the carrier and the air force variant and those fit on small deck ships, why do we need big carriers and carrier taskers? >> that's a great question. i do think over the long-term, i'm delighted to see so many young people here. i think your lifetime we will have fundamentalal debates of whether the long-term carrier is the thing to invest it. it continues to be dominate. vis-a-vis is cape i believities of adversariies we see. if we -- ally land access is sometimes limited in terms of where we can operate f-35 ast or other land based aircraft. in terms of the f-35 b, which i admire as an aircraft and i think we should purchase, the problem is it's not so clear that you really have a greater cost efficiency operating off an

amphibious ship costs you a couple billion dollars. you can put a couple dozen aircraft on it. a flat deck, a big flat deck has cost you in the past $6 billion. that number's growing with the next generation. i'm not sure i'm persuaded the extra money is worth the cost. it's roughly three times as many airplanes per ship. i'm not sure you really change the cost calculus that much by talking about f-35 bst on amphibious ships or others on traditional big carriers. where i do think there are ways to save more very briefly is using the amphibious ships in the mediterranean. i don't think we need to have our larger deck ships doing much in the mediterranean anymore. the threats there are in the great enough to warrant the capability brought by a big flat deck. they should focus on the persian gulf and western pacific. which is why i'm in favor from going down from 11 to 10 in the

big flat deck ships. >> you mentioned the ramp up of capabilities and use of the reserve force for that ramp up as a holding capability. what are the implications for the size, training and the equipping and the laws that enable mobilization on the reserve force? >> i think there are a number of things we would have to do to make sure that we -- by way of force planning. i think in terms of the legal and policy framework we learned a lot in the last ten years. most of what we need to figure out how to do, we've figured it out. you figured it out. we've actually dealt with the difficulty, the real challenge here is the human cost, the human transition of figuring out how do you make life in the civilian sector compatibility with part of the reserve component?

i think there have been titanic ships, huge shifts in how the reserve component thinks about service. and how you recruit. how you have to talk to would be recruits. i think the hard part's done. i think you guys have done it. there are some ongoing legal issues that have to be addressed. but frankly if you have a big war that begins, you're going to have some kind of a congressional resolution ideally to authorize that war and that resolution simply needs to repeat some of the legal language that we've now developed turnover last decade to deal with the legal issues. the the hard part again is the human side, and that's up to you. you've shown us how to do it. we've tried to learn those lessons. i think we're capable of learning on that if we need to. >> in the coming budget cuts, should our cuts to incentive programs and benefits like health care and retirement for reserve force on the table? >> i think the answer has to be

yes. but in fact, ooufb gratified to see many people in the military acknowledging that the answer needs to be yes. i think you need to have an important voice in this. i think we need to find a balance between asking how with do we maintain our sacred vow as a nation with an all voluntary military and even in cases where some of you were not necessarily volunteers when you joined, you still risked your lives on behalf of the nation. we owe you a huge debt of gratitude and a huge obligation. i would begin with some of the same premises that seemed to guide secretary panetta. we have to make changes gradually. we have to make sure we don't cut across the board in all benefits. we have to think hard about people who have been affected by the wars the most, the wounded warriors, their families and survivors, make sure we're fair to them. ic it's time for a bit of a reallocation of the benefits towards the younger military personnel who do one or two tours and are out and for whom most of these benefits have not

been accruing. frankly, i think we can save some money, do better by the younger generation and the shorter termers and do it in a gradual enough way that it does not disproportionately and adversely affect people who are counting on those benefits. even though i'm in favor of rethinking military pentagons, military health care, et cetera, it is a little troubling to me that we're getting this whole locomotive going full steam while we haven't yet found a way to talk about broader social security reform and medicare and medicaid reform in the nation at large in other words -- [ applause ] >> we need to ask everyone for collective sacrifice. it doesn't really make sense to focus on the entitlement benefits of those who have served and to focus on the 90%

that haven't served. [ applause ] >> south america, central america have not been centered on the defense establishment's radar scope over time. but we have it as the nexus of far coe terrorism. we have it as a continent whied populism movement changing the government. hugo chavez is rumored to be on the last years of his life. what do you see are the implications of this hemisphere in your national defense? >> that's a great question -- >> and homeland security and immigration. >> it all comes together. an answer has to touch on that. i have to be brief and not as comprehensive as i should be. i would begin by saying there's a lot of great stuff going on in latin america that we need to be grateful for at the same time we're troubled by the violence and drug wars. we've seen an incredible wave of

democratization in latin america. in many ways it was the main precursor along with what happened in eastern europe to the arab revolutions or things we're seeing unfold right now. the number of latin countries that when democratic in the 80s and 90s is astounding. it's essentially now a democratic hemisphere north and south america. this is on balance extremely good news. we've seen a couple democracies cliek colombia get on the ball and figure out how to use their democratic process to find leaders who can make a meaningful difference in their violence and the vie thaens that afgts us, too. we've also seen president obama one of his most significant accomplishments has been to ignore chavez. you recalled he tried in the first few months to say hello to him and it was a little uncomfortable. some salespeople thought he smiled too much, some people thought he smiled not enough. he shook the guy's hand and he hasn't spoken about him sense. that's the perfect way to handle

chavez who in one way or the other is on the way out. i don't see him gaining any popularity in the region. he has a message that's broken. his country tragically is not doing well. it has one of the highest violence rates in the entire hemisphere even though it has some of the greatest oil resource. he's a failed leader. i'm not as worried about him. we still have big problems in mexico. mexico has a political system that's functioning okay in some ways. they're having vigorous democratic debates. they did some things with their overall approach with the drug war under their current leadership in many ways mimic which general petraeus did in iraq and afghanistan. unfortunately, they haven't managed to turn the corner. we have to be very analytical in how we think about what's needed next. the mexicans are going to make the decision. the one thing we have to think about in this country is what can we do to help the mexicans by way of reasonable gun control measures. i'm not talking about taking guns out of the hands of

law-abiding americans. i'm talking about tracking the sales of semiautomatic weapons much more effectively than we do today. those weapons account for about 80% of the violence in mexico. we owe our southern neighbor a debt of obligation to think hard about what steps may aid in their problems. >> the one country that his has not yet been mentioned in the first two hours of the symposium is perhaps our most apparent threat and adversary and potential nuclear power and that's iran. how does iran figure into your calculus of our national security? >> well, it figures in initially in i don't believe we can talk too much about the repivoting or rebalancing to east asia. the administration has done a good job reminding east asian allies that we're there. we're there and committed. we're not going to cut.

actually, i have some doubts about the current okinawa plan, but we can talk about that some other day. in broad term it's certainly correct that we should not be cutting our overall capabilities in the western pacific. but at the same time you can't push that argument too far. whether you want to get out of the middle east or not, it drags you back. it always does. there are times where we get involved in wars of choice, but for the most part, the world still has a dependsy on the middle east in terms of oil and gas, in terms of stopping nuclear nonproliferation. that's why in my argument in the wounded giant book and what i try to underscore today i think we have to do the persian gulf as well as the broader middle east and the western pacific as equally important theaters of future military focus. there are a lot of ways we could talk about the specifics of where the crisis with iran may go in the next few months. i'll leave that to other speakers and other session of the symposium realizing we don't have much time right now. i think as a merit of defense

spending we cannot and must not understate the centrality of the persian gulf. the rebalancing to asia has been good up to a point because it reminded countries in that region including china that we are still very much a pacific power. that this region is as important as any other to our future national security and that this region as what lot positive going on for it right now that makes it important to stay involved. but the middle east while it has some positive things, too, has problems like iran that make it impossible to ignore. it has to be an equally important locus of future american defense planning as the western pacific in the coming decade. >> thank you very much for those provocative looks at the defense establishment. [ applause ] >> we have a couple of gifts for you. one is our coin. >> thank you very much.

>> and a thank you gift that we hope you use as you go forward and through the great thinking of the brookings institution and continue to be our conscious in the defense establishment. >> thank you. thanks to you all. [ applause ] all this week in primetime on c-span3 we were bringing you american history events. and tonight beginning at 8:00 eastern from our american artifacts series, we travel to orange county, virginia, and james madison's montpelier to learn about the family semistair and the nearby slave cemetery. at 8:30 p.m. in old spur bridge village, massachusetts, we'll visit a museum depicting early american life. and at 9:00 wem show you inaugural gowns and white house china and learn more about the roels of first ladies in

presidential administrations. >> this weekend marks the anniversary of the bloodiest battle to be fought during the civil war up to that point, the battle of smie low with almost 24,000 casualties. and we'll tour the battlefield with chief park ranger stacey allen saturday at 6:00 p.m. eastern. and sunday night at 7:00 the angel of the battlefield and founder of the red cross, clara barton operated the missing soldiers office in a washington, d.c. boarding house until 1868. join us as we rediscover the third floor office as it's prepared for renovations. this weekend on american history tv on krrs-span sbst 3. >> last week the feminist majority foundation hosted a forum in washington focused on issues important to women in the 2012 election. during this discussion panelists addressed some of the ballot measures affecting women. among the participants representative from planned

parenthood and the national lesbian and gay task force. this event contains some language some people they find offensive. >> this next forum is called coming to a state near you. you've heard a little bit today already about some of these so-called personhood initiatives that are going to be on state ballots. we have some of the leading experts to tell you a little bit more about where these are happening and the impact that those can have. you're also going to hear about the drive for equal marriage. both in states where we're expecting equal marriage initiatives to be put on the ballot as well as literally a couple of states where we're putting our initiative on the ballot to win back equal marriage. and then you're always going to hear about the ongoing fight for workers' rights.

some very critical elections in this country revolve around winning back the rights that have been so terribly compromised under these extreme conservative state legislatures and governors that came out of the 2010 elections. we're never going to let that happen again. so, i'm going to now introduce the moderator for this next panel. duevern gains is the coordinator of our choices leadership campus program. also an attorney who works with our national clinic violence project to stop the anti-abortion extremist attacks on clinics all across the country. so please welcome her and hold your questions until the end. we'll have time for more q and a. >> thank you, cathy. hello. welcome. >> hello. [ applause ] >> on to the next session. thank you for sticking it out

with us. yes, we are indeed right now talking about ballot measures and stopping the war on women. and what's on deck in 2012 with respect to these measures. ballot measures present an interesting opportunity for us. they're used by our on opponents to create division and we capitalize upon that to unite our movement and fight back and win. there's a lot going on. we have a distinguished panel here to talk about anti-union initiatives. anti-choice and personhood initiatives. i'm going to briefly speak about voter identification measures and amendments that have been passed in addition to anti-marriage equality and anti-lgbt initiatives across the country. we are -- it's been an interesting last two years with respect to voter identification, which is i think a good way to

perhaps kick off this session. last fall i was in mississippi working side by side with megan darby and planned parenthood and the aclu. we the feminist majority foundation were very active on college campuses throughout the state working to defeat initiative 26 that was the personhood initiative that made it to the ballot in mississippi. yes. that was a huge victory. [ applause ] >> i don't want to steal megan's thunder. actually, i will boast a little bit about what happened in that particular battle and the incredible effort that planned parenthood and the aclu and other groups put into that victory coupled with our work on college campuses. we were 31 points behind two months out before the election. 31 points. we literally i know planned parenthood put up offices, campaign offices overnight.

threw them up. it was literally astonishing and the incredible grassroots movement then took place in that state. i think it was something like, oh, thousands and thousands of phone calls that were made over 412,000 phone calls made within a four-week period. 20,000 doors were knocked on. and mississippians said no, we're not stupid. we know that this is a massage nis and we're not going to change and amend our constitution with this crazy initiative. and we defeated that measure by ten points in the end. i would like a little round of applause there. thank you. and it was a tremendous effort. but unfortunately we lost when it came to a voter identification measure that was on the same ballot. and voter identification measures are out to disenfranchise millions of americans. we saw a massive proliferation in 2011 of voter identification

measures nationwide. i think over 34 measures were introduced across in state legislatures across the country in 2011. there's at least 32 introduced in 2011 and many of them have passed. it's interesting in states like texas it's passed, wisconsin, south carolina. many of these states are subject to preclearance under the voting rights act because of bad behavior in the past in terms of discrimination. so they're actually subject to preclearance by the u.s. department of justice. guess what? they're not getting it we know that these are racist, sexist laws that are designed to disenfranchise voters. how are they designed to disenfranchise voters? if you're required to get a state issued voter identification like a driver's license, if you're elderly, if you're over 75, most individuals do not have photo identification

anymore especially driver's license. if you are a student you won't have the same address as your voter identification as your driver's license because you're constantly, from one year to the next, new dorm, out of state. in addition, if you are a person of color, many places we're seeing what i would call polling location racial profiling. you're only asked for identification if you're a person of color, so it's a selective bias and disenfranchisement, not to mention the fact what we see in certain areas, people of color less likely to have photo identifications, photo ids, compared to white counterparts. or disabled individual, can't go down to the dmv at the drop of a hat to get the new strict photo id, that now is required in their state. so there is really i think it was best said that voter --

frauder fraud is about as commonplace as being struck by lightning. so this is a complete ruse and we must fight back and make sure we have the opportunity to vote, and we will, i'm happy to say wisconsin's voter id was ruled unconstitutional. the department of justices are saying we know what you're doing, this is a poll tax or another method of discriminating against segments of the population, so hopefully we will win and make sure everybody gets to that ballot box this november and the primaries this spring. i wanted to talk about that and introduce with megan, i mentioned mississippi, she is here to talk to us about a little bit about what they did

there. i think you were the director of mississippi mississippians for healthy family campaign. it was the main campaign to defeat 26. we the feminist majority foundation worked with students across the state through the students voting no on 26 campaign. and megan is currently the i should get this correct i know it's a mouthful i want to make sure i have it correct. ballot initiative and opposition research manager at planned parenthood federation. she has worked all over the country on ballot measures, prior life working to defeat anti-union initiatives. please welcome to the stage, megan darby. [ applause ]

>> hello, thanks for having meechlt i'm here to give you an idea of what we think will be on the ballot, what has been defeated so far. but starting off, i did have the opportunity of speaking nine weeks in mississippi last year, which was a little life-changing. little tiring, and a little surreal when i think about it now because we had such a huge victory, we wereere 30 points d three weeks from election day. five days before the election, independent poll came out that had us one point down, 11% undecided. this was decided in the ballot box that day. we were are very fortunate that we not only won, we kind of crushed it. [ applause ]

>> unfortunately that wasn't the case for voter id, that was initiative 27 that year. what's interesting to note is that initiative 26, the personhood initiative, that i will be talking more in detail on saturday at the campus gathering, if you guys are around, initiative 26 was the least voted on initiative of all the three. this was an untraditional ballot state. it was only used a couple times before to votes to keep the confederate flag and gay marriage ban. this was untraditional, the man who is now the governor was a huge supporter of personhood. so what we really did and what we're thankful for all of you helped us do is created a climate where people could talk about this and people had doubts and people were given permission to be pro-life, because they are in the state of mississippi.

and be against personhood. so i think we were the least voted on because we did create a culture of doubt that some people weren't comfortable voting no, but they weren't comfortable voting this into law. and i'm happy to report that they did try a couple maneuvers in the state legislature this year to get personhood back up and running and has been defeated. so we will not see personhood in mississippi for at least a couple more years. [ applause ] >> so let me transition into what we definitely will be seeing. and i'll start out in the state of north dakota. on the june primary, june 12th, there lab religious liberties ballot initiative, very broad wide-based initiative that will legally make it you candice crime nate based on religion. birth control refusing or denying a muslim couple to rent an apartment you are the landlord.

this is a primary that people will be voting in because there is an open senate seat. so that's the first one. obviously, our organization and everybody in the room does not want discrimination, especially with the refusal that we're still going through actually this is something we will be watching. moving on to florida, there is a privacy and public funding ban this, was placed by the legislature last year. what this does is public funding will deny public funding for abortion. we don't know, we are exploring what it means. this could impact public employees private insurance because technically it's paid for by public funds, could take away abortion care from private insurance people that are employed by the state. also, there is a little provision written in, the florida privacy in their constitution is stronger than the united states constitution. so they would like to repeal it to the united states standard.

now what does this mean? because honestly the first time i was like, what? we stop a lot of things because of the strong privacy laws in florida. so repealing it would open the door for a lot of things that might not necessarily get very far because of the protection in their constitution. so this will be happening in november. another thing that will be happening in november, in montana, parental notification. now, this was again, put in by the state legislature, we only have one citizen-driven initiative that is on the ballot now out of the three. montana last year, the state legislature passed a parental notification bill and sent it to the governor, who is 100% pro-choice. they said this what is we're going to do. you veto this, we pass something else that will throw constitutional amendment on the ballot next year. so you either sign this or we fight at the ballot box. so he vetoed and now we have

parental notification in montana. so those are the three that are going to be printed on the ballot. here's what we think is probably likely in november. i'm sure h you heard personhood is back in colorado. it is. as you know, in 2008 it was defeated, overwhelmingly. in 2010 they gained three points. still, defeated over wheelingly. after the victory, keith mason put out a press statement comparing himself to susan b. anthony in her campaign for women's suffrage in south dakota. he will come back and fight for the unborn. and anyone who does this work is very familiar that colorado,

it's kind of easy to get a ballot initiative on. very thrlow threshold. life begins at conception, life begins at fertilization, and what they found themselves, because colorado is a little h bit more pro-choice than mississippi, so what they found themselves in mississippi, they were not prepared for was talking about ivf and birth control. so they decide they had would start making these hybrids, so they did one and it wasn't actually one of the most extremes, this is a pretty basic one, says person applies to every human being regardless of the method of creation, a human being is a member of the species homosapien. there was a challenge, that was lost. when it was lost