 So what I want to do is give you a frame problem about terrorism, then try to give you a few arguments to convince you that the frame problem is a worthy problem, and then Bob's going to give you a little history about terrorist movements over the last century or so. And then we're going to try to engage with you in discussing this general frame problem. So let me make a statement which is sort of a personal statement, but helps to inform my view of this frame problem, and that is never before in human history have so few people with so few actual means caused such fear in so many. And I'm going to try to convince you that that is at least partially true. But if you buy into something like that, that the terrorist scare has been, the reaction has been almost hysterical and outsized compared to what the actual threat is. Let me just give you one personal anecdote. Back when I was nine years old in October 1962, my father worked in the defense industry, and he was taken out in the middle of the night actually, and asked to do an assessment whether Phantom Jets armed with spiral missiles could knock down Russian ICBMs launched from Cuba. And his answer was no. After doing the analysis, Phones said he may not come back tonight. Eventually, they let him out, and he came home. And I had heard President Kennedy's speech, and I was very nervous. I remember when another picked me up from school, and I said, mom, the president said there's danger. What's going on? She said wait till your father gets home. I knew that was serious then. And he got home, and he was a World War II veteran. He was visibly shaken, and he said only about 20% chance on that there will be an atomic war. That was pretty much the common view among people in the know at the time. That is, there was a 20% chance that the next day would never come, that our world as we know it would disappear from the face of the earth. Now that is an existential threat. What these people can do is not remotely anything like that. Well, I was having dinner the other day with somebody who is fairly close to the administration and the president, and we're talking about the threat. And he said, all right. The president may agree with you that the response to Islamic terrorism has been overplayed and that the threat to the United States does not merit the continued outsized reaction. So here's my question to you, and here's my question to you. What do you advise the president to do to change political and public perception into something more in line with what you and perhaps he may believe? It obviously can't be a sudden thing, but will require a number of small steps whose accumulation and collective weight may finally change the political landscape. Into this, you have to figure that some people, important people, sincerely believe the threat is as serious as they think. Others perversely play up the threat for political gain. But somehow, both groups have to be convinced or outmaneuvered to change their attitudes as well. And I sort of see it as in any large and important policy change in our country as trying to turn an aircraft carrier in a very small port. Slowly, slowly, slowly. Now, the sort of knee-jerk reaction to this by, I guess, the political science community or the public policy community or the political community in general would be, OK, let's give some nice, evidence-based, rational, detailed argument for how to do this. And let me tell you, I don't think that will accomplish anything. Unless you figure the irrational fears, the emotions of revenge, and something that Bob calls the conservation of enmity. That is, you do need some kind of enemy. And what that new enemy might look like is something I'd like us all to discuss. But let me give you some rational, evidence-based arguments for why I think that the problem is the right problem. And this is the hardest problem we face with respect to the terror threat that is convincing our own public that it's not as terrible as it appears to be. There hasn't been a successful attack against the United States since 2001. Almost all cases of uncovered plots have been set up by our intelligence and law enforcement authorities. 80% of all plots, terrorist plots against the West, are homegrown plots with no relationship whatsoever to al-Qaeda or anything having to do with the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier. Of the remaining 20%, al-Qaeda has very little operational handle on anything at all. There are no al-Qaeda, so to speak, in Afghanistan. There are a few left, 100 or so perhaps, the old al-Qaeda, hiding out from predator drones and caves on the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier or in cities like Karachi and perhaps Lahore. The greatest protector of the al-Qaeda movement today, of course, is the Taliban. If the Taliban are primarily interested in their homeland, they always have been, and not ours. There has never been a close connection between al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Before 2001, there wasn't a single Afghan who was ever a member of al-Qaeda. The reason is simple. The Arabs were really not very involved in the Soviet-Afghan War. They were involved in a single battle, the Battle of Jaji, where Bin Laden was a leader. It was a defensive battle that caught the Arabs by surprise. The CIA's AK officer at the time, who was reporting on the battle, didn't even mention that there were any Arabs around. That's it. It's the entire participation of the Arab contingent in the Soviet-Afghan War. And yet, of course, the publicity, especially by the Saudis, that the Arabs had a great role, now there are about three or four million people who have claimed to have been part of that battle, has been, of course, greatly overplayed, and the Saudis themselves take responsibility now for having done that. But the Afghans resented it. And again, the Afghans resented how they were supposed to pray. Now, the Arabs told them they were supposed to pray, and do jihad. In June 2001, June 4th, Arnaud de Borsh-Grav, veteran UPI reporter and editor, interviewed Mullah Almars, the only interview by a Western journalist. And Mullah Almars said that he had prohibited Bin Laden from making fatwas. He had confiscated his cell phone. He had put him under house arrest. And that the Americans, who had accused him of sponsoring the attack against the USS Cole and the embassies in Africa, were invited to be present at a trial. And as soon as they came, that a trial would be held. But they decided never to show up. And he claimed that he had sent letters to the American ambassador, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now, after 9-11, the American administration, very briefly, in the first days, were debating whether this should be treated as an attack against humanity or an attack against the United States. Of course, the world's reaction was it was an attack against humanity. Headlines, for example, in Dumon, which is not known for its pro-American sympathies, the day after 9-11 said, Nusamtus is American. We are all Americans now. But the United States administration decided to treat it basically as an attack against the United States and looked at it through that particular lens. There was very little consultation with the international community who were urging many of them at the time that they talked to the Taliban and convinced the Taliban to give up in Laden just as the Sudanese had given up in Laden in 1996. The Taliban had a meeting, convoked by Mullah Omar, where the majority of the Taliban leaders decided that bin Laden was a troublesome guest and should be disinvited or invited to leave. Before that, the liberation was finished, of course, the United States attacked Afghanistan. Whether he would have been liberated or not, that we don't know, of course. The Taliban fled with their guest to the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. I should mention that the notion of a guest, which has also been ridiculed by our administration in the beginning, is the most sacred value the Taliban and the Pashtun tribes in general have. Why is that so? The reason is if you buy into Habs's theory that without some kind of centralized authority, it will always be a war of all against all, you have to ask yourself, how could a cultural group survive as a functioning society for two millennia without centralized government to speak of? Now, there was a brief time they had centralized government. For instance, in 1504, Babur, the Moghul emperor, who was in Senate both of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan, established his capital in Kabul. But that rapidly devolved. And starting about the beginning of the 18th century until now, it devolved into a completely decentralized form of government. Now, how did the Pashtun tribes, how were they able to resist invaders from Alexander the Great to the British Empire, who they defeated in three wars, mightiest empire in the world, to defeating the Soviets and on the verge of defeating the NATO forces today? And the answer is, through a thick set of customary relationships and a very bellicosed war-life culture. And before I go over to the discussion of our general question, let me just quote from you a statement by a British army missionary in 1906, endorsed by the head of the British army at the time. Waziristan, the country of the Wazirs and the Mechzuds, is severely left alone, provided the tribes do not compel attention and interference by raids into British territory, which are frequently perpetrated by the more lawless spirits. Tribal jealousies and petty wars are inherent, and hence the saying, the Afghans of the frontier are never at peace except when they are at war. For when some enemy from without threatens their independence, then they fight shoulder to shoulder, although even when they are all desirous of joining jihad, they remain suspicious of each other. Mullahs sometimes use the power and influence they possess to rouse the tribes to concerted warfare against the infidels. The more fanatical of these mullahs do not hesitate to incite their pupils, the Taliban, to acts of religious fanaticism, or raza, as it's called. Berazi is a man who has taken an oath to kill some non-Muhammadan, preferably a European, as representing the ruling race, but failing that a Hindu were a Sikh. The mullahs instill in him the idea that in doing so he loses his own life, but he goes at once to paradise, to the gardens which are set apart for religious martyrs. Lord Khorzan, the British vice-foyer of India, who came in 1899 and established the Northwest Frontier provinces as a buffer zone between the Afghan tribes and the Punjab, remarked that the only way to deal with these tribes is to leave them alone as much as possible. For respect for the independence and sentiment of the tribes must be upheld as we are dealing with an enemy habituated to every form and habit of guerrilla warfare, and even if military action is attended with maximum success, no permanent results can ever be attained, while the Afghan frontier would be ablaze from one end to the other, causing an intolerable burden on the empire's finances. So what has changed? Virtually nothing. If you read the Hansar debates, the debates in the House of Lords and the House of Commons, they are almost word for word the debates we are having today. Debates about whether we should have troops increase. Debates of whether British troops are actually holding the provinces. Debates about whether they should improve the status of women. Debates of whether they should improve the infrastructure of Afghanistan. All fairly feudal debates, because in the end the Afghans defeated them in the Third War and they withdrew in 1921. The Pashtun tribes of the Pakistani frontier, that is the federally-administrated territories in the Northwest Frontier provinces, had nothing whatsoever to do either with the Afghan Taliban or with al-Qaeda before 2005. Yet today, they represent one of the great strategic menaces we face in the world, and it is mostly our doing. How did it happen? Well, in addition to the notion of guest, and remember the notion of guest is so important because when you have groups that have no centralized government, how will you ever get a series of negotiations started to make a peace? The only way you can do that is have some kind of protective customs for the potential negotiators. So although personal revenge is as important for the Afghan tribes as virtually everything else, the notion of the guest even takes precedence over revenge. So no matter how many women you may have raped or how many tribesmen you have killed, if you've been accepted as a guest, even temporarily, you are inviolable under penalty of death for you and your entire tribal section. So bin Laden was a guest, and the Americans ridiculed that notion, bombed them into togetherness with the Taliban, and they fled to the Pakistani frontier where they were given sanctuary, another hollow tradition, by their Pashtun brethren on the frontier. Again, who had no love and interest in the Taliban because the Taliban were actually a marginal group of people who had tried to bring order to a lawless Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, and were basically young students or former fighters and people not very much tied into traditional tribal customs. In fact, they were trying to overturn tribal customs and to impose a single sort of political, religious structure on Afghanistan. Again, something that the Bellicose tribes of the Pakistan frontier, the Afridis, the Meccasudes and the Wazirs, basically rejected. What happened was, under United States' assistant, President Musharraf sent troops into Waziristan and riled up the tribes. Now when Muhammad Ali Jinnah established the state of Pakistan, the first thing he did was put into place what he called Operation Kursan named after the viceroy of India, in line with the viceroy's policy. Namely, we will leave the tribes alone to the best of our ability as long as they don't come down raiding into the Punjab. And he promised the tribes that he would never send any army group above the level of a brigade and that any army group that ever entered into the Pashtun territories would only be allowed on 100 meters on each side of the road in order to ensure transportation and free movement of goods and people. That was violated for the first time to any significant degree by the offensive undertaken at the behest of the United States. And of course, what happened? The Pashtun tribes got thoroughly pissed off. Now they are a true strategic threat because they have decided to attack the Pakistani state which they believe now is a lackey of the United States and has violated the terms of the agreement that has held up ever since the end of the 19th century. They have attacked for the first time nuclear facilities. Remember, because the great enemy of Pakistan is India, all of the nuclear facilities are as far from the Eastern frontier as possible. That means they're very close to the Northwestern frontier where the rebellious Pashtun tribes are and they have targeted nuclear facilities. It also should be remembered there is no such group as the Taliban, so to speak. There is no Taliban central. The Kettashura, who are beholden to Mullah Omar, the vestiges of the old Afghan Taliban have very little sway actually on the field. And this is a result of the paradox of United States success and failure. The United States success is that having started large-scale offenses with the surge, they have knocked off killed many of the old Taliban leaders. Some of these people have been fighting since the Soviet times for 30 years. What's happened is that young leaders straight out of the rural poor madrasas with no history and no education, so to speak, have taken on mid-level command. The average age of a Taliban commander over the last three years has dropped from about 35 to less than 24. And these younger Taliban are much less likely to want to talk, to negotiate, and to accept even the idea that anything short of the defeat of the United States and its allies will lead to a peace. This is not the position of the old Taliban. Between 2004 and 2001, when there were only 20,000 NATO and US troops in Afghanistan, there were only 10 roadside attacks and suicide bombings. The more NATO and the United States ratcheted up troops, the more attacks there were. By 2008, it had increased from 10 attacks to 3,200 attacks. It has increased steadily ever since. In 2010, there were three times more, there were more attacks than in the three previous years combined. And things are getting worse. In 2001 and 2004, the Taliban were only in the southern provinces, four southern provinces. They are today in all the provinces of Afghanistan. In 2001 and 2004, the Taliban were restricted to the Pashtun tribes. Today Uzbeks, Tajiks, and even Hazara have joined the Taliban. You have London cab drivers, groups of London cab drivers going to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban during the fighting season and coming back to London to drive their cabs in the winter season. The Taliban and its insurgency are keeping al-Qaeda alive. Now the Taliban relationship with al-Qaeda is to say the least one of convenience only. The closest allies of al-Qaeda today among the Taliban are the Haqqani fighters who don't even really call themselves Taliban. The Haqqani Jalalud, Jalaluddin Haqqani, the leader, the old leader of the Taliban, was once called by Congressman Charlie Wilson, you all remember Charlie Wilson's work, goodness personified when he was fighting the Soviets. Now of course he is evil personified. But if you look at the history of relationships between the United States and say the Haqqani and the Karzai government, you find that they have been talking the entire time. The Karzai people have been talking with the Haqqani people and paradoxically the Haqqani people have helped save Karzai's life on numerous occasions. When Karzai first came in to Afghanistan after the United States invasion, it was Mullah Baradar, a Taliban who saved his life. Why? Because he was a member of the same tribe as Karzai, the Baltic. And he negotiated relationships with the Haqqani. The way Afghan society works is not only through these customs that I describe, the guest and sanctuary and revenge, which are commonly called Pashtun Wali, but through a set of very, very complex and intricate ties of friendship, patronage and family, which they call Andi Wali. And it is through Andi Wali that the future of Afghan society depends. As I said, there were negotiations through these Andi Wali ties between the Karzai government and the Kani government ever since Karzai came into power. Now back in 2005, so someone from the National Security Council administration at the time told me that the United States was very interested in these negotiations. They asked the Karzai government to ask the Haqqani to give up al-Qaeda and in exchange there would be a show of goodwill. The Haqqani's asked the United, well asked the Karzai government what would be the show of goodwill. And the United States said, we would withdraw some of our troops from Haqqani territory, to which the Haqqani responded, well, if you slit Karzai's throat, then we'll reduce our attacks by about 10%. How's that for a show of good faith? Well, in fact, there was a show of no good faith on either side, because of course the Haqqani's felt that it was the United States pulling the streams which they were doing. Lord West, the first sea lord and principal security advisor to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown until May of last year told me a couple of weeks ago as we were sitting together that the only way there will be peace in Afghanistan is if the United States talks to the Taliban because they will not defeat them militarily and the United States is not ready to talk to the Taliban because some of your military leaders still believe you can win this with a military victory and nobody, but nobody believes that except for some American military leaders. I believe that the Taliban are ultimately our best ally in destroying Al Qaeda. Why? Because Al Qaeda again has almost ceased to exist as a group with operational command and control. They are a viral movement and they are infecting areas that were not infected really before including Yemen and Somalia and the Maghreb. And they exist solely for two reasons because the Taliban harbor a core which gives a symbolic presence and seat to this viral movement and through publicity which is the ultimate oxygen of terrorism. It is publicity which makes terrorism a hysterical threat to the world today. Again, there hasn't been a single successful attack against the United States since 2001. There has not been a single Al Qaeda directed attack that has been successful against the West since 2001 except for a very indirect tie with the London Underground bombers who paid themselves to get to Waziristan for training. Al Qaeda training camps have devolved. They were once formidable. Now if you go up the biggest training camps in places like Mir Ali consist of about 24 people with a single trainer, sometimes an assistant trainer and if you look at the Christmas Day crotch bomber or the Fizzle firecracker bomber in Times Square you see how effective that training is. Again, it's not Russian ICBMs. Again, 80% of the attacks against the West are homegrown attacks and they have very little to do with Al Qaeda. Operationally, nothing whatsoever to do with Al Qaeda. So if we can, if the Taliban believe that Al Qaeda is a bigger headache to them than we are they will get rid of Al Qaeda themselves. Just like when the Taliban believed that we were their best buddies, they embraced us and we embraced them but the moment they thought that we were a headache they were willing to oppose us with everything they have and they will continue to do so. So tone down the publicity in hysteria, try to engage the Taliban and on a long leash and get them to acknowledge which they would probably do in a heartbeat that Al Qaeda is potentially in the long run a greater headache to them than we are. Now this may seem counterintuitive but because they share a lot of the ideological presumptions yes they do but so what? I have interviewed suicide bombers, failed suicide bombers, would be suicide bombers, friends of suicide bombers and failed and families of suicide bombers from Sulawesi which is sort of like the jihadi capital of the world. It's between Borneo and New Guinea believe it or not but there are about 40 Lashkar's Muslim militia there finding everybody under the sun but especially local Christians to Morocco where I interviewed the families of the Madrid bombers for example and what I found is that once people lock in to martyrdom, the only groups I have ever seen that have successfully drawn them away from it are Salafi groups, why? Because Salafi group is a little bit like fundamentalism and white supremacism. You can't call all these people Salafis and say that we have to defeat Salafism that's like saying we have to defeat Christian fundamentalism in order to get rid of white supremacism. Well to tell you the truth there are maybe 60, 70 from Christian fundamentalists in our country and hundreds of million fundamentalists on the world. You're not gonna destroy Christian fundamentalism any more than you're gonna destroy Salafis. But the Salafis themselves can bring these people into their fold yet rather than encourage that what we're saying to our leaders across the world and I find this especially in Europe where I live let's preach the true word of Islam and moderate Islam and then I'll end on this that won't succeed for two simple reasons. People go into Jihad because it is thrilling, it is glorious, it is adventurous and it gives meaning to people's lives. Glory and adventure and thrills and that sense of sacrifice is probably what got our tribes out of the caves led to the rise of civilizations and is what moves people much more in life than I think economic rationality does. And these people truly believe these young people that they will get great significance in life. So preaching them moderation is like trying to tell your children for those of you who have children be moderate to your choice of boyfriends and your choice of carriers and you're likely not to succeed at all. Second thing is give them hopes and dreams. So I did a survey in the Jamama's walk where five of the seven Madrid train bombers who blew themselves up came from and a dozen who sacrificed themselves in Iraq as martyrs and I asked them who their heroes were. The older kids of course said Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. They were pulling my leg of course, but the young ones don't lie and the young ones, the first one they said, number one hero, Ronaldinho, soccer player from the Barça team, that's the class soccer team around the world. They actually pay UNICEF to put their shirts on, don't accept advertising. Number two hero, the Terminator. Had no idea he was related to the president governor of California. Recently. Recently, that's right. Third hero, Asma Bin Laden. I went back on November 15th, 2009, a week after Obama's election, and I did the same poll. Number one hero, Ty between Sergio Morales, the striker of Real Madrid, that's the big rival of Barça and Etto, the Cameroonian striker of Barça. Number two, Terminator two. Number three, just beating out Asma Bin Laden was Barack Obama. Now what's that telling us? That's telling us that these young people, the future jihadis are at a crossroads in their lives. They're searching for some meaning. And when I asked them what they wanna be, this is what these people in these poor neighborhoods tell me. The first guy told me, I wanna be an archeologist. I said, why do you wanna be an archeologist? To find treasure, you know, to find out our history, who we are, where we come from. He was eight years old, okay? Second kid I asked, what do you wanna be? I wanna be a doctor. I wanna be a brain surgeon. I wanna know what happens in people's minds and why they do the things they do. So these kids, these same kids are telling me that they're almost at a crossroads between Barack Obama and Asma Bin Laden. Between yes we can, or the Republican equivalent, whatever that could possibly be, and happiness is margin. And what's gonna get them to move one way or the other? I think that's the greatest challenge, political challenge facing us. And I'll end with a sort of a speech that Abraham Lincoln gave during the height of the Civil War when he was talking about the Southern rebels as human beings just like any others. And a woman, a staunch unionist, uprated him for speaking kindly of his enemies when he should have been thinking only of destroying them. And he said, madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends? I think how to, there are two ways to win wars. You can exterminate your enemies or you can turn them into your friends. Those are the only ways to definitively win wars. And I think that is the greatest political challenge we face without having to invoke another enemy, and that may be impossible, as when Reagan said to Mr. Gorbachev during their walk in the woods, if only the Martians would invade us, would we be sure of finally coming together? Okay, well, Scott is too modest, so I will push his book, Talking to the Enemy. Just came out, if you wanna hear more, you can read this, which is a wonderful read. Well, thank you. You and my mother are the two who read it. Yes. But many more will. I wanna pick up on the original question that Scott was addressing about what could be done to allay America's fear and overreaction to the terrorist threat. I accept the premise that it is excessive, and I'll give you just a couple of pieces of evidence, one that Scott referred to about, if you think of the last 10 years, since 2001, there's been no serious attacks in the United States. There have been a couple of amateur attempts, and there's been a number of episodes that had been blocked by police action, and that's it. So why are we still so frightened? Many might say, well, for example, there's lots going on in Europe about these kinds of threats, so why should we just be, why couldn't that indicate that it's still a major threat in the West? And a report from the European Union that kept track of this said, there were 294 actually attempted attacks of terrorists in the European Union in 2009. How many of those were Islamicists? One. It was in Italy, it was against the military base. The large number were separatist attacks in France and Spain, there were also some other right-wing attempts and left-wing attempts and so on, but in fact, there was only, so even in Europe, there was only one in the whole year of even an attempt. So I mean, in the West, the actual success and the actual damage caused by terrorism is really dramatically reduced from what we would have expected 10 years ago and what we were most frightened of for several years and to my mind, still frightened. One way to think about this is an historical perspective. As Scott mentioned, briefly give you a little context for waves of terrorism in the past and what's happened to them. There was around the turn of the last century, about 1880 to 1920, a good deal of anarchism as terrorism and what anarchists focused on were leaders and they killed the leaders in quite a number of countries. They killed the leader of Russia, they killed the leader of the United States, they killed the leader of Spain, they killed the leader of France and they killed the heir apparent of Austria-Hungary which set off World War I. So the anarchists really did quite a lot of damage by their assassinations, but it faded out and we don't hear much about anarchism, there's a little bit, but almost none. And why did that fade out? Well, there's a couple of reasons but part of it is when the Bolsheviks took over they were in competition with the anarchists and eventually destroyed them. But also the whole style seemed to gone out of fashion that you can actually make any kind of progress by killing leaders seemed to lose its credibility. Another wave of terrorist activity and by terrorist activity just to give a general definition is non-state action that kills civilians in order to intimidate a larger population. Was the anti-colonial waves, it was a good deal of terrorism in many colonies from 45 to maybe 1960. And a lot of those were quite, were part of very successful anti-colonial efforts but once of course those were achieved I know that motivation and goal disappeared because of an effect of success, not necessarily because of terrorism but it was part of a successful anti-colonial effort and it's largely over, of course. The third wave was the new left of the mostly of the 60s, the weathermen and bottom minecraft gang and so on. You don't hear about those folks of those types of activities anymore and the reason they seem to have been defeated in part was because their numbers were small and they were arrested but in part because the fall of the Soviet Union completely discredited Marxism and although most of the new left groups were very anti-Soviet, the fact that the Soviet Union's failure discredited Marxism more generally, I think discredited the whole ideological framework behind the new left and it lost its credibility as a motive for, as a mechanism for social progress. Another group that isn't so much a wave is of separatists using terrorism and separatist efforts and that's been at a medium level in many parts of the world and continues. And then a new wave, of course, of what we might call Islamic jihadism, which is still underway, of course, but as I was saying, its success in terms of its ability to kill people in the West, at least, is really surprisingly small in recent years. So some of these waves disappear because their motivations have become anachronistic, they'll either become outdated or because their ideas no longer seem credible. And in terms of Islamic jihadism, the reason that they failed in the West, it seems to me, is largely a matter of police action. In another setting of Israel and Palestine, there is almost no terrorism and there's a variety of reasons for that, both defensive on Israel's part and for political reasons. But, and within Islamic societies, there's still a good deal of terrorism, but that has been moderated in several ways. One is that its own excesses have been seen to be counterproductive and the clearest version of that is beheadings. You don't see any more beheadings because the people that undertook them in order to become the most, the vanguard of the most anti-West or the most willing to use violence for the cause were just self-discredited. And so that particular tactic has seemed beyond the pale. Well, the current one that's being considered is whether killing innocent Muslims is appropriate. Is it okay to kill children who are Muslim in the interest of advancing jihad? Well, that's certainly quite a debate. Now, and the other thing that's happened, of course, is that there's a lot of the terrorism that goes on in Islamic societies is between different groups of Islam, of Muslims, between Shi'i and Sunnis in Iraq to take an example. Which doesn't directly affect the West, although it certainly could spill over and it certainly does have important implications, but nevertheless, what's happened is that jihadists has flourished in Islamic societies, but not in non-Islamic societies. And that gets to the question then of, well, how could the president take moves or gradually move the American public away from an excessive fear of terrorism, which is very counterproductive. It's counterproductive on its own terms because fear itself is costly. But it's also counterproductive because in the American context, the fear of terrorism translates into a support for military measures, which are themselves often counterproductive. Well, I think one issue, there's a variety of things that can be considered in helping to tone down the rhetoric. One is to tone down the rhetoric of the leaders who are responsive, both the president himself and the people that are responsive to that. Another is to take into account that fear decays that since it's been 10 years since a major attack in the United States, the level of actual fear is less than it was then, and the longer we go without further major attacks, the more it will decay. And we ought to recognize that in fact, it has decayed a great deal and not just assumed that it's frozen the way it was in 2001, 2002, 2003. Another point is that revenge is a powerful motive. And the American public feels that revenge is quite appropriate after Pearl Harbor and it's quite appropriate after 9-11. And there's not a satisfaction, there's not a resting until revenge is satisfied. Well, of course, it was satisfied against Japan in 1945. And to my mind, we should be considered to have been satisfied against al-Qaeda. It's true that Bin Laden is still at loose, but it's also true that al-Qaeda has been largely disbandled. Most of its leaders are dead and it is generally now not an operational arm of the Jihad movement. It is still existing and it's still a franchise and it still has some intellectual and moral authority, but not very much. It's mostly a has-been organization. And from our point of view, I think we should be able to say to ourselves, we've taken enough revenge on al-Qaeda. We've satisfied that urgent need to say that 9-11 won't pass without a response. Without a response. The response has been taken, it's behind us, it's long since been satisfied. From a historical perspective, this too shall pass. And turning to the more positive side, what is greatness in a society like the United States? Well, greatness has many attributes, but one of them is the ability to accept reality. Weak and fearful countries do not accept reality. They live in a dream world. But one of the things the United States can do as a sign of its own greatness is to accept that it's had enough revenge, that the threat is no longer immediate. Of course, there's going to be more attacks. There'll probably be more attacks in the United States. Some of them may be very serious. And even a small attack that kills one person is very serious to that person, obviously in his family and all their relatives. But it's also serious for the rest of the Americans who read about what happened in Kankakee and their Times Square and become fearful of it. But the ability to accept things in their context and their level of actual danger is important. And I think it's time that we can recognize that. Let me just add one thing to what Bob said. So he was basically, he's telling us that we have to deal with the emotional aspects of what the president must do with the American public in order to negotiate this changeable political landscape. Again, the argument isn't, you just with rational evidence-based argument are you gonna make much progress? Somehow you've got to weave this in into a much more persuasive, remember, outside of the academia, few people are interested in truth. They're interested in persuasion and victory. And that's what you have to deal with. But of course, you want truth to be conveyed along the way as well. But Bob hasn't discussed another principle which I think should be added to the revenge and fear and that's the conservation amendment theme. And that brings us to today's events, what's happening in the Arab world at this moment. He mentioned that Bolshevism supplanted the anarchist movement and that the collapse of the Soviet Union finished off the new left and to a significant extent, jihadism filled the niche after the collapse of the Soviet Union, especially among displaced, among more marginalized masses of the Muslim world because traditional Western-inspired solutions to an Arab awakening had all collapsed and failed. Nationalism, fascism, communism, they've tried it all. They're all Western-inspired and this is a sort of adivistic return to some kind of autochthonous movement. That has some resonance among the people. But what do we do about this notion of conservation of enmity? I mean, if Reagan's musing to Gorbachev is not just idle musing, but reflects a profound truth about what it is to be human and that is we cooperate to compete. We have ever since we got out of the caves, we're primates and we're not likely to, I think at least, that we're not likely to end conflict any more than the earth is likely to see on ending day. So what kind of other enemy is gonna replace the jihadi movement that will help keep the United States people together and moving forward? Well, one possibility of course is China and it's very interesting that a defense planning guidance paper was supposed to be produced on September 12th, which 2001, which listed China as our number one strategic threat. Of course, when 9-11 happened the day before, it was supposed to come out. That was chucked into the garbage. But it's being revived of course and we have a very ambivalent attitude towards China as our ultimate strategic enemy. But China doesn't really fill the niche because they are a national group. They don't appeal to these wider transnational counter-cultural movements. But what are we seeing today in Tunisia? This is spreading rapidly. I think it was actually started by the Green Revolution in Iran. It has been given spice by WikiLeaks, by the Cables and for the good I think. And by the economic downturn, the world economic downturn and the necessity of these regimes raising prices on subsistence goods. But what we're witnessing is a mass homegrown movement across the Arab world that threatens to go from Morocco to Pakistan. And we're seeing it today. Tomorrow we may very well know which direction it's gonna take because there are calls, it's Mosque Day, there are calls from massive demonstrations and the Muslim brothers and the secular Egyptian opposition, El Baradi, are both calling for demonstrations and to join them. So tomorrow- Say Cairo. In Cairo. So tomorrow is a very, very crucial day, perhaps in world history, we'll see. But whatever happens, what we're seeing is a spontaneous homegrown movement to try to find a third way. Now the way our press is treating this and our president in the State of Union speech is these are democratic forces that we want allied to us. But the lesson from the Iranian revolution and from their rhetoric is no, we don't wanna be allied to you, we don't wanna you to embrace us, maybe help keep our satellite communications open, but stay away from us. We want to create our own political space. So the question is, will they succeed in creating a political space? Will that political space be a true transnational movement like the anarchist movement was before or the Bolshevist movement was or the jihadi movement was? Will that be a new enemy or will that occupy some middle ground between China and the United States on our list of access of evil? We don't know, but I think something profound is happening and I think the jihadi movement has a very interesting role in its creation. So I'm gonna keep my comments very short to give you time to question our guest. A few points on this sort of original question, right, which is how do we dial down public opinion, public fears about terrorism? I'd argue actually that a lot of this process is already underway. We had a leak today that the Obama administration is planning on getting rid of the color coding in favor of targeted reports to police agencies saying if there's a specific thing you should be worried about. Obviously something that says these concerns should be out of the every five minute announcement at the airport phase and into the law enforcement kind of phase. I think that's a signal in the right direction. The State of the Union, obviously, if there was any attempt in there to turn our attention somewhere else, it was certainly towards China. Those two things may well be linked to a certain extent. I do, however, question who's leading who here? The degree to which policymakers are forcing public opinion a certain way or that public opinion has updated about a fear that was salient and in the moment and then politically fostered for quite a while. Whether public opinion is now two years into an administration starting to come to terms with the fact that this is not an existential threat, which then opens up policy space for the administration to sort of change their approach to it and look at new priorities that they tend to favor. Of course that's contingent on preventing spectacular attack, right? A repeat of 9-11, something that changes the ball game but I think as Scott and Bob have both noted we've done a remarkably good job with that to the extent that it's reasonable to expect that we may be able to continue doing a good job with that. Adding to Bob's list of tactical shifts that we've seen over the years, things that have been in fashion so to speak and then out, I'd add hijacking as something that we saw extensively. People point to 9-11 as the end of hijacking but it was in decline well prior to that. I think the big question from a policy perspective is whether we can do the same thing to suicide terrorism. A lot of the current fear about terrorism in the popular mind stems from suicide terrorism, in particular suicide terrorism as it was introduced had an enormous effect on the number of casualties that terrorist organizations were able to inflict. Bob pointed to some processes of sort of delegitimization that were going on there. If suicide terror can be eroded as a tactic, I think that that can go a long way towards alleviating fear and then opening up yet more policy space. The last thing I'll say is that prior to us changing the nature of the discussion I was gonna talk in here a little bit about connections between terrorist organizations but I think there's sort of a story there as well. A large part of sort of the larger attraction that I think Scott pointed to is that this is in some sense a global movement, right? That you as a young person can join sort of a global jihad. Connections between organizations are extensive. That network does exist. That global movement does exist but they tend to be fragile and they tend to be things that can be targeted. So with that I think I'll turn the floor over. All right, I'll moderate the question, see our recording thing so if you could come to the microphone and ask your question. Well, let me start by posing a question that was posed at the very beginning that would be. Which is what do you folks think can be done to help moderate American fear of terrorism? Maybe more particularly to help the president moderate fear. And then to rise and you have to come to the microphone if you don't mind and address it. Okay, this is kind of answering around the question. I have a friend in Austria which is not a Muslim country which is not a third world country which is not an anti-American country. He's been there many years and he said after 9-11 the general feeling throughout was a sad thing indeed but it was inevitable. It looked at us as a fact to our cause. I think we ought to look to ourselves, stop saber rattling around the world and maybe stop pulling, we have troops in something like 145 countries besides our own. I think that's way too many. So you're saying we do some American footprint. But what would that do to change our... Yeah, free to do the opposite. I think our politicians have a lot to do with it as well. There was somebody who was running for the governor of Florida, this was a Republican candidate and he had an advertisement out where he would... He was talking about security and how we can beef up security and sort of secure our borders and whatnot. And he picked up an individual who was an average Caucasian male and said, does this look like an average terrorist? And then he picked up another guy who looked Arab and said, does this? So I think since we take a lot of our cues from our politicians, from our leaders and also from our news commentators, the Fox News has done a lot of damage. I think people like John Stuart, I think people on the left who are commentators and comedians and all that, I think they're doing an excellent job as with the academics. So I think that our leaders need to tone it down and our commentators need to be a little more responsible, I think. Yeah, but I mean, to focus you on public policy, what advice can you give to the president of the United States to change the political landscape? I mean, we all may have ideas, okay? What's wrong and what's right, but can the president of the United States, assuming he agrees with you, use those ideas and simply turn around the political landscape? That's very doubtful. So if you could focus a little more laser-like on the policy implications of, yeah. All right, we have somebody there and then, yes, right? I think this can be divided into two portions. First of all, we should think whether the current policy, what are we doing to control the terrorism is that effective? For example, in the airport, we do all these screening tests, et cetera. Did it really work? On the other hand, we, as a consumer, we pay whatever asking us to pay, but never had any right to check to say, I don't really think that's worthwhile. For example, if we allowed all the passenger from now on to pay a fee, say $50, but I have the choice. I said, I don't want the protection, so I don't have to pay. And you're willing to pay, you will have those people examining you. How much will be that happening? So probably we can see how many people really think what we're doing is useful at all. Second thing, I think a policy school like Michigan can really do the nation a good, is try to let the country think. If someone doesn't want his life, like a suicide bomber, can we threat him not to do that by killing him? Now, if not, we have to think what can be helping to change the motivation, the motivation of willing to die, or the motivation willing to discuss. I think these are two things maybe it's worthwhile to think about. Well, I'm present. Okay. It's just, go ahead, go ahead. Bill, were you gonna say something? Oh, no, actually, okay. Okay. Where were you going? Okay, of course I don't have the perfect, the silver bullet either. I have one question back to you in the course of the discussion, and then one direction, at least where I see where something could be done. One is, of course, I'm very much in favor of the general proposal that you put forward, Scott, to engage the enemy and turn discussions around. Turn discussions around. However, in the argument that you made about bringing the Taliban, especially, into the fold in order to defeat al-Qaeda, how do you address the problem that you might appear to counteract some other values that come into play when you empower the Taliban in that way? How do you react to the whole human rights discourse that will inevitably come up? So that's the question. My other observation is about the discourse in the US about what that highly charged, but at the same time, very diffused term, terrorism actually does in the public. And I wonder a little bit if not the title of the panel today is somewhat of a misnomer. And it says international terrorism. But on the one hand, you have made the argument that much of what's going on in Afghanistan is actually local terrorism. And on the other hand, the argument that so much terrorism we should be focusing on is not connected to Islam, so it comes up but we're focusing back time and again on Islamic terrorism. So how do we handle that? Thanks, Bill Clark, political science. I'm afraid I don't have an answer and I'm going to instead challenge the premise and ask what reason we might have to believe that the government would like to reduce the perception of threat on the part of the populace or at least raise the suggestion that that might be a political rather than a technocratic or policy question. It seems pretty clear that the Republican Party seems to think that it has a comparative advantage in security matters. So they seem to probably benefit from continued fear and that might deter democratic presidents like the incumbent one from suggesting that the problem isn't as big as it is because then they will paint him as being Pollyanna-ish. I think Phil's suggestion, practical things about, I mean in some sense, the best way to reduce the perception of risk is for the government and I'm afraid for us to talk about it less frequently. Yeah, I too would like to challenge the premise but in a different way. I think also that there is a misnomer in the panel. In the course of the talks, you have sliced down the concept of international terrorism into al-Qaeda, into terrorism in this country, into terrorism by Islamic groups, Professor Axelrod. It's gotten smaller and smaller and you have statisticalized the discussion and our waving now are moralizing with us. Professor Axelrod says we should be able to accept this, we should be able to think about this, we should be able to calm this down. Well, I mean irrationality cannot be defeated with morality and irrationality is not just a pesky insect that one can wave away. Before we talk about how can we bring the heat down we need to ask why is the heat up? I mean what is hysteria is not just some vague concept. Let me just, and I don't have an answer for that but let me throw a possibility out, okay? Terrorism and I mean it now as a concept. Terrorism, especially suicide terrorism is an unsolved problem for humanity and that's why the hysteria is there. We don't know what to do. It may not be active but it's in a sense like one of the viruses that we've been dealing with in the last few years and one of those viruses becomes dormant, we say okay it's gone away but God help us if it comes back up because we don't know what to do. We are at its mercy and there is of course as Professor Atron pointed out a fantastic economy involved here that so few people can cause not just so much hysteria but so much damage. It didn't take a lot of people to do the 9-11 and that could happen again and we don't know what the hell to do and I think that kind of insult, that kind of mortification especially to America which is a country of action, of progress, of solving problems, this is a great insult. We have not overcome the insult. We are still quaking under it and we can't easily recover from it. That's A, B is that in fact it happens in other places and America has been involved in various ways in trying to deal with this unsolved problem in other places. So unless we withdraw into an isolationist position and say well it hasn't happened here, it hasn't happened by Islamic groups and it hasn't been successful, the problem remains. So I'm not ready yet to simply suggest solutions because that is really a substitute question. The question is not how to bring the hysteria down, the question is how to solve the problem of terrorism. All right, we'll have one more there and one more there and then we'll give the authors the... If I may follow up in a similar vein along the same lines, I certainly appreciate the way our panelists have focused on the issue of how can we tone it down and how can we get beyond the problem and I would like to say that President Obama seems to be moving at least slowly in the right direction, winding down the war in Iraq, hopefully winding down the war in Afghanistan. Though what comes after that, nobody knows. But I did want to bring up the question of terrorism of which we were reminded earlier this week in Moscow. Civil dozen people were killed at the airport in Moscow. By some reasonable data statistics, Russia experiences something on the order of 300 terrorist incidents inspired by Jihadist movements every year. We know that Russia along with India and Pakistan are three countries, and I may be missing some, three countries that have Jihadist movements and happen to have nuclear weapons. Clearly the capacity of these small groups to wreak havoc in the future is, cannot be underestimated. So I'd like to invite our panelists to comment on that larger issue too. Why don't we have one more intervention and then just for the sake of giving the panelists a chance to go? Yeah, I'm kind of an outsider. I'm a Canadian just visiting. So I guess my question is a bit off the wall, but how come there's not as much concern about Americans killing Americans with guns as there is about the potential likelihood of a foreigner coming in and doing some damage? It seems to me there's an important contradiction here in American society. There's concern about foreigners or Jihadists coming in from time to time doing some violence on your territory, whereas it's pretty sure that someone's gonna come out with a gun and kill many or a few Americans on several occasions. And there seems to be, well, that's okay. And it comes back to the question, the point that was made earlier is in whose interest is it to reduce the fear and in whose interest is it to have more stringent gun controls? And I think the answer is pretty clear. It's in the interest of the politicians and it would be in the public interest, but given my cynicism about politicians, I don't think they really care about the public interest. They care about themselves and their jobs and that may be part of the problem that we're facing in this whole scenario of domestic and foreign violence. Thank you, Stephen. Let me turn it back to the panellists, otherwise we won't give them a chance. I'm sure we can discuss informally afterwards, but let me turn it back to you. I'll just say two very brief things. One, I would love to respond to everything, but I can't for lack of time. One was from the second person who asked the question, the gentleman with the Michigan shirt mentioned John Stuart. I think that satire is a very powerful weapon. And I think John Stuart can satirize and those who are frightened of terrorism without being in excess. And I think that under certain circumstances, the president can use satire, such as the Great Iron Speech in places where it's understood it's satire. And it's risky because it could backfire, but I think it's often in a very effective method. The one thing I am very afraid of, somebody mentioned, but we haven't done the panel, the word is Pakistan. I got to go in a minute. Let me just make a general statement about something that was implicit in some of what people say. So I've worked with administrations and let me say that politicians are very much like everybody else. They get up in the morning, they look at the newspaper, they say, oh my God, the world's falling apart, what the hell do I do? And many of them, most of them try to do the best they can within the limits of their possibilities. There are of course some who play this up for perverse political reasons and the number of actual conspiracies concocted by politicians is much less than you probably like to imagine. I mean, we're storytelling animals and we like to think there are conspiracies for everything that goes wrong or right, but really there aren't. There's a lot more anarchic behavior than you might suspect. So the idea is how do you get well-meaning politicians who really care about their constituents and in fact really care about their country and I think that's the overwhelming majority. I disagree. I think that's the overwhelming majority on both sides of the aisle. Now they have different views about the extensions of American power or how democracy should take root and how much should be defended, how much should be, my own take on this and I think Obama's, it's probably not all that different, is that they are for forms of democratic liberalism where there is less room for wars of choice because that's what we are exercising. And the question is how do we advance things like human rights as one person asked? Well, I think Jefferson had the right response. He says, we don't do it by the sword. Maximilian Robespierre in 1792 made a speech to the Jacobin Club in which he said, nobody loves armed missionaries and it is the first law of nature and prudence to repel them as enemies. He promptly forgot what he said when he voted for an aggressive revolution against foreign powers and of course lost his head. But I think that lesson is a good one and I think it was the lesson of Jefferson. People, especially in this internet age when for the first time in human history there is a massive media driven political awakening where people in Tierra del Fuego and in New Guinea can see the same images, can have access to them. The very model of it being there, if it is successful, will be cognitively catchy. I don't think we have to force it. In terms of Afghanistan in particular, in that interview I was talking about with Arnold de Borshkov, the question of women's status was brought up. Now, Mullah Omar is a clever man and he said, how long did it take women's suffrage to advance in your country? Was it two weeks? Was it 10 years? And then he said, and why don't you bother the Saudis about this? Why do you bother us? And then he said, we'll leave you alone with your drugs and your prostitution and your decadent society and your killings and your murder. You leave us alone. We'll solve our own problems. Now there are many aspects of Taliban society that are creepy and they are cruel and in fact some of them are lunatic. But as long as those countries are on enough of a leash where they're not a threat to us or those we really care about, leave them alone. There are 45 other creepy and cruel dictatorships in the world today and we're not out there fighting every one of them. What Bob said about Pakistan is true. We have contributed mightily to creating a true strategic menace. Orders of magnitude greater risk than any group of suicide bombers. And that is Pakistan. Pakistan is on the verge of collapse. It is a very unstable country. They are enriching uranium faster than any nation in the world and successfully. They have built new plutonium reactors. They are armed to the hilt and they have crazy people like Hafiz Said, a very, very savvy guy, Professor of Engineering, founder of Lashkar Taiba, a very close ally of Al Qaeda, running around saying anything he wants to say and inspiring people to attack India. And I believe that that's the greatest strategic threat. India will not be so kind the next time there is an attack on one of their major cities on their parliament and their army is only 100 kilometers away from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. And that risks changing this geo-strategic equation everywhere and for all time. So we should concentrate on that. And one possibility that comes out of this is that the president should pay homage to human rights that's part of our ideology, want to advance it, but again, by model and example, not by force and concentrate on what is really the true strategic threat and that is Pakistan. I gotta go. I would just adding to sort of Bill's final point about government controlling the story and whether talking about it is really such a good idea. I do agree that there's some serious domestic impediments to solving these types of problems. I think not talking about it to the degree the government can dial it down is would be great. I question the degree to which anything like that is really possible. I mean, the Moscow story I think is interesting. They are able to tolerate, as somebody noted, an enormously higher number of attacks every year. Two hours after the airport attack, the airport speakers were announcing that it was running on a normal schedule. They do things a little bit differently. And the way our institutions are structured, I think it makes it very difficult for us to use those same tools in order to sort of allow the proper calculus to occur about terrorist threats. However, there are other models. Israel has managed to sort of incorporate this type of threat into their side fabric for better or worse, which I think does give some hope that people can get these calculations right eventually. Thank you.