Gideon Rose

President Obama made the decision to use U.S. military forces in Libya in his role as the top of American government's executive branch. But the president's cabinet and circle of advisers play an important role in policy. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates come from different areas of the political spectrum, and their positions on Libya have appeared to be quite different. Will the relationship between President Obama's advisers complicate the endgame in Libya?

Guests today include: 

• Benjamin Barber, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New York think tank Demos and Walt Whitman Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Rutgers University; 
• Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and former National Security Council official in the Clinton administration; 
• Simon Schama, University Professor of art history and history at Columbia whose work focuses on revolutions; 
• Mona Eltahawy, Egyptian New Yorker and columnist and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues; 
• Jeff Goodwin, professor of sociology at NYU and author of No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945-1991;
• Youssef M. Ibrahim, an Egyptian and a former New York Times Middle East and European correspondent who served as the paper's Tehran bureau chief in 1978-1979; 

As well as Shinasi A. Rama, deputy director of the NYU Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy and one of the leaders of the Albanian student movement; Suketu Mehta, New York City-based journalist, professor of journalism at NYU, and author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found; Neferti Tadiar, professor and chair of women's studies at Barnard College; Anne Nelson, adjunct associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University who's covered revolutions as a journalist in Central America; Omar Cheta, PhD candidate in the departments of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History at NYU; Shiva Sarram, who was eight years old during the 1979 revolution in Iran and the founder of the Blossom Hill Foundation, which works with children affected by conflict.; Gladys Carbo-Flower, recording artist and witness to Cuba's revolution; Didi Ogude, a recent NYU graduate who was ten years old during South Africa's regime change in the nineties; Hesham El-Meligy, a Muslim-American community organizer from Staten Island; and Ali Al Sayed, Egyptian New Yorker and owner of Kabab Café in Little Egypt, Astoria, Queens.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that 60 percent of Americans say the Afghanistan war is "not worth fighting." This is a record low in public support of the war. Mary Galeti, the wife of Afghanistan veteran First Lieutenant Russell Galeti, and Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs and author of "How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle," describe their observations of public opinion, and what it might mean for the Obama administration's efforts in Afghanistan going forward.

Read a recap of this conversation at It's A Free Country»»

Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs Magazine and the author of How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle, talks about how he believes journalists should handle government leaks and how the latest WikiLeaks may affect US foreign policy.

Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs and author of How Wars End:Why We Always Fight the Last Battle, discusses his new book.

On October 7th, 2001, less than a month after the attacks of September 11, American and British forces entered Afghanistan seeking to disrupt terrorist activities and capture members of al-Qaida. Nine years later we look back and reflect on one of the longest armed conflicts the U.S. has ever seen. Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs joins us for the hour.