that a naive, knee-jerk free-market point of view such as tom sexowl walter williams represent tells us very much moment in time. host: how much is your new book a followup to your previous book, how george w. bush bankrupted america and betrayed the reagan legacy? guest: that's a bit of a followup. that was more narrowly focused, but there was a lot in there that got me thinking about some of these issues, such as, you know, why is it that we had all these tax cuts during the 2000's and they didn't do any good at all? i think it's because they were misdesigned and because, for partisan reasons ark lot of people talked themselves into believing that tax credits, which were essential the same thing as government spending, were somehow or another different and it was ok to have tax credits and not have tax rate reductions, and they just talked themselves into believing that whatever the white house wanted was good for the economy and it was just

all, you know, i'd say -- i'd use the b.s. word if we weren't on tv. host: one for email. pat writes in, isn't a v.a.t. a tax on manufacturing? didn't it also make more sense in the 1970's when we had a much larger manufacturing sector? guest: no, it's a tax on sales, on consumption. and ideally, you'd want it to be as broad as possible to include services as well as manufactured. one of the virtues of a v.a.t. is that it applies equally to imports and is rebated at the border on exports. so actually, it gives you a benefit in terms of international trade. so it's really a very good tax from a narrow technical point of view, and i really think that the people who oppose it are just dogmaticing opposed to all taxes and don't really know

what they're talking about in most cases. host: one nor call for you. this is st. louis. good morning to william on our democrats line. caller: good morning. i have several questions. hope i can get it all in. first of all, i find it hard to believe that most people saved their tax rebate the last time we had it. only people that would seem like to me that would save the tax rebate would be the wealthy. the other thing i want to mention was, do people really believe this economic problem that we have at the present time can be solved in nine months? and the third question, the last question, was the stimulus -- was that supposed to make things better over a period of time, let's say four years, of the obama administration? host: thank you, william. we'll get a response.

guest: well, it is true that the wealthy were certainly much more likely to save their rebates than the poor, and some 30% or so of the rebate was, in fact, spent. the point is that it was very poorly targeted. the money went to everybody. perhaps if they had some sort of targeted rebate that went to the poor, to people who were living from hand to mouth, that they would have been forced to go south and spend more money. but you probably couldn't have passed something like that through the congress. the main thing to me is that republicans are just so dogmatic about tax cuts that anything that's called a tax cut they support whether it's really a tax cut or not. and in case of the rebate, they call it a tax rebate, but actually, it's just government money. it's just a economic that they mailed out. so i don't really see how that has anything to do with taxes. certainly i think the administration was expecting to see some impact, some more impact from the stimulus than

they have seen, but i think they always understood that it was going take years before we got back to where we were before the recession. i don't remember what his last question was. host: he asked about tax rebates, but you addressed that, an but let's see some of the sights and sounds as we get ready for the festival today.

>> i sat across from many of

them in doing the film and talked to them and i thought repeatedly i can't imagine suffering for five minutes what this person has suffered for years. not for five minutes. i wouldn't know how i could endure it. and yet they did and they have to bear it every day of their lives. their personal losses of suffering, the losses of their family, of their children -- this is what they bear. and the reason we need to do this is not because it's a good thing to do, which it is. but because we need to rouse our own empathy not in the superficial sense, of course, which we think is terrible and horrible and we think what it would be like in that situation. in a more profound sense. we need to rouse our sympathy and of those around us and particularly of our politicians. because we need to think what would we do if that was a person

in our neighborhood. let alone a family member. what would we want our country, our political leaders to do? it is critical that we humanize the victims and we keep the humanity and their kindredness in mind and in our hearts at all times. we need to tell truths about what starts elimination assaults. elimination assaults until now have been attributed to all causes. i won't go through them all, historical, demographic, conflictual ones. you've heard many of them. a common view is that there are ethnic hatreds that spin out of control, volcanic eruptions that come seemingly from nowhere and

what can we do about it? because when ethnic conflicts spin out of control, that's what they do. well, in fact all these views are inadequate. it's very simple what starts elimination assaults. it is started by one man or a small group of men who at a discreet moment make a decision, a political decision to slaughter, expel or otherwise eliminated a group or -- groups or a populace that they hate or that they don't want or they think are bad to their well-being or an obstacle to their political projects. it is a discreet decision. whatever the causes of the underlying conflicts, there is a decision moment made by leaders.

these are large scale national or regional undertakings that require vast organization. the coordination of many institutions. it is done by a state. in the ways the states do this is central coordination and decision-making. it is critical to say this because -- and it has not been said which is just striking and indeed shocking. it's politics and it's a decision because when you start thinking about that way, as i will come back to it, it suggest a whole host of things we can do to change that decision. and so when you tell truths about why it starts, it starts because of politics and i've said this already. and i'll say it just as i said about empathy. many people say well, of course, it's political.

but they mean it, but it's political not in the trivial sense that, of course, is pediatrics. -- politics but a more profound sense. mass elimination is part of the regular toolkit of contemporary politics known and available to leaders around the world. known to work. and employed at certain moments when they decide it is to their advantage to do it. the reasons that it has become part of the political toolkit of the modern world and modern leaders are complicated and i won't go into them now. but that they cannot be doubted. and that they are that means we have to start fashioning political responses to these political initiativeses and take the political tools out of their tool kits by adopting our own political counter-measures. we need to tell truths about

what we do, to do this or to stop the killing which is next to nothing. that is the truth. whatever the international community says, whatever bluster comes out of the capital, we do next to nothing. the killing continues and it continues. all the while we look on and wring our hands and speak some pious words and do nothing. we need to speak truths about why we do nothing. the cynicism of our leaders is unmistakable. the holy grail of national interest, which is nothing more in this case than an excuse and a roadblock to doing something.

the international community and the u.n. as an institution -- we must speak truthfully about our setup to do nothing. they're not set up to do something to stop the killing. it is exactly the opposite. we need to speak the truth about what is wrong. and this is what is wrong. if you look out in the world -- if you were just a naive person and you look at the world, this is what you would see. the wealthy and strong and powerful countries of the world, the makes of the west -- which are against genocide, our leaders don't want people being slaughtered. they don't want people being expelled. they don't want elimination assaults and the peoples of our country don't want them either.

they look upon the world in which weak and poor countries led by dictators slaughter their own people. and you the naive person would ask, how can this be? how is this possible? how can all these people who say they are against genocide and really are stand by and let these weak and poor leaders and those serving them slaughter people again and again and again. it simply doesn't add up. it is a wrong equation. and we must change that equation. we must tell truths about what can be done. everything. we can put an end to the

killing. it is within our power. and it can be done, in my view, relatively easily. if you recognize that it's politics and that a leader or a small group of leaders make the decision to begin the elimination assaults and they do so paw they calculate that it will bring them power and advantage -- in other words, the cost -- i'm sorry the benefits will greatly outweigh the costs, you say how can we passion policies and respond politically to that decision-making moment of the leaders, to the small group of leaders and do that so that the costs will be raised astronomically and the benefits will decline astronomically so that when they look out on situations or context in which they might otherwise say, i

think i will undertake an elimination assault, they'll say the costs are too great. i will be the loser. it's not worth it. we have to find some other way. that's why it's critical to recognize the elements that unleash genocide and what the nature and elimination assaults -- and what the nature of this kind of politics is because if you put it this way, you can fashion responses. and as i said, i think relatively easily and effectively. so what should we do? how should we respond politically? any antielimination system would have three components. a prevention system, an intervention system and punishment, which is part of a justice system.

while in the book i go through each of them in great detail and lay out the various components of what each should be, the one we should obviously focus on and the one in which i will speak about this evening is a prevention system. because the goal should be that we prevent them. that they never begin. intervention, which is most people talk about, occurs by definition much too late. realize that in one day, the perpetrators can kill 10,000 people. it is too late even a week or a month afterwards. we want to prevent them. what do we have now? we have no prevention system to speak of. we have only very occasional intervention, which comes much too late. there have been only a few instances of serious intervention.

and we have a justice system which is on its way to being established with an international criminal court and the tribunals that preceded it, which should be applauded. but they are too late. too slow. too partial. without sufficient powers and hence too ineffective. as i said, we should strengthen them. it's good we have them. but that's pretty much all we have and it's the least important part of an antieliminationist system. how does prevention work? prevention works with deterrence. you want a deterrent system because you don't want to identify, a-ha, tomorrow a genocide will begin here. you want it to work in its national functioning so that it will affect all the potential genocidal killers, that is the leaders, at all times.

and deterrence means that the perpetrators know that the penalty that they will incur, the cost they will incur will be great. sufficiently great that they will not want to undertake the eliminationist assault and that they will find it credible that the cost would be applied to them. high cost and credibility of the threat of its application. these are the two critical elements. now, i thought very, very hard in the years in which i was working on this project about what could be effective. there's lots of things that could be effective. and many of them require states to do a great deal. and we know that from -- just from the time since the holocaust when people when

people when people thought about how to stop genocide so we shouldn't expect too much of them from our political leaders. so we need to fashion policies that are relatively low cost. and still effective. if any political leader -- and not just a leader of a dictatorship but his cabinet members, high level subordinates of all kinds, military leaders, police leaders -- if they begin an eliminationist assault, they should be declared, according to an international legal doctrine which has existed for a couple hundred years, they should be declared the enemies of humanity. this is a document which has been applied to pirates. which means they are that. the enemies of humanity and are subject to being killed. unless they turn themselves in.

and what's more, there should be a bounty system established, a bounty program, similar to the program that the american government has called reward for justice, which is in place to reward people for the apprehension or killing of terrorists. we have a program in the united states in which large bounties are paid for the apprehension or killing of people who kill a few dozen americans. why shouldn't we have one for people who kill tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions. we should put bounties, large bounties on their heads. $10 million for a leader. a million for a cabinet member. how many dictators or lower -- or high level subordinates could

even be sure that their own bodyguard wouldn't turn on them for such rewards? how many of them could ever feel safe? could ever go to asleep without wondering whether they wake up in the morning. no political leader wants to be wanted dead or alive. this would put -- give them great pause. and i think would no doubt stop many genocidal killers from ever -- or eliminationist leaders from ever making the decision to opt for such policies. we should make a second credible thought. we should do what nato did in bosnia, three years too late which is bomb the military forces and installations of the perpetrating state. much of these dictators rely on

their military for power. they cannot defend themselves. we could degrade their forces very easily and quickly at relatively low cost. make it clear to them that they will lose power. their own militaries would turn on them if this would -- if this credible threat would ever be applied to them. and as i said, relatively low cost. it's not sending in an invasion force. we did this in bosnia. when we finally did it milosevic came to the table three weeks later and the threat against bosnia was over. if it had been three years earlier when it began, 100,000 people would be alive and many, many more would not have been brutalized, raped, expelled from their homes and removed from their regions.

now i know that these -- particularly the bounties will have people feel uneasy, disquietude. it seems like a radical measure. the question is would it be effective and always keep in mind what we're talking about. we're talking about saving vast numbers of lives. i asked the president of bosnia if milosevic -- and he knows milosevic very well or he knew him very well. if milosevic had known that in starting the genocidal assault on the bosnians that a bounty -- a large sum bounty would have been placed on his head we've done it, and the leader of bosnia told me i don't think he would have. he explained that he relied upon the international community loving the status quo and he would get to keep the situation

that he had created. i asked the justice minister of rwanda, a man who has steeped himself in the horrors and the analysis of genocidal assault as much as any public figure of our time. he has led a justice system which has processed 1.2 million people suspected of having participated in the genocide. they acquitted approximately 300,000 and convicted in various forms about 900,000. i asked him the same question. if the leaders had known that a bounty, a large bounty would be placed on their heads, would they ever have undertaken the genocidal assault and killed

800,000 people, men and women and children. and not just killed them but did unspeakable acts of cruelty and brutallity to them along the way, would it have prevented the genocide? and the leader said definitely, definitely, definitely many times definitely. he then explained. these are his words. if people knew that at the end of the day they'll be the losers, they never invest in a losing enterprise because genocide as you correctly pointed out is a political enterprise. it's a political game. but again it's a power play. it's wealth. it's everything. so if people involved in -- knew at the end of the day they'd be the losers, they would not play the game. that's for sure.

these are the testimonies of two men whose words carry enormous weight based on their immense and -- immense knowledge of two of the most recent eliminationist assaults of our time. we ought to heed their words. we need to tell the truth about the possibility or seeming impossibility or futility of changing something or ending something that has seemed to be a part of humanity for all time, which it has. people say, how can you expect in genocide it's always been a part of the human condition? it will always be with us. if we had been sitting here at

the beginning of the 19th century -- sorry, at the beginning of the 20th century, in 1900, and i had said we will be able to put an end to an imperialism, you would have scoffed. imperialism had been with humanity for all of human history. it was a central feature of how the world -- how the world was run at the time. and yet imperialism is all but a thing of the past. certainly on a large scale it does not exist anymore. if i had said to you that war would no longer be a principal means by which many of the states of the world relate to one another, you would have scoffed. war was a constituent feature of the world around as long as humanity where everywhere around

the world related to each other not that they followed each other but but the threat that hostilities could break out. we have wars in parts in the world but it's no longer a way in which states relate to each other. if i told you that in many countries of the of the world that human rights and political rights would be respected and become such a public norm in the world that even in those countries that violate them, they pay -- they pay lip service to it and they claim that they actually respect human rights and political rights you would have scoffed. it would have seemed like a pipe dream at the time. you would have said, perhaps in a few countries it might happen. but it will be a long, long time if ever, not in our lifetime, not in our children's lifetime will we see these rights respected in many, many countries around the world.

and yet all of these things have happened. momentous changes, momentous shifts in areas that are analogous -- some of them analogous to eliminationism. so why should we not think we can do it with eliminationism? if we devoted an iota of the energy to stopping eliminationism that we have devoted to stopping war, we could put an end to it swiftly and surely. it is right now genocide and mass murder are at best a secondary issue in the international community. and eliminationism -- that is eliminationist assaults that do not include very large scale mass killing are basically not on the radar screen on the international community as things to stop and prevent.

now, the good news is that just as limitation assaults are begun by one man or a small group of men and occasionally women, it actually only takes one man or a small group of men or women to put an antieliminationist system or at least its beginnings in place to begin to stop the killings. a deterrent system relying upon fighting the enemies of humanity who are conducting actually a war on humanity, we misconceive what genocide or mass murder is. we call them crimes against humanity. it sounds terrible but they're not crimes as domestic crimes are. they're not to be responded with police action. but they are actually a war against humanity. we have declared a one-sided war

on part of humanity which means on humanity itself and recognize that genocidal perpetrators, eliminationist perpetrators often after assaulting one group assault a second and a third and a fourth group. they are conducting a war on humanity. and against a war we respond with the force that we do when we are defending ourselves against war and with the rules of war. which is sad but true, you need to stop and kill the enemy. a few one-man -- the president of the united states or a few political leaders, the president of the united states, the leaders of the major european countries, and the european union can institute a bounty

program and with nato or without nato can promise to bomb and degrade the military forces of any country undertaking eliminationist assault. they have the power to do this. literally overnight. it just takes a few moral men and women to change the eliminationist, the genocidal calculus of all future eliminationist and genocidal leaders. we need to tell the truth about our duty. ask yourselves each one of y you -- if i'm right, that a bounty program would have saved 800,000 people in rwanda, ask

yourself would you say it should have been in place? how many of you would say, no, we should not have had a bounty program. it would have been better to let 800,000 people die including hundreds of thousands of children? how many of you would say that and tried to defend that position? i say it like this because i know that people will think that what i'm suggesting is radical.j but what the truth is, like so many other things about genocide, that our vision is clouded by the cliches we've heard about genocide, the horror which overwhelms us and the way we detached ourselves from

genocide from an understanding of almost everything else to do with politics and social life. we need to reintegrate our understanding and analysis and our responses to eliminationist assaults. we need to reintegrate them into society and politics and use the same forms of analysis and the same political tools that we know are effective in other matters to deal with the genocidal killers and to save lives. and so what that means is that -- what i'm saying is not radical. the radical thing is the status quo. because the status quo has led us to doing next to nothing even though there's been an antigenocide convention in place since 1948. we've done next to nothing and we've watched time and again as perpetrators slaughter victims, expel them, brutalize, raped them with utter impunity.

and tens of millions upon tens of millions get slaughtered. the bounties are not radical. the current system is radical. it is catastrophic. we cannot wait for the international community or the u.n. to evolve. people are dying every day. and not just a few people. in vast numbers. and if you say -- if you're with the justice minister of rwanda and you say that we could have stopped the rwandan genocide with a simple deterrent, the kind of deterrent we use in our own society and in other ways in the international community is that when people commit crimes they know they will pay so, therefore, people who choose to commit them choose not to. if you're with the leader of rwanda and you think we should have saved 800,000 people in rwanda, then my question is, how

can we not use the same mechanism and other credible deterrents to prevent the next rwanda, and the next rwanda after that and the next rwanda after that? thank you. [applause] [inaudible] >> c-span is here taping the event. and so they're going to be taking around a microphone for you to ask your question into. you're not going to hear your voice amplified. dr. goldhagen will repeat the

question for the audience for hear. okay? and i'm going to start us off with a question this evening. you traveled the world and you interviewed many people for both the documentary and the book. i'm wondering if you could share with us one moment from those travels that still resonates with you. i'm sorry there are many. -- i'm sure there are many but one of those moments. >> these trips were unforgettable and they made un-dellable impressions on me. i've been doing this for three decades. and nothing has made a deeper impression on me than sitting across from victims, sitting across from perpetrators, interviewing them talking to the people who are trying to save

lives, the people who have taken them, seeing all of the institutions and processes that you see after the fact as well. in guatemala, i went to a exhumiation of a mass grave. and again something in my life i never imagined i would be in. i was in a mass grave while they were doing it. and the people there had been killed by the regime more than 25 years earlier. and while they were exhuming the victims, really excavating the graves, taking the dirt away, in the way that forensic -- the way the forensic experts do, which is painstakingly slow, the families of the men who were

there -- they knew who was in this grave. they'd been there all this time. the families were gathered around. this went on for days, probably weeks. we were only there for a day. the wives, the children, even grandchildren of these people were there. they ate food at lunchtime. they watched. they talked among themselves. it was deeply, deeply moving. so long after to see these people so affected. and they were just getting the bones. they were in terrible conditions. they were just getting the bones crushed and strewn about in this grave. that's all they were getting. and it defined their existence of these people at least as far as i imagine. there's a face of a little girl -- you see it in the film, just unforgettable.

as she stood there and crouched there and watched what was taking place. a scene no little gil should see. f course, the victims -- wh they're assaulted by the perpetrators they have no choice. they get overrun. they suffer what they what they have to suffer because they're powerless.o2ó this family brought this little girl -- it was something she had to do, they thought, and it's not for me to judge whether it's right or wrong. but what a terrible thing for a little girl to have to watch. i mean, you can imagine how gruesome it was. and she knew -- i presume she knew what it was. and so that was a scene -- a day in guatemala that was out of the ordinary and deeply affecting on many, many levels. so if you have other comments or questions, i'll be happy to hear them.

where's the microphone? this woman over here, she's near you. and then we'll go to the front. >> dr. goldhagen, you have suggested very correctly that the bounty system is prevention. which we all agree with. but who will meet out the punishment? who can you -- in today's world, the united nations, european union, the international criminal court -- who can we expect to meet out those punishments? >> the woman in the audience agrees with the need for bounties, in fact she spoke for all of them and i don't know if that's true. and the question is, who should decide -- who should meet out the punishment?

it can't be the u.n., she thinks. and you're right. the u.n. is not going to do this. the u.n. is an institution that is more an enabler of eliminationist of assaults than a hindrance to them. and i say this and i criticize the u.n. extremely forcefully in the book and in the film not because -- not because i dislike its view of the united states or as it has been in the past in american politics. i do it as someone who is for multilateralism, as a liberal internationalist, who would like the u.n. to live up to its founding principles or at least some of them. it holds sovereignty to be

nearly sacrosanct. and one of the things that occurred in our time is that eliminationist assaults, mass murders, genocides have shifted from being to a large extent done internationally across one's borders often by colonial powers in their colonies to the second part of the 20th century to our time to be wholly domestic matters done by states within their own borders. and the principal sovereignty says that as long as you do whatever you do within your own borders, no other country has a right to intervene. and that includes when you slaughter your own citizens or otherwise eliminate them. so they fight to defend the sovereignty of the states and that's what sovereignty is. it's a sovereignty of states and governments, not the sovereignty of people. and there for the u.n. not only is an impediment actually -- legitimatizes and defends and

gives importance to the dictators of the world and gives standing to the u.n. and in my view dictatorships today should all a be conceived of as protoeliminationist regimes because to maintain the power in the modern world where people -- all peoples want to govern themselves, want to have democratic rights. they must use violence and repression. which eventually will meet greater resistance. and when it does, they're never that far from moving to eliminationist levels of violence. so dictatorships today are proeliminationist regimes, they should be gotten rid of and the u.n. does not do that. it protects them. who should decide? who should decide? in my view if nato wants to institute such a policy, that's fine. if the union countries want to institute such a policy that's fine.

if the united states wants to alone or with other democratic allies, it's fine. we live in a world where almost nothing is done -- any country or any coalition of countries that want to intervene either preventively or once killing begins or elimination begins to save lives as nato did in bosnia, they should do it. the moral law is higher than international law in the u.n. which in this matter is utterly bankrupt. people might say, what are you going to have people -- states super have a good evening all over the place all the time? well, the reality is it's very hard to move them to ever do anything. let's get someone to do something. let's get some -- let's get the democratic antigenocidal countries of the world to live up to their principals. i do think an international agency should be created by treaty that will monitor and

identify elimination assaults and declare that they have taken place quickly after they begin and we at this point we know when they begin, which would trigger all of the mechanisms that i lay out in the book. so by treaty that should be established. it should be staffed appropriately. and we should get the countries of the world to do something. the democratic countries. yes, sir? >> i would like you to comment what's happening in sudan and darfur specifically. the president of sudan has been considered a criminal. and there's a warrant out for his arrest and following exactly the steps that you outline. however, he has the power and nobody is going to touch him. and the same thing is happening in iran where there's an outcry of popular revolt and again the

powers to be are too strong to control the situation. >> okay. the question is what about the situation in sudan where at last warrant out -- issued by the international criminal court for the arrest of the al-bashir the president of sudan and iran, where the leader is, as we all know, a dictatorship and acting against its own citizens with considerable violence. the situation of sudan shows how ineffective the current system is. the genocidal assault had been going on in darfur for more than five years before an arrest warrant was issued by the international criminal court for al-bashir. it took them several years to even begin an investigation of him because they were arguing, and arguing in the u.n. and elsewhere about whether it's a genocide or not according to the international legal definition.

this is where we need to think about eliminationism. it's an eliminationist assault. they now slaughtered -- the estimate is thousands of people. a regime which earlier killed and expelled even more people in southern sudan and that is barely ever mentioned in discussions of darfur. it's just shocking. a case where an eliminationist leader conducting a war on humanity did it to one large segment of his country and then turned on another and started up again. it's a war against the humanity. so the international community such as it is is ineffective. it doesn't do much. moves slowly and talks a lot in the u.n. the international criminal court did issue an arrest warrant but it has no capacity and we wait until al-bashir gives himself up

or gets himself deposed. the gentleman suggest what i've been suggesting it's ineffective but it's, in fact, not what i'm suggesting. it is really a good but ultimately effective way to do something. if you wait until a genocidal or eliminationist leader has already killed hundreds of thousands of people it's hard to do anything at this point. yes, we should bomb. we should bomb their military forces. we should make a no-fly zone. bomb their forces. if we have to, put real troops on the ground. the question i would ask -- and i think everyone should ask president obama and let him finally earn his nobel peace prize and ask the leaders of every democratic country, your leader here in canada and the leader of the union countries is the following question. and i would ask every journalist to pose this question and to

keep asking it. how many african lives equal one american or one canadian or one german or one french or one british life? how many? what is the answer? is it one? is it 10? is it 100? is it 1,000? is it a million? if they say well, you know, a thousand lives would justify putting one american life at risk or one canadian life or one european life, well, we've certainly reached that threshold. if they want to say well, it's a million, let them defend the number. let's hear what their moral calculus really is. let's ask them and let's get an answer. and let's not say it's more complicated than that. yes, there are strategic complications but it's a simple equation.

i think an african life is worth as much as an american life and as much as a canadian life. and, of course, there are practical considerations at one point one intervenes in other countries. i'm not saying when one person is killed we send in the marines. but we should recognize that one life is as valuable -- the life of a child in darfur is every bit as valuable as the life as a child. -- as a child in boston and toronto where i live. let's make all of these issues that i'm laying out here as clear as can be, press our leaders and have our media, television, radio and print journalists push these issues. and create public pressure on them to declare where they are and then to act appropriately. >> i have sort of two questions. the issue of darfur is not only

an issue of definition, which has been a problem. but also you have china. i mean, you have nondemocratic countries that come into the calculus that you can't ignore because there are countries that don't want to make those decisions for political or whatever. so that's one side. the other is i look at a country like uganda. and i think at what point -- here you have a situation where you have the initial -- the initial signs of what you call an eliminationism. and nothing is going to happen until it moves to the next step or the next step and then even nothing will happen. so -- and the same question applies. there are too many other interests that will prevent a european nation, a nato, a united states and obama from going in and saying, okay, let's put a bounty. and how do you get around that?

and i think journalists in many cases have fallen by the wayside. >> the question is about the strategic and other interests that exist in the world that prevent the united states and the europeans, canada, other countries of good will so to speak from doing anything to stop or prevent the killing. and the speaker specifically pointed to china being a player in the whole sudanese complex. and to uganda where there is a low level eliminationist assault that takes place which hasn't quite escalated to the levels that we call eliminationism and so what do we do? is there are several responses that deal with different aspects of the problem and i'll just be telegraphic about them. the first is, people raise all

kinds of objections -- and i'm not saying you're doing this. but you apply this principle, what do you do in this typical case and what do you do in that case? can you apply the principle all the time and if you don't how is it a principle and so on and so forth? my response is more or less the same that we do earlier. if we start doing the easy cases, easy in the sense of the ones that are unequivocal, then we've made a lot of progress. if we just succeed one time to prevent or to stop an eliminationist assault, it will be historic. if we succeed one time or perhaps if we fail to actually institute these measures then the next leader will learn he better not do this, we will have done immense good much more than if we cut the murder rate in canada in the united states in half in a given year which

people would justifiably say yes! we can all agree upon and that's all the people of good will and that we can effectively act upon. then we can deal with the border line cases and the harder cases and we can have long policy discussions about what to do. but we don't need to -- just because we can't do everything at once doesn't mean we can't do an awful lot to begin with. with regard to china and sudan, you know, i actually don't think that if we took serious measures in sudan that there would be -- china would scream a little bloody murder but what's going to happen? are they going to stop trading with us? are they -- are they going to bail out of the international system? you know, sudan is pretty far

away from china. it's not in their neighborhood. it's not like we're talking about taiwan. i think that it would resolute west that it could be done. but the more important point is if you get to this point it's much too late. it's true is uganda, too. that's why you want preventive measures so that they don't even begin. it's very hard to clean up messes. and these are colossal messes. it's very hard because even if you intervene and stop you have the whole problem of massive reconstruction which is much more expensive. people say think of the cost of doing any of these things, the cost of bounties is not very much money. the cost of reconstruction of cleaning up the mess in bosnia and rwanda is so astronomical it's cost-effective to prevent assaults and it's cost-effective because these countries can participate actually.

it's in the interest, in the most narrow venal interest. it's in the interest fair to say western countries to prevent these intervention jay assaults. -- interventionist assaults. [inaudible] >> do you want to take one more? >> i'll take one more. sorry. and i'm going to be over here afterwards. i'll be happy to talk to you as long as you'd like me to. >> could you talk a little bit about how you would see the bounty system working. take us through your first case scenario. >> well, the question is how would a bounty system work? what would be the first case scenario? the first thing to do is actually to institute the program. to make -- to apply the doctrine of enemies of humanity to those who -- and you define who they are. anybody -- any political leader,

president, prime minister, whatever he or she calls himself, cabinet members -- people in military command positions -- we can discuss at what level, how far down it goes and police command positions and so on. anyone who is participating in a government or in state institutions at a certain level if a genocidal or eliminationist system begins. they are deemed to be at war of humanity. and the rules of war apply to them. we create the system by treaty or as i said the u.s. can extend its rewards for justice program. which it instituted unilaterally -- what has the world done? people say what's going to happen? what has the world done? the program exists. it's not perfect. but it's actually led to the capture and killing of a lot of significant perpetrators including after the fact genocidal killers in rwanda, from rwanda. to institute the program. have handbooks created that are

handed out to every person who enters one of these command or governmental positions upon taking office, telling them of what happens to them if they begin eliminationist assaults, to dictators, to everybody. put everyone on notice and make it clear that you're serious, institution wise, the u.n. they should give them out the european union, the united states. send them along. the african union. other regional organizations. make it clear. so the first thing to do is to is institute -- create the program, notify everybody in the world and put a lot of muscle behind it rhetorical and others and set up the system so it's not just talk. and notify everyone that this will happen. and then if a leader is stupid enough to put it to a test, you

have the international authority that is created through treaty to declare -- to identify eliminationist assaults to declare that one has created and has started and the bounties and the bombing which should be done commences. or if there is no such international agency and if -- let's say the united states established such a program, then let them -- let them apply it. and the bounties can be collected. the u.s. can act with its forces. again, i will repeat what i said. and i know it's hard for many people to get to -- as i say wrap their heads around it. the radical program is not this. it's the status quo. and my challenge to you and to everyone is, if you don't like what i'm proposing and i understand it causes disquietude, for me, come up

with a a better deterrent system that is likely to be more effective and prevent more mass slaughters but it is not an acceptable response to say the status quo is okay or let's wait for the international system or the u.n. to evolve. we must act. tens of thousands of people can die every day. it is urgent. we have difficult choices. let's be responsible citizens and let the political leaders of our countries be responsible leaders and take the difficult decisions to save lives. thank you. [applause] >> daniel jonah goldhagen is the author of a moral reckoning the role of the catholic church in the holocaust and its unfulfilled duty of repair. for more, visit goldhagen.com.

but let's see some of the sights and sounds as we get ready for the festival today. >> here's a look at some upcoming festivals over the next months.

>> nicole galinas argues that the 2008 crisis was caused by 25 years of government interconvenience in the stock market. she says that we need to return to a financial system in which bad businesses are allowed to fail instead of being bailed out. new york city hosts the hour-long event. >> good morning. i'm amity. please welcome this morning -- please -- i may ask right away turn off your cell phones or beepers or check again to be sure they're turned off. we'd like to welcome you this

morning to this manhattan institute event for nicole, the author of an important new book "after the fall." we welcome new yorkers, manhattan institute of friends and c-span viewers. i don't know how many of you have seen the new chanel movie. that's the movie about the designers, coco chanel. chanel wasn't just a designer. she was the designer. she pin pointed what was wrong with the 19th century with what was wrong with their skirts. then with another set of markers chanel walked out of the 20th century what it should be, women's suits, clothes you can wear and walk in, ideas that changed culture, politics, economics, not just the rag trade all due to the utter precision of the artist. nicole is the chanel of financial governance. [laughter]

>> in her sharp book "after the fall" the book we'll talk about this morning, she marks the spots in our past history that took us to the current financial crisis that made it inevitable, in fact, that we would come this way with equal mastery she pencils the pattern for reform you didn't know was right until you saw it. so we want to welcome you all to hear this. nicole is the freedom trust fellow at the manhattan institute, a contributing editor to their strong magazine "city journal." nicole is also a chartered financial analyst, i.e. a master of her craft. two or three things i want to mention before she comes up to talk to you. one of this book "after the fall" is a history book. today we have our assumptions, deposit insurance is good. we just need more of it maybe. another assumption that we have that the world will