>> there tends to be a denigration of the u.s. military by some historians that whenever one german wehrmacht battalion fought an american battalion or one regiment fought an american at american regiment that the

germans tend to be tactically superior. that mono e mono they were the better military. i think this is just nonsense because it's pointless. global wars and clash of systems it's which system can produce the wherewithal to project power in the atlantic, the pacific, the indian ocean, southeast asia which system can produce the civilian leadership to create the transportation systems, the civilian leadership that is able to produce 96,000 airplanes in 1944 at. >> next, author joan johnson-freese on her book

"educating america's military." choose a profession or at the naval war college. she spoke in march in cambridge massachusetts. this is one hour. >> thank you. it is a pleasure to be here in cambridge on this rainy night during harvard spring break so i thank you for coming and having this opportunity to talk about this book which i'm passionate about. i am very passionate about professioprofessio nal military education which is why i wrote this book which is quite far out of my field. my usual arc of research is in security and globalization. so this is a bit of a deviation but one that i felt was very important to write about. so i want to begin by telling you a little bit about what the topic is and why he wrote about it. professional military education is a system within which most military officers receive their

education after enlistment. it's congressionally mandated. it's not a choice, not an option. all are required to attend to receive what is called joint provisional professional military education credits. specifically in the book i'm talking about the war college which is the most senior of the institutions. it's where the officers of the captain and colonel level attend. when they are transitioning from operational positions where they drive boats, drive tanks into strategic positions where they will be in washington. they may critical policy decisions so we at at the war college seed is our job to really educate them from jobs which had been focused on training that they are very good at. no one is better at these operational jobs than our military officers. to the jobs they are not so familiar with in strategic areas that involve economics, policy,

require knowledge of cultural differences, religion and really are out of their norm. their education questions that don't necessarily carry with them a yes or no answer that the officers are used to when they're in their operating nuclear reactors and flying planes. that being said, i contend in the book we owe to our officers into our country to do the best job possible at transitioning the operational to the strategic position and that we could in fact do better. that because of structural and systemic issues we really are not serving our officers as well as we might to prepare them for their future jobs and the country. and that we could do a much better job. i would like to just read you a couple of paragraphs here from the book that in a nutshell explained the issue. consider as you read how would

you feel as a parent if your son or daughter asked you to pay between 57,166,000 which is the range of cost per student at the war colleges for him or her to attend a graduate program where there are no academic admissions standards and everyone graduates in 10 months? unless the war colleges of the military equivalent of lake wobegon for all the children are above average statistically and everyone graduating from an accelerated rigorous graduate program where there are no admission standards it's highly unlike lee. further, this program will constantly make sure she is happy with what they are being taught by faculty some of them have neither teaching experience nor subject matter expertise. you might have qualms with the educational value of the program. so what are these challenges and

what might we do to fix them quick second 10 in the book there are some things we could do that are particularly difficult but aren't being done simply because in professional military education there is a default to the way you have always done it. so the first problem i talk about, the students. the students come in because they are congressionally mandated to come in. many of them are eager to learn. many of them are very anxious to make this transition. quite frankly, some are not. there are no academic admissions standards. some of these individuals have not a paper in 20 plus years. they are very good at what they do but they are not particularly good students in some cases. yet ,-com,-com ma because they are very good at their operational jobs and government has been sometimes millions of dollars to train them if they

happen to be a pilot or an a nuclear fields are highly specialized fields, there is a requirement that they all graduate. no military officer will be failed in their career ruined because of an academic program. when they attend a war college they get two degrees. one is this joint professional military education degree which again is congressionally mandated. the second, they all received a masters degree in national security. everybody who comes and gets a master's degree. that means the student works very hard sitting next to the student who doesn't necessarily work that hard, they are they're both going to graduate. now, that is not their fault. that is not a problem of their making. they are the military equivalent of being too big to fail. they are too valuable to the

military and the country to fail in an academic program. so you have a system where coming in, the credibility of the program is stretched because there are no failures. occasionally you will have someone who because of family issues or some other issue won't complete the program in time and they are simply recycle. but, academically i have been teaching professional military education for 20 years now, and i have never given a final grade of the c. it's just not given. our range of grades is basically from 84 to 94. now why did i write this book? i am saying some things that are pretty critical of my own institutiinstituti on. the second that this gets to is the faculty. we have very strong faculty in many areas. the faculty is very diverse. there are active duty military officers.

there are practitioners which include a high percentage of retired military officers. there are civilian academics and there are civilian academics who are very active in their own professional field. i make a differentiation they are very carefully. what happens very often as we have the military -- and next week he is teaching economics or political science or history or some topic which he will work very hard at but doesn't have any substantive background and because he doesn't have the background necessarily in the classroom the institution goes out of its way to give them ample opportunity to get good at teaching. they give them more classes to give them an opportunity to practice and get better at what they are doing but what that

means is that the stronger it experienced teachers who do have the background in the fields, we don't teach as much. now when they do get good, usually after about two years old and they are gone and we start this all over again. so you have student body with no academic admissions standards. you have a faculty which is very diverse. everybody is well meaning but some have a substantive background another stoned. and this is all being run by an increasingly large bureaucracy, most of whom have no background in either education or educational administration. this creates basically a situation and i use the example in the book where i say it would be like putting me in charge of the helicopter squadron. i would be very well meaning but i don't know what i'm doing.

therefore, nobody would fly. everybody be careful. we have a great safety record here. what happens in education is there is a default to be as conservative as possible to keep everybody happy. well, as a teacher that's not your job to keep people happy. your job is to challenge them, to really get the students and i don't like this expression but it works, to think outside the box. what happens at the war colleges as well is that the faculty, unlike his civilian academic institution, are not tenured. they are not bad in a tenure-track. they are on usually three or it will most four year contracts. these contracts, renewal of these contracts depends on to the students like you? what does that do for a

classroom? you don't challenge the students because it becomes imperative that they like you. i am very fortunate. a few years ago the war college president who had a merit-based program policy of granting tenure to a small number of people and i am the equivalent of tenure. at about the same time i received this tenure a quibble and there were a lot of retired professional military education faculty members who started writing about the topic and much to my dismay, they were aligned by their fellow factory members and the institutions as disgruntled. and they retired very disgruntled. i didn't see it that way.

because i was tenured at decided i was going to write a book about it. and this is the resulting book. the resulting book which i am very pleased to say started out new media has been very beneficial for getting this topic discussed. i started out writing blog articles for aol defense and u.s. naval institute. i then wrote an article for orbit and there was a lot of controversy. sometimes not wrought to me directly. and then i wrote the book, and i am very appreciative to the naval war college for the academic freedoms that it very much supports that allowed me to write the book, talk about the book and to really voice my own opinion. this is something that the naval war college to me of all the professional military education war colleges and there is an army war college and air war

college, a marine war college, and national defense college, the naval war college. of those i consider the naval war college were in the faculty members to be the flagship academic institution because of its strong sense of academic freedoms and its increasing willingness to go out and find faculty who are willing to be -- i am very careful on occasions. when i'm talking i'm talking for myself and certainly not represent a government or governmental. i took advantage of my position as a tenured faculty member to write this book. one of the things i talk about extensively in the book going back to this idea of administrator, most of the

administrators are retired military officers, very well meaning ,-com,-com ma patriots, all good americans but again no background in education, no background in academic administration. that means that things that they are being asked to do, curriculum development, hiring faculty, promoting faculty, tenure in faculty, they have never done that before. i spent eight years as the department chair at the naval war college and we would spend a great deal of time trying to explain to those in charge how things were done in academia. and very often, most often the response was well we are not in academia. that is not how we do it which got us to a system of again, when i first started working at the war college, every faculty member was hired as a professor.

now in an environment where we are so rank conscious, the idea of hiring people all faculty members as a full faculty and a full professor was just unheard of and it hurts the institutional credibility. trying to explain that to a colonel, why they should not inherently be a full professor fell on deaf ears. the problem of having administrators who really have no experience is i think part of the problem. the other part of the problem and i will be honest. i'm writing a follow one chapter with another former department chair from the naval war college captain tony bharati. we are doing a book chapter that looks at what is the oversight? what is the supervision? there are two basically supervising organizations. something called oteri dictation

coordinating counsel and congress. and excuse me, a part of the pentagon called the jays have been part of the joint staff. but congress is busy. we all know sequestration is basically taking up all of their time. the economy. that allows those in the pentagon and those of the military coordinating counsel to basically ignore what i have been told they consider the, the noise that other articles raise and things proceed ready much the way they always have. it is my view that we can do some things that would correct this situation. the first thing i think we need to do is to separate the congressionally mandated the veteri education program from the master's degree. that would mean very simply that

officers who came in, and any of them already do have a master's degree or some of them are approaching retirement though they don't need a masters degree, would come in and build a jpme requirement that those who wanted a masters degree with sign-up on a separate program and it would be a more rigorous program, where there was an opportunity to say you have not met the academic qualifications. you have not fulfilled the requirement. and they wouldn't receive their masters degree. that would get rid of that 100% graduation rates which i think immediately affects credibility. the second thing i think we need to do is have some sort of faculty tenure program. where faculty are not constantly fearful that they will lose their jobs if the students aren't happy with them. now there is a big pushback from a substantial portion of the

military saying tenured faculty creates deadwood. well, it's rather ironic to me that this is being said by individuals who in their own careers, when you reach a certain point in the military you have an expectation that you will will continue until you have reached your retirement point which is the same thing i am arguing for for faculty members. furthermore this would not be done immediately. it would be done the same way as a civilian academic institutions where you have a trial period. you don't tenure. there would be six or seven years to see are they solid teachers? i think also one of the problems that needs to be looked at is the administrative qualifications of administrators who are in charge of this very important program. my fear is with all the economic

woes in washingtwashingt on that military education will be seen as the low-hanging fruit. it will be seen as an easy target for the budget act. it shouldn't be. it is critical. it's something we need to do more of, not less of an there are ways to save money. i mentioned the figures from 57,000 to $156,000 per student and why the big differentiation? would argue we have one building and one faculty which actually teaches two courses. we teach the war college senior course and we teach an intermediate course called command and staff college. the air force and the army have two schools into faculties each. that would be in easy cost savings ,-com,-com ma to combine them. the naval war college as well, we don't have something called regional studies which are very nice two or three trips -- two

or three week trips where we take students and show them where they would study. very costly and you don't learn anything on a two week junket to paris. let's be realistic here. it is important that we really work on the credibility of the program. it's important to the institutions. it's in porton to the students, it's important that we build up rick or in ways that don't simply involve metrics. on a regular basis i was at bay asked by the navy to provide metrics for their return on investment. this is where we would get into talking about the differentiation between training and education. there is a real -- in the military which poses people pushes people to get their degrees in technical engineering fields. understandable when they are flying planes in operating nuclear reactors on the suffering but when they are going to washington that is not

what they are going to be doing anymore. the military and fortunately doesn't really differentiate between training and education and in some cases they are governed by the same command training and education command. give us metrics, give us metrics for how well it's doing. give us metrics for what can we do and how can we do it better? how can we do it fast or? education is not something you to quickly. it's something that you need time to read a book and think about it. we are fighting a battle right now over what we refer to as calendar of white space. any day that doesn't have something on the calendar is considered a wasted day. when we are dealing with the navy which already thinks any day not on a ship is a wasted day, that's a problem. but for her students is important that they have time to read, think, synthesize and then

they going to seminars to discuss. without that preliminary time there's a tendency to say just give me the answer. just give me the answer in a very high level of frustration among our student body when we can't give them an answer. when the question is, what should we do about fair am? there is no easy answer. there is no single answer. we talk about the difference between puzzles and mysteries. puzzles, you can find the answer. if you work at it long enough you can put it together. mysteries, maybe not. you may never know. what we are trying to get her students to do is to be comfortable understanding that they will be dealing with problems that don't necessarily have these bottom line yes or no answers. i would like to just read one more portion here. it's kind of long but this is the last one i will read and then we will move to q&a. it's very simply again why i

wrote the book and what i hope to get out of it. the purpose of this book is twofold, to familiarize the american public and decision-makers at pmaa specifically the senior war college and to encourage discussion on how to improve the execution of their important mission. the latter purpose comes from the idea that there is always room for improvement before improvement can take place though the goal must be clear. whether war college goals are clear and whether articulated goals are supported by practices and processes at the institution is part of the discussion. admiral james sever aegis provides the same articulation of of his fuel for education goals at the 2011 war college convocation by describing his own situation when he arrived at national in 1991. quote i knew what i was good at and what i knew well driving a

destroyer or a cruiser navigating through tight waters, leaving a boarding party planning an air defense campaign, leading sailors on the deck of a rolling ship but i also sense what i did not know understand well, global politics and grand strategy, the importance of a legitimate -- logistic nation, what are the levers of power and practice work in the world? in essence, how everything fits together in producing security for the united states and for our partners end quote. the goal of the war colleges should be to educate the students in the areas they are not familiar with and take them out of their comfort zones. war college students are senior military officers who are transitioning from career positions where tactical often technical skills are needed flying planes, driving ships leaving infantry's two positions requiring a broader view of the role of the military and u.s.

security affairs including areas of non-technical nonkinetic nature. global politics and grand strategies are areas with which the war college students are largely unfamiliar but for which some will be responsible in their future positions and others will support. too often though educational achievement in those areas has included sacrifice for expedience at the nation's war colleges. that being the case america is neither getting what it has paid for which is and the millions, billions, annually spend on our nation's war colleges nor preparing its military leaders to fight wars and construct peace. admittedly the broad range of war college students interest ability and intellectual bent future jobs and missions and their unique constraints of the military position create challenges in the professional military education not evident

at civilian institutions. it also makes it even more important to continually strive for improvement. i guess i would conclude my presentation with just one more point and that is, the knee-jerk reaction to the statement of these problems that i hear most often are too full. one, just close the war colleges. just close the war colleges. back in the second is close to war colleges and send out these military officers to civilian academic institutions. well i would argue closing the war colleges is not a good idea. again students need this education more than ever. the environment is more complex. their need of strategic education in this environment is more portman ever. we are talking thousands of

students a year. we would want them to go to the top schools with security studies programs but there aren't enough of those programs and not enough of those slots so what would happen is the students would end up going to some other school without an appropriate program and taking courses which might be relevant to somebody but not to a military officer. so we don't want them just going to any school to do anything. furthermore, one of the key benefits of the war colleges to the students is they meet other students in other branches of the military, in other fields and they have an opportunity to talk with each other. this interest in our networking is a key part of their educational experience. i have had instances where i have two individuals from the navy, one an aviator, want a

submariner sitting next to each other and it's like someone talking from mars and talking to somebody from jupiter. they have no idea what the other does or what their world is like. if we want them to fight as a joint military, which we do for a variety of reasons, both capabilities and economics, we need them to understand each other. this would not be available in just any program anywhere. so the war colleges are important. we have to do a better job. i think the first step in doing that and something i've been encouraging is that i wrote my book based on personal experience. i had an opportuniopportuni ty because i was the department chair, to sit in on a lot of meetings and to hear a lot of things and see a lot of powerpoint slides and by the way one of the most, one of the bleakest days as chair was sitting in on a presentation from a three-star admiral who made the comment and gave us a

comment about we need to strip all the gold plating out of our curriculum and when it ended, a very sad looking captain turned to me and said were we just told not to excel? that was a few years ago. lester got a phonecall from someone in the navy who said you know mrs. joan johnson-freese we would like a recommendation for how to improve the program. we don't need ferrari's. we need fords. i would argue, we need ferrari's. we just need a meta-fords cost. i would argue the first thing we need to do is to study the validation. what i've written in my book. our faculty, rehiring the right kind of faculty? are the goals supported by policies and programs to support the goals? what is the situation and this needs to be done by an independent body. i was on the panel not to long

ago and a former president of the army war college said i will do a study. well no you have a vested interest in the results. we need a independent study of where we we are and where we need to go and i hope all of you will in fact help me raise awareness to this. i feel no qualms in encouraging you to buy the book by the way. i don't usually hop i'll book but in this case i did not only because of the importance of the subject matter but because i am donating my royalties to the wounded warrior project. i don't get any money from it. but that i would like to open it up to questions. [applause] i would ask you, we we are filmg the we are filming this movie could wait until we bring the mite to you when the questions are raised. >> thank you very much.

my question is, have you ever called colleagues of yours to let them know this is what we want? [inaudible] number of them will listen to me. thus i have to write this book. it is kind of an enlightenment. this is our curriculum and this

is how we want to lead these men. >> question was basically how much of my talk to my colleagues as chair arguing the points that i argue in the book and i will say there was a cadre of us, very small cadre that tried hard to fight the good fight. don quixote was the windmill. we for a while had -- was very willing to listen to us but was very willing to listen. quite frankly there are, the majority of the faculty that we dealt with were quite entrenched in their positions and quite happy with the status quo. there is an expression my students taught me this year, ducks -- ducks. what does that mean? well it's time for promotion and you are an aviator and everybody in the room is an aviator. if you are an aviator and everybody in the room is a

submariner ducks pick ducks. well to apply that to the war college basically when you had a, when i came there was a very high percentage of the faculty members who were retired military. who did they hire? they hired military. so that was a system that they were very happy with them very comfortable with. but again, there were instances, there were a couple of us who tried very hard to put forth programs. i remember one evening in particular there were over 20 people and somebody said, a colleague and i were arguing for a tenure system and somebody said you don't need a tenure system. does anybody in his room think that somebody would get fired if you buffed defenestration and two of us raised our hands. the rest of them looked at us like that's not the right thing to say. so i guess my answer is there

were some of us but in order to get the message heard further and louder i wrote the book. a question here. this is my colleague dr. john schindler from the naval war college. he is a noted counterterrorism expert so i'm a little afraid of the question. >> thank you. i find it incredibly fitting that we are having this discussion 10 years to the day of the kickoff of operation iraqi freedom where we have seen a great deal of excellence by the u.s. military but calling it anything than a strategic failure and i say to someone who participated in it. it's easy to of course fault the bush of and civilian leadership and rightly so if there were an awful lot of failures by senior military. we had serious reform especially with the naval war college after vietnam in an effort to get it right. it's a twofold question.

do you think the climate is moving that direction not only with your work and two in the early 70's it took a good admiral of a much smaller institution. what would it take now? >> a great question and taken into parts, in about 2005, when it was clear that iraq was a strategic failure, there was a mandate passed down. we certainly got it in the educational institution. again it's an acronym. countering i.d. lexical support and it basically said we need to think on it broader strategic level. what that meant was in a very short period the size of our faculty grew exponentially and i

was able to hire for the very first time an anthropologist, a religion specialist, a counterterrorism specialist, a historian in education, a much wider range of civilian academics. and i think we are now past the tipping point on that. we have a geographer and quite a diverse range of faculty members in the department. regional specialist, my area. we have nuclear experts in the kinds of a white friday. in terms of the breadth of the education. whether or not that will continue to evolve again i think depends on the administrators not just of the institution because i think at the institutional level they deal with things like tenure and promotion processes. it's going to depend on those in

the joint staff and whether or not anybody in congress starts paying attention to this issue. congressman ike skelton was a champion of pme. he was always watching. you know the expression kids don't misbehave when they know their mom is watching? ike skelton has retired and the feedback that i get about this book and about what's going on now in pme is pay no attention. so i hope that congress takes up this flag and carries it forward to do again these rather simple changes that i think need to be done. john i would like your opinion. did i miss anything critical in my presentation? >> no. i think the one thing is that coming from the naval war college and i'm saying this

because i'm part of it too really is the gold standard you know and we still have all these problems. i agree that none of this is fixable and we are not talking about much money at all. the dod budget is nothing literally. it's not a question of money, it's a question of will and i think it also has a lot to do with how important the services and congress think pme action is. does it actually mean larger goals? i don't think it can be emphasized enough that as long as there is a lack of -- and force upon the students the debt will remain -- at the end of the day. >> yes, question. >> i think the clarification, you have to understand the full context. i understood you to say that

it's mandated and it's mandated by congress and that these people are going from tactical military operations to washington which i assume means for policy. are the people that do this selected from within their military units? my impression is that it's not every service person that is going through this and i'm wondering what the selection process is and then the advancement and promotion after word? >> that's a great question on clarification. it is congressionally mandated that every military officer as they progress in rank receives this jpme, joint professional military education one and two and that is the intermediate course in the senior course but you are absolutely right. not everyone attends war college. the vast majority of the

officers received it through distance education programs and there are many ways the business education program is offered. there is basically an on line cd-rom probe room which is as good as an on line cd-rom program can be and then there are what we call in the navy the fleet seminar programs where at different naval bases around the country they simulate what we do in a port with a seminar and they instructor in the classroom so they get the interaction but the vast majority, because it is required for everyone for them to get promoted. a few years ago you can get waivers. if you were in a critical position and you were a pilot and your commanding officer could say i need joe smith, you could get a waiver.

while the navy did that so often that there were what they call the waiver babies. congress got wind of this and said enough. they have to get their jpme. well then everybody had to get pushed to the pipeline very quickly and there was a lot of pressure on us as chairs to figure out a way to get them through more quickly. this is one a lot of the on line distance education programs were started and i'm not going out on a limb here saying the air force clearly won the battle for the race to the bottom on who could get the simplest program to give these people through fast enough. it was basically a program where you took a test and you got it right. that occurs less though now. we have dealt some rigor into the program and the distance education program, the seminar programs are actually quite good. there are in fact programs in

washington. enable war college one program in washington that is very valuable. it's in one of these seminar programs. it's where very high percentage of congressional staffers learned whatever it is they know about security. many of them came out of oberlin college with a degree in literature and now find themselves dealing on the art services committee and they take this business education program and really gave it a stronger background than they would have otherwise. there is certain value to it but the war college themselves, the way people attend is buried by service. the air force and army, you are able to attend a resident program based on selection and promotion and it varies by service. their best and brightest as

demonstrated by their operational jobs and not by their academics. the navy, on occasion they may find themselves on a ship on friday and the war college the following friday because they needed to fill a seat. some of them quite frankly are very annoyed at being there and don't like it. the first day of class they will say this is a waste of time but they will be leaving with their jpme and their masters degree. >> who can make the decision? when you say congress, do they have to pass legislation or is there an individual somewhere who can sit in a closed room and take these decisions are made to change his? >> you know i wish i could give you a definitive answer to that. it is my understanding and my colleagues and i are working on, that there've been proposals at the coordinating council do in

fact bifurcate the jpme and a master's degree. there is some very strong resistance to even considering that by those who have a vested interest in the status quo or just because that is the way they have always done it. i don't know if a distinction can be made as the joint staff. i do know that if congress told them they wanted something done these organizations would get on it. i don't know that it requires congress to initiate or approve it but i do know that congress could motivate it. any other questions? >> i do have a follow-up. there is congressional interest. in 1 cents if you have any is

how it is being received outside the very narrow halls of those who deeply care about if? is being talked about. what is your sense of the community? >> well i do know that it is getting more attention by faculty members. the people are speaking out. when i wrote this book it was basically a taboo subject. there have been two individuals hired, two retired individuals hired. one wrote a book and the other wrote a book chapter and again they were victims of ad hominem attacks. we need to pay no attention to them. well i wrote this and since then i'm very pleased to say there has been a proliferation of articles and comments and

faculty members who are willing to speak up. quite frankly i think the cause we have understood now it's out. if you start trying to stifle faculty members it will be viewed as retribution. and so in that way there is far more activities. and at the institutional level i think there is at least awareness that there are some lines that can't be crossed. whimsical hirings are not gone that they are less. again i increasingly see it as a problem at the higher level where they are tone deaf. one of the reviewers of my book said johnson freeze is willing to take on the power pointed echo chamber of military education and that pretty much sums it up at these higher

levels. so again i think the big tipping point is going to come if congress starts paying attention. >> what might be said about the need for the education as people are moving to different, a different focus in their career? and what you said about the current system, how does the military see this as an advantage to it self, to leave the status quo? >> well again, there are many instances and this is the situation where sometimes rhetoric and actions don't match. there is a lot of rhetoric about the support of education but then -- but they are few and far between. there's a lot of rhetoric at the higher level on imports of education.

if you then start breaking that down with they really mean is okay we will allow it as long as it's in a technical field. i talk about it former student in my book. probably one of the five best students i have ever taught anywhere. and i have had a long teaching career. he did two tours in iraq, army colonel and wanted to go on and get a doctorate. he was told by the army he could do that but only if they got a degree in engineering. and he needed to be aware it would probably hurt his career in the army. so, the value of education again, the rhetoric and the action don't really match. in the navy ,-com,-com ma mentioned before, the navy adage of any day you were not at sea is a wasted day. there are many admirals who

still feel that way. they believed believe the military officer can learn more by working with him directly then by going in and sitting in a classroom and being taught by civilian academics who cs as theory bound pinheads is the expression i've heard more than once. so, whether or not they see it as a value i am not sure they even do. in fact one of the mandates i got most often as chair speed up the course, make it shorter. can't you get it done in four months? is they have every afternoon off. if we had them in class from eight to five instead of 10 months we could do it in five. that is training. that's not education.

there is a question in the back. >> lookition in the back. >> looking at the ever-increasing global world, i am not sure how much you research and what possibly we could gain in contrasting and comparing with foreign military education to improve our own military. >> right. actually there are several people who have worked in this compare to feel that military education and we worked on it ourselves. one of the programs we have at the naval war college that i'm very proud of is an engagement program with other war colleges around the world where we go and work with them helping them set up a curriculum and give lectures. doctors schindler and i were in colombia many times. everywhere from ethiopia to

uruguay to south africa and the thing is most countries build their military education programs based on hours. we are the model. in other countries they do slight variations as well but the general rule of thumb is the model is united states and in fact much of latin america you will find naval war college curriculum translated into spanish. there are some really important and strong points about that. in ethiopia for example we were there, group of faculty members were there helping them develop a curriculum and we noticed everyone was carrying boxes everywhere. we asked what was going on and they said they were moving to a new building. they pointed out that new buildings -- by the chinese but that the chinese are building the buildings and the united

states is providing the curriculum. i think that's a pretty good deal. that's the way we ought to do it. at most of the programs are built on our model and the value is substantial to have someone like john schindler talking to colombia about counterterrorism is very important for them and i would suggest you learn from them as well. >> specifically what i was asking is what we can learn? >> what we can learn from them? >> what we can learn from them? spit typically were talking about counterterrorism let's say from israel or the united kingdom. to improve hours? >> and substantive areas like counterterrorism we work with other faculty members and other experts on a regular basis. do we learn from them in terms of how to better educate people? no. quite frankly again there is a

presumption of u.s. preeminence in that field but if you could bring the mic forward, john could you comment on that since you do work with other counterterrorism experts on a regular basis? >> and counterterrorism in education it's quite close with great britain and israel. i know three naval war college factory and i'm an academic is changed to israel. i've done a great deal of work with the british equipment situation which is a joint institutions so that the faculty level the relationship is excellent. there's a lot of cross globalization's on lessons learned. the british say lessons identified because they don't always assume -- but that is an excellent relationship. >> i work on a regular basis with individuals on security issues and i'm going to continue

those in the near future and other places so the subsequent links are there. >> and cold war between the u.s. estimate the union is over there may have been areas in which the soviets surpass surpassed the united states in their military education. now since the relations are open what are we learning if anything? >> actually the naval war college has a relationship with one of the the soviet naval education institutions and again regular exchanges go on. what can we learn specifically? i know this is difficult to accept but most of the time there is a presumption that we are the teacher, not the recipient of the information and maybe we ought to be looking more at that. we work with these institutions, we gain in individual subject

areas but overall in terms of how do we do the education itself, we are the model. if there are no more questions, thank you very much. i really appreciate you attending. [applause]

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and i think that what the houston hospice does is one of the best ways that one can possibly serve, and i would submit to you that those who care for others at the end of their lives are suddenly heroes in every sense of the word. i would like to just give another round of applause. [applause]

and i know well that that can be up a hard task, of thankless task, but is a needed task. i can promise you that our communities are better because people like you are in imperious approval except except. car "aho -- wyatt is so critically important that our nation -- and our nation today. and in some ways you guys are getting a preview or an insight into the leaders. justice shows yesterday. if you think about it in many ways were in a crisis of leaders . a political institutions receive low double-digit approval ratings. our business class has been hammered by poor examples that cropped up in the recent recession many of our local leaders have taken the fall as well. i think to myself, good could

not be more needed, whether that's internationally and nationally, or locally. a gridlocked political system just need someone to step up and take responsibility, serve with the nation's best interest in mind, not their own reelection. i will tell you, with europe in crisis, with the rising countries like china looking at us, they can either look at our motto and say, hey, we value the same -- we see that you value economic, political, and individual liberty. we see what that produces. we see the kind of country that produces, and we think that is the right way forward. or we look your system. we think it is a product of the past. we think your leaders are ineffective, and we're going to choose a different model. luckily we have people and are keen to these two have been ravaged by the recession. and they need others to step up to stand in the gap and to serve and make a difference in their own lives. and so what i would like to do

today's share with you a few thoughts about how we can do that and encourage you to think about how, in your own lives, you can do the same thing. but before i get started to my want you to know, i'm not a real author. in fact kamal when i told my brothers -- i have four little brothers, that i had written a book they said, you wrote a book? so when did you learn to read? [laughter] all right. all right. thanks, guys. i also recognize that by admitting that i can read and write i, in some ways, you know, run the good name of the marine corps. all do my best to make it up. the first -- i didn't mean to write it. i'm not a writer. it's not lead to full time. the only reason i wrote it was because i really felt like i let my men down when i was a war. it's hard to explain. if you have a 19 or 20-year-old,

and he charges a machine gun because he's worried that his buddies under fire are going to take more wounds and he runs the the thing thinking he's going to die and hopefully can save him. the only thing you can do as is officer, as his leader to reward him is give him a medal. you cannot give him the vote -- of vacation, a bonus to my day off, promotion. the only thing you can do is take a little bit of ribbon and metal and pets his chest and say, hey, congratulations, marine. thank you for what you did. i didn't do enough of that when i was reading my marines. i get in the business. i thought there is something i have to make right. i can't go back and write him up for the words. and so i asked my professor, hey, can i write this down instead of taking a class and he said absolutely. and so my intent was to write

the story and e-mail it to him. the next thing you know, the book "joker one" was produced. and what this most recent book -- was flying around the country, and i was watching business leaders leaving their companies in chaos in disarray say, look, i don't know much about this and i know feel responsible for it. you know, i compared them to one of my team leaders. he left for other guys. i remembered one day we had just come back from a mission. we were walking down the middle of the street of ramadi and we were doing the morning round sweep which was when we look for bonds with our naked eyes. and this guy, corporal tea, was walking point. he was at the very front of my platoon, and he was at the front of his team. i told them, look, you need to do that. in some ways you may want to walk behind them so you can see what you're doing and give them orders appropriately and he said to make, these guys are my man. and one of these days one of

these bonds is going to blow up because we have seen enough of that to note what happened to us, and did while we were doing the mission peak. he said when that bomb blows up i want to make sure that my body is in between that, my man so that if i can save them by doing that than i will. i have a 19-year-old here, and that is how he leads. i am comparing and against people who are three times his age who have less than 0 percent of his same sense of self sacrifice. that's the one thing that i want to talk to you about today and to give you a little bit of the background of the learning is that i extracted from that environment. i can tell you a little bit about that tore. in 2003 and was given command of the marine infantry poland. with four exceptions everyone of these guys -- and you can see them up here, between the ages 18 and 21, college-age. for three months we train

together for a pretty hazy mission because in 2003 they had pulled out of iraq entirely thinking that combat operations were actually a work. in fact, i was on one of the last marine helicopters out. in 04 it became increasingly apparent that there was still a lot of fighting to be done and that the marines would go back and that joker one and i would be in the first wave of returnees. we would report to the volatile al anbar province, the area that would become the heart of that year's insurgency. in fact, we were deployed to the heart of the heart of the insurgency because we were deployed to the capitol city of the province, a city called ramadi. we thought we would do more rebuilding and fighting in could not have been more wrong. as the spring and summer round on a company of 160 found itself responsible for a city of about 400,000 people. battling in trying to keep the

piece. we never rested. we never pulled off the front lines. at one point in time in june 1 of my outpost's was the most attacked outpost in all of iraq, and for most of the summer we were the most attacks unit and all of iraq. this picture actually made it cover of the new york times. it is one of our engineers driving a vehicle out of an ambush. he was actually killed the very next day. by the time we finished nearly one-third of my platoon had been wounded. i had lost one man. in my company they casually -- casualty rate was higher, one out of every two wounded. to that -- to the state we're told that many casualties in that amount of time is a rate that has not been exceeded by any other unit, marine or army, since vietnam. when i returned from war in october of 2004, by august of 05i was in cambridge, massachusetts, preparing for your number one of business school. not an easy adjustment, but it

was a good one. shortly after i graduated from business school i was in voluntarily recalled and serve the third deployment in january of 2008 with afghanistan supporting u.s. special forces. as spend yet another wedding anniversary overseas and missed most of my daughter's second year of life. if i think about it, he essentially, i spent my 20's up more. it was not necessarily my plan, but that is what happened. it was not easy. it was not an easy or comfortable experience, i can assure you. i was not thrilled about redeploying to afghanistan after i felt that i have finally got my life in order, but i would not trade it for anything in the world. and the reason for that is, i think it taught me things that i don't know how i would have learned anywhere else. i think most fundamentally it taught me, and as i have had the

time to process that and apply that outside of the military and outside of war, what have this -- what i have discovered is the fundamental principles that the marines taught are just as necessary outside of the marines, outside of war, and in all facets of our lives, and i thought it was so interesting to me to be at harvard because some many of my classmates said, hey, we did it. we know the u.s. serve, but you have to get something. the weighted you lead in the military does not work in the civilian world because all you do is give orders. i thought, that is not true. nothing could be farther from the truth because at the end of the day you stand in front of 40 young men and say, here's the deal. we will show up at two a.m. tonight. we will fight for 36 hours straight. they tell us that one-third of us will not make it back. so you guys look to your left and look to your right and know that one of those guys won't be

coming back with you. and those 18 and 19 year-old and 20 euros lagard usa, roger that. we will see you at 2:00 a.m. i mean, what kind of individual, what kind of leaders inspire that and the behavior when they know that there is nothing in it for them except, perhaps, loans and death. well, the fundamental thing that the marine corps taught us, taught me is that good leaders are based on good character. character comes before competence, and that to build character you have to pursue -- pursuit virtue with the same intense with which you pursue a thing else in life. if you want to run a marathon you train cropland, prepare, and then execute. the marine solicit is no different with character because when the chips -- when the chips are down, and allies from the

line, when you have to make life-and-death decisions in seconds of less it is not the person that you hope you will be , not the person that you want to become, not the person that you wish you were that makes that decision. is the person you train yourself to be overtime that's either going to make the right call of the wrong call. and unlike many other institutions, the marines ticket one step further and told us specifically which virtues we needed to pursue. the first of those virtues was humility. we see a picture of abraham lincoln appear. he built one of the best teams from a group of men who had hotly contested him for the republican nomination. on his left, you're right, one of the most disappointed not to receive the republican nomination that ultimately went to lincoln, and actually, lincoln had encountered them before the nominating convention some six years earlier.

fellow lawyers on a case in ohio. he had asked him to walk to lunch with him and stanton refused, later telling a friend that he did not want to be seen walking to lunch with that a long-armed ape. well, fast forward six years. that long-armed it is now the president, and he is now his secretary of war. a congressman comes into lincoln's office from secretary of war stanton office and says, hey, mr. president, secretary of war stanton has just called you a damned fool. lincoln paused and said, did he now. yes, he did, and he repeated. well, stanton says that i am a fool, then a full i must be because he generally says what he means, and he generally means what he says. i will step over and see him. lincoln was known for a singular virtue, humility, which allowed him to set aside his own

insecurities, his own feelings, his own need to be right and focus solely on how to navigate the existential crisis facing his nation using the best and brightest of resources no matter how they made until. i think a lot of people misunderstand this virtue. they think it is self-effacing and a lot of confidence. i think that the perhaps best explanation, way to say it is that it is not thinking less of ourselves. it is thinking of ourselves less. it is having most accurate view of ourselves possible and transmitting that you clearly to others. the picture uc appears oliver cromwell, the general who led the 17th century english forces that oversee -- over to the english monarch be an established democracy, probably the most powerful man of his generation and certainly the most powerful man at the time in this country, and in 1654 he sat for a painting.

the painter, on the first round, painted him as an idealized roman god. he took one look at it and demanded that it be redone. you see, he had noticeable facial warts, and you can see them up there. and the painter had left them out. he looked at the painter and said, you will page me just as i am, warts and all. and i think that is possibly the best explanation of humility possible. i know who i am, and i am just as i am, warts and all. and i am afraid to transmit that accurately to others. i think pursuing that virtue in the marines, it means you have to ask for for -- asked for forgiveness often, seek constructive criticism often and accepted willingly and you have to be unafraid to transmit your knowledge of yourself to others just as you are. the next thing that the courts of us was discipline, and a lot of people have a negative connotation of this and think it

means punishment. it was not always so. the word discipline originates from the latin word which means teaching or learning. and it first entered the english language to refer to the systematic destruction that was given to pupils to train them in a craft or ted teach them to follow a particular code of conduct or order. in this case the marines taught us and what i believe discipline refers to, and it refers to leadership, of virtue that keeps leaders on the straight and narrow, that helps them to here to written and unwritten standards of behavior and to general morality. this picture is the picture of legendary ship the endurance, and his story stands as a testament to the power of discipline in a leader and have that can affect the team. in 1914 he and 56 others left british waters to attempt the last great heroic feat of the

antarctic exploration, a journey across the continent, via the south pole. in january 1915 to the endurance found itself frozen into an ice pack. the crew ultimately slept on the open ice itself. most of their provisions sank when ice crushed the ship. supplies were rationed. every man ate the same amount of food service to them in the same aluminum log with the same three utensils. no man took more than his due. shackleton and self one out of this way to do the menial chores that he asked of his men. he a after they did. when it was his turn to serve the men food from a large pot he went to every one of their tents and did so. in manila says -- his turn to stand 4-hour watch he did it, and when it was his turn to stop himself into a sleigh and pole like a sled dog so they could move their camp from location to

another, he did. and in large part because of his example, not a single man gave up, not a single man quit, and after over a year stranded in in erica, every one of his crew was rescued. he was an example of execution of discipline, defined as strict adherence to the standards that we ask others to observe. there is another type of discipline, i would call it ethical discipline that a leader must observe. i will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do sums it up well. most of us are not going to apply this code it in life and death decisions or navigate complex right and wrong dilemma's where our lives or our decision affects thousands, but all of us face smaller decisions like this every day. because they seem lower in

magnitude, they can send lesser importance. for example, does it really matter if i tell someone, i'm almost finished that presentation when i haven't really started? did people really care when we tell them we will handle something minor and then walk away from that conversation and forget all about it? to my little girl's remember when i tell them that i will be at their dance recital? does my wife remember when i say, will be home at 630 and then not. the answer to these questions and all of those little ethical questions that we ask ourselves is, yes, they remember. those little ethical failures, over time, make us or set the stage for a larger ethical failures. i suspect if we were to ask bernie madoff, did you set out to be known as the greatest cheat and lyre of all time, was that what you set your heart on to do when you graduated from high school, did you hope that

your name would become a byword for fraud, he probably will have said no. the problem was, he did not apply ethical discipline. he stated, i made one decision wants to hide as small loss. end decision after decision pile upon one another until all of these small decisions became a big one. the next thing i am being marched to prison in an orange jumpsuit. my wife is wishing she never knew me. i ask you, i encourage you, think of how you lead, think of the small, ethical decisions that you make every day. the next virtues that the marines told us to pursue intentionally was the virtue of excellence. and i think this picture here exemplifies that better than about anything else. when he was 37, the man pushing a wheelchair entered a 5--mile charity race with his wheelchair

balanced on a rake. he was out of shape, former air force officer, totally makes sense. sorry about that. [laughter] i couldn't resist. i mean, i'm a marine. he did not know how he was going to run 5 miles. after all, the air force probably had not made him do that before. he certainly did not know how we was going to do that pushing his son in a wheelchair, but he did finish. in fact, he finished next-to-last, and for an hour after the race he lay on the floor gasping. he had no idea how he had managed to finish and was sure that his short and unhappy racing career was over, but during that hour his son type data message with his head, the only body part he could move. here's what he typed. dad, when i am running i feel like i'm not even handicapped. and since that time dick and rick have run over 300 in there

and services. he ran in because he could do something that his son could not , and he ran and determined to give it is all, no matter what the outcome, and when you're training for a marathon or triathlon that you know in advance you have no possibility of winning that says something about you. from his determination, amazing was born which is inspiration to hundreds of thousands. heat -- date did this because he had a gift that was given to him that was not given to his son, and he was going to do his best with that gift no matter how it turned out, and i would suggest to all of you that time is a gift. i have lost a lot of my buddies and more. i think now i understand this gift of little bit better. when many of your friends and comrades do not have a tomorrow because they bled their lives out in a nameless street and

nameless city that no one back here as ever heard of, you start valuing every day just a little bit more because you know that tomorrow is no longer as short and say to yourself things like, my buddy, whose widow i move out of this house would love another day with his wife, but he's not going to get it. my body was killed and a helicopter crash of another day with his three kids, but he will never see them again. i still live. and if i still live, then i have a gift. and so what am i going to do with the gifts that have been given? , going to use the time that so many of my friends wished they had but were not -- will never have again? all minority uses of the beckham make sure i ever met, so that i can make the most of something that i no there will never possibly have? how do you do this? county live each day like is the last?

i don't know exactly because even though i have been in combat, i cannot conceive of what it is like to die. i can suspect it is doing something like the kuwait does which is giving his best, giving our best every day that we give up and have the opportunity to run the race that we call life. we can pursue the paths that are in front of us without regard to how they will turn out with our best efforts because we know that each day divinize brings a responsibility, and to do anything less than the best with the day that we had is a slap in the face of all of those living and dead who don't have what we had. we can understand that with every right comes a commensurate duty. i personally lived in fear that i will waste the day, the time that rabin given. and i was made to repeat, as i lay in bed as an officer candidates, this saying by gary sargent.

i did not get it because they had not been to war. i was 21 and mature. here is what he made is repeat. i think that i finally get it now. he made is repeat, today i have given all that i have, and that which i have kept i have lost forever. and i hope that at the end of days i can stand in front of my maker and say, sir, with what you gave me i gave it everything i had. i hope that i am not wait in the balance and found wanting, and i encourage you to do the same thing. today and given all that i have, and that which i have kept i have lost forever. if you're going to do that it helps to know why you are giving your best. in the mission that guide their course of your life, ships to your what you want to be known

for. i learned in combat that it and bring out the darkest recesses in the heart of man. only knowing in advance that i would rather die than this honor might men are my mission was the only way to remain sane. he had the privilege of reading his own obituary. he was the inventor of dynamite. he created an industrial empire that spans the globe. his brother was touring in dynamite factory and exploded. he woke up the next morning, was in paris, and redwood ec at the bottom, the headline of the pri's in newspaper and said, the merchant of death is dead. he realized that no matter what he thought his mission was, every one of serving and thought that his purpose in life was to purvey death. he wanted to be known for something else. many people believe that it was reading that headline that inspired him to give the vast majority of his fortune to start

the foundation that now gives out the nobel prizes, among them a nobel peace prize. i have thought a lot about mission and what is mine and how make the most of my time here. i think that so that you can call me accountable, it's worth sharing what i have thought about. i am a christian, so my mission here is to reflect great credit on my faith, family, and on my family name, enter my life and power, the ability and power, through my life and actions, the ability and power of mind of the -- belief system. that is what does it for me and i encourage each one of you to think about what it is the you want to be known for. what mission are you want? what are you pursuing with your time and with your treasure? and when all is said and done, what is it that you want written on your tombstone when you are late into the ground? the final thing that the marines taught us was that there is a c-span2 model that works in all contexts.

it works when life is on the line. it works when you are back in the barracks and it is peacetime. it is the servants leadership the model that works. these leaders are in high demand and short supply in today's day and age because consistently subordinating your self-interest and that of others is just not easy. if you are at all like me, is so much easier to focus on the perks of your position are the entitlements of your role than the need of your people, but at the same time you want to purport that your about something else because saying, hey, i am in this for myself just as us, let it. i encourage you, never forget this. no matter what it is that you say to my you reveal your values by the sacrifices they you make to uphold them. in this life we generally value something at exactly the price we pay for it. if we cannot make a personal sacrifice for our belief, ethics, teams, missions, and all

we're doing is doing these things to lip service. anyone who cares to observe our lives in the trade us that we made will know exactly what that is. so when i say servants leadership, what is it i mean? well, it is simple. seventh leadership is a model which a marine puts -- a leader puts their mission first, the welfare of the team's second, and the welfare of their -- themselves a distant third. i exist to remove obstacles for my team so that they can accomplish a worthy goal. i do not exist to recruit lori of power or wealth or fame because after all, coming into this world and having seen a lot of funerals, i can assure you, you did not take anything with you. servant leadership demands that people observe what we do rather than what we say.

the man's integrity, homeless, consistency between word and deed. above all else it's a man's character. unless we think is leadership hard to obtain, i promise you that it can be done, but it does take the patient pursuit of virtue, and it takes courage. allow me to tell. >> story about corporal jason bonham. he participated in the iraq invasion in 2003 and was scheduled to get out of the marine corps. when it became apparent that 12 million infantry's what he had led in 2003 with a return in 2004, he extended his and listen so that he could go back overseas and lead them in combat once again. and he told his mother reportedly that he just could not stand the idea of his guys going back to iraq without him. in my mind, that was his first great act of courage. having left, once and been

recalled, know that it is hard to volunteer to go back when you know you are exactly -- what it is you are getting into. but go back he did, and lead his men he did. on april 14th, in 2004, he and his men were patrolling when it came under fire. heading south to cut off their ambushers, they came upon a 7-vehicle convoy exiting the scene and the rest of what will read to you is from a cessation. he and his team stop the vehicle research and for weapons, and as their personal vehicles and insurgent leapt out and attacked corporal dump. he wrestled the insurgent to the ground and in the ensuing struggle saw him release a grenade. immediately alerted his fellow marines to that threat, aware of the imminent danger and without hesitation he covered the grenade with his helmet and body , bearing the brunt of the explosion and shielding his marines from the blast. in the ultimate and selfless act of bravery in which she was

mortally wounded, he saved the lives of at least two fellow marines. on like jason, most of us are not going to be asked to give the last full measure of devotion for art causes or our people, but we are all guaranteed to face hard choices and make hard sacrifices to uphold what we believe is right. we are all going to encounter a situation where there is going to be a far easier thing to keep silent when surrounded by yes-men or when the troops would be too painful or to look the other way when their practices when no need to be called out. so at those points in time now but as you test yourself hard question. john wants to be brave are dry simply wants to avoid pain? here is what i think is so great, though. i think that if we can do all of these things, if we can demonstrate morals that do not fluctuate with the time all with

the circumstance, if we can demonstrate that we care far more about the patient acquisition of virtue than the rapid accumulation of wealth, if we can lead by serving others, then i think this is one of the best times in our country's living memory to be the people who raise our hands and say, here my. you have a need. to use me. i think this is a once in a generation chance to shape the course of our country and maybe even the course of the world. crisis presents great up virginities for great leaders. i think the world is hungry for a great leaders. i would encourage you to think about it, to think about the role that we can play. i, for one, am excited to do my best to try and rise to the occasion and to make a difference by leading well. i encourage you, as you think about the role that you can't

like to think about pursuing the virtue above all else. be humble. ma what you expect. do what you are going -- do what you say you're going to do. never take a single day for granted. enjoy the day you have. give your best at it. pursue excellence for its own sake. know your mission, and know what you cannot and will not trade off ever. serve your cause. serve your team's first. put yourself a distant third. take courage because you will fail and you will have to make hard choices, but you can and you will persevere. and in so doing you can help ensure that this great experiment that we call america remains the best and the last hope of the world. i am encouraged to talk to you today. and courage to see what we can do with our country, and i am

proud to be called an american. thank you. [applause] >> following are book tv programming in time -- prime-time continuing in a few moments with the panel from a military writer symposium on the challenges facing veterans returning from combat. in two hours marine corps commandant general james amos on the future of the court. after that, john johnson talks about her book, educating america's military. our live coverage from book expo america continues tomorrow morning with authors discussing their upcoming books, panelists include age male

>> no a forum on that challenge is veterans face when returning from war. from the women colby military writer symposium. this is two hours. >> first of all, president schneider, president todd, dr. wong, guests, students, thank you for coming to colby. i think this is going to be a very worthwhile afternoon. anybody have a cell phone? please turn it off. or at least get the rare volume off so it does not interrupt the proceedings. way back in 1951, even before i was born, new york giants center fielder willie mays was the national league rookie of the year. the following season he wore a different uniform. like many others of his

generation from all walks of life he had been inducted into the u.s. army. among those children the same year as willie mays was another american of some repute, pfc edward m. kennedy of massachusetts. later on with several gold records behind an elvis presley also took his turn to serve. there was a time when virtually all men who could serve in the armed forces of the united states did. those who didn't were more people than envied. draftees' route in two years. recruits stay at least for, but got a better deal. they got a choice of duty and training. most veterans are proud of their service. a great many of them regarded as an important and formulated part of their growing up. things changed, however, 1973 with the coming of the all volunteer military that ended the u.s. draft. also brought to close what had been a major rite of passage,

celebrities and the sons of the rich and famous shared with the rest of us. after 1973, men reaching the age of 18 were no longer push toward military service by the draft or by cultural norms. the volunteer force set up a major shift in the demographics of america. three-quarters, 80 percent if you count age 85, of american men over the age of 80 our veterans. by contrast, less than one-tenth of those under age 30 are veterans. veterans are a diminishing minority. for the most part, like jim people know about military service effort from their fathers, grandfathers, seen in the movies or picked up second-hand. only about 13 percent of americans are veterans. the military still ranks high in public opinion, but this could change. lack of wartime success could bring back contempt for military

values, seconded during vietnam. news coverage of the military usually focuses on scandals, losses, waste, mistakes. most of the entertainment industry traditionally depicts the military as buffoonish, bumbling, corrupt or informed. when people do have personal experience on which to base their judgments, images delivered by the news and the entertainment industry dominates or may become as we might say this year, lack of images produced by the military in the entertainment industry might dominates. does not follow that all that could understand the military have to have served in the military, but those who have served in the military can lend their voice. today on this panel we have several of those voices. all men who have served in the military. i'm going to introduce them from

the center out. dr. james wright, some of the world war two veteran who joined the marines and a 17 answer for three years, primarily with the first marine brigade in japan. he earned a ph.d. from the university of wisconsin madison, a chemistry professor at dartmouth college in 1969, and served as dartmouth president from 1998-2009. since 2005, dr. wright began a series of visits to u.s. military medical facilities where he met marines and other u.s. military personnel who had been wounded in the course of service in iraq in afghanistan. in over two dozen visits, says than the often encourages the injured servicemen and women to continue their education, and he subsequently joined in establishing and assumed responsibility for raising funds to support educational counseling program for one the u.s. veterans. severely injured military veterans.

it is now being offered to the american council on education. the president worked with senators jim webb, john warner, and check payable on language for the gi bill those passed by congress and signed by president bush in june 2008. his interest was to provide a means for private institutions to partner with veterans affairs in supporting veterans who matriculated at these institutions. this is known as the yellow ribbon program. dr. wright's book, among one of the reasons he is here at the colby military writers' symposium, those who have borne the battle, a history of america's wars of those is bought them was released in april 2012. he provides a historical overviews on american use of words and those of us fought them from the american revolution to current wars and share some of his own experiences and insights. please welcome dr. price.

[applause] >> dr. david mcintyre, colonel mcintyre, is a distinguished visiting fellow at the homeland security studies and analysis institute in washington d.c. and at the bipartisan w in the terrorism research center in washington d.c. as well as a director of homeland security and defense programs at the national red was cool. he presently serves on the editorial board of the journal of common security education and writes a regular column for inside homeland security. dr. mcintyre was appointed the national security education board by president bush into designate. previously served on the national board of directors at the national members alliance, a public-private partnership with the fbi. as academic adviser to the university and college committee at the international association of emergency managers, steering

committee of the homeland security defense education consortium and the 2002-two dozen three defense science board summer study and, and security. he has taught homeland security at the elliott school of george weston university, the lbj school of the university of texas, and the bush school at texas a&m and also directed the integrated center from insecurity at texas a&m for four years. he has numerous press credentials and interviews with every major network in the united states, and numerous radio stations and including last night was doing a cellphone radio interview with a station in texas. prior to this he served a 30-year career in the united states army would do these alternating between airborne and reconnaissance units and writing and teaching strategy. he taught the english department at west point and retired as the dean of the faculty in academics and then as it -- academic or college in 2001. he was 19 when i was a student there.

dr. mcintyre's book -- yakima he did a good job. thank you. [laughter] dr. mcintyre's book, rollicking good read, a center line, which depicts the story of a u.s. air force medevac c-130 transport and the lives of its crew, the medical personnel who support the transportation of wounded veterans, bringing them home in time for christmas, and it is a related story. i enjoyed it immensely. yields a b.s. in engineering from the net six military academy at west point, in m.a. in literature from auburn and a ph.d. in political science from the university of maryland. please welcome dr. mcintyre. [applause] first lieutenant directly to my left brew up in seaside, ore. think he is back in the great

northwest now. he was a high-school football player and a student body president at seaside high school, class of 1963 were is father was principled. he won a national merit scholarship at yale university. member of jonathan edwards college. he played wing forward for yale's rugby team, of rhodes scholar at the university college in oxford, and it was from university college in oxford that he was called to active duty as an infantry officer in the united states marine corps. after his military service returned to oxford and earned a master's degree. he made his living as a national business consultant in the coming month in singapore, and france. he is the author of a novel of the vietnam war, a top-10 best seller published in 2010. sebastian's youngbear declared mater or more of the most profound and devastating novels ever to come out of vietnam. received a 2011 washington but stay book award in the fiction

category based upon his combat experience as an infantry officer in the vietnam war and as a marine corps second and first lieutenant. his personal decorations include the navy cross, the bronze star, two navy commendation medals for valor, two purple hearts, and ten air medals. after his combat tour in vietnam he served another year of active duty at headquarters marine corps and writes about both his service and his post service and his latest book, what it is like to go war. he was recently interviewed by a build more year in connection with promotion of this book in 2012. please welcome him. [applause] last but not least, at the far end of the panel, colonel john

coffin from the national guard of vermont, retired. in his army career he served as a signal platoon leader and immobile consultant across south vietnam from 19 -- southeast asia from 1916 to 1970 and joined the vermont national guard in 1973. during his lengthy career he served a wider range of positions from the vermont medical platoon to the honor of commanding the singularly leaked , three of the 1,702nd mounted infantry battalion in the early 1990's. for the last 19 years he served in the capacity of the vermont guard staff psychologist. based upon his longtime service as a civilian counseling staff psychologist for both fire service and police officers at the -- it escapes me, the name of the organization. >> the power center. >> that our center in burlington. colonel kaufman was appointed the vermont guard staff

psychologist. he would debrief returning soldiers at the books in unit as well as brief soldiers that were getting ready to go on the vermont guard deployments to iraq and afghanistan. he and his critical incident team debriefed nearly every vermont soldier returning from overseas, including troops deployed with other reserve units and state soldiers. in addition, for the better part of a lasting years he consulted with soldiers prior to departure to iraq in afghanistan can often for repeated taurus. the team was constantly deployed to one of 12 different army deportation locations around the kutcher providing 106 small level unit if debriefings during the weeklong vacation process. six months ago he retired 49 years of army service as which time he was awarded merit and distinguished service. welcome. [applause] this year's theme for the colby

military writer symposium is coming home, and it talks about the hopes, fears, dreams, and ambitions, i hope, of returning veterans. and the dwindling number of returning veterans, not dwindling numbers of veterans, but the defendant -- bundling numbers of veterans and the population. you previously stated that the greater transformation in the united states as far as the military concern followed world war ii in the way we mobilize war, five work and honor those who served. you say this has changed drastically. because of unclear and changing military objectives you think it is harder for a civilian to stand behind this situation. because our forces have become less representative of american society as a whole, few citizens join in the sacrifices that were fair demands. this support systems seem less and less capable of handling these demands. how do we deal with this?

how the we fix it? and the think it is a problem? >> well, that is the question of today and a question really of our time. those of us took care of veterans. we need to fix it. need to address it. world war two was a clear war with the objectives defined and accepted by the entire population. there was a full mobilization and everyone shared in the sacrifice of world war ii, about 12 percent of the population served in uniform during the war. the war since then, korea, vietnam, and certainly the wars in iraq in afghanistan have been less clearly defined. there has been a full mobilization. we have been reluctant to have sacrifice is for most americans, and increasingly now we have depended upon an all-volunteer force. they are not representative of us. had we fix it? we have to give our political system to recognize when it talks about sending troops into war that there are going to be casualties and in our political system to recognize that these

casualties deserve full care from this country for as long as it takes to deal with the issues that they bring back with them, either physical or emotional issues that they bring back with them. we need to know who these people are who are serving in our wars. wars with undefined purposes fought by people who are unknown to most of us are very dangerous things. a democracy cannot wage war in this way. >> do you think the relative lack of press coverage in the current war or current military operations in afghanistan is an issue? i think he wrote about this a few weeks ago. >> estimate is an issue. there is nothing dramatic to cover most of the time. is guys going out on patrol. maybe some kid from iowa losing his leg in and high edie's motion. there is now engaged with the enemy. there is no pill taken and flag planted to say, we have had a victory today. so the media simply do not coverage, and most of us do not know if. there's too much of a sense of

this war being fought by drones in some place that we don't know. it is still being fought by young men and women with its underground, and they are dealing with multiple the bonds, and we have to understand better what it is apparent during. >> you know, you commented in your books about returning from vietnam to a nation that certainly opposed the war, but visibly oppose it. what you think we see that visible opposition today or if our mission is not any more clear than it was in vietnam? >> well, i think the first obvious answer is there is no draft. there wasn't all lot of protesting as long as that to s deferment was in place. as soon as the college deferment was taken away and the leads could start getting drafted or, you know, students are going around saying, my god, they're going to get me, i'd like this work. i mean, it is -- it is very important, as dr. wright says,

that the entire nation realizes that it has chosen to go to war. somehow we get the idea in this country, we sort of -- we are faced with sort of indifference now, almost at the. they are a war. that is the army is a workable we're not. you pays the taxes? to build the factories that build the bombs? who teaches the kids that go off to the military are the scientists that develop the weapons? we talk about how veterans sometimes feel isolated when they come back, and i think that what has happened, as a result of the all volunteer military is that the country itself, and cautiously does not really feel like it is involved. we borrowed the money from the chinese, basically, to fight the war. taxes did not go up. so there is not in it -- even in the neutral sacrifice, and the more important thing that i think is something that we need to take on more. if you have the attitude that

you are not really engaged in it as a civilian, at the end of this long chain of factories and financing and taxes, at the end of that long chain you have a 19 year-old who pulls the trigger. that 19 year old is just the in the long chain that we are all part of. somehow we have the idea that that 19-year-old is the one that went to war and pulled the trigger. he did the killing and he did the suffering, and we have some compassion for that, when he goes back home, if we come as a nation, and consciously -- unconsciously think there isn't going to be isolation -- how is he going to feel? in the old days he came back to the tribe, everybody suffers. civil war, all the way back to the revolutionary war, women had to go farming. they suffered when the men were gone. it does not happen anymore. i think that goes right back to the point, which i think that we

have to reexamine the of volunteer military. >> dr. mcintyre, you touched on some of the families back home, but the wounded warriors as well as the folks that work in a position to support them, particularly captain mike middleton and his family situation back home. could you describe when you get some of these ideas and what you used as your biographical sketches for your fictional novel? >> sure. of these samples ledger run of his knowledge or from people that i know and recruited to do interviews with me. so air crews, interviews from people i knew or specifically from my youngest son who is an air force pilot. in fact, deployed today to afghanistan on his 13th trip overseas since this war started in 2002 in air force special operations. their families to the medical people commoners is that i knew

or nurses that i may as contacts to get interviews with me, chief of the emergency room in kuwait, a flight nurse who had 500 combat hours calling wounded, the family members are either my own family members to my wife was in bed and merrill marauder, military child who married the guy in the military, become military wife, and then sent two sons off to war and became a military mother. my daughters in long, a sister who said nephew's off. this is really about, when you talk about four groups, pilots and air crews, the family members, the wounded. the medical teams, these were people drawn from my own experience. the question you're addressing about the isolation, whether they're cut off for the rest of the net states and that is drawn from my own experience as well. if i could, let me just take 30 seconds, national strategy and homeland security strategy is mostly what i do, not writing

novels. let me follow up on the last two questions if i could for just about 30 seconds. one thing has not been mentioned is not the sole cause or a shoot. please don't get me wrong, but it is an important issue to understand. there is a fundamental divide in this nation over what the future of the nation should be. and at the top, there is republican or democrat, for the eight years of the bush administration, now going on five years of the obama administration, there has been a feeling among the political elite, among the political science elite, among the decision making elite that the united states must be engaged slowly. the way we defend ourselves is either with military overseas are with and those overseas, but we must be engaged globally. the problem is, the american public is not willing to pay for that. we have done it on borrowed money or profession -- borrowed money to hire soldiers to go into that. so there is a fundamental disconnect my strategic

disconnect. but that leads to is the military and political elite in the country doing things without open access of the public. i don't know whether you have noticed and not, but there has not been an american casualties in the news for several years now. every time a person is killed in afghanistan @booktv by the way, one did are no longer reported. every time a person is killed it is reported as a nato casualty. you have to read part and in the article to find out what country they're from. yes up reporting them as american casualties. we don't have an american helicopter go down anymore. it's a naval helicopter. that's not the press' fault. the military has made the decision to do that. this is not just a political decision. is leading from mine the curtain. it is not his leading from beyond the people. it is what we're doing and where we are engaging, obscuring in many ways from the american public who don't see the price or feel the price of the american engagement.

really that there is a fundamental problem i suggest it is in this army in this audience and in your homes. the question is, to you want to be? if you want to have a global footprint, you have to pay for the global footprint. if you're not willing to pay for it, you have to accept the fact that you, and other people do what the hell they want to. you cannot have both things. that is a strategic impossibility. and that is the position that we put our families and our military in. they're paying for our attempt to accomplish a -- accomplishes. ♪ impossibility. >> you get to speak to a lot of vermont guardsmen both before they went to war and after they came home. would like to keep it is before they went to war for while because you tell me what you told them, and i would like to read get a view of weather that was the right thing to be told before going off to fight in combat. >> thank you. i am a flag by a three extremely

influential, powerful, and well read and well-written and who i hope can assist everybody in this room to a squeeze our government to provide everything from vocational help to psychological help our soldiers. and i would like to join them in that in my humble capacity. i just got out of the bag after 49 years. all i know about is what i have heard. i have read, i have thought. really what i know is what is in the hearts and minds of our soldiers. in general jonathan has overheard a number -- was also with him last night reflecting on a pile of newspapers he had in his office in the first couple of months of the war. and he plopped the day's paper down and said, somebody really ought to write about this. and following a discussion we had, we agreed that it was not going to be one of us.

i had not yet like my brothers and the stage here picked up a pen, and i don't know, actually, if i am going to war will be able to. i am putting -- pretty raw from many of the stories i've heard. but what we talked about, there were many vietnam veterans in the guard at that time to in years ago, 12 years ago. the thing that to bring the most lovely in my heart was nothing happened to us. when we come back to my had a double album given to me when i was discharged. i was in a bar. he has a better story about being discharge of f-15 mess.

essentially i got down on my knees and said, we have to go on after these guys. we don't know what we're doing. we don't know what will help. we have to go out there and try to talk to them from our hearts and souls. we are behind them no matter what they find themselves into over there. on never be able to live with this or myself. we practically had carte blanche going out to units in talking to them about what they feared that they might face because we are in uniform. conversations going. been around a long time. i have been around so long that i know grandfathers, fathers,