a soldier? later in the afternoon and another former foreign correspondent will be talking who has written a book. >> he is a genius by the way. >> could you mentioned i made the decision and jake tapper could you talk about we do have a volunteer armed forces does that make it more difficult to relate to as a reporter their stories to the american people? . .

or whatever name it is called by today. that disconnect serves no one. it doesn't serve our policymakers. it doesn't serve the troops or their families. i am not saying there should be an inscription or a war tax or there should be anything but it's not sustainable the way it is right now. one general in the book who preferred to go on background and not to use his name said he hoped my book would least help some people understand why we shouldn't go to war so quickly, what it is that is being sacrificed because he compared this general and excuse me, he felt like we were the relevance to fight our wars and there was

completely separate reporting on the wars while not having served. it is not a problem because most of what i report on is not groups that i belong to and it's always been that case. writing this book is help may have a greater understanding and not just the difference between a first sergeant and a staff sergeant or sergeant first class. but also just what it's like to be a soldier. by never truly will understand that but i have a much greater understanding of it. i do think that when our nation goes to war, i'm not saying the policymakers, a lot of debate is flippant and there is no resemblance to the reality of

these men and women in its one of the reasons i wrote the book. what has happened i have been reporting on stuff for debates. at that point i had never gone to afghanistan and now i've gone twice. when i had gone to iraq as it did want to understand a little bit of what's going on there, but generally speaking we go to war. it's not that we go to war too quickly but we go to war without understanding the nation, without understanding what it means. this little boy who is not going to have a father, that woman who will never get over what happened, these fine incredible young men or women will never be. we think we know it in our hearts but it that it doesn't factor into the intellectual decision i don't think. >> very well put. i was just going to say that i would like to echo just a little bit of that and the separatioseparatio n of the military and the civilian populace is something i talk

about at other times so i think that's, if you don't live in north carolina or texas or southern california, and they'll see people in uniform it was true from a growing up in buffalo new york and i got my rtc scholarship in 1995 so that was a very different culture and time. it's not that long ago but 9/11 really did change so many things and i thought i wanted to be an astronaut. i thought i was going to do all these other things but i went to school between the invasions of afghanistan and iraq and i knew exact to what i was signing up for and i wanted to do it anyway. that would make me the same as young men between the age of 16 and 30, for the last 5 million years. the consequences just are not there. there is this part of the brain

that has the self-preservation instinct and i was born without it. maybe all the other guys i worked with were sane and that you try to keep yourself safe. you don't want to get shot and you're not looking to get killed. it's just you are willing to put yourself there for reasons that aren't necessarily clear until you are there. so the questions you asked about somebody else decides if you live or die, those are good questions that i never asked myself, not even remotely. >> and i will echo that. the amazing thing is, military actually does not make wars. we go where you send us and that's why you have us. we hope that there is no -- in the mission, that somehow we are justified and when we are found not to be and the movement

for 10 years, i don't think anyone thinks iraq was the right decision to make now for a year after we have are there. but we stayed there for 10 years. >> vice president cheney and secretary rumsfeld probably think so. >> for some people it was a great idea. but the truth being that i voted and then i went to iraq and there i was. it no longer -- we were kind of above the politics in our hope and below politics in our utility. we weren't actively a part of the mechanism in a way which felt like we have a hand in our fate. and so when i was there, i went back in 2052 ramadi. by that point we knew we were wrong but my marines were being

sent and to not go was intolerable to me. and of course that's when everything went wonderfully in terms of losing my parents and losing my friends through that entire tour. i left for 16 years. you get money for being there 20 but i walked because they knew that that sense of responsibility was inescapable and i would never be able to not watch television and see the marines go in and if i were capable, if i were still able to justify not going with them despite the fact that i had every reason in the world to justify not going with them. i had a wife and a child and no one to help them in my absence but the danger is, you begin to feel like you are somehow

important to it, that somehow your abilities, scarce as they are, make you useful and that to turn away that part of your life is to betray a great expectation you know the marines don't care, one colonel n., one colonel out, the machine always repairs itself. it has a lot of platelets, but you have to imagine for at least a moment that you are unique, that somehow you bring something to that leadership position or two that capability that you have whether you you have whether you are lance corporal, a sniper whatever you are, that somehow you perfected something which is necessary in that machine, and that organization and what you realize in war and what i realize of course and the book addresses is they just pick

you. on the day that i read about, it's his vehicle, not mine. it's not because my vehicle was scary and they were afraid to touch it. it's because they picked his analogy is dead and now his family is without a father and they will never have that. not like that. not the same. i saw him die. i saw him leave. i saw the family destroyed, but they didn't. that is my part of his disappearance. my whole book really is my absolute abbhorent so disappearance. i want to preserve. i want to save. if it's a memory, fine, e-memory. if it's a stone, find. it's why became a stonemason when i was very young. took me all these years to figure out why i was working in stone. war is the great betrayer

because of course it doesn't matter that all the training and all the skills you have, it can be that day that it's you. so a long answer for how in some ways even if we say we choose we don't have a hand in a. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> over the next two hours booktv brings you the international sum of the book. panels addressing the current state of letters and publishing as well as the future of the

book. first a discussion entitled "reading is not an option" with walter dean myers, national ambassador for young people's literature and john cole director of the library of congress a center for the book. this year's international summit of the book was hosted by the library of congress in washington d.c.. >> earlier this year doctored billing sten named walter dean myers as the third national ambassador for young people's literature. this is a project of the center for the book with a children's book counsel and it's a nonprofit arm, every child the reader. the notion of the national ambassador would be someone who traveled the country on behalf of young people's literature, promoting it and also expanding the audience for reading in every way that we can think of.

my proper today you already have. on the table in the back there is a bookmark which has walters photo and also a free explanation of the national ambassador program. it lasted for two years. walter is midway through his two-year term, speaking on behalf of reading and today we are going to learn a little bit about his experience but i would like to start by asking him how he chose his particular theme for his act to the, which is "reading is not an option." walter, do you want to tell us a little bit about how that came to be your theme and a little bit about -- who i happen to know it's his own early background that helps lead to this theme. >> as i began speaking to young

people and how we approach them in reading and with books, very often i would see teachers and librarians saying to young people, books are wonderful, they take you to far-off places and a ship is like a frigate. i began to ask the young people what did this mean and they began to say things to me like oh if you want to, you can have a lot of fun with books. and if you want to, you can enjoy yourself and learn something from books. i thought this was bad because reading is something you have to

have two exist in this world. my dad was a janitor and could not read or write but always prided himself on the fact that he could support his family. today, he couldn't. not without reading. and how reading affects all parts of our lives including national security, it's not spoken about very often. one of my sons is a chaplain, was a chaplain in the air force. he said when things the american had is -- americans have that they could not use because they could not read the manuals. this is becoming more and more more -- the gap is becoming more and more. the most american thing we have been the most american thing we have in this country is