>> when the luck of the irish ran out, the world's most resilient country and its struggle to rise again, author david lynch. .. about -- well, my world but especially for the students, your world. which is as far as i'm concerned a world made by war. when you look at me, you can't mistake the fact that i'm of a certain age. but just for the moment think of me as 9 years old. you could even say that i

celebrated my 9th birthday last month without cake, candles, presents or certainly joy. i had to mobilizing moments. the first was in the vietnam years and the second that leaves me today as a 9-year-old. [inaudible] >> okay. >> that first one began, of course, on the morning of september 11, 2001. i turned on the tv while doing my morning exercises; saw a smoking hole in a world trade center tower and thought that as a 1945 when a b-25 rammed into the empire state-building, a terrible accident had happened. later, after the drums of war had begun to beat, after the first headlines had screamed their world war ii-style messages, the pearl harbor of the 21st century and if you remember those screaming

headlines i had another thought and for a reasonably sophisticated political guy and my second boss was not only off-base as the first but remarkably dumb. i thought this horrific event taking place in my hometown might open up americans to the pain of the world. no such luck, of course. if you had told me then that we would henceforth be in a state of eternal war as well as living in a permanent war state, that to face a ragtag enemy of a few thousand stateless terrorists. the national security establishment in washington would pump itself up to levels not faintly reached when facing the soviet union. a major power with thousands of nuclear weapons and an enormous military. that homeland, a distinctly un-american word woodland in our vocabulary never to leave. and that a second defense department dubbed the department of homeland security would be set up not to be dismantled in

my lifetime, the torture -- excuse me, enhanced interrogation techniques would become as american as apple pie and that some of those techniques would actually be demonstrated to leading bush administration officials inside the white house that we would pour money into the pentagon at ever escalating levels even after the economy crashed in 2008 that we would be fighting two potentially trillion dollar wars without end in two distant lands that we would spend untold billions constructing hundreds of military bases in those same lands, that the cia would be conducting the first air drone in history in a country that we are not in war with and we all lived in a remarkable state of detachment to this and finally only by the way -- i'm cutting this list short, arbitrarily short, just not to try your patience 'cause it could go on forever, that i would spend my time writing incessantly about the american way of war and produce a book with that title,

i would have thought you were nuts. but every bit of that happened, even if unpredicted by me because like human beings everywhere, i have no special knack peering into the future and if you had any point what was going to happen in the future you can see how bad we are actually, how poorly we can imagine our own futures. if it were otherwise, i would undoubtedly now be zipping around fabulous cities with a jet pack on my back as i was assured that would happen in my distant future. if predictiontion is our forte then adaptability certainly accounts for my being here today. i'm here with the bizarre of the spectacle of this nation going to war while living in peace and if you remember in the early part of this war, the president actually urged americans to go to disney just to show our grit, our consumerus grit.

while living at peace, even if a spas mick state of collective national fear i did something i hardly understood at the time. i launched a nameless listserv of collected articles and my own commentary that ran against the common wisdom of that october moment when the bombing runs for a second afghan war began. a little more than a year later, thanks to the nation institute, it became a website with the name, tomdispatch.com and because our leaders swore we were a nation at war, because we were indeed killing enemy quantity in distant lands, because of the power of the state at home was being strengthened in startling ways while everything open about our society seemed to be getting scrooge-shot and the military was being pumped up to the dimensions i started writing about war. at some level, i can't tell you how ridiculous that was. after all, i'm the most civilian and peaceable of guys. i've never even been in the military.

i was, however, upset with the bush administration, the connect no doubts media no moment and the repeated 9/11 rights which reclaimed us the planet's greatest victim, survivor, dominatoring and leaving only one and known who filled it hands down, greatest evildoer open for the rest of the planet and sometimes it does help to be outside of the thing you're writing about. that is when you are a tree in the forest, it is indeed to write about the forest and maybe that's my advantage in writing about war in the military. i am outside it. i won't say, however, that i have no expertise, whatsoever, with the permanent state of war and a permanent war state. only that the expertise i had was available to anyone who had lived through the post-world war ii era. i was reminded of this on a recent glorious sunday when from the foot of manhattan i set out for the first time in more than half a century on a brief ferry ride that proved for me as

effective a time frame than anything hg wells ever imagine skwleded. that -- imagined but a park in the waters of new york harbor and to the rubble of a gas station, my father a world war ii veteran in the early 1950s when that island was still a u.s. army base. on many morning of those years i accompanied on that short ride on the east river and found myself amid buzzing jeeps and drilling soldiers in a world of army kids with giant pools available and cheap matinee cowboy films and everything a kid could kind of dream of or imagine. as a dyed in the wool city boy from manhattan it was my only real exposure in those years to the burbs and it proved one that actually caught something of the exotically militarized korean movement, we're talking '51, 52,

'53. so on that world in the world of the warrior and no more antithetical and than corporate executives and scientists and military officers who were using a rising military budget and the fear of communism to create a new national security economy. an alliance between big industry, big science, and the military had been forged during world war ii that blurred the boundaries between the military and the civilian by fusing together a double set of desires, for technological breakthroughs and the race for future good wars and the race for the good life were then as that island were being put on the same war footing. in the 1950s, a military keynesianism was driving the u.s. economy toward a consumerism in which desire for the ever larger car and missile,

electric range and tank, television console, sub-marine was whetted in single corporate entities. the companies producing the large objects of the american home were also major contractors developing the big ticket weapons ushering the pentagon into its own age of abundance. more than half a century later the pentagon is still living a life of abundance despite one less than victorious, less than good war than another while we increasingly are not. and i think that's very obvious in our world today. in the years in between the developing national security state of my childhood, just kept growing and in the process, the country militarized in the strangest of ways. only once in that period did a sense of actual war seem to hover over the nation. that was, of course, the vietnam years of the 1960s and early 1970s when the draft brought a

dirty war up close and personal, driving it into american homes and out into the streets. when a kind of intermittent warfare almost seemed to break out in this country's cities and ghettos and when impending defeat drove the military to the edge of revolt and collapse. from the 1970s, that is the end of the vietnam war, until 2001, as that military rebuilt itself, as an all-volunteer force, no more draft, and finally went back to war in distant lands, the military itself seemed to disappear from everyday life. there's no -- the world at that time, there's no relation visibly to the parades of my childhood or to what you see today. there were no soldiers in sight. nothing we would consider common place now. from uniforms and guns and train stations to military flyovers at football games and the repeated rights of praise for american troops that are now every day fare in our world where

otherwise we ignore american wars. in 1989, for instance, i wrote this of a country that seemed to me to be undergoing further militarization even if even in an especially strange way, that is quote from a long quote from a piece i wrote. it was actually on star wars, ronald reagan's space defense system that's still with us in one fashion. but i also commented on what i saw at that time as the further militarization of our societies. that was '89. ours as i said an american that conforms of what we hold to militarism. militaryism is with uniformed, exalted troops in evidence and a dictatorship possibly in military in power. the united states by such standards still has the look of a civilian society. our military is if anything less visible in our lives than it was a decade ago.

no uniforms in the street, seldom even for our traditional parades. a civilian-elected government, weaponry out of sight, the draft and the idea of the civilian army, a thing of the past. in the reagan-bush area, now that was president ronald reagan of the '80s and the bush was not the bush you all know but his dad, h.w. -- not w. but h.w. bush. in the reagan-bush-era the army has gone undercover in the world we see though not in the world that see thasees us. for if it is absent from our every day culture, its influence in omnipresent in corporate america that world beyond our politics and out of our control. the world which nonetheless plans our high tech future of work and consumption. there the militarization of the economy and the corporation of the military is a process so far gone that it seems reasonable to ask whether the united states can even be set to have a civilian economy.

that was me in 1989 and it was an exaggerated statement. you know, that was then. this is now. today it seems our country is triumphant in producing only things that go people in the night. -- boom in the night. in the dark we're experts in explosions of every sort. when i wrote in 1989 that the process was so far gone, i had no idea how far we still had to go. i had no idea, for instance, how far a single administration could push us when it came to war and that was obviously the bush administration which have i think made one singular error. i mean, they were visionaries. you might consider them mad visionaries. they were wrong in so many ways, but -- and their greatest mistake -- they took in the world. they had a vision of the world but they imagined -- they also were people who had largely not been in the military but they were in love with the military. they were romantics about the u.s. military and particularly about what its power could do,

and they made a terrible mistake. miscalculation. they believed that with the power of the u.s. military -- and it was obviously powerful. it was a very threatening force if you wanted to use it as a threat. with the power of the military -- that military power was the same as global power. and it turned out it wasn't. they thought that on their own with the u.s. military it was what was called unilateralism. they could establish a americana on the middle east. they couldn't have been more wrong and that, i think, was their most fundamental mistake. it wasn't a religious fundamentalism. it was a military fundamentalism. they thought the force was all. and they only imagined force as military force and i think we see that in a single -- in just a few years, they pushed the united states, you know -- they pushed the imperial part of america into a visible state of decline, which i mean, everybody can see around us today. i had no idea -- still, one

thing that does remain reasonably constant about america's now perpetual war how we, the 99% don't belong of the military fight actually see of it even though it is in a sense all around us. and so what i want to do is give you a little sense now of how it's all around us or how i see it all around us and this is a note from a remarkable array of possibilities. i'm going to offer you just a few war scapes. think of them as landscapes only deadler in an attempt to make visible in an american way of and a way of war that we thunderstorm spend little time, questioning, debating or doing anything about. let them start by trying to conjure a pap of what defense as imagined by the pentagon and the u.s. military at the moment actually looks like. you can find them -- a map just like this at wikipedia but for a second just imagine a world map waved flat before you. now, divided. the whole globe like so many ill-shaped pieces of cobbler

into six serves. you can -- you can be as messy as you want. it's not an exact science and label them. u.s.-european command which is really europe and russia. pat com, pacific command and asia, centcom, u.s. centcom which is central command, the greater middle east and a touch of north africa, northcom which is us. north america, south com and most of of the caribbean and africom, most of africa. these are the areas of responsibility as they're called of six u.s. military commands. in case you hadn't noticed, that takes care of just about every inch of the planet. but i do hasten to add this. not every bit of imaginable space. for that, if you were a clever cartographer you would somehow need to include stratcom, the u.s. strategic command charged with among other things ensuring

that we dominate the heavens and geographic commands, cybercom, something you guys may know something about. which is expected to be fully operational later this fall with 1,000 elite military hackers and spies under one four star general and that's not my quote, but from a major newspaper impending to engage in cyberwar in cyberspace. and this was formed in 1983. it was a result -- a direct result of the carter doctrine, of that is president jimmy carter's decision to make the protection of persian gulf oil a military necessity for this country. while both northcom, 2002, and africom, 2007 were creations on the global whatsoever terror. from a mapping that perspective, though, the salient point is simple enough. at the moment, there is no imaginable space on or off the planet that is not an area of responsibility for the u.s.

military. that, not the protection of our shores and borders, is what is now meant by the defense in the department of defense. and if you were to stare at that map for a while, i can't help but think it would come to strike you as abidingly strange, it does me anyway. no place at all of no military interest to us? what does that say about our country? and ourselves? in case you're imagining that this map i've just described is simply a case of cart graphicic hyperbole, consider this we now have, in essence, a secret military inside the u.s. military. i'm talking about our special operations forces. these elite and largely covert forces were rapidly expanded in the bush years as part of the global war on terror. but also thanks to secretary of defense donald rumsfeld now he was the secretary of defense if you remember for the six years of the bush administration, he was succeeded in the last two

years by robert gates who was carried over in the obama administration along in fact with many bush foreign policies and military policies particularly. but also thanks to secretary of defense donald rumsfeld's urge to bring covert activities that were once the province of the cia under the pentagon's wing. by the end of george w. bush's second term in office, think of that map again, special operation forces were fighting in, training in or stationed in 60 countries. around the planet. and that was under the aegis of the global war on terror. less than two years later according to the "washington post" 13,000 special operation forces are deployed aboard in approximately 75 countries, 15 more than at the end of the bush-era. that's part of an expanding global war on terror even if the obama administration ditched that actual name. in other words, special forces alone are in over 40% -- almost 40% of the countries on the

planet if you're figuring it on u.n. membership, 192 countries. and talking about what the pentagon has taken under its wing, i'm reminded of a low budget sci-fi film of my childhood probably most of you except if you're of a certain age like me, haven't seen it it was called the blobbed. you could see it in any drive-in in those days and in it there was a gelatin mass eating everything. by analogy, take what's officially called the ic or u.s. intelligence community that rumsfeld was so eager to militarized. it's made up of 17 major agencies and outfits including the offense of the director of national intelligence. created in 2004, in response to the intelligence dysfunction of 9/11, that office is already its own small bureaucracy with 1500 employees. and evidently next to no power to do the only thing it was ever really meant to do.

coordinate the generally dysfunctional labyrinth of the ic itself. you might wonder what kind of intelligence a country could possibly get from 17 competing bickering outfits? but that's not even the half the of it. according to a "washington post" series -- this just came out a couple months ago. it was called top secret america. it was a three-part thing with interactive maps and it's well worth taking a look at it. it was by dana priest and william arkin and these are just some quotes that i picked out of the very first of their three articles,ions cherry-picked out just to give you a feeling for the size and the growth of the ic before we get to the pentagon. in all, at least 263 organizations have been created or reorganized -- this is intelligence organizations as a response to 9/11. some 1,271 government organizations and 1, 931 programs work on are

counterterrorism, homeland security in 10,000 locations. that's 10,000 locations across the united states. in washington and the surrounding area, 10 buildings are under construction or have been built since september 2001. together they occupy the equivalent of almost three pentagons or 22 u.s. capitol buildings. about 17 million square feet of space. and that's the end of that quote. but let me just mention that more than two-thirds of the ic's intelligence programs are controlled by the pentagon. which means control is well over a major chunk of the combined intelligence budget which has been announced at $75 billion in which arkin and priest point out that's 2 1/2 times the -- what the intelligence budget was before 9/11. and that's not a real number. $75 billion is what -- is officially announced. it may be a fact that even the

u.s. government doesn't know how much given the black budgets and so forth and so on, how much money actually goes into intelligence and other operations like it. we just know that it's significantly more than $75 billion and that the pentagon controls a lot of that. and when it comes to the pentagon that's just a start. massive expansion in all directions has been its m.o. since 2007. its soaring budget hit about $700 billion, sorry, for fiscal year 2010 and that's -- to get to that you have to include a war-fighting supplemental of $33 billion that congress passed when they needed more money for basically the afghan war. an increase -- that's an increase of only 4.7%. this is in a terrible budget-slashing moment almost anywhere. the pentagon was getting maybe 8% for most of these years since 2007. this was 4.7% jump and it's now projected as the pentagon budget, $725 billion in fiscal

year 2011. some experts claim, however, the real figure may come to the trillion dollar mark when all aspects of national security are factored in and care for soldiers who have long-term care for soldiers who have been wounded or in some way damaged so on and so forth. not surprisingly, the pentagon has taken over a spectrum of state department-controlled civilian activities what previously were civilian activities ranging from humanitarian relief and development now called generally nation-building to actual diplomacy. and you can't forget its growing roles as domestic manager and a global arms dealer or even as green revolution energy because it's going heavily into the green revolution and was the one part of the bush administration by the way that was into global warming. the rest of the bush administration was in denial about it but the pentagon wasn't. you could certainly think of the pentagon as the blob on the

american horizon eating everything and yet looking around, you might hardly be aware of the ways your country continues to be militarized. now, let's turn to a different war scape at a time when as numerous commentators are pointing out, the u.s. seems to be morphing from a can-do into a can't-do nation. when the headlines are filled with exploding gas lines, gas lines that have blown up in california and grim reports on the country's aging infrastructure when locally a major commuter tunnel from new jersey to manhattan -- the sort of project that once would have tattooed american has just been cancelled by new jersey's governor. still i don't want to you imagine that that old can-do spirit i remember from my childhood, from my childhood america is dead. quite the contrary. we still have our great building projects, our pyramid equivalents. it's just that these days they tend to get built near to the

ruins of actual pyramids. i'm talking about our military bases especially those being constructed in our war zones. i mean, no sooner had u.s. troops taken baghdad in april, 2003, then the pentagon and the crony corporations it now can't go to war without began to pour billions of taxpayers dollars into the construction of well fortified american small towns. and it was many billions in iraq that included bus routes, food joints, massage plants, power plants, fire stations, i mean, you name it. hundreds of military bases from the tiniest combat outpost to these enormous sprawling town-like structures were built in iraq alone including the ill-named but ginormous victory-based complex at the baghdad international airport with nine significant subbase and at least nine and maybe more but nine is what i counted

inside it and balad air force base which sooner or -- which sooner than you could say saddam hussein's in captivity was handling air traffic on the scale of o'hare international airport in chicago and bedding down 40,000 inhabitants including african cops, special opposites forces, the employees of private contractors and, of course, tons of troops and air force personnel. and all of this was nothing compared to the feat the pentagon accomplished in afghanistan where the u.s. military now claims -- and this is something -- this is what the u.s. military spokesman told nick terse, a spokesman in afghanistan, they now claim to have built again from teeny outposts to gigantic base like kandahar air base, 400 bases or so in afghanistan. they are not actually how many as far as hot pick without a country without normal resources, fuel, building

materials or much of anything else. just about all construction materials for those bases and the fuel to go with them had to be delivered over treacherous supply lines, thousands of miles long and they say -- the estimate is that just getting one gallon of fuel to our troops somewhere in afghanistan -- that gallon of fuel costs about $400. so, you know, when you -- when you go to your local gas station and fill up your car, just make the comparison. at some level this makes a remarkable can-do achievement and tells you about a great deal of american priorities today. about where our national treasure and can-do efforts are focused. i mean, i could go on. the pentagon and the military actually make going on pretty easy. the list is reasonably unending. the militarization of our american world ongoing. and it's all happening in your time on your watch. this is the world you're going to walk out into.

i may be 9 years old in tomdispatch.com terms but i've been around for 66 years and this really won't be my world for long. so let me ask you, the students rather than the people my age here, are you sure that you want the u.s. military to be concerned with every inch of the planet? are you sure that you want your tax dollars to go above all into pyramids in iraq or afghanistan instead of tunnels at home? or to fighting a multigenerational war on terror planet wide, 75 countries or more. instead of if you got into -- instead of into putting the unemployed to work here? if you can't imagine reducing the american military mission and footprint on this planet significantly, then, you know, ignore this talk. but do rest assured you won't save the country that way. it just won't be saved that way. it will functionally, i think, be destroyed.

a decade ago, when i was born, as tomdispatch.com, many of you were only 10 or 11 years old. as were many of our soldiers now in afghanistan and iraq. a decade from now, if the war in afghanistan and it looks increasingly like pakistan is still being fought, most of you will be entering your fourth decade on this planet. and you may even have a 10-year-old of your own. a decade from then, if as some top washington officials insist, the global war on terror is multigeneration, that child just might be fighting in pakistan or yemen or somalia or some other military area of responsibility somewhere on the planet. a decade from then dot, dot, dot. of course, whatever skills we may lack when it comes to predicting the future, all things must end.

including the american war state and our strange state of war. it will happen. it won't take forever, not the way things are going, but it will happen in an easier and less harmful fashion if you're involved in whatever fashion you choose. in making it so. had i a birthday cake with candles on it and blown them out, that i think would have been my wish. thank you. [applause] >> we're going to open things up for your questions and comments, please. try to keep them pointed and brief and you must use the microphone in the center here. and as always, we want to give priority to students. >> just walk up there -- >> just walk up there to the mic. and make a little line if we need to do that. thank you. >> hi. thank you so much.

before you said during the 1950s during like a high time of consumerism, corporations were really involved in, you know, arms producing. how involved would you say they are now as we continue to globalize our military? >> i actually think -- and i'm no expert in this, but i actually think that the big -- the big weapons makers are probably less -- are probably less the big -- the big makers of consumer items. i think -- i think weapon makers -- i mean, they are enormous but they are somewhat more specialized today. that's my impression anyway. >> okay. thanks. >> hi there. >> i like your appearing with a computer. [laughter] >> it's the 21st century for you. by the way, great speech. >> thank you. >> i really have to see. my question due to the larger

amount of money we shell out for the pentagon and the other headquarters around the world, what if we decided to cut out some of the funding and shut down some of these commands? out of the particular country and use the noun reduce the deficit and for domestic use? and what are the consequences of these actions? >> well, to my mind and, of course, people would argue differently. to my mind the consequences would be quite positive. i mean, i think there's no question one of the things that we really don't deal with in this country is the degree to which our national treasure is being -- i mean, if you just start with afghanistan which is very strange. we know 9/11 came at least partially from afghanistan although it also came from hamburg, germany, and orlando, florida, and so. planning went on wherever. but otherwise -- and al-qaeda, which was a relatively ragtag group of stateless terrorists who could -- who could put --

who could create -- they really were able to create spectacular disastrous events about every two years. of which 9/11 was just, of course, spectacular beyond when i think they even expected. but they were using afghanistan as it was -- it was -- it was because it was there. but afghanistan otherwise is the second poorest, fifth most corrupt -- or maybe it's the other way. i don't have my figures here. it's the fifth poorest country on the planet. it's truly from our point of view the back lands of the planet. i think of osama bin laden had a dream nightmare for us, it might be something like involving us forever in a war in afghanistan where we would end up spending -- you know, we already spent and this is conservative about $400 billion on that war over the years. we're building an afghan army. we're talking about -- i mean, the president now talks about getting in about 2014. that's probably hopeful. the military is talking about a significantly longer war.

we're building an afghan army of 400,000 troops if we are successful in that. and most of them don't deserve as they've been doing over the years. if we're successful this is a country that has -- you know, has a gnp kind of like money you're spending for right now. it's an incredibly impoverished army. we will be paying for that army. the answer is i believe that if we were to scale down the american mission massively, take that money and put it into things that mattered in this country -- and we could argue over things that mattered, jobs, deficits and the various things that seemed obvious, it would be a big difference -- i mean, it is crazy to be conducting what's already a ten-year war and in some ways a thirty-year war because our first afghan was was in the 1980s. but the ten-year war for another five or ten years, it will break us.

so the answer is however you did it, you're right. if we could get that money out thereof and into something that really mattered to us but i think it would make a difference. >> but it's also -- i feel like -- you know, i'm someone who wants to go into politics one day and i really do feel that the biggest uphill climb is in congress. there's a lot of those republicans that block legislation to cut any funding. they want to extend more funding if they extend the house. >> some of them do, some of them don't. weirdly some of the tea party people don't. rand paul does not. >> that's understandable -- >> but i think you're basically right. i do think you're right on that. >> great, thank you very much. >> and we need people like you to go into politics so it's a great idea. >> well, first thank you for coming. and obviously it's become pretty vogue to just discredit and insult everything that people disagree with in america and that itself is perfectly fine.

and you have done an exceptional job with highlighting the very shortcomings of america and the american military but what in turn would you prescribe while keeping in mind that our enemies have proven capable and willing to attack us at our heart. >> what i would say is, i think -- the truth is, that if we had been watching out in the first place, if we had locked our airplane doors, so to speak, it wouldn't have happened. i mean, terrorism is a dangerous thing. but it is not, in fact, a world-ending thing. and the very danger we're dealing with i believe has been blown utterly out of proportion. i mean, it is terrible. but essence -- since 9/11, fear has been pumped into this country in bizarre ways. i mean, people are worried in el paso texas where my wife comes from and in topeka about whether they are going to get hit. no possibility. it's just not going to get happened.

i think that we could have done something much more modest, much more targeted, much more effective and we would not have sent our national treasure basically overseas this way. so that would be what i would argue. i hear what you're saying, but that would be my argument. okay? >> if you don't mind a follow-up to -- >> no, of course. >> now that we have already started upon this path, what's happened has happened and there's nothing we can do about that. what would you prescribe for the future? >> no, i think there are things we could do about it. i would prescribe -- i do not think -- i've been focused on afghanistan here. i would say the same thing about iraq. i do not think we should be fighting these wars in distant countries. the full scale counterinsurgency wars. i just think it makes no sense. so my answer would be, i think we should in a perfectly reasonable way withdraw. we should do our best to make -- you know, to help make the situation as reasonably as

stable as possible and possible plans for doing this which i won't go into here, but i think the answer is, we should withdraw. we should defend what really matters to us and we should put our money where it does matter because the truth is -- the problem, the real problem here is that while we're putting our money into those wars, we are weakening at home. in all sorts of ways that truly matter. our infrastructure is going. i mean, look at the unemployment in this country. it's rather startling -- i mean, this country is in a state of incipient and increasing decline. there can't be any doubt that it was pushed over that edge by these two wars. i mean, one war was an utter war of choice. this is iraq. it had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, whatsoever. you know, i think this is -- i think it economically makes no sense. that's me. >> thank you. i hope we could have a good conversation later. >> thank you very much for the question.

>> good afternoon, sir. >> afternoon. >> having spent six years in the military i've come across these super bases that you call. in the military we call them forward operating bases. i spent 27 months in iraq. >> uh-huh. >> so i've seen the war up close and personal than your average american. just this past week i was able to be there for my son's 9th birthday. we did have candles on his cake and he was very happy. my question to you is, what future role do you see our military as far as in this global war on terrorism and it is global. in the military we do have forces aboard on almost every country whether it's not official or unofficial. given that state of expanding our military and sending as we call supervisors into countries who have a weaker infrastructure and we build out their security forces, do you not see that as downsizing the amount of

terrorism or do you see it -- >> i don't. >> with the increase of military presence. you'll see -- >> i don't see it as downsizing terrorism. i think, you know, to just take one example. and it's not quite what you're talking about. but our drone war. i mean, the cia -- there's an air force drone war. over iraq and afghanistan certainly but there is this cia drone war over pakistan. my own feeling -- i mean, the idea is those missiles, those targeted missiles should -- you know, they're literally trying to knock out as if it were kind of a -- almost if it were like the pentagon, they are trying to knock out the high command. and when they were incapable of knocking the high command missile by missile they went down lower to midlevel people. i think the problem that this sort -- like a lot of counterinsurgency, this sort of war creates. -- it's not as much as a war on

terror on but a war that creates terror. every person you are killing whom you would want to kill you're killing someone you wouldn't want to kill with a family. sebastian younger in his book "war" has an interesting passage on this where he talks about -- it's a u.s. -- it's a plane not a drone. and a plane comes in and drops a bomb on the village. the soldiers go out the next day, you know, they thought they had gotten some taliban guy. they got, you know, some kids and a woman and there's some dead bodies. you know, a weak later, the village elders declared jihad on american forces. you know? they are angry. my answer is, i mean, i think the least we can do is actually the most effective global war on terror. obviously, you do -- i mean, people who are out to get you, you want to get them but the war

to my mind -- i mean, you know, and i have to say based at my site tomdispatch.com and i get letters from soldiers against me and some saying you're absolutely right. and i understand there's no agreement on this either and at the high level of command there's no agreement and generals. there are admirals who don't care much for this sort of war and would rather not us having us doing this kind of global we're. -- war on terror. >> thank you. >> yeah. >> thank you. >> yeah, good afternoon. >> good afternoon. you have speak up a little. i'm a deaf old guy. >> yeah. from the political side, we as the voters, how do you propose we gain like the power to divert our politicians' attentions to these issues when private corporations, especially those tied up in the military are funding their campaigns?

>> you know, one thing i would say about question and answer sessions -- i often feel maybe because i'm -- i'm an editor and a writer in real life, and i find, you know, i like the possibility to go back -- this is an obscure way to answer your question or to say that maybe i can't answer your question. you know, maybe in three days i'd have an answer to your question or three weeks or three months or maybe i wouldn't. it's a tough question. it's a wonderful question that i don't actually have an answer to and maybe the answer is, the young man who wants to become a politician. maybe you guys -- i'm probably incapable of figuring this out. this is a question for your generation. i mean, it's clear that the american electoral process is now rather corrupt to say the least. i mean, we worry about corruption in afghanistan but we clearly have another striking form of corruption here and it's quite a legal form of corruption

at this point given what you said, given what the supreme court did recently on, you know, what corporations can give and how. to politics. so what to do next, i can't give you the answer but i hope you guys will work to figure out what the answer is. >> that's really like the biggest problem. >> it is a big problem. you're absolutely right. thank you. >> how are you? >> hi. >> hi. earlier you had said that with this war we're spending our money in the wrong places. >> yes. >> you know, taking into account the current economic stability of our country. do you think that the war had anything to do with the recession or do you think that stopping the war will take us out? >> i think, yes. my answer to at least the first question is absolutely yes. the war -- the wars and not just the wars but the world that went with the wars. the world i was trying to describe of the pentagon. the world of crony corporations that build those bases and make

the weapons so on and so forth. i think they and the bush administration in particular help drive us. it was like they got in a car and said hey, this car works and drove us directly to the nearest cliff. you know, my own answer is a longer more historical one which is the cold war ended in 1990? and in this country -- it ended by our major enemy who to the last moment most people in washington saw as a major power basically disappearing. it disappeared from the face of the earth more or less overnight. it was extraordinary. we dealt with that here in washington particularly in the country. as a giant triumph. it was a victory, you know? and that was probably the crucial moment where real american monies could have been redirected somewhere else. i mean, there was no -- we were looking for so-called rogue states.

the military and in washington they were looking for enemies, you know, these modest regional states like north korea or iran or whatever. they basically -- washington declared it a triumph. and weirdly enough headed down something like -- we were much more wealthier and more powerful nation but it headed down something like the soviet path. the soviet union for reasons you can discuss and explain pumped incredible piles of money and wealth -- their national wealth into their military. and the country -- they had an aging infrastructure. they had a cracking infrastructure. and it cracked on them. our response to victory was, in essence, to -- after a little paw and a discussion of the peace dividend which never happened was to pour our money down exactly the same path which was the military path. we decided we were the sole superpower. we were greater than rome and great britain, et cetera, et cetera. it was kind of an extraordinary moment.

and i think the answer is -- and i think the truth of that moment was probably more like at the end of 50 years of the cold war, or so, not quite, there were two losers. one disappeared. the other also weakened, started to slowly leave the stage in triumph. feeling great about itself. and i think that what happened was pushing and what particularly with the bush administration -- pushing ourselves into a state of war, into a permanent state of war actually pushed that process fast and farther. so the answer is, absolutely, you know, now if we were to reverse that somehow, what difference -- i think it would make a difference. i'm no economist so i can't really tell you exactly. but that would be my explanation. >> fair enough. thank you. >> we have time for a few more questions. we'll open it up to everyone. the more experienced and wise ones among us.

so i would love to hear some of your perspectives. i'm struck as we -- as we hear -- hear this, you know, this is -- this is -- these are hard truths to face as a people. and so many of the questions asked by our students, i think, reflect that. so i always go back to the quote about we have to think pessimistically but act optimistically. that often in the face of these realizations, the response is what can we do? what can be done? are we so far down this path that we're becoming dinosaurs? you know, as a species. so i think the challenge really is as several of you said, the political one. what can people do to act, not naively but with optimistic and energy to address these issues. >> that was probably the way -- it was a great set of questions, i have to say. and, you know, i also -- i have a very similar set of feelings. and, in fact, although at tomdispatch i'm very careful that i don't like to tell people

what they should do. i mean, i'm good as a -- i mean, i do certain things well, i think. but i don't see why because of that i should know what we should do or what i believe it what you should do. i know that something should be done, you know? i sense much. -- i sense that. it's pretty important to try to figure out what in the world to do about our world. but i am not in the normal sense a pessimist and i see the world as dark and we haven't even gotten into the darker stuff. but, but, but, but i also think history has its surprises. eternally has its surprises. we can't predict it. we don't know, you know? and i'm always hopeful in that way. i'm always ready to be surprised. >> well, i know the equal rights amendment hasn't passed right. but i want to ask a question about our constitution. i don't see any major discussion about amending the constitution to take the money out of elections.

and that to me is one of the biggest crises that we have. why aren't we doing something about -- i mean, i don't know -- i don't expect you would have an answer. >> i don't. i think it's a really good question, you know? i mean, the question well, why aren't we doing -- i mean, quite the opposite of doing anything it seems as though everything is moving in the other direction when it comes to money and politics. i mean, it's really that simple. so the answer is, yes, wouldn't that be great? i'm for it. do it. [laughter] >> i don't know how. someone here must. i didn't promise to be wise. [laughter] >> i could say that was a pretty wise question. >> i would agree. >> real quickly, you know, before my question was about the consequences of what happened if we were to shut down, you know, other u.s. headquarters around the countries. now, do you feel that the reason why north korea and iran and all these other countries are secretly building a lot of these

nuclear power plants is because they feel threatened of the u.s. force to the point that they have to protect themselves and it's not about them just wanting to hurt other americans or hurt other civilians, other countries? it's just more of the threat of our force? do you feel that's the major reason why? >> i mean, i think both of those countries, the leaderships of both of those countries, both pretty ugly truths. yeah, no, no. i'm going to agree. i think they both -- i mean, they're not creating nuclear weapons. north korea and you look on tv and you see those soldiers goose stepping but that country is a mess. the air force knop fuel. i mean, it's like -- they don't even have fuel for training. i mean, that's a disastrous country. at this point i think the nuclear weapons in korea -- it's the one chip they have. i don't think they are thinking about it in the normal terms of where you could use it or where

you could drop it. i think it's a long term -- they see it as a long-term bargaining chip to get other things and in some day they will indeed give it up in return for some kind of deal which we've almost reached a couple of times but it hasn't happened. we did come close a couple of times. iran is a much more complicated issue. >> absolutely. >> and, of course, i don't think we know if iran is actually building a nuclear weapon. i think what we know iran -- they are not the only country like this is building -- i mean, they are building a peaceful nuclear program and the possibility for a quick breakout program. i mean, this is what we really know at this point according to u.s. intelligence basically. they are building the possibility if they decided to create a nuclear weapon if they felt it was in their interest. they will be ready to build it -- i mean, relatively speaking, quickly. yes. and i think they are doing that. i mean, they are dealing, you know -- however, they sound, they are dealing with a middle

east in which israel actually has -- it's estimated 200 nuclear weapons. i don't think -- i mean, israel's force is an interesting force with very little written about here and the israelis -- the israelis -- even though everybody knows they have them, they have the interesting position of neither saying that they have them nor denying that they have them. it's as if they live in some limbo in that case. but i think -- i think for the -- for iran, you know, i don't think it's -- i don't think it's a particularly serious military option but again, i think it's kind of -- if that's what they are doing, it is also kind of a bargaining card that does involve the u.s. and israel. i mean, iran historically, you know -- if you don't go back to distant empires, it's not been a very aggressive country in the normal sense. >> i also feel that the media makes things bigger than it really is especially in other parts of the country. i have a quick second question for you -- >> i'll tell you what -- just so we make sure everybody gets a shot, just stand in back of him.

>> if we drastically reduced the size of our military, where are a lot of soldiers going to find employment? >> that's a good question? >> and it would be -- it would have to be something thought and planned out. i mean, we would have to decide that we were -- you know, one of the -- to me, one of the great frustrations -- and this is to move on to another subject entirely of the obama administration -- if they did have -- they had a model in the new deal which was rather striking. it was a thing called the civilian conservation corps. roosevelt went -- franklin roosevelt in the new deal -- one of the things he did or his advisors did was they began to give money directly to americans. for work. it was small amounts of money and it was to go out and build national parks and so on and so forth. the obama administration has been very -- for whatever reason it's not that they've given no money directly to people but it's very little. it's not a program. i think it's been to their

detriment because when you got money from the government, you knew -- you, your wife, your kids, your village, your neighborhood, whatever it was knew that that money had come from the government. you know, you knew that the government was actually doing something for you. right now we have almost 10% unemployment and nobody feels the government is doing anything for them. the answer is, i think you would need some kind of -- and again, i'm no economist but some kind of serious job programs, retraining isn't enough because retraining programs don't tend to lead to jobs. you need a serious job program of the kind that we don't -- we really haven't had in this country and it would have to involve the military because you're right, if you downsize the military, you do have people out of work and that's a major thing we would to have deal with. >> so should i let him go first or can i ask another question. >> he's had two, go ahead. >> i think we had unofficial military bases in georgeia.

>> i don't think -- i don't think it was ever -- i don't think -- the u.s. government -- the bush administration ever considered the possibility of actually throwing u.s. troops -- and the fact is that even had they wanted to do so, at this point remember they were involved in two wars and a global war on terror. the possibility of starting a third war, you know, against a major power on its borders, you know, i don't think -- i mean, you know, even the bush administration didn't seriously consider that. as far as secret bases, i don't know whether we have a secret base there. one of the -- one of the things -- the pentagon counts up its bases, its stations and offers, you know, usually it's about 800 a year that they publicly admit to. but there are a variety of bases around the world. i mean, in countries that are slightly embarrassed for political reasons to have those

bases or to share them with the united states and they are not on any list. so it's possible we have one in georgia and pakistan bases and we at least share them with the pakistani military. it's no on any pentagon list. >> well, i was -- i was in russia when this was happening so obviously the information i was receiving was probably biased. >> yeah. >> but there was a lot of video footage and pictures of documents showing like american troops training them? >> we were training them, yes. i don't know about an actual -- i just don't know. you could be absolutely right. thank you very much. >> do you want to let her go first and then we will finish? [laughter] >> with rahm emanuel leaving and some other people entleaving, w

president obama get people out of afghanistan and sooner than we predict. >> there's always hope and then the one change in the white house which is the national security advisor, the former marine general james jones is gone. and the fellow who's taken his place, at least if you read the recent woodward book seems to have been strongly against it. the full scale general petraeus-style surge in afghanistan. he's a man closely connected to vice president biden who admittedly was looking for -- i mean, the thing you have to understand is in washington last fall when they were doing this, there were no options, there were no less options, there were no less options on the that i believe they were all more options. you know, the question was, was the more 20,000 troops mainly trainers and a lot of drones going in and special ops people

and was there this kind of compromise? i don't think that there's an immediate hope for us getting troops out of afghanistan. i think there's probably an urge somewhere in the white house and somewhere in obama himself but so far he for whatever reason hasn't shown as john kennedy in the cuban missile crisis. he hasn't strength, desirability, or whatever to stand up in his commanders in a full and significant way. that's the way it looks to me. so i'm not immediately enormously hopeful. on the other hand, things could go very badly and anything could happen. i mean, it's really a very open thing. i could -- we don't have the time or i'd go into what's happening in pakistan and there's a lot of problems with us in the actual war. >> thank you very much. >> i think this will probably be the last comment so again in the spirit of thinking, let's say,

critically rather than pessimistically and acting effectively we're delighted to have you give the last question. [laughter] >> thank you. real quickly i wanted to follow up on someone's question what the troops would do for the jobs. the green jobs are definitely the biggest initiative for the next 15 to 20 years in this country. there's billions of dollars to be made. it's a little slow right now but hopefully in the next five years we can really speed up the process. .. >> i would hate to stand up here and pretend i had some serious thoughts on something i should

have thought about, and i'm glad you brought it up to me because i now have to think about it. thank you. >> oh, no problem. >> very much. that's a good question. >> again, thank you so much, tom, for sharing this insight and, hopefully, inspiring us to do something about it. [applause] reminder once more that our final session for this semester will -- >> tom engelhardt is currently a consulting editor at metropolitan books. to find out more visit tomdispatch.com. >> every weekend booktv brings you 48 hours of history, biography and public affairs. here's a portion of one of our programs. >> the reason i felt it important to do a book essay -- because that's what it is -- on the obama administration is because i think it's extremely important for progressive people

not to create too many illusions about what's around because they don't help. and to see in quite as hard-headed way what this new administration is, what it represents in terms of foreign policy, imperialist continuity and what it represents at home. and it's important to do that to understand to what extent it's different and to what extent it is continuing the policies of the previous three administrations. not just bush and cheney, but clinton and bush sr.. and from that point of view the balance sheet i have prepared, the obama syndrome: war abroad

and surrender at home, is not a very optimistic account or a pleasing account of this administration. now, it's not a pleasant task to write books like this. [laughter] because, you know, when you see what's going on and read a lot of material which has been published on domestic policies leave alone on foreign policies, it's striking how conservative the administration has been. now, i know all the restraints and constraints. i know that we live in a neoliberal period, that despite the crash of 2008 the system and its political leaders have not attempted any serious structural reforms which was, you know, necessary after that crash. and so the crash has not gone away, it's simply been blasted over with sticking plaster. and it is going to worry people and is worrying, certainly,

progressive economists, many of them who are not that radical who are saying that it's not going to work. so here was an opportunity for a newly-elected president who was not responsible and couldn't be held responsible for this particular economic crash who had, unlike previous presidents, mobilized hundreds of thousands of young people in this country, brought them out into the streets to help him get elected and had created the illusion that they would do something. i mean, yes, we can is not a very concrete slogan -- [laughter] but it offers some hope or at least creates the impression of offering hope. and so young people were happy, they were mobilized, and they thought that some change would

take place abroad and at home. the balance sheet is what? let's first discuss, briefly, the continuity in foreign policy. now, the continuity in the foreign policy was symbolized by keeping gates on at the pentagon. by essentially accepting the view that petraeus' surge in iraq had solved the problem. by sticking to bush's plans on a so-called withdrawal from iraq without bringing about any change there at all. by pushing these plans through which are, essentially, very simple. withdrawing combat units from the main cities of iraq, building huge military bases in that country and keeping between 50 and 70,000 troops there

permanently. that is what the withdrawal is, and it's not new. the british tried it in the '20s and '30s, exactly the same plan, and it imploded when there was a revolution in iraq in 1958, and they had to -- they threw the british out. and it's very likely in some shape and form -- not in the shape and form of the '50s -- but a similar thing will happen if these troops stay in there. on iran, once again this administration has carried on with the old policies, essentially in the case of iran appealing the israelis. because the big pressure for not doing any deal with iran both on the nuclear question and generally on other issues comes from the israelis who are prepared to do anything to preserve their own nuclear monopoly. that is what that particular issue is about. and the failure of this

administration to break with those policies of the previous administration is not all that surprising because i remember as i point out in the book, i was in the midwest teaching for four weeks in urbana-champaign, and i saw this young, fresh-faced guy running for the senate called barack obama. and i was at the house of friends, and they said he is the great hope of the democrats. and i said, well, let's watch him. because i'm always interested in great hopes. [laughter] and the great hope was asked, president bush has said that it might be necessary to bomb iran and take out their nuclear installations or whatever they're doing, and what would be your position on that? i support the president totally, said the great hope.

[laughter] so that was my first sighting of him, and i just felt instinctively that this is a guy who is really going to try to please, and he is a weak guy in many ways and is not going to push through some tiny shifts in domestic or global policies. >> to watch this program in its entirety, go to booktv.org. simply type the title or the author's name at the top left of the screen and click search. >> and now we are pleased to be joined by the founder of thee ar national book festival and former first lady, laura bush. it was september 8, 2001, that the first national book festiva8 was held on the capitol grounds. itoo was founded by laura bush,t has now grown so large, they have to hold it ina the national mall with all sorts of tents.

>> that's right.iona it's such a thrill, and i'm thrilled to see so many people have come out already for the very first reading. we can hear gordon wood reading behind us from the history tenta i'm just very, very happy to see how many people love the national book festival. >> well, we continue to hear about the demise of the publishing industry and demisett of books in many general, but then you hold a book festival like this -- >> and a hundred thousand people show up. it's really great. >> the texas book festival as well --e sh >> it's huge, too, yeah.stiv >> one you founded as well. what does that say to you about the state of reading? this. >> well, i think people do love to read, for sure. now -- i think part of the demise of the publishing p industry which i don't reallymie think is in demise, i think they're going to figure out a way to be around it, but now yon can get all those books on your kindle or your ipad or electronically. and so rather than buying the hard copy of a book, a lot ofhe people are h just downloading tm because the good news is you can do that in 35 seconds.

so just as soon as someonen recommends a book to you, you can rush home and download it oc your ipad.and and i think because of that people will continue to read. i think they'll still continuehk to buy hardbacks, to buy hard copies of books because they'll want to have them for their t collections, and there are certain books like our beautifud children's books, so manybook beautiful children's books that we're so fortunate in america to have, people this want to look at because the illustrations art so lovely in a book and so much fun to look at with a child.re >> well, it was september 8th, c 2001, that you opened the first national book festival. >> that's right. >> and now you're returning as an author.rs >> uh-huh.t fest >> this wasiv published in may, "spoken from the heart." i just want to read, get yourad reaction -- because i know you're going to be talking about 9/11 in the tent.pea >> that's right. >> you write that on friday night, september 7th, 2001, we held a gala for the festival atm the library of congress before the official day of author events.

dr. billington, the library of congress, introduced me. lib as the back of the stage openedt i walked out. the crowd gasped, and i felt that this was my official debut as first lady. not quite nine months after george took office, i was now doing what i loved, finding my place in the world of washington and beyond. >> that's right. w i mean, when i looked back, when i wrote the book and looked bacd at it, i saw that leading up to september 11th this, the book festival and then on the morning of september 11th which i'll bed reading about in a minute, i was on the way to capitol hill to brief a senate committee on early childhood education. so i think i was just sort of finding my way as first lady right before that weekend before.lady we had just hosted the mexican president, president fox and martha fox on september 6th for our first state dinner. when i left for the capitol that morning of september 11th, the white house grounds were covered

with picnic tables. wed were hosting the congressional -- the wholee congress and their families for the congressional picnic that night. so i think in many ways i was just finding my way and figurinf out, really, what i wanted to do. and, of course, i knew what i wanted to work on was education and reading because that had been my whole life. rea and that's what happened that weekend before september 11th. a >> well, you also write quite extensively about nerve.embe you also write about -- 9/11, a you also write about the iraq war and katrina. how personally did you feel as first lady the politics and what was going on in the world?cs a >> yeah. well, of course, i felt very personally the politics and the criticism about george. you know, everyone does that lives there. but i also knew that it was aevr fact of life. i knew when he ran for presiden that that's what happens to the american president. remember, we'd been the child oe a president ourselves, the children of a president, and we had been so distraught when

president bush, george's dad,ra was criticized so much in 1992 when he lost that election. in and so we knew what we were getting into.so w i think you really know to expect that. and it's nothing new.now we feel like it's new as we look around now and see the criticism of our current president, but if you visit the lincoln library in springfield, illinois, and seeol the terrible things that were written about lincoln, then it was not 24-hour news, but it was pamphlet tiers, panel pletts that were so critical and terrible about him. so it's just a fact of life, and and it really is, also, a function of our democracy that we can criticize our president, that we do have the freedom to say whatever we want to say. and so as much as i hated it when it was terrible things h about george, i also knew that that's part of life in the unitedrt states, and really it'a part we should be grateful for.a >> at what point do you grow the skin thick enough to withstand

some of the criticism? >> i think maybe we'd been growing that skin from when george's dad was vice presidente but i also think, you know, i knew more than the critics. i mean, i lived with george. i knew what the threats were. i didn't know every one of themh he didn't -- thank heavens -- didn't tell me every one becausn he didn't want to add to mybeca worry, but i felt like i knew ao lot more about a lot of the issues than the people who weret criticizing him did. >> and and in "spoken from the heart" you write about those. you're known as a pretty private person, only child, but a couple of the things you write in the book are about some of the private trips you took, and one of those that wasn't on your schedule is a visit with mary i ann pearl in paris. >> uh-huh. that's v right. i knew about danny pearl, danny pearl's kidnapping. he was a "wall street journal" reporter, and he had been kidnapped.jo we all, i think at the time, probably assumed that he was dead, but we didn't know that for sure. dea and when i was in paris, mary

ann pearl, i knew she lived there. she was pregnant with their first child, and so i made a call on her and had a chance to visit with her privately. jenna, my daughter, was with me. we had a chance to talk to her and just bring some sort ofalk encouragement and comfort to her.nco shortly after that visit, we found out that danny pearl hadtt been beheaded. and the really tragic and brutah way he was killed. and i've kept up with mary ann k pearl when i went to paris just a year ago after george was president for international literacy day at unesco. i invited mary ann pearl out to lunch with the two spouses of the two current ambassadors, the bilateral ambassador to france from the united states and the wife of our ambassador to unesco so they could meet her. but, in fact, she told me thenfa and two weeks later she was, she became an american citizen. so she's a citizen of the united states now.

>> again, with the privacy thing you discuss as you talk aboutvay some of your yosemite trips or your hiking trips with yours, friends and how you were able th get away on those. >> uh-huh. o >> is it possible, we've all seen the articles about the carla bruni book, the first lady of france and what michelle obama reportedly said, is it possible to have a private ha conversation in your capacity? >> oh, it is, of course. yo and who knows, she probably didn't say that at all. that was probably made up. i think carla bruni said she diy not say that after all. but it is possible to have friendships and to have a very, very normal life. i know people don't believe thay because you're living in such ae magnificent mansion with every sort of help including a pastryf chef that you can imagine. but really i knew that the white house could be a home because george and i had stayed there with his mother and dad. and, of course, barbara busher made it a home for all of her children and her grandchildren. and i knew that i could do that

for barbara and jenna and for george too. and the other thing that george and i were very lucky about is that we have lots of long-time friends who came up and visitede us and stayed with us. >> mrs. bush, there's another bush family book coming out in s this about two months. >> that's right. >> have you read "decisionio points"? p >> i've reado it, and it's very good. i think people are really going to like it. george's bush publishes in b november, "decision points," and i think people will really live it. it's very george bush, and in his voice -- sug >> any suggestions from you? >> not really. we were both writing our books at the same time. the we shared researchers. we each had our own researcher who would go to the archives where everything is documentedvy to, for instance, when i wrote about september 11th, to look at the secret service log of the timeline, to look at our ti advanced people's timelines, to look at the other -- everything else that was on our scheduleat around that day so i could write about it in, you know, very

straightforward and honest way.d but, so we did share researchers. we did talk to each other about what we were writing. george did ask me to take are couple of stories out of my book that he thought were his stories, and they were -- >> and will we see them in w "decision points"? >> we'll see them in his book. they were stories of somethingsn that had happened to him that i was reporting on secondhand inse my book, but he wanted to include them in his book. >> in your acknowledgments, youe acknowledge and thank andy card and josh bolton. as first lady, what was yourat relationship with the chiefs of staff? >> george had two unbelievably great chief of staff, really, really fine men, and i was close to both of them. both of them made an effort to d have lunch with me once or twicm a month. >> just so we could -- just so s we could have a chance to visito so i i could talk about what bothered me or what i wasothe interested in, and they could

tell me what things they sawings coming up on the schedule that they thought would involve me. so that was great to have that kind of relationship with them.e andy card's wife is a minister, a methodist minister, so on the day after september 11th when i went up to visit with my staff who o were young women, many of them straight out of college who never expected to be told to run from the white house, you know, they thought they were coming to a very glamorous white house job but, in fact, had to kick off their high heels and run on h september 11th, i asked andy card's wife, kathleen, to come with me because she's a methodist minister, and she was able to counsel with my young staff members who were gettingy used to the idea of having a joe that was a lot more dangerous, really, than they ever expected. >> three final questions. who's lyric winnik? this. que >> lyric winnik is one of my very good friends.s on she helped me with this book. she lives here in washington. she lived here the entire time

we did which was very helpful because she knew what it wasic like to liveh in washington during the years that i waslive writing about. her husband is a historian. i hope he's been a national book festival writer. >> jay winnik.tion >> he's written two magnificent books about the last week -- month of the civil war. george read it early on in his o presidency and was, we both were very fond of it. and then the other one i'm not sure is so well known is called the great upheaval, and it's a history of what was going on in the world during the time of the founding of the united states. and i found it so interesting because we think of our founding sort of in a vacuum. we don't, we're not, we don't really know, i mean, did you know that katherine was czar ofr russia when the united states was founded? i think it's really a great way to put our revolution, theour american revolution, into perspective. >> and for viewers who are interested on jay winnik, go to

booktv.org. we have the searchim function up in the upper lefthand corner. type in the name and watch it online free of charge. it second question, in "spoken from the heart" you write, in 2004 in the social question that animated the campaign was gayhat marriage. before the election season had unfolded, i had talked to george about not making gay marriage a significant issue. we have, i reminded him, a number of close friends who are gay or whose children are gay. have you talked to ken mehlman since he came out? cam >> i haven't talked to kent since, but i had talked to himbu right before. he was in dallas, we had to fly ins with a lot of administration people to talk about the bushdmi institute that we're building as part of the bush library, and there. he was my dinner partner that night. and, you know, i know ken mehlman very well, and i respect very much his decision to go public because i know it's p difficult.eca it's very, very difficult for

many people to be able to admit their feelings and especially, i think, in the republican party. but i'm proud that many, manyary republicans and many otherat people have accepted and always accepted ken, you know, as a great friend and accepted his choices. >> and finally, mrs. bush, what are you reading and what's the president currently reading? >> well, i'm reading books that booksellers gave me on my book tour. one of the great things about a book tour is visiting withis booksellers across the united states when you're there for book signings.gn so they would give me the books that they highly recommended,ha and one of them is my name is a mary suiter. it's historical fiction abouthi the civil war. it's very, very excellent. and then another is cutting for stone by abraham -- who's been a texas book festival, i'm not sure if he's been a nationalas book festival writer or not, but it's historical fiction, also,

really about east -- ethiopia and then a really wonderful and fascinating story about twins. my twins, barbara and jenna, are reading it right now. jenna just went to ethiopia on a trip there, so she wanted to read that especially around her trip. >> do you know what the president's reading? >> he's reading a very excellent biography of bonn offer, a new biography that i'm anxious to get my hands on as soon as he finishes. >> and we just got that at m booktv, and we willy be covering that at some point.h laura bush is the founder of the national book festival and the author of "spoken from the heart."nd t oh, and by the way, she was first lady for eight years as well. thank you for being here with us. f >> thank you so much. thank you for covering the national book festival. >> every weekend booktv brings you 48 hours of history, biography and public affairs. here's a portion of one of our programs. >> why when we hear the

president and others talking about the fact that we must make government efficient for the people did our founding fathers actually design the government to be inefficient? ask yourself that question. because this is a model for inefficiency. but it was done deliberately. why? because in order to have basic liberties you have to have the government with very little power. the more efficient the government is, the more liberties the individual has to give up to give to them. they cannot do their job efficiently unless they have the power to tell you what to do. very interesting, isn't it? and yet our society today

generally believes that we have to have an efficient government because we've been told time after time after time we must make the government efficient. but that is the road to loss of freedoms. >> to watch this program in its entirety, go to booktv.org. simply type the title or the author's name at the top left of the screen and click search. ♪ >> coming up next, booktv presents "after words," an hourlong program where we invite guest hosts to interview authors. this week ron christie, a former staffer for vice president dick cheney, discusses his latest book, "acting white: the curious history of a racial slur." the george washington adjunct professor presents a historical journey of the often-damaging phrase beginning with its origin

during the reconstruction era through its current-day use. he talks with the author of "my life in two americas," janet lang hart cowen. >> host: ron christie, i'm delighted to have this opportunity to talk to you about your latest book. it's called "acting white: the curious history of a racial slur." >> guest: janet, thank you so much. it's a pleasure to talk to you. >> host: tell me about this acting white. what does it mean to act white? is this an aspersion or slur that african-americans cast upon each other, level at each other? >> guest: unfortunately, they do, and this is a problem that we've seen since the middle part of the 19th century in america to the present day. and what i had done is i had had the opportunity to mentor a young child in washington, d.c. at a very, very disadvantaged school for title i students which are the folks that are really at the bottom of the poverty level. and my student looked at me, and he said, mr. christy, why do you

talk white, and why do you act white? and i thought, my goodness, what on earth is he talking about? and it's something that stuck with me ever since then x this was in the early part of the 1990s. and i went back and i wanted to say, where did this slur come from, and how can we move away from it? this so what i did is i found that the real genesis of acting white is in uncle tom's cabin published in 1852. and the real brilliance of what harriet beecher stow had done with her book was acting black at that point in be literature, you were uneducated, you didn't have religious background, really you didn't have a strong family background. and what she did is she infused her black characters with the attributes of what it meant to be white; intelligent, literate, strong family values and, in fact, every major character in uncle tom's cabin who is black could pass as being white with the ception be of -- exception of uncle tom himself. and so i took it from that standpoint of 1852 and used the

book to trace a historical sweep and say is this just a one-off, so is this something we found throughout history? and it surprised me that through the decades after reconstruction, you had two of the most well-known african-americans in the united states in the form of w.b. due poise and booker t. washington, and as they sought to chart a new course for african-americans at the dawn of the 20th century, booker t. washington essentially said to duboise, you're acting white. and you want to be white and, oh, since you're a harvard ph.d., you must think that you're white. and just, it stunned me. and you look, and the fascinating dichotomy between the two men couldn't be any more stark at that point. booker t. washington through his famous atlanta exposition speech that he had given believed that blacks and whites should be able to coexist, but they should be as individual as the different fingers on a hand. and yet at the same time he didn't believe that blacks