In 2008, 2009 is the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, whereas Assistant Secretary Hughes responsible for U.S. policy with regard to 50 countries in Europe and Eurasia as well as NATO, the EU, and the OSCE. So the idea of working with allies is in many ways what Phil has been doing since the very beginning of the Obama Administration. He was an advisor to the presidential campaign of then-Senator Obama, served as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and was Director for European Affairs at the NSC under President Clinton. He also was a senior fellow at IIS in London. He has an MA and PhD in International Relations from Johns Hopkins and a BA from Ohio University. Please join me in welcoming Phil Gordon to the stage. John, thank you very much. Kath, everybody, thanks for having me here. The topic that I was asked to address about building partner capacity in the Middle East I think was already timely and important when you thought of it, but I would argue that it's even more timely and important now. The President has long made clear notwithstanding any pivots or obviously other important regions in the world how central the Middle East is to all of our national interests, whether that's in the area of energy or the economy or terrorism or nonproliferation, the security of key allies. And he has also made clear that while the United States inevitably must lead, defending our interests in all of these areas requires strong partners. We need partners that can meet their citizens' basic needs and ensure security within their borders. Their inability to do that creates problems with global consequences that ultimately give rise to direct threats to the American people. And so this has been the subject of your conference here, has been an important emphasis of the President's all along, and today we are called to implement it as we're dealing with this rising threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, ISIL, where we believe partner capacity will be critical. So what I'd like to do today is present the administration's view on building capacity, where it fits in to our overall strategy, but particularly how it applies to ISIL and then afterwards, John. I look forward to a dialogue with you and questions from the group. This approach includes how we're building a coalition to dismantle and defeat this terrorist group, how we're working with our partners to build their capacity to sustain gains on the ground, and how we are once again with partners dealing with the root causes of extremism to help advance a more peaceful, prosperous, and pluralistic future in the Middle East. As I mentioned at the start, this is not a new idea or emphasis of the administration. The 2010 National Security Strategy highlighted the need to use our development capabilities military-to-military interactions, economic diplomacy and intelligence and law enforcement agencies all to build partner capacity. The 2010 strategy also emphasized the role of NGOs and acknowledged that we have to draw on resources of national influence outside of government to address shared threats, including people-to-people ties between countries, global trade and commerce and our values and ideas. The president put a particular emphasis on this point of capacity building in his speech at West Point just this past May. He called there for a sustainable framework to more effectively partner with countries in which terrorist networks seek to gain ground, recognizing that the nature of the terrorist threat cannot be resolved unilaterally or through military means alone. While the president made clear, as he always does, that he reserves the right to take direct action, unilateral action when necessary to protect the United States, he underscored the durable solutions to these challenges, require comprehensive approaches in close coordination with our partners. To underpin this framework, the president called on Congress to authorize a $5 billion counterterrorism partnerships fund to address terrorist threats from South Asia to the Sahel, to allow us to train, equip and support partner countries on the front lines, including those confronting the threats posed by ISIL and other extremist groups based in Iraq and Syria. The CTPF was meant not just to increase security assistance to our partners, but to ensure a whole-of-government approach to tackling these threats. With new funding requested for intelligence sharing and law enforcement, as well as programs to stabilize Syria's neighbors, including assistance to communities now hosting more than 3 million Syrian refugees. We also asked at that time, Congress, to provide authorization and funding for a Defense Department program to train and equip vetted elements of Syria's moderate opposition so they can better defend counterattacks from groups like ISIL. The CTPF will also support longer-term security sector government initiatives because our counterterrorism success over the long term depends on partnering with and developing professional and accountable security forces and supporting institutions. We are gratified that Congress has now authorized that request and we are moving forward as quickly as possible to implement this program. We've designed our response to the threat from ISIL with this overall partnership approach in mind. As the President has made clear, ISIL poses an immediate threat to the region and as it seeks to overthrow government's controlled territory, terrorize the local population and implement an oppressive and intolerant interpretation of Sharia law. We've also seen ISIL seek to project its capabilities beyond Iraq, including using Syria as a safe haven and the resources it has seized in the region to plot against Western interests.  As the President said in his September 2014 address to the nation on September 10th, if left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States. Now, I want to be clear. We have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland. We do know that ISIL leaders have threatened America and our allies. And our intelligence community believes that thousands of foreigners, including Europeans and some Americans, have joined them in Syria and Iraq. These trained in battle hardened fighters could try to return home to carry out deadly attacks. So this is why the President has laid out a clear strategy to degrade, dismantle, and ultimately defeat ISIL. And over the past few months, the President has consistently emphasized a critical element to any effective response to a threat like ISIL, includes partnerships where local forces take the lead. We are now fully engaged in an international effort to partner with Iraqis and others to meet this challenge. That partnership is premised on an inclusive political process, including steps that would demonstrate the commitment of Iraqi leaders to forming a government that would be representative of the legitimate interests of all Iraqis. We have been encouraged by the political progress made in Iraq over the last month in which the new Prime Minister, Abadi, successfully formed a new and more inclusive government and put forward a national program that reflects the urgent need to address the needs and grievances of the Iraqi people. As you all know, President Obama met with Prime Minister Abadi in New York. I think it's fair to say that he gets it and he understands that it can't be business as usual continuation of the previous eight years. This is only going to work if there is a new political approach. Based on this partnership with Iraq, which was only possible when there was a new government in Baghdad, we've now formed a global coalition of some 50 to 60 countries, thus far, that are working with us to deny ISIL a safe haven and thus counter the flow of fighters and diminish its access to the sources of funding and weapons that has fueled the group's advances. Last week, of course, we launched airstrikes on ISIL targets and other terrorist targets in Syria. We did that in partnership with Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. And that represented the largest group of Arab partners involved in direct kinetic action alongside the United States since the Gulf War. Working with these partners, our strikes in Syria have targeted ISIL training facilities, fighters, command and control centers, sources of revenue, and fuel and armored vehicles. And going forward, consistent with the President's strategy, we plan to further strengthen these long-standing security relationships and continue working with our partners to conduct targeted strikes against ISIL in support of our collective security interests. I think many doubted that we would find such strong and direct support in the region for the military component of our program. But I think what you saw in Syria and Iraq last week testifies to the strong partnerships that we have there. And we have seen in the week since then that traditional partners are also a critical part of this effort. Just this past Friday, the United Kingdom and Belgium authorized the use of military force against ISIL forces in Iraq. And so the air forces of those two countries will now join those of the United States and France, which along with the Iraqi Air Force have already conducted strikes on ISIL positions in Iraq. Denmark and the Netherlands now also plan to provide fighter aircraft to the coalition. Germany has begun training and providing equipment to the Peshmerga in northern Iraq. Canada has announced that we'll make an additional contribution of $15 million to support security measures and provide further assistance as needed. This contribution includes non-lethal security assistance to security forces in Iraq combating ISIL and supports regional efforts to limit the movement of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria. So taken all together, I think these commitments demonstrate, these decisions demonstrate the clear commitment of the international community to take the necessary action to degrade and ultimately defeat the terrorists who call themselves ISIL. Now, the president has acknowledged that Syria presents a more complicated problem and challenge than Iraq, because we don't in Syria have the government to partner with that we now do in Iraq. Over the longer term, we will need partners on the ground in Syria who can counter the threat from ISIL and other extremist groups. And that's why we are working with our regional and European partners on a program for our military to train and equip vetted members of Syria's moderate opposition. Saudi Arabia has agreed to host the program and we are discussing contributions with other allies as well. The more resources we have to put into the program, the quicker we will be able to bring it online and the more effective it will be in terms of enhancing the opposition's ability to consolidate the territory under its control and defend against attacks by ISIL and the regime. I wanna emphasize having spelled out some of the military partnering that we have been doing that while the use of force is a critical and necessary component in the campaign to counter ISIL, the importance of partner capacity and contributions goes well beyond the military sphere. We're also working to undermine the root causes of terrorism and disrupt the networks that facilitate terrorist travel, procurement, and plotting. In New York last week, the president, as you know, convened a foreign terrorist fighter summit with the UN Security Council, one of just a few times in the Security Council history that heads of state have come together in that format. He did so because of the priority of that issue and the need for consensus. And as a result of that meeting, Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2178, which is legally binding and requires nations to prevent and suppress the recruiting, organizing, transporting, or equipping of foreign terrorist fighters, as well as the financing of their traveler activities. Nations must prevent the movement of terrorists or terrorist groups through their territory and ensure that their domestic laws allow for the prosecution of those who attempt to do so. Australia has proposed a plan to its parliament to invest over $500 million in a counterterrorism package to combat homegrown terrorism and deter Australians from joining overseas terrorist activities. Canada has announced that we'll make additional contribution of 15 million to support regional efforts to limit the movement of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria. These types of decisions, first of all, underscore the need for international participation in this effort, and they demonstrate a clear commitment on behalf of the international community to take action, whatever action is needed, together to degrade and ultimately to defeat ISIL. I have focused today on how we're addressing the threat from ISIL, obviously, because it is so central to what we are doing, but I want to also underscore that the emphasis on partners in building partner capacity goes well behind, well beyond the ISIL threat. Indeed, as I've suggested, it was a core of the administration's approach well before ISIL was where it now is in the priority lists. And I also want to underscore that even as we are emphasizing building new partnerships, we also remain committed to supporting fortifying traditional allies and partnerships. So, of course, we have over the past five years deepened U.S. security and defense cooperation with Israel to unprecedented levels, to include providing Israel with financial and technological assistance for defensive systems to counter the threats of rockets and missiles, access to the most advanced U.S. manufacturing defense equipment and excess defense articles, and increased opportunities to train with U.S. forces. We've done the same on the West Bank, partnering with Palestinian authority to train and equip professional security forces that ensure law and order, and are not a tool of political influence. In North Africa, we are helping Tunisia with its remarkable democratic transition, providing support not just on the economy and governance, but also in the security sector, including foreign military financing and international military education and training activities. In Libya, we, along with several partners, have committed to training a general purpose force to help address the lack of institutional capacity and instability there. In Yemen, we're working to support President Hadi and the people of Yemen as they work to achieve a meaningful reform through the GCC initiative process and to partner to confront the shared threat posed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. We also recognize that the long-term stability and prosperity of our strategic partnerships is best advanced through the institutions of democratic governance and respect for rights of all citizens, and therefore, as we pursue all of these goals, we will continue to speak up for our values, promote the rights of civil society, and underscore that the denial of universal rights and fundamental freedom only fuels the fires of extremism that we are seeking to extinguish. Bottom line, once again, US leadership will be critical and indispensable to meeting the challenges we face throughout the Middle East. I think the President, if you saw his 60 Minutes interview last night, underscored that once again, noting that whatever the problem out there in the world seems to be, and there are plenty of them, US leadership is a critical component. I believe he said, that's how we roll. That is how we roll, but we also know that while we have to lead, we can't tackle all of these challenges alone. We need strong partners, and that's why we've invested so much and continue to invest so much in building partner capacity. From Iraq to Syria to North Africa, we will help those partners build that capacity so that they can secure the gains we achieve for the long-term. Thank you for your attention. And then, John, I look forward to pursuing the discussion with you and with the rest of the group. Thank you very much, Phil, for that excellent and thought-provoking talk. I'd say thought-provoking, because I came up with a number of questions, which I'm gonna take advantage of your proximity to ask. And the first is, how do we think about what lessons the administration has drawn from Libya? I mean, there was, before we had this very broad multilateral attack with our Arab allies, the previous high-water mark was Libya. And Libya now is not looking like it is churning out so well. So as we consider the current operations, what lessons have we drawn from the previous operations? That's an excellent and important question, one that we have obviously asked ourselves and the President has addressed. I think when the President was recently asked about this, he said one lesson he took away from Libyans that follow-up is critical. We didn't have a lot of good choices in Libya. It's not as if, some have said, well, it would have been nice if we could have invested in partner capacity well before the revolution, trained and equipped moderate Libyans and a security force so that when Qaddafi left, you would have institutions and forces to stabilize the country. That would indeed have been nice, but it wasn't a realistic option at the time. So Libya, as you know, the United States led with partners in intervention because of the urgency and drama of the situation and didn't have the luxury of having years in advance to build up that capacity. But the President has acknowledged that when the institutions are destroyed and you don't have something to take their place, it requires intensive, urgent and global and resourced effort to put something in place. And we're the first to acknowledge that that has yet to happen in Libya. But as I underscored in my remarks, we are ready to, along with international partners, train and help build the security forces that will be necessary to stabilize Libya. So you need and have the diplomatic political piece and we're supporting UN and international efforts to get the parties to accept a form of governance. And we have at least prevented Libya from completely disintegrating into the all out civil war that would be possible. So we need the parties to see that first they need to come together around an institutional process. And then when that is in place, we remain ready and indeed have even authorized the spending for and prepared the plans for training that security force if they can get the politics right. And just to apply this to the ISIS, ISIL, Daesh environment. You said that the president told Prime Minister Abadi, this will only work if there's a different political approach. I think that raises the question of if there's not a different political approach, then what is the status of the US campaign as our support for the current government of Iraq conditional in any way. And second, as we think about the sort of follow through and the implications of our strikes on this group on the border of Syria, do we have, what is our strategy for thinking through what the long-term political trajectory of Syria is? Right. Well, fortunately, fortunately, John, the first part, the first and hardest part of your question, we don't currently have to answer that because there now is a government. I mean, you're right that if Maliki hadn't been replaced and Iraqis didn't come together behind the government that was prepared to work that we could work with, that would be an enormous policy challenge for the United States. And that's why we are encouraged by what we now have to deal with. The president made that clear, go back to how this developed over the summer. Obviously, the ISIL threat emerged particularly with the fall of Mosul. And that posed a real challenge. And where some were ready to say, well, the United States now has to jump in with its air force and military forces to deal with this threat. The president was very clear. He immediately took measures to defend Americans, reinforce the embassy, made sure that we would protect Americans as the first order of business, increased our intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. We had a better sense of what was going on in the ground, put in assessment teams so we could better assess the Iraqi security forces, but also made clear we were not taking this on as Maliki's air force because that might provide an immediate stopback gap, but it would perpetuate the problem that was significantly responsible for the rise of ISIL in the first place. Even before the Iraqis had formed a new government based on the election last March, the president did need to use some military force when we were concerned about the Mosul dam being in the hands of ISIL and the consequences if they weren't stopped outside of air bill where we have Americans. So we started to use force, but again made it clear that for this to work in the long run, it was going to require an Iraqi government that we could partner with for two reasons. One, because without the politics right, if you continue to the government that would make significant parts of Iraq, notably Sunnis, feel like they weren't part of it, you just weren't gonna deal with this and we would just be with our finger in the dyke, so to speak. But two, because we needed partners on the ground who could fight, especially given that we don't see US ground forces as the solution. So we now have that and it gives us something genuinely to work with in Iraq and that's what we're focused on. We think there's a real chance now by getting the politics right, you can persuade the majority of Sunnis that they want to keep Iraq together and participate and have no reason to turn to this terrorist group and the Iraqis will provide the forces on the ground that we can work with. As I mentioned myself, Syria is harder. There's no doubt, because we don't have a government that we can partner with, which means in Damascus, unlike in Baghdad, you actually have a force that is continuing to be a cause of some of the terrorists flocking to the country and resistance and you don't have a partner with that you don't have a partner that you can actually active work on the ground and that's why I said the solution in Syria while longer term and harder depends on achieving ultimately that political transition and in the meantime, training to the degree we can, the moderate embedded Syrians so that they can provide a modicum of force on the ground to partner with even while awaiting that political transition. There was a curious little piece in the economists last week, not Friday, but Friday before, which noted the rise in beheadings in Saudi Arabian. So, you know, the Saudis are not as dissimilar from ISIS as people portray, that here you have a deeply orthodox regime which enforces strict tenets of Islamic law in a population which is not democratic. Clearly, one is the enemy of the United States. One is, if not an ally, a close partner of the United States. Is there any truth there? Is there anything, is there any validity to the comparison or is there any possibility of living with ISIS or some group like it in the future? Well, the short answer to that question is no. We don't see any possibility of living with ISIS whose growth, I mean, we have underscored in numerous ways. If ISIS is left unchecked, it will continue to take territory, wildly abuse human rights through displacements, genocide, rape, sectarianism, take territory and destabilize existing governments and seek to establish a caliphate. And that's just simply unacceptable to the United States and our interests. So I think there are vast differences which make it unacceptable for us to allow ISIL to progress and that's why the president has said it's immediately a risk to Iraq and Syria and to Americans in the region, but in the longer run it's a risk and a threat to our partners and allies in the region but ultimately to us. And if it continues to attract foreign fighters and terrorists, it becomes a risk to the homeland, even well beyond the fact that it is a massive affront to our values. And so for all of those reasons, we see no scenario where we can live with ISIL and just accept it existing in the Middle East. Yes, one more question before I go to the audience. One of the things I increasingly hear from U.S. allies in the Middle East is there is such dissatisfaction with the role the United States has been playing and dissatisfaction with our arms purchasing process that people say we will get things from elsewhere. I just met with an Egyptian official last week in New York who started talking to me about how they're getting all these weapons from the Soviet Union. Saudi Arabia, a close ally, has reportedly financed $3 billion in weapons acquisitions for Lebanon with the idea that they don't come from the United States. How do we think about, as a policy issue, is it a problem when people turn away from American supply, is it a problem when people try to use weapon sales, not as us projecting our policy and building relationships, but as a way to punish the United States? What effect does that have on the way we see the relationships with them or also customers, how we see our relationships with the world? What response does it and should it generate from us? Look, John, that's a long-standing issue. There's nothing new about it. And I think there have been countries around the world for a long time, even going back to the Cold War when there was also a global market for arms and countries had to orient themselves, not just in terms of arms purchases, but in terms of geopolitics and everything else. And the specter of turning to the Soviet bloc or to the Russians was also always something countries waived to get our attention and maybe get leverage it for other things they need, whether in the arms area or not. And there's nothing new about it and we see it and hear it a lot now. I think what was true then remains true now that the United States is the most reliable, dependable source of the most efficient and effective weapons that these countries need and they know it and they value the defense equipment that comes from the United States just as they value the security partnership that often comes along with it. So I think we're quite confident while there's always a risk of turning elsewhere, in some cases it's a threat to buy Russian arms as opposed to have US security assistance pay for those Russian arms. I were quite confident that the vast majorities and the countries in the region will continue to look to the United States as their primary security partner for a whole range of reasons. But will they hedge and turn to France and turn to the UK and turn to other? They always have. There is a global market for arms and we never expected or do not expect to have a monopoly where countries only buy from the United States and there are no other options. There is an international market for weapons and countries have a right to procure them wherever they see fit. We just happen to believe that they will often see fit to buy American because of the quality of the arms and because of the defense relationship that comes with it. And I think the past weeks and months have probably proven as much as ever why being a close partner of the United States is in all these countries' interests. Thank you very much. Now I'll turn to you if I could ask you to raise your hand to identify yourself, wait for the microphone and only ask one question until everybody's had a chance right here. Hi, Marisa Lino with Northrop Grumman. I wonder if you would talk to us a bit about Turkey's role in the situation with ISIL and whether you expect their approach to change. Turkey obviously will play a critically important role. It's there. It is already the home to hundreds and thousands of displaced Syrians. It's been focused on the Syrian issue from the start. It's a key partner. It's a key NATO partner. We've been working closely with it on these problems for years. I don't know what you mean by will it change. I think Turkey understands as we do both the need for a political transition in Syria, which they've supported and pushed for for a number of years, but also the threat in the meantime posed by ISIL. And so we've had very close conversations with the Turks. President Obama called President Erdogan just the other day while in New York and the vice president met with him. And I think it's fair to say that we have common interests when it comes to these problems, both in seeing a political transition in Syria and the Turks again are on the front line. So I think we will find in Turkey a close partner. Obviously we need Turkey on the foreign fighters issue, given the borders and the risk that foreign fighters will pass through Turkey on the way there. So it's a critical part of our cooperation. Oil sales and denying ISIL the opportunity to sell oil. And I mentioned, I said everyone likes to pay attention to the military part of the coalition, which is understandable because it's so important. And I mentioned all the military contributions from so many of our partners in the region. But as I also emphasize to get this right, we need partners on all these other dimensions. The ideological dimension, foreign fighters, oil sales and Turkey can be a critical partner on all those issues as well. And we're going to work closely with them as we will with others. Family, Saudi, FAS partners. I have a question which is an extension of the statement or the question made by Prof. Dr. Alterman. Considering that ISIL and Saudi Arabia essentially use the same method, they still in Saudi Arabia, they cut heads, they cut hands, they treat women the way we know they would treat them. They have been spowing this hatred and selfish ideas throughout the world from Southeast Asia to Baccaram in Nigeria. What is the possibility that the people you'll be training in Saudi Arabia will be moderate in terms and what's your definition of moderate? Second question, what are you doing in terms of? One question, that was one of the rules. Same question, what are you doing? I'll just choose one to answer. What are you doing to stop that propaganda and that stop of thinking? Well, in some ways it is one question. First again, let's be clear there really is no comparison to what ISIL is doing and trying to do in terms of destabilizing the region and taking territory and killing and displacing people because of their sect and all the rest and that's why it's just a fundamentally different challenge and issue whereas Saudi Arabia is our partner in this regard, ISIL for all the reasons I said poses an urgent threat that we need to confront and deal with. The issue you raise about ideology though is a critical one and like I said, this cannot be dealt with just through military means. We have to get to the root causes and one is the ideology that ISIL has been turning to and there we do need Saudi Arabia's help as well as others and the King of Saudi Arabia addressed this issue and some leading clerics in Saudi Arabia have also come forward to denounce ISIL and what it stands for and deny that it represents any version of Islam and we need more and more clerics and Muslim leaders and political leaders in the Muslim world and beyond to make that point and so again, while there's much more work to be done we acknowledge that the Saudis have taken some steps in that regard and we're going to need them and others among their neighbors to do the same thing because otherwise, we're dealing with the symptoms of the problem but not the problem itself and ultimately we need more and more voices making clear what we believe and have said that the so-called Islamic state is neither Islamic nor a state and it doesn't represent Islam. Hi, my name is Nazar Jannabi. I'm with SDI. My question is, since the airstrikes started we noticed that it did blunt the ISIS attacks but however, there is no significant territorial contraction within their activity, their areas of control, areas of influence are almost the same as the day before the airstrikes. Now, if this trend is sustained what do you see other options that the United States government and its allies having, thank you. Yeah, well first, to be precise, they have contracted somewhat. As I mentioned, there was a time when they were holding Mosul Dam and US airstrikes in conjunction with Peshmerga and Iraqi security force is on the ground managed to take that back and push them back and so we've not only stopped them from advancing in for a while, they were advancing significantly including towards Air Beal and Baghdad, not only stopped that but have pushed them back in certain areas and continued to do so. So that's already pretty important for just a couple of weeks of strikes. And the president said this is going to take some time but those strikes to stop them, start rolling them back in conjunction with what we're working with Iraqi security forces to be better able to do and over time a partner on the ground in Syria, we are confident that their territory will not only cease to expand, what will begin to shrink. It's not gonna happen overnight, the airstrikes have only been under way for a couple of weeks but it will happen and that itself, by the way, is an important contribution even to, we think, the ideology in the foreign fighters. Somebody needed to stop this group and demonstrate that it's not the future. These leaders are peddling this fantasy that they are the future and they're gonna establish a caliphate and they're gonna restore the Muslim world under this caliphate to all its glory and it was important to show that that's actually not true and there's a lot of resistance to them in the world and in the region and far from going from success to success, they're now being hit hard and rolled back and being weakened and that itself will undermine the sense of momentum that they had for a little while. Rafael Leal with the Brazilian Embassy, could you comment on a possible role of Iran in this coalition and the way that your partnership with Saudi Arabia prevents our brother participation of Iran? Right, it's not just the partnership for Saudi Arabia but our own differences with Iran that make it impossible for us to include Iran in the coalition and so Iran's not part of the coalition and we're not working with Iran or partnering with Iran. It is true that ISIL poses a threat to Iran and Iran is opposed to ISIL as are we but that doesn't imply or necessitate any active cooperation. I would just say as a broader point, however, and the President emphasized this in his General Assembly speech, we need to see efforts to overcome sectarian divides throughout the region and one of the things that has plagued the region has been the sectarian divide within country and then between and among countries with different majorities and so in that sense, while dealing with ISIL is an urgent security and defense threat, over the longer term we need to see countries that have been at such loggerheads and refusing to cooperate with each other understanding that it's that very competition among them that fuels this problem and we hope that they will start to see that themselves and start to take steps to reduce those differences. What can we do to move along that process other than hoping that they see the world the way we do? Well, ultimately they have to do it. We can't do it for them. We are encouraged by the way Iraqi leaders in different camps having stared at the abyss have decided that maybe actually they need to come together and overcome those divides. We saw it to a degree in the military coalition with Arab countries partnering with Iraq. The president had a meeting in New York with the Iraqi leadership and the Arabs, so the Shia prime minister of Iraq and the Sunni Arab leaders who are partnering and it was one meeting and they were together and they were talking about common security interests and the need to work on this common problem together. That's already a step in that direction. You've seen a meeting between the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia, so we can't do it for them but we can remind them as the president did in his speech how important it is and we can urge them to come together and it really does need to be one of the many elements of dealing with this problem is to overcome those divides within and among countries. Can we or should we press them? Press, you know, use different words, encourage press. We need to continue to underscore that it's important and we have urged them. Again, ultimately there's decisions they have to make but yes, we're for it and they know we're for it and we can facilitate it as we did in the meeting in New York and there was a real positive side to that. Tom Gaffes from the Senate Armed Services Committee. Dr. Gordon, you talked about training the Syrian moderate opposition and being able to potentially get some contributions from partners in the region to potentially increase the numbers that we can train. My question is how confident in the media it's been a couple thousand in a year. How confident are you that we can actually find that many recruits for the program as it's envisioned now, let alone if we increase the size of that and what gives you that confidence? Well, you know, as you know, there are already tens of thousands of Syrians fighting the regime and committed to defending themselves against the regime and fighting ISIL and committed to defending themselves against ISIL. So I don't think it is, we're going to lack a pool of potential recruits and again, obviously we need to vet them and make sure they don't have terrorist ties and that they'll be who they say they are. But given the number of Syrians who are against both the regime and ISIL, we actually are confident that we won't have trouble finding those recruits. We have obviously been working very closely with the Syrian opposition for several years. We've increased our assistance to it, including military assistance. And so while we're not, we realize this isn't a quick fix and it'll take some time to get it up and running, we are confident that there are plenty of candidates to participate in this program. We've done a lot of military training both in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade. We still have green on blue violence in Afghanistan. It's a problem. The Iraqi army did not perform well against ISIS, which necessitated the American engagement. Is it just different to deal with opposition troops than to train government troops? Have we learned something from training government troops that is going to cause us to approach this differently? I mean, we've been involved in the training business in the Middle East for more than a decade. As we approach this task, what are we, what new were we taking into that? Well, I think we've learned a lot. This is, you know, we have increased, we have significant experience training and equipment partner forces throughout the region. I think the case in Iraq, while we're still studying what happened in Iraq, was as much a case of lack of motivation and commitment as it was an absence of training and equipping. I mean, the lesson of Mosul seems to be that the Iraqi army, as it was made up, chose not to fight, not that they weren't trained or didn't have the right equipment, they just chose not to. And I think that'll be very different in the Syrian case where we are recruiting and training equipping people who are committed to it, indeed strongly committed to it. So that's a critical difference, and we're trying to fix that problem in Iraq by dealing with the politics and having a government that is worth fighting for and backing and have that participation. So I think that's gonna be, that's what you'll find as the more important difference rather than any particular modality of how we train the Iraqi security forces. Thank you. I thought I would start to sing to attract your attention. Thank you so much. I'm Sylvia Shavostka from the Polish Embassy. And my question is in regards to ISIS. ISIS is going to adapt to airstrikes. There's no doubt about that, even by mixing with civilian population even more. What scenarios do you envision, visit for if that happens? And airstrikes, it will turn out that the airstrikes wouldn't be that efficient as right now because the ISIS is totally mixed up with the civilian population. What can be done then? Especially, I'm thinking about Syria, Iraq region, which to operate there would be much more difficult than in Iraq. And what there must be done to have to see, let's say this famous US troops or US boots on the ground. Yeah, no, thank you. Look, that's where all these other elements come into play. Nobody promises that we can eliminate ISIS through airstrikes. We can stop it from massing forces and we can degrade its capabilities and we can take out leadership and equipment. But you're right, they will draw lessons, they will seep back into the population and that can't be eradicated through air power but that's why we've said all along, air power is not the only part of this project. And while we're doing that, we need to get the politics right so that in Iraq you don't have Sunnis motivated to join ISIS because they're so determined to get rid of the government in Baghdad. So you take that away, that's why we need a political transition in Syria for the same reason. You'll have forces on the ground. In the Iraq case, the new prime minister has talked about a national guard. So in the Sunni areas, you could have a Sunni-led national guard. So you have locals providing security and local Sunni majority areas and that they will deal with this and we will take steps to cut off foreign fighters. It's been an important part of this ISIL group and stopping them in their home countries and at the border and we will take steps to cut off financing that has fueled them and we need to take steps across the region to deal with the ideology. So it's a long term, I think the president even said, a generational project with multiple lines of effort of which airstrikes is only the most spectacular and maybe the easiest to implement very quickly but we don't pretend that that's going to eradicate the problem. It's necessary and it's a start but everything else is going to have to be sustained for the coming weeks, months and years. Much is, it's a delight to have you outside of the White House as a citizen and a taxpayer. I think we have to let you go. I wanna thank you for taking the time for being so generous with your thoughts. I wanna thank you for your attention. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you.