we need to acknowledge that this is an impossible moral dilemma the conflict presents us two years ago in the spirit of the arab spring that swept through the middle east the syrian people rose up against the brutal corrupt nepotistic assad dynasty they used classic forms of nonviolent resistance they stream from friday prayer in the mosques and churches into the public square using religion as an expression of their moral opposition they rallied they shouted slogans they published broadsides it was almost a classic lesson in civic participation this was the same force that toppled the tunisian and  dictatorships and the syrians had every hope and reason to believe it might do the same for them instead of engaging in dialogue with the opposition proposing or implementing reforms assad some in his brother's commandos and brutalized these million unarmed civilian protesters they turned guns helicopters jet fighters artillery and missiles on unarmed civilians and mowed them down in the r thousands and tens and tens of thousands at that point the opposition had a fait fatal fateful choice it could continue on the path of nonviolence and suffer an ongoing slaughter or it can arm itself and fight the regimes fire with its own when it chose fire at first the arms reach the armed resistance was domestic and relied solely upon what it could muster inside the country in the way of recruitment and weapons but as the brutality of government forces increased the resistance responded in kind soon it was turning to outside forces for support as the majority of syrians are sunni while the assad us are  the opposition turn to other sunni countries to meet their needs their military needs that meant qatar turkey which had provided the lion's share of armaments for the free syrian army to be clear foreign intervention isn't a one sided deal assad has received major support from russia and iran for decades that includes advanced weaponry like anti aircraft and ground to ground missiles series other i lie has follow has also served as a useful proxy both in lebanon and syria so each side in this conflict is guilty of turning to outsiders for lethal support unfortunately a conflict that began as an act of civil civic protest turned into an increasingly ethnic conflict between shia and sunni and of course christian syrians are wedged into that as well and they're a smaller minority and probably suffer more as a result  shia allies are iran and hezbollah while the opposition's sunni allies are qatar and turkey so far the united nations estimates that nearly one hundred thousand have died there are at least we just saw the figure of one and a half million refugees it's probably much larger in four neighboring countries in riga spoke so eloquently of her work in bringing them humanitarian relief and i'm hoping that we will raise as much money as we can to support her after we pay for some of the expenses of the event tonight going back to the conflict each side is playing a game of chicken they realize that if they violate the rules of the game and cross red lines the other side will do the same that's why russia hasn't yet supplied the s a three hundred anti aircraft missiles a contract to do to syria because israel has made clear that such a game changing weapon would likely be used by hizbollah against it and israel would likely attack any weapons convoy in syria in order to take out such on mint's and it has done this twice in the past few months has been a recently also made a critical choice to escalate the conflict by sending four thousand of its fighters into the town of qusayr this is an act of outside intervention that exacerbate the hostile feelings both inside syria and lebanon itself since many lebanese do not approve of the shia militia has been taking its battles outside lebannon some like israel's intelligence corresponde didn't phrase it this way president obama's recent announcement that the u s would begin arming the rebels came as an indirect response to this escalation by as well in qusayr of course we publicly stated the real  reason the reason that we offered was that we said we have proven that assad has used chemical weapons against his people it's likely that he has it's possible that other forces in syria have used chemical weapons as well but to my mind this w m d justification was an after the fact kind of situation in this conflict as in iraq w m d seems as much a political as a military issue it's used by outside forces to justify whatever course of action they'd already decided upon bush did it in iraq and now obama looks like he's going to do it in syria our cia is already training  syrian rebels in jordan and now we will be arming them as well and here's where we get to the other part of the dilemma should the u s intervene right now militarily my answer is no not because i'm a pacifist or believe the u should never intervene in such situations there are times when i believe military engagement is morally justified rwanda kosovo places like that i believe the assad regime and its reader has proven it  spades is evil and should be overthrown but i'm not prepared to do this as the united states citizen for the syrians themselves the reason is not to do this are obvious we can look at what happened in iraq we were going to overthrow saddam and hand him ocracy to the iraqis on a silver platter but it didn't work out that way i wouldn't be opposed to some form of u s intervention if the syrian opposition had a unif political and military agenda if it could demonstrate that it had surmounted the ethnic rivalries and religious hostilities i would support a greater level of involvement but unfortunately the rebel leaders haven't shown that level of maturity or stability yet instead some of the strongest fighters on their side have been the illness or find an extremist sunni faction allied with al qaeda those fighting units which are more secular or more religiously moderate have not shown the same cohesion the same toughness of the extremists as a result if we now play a definitive role in determining the outcome we risk bringing to power the forces that will be the most hostile to democratic values and religious tolerance and these are ideas that will be sorely needed to rebuild syrian society after the civil war and and it willing hopefully sooner rather than later the syrians have to take control of their own destiny they have to determine who will govern them and what sort of government it will be i don't have a problem with other regional forces taking a role in this turkey as a neighbor is intimately connected to syria and stability there in syria is critical for turkey but the turkish government so far has taken a very measured approach and has enabled the rebels to decisively defeat us in addition turkey itself faces massive civil disruption in the form of the talks and square protests and that will likely diminish the level of engagement of turkey in this for some time to come so of syria's arab muslim can't produce a coherent response to assad who are we as americans to do so on our own there are two other eight hundred pound gorillas on stage on the stage  is on the stage and one hovers just off stage the first one the one that is on stage is a wrong assad's key ally it provides him with both financing and the weapons to pursue this butchery  till the end without assad iran's support for hezbollah would also be in jeopardy since weapons are transferred to leaven our own via syria by by iran without a compliant syria hezbollah would not progressively confront israel and in this sense the lebanese militia serves iran's is interest should israel attack iran as bibi netanyahu has many times said that he would like to do not to mention th shia religious axis of iran syria hezbollah religious solidarity plays a strong role in motivating the conflict the longer the blood flows the more divisive this particular element will become as we all know benign conflicts can flare into raging conflagrations when religious hatreds are introduced let's not forget an important recent development in iran a relative moderate hassan rouhani came from virtually nowhere to defeat seven candidates in the presidential election each of those candidates was more dour and conservative than the next and more loyal to the supreme leader ayatollah khomeini than the next rouhani is a little bit breaks the mold he's what in an american context we call a hard headed realist he puts iran's interest of course above all the rest he's a strong tough negotiator but he realizes when the proper moment to compromise has come and he has in the past created interesting creative compromises involving iran's nuclear program among other things expecting rouhani on the on the other hand to be iran's martin luther king and to bring about democracy in iran or to overthrow the clerical regime that is being very unrealistic  he's a product of the regime albeit a pragmatic one now let's talk about the offstage grilling not so off stage and that's israel it has a deep invested interest in syria at least it villages on the israeli side of the border and on the syrian side israel maintains an interest in the villages the syrian jews villages that are on the other side of the border and it has sent its own special forces into syria itself in other words it has violated the sovereignty of syria by sending these troops in and what they do is they liaise with the syrian druze villagers there has been some really set up hard fighting in the golan on the syrian side between syrian government forces and the rebels and some of the over those rebels have been the syrian druze villagers so israel if there is chaos and disintegration in the golan like there has been in other parts of syria it's conceivable that israel either will itself invade syria or occupy syria or use a proxy like the syrian  jews to cut off a slice of of syria cut off a slice of territory and have an autonomous kind of situation in the go on and that is what some analysts foresee possibly happening in all the different parts of syria where northern syria might be broken off and be one entity and the coast of syria coast where the alawite so are might be a different entity that would be controlled maybe by the government and the golan could conceivably be controlled by proxy by israel and israel has done this before in southern lebanon where it had the christian south lebanese army as its proxy and used it to act as a cushion as a shield between  and the other anti israel forces in lebanon and this kind of act badly as we could see in lebanon israel lost scores of don hundreds of troops  militia attacks and the same thing would eventually happen in syria if israel did this it would be a disaster of this kind of intervention by israel for the syrians because it would ensure that israel carved out this slice of territory it would fragment syrian continue the process of disintegration inside the country it would add years to the ewing process and rebuilding of the nation and just as the lebanese civil war has taken decades to recover from it would be disastrous for israel as well although its leaders on think that obviously it would cement israel's reputation as a meddlesome aggressive untrustworthy regional force iran could use the excuse of intervention to ratchet up pressure and its own military prop posture inside syria and it iran could even escalate its nuclear program in response the reason is really intervention in syria would be bad is the same reason the first president bush demanded israel not respond when saddam launched scud missiles that had to leave even the first gulf war the fight against saddam's forces was hard enough without adding the israeli wild card into the mix what does that leave us with i'm afraid as they said in the beginning there are no easy answers the conflict is fraught morally and politically assad must go but how to make it happen the process must be done carefully and  y in terms of outside action but this need for caution unfortunately means that syrians will continue to die and that is only one part of this tragedy the onus is on the syrian opposition they must step up to the plate they must organize they must coalesce they must be worthy of suing the leadership the mantle of leadership the last thing syria needs now is a repeat of the saddam disaster in which a tyrant is violently overthrown and a vacuum allows the most intolerant violent forces to come to power though one hundred thousand syrians have died thus far millions have died in iraq in a decade of fighting there let's not let that be the fate now i want to thank you for being patient and i have one last portion of what i'm going to say and i want to make clear that this is a dream a political dream that i have it may be an unrealistic dream but i i want to think positively and i'm sure that you do as well and so let me just you me while a real off this dream i have  let's put forward two leaders two national leaders barack obama and cousin rouhani let's put forward these two leaders who rise to the better angels of their nature and leaders who realize that the interests of each of their country may be realized by a comprehensive settlement of all the outstanding issues now remember i said it was unrealistic but i'm still to come still want to be positive and optimistic i'm not just talking about iran's nuclear program i'm talking also about this intractable relationship it has with israel and its support for  iran lets in this dream and then i'm spinning out iran agrees to stop you renaming richmond beyond the twenty percent level it agrees to ship that enriched uranium that's above twenty percent to third neutral country like brazil or turkey the u s and allies agree to end sanctions and offer full recognition and trade relations to iran but let's not stop there iran persuades assad to step down and he's replaced by a caretaker kicker government appointed with the agreement of turkey and iran elections would be held in a specified time frame for a democratically elected government power would shared among the various that groups iran also would agree to stop army hezbollah in return for u s pressure on israel to settle all outstanding issues between lebanon and syria the goal line would be returned to syria lebanese territory returned and it's prisoners that are in israel the few that are left are for would be freed israel and syria would recognize each other for the first time since nine hundred forty eight now let's turn to the really thorny part of the palestinians and this is where it may be even more on the realistic then everything up until now but you or me the u s would have to force israel to agree to a settlement there would involve withdrawal hundred sixty seven borders recognition of a palestinian state sharing jerusalem as its capital and return of refugees what would israel get it would get the u s and united nations as guarantors of the peace the saudi peace initiative would be sealed and arab states would and their hostilities with israel and recognize and exchange ambassadors and trade and all the other things that would come along with that it does sound crazy i admit but remember there was a day in reykjavik a few decades ago when gorbachev and ronald reagan sat together and they almost agreed to nuclear disarmament they came this close it didn't happen but at least they talk seriously about it within a few years after that even though it didn't work that time the soviet union collapsed and it brought an end of the cold war and an end of the era of mutually assured destruction it fundamentally realigned the world and while it didn't end conflicts it did substantially reduce the danger of nuclear war what my dream requires is two leaders and perhaps other leaders as well who rise to the occasion like gorbachev and reagan almost leaders will foresee a grand plan to resolve some of the worst the most intractable conflicts in the region for the sake of all the peoples of the region think of abraham lincoln after the civil war as he contemplated reintegrating the confederate states in the union think of eleanor roosevelt as she gave the opening speech of the united nations in one thousand nine hundred six in san francisco think of nelson mandela as he left robben island after decades in prison and prepared to dismantle apartheid with his partner who had been his former enemy f w de klerk stranger things have happened d rouhani and obama have it in them probably not i'm not foolish enough to believe that they really do they may be such creatures of their respective systems that they can't break out of them and seize such an