WEBVTT

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[explosion]

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On November 12th, 2001,

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two months after terrorists hijacked airplanes

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and targeted the World Trade Center in New York City,

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American Airlines flight 587

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plunged into the ground in a ball of flame,

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just three minutes after taking off.

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All 265 passengers and crew were killed,

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as well as five more people on the ground.

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The plane fell out of a clear blue sky,

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and only two months after New York

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had been attacked on 9/11.

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Terrorism would seem to be the obvious explanation,

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but analysis of the plane\'s black box,

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the recorded conversations in the cockpit,

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and logged technical data,

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showed that this was not an act of terrorism.

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The crash was blamed on pilot error

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in the face of sudden turbulence.

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Sadly, there is no such thing as a black box

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for military or political disasters,

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but what if one existed?

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What if we imagined a device that would record and trace

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the actions and decisions of those in command?

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Decisions that in the 16 years that followed 9/11

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did not lead to the elimination of terrorism,

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but rather to its expansion.

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Since 9/11, we only use tactics to fight the threat,

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but we never focused on fighting the ideology.

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We never focused on discrediting the narrative

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of the terrorist groups.

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And that\'s why on the eve of 9/11,

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we had 400 members who pledged bayat to Al-Qaeda

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and to Osama Bin Laden, 400.

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15 years after the War on Terror,

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15 years after 9/11,

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four, five years after the death of Osama Bin Laden,

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we have more people who adhere to the ideology

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of Osama Bin Laden today than we had in 2001.

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After 9/11, the gloves come off.

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From this day forward,

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any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism,

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will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

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[audience applauding]

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In the beginning,

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what you had was a reaction on the part of the president

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and the vice president,

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that came from the clear perception

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that they might be impeached.

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Osama Bin Laden!

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We knew that we had Al-Qaeda

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with a particularly violent and radical view of Islam,

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but no, I would make no claim,

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certainly I had a deep sense

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of what was coming over the next decade, plus.

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[speaking in foreign language]

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[explosion]

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[speaking in foreign language]

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At least 30 people have been killed.

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Since 9/11, political intelligence

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and military leaders have waged war

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against an unidentified enemy, terrorism.

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Today, their testimonies helped to shed light

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on what went wrong.

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How is it that a war launched to protect democracy,

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and our way of life, could become its biggest threat?

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[soft orchestral music]

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I was driving to the office early in the morning.

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I was on the Brooklyn Bridge and I got a page.

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So I called the office

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and it was one of my colleagues on the phone.

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And he said, come to the office.

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There\'s something that happened.

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We had a ship that was attacked in Yemen.

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Then we had to assemble a team,

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and I took four people with me from New York.

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And we headed the same day,

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we headed to Aden.

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[helicopter flying]

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We\'re operating under the assumption

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that this was a terrorist act.

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If as it now appears, this was an act of terrorism,

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it was a despicable and cowardly act.

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This was not the first time

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that Ali Soufan had rushed to the scene of a terror attack.

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In fact, the strike on the USS Cole

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was not the first violent act carried out by Al-Qaeda.

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Two years earlier two American embassies in east Africa

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had already been targeted by coordinated suicide bombings.

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We were saying that it\'s probably Osama Bin Laden.

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Not a lot of people in Washington

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kind of believed what we were saying,

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or agreed with our assessment, because Osama Bin Laden,

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according to them, never did a terrorist attack before.

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[speaking in foreign language]

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If you went back and looked at the composition

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of our intelligence services on September 11,

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I think you would find an extraordinary number of people

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who are experts on Russia,

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because they had been experts on the Soviet Union,

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and very few who were expert

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on radical Islam.

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In fact, I asked George Tenet,

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who was then the Director of Central Intelligence,

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in a meeting of the defense policy board.

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I said, was there any occasion on which you presented

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to the president of the United States,

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and he served more than one president,

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was there any occasion on which you warned the president

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that the rise of Jihadi ideology

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was a threat to the United States?

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And the answer was no.

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Please raise your right hand.

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Do you solemnly swear that the testimony that you will give

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before these committees will be the truth,

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the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,

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so help you God?

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I do.

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Did you grasp at the time

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the complexity of this Jihadi threat?

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I make no claim that at that point in time,

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we could foresee the evolution of Al-Qaeda,

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Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula,

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Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the evolution of ISIS,

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Boko Haram, and so on.

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We knew that we had Al-Qaeda,

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with a particularly violent and radical view of Islam,

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with just basic hatred, enmity,

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towards the west and towards the United States.

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But no, I would make no claim,

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certainly I hadn\'t a deep sense of,

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of what was coming over the next decade, plus.

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On September the 11th,

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I was on an aircraft

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actually flying between Stockholm and London.

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When the plane landed,

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I could see my car actually on the airport tarmac,

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waiting for me, where the plane docked.

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We don\'t do that sort of thing in the UK.

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You walk off the plane like an ordinary passenger

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and just disappear into the crowd.

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So, I mean, I knew seeing my car there

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that something weird was going on.

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I was taken straight to number 10 Downing Street

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for a meeting with the Prime Minister.

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He asked me to go to the States

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and plan our coordination and our cooperation.

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48 hours later, I was on an RAF transport aircraft,

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flying the Atlantic with a small group of senior officers.

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We flew down over New York, it was very clear.

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So we could see the wreckage of the Twin Towers,

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the sort of smoking ruins,

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and then we flew with these escorts

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into Andrews Air Force Base,

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and then went in a blue light, flashing convoy,

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straight to a meeting in Langley.

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In the meeting, Cofer Black had a very

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sort of bullish aggressive way of talking

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and was saying some pretty extraordinary things.

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I did say, aren\'t you afraid if you

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hit the mercury with a hammer,

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it\'ll split into a thousand pieces?

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And what did he say?

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Honestly, I can\'t remember what he said,

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but we didn\'t have the easiest of relationships, I thought.

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He was quoted saying,

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this is not our concern.

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Our concern is to kill terrorists.

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Well he did say something like that, yeah.

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Well, that\'s what Cofer was like, really.

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This is a very highly classified area,

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but I have to say that all you need to know

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is that there was a before 9/11,

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and there was an after 9/11.

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After 9/11, the gloves come off.

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Having spent the day on and off Air Force One,

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President Bush finally arrived

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at the White House at 6:45 p.m.

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It was here that he made his first statement

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about the nature of the conflict

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that had just erupted with such unprecedented violence.

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We haven\'t seen this kind of barbarism

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in a long period of time.

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No one could have conceivably imagined

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suicide bombers burrowing into our society,

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and then emerging all on the same day to fly their aircraft,

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fly US aircraft into buildings full of innocent people,

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and show no remorse.

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And this is a new kind of evil.

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Nihilism is what our political leaders use to explain it,

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that these people just want to destroy.

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But in fact, although I must say the Islamic state

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has an apocalyptic vision quite different from Al-Qaeda,

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that we have to destroy the world to save it in a sense,

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their big plea is that they\'re anti-nihilistic,

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that the west lacks and,

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and it\'s lackeys in the Middle East and Asia

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lack, and Africa, lack metaphysical moral principles.

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The first error was a criminal approach.

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The idea that these are criminals,

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they\'re somehow pathological individuals.

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If you look more closely,

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criminals usually don\'t carry out

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high-impact low-probability events,

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or they don\'t randomly target masses of innocent civilians.

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And they don\'t rely on non-criminal populations for support,

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which these movements do.

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One should think of these terrorist movements

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in a political context,

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even if they claim religious identity,

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because ultimately terrorism is about communication.

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I mean, terrorism doesn\'t change very much

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in terms of the countries that it threatens.

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It\'s not gonna change them politically,

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but it\'s about extreme political messaging.

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By ignoring this political message,

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terrorism was quickly defined as an evil

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against which the only possible response is war.

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[speaking in foreign language]

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Overreaction.

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That\'s why the president\'s speech tonight

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probably as difficult a speech as any president.

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At least since Roosevelt.

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Probably since Roosevelt.

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The President now just a few moments away

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from addressing the nation.

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This was to be the president\'s first address

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from the oval office since he came to power.

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In 2001, it was seen as a speech that would calm the nation.

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Today, it is seen as the declaration of war on terror.

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Good evening.

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Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life,

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our very freedom came under attack

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in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.

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The most important sentence of the speech

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was added by Bush himself, just minutes before airtime.

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We will make no distinction

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between the terrorists who committed these acts

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and those who harbored them.

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As it happens, I was on the phone

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with one of President Bush\'s speech writers, David Frum.

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And I said, David, whatever else the president says,

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I hope he will say that we will hold accountable

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states who give support to terrorist organizations.

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And so in uttering a single sentence,

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President Bush put his country

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on the road to an unending war.

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The United States would not only attack terrorists,

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but also the countries that supported them.

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Not a single member of his cabinet was consulted.

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Witnesses remember the historic meeting

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of the National Security Council that followed the speech.

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It was the first time that the President

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described his vision for the war.

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He saw it as an opportunity, in his own words,

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to shake the terror loose

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in places like Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, or Iraq.

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Defense Minister Donald Rumsfeld objected,

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claiming that international law allowed only for the use

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of force intended to prevent future attacks,

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and not as an act of vengeance.

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Bush\'s response was that he didn\'t care

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what international law experts had to say,

264
00:16:51.040 --> 00:16:53.583
adding, we\'re going to kick their ass.

265
00:16:58.720 --> 00:17:02.540
In the beginning what you had was a reaction

266
00:17:02.540 --> 00:17:05.020
on the part of the President and the Vice President

267
00:17:05.020 --> 00:17:07.840
that came from the clear perception

268
00:17:07.840 --> 00:17:09.290
that they might be impeached.

269
00:17:14.100 --> 00:17:17.590
After all, you had just had the greatest death

270
00:17:17.590 --> 00:17:22.400
of Americans on American soil by a foreign entity

271
00:17:22.400 --> 00:17:23.643
since Pearl Harbor.

272
00:17:28.154 --> 00:17:32.154 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]

273
00:17:59.620 --> 00:18:02.040
Why did you recommend war?

274
00:18:02.040 --> 00:18:04.830
When we looked back after September 11,

275
00:18:04.830 --> 00:18:08.420
it seemed obvious that the failure to deal

276
00:18:08.420 --> 00:18:11.870
with acts of terror that preceded September 11

277
00:18:11.870 --> 00:18:16.870
had allowed Al-Qaeda and other terrorists

278
00:18:17.250 --> 00:18:20.170
to grow in stature, in importance,

279
00:18:20.170 --> 00:18:23.183
in prestige, in resources,

280
00:18:24.260 --> 00:18:27.460
and looking back,

281
00:18:27.460 --> 00:18:29.730
it seemed to many of us that the failure

282
00:18:29.730 --> 00:18:32.550
to deal with the earlier events,

283
00:18:32.550 --> 00:18:35.230
had led to the situation on September 11.

284
00:18:35.230 --> 00:18:36.173
We were late.

285
00:18:37.183 --> 00:18:38.990
[phone ringing]

286
00:18:38.990 --> 00:18:41.330
We would not answer by shooting a few missiles,

287
00:18:41.330 --> 00:18:43.450
Bush would later write in his memoirs.

288
00:18:43.450 --> 00:18:46.370
My first instinct was to tell the American people

289
00:18:46.370 --> 00:18:48.113
that we were at war.

290
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[speaking in foreign language]

291
00:20:02.078 --> 00:20:03.910
[birds cawing]

292
00:20:03.910 --> 00:20:06.120
The word war carries with it

293
00:20:06.120 --> 00:20:08.140
enormous implications.

294
00:20:08.140 --> 00:20:09.750
President Lincoln, for his part,

295
00:20:09.750 --> 00:20:12.280
insisted on referring to the Civil War

296
00:20:12.280 --> 00:20:15.480
only as a rebellion of the southern states.

297
00:20:15.480 --> 00:20:18.023
He never declared war against the Confederacy.

298
00:20:19.720 --> 00:20:21.310
In the wake of Pearl Harbor,

299
00:20:21.310 --> 00:20:23.210
President Roosevelt asked Congress

300
00:20:23.210 --> 00:20:25.970
for a declaration of war against Japan,

301
00:20:25.970 --> 00:20:27.060
but he would not do the same

302
00:20:27.060 --> 00:20:29.750
in the case of the other Axis countries.

303
00:20:29.750 --> 00:20:33.665
He waited until they declared war against the United States.

304
00:20:33.665 --> 00:20:36.950
[dramatic orchestral music]

305
00:20:36.950 --> 00:20:38.708
Impressions of the American buildup

306
00:20:38.708 --> 00:20:39.860
for the battle of Korea,

307
00:20:39.860 --> 00:20:42.310
include this view of the aircraft carrier Bataan,

308
00:20:42.310 --> 00:20:44.730
ready to sail from Norfolk, Virginia.

309
00:20:44.730 --> 00:20:46.380
During the Korean conflict,

310
00:20:46.380 --> 00:20:48.290
the United States would carefully avoid

311
00:20:48.290 --> 00:20:50.250
the use of the word war.

312
00:20:50.250 --> 00:20:53.943
We are arming only far defense against aggression.

313
00:20:54.860 --> 00:20:56.140
From his perspective,

314
00:20:56.140 --> 00:20:58.150
President Truman was only responding

315
00:20:58.150 --> 00:20:59.890
to North Korean aggression,

316
00:20:59.890 --> 00:21:02.373
in accordance with United Nations resolutions.

317
00:21:05.550 --> 00:21:08.880
War is an officially recognized act of aggression,

318
00:21:08.880 --> 00:21:12.123
a term that is not used loosely by politicians.

319
00:21:16.800 --> 00:21:17.643 line:15%
The president\'s motorcade

320
00:21:17.643 --> 00:21:19.710 line:15%
has just left the White House.

321
00:21:19.710 --> 00:21:23.390
It will be traveling along a now empty Pennsylvania Avenue,

322
00:21:23.390 --> 00:21:25.830
which should take the President less than 10 minutes.

323
00:21:25.830 --> 00:21:27.280
On September 20th,

324
00:21:27.280 --> 00:21:30.120
President Bush crossed a historic Rubicon.

325
00:21:30.120 --> 00:21:33.630
In an address to both houses of the United States Congress,

326
00:21:33.630 --> 00:21:35.430
he declared war.

327
00:21:35.430 --> 00:21:39.513
Our war on terror begins with Al-Qaeda,

328
00:21:40.660 --> 00:21:42.023
but it does not end there.

329
00:21:43.460 --> 00:21:46.240
It will not end until every terrorist group

330
00:21:46.240 --> 00:21:49.900
of global reach has been found,

331
00:21:49.900 --> 00:21:52.572
stopped, and defeated.

332
00:21:52.572 --> 00:21:55.822
[audience applauding]

333
00:21:59.990 --> 00:22:01.160
Secretary Powell and I were complaining

334
00:22:01.160 --> 00:22:05.380
about the terminology right away, to no avail.

335
00:22:05.380 --> 00:22:07.680
It had caught on the minds of American people.

336
00:22:09.414 --> 00:22:13.510 line:15%
And so the famous GWOT became part of the vernacular here.

337
00:22:18.560 --> 00:22:21.780
We didn\'t like the terminology, global war on terror,

338
00:22:21.780 --> 00:22:23.940
because we reasoned that you didn\'t have

339
00:22:23.940 --> 00:22:25.773
a global war on kamikazes,

340
00:22:26.750 --> 00:22:29.560
and terror is a tactic just like kamikazes were a tactic

341
00:22:29.560 --> 00:22:31.437
of the Japanese, during the Second World War.

342
00:22:31.437 --> 00:22:34.050
And there were aspects of war,

343
00:22:34.050 --> 00:22:36.370
we\'re witnessing most recently with ISIS,

344
00:22:36.370 --> 00:22:39.793
and having to battle them in the streets of various cities.

345
00:22:40.640 --> 00:22:42.710
But it leads to the misimpression

346
00:22:42.710 --> 00:22:44.320
that you can prosecute

347
00:22:45.840 --> 00:22:49.180
these terrorists simply by military means.

348
00:22:49.180 --> 00:22:51.030
It\'s much more complicated than that.

349
00:22:52.880 --> 00:22:55.830
We had already had experience with an unwinnable war

350
00:22:55.830 --> 00:22:58.840
and what it did to the military, the war on drugs.

351
00:22:58.840 --> 00:23:02.500 line:15%
Public enemy number one in the United States

352
00:23:02.500 --> 00:23:04.033 line:15%
is drug abuse.

353
00:23:05.120 --> 00:23:07.320 line:15%
In order to fight and defeat this enemy,

354
00:23:07.320 --> 00:23:11.680
it is necessary to wage a new, all out offensive.

355
00:23:11.680 --> 00:23:14.530
We didn\'t like using that term war,

356
00:23:14.530 --> 00:23:16.623
because they\'re unwinnable.

357
00:23:17.930 --> 00:23:20.210
There\'s no way you\'re ever gonna win these conflicts.

358
00:23:20.210 --> 00:23:22.460
So you put the military in a situation

359
00:23:22.460 --> 00:23:26.050
where its reputation becomes damaged inevitably,

360
00:23:26.050 --> 00:23:27.740
because we can\'t win these wars.

361
00:23:27.740 --> 00:23:29.240
So we didn\'t like that phrase.

362
00:23:30.330 --> 00:23:31.890
The White House liked that terminology,

363
00:23:31.890 --> 00:23:36.870
because it smacked of doing something resolute, courageous,

364
00:23:36.870 --> 00:23:38.780
and noticeable to the American people,

365
00:23:38.780 --> 00:23:41.150
so we went right along with it.

366
00:23:41.150 --> 00:23:44.143
So why were you so weary of war analogy?

367
00:23:45.570 --> 00:23:47.963
Because I mean, I think you know if you,

368
00:23:49.210 --> 00:23:51.080
you enhance the status of the terrorist

369
00:23:51.080 --> 00:23:53.080
by gratifying them with the term war,

370
00:23:53.080 --> 00:23:54.373
let\'s put it like that.

371
00:23:55.500 --> 00:23:57.890
Our policy of dealing with the IRA

372
00:23:57.890 --> 00:23:59.840
had been to treat the IRA as criminals.

373
00:24:02.320 --> 00:24:05.610
You sort of enhanced the political importance

374
00:24:05.610 --> 00:24:09.760
of the movement that is providing this threat,

375
00:24:09.760 --> 00:24:13.870
by conceptually treating it as maybe a larger

376
00:24:13.870 --> 00:24:18.870
and more consequential entity than it is.

377
00:24:18.870 --> 00:24:20.763
We have seen their kind before.

378
00:24:21.970 --> 00:24:24.290
They\'re the heirs of all the murderous ideologies

379
00:24:24.290 --> 00:24:25.563
of the 20th century.

380
00:24:26.670 --> 00:24:30.630
By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions,

381
00:24:30.630 --> 00:24:34.010
by abandoning every value except the will to power,

382
00:24:34.010 --> 00:24:36.644
they follow in the path of fascism,

383
00:24:36.644 --> 00:24:39.265
Nazism and totalitarianism.

384
00:24:39.265 --> 00:24:42.515
[audience applauding]

385
00:24:45.695 --> 00:24:47.170
[Studio Interviewer] Time once again for Community Quorum.

386
00:24:47.170 --> 00:24:48.770
And we are very lucky to have with us

387
00:24:48.770 --> 00:24:51.823
live in the studio this morning, Andrew Bacevich.

388
00:24:54.110 --> 00:24:57.108
George W Bush gave in the wake of 9/11,

389
00:24:57.108 --> 00:24:59.720 line:15%
in which he quite explicitly

390
00:25:00.830 --> 00:25:04.750 line:15%
compared the enterprise then being launched,

391
00:25:04.750 --> 00:25:07.710
what he called the global war on terrorism,

392
00:25:07.710 --> 00:25:11.150
explicitly compared the global war on terrorism

393
00:25:11.150 --> 00:25:13.113
to World War II and the Cold War.

394
00:25:14.720 --> 00:25:17.210
The reality is that

395
00:25:18.070 --> 00:25:21.790
the conditions in the Islamic world,

396
00:25:21.790 --> 00:25:24.800
the problem, whatever the problem is,

397
00:25:24.800 --> 00:25:27.420
simply does not bear comparison

398
00:25:27.420 --> 00:25:30.240
to the problems we imagined we solved

399
00:25:32.164 --> 00:25:35.617
in the 20th century, in World War II and in the Cold War.

400
00:25:40.476 --> 00:25:44.393 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]

401
00:26:21.690 --> 00:26:24.290
Large numbers of Indochinese in Haiphong

402
00:26:24.290 --> 00:26:25.940
created a considerable disturbance

403
00:26:25.940 --> 00:26:28.865 line:15%
during the last days of the French evacuation.

404
00:26:28.865 --> 00:26:32.865 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]

405
00:26:56.923 --> 00:26:58.020
We are a different country.

406
00:26:58.020 --> 00:27:00.553
And I fully recognize that,

407
00:27:01.810 --> 00:27:03.280
on some issues there\'s daylight,

408
00:27:03.280 --> 00:27:05.580
even between ourselves and our British friend.

409
00:27:07.470 --> 00:27:10.230
Think of your most popular favorite

410
00:27:10.230 --> 00:27:12.424
American film, High Noon.

411
00:27:12.424 --> 00:27:16.174
[dramatic orchestral music]

412
00:27:23.261 --> 00:27:25.280
The sheriff is abandoned by the town,

413
00:27:25.280 --> 00:27:28.680
and resorts to what I called righteous violence,

414
00:27:28.680 --> 00:27:31.123
in order to defend himself and the town.

415
00:27:32.741 --> 00:27:34.259
Miller.

416
00:27:34.259 --> 00:27:36.190
[guns firing]

417
00:27:36.190 --> 00:27:38.193
It\'s a quintessentially American film.

418
00:27:48.770 --> 00:27:51.050
I\'m probably exaggerating here,

419
00:27:51.050 --> 00:27:54.770
but most of my countrymen own guns,

420
00:27:54.770 --> 00:27:57.220
and most of my countrymen go to church on Sunday.

421
00:28:03.280 --> 00:28:06.260
In the last 60 or 70 years, this is not George Bush,

422
00:28:06.260 --> 00:28:07.760
it\'s not post 9/11.

423
00:28:07.760 --> 00:28:10.140
In the last 60 or 70 years,

424
00:28:10.140 --> 00:28:11.610
we and our European friends

425
00:28:11.610 --> 00:28:13.480
have developed different attitudes

426
00:28:13.480 --> 00:28:17.220
with regard to the use of force in international relations.

427
00:28:17.220 --> 00:28:18.793
And that\'s just a fact.

428
00:28:23.450 --> 00:28:26.350
Was it a mistake to label this a war on terror?

429
00:28:26.350 --> 00:28:28.260
I think so, I think so.

430
00:28:28.260 --> 00:28:30.660 line:15%
I thought it was such a fatuous title.

431
00:28:30.660 --> 00:28:33.280 line:15%
It was such an amorphous enemy.

432
00:28:33.280 --> 00:28:36.150 line:15%
The military, I come from quite a big military family.

433
00:28:36.150 --> 00:28:38.110 line:15%
They need to know who they\'re fighting,

434
00:28:38.110 --> 00:28:39.560 line:15%
and they need to know how they\'re gonna win.

435
00:28:39.560 --> 00:28:41.960 line:15%
And then declare victory if that\'s achievable.

436
00:28:41.960 --> 00:28:43.860 line:15%
You could never win against terror.

437
00:28:43.860 --> 00:28:46.020 line:15%
It doesn\'t exist.
Exactly.

438
00:28:46.020 --> 00:28:47.680 line:15%
It\'s a technique, it\'s a method.

439
00:28:47.680 --> 00:28:49.500 line:15%
The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize.

440
00:28:49.500 --> 00:28:50.900 line:15%
Did you argue against it at the time?

441
00:28:50.900 --> 00:28:52.170 line:15%
I did.

442
00:28:52.170 --> 00:28:54.160 line:15%
Why were you overruled?

443
00:28:54.160 --> 00:28:55.340 line:15%
Well I wasn\'t overruled.

444
00:28:55.340 --> 00:28:58.830 line:15%
There was a discussion and people had different views.

445
00:28:58.830 --> 00:29:00.330 line:15%
Because I was not the president.

446
00:29:00.330 --> 00:29:01.930 line:15%
The president was the president.

447
00:29:08.596 --> 00:29:11.013
[explosion]

448
00:29:13.910 --> 00:29:16.280
The Oxford dictionary defines terrorism

449
00:29:16.280 --> 00:29:19.610
as the unlawful use of violence and intimidation,

450
00:29:19.610 --> 00:29:21.330
especially against civilians,

451
00:29:21.330 --> 00:29:23.283
in the pursuit of political aims.

452
00:29:25.514 --> 00:29:27.540
The problem is that the definition covers

453
00:29:27.540 --> 00:29:29.573
almost every conflict in history.

454
00:29:30.610 --> 00:29:32.930
Every insurgent or revolutionary movement

455
00:29:32.930 --> 00:29:35.943
has at one time or another employed violence.

456
00:29:37.712 --> 00:29:41.712 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]

457
00:31:00.898 --> 00:31:02.650
The United States declared war on Al-Qaeda

458
00:31:02.650 --> 00:31:04.210
and on terrorism,

459
00:31:04.210 --> 00:31:06.270
while ignoring the fact that they were galvanized

460
00:31:06.270 --> 00:31:09.720
by a single idea, Jihad,

461
00:31:09.720 --> 00:31:12.333
an error that has echoed since 9/11.

462
00:31:15.810 --> 00:31:17.463
After 9/11,

463
00:31:18.440 --> 00:31:23.440
I was asked to write something for a cabinet office meeting

464
00:31:23.660 --> 00:31:25.550
with a wider scientific community,

465
00:31:25.550 --> 00:31:27.500
understanding the new times we were in.

466
00:31:29.860 --> 00:31:32.460
And I thought the best way I could do this

467
00:31:32.460 --> 00:31:37.400
is not give a boring objective strategic analysis,

468
00:31:37.400 --> 00:31:41.030
but to set out the view of a person

469
00:31:41.030 --> 00:31:43.870
and the hive mind of Jihadism.

470
00:31:43.870 --> 00:31:46.573
So I tried to do it from the inside.

471
00:31:50.026 --> 00:31:52.943
[Islamic chanting]

472
00:31:57.810 --> 00:31:59.810
Please allow me to introduce myself,

473
00:31:59.810 --> 00:32:02.490
without beard or costume for a short time,

474
00:32:02.490 --> 00:32:04.260
I will cease to Paul Schulte,

475
00:32:04.260 --> 00:32:06.970
the mild-mannered British defense academician.

476
00:32:06.970 --> 00:32:11.970
I\'ll try to become Osama Bin Laden.

477
00:32:14.210 --> 00:32:17.400
I shall begin by reminding you what the jihad is for us,

478
00:32:17.400 --> 00:32:18.950
and what it should mean to you.

479
00:32:24.500 --> 00:32:27.210
Our fighters are united in a total and protracted

480
00:32:27.210 --> 00:32:28.603
global defensive war.

481
00:32:30.690 --> 00:32:35.030
You are fighting on a severely limited and disunited basis

482
00:32:35.030 --> 00:32:37.780
now very largely by fateful military expeditions

483
00:32:37.780 --> 00:32:38.980
into Muslim territories.

484
00:32:45.267 --> 00:32:46.690
And what\'s our aim in this war?

485
00:32:46.690 --> 00:32:48.770
We want you out of the Islamic world.

486
00:32:48.770 --> 00:32:51.410
We want to correct the defamation of history

487
00:32:51.410 --> 00:32:53.280
by Judeo-Christian forces

488
00:32:53.280 --> 00:32:55.540
at the expense of the community of Islam,

489
00:32:55.540 --> 00:32:58.243
which you have reduced to such a disastrous condition.

490
00:33:03.130 --> 00:33:05.630
The US today has set a double standard,

491
00:33:05.630 --> 00:33:09.440
calling whoever goes against it\'s injustice, a terrorist.

492
00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:12.620
It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources,

493
00:33:12.620 --> 00:33:15.120
impose agents on us to rule us,

494
00:33:15.120 --> 00:33:17.450
and then wants us to agree to all this.

495
00:33:17.450 --> 00:33:20.533
If we refuse to do so, it says we are terrorists.

496
00:33:23.586 --> 00:33:25.836
[chanting]

497
00:33:30.570 --> 00:33:33.170
Dawn rises over this Madrassa,

498
00:33:33.170 --> 00:33:35.560
a religious school in Pakistan,

499
00:33:35.560 --> 00:33:38.090
one of 18,000 such schools in the country,

500
00:33:38.090 --> 00:33:40.620
and many more around the world.

501
00:33:40.620 --> 00:33:43.963
Schools like this have been called Jihadi incubators.

502
00:33:44.860 --> 00:33:48.210
Financed by Saudi charities and individuals,

503
00:33:48.210 --> 00:33:49.410
these Madrassas teach

504
00:33:49.410 --> 00:33:51.523
a strict form of Islam called Wahhabism.

505
00:34:03.355 --> 00:34:06.094
Osama is a great man.

506
00:34:06.094 --> 00:34:10.050
Western governments had failed in imposing

507
00:34:10.050 --> 00:34:14.250
or lending political models to the Middle East of all types,

508
00:34:14.250 --> 00:34:17.050
fascism, communism, democratic liberalism,

509
00:34:17.050 --> 00:34:19.763
national militarism, all collapsed.

510
00:34:30.740 --> 00:34:35.740
In this failure of our civilization,

511
00:34:35.920 --> 00:34:37.790
our liberal democracy is to satisfy

512
00:34:37.790 --> 00:34:39.550
the wants and needs of the people,

513
00:34:39.550 --> 00:34:42.720
the driftwood of globalization, in a sense.

514
00:34:42.720 --> 00:34:45.040
This has formed as one alternative,

515
00:34:45.040 --> 00:34:47.380
perhaps the most important counter-cultural movement

516
00:34:47.380 --> 00:34:49.163
in the world since World War II.

517
00:34:55.842 --> 00:34:59.842 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]

518
00:35:08.311 --> 00:35:10.075 line:15%
♪ I know you want it but you\'re never gonna get it ♪

519
00:35:10.075 --> 00:35:13.992 line:15%
[singing in foreign language]

520
00:35:16.493 --> 00:35:20.493 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]

521
00:35:36.060 --> 00:35:40.350
The traditional ways of cultures defending themselves,

522
00:35:40.350 --> 00:35:43.220
their sacred values that keep the people together,

523
00:35:43.220 --> 00:35:45.210
that define who they are.

524
00:35:45.210 --> 00:35:50.210
Their internal economies all became suddenly externalized

525
00:35:50.260 --> 00:35:51.713
and broken open.

526
00:35:52.698 --> 00:35:56.615
[singing in foreign language]

527
00:36:05.510 --> 00:36:06.830
We also want to protect our faith

528
00:36:06.830 --> 00:36:09.800
against your endless corrosive images and messages

529
00:36:09.800 --> 00:36:11.760
of fulfilled individual desire,

530
00:36:11.760 --> 00:36:14.480
drunkenness, pornography, or prostitution,

531
00:36:14.480 --> 00:36:16.960
and the commercialized degradation of women,

532
00:36:16.960 --> 00:36:20.300
of lavish material consumption, intellectual relativism,

533
00:36:20.300 --> 00:36:21.523
and religious doubt.

534
00:36:22.690 --> 00:36:25.310
They flood in at us faster and faster,

535
00:36:25.310 --> 00:36:27.100
like an endless toxic attack.

536
00:36:27.100 --> 00:36:31.080
You call this globalization and pretend it\'s unavoidable,

537
00:36:31.080 --> 00:36:33.303
and independent of your interest.

538
00:36:37.328 --> 00:36:40.328 line:15%
[uptempo pop music]

539
00:36:43.720 --> 00:36:47.720 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]

540
00:37:06.600 --> 00:37:08.820
The Muslim world is not your backyard.

541
00:37:08.820 --> 00:37:11.900
The Muslim world is not Germany, Japan, or South America.

542
00:37:11.900 --> 00:37:13.830
The honorable sons and daughters of Islam

543
00:37:13.830 --> 00:37:16.230
will not sit down watching you

544
00:37:16.230 --> 00:37:20.180
spread your evil and immorality and infidelity to our lands.

545
00:37:20.180 --> 00:37:22.423
It is time for us to be equals.

546
00:37:25.233 --> 00:37:29.233 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]

547
00:37:58.930 --> 00:38:01.530
On my orders, the United States military

548
00:38:01.530 --> 00:38:04.063
has begun strikes in Afghanistan.

549
00:38:06.830 --> 00:38:09.280
Ignoring the history behind 9/11,

550
00:38:09.280 --> 00:38:12.720
the scope and depth of the resentment that produced it,

551
00:38:12.720 --> 00:38:16.040
the United States embarked on a global military campaign

552
00:38:16.040 --> 00:38:19.023
against what was first and foremost, an idea.

553
00:38:19.890 --> 00:38:22.210
Afghanistan would be the first battle

554
00:38:22.210 --> 00:38:24.027
in the promised war on terror.

555
00:38:32.760 --> 00:38:34.930
Officially, this was a mission designed

556
00:38:34.930 --> 00:38:37.323
to oust Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan.

557
00:38:38.160 --> 00:38:42.160
I think that the term war on terror really was taken

558
00:38:42.160 --> 00:38:45.520
at least by those of us in the field at the time

559
00:38:46.370 --> 00:38:48.850
to mean actions, military actions,

560
00:38:48.850 --> 00:38:52.640
against those that were linked to,

561
00:38:52.640 --> 00:38:55.163
or conducted the 9/11 attacks.

562
00:38:59.980 --> 00:39:03.240
That was obviously focused on Al-Qaeda

563
00:39:03.240 --> 00:39:06.423
and any affiliated movements in particular.

564
00:39:08.720 --> 00:39:10.970
[yelling]

565
00:39:16.070 --> 00:39:20.070 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]

566
00:39:56.293 --> 00:39:58.750
Why did you support a regime change?

567
00:39:58.750 --> 00:40:00.760
I had believed for a very long time

568
00:40:00.760 --> 00:40:04.350
that we needed to hold states accountable,

569
00:40:04.350 --> 00:40:07.000
because otherwise we would be in the position

570
00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:10.070
of chasing elusive terrorist organizations

571
00:40:10.070 --> 00:40:10.903
all over the world,

572
00:40:10.903 --> 00:40:15.003
and we\'d never achieve a conclusive result.

573
00:40:19.460 --> 00:40:22.110
So if we are going to discourage

574
00:40:23.340 --> 00:40:27.210
countries and even territories within countries,

575
00:40:27.210 --> 00:40:28.470
harboring terrorists,

576
00:40:28.470 --> 00:40:31.138
we have to be able to deal with those states.

577
00:40:31.138 --> 00:40:35.055 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]

578
00:40:56.804 --> 00:40:59.387
[guns firing]

579
00:41:02.270 --> 00:41:04.660
The war on terror really took on

580
00:41:04.660 --> 00:41:06.780
a much more expansive meaning

581
00:41:06.780 --> 00:41:09.840
with the conduct of the operations in Afghanistan,

582
00:41:09.840 --> 00:41:12.823
to ensure that Afghanistan was never again

583
00:41:12.823 --> 00:41:14.630
a sanctuary for Al-Qaeda the way it was

584
00:41:14.630 --> 00:41:16.803
when the 9/11 attacks were planned there.

585
00:41:24.020 --> 00:41:25.950
It\'s obviously an ongoing mission.

586
00:41:25.950 --> 00:41:30.950
It\'s not one that you can, as in conventional war,

587
00:41:31.240 --> 00:41:32.750
take the hill, plant the flag,

588
00:41:32.750 --> 00:41:34.423
and go home to a victory parade.

589
00:41:39.930 --> 00:41:44.930
This is the kind of endeavor that requires enormous time,

590
00:41:45.380 --> 00:41:48.660
resources, determination, perseverance,

591
00:41:48.660 --> 00:41:50.203
and all the rest.

592
00:41:52.360 --> 00:41:53.380
While focusing on

593
00:41:53.380 --> 00:41:55.490
trying to rebuild Afghanistan,

594
00:41:55.490 --> 00:41:58.390
the United States found themselves mired in a campaign

595
00:41:58.390 --> 00:42:01.270
of counterinsurgency, which continued to deepen,

596
00:42:01.270 --> 00:42:04.853
even after Al-Qaeda militants had been killed or displaced.

597
00:42:09.220 --> 00:42:11.840
There was this gross misunderstanding

598
00:42:11.840 --> 00:42:13.380
of what asymmetric warfare,

599
00:42:13.380 --> 00:42:16.340
particularly insurgency, is all about.

600
00:42:16.340 --> 00:42:18.690
You can parrot that you\'re out to win

601
00:42:18.690 --> 00:42:21.560
the hearts and minds of the people all day long.

602
00:42:21.560 --> 00:42:24.260
But when you walk down the street in battle rattle

603
00:42:24.260 --> 00:42:28.090
with full Kevlar protective equipment, helmets,

604
00:42:28.090 --> 00:42:30.310
armored trucks and cars and everything else,

605
00:42:30.310 --> 00:42:32.330
you\'re not winning anybody\'s hearts and minds.

606
00:42:32.330 --> 00:42:33.890
You\'re alienating the people.

607
00:42:33.890 --> 00:42:36.550
And when the Taliban come in as soon as you\'ve left,

608
00:42:36.550 --> 00:42:38.510
and do the things that need to be done

609
00:42:38.510 --> 00:42:40.310
to win the hearts and minds of the people,

610
00:42:40.310 --> 00:42:44.300
or threaten them in a way that is a believable,

611
00:42:44.300 --> 00:42:45.568
then you\'ve just lost.

612
00:42:45.568 --> 00:42:49.568 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]

613
00:43:20.710 --> 00:43:22.550 line:15%
We have knowingly embarked

614
00:43:22.550 --> 00:43:24.890
upon a costly long-term cycle.

615
00:43:24.890 --> 00:43:28.130
You would call it a strategy of provocative escalation

616
00:43:28.130 --> 00:43:30.293
or a spiral of holy rage.

617
00:43:32.900 --> 00:43:35.360
We anticipate extreme military responses,

618
00:43:35.360 --> 00:43:38.563
which we know will eliminate our initial cadres of fighters.

619
00:43:41.360 --> 00:43:43.810
But the violence of enemy responses

620
00:43:43.810 --> 00:43:46.410
provokes the spiral of engrenage.

621
00:43:46.410 --> 00:43:49.230
That\'s a French term for the condition of being enmeshed

622
00:43:49.230 --> 00:43:51.400
like cogs in interlocking gears,

623
00:43:51.400 --> 00:43:53.983
in a repetitive cycle of atrocity and revenge.

624
00:43:55.310 --> 00:43:58.190
Engrenage is a word the French forces had to use a lot

625
00:43:58.190 --> 00:44:01.120
in Indochina and Algeria in the middle of the last century.

626
00:44:01.120 --> 00:44:03.140
I invite you to become familiar with it now,

627
00:44:03.140 --> 00:44:05.983
because we\'re making it part of the present century, too.

628
00:44:07.278 --> 00:44:08.660
[gun firing]

629
00:44:08.660 --> 00:44:10.200
A new milestone crossed

630
00:44:10.200 --> 00:44:12.180
in the war in Afghanistan.

631
00:44:12.180 --> 00:44:16.290
The number of us military deaths has surpassed 2,000.

632
00:44:16.290 --> 00:44:17.810
That figure then doubled

633
00:44:17.810 --> 00:44:21.083
in just over two years after a major escalation.

634
00:44:22.830 --> 00:44:23.980
We did not intend it.

635
00:44:25.010 --> 00:44:27.090
Even my nemesis, Mister Rumsfeld,

636
00:44:27.090 --> 00:44:30.830
had no desire to want to do this at all,

637
00:44:30.830 --> 00:44:32.710
but we took our eye off the ball,

638
00:44:32.710 --> 00:44:36.020
as the administration started to talk about Iraq,

639
00:44:36.020 --> 00:44:38.870
and things just drifted in my view.

640
00:44:38.870 --> 00:44:41.270
And when we woke up,

641
00:44:41.270 --> 00:44:45.023
we found that we owned Afghanistan.

642
00:44:46.205 --> 00:44:49.955
[dramatic orchestral music]

643
00:44:53.096 --> 00:44:54.620
Hello, and welcome to Politics Confidential.

644
00:44:54.620 --> 00:44:55.630
I\'m Jonathan Karl,

645
00:44:55.630 --> 00:44:58.550
and today I am joined by former Chief of Staff,

646
00:44:58.550 --> 00:45:00.140
former Secretary of Defense,

647
00:45:00.140 --> 00:45:02.403
former member of Congress, Donald Rumsfeld.

648
00:45:03.270 --> 00:45:05.530
We\'ve been engaged in this long, drawn out war,

649
00:45:05.530 --> 00:45:09.510
and you\'re saying there was never even a decision to do so.

650
00:45:09.510 --> 00:45:11.560
Well, I\'m saying, I don\'t remember one.

651
00:45:12.510 --> 00:45:15.810
There was no formed strategy for what was gonna happen.

652
00:45:15.810 --> 00:45:17.810
We were just going after bin Laden.

653
00:45:17.810 --> 00:45:19.360
I don\'t think anybody,

654
00:45:19.360 --> 00:45:21.180
anybody, this may sound shocking,

655
00:45:21.180 --> 00:45:24.370
but I don\'t think anybody envisioned the end state.

656
00:45:24.370 --> 00:45:27.740
Nobody understood or had conceptualized

657
00:45:27.740 --> 00:45:29.550
how long we were gonna be there,

658
00:45:29.550 --> 00:45:31.210
how many casualties we might take,

659
00:45:31.210 --> 00:45:32.360
and so forth and so on,

660
00:45:32.360 --> 00:45:34.760
or whether they were gonna do what I recommended earlier,

661
00:45:34.760 --> 00:45:37.910
that we just go in, get Al-Qaeda and leave.

662
00:45:37.910 --> 00:45:39.640
No one had thought that out.

663
00:45:39.640 --> 00:45:41.860
No one had really given that a whole lot of thought.

664
00:45:41.860 --> 00:45:43.233
We just simply acted.

665
00:45:54.240 --> 00:45:58.650
We Americans have come to view history

666
00:45:58.650 --> 00:46:03.650
as kind of a triumphal march led by the United States.

667
00:46:04.880 --> 00:46:06.840
There is a narrative,

668
00:46:06.840 --> 00:46:09.670 line:15%
particularly a narrative of the 20th century,

669
00:46:09.670 --> 00:46:12.220 line:15%
a narrative centered on World War II

670
00:46:12.220 --> 00:46:14.493 line:15%
and its aftermath, the Cold War,

671
00:46:15.650 --> 00:46:20.650
which seems to suggest that forceful American leadership

672
00:46:22.020 --> 00:46:24.080
can destroy evil

673
00:46:26.909 --> 00:46:30.835
and transform the world in our own image.

674
00:46:30.835 --> 00:46:34.752
[triumphant orchestral music]

675
00:46:39.595 --> 00:46:42.012
We think we won World War II.

676
00:46:43.090 --> 00:46:45.700
Truth is mostly the Soviets defeated the Germans,

677
00:46:45.700 --> 00:46:47.460
but we think we won World War II.

678
00:46:47.460 --> 00:46:49.100
We think we won the Cold War.

679
00:46:49.100 --> 00:46:50.973
We think that we are a liberator.

680
00:46:51.990 --> 00:46:55.610
And the reason this is relevant is because

681
00:46:55.610 --> 00:46:58.470
those sorts of expectations

682
00:46:58.470 --> 00:47:01.430
then shape the thinking

683
00:47:01.430 --> 00:47:03.970
of American presidents

684
00:47:03.970 --> 00:47:06.950
as they looked at the Islamic world,

685
00:47:06.950 --> 00:47:08.800
considered the problems,

686
00:47:08.800 --> 00:47:11.590
the dysfunction with the Islamic world,

687
00:47:11.590 --> 00:47:15.424
and tried to calculate the best response.

688
00:47:15.424 --> 00:47:19.174
[dramatic orchestral music]

689
00:47:21.230 --> 00:47:23.120
America was going to eliminate

690
00:47:23.120 --> 00:47:24.600
the evil of terrorism

691
00:47:24.600 --> 00:47:27.510
and then rebuild countries like Afghanistan,

692
00:47:27.510 --> 00:47:30.730
just as they had done so successfully in Japan and Germany,

693
00:47:30.730 --> 00:47:32.280
following the second world war.

694
00:47:33.851 --> 00:47:37.110
And we are trying to teach Germans democracy.

695
00:47:37.110 --> 00:47:39.760
In this former Nazi publishing plant,

696
00:47:39.760 --> 00:47:42.790
our army issues a newspaper for the Germans.

697
00:47:42.790 --> 00:47:45.200
As Editor in Chief, an American major

698
00:47:45.200 --> 00:47:48.580
sets the pattern for honest journalism in our zone.

699
00:47:48.580 --> 00:47:51.680
After 13 years of lies and distortions,

700
00:47:51.680 --> 00:47:53.790
Germans can now read the truth.

701
00:47:53.790 --> 00:47:55.483
And many of them are responding.

702
00:48:04.118 --> 00:48:06.270
But that which had worked so well in Europe,

703
00:48:06.270 --> 00:48:09.243
failed in Afghanistan and the rest of the Muslim world.

704
00:48:13.350 --> 00:48:14.183
Don\'t you agree

705
00:48:14.183 --> 00:48:16.860
that conceptualizing it as a war,

706
00:48:16.860 --> 00:48:21.130
conditioned us to look at jihad strictly in military terms,

707
00:48:21.130 --> 00:48:24.023
when in essence it is an ideological conflict?

708
00:48:25.200 --> 00:48:28.780
I agree that the clash of narratives

709
00:48:29.620 --> 00:48:32.370
between the Jihadi vision,

710
00:48:32.370 --> 00:48:34.190
the millennial view of

711
00:48:35.760 --> 00:48:37.680
the reestablishment of the Caliphate

712
00:48:37.680 --> 00:48:42.270
to the domination of Islam is the threat.

713
00:48:42.270 --> 00:48:44.500
It\'s not a essentially a military threat,

714
00:48:44.500 --> 00:48:45.850
it\'s an ideological threat.

715
00:48:55.810 --> 00:49:00.550
We\'re terrible at engaging in ideological warfare,

716
00:49:00.550 --> 00:49:03.680
and that\'s in part because we in the west

717
00:49:03.680 --> 00:49:06.883
have no real voice, we have no real standing.

718
00:49:09.667 --> 00:49:14.667
No Muslim population is going to pay close attention

719
00:49:14.760 --> 00:49:19.370
to what the United States says about radical Islam.

720
00:49:19.370 --> 00:49:21.100
The battle, the ideological battle,

721
00:49:21.100 --> 00:49:24.613
has to come from within the Muslim community.

722
00:49:26.315 --> 00:49:28.898
[guns firing]

723
00:49:33.635 --> 00:49:37.635 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]

724
00:50:23.834 --> 00:50:25.200
It was the logic of war

725
00:50:25.200 --> 00:50:28.090
that brought the US into Afghanistan.

726
00:50:28.090 --> 00:50:31.790
Once there, an insistence on regime change entrapped them

727
00:50:31.790 --> 00:50:34.230
in a campaign of counterinsurgency,

728
00:50:34.230 --> 00:50:36.193
from which there is no visible escape.

729
00:50:37.944 --> 00:50:41.611
[light instrumental music]

730
00:50:46.930 --> 00:50:49.120
Just as was predicted by some,

731
00:50:49.120 --> 00:50:52.300
this war was like a hammer striking mercury,

732
00:50:52.300 --> 00:50:53.863
like kicking an anthill.

733
00:50:54.710 --> 00:50:56.800
The ensuing revolt would prosper,

734
00:50:56.800 --> 00:50:58.440
and allow the concept of jihad

735
00:50:58.440 --> 00:51:01.963
to spread well beyond the borders of Afghanistan.

736
00:51:04.310 --> 00:51:07.230
In the next episode of the war on terror,

737
00:51:07.230 --> 00:51:09.180
how the concept of regime change,

738
00:51:09.180 --> 00:51:11.700
and the treatment of captured enemy combatants,

739
00:51:11.700 --> 00:51:14.320
helped only to worsen the conflict,

740
00:51:14.320 --> 00:51:18.580
how a perpetual war would come to threaten our way of life,

741
00:51:18.580 --> 00:51:21.053
our values, and our democracies.

742
00:51:21.887 --> 00:51:25.637
[somber instrumental music]