brigade, it's still the case that most of the analytical expertise is associated with a division and brigade level. and in this fight, which is so local, and so information-intensive, and with soldiers who are used to having information, you're used to acting on information. the army now has these company command posts, and boy, it's not your company command post of 20 years ago. they're all at laptops, they're expecting that kind of information, they know how to be effective with that kind of information, and they need intelligence analysts who can tell them about this town, who can tell them about good guys as well as bad guys, because that's important, not only the threat, it's do you know your situation well enough to do the

counterinsurgency mission and it's still the case that -- i know this is noted frequently, we're fighting against it every day, that it's important to get those people down, out to the outposts an down to the echelons where analysis can really be useful and not just writing reports at the higher echelons, so all of that is very important and is the back end of the isr sensor, front end, incredibly important. >> dr. carter, we want to thank you all very much gentleman. >> thank you all very much. appreciate it. [applause] >> while our first panel is proceeding up to the platform here, i would like to take this opportunity to thank our underwriters for the event this morning. csc computer sciences corporation, it was in part, their idea to put forward such

an event as this, and we really appreciate their underwriting support in making it possible, so thank you. i want to be sure to recognize them. our next panel actually will pick up the ball, in part from that last question, so thank you, kevin, for that opportunity if you will. this panel is focusing on the real back hand of the back hand, enterprise resource planning and the lessons learned from that. we have with us logisticians, a wonderful panel, i will introduce each of them and turn the microphone over to general john handy, -- >> we are going to leave the remainder of this event at the center for strategic and international studies for other

programs on this friday morning. later today, remarks from president obama in charlotte, north carolina. he'll talk about the u.s. economy, this after earlier today the labor department reporting the unemployment rate remaining unchanged at 9.7% in march. with 162,000 jobs added during the month. you can see the president's comments live from a lithium ion battery parts manufacturer at 11:55 a.m. eastern on c-span. also today, state department counterterrorism coordinator daniel benjamin on the obama's administration's tactics and strategy for fighting terrorism. he'll speak at the woodrow wilson center that saturdays live at noon eastern here on c-span2. february marked one year since congress passed the economic stimulus money. of that $787 billion approved, $355 billion have been committed, $205 billion paid out as of march 23. for more details on those

projects, go to our web site, c-span.org/estimate lums. -- stimulus. >> this weekend on c-span two's book tv, from the virginia festival of the book --

>> next, a discussion on u.s. involvement in iraq and afghanistan. brigadier general h.r. mcmaster and retired general keene join law school professor bruce ackerman to talk about the conduct of the war and prisoner detention, held at the national constitution center in philadelphia, this is almost two hours. >> good evening. and welcome. i'm david eisner, i'm the president and chief executive officer of the national constitution center and it is our distinct on horto host

the -- honor to host the fourth annual peter jennings project for journalists and the constitution. it's named for a man who prior to his passing in 2005 had made it his mission to bring constitutional conversations to his viewers hand readers. and moreover, he did it in such a way that was commensurate with his enthusiasm for what he felt for the historic human achievement represented by the u.s. constitution. it is to that unfinished mission that the peter jennings project for journalists and the constitution is dedicated. our journalists, mid career journalists come from 19 states, and nine countries. the jennings fellows in the audience, will you all wave? the jennings fellows in the audience represent a diverse group of media professionals.

they're all here and have given us this weekend to engage with constitutional issues. they're exploring the principles and the ideas that are expressed in our nation's most cherished document. as journalists, they're serving a unique -- they're performing a unique service, and ensuring the integrity of our democracy, whether directly covering the struggles of power in and among our branches of government, or if they're reporting on business, education, health, art, culture, or any other area where constitutional issues come into play. in strengthening their ability to report on constitutional issues, they're striving to provide all americans with what thomas jefferson called avenues of truth. so that all of us, all americans, can fulfill our potential as citizens. on behalf of the center, i want to thank all of our jennings

fellows, and all of the participants for honoring peter's legacy in such an important way. i also want to thank jennings' project director, todd brews at the, who you'll be hearing from in a moment and casey p. jennings, a close adviser to the project and a great friend to the center. let me also extend a special thank you to the anneburg foundation and knight foundation, both of whom's generous support is responsible for allowing us to bring you this peter jennings project and this forum tonight. and to our distinguished guests here tonight, i want to offer a thank you for making this what promises to be a fascinating conversation. tonight's timely program, the constitution and the long war, will consider whether the u.s. can maintain the long-fought

constitution's prized balance of power, where war is prolonged. and will consider whether the executive must have expanded powers to act without significant participation by congress or the courts. todd brewster will introduce the program. in addition to his work with the jennings project, he's the director of the west point center for oral history, which is our program's co-presenter this evening. he's a -- he was a chose friend of peter jennings. todd was -- is a veteran journalist who for more than 20 years covered national and international politics, working with time and abc news. he is co-author with peter jennings of the best selling books "the century" and "in search for america." todd has also taught journalism, documentary film, and constitutional law as a visiting

professor at wesleyan university and he is a knight fellow at yale law school. it's my pleasure to introduce him now. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming todd brewster. [applause] >> thank you, david, and welcome everybody, to our main event for the peter jennings project. it's a joy to be addressing you all, introducing this main event, could be received if partner high pressure with the center for oral history. you occasionally hear army officers about how war ought tore left to the warriors and civil affairs to the civil politicians. you also here "war is politics" by other means, hence the dilemma. where should the line properly

fall between civil and military affairs. the framers negotiated this path with a delicate penmanship. the constitution gives power to congress to provide and maintain a navy, but an army must be reappropriated every two years, so fearful were hadell madison and hamilton that a standing army could be an agent of tyranny. here it another oddity. it was under the administration of thomas jefferson, that west point, a military academy, churning out professional warrior class was founded in hain 02. jefferson -- 1802. jefferson, who feared stand armies as much as anyone in his time. if the framers were suspicious that a powerful military would be bloodthirsty, perhaps too quick to act, history is not necessarily proved them right. of after the first guns were fired at fort sumter, abraham lincoln famously derided the parade of union generals, who as he put it, had a bad case of the slows, so reluctant were they to

act. in the end, it was as -- he as much as anyone else who guided the union soldiers to victory. in our own time, we know that the decision to invade iraq , the adoption of enhanced interrogation techniques and the insistence on going to war with the army we had, rather than the army we may have needed be was guided by our civilian leaders, often in conflict with the military's advice. it is army officers who understand better than anyone else, the other familiar phrase, that fog of war and that no plan survives the first contact with the enemy. war they know, is a dangerous and unpredictable business. throughout most of american history, the army has remained small, built up during wartime and demobil highed quickly of a. that is until world war ii. since then, the army has remained large, expense of, and

more frequently employed not only because of america's stature as a super power, but because being a super power in the 20th and 21st century has required a permanent war footing from world war ii to the cold war, to the war on terror. the result has been a president who is always dressed as commander-in-chief, and an executive bloated in size, remarkably, james madison anticipated this when he argued in the federalist that constant apprehension of war has a tendency to render the head too large for the body. today, we are in a period of extended conflict with troops deployed in two theaters and perhaps even more important, a sense that a protracted war, 30 years, 40 years, will blanket the first half of the 21s 21st century. how can the constitution tolerate such a situation? what are the implications for civilian control of the military, when the military is

in a period of permanent engagement? what other prospects for the balance of power? today, we are fortunate to have a panel of extraordinary professionals to help us negotiate through this difficult territory. brigadier general h.r. mcmaster commanded the third army's armored cavalry regiment in iraq and was widely praised for securely the iraqi city in 2004. he has been a military history professor at west point, holds a ph.d. from the university of north carolina and is the author of a tremendous book "dereliction of duty and the lies that led to vietnam." he grew up here in philadelphia. retired army four star general jack keene served in the vietnam war as a paratrooper. he was later deployed in the u.s. engagements in somalia, haiti, bosnia and kosovo.

he commanded both 101s 101st airborne division and the 18th air corps and was army chief of staff. bruce ackerman is the sterling professor at yale law school. he is the author of "before the next attack beings preserving civil liberties in an age of terrorism," his op-ed piece criticizing general stanley mcchrystal for publicly challenging president obama last fall was widely circulated. bruce is now at work on the expansion of the presidency in the 21st presidency. they are joined tonight by terry moran, co-anchor of abc news's "nightline." terry is uniquely call need to frame the questions for tonight's program. in addition to his work at ""nightline"" he is also answer news' supreme court correspond correspondent. he has reported extensively on the wars in iraq and afghanistan and white house correspondent during the presidencies of bill clinton and george w. bush. so let's welcome our guests and get ready for an exciting

evening. thank you. [applause] >> thank you todd. it's an honor to be here and with this remarkable panel. it's a topic of abiding interest to generations of americans. you never know where it's going to turn up. i was in the taxi over here, told the taxi driver, going to the national constitution center. he starts driving. a couple minutes later of absolutely nothing, she said well, maybe we'll get our constitution back some day. now, they could have been someone who didn't like president bush, or somebody that didn't like president obama, could have been anybody, but it's that word our that really is the focus as to is pointed out. americans own their constitution, and this building

is full those quotes telling us that, one from john marshal i saw this afternoon, the american people made their constitution and only they can unmake it, through conversations, through discussion, so let's do some constitution making, and i'd like to start with a big question, focusing on one word in our title, our topic. the long war and the constitution. war, war has constitutional meaning, constitution divides up power over war over the branches, it has a political meaning. nations and peoples change at war. and of course, as general keene and general mcmaster know, intimately, it has a human meaning, which is right at the bottom of it all. so war, is that the right word to use, this is a debate that's out there, to describe the struggle we're into defend our country against extremists, muslim jihaddism, against terrorism, and to defeat that

enemy? is war the right word? general keene, what do you think? >> well, the struggle against jihad. or radical -- jihaddism or radical islam, it's founded in an ideology that has clearly a religious base to it and we cannot dismiss the seriousness of their belief in that, but what clearly makes it war in my view is the means, which is jihaddism and their use of arms and violence to achieve those political ends and even though they may not be a nation state in some cases, in some cases they are, the fact of the matter is, they are using armed violence to achieve political objectives, which is essentially what war itself is. >> bruce, you don't think so? >> make a distinction between two sorts of problems. one is we certainly recall at war with saddam hussein, and we

certainly are at war with the -- with afghanistan, and we are certainly engaging in occupation of these two countries at the present time, trying to prop them up in various ways. so war in that sense is perfectly appropriate. the problem with terrorism is not a problem of war however. it's a different -- it's a real problem. , but it's a very different one. the state is losing its monopoly of force in the 21st century. that's a problem that would exist, even if the middle east became an oasis of peace. what, you know, the 9-11 and such events are fundamentally

not like pearl harbor. in pearl harbor, you had a state, a war machine, that you knew was going to follow and could have invaded the united states. terrorist acts will occur intimately, they are the consequence of black markets in violence, smaller and smaller number of people, whether they be called jihaddists or militia men from montana or of what, smaller and smaller. people with smaller and smaller amounts of money will be able to buy bigger and bigger weapons, that's the black-market and we have to understand that that's a very different problem from invading countries.

>> let's go to -- well, go, and then just jump in, you bet. general keane. >> first of all, this enemy has declared war against us, that's a fact. secondly, most administrations, both democratic and republic, in dealing with this threat, prior to 9-11, treat it as something less than war. they treated it as criminal activity, whether it be republican or democrat. post 9-11, i think we finally woke up to the harsh reality of what it had always been is an act of violence against the nation state, which it is, much what the israelis have been dealing with with their own problems. we know for a fact, those of us who have been around intelligence communities, know that this same body of people want to get their hands on two or three w.m.d. capability, and

do that simultaneously in hour communities, killing 200,000 people per. now, 9-11, the horror of what we witnessed, the means certainly is terrorism. a potential w.m.d. strike in america that would collapse our economic system and drive down the trust and confidence in national institutions an therefore make the united states mute with their objective, that in my judgment is all about war. >> ok. general mcmaster. >> i would just like to make a couple quick points. first of all, i think prior to 9-11, we saw the gravest threat to our national security as emerging from the most industrialized nations and when we perceived that threat, we could see those industrialized nations mobil eye and we could in turn respond to that. i think now what bruce has mentioned is with the increased access to weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass effect, the ability of triter organizations to do something fundamentally different from what terrorists had been able to do in the past. terrorism is not a new phenomenon. what is new is the access to these destructive weapons and

also communications and the ability to take local grievances, and connect them to a networked transnational movement that poses a grave threat to all civilized people's, our nation and especially the people's of that region and i think it's important for us to remember that this is essentially an irreligious enemy, who uses an irreligious ideology to motivate largely undereducated or illiterate young people to their cause. they exacerbate weakness and use weakness where there is lawlessness, lack of governance, rule of law and for us to be effective against this enemy, to deny this enemy safe havens and support bases that are needed, to mobilize efforts against us and others, we have to operate in the least industrialized areas, and we have a viacom indicated problem of not just a security problem, not just a military problem, where you can follow the advance of an army

across the map and know when they get to the capital city, the war is over, but we have to be able to intergate sell and military efforts very closely, to achieve the kind of sustainable security and stability necessary to remove these safe heyens and support bases, to protect pop layings, to help inoculate them against this cancer of this enemy, who, cynically uses, you know, this irreligious ideology for their own purposes. >> so there you have an outstanding display of debate over this. why does it matter in this topic? >> because war has a constitutional meaning and if we call it war, and let me pick up on bruce's point for a minute. if we call it war, doesn't that stack the deck constitutionally for the president is this in the long war, decades perhaps, punctuated by threats, close calls, successful attacks, doesn't the president's war-making power then reach a kind of zenith that he or she is

constantly deploying military force, using military force, covertly, overtly, large scale, small scale, in the long war, tonight the president, in this situation we just described, become constitutionally unrestrainable? >> oh, i don't think that's true at all, but certainly, the abdication that it's a war, gives him or her additional powers, that's for sure, because if it is a war, then they can use all the ammo of national power to deal with that war, not just treat it as a cripple if a activity, as we had done in the past. and as a result of that, he's not just using military means, he's using covert means to do that, and also, he's using other elements to do it. we cleaned up a lot of the al qaeda finances, you know, the department of treasury did some very herald wobbling, which isn't in the public domain and probably should not be, and

certainly the power that he had to do that, was able to achieve those kinds of results. the basic framework of the constitution in terms of the limits of presidential and executive power are still there. >> they still are? >> they definitely are. as i see it and as i see it being played out in front of our very eyes in terms of the congress of the united states. now is there potential for abuse? certainly so. but i think the values of america, the character of america, as it's defined in the constitution itself, are there to limit that power, at the same time give the president the tools to meet the ever-changing responsibilities that a global country has in the world today. now, there's is there tension there? of course there is. and it's been the subject of much debate in hour country, as it rightfully should be. >> bruce? >> well, if it's a war, i think

it's extravagant to think of this as a war, not to say the wars against afghanistan and iraq . those are classic wars. i have no trouble with that. but the -- let's just step back for a second and ask. at what point -- take from 1950 to 2010, where -- what moment was the least dangerous for america? the answer is today. is the least risky. when we had the soviet union, that was a big state. we had members of the communist party who actually were in high positions. there was a conspiracy in the united states by very reputable people, who thought that marxism

and lennonism was the way to go. that was much riskier than today. we could have had total nuclear obliteratation. even at the worst of the mccarthy period, in civilian courts. this is -- once we say that the situation today is like abraham lincoln, trying to do hero eck things, in this condition of true national emergency, once we say that this is -- this situation right now is like the situation that franklin roosevelt encountered when some germans came and were dumped off on long island on a submarine and he sees them and puts them

before military commission, giving them no due process, i should say, if our situation is like that, this justifies under the laws or under the precedence of the united states, very repressive actions. very repressive actions by the president of the united states. so we have to be very careful. the presidency, as you were suggesting, you know, we've had many, many wars. the war on crime, the war on drugs, the war on terror, terror is a technique. we don't make war on techniques. we -- this technique can be -- there are seven billion people in the world almost, and there will always be, always, jihadists, non-jihadists, people who think that the treaty of guadalupe deser delga is terriby