warlike group and they fought. that is what they did. when somebody would conduct the arapaho conducted the success of reagan as the comanche they would watch the countertrade and it went both ways. this is the way it went sometimes their raids meant to get horses sometimes if somebody killed the that would call for revenge but it is the way it worked and it was part of the deal the same revenge was exacted on whites later. will hold adobe walls that vote last great expansion was a giant revenge raid against the white truck they had done qantas said it was because of the death of his

father but the comanches were very brutal so were all plains indians and also native americans with treatment of the captives and torture and revenge raids they were common to native americans. if you are a historian you have to come to terms with that. it happened. . . the best example would be at wounded knee but there were some

others, that the impression created was that indians were these kind of more gentle, spiritual people, not necessarily gentle but they were fundamentally decent people who were steamrolled by the culture of rogan treaties and the stories of the massacres and it was kind of i think a one-sided deal. and if you look at the comanches that simply is not true. the comanches were enormously powerful. were they victimize? where were they eventually steamrolled? yes, they were but that is not fundamentally who they were and to think, i wasn't making a political point in my book. i was just describing what i found and what i found was yes they were quite regal and quite warlike and held their own against everybody but that particular view was just overly complicit decodes even the five civilized tribes from the southeast if you go back to their origins they were

enormously powerful and they were warlike and they were noble in their own way so again i had no political.. i had no political agenda. anybody else? thank you all for coming. [applause]ntinues.

host: joining us next is former senator russ feingold of wisconsin. he has a new book out, "while america sleeps." what are you trying to do with this book, senator? what are you telling americans about the state of our international relations? guest: thank you for having me on the show. during the 10 years after 9/11 when i was serving in the united states senate on the foreign relations committee, the intelligence committee, i saw some changes in the w we were responding to 9/11. it was a terrible tragedy but we were going to work together to address this issue. then things started to go downhill with the divisiveness over the mistaken war in iraq.

then we entered a period where we seem to have gone back to sleep in being concerned about the rest of the world bank part of it is understandable because of the economy but part of it is political manipulation. i think that is dangerous. it reminded me of winston churchill. he gave some 45 speeches in the house of commons where he basically said i know we are not used to worrying about the rest , but therld the germans are re-arming. i had never read his book. that title reminded me of what we are slipping into now. a country that somehow believes we can go bacto our island mentality, that we are over here

on the oer side of the world and the rest of the world will take care of itself. we cannot do that if we want to be successful. that is the spirit of the book and whi wrote it. host: i will segue quickly into presidential politics. notm wondering whether or you think there is sufficient discussion during this year about international relations. guest: it is a completely insufficient discussion of international matters in the campaign partly because of this manipulati. the candidates on the republican side do not really want to talk about foreign policy partly because of the legacy of the bush administration and partly because barack obama has done a pretty good job. osama bin laden is gone. the present has a much better

reputation around the world than george bush -- the president has a much better reputation around the world than george bush. they want to try to say that he is always apologizingor america. they made fun of his foreign trips to places like india and indonesia. they had these absurd comments like with herman cain. they asked him about whose pakistan. instead of having a thought about that part of the world, he said i am not going to pretend to know about the country. it is not a joke. it is the country right to the north of pakistan and afghanistan. we have to send hillary clinton and make deals with basically a stain-like a dictator in the country. -- a stalin-like dictator in the

country. publican candidates idea is to make fun of it, that it is cool not to know anything. it is dangerous for america. we need to have a conversation during the campaign and after as americans, not as political parties, thaweeed to be together on these issues even if we want to keep fighting about domestic issues. host: youeferenced you were concerned about america's policy objectives. we were there for a dece. now republicans are criticizing president obama's decision to bring the troops home and we are seeing stories of major bombings across t country, thinking that perhaps al qaedas destabilizing for there. i am wondering about the gains that we made during the 10 years that you are concerned about that we might lose with

that schedule. guest: the idea of going into iraq was a terrible idea. president bush ran around the country saying that al qaeda was operating in 60 countries around the world. that list included afghanistan, ireland, and iraq was not even on the list. why do you think they decided to go there? because of the foolishnes of putting oselves in a situation where we were playing the game of osama bin laden. if you look at his speech that he put on the internet, he mocked us. he said we send a couple of people to these places and the american military comes running. what we really want to do to the united states is bankrupt it. that is t trap that we fell into. i think we got out of iraq five years too late.

the idea that we were goi to resolve all of the issues that have been there -- you cannot do that. you need to work with the governmes that are friendly around the world to identify al qaeda operatives and try to keep them on the run or get them as president obama has done. if people want to argue that we should still be in iraq, that means we have to invade every country and abroad at some point and treat our troops there like it is a game of risk. host: i have the challenge of getting two colex issues on the table. the opening sentence of your book is actually a round of the passage of legislation that bears your name. the campaign finance reform legislation. i am wondering since it now has

three reviews by the supreme court, the latest of which was citizens united in 2010. what you think about the state of legislation today? guest: there is a misconception out there that the legislation has been overruled. the supreme court of limited a couple of the more minor provisions that i did not think were central. what i considered central continues to be the law. politicians cannot raise it. that is good. john mccain and i always said this was only one tng and we needed to build on it. in citizens united, the entire foundation that we built upon was destroyed. that was the longstanding rule that corporations could not use their treasurys. they could not use their money for political purposes. and the law that labor unions

could i do the same thing. the entire campaign finance system has been eviscerated and all the one of the building blocks still exists. that is incredibly regrettable and is why i created a group last year and has been very successful raising this issue of progressives united which is the group in america working with other groups to raise awareness of how devastating one of the worst decisions in the histor of the supreme court actually is to our system of government. host a question for you. you are critical of president obama for deciding that he will accept superakcs. some are calling this a game changer. will you explain why you think this is a bad idea? guest: i think is a bad idea to

allow his ople to be involved in super pacs. i am proud to be a co-chair of his reelection campaign. on a we range of issues especially international issues, i think he is doing a really good job. he is doing well right now. the only thing that is a drag on his campaign at the moment is any kind of affiliation with this corrupt system. i think it is a way for democrats to lose at the local level. if any democrat believes we are going to win a battle with corporate money, they are crazy. we are going to lose. we can ever compete if the question is who has the most money in a system of corporate contributions. guess what you are going to get for policy? you are going to get corporate policy and corporate democrats. we have seen this before.

what did soft money buy? it bought nafta and other trade agreements that shifted the industrial base overseas because democrats and republicans were both corporate- tied. it destroyed a lot of the differences and opportunities for individuality in radio. as i sit here in manhattan, we think about the corporate purchase of both democraand republican votes to destroy our economic system through wall street. to repeal the glass-steagall act which was the protection after the depression of our banking system by separating investment houses fro banks. whilthis was all part of this ugly system, it is back with a vengeance. if anyone believes there is an independent as the law requires from the candidate, that ia

joke. even the supreme court justices are saying this is a farce. i think this will be overturned especially if president obama getso pickhe nominees for the supreme court. host: this is from madison, wisconsin. caller: first-time caller, long time listener. this is a great service to the country. senator, thank you for being a voice during the a conception of the patriot act to say maybe we should slow this. in regard to the candidates and their willingness to speak about foreign policy, i was wondering about what you thought aut ron paul. guest: it is great to hear from

madison, wisconsin. obviously, ron paul and i agree on some issues. he w willing to challenge some of our on wise interventions. he believes that we ought to have a congressional review of interventions overseas including to get more serious about the power to declare war on behalf of the congress. he opposed the patriot. there were a number of congressman that were smart enough to say this thing goes too far. i do not agree with some of his other views that deals with aspects ofmmigration. i am not going to be voting for ron paul but we do have some common ground. i compare him to the pure talking points of the republican candidates on issues like iran or campaign finance. these guys really have no differences between them.

what sidhe is on one day from the next. host: our next call for the rmer senator is from illinois. good morning. caller: good morning. i think you have a tremendous backgroundn terms of honoring the constitution. i am going to give you a challenge because one book describes civilizatio. civilization is the proper unit for analysis. we are the stewards. we have a stewardship responsibility to our former governme. that is why we have to save our process first before we go into other units, into other nations. they can look to us and we can demonstrate by example. you referenced in your

discussions with the white house. it is in manual for what is going on politically. i will pick up your book and i will read it next week. i have a lot of respect for you. i think we have to demonstrate the larger issue. thank you. guest: wonderful comments. i shld be reading that book myself as i continue to study this subject. you make a good point about the constitution and our stewardship of. half of my book is about errors we made about how we look at the rest of the world and our military interventions. the secondt is a concern about the way in which the fears of 9/11 were exploited for political purposes. one is in the area of the patriot act and legislation that was used as a vehicle to t into place an old wish list of

the fbi having to look into people's library records and doing searches of people's homes when ty were not there. it was a per grab. that was one example. the other was the interpretation of article two of the constitution under geoe bush and his legal adviser. they basically took a new view. they said we have been attacked by a different organization so the law does not apply any more. if you want to do some wiretapping, we do not have to go to a foreign intelligence court. this is a direct attack on our constitution, the very foundation put together saying that there needs to be checks and balances. it is one of the most important developments coming out of 9/11. it needs to be fixed.

the whole story of america going to sleep has to do with the fact that our freedoms since 9/11 have not been fixed. host: this is a republican. caller: how are you doing this morning? guest: is it snowing? caller: it is actuallyrapping up. guest: good to get the report. caller: i just wanted to thank you for your service. i am a replican myself, but i voted for you over ron johon. i am not too impressed from what i have seen from ron. if you were to run for president, what would your

budget proposal be? would you cut some spending and save us young people like myself in the next 20 or 30 years? what would you cut? not the obvious answers like defense. thank you. guest: this is what wisconsin has been about ithe past. here is a republican that calls me up and does not agree with me on everything and voted for me independently. this is what we have to get back to instead of this blood and guts stuff. i thank you for your attitude. i have been thinking on a daily basis of what kind of budget i would put together a. when i came to the senate, i came with specific plan that had to do with ideas, larger ideas about closing tax

loopholes. we puthat into place. working with both parties, we got rid of the deficit before george bush got into office. part of the answer is going to have to be not having the bush tax cuts extended forever. i think people should have a seris exemption of up to $10 million per couple. it is not necessary to give up that revenue. i think there are many places where we can identify programs at do not work. i had a great deal of success in the senate. identifying things that no longer had their usefulness. ronald reagan was right when he said the closest thing to immortality is a federal program becauset develops its own constituency. some of her federal programs,

they had their relevance at one time but they became wasteful and bloated. we need to have that kind of analysis. u say defense spending. making sure defense spendings relevant to the threats that are around us. way too much of the defense budget goes to those military contracts and things that do not work well. let's say you and ian agree that we are not going to cut it, but let's make it more targeted to what we need to do. those would be some of the things i would look to in formulating a budget. host: well, his question was prediced on future political ambitions. there is a bit of a discussion going on as you are talking about what your intentions might be in the future. governor, a presidential bid? water you thinking about for your political future? guest: i am not thinking about

running for office at all. my family is very happy about it after 28 years in a row being in public service. i am a private citizen. some of these guys that campaigned against me all right, to have an opportunity to look at the rld in this way. it is a great thing to serve the public. i have an opportunity now to sit back and think about what i wrote about in my book. i never had the chance to do that because i had to adjust the day to day issues that i had to address. we had to deal with a flood and the budget in wisconsin. i have seen this, i was on the intelligence committee and the foign relations committee.

i am very worried that we are losing our focus. i can do that as an elected official, but at the moment, i am having better success getting that message out as someone who is writing, thinking, and talking about it. host: the people should know that the style of the book is a tick tock of events. curious about how you kept all the details of that in the book. guest: i should have kept a journal, but i did not. i did not have that kind of discipline. a lot of itame from memory during the book. i have this tendency to come back from a meeting or tripped and make my staff listened to stories. i hired a research assistant. i asked him to go and interview

people who work with me to see if they remember the incidents the same way i did. we wanted to be sure that -- we went back and jeremy talked to the ambassadors of the time to see if they had the same recollection that we did. areelieve my recollections wit accurate as possible. some of the more entertaining storiesi knew they were right because i left pretty hard with a happened. it is a serious book but ere is some entertaining stuff that i think people would enjoy. we try to use it to make serious points. host: any push back from your colleagues about revealing details? guest: the guy that was going to one of theae, funniest stories in the book was

about him. so far, so good. host: next for the former senator, the white is an independent -- dwight is an independent. are you there? caller: everyone is talking about the middle east. corporations do not want to take any responsibility anymore so they moved jobs overseas while they get tax breaks. and all these wars is bankrupting america. they just do not make any sense. i would like to say on a couple of calls a while back, the segment a while back, the caller from florida -- he was a republican. they want to raise the minimum wage there.

my redneck friends here would say th everything would go about. that is all i got to add. host: thank you very much. minimum wage in the overall effe on the economy. guest: here is a caller who is saying wait a minute. you nnot just focus on the middle east. what about china and its influence in africa? what about the iranian influence in latin america? th is something that we need to become more aware of. al qaeda is still very aive in northern africa. the former counter terrorist chief as i pointed out in the book says there is still a serious challenge there. there is a chapter about al qaeda in northern africa in

places like algeria and mali. in nigeria, there is a group which is carrying out huge numbers of attacks on western targets andnternal religious targets. it appears to me they either have an al qaeda connection or use the same tactics. we have to be able to lk at these different places at once. i am a strong believer that a stro minimum wage is necessary. it is important to protect the livings of people. if you do not have an adequate minimum wage, if people cannot make ends meet, the minimum wage i thinks a good program. when i was in the senate, i consistently supported reasonable increases. host: this week from a viewer who writes --

guest: the nafta deal with china and other deals, central american free trade agreement, they are all out of this same broth. there were agreements that pretended to be balanced but were heavily balanced toward the country on the other end of the deal. thereere not enforcement mechanisms in case the workers' rights in those countries were not respected. if there was fancy language of our respecting it but no way to enforce it. this is how we lost jobs to mexico and a lot of the jobs in mexico shifted to china. we lost a huge number to china and other countries. wisconsin was one of the most industrial bases of the country

and we took a huge loss in places like green bay, sheboygan, and also the loss of industry in a city like milwaukee which was once one of the greatest nufacturing towns. we still have some, but whave lost many jobs because of the trade agreements that were paid for with soft money that both parties were involved in. host: baton rouge, louisiana, good morning. you are wrong for russ feingold. -- you are on. caller: how are you doing this morning? i'm a ron paul supporter. i do not mean to put you on the spot, but i have read part of the previous guest, pat buchanan's, book. my question comes down to the economy and how we invest in

foreign aid. i get in trouble when i say this because a lot of people take it the wrong way, and i hope you do not, senator. i think we are a bankrupt nation. we will never get out of this debt with the policies that we have. i think much of it has to do with t security of israel. i'm not against the security of israel, but us going into iraq, on the verge of going into iran to try to prevent their nuclear proliferation, and there is no proof that they have these weapons or that they are really trying to have the advantage to get them, i guess what i'm trying to say is that at some point we're going to run out of money to help these foreign countries, paying israel to stay one step ahead, paying their neighbors to not attack. when our money runs out, what will happen to the state of

israel? china will not take them under their wing. the only outlet they will have will be to go back to europe. when they depend on europe, the jewish people always get in trouble when they go there. we simply cannot sustain this. host: russ feingold? guest: iran is not just a threat to israel. they are also a threat to the u.s. if they get nuclear weapons. because israel is an ally as well as the threat to our security, i think we need to take seriously what is going on in iran, but that does not mean i advocate an attack or invasion. as to foreign aid, i agree with a little bit. i do not want us to just throw more money at different countries in order to solve our problems. but i say in my book, "while america sleeps," it is to help reach out and improve our

knowledge of these countries while having a more positive relationship with these other countries. let's be citizen diplomats. maybe we should go for two or three weeks per year to help them learn certain things that would be of use to them and it did help us learn things as well. there's one guy in wisconsin named damon. he came to me in 1994 and told me he was a dairy farmer. he went to the former soviet republic and visit a dairy farm there. this farmer went out and he said there were so much bacteria in the milk that it could have walked to the market by themselves, that is a wisconsin joke, but it helped them come up with better techniques. 10 years later, he has gone to something like 30 other countries and has done the same thing. he is helping us sure that america's interest in other people, that we want to share

information and skills, and he arned about another country. heas able to come back to pulaski, wisconsin, and tell people what it is like. we lack a scouting report on other countries. even football teams go and scout the other teams. we're at a huge advantage when we do not have a significant knowledge of the rest of the world and we really need to bring up our game in this regard. host: ohio on the democratic line. good morning. caller: a have a lot of respect for you, senator fine gold, and i hope you run for office again. feingold.r the general was recently on zakaria on cnn. he was a rational and had a deep

understanding of foreign policy and he said the iranian regime was an actor. he said a strike at this time would be, in his words, "destabalizing." iran has never threatened the u.s. and comments from ahmadinejad have been misrepresented by the very same people who that is into iraq. i believe you voted against the iraqi war revolution and you were on the intelligence community -- committe at that time. guest: i was not, but i voted against it. caller: senator durbin was and voted against it. do think those operating out of the office of special plans in the pentagon, those who created and disseminated false intelligence, should they be held accountable?

on c-span, they have often had the former head of the cia, michael shearer, on and he's in the three issues on what people are angry with the u.s. is our support for dictators in the region, the u.s. support for israel matter what they do -- no matter what they do, and also our military bases to access the oil in that region. if you could talk about the core reasons of people in that part of the world are so angry about with the u.s., as michael shearer has talked about. guest: one of the stories i tell in my book has to do with, frankly, my first experiences meeting with a large group of islamic americans and foreign students in madison, wisconsin,

did you days after 9/11. they had an open house to have a dialogue. they had a wonderful reception and had a great time talking. i asked the question the basically asked, what the source of the the dealings in the middle east war. there were comments about israel and the palestinians, and part of the iq war, no-fly policies come humanitarian issues at the time. the overwhelming criticism was that we supported dictators and despots in the middle east, as you said. that is the big one. we have these values of democracy, human rights, women's rights, and yet we support people like ben ali in tunisia, mubarak in egypt, yemen, and even on occasion working with saddam hussain when it was convenient for us. this is what people say. it galled them that this is what

we claim that we cared about it we picked some died like musharraf and went with him instead of making connections with the people. that is a fundamental flaw. i know what people say. you do not what you're going to get. -- do not know what you're going to get. we have to figure out a way to work with the actual people in the country and not just pick some strongman that will repress people and cause them to hit us much longer. the root of our relationship with iran have to do with the relationship we made in this regard in the early 1950's. it had finally gotten a free leave chosen prime minister. with the cia and others, we took him out of power. this was a great frustration for the iranian people that led to the dominance of the shah of iran. this is the kind of mistake we have made.

host: back to campaign finance, last friday in "the new york times," if the head of the progressive policy institute and former finance director for the democratic national committee had an op-ed. here is just a little bit of what was written.

guest: he could not be more wrong. we saw his comments in "the n.y. times." my director responded. it is like saying there's one series of organized crime's alleged open up another to balance it. we've already seen what this system of soft money did before mccain-feingold. as i write in my book, we talk about the bad the been actually hear people talking about these corrupt contributions on the floor of the senate while voting on it. the idea that this gentleman thinks it's a good idea to go back to unlimited contributions to the party, that is a complete defeatist attitude. what he is forgetting is that things are much better in the 2008 election when we did not have these huge contributions because citizens united had not yet occurred and we had banned soft money to the party. what happened?

people want more democratic -- went the more democratic route. people who felt that they could not be part of the political process went back to giving $10, $20. corporate america saw that and they were worried. this saw the face of democracy and they were terrified. what did they do? thengineered a decision like citizens united. they said we would never be able to deal with that because we cannot get the decision overturned, so let's get rid of that. it's the most defeatist approach i could think of. host: tweeting this question -- of that's what i do every day. it is what progressives united is all about. i pounded it with some people i have worked with in the past ride around the anniversary of

the citizens united decision. you can go to citizensunited.org and be part of a group that is working to make people aware of citizens united and also to support legislation, such as the disclosure act to make sure people know where contributions are coming from, get rid of the federal elections commission which is a joke, but also to call up the candidates, democratic republican or anyone else, if they want to get involved in corporate money in this game to the unlimited contributions. this is a system that, i believe, is devastating for those who are progressives. we believe money should not control policy, that people should. we worked every sing day, and i think with great success, to highlight everything from the super committee, which we were worried would give away the store and create a bad budget, to commanding that there be a

real investigation of what happened on wall street and the president took steps in that regard after we raised the issue. we're proud of what we have done and we want to encourage people to join us because we are specifically focused on this, but we have worked with other groups like democracy for america of and moveon.org instead of just shrugging our shoulders and saying this is the way it has to be. host: another call from wisconsin for you. an independent. caller: hello, senator. i was just wondering if you give your take on everything that is going on in our state right now. i do not know if you covered that already, but i got a late start in watching this. guest: we have not. he is calling from the granite capital in the world. our state has been thrown into a

horrible situation. gov. walker got elected. he won t election and it was one where all the democrats lost and he got into office. but for him. the problem is he decided to attack our state. he did not want to work with the other side and work with the people. he wanted to attack the public bargaining rights have been around for decades. weaver the first-aid in the country to have these laws. -- we were the first ever in the country to have these laws. it is a basic right. he used every brutal tactics, every unfair approach. i served in the wisconsin state senate for 10 years and he broke every tradition and he had a desire to destroy this lot. he has succeeded for now. i was over 1 million people to sign the petition to recall this governor. we do have a recall law, so what is it for? it is for a situation for when a

governor has waged war on the working people of the state in a way that no one could have predicted that has divided families and friends, but a state that it usually very genteel and cooperative, community-oriented, and he has turned it into a war zone. we need to reverse that. i think we have a good chance of replacing that probably as soon as early june. host: our last call view is from kansas. a republican. caller: good morning. how are you today? guest: fine, thanks. caller: i just recently completed "the world american made." one of the points he makes is that americans, we have an involvement all around the world. we are a superpower. the american instinct is two fold. on one hand, we want to get involved in something and as

soon as the get there, we're looking for a way out. the instinct, i think, as part of the humanitarian feel. we were watching the news out of syria. we are told that we do not have a heart. it was tragic to see what was going on in syria. we were talking to each other and when we say someone has to do something, it has to be house that does it. and we were watching the news in afghanistan, the people in the streets rioting, the two american soldiers that have been killed over the burning of the qoran, and we think we just need to get the hell out of there. we want to be engaged in these things, but at the same time i'm really looking for the exit. how do we get our arms around all of that and do the right thing and see the job through?

guest: this is one of the chapters in my book, while america sleeps, talking about in for a penny come in for pound. once we go into a situation, we have the attitude that we have to stay there forever. getting the job done is a meaningless term. what does that mean? we resolve the differences that have been there for thousands of years? that's absurd and will not happen. our purpose going in was to get osama bin laden. , got him in pakistan. what are we still there? it's crazy. it is not making any sense and it is sapping our economy. president obama showed great wisdom in regards to libya. he did not have to send in boots on the ground to have people there three years and years because of the argument that once you are there you cannot leave until it's all taken care of. he very wisely engaged the

community. we did things to make a difference to keep the tipping point from going against gaddafi. we got rid of the guy. that shows the wisdom. that shows a president that gets it instead of the crazy idea that you have to invade one country at a time and stay there like we're playing a game of risk a set of having a better relationship with the rest of the world. host: russ feingold's new book, "while america sleeps." "while america sleeps."