irans going -- veterans going back to the revolutionary war. it's up next on booktv, a little less than an hour. >> good evening. and on behalf of the marines memorial association, i would like to welcome you to tonight's program. on the book "those who have borne the battle." the author is dr. jim wright, and dr. wright is an american historian, the president emeritus of dartmouth college and a marine. my name is bucky peterson, and i'm a director emeritus on the marines memorial association board of directors. before we begin, a few quick words about the marines memorial. the marines he moil association -- memorial association is a nonprofit

veterans' organization chartered to honor the memory of and commemorate the valor of members of the united states armed forces who were killed, lost or who died in military service. among its list of duties, amongst the list of duties for the marines memorial association is we're responsible for maintaining this extraordinary club, the marines memorial club. as a living memorial to those who have gone before and to pay tribute to those who carry on. to learn more about our organization, visit our web site at www.marineclub.com. and before we begin, please, take a moment to turn off your cell phones as i just did and

any other noise makers that you may have. and while you're doing that, i'd like to take this opportunity to announce that on the 9th of may, this wednesday, ms. paula broadwell will speak on her book, "all in: the education of general david petraeus." mrs. broadwell is a west point graduate who was embedded in general petraeus' staff in afghanistan. she draws on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with general petraeus and his top officers and soldiers to tell the inside story of this commander's development and leadership in war from every vantage point. the event starts as it is this evening at 6 p.m. so that's 6 p.m. this coming wednesday.

lastly, you've got question cards, um, on each of your seats, and i would encourage you to make use of these blue question cards early on as questions pop up in your mind. that's how we'll handle the q&a tonight. and, please, hand them in to the staff once you've noted your question, and the staff will be mingling amongst you. audience questions then will be posed to dr. wright by me during the second half of the program based on your questions. it's now my great pleasure to introduce this evening's distinguished guest, dr. jim wright. dr. wright is the son of a world war ii veteran, and dr. wright

himself joined the marine corps at the age of 17. he's from georgia lean that disturb galena, illinois, a small town near dubuque, iowa, where i went to school. and if college president, my college president, dr. couchman who is now deceased knew i was with dr. wright -- because i graduated with only the slimmest of margins. [laughter] from the university of dubuque. he'd be rolling over in his grave about 5,000 rpms. so, dr. wright, please, allow me to continue. after his tour in the marine corps, he went to college, university of wisconsin, and eventually became a history professor at dartmouth. in 1969. he served as the president of dartmouth from 998 -- 1999 to 2009, and since 2005 he has

visited most of our military hospitals and has encouraged support for the wounded veterans in those hospitals. he is a director on the board of the injured marines semper fi fund, one of the ten top charities recently rated by charity navigator. his writings have been featured in "the new york times," boston globe, christian science monitor, npr just to name a few. and he is recognized by the education field, the veteran field and other service organizations as one of the foremost spokespeople for our young veterans today. ladies and gentlemen, please, join me in welcoming dr. jim wright. [applause]

>> thank you, bucky. it's an honor for me to be introduced by you. i have admired so much your work on behalf of veterans with the california state university system particularly. as i've told you, you and chancellor reid are really models for individuals who are pushing hard to make available opportunities for veterans. and i was down at the marine corps recruit depot last friday for graduation of a boot camp class x it was the first time i've been back on that base since i finished boot camp in 1957. and like bucky, i had a drill instructor who surely would roll over in his grave if he knew i was the parade reviewing officer on the grinder down there. [laughter] and i would be very happy to see him roll over in his grave, as a matter of fact. [laughter] i'm very grateful to general mike myett for inviting me to

speak here. i admire general myett very much. i served with him on the board of the semper fi fund. i admire him for his service to this country and to those who have served the country, and his service did not end when he retired. he's really just a remarkably inner in jettic figure who tries and does make a difference. and, of course, i'm grateful to my dartmouth friends in the bay area for be acknowledging my visit, for publicizing it and for joining us here tonight. san francisco is a special place for me in all sorts of ways. i've spoken at this club a number of times representing dartmouth. we've held events here. but more importantly, i shipped out of treasure island here in 1958. of course, we really shipped out of oakland, but i was -- we were at treasure island preparing to ship out.

i went on a jeep carrier, and then i came back here on a troop carrier in the spring of 18960, and i was discharged at treasure island just 52 years ago, in late april of 1960. my story tonight and the story of this book is not a personal one, but it's surely informed by my background and experience. i think most of us who write books write things that are informed by our own background and experience, and this one explicitly is for me. i grew up in galena, illinois, as bucky said. general grant's hometown when the civil war began. i was a world war ii baby. i was born in 1939, and i remember my father going off to war, and i remember at the end of the war it seemed like everyone's father, so many people came home, and this town of roughly 4100 people at that time, 18 did not come home from the war. it was a town where people did

serve, and they served in this some very difficult places. and i grew up playing among the cannons in grant park, and i talk about that in the introductory chapter of this book. and then joined the marines at age 17. and it was a time, those of my generation, my age know going into the service was simply something that was expected of us. so you could wait to be drafted in the army or as we did, we joined the marines: there were 25 boys in my high school graduating class, five of us joined the marines, another half dozen went into the army, the navy or the air force, and i think three or four went to college and that was, basically, the breakdown at that time in the community where i grew up. but after i got out of the marines i decided to go to school. and once i started, i never stopped, and i haven't stopped yet because there's so much to learn and there's so much to do. while at the university of wisconsin in the 12960s --

1960s, clearly, i went through a disengagement with the military. the vietnam war was something that increasingly troubled me. not the kids who were fighting there, i worried about them a lot, wondered if i knew them, and i'm sure i did knowsome some. but it was a difficult time. and then i came to dartmouth, the campus closed down in my first spring because of protests over the war expansion into cambodia. and then there was a major fight over rotc. but i reengaged with the marine corps and the military beginning in 2005. i've been really affected by accounts of the battle at fallujah in november of 2004, and i spoke to a friend, and he encouraged me to go down to the hospital, and i did beginning in the summer of 2005, went down to bethese that and talked to some -- bethesda and talked to some marines there, and i've

continued that. i was just down a week and a half ago. i've been down somewhere between 25 and 30 times, i guess, over the last several years. i generally walk the floor and talk to people bed to bed and chat with them about their own experiences. i ask them how they were injured, and it's really quite a tale that i guess i could reflect on all of the 900- 300-plus kids identify -- i've probably spoken to. this led me to other involvement with other veterans. i work with a couple of marines, senator webb and warner, when they're promoting the post-9/11 g.i. bill be. i had a meeting with the two of them in february 2008 urging them to include opportunities for veterans to go to private colleges. and we developed in senator warner's office the basic principle of what became the yellow ribbon program which is a

terribly important part of the g.i. bill. for the jefferson lecture at berkeley in 2010, it provided me an opportunity to reflect on some of these issues, and i thought i would just pick up a book or two and sort of immerse myself in america and its veterans. and i realized there wasn't a book there. and i started complaining about this, and a friend said quit complaining and write it yourself. and that's, basically, how this book started. for me it has been a reimmersion into american history. i loved american history, i loved teaching american history, but i've been away from my field for some 20 years while i was serving an administration. but this provided an opportunity for me to become reimmersed in it. and the book is an overview of the summit of america's -- the subject of america's war and those who fought them. it's a narrative, but it's also a a meditation on my part, a reflection. and i have some observations on

the current state of affairs. i have a number of ox vegases on the current state of affairs and what we think about war and what we think about those who fight our wars. some major themes that i pulled out as i thought american history was the idea of the citizen soldier. dating back to the american revolution. the concept that americans would leave their farms and their factories and their shops when the republic is threatened. and they'll to off to war. and as soon as the war was over, they would hurry home because they are not professional soldiers. i've come to realize its declining value as a description of those who serve and particularly since world war ii was the military forces have become less and less representative of the population as a whole. world war ii was the most representative of any of our wars and beginning with korea. the military was less and less representative of cross-sections of the society. and part of that because of

exemptions that were offered for college students beginning with korea and certainly in vietnam and then today with the all-volunteer army. george washington believed that all americans had an obligation as citizens of this republic to serve when the public was threatened, to be in the militia, to be available to be called up, and he also believed we all had to contribute our treasure to support those who serve. but his, his -- he also recognized that his own experience was negative. washington for all of the talk about the importance of citizen soldiers and the militia did not like the militia. he wanted a regular army. he wanted people that would when he said let's go down to virginia, they would go to virginia with him rather than saying, no, it's time for us to be planting the spring crops. sorry, general, we have to go home. and so he wanted full-time soldiers, and he got them

finally in the continental army. i've also looked at the way that america has viewed its veterans and the obligations we have to them historically. and from the very beginning there was a sense that because it was an obligation, a contract almost of those in this who are part of this republic to serve, there should be nothing given to those who are healthy x. beginning with the revolution, healthy meant if you had all your limbs, you were healthy, and you should not expect any support from the government. that has continued to be the principle although, obviously, in various wars, in all of our wars we started giving pensions to elderly veterans. but this changed dramatically beginning with world war ii where the g.i. bill provided opportunities for all of the veterans to go to school, to take out loans, to start businesses. and this has been the pattern ever since then. interestingly, during the 1920s and '30s and not just presidents hoover and coolidge

insisted that there should be no payment to healthy veterans, but even franklin roosevelt insisted the same thing. healthy veterans are not entitled to anything from the republic for simply doing their duty. he changed his mind during the second world war, fortunately. i've also reflected on the composition of the military today. when the all-volunteer force was approved in 1973, there was really a great fear on the part of many that the military would become a force composed of the poor and the minorities. this really has not happened today. but it's not a representative force either. it's more rural than urban, it's more southern than western, small town west than it is northern and eastern. there are very few college-educated people serving in the military. and it's my strong impression

although there's no evidence that i can find on this that it's also more generational. many of the people certainly today are sons or daughters of people who serve inside the military, and that sort of continues the demographic pattern that we've seen. it is more black and white than population as a whole reflecting, perhaps, the southern influence. but it is not representative in terms of hispanic or asian-american population. we give our veterans today great rhetorical, even emotional support. i'm struck by the comparison with the war in vietnam. the war in vietnam was, obviously, as unpopular as the wars are today, as the wars have been looking at public opinion polls. and yet we're not blaming those we're fighting today, we're crediting them. there's tremendous applause for them. but i worry a bit about this applause, because the applause

will stop, and i do think there's very little understanding of who these young men and young women are who are serving. there's very little understanding of what it is that they have been doing on our behalf. these wars are mysterious, they're impersonal. we really don't know what's going on there. there are very few news media that are covering the wars in detail and, quite frankly, there's not a lot to cover most of the time. there are no major battles, there's not really been major battles for several years. there were a few in iraq, but they're not major battles that can grab front page headlines or for a lead story in the evening news. there's some human interest stories, there's some stories of tragedy, of heroism. but there's no real understanding of what it is day by day that these young men and young women do. i think that we're fighting defensive wars against unclear

enemies. and this is not what the american military is best trained to do. in the play that was on broadway last year called ajaques in iraq -- ajax in iraq, there was a line one soldier said, we're the only ones in if uniform, you know? how do we know who it is to fight? we're the only ones in uniform. last summer when i was visiting the bethesda hospital following the spring and summer battles over in the afghanistan, and in late july one day when i was there, there were 45 in the ward who were suffering from combat-related injuries. one of them had been injured by a mortar round. three of them had been injured by gunshot wounds. in each case from 123450eu7er fire -- sniper fire someplace. and 41 had been injured by

explosives. none of these people saw the person who detonated the explosive that injured them. it's a different sort of war. it's a defensive sort of war. last, ten days ago when i was at bethese bethesda, there were fewer people in the ward, and i actually met a marine who had gunshot wounds from a fire fight. that was the first time in a couple of years. and it's really just, again, quite different. we're saving more casualties on the battlefield, about 10% of the combat casualties in afghanistan and iraq have died. in vietnam it was more than a third of the combat battle casualties that died. it has to do with a number of factors. it has to do with the armor that they wear today that protects vital organs, it has to do with the helmets that they wear that

protects them. it has to do with battlefield medicine which is incredibly sophisticated with medevac where they can get most of these kids out within 30 minutes to a field hospital. and it also has to do, quite frankly, with the explosives which maim these young servicemen and women terribly, but gunshot wounds are more lethal. gun shot wounds are more carefully placed, and more people die. there's a higher death rate from gunshot wounds. the same was true in vietnam as it is in the wars today. so we have new types of injuries. a lot of amputations. when i go through the hospital ward, it's common place to see somebody missing one or more limbs due to an explosion. there are a lot of more face and head injuries due to the explosions. i mention in the book one of the most poignant and memorable things i saw was when they were

showing me a new ward in the hospital at bethesda for people who were suffering from head injuries. in all of the bathrooms there were no mirrors because they didn't want these young people to see their reflection in a mirror without somebody being with them to be able to help them through this experience. it's, it's just a different sort of war we know that there's a greater incidence of ptsd. we can't really compare it with previous wars because we're far better at diagnosing this than we were in vietnam. we only started identifying this, basically, eight or nine years after the troops had pulled out of vietnam. in the other wars, it wasn't identified at all. but clearly there's more of it, and we're also understanding that mild traumatic brain injury can cause ptsd, and the military

and the national football league are discovering this at about the same time. there's -- getting your bell rung is no longer something to shrug off and to dismiss. the imperative, i guess, my takeaway from this is that we need to remember the human face of war. in some profound ways, i don't know if there's anything more human than engaging in war. it's ironic and even perverse. there's nothing fundamentally more human than asking somebody to do this. and i think we have to reflect on what it is we ask these young men and young women to do. all of us bring up our children with a set of principles where we ask them to learn, and among these principles certainly in each case would be two. one would be to avoid situations that are dangerous. don't put yourself at risk. and the other is don't harm

other people. they're personal, they're moral, their spiritual, there are legal strictures against harming other people. then these 18 and 19-year-olds we put into the armed forces we say, well, you have to forget these two rules. you have to be prepared to put yourself at risk and do it quite regularly, and you have to be prepared to harm other people. and then they come home, and we say forget, go back to the old lessons and forgetting these things is very, very difficult. one does not forget easily. i followed the account of a young man who had been kill inside korea, and i think it sort of summarizes the human face of war as well -- and this could be repeated in the any number of wars. late in the afternoon of july 5, 1950, a young soldier huddle inside a foxhole in the rain in south korea. his unit, the first battalion,

21st infantry regiment of the 24th division had just arrived reassigned from their occupation duty in japan. a north korean tank approached, and when the bazooka team fired, the tank opened up with its machine guns, and the young man was shot dead. his team withdrew, taking his body with them. shad rick was the first announced american serviceman killed in the korean war. a journalist was present when the team brought his body to a hut that the medics had occupied. she has been a front-line correspondent in world war ii and had left the tokyo office of the new york herald tribune to go with the troops to korea. she wrote that this dead young soldier had a look of surprise on his face. quote: the prospect of death had probably seemed as unreal to the private as the entire war still seemed to me.

he was very young, indeed. his fair hair and frail build made him look far less than his 19 years. the medic standing there said simply, what a place to die. and "the new york times" would write: he died as doughs usually die, in a pelting rain in a foxhole. back in skin fork, west virginia, shadrick's parents learned of their son's death that morning at breakfast when a neighbor rushed in telling them that he had heard it on the radio. mrs. shadrick was devastated by the death of one of her ten children, and she could not discuss it. mr. shadrick, who had worked in the coal mines for 37 years, later talked to reporters who described him as sad, but resigned. his son, he said, was the best there was. never caused us a mite of worry. mr. shadrick had accepted his

son's interest in joining the army at age 17, had signed the permissions for it. when he was asked by a reporter what he thought about his young soldier's assignment to the conflict, he said simply: he was fighting against some kind of government. when a reporter asked him if he knew where korea was, he said, yes, korea was the place where his boy was killed. this sort of story would be repeated many times, 37,000, in that war and in the wars that would follow. we ask our youngsters to go out and do some things that none of us, many of us don't understand. some of you in this room do. i was struck by one young marine that i spoke to that talked about being on a patrol in iraq, and their vehicle took some fire from a farmhouse, and they started a fire fight with those

who were inside the farmhouse. he noticed that a young boy who was frightened ran out of the farmhouse and got caught in the crossfire and fell down in the farm yard. the people were in the farmhouse, they either retreated out the back or were killed, and this young marine jumped out of the vehicle and ran over to the boy. lying there in the dust. and he realized quickly that this boy was dying, but he was still alive, and he held him. and hisser is crept in the -- sergeant in the vehicle said, come on, it's time for us to go. we've got to get out of here, they're coming back. and he said to me, i was just so torn by that because i knew that my unit, my guys, people i cared about a lot were in that vehicle, and they did need to get out of there. and i needed to be there for them to go. but he said, i also thought i don't want this young boy to die without another human being holding him. and so i knelt there in the dust, and the boy finally made a

sound and rattled and died, and i put him down resting his body in the dust, and i ran back to the vehicle and got in, and my sergeant said i'm going to court-martial you. you put us all at risk. fortunately, nobody court-martialed him. he said they were right, i shouldn't have done that. as a marine, it was my obligation to get back with my unit. my view on this is that this is, this is, as i said, the most human of things we can do. and what a choice to ask a young 19-year-old to make, to make this sort of decision. but they do it, they do it often. they're remarkably professional in what they do. we talk now about everyone being a hero, and i think of the people who are serving as being so courageous and so remarkable and brave. but there's no longer much use of the word "heroism" in a contemporary sense. but this goes back to abraham lincoln at gettysburg.

in his wonderful, poetic remarks on a battlefield that was still stained by the blood of some 8,000. when he spoke in the fall, there was no names, there were no exploits, no bat be l accounts. rather, there was a poignant eulogy for all who sacrificed, and he said they were heroeses, all. and we continue to talk about heroes, all. ..

the 1% are privileged and entitled and 99% of us pay the bills for them and we will hear more of that coming forward. i think that there's also a 99% and 1% ratio that we don't talk about so much. about 1% and less than 1% of our population serves in the military today. about 1% of our family have sons or daughters who are saving in the military today and 99% of the simply are not sacrificing. we are basically unaware of what they do. this is the first sustained war in american history where there's not even been attacked to pay for the war. vietnam came late, but there was a surtax in the vietnam war to help pay for the cost of the

war. if that tax cuts at the outset of the word nobody dares talk about taxation today. i wrote several senators and congress. men and women much or all of whom i a first relationship with instead you know, if you're talking about this, maybe it is a surtax on individual income and corporate income to help pay for this war rather than let these kids come back from the war that they are fighting and say now you have to pay for it. none of the suit people with an eye for a first name relationship even answered my letter. there's nobody in washington. a tax as they know is the third rail of our politics. ironically, as much as american don't want anymore, i'm sure that such a tax could he approved, but it couldn't be and it won't be. that is nature of order today. i have been immersed for the last several years trying to understand this and i'm an old

history teacher. my interest is having the biggest lecture and i can possibly have to talk about some of these issues that i think are terribly important. there is a history lesson here, but it goes beyond the history lesson. there's a civics lesson. a lesson in the way that democracy organizes itself. a lesson in the sacrifices that we ask our citizens to take on and i'm just delighted to be here tonight. i'll go anyplace to talk on the subject and i'd be happy to answer the questions you have now. [applause] >> i think i speak for all of us, doc to. thank you for your tremendous

capturing the essence of what the young military men and women woman faces today in the world that they come back to. and the first question you talk about in your book that veterans are portrayed as the victims. what we do take that off the description of veterans? >> yeah, i think the vietnam veterans are often considered veterans pier one of your wars people were considered victims and i think that's a condescending term to use. and i don't think and i think in this case a writeup about them as victims it condescending. these young men and women signed

a. they enlisted and i think we need to be proud of them was attempting to defend that some poor souls who found themselves in a place they didn't want to be. some of them have found themselves in places they didn't want to be coming but that's true in every word. i suspect they assigned that. they are not victims. they are quite remarkable young people who are trying to serve their country. >> seriously question back on your discussion with your first name friends in washington. there seems to be a sort of duplicity in d.c. these days. national leaders want to reserve the right to engage military forces and multiple assignments. yet they do not want to fully fund our active duty forces. the result is repeated deployments. the act to reserve and guard units and they are not really

designed for continuous or repeated tours. >> i think -- i won't get into the duplicity in washington, but i think that is true that we have not -- we did not mobilize the force sufficient for the worst that we have been fighting over the last decade. part of that is because a decade or so ago, beginning in 2001 in afghanistan nobody predict that, nobody seemed to think that much about how one of these words would take it they didn't think about the cost of these wars. we should have mobilized a larger military force. there surely should've been more marines, more army in future you into treating paratroopers rather than us at these people have deployments of five or six times. i don't think anyone can go through this -- go through combat zones as many times has the best these young people to

do without suffering significant consequences. 56 of the military today are married. these people are leaving families behind and they go back out for the third or fourth claimant and i just think it's a tremendous burden they've taken on. >> several questions have come in on the increasing role of contract employees. in your opinion, you are not on how this impacts the military. >> yeah, it is interesting. i was telling at mcr d. in san diego at camp pendleton. i said what about the mess hall? that's all civilian contract. i said what is happening on the marine corps. i was on the mass hole all the time. i think that's good. i peel potatoes and japan. i worked in a scullery on alice t. i worked in a pot check can

paint you a day. i've done it all. i think it's good they're not asked to do that now, but more seriously the people who were on guard duty, serving that there will rules that the bases in in afghanistan and iraq. and i don't know if i want to say there's too much of it. that's a harder question to deal with. they can relate to military certain obligations, that's good. but what does happen is we don't have to account for this. they're not military, said there is a different system. the numbers of people who have been over there have really been quite significant and only when there is a significant incident, like some of the killing of the hanging of bodies in falluja in the spring of our floor. we realize how many of them are over there? i think there's a fuller accounting of this. >> guest:

>> several questions regarding posttraumatic stress and psychological support. so first, how are we doing in the area posttraumatic stress? and secondly, if they're in psychological support outside of the posttraumatic stress? are the young veterans hoping to counseling or do they consider it to be weak in stigmatization of themselves? >> yeah, the answer to the first part of your question depends on the observation of the second part. i'm not sure that they are open to counseling. it's hard for them to come forward. as i said to a group of the first researching the darpa to go to school, there's nothing harder for a 22 or 23-year-old guy, particularly a marine who has served in iraq or afghanistan to come forward and say i'm scared.

i am nervous. i'm angry. i can't sleep. i'm apprehensive. i think you have to be lent to do that. there needs to be i think more of an openness that encouraging them to do that. and finally, the va recently expanded significantly the number of mental health counselors trying to understand it's time to step up and deal to provide support for quickly. there were more suicides in the military in 2000 night and there were people killed in combat zones in iraq and afghanistan. we need to do a better job, but i've been struck by the way the confidant of the marine corps, general turley was syria if it is the chief of staff of the army and trying to break through this and get people to understand if i'm apprehensive and i'm concerned that she don't say in language that i won't use in this company come on.

don't psa see or don't be afraid. you've got to go forward. i just have to young guy recently who was supposed to go back to iraq with his unit and may identify with ptsd in a search or print them out. he said he did this just to avoid serving with us this guy spent three times. he was set to go again good you got to get down to the nco ranks to really make a difference that i think it comes from the top. the military really is hierarchical. people try to follow orders, but this is a cultural thing. it's just harder to break through. >> is a couple questions on the all volunteer force. your views on the all volunteer force as history than the country? or is that caused weakness to pop up?

>> well, the all volunteer force as i suggested is not representative and that is unfortunate. so people often say, let's have a draft in the south and people urging a draft. i am not one of those people who would urge a draft. i think that the military does have a very professional force today and certainly futile to any of the major branches of government they'd rather have people listed and want to be there. but more profoundly there's 4.418 million-year-olds in the united states in that year the military forces accession as they put it about 165,000 people, less than 4% of the 18-year-olds that were asked, that served as a sign that because they're all volunteer he that year. that we could move away from volunteer and how the draft and you could have a laundry i

guess, but what 4% would it be would be the question and most people would say it must look at those who prefer to be there rather than somebody who strapped into the military service and who does not want to be fair and certainly those in his command would assume he wasn't there. so it is a difficult thing to do that. there's not an easy answer, but it's not representative. we have to represent the military better. we have to understand better who they are and what today's were asking asking them to do. many people say we need to draft because people in washington make decisions on war. it will be far more cautious about making those decisions at their own son or daughter are likely to be called up to go to this war. i believe that is such a cynical view of democracy. i refuse to accept that. if we people in washington who are sensitive about sending young americans off to war, only

if their own children are involved, but they'd be indifferent or not care as much as somebody else, they should not be in washington. we should never have people in public office functioning this way. >> a great question. which of my comments regarding the recent dartmouth grad, nathaniel and his book, one bullet away. >> date taken from is someone i've very proud of and i become a good friend in recent years. i was with him talking about this book in washington a couple weeks ago as a matter of fact. he's a great example i think of a liberal arts graduate going in the marine corps. he's a classics major at dartmouth. his unit was involved. he was in afghanistan first and then was involved in the invasion of iraq in march of 2003. the generation kill and the hbo film i'm not really tell what the unit and this classics major

at dartmouth once they got to baghdad while to take his platoon down to see babylon and the ancient -- some of the ancient ruins of iraq and i like that, although he said a few years later from a few months later rather he could have taken his platoon down there unless he had armored escort and a bigger unit but there was a time there in that brief window you could do that. he's just coming on the dartmouth board of trustees. he's a remarkable young man. >> this question speaks to the transition program and the military. the questioner says we go through boot camp, where 10 to 12 weeks heartache and to transform a young man or woman to become a military person and there's literally no process to

help them in the exit service. your comments in this area and the importance of a transition program, solid transition program? >> i think that's a very good observation. there needs to be a solid transition program for those leaving the service. i know that they are trying to do more in some of the major military installations for many of the people received their discharge and go back to civilian life. but i think what is required is just really to sort of the good personal counseling. we can do that in this country far more effectively than we can today. the young veterans have a higher unemployment rate than the population as a whole. there's more homelessness on the part of veterans than there is the population as a whole. we just need to do better than that. and the way to get it that it's finally disordered individual

support and counseling. there is not massive across-the-board programs. you've got to understand what it is, with the problems are and what it is you can do to deal with them. i really worry about counseling for injured veteran. we have come as i said, just some horrible injuries to dad. and if you bring a young soldier in a wheelchair over to a ballgame at at&t park there would be a standing ovation. everyone would cheer, teary-eyed and that's a good thing, but my concern is the music is going to stop. these guys are rock stars are out, but the musical style. the last world war i veteran just died in the last year, presumably the last veteran of the worst will die and 21 of five something like that. given the nature of the centuries, these guys deserve to be better than wards of the state. we need to find ways to look after them and encourage them to enlarge their own dreams and

that we need to find ways to help them meet their dreams. this could be done, but if she's going to take time, effort and the personal touch this very hard to find today that discharge letters from the veterans administration are so overwhelmed by the numbers. >> in the past, we at john wayne, iv murphy and others who made major impacts on the military to the movie industry. now we've got a act of valor and. your views on the impact of these movies on young today.

for jumping on a hand grenade to save others. it's remarkably heroic and courageous action. it's just overwhelming. we don't know how to handle these wars. we don't know how to define here is that these wars. everyone is upset at the gate has been a rock over there. >> last question. in past conflicts. the civilian leadership is shrinking to almost a macroscopic level of those who served. how does that impact on the civilian decisions made for the military forces? >> yeah, it is an interesting question is a far lower

percentage of veterans than anytime since maybe 1948 guests. and it has declined significantly just in the last 20 years. and i think this is not a good thing but maybe in some ways it's a little ironic. i think there is a good inclination, a part of many people in congress a summit that, this is for the military for this is for the veterans. all voted for it. i think you need to get a few more lance corporal sayer. would be more than happy to ask tough questions of people. the somebody's never been in the military may not want to ask tough questions. it's interesting if you look at presidential elections. the last several presidential elections, clinton beat a war hero. he beat a secular war hero and dole in 96, george bush the

second president bush had been in the national guard, but he beat al gore who has served in vietnam and kerry was defeated by bush the second time. mccain was defeated by obama. i don't think being a war veteran or war hero is not helpful, but it obviously doesn't put people over the top anymore and that's an interesting situation. but with fewer people serving the military, less than 1% serving, we have to recognize her going have a smaller and smaller proportion of veterans in almost every area of american mias including politics. we have to find ways to deal with that. >> on behalf of the marines memorial for your guests here tonight, thank you for coming here to share. [applause] >> thank you.

>> you are watching booktv on c-span 2. >> "john f. kennedy: the new frontier president" is the name of the book, published by nova publishers and professor david snead, chair of the history department at liberty university is the author. dr. sneed, let's talk about, what is this series of books? >> this is a series that no book publishing started to do six years ago. the idea was to get a series on the president's got the general reader, students in college in college or even advanced high school student could turn to to get basic information on the presidents of the united states. >> host: what are you writing about john f. kennedy?

>> guest: is started with one of my dissertations which was a book. i focus on eisenhower but it crossed over into the kennedy years. i got a taste of kennedy in the late 1990s and so that kind of set my entries to find that a little bit more about him. when the series came out, the needed authors and he asked me if i wanted to do the kennedy both. i said sure. i don't know a lot about him at this stage other than what i've read, but it would be a good follow-up to general eisenhower. an earthward challenging than i thought it would be, but i enjoyed it immensely. he's very different from eisenhower. eisenhower was much older, different generation. eisenhower has been the five-star general in world war ii, born in the 19th century. kennedy much younger by three decades. obviously different perspectives, different levels

of energy from a different political. and so, that posed a challenge. kennedy was different from eisenhower and some of his actions. eisenhower was generally faithful to his wife. kennedy hasn't been. so i knew that would be a challenge. >> host: how did you address that? >> guest: i want students in the general public to know he was thought that anybody else. he unfortunately did engage in affairs throughout his fee and does that undermine some of his policies to a degree. but i don't want to give too much attention to it because that was his private life and was between him and jacqueline kennedy. but it's also something that shouldn't be ignored. i did want to focus most of the book on what were his decisions and why did he make decisions he made. >> host: what is one decision you talk about the less

consequential to his presidency? >> guest: one of my criticisms that led to a new policy as he spoke about civil rights in the 1960 campaign as if he would be the representative for black america and he won the overwhelming black vote in that election, but he didn't do much once he was president. he really was as he strides: a bystander. he made a commitment and then did not. that does change the inmate to 60 when he witnessed through the newspapers and television at the time the birmingham riots in protest and police chief condor and the fire hoses disrupting the protesters. he was really horrified by that and i really think that is when

he truly understood or begin to understand the civil rights need to do something about. soon after that in june in 1863, he spoke out very eloquently against segregation in the south and many for civil rights legislation. that ultimately led to the civil rights act of 1964 and two lesser extent the voting rights act of 1965. >> host: his three years in the presidency, with a hopeful? >> guest: overall. he did not achieve everything he set out to do. think at times he was more interested in getting rid of that it in 64 than and he wasn't for issues. i think he learned as a president, which i give him credit for. his first year in office he really struggled on some foreign policy issues. in particular with the berlin crisis that summer. he had a summit meeting with khrushchev in vienna that did not go well, which she admitted

to. but he grew. he learned. he learned to be more calculated , too i say think more before he spoke. he had a tendency to use rhetoric that was almost inflammatory to go back to early in his campaign, his presidency in 1961 when the berlin crisis was going on he talked about the need to build fallout shelters. that caused a real stir, not a panic in the country, but raised levels of fear both in the united states and soviet union that may be this nuclear war might occur, whereas only get to the cuban missile crisis, he's much more restrained in how we handle that crisis. obviously a lot of it was done behind the scenes. but he tried to keep the rhetoric cooler and try to work through it with a solution behind-the-scenes. >> host: what is the new frontier part of this?

>> guest: he wanted to have a new frontier. that was his campaign promise. basically a new direction for the country. he believed the eisenhower administration and republican policies of the 50s had crohn's dale in the country wasn't doing a mass. he wanted to see growth economically, but the country had not experienced for a while. the 50s had been steady economic growth, but not the levels he needed. he thought the u.s. should do more in science. the thing that gets connected to the most is the state's program and the desire for the united states to compete there. he had it at his home state up front he wanted to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade and put a lot of resources into that. but basically been different and new and having hope for the future i'm trying to challenge the country to have hope for