so we're getting started. so we're pleased to be a co-sponsor of today's conference alongside the wallace foundation and the carnegie corporation of new york in its mission to explore the deeper meaning and lasting impact of this transformative era in american history. you will not only hear from former diplomats, military leaders, politicians and veterans, but also noted historians, journalists, poets and music educators aligning well with the colombian college's pursuit of a multidisciplinary and engaged liberal arts experience. there may be no individual well gw alumnus who better embodies an engaged liberal arts experience than dan weiss, who brought this conference idea to

me a year ago, an idea that gained momentum and enthusiasm with each passing day. dan, who is president and ceo of the metropolitan museum of art, formally served as president at lafayette and haverford college and dean at johns hopkins krieger school of arts and sciences at gw. dan studied psychology and art history on the heels of this turbulent era that we examine today. it was dan's book that time michael o'donnell and the tragic era of vietnam, highlighting the remarkable and courageous life of a promising poet amid the tragedy of the vietnam war that inspired this conference. dan, i'm proud to count you as a graduate of the columbia college, and i'm grateful for your leadership role in this conference, accompanied by peter osnos and thom shanker. thank you. and welcome back to your alma mater.

it is now my privilege to introduce you to gw as president mark wright and president wright and came to gw after almost 24 years as chancellor and chief executive officer at washington university in saint louis. as president reagan's term comes to an end this spring, it's my honor and pleasure to share this special experience with him. president reagan, will you please come to the stage. good morning, everyone. those in person and those watching. i appreciate very much. dean welbeck's introduce action. and i think we're in store for a very good program today. i'd like to echo paul's thanks to dan weiss, peter osnos and tom schenker. i appreciate the sponsors that have joined us in this important

undertake. today, the panelists we are about to hear from will walk us through the many stages of the vetting war era, reflecting on its lasting impact and parallels with our own time. we seek deeper meaning as a research university in the heart of our nation's capital, the george washington university is committed to having a very high impact on the world, especially through the creation of new knowledge. this is not only relevant in looking toward the future, but is also relevant as we examine and reexamine important historical events in the past, such as the vietnam war. we're very fortunate to have the opportunity to convene such a high impact event as today's and to bring together experts,

research and scholarship in ways that help us reflect and better understand the past. and i hope that the presenters today are able to share aspects of their personal involvement in the vietnam war era. i myself was 20 years old in december of. 1969, when there was an announcement of a lottery based on your birth date. and i had number 134. my brother had number 35. ultimately, neither of us was called to serve. i was wrapping up my undergraduate experience at florida state university in

december. of 1969. i went on to the california institute of technology in january of 1970. i am the son of a career navy man. my father graduated from high school and immediately enlisted in the u.s. navy. he was an enlisted man for his entire career. i'm very proud of his achievement. he rose to the highest rank in in the enlisted ranks as an nine. but he was as many would appreciate a person who built his career in the military and though my brother and i vigorously argued with my

father, he believed very strongly in the chain of command in the military regarding the president as commander in chief and you should report your president, right or wrong, and that military perspective stuck with me. and as the months unfolded in 1970, as i began my ph.d. experience at caltech, we were involved in many challenging times. my ph.d. advisor, dr. george s hammond, was a great chemist, and at the same time a very politically engaged individual. he gave a speech at caltech after the cambodian invasion. that speech was very critical of

president nixon, and my advice her was removed from a list of nominees to be a high level official at the national science foundation. the good news for me is that my advisor continued at caltech and subsequently there were a series challenges to many organizations, including all academic institutes missions across the country. today, we live in a time of controversy from rulings of the supreme court to divisions about the role of politics in. higher education policy. one of the strengths, i believe, of american higher education is a degree of autonomy. and i believe that we need to

work to sustain higher education in america as the world's best. so. so those are a few person reflections about my time in my early twenties. proceeding through graduates school and then joining the massachusetts institute of technology as a junior professor. when i arrived at mit as an assistant professor in 1972, i heard about the occupation of the mit president's office and then howard johnson, who was president, how well he handled the protests surrounding the vietnam war. i believe that many people were deeply touched by the vietnam war. and of course, so many people were injured and lost their life

in connection with that conflict. i look forward to hearing a portion of the program today and it is now my privilege to introduce one of our three moderators and organizers of this event. peter osnos. peter is the founder of public affairs books. was a vietnam correspondent for the washington and post and is the editor of robert mcnamara's. in retrospect. peter, i extend to you a warm welcome to george washington university. way. thank you. hi. looking around, i realize that when we said we were going to start this at 9:00 in the morning on time, we lost the students. those of us who are here, as i look around, have probably very

kind of direct experience with the vietnam era. and the vietnam war. war is almost always have a name. there's the revolutionary war. civil war, good war, forgotten war. however, else the vietnam war is portrayed. it's almost always associated with some version of tragic or tragedy, for that is what it was. the american war in vietnam, the years between the early 19 oh sixties and 1973, when the last gi and p.o.w.s left the country still at war, was meant to prevent a communist takeover in southeast asia. barely more than a decade after

mao tse-tung communist victory in china and the war in korea, where communists held on to half the korean peninsula. the effect on vietnam itself, north and south, was catastrophic. but death and devastation has not prevented a unified socialist republic of vietnam from becoming a substantial asian nation. and ironically, a source of commercial and political collaboration with the united states. it is in the u.s. this country where the consequences of the war are still being felt in ways existential, a sense that america is a superpower in some measure of global decline and

with a democratic system at risk and really profound. the social and cultural changes the country has undergone over the past 50 years that can be traced to the war years of the 1960s and seventies. for the 2 million vietnamese americans living in this country. succeeding generations have been absorbed and on the whole, welcomed and successful. but what about americans in the broadest sense? how did a military failure shaped the strategies and policies of our era? how did the antiwar movement, the drive for racial equality and other social reform that were a factor in the war years shape the ways the country has evolved since then? what has happened to patriotism as a foundation of the american

way of life? those are the questions we'll be discussing today in our panels over lunch here. and for the viewers on c-span today and thereafter. and we once again want to say how glad we are that all of you have chosen to spend the time with us. dan weiss, about whom you've heard. i just want to say one other thing about dan wise. i'm an editor. when his proposal for that book in that time came in, i said, clear the decks. that's going to be one of the more important books ever. on vietnam, it's about michael o'donnell. one soldier of the 58,000 who died. dan. good morning, everyone, and it's a real pleasure to have you with us for this day. our hope is, as peter said, that we can spend a day reflecting on an extraordinarily important moment in our history that in all kinds of ways, i think we can agree, changed almost

everything about how we live, what we believe, how we select governors, governance, how we think about the military and so forth. we hope to dig into those questions and many others today in our discussion and there will be opportunity for us to discuss with the panelists as we do these these sessions. each panel, there'll be five panels through the day and in between the panels there will be breaks and opportunities for discussion. but we won't be taking questions from the audience during the period of the of the sessions. for those of you who stay with us, you get a free lunch and it's going to be delicious. i promise you, books are available in the lobby, so we have a nice plan for the day ahead. i'd like to just conclude briefly by saying in a moment for a moment what it is that my what brought me to be interested in this subject in the first place about michael o'donnell. and it was this poem that he wrote on new year's day in 1970. he was a 24 year old helicopter pilot working in vietnam. and on new year's day, he was reflecting on his circumstances.

and in a letter to his best friend, marcus sullivan, who is here today as well, he wrote the following poem if you are able save for them a place inside of you and save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go, be not ashamed to say you love them, though you may or may not have always take what they have left and what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own. and in that time, when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind. o'donnell wrote that on new year's day in 1970 and about two months later, his helicopter was shot down and he was listed as missing in action with his crew for 28 years. eventually, the helicopter was recovered and michael o'donnell was buried with full military honors. two weeks before 911. so for his family and all of those who knew him and loved him, just as for so many of you, this war doesn't seem to end or

go away. and our goal today is to reflect on all of that together. so it is now my pleasure to introduce the first panel. peter. turn it over to you gentlemen. come on up and take your seats. now you've got to sit in a specific place or you'll be misrepresented on c-span and i don't have that list in front of me. if we have to move you around, one movie around doesn't have it. we're going to need to be a little less formal and perhaps some of you may have suspected that's just it's vietnam after all. so let me make a quick introduction. when i call these three gentlemen, i said to the first one, i said, secretary hagel said, call me chuck. and i called bob kerrey. i said, senator kerry. he said, call me bob. then i called general eaton.

he said, call me paul. so you can see that we've got a certain i don't know what rhythm here, which is to say that while these gentlemen are could not be more distinguished, each in their own ways of service, we're all at a stage of reflection. and that's what i really want us to, to talk a bit about. so what i'm going to do is ask each of you a really very specific question to start with, and then try to move into a sort of more general discussion. i have not gone into a long and labored introduction. you, of all people, do not need one. we only have an hour. we want to keep a tight and get as much done as we can. so my first question is, chuck. mr. secretary. you and bob. how is it that we have to. former senator from nebraska, what are the odds? right. and you just got lucky.

and one was, if i'm not mistaken, a republican, and one was, if i'm not mistaken, a democrat. neither of it is past tense yet. i would say that. and so both of you served with great distinction in various ways. and then both of you came home and chose a life in politics. and at over the years, let's face it, your success in politics was very substantial. what i'm kind of curious for chuck and then bob, how did the vietnam experience how did the vietnam experience both of you had real experience wounded. wounded came home to a country that really wasn't welcoming to you. how did that experience the vietnam experience shaped the way you went about your political lives? chuck thanks, peter and i thank

my two colleagues for taking time this morning and all of you and all of those who had something to do with putting on this retrospective because i think it's very important for all the reasons that already have already been noted this morning. but i think war's become as we move away from them and they become part of our history, they actually become more important because they can help guide us as especially in what not to do and understand the mistakes we made as well as the noble efforts that we made and what america's leadership role is in the world to come, as to as to your question. peter, i think you start with in everybody has their own story on

this. we're products of our environment. we're all products of where we come from, what shapes us, what molds us. our experience is and i don't think there's anybody who served in vietnam, including especially my two friends here, and i use the term liberally with kerry. but he warned me that keeping kerry under control was going to be today's, that that that experience has shaped all our lives and it doesn't really matter if you were and i don't think if you were in politics you're not a united states senator or secretary of defense. bob was a governor as well as a senator. you are shaped by that experience. and and i was every decision i made in some way, i had some reflection on times in vietnam. it wasn't with me every day on every decision.

but it was there. and on some of the decisions that bob and i made based on votes in the senate on foreign policy, military affairs, intelligence, surely were were reviewed in our in the receipt of our of our memories and minds about our experiences in vietnam. so i have to say, it's it's helped me and i have to go back and review all those times. sometimes it's difficult. i was there with my brother in 1968, which was the worst year, and so anybody who's been to war in any war, it's not always pleasant to go back. but sometimes you need to go back. not just to help you with the decisions you've got in front of you, but just to remind you of some things that are important in life. so that that would be my

response. peter. bob well, adam, if you've read elizabeth becker's book, no, i had nothing to do with it. which one is it? where are you? elizabeth hager. but i just asked you a question, so elizabeth becker wrote a book, the title of it is you don't belong here. and i think it's a pretty good summary of our involvement in vietnam, and it might be a pretty good summary of my presence here today. so. but she described not just her reporting, but kate webb, frances fitzgerald and katherine leroy. it's a remarkable story and it i actually connected in some ways to two other books that i read once in 1972 and then again recently, which is fire in the lake, and then a delusional woman. my name is svetlana, alix. they have called, you know,

second hand time and the reason there was two books are important to me is i do think one of the problems with discussing the vietnam war is we get self-indulgent. it's all about us. it wasn't fought in rome and omaha. it was fought in vietnam. and the impact on the vietnamese is larger than the impact on us. by considerable amount. after i stepped down as governor and after a single term and i was invited to go to santa barbara to teach a class on the vietnam war, about which i knew nothing, and i've only increased my knowledge at the margin since then. and full disclosure, i had a choice do i want to spend january, february, march in santa barbara or january, february, march in omaha? and that was a pretty easy choice. and we talked about the impact at that time. bear on us and on other veterans, including vietnam. and one of the people i invited was a guy named gary parrot, who is a very close friend of mine from seal team. and as he got up on stage and

leaned in the podium and he says, if there's if there is reincarnation, i want to come back as a vietnamese. and i think that to me, i feel the same way. i mean, i started going back to vietnam in 1989 as a cold war was about to about to end. and one of the thing is really two things i'd say that are under appreciated that happened at that time. the difficulty of normalizing relations. it was really hard to resolve the p.o.w. market issue, the battle cry was no written until we get a full accounting, we can't normalize relations. and the second was a peace agreement in cambodia. so the first president bush negotiated all that and had a roadmap to normalization. then he lost. and bill clinton, who famously did not go to vietnam, not running against bob dole in 1995, signed the normalization, an agreement, and before that, in 1975. the two heroes for me are gerry ford and ted kennedy. those two guys made it possible for a million and a half or so

vietnamese to come to the united states of america. that didn't happen by accident. we may have been just as anti-immigrant in 1975 as we are today. it was a wonderful thing that they did and they get way too little appreciation for it. so i think the summary for me is the question for us needs to be how do we sustain peace? peace in some ways is a hell of a lot harder than war because you have to constantly work at it. you have to constantly work through the disagreements, you have to constantly work through. people say, oh, you're making peace with the communist. so it's to my mind, my work right now is much more about making fulbright university successful because i think it's a way for us to do something positive and give us one sentence on fulbright university, because it's very likely that not everybody knows what it is. i mean, we don't know each other well, and i can't say one sentence on good morning. so look, it's a university we put it in and the normalization legislation in 95 and we actually did it in a little inappropriate way, but we did it

nonetheless. i appreciate this is more than one sentence, although we haven't heard a comma or a period yet. and we we build a graduate program first in our building, an undergraduate program first. we have an independent license from the government, vietnam, which is really important. they let us do our own curriculum and if i could fill this room with those students who would say, holy --, these kids are great. they're trying to figure out their own future in vietnam. they're trying to figure out what does a war mean to them. and i think it's very important for us, as i said in this in the second hand time book this what she does and she talks to people and gets her story and puts it all together in a wonderful piece of nonfiction as does. and my view is frances fitzgerald in fire in the lake. but we need to be sympathetic and try to understand and become friends with the people of vietnam. you've just had an illustrator of what it's like to talk to senators. yes. name one. ask and you ask you ask your question. i got it. i got a very good, concise answer from the republican. the democrat went off the rails.

yeah. there you go. yeah, i did warn you that i did. i've been warned. i've been duly warned. yeah. paul, your situation is really quite different because, after all, it was your father who was shot down when you were a playboy at west point. and you went on to serve in what essentially was the cold war army. how do you think going into the military at the end of the vietnam experience affected your own? you know, years as you rose through the ranks to major general and first of all, tell us a bit about your father and why that had an impact on you and then the years you spent in the military. sure, peter. so when i told my younger son a special forces officer, what i was doing, he said, why are you here? because you didn't go to vietnam. and i said, i'll let you know after the conference. he also said, i don't know who

the other panel members are, but i hope you have a noncommissioned officer and a special operator. you got that. was so my dad went over there to fly the 5780, which was a a small bomber retrofitted to to perform night trail interdiction over the ho chi minh trail, wherever it might be. and he had the section over laos and a he was 41 years old when he went over. he was a lieutenant colonel, air force, and on the night of january 19, and he didn't come back and i get a phone call from my mom while i was at lunch at west point, and it was her

birthday, her 40th birthday. and she said, your dad's lost. they got a beacon. they don't know anything other than we don't know. and some 38 years later, we get a call from my mom that remains recovered and buried with full military honors. so it closed the chapter. but i'll tell you that one, the air force covered itself in glory the way they treated my mother and my brothers and me and we owe julia more. hal moore's wife, who was famous for the book, we were soldiers once and young and all of that memory is an piece to a young person. i was 18 when it happened and it

changes your your outlook on life. so what did it do to change my outlook on the armed forces. right after that happened, i went over to germany to perform platoon leader duties for 30 days with the 14th armored cavalry regiment, which was right on the border between east and west germany. i was not impressed with the equipment. i was not impressed with the willingness to execute combined arms operations and all of my classmates came back and we went through that question. we had an opportunity to to change our future, but the majority of us stayed at the military academy. but that experience was informative. the next punctuation point was, as a platoon leader with 44 young americans who had

volunteered. it was 1973 and we just going to the all volunteer army. so all these men were volunteers to serve in the armed forces of the united states. my squad leaders and my platoon sergeant. were two tours, vietnam veterans. i came in with zero experience and it's repeated itself with the iraq and afghan wars. but that is intimidating because they knew so much about everything. they were young men. my platoon sergeant was staff sergeant ray july. he was raised in guam. and that man had the wisdom of a man far older than he was. and everything that we did was a

reflection on their experi ence in vietnam. overlaid on the fact that we were preparing our unit for the cold war operations with a warsaw pact. so a completely different war because america kind of shelved our experience in vietnam. ranger school in 72 was all about vietnam, but the american army turned the page just instantly when we came out. different preparation for war, but with an overlay of experience from the vietnam war and the young men. and it was all infantry. so we did not have women then at that time. but they listened to our vietnam veterans. and i did not have a boss who

was not a vietnam veteran until i was 53 years old. hmm. they were all vietnam veterans. and they stayed with your army and made it what it is today. so one of the things that characterized stick of that period was that americans showed not all certainly, but ultimately a majority of americans showed disrespect for the effort in vietnam. certainly the guys who came home were treated that way. and yet today, if you go to a sporting event and there's a veteran there often a woman, 18,000 people will get up and cheer. so why do you think what was that fact in the seventies?

a young man like you, paul, that's like you guys. when the country was turning against the war and turning against the military. how did that make you all feel? how angry were you if that was what you were or resentful that you went to serve? you lost your father. you lost part of your leg. you're wounded twice. how did you all feel about the fact that this country was not behind your efforts? chuck, you want to try? well, i think the first part of your question. yeah, is or can be explained by an understanding of finally the american people separated the war and the warrior. it wasn't their fault that they went. america told them to go fight that war. they did. and they did it for their country. and those of us in the baby boom

generation who fought that war, our fathers, most of our fathers or uncles served in world war two at least. that certainly was my brother tom. in my situation. and i think it was a situation for for most of us. and so you did what the country asked you to do because it's the right thing to do. my dad did. my grandfather, my uncles did it. and i think that was kind of the beginning. but more to your point, as were able to mature as a society about what the hell happened over there and why were we there? we eventually separated the war and the warrior. i think today is different for probably two or three things. number one, certainly in 911, nine, 11, really coalesced the country behind our men and women

in the military and all the consequences that were still playing out, i think, to just a better general educated public on not just vietnam, but issues like geopolitics and world and trade and what's happened over the years is this i think made us our society a little smarter, a little wiser and a little better with with a bigger appreciation, a wider lens, a view of of mankind, of world, of service. and i think number three and it kind of gets to its something paul was referring to, the quality of our armed forces, the people who who stepped forward after vietnam. and i recall many times talking

to colin powell about this and paul especially knows this, how many of those guys like colin powell stayed after vietnam and said, we're going to we're going to improve this army, we're going to make a better army, i'm going to do the right thing. and they did. and it was because of mccaffrey and powell and all these as well. well, well, that we'll get to that as you get to that. but but it's a good point on your behalf, of course, is. but all our armed forces just improved. i mean, just because there was no draft and because everybody's a volunteer. well, that was part of it, too. but just, i think, a new sense of where it was going and the people who stepped forward to make it. and then what paul said, too, and i'll end with this, paul was just coming out of west point, and i remember serving with marty dempsey, who was chairman of the joint chiefs when i was the secretary, and he was coming

out of west point right at the end as well. and these were really pretty special people. and they they saw it to. and i'll let paul address that. but and that helped us and that helped us. and i think last we want to put that chapter behind us. sure. bob, you're were there. roughly 15 years after the end of world war two, the height of the cold, the chinese commies, the reds, this that did you know why you were there? did you have a sense that you were there to make the world safe or going to make up for the previous answer i gave you? you're going to be no good. thank you very much. no, but no. but how? you know, how did you feel about the way the country treated the war and the warriors?

well, first of all, you have to know a little bit about me. so i was on a panel a couple of weeks ago of bill bradley, who's a dear friend. and the question and somebody's asking a question about politics today and bill's answer was, we just got to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable. to which i said, no, there's nothing wrong with being disagreeable. and and i can be that way i can be very. and if you provoke, i'll be disagreeable. no. so it's a he's not kidding. it was a 68 was a defeat year for the united states. right. we were being disagreeable. but i mean, malcolm knox was killed. dr. king was killed. bobby kennedy was killed. and that's just sort of the tip of the emotional iceberg. it wasn't just vietnam that was provoking americans into being disagreeable by far. there was great civil rights and cultural changes going on in america at that time. and the war happened to be one of them. the next thing i'd say is i think the worst thing i'm speaking to the men and women who of our veterans of war. i think the worst thing we can do, especially those of us who

were hurt, is to become begin to be feel sorry for ourselves. i get that way every and then it's dangerous, really dangerous. i had one of my best friends. i was in the build up a naval hospital full of marines in 1969, and one of my best friends was a guy. but i remember this, paula, and louis paula called me while he was listening to fortunate son creedence clearwater revival song. i was the basis of his book called fortune song, and i was the last person to talk to him before he shot and shot himself, because that's where it leads. that's where despair goes, and you got to find a way to get over it because it's a deadly condition. so for me, an end when i came home, i don't i didn't give a -- if somebody didn't like me, what do i care? i got other problems other than whether or not there's a group of people. i think the vietnam war is wrong. i got a i've got to put my my broken little body back together. and thanks to the united states government who, you know, it's fair to say, almost killed me

before i was able to put my life back together. so i think, you know, we were treated poorly in part because everything that was going on at the time, it was not just a war. when you've got a president of the united states saying, i'd like to tell you what where we're bombing in vietnam, but i don't want the enemy to know is, excuse me, we're dropping the f ing bombs on the enemy. don't you think they know where the bombs are dropping? there were many examples where our leaders were just lying to us, and it tends to. to put it mildly, be very discouraging. and i think that one of the things that's characterize stick of all the years since yeah that it was in vietnam and when that when the government was telling people x when reality was y that that began a process with which we are deeply immersed today, which is a kind of lack of confidence and a belief that they're telling us things that

are not true. that's true. so, paul, you go out there, you finished west point, you've lost your father. you're going to serve the country. you could have done a hell of a lot better. go into business school. but you didn't. you stayed with it and you watched the military recover because that's what it did. it was broken. and morale certainly by the end of the war, the united states had never retreated in the way we did. you know, we talk about the the last guys because that's why we're here is last year left in april 73. but the war didn't end until 75. and the image and everybody's mind is those folks on the top of that was not the embassy, but a building downtown. so you were there picking up the thread of a very demoralized, i would guess, in some respects, senior military leadership.

they knew they had failed. so how did you in the decades see the recovery of pride? well, you already talked about the recovery of the skills and so on. but one of the things that fascinates me is when a poor individuals, how they cope with the broader sense of failure, how did you think that you, as an officer, as a as a west point graduate, how did you kind of manage the changes in the way the country was treating the military and the way you felt about the country. so in 1972, chinese premier jo enlai was asked the implications of the french revolution, and he said, it's too soon. tell. the long view and. when i arrived at fort carson, colorado, with my 44 brand new

soldiers and my four vietnam veteran noncommissioned officers, we worried about the first sergeant. that's our focus. lieutenant. and the men are our troopers. as long as first sergeant gerry washburn was happy, we were happy, and so was our company commander. so there there is this fact of a demoralized army in the aggregate. but we were not the moralized as individuals. and everybody who stayed in the army after 1970, after the summer of 73, was a volunteer. and every day we went to work knowing that we could make a whole lot of money on the outside. but we liked what we were doing. if our chain of command was good

and i was supremely lucky with my chain of command, one boss after another, one platoon sergeant, one first sergeant after another. charlie wilson. my first sergeant. when i took a 180 man rifle company in germany, all volunteer was about 20%, 25% black. we had not conquered our racial problems by then. by 1975. but charlie wilson, who was black, and his wife, peggy, also black, became my wife and my best friends. and were we inwardly focused? yes. so we weren't worried. the fact that vietnam may not have turned out to our

satisfaction. we were worried about our mission and the welfare there of left and right up and down. and i'll make a comment that and or witnessing it right now between russia and ukraine. armies can lose wars, but it takes a nation to win a war. and you can vietnam with. 550,000 of the best americans you can possibly find. but if the national strategy and if the national will isn't there, it will not be a success. i made a trip to to vietnam in 2009 with my brother and what we saw was wonderful and the question that we had was, is the

vietnam that we see today, which is what's wonderful, the vietnam that we see today, was that because of the french and american involvement, or in spite of it. i say the same thing about the us army. is the army today. because of our vietnam experience or in spite of it. and i give it to a handful of extraordinary generals and senior noncommissioned officers who took what we got out of vietnam and created this marvelous instrument for foreign policy that we have right now. and i believe in spite vietnam. but if i want to make sure i get this right, that you were one of the military who spoke out against the invasion of iraq in

2000. i read about that, indeed. okay. talk a little bit about why you as a career military officer, when once again, your president was saying we're doing this because we think it's in the best interests of the united states. why you who would never have disobeyed an order in the military stood up and said, as what you did forthrightly, that this is a mistake or whatever it was you said. talk about how you came to that view. so in that happened and i'll start off with at the war college, we send our best and brightest to at the age of 41, 42 years old, to to the war college. every service has one. and the army, when they start off with welcome practice, owners of the military are. we're going to talk about two things. one, the rest of government application to foreign policy

and vital or national interests and a vital national interest or an existential interest. in theory, you're all in when this second attempt to go into iraq was being tossed about. for those of us who believed what we heard in the war college, it was not a vital national interest and all of us had been exposed to what my two colleagues on this stage have been exposed to men who had to vietnam and had returned and the experience that meant for the nation, the iraq war was the dumbest thing that we've done in a long time. and that because of better than

4400 families who lost men and women over there. that's a that's a tough pill to swallow. but and also my brother, who was a lawyer, said. you know, you're subject to the uniform code of military justice and you are because i was retired at the time. but if you're retired and you're drawing a pension, you are subject to military law and the commentary that i wrote for the new york times about mr. rumsfeld triggered an article. yes, mr. rumsfeld could court martial the generals that that had not occurred to us when we took our position. but it looked great and strikes me it was an unlikely event. so. so let me ask the two others of you who were in very significantly in public life at the time of 911 in iraq and

afghanistan. remind us of what your positions were. chuck, you want to start with that? what did you think? 911, you said, was a turning point. then we wanted to afghanistan and made a quick job of it. then came iraq. and we didn't. we? what did you think at the time? i forgotten where you were in the hierarchy of the world that time. where were you in 2003? i was in the united states senate foreign relations committee, foreign relations committee, intelligence committee in 2001. after 911, i supported, i think every senator did, except we had one vote against it. mm hmm. going into afghanistan in iraq was a whole different story. yeah and i spoke out against it. took a very similar position. paul did, reflecting on the first question you ask is our experience in vietnam, did it

affect our lives and how we viewed things in and came to decisions? that was a clear example of how i got to my position on iraq. that was wrong. i gave a floor floor speech, senate floor speech on it. i, i became ostracized from my own party. i was called a traitor and a rhino, which is worse. i don't know. rhino is not an attractive fellow. it may be purebred or something would be better the rhino. but in any event, for the same reasons that paul noted in more why i thought iraq was a mistake. we didn't need to do it and something it's always really astounded me. the news media, especially lose and did lose this point. you know, after desert storm,

when we and i think george h.w. bush handled that exactly right. you push him out, you finish the mission. but but we didn't just leave. here's what's missing that people forget. we had overflights over the northern part of iraq and northern and southern part of iraq, where he saddam hussein, couldn't control his own oil. a matter of fact, he couldn't even sell his own oil was being sold to the united nations. he was he was just a broken down old general. he would have been overthrown. he didn't control 60% of his country. and the kurds flourished for ten years up in the north. and joe biden and i drove down into kurdistan in december of 2002, a couple of months before we invaded iraq. and we spent three days up in or in iraq. biden and i did. and to see what what was going on up there. so i talked to the present president bush personally on

this a number of times, as i did rice and rumsfeld. but that decision had been made months and months before. and the administration didn't tell the truth, quite frankly. and with this, there was a speech that vice president cheney gave in kansas city to the vfw convention in august of 2002. and he very clearly said, we're going to war in iraq and we're going to invade iraq. and in within days after i, i noted that in a floor speech that i made in the senate, but nobody really picked it up. i mean, it wasn't unusual for nobody to pay attention to me, but you got an audience here now. well, captive. yes. so, yeah, i it was it was very bad. were we started something in

iraq that some of us warned about that all of what's happening in the middle east? i would say in some way can be traced back to that invasion of iraq. and then then we got kicked out. and then 2008, while bush was still president, prime minister maliki says the bush i'm not going to take of forces agreement to the parliament to protect your troops because you're occupiers. now, this is 2008. get out, get out. and that's what happened. mean obama didn't it didn't take the troops out. obama was opposed to it in the campaign in iraq. but bush had to sign that deal in 2008 to remove all troops because we were seen as occupiers. and that's always going to be the case when you stay too long, when you don't even understand why you're going in to start with. it was all on lies and so on, but anyway, i had that was my

but i'm not surprised. i mean, i'm not going to expect you to say you were in favor of the iraq operation. what do you expect me? but going to ask you another question. no, let me you can deal with that. but then i want what you ask me. i'm not going to answer it. no matter what, we're now 40 minutes into this. i figured that out. but i one of the things that that's stayed with me most and the my own vietnam experience and years since was when john paul van said the trouble with the united states in vietnam was, not that we only had ten years, but that we had one year, ten times in iraq was in many ways a repeat of some of the same mistakes. we went into a country that we didn't understand. i think it's a -- analogy, just

to be clear at the outset. well, that's why i'm asking the question. well, a couple of things i want to say. first of all, you do know that we're on live television. we're going to believe you. you don't know i'm a former senator, right? so the the draft was ended in 1972 because the draft was unpopular, not because the congress. oh, we're going to do something enlightened. they eliminated draft in 1972 because the draft itself was unpopular, not because we thought it was going to improve the quality of the military. i'm not sure it did because. i served the people of all walks of life because i was you know, i was i was essentially drafted, although i volunteered for the navy because i didn't want to go to vietnam. that was a smart thing to do. so. secondly, i remember the balkan war and in the balkan war, people were said, oh, we can't intervene. it's not in our interest. we're not going be able to do anything anyway because they're still thinking about the battle policy in 1423. so don't intervene. we intervene. and -- holbrooke went to dayton, ohio, negotiated a peace

agreement, and most of the smart people said, you can never enforce it, never enforce it. and we did. the defense intelligence agency monitor that whole process and the killing stopped as a consequence of the us military intervening. so i'm cautious. and the final thing i'd say, peter, is that i watched the other day on youtube an interview of john kennedy in 1962. and it's remarkable. they ask him, was there anything harder than you expected it to be? and remember, when the iraq war was started and i cited because he said, you know, yes, i realize it's it's a lot easier to tell people what to do than it is to actually make the decision to do it. so i wasn't in the senate at the time and i had a relationship with the kurds, and i believe that they could have establish a, you know, a representative government, knew what the nature of the prisons were in iraq. so i think my opinion is what

should have been done, could have been done, is not much more than somebody setting on the sidelines cheering on their team. so let me be sure i understand. what you're saying is you thought they would be more specific. what did you think the mission in iraq was and what should it have been? i think they got badly confused. look, we did have international sanctions on iraq and all they had to do is disclose where their weapons of mass destruction are. and it did leave the impression that they must have had them. we didn't realize that the sanctions were enabling saddam hussein to make a whole bunch of cash off. it was in his interest to keep sanctions on. so it wasn't a it's not impossible for me to be sympathetic to somebody say, oh, they've got weapons. based upon his behavior. but i think we got lost. i think we i think rumsfeld wanted to demonstrate that he could do with the smallest possible. he obliterated the power doctrine, which was really important. it's sort of that lesson i learned in demolitions. calculated amount of c4 you need and multiply it by two. that's what he did.

this is what it's going to take to win desert storm. you multiply it by two. and if the american people are not supportive, we're not going to do it. and then it turned the whole purpose around. he didn't care about democracy in iraq the same way in afghanistan. we drove the taliban out in six months with special operations and cia people. and then what did rumsfeld do? we can't stop until we can kill bin laden, which is, what, eight years later? so, yeah, there's so much. and the decision making about the both the iraq war and the afghan war that i am extremely critical of. but i'm again, reminded what john kennedy said is he's 100% right. you're in the arena making the decision. it's a lot harder than sitting on -- running the new school up in new york city. peter, we took bob's point. we lost our way. we really never understood why. we went into afghanistan either. iraq was a different, but we never had a real plan. and we stayed and stayed. and i remember asking questions

of foreign relations committee of senior administration officials. is this nation building? oh, no, it's not nation. what is it? we'll be out of there in five, six months. give us more men, more money, and we'll be home by christmas. year after year was that same answer. and we just eventually went off the cliff and didn't realize any more. why worry there when we got in so deep and we had so many business interest consultants? billion dollar contra acts and on and on and on. and congressman and senators were benefiting too, because those contracts were going back to their districts and their states. in fact, bob. so you're another generation. we know where these folks were and we now know where you were on that. where do you think has happened to the country since iraq and afghanistan? where do you think we are.

in 2023 as a country? first of all, as a military. second of all, and i would say that one thing that's been striking to me is really for the first time since world war two, the folks fighting the war in ukraine are people we admire. we didn't admire the south vietnamese. we didn't admire the koreans we didn't admire the, you know, of the afghan army. we always treated our. as though they were clients, which is to say we didn't have much respect for them. but we seem to have a great deal of respect for the ukrainians, partly because we're not losing anybody. but where do you think the country is now in the broader sense and in the particularly in the military sense what should we be thinking about on those two big issues and the military. i am 72 years old. oh, to be 72.

and i have all my family is military. my my three children, two sons are are still active. well, my younger son just retired. a daughter served. two noncommissioned officers. one officer. i grew up in the air force. my father in law was a career marine and we tend to view the world in an insular fashion when we're active duty and we're looking. but as a as a guy looking out right now, i live in key west, florida, a small town with a drinking problem, we say. and it's a it's a great place to live, but it's a small town and i go to little league games. my my family's little girls are 13 and 15 are great athletes and i watch small town america

operate. then if you turn on one of the cable news programs, you get a different perspective you get this politicization of just about everything. and a a political environment is is as divisive as i've seen in the time that i've been conscious. so. it's kind of like military units, small units tend to operate as they have always operated. good leadership and good men and women doing what they're told to do, preparing for the eventual. and then you get into the politics and my colleagues can can speak far more eloquently than can. but if you're bombarded at at the national level by by increasingly sufficed dictated

means of transmitting ideas and conceptions as opposed to news, it's a hot mess. and then if you start querying and i, i think that it would be helpful to answer your question in in polling to to to reach out to a retired lieutenant who was wounded in afghanistan and, who has just retired, how he feels about what we did leaving afghanistan in a less than elegant manner and the way we left iraq after, committing nations resources. and, you know, and our youth to a cause that we did not completely understand, which is a little reminiscent of what we're talking about today.

so we have as a nation, we have repeated what we did in the sixties and seventies and there are a lot of young americans who are very unhappy and because of the nature of who they are, they are coming to grips and putting packages together to go back afghanistan and rescue people who need rescue, to bring them back to america and safety because of the personal relationships that are always important critical. it's a small level. so addressing america, we're going to we're doing great. we're it's i i'm a pollyanna ish. you know, glass is half full. i'm i always have been that way. and i trust in the youth of

america and what they will do, they'll do the right thing. we've got a great economy going on right now and we've got some frictions out there. but i am i'm positive. so the fact that you lost your father in vietnam, that you thought the iraq war was a terrible mistake, but your general view is that americans. well, so why do we keep making all these terrible mistakes? is it politics. gentlemen, that i'm going to if you don't want to answer the question, i'm because i what we're hearing from from paul, is the quality and commitment of the military forces and the quality of american life

generally. let's put the little league and the big league. but what we have is a very, very, very complicated, to put it mildly, vexed political system. so in a democracy, peter, the most dangerous force is uninformed public opinion always has been, always be. and when i read for the second time fire the lake, i mean, she goes into phenomenal. detail of the various different religions and sex. and so if i had no understanding, likewise until 911 peter if you ask me to tell you the difference in a shia and a sunni, i couldn't i'm not sure i still can, but we had to the congress needed to rapidly increase its knowledge in order to answer the question what did we do and might and ukraine by the way in some ways is easier because they look like us. it's easier to understand their culture than it is to understand

the culture of the vietnamese, of the culture of the iraqis. so i think it does get back politics, but it isn't what the politicians are doing. it's what we as americans know, it's don't push your politician to do something unless you really understand what it is that's going to happen when they do what you want them to do. you know, i take that on the politics of why is it that we have this distinction between in the american spirit on the ground and the military spirit on the ground and, the very dystopic politics that we find and the kind of politics that leads to, well, disaster sixties was vietnam, the nineties was iraq. and here we are. so how do you resolve contradiction? well, we've got 5 minutes left. i say wrap up so yeah that's that's that's a question i would take all day to answer.

we don't have all day. so i'm going to tell you this. iraq and afghanistan were the products of 911 america was. all americans responded to that just judging from the congress in the house and the senate, how that vote was to go to afghanistan, we were attacked. that's not going to happen. and so that's different. vietnam different from other than world war two. when we were attacked by the japanese. i think that's where you got to start on those two wars. but to your bigger question on the on the politician bob's right. i've always said that does not lead politics follows. society. society at. the ballot box in november makes decision who's going to be the president and who's going to be in the senate and the house and the governor. and so it's society that informs its society with the power it's

society with the votes and politics just responds to that. it just reflects to that. and bob's point is a really good one. and by the way, he's never said that before. yeah, well, maybe, you know, maybe they're trying to get their right to say that again. but. but also you've got the other variation of social media, of lack of trust. i mean, trust is the coin of the realm. everybody knows that in personal relationships or anything, business, politics and when we've destroyed in this country truth, what is truth? i don't know what fox says or what says or politician lie. i mean, you can't trust anybody. you've got that kind of of a world today. the world is complicated, is intercut. and so it doesn't do any good to just sit and talk about and wring our hands.

we've got to manage it just through a cursory reading of history down through the last few centuries. all the problems that that society has had to deal with every revolution in technology all my god is what do how do we handle this? you're going to put people out of work so i think that's not a good answer to the question, but i think. as long as we can understand the challenge ahead of us and you'll never understand all of the challenge because you don't get it all, you're the future and i'm confident that we can do that. i spend and i'll end with. i spent some time with younger members, the house democrats and republicans, the senate, they have a whole different attitude toward all this. they that we look like a bunch of jokes. i mean, really who joke. but there's different members, younger members, and we all you

guys are. but no the well how, we're governing or or pretending to govern. and the difference is, the political differences that you're talking about that paralyzes and polarizes and us, we've got to stop that. we've got to break out of that. and these younger ones understand that they haven't yet reached a authority position yet in the power. but what they're doing, it's interesting, they're putting caucuses together so it isn't just one or two members is a caucus of like 50 members. now, new york times wrote a wrote a great story about it, about a week and a half ago. the five families of of mccarthy and the republicans and so on. and i don't want to get political here, but but that's people are responding to this. chuck. we got one hour and we have one minute and 2 seconds left before they give us the hook. i just want to ask all three of the one looking at the four of us. we have something in common. we're all white men of a certain old, old well, i call it

seasoned. anyway, the thing i wanted to ask, though, is it time for us to get out of the way. should joe biden, the president of the united states, be running again. well, i'm delusional about lots of things, but i am out of the way. so. well, speak for yourself. you're not out of the way. i just i i'm saying that seriously, i want to i want to the question of the age of the vietnam generation who are still extant and joe is one and all of us are except a little younger. but where do we fit in? today's how how to influence the world experience? count. his experience. count. sure, sure. experience counts, but there are a variation of qualities of leadership that you need. experience is of them, but energy, new focus, discipline.

i mean, all those things are part leadership. look, i just want to say thanks very much thank you, bill. kept as much as we to the subject. thank you very much. thank. thank you very much.