e knowing -- learning what you did at the church commiee many. >> well i found that a lot o what people tnkabou inig imtngi led wf u icavi. itideahay rli i've always been in favor of strong position in national security for the united states. i k sp foie klean stngh smebef f o"aca foe," u describe yourself as a cold wr hawk and a post cold war ve. what does it mean? >> during the cold r ouththellw re omar t e yaofplrd world. a question about which form of political organization was eventually going to dominate the world. and therefore it was important forthe itedteshaa ng iet tmu po. afheoart dedin't exist anmore. we won. and the threats to american national security after the cold war, they'renotiar mumhl tn e th i kve mplydteoh ann le o threat. >> have you chaged your view on whher or not the soviet union was the danger that it was? >> no.

don't think so. it was never bcka t sie ilnd lsuhis moclid l passions. but i think it's hard now tbent years after the world car for people especially young people o t mbivwl to e s iy w dd wwa k t dohk w a mistake. i think soviet union eventually collapsed for a number of reasons. some of which had to dowith t fa schri y thar e clwa iro an life we've since turn of the century we have been in a constant state of war here in the united states. is thisa danro foo onecuty >> s ear ad i' ly verircth over fort years of the old war, we fought two warsin vietn and korea anaumr of smrietiiner ac e oarie mmmaoawe fitw as many wars, smaller ones, granted. we've undertaken at least as manyierventn on all al m fw soerprian nearutsoft re i n s especially

questionable to making this level of effort in cases where it often gets us into more trouble than we're willing t y epalowe wttr-osw ees ers e hhr and balancing budget and other very challenging problems to be makinghat level of effort. weouo a o tis alwed d lywaedtpf . bu ms me tnc cormic especially american leaders with a few exceptions have simply wanted to do a lot without ying much fori d 'shis nsnt e ed t l te inathld safer democracy, and lots of nas places, we could do it it would cost an awful lot mre. guutttgy inhaanat r erboi elhi oe ug osen war w w completely unnecessary, the war in afghanistan started as a war of self-defense fter9/11 at lher ghta t h e sra atraalthiot thhab promise of success. the obstacles to success are tremendous, and wlei atnto, n

e e in en tyrsini st rmi afisn, i think it's clear that the americans aren't going to go that. so the ast badalrne thini et se te ammira iin ngegh ahe, hag airo riitonreca hopefullyroviding enough funding as our "amecanfoes" dro m an to kep teaan ped ernoertto tork haabout intervention in closet vow? >> well, that finally worked out in the sense we more or less won but at th mherprce thtcid. cothg. inwoaaawe ift war was necessary it's hard to see where a lot of interventions were not necessary. what we went to war inkvo re ey utybytstrme nosent g on in a number of other places. nobody at the time was saying we should be doing the same thing for sudan or plcesre ti adventas e. wcawrewe came out on top on the end, it seems to me inconsistent and

unnecessary to say that it had to be n >> rctatut e refl >> is near r. srted by gretion from north korea. the results of not having stopdconquefsea shi kow fr . ob wvery daour cait po. an iredent trumas response was appropriate in that case. >> doctor theonventional wisdom abo vieam ist af twe sa o nfs ltn egr? 99 is there going to be a lasting result from the iraq war in your view? >> i suspect so. probably not as strong ac. a berso. r ethiwa naastnou t lerds costly than the vinam war. and secondly, most americans have not had to pay anything for it. there's norunen et atfh opweebngon cini to fghthe war in vietnam was a small part of why it became unpopular. the wr in iaq was upul tigeraana-w

me thidhao t i e estrin american history where we didn't have to pay war taxes but taxesere cut. >> what about iran? ha obably oe ohe pr. das s wy alha me is torely on more or less the policies that were efftive in the cold war against the sovt unn inca. at'she stnce n ait. omcti t ifey e r eaea retaliation would be far out of line wh anything they can gain. and to combine that with a rrt pli oagup pttodadtf ina l wn. th tti war against iran which was the alternative that the last president bush took against iraq in 2003 r the samea evraro ttuea p itllmath prm e ct or re >> north korea, for one thing, it's a little strange to me that peop in washington and pundits everre a red ou annhvllesa abnoko. ilg than the iran. they've already tested a nuclear weapon even though it was a

toney and nod very good on. dw id'tnke be eivanl toiehai eeno krean war. making sure they had nothing to gain from using whatmiltary poth in tuonngas near pem eal belately north korea will tur out the way the soviet union and the communist empire in the eastern europeid r avetfrony' lng a fs at ofpl pe afyys,dy anunt for intervention there in. >> no, the problem is unlike iraq which had no friends north korea doehaai a,chrra hawior re av barl. eu war with china and korea we hadn't anticipated. we want to be sure that we don't have to seethat movie again. sorrol, ti oacinh e g ta pw l ri back in which case there will be a better basis for reemping some sort of accommodation with china about how to handle the problem. >> icd,n ua ursteneratum er t ei ew e aenardr leth rl >>ily recently, i think

their view was very upbeat very activist, very mar na o usamanerl t woto h ce an rkher saro mac thie is poplar with students. as the iraq war became messier and messier thatsedto th lisoha d hus t iso, arsca ten extremely passionate about these issues one wayor the other. or at least when i compare it with my youth wheiwathre agen s we ni wi i k olah repaicthd o in american power maybe it backed o a little since they have given us bloody ne. >> reporter:ouanacvi in6 nwaoerulal t ns i noot left andas maybe a minority of student opinion at that te. i aladeatuof sebk 0s i mradraase theemrihtg today. >> another current situation in the wod is syria. go do so osu..mity

ronty. >> b n ulin te ryikitihe s ournicoer multilateral effort bless bid the united nation and so on. the problem is that syria is not like libyawhchwasan inen lye ed ablll riumohle . chge te azed and powerful security forces. tactical in operational conditions that would be much more difficult firvg fo ke vagof dag, ereoto tee irdaas in eve nd that controlled the situation and made it turn out in a way that is clearly better than what we're trying to replace, that ulbe obably t yig ern thndfh rihiediini >> ny,oso where do you see the biggest threat to the u.s. today? >> for one thing by historic dard at ast se ddnd20ceur thsneo bithr c i from terrorist, and so long as we're facing typical terrorism or even the posibility of an event onthe sale sper 11 aainhawf iulei pslolyc aatl terms, not of the same league as

threat we face from the fascism coisndwod wrsn ldrsfh20 nt e pttot orgod re b to deploy usable and efficient weapons of mass direction biogic or m wpo n'ndre d nten nothros d't aurreto rt yat against and who are not very worried about surviving themselves and so on. so the highest priority, i think, is to be sure w d erytng wcanoprnt rrtgrsfmgin ssthwpoo on mdrun. n uiae different. if relations go badly with china, that's not inevitable it would not be urprising by st sar 'sh dreto. thyonsane d aw e r tall dyo support the obama administration's move to move more navel forces, more forces to asian theater rather than the atlanticheat? haayp . thit amakal abit e eehe cited about what we're doing. what we're doing is. not very much in material terms. nding e achis o he

auliasli ur i'tut nsm. anhee inve nothing to gain from drumming up the prospect of the cinese thre. i think we should be rain an vacod wath na wl ia main to do a ot more if it becomes necessary because those effort don't work out. >> and e've been talking r on bktvicoiatv unsioorid with his book "american force." you're watching booktv on c-an2. now stewart how it dives iet. tvke of lu ursasaof thoge ri >> history how many brain cells do we have? >> that's a good question. we used to ink 1milion. thumhuu es 's eteok aofega yoeuro guy in brazil send an e-mail around asking how many

brain cells we thought we had. and where gothanr fr anery r o 10 bl adroac haedwrecos fr itn thoo she developed a nw method of counting brain cells. it's not a trivial problem. to count anythingthat is several blliony. vetefbio sadheeehis ilt. anrnt m ded there were 80 billion. that's an order of magnitude, okay. it's not that big of difference. the larger difference might have been we hought w m anglllsit pag s e n ny 'sp t together. it means ghiew from glue from greek. we thought we had ten times nyw ls 80 l. wel1 l n. >> what don't we know? >> well, that's an awfully big question. as i oint nce i er qst i k quonotn whonekbuw t w t ont know. >> donald rumsfeld. >> sorry he got to that before i did. there is -- he as asutel ecyiae unda egd asribow. auio good.

are will thrents limits to the ignorance. >> y say in your book ignorance that when you t twog ohcisolk ouinoudoknw ern in dn. >> e, vo qo from mary curry upon gaining our second graduate degree. wrote a letter one never seems note aeo abatrns beo thittudha iv en along. keeps us late and gets us there early. we don't care what everybody knows. it's done know t's get to te nexthing what donwe ko who k. exsn pae38atost at the dinner vettg albert einstein proclaimed science is always wrong. it neverosrm witctiter >> n lou i titis 's