the u.s. should be more involved in resolving this dispute and how important our air base is to the united states. >> well, you know, in addition to the other threats that i pointed out in the middle east, there are divisions in the middle east. historic divisions. you know? between arab and jew, between arab and kurds, between arab and arabs. and in many ways those divisions have impacted on the ability to try to find some degree of stability in the region. and so obviously if we are going to be able to make progress in the middle east then countries have to work towards the same objectives. they have to identify what is it that under mines stability in the middle east. and what under mines stability in the middle east, as i pointed out, is terrorism. isis, al qaeda, hamas, hezbollah. all of that terrorism has undermined the ability of that region and continues to do so. and so qatar has had a mixed record. we know we have provided financial support for the muslim brotherho brotherhood, for terrorism, for hamas, for elements of al qaeda, the taliban. and the problem is they can't have it both ways. if you're in that region you have some common enemies. one is terrorism and frankly the other is iraq. and you can't play both sides of the street. i think it is extremely important. i think qatar has now said that they want to abide by international requirements with regards to financing of terrorism. they have passed laws to try to implement requirements against financing of terrorism. they say that they want to do the right thing. i think the issue is now to make sure that what they say is what they do. and that means making sure that they are enforcing efforts to limit their support. yeah, you know, we have a defense agreement with qatar. we have a base there, a pretty significant base involved in the wars in the middle east. they have been facilitators when we dealt with not only iran but with the taliban. there has been some efforts to try to work together, but you can't do this unless we know where you are. and in that world you've got to be committed against terrorism. and you've got to make clear that you oppose isis and other elements of terrorism and that you are going to work with other countries in the region to make sure that terrorism is not supported. and that ultimately is the way to try to ultimately reach some kind of solution. i know that united states, secretary tillerson are working on that. i know that kuwait has provided assistance. i think you need to have a commitment by qatar that they are going to abide by what they say they are doing. >> in wrapping up i can't resist asking you, you have been around this town for a long time. you have a lot of experience. >> as witnessed. >> members of the establishment. i can't resist asking you, people in the so-called swamp continually are wringing their hands and saying this town has never been more divided and politics have never been worse, do you believe politics have never been more divided? and how do you see the town and this administration's functioning? >> well, i mean, it's a real concern of mine. i have seen in my over 50-year career in public life, i have seen washington at its best and washington at its worst. the good news is i have seen washington work. when i first came back as legislative assistant to senator from california there were senators on the republican side who work with senators on the democratic side to develop bipartisan solutions and they passed landmark legislation. when i got elected to congress tip o'neil was the speaker. he had a good friend in bob michael who was the minority leader. and they worked together. in the reagan administration as an example, you look at what is up there now in the congress, we passed social security reform and immigration reform. we passed tax reform. bipartisan because we were willing to sit down and work together. i have never seen washington as dysfunctional as it is today, both parties are in the trenches. we don't want to come out and work together. and when they do they run into barriers of one kind or another. this country will only survive if our democracy is able to find consensus and compromise in working out solutions for our nation. that's the essence of how our democracy works. it operates by leadership or by crisis. if leadership is there and willing to take the risks associated with leadership then we can avoid crisis. if not, we will govern by crisis. and that's largely what we do today. so ultimately leadership has to step up. i have a young son who just got elected to my old seat in the congress. [ applause ] what he has experienced and he can't plead ignorance because he saw me in the congress -- but he is a veteran from afghanistan who was able to get elected. there are newer members up there, republican and democrat, many of them veterans, who are frustrated by the dysfunction and the grid lock. so he is part of a solutions caucus. 22 democrats, 22 republicans trying to find solutions. i'm afraid what's happened in washington is not going to change from the top down. it's going to change from the bottom up when we elect a new generation of leaders who want to govern this country and not just fight each other. >> you are just terrific. thank you so much. [ applause ] [ applause ] this conference on intelligence and national security taking a short break. coming up comments from mike mccall, 230rformer cia director david petraeus. and press coverage of trump administration. live at 7:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span 3. online at c span.org or listen on the free radio app. if i could have everyone's attention at this time and ask everybody to take their seats. if we might, i'm congressman ed royce, i chair the foreign affairs committee. [ applause ] and we have with us here mr. fore forest, mike mccall, many of you know is chairman of the homeland security committee. [ applause ] congressman brad sherman from los angeles. congressman hank johnson, as well. what i thought i might do here is let me say a few words of introduction if i could on behalf of mr. stewart forest because i wanted to share with him how much we admire his work, the work he has done, the work his wife has done to try to ensure that no other family has to endure the pain that their family has endured. their son, taylor forest was great american patriot. he was a west point graduate who served his country with honor in iraq and served in afghanistan. and i remember our meeting last spring with senator corker. my democrat counter part elliot engel and i have put together a bipartisan version of the act which we will be marking up in a few weeks and i want to thank him again for taking the time to address us here today. ladies and gentlemen, mr. stewart forrest. [ applause ] >> good afternoon. thank you chairman royce and to the hudson institute. as you will notice very quickly, i'm not an expert in any of the subject matter today. i'm here as an unofficial representative of a group that no one ever wants to be a part of, families of victims of terror. we lost taylor in a palestinian terror attack in israel about a year and a half ago. we immediately became members of that horrific club. he was a west point grad and two combat tours in iraq and afghanistan and brought his troops home safely from both tours. completed army commitment, went back to school and was a grad school and was on spring trip to israel when the attack occurred. purpose of this conference, i believe, is to get a better understanding of the big picture, how terrorism in all its forms and facets comes together. in my experience i have always been concerned with a small corner of the big picture, just taking care of smaller items and not worrying about understanding how everything works. over the past year and a half we have had to try to understand the world at large and exactly how this terrorism puzzle is put together. big picture is pretty hard to comprehend but with your work, your expertise i think we can make some inroads in the funding of terror. the goal of everybody working on the big picture and the little picture which is the taylor force act i think needs to come together and provide effective work to get both of these things accomplished. the taylor force act if you are not aware is legislation that holds back foreign aid to the palestinian authority until they can certify to the secretary of state that our foreign aid is not being diverted to reward terrorist activities in israel and by the palestinians. there are rewards to the terrorists or if they die to martyrs families of up to $2,300 per month which is quite a but more than average palestinian urnz. the severity of the crime, the severity of the act determines how much the reward is. the fact that our tax dollars are being diverted to support terrorism is unacceptable. tailor force act would stop off the funds and that is what my wife and i have been involved in supporting for the last year and a half. i think the goal of both those working on the big picture and those working on the small parts of the big picture should be to disband the club of the families of terrorist victims through lack of membership. i thank you for listening to my short remarks and i appreciate you being here and your work. thank you. [ applause [ applause ] thank you very much, mr. force. for many of us i don't know if we remember this but today is also the 34th anniversary of the marine barics bombing where hezbollah murdered 241 u.s. service members. and given this solemn occasion i think we need to thank all of you for providing the opportunity to share thoughts on the topics before us today, those topics are iran and qatar, muslim brotherhood and the general regional instability and what we can do to shape policy and that's the important work here of the hudson institute, shaping policy, helping us shape that policy in order to counter the challenges that we have before us. so i would like to turn to my good friend chairman mike mccall, chairman of the homeland security committee. he has to leave soon because he has five bills on the floor of the house. the last time i checked we are going into session at 2:00 and the first bills up were homeland security. mr. chairman, mike mccall. [ applause ] >> thank you, ed. i want to thank stewart for being here. i was proud to co sponsor legislation bearing his son's name. as many of you know he was killed in israel by a palestinian terrorist. our thoughts and prayers are with you, sir. also want to thank the hudson institute. they helped me write my book, failures of imagination and put together some creative energy in the room. i want to take you back historically. what is past is prologue and at the archives and look back at the year 1979. that year transformed the middle east and changed the world. in that year radical islamist ideology rippled around the globe and the revolution in iran brought the iotola to power. also that year the soviets invaded afghanistan and under the leadership of bin laden became a force to be reckoned with as if time had gone backwards. today 38 years later and 16 years after 9/11 the threat landscape remains. the sunni extremists continue the rein of terror and russians have returned to the region to control ports in syria and prop up the dictator, bashar al assad. last week we saw a crushing blow to isis in raqqa, syria and before that mosal. after watching the caliphate mastasticize over the previous administration and after constant briefings on operations and threats to the homeland we can finally see a defeat of isis in the region. before we celebrate or claim victory i believe it is important to caution the radical islamist terror is still alive and well. look at northern africa and recent events in niger. look at iran and its growing presence in the middle east. all one needs to do is look at how hateful ideology mastered global band of internet. recently travelled israel with chairman royce. there we had a candid discussion with prime minister netanyahu about the greatest threat to his country, the shi'a crescent from iran. iran is filling the vacuum in iraq and syria and through hezbollah building rocket manufacturing plants in lebanon. through hamas digging tunnels and aiming rockets. in yemen it is backing the rebels. the prime minister also briefed us on the relationship and opportunity that has arisen between israel and saudi arabia, once proclaimed enemies now these two nations have a unique alliance. the enemy of my enemy is irani. this threat exists not only against what iran references as little satan but also what it calls the great satan, the united states. the threat of a nuclear iran is real and must be stopped. in congress under ed royce's leadership we pass sanctions on iran's ballistic missile program and will also sanction iran's revolutionary guard corps, a bill i passed in two prior congresss to designate the terrorist organization because that is what they are. finally, we must deal with the issue of terror financing. qatar stands as a leader when it comes to funding hamas. qatar has a unique and disturbing relationship with iran. i believe it is time to hold them accountable. if qatar is to remain an ally it must renounce its terror affiliations. thank you. [ applause [ applause ] muslim brotherhood continues on the march to threaten the region and al qaeda grew out of the brotherhood. president morsi and arab spring liberated them. we must support the restraint. the muslim brotherhood proclaimed that used hitler to reek holocaust upon jews as divine punishment and praised them for putting jews in the place. my father was in world war ii and participated in d-day air campaign and bombed the nazis. i visited to see first-hand the terror. the horrors of the gas chambers. what my father and ed royce's father and their generation were fighting against was pure evil. it is no surprise that the radical islamists were then allize of the nazis. as a once famous jewish man said in jewish history there are no consequences. we must always remember and never forget. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, chairman mccaul. congressman brad sherman is with us who has done important work of terrorism subcommittee of foreign affairs. he is with us here today. good friend and colleague. i would like to welcome congressman brad sherman. [ applause ] >> hello, i'm brad sherman from california's best named city, sherman oaks. for 21 years i have sat with chairman royce on the foreign affairs committee. he was there back in 1997 when i put forward the proposition that iran was the number one threat to american national security. as to qatar trying to perform an effort of political gymnastics that would have disabled nadia. look at the splits. he seeks to have one foot with the brotherhood and the extremist. he seeks to put another foot with the united states, the moderate sunni and the gulf cooperation council. and while these legs are separated beyond human capacity, he is trying to do it all while kissing ayotola. that is a disabling act of political gymnastics. he may believe that we are obligated to protect his regime because he hosts an american political base. the castro brothers never reached the same conclusion. it is time for him to pick a side, stop supporting hamas. as to iran we need the maximum sanctions, the maximum enforcements and the maximum international support. one way is to renounce the nuclear deal. doing that would cause europe not to support our additional sanctions and many in the world would even say iran was in free to reopen its nuclear program without inspections or restrictions. fortunately, the world is blessed with an almost beyond possible use natural resource and that is our supply of evil coming from tehran. we can impose the maximum sanctions without even mengzing t -- mentioning the iran deal and we will have european support as we point to almost 500,000 dead syrian civilians, a direct responsibility of tehran as we point to terrorism around the world and how they treat their own people and the execution of those in the lgbtq community. there is no shortage of reason to impose sanctions on iran. if we do enough they will come begging to us to have negotiations on all the pending issues including the inadequacies of the nuclear deal. thank you. [ applause ] another member of congress who has been very active on these issues is congressman hank johnson. a good friend and i would like to welcome him at this time. >> thank you, mr. chairman. good afternoon to the visitors here today. thank you for having us. i want to extend my condolences to you, mr. force, on the loss of your dear son. i would say that before we can reach peace in the middle east we are going to have to resolve the dispute involving the palestinian state homeland before we can have peace in the middle east it's my opinion that we are going to need to solve the israeli palestinian conflict and it will have to result in a two-state solution, one state for the palestinians and another for israel. and i think once that is done it is going to go a long way towards diffusing a lot of the radicalism that is in existence in the middle east. that issue, of course, is not the only issue and it is not the greatest issue or the greatest threat to america, but before i begin my talk let me say how much i appreciate the hudson institute, an organization committed to dialogue and understanding. i commend the hudson institute for its dedication to american leadership and global engagement for a secure, free and prskand prosperous future through defense, economics, health care, technology, culture and international relations as well as the rule of law. and i think before we can begin to talk about peace in the middle east or the suppression of violent extremism that is really threatening to the whole world we have to look at the issue of islam. islam is not a religion of hatred and violence, but it has been used by forces that cloak themselves in islam and then proclaim to represent islam, distorting its teachings. i think we must respect islam, the world's second largest religion, one of the three abrahamic religions. i think we must respect that religion and we must respect those who want to be peaceful inherants to that religion. but we do have a group and they are based -- they are saudi arabia based which is the state religion of saudi arabia which is the greatest exporter of ideas of violent extremism on the face of the earth, in my humble opinion. until we can address the issue of saudi arabia's support and its spread of violent jihaddist philosophy then we will continue to kind of mire ourselves further into the mud. and i hope that we can wean ourselves from our dependence on oil which seems to be the driving force of our policy towards saudi arabia so that we can deal with this issue to a greater degree than we do now. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, if i can sort of sum up here on a few thoughts. the first is that israel is contending with a deep seeded hatred nurtured by leaders of plo, and nurtured over many years because i have seen these textbooks. this has occurred in the mosques, schools, newspapers, on the television. this has to stop. as one witness told our committee incitement is the term we usually use. that's not what we mean. what we mean is teaching generations of young people to hate jews by demonizing and dehumanizing them. that is the point. that is what we seek to address here. that is what the taylor force act seeks to do. the other aspect of this is that people are being lured to terrorism by more than just words. they are being lured there by this concept of pay to slay, by this inducement and financial reward that says the longer the sentence, the more people that are murdered, the greater the stipend that goes to you when you get out, goes to your family in the meantime or goes to your family if you have martyred yourself in undertaking this act of murder. so we want to make sure that we do this right and that we send a clear message to the palestinian authority that payments for act of terrorism are unacceptable. now, on iran, the u.s. has got to respond to the full range of threats from iran not just their nuclear program because we see in syria and in iraq, we see it right up along western syria now with the irgc. they are taking advantage of this fight against isis and they are moving in and brutalizing syrians but seized so much territory. meanwhile hezbollah which is iran's terror proxy, is amassing fighters and troops along israel's border in the north and the border in the east. iran continues to acquire destabilizing conventional weapons but also intercontinental ballistic missile. the administration is taking a realistic approach on iran recognizing the full range of these threats. this is what we have been messaging in a bipartisan way on our committee. this is what brad sherman and i and mike mccaul is other members have been talking about as we push these policies. congress and the administration must work together to confront these threats while insuring iran never develops a nuclear capability. [ applause ] and i will add another point here because that approach was evident just over a week ago when the administration implemented a provision that congress passed in july as mike mccaul shared, designating the powerful revolutionary guards. this has to represent the beginning of a cooperative effort to turn up the pressure on iran and this week the house is going to do its part by bringing up my legislation on the house floor that we passed targeting iran's ballistic missile program and targeting hezbollah. on qatar it has a disturbing history of facilitating radicalization and of broken promises to reform its behavior. in 2014 saudi arabia, the uae with drew their adams from qatar because they said qatar was interfering with internal affairs promoting extremism. after that dispute qatar reportedly promised to address these issues, promised not to harbor persons with harmful agendas towards other gulf states and promised not to support any other organization fighting legitimate governments in yemen and in egypt. qatar has failed to live up to its words which is why saudi arabia, uae, egypt cut ties with qatar this past june. shamefully until may of this year qatar was hosting senior hamas. after several other members including mr. sherman introduced legislation increasing sanctions against those that provide support to hamas, qatar expelled those seniors. but given the history of false reform and broken promises, i am concerned that this is a tactical move, not a strategic shift away from supporting hamas. must take serious measures to fundamentally alter policies. no more bait and switch and no more back sliding. we need real commitments from qatar to end its attitude and actions towards violent extremists. and on our hamas bill, continuing impediment to peace and security for the middle east is hamas. this deadly terrorist organization continues to work towards israel's destruction. hamas uses other human beings as shields by hiding their terror tunnels under schools. i have seen them myself so has chairman mccaul and other members of our committee here and we saw them as recently as our last trip to israel in august. hamas is responsible for the murder of more than 400 israelis and of 25 americans. represented mass legislation further isolates hamas. anyone who funds or provides support to hamas should face u.s. sanctions. hamas is a foreign terrorist group and specially designed specifically by the united states as a global terrorist threat. so i mention one last issue i wanted to bring up and that was the muslim brotherhood. we need to push back against extremist ideaologies like this one. it is a movement staunchly hostile to secularism. it is steeped in anti-semitism. they exploit democratic institutions to further they aims having no intention to share power. they are by no means a benign movement and bust me effectively countered by employing moderate voices including through more effective broadcasting. we must go after its leaders, those that meet the criteria for individual terrorism sanctions. so i would just now like to thank all of you, thank you for giving the opportunity to me and my colleagues and especially mr. force to be with you to address you today and good work on your development on implementing policy. thank you so much. [ applause ] good afternoon again. we have a very distinguished panel to hopefully inform you and entertain you, hopefully, too. at the end i would like to introduce ray who i would say is leading scholar in the u.s. i don't want to get in trouble, on iran, a leading scholar in the u.s. on iran and has many other distinguished attributes. that is one of them. then comes bill weksler who was formerally assistant deputy of defense for special operations and combatting terrorism. it sounds like a terrifying title. then comes my friend who served as united states ambassador to the u.n. and to iraq and afghanistan all with distinction. then comes general wald who was former deputy of the u.s. european command. then comes ambassador alberto fernand fernandez, a career foreign service officer whom i heard fantastic things about who apparently ran a brilliant program out of the state department to counter al qaeda's propaganda. am i right? anyway, hopefully. then comes the director of the hudson institute's center on islam democracy and t. he is a great authority on the topic today. so we decide -- we are going to start off today, our fascinating hopefully discussion, on since 9/11, of course, the u.s. said we have two big enemies in the middle east, one being terrorism and one being iran. so i'm going to ask the panel to comment each and hopefully briefly and interesting, please, on how you see it. >> brief and interesting. i will get the brief part right hopefully. iran and terrorism are sort of co-joined because terrorism is a sort of strategic doctrine of the iranian state, the use of violence. and it's actually remarkably effective. various terrorist organizations act as proxy. there was a time when terrorism was considered weapon of the weak. because right now the iranian case is that if the united states accuses us of terrorism we will respond with terrorism against american forces in iraq and elsewhere. that argument has been persuasive to a lot of people who essentially do not want toconfront iran for the fear of iranian terrorism. as a doctrine of statecraft terrorism has been remarkably effective tool for the islamic republic. >> and you can say a little bit, the iranians are backing the hudys in yemen. >> they are involved in yemen and iraq. certainly iraq. they are involved throughout the region. it is sort of imperialism on the cheek. on the one hand it is a very grand imperial project. on the other hand by relying on proxys it is also cheaply executed. it does not have the treasury to sustain its own national armys. also, iran actually does suffer from its own version of the vietnam syndrome. since the iran/iraq war from 1982 after math is casualty adverse and has no problems but kind of likes to maintain measure of distance. >> they have no problem with members of hezbollah dying in syria. >> none whatsoever. >> that is why they have members of hezbollah which is shiite. >> one of the most effective terrorist/militia groups in the middle east history. >> so? >> so as a result of all of that iran is getting closer every month to achieving its grander strategic objectives across the region. not only to have control over lebanon, but increasing control over iraq and over syria to project power and disrupt sunni governments throughout the region. at the same time the other side of terrorism besides the iranian sponsored terrorism is of course the jihaddist terrorism most notably islamic state and al qaeda which are on their heels. as secretary panetta said they are not going away. the way we have to continue to combat them is both through military means and also through looking after the long standing political challenges that aggravate sunni interests in iraq and elsewhere, but then also through what this panel is talking about the finances and ideology that still in too many places contribute to the growth of these groups. >> so you say that isis is not going away, do you see that if the sunnis are not incorporated into the life in iraq there will be a new do you see that the tsunasunnis are not incorpo or do you see them spreading into africa or where do you see isis going? >> isis and sun of isis, whatever its name should be, will expand because of the ideological religious component of the view of a caliphate and also local dynamics. the local dynamics as you said in terms of iraq are about the sunnis feeling excluded from the future of their country. similar local dynamics work in other places where those types of organizations have achieved a lot of interest. the real challenge for the united states it perhaps goes out saying, but i'll say it, is that those jihadist groups are unlike any of the other terrorist groups in that once they have a place that gives them sanctuary and they can act with impunity, they will do external attacks. we've seen it again and again. we saw it in sudan. we saw it in afghanistan. we saw it in yemen. we saw it in syria. every one of those instances there were both in the united states government, people in the intelligence community that would say this group is only interested in local issues. they're not -- we see no evidence of them planning external attacks. then we were always surprised they went to externa ex ternal . in syria and iraq -- the groups that we have. >> okay. sal. >> well -- >> the two greatest threats being iran and -- >> sure. on terrorism, i think one of the issues that we do not pay enough attention to is not only that there are groups that iran supports, terrorist groups directly, such as hezbollah or hamas or some of these militias that now exist in iraq, including one that is led by the one responsible for the attack on our embassy in kuwait many years ago. but that iran's policies create circumstances that leap at times to sunni extremism and terror. it's an arsonist on the one hand but then offers itself as a firefighter to come against those forces. for example, extreme measures taken by bas sar against the population. create extreme circumstances. and in those circumstances some extremists find a home. then iran comes de facto, a member of the coalition, not a jury member, and tries to defeat those forces. but it uses the defeat to extend its influence into those areas. for example, now you see in iraq in the sunni areas of iraq which have been devastated because of the isis actions and the actions taken against isis but now there are sunni militia. we assume they are all shiite. they're not. there are some that are now sunni militia working with iran to control those areas. so we are very good at going after the terrorists, which we should, such as isis or al qaeda. but we're not that good at what we do afterwards so this threat doesn't reemerge politically. how you organize the area in terms of politics, through economics, in terms of self-government, in terms of participation and power sharing. but iran has very cleverly uses counterterrorism to extend its control. at the moment because they have made great progress in the sunni area and in syria, the crisis between the kurds and iraq and the baghdad government has created an opportunity for them to bring kurd saistan to heel. has been the architect between the fight between the iraqis and the kurds and militia forces that they control have been heavily involved in the fight against the kurds. and in fact, last night there was a meeting between the kurdish and the iraqi security forces, the iraqi delegation was three/fourths made up of forces that iran controlled or iran itself. there was not iraqi military represented. but also the militia forces it were there that iran controls. there was an hezbollah from lebanon representative in the meeting. and also an iranian presumably from the kurds force. and iran has made great progress in influencing iraq generally, but there was a pocket where the kurds, particularly the kdf kurds who are more independent of iran, and they want to bring them to heel. and it's very important that in the aftermath of what the president has announced our new iran strategy, the iranians are pushing forward, not being restrained, not being deterred, but they are being more aggressive. it's very important that in my view that we look at these militia forces. some of them now have acquired american weapons and i don't know whether anybody from the pentagon or congress are still here. it's very important that we demand that those american equipments such as tanks are not allowed to be controlled or owned by the militia forces. they either need to be returned to the iraqi regular forces or we need to disability them. >> thaey're also with the pesh mer ga. >> they have some capable equipment and iraqi forces, the regular iraqi forces and some of the equipment that the militia has acquired from the iraqi forces either because of the abandonment of those weapons by the forces in the face of isis or by the current government. this is an important issue. we don't want another hezbollah in iraq, these militias, which that's what iran wants, to create an hezbollah they can do sharing when they run into difficulties, use these people as they have been doing with hezbollah in syria and you sending also iraqi militia syria and even bringing afghans, shiites and pakistani shiites to minimize their role in terms of the -- what ray was mentioning, vietnam, because it's expensive so how do you reduce the cost and get others to do your dirty work. that's what they have been doing. i think -- i agree with the notion that the terrorism and iran and part are separate from each other, but then they are part of the same problem. i believe that for the longer term while iran wants to dominate and throw us out of the middle east as it sees itself and the logical rising doesn't want balance and the u.s. is the balancer that focusing to make iran a normal state instead of an abnormal state i have to say, it's in part a state. it's stretches of a state. but the purposes of revolution that seeks to spread and be promoted and use that to dominate the region by defeating iran's effort. germany i think we would -- should we succeed in that, it & it wouldn't be easy, then we can also make progress to make iran a normal state and i believe that a serious containment strategy is needed. >> consider what you said do you feel the u.s. is playing an active enough role in iran? i'm sorry, in iraq? helping to contain iran? and helping to say to the prime minister of iraq, you know, don't coordinate with the iranian forces and don't fight with them? or how do you see the administration's actions? >> i think that we're a little unhappy with the kurds, with president ba secause he didn't listen to us and make an alternative offer. i think larger more broadly than just being unhappy with this kind of nonbinding referendum shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that 93% of kurds want to have a country of their own. i mean, this was more or less a public opinion. >> what's with the other 7%? >> what did they think? but i think because of that disappointment we have not been strong enough and engaged enough since this began, i think we need to make it very clear, loud and clear that all use of force must stop. the negotiation must begin immediately. and how is it that the iranians are sitting at the table in the negotiations between iraq and the kurds and that where are we soto spe so to speak on this? >> so we're missing? >> i would think we need to be given, especially in light of the president's strategy, i would have thought we would be more active in pushing back rather than watching as iranians expand their influence into yet another zone that goes outside at least the part that -- i think they will like to bring them to a situation that they would look to iran rather than looking to the west or to the united states or to have relations with isreal. those are i think the iranian objectives. it's quite clear and they've been very effective, very clever in pursuing that objective. one has to say. that but it is important also that we have a -- as secretary panetta said we haven't put the coalition together for an effective pushback strategy for really extending iranian entanglement in a protracted conflict so that they are disciplined over time by being overextended as we did with the soviets in vary theaters. i think we need to relearn those lessons. >> so general, of course, you have so much experience. you've thought about the middle east a lot. i wonder how you see the issue of iran and of terrorism? >> yeah. >> and what you think about what's -- >> well, i think what the previous speakers mostly say i agree with. i would say that my sense is a couple big things. one is, i've said this before several years ago in your paper, we're in this probably for the rest of our life. people say generational. i'd say depends on how old you are, but we're going to be doing this. this is not like isis goes away, let's stop and take a breath and start over. this is beginning. two is i don't think the status quo in the middle east, this is wald speaking, will ever be the same again. i think -- >> because? >> i just don't think ift fits. i look at countries like my favorite, the arab of emirates or saudi arabia or isreal actually having a common interest, which is really hard to say publicly. it's not been very well received a lot of times. i think those common interests are starting to build and so i think the status quo in the middle east will never go back to the way it was. i go back to the disaster he just talked about with the kurds. to me, it's hard to argue with what they've done. they have actually shown responsibility and defended their territory. again, that's going to be tough because we want -- everybody is wanting to go back to the way it used to be. i have a tough time thinking that's ever going to happen. s so i think, and again, you'll hear secretary tillerson say wald, maybe you better stick to your own lane. i get it. and i know they're thinking about this, but we have not articulated a common view of what the end state may be sometime. and i think people have this tendency to want to yearn for the mel an coley, and even though there's tension, it's tension -- i don't think that's going to happen again. i think this growing threat in africa, we worked on this back in 2001. people said you just kind of, typical military guy, you're trying to throw kerosene on a fire. but it's happening. and so we need a broad -- it's going to be very different -- >> we were talking about isis going into africa. >> exactly. it's connected. no doubt about it. and so long term we're going to have to i think look at what maybe the middle east likely could look like realistically. i think we need to box in assad. literally. we need to box him in. >> get rid of him you mean. >> box him in. he'll get rid of himself eventually. >> small piece of land? >> let him sit there for a while. i think we need to counter the iranians sending arms to syria let's say or to terrorists. they need to be countered. i think we need to commit the united states to a long time in the middle east in a big way and we need to work with our friends from the emirates and saudi arabia and jordan and others to say this -- and egypt for that matter. this is what probably is a doable end state that we're probably going to have to see the end, and it may be 20, 30 years from now, but we have to start now. >> that's very interesting. ambassador? >> well, i think when we look at iran and terrorism, i think we're making that phrase where starting off making a mistake because the iranian -- >> we were saying the two big issues. >> no. what i'm saying is we all too often focus on iran, the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism and fail to see the much broader ambition and action that iran is doing on the ground. terrorism is one part of it. one of the challenges i think we face is that we are, we meaning especially the united states, are misaligned in this challenge. iran is tactically flexible, but has a strategic vision. think of it, iran works with sunni extremists. it works with al qaeda. and yet it fights then sunni extremists, jihadists and other places. there even an iranian militia that's made up of the leadership in iraq of iraqi christians. so they have tremendous flexibility in the tools they use. terrorism is only one of them. war is another one. political issues, political sub version is another one. this iranian ground game which is occurring is one that which we have traditionally been misaligned and not ready to challenge. so we talk about things like int interdicting weapons or stopping terrorism. that's a small part. part of what they're doing is guys threatening people. guys giving people bags of money. all kinds of way that they are advancing political agenda in the region. we're often -- all too often seeing the challenge in a one dimensional way and thinking of nation states and obviously a relationship with our friends in the region is as paramount, but that's only a small part of what the iranian offensive looks like. so when we reduce it to terrorism or reduce it to kind of violence on the ground, we're missing this whole other area of bribery, of corruption, all of which is part of a much broader agenda. we need to get our own ground game in order if we seek to challenge them rather than kind of picking them from a far, kind of looking at things like, you know, fto designation of the irgc. that is a much broader array of tools that i using. >> i think they're well aware of the iranian role in the middle east, don't you? >> i think they are, but i think part of the problem is that they have been consistent in what they've been doing. i mean, we are starting from behind until a few month ago we had an administration that talked about sharing the middle east and equal lib breeium which of course would mean a percentage gained by iran in the region and indeed that's what we're seeing. so -- >> so how do you feel about the trump administration's policies? >> well, i think they've said the right thing. i think i was in a panel just a week and a half ago on this. they've said the right thing. the focus is the right focus. the question is that ground game. the question is that type of gr granularity and detail on the ground that you need to do to challenge them. not just bypass something laws or talking about money coming in. that's just a small part. >> can you really have a ground game if half the state department is empty, for example? >> that's a very good question. that is part of your ground game. the work of development, the work of politics, the work of relationship, the work of the intelligence community. all of that is -- has to be part of our response to what they're doing. >> just real quick, first of all, i think he's right. but i would not trivialize kurd's forces or other things. they're not a small part. there's a whole bunch of big parts. so they're not just going to go away on their own anyway. and you didn't say that. >> last but not least. >> there's been a great deal said that's very much true, very much needed to be said. i won't go over the same ground, but i wanted to pick up on two things that follow from the early discussion. one is this flexibility of the iranians that was referred to by ray, by alberto, sal, and so forth, and will. at one level it looks like just simply ma -- mack vellian. that's a lot of it. i think it's worth noting that there's a kind of way in which, for example, use of sunnis or the attempt to have alliances with sunnis goes back deep to the foundations of the regime and to the perspective ayatollah k khomeini who was an admirer of the muslim brotherhood in particular. particularly because they laid out an object. the foundation of the new islamic state that would be redemptive of muslim history. that went so far as to being translating works from arabic into persian, in particularly works of one who came to be the leading intellectual figure and it's worth noting that his persian translator was the president supreme leader. so there's a kind of, from the iranian point of view, it doesn't only need to be -- from that point of view, from the sunni side it doesn't have to be that way or cynical. there is a way that sunni parts of the shiite radical movement can see themselves working together for the greater good. and since one of the places where that -- and that's a remarkable thing. one of the place where that has to come meet and join in this little country qatar which is the host of the muslim brotherhood, has played a warm -- has maintained warm relations with iran. >> you're speaking of qatar. >> yes. that this peculiar more friendly relationship of sunni radicalists and shiite radicalism has a home in some respects and that's not important for the dynamics in the region. the last thing i want to say is about our policies and so forth. i think it was said earlier by secretary panetta that trust in one's word matters a lot. and when lu lost iyou lost it, hard to get it back with words. we've had quite a lot of words and very little american action. the most recent thing was very -- went in the same direction. the president announced a new policy on iran in which the irg was the most notable object and about 48 hours later the irg's seat took kirkuk from our allies. so i think -- maybe that was all that could be done. but for the future, the only way in which the region is going to have some confidence in us is if we do something hard, clear, and tough. >> do you agree with that, ambassador? >> yeah. we need to learn to play the long game as well as the four year cycle. >> but do you agree with him that we should have somehow stopped them from taking kirkuk? >> i think we needed to know clearly, and you have to remember that the pmus, the iranian supported ones, were moving north even before the president's announcement. so anyone with any kind of following of events on iraq could see that something was going to happen. at the very least, we needed to be in a position to say these are our red lines. these are our parameters. it's not clear that we did that. or if we did that, it doesn't seem to have been fulfilled. >> they walked right over it. okay. you have something to say, ambassador? >> well, i think it's very important that with any big declaration, and we've had a good declaration on iran, that there is an action plan, but that we have an action plan, a strategy and timelines that the rest of the bureaucracy gets appropriately organized and staffed. >> and that's not happening? >> and resourced and people are held accountable for producing results. and i think conceptualizing the problem, we've done that well. but implementing the strategy and developing it is where i think more attention needs to be paid. >> so politely speaking t has, hasn't been done. >> i think we see in the case of iraq and kirkuk, certainly one can point to shortcomings. >> and you agree? >> yeah, i do. >> if we wind up with a result of 93%, will that -- >> good. really good. okay. so let's turn to syria now. so raqqah fell last week which was obviously a fantastic development. the trump administration's policy from what i can see is to leave president assad in power. how do you feel about that? do you think it's a good policy? >> i don't think there is an option at this particular point. because in sort of a civil war condition that in a broken condition that syria is the dirty little secret is that the only way syria in my view, others can comment, can be stabilized is for an out force to come in and impose peace like happened in lebanon when syrian forces went in and imposed peace. that's the way you can impose kind of a demarcation level n. absence of that, and i don't see evidence of that, i think syria will remain this mess that it is as we see it today. >> what do you think? >> i think unfortunately the window of opportunity to have dealt with assad closed long ago. and the scenarios that we're looking at now, absent of an external actor coming in in a way that i think is highly unlike i, are either the regime supported by iran and russia slowly continuing to progress across the country or quickly doing so. unfortunately i think that's where we are. and then amongst the questions for u.s. interests are in the aftermath iran is going to have a lot more placement and access in the south to be able to cause problems for allies of ours, like jordan and isreal, and so how do we confront them and deny them the ability over the long run to take advantage of that placement? >> that's a very good point. >> i think it's very important strategically, if you're serious about containing iran, is to make sure that iran doesn't have a contiguous land access from iran -- strategy should be informed by that objective which means we should, as secretary panetta said and i agree with him, we need to maintain a presence in syria. and we need to develop a strategy for increasing the costs for iran on the ground which the ground force is mostly iran or iranian backed elements. that ground force has great vowel n vulnerabilities. we can increase the cost of maintaining or expanding -- >> the hezbollah force. >> the hezbollah force or controlling more the areas of syria to block the ground access that i mentioned on the one hand, but two, that although immediately a settlement to get rid of is not in the cards, but as costs go up, a lot of the syrians are not happy with keeping him there. mainly the iranians and russians and some syrians may recalibrate. i think the cost for us would be much lower than the cost for them, for the other side. so we need to exploit that asymmetry. >> and you also believe that we should leave troops in iraq too? >> i believe very strongly that we need to maintain a military presence. i think president obama made a mistake to get our forces out. if we get our forces out, iran will either become more dominant and entrenched and the possibility that when i was ambassador in iraq, we got rid of al qaeda and iraq and military forces, we killed the head of al qaeda and iraq. but when we left, the vacuum that was created, as again, secretary panetta said, one became more -- more independent of our pressure and presence and o pressed the sunnis and with the dis integration of syria you've got isis emerging. i believe it's possible you get a new version of extremism and terrorism group. >> i would go with that. i would say my view would be if you want to kind of comment about what it should be, i'd say keep assad in syria. keep the iranians out. tell assad you're going to have to live there the way it is and you're not going to have a very good life, because there's hardly anything coming in. number two, as you drop another barrel bomb out syria with one of your airplanes, it's the last time you're going to have an air force. you're done. we should never let that happen. we should have taken his total air force out. we could have done it. it would have been very easy. we should say assad, congratulations, it's kind of a comfortable prison you're going to be in. iranians, stay out, you're not going to be part of. that russia, by the way, if you start flying bombing missions, against our troops, that's the end of it. so i think we need to quit mamby pambying around. >> the iranians, you're saying -- >> keep them out. i'd keep them from supplying. i'd keep them from taking the -- >> the way the u.s. is doing? >> exactly. every time they do t i'd go after them. the israelis do it exactly right. when is the last time anybody went after isreal for taking out an s 400 going into syria? never. >> i thought the red line is they don't want to transport red lines. >> that's part of it. they don't want them in syria. my point is, what's the difference? lebanon, syria, i don't want them in there. period. i don't want to be threatened. >> you don't the reps coming from iran. >> either from mediterranean, t turkey. >> maybe we should nominate you. >> i won't serve. but we need to do something. >> so you're not very happy with the policy i take it. >> no. listen, i'm not trying to, you know, criticize -- first of all, i wouldn't krcriticize mattis f anything. i it's difficult for somebody like him or even tillerson to articulate what i just said. i think we should do that. there may be a lot better way to say it, but i don't think we've publicly said anything like that and i'm not sure even privately we have a consensus on the policy. i think we're kind of -- we'll know it when we see it and i hate to say it, but isis, they've done a good job on isis, but isis is just a manifestation of a broader, as we all know, isis just happens to be one of the farm teams for the pros. anyway, yeah, that's what i'd do. >> i think our audience would put you in charge. ambassador? >> well, i think one of the challenges of course we face is we're dealing with the legacy issue of deeply immoral cynical policy by the previous administration regarding syria which basically brought about a nuclear agreement floating on a sea of syrian blood. so we're -- we have -- we're limited. we have a difficult challenge in the hand that we've been dealt now. ambassador talked about the land bridge to the mediterranean. that is going to be decided in the next few days as somebody drives towards the syrian iraq border and -- >> explain. >> we have a challenge and a problem. the iranians of course have not only forces in syria, but they have many proxies including the syrian regime. who are our proxies in the region? in syria we have a proxy which is powerful, important, and deeply problematic, which is the sdf/ypg. >> you're talking about the kurds, right? >> yes. which is militarily significant and militarily important and has all kinds of question marks there. >> we're talking about the syrian kurds. >> yes. our relationship with the kurds, we need to either, you know, put up or shut up. if they are unclean, deeply unclean because they holdup pictures of the terrorist, then fine, that's -- then we're going to act a certain way. but if not, we need to find a way to use them as proxies. we need to make them less kurdish, more accepting of arabs, less like the pkk. more of a useful tool for us, especially if we want in a very immediate way, we want to block iranian ambitions in the next few weeks and months. >> absolutely. >> i will just endorse what was just said. i understand our time is out. the only thing i want to say is this. with regard to syria, i think general wald has the right perspective on it. what i fear is that we're going to be between two other alternatives. one is a kind of slow management of the situation. assad won't control things but neither will we. there will be nothing resolved. which create the conditions for some major miscalculation arising where -- the thing i think we -- i hope you're thinking about what happens if the iranians launch some kind of initiative against jordan, against isreal, and so forth. where are we going to be then? >> we'll be there to protect them. >> okay. well, i hope that you found this interesting. i'd like to thank all of our panelists. i thought you were terrific. we could go on a lot longer. i'm getting signs from the front row that we're supposed to stop. thank you, audience. thank you, panel. [ applause ] hello, everybody. up next is our keynote speaker and before general petraeus comes on stage it is my pleasure to invite brigadier general retired don bacon, congressman from nebraska to the podium. distinguished officer of the united states air force and highly decorated aviator. congressman bacon specialized in electronic warfare, intelligence, reconnaissance and public affairs during his military career. he has served deployment in the middle east. his military decorations include the air force distinguished service medal, two bronze stars, two lesion of merits and five mare torrious service medals. congressman bacon will introduce our keynote speaker, general david petraeus. >> hope mully tfully the mic is. thank you for the introduction. it's an honor to be here today. it's really an honor for me to recognize general petraeus and ambassador ross. during my military career i got to work with both of them in different capacities. nothing ruins a good war story than an eyewitness, right? but in this case i was an eyewitness to general petraeus's leadership. everything we say about him was so true during my time in iraq. so instead of giving you his fullback ground i'll give you the story of what i saw. i got in 2007 in the spring about the same time he showed up. when our fortunes in authentic looked at their worst. the mood was bleak. our casualties were at the highest they'd ever been. and there was no optimism of where we were going. and we brought in general petraeus because he had a vision for how to fix this. it was my good fortune to come in about the same time and see the progress that we made in one year under his leadership. so when he showed up, we had 120 fatalities a month. u.s. fatalities. the attacks against our forces and against iraqi forces and installations and economy were at its highest. and he brought in the surge strategy. not only surge of u.s. forces but a surge of new ideas. we brought in 30,000 roughly new troops. he put those forces into our populated areas where we could protect them better. and he was able to get the sunni tribes to lead that fight against al qaeda. and at the same time he had to come up with a strategy to counter the iranian trained militias that were wreaking havoc down there too. and also help compel the iraqi leadership to build a government that has kurds, sunni and shiite in it and i got to watch that firsthand. a year later our fatalities were less than a handful of americans. 120 down to times two or three. a year later they were zero for many months at a time. just a couple little anecdotes. one time the prime minister criticized the u.s. forces and general petraeus to go and build a briefing and we're going to show the prime minister the good thing our folks are doing. my boss was gone. that was a colonel. so i made up a ten slide briefing. we were billing a dam or working the dam, building a hospital. i sent them over to general petraeus's office. i went to the prime minister's house and sir, this is what you said about our forces, let's remind you of the things that we're doing in iraq. we went through the hospital, the dam. the port down south, all the work we were doing there. what a great opportunity for me to be at the prime minister's house with general petraeus briefing the prime minister. i'll give you another one. general petraeus made it clear we want to show the atrocities of al qaeda so people could see what was going on. we found a torture house where people were being murdered. i wanted to get that story out by my boss wouldn't let me do. i did something that was probably not wise. i did it anyway. i put it out despite my boss, who was a general, and he was coming down to -- i was going to hang on the end -- i was going to be hanging. before he came down, general petraeus sent a note saying great job, it's one of the best things i've seen done. so i got saved thanks to him. but we owe general petraeus a debt of gratitude with many deployments in the middle east. moderating today's discussion is ambassador ross. i got to see him at national war college as a guest speaker. a person who started out as sovietologist. he is an expert when it comes to israeli negotiations. he's worked a lot with the syrians. really no one else has the depth of middle east diplomacy than ambassador ross. so no further ado i'd like to infight our two esteemed patriots up here to take the stage. thank you. [ applause ] >> so, together again. i want to start by asking you a real general comment. one of the interesting things that you noted a long time ago was that the struggle that we face with radical islamists and islam is a religion. islammism is an ideology. one of the things you noted a long time ago is this going to be a long struggle. it's not going to be something that's going to zpedisappear overnight. i'd like you to offer your perspective on the nature of the challenge, how we've got to think about it, why it's not going to disappear quickly. >> thanks very much. thanks, congressman, if you're still in the house for a very kind introduction. i was delighted to save your bacon by appraising your two star boss for what he would not have approved having you do. we weren't there to lose gracefully as you recall. it was take no prisoners time, metaphor cally speaking, of course. thanks to the hudson institute for the invitation to be here. thanks in particular for arranging for me to be -- have the privilege of being on the stage again with one of america's great diplomats and certainly the dean of those who have wrestled with the problems of the middle east, dennis ross. i have enormous respect for the hudson institute. i've done a lot of events with them over the years and i'm pleased to be able to be here for this one. i am a bit disappointed i must say that the pink ladies were ushered out of the house earlier today. we had a very close relationship during the time that i was privileged to command the surge. never was there an appearance on capitol hill that was not helped by their greeting to me, usually directly behind me with the cameras getting them in the frame. and it would have been a sign of continued relevance if they were still in the room. so i hold leon panetta personally accountable for having them expend all of their energy on him and not saving some for me. this is a great question that you ask as usual up front about the duration of the challenge that we face which as you know, and we've done this just as little as two weeks ago and love doing it together. i've characterized that as a generational struggle. this is not the fight of a decade, much less a few years. maybe if i could i'd like to offer five lessons up front that i think that we should learn from is the fight against islamist extremists and to some degree by the way against malign iranian activity. five of them. the first is that extremists and in some cases in the shiite parts of the world malign iranian elements will exploit ungoverned spaces. it's not a question of if. it's merely a question of when and how significant will that exploitation be. the second is that we have to take action in such situations. and that's because las vegas rules unfortunately do not apply in these areas. what happens there does not stay there. they tend to spew violence, instability, extremism, and in many cases a tsunami of refugees throughout the region, but all the way into the countries of our nato allies and partners. as we saw most significantly with the case of the geopolitical chernoble and the melt down of a country and the consequences of that being very significant domestic populace pressures that we've seen -- brexit arguably being among those. so this is not a problem that we can deal with the way that washington sometimes deals with it and that is to admire it until it goes away. unfortunately, it is not going away. the third is that in taking action, the u.s. invariable has to lead. there may be some cases such as the admirable case of france leading the way very skillfully but in most cases the u.s. will have to lead. the reason is quite simple. we have the assets that are proving to be the most valuable of all as we engage in what might be termed advise, assist and enabling operations. that's what we are doing. this is a big deal as joe biden might have observed. this is a -- such a big deal that it is arguably revolutionary. that we are able to defeat the islamic state in iraq and in syria without our young men and women having to be on the front lines more than in select counter terrorist operations and as advisers. and it's because of the skill of our young men and women in uniform and those of coalition countries, and this should be a coalition, and the coalition should include islamic countries, and i'll explain that more in a moment. but the assets we can bring to bear, particularly the reconnaissance platforms, the unblinking eye up there seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and the advantage that that provides to the forces that we are advising, assisting and enabling is profound. you can take all of the similar capabilities of other countries around the world and multiply it times five or six and i think you probably wouldn't get to the number of orbits that we can keep up there. i'm not talking about little drones. i'm not talking about do it yourself. i'm talking about the coin of the realm which is the predators and reapers which have extraordinary optics and intelligence gathering capabilities and from which we can shoot from other platforms that are similar. beyond that we have the unique ability to do industrial strength intelligence fusion. this is perfected really or first done during the surge in iraq when we brought all of our -- we had to bill a cloud in baghdad. we couldn't ship all the data back to the states for intelligence analysis because of the size of it. so we built our own cloud. we brought the applications engineers and scientists out from the united states. by the way, it's amazing how productive people can be when there's nothing to do but work 24 hours a day. there's nobody asking when they're going to come home for dinner and they can't drink. productivity was extraordinary. so we had that unique ability as well. of course the precision strike which many of our allies and partners can also bring to bear, but which we have an industrial strength numbers. so those capabilities are extraordinary. but it should be a coalition. i am a huge believer in having as large a coalition as you can have. i was willing as the commander of the largest coalition at that time in afghanistan to spend whatever it took in co lealitio maintenance activities and it should include muslim countries. if you think about this endeavor right now, this challenge is more of a fight for the heart of the muslim world. so it's a clash within a civilization more than it is a clash of civilization to harken back to sam huntington's book of that name. many of our successes in this particular fight have come together with muslim partners and leaders in intelligence officers and special operators of muslim countries. the fourth is that in leading, we have to ensure that we embark on a comprehensive campaign. this has to be what the congressman was referring to earlier. it's a civil military campaign. it is not just a counterterrorist endeavor. in fact, the pair radox is you cannot counter with just terrorist force operations. you are not going to drone strike your way out of this problem. it takes all of the above. we created a slide for congress during the surge just to show that while military force was necessary, absolutely necessary because without security foundation nothing else is possible. it is not sufficient. it takes all the other elements that, again, the congressman was referring to and he is correct to say that the surge that mattered most was not the surge of forces. it was the surge of ideas. it was the change in strategy. the major elements of which were 180 degrees different over what we were doing before. instead of consolidating on big basis, you live with the population. instead of handing off to the iraqis at an ever increasing pace, we stopped it and took back control until we could reconstitute them. p promote reconciliations. stop releasing detainees until you have a rehabilitation program, et cetera. this has to be a comprehensive approach with a large coalition that includes muslim countries. finally the fifth point, which is really what you got me started down this road on in the first place, dennis, is that this is a generational struggle. therefore, we must have a sustainable sustained commitment as our strategy. what is hugely important is that what was begun by the previous administration, give them credit for that, however reluctant it may have been to return to iraq and to take action in syria, did get us down this road on which this administration has built now very effectively. and that is to have a strategy that sustainable in terms of the expend d expenditure of blood and treasure so we can have the sustained commitment that is necessary in the endeavor that is generational in nature. for example in afghanistan to go to an approach that does not have time phased or time based draw downs regardless of what conditions are on the ground and so forth is a very wise approach. so thanks for giving me the excuse to deploy the five lessons that we should have learned. >> anytime you want to travel around the country and make those five points, i will be your side kick on this. i'm happy to ask the question and trigger the discussion. i mean in all seriousness, i didn't want to do that because when you just laid out is a conceptual approach to what we're approaching. >> it helps to get the big ideas right. >> if you don't get the big ideas, you're not going to get the smaller one. i want to follow-up on some of what you raised. one of the points you made is if there are ungovernable spaces, those are going to be exploited. another way is nature abhor -- of the principles they think has to guide american policy is be mindful of making sure vacuums don't begin to emerge. >> wherever possible. couldn't agree with you more, which is why we need diplomats, frankly. it's why we need to fill the vacancies in the state department, so forth. >> that's part of your comprehensive approach as well. it can't be only military. it's going to have to have an ideological dimension. >> sure. it's all of the above. when we went back for the surge, i remember the president called me in once i'd been confirmed. this is the final sort of, you know, pat on the back and photo op before you go off and try to turn big ideas into reality on the ground. i remember he said something along the lines, well, general, we're doubling down here. i said mr. president, your military is going all in. we need all the rest of government to go all in with us. he very much worked to make that a reality. >> part of what you also raise was this is not a conflict between civilizations. it's one within a civilization and a culture. >> yep. >> for us to succeed, part of this comprehensive strategy has to be not just having muslim partners, but having muslim partners who will discredit the ideology, because we can't. >> correct. >> it is not up to us to discredit this ideology. it has to come from muslims. >> for more authentic. that's why the emirate initiative to counter -- in cyberspace, to chip away at the virtual caliphate. my worry is that we will take away, we now meaning the forces we're supporting in iraq and in syria with the coalition, will defeat the islamic state on the ground, take away the ground caliphate, one of the true distinguishing features over al qaeda, the other being their facility in cyberspace. their ability to operate in that new battle field domain. obvious concern is that we can put a stake through the heart of the isis army, maybe even through baghdad event at some point, their leader, but we're not going to be able to put a stake through the heart of the virtual caliphate. i think there needs to be more done by internet providers and social media platforms. they're got to do this with art official intelligence because it's beyond the ability of human beings to take the action and frequency of the amount that is necessary. this done quite effectively in dealing with child pornography. some of that's illegal, maybe it's time for legislation to work with those who control these media platforms to take that kind of action. >> and one of the things i would like to see, you look at the icy ideology, and one of the claims is not just that they created a caliphate, which is now being undone, but also that their warriors are basically ones with a divine mandate. >> yes. >> one of the things we could be doing, apropos of your point on the internet media, we have now had a significant number of isis fighters surrendering. if you want to do a lot to discredit the ideology, nothing does it more than, a, showing that, but b, then also having some of them come on and tell their stories. >> we'll bring the congressman back on active duty, he had a particular facility for doing this. in truth, we had a whole series of big ideas that guided our actions in iraq. you heard a few of them. but then they went even further. then they had a communications idea, be first with the truth. we wanted to beat the bad guys to the headline. by the way the bad guys in sadr city, and as we are doing the extraction of special victims unit. they're already dialing in saying we have just been responsible for a new atrocity, we're beating them to the headline, bringing in full motion video, being able to show demonstrably, that it was them that shot at us. being able to show that -- we have talked before about the urgency of this, all the way back when we did this a year, year and a half ago. we talked about the imperative of accelerating the fight of the islamic state, because as soon as you can show they're losers rather than winner, is the sooner they're no longer effective in cyberspace. and soon the virtual caliphate doesn't have the same atra trttn that they used to have. by the way, we have taken away the big media center in raqqa, there's been big public accounts of what they had in there, the screens and everything they were using, very sophisticated operation they were using. not overdoing it, merely showing the facts, again, trying to be the first with the truth, not with spin. and by the way, sometimes being first with the facts, means that you acknowledge that we made a horrible mistake, as happened some days, or we just had a really bad day. in fact one of the predecessors of this communications world in which the congressman operated was allowed to return a little bit before he would have otherwise because there was a difficulty coming out in saying, we had a horrible day today in baghdad, 150 innocent iraqis were killed in two different suicide bombings in marketplaces. here's the facts as we best understand them. here's the lessons we're taking, and here's what we're doing with our iraqi security force partners to mitigate this happening again. you can't put lipstick on a pig, it still is ugly, and all you've done is erode your credibility. >> i want to pick up because you made a reference to the sadr forces and how you affected them. today it's interesting that sadr may have been demonstrating more than anybody else that he's an iraqi nationalist. >> he's the counter balance to the shiia militias who are largely funded, trained, equipped, supported and even directed by the kutz force of iraq. >> i want to get into this notion of radical islamists that are sunni and shiia. it's not just one or the other, they may fight each other, but the fact is they have many similar attitudes, instincts approaches. what binds them is no respect for borders. what binds them is the complete disrespect of the other. what with binds them is an instinct towards dominance and intolerance. we can talk about isis, we can talk about al qaeda, we can talk about the muslim brotherhood. we can talk about the islamic republic of iran, we can talk about hezbollah, many of these militant forces. when you look at this array, they don't all represent this kind of challenge. when you think about the different challenges that they embody and represent, does it call for a more calibrated strategy in your mind? or do you think that one set of principles works for all? i mean how do you think about that? >> i think one of the big ideas here is to acknowledge that we never have enough of what we would like to have. i mean there's never been a military commander in history who had enough soldiers, enough money, enough predators, enough bandwidth nowadays. >> right. >> so you have to at the end of the day prioritize and to some degree you're going to be allocating shortages, that's what you're doing, no element is going to get everything they want, unless it's the absolute number one priority, that might be the case. but that means of course that the others are not going to get all that they want. so i do think that's exactly right. and you've got to assess in a fairly cold eyed way, what elements are posing the greatest threat to our homeland, and to the homelands of our allies and partners. which pose the potential for another 9/11. and gonagain, you've got to do s in a very brutally realistic matter. i mean, look, the first year in the surge in iraq, we decided, i decided that we had to focus on the sunni arab extremists, al qaeda in iraq, and the associated movements, the so-called sunni insurgent groups, which were threatening the very survival of iraq as we knew it. and what we needed to do is do just what was needed against the shiia militias, which were very damaging as well. and ideally, we could even get them to take a knee for a while. and that actually happened. both serendipity, and luck is what happens wh -- the shiishiia, for the assassinations, deaths and murders of three governors of shiia provinces in southern iraq and also three police chiefs of of shiia provinces. this is a very big deal. then they were the catalyst for violence during a religious holy period for shiia islam, something that so outraged the prime minister that he personally strapped on a pistol and went with a column of 100 vehicles from baghdad down to confront them, was personally arresting people down there. they realized after we hung the deaths of these six governors and police chiefs and then the violence in ckarbala, around their neck and publicly, and again, first with the truth kinds of approaches, that they needed to lie low for a while. and that was very, very helpful, because it reduced quite significantly the violence they were instigating, and it was just at a time when we were driving the violence from the sunni insurgencies in iraq as well. and allowed us to really focus for the entire first year, very heavily on the sunni extremists and then we would turn to the shiia extremist militia forces, we did it a little bit early, there was a very impulsive decision by the prime minister of iraq on a little bit faster timeline than we had planned and we had to sprint to support that and to move a lot of assets and reposition and so forth and very narrowly averted what would have been a disastrous defeat, including with him personally down inside basra city and encircled and then basically destroyed the shiia militia with the fighting there and then in sadr city and in other locations throughout southern iraq, who had largely by that time defeated the sunni extremists as well. >> one of the interesting elements i might add to your principles is reflecting what you're also now saying. one critical element of this effort is how do you publicly frame what you're doing in a way that is compelling? >> usually we fill up the stage for quite a bit of time and we're doing it again. but i want to take this concept of framing and i want to relate it so, between the saudis, iranians, bar rarain -- bahrain. making sure they clean up after isis, because if they don't, iran will. and we're already seeing, iran is, we're talking about this, they're acting about it right now. >> iran is great about looking for and finding waves and then riding it. they're doing the same thing in northern iraq right now, obviously. >> right. >> where in the old time referendum, understand the erenn the internal boundary areas that forced the internal body to take action. >> and now they're pushing beyond. >> my understanding is they have stopped. touch wood, anybody who has wood around them because we're surrounded by plastic up here. but yes, i am concerned about that. >> both to ensure what happens in terms of the reconstruction that is necessary, even the security that is necessary so there isn't a vacuum for the iranians. but also to be part of the broader effort to counter what the iranians are doing with shiia militia there in the region, perhaps to end what seems to be a distraction. i would like to see it end in a way that countries are not completely left off the hook. i made a suggestion that the u.s. should go in and settle this, and the u.s. could do it based on four conditions that i believe would satisfy the saudis and no one can claim that these are unreasonable kinds of conditions and the four are that first, the qataris should fully implement the eu counter -- which was negotiated by them with secretary tillerson. second, that anyone who has been designated by the united states to be on the terrorism list or to be seen as a facilitator, a supporter of terror, should either be arrested by the qataris if they're in qatar, or expelled by them. third, any group in the region that we see is contributing to instability, the qataris will no longer finance, and fourth, that the countries would stop their subsidies, phase out their subsidies for al jazeera, al jazeera is many things, but i think one of the things it has done, it has created a platform that legitimizes the views of those who embody the radical islamist ideologies. i have said it to you before. you watch oftentimes someone who represents those kinds of extremist attitudes and they're put on with someone who might have main stream attitudes and they're equal, they're treated in terms as if they're equal. these are the kind of conditions i think that should -- would meet our needs on the one hand, should be acceptable to the saudis and others, and qatar should be prepared to accept that, so first i would like to get your reaction to that. >> well, this is a demonstration of why he's one of the most respected diplomats of his time. and particularly out in that region. second, let me just note that, look, i had issues with the qataris, as commander of u.s. central command. they provided $100 million for just the headquarters of central command forward. we added another 100 million in it and all kinds of other systems to that. so this is an extraordinary platform that we had. that's on top of the combined air center that's been operating the air wars over iraq and syria and yemen and other places. the airfield complex which is so vast, that as you know, you could run out of gas just taxis around the thing on certain days. so it's really quite extraordinary. so you've godone this on the on hand, and on the other, you're allowing, even subsidizing a tv channel that's even being used in part by a platform of extremists or various nefarious political slislamists, not thos in indonesia. i do think we need to be careful not to overdo it. we need to realize that the reason that the taliban are in -- we have got to have a place where they can be, so that we can engage them. this is all done in coordination with the united states. the reception for them, the security and everything else met all of our standards. the same with one or more of our hamas leaders who are there because the u.s. asked them to be there. >> that's more the exception than the rule. >> but you've got to be careful not to undermine the arguments or the points, if you will, by those that are not accurate. because there's enough i think, otherwise. i think you and i both, more than others are the recipients for either side, and have been able to ferret out what is and what is not quite so factual. they are quite intent at this point on living by that mou. they have told me, very senior as senior as you can get. they believe it should be declassified and they would like to see the mou made public, and they have been briefing members of congress. so i'm hopeful that we will allow that to take place, and everyone can see it. then the other items that you have, i think, are again, very solid, very sound and very reasonable. i think they're so reasonable, i think all the countries in that region ought to subscribe to the same principles, because as you know, there's issues with some of the other countries there. not about countries supporting extremist groups, i'm talking about high net worth individuals, we dealt with that a lot when i was u.s. central command and others as well. i think that's a great approach, it's both substantively more than adequate. and it's reasonable. it meets, i think the intent and addresses the legitimate concerns of the countries. and you're absolutely right. look, we have got to get that past us. we need to come back together. we can't have a splintering of the gcc, and you can't push one or other countries in this direction or that direction, and i hope that this kind of thinking and spirit and so forth can be manifested in action. >> i think if this is the american position that was presented to both sides and said this is the way we're going to resolve this, this stresses everybody's legitimate concerns and meets what we really feel has to be dealt with. >> yes. that and a few phone calls. >> a few phone calls from the right person with the understanding that these are the conditions that we're not going to negotiate because they represent a set of things that relate to what is actually threatening us and them. and i think that is reasonable. and then we see where we go from there. >> well, we're at -- i have been told i have one minute. and what happens after one minute, is there's a trap door here, the two of us disappear. let me just sort of conclude, i guess, by -- i realize one minute means one minute for both of us. i have already taken up 30 seconds. >> i'll give you an exception. >> when you look at what's going on in kirkuk right now? >> yes. >> how concern reasonable doubt you? >> i'm quite concerned, because different elements are exploiting this for their own purposes, because it is causing a bit of a break between the kurdish regional government partners, between the puk and the kdp in particular. because it could go farther and i'm, again, hopeful that this is halted. again, i -- you talk to doug silerman, the ambassador, those are two that are in a tough place, because these are all our friends, not all, but the kurds are our friends, and the iraqis, prime minister abadi are all our friends, we want inclusive government to succeed in iraq, but there are elements of there who are not fans of inclusive government, they would like to lebanonize iraq, just like they would like to lebanonize syria. so it doesn't just have a paramilitary aspect to it. in the case of lebanon, it literally has a veto proof element in the parliament, if they can keep that together. so that is my concern. >> so the trap door is not opening up. i want to thank dave petraeus. and i thank him for his service, but also what is really his strategic perspective on the region. thank you. thank y >> thank you, dennis. >> so next up we have catherine herrid herridge, interviewing senator don cotton. catherine is the news correspondent for fox news channel. s in her career, she has reported from afghanistan, iraq, qatar, israel and guantanamo bay among other places. i would like catherine to take over the stage and here we are. >> good afternoon. i would like to thank the sudden s hudson institute for hosting this meeting. and for tom cotton agreeing to be here with us. i would like to start with an overview kind of setting the table. how do you see qatar, iran, the muslim brotherhood, how do you see that relationship and that pillar of power playing out in that region? >> first of all i would like to thank the hudson institute as well. and catherine, thank you for joining me up here for this conversation. i see the middle east broadly as a place that's dangerous and unfortunately has been growing more dangerous in recent years, there are in my opinion, i would say three coalitions, three alliances, three actioxises of power. and the first, most important, t from a danger standpoint, iran, obviously a nation state, with all the abilities and powers of a nation state is primary rebind that, the actors there are primarily nonstate actors, hezbollah and the avant, many of the militia forces in iraq, yemen and many other insurgencies in sunni arab nations. second would be muslim brotherhood and some of its allies throughout the middle east. the brotherhood is a wholly terrorist organization. like hamas, al qaeda and other militant states. and other states who have in lesser or various ways have supported those groups, regrettably turkey in some instances. and our alliance of power, the united states, the united nations and increasingly israel. that's the partners that we have had in the region for many years, obvious think there's some divisions in those alineses a -- alliances. iran is sheltered al qaeda in the past. that's not to say that these three coalitions are alliances are axises of power never interact at all. but by and large, i think most of the region is divided in three of those coalitions or axises, and we need to do everything we can to strengthen ours, to try to minimize support for the other two, and ultimately, in my opinion, try to undermine the gravest threat that we face in the middle east, which is iran, which is as much a revolutionary cause as a nation state, but also the revolutionary cause backed by the nation state. >> you have been a contributor of the jcpoa. what are the weaknesses of that deal and what do you think a good deal would look like? >> the weaknesses are man fold, we have spent a long time talking about them. at the high level, a nuclear deal with iran, puts iran on a path to nuclear weapons, it doesn't block that path. in a mere 18 to 20 years, iran will have a nuclear capacity. that's if you assume that iran is not currently operating a covert nuclear program, which will be the first time they haven't had a covert nuclear program in decades. but until then, until they achieve that nuclear status. the deal has also empowered and emboldened iran. it's empowered and emboldened them because it gave them over $100 million in various kinds of sanctions relief. it helped them because they're not facing those sanctions, it helped legitimize them in the eyes of those around the world as a semination state, not the rogue nation we know they are. it's the blink of an eye in the life of a nation. and every day that passes, iran is going to get stronger, their economy is going to continue to grow, if they don't face sanctions, if they're not financially isolated. western companies are going to get more deeply entrenched inside of iran, which is going to create a pro iran cabinet in western nations. iran's economy is growing and they're going to be able to plow more money into their military, but partly because of the nuclear deal, the conventional arms embargo is lifted in barely three years, which means iran can obtain main battle tanks, heavy artillery and fourth and time, iran would have all those things with an industrial nuclear capability in 8 to 13 years, that's why i think we have to confront it now. the president made the right decision a couple of weeks ago, when he declined to certify that the deal was not in national security interests. th that's what the deal required. by the way, they're not complying with. but there's no doubt in my mind that's not in our national security interest. so what should we do? i don't think we should immediately impose sanctions, that's not a necessary step, in some ways it's a backward looking step, since iran has gotten many of the front loaded nature of the deal. we're focusing on what president obama should have focused on from the beginning which is stopping iran from developing their nuclear capability. that means having more robust inspections of iran's nuclear program to include military sites. that means enforcing strictly the centrifuge restrictions, that means restrictions on iran's ballistic missile program. especialliy licbms which are no known for carrying nuclear warheads. we don't need to negotiate with iran by the way, that's something that can be done by national security council action, or at least action in conjunction with the so-called eu three, united states, france and jem and germany. we should at least give that a chance, we may not do that in weeks, but we can't wait years, we can wa't wait until 2025 to resolve all that. and we need to ta-- all of whom destabling forces for our interests in the region, and for our partners in the region. >> what concrete steps could congress take? >> congress doesn't have a huge role to play here. in part because existing law gives the president most of what he needs to take these actions. for instance, one reason why i don't think it's necessary to immediately reimpose sanctions on a simple majority vote in the congress, as u.s. law currently permits us to do for another 45 days or so, is that the president can reimpose all those sanctions himself. under u.s. law he can reimpose them. under u.n. security proposal, he can reimpose them. all he has to do is direct the next ambassador to the u.n. to -- he can also take more diplomatic actions to enforce our coalitions in the middle east. to get the central intelligence in baghdad work -- who don't want to see hezbollah as a state within a state. working with saudi arabia and the emirates to try to once and for all end the fighting in yemen, which holds at risk our nations throughout the arabian peninsula. same thing with the persian gulf, beginning to take a firmer hand towards iran's further action with our ships and our aircraft and so forth. if we need to take additional steps, like passing a sanctions bill, also a requirement that the irgc be designated as a terrorist organize, we can do that. right now the president has in his hands most of what he needs. >> have you had recent conversations with the president about next steps. >> i have. >> is there anything you can share with us about what that looks like? >> i can, but i won't. >> i'll give you some time to think about it and we'll come back to it. this summer at the aspen security forum, the security commander tony thomas described how iran had laid the ground work for the shiite crescent, this is a land crescent that extends from iran, iraq, syria and also to lebanon. do you agree with that assessment, and if so, is there a way to roll back those territorial gains? >> it's an advance to iran is making through northern iraq and syria. and their aggression against israel has become muchmore widespread. for instance, iran is not just providing rockets to hezbollah, but they're helping to build precision guided munition factories in syria on lebanon's border, where hezbollah can actually manufacture its own precision guided munitions to use against israel if there's another outbreak of hostilities between hezbollah and israel. we can't allow that to happen. it's bad enough it happens by ship, for instance, but we can't allow unmolested, the irgc to have resupply lines going from its territory in iran into lebanon. we have a take a firmer line with our partners in baghdad. we have to finish the fight off against the islamic state. it's a good thing that raqqa fell last week, i don't think that would have fallen, if it hadn't been for changes in the rules of engagement. and to the delegation of command and control, to our military officers, not putting it in the hands of white house staffers. but we can't just assume that that fight is over. islamic state still declares territory in eastern and southern syria, which is vital to iran and the assad regime and hezbollah having that land bridge built and it's our paramount interest that we stop that from happening, again working with our partners in the region. >> when you look at the map now, is it really understood that syria does not go back together, that iraq does not look like it did a decade ago? >> it's hard to see syria being reunited under a military government under an assad regime in damascus, given what the assad regime have done in russia. in iraq, we have a lot more influence, we have troops on the ground, we have invested a lot of lives, a lot of money, a lot of time in that country. we need to take a firmer hand in trying to reach a negotiated compromi compromise solution between some of the factions while also pushing some of those factions away from iran, the irgc and all the popular -- >> can you describe the relationship between the -- >> i would expect that would say it was probably better under the obama administration, in part because the obama administration was so focus on a nuclear deal with iran. go what to the 2008 campaign, in the primaries, barack obama said he would sit down with dictators without precondition. and hillary clinton mocked him for being naive and foolish. she didn't know the half of it. but he wasn't just talking in the abstract there about some principle of international relations. he was talking in particular about iran and about trying to reorder our alliance structure in the middle east. he admitted as much in the last year, in an interview conducted with -- he always ended up siding with iran's interest in the middle east, all to get to a deal and to preserve a deal. so for instance, when students protested in iran after the ayatollah stole the elections in 2009. the administration largely stood by, for days they said nothing, they finally issued a meekly worded statement. barely 18 months later, a partner of ours, egypt, under hoznimubarak. after 2003, had give up his -- therefore the obama administration was also looking for ways or looking for partners who would be more friendly towards iran. there are a lot of countries in the middle east that are not willing to do that. qatar is one of them. and therefore i would suspect that most of the leaders there would say they had a better relationship with the obama administration than they do under president trump. they should have a good relationship. there's no reason why qatar cannot have a good, strong relationship with the united states. we just approved another weapo s s sale to them. but as president trump has said, rightly, we need qatar to come back into the fold of our organization. stop the close relationship it has with iran, by for instance just sending it's ambassador back to tehran a couple of months ago, after having withdrawn it two years ago, along with all of the other gcc countries, all but one, i take that back. so we should have a close relationship. i just think president trump is committed in a way that president obama never was, because . to join our coalition, once and for all, stop the support for extremist, brotherhood allying groups. we understand that qatar has to have a different kind of relationship with iran than we do. that's fine, they share the world's largest gas field, they're close to iran, they're far from iran, they're small, we're big, we understand they have to have a different kind of relationship. just like south korea has a different kind of relationship with china than we do, just like norway has a different kind of relationship with russia than we do, but that doesn't mean they can't be a strong ally of the united states. >> how do you get them over to that side of the argument? >> i think that you support by and large what our air partners have been doing. i tend to think the alliance of saudi arabia, the emirates, b bahrain and egypt have taken an approach that's sensible. you don't have to support every single initiative they have promulgated. not quite short of wood drorow wilson's 14 points, but by and large, those are the alliances in the region that have zostood with us, especially over the last five, ten years, rather than viewing this as a crisis to manage, which e should view it opportunity to seize. the united states and the gcc would both be much stronger if the gcc was fully united with each other and against iran. >> is this really for diplomacy, versus any kind of congressional action? >> by and large, you may have noticed that congress works on a slow timeline. and in the world, especially when it comes to foreign policy and national security matters, events can overtake you quickly. if the president were to ask congress to act on this, i would support that kind of initiative. but by and large, this is a matter for diplomacy, some public, and some quiet in private. and, you know, our president and our senior national security official should be working pretty aggressively to try to, again, resolve this as an opportunity to seize, not a crisis to manage. >> in 2014, qatar took the taliban five. was that a mistake? >> yeah, it was a mistake by barack obama to trade, to make that trade. wouldn't have done that. that's behind us now, though. and, you know, i think it's pretty well known now, that the president, the u.s. government asked qatar to make that decision. now again, that's an example of how that country will do some things that other countries in the middle east would not do. i mean they opened that outpost for the taliban there. that was not the kind of arrangement that i ever would have advocated for. but it's behind us now. it's hard to see on what ground you would unwind it. we would certainly insist upon the very thorough enforcement of confinement, travel and communication on the taliban five to which qatar agreed and if they don't enforce those terms, we can revisit the matter now. i would sooner see things like qatar change its behavior toward iran and the muslim brotherhood and other associations it's had against the taliban or hamas, or the holy land. >> there really is, though, evidence of reengagement of the taliban five and those arrangements in afghanistan. >> if that's the case, i think there's a lot of empty beds left in guantanamo bay. it it would be like a homecoming for them. >> on the issue of qatar, is there a way to, as director panetta said earlier, that they have been able to play both sides of this conflict. are they able to do this because they feel emboldened in the region? or if so, what do you put this down to? >> if they're playing both sides, it's bawl the obama administration allowed them to play both sides for a time. i think the president is committed to stopping that. so president trump is committed to stopping that. the trump administration may have a different viewpoint, especially if their worked on this file in the obama administration. ultimate ultimately, we're the biggest, strongest, richest, most powerful nation in the world and if we want a nation like cutqat to not play both sides of the street, to get on our side once and for all. it's not just for the gcc's interest. it's for our interest too. but we have a lot of tools to make that happen too. >> to what extent has their support for terrorism inside theory june athe region and outside of the region. has it grown? >> since the arab spring, it's been unhelpful in the region. just to get back to kind of the intellectual forerunner. hamas is a terrorist offshoot of the muslim brotherhood in the holy land and they have provided support for hamas in the holy land. if hamas didn't have that kind of support, it would -- it would be the secondary effect that would be in everyone's interest, if qatar came back fully in the fold of the gcc. it weakened hamas means a greater chance for some incremental process between israel and the palestinians because you don't have a terrorist organizations occupying a state in the region. you don't have hamas and qatar controlling the influence for that. this is just an example of how you would have effects fully inside our camp if the u.s. government and our allies can make that happen. >> to a certain extent, is having an unstable environment to their advantage, though? >> i would say, when you're that size a country, it's never good to have an unstable environment in that region. ultimately, again, the united states has the ability to kind of, not necessarily dictate events, but help direct and channel events there. and we should exercise that ability to a greater extent than we have. i mean, look, qatar is a small state, it has maybe the highest gdp in the world. if not the highest, it's one of the highest. there's no reason why its people cannot live in peace and prosperity and security, aligned with the united states and many of its neighbors. that's why i say in the long run many of the actions it's taked in the last few years are contrary to its interest. >> support for organizations like the taliban, or like hamas, it's a deeper relationship with iran than we would like, acknowledging that it needs to have the kind of relationship the united states or saudi arabia might not have, but deeper than we would like. again, these are things that can change. again, they don't take a long time to change. >> the muslim brotherhood, is it a greater threat today than it was five years ago? and if so, why is that so? >>s the >>s there a threat, because it's founded on anti-western ideas, and some of its offshoots like hamas are outright terrorist organizations. i think in some ways, it's stronger. in some ways it's weaker, you have a brotherhood aligned government in egypt, that proved it could not govern in any way. and therefore it's lost some credibility, i think as a movement that was capable of turning itself into a governing power. but in other ways, a lot of the offshoots, the descendants of the muslim brotherhood are still strong. it still controls some territory in syria and iraq, it has the online caliphate. many of the sunni extremist groups in the mountainous tribal areas of afghanistan and pakistan are strong and resurgent. in some ways it's been weakeneden but in some ways it's still quite strong. >> to what extent when we're talking about isis and the caliphate, as it is near collapse. what are the second order of facts, let's say, in africa. we have been talking about niger, this week, were you aware that u.s. forces were in niger, and how would you describe the threat in that region? >> so far as i was aware, and you can go to hamas websites and fi find -- if you're on the armed services committee, you can attend our hearings and see that we have troops there. if you want to ask the question, does the united states have troops in that region, the answer is yes. sometimes that may number in the dozens, sometimes it may number in the hundreds of thousands. but in africa, where you've seen both al qaeda and islamic state trying to establish foot holds, to have what they had in afghanistan, 17 years ago, which is a safe haven from which they can deliberately plan, plot attacks in the united states. that doesn't mean we have to see what we saw in afghanistan 16 years ago, it means we want to try to empower thes-- then ende up -- or al qaeda, so as the caliphate, as the actual caliphate falls, i think one fears that you may see growing numbers of islamic state sales, in places like africa, or afghanistan, or around the world. and you might -- it's possible, you could see some of the most dangerous food soldiers or high commanders of the islamic state escaping iraq and syria and getting into some of those new safe havens, in places like afghanistan, pakistan or africa. >> the goal of niger was to effectively try to keep a lid on the al qaeda operatives on that part of the world, right? >> broadly speaking, it's fair to say that's one of our main goals in after sta. th -- africa. we have the green berets greated by jfk specifically to deal with these local insurgencies, to deal with a 12 or 6-man team of again berets, but rather training the indigenous armies to do so. that's one of the reasons why we have troop presences in so many places around the world. so it's a fair characterization to say one of the core missions we have in africa, is that kind of train and advise mission, which again the green berets have had as their primary mission for over 50 years now. >> without getting into classified information, with earning you know, does this tell you this has the hallmarks of the al qaeda and islamic grid attack, or was it point to isis? >> i think i'll go back to my previous answer on i could tell you but i won't. and obviously they use a lot of the same tactics, techniques and procedures and are vying for a lot of the same territory. and sometimes, again, those local forces oftentimes are deeply rooted in a tribal and ethnic and historical way, in that territory and they can shift between external terrorist organizations, based on who's up, who's down, what can provide them the most money, or weapons, or fuel or what have you. they're both pretty bad, though. >> we have about six minutes left and before i get to some closing ideas, i have some quick questions, that i'll put into now that i've got you in the chair right there. what can you tell us about any conversations to leave the senate and go either to be cia director or the movement of pompeo to secretary of state? >> very little. i have seen the news reports to which you refer. i think much of that is idle washington parlor games, speculation. we have a cia director, mike pompeo, i think is doing a good job, he's a close friend of mine, and i support him in the work hedoing, these decisions are up to the president. as far as i know his dance card on the national security council is full right now. >> okay, and on russia. as a member of the senate intelligence committee, have you seen anything that's helped you determine how credible this trump dossier has been? >> well, i think some of the key points about its correct are unknown. as senator burr said at a press conference a couple of weeks ago, as anybody who's followed the matter closely knows, fusion gps has gone to the greatest lengths possible to try to conceal them, which makes me think it was a democratic political office or russian intelligence service. there are officers who have taken the fifth in the house of representatives. and are now fighting to quash a subpoena to get their bank records. we have the right to draw what inferences we will from that. likewi likewise, i don't think we know anything about what the sources of this is. chris steele, i don't think was running around russia interviewing people who claim to have firsthand knowledge of any of these outlandish allegations. so for all our knowledge, we're dealing with sources and sub sources who we don't know, and who are being paid to provide salacious information, or if they are operatives of russian intelligence who were tasked wito gather that information. certainly not until we answer those questions, nor have i seen any reason to do so. >> to the matter at hand, muslim brotherhood, iran and qatar, as you look ahead in the short to medium term, what kinds of developments will you key in on to determine whether we're heading in the right direction, or heading in the wrong direction. >> i think the obvious incremental steps would show good progress. so for instance, recalling their ambassador from tehran, maybe a change in the tone of coverage in al jazeera, every now and then, maybe a greater willingness to sit down and talk with the other leaders of the gcc about their -- i think it's now six principles they would like them to endorse. some of these matters are not big steps, they might led to steps in the right directions, many of which are going to be classified of course. but would show that the three powers in the middle east that you just identified, one of them is fully back within the fold of our coalition. pretty hard to do that with muslim brotherhood, or iran, but i would like to do it with qatar, it would strengthen us and strengthen them and all our partners in the middle east. >> is this a way to sort of divide, isolate, separate or weaken iran? >> of course. again, iran is as much a revolutionary cause as it is a nation state, unfortunately has the powers of a nation state behind that revolutionary cause. you see it everywhere, you see it in iraq, lebanon, syria. it is not in the united states interest to have a revolutionary cause with the backing of a nation state expanding its influence throughout the middle east. therefore we need to identify any partner we can who is willing to work with us to contain and roll back that influence. qatar could be one of those partners. they could certainly be a better partner than they have been. >> when you talked about the jcpoa, do we have the kind of visibility we need to know when we're approaching that point? >> again, if iran doesn't have a covert nuclear program, which i hope they don't, it would be the first time in decades they have one. and to think about that in very concrete terms, i mean you're talking about a country that's 2 1/2 times the size of texas in which you're looking for facilities that are not much bigger than this hall in which we're sitting, and the people who are looking for them are a handful of scandinavian or japanese scientists who are being driven around by iraqi intelligence officers. a lot of their facilities that are declared are military and we don't have the ability to inspect them. but ultimately, if the terms of the jcpoa are all that governs iran's nuclear program, they will have an industrial capability in eight to 13 years. and i do not think we can allow that to happen. both for what it would mean once iran gets nuclear weapons and what it means in the interim, just what we have seen in the two years since they enacted that deal. and i would say too, it's not a coincidence in my opinion, that north korea's pace of nuclear testing has increased rapidly since the jcpoa was consummated in the summer of 2015. >> why do you think that is? >> it showed them that the united states is willing to broker any kind of deal for any kind of fig leaf of a claim we had pushed their nuclear program to the right on the calendar. therefore if the obama administration was willing to appease iran to such ain degreei think kim jong-un believed we would be even more -- >> h >> how involved is president trump on this issue? >> on a day basis, we gets a daily briefing. >> how would you describe his level of engagement? >> it's deep. when we have conversations about this, we understands at a detailed level what the threats are from countries coming from iran and north korea. that's why he was not going to certify that the nuclear deal with iran was not in our best interests. he understands just how grave those threats, plus when you sit in that seat versus any other state in the national security council, you see it in a slightly different perspective. >> i'm going to give you the final word. >> thank you for the interview, and thank you to the hudson institute for hosting such a conferen conference. the middle east is dangerous, even more dangerous than it normally. we have allies with countries like israel, jordan, egypt, the gcc, we should press those advantages. those alliances have served us pretty well in the last 40 or 50 years. and that starts by recognizes that iran is the source of most of those in the middle east. and every time we have a chance to separate a country like qatar and bring them back into the fold, we should do that. >> thank you. >> ladies and gentlemen, please note that the doors will be locking at 4: 10, there will be no re-entry after that time. i repeat, there will be no re-entry through the doors at 4:10. thank you. this conference on combatting violent extremism taking a short break. all of those speakers sar far, including mike mccall, david petrae petraeus strategist steve bannon. the senate is working on a house passed $36.5 billion disaster aid bill also includes wildlife recovery efforts and debt relief for the national flood insurance program. a vote to limit debate is scheduled at 5:30. the house likely to take up that and the 2018 gop budget resolution, including tax reform on thursday. they're expected to consider legislation to impose new sanctions on iran's ballistic missile program that don't take aim at the international deal to curb the country's nuclear program. and on wednesday, the senate intelligence committee looks into russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. live coverage at 10:00 a.m. on c-span3. good afternoon, again. i know it's been a long afternoon so far but we're getting to the real meat, actually. we've had much analysis of the issues that are headlined by this conference and now we will get to some account of what our congressmen think we can do about it. it's a pleasure to welcome to this panel congressman brian fitzpatrick, congressman fitzpatrick represents pennsylvania's eighth congressional district and he serves at the president on the house foreign affairs committee as well as the commit on homeland security. but he brings to his work a wealth of experience having served for some 15 years with the fbi and where for better or worse he became intimately acquainted with the problems we are here to address and not only within this country but in the world at large. we're also happy to have with us congressman piten jer representing north carolina's ninth district. congressman pitinger is serving his third term in the u.s. house of representatives. he serves as vice chairman of the subcommittee on terrorism and elicit finance where he provides leadership used to intercept the money used to finance radical terrorism. a most important subject and one in which we have not yet talked about a great deal today. as chairman of the congressional task force on terrorism and unconventional warfare, congressman pitinger has met with hundreds of world leaders and security expert to advocate in global cooperation in the fight against isis. it's really a pleasure to have you both here this afternoon. [ applause ] and, you know, in a way the questions i have to address to you are very, very simple but i'm sure the answers are difficult. first, we've had an analysis of the kind of challenge we're faced with. in a general sense in terrorism but its specific enablers iran, the muslim brotherhood, other agents, places where qatar rather radical islamic movement find shelter and comfort and support. there are certain large things that get sometimes get to be done with planes and ships and soldiers, but all of that depends upon the support of our public and the congress that represents it and i guess as i said my questions are pretty simple. where do you think we are today? you're both experienced men in the struggle and how do you see our situation today and what do you think we should be doing and what is the best way in which the congress can support that effort, including and i understand that you both have some legislative proposals that are -- that have been developed to address these issues? i'll start with congressman pitinger. >> sure. good afternoon. good to be with each of you all today. i'm from north carolina. i do serve on the financial services committee and i do chair our congressional task force on terrorism. an effort that i had took over from our former majority leader eric canter if he asked me to succeed him and our interest has been to bring collaboration together among members of parliament from throughout the world addressing issues like terrorism, finance, cybersecurity and intelligence sharing, all three of these are important factors in defeating our adversaries. to that end we've hosted eight forums to date that have involved 600 members of parliament from 60 countries. we're having our next forum in argentina that will be in november and they expect 300 people there from throughout south america and then we'll have another one here in washington, d.c. members from our own government, from treasury, the private sector, barkleys, citi and private sector groups, erickson are involved with us and giving tools to our partners in what they can do to work with us to stop the flow of the money and enhance their cyber capability efforts as well as making sure that we have good data resource sharing. data is very critical. i have read countless numbers of documents in your scif under classified briefing of so many attacks that have been prevented because we had good data. and certainly as we look at the field and see who has been complicit, iran is of course at the top of the list. right next to them, of course is many other countries like qatar, who has been a resource for individuals to find a safe haven to be there, muhammad of course involved in 9/11 but they have been involved in ransoms for kidnapped people, funding for -- through various grants and nonprofits entities. i have had three meetings with the amir with the ambassador several times, frankly he even said to me, we have helped al qaeda and syria because of his disdain for assad and what are you going to do with al qaeda? i'll deal with that later on. but to his own admittance, he had been engaged with a terrorist group. we have very capable technology that we want to resource and work with our partners around the world. we have our embassies who still lack staff. i just had a bill passed to enhance the staffing of our embassies to make sure that they attaches are better equipped. they all operate out of their own silo and to be able to know where the money's flowing, they need to be able to share this data and -- yes, ma'am -- and to have a safe harbor to be able to do that. that's not available today. so i'm working with members of the finance -- financial services committee to get that done. if you know maxine waters, put in a good word. she's a nice lady. we have a very good relationship. i appreciate your concern on these issues. i feel like they're absolutely vital to the extent, you stop the money, we can have good data, enhance our cyber capabilities, all very important tools in defeating our adversaries. [ applause ] >> i just ask before i turn it over to congressman fitzpatrick. of the variety of things that you've described as, you know, important in this fight, it's the financial data sharing that you think is the most crucial at this point? >> well, it's an important tool. right now 90% of the foreign money that comes into our country comes in through four financial institutions and yet they are restricted on how to share data with each other and when treasury has awareness of some bad guys, we want to have as good and complete data sharing as we can. obviously we're all concerned about privacy and civil liberties. we address that at every single one of our conferences. the white house counts the civil liberties in these forum as does our chairman. sharing data is very critical and we must have it and must continue to have it in whatever enhanced way we can. >> thank you. >> congressman? >> thank you, sir. thank you for the hudson institute for inviting both of us here. my name is brian fitzpatrick. i'm in my freshman term. my job previous leading up to this was for the past 14 years i was an fbi supervisory special agent working really all aspects of national security, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, cybersecurity and worked international corruption matter which feeds into the international security picture and i think it's critically important that mr. pitinger and myself are working together hand in hand, he in his role on the financial services committee on the task force to combat financing and myself being on the homeland security committee and the foreign affairs committee, which also work hand in hand in this problem and i know i'm not telling anybody in this room anything you don't already know that in a point in time where we have 195 countries on this planet, there's not a single one that i'm aware of that's safer, more stable and more secure now than it has been in the past and nowhere is that more prevalent than in the middle east. part of my fbi experience i was in iraq where i served as an al qaeda interrogator, i was reminded in my most recent trip to israel meeting with the folks in the idf, people in the intelligence services, how significant and how eminent the threats are that they face over there, which to strengthen my resolve as a member of both homeland security and foreign affairs and as a member of the entirely body of congress that we need to be very honest about our relationships across the world but also in the middle east. we need to transparency, we need to be honest about who our friends are and who our friends are not and allow that to influence the decisions we make with regard to foreign policy. we live in a very dangerous world and we will need that honesty and transparency and people that claim to be our friends and say one thing to our face but do other things behind our backs, that's a very significant problem that has a ripple effect throughout a whole host of other areas. i want to thank you for inviting us. look forward to the discussion. >> i guess the main follow-up that arises from what you both said is this, in what way do you think -- following on your comment, congressman fitzpatrick, the management of our relations with countries in the middle east and so forth has left something to be desired in certain cases. what do you think -- the direction we should be headed? i don't mean to exclude you. >> i think first and foremost transparency. we need our leadership to be honest about relationships and all that's involved there. who are friends are and who they're not and mr. pitinger brought up qatar. it's very important for us to have an honest conversation as a country and certainly on the floor of the house and the senate about what exactly is going on over there in terms of their media outlets and what they're portraying over their media outlets. whether or not they're supporting and harbing members of hamas and other organizations and as far as their financing goes. mr. pitinger talked about the importance of cracking down on international elicit money laundering. that was one of the major securities of the financial -- if you cut off the illicit money laundering you cut the head of the snake and that's the key ingredient to fighting back on terrorism and if there's instances in qatar or elsewhere in that region of people that are claiming to be our friends that are still either turning a blind eye or in the worst case actually supporting behind our backs, the flow of international money laundering throughout the region and world to fund organizations that are hostile to the interests of the united states, that's a conversation we need to have on the floor of the house of representatives. it's a conversation we certainly need to be having on the foreign affairs committee on my subcommittee which covers the middle east and north africa. >> was there something you wanted to add? >> sure. i would think that having honest relationships is critical. we now have a memorandum of understanding. the state department has with qatar today. it's a classified document. i will be briefed by the document. i didn't have time to be briefed before i flew in today, but i will see it. i would like to know frankly why it's even classified but to that end, we need to have clear and open relationships with an understandings with our would be allies. as i have sit down with every head of state in the gulf region, they all have questioned frankly the foreign policy that we've had over the last previous eight years and they didn't know where america stood and particularly on the iran deal. the crown prince one of one of the countries said to me, congressman, it's like the arab states went to moscow to negotiate an agreement relative to ukraine without talking about that with europe. so we need to be clear thinking on our allies in the middle east as well as recognize that there's been bad actors who have operated out of each of their countries and we need them to be straightforward. many of the countries now have come out with their own memorandum against qatar and i respect that but we need, frankly, to expect accountability from every country while i have focused on qatar, i have similar issues with some of the other countries involved as well. >> it does seem -- i mean, experience in the middle east tends to show that unless you're very clear about where you stand people will either misunderstand you or take advantage of you and i cannot help but agree that for the last eight years there was not a real clarity about where we were headed. the question is, are you confident we will have clarity now? >> i think of the world -- the world knows where we stand today and i pay tribute to president trump for making that clear. frankly, when he ran for president, you heard all the clamoring the muslim world would never pay any respect to him yet they came to riyadh and listened to him. the world has a clear perspective from the u.s. and i bring that back to frankly ronald reagan. ronald reagan gave a clear understanding of where america stood and he energized the rest of the world. he and margaret thatcher worked together. we built up our military. put sustained economic pressure on the soviet union. pope john paul even got involved and had a rally in poland yelling, we want god. it was a whole world participated as a result the soviet union collapsed without firing a shot. >> wow. how's that? somebody didn't like what we were saying. >> i guess not. so i think we need to have that type of clarity and i respect and honor the president for being clear in what he's communicated to the rest of the world. moral clarity. the world does not expect america to show up everywhere but the world is a safer place when america's strong and we stand strong and that's where we need to be today. >> one other large issue obviously that we'll be an issue for the congress concerning -- otherwise known as the iran nuclear deal, with the lack of -- i mean the president just most recently declined to certify that iran was in compliance with the agreement. it seems to me for entirely good reasons they're not in compliance, but the question is then if that is supposed to lead to a legislative process or as part of a legislative process, what do you think -- what's your either recommendation or expectation of what will follow from this? i think last week general mcmaster was saying that quite rightly that the decertification was an operation not between the united states and iran but between two branches of the american government, the president -- the office of the president and the congress, so something now would presumably get set in motion and within the congress, yeah. >> there's really two questions with regard to the iran agreement. number one, was it wise to enter in to begin with and number two is what to do now. i've said repeatedly i thought it was a huge mistake to enter into that agreement. there's not a single government official in tehran, not a single member of the iranian parliament that signed that agreement. by all measures they're violating it with regularity and we've all -- we've already sent i believe $115 million in frozen assets and given them access to that again and the lifting of sanctions allowing their economy now to grow at a clip of 10% to 12% beyond what it was before. those are not good things with a country that is unanimously referred to as the largest state sponsor of terror. the question is what do we do now and that's really where our committee is going to have to do a deep dive into what are the consequences both intended and unintended of withdrawing from that. we need to hear from the experts on what the implications would be and we need to make an informed decision. >> the -- this is sometimes -- not entirely well understood but -- as far as i understand and i did read the agreement rather closely a few times. when we -- when we decertify we're not simply withdrawing from the agreement but the question is whether that leads to the real position of sanctions which iran would obviously regard as a break in the agreement. is the process now to -- i understood you to say house foreign affairs will now hold hearings about what it might do with regard to sanctions, is that essentially where you're at? >> we need -- i mean it's one thing to have a bad decision be made in the first place, the question is now what is the best course of action and that's what we need to decide on as a committee and in order to make the best decision we need to have full and open hearings and hear from all sides. >> the horse is out of the barn. they received back $150 billion. we paid them 12 billion just to come to the negotiation table. iran now is positioned and with trading alliances with various governments. there are still have reservation by some of the banking system. they do have about 30 banks. you're able to operate under swift concurrence. they can still engage with other financial institutions in the transfer of money, so that clearly is a concern to me and something that i believe could be done to address and restrict the flow of money from the financial institutions. i think sanctions are still awarded. the reality is, you know, we took an agreement and in 15 years or less they're free to do whatever they want to do. very short mind set. hard to understand that these people think in terms of centuries. we think in quarterly reports and 15 years is a long time. that's not a bother to them even if they stayed in full compliance. they are a major threat to the world and we cannot keep our eyes off the fact that the ongoing development of nuclear weapons is likely. we can't even visit their military installations. the iea cannot visit them. it's filled with major concerns of whether they are going to be accountable. >> we have a couple of minutes left. i want to say before -- i turn it over entirely to you, but i want to say that despite the lack of lighting, physical light you've been very illuminating about the problems we're discussing and also the -- about the congress's role in this. so if you have any final statement. >> i just want to reemphasize and i can just give you the freshman legislators perspective. we're obviously dealing with a lot of very significant serious issues in the coming months that will have a direct nexus and link to our national security here at home, to israel's national security and the stability of the region and what i always like to tell folks is, please let your voices be heard. the fact that you're here today giving up of your time to engage in this conversation tells us two things, number one, you obviously care enough about this issue and second, you're obviously very educated because you're giving of your time to be here. let those voices be heard. come to us, particularly those on the foreign affairs committee, people working on the tariff financing aspect of this. it's a two pronged fight when it comes to cutting off illicit money laundering. we want to hear from you. we need to hear from you. i'm coming out of 14 years in national security of the fbi but i'm learning every day more and more being on that foreign affairs committee with chairman boyce and we're entering a very critical juncture right now without a doubt and we need to hear from you so i just want to leave you with that. feel free to reach out to us directly. we're happy to sit down and talk. [ applause ] >> i'd like to thank the institute extraordinarily important gathering. i commend each of you for being here. we are faced with enormous challenges ahead of us. i think we're all aware of that and frankly that's why you're here today. our committee of financial services is zeroed in on the illicit transfer of funds as well as my overall broader interest as i said in building a collaborative relationships with members of parliament throughout the world. so any advice, input, direction that you've got, we welcome it. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> on behalf of the hudson institute, i would like to thank you for being here today. >> they said i had a radio face any how. [ applause ] [ no audio ] >> announcer: this conference on combatting violent extremism taking a short break. the conversation earlier with former defense secretary and cia director leon panetta. s. >> so good afternoon and thank you all for coming. on behalf of the hudson institute to what i hope will be a fascinating afternoon. and it starts off with leon panetta whom i'm sure we will all be fascinated to hear from considering the number of crisis that are going on all over the world today. so leon, i can't help but ask you, first of all, north korea, how do you see the situation? do you think we're close to war? how do you assess north korea? >> well, first of all, my thanks to the hudson institute for inviting me here and for having this opportunity. look, we're living in a world where there are a huge number of flash points and danger points, probably more -- more flash points than we've seen since the end of world war ii. failed states in the middle east, isis, the war against terrorism, iran and they're continuing support for terrorism, north korea, russia, china, cyberattacks. i mean this is a -- this is a dangerous world and it demands very strong u.s. leadership to be able -- >> and u.s. policies have actually created. >> i don't think that's helpful. let's secretary panetta finish. >> okay. okay. i think you should let secretary panetta finish, please. >> [ inaudible ]. [ boos ] >> wow. >> okay. please. okay. i would like to add that -- during this mayhem i would completely -- okay. wow. >> oh, my gosh. [ shouting in background ] >> okay. >> welcome to a congressional hearing. [ applause ] >> and i would like to say i completely forgot, i completely forgot which was my intent to introduce for secretary panetta who once asked -- is there any chance that people will be quiet? okay. he served this country as secretary of defense and director of the cia so i think that gives his views -- oh, my goodness. any way. i think that gives his views added -- a great, you know, great scope and it's fascinating to hear what he has to say about the crisis of our day. if members of our audience would be so kind to just let him speak which is apparently quite difficult. okay. leon. >> should we try again? >> yes. >> so it obviously is a challenging time for u.s. leadership because of these danger points and we're seeing that with north korea. north korea has been a difficult challenge for a very long time and it's been a rogue nation and obviously a nation where we've been extremely concerned about their ability to develop nuclear weapons and an icbm, which they seem to be making great progress on and i think according to intelligence analysis we're probably looking at not that many months before they, in fact, develop both an icbm capability and a miniaturized nuclear weapon that could be placed on top of an icbm, so the issue then becomes how do we -- how do we confront this challenge to our national security? the reality is that there have been military plans that have been developed over the years to try to confront north korea. the bottom line is that none of those are very good options because of the consequences and the concern that ultimately it could lead not only to many lives, thousands of lives that are lost in south korea, but also could lead ultimately to a nuclear war. and so for that reason, you know, the issue has always been how do you try to engage north korea and obviously the effort has been made to try to put pressure on china because china is the one country that has large influence in north korea to try to get them to try to deal with north korea and get them to negotiate. that is not proven very effective, so what are we left with? i think in the end the united states has to implement a policy of containment and deterrence, which is the approach we've been taking, but i think that in some ways that noose of containment, deterrence has to be tightened. i think we have to obviously increase our military presence and strength in the region, we have to increase our navy presence. we have to continue to support and develop the security of south korea as well as japan. we need to develop a missile shield and effective missile shield that can bring these missiles down in south korea, in japan, obviously in our country in terms of the threat of icbms. we need to continue to toughen sanctions and i do think that if china is willing to restrict oil shipments and deal with some of the other commercial areas that they deal with in north korea, that it can have an impact on the north korean economy. so tightening up those sanctions and then at the same time working with our allies, working with china, try to see if we can't work toward some kind of negotiations with north korea. this is not going to be easy and we've experienced that, but i think we need to push as hard as we can on the policy of deterrence and containment and try to put as much as pressure on north korea as possible, recognizing that if something were to happen we have to be prepared to obviously confront that. and also i might mention developing both our overt and covert capabilities to try to deal with their efforts to try to develop a larger and more effective missile system. >> how do you think the administration is doing in dealing with north korea? >> i think -- you know, the concern is that there's been this exchange of rhetoric between president trump and the north korean leader. the concern i have is when you ratchet up the rhetoric between fire and fury and destroying the united states, et cetera. what it does is it increases the tension level in korea and you have to imagine there are forces, we have 25,000 troops in south korea along with the south korean security force, the north koreans obviously have forces that are deployed along the border and, you know, they're in a situation where because of the rhetoric, the tension has risen a great deal and with that tension is the concern about a miscalculation or a mistake that will ultimately escalate into a greater conflict and so my concern right now is that it would be far better to lower the volume of rhetoric and focus on developing both our strength and capacity in the region, developing better containment, developing better deterrence and trying to deal with sanctions that can really have an impact on north korea and impact on their economy. the main reason we ultimately brought iran to the negotiating table was because of worldwide sanctions that were put in place against iran. i think we have to think in the same way about doing that to north korea. >> so speaking of iran, do you feel that president trump's threat last week to not certify the iran bill was a mistake and what did you think of his reasoning, his basically saying that iran was not complying with the accord, that it was behaving very aggressively, that it was restrictsing navigation, et cetera? >> yeah. in foreign policy, in defense policy, in many ways your word counts for a lot. and when you tell somebody that you're going to do something, if you fail to stick to your word, it sends pay clear message to others that as a result of that you cannot trust america as a partner. in many ways we experienced that when president obama made the commitment on chemical attacks in syria with assad, that if those chemical attacks took place we would take action and when those chemical attacks did take place and many were lost as a result of that, the failure to actually take action at that point sent a message that we would not stand by the word on the red line and i think that had an impact in terms of credibility of the united states and the world. i think the same thing's happening now with the failure to abide by our word on the agreement. obviously there are a lot of concerns about the nuclear agreement. the failure to deal with these other issues support for terrorism, missile development, promotion of instability in the region, et cetera, but an agreement was arrived at by the united states along with our allies and it was signed into place and up to this point, the agreement dealing with the nuclear site even though temporary is one that all of those have been involved in the inspection process have said that from the inspection point of view iran is technically abiding by that agreement and, you know, we can raise a lot of concerns about other elements there, but at least with regards to the development of a nuclear weapon they have abided by that agreement. i think -- i think as a result of that we ought to continue to enforce that agreement. and i think congress, you know, can add obviously this issue has now been thrown to congress. i'm a little concerned about that because congress is having a hard time sometimes finding its wa its way to the bathroom much less dealing with areas that frankly the commander in chief, as someone who ought to direct foreign policy under our system of government that i think far better for the administration for the president to deal with these issues but since it has now been thrown to the congress then i think congress should hopefully develop a way to increase the enforcement of that agreement, tie sanctions to the enforcement of it, try to -- probably make some other recommendations about trying to take these provisions and make them permanent as opposed to temporary and some other steps with regards to inspection. but -- but in the end to make clear that we're going to continue to enforce that agreement -- >> well, we're still without light but not very much light. thank you again for coming today, thank you for staying today. i'm sure that the remainder of the conference will be extremely interesting. it will consist of two parts, the interview of mr. bannon by hussein alkoni and closing remarks by hussein and we'll wrap it all up and explain everything that's happened today and where we should go from there. but throughout the day you've seen my old friend and dear colleague up here, but he hasn't been properly introduced. let me say just a few words about hussein. he is currently a senior fellow at the hudson institute. he has been the ambassador of pakistan to the united states. he's a very knowledge man about the affairs of the middle east, south and central asia, a very wise man in his judgment and also very brave man and he's often had need of that courage to -- because he's occasionally has himself in rather unfortunate circumstances. the trunks of cars of secret service people in pakistan, house arrest in pakistan while he was still serving as ambassador and throughout that he has kept a remarkable degree of -- he's certainly entitled to anger but he didn't let that cloud his judgments. it's a great pleasure to introduce to you in a formal way ambassador hussein al-qwani. >> good afternoon. if you belong to the left of the political persuasion you might say that this is appropriate because the forces of darkness are up here and if you have a different perspective, you would say that there is some sort of illumination in the light on this stage. in the absence of light. [ applause ] now we've had a full day today. we have had -- we have heard many voices, we have had several speakers. we have had several banners. we have had heard from republicans, democrats, senior retired officials, generals, two excia directors and so the last thing that you needed we thought was an exiled talking to an insurgent. i don't think i need to introduce mr. steve bannon. he is the former white house strategist and the executive chairman of breitbart news. he has interesting things to say even for those who do not agree with him and it's important for us to hear his perspective. any attempt at trying to introduce him would only get me into greater trouble than is necessary. everybody knows who he is and i welcome him on behalf of the hudson institute to this conference. i would just begin by saying that mr. bannon has identified with the identify of america first and there are those who would say that america first would be more of an isolationist idea. his agreement to come and join us today actually gives us an opening to ask him to share with us some of the ideas that he would say he has about the topic today, which we all know is countering violent extremism, iran and the muslim brotherhood, they all fall within the rubric of the national security requirements of the united states and foreign policy. steve, why don't you start with an opening statement that then sets the pace for us having this conversation. >> thank you very much, ambassador. i'd like to give a quote just to start off. we will reinforce old alliances and form new ones and unite the civilized world against radical islamic terrorist which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth. that was -- that was donald j. trump a few minutes after high noon on january 20th 2017, his inaugural address. we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth radical islamic terrorism. now, there's a lot of confusion or misinformation, fake news, about who wrote that inaugural address. president trump at the time president-elect trump wrote it. steve miller and myself were honored to help him out as were jared kushner, kellyanne conway, jason miller, some other folks as we help maybe crafted or structure it but he wrote it. he particularly -- he wrote that sentence. and i remember -- i think he wrote that line and that part of the speech in back in november/december at mar-a-lago. the first time we talked about it and back in trump tower. steven miller and i and general flynn at the time talked about him -- that's a pretty big check to write, because somebody's going to have to cash it. and he said, this is my obligation to the american people as commander in chief. if you go back in time, president trump strongly believes that the reason that he was on the podium on january 20th and hillary clinton wasn't was that it came down to a decision of the american people of who would be the best commander in chief in a time of war and i think one of the things that president trump and candidate trump at the time remembered is that, we're now fighting -- this is the longest war in the nation's history, in actual combat time it's longer than the revolution, the civil war, world war i and world war ii, if you add it all up in actual time in combat, i think that this is the longest sustained military conflict we've ever had. president trump in his own candidacy from the very beginning when he came down that escalator in trump tower was a repudiation of the elites, the repudiation of the foreign policy establishment, a repudiation of the party at devas, a repudiation of this concept we have of this rules based international order of which the american working class and middle class underwrite with their taxes and more importantly with the blow to their children. i had a little skin in this game back in '79, '80 i was a naval officer on a destroyer in the persian gulf during the original hostage crisis. my daughter's a west point graduate served with 101st air force in iraq after she graduated. she stays in the army. she's army captain. may eventually deploy back. i've had many nephews and cousins and folks like that in my extended family have served in the middle east. in fact, my kid brother's a pilot in '83, '84. these wars have gone on for a long time. president trump and the campaign and particularly when i was able to step in as ceo with kellyanne conway as campaign manager, it was just during the end of the mr. and mrs. kahn's the crisis around the kahn, the gold star family and the death of that hero captain kahn. and the president one of the things we talked about was how you compare and contrast himself with hillary clinton. one of the strongest things she had going for her when she was running was her foreign policy experience. her time on the senate armed services committee, her time as secretary of state, her vast knowledge of all the ins and outs of foreign policy and president trump i think really connected with the american people and he talked about a couple of things, we're at war and i remember at that time when he came down in 2015, we were seeing a rise of isis that was really had caught the world by surprise. isis had done more than anybody, even the muslim brotherhood historically and actually having a physical caliphate, eventually that caliphate was 7 or 8 million people. the ability to have slave markets and recruit from all over the known world including asia and europe, the united states. you also had for the obama administration because of their focus on the nuclear deal, you had an insurgent or resurgent persia, very aggressive on its expansion of iranian expansion and you also had the continual spector of radical islamic terrorist. president trump could not have been more direct and more blunt in what he wanted to accomplish and from the very first day that he won, i remember general flynn at the time what he wanted to do was at the national security council give the power back to the commanders, they would take a more active role in a more aggressive role in the destruction of isis. in addition, he was going to review the iran nuclear deal. remember he said during the campaign. i'm going to try to make that deal better. if we can't i will decertify it, i will terminate it. the one thing i will do is connect their aggression and their behavior to that deal and the third we've got to figure out how to take care of radical islamic terrorism that's not isis related. once he -- once we took office, one of the top things he had jared kushner and myself, then secretary tillerson work on was a summit, was a summit that he wanted to bring the arab world together and to really put i think beyond people that he had run as islam aphobe or that america first didn't mean you wouldn't be actively engaged. i don't know how you look at the arab summit that took place in the muslim summit that took place in may of 2017 -- >> in riyadh. >> the three parts of that, the three component parts of that that were worked on from day one, was to take care of number one, the financing and support of radical islamic groups throughout the world. number two, was to work with the arab world and the muslim world particularly with people like general cc that had that great speech at cairo on new year's day and work with the arab and muslim world about the engagement of islam with madernity and the ability of islam to -- islamic world reforming certain aspects of its religion as faith that led to certain parts of this radicalization. and the third was to really start to have a serious conversation about what type of military alliance, what had to happen to stop iran's expansion, persia expansion in this arc across from iran to the sea, through the capitals of baghdad and damascus and bay route and what was happening on the yemen with this peninsulaer move. what's happened in seven or eight or nine months, we've -- president trump has accomplished something that i think people would have mocked and laughed at him in the campaign. raqqa fell the other day. the physical destruction of the isis caliphate which shocked the world on its rapid rise and i think put the world back on its heels, how can this kind of group of young people with a couple of spiritual leaders in the call to arms they had from that 900-year-old mosque in mosul, how can they have an economic in mosul and a spiritual capital in raqqa. in and 8 million people that can be taxed. it was breathtaking. the whole world kind of backed off. in 8 months of president trump's strategy executed by general mattis and that strategy was not a war of attrition. it was very specific from day one, this will be a war of annihilation. he will physically annihilate the caliphate and that's what's been accomplished. if you look at the summit, the second part of it is that they went into the summit, we went into the summit with uae and saudi arabia and others and the number one thing was we must take care of this financing of radical islam and there can be no more -- president trump says no more games. you can't have it both ways. you can't say you're a friend and ally and on the other side be funding the muslim brotherhood and hamas or being open to iran and particularly iran's aggressive war-like posture to the united states and to the west and other islamic countries and that you can no longer have it both ways. i think that it's not, you know, the summit came. i think president trump's speech at the summit was one of the great speeches of any political leader in the united states has ever given. i think it put to bed or should have put to bed that president trump was an islam phobia or somehow his administration or people who work for him, particularly the deplorables, the people that voted for him, did not want an active engagement with the islamic world, understanding as partners that we had to take care of -- we would have to go through this time together and as partners we would come out on the other side and the world would be a safer and morroe robust place. i don't think it's by happenstance that two weeks after that summit that you saw the blockade by the united arab emirates in bahrain, egypt and the kingdom of saudi arabia on qatar. i've said from day one that even with the situation in the northwest pacific with korea, i think the single most important thing that's happening right now in the world is the situation in qatar. >> okay, there are three or four things that you said that need a little more elaboration. the first which i think is a positive, you made it clear that the trump administration and those who were instrumental in bringing president trump to the white house are not islam phobic and they want to engage with the islamic world but they want to do it in a different way. that needs elaboration because that's quite contrary to the way things are perceived. the second thing that needs a little more clarification is you make it seem that the last ten months have represented a major clearly thought out step-by-step approach to the problem and you give credit to the trump administration for the success of the iraqi military and the kurdish militias in relation to the islamic state, and there are people who would attack that or criticize that or say that that's not true. so i would like you to kind of make the next point which is, why do you think that what has happened is actually the result of policy and not the result of developments within the region. and the third is, the qatar question. it seems that the american policy has been two steps forward and then two steps backward again. is it really the change that you said it was or is there something else happening in the administration that you decided not to share with us in that initial statement? >> let's take the first. i think that number one, this whole thing of america first being isolationist or us against the world, i think it's total nonsense. he looks at the world in a different way. it's very walter russell meade would say jacksonen. i think president trump looks at things in a jacksonen that what's in the vital national security interest of the united states is what you should commit to. in those areas of the world where it's in the vital national security interest of the united states you will have partners that will be in their vital national security interest also and that you work, whether it's the northwest pacific or japan in south korea or the gulf with people like the uae and saudi arabia and egypt and bahrain. so i think that there's a tremendous thing of engagement. i don't think there's anything president trump has done in this administration that makes us look isolationist at all. i think he doesn't want to get into these kind of arrangements like tpp and others where we're just another person at the table, another entity at the table and not something that we know it's in our vital national security interest. as far as being islamophobic, i would talk to our allies in the region. i would talk to egypt, the uae, saudi arabia. i don't think anyone's given the now crown prince more support and vision 2030 which is a complete not just reorientation but almost a restructuring of their economy and eventually their society, which i think they've made tremendous slides. a lot of people say it's a very imperfect plan but you have to understand they're trying to do something in 10 or 20 years that spent centuries building up. i don't think anybody's been more supportive and i take that exactly from the quotes of when we had the summit, what the king said, the crown prince, what many leaders of saudi arabia said. also at the uae, if you talk to these individuals and they talk to the media all the time, is that for many years of actually the obama administration being disengag disengaged, that president trump has leaned into this in every aspect of it. now, about the developments or the structure of isis, that's another thing. certainly it was done with allies. it was done with most of the troops in iraq that eventually went and took mosul, kurdish groups in raqqah. i think that's once again to what president trump's trying to get across. it's not going to be america that has to lead here. it is our local -- when it's in the vital national security interest of the united states it's going to be in the vital national security interest of other people and you have to show their support and you have to show their -- you have to show that you're not just financial support, military support, political support. it shouldn't be lost on people that the extreme vetting, what's called the travel ban, the difference -- the fundamental difference between the first and the second, one of them was iraq came off and that was after further discussion, further analysis and further state department involvement. it was derived that iraq should go back on there. one was because of the fight against isis, what they were doing. it was also what they had done to make sure that people were fully vetted before they came to the united states. so that's the second question. your third question was? >> the third question was about qatar. is it a two step forward, two step backward approach? >> yes. >> there seems to have been a step backward after riyadh. >> look, there is -- president trump, one of the reasons he's president of the united states, one of the reasons he's president and hillary clinton is not is i do believe that there was a fundamental rejection by the american people of much of what the foreign policy establishment of both political parties have stood for, kind of this -- we had talked before, davos man or the consensus of american foreign policy, how it devolved that we're in the middle east and the blood and treasure that we've left and in the same situation, why have we not focused on the rise of china. i think the working class and middle class people in this country are looking at the taxes we pay, they're looking at the trillions of dollars spent, the veterans that come home that have ptsd, they're looking at section 60 at arlington national cemetery, the young men and women that have died that we've buried there and looked at trillions of dollars and i think it was rejection. so with president trump it was let's try to bring these wars to some sort of culmination. and victory matters. president trump is not a quitter. he's certainly not a loser and the american people are not either. it's not just the cost of being there. we understand that these things have to be done. now, i do believe there's aspects of the foreign policy community that are quite inextricably linked that don't share points of view. i fundamentally believe that particularly in qatar and particularly after the summit, the muslim summit, it was looked as an opportunity to be seized instead of a crises to be managed in that qatar finally had to be called to account for their continual funding of the muslim brotherhood, the continual funding of hamas and their engagement with both iran and quite frankly turkey in the gulf. i think it was pretty -- if you look at people on our side -- and i realize i at the time in setting up the summit, i'm not a foreign policy expert by far but i took a very hard line in that. i thought the uae and the egyptians and the king of saudi arabia had a well thought plan. i thought they were going to bring the financing of radical islamic terrorism, that it has to be cut off 100% and if you cut off the funding, you cut off support. we can have a chance to eradicate it from the earth. >> but it's not being fully implemented. >> there's two things on engagement. i have tremendous respect for rex tillerson. i was one of the people who was most aggressive of trying to get him into the administration at the time. i think there's a fundamental -- and i want to make sure that everybody and i'm sure they've gone through it earlier today but one of the things that was most, i think people came down on two sides of were the original 12 demands that were put out. i think these demands are, quite frankly, pretty straight forward. the uae and egypt and saudi arabia didn't say the demands had to be met. what they said is that these are what the framework has to be for discussion. let's go through those demands. number one, that qatar will curb diplomatic ties with iran and close diplomatic missions there. number two, that it will sever all ties to terrorist organizations, specifically the muslim brotherhood, the islamic state, al qaeda, and he is bozb and formally degr lly designate terrorist groups. they will also shutdown outlets that qatar funds directly or indirectly. they will stop all means of funding for individuals, groups or organizations designated as terrorists by saudi arabia, bahrain, the u.s. they will hand over terrorist figures. stop all contacts with political opposition. mem roranda of understanding i believe it was party to. now, i realize some people think that's over the top and some people think that qatar would give up its foreign policy. i don't say that i agree with maybe all of those but i do agree that i thought that was a pretty good construct of which to sit down and i believe it's a construct today. i believe it's well within the rights of people that we agreed at that summit, there was an agreement that there was going to be an effort to have a 100% you cutoff of the funding of radical islamic terrorism and i believe our allies in that region, uae, egypt, and saudi arabia not only agreed to that, they were the drivers of that. >> and you think that they are as drivers implementing it firmly whereas not implementing the mechanisms that will stop terrorist financing? >> what do you mean? >> saudi arabia, uae, you think that they are no longer doing anything that can be construed as supporting any radical islamic groups. we know that the uae runs a major anti-extremism effort. but there are people who say that other countries in the region have not firmly -- >> let's talk about the kingdom of saudi arabia. they're just as bad. look at the tech tonic plate shifts we've had from the summit. this is why i don't think it's fair to president trump and i'm not here as an apologist. i'm here as a guy that's a veteran -- >> maybe his advocate, not apologist. >> okay, i am his advocate but also a parent and a veteran and a taxpayer and a citizen. what's been accomplished in a very short period of time to me is amazing. i don't think he's gotten the credit for the summit because i think the summit was incredibly important. i think it was important in the muslim world. it was important in the arab world. i think it was important to show that the united states was fully engaged, it wasn't a bunch of happy talk and action was going to take place from that. if you look at saudi arabia, they've had a pretty big fundamental change since that summit. the deputy crown prince is now the crown prince. two weeks ago there were 1,000 clerics rounded up or somehow put under house arrest or whatever. i realized that the opposition party of the "new york times" refers to most of them as liberal scholars. i would respectfully submit if you flip through an intelligence report or two -- >> i would have to stand up for "the new york times." they're not the opposition party. they're people that disagree with you, just as you disagree with them, right? >> i could not disagree more. that's a debate for another time. but i think there's been huge changes in saudi arabia. >> i was also just joking. >> i think saudi arabia, i think people realize that there are definite issues with other countries. i think they're making an effort but it's nowhere near of what qatar, its active involvement with that and also i would say that qatar has run an influence operation here since this all came about. they spent millions of dollars to try to change the opinion of congressmen and thinkers and think tanks and the elites in this city. >> they had a story today that said that you are being paid by one of the other gulf countries to influence opinion the same way. so -- >> okay, that's a company i have nothing to do with. >> okay. >> hang on. it's a good point. there are companies that have some sort of financial relationship. i have nothing to do with those guys. understand how the qataries are trying to throw that up to chop block me before i come. by the way, that's fair play in this thing. however, i think they're both missing the point. the one that came out in the article of me today and the other influence operation is that the american people can't be fooled about this. the american people, i think this is one of the powers of president trump, the power of him as a candidate, he can connect to the american working class and american middle class in a very plain spoken vernacular. i'm a huge believer in the common sense and decency in judgment of what we call the common man. that's why i'm a populist. i'd rather depend upon their judgment. in fact, you know, we were in fair hope, alabama a couple of weeks ago in an old barn with a sawdust floor. i said at the time i would take the first 100 people who came to that rally than the top 100 partners at goldman sachs. i'd want to reiterate that i would take the top 100 for foreign policy than the first 100 at davos. those people are not going to be convinced that qatar continues to finance the muslim brotherhood of hamas and being in bed with iran is a good thing. >> we're towards the end of the session. general petraeus this morning said that you can't just use force operations and drones to get rid of the problem of radical islamic extremism and terrorism, that this may actually being a multi-generational issue and that the same may apply to the containment of iran. how would you describe your views on the comprehensive approach that is needed to both sunni extremism represented by groups like al qaeda and isis, et cetera, and the muslim brotherhood and shia extremism that is represented by the clerical regime in iran. what would be your multi-generational approach, and how would it differ from what you call the establishment? >> number one, i think it shows in afghanistan is that we say multi-generational approach, there's nobody in the united states that wants to be engaged in combat operations, special forces operations, drone operations multi-generational. i just think that's just not where the american people are. it's not the way our country was founded or formed. i think that the summit, i think that's what's so important about the way president trump structured the summit and what he wanted to accomplish. we're prepared to be allies. what we don't want is these countries to be protect erns. there's a big difference. that's why i think the action against qatar was so important. that's what i keep telling people all the time that actually what's happening in qatar is every bit as important as what's happening in north korea. in qatar all the themes come out. i think it's very important in our allies, in egypt, the uae, saudi arabia understand that we're there for them but it's not our fight. it's your fight. if you're going to reform islam and bring it into ma dernt, that's a huge civilizational and cultural aspect and it's yours. we're there to be an ally. we're there to be a partner if we're needed. we don't look at it as multi-generational that we're going to have combat troops. that's why i was so adamantly opposed to what happened in afghanistan. by the way, you should know president trump, president trump, we took six months to make the decision. president trump weighed every decision because he believes every american life and taxpayer dollar is important. what i disagree in afghanistan, i believe we've tried to impose our values. i believe we're trying to impose a liberal democratic system on a society that clearly to me doesn't seem to want it, which i think is fine. we should not be -- and i think this is america first. we're not looking to transform the world into our values. i think the world has got to come to its own conclusions, right, how it wants to govern themselves. hopefully they'll see in the example that we have in our own country that, hey, maybe there are things in the american system, maybe there's things with the american people, things with democracy that they will take. so i do agree with general petraeus that you have to have a more total approach. i disagree with the fact, particularly general petraeus and some others that looked at this assanation bui nation buil. we have to build america. if having the robust nature to be able to partner with people like uae and the kingdom of saudi arabia, bahrain and egypt as they go through this massive change, we'll be there. not trying to impose our way of life and our beliefs on other people. >> so you would not have any role whatsoever or any actions that would imply trying to remake the world in america's image. you want to accept the world as it is, and yet try and interact with the rest of the world with american values and let them pick their own? >> well, american values are from america. i know that we have certain universal beliefs. i think that you have to show the world how you implement those beliefs and execute upon them and if they want to emulate them, they can emulate them but we continue force it. these societies are thousands of years old. honestly i think we've missed the plot here because the geniuses in the foreign policy elite, what they left on president trump is essentially the bay of pigs in venezuela, the cuban missile crises in korea, and the vietnam war in afghanistan. all at one time. president trump didn't do this. the deplorables that voted for president trump didn't do this. this is the geniuses of both political parties. both political parties delivered this upon us. in addition, besides what they've allowed to occur in the middle east, of which now president trump is trying to work with partners to try to pick up the pieces and to bring some stability and some safety to the region, we see the rise of china. president xi said it's going to have massive implications for the united states and the world. president trump didn't do that. that's all the geniuses that -- by the way, last week in a span of i think 24 hours we had the speech of president xi, the speech of president bush and the speech of senator mccain. i would respectfully submit that president xi's speech was an adult speech to adults and that president bush and president mccain's speech was pab lum and the reality is what donald trump has done in that summit and what he promised the american people on inaugural day and what he's implementing every day as he works with his tremendous team to try and implement this. >> the foreign policy elite that asked me to interview you today told me that when you start talking about issues other than those that relate to this conference i should bring it to an end so i'm going to bring it to an end right now. steve bannon, thank you for doing this. it was a pleasure. >> thank you, ambassador. [ applause ] ladies and gentlemen, we are at the end of our day-long deliberations that focused on how qatar, iran and the muslim brotherhood affect violent extremism and how the united states might respond. we have heard several voices from high level officials during the bush, obama and trump administrations, noted experts on particular terrorism-related subjects and concerned members of congress. i think there is consensus that the problem of radical political islam is here to stay with us. the apparent recent success against islamic state in iraq and syria marked by defeat in its capital, raqqah, should not result in hubris or complacency. in trying to recreate an islamic state of caliphate modelled on the earliest year of islam, radical islamists try inspiration from 14th century islamic history. there have been various movements involving various degrees of violence and a challenge to the global order of the time. radical slammism has been defeated in one region only to raise its head elsewhere. just as textremist forces in th muslim world will try and resuss state themselves in another form, another theatre. if al qaeda was jihad 1.0 in our era and isis was jihad 2.0, we should now start preparing ourselves for jihad 3.0. muslims who consider islam as a religion and not a political ideology and who seek to pursue personal piety and not conquests are important partners for the united states in the struggle against violent extremist ideologies. the notion of a mon lengthic islam is integral. the battle with islam runs the risk of giving extremists all the people who consider themselves muslims. 1.6 billion people. islam means different things to different people and has been practiced differently by different sects, orders and denominations in different places and times. the muslim brotherhood is the most significant of several transnational movements within the muslim world. they have mixed religion, politics and violence throughout their history and are patterned on an inverted communist movement. during the according war, the united states and other western governments embraced the muslim brotherhood as anti-communists, allowing them to gain a foothold among pledging muslim communities in the west. most muslim radicals today trace their origins to the brotherhood or its offshoots. then is the matter of qatar, an oil rich state that has become the muslim brotherhood's biggest financial and political supporter. at a time when other arab countries are trying to margi l allize and stop its activities, qatar's role is disturbing. qatar has a population of only 313,000 people. its ambitious rulers want to support extremist groups and threaten their neighbors with extremist idealogical influence. it is almost as if luxemburg after finding enormous wealth tried to destabilize all of europe by supporting nazis and communists when all european nations acted together to defeat them. an issue on which the u.s. government must evolve a realistic policy that is different from the past. then there is iran, a shia trying to revive sectarian conflicts throughout the muslim world. most americans are aware of the threat that iran poses to global order, but there are still some who think that agreements with iran rather than containment is the better policy. qatar and iran are working in tand tandem, especially in the gulf region. their sectarian differences do not seem to stop them from working together to threaten others. part of the mix now is president erdogan whose desire to be elected has undermined turkey's stature as the model muslim majority secular state. we hope that deliberations in our conference today helped inform policy makers and the public on current realities, future risks and potential american policy responses. thank you all for attending on behalf of hudson institute. i thank you all and thank all our speakers and announce the end of today's conference. thank you. [ applause ] later the media and the trump administration. white house press secretary sarah sanders joins a discussion with white house correspondents from fox news, cnn and "the new york times." live right here on c-span 3 at 7:00 eastern or watch online at c-span.org. or listen on the free c-span radio app. tonight on the communicators, russia's involvement in the 2016 election with senior reporter julie a angwin. >> facebook said they learned that a number of ads were placed by by russians under anonymous accounts. political divisive ads not necessarily aimed at one candidate or another but aimed at sewing divisiveness on some charged topics. >> watch the communicators tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span 2. the c-span bus is traveling across the country on our 50 capitals tour. we recently stopped in frankfurt, kentucky asking folks what's the most important issue in their state. >> hi, my name is gerald. i live here in frankfurt, kentucky. one of the more important issues that's going on in kentucky right now is public pensions. legislators are getting ready to call a special session to try to fund our pensions. it's very important to all of the public sector workers and all of their families. we have a coalition called the kentucky public pension coalition which includes firefighters, police officers, state workers, retired state workers and various other members that have joined us and are partnering with us. it is very important and our coalition is trying to fight and make sure that the legislators here in kentucky do the right thing and find a funding source for our pension. >> my name is jerry freeman and one of the biggest issues of this state is the drug problem. even in rural kentucky the drug problem is rampant, so that's definitely one of the biggest issues. >> hi, my name is dee dee and i

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