example here is syria. what worked in libya isn't working in syria. the geography's different, the problem hasn't been tried but no one will dare try it because in libya, you could deal with this remotely by finding the libyan forces out in the desert and bombing them. in syria, this is all taking place inside cities. you can't use remote air power without causing terrific casualties and no one wants to take the risk of getting in the midst of the civil war. so there are some things for which the light footprint strategy works and there are others which is not well suited. >> rose: well but there are people who worry about the syrian policy if the administration and others do nothing, the things they fear most eventually happen. >> that's right. and that's the big concern here. so you know, we've got a strategy right now that is good for keeping terrorists off balance and may be good at slowing down countries seeking unconventional weapons. it does not do a whole lot for changing societies. remember, it was just a few years ago we would sit at this table and we would talk about whe

many, many, many times. we don't know what's going to come to power in libya. we don't know what's going to come to power in syria after assad-- whenever that day happens. are we going through something now with tunisia and now in egypt, an evolutionary process of sort of people like the muslim brotherhood in power and that may change them as much as they change the country? >> well, that certainly has been the u.s. hope is that as the muslim brotherhood, the muslim democrats generally began to go into politics, had political roots to express their frustrations and their desires that that would take the violent edge off of islamist movements and they would then have to grapple with the realities of power. how to bring foreign investment, how to get an economy moving. how to get the g.d.p. growth level above 5%. those are the specific issues that now face the likely president morsi. and it was hoped that across the arab world that this process of empowering people who had been excluded by a corrupt essentially police state system would be beneficial. and i think that the obama admin