background. so when he came to fox in 1996 and he started the network for rupert murdoch, he brought all of that culture, the dna of a political campaign. i write in the book how he structured it like a political campaign. there is, in fact, a group of executives, some of his senior-most team that call themselves the g8 and that is a reference to the g6 which was a group of campaign advisers who worked for george h.w. bush in 1938. so you see all -- 1988. so you see all these little phrases and sayings that come from the culture of political campaigns that occur at fox. but more than that, the way the network operates is really much on the structure of a political campaign. it starts with the eight a.m. meeting with roger ailes' news meeting. everyone marches in lock step. there's a sense of mission and purpose that flows from the top, and you really see all of those attributes that come out of the political world. >> and now, booktv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend.

here are some programs to look out for this saturday and sunday. .. for a full schedule of authors and books this weekend visit us at booktv.org. up next, author and military

strategist bing west, the former assistant secretary of defense talks about counterinsurgency, the wind down of the war in afghanistan and current foreign-policy. the council for relations member and former rand analyst is the author of six nonfiction books including "the village," "the strongest tribe: war, politics and the end game in iraq" and his 2011 release "the wrong war: grit, strategy and the way out of afghanistan". . >> why did you call the afghanistan war the wrong war? >> guest: we had a strategy that was misplaced for the war. we shouldn't have had a strategy of trying to build a nation with 31 million tribesmen going headlong into the ninth century. that was too much. it was the wrong war for the strategy we chose. maybe you could do that in japan or germany after world war ii but doing it in afghanistan

which is a pile of rocks in the little of nowhere was the wrong war for that strategy. >> guest: what would have been right war? >> guest: we should have finished al qaeda in 2001. our general who was fair, more than just a general, all of us, think back, we were attacked on 9/11, 3,000 americans died, more americans than died in pearl harbor and we had al qaeda and we had osama bin laden trapped in some mountains called before a board. we didn't finish the mosque. then we let them escape over the other side of the mountain because we said that is pakistani territory. think for a moment. can you imagine during world war ii, when we won the battle of midway which changed the entire war against japan, he sailed across the international dateline in the pacific and

attacked the japanese, destroyed their fleets, 1942. he went across the international dateline. supposing he had turned back and said that was the international dateline and japan is set of don't cross the international dateline we will take this part of the pacific, you take that and we will live happily ever after? we get to these mountains in the middle of nowhere and allow al qaeda to escape? makes no sense. our entire country had become more legalistic. we should have gone and finished it. that is my judgment. given that we didn't finish it then, i think the only thing we should have done is send in some advisers, and give the afghans money for their own troops and that is it. let them decide their own government, don't try to build a nation. we have been there for 13 years. i think is wrong. is just wrong.

i have said that for a long while. now we are getting out. president obama said that is it. we could stay in afghanistan if we want to build the nation for the next hundred years but there's no sense in doing that. >> host: in "the wrong war: grit, strategy and the way out of afghanistan" you say there are solid reasons to be engaged and our mistake was to do the work of others for ten years expressing -- expecting reciprocity accost a cultural and religious divide. >> we are not afghans. that should be obvious. why are we over there trying to persuade these tribesmen, we don't even speak a language with them to support their government? we tried to do too much. i can see sending advisers but that is all. >> host: you also write a good strategy and the way out of afghanistan, when avoiding casualties is the achievement,

it is time to leave. >> guest: we had generals including one top general by the name of stanley mcchrystal who said you can't win wars by killing people. oh yes you can. that is what war is all about. general stanley mcchrystal and others said we should spend 95% of our effort persuading the people, and 5% attacking the enemy. that makes no sense. if you stop putting all these restrictions upon the use of force, we ended up having a lawyer in every battalion who had to decide whether we could use air in an attack, so we put restrictions on ourselves beyond the restrictions police have in major cities in the united states. >> host: in your view was the

iraq war necessary? >> guest: absolutely not. at the time i did because i believed then, as did most of the american public and the congress that saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction and would give them to terrorists. that turns out to have been wrong. >> host: in your book about the iraq war, "the strongest tribe: war, politics and the end game in iraq" you say is not required for a healthy society, and healthy society does not treat war as it extension of domestic political competition. national security cannot be sustained as domestic party affiliation and audiology determine the support for a war. iraq was a symptom, not the cause of the ideological polarization in american society. >> guest: when you see parties,

democrats, republicans aligning on issues strictly on their ideology rather than being americans, you have a problem. and senator harry reid who is the democratic senator in charge of the senate basically said the war was lost. you don't go saying things like that when you are an american and we are at war so i think this country has become entirely too divided along ideological lines. i don't know what the solution is the we have to stop beating up on one another. >> guest: the iraq war, the vietnam war, same ideological divisions? >> no. i fought in vietnam. the way the american public, both parties treat our military is so vastly different, we are much better country today.

our spirits toward our troops is terrific and that was vastly different from vietnam, that is whether you are a democrat, republican or independent. we are much more behind our troops in this war than we ever were in vietnam. >> host: back to your book "the strongest tribe: war, politics and the end game in iraq" we demand volunteers tonus it red line, we could undercut our own martial results if we as a nation lose heart, who will fight for us when valor has no champion america loses. >> i am a ground. i was born during world war ii and both my uncles were marines and when they came home from guadalcanal and iwo jima as they were my babysitter is the first five years of my life. was inevitable i would go into the marine infantry not as a career but to fight because that is a tradition in our family for four generations. we have been a marine infantry.

when you are in a war, you need a fierce spirit that you are going to win and you need tough guys who are out there and are cohesive and believe what they are doing and receive awards for destroying the enemy and you can't change that and i think we have to be very careful so we don't star standing shifting signals. again i have been pleased to see recently we are beginning to give more medals of honor, more ways of saying we acknowledge your bravery, we acknowledge that you killed the enemy. i don't think we can never lose sight of that spirit and we have that spirit right now if you want coming to the marine corps. you have to wait a year. that is along the queue is to get into the united states marine corps. so i think we are on pretty good ground with those who are coming

into the military today. >> host: when you look at the last few years of war how has it changed from vietnam through iraq, iraq, afghanistan? >> the first huge difference is death. we fought if i could call the word existential war in world war ii, we had to win that war, unconditional surrender. when i went to vietnam, all of my top commanders in the marine corps had fought in world war ii and we had the idea when you get into that fight you get into that fight. we went over as individuals, not as whole units, and you accepted death. it just happened. sometimes you didn't even know who he was and he was dead. that was world war ii, vietnam, 50,000, i see a vast difference today. in iraq and afghanistan not just on our side but the other side. everyone is much more cautious

now, tribes fighting, you don't want to fight to the last man on either side. the american indians when they were fighting in the planes against our troops in the 1860s if they were losing a battle they would reach 3. wasn't an idea that you had to stay on a battlefield until you won lost. we have to be very careful we don't go too far with this, that death itself becomes what you want to avoid. the biggest difference on battlefields is the attitude toward death. where is the >> host: where is the act of killing, you write, as a nation we have become so refined and remove from danger we don't utter the word kill. the troops in the strongest tried book aren't victims, they are hunters. and i regret that our generals

have become too educated, they all have doctorate degrees and things and they have gone too liberal schools and they are unwilling to say when you go out on the battlefield you go out to kill the enemy. we have things like our chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, admiral mike mullen, saying you can't win a war by killing the enemy. wait, that is what war is all about. we can't get so refined that we believe that we forget what war is. war is the act of destruction, violence and killing. the people at the top have to be more like this general, sometimes he is called mad dog, commander of our troops, central command, where they don't flinch from it, you go forward in the battlefield, i expect you to lisa ferocious that you will continue to kill and destroy until you defeat the enemy.

>> host: who is the kota flyer? >> guest: a wonderful example, the reason i'm smiling as he is a great example of young americans today. a 21-year-old corporal who came from the farmlands of kentucky, graduated from high school and came into the marine corps, he is a big kid. session to use the word kid that he is 2425 and he was in a battle where some of the other marines who were advisers were trapped. the cut was off the field of battle, and he rushed onto the field of battle to try to save his comrades and refused to be defeated and he fought for six hours with just a small group, three four against 30 or 40 of the taliban who had come from pakistan and he showed remarkable bravery and was awarded the medal of honor but didn't want it.

the interesting thing is after he received it he felt he had been a failure because his four friends had been killed and to this day i hope he has gotten over it but he was shaken by the fact why should you reward me when my friends were killed, if i had done my job they would be alive because he couldn't possibly have saved them but he was a fighting machine for six hours. the just wouldn't stop fighting. >> host: was your first-hand account of the most extraordinary battle of the afghan war"? >> in that predicament book i had spent a lot of time in that area and i knew the units and i missed that battle but i was in the other battles and as an army captain came up to me one day and said seriously, you have to meet our pit bull, he said who is that? that happens to be corporal meyer. i went in to shake hands with him and all the sudden there was a rifle shot, they shoot at you

from different positions and he was out the door immediately in this shooting and i looked at him and thought he was sent on sentry duty, what is he doing? what is up with you? he was just very angry about what had happened and i thought maybe people should know about that so i talked to some of the generals and said you know what happened out here? they began to investigate it and said certain things a gone right and other things had gone wrong, we hadn't given those troops the support they deserved but more than that i wanted to write the book to explain to the american people the kinds of young men we have out there. >> host: in this book you right i am the gun, i am the sniper, shooting his technique, no emotion. sometimes you do think about it, that tiny figure in the distance is a human being, may be a great guy or may be one of those animals who will be his sister to death for having a boyfriend

not arranged by the family. you are not there to judge. my only job is to bring down before he gets to cover. i fire burst after bursts, walking the trees is up the slope, i hit his leg first, then his back. i keep shooting until i'm tearing up a corpse. i work through 200 rounds. the sound of the last round echoes down the valley that returns fire, that are pg gonna die alone. no rifleman providing cover for him. i wondered if he was dumb or if he had gotten away with it before. i trotted back to the bunker. >> guest: he was a sniper. i have known a lot of snipers through the years, everyone on the battlefield, every granth i have known, after you are in that group, two four weeks, you have to become dispassionate, you don't think about those people you are killing as human beings. they are simply targets in your sights and that is how you have to look at them.

there is a place for compassion but the place for compassion is not in the middle of a firefight. dakota for instance had fired 10,000 rounds before this fight and so to him it was just a lining sites and shooting. his mind was blank in terms of is that a human being? you don't think about that person as a human being, you think about him as an object that has to be destroyed. >> guest: how long did you serve in vietnam and did you volunteer? >> yes. i had to. it is such a tradition of course i was going to become a marine, infantry and i was with several different units. one was called the ninth marines, forestry, and combined action so i got a chance to see the big battles and the small battles. one of the generals over there wanted somebody to write about

what they were doing at this small unit level because his experience had been in guadalcanal, his name was general waltz. cheese send me to the different battlefields where i had been fighting, to write about them so there would be a doctor and we could hand on to the junior officers going out on the battlefield so i saw a lot of different actions in vietnam. >> host: how long we there? >> guest: i went back and forth from the marines and showing the rand corp. and they sent me back to be an analyst. altogether i spent 18 to 24 months in vietnam but i got a chance to go all over the place. >> host: in hindsight should we have gone into the and on? should we have worked with south vietnam? >> guest: interesting question. i come down on the side of yes. this will never be resolved about what happened in vietnam.

there are two schools of thought. one school of thought is that was the case in the government such that it was going to topple any way. that is the dominant school of thought. another school of thought that i belong to, that is after we withdrew because i was there in 66, 67, 68, 69, different times, if we had continued to give the south vietnamese aid the way russia and china gave to north vietnam, north vietnam would not have taken south vietnam. most historians listening to me say i am wrong but we will never be able to resolve, it is counterfactual. we will never resolve it because we did cut our aid and that worries me about afghanistan. >> host: how did you get into the writing business? >> if you are a writer is going to show up because you feel

compelled at some particular point and you read and you want to express yourself. not like you ever sit down to be a writer. goodness gracious, never. you could never make a living that way but i kept coming the last 2 and back to let. >> host: how many battles have you covered as an author? >> host: >> guest: the final battle, hart senate office building shooting at each other? >> host: you have been in iraq and afghanistan and vietnam. >> guest: 800. there are patterns to any war. generally i didn't wear armor out there. i relied on moving fast and ducking. after a while you can see patterns in war and you know what is going on and it differed tremendously. in viet nam when you were fighting the north vietnamese

they were terrific and they were like moles and the earth was very soft and they would dig trenches and get in that fringe and have their rifle pointing at you and you had to be on the ground flat because they were shooting just about this high hitting you right above hip level and they were great with mortars as well. i had a mortar platoon for a while. i thought i was better and they would say they were better. then you go to iraq, iraq was city fighting, more like way city in 68 and the r p gee, the rocket-propelled grenade was the preferred weapon those in iraq and to a large extent in afghanistan. in this city when the grenade goes off, it hits the side of the building and it shatters the concrete and it is the fragments that can do a job on you and you had to be very, very careful when you were moving around corners but on the other hand

the person using the r p g has to expose himself because of the blast that if he makes the mistake of staying there for three seconds he is shot first. is entirely different from the jungles of vietnam. in afghanistan we had two different fights going on. they, being the taliban, would shoot at you from only 500 yards away, but there would be a huge difference between you and then and it would take six hours to get to where they are shooting. when you get down south they had what they call the green zone because there is one river is it goes all the way to the south of afghanistan and for four miles on either side you can grow anything, poppy, watermelons, corn, wheat, whatever, you name it. that was just like going back to vietnam. when i went to afghanistan, the techniques of the fighting were similar to what i did in the

village. 60 years ago. almost identical. >> host: where is "the village"? >> guest: the village is south of des named near what used to be called the demilitarized zone so is all the way at the top of south vietnam just before you get to north vietnam and a dozen of us, one squad, were sent out to work in the village with 5,000 vietnamese villagers and build a militia to defend the village so i wrote the story of what happened to the 15 of us who went out there and of the 15 seven were killed before it was over but it was an adventure and i don't think any of us would trade it ever again. every single night we go out we get into a fight of some sort but the villages were on our side. entirely different from afghanistan. you can't put americans in the villages in afghanistan. too many people would be trey

you one way or the other. it was more solid in vietnam. either they were with the viet cong or they weren't but you didn't have this phenomenon you have of zina phobia in afghanistan where as an outsider you are just rejected. that wasn't the case in vietnam. the fighting was hard though. the fine was hard. >> host: was the name of the village? >> guest: beniya. the marines stayed for 385 days and move don and i kept going back to see how things were going in the village and when the north vietnamese came in in 1975, the first thing they did was take the plaque that had been dedicated to us by the villagers saying thank-you for all your good work and they were going to throw it in the river. some of the villagers -- they kept it. when i went back to my village

to visit in 2000 they showed me they still have the black. that i was visiting with the village chief who had been a boy of 10 when i was there and he said older brother, i have 10,000 in my village. what am i going to do with them all. i said don't give me that. you won the war. he said don't you give me that. you live here. you don't think hanoi cares about me. needless to say we made a donation. they felt affiliation because we had fought even though we were on the other side from those who won. >> host: good afternoon and welcome, this is our monthly in depth program. this month we are talking with military author and historian bing west. mr. west began writing by writing a field manual, training manuals in 1966, small unit action in vietnam.

"the village" came out in 1972, reissue in 2002. "the march up: taking baghdad with the united states marines" came out in "no true glory: a frontline account of the battle for fallujah," and "the wrong war: grit, strategy and the way out of afghanistan," came out in 2011 and finally his book "into the fire: a first-hand account of the most extraordinary battle of the afghan war," a firsthand account of the most extraordinary battle of the afghan war. one of the themes and if you would like to participate in our conversation with bing west we will put the phone numbers up on the screen. we did a little differently this month, divided them by veterans and non veterans given bing west's background and what he writes about want to hear from the veterans. 202 is the area could if you are the veteran of a war or of the u.s. military 5853880 is the

number for you to dial. 9 veterans 5853881. if you can't get through on the phone lines you can get through on social media. at booktv is the clear handle. you can leave the convent there or send an e-mail to booktv@c-span.org or make a comment on our face book page facebook.com/booktv. one of the themes in your iraq and afghanistan books is how the enemy, hide in plain sight by not wearing a uniform. >> guest: i don't think we is in the end of this. seems to me if you put uniform on and come against the american military you are finished within two weeks. we are that good. our overhead systems, you can have jets that are at 10,000 feet and they can pick out

people because i have seen this, that are on the ground, you are on the ground and have a little telescope like this and picture shows opinions say that is the right guy, hit him. if you are wearing a uniform you are finished. in iraq and afghanistan, no one wore a uniform. how do you know who he is? you don't. we have to also try to figure out if we're ever going to do this again, how to identify people's fingerprints or something. we just didn't do it. but if i were any enemy of the united states i would hide among the population and take off my uniform and figure out another way of communicating with each other. >> host: does the u.s. use that strategy? >> guest: in what way the mean? >> host: not wearing uniforms, fighting amongst -- infiltrating in now way. >> guest: my goodness, no.

we are not talking about the cia or undercover people. the u.s. military, absolutely not. if you take off your uniform you are disobeying all the rules of law, you are sanctifying with the other side is doing. we would not do that. even our special forces, they grow beards but you can still seek the big tough americans. >> host: has the relationship between washington and troops on the ground improve, change, worsened? >> guest: i think we have to be very careful. i will put it this way. the generals really care about their people but it is not a war where a general has much to do in iraq or afghanistan. wasn't the general's war. they couldn't maneuver forces. you did find generals trying to

give general orders like don't fireback at a compound if you think civilians are there. try to impose things from the top to those who are fighting on the ground and there is nothing worse than a good colonel or a good general trying to figure out when there's not a lot for him to do because he is smart and active and going to do something. i would like to see a review of what we did in iraq and afghanistan done by the generals, staff, saying what did we get right, what did we get wrong? i believe what we tried to do with counterinsurgency was wrong. we went too far with nation-building and that was from the generals on down so i don't in any way denigrates the courage and dedication of those at the top. but i get a little bit worried since they are not giving enough freedom to the troops to figure

it out. >> host: how many soldiers did we lose in iraq and afghanistan? >> guest: 5,000 iraq, 2 to 3,000 in afghanistan if you include coalition as well. >> host: vietnam? >> guest: 50,000. >> host: y difference? >> guest: there are two things going on. the entire nature of warfare that i have seen has changed. you are no longer locking horns to an end, and the north vietnamese. they are destroying you or your destroying them, same with the viet cong. with the tribe said in afghanistan if they are losing they will back off right away. so you have a different nature, and the other thing is firepower. firepower or if you mistake,

standing up for 15 minutes we have the air overhead and we are going to direct the air right down. so usually most of the firefights now include 10 to 15 minutes. >> host: this is an e-mail from richard cross, my computer just shut down as i was going to this and see this type in again and pull it up. do you know richard krause? does that name sounds familiar? >> guest: he says here i respect bing west very much. too long a story to tell you why. he is living proof you can influence the thinking and lives of people you don't even know. >> guest: this is the first opportunity i have had to tell him thank you. he lives here in washington d.c. and one of the questions he asks, what about the history,

what about history does the next generation of students in this country need to know? >> guest: i would say -- i would say our founding principles, more than anything else, how did the constitution come about? why did we fight? things today people are forgetting and what caused the spirit of america and what will sustain the spirit of america. robert keeton has a book about the history of america up to 1900. it is in just one, if i had to pick one thing, wanting to know, please proceed with your question or comment for author

bing west. >> caller: chuck here, senator 5. rules of engagement in vietnam. and free fire zone. and the engagement in afghanistan and iraq. and the leading impact, the more owl, and physical and mental health of our troops, what do you think? >> host: who are we talking with? >> guest: another marine, he is a marine. >> i served in the ninth marines with bing west. >> host: in vietnam? >> caller: yes. >> host: thank you, sir. >> guest: when you are on the

air. you can't call it in, your battalion has a lawyer, and he is discussing with the pilots the air officer and italians discussing with the pilots. and the three four wayne debate a lot of times. and the troops, i would not use the word -- maybe someone would say cynical. and every one from the company, everyone from the battalion commander on down who served in afghanistan is aware of this.

it is different from where we fought in vietnam, much different. >> host: what is the importance of tribes in iraq and afghanistan? >> guest: let me go to iraq first because it is quite different. iraq is flat, you can drive from one end to the others on six or seven hours on a major highway. the different tribes knew each other quite well. 50% of the entire country is urbanized. and the power structure is. what happened in iraq to change the entire war. and the marines are fighting in and bar and volusia which is toward the syrian border. after four years of fighting, this magnificent sheik came forward.

we are tired of sudanese fighting against you. and general david petraeus, all of the sudanese are willing to come over to our side and tipped the scale of the entire battle. the rest of them followed, the sudanese followed, and the prime minister was so downright sectarian as a shi'ite. he ruined the relationship with the sudanese and the terrorists come into volusia, he came down too hot on the cities, but afghanistan, you have about four

or five major tribes. and these tribes lived in different parts of the mountains and do not have that uniformity, a way of getting to one and having him swing everybody else. it is much more fragmented in afghanistan that it was in iraq. >> host: where will volusia go down in history? is in a battle that will be studied and looked at? >> guest: i went through two battles in volusia, i am writing a book, this marine general is in charge in volusia, when he was ordered out, president bush said stop that and come back.

he felt the political dynamics were working against them. his troops were half lacrosse this city. madness burst out and he said if you are going to take vienna take vienna. that was the classic line from napoleon when one of his generals got to the outskirts of vienna and didn't know what to do. don't do it. the message from volusia is we must be working with generals and policymakers much better than we are now. the current administration isn't as close with the generals as they should be so they work as a team and that is the lesson taken from volusia. >> host: you serve from the pentagon in what capacity? >> guest: i was assistant secretary of defense for

international security affairs. the budget was going up so wherever i went in the world, and dealing with other -- each of the chiefs, we have to have something, can't just go over is there. what do you want and what every head of state wants more than anything else, the scholarships that we give to our war colleges, that is something he can give to his favorite nephew, rising lieutenant or whatever. i arrive in a city or country, what do you get for me? six scholarships, a dozen tanks, 50/50, a done deal. the ambassador was happy, i am happy and whatever was in charge of the country was happy. it was a fun time and i am a strong believer that giving these scholarships we give to

our war colleges is terrific to keep contact with armies and navies around world. >> host: historically who are your favorite, who are your most admires military leaders? >> guest: who are still alive? anyone? >> host: the first >> guest: vs schlesinger, he is the secretary of defense, when saigon was falling. in 1975 when everything, he had been director of the cia etc. when everything was falling apart he stood with the troops everyday, said we are going to stay together and kept encouraging them, we weren't there but what you did was noble, and when cutting the

defense budget everyone was mad, he stood up and said it is deep and arbitrary and president ford, they fired him but he was determined to stand with the troops. and the commandant of the marine corps, general wilson and general abrams chief of staff of the army, they got along so well because he stood by them so the first person, secretary schlesinger. the best combat leader is general madness but he just retired. there was much more than people know he did in iraq, and i put those three, madison, and slush ginger -- >> host: currently armour chief

of staff. calling from the bronx, leo, you are on booktv on c-span2. >> thank you for having me. my question is i have seen on c-span a retired cia analyst speak and he said saudi arabia is funding the most extreme mosques around the world including the ones in pakistan and those mosques provide suicide bombers which attack american nato troops in afghanistan. what is your take on that? >> i have no reason to dispute what he has said. absolutely no reason. trying to break the financial network, i think, something we have to keep looking at but no reason to dispute that

statement. >> host: paul, craig, arkansas. >> caller: i correct you. -- it is a pleasure talking to you about the situation we face politically. just to give you a base, my service, i served 65, went on duty in 69, got out in 75, i was fortunate. i don't call myself a vietnam veteran because i was not in vietnam but i sat on bombs in thailand. my daughter serve in iraq 2006-2007. and easy for. my heart is pumping right now. i am so upset about the situation. what that says to me is going

back to the philippines we had a general that said kill them all, man, woman or child. macarthur, we have our troops committed, willing to go to nuclear war because he was committed to win that war. these two wars, vietnam, iraq and afghanistan all refer to as insurgencies, and it was going back to the philippines, it was a guerrilla war. i heard on tv, instead of insurgency, referring to to the situation in the ukraine, now they will say he will be facing a guerrilla war. and we should commit our troops if we are going to total war and willing to back them all the

way. and they are willing to have a political tool, and i do not feel our troops should be committed unless it is survival. >> host: let's get an answer from bing west. >> guest: there is a lot of wisdom in what paul is saying. we rushed into these wars without thinking it through in terms of what warm and. we tried to define it as we went. i think that was wrong. paul is absolutely right. we started with president bush and president obama saying we are in this thing to win and we are going to defeat and then the taliban and then it changed to we are not going to lose and it changed to we are going to stop

their momentum, so paul, basically, is correct in saying policy leaders and the military leaders, and take a cold look at what we are doing, that is one thing, i was fortunate a couple times in the oval office when president reagan was there. there was something absolutely magisterial about going into the oval office, and the way you and i might talk to each other is not the way you talk to the president of the united states. how you have these conversations so everyone understand what you're going to do, isn't as easy as it sounds, how people talk to the president, we show much dissidents -- difference, sometimes the reality of what the word war mean this case

people. >> host: society is disconnected from the military, you write in "the strongest tribe: war, politics and the end game in iraq". less than one in a hundred graduate serves in the infantry mentioned throughout that book. three quarters of high school graduates do not meet military physical or mental entry standards. i believe graduates do not feel an obligation, before getting on with their careers. >> host: this gets back to the issue of what people should read about america, start with the constitution in the narrative of america, people are missing. we don't need to many people in the military and our overssubscribe out of one of the hundred going in. you have to ask yourself.

and i think the answer to that has to be a precedent who says this is our war and a congress that says this is our war and i do feel, and i have forgotten that we are fighting any longer. and i think the american people, if you ask them to sacrifice, would pull us more to get there but if i said now the sacrifice for afghanistan, why do i want to sacrifice afghanistan? i think we have to align means and ends, there are certain things we will fight for. >> host: let's talk about this quote from your book, the attention heaped upon the defense should trouble our society. when the single bead of tragic negligence receives vastly more

attention than a hundred deeds of valor the country is diminished. >> guest: what happened there and the role of the press. 2005-2006, this is a small town in the middle of iraq. they took heavy casualties before. one of the veterans beloved by his platoon's blown to smithereens. but they lost control. it may have been 18 people, civilians, women and children. and whether that is an example, this is murder or what these

people are doing, and it got out of control, because of bad training, i wasn't malice, it wasn't for thought, it wasn't let's go out and deliberately do something. you just had a lieutenant going there with some people, beginning to shoot people. getting some shots but you have to react. all of that stuff was wrong but we have to get a bounce. we got way out of bounds. it took a while to settled down and that worried me about the press immediately leaping to conclusions before people really examined what happened on the ground. i am not defending in any way

what happened but i was there, i went on the ground and talk to the survivors, there is nothing of malice of forethought. people did not have enough control in a confusing situation. >> guest: >> host: what about the press and its reporting on military battle? >> guest: the press has been terrific. some might disagree with me. i think that the press wants you are embedded and out there, you take to the bank what you are saying, they would be fired if they make things up. that is what happened. different perspectives, and to emphasize, they have done a very credible job of telling us what

is happening. they have been too easy on saying what they're seeing on the grounds doesn't match the stuff that they hear about strategy, and they haven't said wait a minute, this is what our troops are really doing. >> host: if you can't get on the phone lines you can get through on social media at booktv is our twitter handle, you can make a comment there or on our face book page, facebook.com/booktv, and send any mail to booktv@c-span.org. this is an e-mail from randy bowen from san antonio, doesn't all volunteer military, make easy to throw the u.s. into conflict. >> if this isn't my area of

expertise, analyzing what goings on in the person's brain on why people want to be politicians, a strange cat to begin with. i don't know, i really think there could be a flippancy there. more than we would like because they feel they have no stake in the game. >> host: wayne in texas, good afternoon. >> caller: hi. i am thinking about the cat program, current portions program. what if that had been weighs the marines operated and had done away with almost suicidal search and destroy missions? i am also thinking general westmoreland's last day on duty, the 5:00 prize, how could the attacks in saigon be stopped? he couldn't. abrams showed up and said he was going to stop it, pull the

troops and what if those tactics, the combined action program had taken place in i corps. and i have a friend who was over it there 66 through 70 and the late 70s he told me he could walk over 75% of vietnam's, bill colby and a friend worked on a motorcycle trip in the delta and it really was a safe thing until congress made it a crime to send and low to the south vietnamese. >> host: a lot of acronyms the >> guest: you are right. by 1972. and the director of the cia, officer overs there at the time

coming he did driver rounds, he had a weapon in his jeep, and most of vietnam from 1972 without being attacked. much more than you could today in the and bar province, we are absolutely right, there was a time in 71-72 when you could do that. the other question was the combined action program, when you have squads of marines, 13 marines, and he would fight small militia, 20 or 30 of you and teach you how to try to hold onto your village, three to six square miles of territory by fighting, training as they go along. the one thing about that is you

have to start with squads of tough marines in the first instance who have seen heavy combat because that is how you are selected. to have to have six months of combat before you can be selected. it would have been good if the army tried it more but general westmoreland didn't like it. when general abrams did come in he did do much more of it. >> host: did we send enough troops in your view into iraq? >> guest: no. that is easy to say. no, we did not. manifestly we didn't. when things got out of control so fast. how much would that have changed? i don't know. but again, i would come back to one major point. what was happening between

president bush, secretary rumsfeld, who was secretary of defense at the time and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at the time, general motors -- general meyer was an air force general, he didn't have a background in that kind of war and i don't think general franks who was in charge did a particularly good job saying this is the amount we should use. looking back on it, no. that was a decision made at the top but it was the wrong decision. >> host: disbanding the iraqi army. >> guest: nuts. that is just plain nuts. i was down in a city where general maddest was coming down, the marine division commander and they were paying the iraqis who were getting out because they had said you are going to disband the army. the marines agreed to pay some hundred dollars apiece, we had

thousands of iraqi soldiers lined up to get there hundred dollars in front of pay windows. along comes the general and they all stood at attention when he walked by. .. time, lieutenant colonel malay, turned to general mattis, and he said, sir, if you want a battalion, i'll give you a battalion. if you want a brigade, i'll give you a brigade. and mattis said, no, we've been told we have to disband them. they were willing to take control. we should have given it to the army. we could have kept control somehow. it was a huge mistake. >> host: bing west, what's the process of getting embedded as an author, a as a military writer for you? >> guest: well, for me it's -- i'm a grunt. i'm a marine grunt, so it's pretty easy, you know? if i want to go out there, they say go ahead. sometimes they'll say just don't get killed because that could be

a problem for me, but aside from that -- but the average reporter, no problem. it just takes a while with the bureaucracy. but once you get out there and get with the troops, no problem. it's always the bureaucrats and going through the system. but we have bureaucracies all over the place. but once you're down to a company or platoon level, you fit right in. >> host: where were you raised? >> guest: i'm sorry? >> host: where were you raised? >> guest: oh, boston. [laughter] and your father was a full-time marine or -- >> guest: no, no, no. my dad was a doctor, harvard medical school in eye and ear. but my uncles, both my uncles went into the marine corps as infantry. one was a private and the other one was a lieutenant. gradually, they fought all the campaigns. but every time a campaign would be over, they'd all come back to

our house with all the other veterans with them. .. and then wrote a book about his experience is that it iser called snake eaters. >> host: kathy is going from

lawrenceville georgia. hi, kathy. >> guest: i'm really enjoying c-span. i come from a family of arrays. my father brought home a quarter sized hole for poker now appear to survive the battle, lost word is that 30s. my brother is a marine saluted a bold, volunteered, had to write the senator is spending too long in the philippines in writing to the actors choose into vietnam and he finally got to go. the arab man who had occurs nervous in the federal bomb first and indicted a young age aligned duty. a recipient of the marine corps law enforcement. having said that, as an older brother, like many moms i tend to break out into tears every time i hear of another soldier status. at about this from being the

descenders older just being a teacher or african-american. i am sort of an avid history is other. the concept changed so that world war i. we are fighting a different war against ideology now. despite the technological advances because the united states is so far superior, i have two totally different questions. the first is how do we fight this war against islam ideology number one? and i'm not trying to infer that islam is bad religion or anything like that, but the radical islam, how do we fight that, number one? in a totally different take, when i hear about congress and the freedom of information act release and more information about water wording, it better, i'm not sure if that the good thing because i don't think the

general public has a need to know all that stuff were doing. be not all right, kathy. the marine corps is on for smith foundation has been based to people -- three people, one by the name mr. ricci and jihads and dave gibbons and dan mike $5 million in a unique way. they gave $30,000 to every child as a scholarship if anyone killed in the marine corps or the fbi are in a any law-enforcement agency. their overhead for this is era. when the irs can at $55 million you run it out of the garage and they get the money right away. so it is a terrific organization. relatives to islam as, we are fighting an ideology of radical

islam and we cannot win that site. we can keep smothering it down, but it will gradually burn itself out as a critical turning point will come when seniormost one liters say this is wrong. he will not go to heaven by blowing up innocent civilians. until islam's leaders cannot say that you will go to and not to heaven, you will have people misguided and not to believe that by murdering other people, they will be forwarded by god and that is wrong. only islam can address that direct way. >> lloyd, charleston from the south carolina in the uri with being less. >> thank you very much. i don't know what you're officer ship was when he retired, but i

will have to call you mr. west. in the early 50s the quantico marine corps base, the best years of the teenage/. secretary of the navy made an honorary marine. but the u.s. army be at times 65 to 67. so i love the marines dearly. i think to ask you a question. everybody seems to call you as emotional tent to their voice, especially those who were more and it's hard to befriend top court in it to someone who did not go through a war. we're talking about years to iraq and dan in vietnam. you just can't do that in a short conversation. i'm just going to ask you a couple questions.

i know quite a bit about the beginning of the war, the chinese fighting against the vietnamese to take over control of the town. ho chi minh was first and nationalists in the town. he did not want china to be a part of p. at him. the next most important question i have this in the earliest book i read about vietnam was called a bright and shining lie. he was a "new york times" reporter and spent several years. >> host: lloyd, what is your question, or? >> caller: the question asked by you or one of the callers what his feelings were why we should've gone into vietnam. he said to be a little in the voip are a good reason and that reason. well i just kind of go towards the back reason. but i grew with them also

because it's a very difficult question to answer. i wanted to know why. >> host: i was told that, i apologize. if you could quickly get to the negative your question. >> host: if you read a bright and shining lie -- >> host: thank you, sir, we got the point. >> bright shining lie was one reporter's perspective from john palfrey and he spent his entire life in the non-diet air. it questioned whether it was worth the effort. i may know, she going to have this development. what was the other part of the question, peter? >> guest: mcnamara -- don't

get me going to mcnamara. the man is a disgrace. if you're the secretary of defense in your troops are war come you stand behind your troops and you don't try to undercut them -- excuse me for getting excited myself. you don't try to undercut your own troops by saying to the president we should do this or the other thing have a peace treaty or some pain. no, you are the secretary of defense. you are not the secretary of quitting. if you don't want to be secretary of defense, quit. don't go behind the back of your own troops. >> host: being last, the afghan elections purchased out yesterday. is there anyone who is your favorite candidate? doesn't matter? hamid karzai, how did he do? >> guest: why i believe what i said much earlier than we should've just gotten a manner,

giving them aid and opposite. karzai, the best i can say is all the synopsis don't close in the brain. that is being time. he unkindest that he is cunning, but he is putting his own ego in front of the welfare of his own nation, which is a disgrace. i think it makes a little bit different who the next president is at afghanistan, but not a big difference. afghanistan, 90% methane is going to happen and we'll forget about it. it's not going to be like saigon. for north vietnam to get to saigon, they needed tanks. they needed artillery and they needed trucks. taliban has none of that status in pakistan is it going to give it to them.

adelphia taliban gaining control. the only hope over the future for 10 is the next president is a real leader, but i can't predict that. >> host: should we leave an american force and asking if dan? >> guest: i believe it is that the critical that we live a force there for a morale reason. napoleon once said the moral is to the physical is three to four to. afghanistan the moralist to the physical is 20 or or 30 to one. if the afghan army that we are paying for the leaves we have left completely, they are going to fall apart. and i believe every single senior, military officer has

said that president obama and he knows it and he's hoping he can cut some sort of deal with the next president. whoever the next president at afghanistan he is going to date please do here and we'll leave about thousand troops. >> host: bing west, one of his books, "the wrong war." this is booktv's book club selection for this month. if you would like to read a lot, our current strategy they are, participate in our book club for the month of april. you'll see a tab at the top that says bookclub. he can make your comments they are. can respond to questions that are posted on our book club page and over the past couple months, they have participated and perhaps will also click on

bookclub. and comment directly. if you'd like to read along, "the wrong war" is booktv selection for april. max collet is in yampa colorado. >> host: first off span. in 1968 incident then i've read a lot of books looking for the answer if anybody had one and agree and disagree with some of them. and then i read mark morris book, triumph for stake in and to me it's been the bright light that everything came together with that. i was wondering if mr. west has read that book and if you could comment on it. i plan to read a lot of books after this program. postcode gary, what is herein

there? >> guest: i think some of the reporters cost out or end there were some mistakes made by kennedy and stuff and henry cabot lodge and stuff like that. after we got in there, we should've won it. they did not the stomach for it. i think we should've stayed there. all you have to do is look at the people and see that maybe we should've stayed there and settled the country down before we left. >> host: bing west >> guest: i believe that mark moyers spoke and marked as an historian is very at earl. he is a serious scholar. the interesting thing that his

study point out is the degree to leadership that actually existed in the armed forces of tom but they never got credit for. i tend to come down that if you look at how well the viet means, both people have done since they've come to the united states. i was just back in vietnam last year. americans their beloved everywhere. if we had shown a little more tenacity and a little more kurdish, it could've turned out quite differently. postcode bing west, and set to come secretary of state condoleezza rice are in the campaign bush's foreign policy at guys there had written the president must remember the military is a special instrument. it is lethal and it's meant to be. it is not a political referee

and it is most search may not design to the a civilian society. yet because the state department had not stepped forward in iraq, the u.s. military was a police force and a political referee. >> host: >> guest: and? >> host: what is the departments and what should be the state's role in conflict? >> host: >> guest: there's only two agencies that do something. and serious, just two. the department of defense and the cia. no one asked has a mental attitude and a culture that says let's get the job done. the state department are trained not to resolve anything. i mean, the state department's culture is to get along with

other countries, not to go out and solve a problem. that culture is incapable of nationbuilding. so is the military. i just don't believe in nationbuilding. the state department didn't do a darn thing in iraq or afghanistan. they really didn't. our military was fed up with it. it's so ingrained to go to the state department. i don't care if secretaries ate a scary or race i don't care who they are and tell them, colin solve a problem. i'm not in the problem-solving business. i'm in the negotiating business about how you don't love the problem. so is hopeless to think the state department to do the job. >> host: should we have left the force in iraq? >> guest: absolutely. several whole deserve not to be respected for that decision starting with president bush. for president bush to rot if

they are, done had going to get it to maliki and he says how proud he is to say i'm getting everything out of here and people are saying why can't karsay -- karzai be more like maliki? after when you that maliki was sectarian. president bush said i'm going to leave it to somebody else. president obama said you're not going to leave it to me and supposedly they say general petraeus and general odierno went along with it. there's plenty to go around. the question is should we have kept troops in iraq? positively. only to keep maliki from being the radical sectarian deity showed he is. with lots solution. we go and say in iraq and afghanistan because we say we don't want them to be safe

havens. hello, they are now in falluja. so i've been cnn's got all screwed up than i do not excuse the peak oil at the top. postcode days, baltimore, you i'd tv a beast into which the west. >> host: is really a pleasure to talk to a thoughtful person on the veteran died. i like to think true warriors speculate on ways to add war. can you think of any tactics we who are working for non-violent should be using? you guys have all the resources, but you sound like a great addition. >> host: wait a minute now. i am attacked titian who likes to plug people, not give them money. i am not persuaded -- i am not

persuaded that we can do much in nonviolent means of altering other nations. i'm not persuaded we can do much with violence either. i'm afraid we wouldn't have a tactical device. >> host: were you aware if viet, the protest going on? >> guest: yes. poster what was the effect that from your good? >> guest: anger. >> host: what about the draftees? >> guest: i cannot comment on that because marine corps to the end where draftees. but you know, both the marine corps and the army fell apart. we had the radical black movement. and we had drugs. we had disobedient and it all started after wild people said

what is this all about? it tumbled down until the mid-19th century nason is the army and marine corps said we are not putting up with this anymore. if you're not willing to live by rules come you are out. to change the culture. that did not happen after afghanistan and iraq and that is to the credit of assistance. we haven't had a morale. we are oversubscribed. we've done a much better job. >> host: how serious was to problem? dgc at first hand? >> guest: i did not. i did not because the front line units when you are out with the platoon, number one, you are out there somewhere. and number two, i was considered by units to be good. the lieutenants are on top of

it. if you're out there with 40 guys come you know it's everyone's doing. that's the same in iraq and afghanistan, and do. we haven't had problems with drugs in iraq and afghanistan. afghanistan is loaded with drugs. that's another thing i don't like about what we have been doing their because there is great collusion among the farmers and the taliban enter dealers to get money out the drugs and they know it's wrong. so we are fighting a war on drugs here in the united states. that is a messy thing. there's no evidence that our troops either in iraq or can i subscribe to using drugs. >> host: one of the things you hear is the afghanistan wait us out. we will leave and then go back to what they want to do. >> guest: i think that's true. i think that's absolutely true. i'm finishing up a which is

about this marine platoon in an obscure district of southern afghanistan. this marine platoon fought for six months. they lived in caves outside friendly lines. of the 52 variants, 26 were killed in one day. a wonderful camaraderie in that group. but they had no illusions about what was going to happen when they left because the farmers were getting paid four times as much in the taliban said we will split up but you. they saw the government coming in and said either taking a cut or telling them not to go. so i believe you are going to see many afghans working out deals that will never understand. go do it the afghan way. >> host: bing west are coming are you going back to afghanistan?

you have plans to go back? >> guest: americans are no longer allowed to go out and combats to abort me. i won't go back to afghanistan just to sit and operations center. i'm not going to go on patrol joseph afghans. >> host: why not? >> guest: because i can't trust them. >> host: afghans, the best i can say about the afghan army is if you had eighth-graders and you have a poor teacher so they can get unruly in a hurry because the teacher doesn't keep discipline. you don't know among them which is apt to do something really. they have to figure out all of that for themselves. but what is troubling is occasionally one of them turns around and just chose a westerner. the reasons he chose a westerner, nobody really understands. so it is fraught with white

ticker risks just to get yourself shot for no good reason? >> host: what kind of troops to our trainees get this going into troops could cultural training. >> guest: i'm not good on the cultural training. our troops are intelligent. every single one of our troops without exception has graduated in the top 50%. they get it. they get all this staff. but the war is over for them. the biggest challenge that i thought was a cultural things people talked about. it was we never figured out a way of dealing with the ieds are killed us. the ied is just two pieces of good and one wire comes out to a little flashlight hattery. the other goes to a job full of

ammonium nitrate, which is a fertilizer. if you pour some gasoline or fuel oil to the ammonium nitrate, when you walk along that put two pieces of wood underneath the earth and when you walk by, you step on it. the wires connects. it sends the flash goes off your legs. we have lost 60% of our casualties due to that one phenomenon throughout afghanistan and we never found a lathe echidna networks that were doing it because unlike in vietnam, the police are very effect did i kidding espied network. we have not been able to get a spy network places like saying and where wes for a long time coming that could enable us to

understand who's doing last night after night after night. so it's not the cultural name. the tribes would not turn in the taliban. they would do it. >> host: steve asks via facebook, what are your thoughts about today's right wing demagogues for tv and talk radio who never served in the military at that our weakest warmongers? >> guest: number one, i am not in that kind of stuff. numbers two, i don't see that. we didn't do anything about ukraine. we didn't do anything about syria. i don't see any organized movement in the united states for us to get involved anywhere. we have to be very careful that we are not just withdrawing from the world cutting our defense budget imprudently.

so i don't see anybody stirring up war term anyway. postcode keith, malcolm burke, arkansas. >> caller: how are you doing? thank you very much for c-span. bing west, you are something else, man. i have listened you for an hour and listen to everything you said. i went in the marine corps would notice 15 and a half years old. i fight for this country and that uncle was marine corps. we buried him what they want to salute. because they will be better -- albeit they are not bakula. you don't have to look to see if they are behind you because they are there and i'm going to be there and still i my last

breath. i love you, mr. bing. good night. >> guest: thank you. it is true the marines do have the spirit. it may be because they are a very small outfit. the few, the proud. but the commandant of the marine corps says only he gets to say what somebody can leave the marines and he's trying to build a list of everyone who served in the marine corps and he insists he'll call us back at any time. >> host: we have a think a semi-facetious e-mail here. of course now i can't find it but it's about the marines in the army and hopefully i'll feel to find it. why did the marines do things the right way? >> you're not going to go there? >> guest: we are your uniforms. christian in oklahoma city. >> caller: good morning.

glass gentlemen, i really feel for you, but we need to ask, why would bush send our boys and girls to iraq, it were a choice without the private government. we love our servicemen are spirit i do also. understand us once again. tell them about this because you know more than i do. there's no reason for us to go in iraq. they are without the armament. it is just disgusting to me i get so upset because i have republicans and fox news and always wants to say something. the gentleman in benghazi had the opportunity to have other military hope. but he didn't want that. yet they don't -- in the same breath they don't talk about what bush did, sending our boys and girls to a war of choice without the proper government.

>> host: christian, we've got your point. >> guest: thank you, christian. the interesting thing was the secretary of state, colin powell who is a terrific chairman of the joint chiefs of staff what to president bush and i think maybe even president bush's father as well. but definitely secretary powell and fanfare, we have to go to the congress. we should go to the congress and the united nations. they did go to the congress and the united nations. so pleasant just president bush. we all as the country went into iraq and then you get into the funny things about politicians or later, senator kerry who is our secretary of state that, while, i was against the war before i was in favor of the word before it is against the war.

it is one of those things that have to with 2020 fish and we could say was the wrong thing to do, but we all did it together. >> host: mustapha how to treat studio can you explain more about the black problem in the non-that you mentioned earlier? >> guest: the whole notion of a forget what it's called, students for the democratic society, the military was not immune and from everything affecting on the campuses in the united states. in 1968 probably hit its peak about 1972. you had a lot of uproar about how we could change society and many young bracts feeling they should be more vociferous. the problem if you're in the military, you want to treat everybody only and everyone has to obey the same rules and you can't have any group beginning

to say we want rules. there's a definite problem for a while. >> host: bing west is the author of several nonfiction books and nonfiction, which will ask about later. but he wrote a training manual first volume in action vietnam in 1966. he wrote the village in 1972. 15 what did it what's sad is the subtitle. march upcoming taking baghdad with u.s. marines came out in 04. if an account of the battle for falluja in 05. "the strongest tribe" came out in 2008. and "the wrong war," strategy and the way out of the interesting came out in 2011. that is book club selection if you'd like to read a long period into the fire, a first-hand account of the most extraordinary battle of the afghan war, with dakota meyer in

2012. we always ask iraq is what they are reading, what some of their influences are, what their favorite bookseller. here is a little bit of bing west. ♪ ♪

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we also posted an article from publishers weekly reporting on book sales for 2013 which increased about 1 percent over 2012. we tweeted but some of the upcoming events we will be taping around the country this week as well as an excerpted political from top programs in book on the 1964 civil rights act. >> here is a look at some books being published this week.

should

>> host: bing west come you got charles krauthammer and ernest hemingway on the same author list. why? >> guest: i think hmingway

>> i think anyway for structuring sentencesucturing sd for getting into a character. krauthammer because his ability to take a complex subject and in three paragraphs explain it to you i think is brilliant. post code you wrote a novel as well. just go yeah, i did. if you write a novel and you can into your care dear, sometimes they run away, but you can try and figure out the ending. so i'd love to do more novel writing. the problem is making a living and most people who buy novels tend to be women between the ages of 40 and 65. it's not my natural audience because i novel was an adventure

story about going across the country and fighting hard. unfortunately, i have two more books i am still working on, so i'm stuck on the nonfiction. but in my heart above to write fiction. >> host: who are the pepper talks? >> guest: five during recon reserve this who are in superb shape and one of them is captured in bosnia and the other four decided they would get in back. they disobeyed orders, but they also tried to get into the next coming of a technology are going to enable us to go without sleep for long periods of time and also you can replace and add to your red blood cells so you can run faster and longer and then with the new technologies we have for the internet, you can be communicating anywhere in the world. i try to put all this together

to show how you could end up was for superb at late on the hunt, moving 60 miles a day and the rest of the world is watching us, trying to figure out how to send in the president meanwhile seen how do i get these guys under troll? >> host: you mentioned you were born during world war ii, bing west. that puts you in your late axes, early 70s. what does your wife thinking about your running off to afghanistan or iraq with the american military? >> guest: after a while after you're dead 20 or 25 trips, betsy has recognized i'm going to be a little bit natty and she just has to tolerate that. >> host: the gist of it. why do you list to just do it as of your greatest? >> guest: jazz duets insist

you learned not, greek and english and if you don't know a sensible paragraph, you're out. they have a great influence on me in terms of structuring writing so a dissent will and concise. >> host: what can we learn from ancient military history? the spartans, et cetera? >> guest: i believe when you look back very certain commonalities that combat you over time. the first one i saved if you get into work, you have to be ferocious beard you have to be fierce. you have to be a lawyer and that brings with it a set of care or sticks. you have to be hired. you have to have a definite sense of achievement and you have to have a cohesion in units. it doesn't mean you have to be moral. so i'm not trying -- you can be a german soldier.

so if you look at history, you can recognize good leaders and bad leaders in terms of variety, but other things trend and if you're going to go on a battlefield and you've got to have been. it isn't because you're a good nation or bad nation. if you send someone into combat company better if given them the right training and leadership so he has a cohesion and desire to win. >> host: when you look at the technology we have been developing particularly drugs, what is your view? >> guest: what interests me is why do we care whether it is a drug? i don't care. you're killing a person one way or another but the person and the cop hater not. somehow the entire world has except did it if you are looking at a video and popping the guy and there's nobody in the drone, that is a little bit different than having the pilot.

you expect her to go somewhere with a drone that we camp at the pilot. i will send that road overture do the work. but i don't if that is a deciding factor in what you are doing. more than anything when ac is that the deciding various at least taken for granted in such a way, which wasn't there at all of world war ii that no pilot is killed any more combat. i mean, we've done away with that. with perfect control control of the skies and that has given us a different way of fighting. you look at a possible enemy like china anywhere in the next 10 or 20 years, now that is going to change again. so we've become a little bit too could face an because we have superiority today and we just think lavin in the future. that's what worries me about cutting the defense budget

because you have to build these platforms that are going to be there 20 years from now were more. in vietnam, i was on a helicopter caudate ch 46 helicopter. we are still using it today. if you don't know things, they are not going to be there for the future. i don't care whether it is a trove for the guys in an aircraft. >> host: do you see china as a potential enemy? >> guest: let's be careful of the word enemy. but they adversary. they made no bones about it. they said the pacific should be our lake. okay, we are going to say no. we are not going to allow that. so you do get japan to japan is worried about this now because they are saying you promise the ukraine you're going to help them but you didn't. what happens if china pushes us around a little more?

so do we have a problem in the future? share, as honesty of human being in the face of this earth coming you're going to have adversaries. >> host: bing west is our guest on c-span2. look at the numbers on the screen if you'd like to participate. (202)585-3880. we want to hear from you. military historian and author not better, do it to friday 5381 is the number for you to dial. if you can't get or via the phone line@but tedious or twitter handle. they spoke.com/booktv. if you'd like to leave a comment they are. you can send an e-mail at c-span.or. we have an e-mail from john and he says the end of the vietnam war was a perfect ending. we do not have a force today and after inh trade and a sense

better than world war ii. best book on vietnam. he says the end was perfect -- it is the perfect ending because they are friendly and retrain them. >> host: i'm sorry, but john, anger is younger than i am. when saigon fell, the morale in the united states plummeted and i think morale makes a big difference. three. call it president carter's president he and he was not reelected. people believed president carter just didn't stand up for her right then we had a lot of us curvaceous going on. we have to be very careful. other countries look at us and they'll determine, can you push america third things or can't

you? if you lose four, genetically the way we lost vietnam, there's a consequence. secretary of defense gates who just retired said in his book, i just want to a void a disastrous defeat for a pic global humiliation in the end, which is the minimum. but he felt there was a minimum below which you cannot go. i hate to see us test your hypothesis, john, that we could have afghanistan disintegrate and trade within a couple years later. >> host: what is the long-term effect of what has happened in iraq and afghanistan if another workers? >> guest: several things come to my mind. one of the long-term effects as if the other side is not wearing

uniforms and stayed among the civilians, which i advocate they should do, we never resolved how to handle that. even though we don't tape prisoners anymore, it used to be traditional in warfare when you broke through the lines of the other side, it had uniforms on inuit and it capturing or for every person you killed. we only had a handful of praise nurse in iraq and then that we gave back to those two countries and then they let them go. so we haven't figured out how to fight people who don't have uniforms? would you do it to? that's unresolved although it to the supreme court. i was saying the future work, not have uniforms and what you do with prisoners is still unresolved. restrictions right now on fire are huge on firepower. if you lose more americans come you might start changing those restrictions.

i don't think we've thought through that when it either. in ground combat i can see changes coming. air force and navy iges choctaw because you know that our navy hasn't got a worsened 1945. so the question is how at the navy fight if it has to fight? we don't know. the air force has perfect air superiority. our ground forces have been on this combat it. now an air force and navy don't. >> host: bing west come if you care to venture a thought when it comes ukraine and russia? >> guest: gas. i would definitely give arms to the ukraine rather than withhold them. i would absolutely begin to allow natural gas to be

exported. president obama is much for green energy and therefore we have 14 port that avast four authority from the federal government to compressed natural gas, liquefied it and export to europe. i positively would do that and a signal to russia, you want to play the game of who was going to lose economically, i am going to show you that you will lose economically. those are my casual thoughts. >> host: bing west has written about the vietnam war, rapport and afghanistan more. you mentioned earlier you are fighting a new book. what is it about? >> guest: i am writing to simultaneously. one is called 1 million cents. a marine platoon out word because this marine platoon in southern afghanistan that i was with, they were not every single day for x and they walked about two and a half miles every day

and i calculated if they got through that too or they would've fought 1 million steps, never knowing where the ied, where the landmine was and they lost half their floors. on the last date they were a, they were going out further if any other day. what i try to explain us what happened to cohesion? how does the platoon despite its losses, despite losing it leaders to get the other leaders in continuing what caused that to be so give? that is one book i am writing. that's a book about combat cohesion. i met general james mattis who retired, he has a very large view about readership and more and so i am collaborating with him on a book about strategy and leadership going forward. so that is what's keeping me busy. >> host: if someone were to

pick up your training manual from 1966, small unit action, what would they learn? >> guest: if they had thought in afghanistan, david c. at the beginning of it, holy smokes. if i just changed the names, i am in afghanistan. when they get in the heavy battles that dma say we never fought that much. the similarities in the fighting style and what i call the green, which is a great area of afghanistan was remarkably several to vietnam. the other thing everyone would recognize is fighting not that level in a platoon, it hasn't changed that much in 70 years. i keep going back with platoon saw the time. changes are saul. no pilot would possibly get into an aircraft today and say i can type this aircraft if he had

flown an aircraft in 1965. so ground forces or ground, have not changed as much as the rest of our forces. >> host: warrant in tyler texas e-mails it to you, i agree with the quote of condoleezza rice, why is the military used for other missions? we've been involved since world war i at the different regions. nationbuilding. how can we stop the thought process we must be involved in? >> guest: what was the gentleman's name again? post-cold war and. i think it's a woman. >> guest: this is wrong. we should not have made this staff and actually admired the man, but as general david petraeus who signed the documents say in our and marines had to be nation builders as well as warriors. i believe that sentence should

be burned, stamped out, you raced. get rid of it. so far, the military has an unwilling to look at iraq and afghanistan and say did we undertake too much? they are still using the stop to the messed up dreams are wrong. the military should not be nation builders. >> host: gary shattuck and marie retired u.s. attorney e-mail said, i object to your statement that states absolutely nothing in iraq. he says, i was a member of the department of justice team that went into bag that in 2003 to assess the judicial system to provide support in take recommendations to get them back into service. we did much good work and identified problem judges and prosecutors concede that they were removed from service and assisting in getting the court that to working. i respectfully said that you qualify your state and to

reflect there was indeed much good work down on the iraqi's behalf by american civilians. >> host: gary, i will qualify my statement. you speak in overall terms. you're quite right. i certainly did not mean to denigrate the good work of any individual. but i would stand by what i said over all. look at the judicial system we have today in iraq or they take all the sunnis in with them in jail. while, they say the vice president who is a sunni is somehow a criminal and they want to put up on murder charges. the fact is if we look at it, no matter what we did, no matter what her attorney general system did, we didn't change the nature of the maliki government. and so, we cannot say we have the rule of law today in iraq. if we had the rule of law today

in iraq, we would not have the terrorists have been taken to lucia again. the only reason they did that is sunnis were so discouraged by the maliki government and its judicial system that they said to heck with the government, we are going to allow the terrorists to come back. it is not that individuals didn't do well, but we never cemented it. >> host: and are left in our program of bing west and john and barry for not coming you are on the air. >> caller: yes, i was ephedrine at the vietnam war, which is the southeast asian war as far as i can turn. special ops in northern thailand. we repaired xga when robert mcnamara and lyndon been decided to micromanage the war and they called bombing halt.

our aircraft classes went off i may base. we had air rescue a jolly green giant and it got so bad that her morning straight regimes, we changed the name of of them to the banana and water buffalo account because those were the only targets that are pilots could go after without prior authorization from lynn did and robert. we almost had a pilots strike. i am not kidding. it dawned on me in september of bag here that we weren't theirs to win anymore. and it is very demoralizing and i was even more allies when we got back to america. i think on the fifth anniversary coming we really need to say thanks to people like yourself.

even at this late, they are appreciated. i would like your dots. a cab company said it earlier in the show that you can't win a war from the top down. thank you. >> guest: that's interesting along the following lines that president johnson and secretary mcnamara set such a bad example that president george w. bush said i am never going to do that as president. but i believe that president bush may have gone a little bit too far and not fundamentally sane to the generals, now let's all together and make sure we all in this and each other. president roosevelt eight he

could probably the best job i've been in halt without giving direct orders. i am concerned from what i hear for many will that president obama is to remove from his military. there has to be a balance where you don't become president johnson, but you don't become too removed either. you have to hit the intermediate position in president roosevelt is the classic example of a president who did it correctly. >> host: from no true glory, a frontline account of the battle for falluja. the singular lesson is clear. when you send soldiers into battle, let them finish the fight. for marines to attack and calling them off and then sending them back and constituted a flawed set of strategic decisions. american soldiers are not political bargaining chips. they fight for one another for winning the battle and for their

country's cause. you criticized robert mcnamara for turning his back on the troops in vietnam. can you explain the full context of what mr. mcnamara did? >> guest: the full context is that mr. mcnamara lost his sense of purpose in the lord. he started to question, what are we doing there in the first and then he began to look for a way of negotiating with the other side. and he used his power because he had more power than the secretary of defense to get into areas where he shouldn't have been gone, but he was looking

for a way of having a negotiated peace when he was secretary of defense. and his relationship with the military generals became very antagonistic. the opposite of secretary of defense/injured -- schlesinger. he stood shoulder to shoulder with his generals and they greatly appreciated it. secretary mcnamara went the other way. >> host: april 1975 where are you when saigon fell? they remember that day? >> guest: i was in the pentagon. i do remember it. >> host: what was it like? >> the day saigon fell, i was the assistant to secretary schlesinger, our ambassador in saigon at the time, ambassador

martin didn't want to leave, wanted to be the last man out, what we were trying to, what schlesinger was trying to do was get everybody out so it was more a focus on the tactics of not leaving anybody behind a special your ambassador rather than the larger picture. the larger picture didn't set in until several months later. >> host: isn't that the ambassador's job to the last out? or am i wrong? >> guest: holy cow, they were coming with tanks. at some point you have to say mr. ambassador, the military says we are leaving, get on the plane and let's get out of here. that is -- the scramble at the end is terrible and leaving behind all those -- it was awful, but the focus at the time

was just extracting them. wasn't until later that the full import of watching the helicopter taking off and hands reaching got to grab it, that didn't set in that day. that set in over the course of the next month. >> host: being that the pentagon was a chaotic? were you working closely with saigon? was the coordination? >> guest: henry kissinger had his own opinions, president ford was not really that involved. the military were right there in the secretary's office and the people in saigon were saying we are having all hard time, we don't have a clear chain of command where everyone has to report to one person and that one person will have the final

authority and everything was chaos at the time so it was -- washington wasn't really directed toward the end. it was done by the people on the ground in saigon. >> host: thank you for holding, you are on with author bing west. >> caller: great program, c-span. i am a private in the army. i have a son who is a warrant officer. two years in iraq, one year in afghanistan. i have a grandson. our only grandchild who just finished basic training at fort benning, georgia. we are of families that have put our lives on the line. i have to be very fortunate, i served in fort monroe, va. when general john waters, general patton's son in law, and general truman, harry truman's nephew hit the army command.

i was two years in the u.s. army special forces reserve, went back to fort benning and went through jump school. i have written a book about a young boy growing debt that end of world war ii, we were fighting the crowds, america was at its best, we were loved the world over. i had an afterwards where i compared the country than with the country now. my editor told me you have to take that out. you have written a second book. the second book i want to read one thing for c-span, don't interrupt me, you don't interrupt people on the west coast. this is a very brilliant man he writes from the standpoint of a private like i was and the ground. and honor to speak to you and an honor for c-span to have you on their channel. i go a through w and american military, number 6 is military

drone aircraft. those who object to the use of drone aircraft to fight terrorism should join the u.s. army regardless of age, sex or religion. pick a rifle and go to pakistan or far away. or better yet send your children to die by the hands of people who hate the united states of america and all the freedoms we stand and fight for. we got a $20 trillion debt and we have young people putting their lives on the line. i went through jump school was a marine pathfinder grew. i have such admiration for those folks. i hope they made it through vietnam. >> guest: thank you for calling in. respond, bing west. >> guest: the $20 trillion debt. i agree with those who say the most depressing danger we face

is in our inability as a country and our politicians to recognize the we keep adding to the debt, we haven't solved social security, medicare, medicaid, and we know we are adding the taxes to our children, and i would say that swamps any national security issue. >> host: patrick casey e-mails mr. west, how have our two wars iraq, bombing of libya and drones rights in yemen benefited the average american? >> guest: tremendously. the average american is all of us, we are one of america. we were killed, we were murdered. the loss 3,000 americans in the twin towers. leno's the we are engaged in a

war against radical islamic terrorists who wish to kill all americans. how has it benefited us to fight back? the answer is clearly if you don't fight back, you are finished. >> host: abdul in salem, ore. please go ahead. >> caller: good afternoon. i am a proud naturalized citizen of the united states and i really appreciate the program and the hon. guest, it is grade of you guys to take that call. >> host: where are you from? originally? >> host: >> caller: and was born in afghanistan and was a political refugee after the soviet

invasion of afghanistan. >> host: please go ahead. >> caller: i have a question and comment. the concern, the book is great but the title, the wrong war, i don't think it is the wrong war. i would call it a noble work, a good war for a noble cause coin. the war is fought in the wrong places and with the wrong people. the battleground is the wrong battleground. that is the origin of these criminals coming from wear and supported by who, i don't know the name of the individuals but everybody is clear at the center of those things. >> host: where should the right

will be fought? >> caller: this is the right war from beginning to end, there are different situations, totally understand. >> host: you say it is being fought in the wrong place. >> caller: what i mean by the wrong place, wrong place is afghanistan. the afghan people, the vast majority of the afghan people including the so-called taliban i the victims of the people who support them and the policies or whatever they're called. >> host: where is the right place? >> the right place -- pakistan, saudi arabia, qatar, all those countries, the political

organizations. >> host: we would get a response from bing west in just a minute but what do you remember? did you come over in 1979? do you remember anything about the soviets coming? >> caller: absolutely. they put me in jail as a political prisoner for year in afghanistan and when the soviet union came to the united states as a political gesture to these political prisoners and i was released but a few months later i skip to pakistan and became a refugee with my family and from then on, a political refugee to different countries but decided to come to the united states in 1981, as a political refugee, verify that i became a citizen which i am proud of. >> host: thank you for calling in. bing west, response for that

caller. >> guest: abdul is right. pakistan is behind this and don't know what to do about pakistan. pakistan has 50 nuclear-weapons. they continue to give sanctuary, 1500 miles of sanctuary to the taliban. if the taliban did not have that sanctuary this war would have ended quite some time ago. no national policy for persuading pakistan to change who they are and they are determined to keep the taliban as i cat's-paw so that india doesn't get too much language against kabul the. india is only here to the east? they think the indians are going to come into afghanistan?

that is how the pakistani sink. abdul is correct. we cannot talk about this war without acknowledging the complicity of pakistan and without acknowledging the complicity of money that comes from saudi arabia and other places to help the terrorists. the other thing i say, i know i was gratified that you said you are proud that you are now an american. i do hope that our state department does something about many like you. we have 2,000 to 5,000 afghans who have given their loyalty to our forces, and our translators and we are not bringing them here because we are afraid one out of all of them might be a terrorist or something, i hate to leave the mall behind. i hope that we will allow more

afghans who have served us very well to come to the united states. >> host: bing west writes in "the wrong war: grit, strategy and the way out of afghanistan" the strengths of the taliban are there is less fervor and the sanctuary, pakistan is determined to remain a supporter of some taliban in case the u.s. quits the war in the extremists seize power. as long as pakistani territory remains a sanctuary the war will not end. marissa in california. >> caller: mr west, two good questions. why do you suppose mcnamara given his strategic militaristic knowledge is not as motivated to go to war in cuba as he was in vietnam and how do you feel about the 1946 memo stressing a

policy of containment, it says 68. and it is global. >> host: how did you feel about that? >> results speak for themselves. if you see what happened in vietnam it is interesting how going to this very term strategic way of wanting -- did not seem that the outlook to be positive. you have people working in government who lived and was happening in russia, all that work was not taken into account. >> guest: just quickly mcnamara relative to cuba, mcnamara like

everyone else, the executive committee was strongly in favor of the quarantine to cut russian ships and missiles from cuba. relative to canon, you can't blame him for having a big ego but his famous 1948 telegram was taken as the blueprint which we continue with relatively modest changes. it was a continuation of george can, basically saw much more i to i then they would have differences. >> host: we started off with an e-mail from richard cross in washington d.c.. he had a second question we didn't get to so he tweeted is that in. mr. krause is tweeting in try to fit in my second question about

what to do with old generals and he went on to say, i apologize because i deleted the e-mail. he went on to say should they be serving boards of directors, being in the defense industry -- >> guest: interesting and provocative questions that i should try to duck. i am of two mind about that. we have to be careful who is a general and why is he wanted for certain things? if somebody wants somebody on the board because he believes he understands finances of a business or something i can understand that but if you want somebody there, window dressing

or possibly influence, you are walking of very fine line. i think the boards of trustees of themselves should be the ones who judge this, not outsiders. but i agree it is something that should be on display. there are certain classes of people who have done a good job that they should be known forever because they have done a job in the past. doctors, whenever a doctor retires you still address the envelope to dr. so and so and that is what he expects. many senators do the same thing after they retired and practically all generals do it but if you are a major in something you don't do it so there is this feeling a little bit that may be you owe something, you have to be very careful of that and i know that is a wishy-washy answer. >> host: you hear the phrase it

is necessary to win the hearts and minds. what do you think? >> guest: i think i am saddened because this whole notion of protecting and persuading tribes is a fanciful, imaginative series that makes theory that m the battlefield. general stanley mcchrystal said we should spend 95% of our time persuading the people and 5% fighting the enemy. would you sell an 18-year-old marine, give them a rifle and walk out and say don't fight the enemy, go have a cup of tea with the elders. it made no sense and the people on the ground knew that there is

a cut off point. the battalion level on down. and the member of the battalion on down there was a different perspective of this war than there was at the level. that reconciliation between those two perspectives hasn't occurred yet. >> host: go ahead with your question or comment for bing west. >> caller: mr. west and c-span, i am not 20-year-old veteran, entered as a private, retired as a major. was a drill sergeant, went through the cf. was the big company commander for project 100,000. was a rifle company commander in vietnam, spent some time in foster will 249 in japan, returned to the brigade as an

operations officer and i have i thought was a very good working knowledge of the army from the enlisted to the officer ranks. until 2003, i went to washington d.c. as part of the vietnam veterans memorial fund, teach vietnam. have a long talk with stanley, long listening session, i read his book and it really changed my concept of why we were in vietnam. i was wondering did you ever read -- i was also 0 cf company commander during the vietnam era too. i was on the ground and i trained. i would like to know did you ever read that book and what did you think of it? >> guest: i did read the book.

to tell you the truth i didn't come away with any -- anything conclusive enough to respond to you. i would like if you would explain to the audience your perspective, what it was, projects 100,000, and how it worked? >> host: he is gone. >> guest: project 100,000 was an effort by mcnamara to bring in people not qualified to be in the military to give them a chance, and it didn't work out well because the amount of dereliction of duty and bad conduct among the group was entirely too high. it would have been interesting to listen to what he had to say about that. >> host: what would you think about a draft? >> guest: can't be done. we don't have the money to do

it. it would be too disruptive. i am not at all in favor of the draft. >> host: adam e-mails what do you think of what is described as a nationalist trend in japan and apparent desire by policymakers for japan to have a more robust military? >> guest: i think it is inevitable. i believe japan is beginning to question our fidelity for their security and will gradually build up their own forces. >> host: how do you feel about that? >> guest: i think since it is inevitable, irrelevant what i feel about it but i think it is -- i can't predict the future but i think it is probably the right thing to do but i can't predict how china is going to react but it is going to happen anyway. >> host: teresa.

>> caller: my father was a marine as was my brother in vietnam but i did protest against the iraq war because i did not believe -- there are millions of americans, the reasons given by the jewish west administration, i do agree with what you said earlier especially about disbanding the iraqi army especially when george bush said he had our planes dropped leaflets all over baghdad telling the sunni ali to the down your guns, don't fight us, we will financially help you and your families, he betrayed them. he went back on that promise and that is how we started the insurgency which was basically against our soldiers. i also agree with what you said earlier that it made no sense that we allowed osama bin laden to escape from tour of borrow. i agree. in retrospect i believe it made perfect sense to beat george bush neocons who wanted to invade iraq and that the pretense that said, was going to osama bin laden, if we had

captured osama bin laden it would have come out that saddam hussein and al qaeda were not connected. also president obama killed osama bin laden and found him 100 miles east of tour of borrow. don't tell me in a new york minute that george bush and company did not know he was there. >> guest: if i drop back from the individual conscience it does -- it is worth making the observation that once you going to the military and swear to uphold the constitution, then you should always be to forced from politics and one man can be a marine and soldiers and have a private opinion about something but your duty is never to criticize your chain of command, and to carry out those orders

knowing all human beings are fallible and we don't always get it right. i think our military does agree job of staying, if you will, in their range. regardless of how a war occurs or what mistakes the politicians make, that the military is always there to serve the president as commander-in-chief, democrat or republican, and to keep their politics out of it and i think the military has done a terrific job of doing that. >> host: bing west, thank you for your service. i have a membership program for young people. most of them graduating from college and want to enlist. a key issue for them as well as urban youth is past use of marijuana. even though they are no longer users, in order to enter the application truthfully they would have to say how many times they used it and currently there is a numeric level, 15-25 of usage times. i am thinking if they wait a

year after college and then say they have not used it since or for so many years this would be an acceptable answer. these young people had no idea this would become an issu for them. young people don't know the strict standards military people follow in determining character. that is from brendon elliott, next gen initiative is his group. should people who smoked pot in college and high school be kept out of the military? >> guest: i have no idea. by that, i mean the entire subject is changing so fast and it doesn't pertain just to the military. also pertains if you want to go into law enforcement for the cia there is a whole set of jobs where they ask the question have you used drugs, had you used marijuana. that is such a political

decision, that is a decision like don't ask don't tell or something, that the administration is going to have to come to grips with. discussing it with congress and discussing it with the agency's but it is not just the military. that extends across many agencies and the private sector. wears a come down on it i am not qualified to say. >> host: what you think of gays serving openly in the military and women in combat? >> two issues. case serving openly in the military, no issue. women in combat we have to d fine very carefully. ..laws of sex. we're not going to repeal body strength. we're not going to repeal muck and the blood ask that you cannot have any favoritism toward anybody when you're in combat, and they are all expendable.

i would be highly reluctant to see us throw everything out the window and say we're just going to open up the ranks to be in the infantry. and i don't say that just because i'm an old -- i say that with very due consideration that you have to look at that one really carefully. >> host: one of the stories we didn't touch on if "the wrong war" is your personal experience in afghanistan with cholera. >> guest: oh, well -- >> host: what happened? >> i say that with very due consideration that you have to live without one. you have to look at that one really carefully. >> host: one of the stories we didn't touch on in your book is what happened.

>> it was my own fault. i didn't realize. elon, watermelon. so when the water is filled with feces and you eat that watermelon, i guess you deserve what happens to you. [laughter] >> host: but -- >> guest: let's move on. >> host: but at the same time, you're talking about a near death experience. >> guest: well, so what? i mean, a lot of us are those sorts of things. it just causes you to sort of say even an old dog has to learn some new tricks like, you know, use common sense when you do certain things, you know? but i must say, i really love those army doctors, you know? >> host: jon is calling from chicago. jon, please go ahead. >> caller: semper fi, sir. >> guest: semper fi. >> caller: golly, what a breath of fresh air. i would like to thank you for all the veterans out there listening, sir, for having such a straightforward and being an advocate for the fighting man.

are you a fifth marine regiment, sir, from vietnam? >> guest: i was. i was with 2-5. >> caller: 2-5. do do you remember the name dela garza? that was the fella that earned the medal of honor, sir. i think he was 1-5. >> guest: 1-5. >> caller: sir, could you talk about dakota? let's switch gears here a little bit. it's been a whole wunsch of -- bunch of serious questions. talk about dakota, sir. >> guest: well, dakota highier is simply illustrative, he made sergeant leader, he was fighting when he was 19. the point about seem like dakota -- people like dakota, which gives me great hope in the future, is that you get these young men whose environment is such that when they come in, they know if you join the marine corps, the marine corps doesn't

join you. and if you come in, you live up to a certain set of standards. they'll train you, but you have to have the right stuff to given with. and they put that together, and it makes a composite that's an excellent fighting man. and dakota meyer, who was awarded the medal of honor, and others like captain swenson who was the army captain who was awarded the medal of honor, they illustrate the kinds of young men that we want in this service, and we're getting them. we're getting them. our services are doing better, not worse. so i'm, i am optimistic about what we're doing internal to the services. i am not optimistic about the level of money that we're giving to them to do their job. we're cutting them too muchment muchment -- too much. >> host: are you still in touch with dakota a meyer? "into the fire," by the way, was ping west's last -- bing west's last book that he wrote with dakota meyer. are you still in touch with

mr. meyer? do you know where he is now? >> guest: oh, yeah. he's back in kentucky. he has a construction business. dakota's doing very well, and he lives next to his dad, and his dad's a terrific man, so he comes from a very good community. >> host: bing west, did you follow think soldiers that came back with ptsd? >> guest: the answer is, yes. but i have -- let me draw back. post-traumatic stress disorder. no, post-traumatic stress. anyone who has been on the front lines in combat and seen his fellow soldiers and marines blown up or has seen, has killed people and seen the messed-up bodies is going to have some post-traumatic stress. it doesn't mean it's a disorder. everyone who fought in normandy in 1944, everyone who fought in iwo jima in 1945, horrendous

battles. did they come back with stress? absolutely. were they disordered? most of them weren't. we have -- and i'll tell you what the marines tell me, this platoon that i was with. this platoon had 52 who went in, 26 were wounded or killed, nine amputations. they had eight -- no, they didn't have eight, they had four out of the 52 who are receiving benefits from the veterans affairs for post-traumatic stress disorder. that's 8% of the platoon that saw the most combat in afghanistan. the force as a whole has 20%. and of them are in the rear and never engaged in combat. but we have to be very careful that we don't do with the military to a surgeon extent what -- certain extent what we've done with some police departments, fire departments, etc., where it's expected that

you get something extra with your pension for some disability or something. and i don't want to get too far into this, but we have to be very careful that we don't overstretch things and get to the point where we're saying, well, you were shot at, you have to have post-traumatic stress disorder to. you're going to have stresses, but you can get on with your life. they're not all disorders. >> host: you had a series of book with, taking baghdad with the u.s. marines, no true glory, and -- that were kind of very fast. they read almost novelistic in a sense because you're moving along. are you still in touch with a lot of those soldiers? >> guest: oh, enormous amount of back ask can be forth. e-mail -- or back and fort. e-mail you just have to be careful. my wife betsy says sometimes i'm

spending too much time on e-mail. so you end up, you have to be real careful because once you start a conversation, you can e-mail back and forth. i have to get on with my writing. but i can reach out can and touch them, i have long lists, and occasionally when i write something they'll come back and say, atta boy, bing. >> host: john mcgraw e-mails in, and he's not a fan of yours. you would have us in every possible war. i'm glad you were not my unit leader in vietnam. you remind me of the worse case of overconfidence in the military. >> guest: what does that mean? i would have him in every war. i don't know. i don't know what he's talking about. >> host: edward, dover, delaware. hi, edward, you're on with bing west. >> caller: i'll ask my question, then i want to hang up and listen to his answer. what does he think of rumsfeld? >> host: edward, what do you think of secretary rumsfeld? we're getting the delay, unfortunately.

bing west, what do you think of secretary rumsfeld? >> guest: i believe that secretary rumsfeld should have resigned after abu ghraib. that that became an albatross around his neck ask around the neck -- and around the neck of the war effort and the president. and at some point, it would have been better simply to say, mr. president, it happened on my watch. that's all you have to say, that's it. give it to somebody else. my responsibility. if you're in the navy and you're in charge of the ship and you go to sleep and that ship runs aground or something, your odds of getting relieved are very, very high. even though you were asleep because it was your vessel.

you're supposed to be responsible for everything. i think secretary rumsfeld, it would have been much better for everybody if he had resigned at that time. >> host: prior to abu ghraib, what did you think of his management of the war? >> guest: management of the war. tricky subject. manage, lead, it is my personal opinion that the you send people to -- that if you send people to die ask you're the president of the united states -- or send them into war knowing that they're going to die and you are the president or you are the secretary of defense, you should spend an e author house amount of time -- enormous amount of time really understanding that war and not just relying on somebody else and not just relying on what he says, but somehow finding out so that you have your pulse on it because those are living people. and i think that we would have

been hutch better served -- much better served if both president george w. bush and secretary rumsfeld had taken much more time to really understand it rather than just say, well, this is something i don't like the general, i'm going to replace the general. >> host: warren is calling from palm bay, florida. warren, please go ahead. >> caller: yes. i was a teenage marine in korea. my commanding officer, last one i had over there, was marion carl. i think you probably have heard of him. my favorite marine, butler, i read his book, "war is a racquet," and i think if we had listened to evan carlson like he wrote in his book, we'd see that we could have never won in vietnam. and i can remember on a troop ship today told us we are going there -- they told us we are going there to make south korea free for democracy, and what was

it, 16 years later they had a democratic election. this country loves war, but that's my comment. >> host: this country loves war. first of all, did you recognize some of the names -- >> guest: i did, i did. i did, indeed. well, let me just spend a moment with butler as the example. pedly butler was a famous marine, i believe he may have received the pedal of honor. he certainly was a ferocious fighter, and he was extremely cynical can about why we were fighting the banana wars at the beginning of the 20th century. and that illustrates my point earlier, i think, that the you're a marine, if you're a soldier, the you're an air -- if you're an airman or coast guardsman or a sailor, you should be able to do your job and not be involved in in my ofe politics of it because sometimes we get things right, sometimes we get things wrong.

but overall i would argue that the united states more than any other nationing in this century has been and the past century and true today has been a source for good for the world. it's -- we're not out picking wars. i would argue that world war ii, which was the decisive war, we went to help others for. ask that was the most, that dwarfed any other war. and there's certainly no evidence today, absolutely no evidence that we're out there trying to find a war to the fight. my goodness gracious, we're trying to pull back as much as we can. >> host: phyllis e-mails in to you, mr. west, from carmel, california, please comment about better medical treatment both short term and long term for our veterans and their families. >> guest: the treatment of the families, let me, let me difference shape. differentiate. i don't know. i cannot comment about families

of veterans relative to u.s. government and how the u.s. government plays a role there. i can say that the student that we have given -- the treatment that we have given to our warriors when they come back wounded is extraordinary. i mean, it's just remarkable. in vietnam one out of every four of us who was wounded died. now today it's one out of seven. so we've practically doubled the good care. i believe the va is trying its absolute best to do what it can with more and more ailments now being reported that's just going to grow and grow over time. but i believe they're doing their absolute best. the issue that's going to confront us with the military health care overall going forward is the sam issue that's going to confront us with the care.

the desire for the care eventually is going to outstrip the resources tar available. >> host: mike in napa, california. >> caller: hi. may i start talking? >> host: please do. we're listening, sir. >> caller: okay. yeah, i had a question regarding will bing's talk about -- mr. bing's talk about the lack of financial resources. and i wanted to know relative to the other, the military side problems like his author, mr. cra cow says everything starts with politics. and obviously the politics relative to the financial crisis that make them come up short on the financial end, which is most important end to start from? where's the -- what's the biggest problem, in other words, of the two? >> guest: well, if i could rephrase it, it would be like this: we used to spend relatively 6% of our gross

national product, of our wealth on defense, and we spent 18% on all the federal programs. now we're spending 24% on all the federal programs, and we're dropping defense to 4%. so if you look at defense as just being an insurance program, if you're getting more wealth, the first thing you don't do is say i'm going to cut my insurance. because then if a catastrophe happens, you lose more. i would simply argue that we should just have picked a figure like 4%, 4.5% and say, look, we'll just continue at that level and tell the military, that's the amount of money, now you figure out how you're going to do it. trying every year just to cut them, i don't think, is wise. >> host: i want to follow up on that va e-mail we got. when you were serving, what kind of differences do you see between the services offered to veterans in the vietnam era as opposed to today?

>> guest: everyone, i would start by saying i wasn't even aware of services. now everyone's aware of services. that's the huge difference. do you know that everyone now leaving the service has an exit interview at which point they're told here are all the services that the va can provide for you. we never had that. and i'm sure that we would have had four times as many if somebody had said here's your choices. so i'd say that's the biggest difference. >> host: when you left the military, when did you leave the military? >> guest: about '67. >> host: and what was of your exit like? [laughter] >> guest: that was it. [laughter] i mean, there was no, there was no exit. see ya later, you know? there was no exit. now they have everything much more structured than they did then. >> host: i want to read one more quote from from "the strongest " that you write.

american society seems frivolous and soft, yet it produces the world's toughest warriors. american society is fickle, yet its warriors keep coming year after year without encouragement from society, especially its elite, our warrior class selects itself. >> guest: absolutely true. >> host: is there a divide between what you call elite and people who serve in the military? >> guest: um -- >> host: is there distrust? >> guest: i, i'm on thin ice on that one because i haven't thought it through myself. i will say that i wish that, i wish that the ivy leagues sent more into the military. i wish that we hadn't got to the point where it's highly unusual. hi son went to harvard, and there were -- my son went to harvard, and there were only

five if his graduating class who went into the military, and of that five when i went to the ceremony, they held it in the basement to excision them. i wish that -- to commission them. i wish that there was more parity. at the same time, i have to say that the average person coming into the military today comes from middle class to upper middle class families. the average combined salary of the parents is $8 to 0,000, and most of them come from families with both parents. so i'm perfectly satisfied with everybody coming into the military. i wish some of the ivy league schools would do a little bit more, but that's just a quibble on the margin. >> host: bing west, your book, "the village," 15 walked in, 8 walked out, is on the commandant's reading list. >> guest: the commandant of the marine corps has a list of books

that everyone should read, and it's been on the list for 40 or 50 years. of. >> host: don is calling from kendrick, idaho. >> caller: yeah. i'm a vietnam vet. i was drafted when i got out of high school. and i have a totally, completely different view of the marine corps than what mr. west has. i don't see any rational progression of what he says at all. if he believes really that we're selecting better fighters now, then why do we have such difficult problems where a vast majority of people coming out of the service are applying for disability benefits? there continues to be

soldier-on-soldier killings, there continues to be ever-increasing sexual assaults with the claim that the military command is in command when clearly they're not. if they are, then they're all complicit in the problems. >> host: don, don, we'll have mr. wes respond to some of your -- mr. west respond to some of your issues, but you said that you were drafted into the marines during during vietnam? very quickly, what was your experience? >> caller: what was my -- you mean, what did i do while i was in the service? >> host: right. >> guest: the marines. >> host: right. what was your impression of being in the service at that point and being drafted in? >> caller: my impression was that it was pretty much a jena laze that the country -- a general z malaise that the

country had been in for some time that we believed the only settlement to any kind of a problem is to bully the rest of the world. >> host: were you in the marine corps? >> caller: pardon? >> guest: were you in the marine corps? >> caller: in the marine corps, yeah, correct. >> guest: and what unit were you with? >> caller: when i was overseas? >> guest: in vietnam. >> caller: third. >> host: he talked about sexual assault, he talked about soldier-on-soldier violence. he didn't bring up suicide which the current military is facing. >> guest: i guess you'd have to say compared to what so you're comparing an apple with an apple. the question is, are suicides very prevalent? i don't think so. sexual assault is interesting. they gave, i guess, the survey

to 26,000 people. balanced so that most of the respondees were males rather than females. i haven't understood why no one said, well, you know, in all -- you can see where i'm driving on that one. i think there are many people this the military if they're given a survey, they're going to jot things down, and i am not persuaded just from the survey that that is an accurate indication of what's actually occurring. i suppose i have more faith in the commanding officer structure. until one compared what was happening in college with what's happening in the ranks of something, and until i could see some comparison, i am not persuaded that it is -- i would be arguing that there's probably less in the military than

outside the military. but i can't prove that until someone is willing to compare an apple to an apple. >> host: donny nicklaus e-mails in to you, what is the difference between nation building in iraq and afghanistan versus nation building in japan and germany? >> guest: oh, you mean back in world war ii? well, i think it's quite clear. at the end of world war ii, we said unconditional surrender. we are in charge. we are going to tell you, the germans, what to do. we're going to tell you, the japanese, what to do. there was no issue about coming in and saying, mother, may i. we restructured their societies because they had committed mass murder. ask we had the nuremberg trials, and we executed the leaders. in iraq and afghanistan, we went in, the colonial era was over, and we turned to somebody like

prime minister maliki and somebody like president karzai and said you're in charge. we will not affect your promotions whatsoever. you choose whomever you want, and we'll do the fighting for you. so a vastly different system between japan and germany versus iraq and afghanistan. >> host: michael paul e-mails in to you, mr. west, is it the responsibility of the u.s. to make the world safe for democracy, or is a democratic republic a reality only for those willing to die for it themselves? >> guest: i, mr. paul, come down much more on the latter. that a democratic society you have to be willing to die for it yourself. >> host: is it the world's -- is it our responsibility, though, to be the world's policeman in a sense? >> guest: no, it is not. it is our responsibility, it seems to me, that in certain areas to establish rules of the road that are common to everybody.

for instance, at sea there will not be piracy. we will help to enforce that rule of the road. we will not enable people to say that they can extend out their territorial boundaries a thousand miles. so there are certain global rules that we would say we as part of the united nations will insure are -- freedom of the air, to fly, etc. and i think we've dope a very good job of that -- done a very good job of that. but we do not have the responsibility of trying to make the world safe for democracy. >> host: chris in brooklyn, please go ahead with your question or comment for author ask military historian bing west. >> caller: hello, mr. west, how are you? >> guest: good, chris. >> caller: yes. i'd like to say el low and semper fi. >> guest: semper fi. >> caller: i'd like to hear his comments -- i have two questions, one on what he thought of general wald's

opinion of people and keeping 'em safe and westmoreland's, you know, point of view which was worry about going out into the mountains to get, you know, the vc. actually, nva. my opinion is that wald had it right and westmoreland had it wrong. and my second question to you is we approximately right now have six or seven aircraft carrier groups at any one time, and i'm worried about what the chinese navy's going to do. i think within five years they're going to start -- within five years they're going to start making moves in, you know, the pacific to challenge us. >> host: all right, thank you, chris. let's get an answer. bing west? >> guest: chris, i believe you're correct on both issues. look, the first question chris asked was about what happened in vietnam because general westmoreland who was down south in saigon wanted to go out to the mountains to fight the north vietnamese a regulars.

up in the north where the marines were, there was a general by the name of walt, and he believed in trying to protect the population along the coast, and that's why he sent me -- actually, it was general walt who sent me out to write that book. so, yeah, i'm in general walt's camp. now, your second question i think is very pertinent. you said six or seven carrier task groups out there. no, chris, we're down to three. we only have at any given time in the world today three carriers at sea. we only have 11 carriers altogether. but only three of them are sailing. so we can't be in the atlantic, the mediterranean, the indian ocean and the pacific at the same time. we don't have enough ships. do i think we're going to have some faceoffs with china? yes, i do. yeah, i do. and is china building up its carrier, trying to? yes. they're way behind us. but i am worried that we keep pushing the united states navy

down, and there could come a crossover point. so six or seven, i mean, that's illustrative, chris. we don't have six or seven anymore out there. we only have three. >> host: gustavo we area rah, blacksburg, virginia. e-mail: i just want to share my story about how i perceive the role of the military in this country. born and raised in europe, i moved to the u.s. 12 years ago. since then i can truly state that i have experienced the concept of the american dream. i am a college professor who also serves in the army national guard originally as an enlisted and now as an officer. i serve because i feel that it is the least i can do to pay back this country for the most precious things i got. furthermore, joining the military has contributed immensely towards my integration in this great society. >> guest: wow. i can't improve upon that. especially from a professor. god bless you. [laughter] >> host: bing west, what again are the books that you are currently working on?

>> guest: well, there are two. i'm working on a book about courage called "one million steps" which is the number of steps each marine in a platoon had to take over the mine-infested ground before he returned to the united states in southern afghanistan, and i'm trying to explain why did they fight so fiercely even when they lost their leaders and never gave up? and that has to do with small unit cohesion which is critical always for anything you do. it's critical on any ship, it's critical for any air crew, it's critical on land. and i'm trying to indicate that we still have that cohesion. the other book is entirely different, and there's this very distinguished general by the name of james mattis, sometimes called mad dog among other things, who is a terrific war fighter and also in charge of our central command until a few months ago. and i'm trying to help him write a