united states could help to make the world better longer term. so, he probably would have remained a noninterventionist, and i'm saying this as one who approached this as an editor, not as an advocate or critic of hoover. i think that one could make that kind of inference from his basic world view. >> host: you are the preeminent hoover scholar. you have written three volumes of definitive hoover biography. you know the man better than anyone. you certainly see more of his papers than anyone. is there anything that surprised you in the course of doing this project? and is there anything you don't know about hoover that you'd like to? >> guest: hmm. well, i was surprised by the emphasis he placed on the polish guarantee as a great blunder of

british diplomacy. i was less surprised by his argument that we had made the greatest blunder in the history of american diplomacy by an alliance with stalin, propping up stalin, when hitler attacked. he said that was bound to lead ultimately to an expansion of communism in the world and he felt vindicated in that prove simple. one of the interesting parts of the book is his interest in the tehran conference in 1943 as a lost opportunity for trying to reign in the imperialistic appetites of joseph stalin. so that was somewhat surprising. i think what i find most awesome about the book -- not quite surprising, because i've known about it in other ways -- was the sheer energy that he poured into this. here's a man who in his 80s got up at 5:30 in the morning, at his desk at 6:00 and would

write until 6:00 the next evening with short intervals for breck fashion lurch, and a mid-afternoon coffee break. he was writing many books, and my favorite statistic, between the ages of 85 and 90, he wrote seven books, published seven books. but not the magnum opus, the one that mattered to him most. so the man's tenacity, his desire to get the record out -- he wrote that four-volume american epic series. volume four of that was effectively a revised version of volume six of the original memoir scheme. so he did kind of get that in at the end. but i think what would i like to know more about herbert hoover? well, i'm always looking for documents where he explains himself on paper and where we don't have to make inferences. now, he generated a lot of paper as an ex-president or as man throughout his life, but it

would be nice to find even more, and i don't know whether that would exist at this point in time. >> that. >> host: that raises -- hemingway's trunk. there are still manuscripts in the vault, also it were? >> guest: i did discover in the course of researching magnum opus, various drafts of what would have been the parallel volume, the volume where he discussed his domestic politics involvement from 1933 to the 1950s. i think he called that his crusade book. so that's something that iseess to be published. >> host: hopefully. you will bring it to us. it's an extraordinary account, george. we have been talking to george nash. the book is "freedom betrayed" worth wait ing 50 years for. the author, herbert hoover.

>> the pursuit of happiness is the name of the book, and university of maryland professor and brookings instance constitution fellow, carol graham, is the author. >> host: -- graham, is

happiness public policy? >> guest: that's a big question these days. when i started working on this ten years ago, people thought the few of us that were doing it were pretty loopy. but actually it's become a new science, way of measuring well-being in a broader way than just income can measure well become and quality of life, and right now, the british government, the united nations, the chinese government, the brazilian government, and i could name more -- are very interested in implementing well-being metrics, happiness metrics in their policy decisions. the british government just completed its first round surveys where it included happiness metrics in its national statistics. >> host: what is the happiness met distribution? >> guest: it's a measure of the -- we measure well-being more generally. happiness is the coe lock

we'llal term. it's how satisfied people are with their lives in general, how they experienced the day before, and much shorter term, daily experience measure, and then how people evaluate they're lives at a whole. we also measure positive and negative affect. tell us how often did people worry or smile yesterday. those things all connect with different elements or aspects of people's lives. >> host: why is it important we know if people are happy or not? >> guest: well, it's -- i think it's an important metric that compliments what income measures tell us. for example, we find things like the paradox of unhappy growth, which is that in economies that are growing very quickly, middle income,-growing economies, people are less happy than in economies growing less slowly. that doesn't mean that growth isn't important but it means that rapid growth in the sort of china and brazil setting, can be be very unsettling for people

because there's uncertainty and inequality. we also find that income matters very much to people's happiness and well-being but other things matter as much or more. >> host: such as? >> guest: stable partnerships. fulfilling work. those are all very important to people's well-being, and so we're able to quantify those different elements of people's lives and how much they matter to their well-being and compliment income measures. we can look at how much does commuting time matter to happiness? is it good or bad? we find other funny things or surprising things, like cigarette taxes make smokers happier in canada, and the obese are less happy than the nonobese. is that a choice of the obese or income-based choices, then why there is unhappiness associated with them? >> host: can you explain the smoking and cigarette tax thing? >> guest: similar to the obesity findings. if you assume that all choices are optimal rational choices as

standard economic models do, then anybody purchasing a box of cigarettes is doing so to enhance their welfare. all of us know that's not exactly what is going on. if you assume that some of what is going on is a self-control or addiction problem and people are trying to stop smoking you can see why a cigarette tax might enhance the well-being of people who are trying to stop. >> host: dr. graham, does the u.s. in any way measure happiness or well become or quality or life? >> guest: at this point we measure it informally. a u.s.-based firm, the gallup yours, is the biggest provider of well-being data not just in the u.s. but throughout the world but that's a private polling firm. there's a serious discussion now, and a new national academy of sciences panel on well-being metrics, which will be assessing whether or not we should be including these measures into

our statistical gathering data. >> host: if you were to include a question or two about -- we're going to use the word happiness -- how would you phrase it? >> guest: i would include at least three questions. hopefully four, to capture the different components. one, how do you experience yesterday? how happy were you yesterday? some question along those lines. capture short-term fluctuations in people's well-being, and i would include a question how satisfied are you with your life as a whole, and third a question about life purpose. do you have purpose or meaning in your life? and these are different dimensions and people may value them differently. finally, if possible, i would include another question, which is how does your life compare to the best possible life, which is a relative sense. it's how people compare themselves when they think in terms of a broader reference. all of those questions give us different components of well-being.

>> host: so, when the brits measure happiness and the brazilians measure happiness, what did they find for a national average? is there such a thing? >> guest: well there is a national average with the brits and with the -- the brits have done and it the brazillans are thinking of doing are taking the metrics in their country and they've just gone to the field. the british findings, are very much accord with what we find about happiness around the world there are averages across countries around the world. and that's basically that the same things matter to british people's happiness as matter to people's happiness around the world. income matters but only so much. health matters a great deal. stable partnerships. there's a u-shaped curve between age and happiness, and the low point being the mid 408s, and the british cop form, as do americans in the study. >> host: really. why is that? >> guest: the middle age years

are often there's a double burden of child rearing and also dependent parents, financial burdens. it's about the time that people's aspirations align with realities. if you don't know what you're glowing bev when you grow up by mid-40s, you probably should. after that as people get older they -- as long as they're healthy and in a stable partnership they get happier. could be people get more appreciative of life and aware it's short. and aspirations align with reality and some of the financial burdens ease as people age typically, on average, anyway. >> host: how did you get interested in this topic? >> guest: i fell into it by mistake and i loved it ever since. i was actually studying people's income trajectories moving in and out of poverty in fast-growing developing countries, in peru where i'm from, and also russia and chynna, and found that most people made the most progress

escaping poverty reported their economic situation to be worse than before and trying to disentangle thinks that -- things and i started to get into what was then a nascent literature that combines psychology and economics and understanding how people assess their well-being and economic life and economic progress. >> host: professor graham, is it possible to legislate happiness? no that's not something we should get into doing. i think measuring or taking stock of our nation's will being and using that information to inform policy decisions is a contribution. i don't think we can legislate happiness, nor die think we should set up happy nose be -- happiness to be a policy objective. >> host: we're guaranteed the pursuit of happiness in the constitution? >> guest: that's an opportunity to lead a fulfilling life, and i detail that in my book. that's probably the most important thing the government

should be thinking about. but that's different from legislating happiness. >> host: what do you teach here at the university of maryland? >> guest: i teach a course quantitative midwests and research methods to get at more difficult concepts and policy problems. >> host: what department? >> guest: i'm in the school of public policy. >> host: what is your role at the brookings institution. >> guest: i'm a senior fellow. i spend most of my time there, and i'm involved in studile well-being in all kinds of dimensions and involved in settling up a new initiative. >> host: carol graham is the author of this book, "the pursuit of happiness: an economy of well-being." this is her second book on happiness. thanks for being on book tv. >> guest: thanks for having me.

>> you're watching book tv on c-span2. we are on the campus of george mason university in fairfax, virginia, on the outskirts of washington, dc. for our university series. we have the chance to come to some universities and talk with professors who have also written books that you might not have heard about. and joining us now is meredith lair and her book is not quite out but here's the cover of it: "arm with abundance. consumerism and soldiering in the vietnam war." professor lair, what was the typical experience of northwestern soldier in vietnam. >> that's a great place to start. i think the american public has an assumption about what that experience was that was informed

by television, movies, media coverage of the war, that shows the general of the grunt who is in the boonies, who is in imminent danger, living a life of austerity and frequent danger. that's a powerful image. certainly an experience that many, many vietnam veterans had but it's probably not the dominant experience of the war, because particular live by the late 1960s, the united states had built an incredible logistical apparatus to support troops in combat so most soldiers were serving in support capacity, living largely out of harm's way, and as the war went on, and enjoying an increasingly comfortable quality of life that was designed to minimize the difference between living

conditions in u.s. and on a u.s. military base and living conditions in vietnam. >> host: how many soldiers at the peak in vietnam. >> guest: the peak ways in 1968 and it was 542,000 americans in vietnam. >> host: how many american soldiers were killed that year? >> guest: off the top of my head i don't know. it was the deadliest year in vietnam because of the tet offensive and the mopping up operations. so i don't in the book deny the hardships that soldiers endured and the cost of the war in terms of blood and treasure, and emotional consequences of the war. what i'm trying to do is to complicate people's ideas what it meant to have served in vietnam and what that experience was like and to give some credit to soldiers who don't see their experiences represented in film or television or other popular representations of the war. >> host: now, you have a chart in here, gross sales in vietnam,

fiscal years 1968 to 1972. 1968, $325 million. is what you have. up to 364 million in 1971. why do you include this chart? >> guest: well, one of the things i examine is consumerism and the role it played in american soldiers' lives, military authorities in vietnam recognized that providing consumer goods to american soldiers was a way of maintaining strong soldier morale and that's important in this war because it's very colorful and -- is very controversial, and providing consumer goods is a way of ameliorating some of the morale problems the officials are seeing. thatso they create this exchange apparatus. so the u.s. military is functioning as a store and becomes in essence the third largest department store chain

in the world as a consequence, with sales over a three or four year period over a bill -- billion dollars and those figures are not adjust for inflation. if they were adjusted, i don't have those numbers but it would be staggering. >> host: what is this photo on the front of the book? >> guest: that's a photo i found in an archive at texas tech university and that's that's three guys playing with their cameras and the camera was an essential purchase in vietnam. it was something that was talked about a lot in publications for soldiers. it was the thing that guys would save up their paychecks to buy, and these things were pricey. these were not a little $99-point and shoots we have become accustomed to these were sophisticated cameras that could run several hundred dollars and there was really rash of photo take saying thought that was an interesting image because it's soldiers taking pictures of themselves taking pictures and that's in essence some of what

the book is about, because it has soldiers and other people's experience of the war. >> host: professor lair, what was living in saigon for a u.s. soldier in the late '60s like? >> guest: it would depend. some soldiers who were living in saigon, were stationed in quarters that were essentially hotels that had been rented out by the u.s. military. living in saigon created a president of problems for the military because you had probably -- i mean tens if not over 100,000 soldiers in the area by the mid-60s, '67 and '68 and it created problems because these guys are going out after hours, they're getting drunk, they are patronizing brothels, that is eroding relations with the vietnamese that need to be better, and also they're presenting themselves as targets for criminals who mug them or roll them as drunks, if

they're drunk, or occasionally for the viet cong who were lobbing grenades and setting off car bombs in the city. so if you were a soldier stationed in saigon life was good and there were random acts of violence, and the tet offensive did bring the war to saying gone's doorstep in 1968 but for the most people there were people who lived in saigon or bases near there whose war experience was very, very isolated and the didn't feel like there was a war going on at all. that's something i quote in the book. soldiers saying, if not for the information about the war i'm getting from stars and stripes from the radio, i want know i was in a war. >> host: where is this photo taken? >> guest: i think that was taken on the coast near da nang. there's guys getting ready for a party. they have requisitioned the beer and hot dogs and probably had girls already set up and they're making this beach landing.

so you can make out they're in their swim trunks and laden with supplies and they're going to have a party, and the photographer who took that particular image has others of the beach and it's of guys standing around barbecue pits and the beach is literally littered with empty beer cans. so it's an incongruous image we tradition yale see of the vietnam war. >> host: who is -- >> guest: he is one of the photo journalists that war interested in this side of the war. that proved difficult to find quality images to include in the book. i did find lots and lots of not so quality images that were taken by these very soldiers themselves who had very little facility with the cameras they were using. so lots of blurry shots and darken interiors. the professional journalists were charged with getting a story to sell papers so the war

they focused on was the killing and dying warm ask the images are powerful and beautiful from he shooting war. i have a few photos in the book that are famous. but there was another photographer i talk about. who was actually a soldier journalist. they took photographs that captured this other side of the war and it really undermind the impression that the war was of great urgency for most americans who were fighting it. >> host: when did you get interested in the vietnam war? >> guest: very, very early in my life. >> host: why? >> guest: i did my first research report in seven agreed on vietnam. and and the reason was i am the daughter of a vietnam veteran and a career military officer and the vietnam war really -- he spent two tours in vietnam, and i think it really etched its

mark on my family and on my parents' marriage and on their relationship with their children, and so i was fascinated by that, and ailes grew up in the 1980s, and vietnam was still a very raw subject for adults. so i recognized that while my father was willing to talk about his experiences, most adults were not, and i had -- and i also i was trying to reconcile some compete can messages i was hearing from him about what his war was like and how the war was being presented. >> host: what did your father write in the prologue? >> guest: i wrote the prologue but it's about his experience in the war. i wanted to do that because this is a permanent subject -- percentage subject -- personal subject to me and i described his tours in vietnam. his first tour was a very -- living on an advisory compound

which is 20 americans and working solely with vietnamese infant triand it was hard and dangerous and i think much more in the spirit of how the vietnam war is popularly represented. but his second tour he went back in 1970 and found a world that he could barely recognize. so for half of the second tour he was on one of the largest bases in vietnam and was like an american outpost in southeast asia. it was home to upwards of 60,000 people. there were swimming pools and barbecue pits all over, massive pxs, hundreds of opportunities to drink and party, movie theaters, bowling alley. every amenity you can imagine, and he worked in an air conditioned office and had some

profound questions about what am i doing here and what kind of war is this? and so i heard those competing versions of the war as a kid, and really -- it's not as though i set out to write a book about that. but then when i was a professional scholar and doing this kind of research, i started to find the evidence of this other world, and that captured my imagination once again. >> host: did you think potentially that the words abundance and consumerism in connection with the vietnam war might be a little controversial? >> guest: it has been controversial. i've made -- i've done speaking engagements where i had some fairly hostile reactions from vietnam veterans or from people who feel that by pointing to some of the more comfortable conditions americans enjoyed in vietnam i'm somehow eroding the sense of sacrifice that americans made.

i think that's the wrong way to look at the problem, because even if somebody went to vietnam and spent a year on one of these bases, basically working a seven to five or seven to six job and then partying in their off-duty hours, they're still missing out on a lot and there still is a great deal of loneliness and alienation and the world as home is passing you by. so there's sacrifices to be made and those soldiers don't see they're role in the war acknowledged. there's very few published memoirs and the vast majority of the published memoirs are self-published and done on vanity presses because parentally the market doesn't want to hear those stories. >> host: you've mentioned drinking and partying several times. was there a lot of that? >> guest: there was. and it's something i think the american public has to take responsibility for, that our soldiers abroad in the vietnam

war were not always angels. and frankly, drinking and and carousing was encouraged in the fact it was discouraged. there will no sanctions for visiting brothels and indeed there were brothels on then paces that were tolerated and medics were sent to treat the prostitutes for venereal disease so there was a wink-wink boys will be boys look at the war and this is ultimately an exploitative encounter that american women were having with vietnamese women, these women wore participating not because they aspired to be prostitutes as girls but because the war so unsettled the countryside, created five million refugees, families were struggling and the

last best hope for a family was to patrols constitute out their daughter. so american soldiers didn't pay much thought to that. not all of them certainly but a lot of them so there are bitter consequences for the vietnam yes. as far as drinking is concerned, drinking was rampant in vietnam. a lot of attention is paid to drug use because americans at the time, the world over, were experimenting with pot and other drugs, and that drug culture carried into the vietnam war. but drinking was absolutely pervasive and was essentially encouraged because the u.s. military was the per very of alcohol. it was available by the case. there was a ration program that sent limits but it was something like four our five cases a month was the limit and you were expected to consume what you had because there was concern if soldiers stockpiled it, that it

would create a black market or create epic blowout parties that couldn't be controlled and then there were clubs. little clubs that were started up by a unit where everybody in the unit would pony up 25 to get the club going, and over the course of the war, the club proceeds were reinvested in making the clubs nicer and nicer. so some clubs don't have running water and they're a little back room where there's warm beer and by the end they have leather swivel chairs and they're incredibly sophisticated nightclubs with live entertainment and slot machines and food, and are literally generating millions of dollars. in fact there was so much money being generated by the clubs that the u.s. military around 1969-70, conducted an audit and seized something like $16 million in cash that was laying out in these club cash registers and slot machines, and that money was used to build a

high-rise hotel on hawaii for the military families on r & r. >> host: professor lair, the bases you're talking about vietnam, are they the models for what we have today? i'm thinking of iraq and afghanistan and other foreign bases -- that have a lot of the american amenities. >> guest: i wouldn't say there's a model for it. ... >> and some of the consequences of that.

>> host: meredith, what do you teach? >> guest: i teach american history, the vietnam war and war in the american society. >> host: and her new book just coming out is published by the university of north carolina, "armed with abundance: consumerism and soldiering in the vietnam war." thank you for joining us here at george mason university. >> guest: thank you so much. >> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. next, booktv sat down with university of texas at austin professor ami pedahzur to talk about his book, "the israeli secret services and the struggle against terrorism." this is about 20 minutes and is part of booktv's college series. >> host: and you're watching booktv on c-span2. and we're at the university of texas in austin interviewing professors who are also authors. and now joining us is ami pedahzur. he is the author of this book,

"the israeli secret services and the struggle against terrorism." professor pedahzur, first off, what are the israeli secret services? >> guest: well, the israeli secret services is a very elusive body of various organizations including the branches of the military, the internal security service equivalent to the fbi in the united states, the mossad which is the equivalent to the cia, and within the army we have the intelligence branch which is doing pretty much whatever the nsa is doing here in the u.s. >> host: how, what is their working philosophy when it comes to counterterrorism? >> guest: well, a very, very interesting question because it's a working philosophy of trial and error. and terrorism unlike other types of warfare is very, you know, surprising, and it's not the kind of threat that militaries

are used to dealing with. what happened in israel over the years is terrorism took an increasing role in a public domain and became not a strategic threat to the israeli society, but a very, you know, annoying phenomenon that policy leaders had to respond to quite often. the problem with terrorism, unlike other military threat, is there is a lot of emotional burden on policymakers to make immediate decisions and to soothe the public and to reassure the public that they are in control of things. however, terrorism, you know, as a phenomenon is something that it's very hard to control and contain and, therefore, it's much more challenging than fighting a syrian division or an egyptian, you know, armor brigade. >> host: but israel's rather unique in the sense that it's dealt with terrorism for years and years and all kinds of terrorism. have they perfected a model that

you see? >> guest: whenever they do perfect a model, the terrorists are innovating. so, for example, if we think about the last several years, the second intifada when israel was coping with, you know, the very formidable challenge of suicide bomberses, eventually between 2002 and 2004 they came to the conclusion that erecting a barrier between israel and the palestinian authority and reoccupying parts of the west bank would be a good solution. and it did work because since 2004 the number of suicide terrorist attacks is insignificant. however, it didn't eliminate terrorism because then hamas, for example, learned that in order to keep pushing their agenda they can use rockets. so once you erect a barrier, they'll come up with a new mode of operation which would lead to new challenges.

>> host: well, in your book you talk about four different models of counterterrorism. what are those four different models? >> guest: mostly what i'm talking about is the gist of the argument is that closed democracies tend to respond using the war model which is treating terrorism as a kind of warfare. and this is part of the aim -- if we think about 9/11, this was the immediate response of the united states, trying to, you know, put terrorism in this kind of framework that is something that we know how to deal with. and, of course, we tend to go to the military for advice. but the problem is that terrorism is not a military threat. it's a different animal. and that's why i'm introducing the criminal justice model, i'm introducing the defensive models that are, in my opinion, more suitable to treating terrorism rather than using military force

in an attempt to overcome the terrorist threat. >> host: so you do not necessarily, professor, see terrorism as an act of war? >> guest: i think that terrorism is, again, it's not that i'm trying to -- i think that we have to demystify terrorism. and the problem is that once we, you know, we declare a war on terror, we are doing something quite bizarre. we are not declaring a war on, you know, air bombardments, right? we are decan claireing a war on -- we aren't declaring war on a country or entity. so you cannot perceive terror as a military threat because, first, in the most cases the objectives of the actors perpetrating attacks are different. they do not pose a strategic threat to the country. what they do is, you know, frighten the public. policymakers tend to, they look for those, you know, formulas that they are aware of or they

know for dealing with this phenomenon. and, therefore, what we see is the immediate, forceful response. now, i'm not saying the terrorists should be spared. i'm just saying that sometimes if you really want to reduce the impact of terrorism, you have to look at it from a different perspective rather than, you know, a military one. >> host: so here in the united states after 9/11 then-president george w. bush talked a lot about the war on terror. incorrect, in your view? >> guest: yes. i think that, you know, when the united states launched the war in afghanistan, it was the right thing to do. but, you know, this was something that, you know, ended within six weeks. then what? you know, you pretty much destroyed al-qaeda within the first six weeks and the taliban regime. and then the war on terror ended. there was now -- we are in the

11th year in the war in afghanistan. it's not the war on terror, and it evolved over the years. so what i'm saying is the united states took many, you know, important measures over the years in an attempt to cope with terrorism. increasing security, using, you know, all kinds of measures that are enhancing the capabilities of the intelligence community. but i'm not sure that the forceful reaction was the most important one in, you know, eliminating the threat. and by the way, today we see a different model using drone, targeting specific individuals in the al-qaeda network rather than an entity that has to deploy the whole u.s. armed forces into a world against. >> host: now, ami pedahzur, in israel is the war model the one

that's usually used -- >> guest: yes. >> host: -- or are there all four of the models that you identify? >> guest: well, mostly policymakers around the world tend to result to the war model because if you think about the politician in a democratic setting, they need to -- they are being held accountable by their con stitch wents. constituents. and when i wrote the book, it started, you know, i started doing the research right after the end of the second intifada. and i remember i came to the u.s. in '04 at the very last stage -- >> host: from israel. >> guest: from israel. and during that time, you know, for four years we were terrified. and a terrified public is looking for an answer. and when you see a policymaker who is taking a tough position and he's deploying special operation units, and i'm elaborating in the book about all kinds of assassination attempts, etc., it reassures the public that something is being done. however, for example, if you go back to the very famous example

of the munich olympic games in 1972 and the assassination campaign that the israeli government launched against the plo, we see that at the end of the day it was a very unsuccessful attempt to -- i'm not sure if objective was really to undermine the power of the plo or just to tell the israeli public, listen, we are not going to, you know, sit still while our people are being attacked. so they were just targeting individuals that many of them had nothing to do with the plot against the athletes in munich. so what i'm trying to say is that policymakers tend to look for modes of operation that are going to make their constituents, the public feel reassured rather than, you know, thinking about how to actually, you know, contain the threat of terrorism. and one of the problems is that they want, the public looks for solutions, and there is no

solution to the problem of terrorism. you can reduce, you know, the intensity of the attacks, you can make it a little less, you know, central at a given point in time, but, you know, humanity had terrorism for centuries. we've never gotten, you know, we've never eliminated it. but the public still l expects policymakers to do it, and this pressure leads them to resort to forceful measures that are, you know, at the end of the day not very effective. >> host: ami pedahzur is a professor here at the university of texas austin, he's a professor of government and middle eastern studies, he's also the head of the tiger lab here at the university of texas. what is the tiger lab? >> guest: the tiger lab is a small research center where we are conducting research on terrorism, insurgencies and guerrillas, and this is -- that's the root of the word "tiger." graduate students are doing their dissertations trying to

analyze a phenomenon related to those three, you know, topics utilizing various research methods. so the university's facilitating this kind of research and supporting the students who are interested in it. >> host: professor pedahzur, looking back at the operation wrath of god, the 1972 retaliation by israel for the munich attacks, has there been schools of thought in israel about how they would approach that today, what they would do differently? >> guest: yes, and we see that, actually, there is a very interesting linkage between israel and the united states, because the united states is now engaged in a very similar mode of operation in pakistan, in yemen. and the question of targeted killings is a question that preoccupies policymakers for, you know, an extended period of time. people are thinking, first, whether -- sorry -- it's effective, second, is it moral to do it? and i think that israel has been dealing with this issue for an

extended period of time. i don't think that they came to the solution. i think that targeting an individual if we think about osama bin laden is much more of a symbolic reaction to terrorism which is a symbolic mode of operation rather than something that is actually treating the root cause of the problem. taking out bin laden was not something that made the u.s. safer, but it was very important for the american public to hear that bin laden was removed from, you know, the scene. so this is what israel did for a long time. and whenever we analyze counterterrorism, we have to think about the policymaker who is trying to address the concerns of the public as much as they try to address the concerns of -- the security concerns. and i would go even further and raise the question whether militaries or or security personnel are the right individuals to approach when terrorism emerges.

because terrorism is not, by its nature, a military threat. and in europe there was a school for many years that argued that terrorism should be treated by the police and by the criminal justice system. however, when terrorism increases, when the intensity increases, the pressure on policymakers shifts, you know, the responsibility to the army, and this is what we see. eventually, the response is escalating, and we -- it spirals out of control. >> host: so, professor pedahzur, a bus blows up in jerusalem, rockets are fired from the gaza strip. what should be the response, in your view? if any? >> guest: well, first of all, you have to make sure that when something like that happens, you have good first responders on the scene. you know what to do in order to save as many lives as you can. then you have to be able to actually figure out who is launching the attack and why do they do it. now, i'm not saying that in

every case you can address the root cause, but i think that in many cases you can reduce the motivation of a specific group to launch an attack. and it's very important in these cases to know exactly who's the individual behind an attack in order to target the response at this faction or at this group rather than, you know, whatever we saw, for example, during the gaza war of december '08, you know, targeting a large civilian population which, of course, when you kill civilians and when you're using, you know, excessive force the animosity and the root causes of the conflict are just becoming even more intensified. so you have a new generation of hatred. so what i'm saying is that it's not always something that you can resolve through

negotiations. in many cases you do need to use force, but it's very important to tailor the response to the type of threat that you're dealing with. and we have to remember that terrorism, even horrific attacks like 9/11, at the end of the day are nuances. they're not strategic threats that, you know, can be posed by other countries. they are aimed at hurting several people in a very dramatic manner for the purpose of, you know, terrifying the rest of us. and when the public is pressuring policymakers to respond forcefully, this is exactly what the terror is want -- terrorists want. they are achieving their goal. >> host: so, professor, when you talk about root causes, could some of those solutions be political? >> guest: of course. you know, when we look at the history of terrorism, david rap a port from ucla is talking about four waves of terrorism. one of the waves, the second

wave was the decolonization era when people were using violent behavior in order to, you know, get their independence. and in many cases you can identify a root cause and, you know, address it through negotiations. in other cases when, you know, you have all kinds of messianic or radical ideologies involved, it becomes much more complicated. we saw that in the case of the tigers in sri lanka, it was a combination of ethnic grievances with a cultish behavior of a very radicalized group, and eventually the solution was military. and and the i have land can government had to eliminate this group altogether. so what i'm trying to argue here is that it's not always, you know, we cannot say that there is one solution to this problem. terrorism is merely a tactic. it's not a phenomenon. it's a tackic that group --

tactic that groups use, and the group can use at the same time other tactics. they can use guerrilla warfare, sit at a negotiations table, but it's just a tactic. and whenever we are trying to deal with it, what we tend to do is overemphasize this tactic above everything else. and just if you think about it, we tend to refer to groups as terrorist groups. this is a very bizarre way to think about them because most of these groups are being reduced to a tactic rather than being, you know, analyzed through the whole meaning of what you're doing. so if we take a group like hamas, they're a political party. they are ruling the gaza strip, they are highly effective guerrilla force, and they use terrorism. but the very fact that we tend to treat them as a terrorist group diverts the attention from the main issue to a single tactic. >> host: what about the recent release of palestinian prisoners

in the israel in exchange for the soldier? >> guest: well, this is something that you have to, this is where culture, you know, is really important for understanding, contextualizing things. israel tends to be highly emotional when it comes to soldiers because we have a military that is based on conscripts. everyone in israel serves in the army. and i think that strategically it was an awful thing to do. this exchange. israel is being weakened dramatically by exchanging thousands of prisoners for a single soldier, but i think that the prime minister had no alternative. the public pressure was so immense that he couldn't have, you know, done anything else, and this is something that is very unique to israel, this kind of pressure that comes from civil society when it comes to soldiers who are being held by other entities. there is much less pressure when it comes to civilians, and this

is very different from the united states because soldiers are being treated like our kids, our children that are -- and this guy, gilad shalit, became the collective child of the israeli people. so his release -- and this is a pattern, israel is the first country that said we are not negotiating with terrorists. lo and behold, israel is the country that negotiates with terrorists the most and mostly gets the worst deal they can come up with when they exchange terrorists for soldiers or a hijacked individual. >> host: what's your background? >> guest: oh, i'm a political scientist. i've never been in the secret services. i've been, you know, my service in the army was as a medic, so i have no -- >> host: in the idf? this. >> guest: in the idf. i have no classified information, so i could come from this topic from a very naive perspective trying to really figure out, my main question was israel has this kind of outstanding reputation

as a counterterrorism superpower, so why didn't we soft the problem of terrorism? if you look at what happened 60 years ago, things were much better off then than they are today. so if we are so good at what we're doing, why the results are so poor? >> host: ami pedahzur is a professor at the university of texas where he teaches government and middle eastern studies, and he's also the author of this book, "the israeli secret services and the struggle against terrorism." he joins us here at the university of texas in austin. is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. booktv is on location at the university of chicago where we are talking with several professors of the university who are also authors, and now we're pleased to be joined by david strauss who is the author of "the living constitution."

he also teaches law at the university of chicago law school. david strauss, how do you define a living constitution? >> guest: well, it's a good question, and the living constitution is an idea that is controversial, but it really shouldn't be controversial. it's the idea that the constitution as it was drafted in 1787 and has been amended a few times since then, that that constitution has to evolve over time in order to keep up with changing circumstances and changing ideas about how society should be run. >> host: what would you consider to be an evolution of the current constitution? >> guest: well, there are several examples. here's one. throughout the first hundred or so year of the republic really up until the late 19th century, the idea was that the federal government could be very small and that both the federal and state governments would play a limited role in regulating the economy. then as the country became less

agrarian and more industrial, ideas about that changed, and both the state legislatures and congress started to play a more active role in regulating the economy. at first the supreme court didn't like that, struck down a lot of those laws as unconstitutional, but over time the supreme court came to see that those laws were necessary and changed its view gradually to the constitutional law we have now which allows for a very extensive role by both the federal government and the states in regulating the economy. >> host: what is originalism? >> guest: originalism is the idea that one way or another the answer to any issues about the constitution that we have today can be found by going back to the time the constitution was drafted or the time the amendments were ratified and seeing what they thought back then. and taking their ideas from back then and applying them to today's problems. that's the idea, anyway. >> host: does it work? >> guest: i don't think so.

i think it's just not a workable scheme. and it's not workable for a couple of reasons. one is just that it's really hard to figure out what they were thinking back then. that's what historians do, and historians disagree among themselves, and sometimes historians just say, well, they were kind of confused back then. they weren't clear on what they were doing. but the deeper problems really are that even if we can figure out what they thought back then, they had those ideas about that society. and, you know, when the united states was founded, it was a small country, four million people. that's less than half the population of the chicago metropolitan area. that was the whole country. it was clinging to the east coast. it was a rural country, only 5% of the people lived in cities. that's a whole different world, and even if we knew what they thought about that world, it wouldn't tell us what they thought about about our world. >> host: professor strauss, what's the controversial part of a living constitution? what do people find controversial about that? >> guest: i think what people find controversial, and it's a

fair concern, is that, well, if constitution's not fixed, if it doesn't mean today what it's always meant, then someone's changing it. and that makes us nervous because we think that that someone who's changing it is going to be some bunch of judges who are just going to impose their own views on the rest of us. and that's a legitimate concern. >> host: antonin scalia, former university of chicago law professor, isn't he? >> guest: yes, he is. >> host: is he a friend of yours or acquaintance? >> guest: acquaintance. >> host: he would not agree with your premise, is that correct? >> guest: i think that's right in the sense that he says he's an originalist. now, in practice as a supreme court justice he understands that originalism doesn't work all the time, and he's even said, well, i'm an originalist, but i'm not a nut, and there are times when i'll depart from originalism when it's really necessary to do so. >> host: but hasn't he used the phrase "dead constitution"? >> guest: he has, in order to talk those of us who -- to taunt

those of us who believe in a living constitution. and as i say, the concern is, well f the constitution's changing, just tell me something about who's changing it and why and when, and i'm not sure i want to get onboard with the people who are changing it. as i said, i think there's a concern there that needs to be addressed. >> host: how do you glean the founding fathers' intent? is it important in 2011 to know what the founding fathers' intent was? >> guest: well, there are a couple of things you can say about the founding fathers' intelligent. if what you're looking for are the principles, the really underlying principles of the country, you know, a respect for diversity, a limited government that protects liberty but is active enough in order to do the job of governing, if you're defining the founders' intent at that level of principle, then it's absolutely relevant, and it's something that i think all of us would agree with. when you get to specifics, you know, what did they think about environmental protection or occupational safety or labor

relations or things like that, then i think to ask the question about the founders' intent really, really leads you nowhere because, as i said, first of all, it's going to be hard to figure out what they thought even about their world. and even if you do, that doesn't tell you what they thought about our world which is a very different world. >> host: david strauss, do some of the constitutional amendments that have passed over the years, isn't that a way to make the constitution a living document? >> guest: you know, in theory it would be, but if you look at the way the constitution is amended, if you look at the hoops you have to jump through to amend the constitution, it's just not a practical way of changing things. you need two-thirds of each house of congress -- and that's only the starts -- then you need three-quarters of the states to ratify the amendment. so the fact is, we really haven't used the amendment process to do a lot of the things we've done by way of changing the constitution. most of the changes have come about in other ways, and often what happens, actually, is that we change things, and then we amend the constitution after we've already changed it, and

the amendments catch up with the changes we've already made. >> host: do you teach the living constitution here at the university? >> guest: well, i teach the law. um, i teach what what the law is. i just, when i teach, i just try to play it straight and show my students this is what the law is, these are the questions it raises, these are the things you're going to want to think about if you're a well-informed lawyer in the 21st century, the questions you're going to want to ask, the judgements you're going to try to make. >> host: the coffer of your book, "the living constitution," what was it trying to signify? >> guest: i think it's trying to new york a tree in the process of doing, but the growth of the tree is really necessary and is something we should celebrate and not be afraid of. >> host: would you foresee a we writing of the constitution -- rewriting of the constitution? >> guest: no, i don't think so. i think one of the remarkable things is that we've done very

well with the constitution we have precisely because we figured out ways that it can evolve, um, that meet our problems, that change with society, but that doesn't just turn the constitution over to a bunch of judges to do what they want. and i think that we found in the constitution, and this is in no small part because of the genius of the framers, we found the constitution a document that is adaptable enough that it doesn't put us in a straitjacket, and that's why it's worked o well for so many years. >> host: you had several years of government service. what were they? >> guest: i was in the justice department for a number of years, office of the legal counsel and then the solicitor general's office. >> host: under which president? >> guest: initially, under president carter for a short time and then under president reagan. >> host: and what courses are you teaching at the law school right now? >> guest: i teach constitutional law, i teach federal jurisdiction, a course on the relationship between the federal and state courts, i