cook's minimum wage they made the waitresses do that kind of stuff. obviously we were getting no tips at that time. those are my stories. the harassment is too embarrassing. [applause] >> some of my questions just got answer but i was curious what happens if you're an individual worker into about violations and confront your ask lex i imagine there is fear of consequences because they might say well we will hire someone who will do it creates be absolutely so that is why we don't recommend doing it alone. we recommend joining an organization like roc to join together with co-workers who can say these things. you're not protected on your own. you are protected when you get together with other lands say enough is enough sewing courage it go to roc united web site and be a member and we will support you. we created a web site called living off tips.com where anyone who has lived off the industry

can share your stories of what it's like to live off of tips. celebrities are sharing their stories on the web site of their experiences living off of tips and anyone can so we invite and encourage the stories like we have heard today. thank you so much. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

so we are each year to talk about it look and that ink in many respects, our books are radically different from one another. you can buy a copy of each one when we are done and make up your own mind. but i actually think that the books are quite complementary and that each in its own way affirms the message or purpose of the other one. my book is called "breach of trust." the basic point of "breach of trust" is to sit just the relationship between the u.s.

military and american society and just and just alluded to this is the basic relationship is pervaded by dishonesty. rhetorically, we all support the troops. and this, collectively we allowed the church to be subject it to serial abuse as authorities at washington commit the troops to need and unwinnable wars. this is an example, i think, of what a martyr and theologian feature on hoffer once referred to as cheap grace. cheap grace is grace that is unearned and undeserved and that it has since turned a blind eye towards things that are fundamentally wrong or even evo.

now, my book is kind of a history book in no way. it is a history book in the sense that it tries to recount the changes in our basic military system that have occurred in vietnam and evaluate the consequences of this change is. the big change of course is one that occurred at the end of vietnam. that was the creation of the so-called all volunteer force, which despite that phrase, we should think of as a professional army. or to use the phrase that the founders of this republic would've used, a standing army. by and large, it seems to me our fellow citizens today be the creation of y'all volunteer hours of having been a good thing. certainly, the creation of the all volunteer force as a result of that, our reliance on professional soldiers have had the effect of relieving citizens of the neighbors possibility to contribute to the nation's

defense. and it has in fact lifted a burden for months as citizens. what are the consequences of lifting that burden from us as citizens is to give washington a free hand in deciding when and where to commit u.s. forces. the american people effectively have forfeited ownership over what used to be called the american army. that army has now become washington's army. but in the use of that army, civilian and military elite in washington have proven to be both reckless and incompetent. the world's best military can certainly we are told we have the worlds best military and by many measures there is no question we do have the worlds best military. the worlds best military is supposed to win wars and indeed

supposed to win wars quick we can decisively. the end of the cold war along with operation desert storm back in 1991 read that expectation of the military that would win quickly and decisively. the defense of those states, particularly even 9/11 have told a radically different story. we know how to start wars. but based on the evidence presented in an and iran, we don't know how to win and. we don't know how to end them. once begun, wars tend to drag on indefinitely. and it is important i think for us to back nice and acknowledge the extent to which the american people are complicit in this outcome, and this tended me. the american people now have de

facto to find their own involvement in american wars in terms of what in the world i referred to by its the three notes. the first is that we will not change. that is to say we will not change the way we live our lives simply because the nation is at war. and we will not pay. that is to say we will not change our way of life, raise our taxes, reduce our entitlement in order to ensure that the revenues provided stand the word conducted in our name. and of course, we will not lead. put simply, war has become not our problem. somebody else's problem. as a consequence of that, as a consequence of losing control of our military, a consequence of indulging, what we've ended up with is too much for them to few

warriors. 1% of the population bears the burden of what has become for all practical purposes permanent war. the other 99% of us are spectators. i personally believe this distribution of service and sacrifice is not democratic. it is also not moral. it is in fact the inverse of the complaint registered in the occupied move and of a couple years back. namely what we have is the 1% being exploited by the 99%. the side effects are likewise unfortunate. the disparity between washington's appetite for war and society's willingness to provide for years has created an opening for profit they made private security firms that are termed as mercenaries, to enrich

themselves, even as they promote pervasive waste and corruption. now let's acknowledge that war has always been a moneymaking opportunity for some. that we live in a time when in many, war has primarily become an opportunity for sending dictations in some people to make money. president obama and his administration have at least partially grasp the problem. the president's administration has tacitly acknowledged in invading and occupying countries is a fools errand. after flirting with counterinsurgency is okay, jury and the obama afghanistan search, it has devised an alternative way of war. missile firing drones, special operations forces provide the basis for reaching what is in

effect a campaign of targeted assassination. this obama approach has reduced costs. that it cannot provide a basis for coherent strategy. the obama doctrine, furthermore, sets precedents that may yet turn the war into a free fire zone. i think that there is an alternative to the all volunteer for professional military that we have come to expect. the alternative we should be talking about and considering is a program of national surveys. national service could provide a way to revive the tradition of the citizen soldier also in reaching the reigning concept of citizenship. national surveys means that all young americans would spend a period of service to community and country. some young americans would serve in the armed forces. others would serve in different

capacities. per serving the environment, helping the elderly and dispossessed. improving the community in various capacities. but all would serve. that's sad, implementing the program of national surveys requires that we the people first recognize how defective the military system is that we've come to rely on. with that, i will sit down. i'd be more than happy to turn the podium over to ann. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, andrew. and thank you to our host. i am very happy to be here this evening. i am honored to share the podium with one of our heroic

historians. as andrew has said, our books are very, very different from each other and get complement each other and some very profound ways. but whereas i support andrew is very practical suggestion that seems very reasonable and practical if we lived in a reasonable and practical country of national service for everyone. i would like to carry the argument one step further. my solution would eat that we should just stop having wars altogether. [applause] in which case we could devote the year or two of national

surveys to just fixing the infrastructure. we could begin with the commuter trains in this particular area. but if i may, i would just like to read a few paragraphs from the introduction of my book and talk for a few minutes about the process that i followed through on to try to tell the story to back a little bit of argument i am a keen and this introduction. sooner or later almost every american comes home. on a stretcher, in a box, in an altered state of mind. soldiers returned or failed to return to families who recognize them or not, communities that help them or can't. that's what this book is about.

not the pointless wars, which have gone on for so long that historians tolerate the way with their evaluations coming using words like shipwreck, disaster, tragic mistake. historian and are cheap aces -- andrew jay bacevich reminds us u.s. troops in battle dress and body armor, whom americans profess to admire. the price. in this vote, i don't pretend to give anything like a complete picture of soldiers, but rather offer a series of snapshots of soldiers i met and the people around them. caregivers and family members and friends who look after them with the don't go according to plan. the two say the price of folly. i gathered the snapshots on military bases and military

house those in the united states in this war zones and houses here at home. they are not pretty pictures. they are what i saw. perhaps darkened by the knowledge that nothing recorded in this book has to happen. were not natural. we have to be trained for it. soldiers and citizens alike. all right. thank you. war is not natural. we have to be trained for it. soldiers and citizens alike. and the wars of choice be retrained for and the wars these soldiers took part in need never have been thought. contrary to common opinion in the united states, war is not inevitable nor has it always been with us. war is a human pension, and

organized them a deliberate action of an antisocial kind. in the long span of human life on earth, a fairly recent one. for more than 90% of the time that humans have lived on this planet, most of them have never made to order. many languages don't even have a word for it. turn off cnn and read anthropology. yost v. what's more, war is obsolete. most nations don't make war anymore except when coerced by the united states to join him. his coalition. the earth is so small and our time here so short, no other nation on the planet explore as often, as long, as forcefully, as it actively, as distractedly, as we slowly and sent to fully or unsuccessfully as the united state. no other nation makes for it is

his. this is not primarily a book of opinion, but that is my opinion. i would like to be able to convince americans that is an important opinion. so how could i do that? when i was on a forward operating base in afghanistan, i watched the patrols go out every day. sometimes they went with them. and often they would come back, since we were in deeply troubled part of the country, often they would come back with men missing who had been spirited away in that fact helicopters after having been wounded on the battlefield. and they would not return to the base. at the same time, one could read in american papers the heartwarming stories of young

men who had lost both legs in iraq or afghanistan and were going on a mountain climbing trip with fellow veteran who also happen to have lost their legs in those wars. and wasn't this wonderful. well, in a way of course it is a wonderful testimony to the curry h. of those survivors who have worked extremely hard to carry on with their lives in ways that we cannot even imagine. but looked at in another way, it is most endless kind of waste. so why don't we -- why haven't we heard this story in between? might have been spend the time a soldier is shot down in the field and the time he gets to go climbing on his new titanium legs. and that is what i set out to

find out. so i was able, after a year of struggle to finally get permission to embed on the medevac flight and in the hospitals that bring our rented home. the major part of this book is in league a witnessing of what i saw and what i was told by the doctors, nurses and other medical no who care for those soldiers in afghanistan, at regional medical center in germany, america's largest hospital out that if the united states and eventually buy additional medevac slayed to dover, delaware and defend the hospitals at walter reid and bethesda. and then, in many cases i

followed particular veterans all the way home, met their families, heard how the family was getting along and began to understand more fully how the injury of a single soldier in packs an entire family and through that family and the entire community and beyond. as a mother of one veteran of the invasion of iraq who has been at home in the bedroom of his childhood are most of the last 10 years since he returned from the war calls that the ripple effect. i think that is a word that doesn't begin to capture the full impact of that. you know, for years i've worked in afghanistan and another

conflict countries as an aid worker, generally working on behalf of women and other civilians. of course, the principle injuries and deaths have occurred among the civilian of the nations we have invaded. i having worked with those people for so many years, i went to a forward operating base to write a piece about women soldiers i'm not a sin found myself on a base with four women and a whole battalion of men. i wouldn't have chosen to be there, but the air i kept my eyes open and i saw soldier disintegrate before my very eyes. he did know anybody was watching. i thought, there is more going on here than i have ever been aware of.

that is when i began to follow these soldiers and to understand a bit better what they go through and how they are torn apart physically and mentally by the words. and how little understanding that 99% half of what a coat through while they are in the field and after they come home. i also depend upon small-town journalists in this country who provided a lot of information that has never been gathered together in one place about the habit that many of the returning veterans do once they get back. the violence they bring with them and that they commit against others and of course at an incredible rate against themselves. so this is a little green book

of stories that didn't have to happen in. i kept it short. so i hope people have the stamina to stick with it and read it and understand that this is not found in the can allow us to continue. thank you. [applause] >> so, now we will welcome your comments and questions. i guess people who have questions should come out to the make. we are going to stand here and try to field whatever you've got. i told ann without tipping her off whatever's going to say that i was going to post the first question. you know, i write books sitting around in my office at boston university. sitting in my study reading

books and articles and looking at stuff on the web. but it is a wonderful life, but it is also pretty sedate and pretty safe. so my question really is, why do you do what you do and how did you come to do what you do? bearing witness directly and immediately to the dance that you describe and very much putting yourself at risk in the way you approach your work. how did you come to be who you are? >> and very nosy. [laughter] i like to see what's going on. and very often what is going on makes me really mad.

and when i get mad, i start writing about it. so that the short answer. a little bit of context where that is in the dedication to my book. i finally made amends with my father by dedicating this book to him. he was a veteran of world war i, highly decorated, came home, and became one of the successful small businessmen. civic minded, well did in the community and get a violent and dreaded man and withdrawn man at home. a famous comedian outside the house, a silent tyrants within it. i grew up under that shadow that follows my father to the end of his life. he died at the age of 80, still having nightmares about the war he had fought as a young man.

so after each of these wars, we have -- we are reassured by the pentagon that it's only a small number of returnees oldsters who have any trouble reintegrating. most go on to find careers. well, my father was one of those who went on to a fine career. if that was not the whole story. so i've never trusted those pentagon statistics. that is one of the things that makes me nosy enough to put myself at risk to see what's going on. [applause] >> just real quickly. as mr. bacevich that, you can line up for questions here. if you have difficulty coming up to the front, please raise your hand and i will come around with a microphone so you can ask.

>> i just have a quick question related in a direct way. before the invasion of iraq, fallows said the "atlantic monthly" wrote what was one of the most press and articles i you didn't get as much publicity as it should have gotten on what do we do after we win the war? the idea of the article was we can't do anything because we don't have the military as a peacemaking wing that can go in and fix the damage that we've are deep down with our super weapons and help out in constructing a new country. that's quite a task in itself. but it illustrates, if you look

at that problem, after you've hummed out of country, it gives you an idea of the task that faces us, even if we don't have war. so i'm just wondering what you thought. you probably read that article. >> i can't remember what i had for dinner three days ago. i'm sure i can't remember the article. i will respond to what i think is the question. so why was the united states military so i'm prepared for the consequences of overthrowing saddam hussein and suddenly been responsible for this country? the answer, i believe, have to do with the military's response to failure and defeat in vietnam. i'm talking about the military i

was serving in the 1970s and through the 1980s. this is a military that above all else this is the ironic thing, above all else, was determined to avoid a recurrence of vietnam, to avoid being caught in another ugly, unconventional and protracted war. in order to achieve that vietnam avoidance, the mindset of the officer corps focused narrowly on operational questions. the priority, overriding priority was to figure out how to win the battle and there is precious little intellectual energy invested into the question. well, after you win the battle, what an? what comes next? what might you face? this played out in the planning

for operation iraqi freedom and the execution. it is clear that the commander of u.s. central command at the time, general tommy franks, very much a vietnam veteran and i very much a product of this post vietnam. was focused like a laser on how to drive to baghdad and then destroyed the iraqi army and overthrow the government. neither she nor his bosses, secretary of defense donald rumsfeld paid sufficient attention to the question. it was a massive intellectual failure. of course, the consequent is that the massive intellectual failure, the ironic outcome is that the army in iraq found out fighting the vietnam war all over again can equally unsuccessfully in my judgment. >> next question.

>> hi. i have a bumper sticker on my car that says wars not the answer. i happen to be a big fan of your proposal just to stop it. of course the question is a poor is not the answer, what is he in there? i'm wondering if either of you are familiar with the working paper published by the service committee and the friends committee on national legislation. both quaker organizations called shared security. i am wondering if you are familiar with that paper and your thoughts on it. as we try to figure out what the answer is, where do you see the leadership? where do we go? who do we support in making this happen? >> f-4 is not the answer, what is the question? what is the question? we keep struggling with the war

part of it and don't get around to inking about questions that would take us to a different level. i am not familiar with the papers that you mentioned on security, but i would just like to say that, you know, if you talk about it long enough for me really begin to think it is the most important thing in the world and that the whole world thinks so. america is under the delusion that the whole world talks about war and security the we do. nothing could be further than the truth. nobody talks the way americans do. i happen to live in norway now, where security is top about all the time. what they mean by security is now, what do we need to do for the health care system and the jobs and all of this to really

provide security for our children? everything that is done is done with an eye to making security for the children. what security means is that all the basic fundamental concerns of life are provided for by your civic arrangements so that you are not worried about your home. you are not worried about your job. you are not worried about your health care. and then you can be free to live your life in a secure country. that's the kind of conversation we need to be having here. but it is the kind of conversation we never had time to have here because we are always talking about war. that is my opinion again. [applause] >> so, right before we started, we are sitting in the front pew. what side do you want to sit on? i said, well, you.

she said, well, i like to sit on the last. and i said that's fine because i like to sit on the right because i am actually a conservative. i think to the point of your question, and this is where i do think we differ very substantially, i am quite skeptical -- when they cut to the chase. as a catholic, i believe in original sin. i think that we are in our nature, fundamentally flawed and that piece probably is beyond our capacity to achieve. and not to my mind, a more modest goal is more sick to minimize the occurrence of war,

except in those circumstances when the highest values are at risk and that there is no alternative. but to resort to violent in order to defend or achieve those things. even then, always, always, always be cognizant of the fact that war occurred in the realm of chance and that the consequences that will stem from more will defile your imagination. so therefore, one needs to be extraordinarily cautious, careful. this is where it can be agreed not to play that somehow or other, i think particularly since the end of the cold war, arguably you could trace it even to the beginning of the cold war, we as a people our

political leaders in 10 have entirely lost sight of these historical realities and they are far too casual about going to war. they are libya is the adverse consequences. their work on the most optimistic assumptions that is going to be easy, that is going to be cheap, that once you achieve the goal you set for yourself, that all their problems are going to go away. so carmakers are rooted perspective, i am the guy who's as no. there is no reason to think among those terms and therefore we should be cautious in the weary and again minimize rather than expecting we can eliminate entirely conflict. >> first and foremost, thank you very much both for your insight

on these issues. it's deeply important. professor bacevich, i was struck earlier comment concerning the change in the draft of the military force and a pat on my citizenship, on our citizens and more important on citizenship. the fact that today it seems as though citizens seem to be detached from the policy that we seem to identify perhaps more as consumers rather than distance. beyond the question of just returning to a project of national service, perhaps thinking about all the other factors that have led to citizen disengagement in this country. if i could get both of their perspectives on how do we reengage people as citizens as responsible members of the policy and how do we get done -- it strikes a part of the problem

stems from the fact that people don't perceive they have skin in the game in the same way they did during the draft or other periods in our histories. and so, how do we spark that perhaps more historic sense of citizenship that has been lost in the past 30 or 40 years? >> well, it's a great question. a massive subject and i think that implicit in the question is the recognition that at some loblaw, the problem is a cultural one. how is it that the 99% are willing to sit by and allow the 1% to fight these needless and never-ending wars. what does that say about the 99%? if we go to the 99% and say you are americans.

what do you believe in? the answer is we are american. we believe in freedom. we are exercising our freedom. indeed, in somers x the all volunteer force is a testimony to the concept of freedom. if you want to serve, go ahead, good for you. if you don't want to serve him and that's fine, too. my argument, which is an argument that has no political salient is one that the claim we stand for freedom deserves very serious examination. again, because i am a can serve it as, i believe that freedom should mean to live in accordance with what is true. that presumes that one can identify truth to say that i'm

going to live my life in duderstadt or keeping faith with that. in my mind, what is happening over the last 34 years is we've given up on the notion there such a thing as truth or your truth is that it is my truth. who am i to tell you? who are you to tell me? this has created a sense of moral confusion with the default definition of truth tends to be the one that is the cheapest. truth defined in terms of consumption. truth defined in doing whatever i wanted to stay night and wednesday morning. on wednesday morning you've got to show up for work, right? but the notion that freedom

should have some larger configuration has been lost. how to get the american people to engage in a conversation, you know i confess i do not know. but to my mind, that is where the real need is. >> at night to respond to that, too by saying to cut the american people a little bit as lack. it seems that american are so busy worried about all those things i referred to earlier. are they going to pay the right? are they ever going to get their home back. everyone is scrambling around. that's the antithesis of freedom. that is being captive to a social system that is broken down because the country, in my view, have devoted all of

energies to this military, industrial, congressional complex and the whole process a of shifting the money from the public treasury and then coming back and cutting whatever services might have given some relief to the general population and given them time to think about, aren't i lucky to be an american and live in a country like this? now i can think about what i can do for my neighbors and my country when i have a little bit of security to be able to do that. so you talk in your book about fdr's strategy in his guiding

the country through the second world war and the ways that were successful militarily and also brought an enrichment to the life of the country and involve everyone in the war, in the war effort in ways that united the country so that we came out -- i hope i'm not distorting your view. we came out better all-around, whereas the war we prosecute now impoverished the country in every one of those ways and leaves the whole country worse off than it was before. if you project the cost of these wars ahead, the trillions of dollars it will cost us just to care for her the returning wounded soldiers. what chance are americans going to have? when inspiration are they going to have to be involved themselves in this?

[applause] >> thank you. i know you mentioned this one. i am a south more. i know that all the soldiers and professors were once it is. the students found today could be students of tomorrow. in my history class, we mostly learn about u.s. revolution in world war i and world war ii. my question is, do you think if we learn about modern war and open the minds of the students, it will change the minds of the soldiers without knowing the truth? how could we change the minds of the students do not admire

soldiers as the lifesavers. cute guys have any stories of kids, what they think about their parents who come back for more as? also, one last thing, i came from a country to escape war and i mna country that i feel his piece all, but you say is that war. which country speaks for the truth? >> well, let me try and answer the first part of the question, which dealt with the history we learned. last night, today is the 12th? last night i flipped on the tube

and the longest day was on tv. older folks remember that make a movie. it lasted about a day and included every male star in hollywood in one part or another. john wayne, henry fonda, on and on. all about the d-day invasion. and the tale of heroism, as though i was struck by how hollywood has chosen not that moment to portray the senior german officers as true gentleman who didn't like adolf hitler. now, the point of that is the history we learn in the military history we learn that gets taught in our schools or shown on prime time television is a

history that tends to emphasize world war ii, the civil war, and maybe to some degree the revolutionary war. what everyone can say about those conflicts and their political purposes and consequences, they just are of a different -- from a different category than the wars of our time today. what i am trying to say is i think what we need is a different historical narrative that the concerns and issues that are going to matter to you as a citizen of the 21st venture he are not going to be shaped in my judgment by world war ii. to really put it bluntly, the economical lessons of world war

ii are pretty much irrelevant and i think almost counterproductive. the lessons of war that we need to learn are the conflicts n.b. it non-and going up to the present day. they don't tell a story of purposefulness, of the jury, heroism, ideals triumphant. they tell a far murkier and more morally ambiguous story. it's not as satisfying some of it is far more relevant. we need to tell a different historical story. i think we then take away different lessons that are more relevant to the present moment. >> i would like to jump off from the part of your question that asks, what can we tell the students to give them a different picture of war?

i want to give everyone here to take away assignment, please. in researching for my book, i visited schools in the boston area that have junior rotc in the classroom. if a student in boston score at least those i've visited both in junior rotc, which they might do at the age of fort team, 15, they will be excused from taking american history altogether. they will learn nothing about american history except what they are taught by their teachers who are, with all due respect, retired colonels. and you'd laugh, but i want to bring the seriousness of this home to you by saying, if you go

to the veterans day parade, you will also he rank after rank after rank of children who are members of bj rtc marching down the streets with guns and flags, proudly getting ready to enlist in the military and recruiters are in the score. anyplace else in the world, we would have it recruitment of soldiers and that is not what we call it here. go into your schools and look at what's happening. you'll see why account person ask such a question because so many young people right here in the schools of this city are getting a very different message and are being, in my view, strong-armed shanghaied into the military. [applause]

>> hi. my question refers to the notion out of the few times that the current wars are going on indefinitely. i was in the military during the vietnam war. the veteran -- the career soldiers at the time who i spoke to about what was going on in the various conflicts that ran in, including the vietnam conflict, dey said generally they were wars to obtain raw materials, resources. and i had watched the progression of subsequent wars. and when the wars did not wind up, did not end, i simply assumed clearly they have the state they are to be there maintain the flow of the

resources or at least a victory that somebody else to get in the resources. i just wonder if you would comment, if either one if you would like to comment on that? >> well, there are always material stakes. territory resources provide one explanation for a conflict. i tend to think that it a nation is not sufficient. there are ip will who would argue quite strongly that there is a one-word answer to why we invaded iraq and the one-word answer is oil. i don't think that's true. i do think it is true that were it not for the fact that we have a culture and economy that

demands immense quantities of cheap energy combined with the fact that at least until quite recently, in the persian gulf region contained the largest oil reserves. we never would've cared much about what goes on in that part of the world. but that, i would argue that the ambitions and the rationale membership in this nation or why they reached the conclusion that invading iraq was necessary, go far beyond simply wanted to get the oil. in some sense -- in some sense, i thought they did was want to get the oil, that actually might make them seem somewhat more reasonable. but what they really thought was to undertake a project of transforming the islamic world that was going to put the united

states in a position to somehow direct the course of events in this massive swath of territory. they had so much confidence and their own wisdom and in the capacity of american military power that they seriously believed they could rearrange the lives of about 1.4 billion people to suit us and our way of life. my favorite quote of the entire post-9/11. , i'll make it partially correct are mostly correct, but you can look it up. look out, brussels press conference on september 18 of 2001. that is the week after 9/11. september 18. he said, we had a choice. either we could change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or we could change the way they live. we chose the latter.

now, that is what the iraq war and the larger so-called war on terrorism is all about in the eyes of the architects of the war. we are going to change the way we live so we don't have to change the way users. the stakes included the oil, who gets to use it, but went far beyond that. >> this is not in reply to your question, but just to add another mention to what andrew has just said. in the course of my talking to veterans of this war, i talked to a great many whose reintegrating into civilian life has presented us is called in the military, challenges because that's one of them put it to me, whom i quoted my book, but she was representative of many.

we know too much. we've been too rare these wars are. we've been to other countries. we've seen how other people live and we've seen the price that other people in the world pay for the american way of life. we know things that americans need to know that they don't want us to tell them. they don't want us to speak. and she talked about if you go with a minor complaint to the va, they drug you. she said we are at their worst night air. those crazy bets from vietnam come back again. >> this is my wife. she's also ripping maps that i your comments about repeating

teachers as a former history teacher. i disagree with you about something we may have learned about world war ii. that is a way to not see his abused their language for their political and warlike ends. it occurs to me further that at the appointed time, i don't know when. after world war ii, the then war department suddenly became the defense department, a complete reversal of roles and a lie. would you endorse a movement to restore the link which of war department versus defense department? [laughter] >> yes.

[laughter] >> i would like to second that. >> right on. thank you. >> i heard a story of an army or gate in the early occupation of iraq that instead of fighting the insurgents directly, like raiding houses in the middle of the night, they work to improve the community, opening markets, making the streets clean, that sort of thing. just making life a little ball and letting be happy. i believe this may have been the unit that they are a disgrace to the trias. eventually, that unit were shifted out of the area of the neighborhood they were patrolling and they were replaced by a more conventional approach of taking indoors in the middle of the night. i think the base of water is

that really we don't consider that there are people on both sides of the gun. so would you agree with that? what do you think about society and warner? >> well, let me focus on the first part of what you just said. i think that's true. this is petraeus commanded the 101st airborne division in the immediate occupation. i wasn't there. based on reporting, it appears that relative to other commanders of his grade, he took a more proactive approach to try to rebuild, to prevent the complete disintegration of civil society. i am not in a position to evaluate the events. but what i would say is i'm not sure how much that it along those lines would have been necessary to achieve the

objective of preventing an insurgency and having a peaceful occupation. for this reason. the people of iraq want us there. they didn't want to be occupied. ..

[applause] [applause] >> so we're now two -- [inaudible] [laughter] this is the third past the last or whatever. but going back to the rumsfeld press conference and the different idea what security is, you know. to me, it's the policy that has changed and america has a policy of -- the world -- the america canna. war is still the --

[inaudible] politics by other means. ii don't think we are starting wars by accident. we attack countries that get out of line, and those guys really think that the best way to keep the world at peace and prosperous is for america to make the peace. and to goat a different place, i have to change that international security system. whether it starts with schools or whether it starts with the u.n. or some other way of keeping people safe. that's what it's going take. thank you, cole. who can argue with that? you're right. why do our leaders or more broadly our elites -- why are they committed to this

project? which is a term they would never use? because of the overarching importance attributed to the lessons of world war ii. that is to say we must lead. there is no one else who can lead. these are the lessons of history that are constantly recited as they are universally applicable truth. and they make it difficult, if not impossible, at least in the sphere of politics to introduce

other truths that are somewhat more complicated. and would suggest that our interest and arguably the world's interest might be served by taking a somewhat modest view of our role in international politics. it's hard to get a hearing are in alternative perspective. [inaudible question] >> people really look with great anxiety upon the united. they think we have gone crazy, and people fear what is going to happen next. close call with syria. where are we going go next? it seems that the american war machine doesn't need the excuse of natural resources anymore. it just needs to keep the war going. so that it can keep transferring

that money to the people who are profiting of all this. the great eswar profiteering in history according to the studies coming out from bernie sanders and others. well, there you go. [applause] thank you very much. thank you. [applause] thank you, all, very much. [inaudible conversations] is there a non-fiction author or book you would like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv at