The fol­low­ing is the tran­script of a speech Sen. Bernie Sanders deliv­ered at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty on Novem­ber 19th out­lin­ing what the term demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism means to him, as well as his plans to deal with the nation­al secu­ri­ty threat posed by ISIS.

The billionaire class cannot have it all. Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the one percent.

In his inau­gur­al remarks in Jan­u­ary 1937, in the midst of the Great Depres­sion, Pres­i­dent Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt looked out at the nation and this is what he saw.

He saw tens of mil­lions of its cit­i­zens denied the basic neces­si­ties of life.

He saw mil­lions of fam­i­lies try­ing to live on incomes so mea­ger that the pall of fam­i­ly dis­as­ter hung over them day by day.

He saw mil­lions denied edu­ca­tion, recre­ation, and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to bet­ter their lot and the lot of their children.

He saw mil­lions lack­ing the means to buy the prod­ucts they need­ed and by their pover­ty and lack of dis­pos­able income deny­ing employ­ment to many oth­er millions.

He saw one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

And he act­ed. Against the fero­cious oppo­si­tion of the rul­ing class of his day, peo­ple he called eco­nom­ic roy­al­ists, Roo­sevelt imple­ment­ed a series of pro­grams that put mil­lions of peo­ple back to work, took them out of pover­ty and restored their faith in gov­ern­ment. He rede­fined the rela­tion­ship of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to the peo­ple of our coun­try. He com­bat­ted cyn­i­cism, fear and despair. He rein­vig­o­rat­ed democ­ra­cy. He trans­formed the country.

And that is what we have to do today.

And, by the way, almost every­thing he pro­posed was called ​“social­ist.” Social Secu­ri­ty, which trans­formed life for the elder­ly in this coun­try was ​“social­ist.” The con­cept of the ​“min­i­mum wage” was seen as a rad­i­cal intru­sion into the mar­ket­place and was described as ​“social­ist.” Unem­ploy­ment insur­ance, abol­ish­ing child labor, the 40-hour work week, col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, strong bank­ing reg­u­la­tions, deposit insur­ance, and job pro­grams that put mil­lions of peo­ple to work were all described, in one way or anoth­er, as ​“social­ist.” Yet, these pro­grams have become the fab­ric of our nation and the foun­da­tion of the mid­dle class.

Thir­ty years lat­er, in the 1960s, Pres­i­dent John­son passed Medicare and Med­ic­aid to pro­vide health care to mil­lions of senior cit­i­zens and fam­i­lies with chil­dren, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties and some of the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in this coun­ty. Once again these vital­ly impor­tant pro­grams were derid­ed by the right wing as social­ist pro­grams that were a threat to our Amer­i­can way of life.

That was then. Now is now.

Today, in 2015, despite the Wall Street crash of 2008, which drove this coun­try into the worst eco­nom­ic down­turn since the Depres­sion, the Amer­i­can peo­ple are clear­ly bet­ter off eco­nom­i­cal­ly than we were in 1937.

But, here is a very hard truth that we must acknowl­edge and address. Despite a huge increase in tech­nol­o­gy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, despite major growth in the U.S. and glob­al econ­o­my, tens of mil­lions of Amer­i­can fam­i­lies con­tin­ue to lack the basic neces­si­ties of life, while mil­lions more strug­gle every day to pro­vide a min­i­mal stan­dard of liv­ing for their fam­i­lies. The real­i­ty is that for the last 40 years the great mid­dle class of this coun­try has been in decline and faith in our polit­i­cal sys­tem is now extreme­ly low.

The rich get much rich­er. Almost every­one else gets poor­er. Super PACs fund­ed by bil­lion­aires buy elec­tions. Ordi­nary peo­ple don’t vote. We have an eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal cri­sis in this coun­try and the same old, same old estab­lish­ment pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics will not effec­tive­ly address it.

If we are seri­ous about trans­form­ing our coun­try, if we are seri­ous about rebuild­ing the mid­dle class, if we are seri­ous about rein­vig­o­rat­ing our democ­ra­cy, we need to devel­op a polit­i­cal move­ment which, once again, is pre­pared to take on and defeat a rul­ing class whose greed is destroy­ing our nation. The bil­lion­aire class can­not have it all. Our gov­ern­ment belongs to all of us, and not just the one percent.

We need to cre­ate a cul­ture which, as Pope Fran­cis reminds us, can­not just be based on the wor­ship of mon­ey. We must not accept a nation in which bil­lion­aires com­pete as to the size of their super-yachts, while chil­dren in Amer­i­ca go hun­gry and vet­er­ans sleep out on the streets.

Today, in Amer­i­ca, we are the wealth­i­est nation in the his­to­ry of the world, but few Amer­i­cans know that because so much of the new income and wealth goes to the peo­ple on top. In fact, over the last 30 years, there has been a mas­sive trans­fer of wealth — tril­lions of wealth — going from the mid­dle class to the top one-tenth of 1 per­cent — a hand­ful of peo­ple who have seen a dou­bling of the per­cent­age of the wealth they own over that period.

Unbe­liev­ably, and grotesque­ly, the top one-tenth of 1 per­cent owns near­ly as much wealth as the bot­tom 90 percent.

Today, in Amer­i­ca, mil­lions of our peo­ple are work­ing two or three jobs just to sur­vive. In fact, Amer­i­cans work longer hours than do the peo­ple of any indus­tri­al­ized coun­try. Despite the incred­i­bly hard work and long hours of the Amer­i­can mid­dle class, 58 per­cent of all new income gen­er­at­ed today is going to the top one percent.

Today, in Amer­i­ca, as the mid­dle class con­tin­ues to dis­ap­pear, medi­an fam­i­ly income, is $4,100 less than it was in 1999. The medi­an male work­er made over $700 less than he did 42 years ago, after adjust­ing for infla­tion. Last year, the medi­an female work­er earned more than $1,000 less than she did in 2007.

Today, in Amer­i­ca, the wealth­i­est coun­try in the his­to­ry of the world, more than half of old­er work­ers have no retire­ment sav­ings — zero — while mil­lions of elder­ly and peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties are try­ing to sur­vive on $12,000 or $13,000 a year. From Ver­mont to Cal­i­for­nia, old­er work­ers are scared to death. ​“How will I retire with dig­ni­ty?,” they ask?

Today, in Amer­i­ca, near­ly 47 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are liv­ing in pover­ty and over 20 per­cent of our chil­dren, includ­ing 36 per­cent of African Amer­i­can chil­dren, are liv­ing in pover­ty — the high­est rate of child­hood pover­ty of near­ly any major coun­try on earth.

Today, in Amer­i­ca, 29 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have no health insur­ance and even more are under­in­sured with out­ra­geous­ly high co-pay­ments and deductibles. Fur­ther, with the Unit­ed States pay­ing the high­est prices in the world for pre­scrip­tion drugs, 1 out of 5 patients can­not afford to fill the pre­scrip­tions their doc­tors write.

Today, in Amer­i­ca, youth unem­ploy­ment and under­em­ploy­ment is over 35 per­cent. Mean­while, we have more peo­ple in jail than any oth­er coun­try and count­less lives are being destroyed as we spend $80 bil­lion a year lock­ing up fel­low Americans.

The bot­tom line is that today in Amer­i­ca we not only have mas­sive wealth and income inequal­i­ty, but a pow­er struc­ture which pro­tects that inequal­i­ty. A hand­ful of super-wealthy cam­paign con­trib­u­tors have enor­mous influ­ence over the polit­i­cal process, while their lob­by­ists deter­mine much of what goes on in Congress.

In 1944, in his State of the Union speech, Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt out­lined what he called a sec­ond Bill of Rights. This is one of the most impor­tant speech­es ever made by a pres­i­dent but, unfor­tu­nate­ly, it has not got­ten the atten­tion that it deserves.

In that remark­able speech this is what Roo­sevelt stat­ed, and I quote: ​“We have come to a clear real­iza­tion of the fact that true indi­vid­ual free­dom can­not exist with­out eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty and inde­pen­dence. Neces­si­tous men are not free men.” End of quote. In oth­er words, real free­dom must include eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty. That was Roosevelt’s vision 70 years ago. It is my vision today. It is a vision that we have not yet achieved. It is time that we did.

In that speech, Roo­sevelt described the eco­nom­ic rights that he believed every Amer­i­can was enti­tled to: The right to a decent job at decent pay, the right to ade­quate food, cloth­ing, and time off from work, the right for every busi­ness, large and small, to func­tion in an atmos­phere free from unfair com­pe­ti­tion and dom­i­na­tion by monop­o­lies. The right of all Amer­i­cans to have a decent home and decent health care.

What Roo­sevelt was stat­ing in 1944, what Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. stat­ed in sim­i­lar terms 20 years lat­er and what I believe today, is that true free­dom does not occur with­out eco­nom­ic security.

Peo­ple are not tru­ly free when they are unable to feed their fam­i­ly. Peo­ple are not tru­ly free when they are unable to retire with dig­ni­ty. Peo­ple are not tru­ly free when they are unem­ployed or under­paid or when they are exhaust­ed by work­ing long hours. Peo­ple are not tru­ly free when they have no health care.

So let me define for you, sim­ply and straight­for­ward­ly, what demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism means to me. It builds on what Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt said when he fought for guar­an­teed eco­nom­ic rights for all Amer­i­cans. And it builds on what Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. said in 1968 when he stat­ed that; ​“This coun­try has social­ism for the rich, and rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism for the poor.” It builds on the suc­cess of many oth­er coun­tries around the world that have done a far bet­ter job than we have in pro­tect­ing the needs of their work­ing fam­i­lies, the elder­ly, the chil­dren, the sick and the poor.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism means that we must cre­ate an econ­o­my that works for all, not just the very wealthy.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism means that we must reform a polit­i­cal sys­tem in Amer­i­ca today which is not only gross­ly unfair but, in many respects, corrupt.

It is a sys­tem, for exam­ple, which dur­ing the 1990s allowed Wall Street to spend $5 bil­lion in lob­by­ing and cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions to get dereg­u­lat­ed. Then, ten years lat­er, after the greed, reck­less­ness, and ille­gal behav­ior of Wall Street led to their col­lapse, it is a sys­tem which pro­vid­ed tril­lions in gov­ern­ment aid to bail them out. Wall Street used their wealth and pow­er to get Con­gress to do their bid­ding for dereg­u­la­tion and then, when their greed caused their col­lapse, they used their wealth and pow­er to get Con­gress to bail them out. Quite a system!

And, then, to add insult to injury, we were told that not only were the banks too big to fail, the bankers were too big to jail. Kids who get caught pos­sess­ing mar­i­jua­na get police records. Wall Street CEOs who help destroy the econ­o­my get rais­es in their salaries. This is what Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. meant by social­ism for the rich and rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism for every­one else.

In my view, it’s time we had demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism for work­ing fam­i­lies, not just Wall Street, bil­lion­aires and large cor­po­ra­tions. It means that we should not be pro­vid­ing wel­fare for cor­po­ra­tions, huge tax breaks for the very rich, or trade poli­cies which boost cor­po­rate prof­its as work­ers lose their jobs. It means that we cre­ate a gov­ern­ment that works for works for all of us, not just pow­er­ful spe­cial inter­ests. It means that eco­nom­ic rights must be an essen­tial part of what Amer­i­ca stands for.

It means that health care should be a right of all peo­ple, not a priv­i­lege. This is not a rad­i­cal idea. It exists in every oth­er major coun­try on earth. Not just Den­mark, Swe­den or Fin­land. It exists in Cana­da, France, Ger­many and Tai­wan. That is why I believe in a Medicare-for-all sin­gle pay­er health care sys­tem. Yes. The Afford­able Care Act, which I helped write and vot­ed for, is a step for­ward for this coun­try. But we must build on it and go further.

Medicare for all would not only guar­an­tee health care for all peo­ple, not only save mid­dle class fam­i­lies and our entire nation sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey, it would rad­i­cal­ly improve the lives of all Amer­i­cans and bring about sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in our economy.

Peo­ple who get sick will not have to wor­ry about pay­ing a deductible or mak­ing a co-pay­ment. They could go to the doc­tor when they should, and not end up in the emer­gency room. Busi­ness own­ers will not have to spend enor­mous amounts of time wor­ry­ing about how they are going to pro­vide health care for their employ­ees. Work­ers will not have to be trapped in jobs they do not like sim­ply because their employ­ers are offer­ing them decent health insur­ance plans. Instead, they will be able to pur­sue the jobs and work they love, which could be an enor­mous boon for the econ­o­my. And by the way, mov­ing to a Medicare for all pro­gram will end the dis­grace of Amer­i­cans pay­ing, by far, the high­est prices in the world for pre­scrip­tion drugs.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism means that, in the year 2015, a col­lege degree is equiv­a­lent to what a high school degree was 50 years ago — and that pub­lic edu­ca­tion must allow every per­son in this coun­try, who has the abil­i­ty, the qual­i­fi­ca­tions and the desire, the right to go to a pub­lic col­leges or uni­ver­si­ty tuition free. This is also not a rad­i­cal idea. It exists today in many coun­tries around the world. In fact, it used to exist in the Unit­ed States.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism means that our gov­ern­ment does every­thing it can to cre­ate a full employ­ment econ­o­my. It makes far more sense to put mil­lions of peo­ple back to work rebuild­ing our crum­bling infra­struc­ture, than to have a real unem­ploy­ment rate of almost 10 per­cent. It is far smarter to invest in jobs and edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties for unem­ployed young peo­ple, than to lock them up and spend $80 bil­lion a year through mass incarceration.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism means that if some­one works forty hours a week, that per­son should not be liv­ing in pover­ty: that we must raise the min­i­mum wage to a liv­ing wage — $15 an hour over the next few years. It means that we join the rest of the world and pass the very strong Paid Fam­i­ly and Med­ical Leave leg­is­la­tion now in Con­gress. How can it pos­si­bly be that the Unit­ed States, today, is vir­tu­al­ly the only nation on earth, large or small, which does not guar­an­tee that a work­ing class woman can stay home for a rea­son­able peri­od of time with her new-born baby? How absurd is that?

Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism means that we have gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy which does not allow the greed and prof­i­teer­ing of the fos­sil fuel indus­try to destroy our envi­ron­ment and our plan­et, and that we have a moral respon­si­bil­i­ty to com­bat cli­mate change and leave this plan­et healthy and inhab­it­able for our kids and grandchildren.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism means, that in a demo­c­ra­t­ic, civ­i­lized soci­ety the wealth­i­est peo­ple and the largest cor­po­ra­tions must pay their fair share of tax­es. Yes. Inno­va­tion, entre­pre­neur­ship and busi­ness suc­cess should be reward­ed. But greed for the sake of greed is not some­thing that pub­lic pol­i­cy should sup­port. It is not accept­able that in a rigged econ­o­my in the last two years the wealth­i­est 15 Amer­i­cans saw their wealth increase by $170 bil­lion, more wealth than is owned by the bot­tom 130 mil­lion Amer­i­cans. Let us not for­get what Pope Fran­cis has so ele­gant­ly stat­ed; ​“We have cre­at­ed new idols. The wor­ship of the gold­en calf of old has found a new and heart­less image in the cult of mon­ey and the dic­ta­tor­ship of an econ­o­my which is face­less and lack­ing any tru­ly humane goal.”

It is not accept­able that major cor­po­ra­tions stash their prof­its in the Cay­man Islands and oth­er off­shore tax havens to avoid pay­ing $100 bil­lion in tax­es each and every year. It is not accept­able that hedge fund man­agers pay a low­er effec­tive tax rate than nurs­es or truck dri­vers. It is not accept­able that bil­lion­aire fam­i­lies are able to leave vir­tu­al­ly all of their wealth to their fam­i­lies with­out pay­ing a rea­son­able estate tax. It is not accept­able that Wall Street spec­u­la­tors are able to gam­ble tril­lions of dol­lars in the deriv­a­tives mar­ket with­out pay­ing a nick­el in tax­es on those transactions.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism, to me, does not just mean that we must cre­ate a nation of eco­nom­ic and social jus­tice. It also means that we must cre­ate a vibrant democ­ra­cy based on the prin­ci­ple of one per­son one vote. It is extreme­ly sad that the Unit­ed States, one of the old­est democ­ra­cies on earth, has one of the low­est vot­er turnouts of any major coun­try, and that mil­lions of young and work­ing class peo­ple have giv­en up on our polit­i­cal sys­tem entire­ly. Every Amer­i­can should be embar­rassed that in our last nation­al elec­tion 63% of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, and 80% of young peo­ple, did not vote. Clear­ly, despite the efforts of many Repub­li­can gov­er­nors to sup­press the vote, we must make it eas­i­er for peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in the polit­i­cal process, not hard­er. It is not too much to demand that every­one 18 years of age is reg­is­tered to vote – end of discussion.

Fur­ther, it is unac­cept­able that we have a cor­rupt cam­paign finance sys­tem which allows mil­lion­aires, bil­lion­aires and large cor­po­ra­tions to con­tribute as much as they want to Super Pacs to elect can­di­dates who will rep­re­sent their spe­cial inter­ests. We must over­turn Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and move to pub­lic fund­ing of elections.

So the next time you hear me attacked as a social­ist, remem­ber this:

I don’t believe gov­ern­ment should own the means of pro­duc­tion, but I do believe that the mid­dle class and the work­ing fam­i­lies who pro­duce the wealth of Amer­i­ca deserve a fair deal.

I believe in pri­vate com­pa­nies that thrive and invest and grow in Amer­i­ca instead of ship­ping jobs and prof­its overseas.

I believe that most Amer­i­cans can pay low­er tax­es — if hedge fund man­agers who make bil­lions manip­u­lat­ing the mar­ket­place final­ly pay the tax­es they should.

I don’t believe in spe­cial treat­ment for the top 1 per­cent, but I do believe in equal treat­ment for African-Amer­i­cans who are right to pro­claim the moral prin­ci­ple that Black Lives Matter.

I despise appeals to nativism and prej­u­dice, and I do believe in immi­gra­tion reform that gives His­pan­ics and oth­ers a path­way to cit­i­zen­ship and a bet­ter life.

I don’t believe in some for­eign ​“ism”, but I believe deeply in Amer­i­can idealism.

I’m not run­ning for pres­i­dent because it’s my turn, but because it’s the turn of all of us to live in a nation of hope and oppor­tu­ni­ty not for some, not for the few, but for all.

No one under­stood bet­ter than FDR the con­nec­tion between Amer­i­can strength at home and our abil­i­ty to defend Amer­i­ca at home and across the world. That is why he pro­posed a sec­ond Bill of Rights in 1944, and said in that State of the Union:

“America’s own right­ful place in the world depends in large part upon how ful­ly these and sim­i­lar rights have been car­ried into prac­tice for all our cit­i­zens. For unless there is secu­ri­ty here at home there can­not be last­ing peace in the world.”

I’m not run­ning to pur­sue reck­less adven­tures abroad, but to rebuild America’s strength at home. I will nev­er hes­i­tate to defend this nation, but I will nev­er send our sons and daugh­ters to war under false pre­tense or pre­tens­es or into dubi­ous bat­tles with no end in sight.

And when we dis­cuss for­eign pol­i­cy, let me join the peo­ple of Paris in mourn­ing their loss, and pray that those who have been wound­ed will enjoy a full recov­ery. Our hearts also go out to the fam­i­lies of the hun­dreds of Rus­sians appar­ent­ly killed by an ISIS bomb on their flight, and those who lost their lives to ter­ror­ist attacks in Lebanon and elsewhere.

To my mind, it is clear that the Unit­ed States must pur­sue poli­cies to destroy the bru­tal and bar­bar­ic ISIS régime, and to cre­ate con­di­tions that pre­vent fanat­i­cal extrem­ist ide­olo­gies from flour­ish­ing. But we can­not — and should not — do it alone.

Our response must begin with an under­stand­ing of past mis­takes and mis­steps in our pre­vi­ous approach­es to for­eign pol­i­cy. It begins with the acknowl­edg­ment that uni­lat­er­al mil­i­tary action should be a last resort, not a first resort, and that ill-con­ceived mil­i­tary deci­sions, such as the inva­sion of Iraq, can wreak far-reach­ing dev­as­ta­tion and desta­bi­lize entire regions for decades. It begins with the reflec­tion that the failed pol­i­cy deci­sions of the past — rush­ing to war, régime change in Iraq, or top­pling Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, or Guatemalan Pres­i­dent Árbenz in 1954, Brazil­ian Pres­i­dent Goulart in 1964, Chilean Pres­i­dent Allende in 1973. These are the sorts of poli­cies do not work, do not make us safer, and must not be repeated.

After World War II, in response to the fear of Sovi­et aggres­sion, Euro­pean nations and the Unit­ed States estab­lished the North Atlantic Treaty Orga­ni­za­tion — an orga­ni­za­tion based on shared inter­ests and goals and the notion of a col­lec­tive defense against a com­mon ene­my. It is my belief that we must expand on these ideals and solid­i­fy our com­mit­ments to work togeth­er to com­bat the glob­al threat of terror.

We must cre­ate an orga­ni­za­tion like NATO to con­front the secu­ri­ty threats of the 21st cen­tu­ry — an orga­ni­za­tion that empha­sizes coop­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion to defeat the rise of vio­lent extrem­ism and impor­tant­ly to address the root caus­es under­ly­ing these bru­tal acts. We must work with our NATO part­ners, and expand our coali­tion to include Rus­sia and mem­bers of the Arab League.

But let’s be very clear. While the U.S. and oth­er west­ern nations have the strength of our mil­i­taries and polit­i­cal sys­tems, the fight against ISIS is a strug­gle for the soul of Islam, and coun­ter­ing vio­lent extrem­ism and destroy­ing ISIS must be done pri­mar­i­ly by Mus­lim nations — with the strong sup­port of their glob­al partners.

These same sen­ti­ments have been echoed by those in the region. Jordan’s King Abdal­lah II said in a speech on Sun­day that ter­ror­ism is the ​“great­est threat to our region” and that Mus­lims must lead the fight against it. He not­ed that con­fronting extrem­ism is both a region­al and inter­na­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, and that it is incum­bent on Mus­lim nations and com­mu­ni­ties to con­front those who seek to hijack their soci­eties and gen­er­a­tions with intol­er­ance and vio­lent ideology.

And let me con­grat­u­late King Abdal­lah not only for his wise remarks, but also for the role that his small coun­try is play­ing in attempt­ing to address the hor­rif­ic refugee cri­sis in the region.

A new and strong coali­tion of West­ern pow­ers, Mus­lim nations, and coun­tries like Rus­sia must come togeth­er in a strong­ly coor­di­nat­ed way to com­bat ISIS, to seal the bor­ders that fight­ers are cur­rent­ly flow­ing across, to share counter-ter­ror­ism intel­li­gence, to turn off the spig­ot of ter­ror­ist financ­ing, and to end sup­port for export­ing rad­i­cal ideologies.

What does all of this mean? Well, it means that, in many cas­es, we must ask more from those in the region. While Jor­dan, Turkey, Egypt, and Lebanon have accept­ed their respon­si­bil­i­ties for tak­ing in Syr­i­an refugees, oth­er coun­tries in the region have done noth­ing or very little.

Equal­ly impor­tant, and this is a point that must be made — coun­tries in the region like Sau­di Ara­bia, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE — coun­tries of enor­mous wealth and resources — have con­tributed far too lit­tle in the fight against ISIS. That must change. King Abdal­lah is absolute­ly right when he says that that the Mus­lim nations must lead the fight against ISIS, and that includes some of the most wealthy and pow­er­ful nations in the region, who, up to this point have done far too little.

Sau­di Ara­bia has the 3rd largest defense bud­get in the world, yet instead of fight­ing ISIS they have focused more on a cam­paign to oust Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Kuwait, a coun­try whose rul­ing fam­i­ly was restored to pow­er by U.S. troops after the first Gulf War, has been a well-known source of financ­ing for ISIS and oth­er vio­lent extrem­ists. It has been report­ed that Qatar will spend $200 bil­lion on the 2022 World Cup, includ­ing the con­struc­tion of an enor­mous num­ber of facil­i­ties to host that event — $200 bil­lion on host­ing a soc­cer event, yet very lit­tle to fight against ISIS. Worse still, it has been wide­ly report­ed that the gov­ern­ment has not been vig­i­lant in stem­ming the flow of ter­ror­ist financ­ing, and that Qatari indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions fun­nel mon­ey to some of the most extreme ter­ror­ist groups, includ­ing al Nus­ra and ISIS.

All of this has got to change. Wealthy and pow­er­ful Mus­lim nations in the region can no longer sit on the side­lines and expect the Unit­ed States to do their work for them. As we devel­op a strong­ly coor­di­nat­ed effort, we need a com­mit­ment from these coun­tries that the fight against ISIS takes prece­dence over the reli­gious and ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences that ham­per the kind of coop­er­a­tion that we des­per­ate­ly need.

Fur­ther, we all under­stand that Bashar al-Assad is a bru­tal dic­ta­tor who has slaugh­tered many of his own peo­ple. I am pleased that we saw last week­end diplo­mats from all over world, known as the Inter­na­tion­al Syr­ia Sup­port Group, set a timetable for a Syr­i­an-led polit­i­cal tran­si­tion with open and fair elec­tions. These are the promis­ing begin­nings of a col­lec­tive effort to end the blood­shed and to move to polit­i­cal transition.

The diplo­mat­ic plan for Assad’s tran­si­tion from pow­er is a good step in a unit­ed front. But our pri­or­i­ty must be to defeat ISIS. Nations all over the world, who share a com­mon inter­est in pro­tect­ing them­selves against inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ist, must make the destruc­tion of ISIS the high­est pri­or­i­ty. Nations in the region must com­mit – that instead of turn­ing a blind eye — they will com­mit their resources to pre­vent­ing the free flow of ter­ror­ist finances and fight­ers to Syr­ia and Iraq. We need a com­mit­ment that they will counter the vio­lent rhetoric that fuels ter­ror­ism – rhetoric that often occurs with­in their very borders.

This is the mod­el in which we must pur­sue solu­tions to the sorts of glob­al threats we face.

While indi­vid­ual nations indeed have his­toric dis­putes — the U.S. and Rus­sia, Iran and Sau­di Ara­bia — the time is now to put aside those dif­fer­ences to work towards a com­mon pur­pose of destroy­ing ISIS. Sad­ly, as we have seen recent­ly, no coun­try is immune from attacks by the vio­lent orga­ni­za­tion or those whom they have radicalized.

Thus, we must work with our part­ners in Europe, the Gulf states, Africa, and South­east Asia — all along the way ask­ing the hard ques­tions whether their actions are serv­ing our uni­fied purpose.

The bot­tom line is that ISIS must be destroyed, but it can­not be defeat­ed by the Unit­ed States alone. A new and effec­tive coali­tion must be formed with the Mus­lim nations lead­ing the effort on the ground, while the Unit­ed States and oth­er major forces pro­vide the sup­port they need.