Given on September 12, 2005. Transcribed by Reg.

I've given you the setting. Here's what we should be doing:
Number one. We've got to correct the over-reliance on the military. The military is this powerful, wonderful image. You can (inaudible). It's like Chris Matthews was saying, (shouts) "Hey, can't we appoint a - get a czar? Can't we get a MacArthur down there and fix all these problems? What about Tommy Franks?" Well listen, the military is wonderful. I love to military. I spent 34 years in it, but you cannot win the war on terror by using predominantly the US armed forces. Winning the war against terrorism is not primarily a matter of killing people. It's primarily a matter of persuading people that they don't want to be terrorists. That they've got more to gain by staying within the system working in normal lives and contributing to society positively rather than having to give up their life to commit horrible acts against us and our allies. It's a matter of persuasion, not a matter of killing, primarily. You cannot secure facilities by armed guards indefinitely. There's no fixed number of terrorists out there, by the way. It's not like there's a genetic marker, 1/10th of 1% of the population of certain countries is predisposed to be terrorists. These are just ordinary people. They're enraged. They're misled, but they're enraged. They've seen a certain image of the world. It jars them. The best we can tell, these are not ignorant people. These are not the poorest people. These are not malnourished people. These are, by and large, people from educated backgrounds, from middle income homes, who feel the same kind of urge to stand up and protect what they believe is their society that American did during WWII when they flocked, our countrymen, flock to enlist in the United States armed forces. So, we have a problem in approaching the war on terror as predominantly a military exercise. We're not going to win that way. What we have to do to win is stop making so many enemies and start making more friends.
(applause)
You know the thing is people just don't see it the way we see it. You look at (inaudible). And I remember going to see "The Sands of Iwo Jima" with John Wayne when I was about 5 or 6 years old, and it was the most glorious movie, and when you left, you wanted to sing the Marine Hymn, and you wanted to be a United States Marine, and you know that it was the right thing, and it seemed universal. But you know, the whole world didn't look at us like we look at the United States Marine Corps. What we're engaged in, it's not WWII. Saddam Hussein wasn't a Hitler neither is Osama Bin Laden, and these historical analogies, they just don't fit. They just- it's just not the right way to go. Rumsfeld said, "To win the war on terror we have to take the offensive." So, that was the justification for invading Iraq. He couldn't have been more wrong.
This is my second point on how to win. Take the offensive the right way, which is the power, the battle of ideas. You have to win this war ideologically. So, we have to understand who we're fighting, what their motivations are, and what their aims are, how they recruit. We have to understand all this mechanism that's out there. We have to take it apart. And I mentioned a little bit about what I think the motivations are already, but it's not just that they're like us on WWII in wanting to defend their country. They're doing these terrible acts against civilians, and they're doing it in the name of their god. Now, this goes to the very heart of how you win. In the 1930's, and most of us weren't that engaged in intellectual dialog in the 1930's (crowd chuckles), in this country there was a very strong, vibrant Communist Part and it was a very respectable movement, particularly on the East Coast. Had a lot of followers, and it was progressive and it believed in workers' rights, and things. And then there was a man named Eric Hoffer who was a dock worker and he was an American communist, and he decided to tell the truth about what he'd seen in the Communist Party, and he wrote a book called "True Believer." Talked about what the American Communist Party was really about. That it was an agent of a foreign power, that it believed, not in Democracy, but in centralized control. It wasn't in favor of freedom. It was in favor of repression. It was progressive. It was in a sense, authoritarian, strongly authoritarian. And he did this in such a way that over a period of years he totally invalidated the ideological appeal of communism in the United States. It wasn't McCarthy who in the 1950's accused every organization of being infiltrated by communism that stopped communism in America. It was the fact that the idea of communism, Marxism/Leninism was defeated by Eric Hoffer and a few other people like Eric Hoffer who caused people to think again about what they believe in. What we need are people in Islam, who know the Kor'an, who believe in that faith to confront those who believe the Kor'an encourages and supports violence against innocent, ordinary people, and disprove them in that belief. Now, In Yemen there are a group of Imams who are doing this. They've actually taken some of the hardcore terrorists in. Instead of shooting them right away, they've mentally deprogramed them. (inaudible) They've taken the Kor'an in verse after verse, in detail after detail, and when it's over these people have actually said, "Okay I think you're right. I was misguided. I was wrong. This was a mistake." That's the start of winning the war ideologically. We need to take that start and we need to build it up. We need to help these believers in moderate Islam to prevail in their interpretation of their faith. It's not enough that Islamic religious leaders condemn Terrorists. They have to take apart the structure of the Kor'anic interpretation that supports terrorism. That's what it's going to take ultimately to win. We can't win it ourselves. We've got to find those who will win it, because it's in their interest to win. So, that's the way we take offensive correctly.
The other thing we've got to do is we got to remove the props, which are being used to facilitate terrorist recruiting. Every time (inaudible) they see United States helicopters or fighting vehicles in Iraq and then they see a picture of Israel going into the West Bank, they can't tell the difference, and to them we look like the Israelis. We have to help end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Until that's taken off the table were going to have a hard time persuading people in Islam to side with us. We need to be dealing with Russia, and encouraging Russia to stop using force in Chechnya, the way it's doing. Chechnya is another training ground for terrorism. It's a long festering sore. Putin needs it politically to get himself elected. In 1999 he re-invaded Chechnya. He's kept his power because he kept that conflict going. It needs to be resolved. It may take some international help to do it.
And we need to watch out for our own conduct. The United States Army that I grew up in, the Army I know and love, believed in the code of conduct and the Geneva Convention, and we would never, ever abuse and torture prisoners, ever.
(Applause)
I don't think the investigation into that is finished, because I don't think it stops at a couple of NCOs who got carried away. I think it goes up the chain of command, and I as an American would like to know where it goes. Because I believe in the United States Army and I want to see it protected from the abuse it's suffered at the hands of whoever it was that gave the misguided directions that the Geneva Convention shouldn't apply. It should.
Now that's two things.
(To be continued)