Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
in order to formulate a sound strategy we need to realistically appraise the threat
and i would appraise the threat in two components first the most the more dangerous or the
or the component posing the more immediate danger
would be organizations like al qaeda
these are people who
wanna kill us
but frankly %uh ok %uh they are not nearly as capable
as
they have been portrayed by the bush administration I mean nine eleven happened not because they were
so smart but because we were so stupid and let our guard down
nonetheless they are a danger and that danger needs to be addressed it should be addressed
not by invading and occupying countries which is what we've been trying to do it should
be addressed by seeing the threat as an international criminal conspiracy requiring an international
police effort
%uh to
to root it out and destroy it
take a long time
considerable resources
but a more effective i think approach then the one we have pursued in iraq and afghanistan
the second threat although maybe I'd put threat in quotes here
%uh is is is the more amorphous
problem of
the
dysfunction which exists to a considerable extent
%uh in the islamic world
and I
I don't mean
to portray myself as an expert on islam but it seems to me that
in many respects the dysfunction is that
%uh societies in the islamic world have not yet
found the way to reconcile islam with modernity
we in the west struggled with
ways to reconcile our predominant religious tradition christianity with modernity
that process was a bloody one and it took a long time to sort itself out
i think that
in speaking in very broad terms muslims have to undergo a similar process and we can't make
them
come to that reconciliation
they have to sort out themselves
what will it mean to be a muslim in a world of modernity
in the meantime the best we can do
is to prevent them
prevent that internal argument
from expressing itself in ways that do us harm and that's where i think we get to
containment but it's not containment like build the nato it's containment meaning
%uh to
insure that people who come from that world
don't come bearing
bombs
%uh it's it's a matter simply of
of of monitoring and controlling the movement of of %uh of %uh people
it's a matter of not
providing
enormous sums of money to fund islamist activity mean our dependence on oil
which sends billions and billions and billions of dollars to saudi arabia
with the with the saudis to some degree using that money to fund
%uh
islamic fundamentalist activity
to have an energy policy
so we don't give them the money
to under
underwrite activities intended to harm us
%uh and i think that that sort of approach over time
will allow the muslims
to
sort out their own problems and %uh we're talking a hundred year proposition here i'm not trying
to make it sound like it's simple a long peace
it's a long peace it would be nice if we could have a long peace