chinese to get to mars, use the american. >> our first maersk walker could be -- our firstmars walker could be here. >> the moment has come for you to go to lunch, is that right? >> i think so. i already had a nice sandwich. [laughter] i'dheard that at the white house. what you're eating that lunch, remember we all paid for it. [laughter] buzz aldrin, ladies and gentlemen. >> thank you very much spre. .

>> i took off my helmet and clubs and pick up some. -- took off my helmet and gloves. it picked up the oils of your skin and it felt like graphite and you could smell it. it had a gun powder smell to it. i cannot tell you why, but it

did. >> she is shaking her head. we do have a question. this is from the st. louis science center. we have a moderator. >> [inaudible] i think we have a moderator. [inaudible] she is 13-years old. [inaudible] >> what was the hardest part physically and emotionally? >> we are having some feedback problems. >> the question was, what was the hardest part emotionally and technically with the space travel? for me, the hardest part was the landing on the moon.

we are coming in an area that was unknown from a landing standpoint. we could identify it smoking mountain and craters as a came in from an altitude of 1 mile above the surface, but we had to maneuver to an area that would allow us to be as level as possible so we could work. we got photos sent back of the landing spot and you can see this big crater behind our spacecraft. we did not even see it. fortunately we got over it by about 3 meters and landed. looking out to the west it was just a fantastic scene. then i got out and went around

to a tree if the package -- went around to retrieve the package. if we would have landed there it would have been very difficult to retrieve the experiments, so that was the hardest part. emotionally, it was not hard. i was not even trying to control my emotions. i was so excited like a little kid at christmas. that is the way we train, to have fun and be animated. it turned out to be the best because we worked together that way better. emotionally, it was a high for 71 hours. >> in the residue after you got back? -- any residue after you got back? there were some promotional

after travis -- emotional afterdrafts. >> not for me. i don't think anyone had a physical or psychological problems as a result of moon flight, but when you come down from that high and think now what will i do, that is where things could cause you to go off. buzz aldrin acknowledge that in his book and all of us decided we needed to do something else. my commander stayed on at nasa and finally retired in 1995 as 44 years as an astra ab. -- 44 years as an astronaut'. i left after 10 years to do other things, so it was the

after part -- you will probably have the same problem after the throwing the venture, now what will you do? hopefully they have a good mission. -- the same problem after your mission. we have to go explore. >> this time a question from the california academy of sciences. i believe we have a moderator standing by. >> hello, i was wondering [inaudible] scary, humorous, or inspiring? >> would you describe the adventure you just gave us as more inspiring, humorous, or more scary.

>> my first choice would be inspiring. i think not only to us individually but especially the kids of the world. they dream. when i was a kid it was -- there was not a space program. i did not look up into the heavens and say, and i will walk on the moon one day. mama would have dropped a net on me and sent me to the psychiatric hospital. but i did have heroes from the great generation of world war ii. now we have that opportunity to inspire kids of the world to dream in the same high. -- to dream and a high -- and aim high.

the second for us would be humorous because john and i had a good time. my third would be scary and there was only one moment when i had a scary incident. it was doing something i should not have been doing, so kids, hear this, you always get in trouble you were not supposed to do. we were going to set the high jump record on the mound. [laughter] my backpack wait 155 pounds which is what i weighed. when i jumped i went backwards. i had a moment of fear it there because i was falling on my back and the backpack is not designed for that. fortunately i was able to break my fault, but that ended the

moon olympics. [laughter] >> for now. >> mission control was very upset. they thought they lost somebody. >> he did not try to break your record, right? >> [inaudible] >> the rover -- i was the navigator. john was the driver. writing with john, -- riding with john -- he was flat out on the moon and we set the speed record at 11 miles per hour. we were bouncing like this. i am glad i had mine seatbelt because the rover only weighed 80 pounds on the moon. it would hit bumps and small

craters and we would bounce all over the place. >> i wanted to give you a chance in the audience. if you have questions you would like to ask of these wonderful people, come to that microphone over there. i can tell you there was a question from a google moderator. how far do you think the united states should go with space exploration? do you set limits? >> there is always limits you have to set in terms of funding, but it is the most important thing we do. exploration brings all the new technology that makes our lives worthwhile. >> let's take it on.

>> i think great things happen when we said impossible goals. i think space exploration allows us to do that, to dream beyond what is possible so we should not think about it in terms of limits and striving for that next incredible thing we cannot even imagine we could do. >> we don't do it because it's easy but because it is hard. >> that is true. i think the human spirit is the spirit of exploration. that is why i volunteered, i wanted to be an explorer. in the future that spirit is still here with us and it will lead us on to more knowledge of the moon and on to mars. eventually we will get there. i don't know in my lifetime but i would encourage everybody studying now to do their best

and look out into the future the mountains we climb will allow you to see further on with the new technology you could not imagine. >> i think i hear the voice of the next estrada. we have some questions standing by. >> was it more nerve wracking for you to watch the astronauts landed before you wondering if they could successfully land and come back? was it more nerve wracking to be the one they're landing and then coming back? >> >> sitting in mission control and monitoring is morton directing -- is more nerve wracking to listen to it because you are not in that dynamic situation.

once you get to do it, you are so focused on the operational side that you don't have time to worry about, what am i going to do. you would not be there, but watching mission control, you get anxious and you want to succeed so much that you get anxious. >> i was in mission control when they were trying to turn that [unintelligible] people think scientists are not emotional but people were crying because they devoted 10 years of their lives to this. we all wanted to turn that ranch for you -- we wanted to turn that wrench for you. >> i wanted to ask your

reaction to what impact this amazing coverage on television of the apollo exploration at cbs news anchored by walter cronkite, we so tragically lost him last friday, but can you talk about the impact on the public? and for those of us who are in these lists, how can we manage to get those not, how can we get them to get it why this is important for our human species? >> i would like to lead off because charlie talked about inspiring. there is no question -- i did tell my mom i wanted to walk on the moon.

well i have not done that, going up through hubble was my holy grail. i grew up in the 1960's when the two major inspirations was the moon landing and television appearing in people's homes. it was that that set me off on a lifetime of discovery. >> the coverage was intrinsic to your [unintelligible] what impact do you think back coverage had? >> i think the coverage is very important. the earlier flights, every minute was covered on tv. by the time we flu, hardly any of it was on tv. my parents and wife and kids

went to mission control to sit in the viewing room so they could watch us on the moon. that is ok to me. it is an evolution of knowledge and experience that fades away, but does not take away from the importance of what we were doing. lindbergh flew the atlantic, nobody can say the number two. the first 747 to fly. now we have them flying all over. what we do does not distract from what we accomplish. i did not say that right. >> i know what you mean. doesn't the celebrity of those

early astronauts, did that not help to get the congress for the difficult and expensive task that lay ahead? >> that is why i spent a lot of my time speaking to groups to try to encourage them to rekindle that adventure, because the future is the future and we need to get excited about it and invest some of our resources to make that capital investment for a return. >> another question. >> we fly students to the moon all the time. we have a student from richmond, virginia. >> what are some things we have learned from space exploration that we can use to help our own planet? >> great question.

right now nasa has 15 spacecraft orbiting the earth watching our planet as it is changing and studying physics that drives our climate to predict better how it will be changing. things we send to other planets can also help us understand our perspective. we have learned a lot about the history of our planet. there are also technology things we get from nasa. >> the hubble space telescope helped pioneer the use of cameras. i don't know how many people have a digital camera. there is a little bit of hubble space telescope in those technologies that is revolutionized by the media because they are everywhere.

the technology used to make this conductor's, some of that technique has gone into the manufacturing of those semiconductors. we are all concerned about health care and some techniques astronomers used to see plants -- to see planets, technology has been used in medical imaging to detect cancer. it is a wide range of things that hubble alone has helped us.

>> or they're just as many volunteers after apollo 13 04? -- were there just as many volunteers after apollo 13 than before. >> we've fixed that problem and we did not think it was going to happen again. the challenger explosion, there was the crew that followed after that. the is the nature of space flight. that i -- there is not an astra not that is not willing to take that risk. -- there is not an astronaut'. >> is earth gravity a

prerequisite for traveling to mars? >> anybody up for that? >> when we are in space we are weightless because we are in a freefall. when you get on the moon you have won six -- you had 1/6 the pull. it is magical to float in space. it changes the whole experience. the badness is one of the reasons we stay healthy is becausewe exercise of and that makes our muscles and heart strong. in weightlessness our muscles do not get enough exercise. one approach to these long flights would be to build a circular space craft that rotates so that the acceleration

you feel is the same of what you feel on earth. that is an engineering problem and something we could solve. another approach would be to find ways and jamba equipment that allows you to get -- gym equipment that allows you to get enough exercise, which you need any way. this is the first job i have gotten paid to go to the gym every day. that is the one we are using on the international space station. the goal is to learn how to keep our bodies healthy. artificial gravity is one other solution. >> one person said this program will be repeated on nasa tv immediately after this broadcast is over.

also at all of the science centers which are hooked up with us as well. we got another question. >> one day i hope to be an astronaut. my question is for john. what was your reaction when you were the last person to grab onto hubble for the final time. >> the last moment i grabbed onto it [unintelligible] seriously, we made hubble brand new. this was a complete makeover. we put in this new camera with new detectors that will blow everyone away. we put in something that will look into the physics. it breaks up the light coming from distant galaxies.

we brought tv cameras back to life and put capability into hubble so it is a brand new telescope. when i gave it a last salute i said to myself, you are the man. [laughter] and good luck on the voyages. i felt not sadness incredible satisfaction that we achieved those challenges and we were sending it off on a brand new adventure. >> well said. [applause] >> i have a question, is it possible to reach absolute zero in space? >> no, it is not. that is a deep question. it is one that involves physics that is outside of our own experiences.

it gets down to the question of what is space time and matter. the real answer is you cannot achieve a steady state of absolute zero. >> it is still darn cold out there. >> you never spoke about what the second tool was to get the bolt off. could it have been wd-40? >> i was thinking about that because those bolts are lubricated. the number one rule i teach other space walkers, i learned from a master on the third mission. the number one rule is don't break the hubble. when we put a wrench on a bolt, there is a device that prevents

over torqueing. suddenly that things slips and we can increase the torque a little bit and we did that. what we had to do was -- we tried a couple of different sockets and we had to take that out of the blue. -- take that out of the loop. we had to go to that extreme. fortunately it broke loose and just above where the limit was, so we got lucky. then we had a similar one that had been installed and the same thing happened, but this time we knew what the procedures would

be to get it and stop. -- to get it unstuck. >> i think everyone here values space exploration and we understand the value, but can you talk about in an era of tight budgets, the value of man space versus unmaned space exploration? >> we had that conversation with buzz aldrin here. >> id is a little bit of a false debate. there is room and the need for both. robots can go places where humans cannot and humans can do things better than robots. if my friend who is the lead

scientist for mars rover, i have asked him this question. if you are a geologist on the surface of mars, how long would it take you to do what the grover does and one day? it might look at a rock -- do what the rover does in one day? he said i have timed it, 45 seconds. you can and mentioned that there is a lot of proficiency you get out of having humans. in the human eyes and ears can give us observations we don't have the capability to get. most of the missions we do our robotic exploration, but there is room for humans as well.

>> we have time for a couple of more questions. you are one of them. >> my brother hopes to be an astrophysicist. when you were little did you ever dream of that doing what you are doing now? >> i could not even pronounced astrophysicist and i was a kid and i did not, but i wanted to follow in the footsteps of my heroes, which was those that serve in the military. i decided in high school that i wanted to go to the naval academy. i started aiming for that. then i fell in love with airplanes, so i became a pilot. it is just the progression of

one step after another that leads us to the final career. i just tell everybody to dream, where you will be a physicist or engineer, all of those disciplines are needed. if he desires to be an astronaut you can be anything you want to do. >> we have lawyers and business people, too. >> my mother has called me barney, but i am looking at the arguments for continuing space exploration. we are getting to the end of the shuttle program and budget is one of the big montrose. what do we see with support for technology and the intellectual

science fields? >> money. >> let me start. i believe it is science is the international language of peace. when we join on a scientific endeavors, that is a unifying theme. budgets are tight but i believe exploration is this grant is a venture that is an integral part of us being human that we have to do it. great nations are nations of great explorers. look at the spacecraft around the moon. we have chinese spacecraft and indian spacecraft. these are all international participation, so there is no

question that if we don't explore in this country, somebody else will. i like it that we are the leaders. >> almost every mission we do is international. you can harken back to [unintelligible] we were exploring together in space. we can be trailblazers for nations building bridges throughout space exploration with science, and we are doing that today. almost every mission we fly is international. >> [inaudible] i love that. [applause] one name was mentioned earlier today and it turns out late in life walter cronkite and i became good friends. one of the things i remember

most was a conversation in new york where he was talking about . he always called it the biggest story he ever covered. he also put it in a way i had not hurt. he said all the news i was doing we were downcast. he says i am not sure there is a word i will use, but space travel are upcast. you had us looking up beyond ourselves and exceeding our grasp. that is what we think all of you for. thank you for being here. good night. [applause]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> today on c-span, queen elizabeth delivers her annual christmas message. we will talk to the director of "moon beat." phyllis then it discusses military deployments around the world. the muslim public affairs council discusses the fort hood shooting. >> in the mid 1990's "newsweek name to -- "newsweek" named him

an important person. he talks about his current studies at harvard and what is ahead. >> now available, "abraham lincoln" a great read for any history buff. it is a unique perspective on abraham lincoln from $56. from his early years to his life in the white house. it is in hard cover at your favorite bookseller and now in digital audio, available where digital audio down the source told. learn more at c-span.org. >> queen elizabeth's annual christmas message. she talks about the war in afghanistan where 106 british

soldiers were killed this year. she also talks about the commonwealth group of countries that celebrated the 60th anniversary. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> each year that passes seems to have its own character. some leave us with a feeling of

satisfaction, others are best forgotten. 2009 was a difficult year for many, particularly those facing the effects of the economic downturn. i am sure we have all been affected by events in afghanistan and saddened by casualties suffered by our forces serving there. [bell ringing] >> our thoughts go out to their friends and family who have shown dignity in the face of great loss. ♪ but we can be proud of the positive contribution that our servicemen and women are making in conjunction with our allies.

well over 13,000 soldiers from the united kingdom and across the commonwealth, canada, australia and singapore are currently serving in afghanistan, the debt of gratitude owed to these young men and women and their predecessors is profound. it is 60 years since the commonwealth was created, and with more than 1 billion of its members under the age of 25, the organization remains a strong and practical force for good. recently i attended the

commonwealth heads of government meeting in trinidad and tobago and heard how important the commonwealth is too young people. >> i think the commonwealth means unity to us in terms of the fact that we are over 50 countries coming together. >> it is a model of friendship very important in today's world. >> it is a group of countries that practices human rights and equality torus all. that is what attracts me. >> my feeling of what the commonwealth means is unity among different countries and appreciating diversity, and creating a family feeling across the world. >> [unintelligible] >> new communication technologies allow them to reach out to the world and share their experiences and viewpoints.

the practical assistance and networks of the commonwealth can get skills, land advice and encourage enterprise, which is inspiring to learn some of the work being done by these people who bring innovation to the challenges they face. >> when i visited the coral reef, and we have other people whose homes are disappearing. the impact of that is [inaudible] i have been very concerned. >> it is important tuesday discussing issues that concern us all. there can be no more valuable role for our family of nations. i have been closely associated with the commonwealth through most of its existence. eight living bond i have enjoyed with leaders and people the

world over has always been more important in promoting unity and symbolism alone. -- than symbolism alone. the commonwealth is an opportunity for its people to work together to achieve practical solutions to problems. in many aspects of our lives, whether in the environment or culture, the commonwealth connection remains in rushing. -- connection remains in reaching -- remains enriching. it is the face of the future. with continuing support, i am confident this diverse commonwealth of nations can strengthen the common bond that transcends politics, religion, race and economic circumstances.

we know christmas is a time for celebration and family reunions. it is also a time to reflect on those less fortunate than ourselves throughout the world. christians are taught to love their neighbors, having compassion and concern and being ready to undertake charity and voluntary work to ease the burden of disadvantage. we may be confronted by a pope will during an array of difficulties -- confronted by an array of difficulties. i wish you all wherever he may be a very happy christmas -- wherever you may be a very happy christmas. ♪

♪ ♪ >> beginning monday, a glance into america's highest court threw unprecedented conversations with 10 supreme court justices about the court and the history of the building. five days of interviews with the supreme court justices, starting monday on c-span. get your own copy of our documentary on dvd. it is a three-disc set including programs on the white house and capitol. it is available at c-span.org.

>> recently we talked to a filmmaker about his new film, a documentary about the apollo 11 moon mission. this is a half hour. host: we will be talking with kevin starling, director of "moon beat." it looks at the apollo 11 moon landing. we will show you a little bit and then our discussion. >> do you copy? [inaudible] [inaudible] >> i felt sure the mission was going wrong.

i could not believe they would be able to make the landing on the first mission. it seemed some difficult. this weird spider think once so unpromising that i felt sure it would tip over when they landed. i was fully expecting the mission to be aborted. if it was not i thought they would tip over. all two, 4200. you are a go for landing. -- all to 2, 4200. you are a go for landing. all two, 1600. 1400 feet, still looking good. 1201 alarm.

>> the touch and go of that, when you think of it, as they were coming down and there were ready to abort, to get a wonderful guy in the control center who kept on coming back to jean and saying, "is ok." alarms were coming on and everything else but he kept on coming back and saying, but " we are ok, we are ok." host: joining us is kevin stirling, the director and producer of "moon beat," the documentary about the history of the space program. where did you come up with the title? guest: it is a documentary, about the flight of apollo xi. there are scenes with news reporters who covered the space

program. the name of the film, "moon beat," came from some of the interviews i conducted with news reporters. it is obvious that many of them did not just cover that one mission of apollo 11, but they had covered nasa for many years and they were essentially covering the space beach, or the moon beat, as i began calling it it was obvious that was a good employer a documentary about the subject. host: when president kennedy first made a speech in 1961 calling for a space program to make its way to the moon by the end of the decade, among the people at nasa at the time, did they think that was realistic? guest: it became painfully obvious to me in my discussions with several nasa engineers and individuals, no. the short answer is no. they felt it was an ambitious

goal, a challenging role, and certainly not something that they felt would be an easy task to achieve quickly. but they were committed to it. they were determined to achieve it and they felt they were capable of it. but it was at the same time quite a reach. host: was the covering by the press, the media, of the space program -- how did it change from mercury into apollo? guest: some other things i discovered in into giving the reporters -- they had a very meager working conditions going to the apollo program. as you might expect, being a news reporter. they did not have we have today, blackberrys and laptops and so one. the work as hard as they could. nasa provided simple working platforms for them. you see that in the film. there is footage of some of the early press sites. but it is not, by today's

standards, anything you would consider to be glamorous. far from it. host: we want to get viewers and listeners in a vault and the composition of the -- involved in the conversation about the space program with kevin stirling, director of "moon beat." most journalists in this generation and the one that is in front of us have gr integral part of our lives. but the guys and women covering the space program in the early 1960's had never seen anything like this. how did they adjust to that? guest: it was very interesting, as i learned -- many individuals seem to always focus on the astronauts. they were fairly young, in the 30's at the top of their careers. ironically, so were the journalists.

they have been covering nasa from the early days, and to the apollo 11 flight, and later apollos as well could the apollo 11 story was the biggest story of their careers. the in the 30's, considered the prime of -- they were in the 30's, considered the prime of their careers, and where would they go after that? where do you go after covering that landing on the moon? host: our first call for kevin stirling it comes from anchorage, alaska, linda on the line for independents. caller: good morning. thank you for coming on this program. what do you see as the next 10 to 20 years, our future in outer space? guest: thank you for your call. that is the question that everyone seems to be asking. where do we go from here? i sort of want to address that. there is one of the reasons i put together the film.

i had always thought that the flight of apollo 11 in particular -- this is the 40 anniversary, 2009. i thought, who better to reflect on that that the news journalists in particular who covered everything, everything, and defer remember when it was all over -- saw everything, and at the very moment when it was all over, and they have a perspective that is very valuable and important. i thought with 40 years of hindsight, what an important resource we should be listening to and factor into our views of answering that question. my view, having listened to their perspectives, is that they, i believe, as you hear in the film, were very proud of the achievements of the program. they felt that there were certainly missed opportunities in the years since. they thought we would be much further along, but bases in the

moon, having been to mars and back at least once. they were sort of proud at the same time disappointed. to answer the viewer's question about going forward the next 10 to 20 years, it would seem more interesting to the public if we may be did more exploring, men exploring -- manned exploring. at the same time, that is a considerable expense of task. we can hope. host: albany, oregon, line for democrats. caller: i have followed the space from the very beginning with the mercury 7. i have been very involved with space program. at this point in time, i want to know why we are shooting at the mood when we could be working a lot on the economy in this country -- shooting at the moon

when we could be working on on the economy in this country think the money we're spending on outer space right now is pathetic. guest: again, thank you for your call. i will be honest, my perspective is that this year to the oppression -- my perspective is that i certainly appreciate that sentiment. i was always struck by one of the later apollo flights -- maybe 14 or 15 -- one of the astronauts was speaking about maybe the 20th anniversary of their lending -- landing. it is relevant to the caller's question. he said that when he got up to the moon and walked around, and he looked everywhere but did not find any bags of money on the moon. all the investments made in the space program were made ultimately here in this country, providing high-paying jobs and

new advancements and things that would help prepare our economy -- help directly our economy. but for some reason, that was not directly communicate, or not committed as well as it might have been. i am not sure i would agree with the caller on that particular perspective of money and it being not beneficial to our economy. host: one of the journalists you spoke to the film was with "time magazine but this will look at what he had to set -- was with "time" magazine. we will look at what he had to say. >> it has come back a little bit because the idea of going to the moon. now we are in competition with the indians, the chinese. they are just achieving the status that we would have years

ago, and we are in the trenches with them doing the same thing. i guess i envision colonies on mars and may be on the moon and bigger discoveries from all of it. host: sounds like he was looking for more scientific research and projects and more commercial projects in now. -- more commercial projects in space by now. guest: at the very pinnacle of success, having achieved great success, overcoming many obstacles, i such a short time, less than nine years, being on the moon, we were cutting back, winding down the program. the three additional apollo flights had been scheduled, were canceled, subsequently canceled. funding that was slated was again canceled.

who knows? again, some of the other journalists and nasa officials make a point of who knows where we could have been today? perhaps a much different nation, much different world, perhaps. host: do you know what his experience was before coming to cover the space program for " time" medicine? -- magazine? guest: i do not know. i could certainly find hundred he was the senior editor for coverage during those years. caller: i'm curious, what part in the timeline do you think we might have had colonies on demint -- on of the moon? guest: that goes way above my pay grade. i would not even be able to

answer that. i think it is a worthy goal. the president has appointed a task force to study where we go from here. but who knows whether moon based colonies are even our next step? it may be, or it may not be. it may be that mars is the next step or something else. i have no way of knowing. host: kevin stirling attended the wharton school of business at the university of pennsylvania has an m.b.a. from the st. joseph's school of business. how does a guy with the business background put together a documentary about this? guest: wharton is an interesting school and teach a lot of things. one of them is how to adapt to a certain circumstances coul.

businesses, and go. -- businesses, and go. you have to take your skill set and find new opportunities to succeed advance. wharton was the incubator where you could go and find out how to do these things, where the opportunities are that you would not have thought of. host: you are also a business reporter for "the philadelphia inquirer." guest: not on staff. i have done some pieces from them since the 1980's. host: where did this come come from? -- this film come from? guest: i believe that the reporters at a particular, their perspective on where this program was and where it was going, it was an important voice to be heard. i thought that viewers would be

interested to hear, particularly in this environment, where the space program is going. who better to reflect on that that the newspaper reporters, the journalists were paid to be precise reporters, were careful in their thinking, a political by nature, and had seen it all? -- they had seen at all and i thought they should have a voice. in that. they did not have access to that. i was hoping -- in that era they did not have access to that. host: do you think the modern conveniences we had in journalism makes reporting at the space program that much different than it was in the 1960's? guest: i am not sure if it makes it different but it makes it -- it opens up new ways for reporters to communicate better

with their audiences. it may not be different by it is another tool for them. host: i don't know the answer but thank you for your call. the moon has not changed so it is the same moon. i am sure it is an optical illusion perhaps, lighting. host: did the moon appeared different from the journalists of astronauts once they got up

and close and personal question marked guest: it was a goal they had all chased for so long. mankind has been looking at the moon thinking at the moon for decades. in the 1960's, to have finally achieve that goal i suppose in effect is in the film, some reporters recall that day in houston, the screening, that people were so exciting, almost emotional high. almost ecstatic but at the same time it was a joint and culmination after years of challenge and effort. a martyred president said this in motion. all sorts of things going on in that decade and society. nasa was in those years -- people may not recall, but nasa was the gold standard. they had a brand that was unchallenged. they were the brand for problem solving, can-do.

those were amazing days for the space program, as reporters have shared. host: if you want to find out more about him and sterling and the film itself, go to the web site, moonbeatthemovie.com. back to the phones. myersville -- maryland. michael, go ahead. caller: i want to add about the new finding of water on the moon and the implications of that. it is like a gold rush. it is a brand new thing for the states. the first time we have a real reason to go back to the moon. guest: that is breaking news, in

effect. that was just out in the last couple of weeks. that is a very important find and discovery. how it will play out into the decision making about where the space program goes -- it will be interesting to see. it was a sort of big discovery, and nasa was very happy with the news. host: next up is hamilton, new jersey, line for independen ts. caller: like the gentleman just said about funding water on the moon and the opportunities -- it seems like a lot of the things we're finding out in the last for five years, the opportunities lasted well beyond what the plant expeditions were -- planned expeditions' war. if you had a questionnaire asked how many people would be interested in going back to the

moon, he would probably have people lined up around the corner. thank you. guest: thank you for your call. again, water, the discovery, like many they made on the moon -- how it will play out, it is hard to say. water is an important finding, but one the things i learned in the film -- one of the things i learned in the film is throughout the space race of the 1960's, the public was so enthralled with it. the support of the program, they believed in it, they were energized by it, they were believers and were proud of it. we know the water is there, but i think to capitalize on it, to find someone to say, "ok, how do we now use that," it will have to energize the american public to agree to make space exploration of higher priority. host: "moon beat" but a special

jury award at the houston international film festival. houston -- that makes you guys like the home team. guest: they run one of the oldest vessels in the nation. i was honored -- oldest festivals in the nation. i was honored to have won that award. host: is it out in general this tradition yet? -- general distribution yet? guest: not yet, but i hope people see this today -- there is another festival and there will be a program in berkeley. even today, i am optimistic that opportunities will come. i am looking for the right distributor to take "moon beat" to audiences around this country and around the world.

host: new mexico, on the line for democrats. caller: good morning. cannot wait to see your movie. guest: thank you. caller: i really appreciate what you're doing, but because the space program has always got a bad rap of wasting money, gitmo said the technology we have today has come from that. -- yet most of the technology we have today has come from that. but nasa has tested successfully as the personnel carrier -- within the next couple of months or year we will see that aries 5, which will be able to carry a little bit more on the space shuttle. the cargo bay. r&d in designing buildings, estimators, there is nitrates

and water and you can get oxygen and hydrogen and everything you need. i saw a special on the tenacity and they are not joking around, and -- on nasa tv and they are not joking about. i appreciate your support of it. i'm a baby. -- a space baby. i watched the landing of challenger. and both disasters -- challenger, and columbia's last ascent. i'm a big space may be here. -- space baby here. guest: the caller is absolutely right. he is a space baby, as you describe himself. the space program inspired many individuals. i was inspired growing up, and many filmmakers, from ron

howard, tom hanks -- they made the famous movie "apollo 13" and talked about how the space program was a big inspiration for them growing up, and it was for me as well. host: you mentioned ron howard and "apollo 13," big budget movie, a huge screen. what is the difference between what a viewer sees in your movie and other movies? guest: it is a labor of love. it is a film i put together. i did not have a lot of resources. in fact, i did virtually all the production components of the film i was the editor, the filmmaker, the interviewer, did the ordeal and the lighting. -- the audio and the lighting. host: how much did the cost for you to put it together? guest: the tab is still running,

but not large in hollywood dollars. i'm hoping that a distributor will help me -- host: defray the cost. how much have you put into it so far? guest: over the last year and a half, -- without, -- host: under a million? guest: well under a million. the other point i wanted to make is that even though i did most of the production along the way, i certainly had a lot of help. when you look at this particular film, one of the things you see in the "apollo 13" felt as a lot of computer graphics and special effects. this film has a lot of interviews and footage. the reporters were magnificent. they were not only available for stories and sharing their thoughts, but they open up and

let me this some other photographs -- and photographs -- let me use a lot of their photographs and documents. nasa was fabulous. the gaps i had -- i have an archivist in washington, d.c., anomalous -- enormously helpful. and a person -- you see a lot of photographs and the film, photographs of reporters not so much in the actual reporting, but private lives, downtime. a person in florida has an amazing treasure chest of photographs of all of these reporters in that time period, and he was enormously helpful as well. host: last call from tennessee, line for republicans. caller: good morning, guy stood listening to this guy talk, --

good morning, guys. listening to this guy talk -- i watched many of the launches, and looking at the way things going now, and when they finally came down with apollo 13, how they came into the ocean, could you explain how that was done and how did they navigate and to bring them back to earth? thank you. guest: the caller is absolutely right. thank you for your culprit was an amazing feat of technology -- thank you for your call. it was an amazing feat of technology and navigation skills wit. many others are trying to go to the moon and emulate what nasa has achihieved. but it w the movie is a "moon beat." thank you for being on the

program this morning. guest: thank you for having me. >> on this morning's " washington journal" we talk to the head of the institute for policy studies, new internationalism project about the u.s. military's global operations. this is half an hour. our guest is the internationalism director with the institute for policy studies. just broglie, how many troops as the u.s. have stationed overseas? guest: a lot. about 1,000,000.1, something like that. and there are more than 1000 bases around the world in every continent. a base may not be a huge military base. some of them are huge. they are -- there are hundreds

of golf courses, but they are run by the u.s., owned by the u.s., controlled by the u.s. military. they are considered part of the u.s. military presence around the world. contractors raise an important point. right now, everywhere the u.s. has troops fighting, there are more private military contractors than there are troops. in afghanistan, there are about 68,000 u.s. troops, and 110,000 military contractors. the expectation is it will match the escalation. we're going to send at least 30,000 new mercenaries, and the

cost of that is about $1 million per soldier. for that escalation alone, we will be spending 30,000 troops. it will be $3 billion -- i am sorry, $30 billion. imagine what that money could do at home. he$30 billion -- that is about 3 million jobs. that is you'd. -- that is a huge. this is a very different era in terms of the world of contractors. contractors. in the past, in v in every war, in every normal war, and every normal army,

let's say, things like kepi duty, truck driving, cleaning the base, those are done by low ranking soldiers. that is -- private and the corporal's. not in this army, not an hour pentagon. we hire people from all over the world to do that work. it may be, for example, in afghanistan, a lot of those mercenaries or private contractors are actually afghans. they are not all foreigners. about three-quarters are afghans. they are hired to do that work on the bases. they do the cleaning, the feeling of the trucks, the cooking. then a whole gang of people brought in from low-wage countries like the philippines, like ethiopia, like bangladesh, like pakistan, even, who are brought in, hired by contractors, subcontractors, sub sub contractors, and they do the work. then the top of the pyramid are the military guys.

that's the guys with guns who do the work that military people always did, that military people who would be accountable to the military chain of command. instead, you have these military contractors and that is where you have most of the americans been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, 10 times more than the equivalent in the military, and they are not accountable at all to the military high command. separate set of laws. host: we will talk probably about the size of the presence overseas. before we get to calls, you talked to iraq and afghanistan occurred outside of those, what is the largest presence in the world? >> japan, south korea, and germany. in germany alone, there are over 57,000 troops. there -- actually, almost 200 bases and installations in germany. some are huge, like the giants'

medical center. some are tiny, and there are housing concentrations and small basis across the country. the same in japan and south korea. huge numbers, thousands of troops. it has been there since world war two, in the case of japan. the cost of this is way beyond but we sometimes think about. host: has any other administration taken a serious effort at downsizing the presence? guest: there was downsizing in the 1990 pus. there were no major wars being fought.

but not in the key countries. not in germany, japan, or south korea. smaller bases were downsized, but in the last 10 years or more, all of the bases have been going up. host: to be clear, the organization for policy studies, your organization, has an opinion on this. guest: we do. we think this is a bad use of people power, and it does not make us safer. many are angry about what these bases are doing to the environment and social conditions regarding women. so you see fights know and okinawa, in a beautiful place in italy outside an area designated an historical artistic center by unesco, a site -- i'm forgetting the name, of the renaissance

artist and architect known for mansions -- palladio. the palladio mound-- mentions outside the city. and the u.s. has now negotiated against the wishes of all local population to build a second air base within 100 yards. they want a better air strip. why it has to be there, nobody can answer. but the italian government agreed under a right wing government that was allied with bush originally, and the obama has done nothing to change it, and they say that in the opinions of unesco and historians around the world, they do not matter. host: let's go to a caller. joe, go ahead. good morning. caller: merry christmas to all,

and to all a happy new year to all the troops around the world. i am retired army. i spent my career in communications electronics. if anyone has ever pondered why the ratio of contractors keeps increasing, well, you know, when the military is downsized get every conflict, the mission is still there. in my career fields, maintenance was done away with. so what was the military to do? the mission is still there. guest: i think joe raises an

important point, which is what is the mission of these facilities around the world? i do not believe that they make us safer. if you look at africa, right now there are not a lot of troops. there are about 2500 u.s. troops from africa. 2100 of them are in just one country, in djibouti, where there is a huge set of military bases. these troops are invited in some of the fighting in somalia, currently in yemen, as well as the broader south asia region. but last year, instead of saying that africa is not a war area where we do not need a lot of troops and bases, instead of that, they say, well, we are going to set up an african command. they never had a separate

command for africa. and they said to we're going to do is we will have the pentagon to take over everything the u.s. does in africa. so the pentagon is taking over aids and hiv care, health care development, overall development assistance. all this is now run by the pentagon. it would normally be run by the state department or usaid. this is dangerous, and we see it taking place in the creation of a new command in africa. the goal is to establish bases all over africa to do this. so far, the african government has said, we do not what your bases here. the headquarters is in germany now. the headquarters for africom is in germany, and there is no sign that that will change anytime soon.

but the policy of militarizing the u.s. relationship with africa through our efforts with africom is still going forward, and i think that is dangerous. host: as we start looking at facts and figures of how many barrels a day are coming from africa and, it is not deniable that this has become a strategic interest for us. but china has a big military presence there, as well. >> they have contractors. they have a huge economic presence. the question becomes, as it does in so many parts of a world, does having our soldiers present at bases that are often hated by local people, does that make us safer? i do not think so. host: him on the democrats line. go ahead. caller: paying afghan people

$270 a month, and our guys over there, killing them, makes no sense to me, why we're over there doing that guest:. you raise an important question, which is the issue of the continents of how the u.s. pays afghans in the war. the two and $7 a month you refer to, that is after a decision by the military, our military, to raise the pay of afghans that are being hired in the afghan army pictur. they did it not because they thought it was a legitimate amount, but because the taliban was offering $300 a day to recruit. so it went to the highest bidder. these are not ideologues' to agree with the taliban or the u.s. military on anything. they are desperate. they're desperate to figure out a way to support their families,

and they will go with the highest bidder. so the u.s. is trying to outbid the taliban. host: here is larry in petersburg, illinois. caller: i would like to say god bless our troops, and i would like to ask your guest if there are institutes to support certain candidates. in the last primary, there was one individual trying to emphasize the fact that our economy was in bad shape and we are trying to build an empire. we need to draw back and start following the constitution and get troops back home. also, that talk about this being a war? is this a constitutionally

declared war? guest: great questions. we are a nonprofit organization. we do not take government money or corporate money, and we are completely independent. we have our own views about u.s. foreign policy. i read a book few years ago called "challenging a"empire about the war in iraq. but as an institution, we did not take any political positions. the issue of constitutionality is an important one. in my view, the war in afghanistan is not a legal war and never was, despite the fact of the congressional authorization. a congressional authorization in violation of international law is not a valid use of congressional power. the united nations did not endorse the afghanistan war at the time it was initiative.

and the u.s. had decided not to request un authority because the bush a administration had made a decision that they did not want to a knowledge the right of the united nations to make decisions, and as a result, the resolution was passed with great fervor and unanimously. every member of the security council stood and cast votes, they did not just raise their hands. what they asked for was a level of international corp. going after the money, police cooperation, but it did not authorize the use of force and was not taken under the terms of a chapter 7 of the charter, if required if you are going to have a war. host: seek moving forward to present day, the british are

currently conducting an iraq war in korea, and are expecting to hear from tony blair and others. what do you hope to learn from that? >> i think the british decision is very important, to go forward. it is something we need to do in this country, and the efforts of president obama describing it to look forward has been translated into not taking seriously the accountability of the violations of u.s., domestic, and international law that may have occurred. the coalition's in afghanistan, there are uncanny and unfortunate soleri's to the coalition around iraq where we documented -- similarities to the coalition around the iraq war.

this time around, we heard president obama's say in his west point speech, when he spoke about the escalation, he talked about a coalition of 43 nations participating with us. he did not identify them. the nation of georgia has one soldier in afghanistan. iceland has two. ireland has four. jordan has seven. bosnia, 10. there are three or four countries, the u.k., australia, can live up -- canada, and italy, with syria's troops. the rest of there for political, not military support. it is embarrassing to call it an international coalition when it is nothing of the sort -- there rest of them there are political, not military. caller: thank you very much for your astute research.

i want to ask you, do you see any correlation with this military expansion, the movement from a draft service to an all- volunteer service in the sense that americans do not have any skin in the game anymore? people volunteer for military services for their own agendas and motives. guest: i think there's a big correlation. i do not agree with robert about the motives for entering the military. i work with a lot of veterans, and they joined because they need a job. that is more prevalent than ever. 2008 was the first year since 9/11 and that the military has been able to make their quotas without reducing standards, and without reducing standards, and it is because people cannot find and it is because people can't

find a job. i was recently on a speaking tour in the midwest and i was in milwaukee and spoke in a milwaukee area technical college, which is an overwhelmingly working-class center, people going back to school and hoping for a job in a devastated part of the country and they, when i asked of the 60, how many of you have a family member are very close friend or someone you love currently in harm's way in afghanistan or iraq and every hand in the room went up. it is those people from smaller towns, overwhelmingly towns of less than 25,000, people without other option to cannot get college scholarships and the cannot get the job and goes into the military because that is the only choice they have. killed. they are going because there are no other options. if there were legal draft, instead of a poverty draft, i think decision making would be very, very different.

caller: good morning. you say the $30 billion cost of the troop surge would be worth 3 million jobs in america by yorktown. by my math, 30 billion jobs would translate to $10,000 a job or less than $5 an hour. does the institute for policy studies recommend creating jobs for less than $5 an hour, and do you think the money spent on the surge was beneficial? thank you. guest: thank you. you caught me on the mast. we figured jobs based on $50,000 a job, a $40,000 job and $10,000 of benefits. it is 1.5 million. it is early.

it is not 3 million jobs. maybe 1.5 million. but it is a lot of jobs that would be much better than the use of that money here at home. thank you for catching debt. -- thank you for catching vat. -- thank you for catching that. host: the gradual climb up to where we are in 2009, i will ask you, where is that going? to also referred to a term of postwar pax americana, what does that mean? >> the? guest: because it is the most powerful country in the world and the wealthiest, there is a notion that we have a right to have a military presence around the world the way there was once

the tax ramada -- pax romana, the roman military presence in the part of the world they control. the idea was where they were in control, where the roman empire was in control, there would be peace internally. the u.s. often takes that same argument, that our presence somehow brings peace to these troubled areas. the reality is, it does not work. other people did not want us there any more than they wanted the roman empire. we're not sending colonial populations to settle in countries all run the world. it is not that kind of colonialism. it is not settlor colonialism. but it is a kind of empire through these military bases, through the presence of bases across the world, as well as through the force of our

economy and economic control in so many places around awhirl. -- are around the world. 2009 has a high budget, not counting the cost of the wars that are being fought in iraq and afghanistan, and that is the highest it has ever been. host: our next guest is leonard from kentucky. go ahead. caller: merry christmas. when you are the parents of a soldier stationed in bahrain and are not able to contact them do to unusual circumstances, what can a veteran of vietnam do to contact his son? guest: this is a horrifying reality for parents and families of loved ones. we spoke earlier of the list of

u.s. bases around the world. some bases are not even included in the list. cochrane, for instance. only one in bahrain, and none in saudi arabia are listed because of political considerations of the government of the countries who do not want to acknowledge u.s. bases there. it may be that organizations like military families speak out, an important organization of families and friends of active duty soldiers that are trying to end the war, to stop the soldiers from being at risk and to take care of them when they come home. they may have some ideas. you can reach them on their website. i wish i had a better recommendation for you. perhaps your member of congress would be willing to try. sometimes it is special forces troops, but sometimes it is ordinary troops on bases the u.s. does not want to a knowledge are there.

host: palm springs, california. go ahead. caller: i am zacarias matthews' son. i wanted to make a comment. neither reason for him going into the air force is because he was -- the reason for him going to the air force was because he was offered a partial scholarship. can you really afford to pay for an education? do you want to be stuck with the student loans? the military offers these grade education programs. my father was in the air force. why don't you look into going into the air force? that was his choice, going into the air force.

host: thank you. guest: she raises an important point. not every member of the military has been forced and by economic matters. but the air force is one of the few parts of the military that provides some members with a job that they can carry on in civilian life. too many jobs that are the basis of job training in the army and other parts of the military do not have a civilian counterpart. there is little civilian use for infantry or armored divisions, and that is the vast majority of people in the military who do not come out with a viable skill to use. it is that reason that we see the tragedy of so many homeless veterans on the streets of this holiday season.

>> on tomorrows " washington journal" we will talk to former homeland security inspector general clark kent ervin, political science professor henry farrell and and look at the president's christmas vacation in hawaii. " washington journal" begins at 7:00 a.m. eastern every day on c-span. >> next on c-span, former cia analyst bruce grendell look said u.s. policy in afghanistan and pakistan. the muslim public affairs council discusses the fort hood shooting at their annual meeting. and william eggers talks about what government does and does not do well. later, a recent speech by secretary of state hillary clinton on human rights.

>> beginning monday, a rare glimpse into america's highest court threw unprecedented on the record conversations with 10 supreme court justices about the court, there were, and history of the taconic supreme court building. five days of interviews with supreme court justices starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern. get your own copy of our original documentary on the supreme court on dvd, part of the american icons collection, a three disc set including programs of the white house and the capital. one of the many items c- span.org. /store. >> former cia analyst chaired president obama's initial policy review on afghanistan and pakistan. he now gives a historical perspective of the past eight years of american presence in the region, the president's

decision to send additional troops and the prospects for defeating the insurgencies. hour-long talk came at a recent conference by the jamestown foundation. bruce is well-suited for all of that and today you will be very delighted to know he will not only talk for 10 minutes but he has a 40 minute talk planned, so i think there will be an in- depth opportunity to hear what his thoughts on the strategy and afghanistan and at this very critical time in american foreign policy.

he retired in 2006 after many postings overseas. senior advisor to four presidents of the 90 states. he negotiated several arab israeli peace summits. also deputy assistant secretary of defense in near east and south asia in the pentagon and senior adviser of north atlantic treaty organization in brussels. january 2009 president barack obama asked rest to chair a review of american policy toward afghanistan and pakistan, a result the president announced in his speech. more importantly he is the author of this book, the search for al qaeda, its leadership, ideology, and future, published by brookings press. after his talk he will be available for a book signing in the back and if you purchase the book he promises to say a few

words to you and also to sign the book. it's very important book, it is coming out in paperback so it is your last chance to get one in hard copy. bruce will be available for that briefly. after his talk he will take a few questions and answers which he will address to the audience and more and portly i would like to turn the floor over to bruce and i am delighted to have you here. >> thank you very much for that kind introduction. it is a special privilege and honor for me to be here today to speak to this audience at the jamestown foundation. the jamestown foundation over the last several years has consistently provided americans and people around the world some of the best analysis of what is going on in the terrorism world,

and for that reason, it is a very special pleasure to have this chance to be the keynote speaker today. 10 months ago and a few days, i was minding my own business in my home in the eastern shore of maryland when the phone rang and a voice came on and said, please hold for the president. a couple of seconds later, on came a voice, hello, bruce, it is barack, and then i got an offer, like those from the mafia movies, you couldn't say no to. the offer was to come in and share a 60-day review on american policy toward afghanistan and pakistan and, of course, al qaeda. as the president explained it then, in his judgment, this is the single most and portend a foreign-policy and national-

security issue he will face as president of the united states. perhaps a little background is in order. in order to also help you understand my remarks. i retired from the cia in november of 2006. in march of 2007, two individuals, tony lake and -- from the of buraku san obama camp came to me and asked me if i would like to be an adviser to the campaign. i agreed on one condition -- i didn't want to get a job for myself. i wanted to find a job for the senator of illinois in the federal government. i also told the i went home that night and all my life -- wife, this will be lots of fun, it but it will not last that long. there is no way barack obama will become president of the united states. bear their prediction in mind as i go forward.

what i would like to do over the course of the next 40 minutes or so is review the key judgments of the strategic review that i chaired, talk a little bit about the end to run between the closure of that strategic review in march and the president's announcement last week at west point, and then spend a few last-minute looking at the road ahead and where i think we are going. let me be very careful though, and clear. i am speaking here as a senior fellow at the center. i am not here as a spokesman for president obama were the united states government. please do not interpret any of my words as reflecting the views of the united states government in any way whatsoever. i will start with the bottom line right up front. president obama inherited in january and a disaster in afghanistan and pakistan. a war that had begun, that a brilliant military success at

virtually no cost was squandered and for seven years the previous administration did there'd about afghanistan and pakistan and did not act. as a consequence, an insurgency which should never have been allowed to begin to grow now threatens the survival of of the karzai government in afghanistan and threatens to defeat the north atlantic treaty organization's first ground operation ever. worse than that, it is the stabling south and central asia -- asia as a whole. the situation the president has inherited is bad and has gotten worse in the 10 months since then. but we have no time machine. we cannot go back and do it over. we can wish, but that is not a realistic strategy. so what is the situation today?

let me start with al qaeda. we would not have 70,000 american troops in afghanistan and 35,000 more on route if not for september 11. we all know that. what is the status of al qaeda today? i will summarize what we have done to al qaeda in one sentence. like anyone sentence summary, it lacks subtlety, it lacks new wants and if done right, it gets to the point. in eight years we have succeeded in moving the al qaeda accord leadership, senior operational planners and propaganda instrument from kandahar, afghanistan, to a location on known -- unknown, believed to be a hundred miles away somewhere in pakistan. that is not to diminish the hard work of our soldiers, our intelligence officers, and our

diplomats and our allies in fighting al qaeda. it is not to diminish the the conference we have had -- bringing khalid sheikh mohammed and others under detention and killing many others. but the fundamental fact is that al qaeda today remains a deadly enemy of the united states of america and our allies. it is the first truly global terrorist organization in history. its reach and scope in the last eight years is almost breathtaking when you think about it. from algiers to washington, from bali to madrid, this organization has struck again and again and again around the world. it has developed franchisees, it has developed surrogates, it has acquired allies that increases its reach. it has become more than a terrorist organization, it it has become an idea. it has created a narrative that

inspires a small minority of muslims, a very small minority, to carry out acts of mass violence. most of its attacks are indiscriminate it has also demonstrated a chilling capacity to strike with great discrimination against targets like benazir bhutto, the u.n. headquarters in baghdad and almost just a month ago against the deputy minister of interior in saudi arabia. we see this reach in the united states today, both direct and indirect. the afghan american arrested by the fbi and colorado demonstrated the direct direction. what happened in fort hood is the direct direction of the ideology of global islamic jihad. today only sustained significant pressure from al qaeda corp.

comes between 30,000, 60,000 feet in the air from the drones, predators'. the drones are a technological marvel and they have proven highly successful against a limited range of targets and a limited piece of geography. they have to some extent -- and it is hard to know if you are not a member of al qaeda, how big extent is, disrupted al qaeda in recent months. the drones are a tactic, not a strategy. like attacking a be high one be at a time. you are never going to destroy it a beehive one be at a time. ironic, eight years after tora bora osama bin laden is a voice we hear but get an invisible

man. we have no idea where this man is. despite the biggest manhunt in history and a $15 million reward. he could be in the room next door as far as we know. there was a report, poorly sourced, he was in afghanistan in february. what was notable is how good it was -- but even rare that we even get bad reports about where he is. the second thing i would suggest about al qaeda today is that in afghanistan and pakistan, it is part of a much larger sending its of terrorist organizations within which it is embedded. what gwenn mean by that? the afghan taliban, pakistan taliban, and i agree, the two are actually one taliban in many ways -- a whole bunch of of the

groups whose names often change interchangeably but who we know are the same basic characters, are a syndicate of terror. they are not a monolith. they don't have a single leader, they don't have a single agenda. but they cooperate with each other. individuals within these movements move back and forth between organizations. they do not respect the ways we try to impose on them, and most of all, none of them in eight years have been willing to turn on al qaeda and give up its core leadership. what is remarkable when you look at it is that more than any other individual, it is mullah omar that this endecott pledges its allegiance to. and he claims to be commander of

the faithful. the title, which if you think about it for a minute, shows a man with a remarkable ego, commander of the faithful 1.6 billion muslims worldwide. i'm very skeptical we could negotiate with the taliban, particularly skeptical we can negotiate with someone with such an inflated sense of his own importance. al qaeda today is imbedded in this larger syndicate of terror and that is why it is so hard to go after. i would suggest you today -- that is the single most dangerous element. it demonstrated a year ago in mumbai its capacity to strike with awesome fury. as we have been learning in the past few days, its global reach is probably also something to worry about.

let me say a few words about afghanistan. you could also summarize afghanistan in one sentence. we are losing the war in afghanistan, but it is not yet lost. i hope. the report, courtesy of bob woodward, which you all had a chance to read, is an excellent summary of the situation in afghanistan. i think he hit the nail on the head. he got it exactly right. if there is one part of that report that it urge you to look at, the and next the talks about detention facilities in afghanistan in which he says, we no longer control of the detention facilities in which we are keeping captured insurgents. they are defacto under the control of al qaeda and the taliban, more radicalization and recruitment for al qaeda takes place in those detention facilities than anywhere else in

afghanistan today. when you have lost control of the prison camps in which you are putting insurgents and counter insurgency, you are in a deep, deep hole. every measure we have demonstrates the momentum is entirely with the taliban today. bob gates reiterated that several times in his statement last week on the hill. but it is not yet lost. because we did not face and afghanistan, a nationalist uprising. what we face in afghanistan is a pashtun insurgency which is confined to the pashtun ethnic community. the soviets faced a national uprising. virtually the entire country was an opposition to soviet occupation and soviet behavior reinforced that opposition.

we face an insurgency which is, for the most part, confined to the pashtun community. by definition, the majority of afghans do not favor the taliban and more than that, we know from reliable polling that the majority of pashtuns don't want to see a return to the islamic terror of the afghanistan. no one in their right mind would want to go back to living in the medieval held that malone omar created in the 1990's. it is the self constraining factor of the taliban that offers us the most hope to be able to turn this around. thirdly, let me talk about pakistan. pakistan is today the strategic prize in this part of the world as well as the most dangerous country in the world. why do i say that? because all the things that should worry americans about the

future of the world in the 21st century, together in pakistan in a unique and combustible way. nuclear war and peace, proliferation of nuclear technology, terrorism, the future of islam, the future of democracy and the islamic world, the relationship between military and civil society in the islamic world -- all these issues are a lot in pakistan like they are nowhere else in the world. pakistan is the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world today. it has more terrorist per square kilometer than any other country in the world today. it is the world's second largest muslim country and yet its government is teetering on the brink of collapse. pakistan is trying to make the transition from a military dictatorship to something pakistanis hope will look like democracy. we should support that effort with everything we do. but this is the fourth time

pakistan has tried to make this transition, and you have to believe in the triumph of hope over experience to believe it is going to be successful. today's zadari government appears to have a limited shelf life. he may stay on as a figurehead but power is slipping away from him every day. the alternatives are not particularly bright, either. we may see a return to now was sharif, whose two previous times the prime minister said not so you with confidence prime minister will be going in the right direction -- nawaz sharif. but we did not get to choose who pakistan's leaders are and when we have tried we usually have buyer's remorse. the second point about pakistan is that pakistan has a dynamic, confusing, and complex relationship with the syndicate

of terrorism which i talked about earlier. pakistan either created or was the midwife for many of these terrorists organizations. it retains very close links with some of them, particularly with laskar al qaeda and pass of supporter for muollah omar for the last several years and was an active supporter of his up until the 12th of september, 2001, when richard armitage threatened it of being thrown back into the stone age. it has the capacity to both be a patron of terror and a victim of terror, which is very hard for most western minds to put your head around. .

this view remains entrenched in significant parts of the officer corps and a leak. in short, the state in afghanistan could not be greater. -- parts of the officer corps and elites. the future of al qaeda, of the nato alliance, of possibly nuclear war and peace in south asia, all of these issues are coming together. on the 27 of march, obama focused american forces in the

combat zone on disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al qaeda and destroying the sanctuary along the afghanistan- pakistan border. it was clear that while there was a specific mission, to get there we had to stabilize afghanistan and pakistan. that is a much broader mission. the reviews and give to the president which he endorsed had 20 major recommendations in its, 187-recommendations and i will not go into them -- 180 sub-recommendations. i want to stress this point. this is resource intensive. this is going to come with a big cost. to send one american soldier to afghanistan for one year costs

of $1 million. if you think this economy is it to scale, forget it. to send 30,000 that will cost more than $30 million. it does not get cheaper sending more troops. on the non-military side is expensive, as well. this legislation triples assistance to afghanistan to more than $1.50 billion per year. wow, that is a lot of money. now they are saying, big deal, we spend that much on a general motors it in 30 minutes. over 15 years that is $15 billion and it will make them the largest single suppository of american economic assistance in the world outside of afghanistan and iraq. what happened in the eight months from march 27th until his

speech last week at west point? there are two things. first, on the military side, we had an unprecedented event, or virtually unprecedented, he the strategically because of the calls upon the commander to come up with an operational plan for a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy in southern and eastern afghanistan. for reasons that i do not know, he was judged to be the wrong man for the job. he was fired by secretary gates. that was a big thing. the last thing we've fired a battlefield commander during wartime was 1951. the issue then was whether or not to use nuclear weapons against communist china. i do not know what general mckinnon did -- make kiernan --

we lost two months of his time and we had to take three months to get general mcchrystal comfortable on the ground and to get his recommendations. instead of an operational plan getting delivered in may and was in august. in the interim, the military situation deteriorated sharply. from the president's standpoint support for the war in the democratic party and on the hill dropped through the floor. what had been a good war one year ago was now just like every other war, a bad one. skepticism about the war had become widespread among the president's supporters. the second thing that happened was on the political side. the expectation in march was that we would be able to work with the then afghan government

and the international community to produce something that would look like a legitimate and credible presidential election. instead, we had a fiasco followed by a disaster. no one can pretend that this afghan presidential election was legitimate or credible. in the first round, karzai supporters produced 1 million fraudulent ballots. that is a lot even by the standards of a florida or illinois. this is cheating on a global scale. he got caught and he got away with it. i am not sure how diligent man the government looks through the eyes of the afghans, but it looks illegitimate through the eyes of americans and our european and non-european partners. this administration has to bear

some of the responsibility for this. it did not happen on the bush's watch. behavior towards the election was like the famous of the art in the headlights. you could see the problem coming, but we seemed mesmerized until it was run over. again, we do not have a time machine and cannot go back and fix this. we have to work with president karzai. we may find, and in retrospect, that this was the fatal blow. we do not know that yet, and i think we can yet turn this around. mrs. clinton now has her date for the next three years. she will be managing mr. karzai. she needs to of will -- avoid demonizing, timber tantrums timbertemper tantrums, and to

bring out the best in karzai. where are we going from here? let me offer you three observations. first, this is a bold gamble. what the president is to has embarked upon today has no guarantee of success. there are all kinds of things that may fail. trying to build an afghan army and police force may be a lot harder, and i suggest will be a lot harder, and we think. trying to reverse the taliban and momentum will be difficult. for sure, casualties are going to go up. domestic dissent, here and and other nato countries, over this war is winding a stronger and harder. there are several potential game changers that could change everything, literally in a matter of minutes.

another 9/11 attack inside the united states does not have to bring down two of the largest buildings in the world to be significant that comes out of pakistan will be a game changer. the president of the united states will not simply be able to call up and say do something about this. another mumbai attacked coming out of pakistan will also be a game changer. the indian government's capacity to absorb mass casualty attacks, i suspect, has been reached. they will not send someone to islamabad the next time. the second thing i would say is that, as hard as it is, it is the best of the bad options and have today. we really only had two other options. one was to cut and run.

we can define that in a lot of different ways, downsize the mission, readjust the mission, but all of them come down to cutting and running in one way or another. i think the president wisely ruled that out from the beginning. if we are defeated in afghanistan by the television it will be a global game changer. -- in afghanistan by the taliban. the global reverberations of that in the islamic world will be enormous and no more so than in pakistan. thirdly, this issue is now going to consume this presidency which is why it took them 92 days to come to a conclusion because they do not like the answer. if i was wrong emmanuel -- if i was rahm.

this will be the issue, the foreign policy issue, that the congress of the united states is judged upon less than one year from now. other issues may outweigh it, the economy, but this will be the foreign policy issue that people look to. it is going to need to be explained to the american people again and again, why they are sending their sons and daughters to the other side of the planet to fight a war which has been going on longer than any war in american history. it is going to have to explain how we intend to win the war and how we hope to be able to get out of it. that will mean political energy, capital, and the most precious thing in any white house, the time of the president that will have to be devoted to this issue. warsh consume presidencies.

this war stands on the verge of consuming this presidency. the last thing i will say, one final note, the good news in all of this, i generally believe we will note in july, august 2011 whether this strategy works. why do i say that? by then we will have had the additional forces for six months, for more than one year, and we will have a found out whether we can break the momentum of the taliban and will find out how pakistan reacted to all of this. we will have found out whether we can build an afghan national security force. we will not have achieved victory. the and will not be in sight, but we will at least know whether we have a strategy that has a promise of success. if it does, i would suggest to you that there will be very,

very few american soldiers coming home in the summer of 2011. if it does not work then we will face the very, very difficult decision of owning a to that and deciding where we go next. i sure hope he does not call me that day. thank you for your attention. [applause] >> thank you, burst. we are opening the floor for some questions. -- thank you, bruce. we have plenty of people raising their hands. does anyone have a question? all right. you are the man. why don't you let him? sorry.

>> thank you for the top. i would like to ask a question. if we use the cut and run strategy, do you recommend any psychological tactics to make the enemy feel defeated? we can still do a cut and run as long as we are covering this with proper psychological tactics that can it -- that can give them a feeling of defeat. >> nothing springs to mind immediately as to how we can turn a retreat into a victory. there are various levels of cut and run. we do not have to completely give of. we can say we are afghan-izing the war quickly. we can hope the government we leave survives. after all, the communist

government in afghanistan al lived the soviet union, barely. it's not a parallel, we want to spend a lot of time thinking about it. i do not think there is a downsizing the mission alternatives. if we go to appear counter- terrorism, it will not work. as an intelligence professional who spent a great deal of time trying to persuade people to commit treason, they will not do it if they do not think you're going to be around to give them the check when they come back from their mission. it does not work that way. >> this morning, ambassador benjamin gave an end -- gave an interesting talk. during the course of the 15 minutes he failed to use three words that you used in the first five minutes which were global

islamic jihad. to what level was this broader ideological struggle, how this resonates within the current ministration? it seemed to be a hesitancy or push back on looking at the problem through that lens. >> on like dan, i have the liberty of saying whatever i want to say. -- been unlike da -- unlike dan. the simplest answer is that i think this administration understands that this is a battle of ideas and the narratives. it has to come up with a counter-narrative to the narrative of the global islamist jihad. -- it is more less created over the last decade or so. the best proof of that is the president's speech in cairo.

that speech in some ways it was addressed exactly to them. what is the narrative of the global islamist jihad? the short version is the united states is now a crusading power that is trying to impose its will on the moslem world by dividing the world up into smaller states which it can manipulate -- bids will on leave muslim world. what does barack obama say in cairo? what is his opening line? bin"we are not and imperialists colonial power. we are revolutionary state. we were born against an empire." it was a great speech. i do not think anyone disputes that. the problem is going to be following that up. the count -- the counter-

narrative has to be punctuated with real things. they have proceeded to do that in some places and they are struggling in others. in the battlefield of the narratives, the israeli-arab of battlefield, they are having a difficult time. they do not have partners. that makes moving forward very hard. i believe i am convinced that they understand the central role of the war of ideology. >> i am studying at the university of maryland. are really enjoyed your speech. i wanted to make a comment.

about my country afghanistan, you talk about the elections rate i was there during the elections and was working directly on the elections. we were seeing how things were being arranged on the forefront. everybody was watching that. nobody was -- and we could see that this was a -- this would be the consequence of the election. it is not a big deal in the eyes of afghanistan because it was the second election in the history of our country. we are used to it. they're working the kinks out. right now, we have to obviously find a way to work with the president.

the best thing we can do is to push our president to bring the right people in the door. secondly, with regards to the engagement of the united states in afghanistan, i should say that we obviously know that people talk about eight years of engagement in afghanistan, but i am telling you that it has not been eight years of the engagement. it has been one year and a few months of engagement beginning in 2002-2003 when they went to iraq. since then, we were seeing that all the problems, all of the issues that were taking us into

failure and getting us closer to the taliban, we were just watching. i hope -- i wanted to put -- >> can you ask a question please? do you have a question? >> i just wanted to finish my statement by saying that we have the chance to succeed in afghanistan because we have the will of our people on our side. thank you very much. >> to comment briefly, i agree with what you said. karzai's problem is more here than there. i agree with everything you said about the impact of the war on iraq and this venture in afghanistan. do you have a question over here? with the microphone, please.

>> i am a journalist. you contrasted the situation in afghanistan with the situation facing the russians, soviets before. i hate to ask this question, but he begged it with the comparison. the comparison that is often made is the situation obama is facing is what we faced with vietnam. you know the question. the ghost of a vietnam haunts this administration and walks to the halls every day. it walks to the corridors of the united states congress constantly. afghanistan in 2009 is not vietnam in 1965 or even 1961.

it is a very different situation. we were attacked. the most successful foreign attack on the united states of america, bar none, was the attack on our capital in 1814 which was carried out from afghanistan. those who did that are plotting to day a repeat performance. in 2006, on the anniversary of september 11th, the plan a repeat performance that would have been more chilling and devastating than what happened in 2001 which would have been to blow up eight jumbo jet flying across to the united states and canada. had that succeeded, more people would have died on september 11th. the international airline systems would have gone out of business. no one in their right mind would

have a phone anywhere again. that is the viet cong were. as bad as they work, they had no designs to attack the united states. the specter of the north vietnamese attack in seattle was entirely created by the johnson administration and had no basis in fact. secondly, we are not in afghanistan as a colonial imperial power. there is not an american in america who wants to colonnade and control afghanistan. to the contrary, we would like to get away as quickly as we can. the situation in vietnam, the u.s. was there with very little legitimacy and was perceived as the vp colonial -- of the

french. let's deal with the situation we have a, not with analogies to other places. i understand the question. in terms of domestic politics there is a great parallel. the president finds himself in a terrible situation. all the critics of the war are daut pelosi democrats from cambridge and new york city. the supporters are sarah palin republic and. the people he has to convince are his natural constituency.

palin is just looking for a chance to say he is covering it up. the politics in this are terrible. yes? >> you mention that we do not know and there have been no credible reports. there have been reports over a number of years that he has not stayed in above iran what is going back and forth. there were reports in the 2004 and photographic evidence. the had seen him there in january 2009. how do you analyze those reports? >> i want to be absolutely explicit. the last time we had a solid piece of information about where osama bin lawn was was eight

years ago. -- osama bin laden was 8 years ago. he said it has been a few years. senate -- gates has been my boss in more organizations than i can remember. it has been eight years, mr. gates, since we have had any idea. has he been in iraq? i do not rule it out. al qaeda has been able to operate in iran on more than one occasion. we do not know what the government relationship was. i would suggest to you that if the iranians want to give us trouble in the world in the next few years, one of the simplest ways for them to do it is to just allow a higher degree of al

qaeda operational activity in their territory. since we have no baseline as to what they allow, more of it coming would be hard to judge in its significance. if the relationship between al qaeda and ron, it is a black hole. -- between al qaeda and iran. >> have a question about the syndicate of terrorist organizations including the caliban. there was not a single afghan on the plans for 9/11, as far as i know. -- on the planes. omar sending out information and is allowing [unintelligible] he is sending out messages.

this -- he says we are not threatening everyone. why do not -- why do not give them a chance? >> there are several questions buried in that one question. first ago, those chosen by a osama bin laden chosen carefully. it was deliberate. he brilliantly realized that by putting 15 saudis on the airplanes he was going to create a problem. it was a brilliant piece of tactical strategy. apparently he could not find enough people who could fly who were capable of doing that. omar and the taliban, i do not believe that is what he is saying. we are prepared to let you

leave, more or less gracefully. the emirate of afghanistan will be created and we will talk to our fellow afghans about what the situation will be. to the contrary, he says karzai is a trader and deserves a traders' response. -- and he is a day traitor and deserves a traitors response. i believe parts of the taliban maybe but -- may be prepared to break. they will not do it now. no one in their right man is going to break because you will be dead tomorrow morning and so will your family. if the momentum is shifted, we can offer security and protection to people who break

from the caliban then we begin to see fissures within the movement. if we do something simple like paying soldiers up more money at the taliban days we might also find that many people did many people will switch over. that is part of what i mean that we will know in 18 months. by then we will see whether the villagers are likely to develop in the taliban. we will see whether the resources we have brains record in who might otherwise go to the taliban. i think we will know that within that definite period of time. i am very skeptical of the notion the [unintelligible] is interested with negotiations with the united states. if they are, prove it to us.

>> we have time for two more questions. >> i am with the bin "american conservative" magazines. we were against the war in iraq. what about an exit strategy that was promoted that america as a democracy you is not able to fight a guerrilla war. we should really be moving into a defensive strategy, which we could do well. as a democracy, we cannot with all the conflicting issues have a coherent policy for settlements on the west bank. we cannot stop it.

>> the short answer to your question is we tried a defensive policy between 1998 when they declared war on us and september 11th, 2001. we ended up with september 11th, 2001. i sat in the situation room in the white house when we launched cruise missiles. that is a very difficult strategy to carry out because we have to be lucky in foiling every single plot. they have to be lucky once or twice to have a devastating effect on us. we may get their -- there. if it is not working in 18 months, we need to be honest and rigorous and say it is not working. then we may have to go to that strategy.

i would rather try to find out whether there is a better alternative to the one you are suggesting. >> i appreciate your remarks. i am a former intelligence officer. here is the deal. five years ago, congress rejected 402-2 resolution. we are not willing to have our sons and daughters, friends and neighbors bear the burden physically. the speaker has said there will be non. we are not willing to embrace paying for this thing financially. what does that say about our level of commitment? if we take this at face value which is we have to find a way

to mitigate this great. this threat, i do not think we can eliminate it. politicians on both sides of the aisle are saying if the threat can be made to permanently go way, it is not happening. when our going to start talking honestly with each other and the american people about that fact? -- when are we going to start talking? we're going to have to pay for them. thank you. >> it is a very good and difficult question which goes beyond my area of expertise. as i said, this is going to be a resource intense battle. that has all kinds of implications for other things we want to do. i do not know whether the situation in iraq is going to get worse next year as many expect it will, but i think if

we draw down the u.s. forces in iraq, it will be compelled by the situation in afghanistan. we will not have the option of doing both at once. one great line that has been exposed in the last decade is this -- the united states military can fight two medium- sized conflicts at the same time. we cannot do that. if you are involved in one, do not start another one. it has implications in other places. the notion that the united states today could use military force against iran while it is bogged down in afghanistan and is trying to get out of iraq is lunacy. we could not afford to do that. we simply could not. that has implications for the future of iran's nuclear development policy. the president is going to take the military option off of the table.

-- president is not going to take the option off of the table. mr. president, if you want to do that it is your nickel, but here is my racket -- my resignation. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, bruce. [applause] >> he will be available to sign copies of his book. he will remain outside. >> next on c-span, the muslim public affairs council discusses the shooting at their annual meeting. william eggers the author talks

about what government does and does not do well. later, a speech by secretary of state hillary clinton on human rights. >> in the mid 1990's they named him one of the most 50 and the little people to watch. since then he has greeted the social networking side blackplanet.com and has its planned new technologies of "oprah." he talks about harvard and what is ahead. now, part of the public affairs council's ninth annual convention. they discuss the fort hood shooting and how it might affect muslims living in the united states. this is about one hour. >> this is the muslim public affairs council light and no convention -- ninth annual

convention. this is on fort hood, a defining moment. we are going to have a conversation with three very important people that provide unique perspectives on the issue of not only national security but civil rights and how race or religion play a role in the discourse on those issues. with us, and we are very pleased to have her, is constance rice who is the co-director of the advancement project which works on public policy and is also a legal action group addressing racial, class, and other barriers to opportunities. we cannot enumerate the number of words constance has been given. she has expanded the opportunity in advancing

multiracial democracy i. she is not for me major lawsuit in 1999 to bring more construction to inner cities of los angeles. next to her is cynthia venezuela the director of litigation for the mexican- american legal defense and education fund. she is one of california's top 20 attorneys under the age of 40. she has also served as the assistant u.s. attorney office of public corruption and government fraud section. she served as the special assistant to the former california supreme court justice, cruz renoso. next to her is the senior advisor to the muslim public affairs. he is the chairman of the

council of southern california and the spokesperson for the islamic center for southern california. he is the author of a major work called, "in pursuit of justice, the jurisprudence of human rights in islam." he is an advisor to several muslim american organizations throughout the country. he has spoken at the state department and in several interface forms on the topics of the islamic democracy -- interfaith forums. he is spoken on the issue of our modern society. with that, could you please give us a warm welcome to our panel. [applause]

>> unfortunately david eggers was slated and was unable to join us. i am confident these panelists are going to offer us a lot. on the issue of fort hood, isn't really a defining moment? if so, why? >> yes, i think it is. it will be a defining moment if we want it to be. it should be a defining moment. not only for muslim americans but for the country at large. for muslim americans, i think it is a moment where lots of arguments that we use are failing us, appropriately so by

the way. terrorists are not from america. it will not allow such extremism to develop. also, it has nothing to do with islam. i'm talking particularly to the muslims who might be upset of what i say. i think we're discovering right now both in america [unintelligible] and jury the taxpayers' money to become educated, to become a physician, to become a psychiatrist at of all the specialities of medicine. he was a member of the armed

forces. if this was not enough to prevent a crime like that, the second thing that we usually say is the car run and is long would never approve of what he said -- we are in an awkward situation. definitely, if we want to be loyal to our religion and our country, we have to have an inward look to our arguments. for the american public, i think in their minds, a good number of them at least, muslims cannot be trusted and they are violent

because their religion is violent. do we approve that? no. is it true? no. it is the perception. we have to deal with it. i think if we want to include muslims in our society and [unintelligible] this will defined the american muslim identity and what islam is in america. >> how did you react when you first heard about the fort hood incidents and the culprit was a muslim? you told us you are ready to help out in any way. share some of your experiences with us in how to deal with the

problems he outlined. >> first off, please do not let him be muslim. he has brought up some very insightful points. i would add to those points that this incident is a defining moment simply because of the attention that it got. there may have been other more minor, but i come from a military family. i know what it means to be on base. my father was a colonel in the air force. militarily, to have an attack on a base -- my biggest fear was that it would be an awful backlash. what does this say about where we are? eight years after the fact, we are still together in every long

journey. every single group that has come to this country is still on the journey of integration, assimilation, and separateness that makes up the american mosaic. this great country is probably the best but it is not perfect. it is the best at incorporating different groups, the plural this unum -- e pluribis unum. he should read the congressional record. the way they talked about italians, the classified them as black. they have had african-americans, my family is slave owner, slave, and native american. i could write my on reparations act. i family is a mixture. even so i would be "other" even

though i am a blended daughter. i am african-american in some contexts, white in other contexts. for the american muslim family, the muslim immigrant family getting on the road to integration is a big speed bump. fort hood, for me, said the following -- to face the issues that he brought up, this community, the muslim american community, this incident highlights this, how critical your role is in the modern voice of islam. if your voice can not be elevated then this problem will never go away globally. i do not spend time with a lot of groups. i spent time whenever you call

me because the fort hood incident shows how terrible this is immediately. you have to be putting the signs up that say, "i am not a terrorist, i am not a terrorist" immediately. you have to tear down this year. it will peter out and dissipate over time. -- you have to temper down this fear. the process will continue. the other fault line, because there were a lot, it was not just the fear of being attacked but there is an enormous fear of islam. is long-phobia -islam-phobia is

up there with homophobia and provokes reactions. we're going to need to talk about profiling as well. i do not understand how we, as an american-led military people, how did we get so stupid? there were more flags than the un plaza on this one. his religion had nothing to do with reading the flags. if you had seen it timothy mcveigh with his books and his tirades against janet reno, those lives. his neighbors knew he was unstable. they knew he was going into a phase where he might get dangerous. well, the psychiatrists who were practicing with this doctor had notes in his file.

they were tracking his web activity. if he had been a black nationalist or with the ira, somebody should have said, " well, wait a minute." that is not profiling but intelligence defense. there was a complete failure here and they will use racial profiling. they are going to go to another extreme. this discussion needs to say what would have happened here. [applause] >> cynthia, he brought up the issue of mistrust as one of the unfortunate reality is that we have to deal with as a consequence of fort hood. how you deal with that as a litigator? what are some of these strategies that you use in

rebuilding trust and countering the mistrust of others? >> i wanted to start by addressing some of the comments that were made. i think the forehead incident was not really a defining moment from the perspective of the latino community because it really does not color the views of muslims among latinos. latinos understand that when incidents like this happen that you think exactly what that is, please do not let it be a latino. the media does a very good job of changing our entire community with a very broad brush -- painting our entire community. we, as a minority community, i understand the stereotyping,

jumping to conclusions, the wanting to blame a particular group. i think that because our community has that understanding and that sent the that we did not take this incident as a general statement against muslims or as long. from our perspective, it was not a defining moment. -- as a general statement against muslims or islam. [inaudible] there is a huge fear of undocumented immigrants which is something our community has been fighting for litigation over the past four years. we have been fighting xenophobia for over 40 years. recently there have been a number of anti-immigrant and -- ordinances enacted because of

their failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform. state and local governments have taken it upon themselves to pass the various ordinances that all have the same goal and a mission which is to purge people from their communities, to deny access to public health benefits, education, and employment to immigrants which translates to limit -- to legal immigrants and the latino community in general. this is something we have had to fight for litigation. we recently prosecuted successfully and file the lawsuit against a vigilante rancher from the state of arizona. he took it upon himself to " hunt down" people he perceived to be undocumented immigrants. he held them at gunpoint, captured them, rounded them up

and yelled racial epithets at them. he had his attack dogs loose on them. some of these victims included children and united states citizens. we had to litigate and file a case against him. we are successful and recover damages on behalf of the victims in that case. that is one example of the many kinds of cases we litigate against. we also litigate against the type of vigilante conduct. we represents victims and witnesses when various hate crimes occur. i think we will talk about that in response to other questions. >> thank you. some people felt that there should have been no response to

the fort hood incident because there were so many other issues and there is a concern that when we do speak out as connie had noted that we spoke out swiftly that some people misconstrued the -- that as being apologetic. we do not need to apologize for what happened at fort hood. how do we deal with the realities or perceptions that have become realities and the issues of mistrust? but concerns -- also with concerns we're becoming overly apologetic. >> i do not apologize for something i did not do. i do not accept or condone it. anyone with a normal iq would

say you do not apologize. we aren't trying, as connie said, to say, "i am not a terrorist, i am not a terrorist "because they are saying we are. i will keep saying it until someone hears me. we are dealing with perceptions. the perception is that we are dangerous. it is the major problem that we cannot ditch or hide. we have to address it. it must have -- and must happen because we contributed to it. if you would allow me to give one example because it is really bothering me, american citizens from different religions and i

say [unintelligible] the room would be empty because in their mind, "allah akbar" means be heading and destruction. let me ask the muslims here, how many [unintelligible] + save that per day? so much to answer me? how many times minimum? i counted them. pardon me? 45? all right. it is 92 times is the minimum average muslim who is just using it for necessities without dextrose -- without, extras

without"allah akbar" 92 times per day. rain to god, ending our prayer by piece. how did this slogan change from the absolute peacefulness to that perception of violence? we should ask ourselves that. -- praying to god, ending our prayer wit hpea -- with peace. something is deeply wrong. i said that 92 times a day to give me peacefulness and comfort. how they perceive it this way? let us never try to escape this.

we are culprits in the predicament we are in and it is our responsibility to reverse it. .

to them, it is another religion that seems strange even though islam has been a part of the united states since the beginning. you have a frightened population that is ignorant of a particular religion, culture, accused. we do not know the context for the religious sayings. i can give you all kinds of examples in american culture where a comment in one context as a joke and in another can be a threat. sometimes you have to be african-american. sometimes you have to be part of a subculture within the african-

american community to know what we are really saying. every culture has its codes and its norms. you do not know the dances. if you went to howard university, you would be lost. i am queen of the ball. it is my manner. i know everything. i know the unspoken words. i know in between the lines point i know the tilt of information, when yes means no pattern in your culture, i do not even know when yes means yes -- means note. in your culture, i don't even know when yes means yes. we need an acknowledgement of human limitations. we do not know how to read one another. even in this country where we have been together, these multiple races, we african- americans were created on this continent. this is the only place in the world we could have been created we are as indigenous as the native americans in some ways.

we're still getting to know one another. we're still learning to read one another. i was talking with one of my fbi friends -- yes, i have fbi friends. [laughter] i have been learning the culture. i said to my friend, joe, you cannot even handle your black fbi agents. what are you going to do with muslim americans? and what are you quick to do with somebody from baghdad? you can even handle our minorities. you are still getting the ability to read us. so we have agencies that are supposed to prevent something they cannot see from a people and from a cold -- and from a cult and a subculture that has twisted the their religion.

they use ham handed proxy's. there is good profiling and bad profiling durin. my friend says, connie, we have to stop it. you cannot. you cannot do it without the people who know this part of the world, this part of humanity. this is what you have your burden. do not worry. we have had our burden. we have carried it for 400 years. we have to help you in the job because all you can do it. the very people we need, we are driving away. that is the problem appeared the people that we can speak the language are the people who can -- that is the problem. the people that we cancan speake language for the people who can be on line and read this.

if we drive our partners away, the people who can tell us what is going on in hamas -- i am still figuring out where i can wear shoes. i have to -- you have to tell me how i should behave in your house of worship. this incident really highlighted the deficits on the american culture side. we are still lead coming to terms with what we cannot control and cannot know and coming to terms with the fact we cannot make us safe. we cannot make muslim americans save. we cannot make the united states save -- we can make muslim americans safe. we cannot make the united states safe. we have -- that is until we

have [unintelligible] is inadequate how the united states thinking is on that front. >> the turning point, actually -- moslems should agree on reality, even if we do not accept it. muslims are an essential part of the solution. without muslim americans in that for one, there is no solution. there is no solution and america will not be the america we want. we need this country because it is the best country in the

world, the best human experience that we have. we need to keep before us and for our children. to keep it, we should solve that problem of dangerous, violent extremists. without the muslims fighting, there is no winning. not homeland security, not the military -- muslim troops must be on the front line. >> cynthia, in terms of the media and how these kinds of problems are framed, but i think we can agree that, even though we come from different backgrounds and have different cultures, we do have a common problem in terms of the information that is out there representing mainstream as opposed to how various pundits

and the talk shows frame issues. there was a recognition of lou dobbs, for example, on cnn. but he was very much an immigrant in many ways. tell us a little bit about how mall the fuse to these kinds of shows and pundits in the talk- show circuit. >> i think that loves is probably the poster boy for anti-immigrant sentiment. there are other mainstream media. i consider him outside of the mainstream. but there is other mainstream media reporters to do the same thing, who stereotype in their recordings. the -- in their reporting. the maldeff has done this is to

go on the shows and educate. our mission combines education without region partnership, which is why i'm here today, -- with outreach partnership, which is why i am here today. it is to shift the focus of their reporting. it is both fascinating and a terrible to know that the american public is so afraid and so anxious about undocumented immigrants. if u.s. people how large do think in the undocumented population is, based on all of the reporting and the scare tactics that the media uses, you'd think it would be a large percentage of the population.

actually, it is just under 3% of the entire population. it is a very small segment of the united states. yet, it is a convenient scapegoat for people to blame all of american's problems -- all of america's problems. >> when the economic cliff -- when people feel that the country is going over a cliff, it becomes extraordinarily dangerous. this country has been in the spot before, where you see the irrational sort of aggressive ignorance on steroids. the media needs medical prescription. when i turn on the television, i have to turn it off. it looks ahead of an insanity festival. the partisanship that you hear

in the political debate, it is stoking the fears. this country is at a very interesting point. the white population is feeling very frightened and displaced and disenfranchised. so they're turning on the people they hire to wash their cars. we have folks who put our crops. we have invited them and we turn on them. we then associated entire community with this threat. and is irrational it is irrational in terms of being a threat of all. and it is iirrational in terms of the size. we have an equally irrational reaction -- phobia. there are legitimate fears that we need to address together in

a sane and cogent manner. it has to be based on facts and the way that cultures in iraq and based on what we can know and cannot know. -- and the way that cultures interact and based on what we can know and cannot know. my grandmother used to wait in the night for the night riders conquered the media used to send a signal for when the klan was going to come -- the night riders were going to,. going -- to -- going to come. the scapegoatism is very huge.

and the media it is placing its ratings on it. we need to have television shows sen scripps -- because the american people -- television shows and scripps -- because the american people take their cues from the media. >> we are going to go to questions from our audience. even if it is directed to one person, please go ahead as you wish. the first question -- do american muslims there any responsibilities regarding the extremists among them? >> that is a very loaded question. in general, i am a preacher of

putting the responsibility on us. it is our name. it is our religion. it is people who are claiming our religion they're doing awful things. i mean, you count your blessings. we are really in trouble. [unintelligible] we can dispose the logic of that we are bad, but they are worse. yes, there is responsibility. are we responsible for the

extreme elements in our mix? no, we are not. all we can do is argue our case and put our alternative on the table. this is a theology of death and islam is the theology of life. in a song, i challenge anyone to show me that this is -- in islam, i challenge anyone to show me that this is celebrated. this is a calamity. this is an aberration. we have to put the theology of life to live and humanity and t come closer to god through service. that is juxtaposed to the other. we believe that muslims will gravitate to what i call real

islam. i give myself the celebrity. they would do that rather than gravitate toward something that would give misery. the muslims in the extreme fanatic john younand john royit- in the era of the fiery speakers and the pounding on tables, they take it out of context. they are intimidated and they're taken. it is my responsibility.

if you want to be in islam, read the corona and do not let anyone else will you. -- read the koran and do not let anyone else sway you point. >> how can muslim organizations assure other american organizations that it is ok to monitor most loved suspected of posing a danger? this is the difference between profiling and intervention. how do we constructed in a way that it is done in a healthy way so we do not have to resort to profiling? >> let's talk about profiling. in law enforcement, we have done racial profiling cases.

racial profiling is stupid. it says we are going to pull over everyone who is african american who are driving a car. or they're going to say we are going to pull over every latino driving a truck. in riverside, they did that. they put out a bulletin that said it would pull over every latino in a truck. that is stupid. if there is a threat, this can be done by someone who is fluent enough in the threat, whether you're looking for a white supremacist or someone in the klan. you're not going to go to a black panthers meeting. the problem with what we have right now is that you do not have people fluent enough. you have people who are afraid and ignorant setting the

standards. so what do you do? we end up pulling over everybody with a funny sounding name. the have one friend who was stopped on columbia's campus because the guard thought he looked iraqi. that thing we have to fight. what we do have to do is intelligent intervention. i know, in my community, who the nets are could i know who's about to go off. i know who is off their medication. i can tell who is about to get violent. in domestic violence, we have profiles where men are building themselves up to where it could lead to family annihilation. we need the civil rights community to identify the legitimate tools of intervention and interception.

as i said before, i can do it in my community, but we have got to get -- we have to help law- enforcement come to a more intelligent approach to this. [unintelligible] this is exactly the one community that will help us underground and alienate them. the very people we need to keep us safe, you are using tactics that will alienate them and drive away. it does not get any dumber than that. you also had another dynamic in fort hood. we're talking about doctors could i have two brothers who are doctors -- were talking much

doctors. i have two brothers who are doctors. doctors do not read on one another. they do not challenge one another. you think lawyers are bad? doctors are notorious. you have a medical community and a medical culture -- surgeons who are drug -- a took my brother 10 years to get rid of a drug surgeon because they will not go after one another. there will not prosecute another. they will not raise questions about one another. they may whisper, but they may will not say that this doctor is posing a threat or a danger to the patients. that is what should have happened here. that medical community, that psychiatric community, they knew the problem occurred we know that now from the notes in the file. -- they knew the problem. we kneknow that now from the notes in the file. with people who are dealing with post-traumatic stress,

when you have a doctor with posttraumatic stress, that is your sign. you do not send them. you don't let the pressure buildup. the might be something that impact. we need to get the experts together and we need to help law enforcement get intelligent questions. i see a 5% of the profiling is stuck on steepened -- i see a 85% of the profiling is stuck on stupid. [applause] >> again, this is the media spin on it, the right wing conservative media on it. they said that the military did not follow on this because they were afraid of an eeoc complaint. that is stupid.

this doctor protector phenomenon -- it could've been that the military is so stressed and we're asking them to do so much and we are calling on these psychiatrists to take so much, to hear so much pain and terror and to hold it inside. it could have been that and the lack of psychiatrists and the lack of professional help and the need to keep someone there, even though there were troubling signs, to keep them there because they were stretched so thin and they needed someone to help these soldiers at fort hood. there are a number of reasons why attacks could have happened or why he was not reported or action was not taken against this doctor. the right-wing media automatically immediately wanted

to spin itmt to say that this is why we should not have -- this is why we should have racial profiling and be allowed to racially profile everybody in. it is outrageous for the reasons that mr. rice stated. ]w>> there is a myth that we create and then we are bound by it. let me talk about political correctness. what is politically correct? whether it is politics or otherwise, now comes the notion that, because we're politically correct, i want to know exactly what that means. we should be politically incorrect or what? many are saying, basically, do not treat them fairly.

they do not deserve it. be suspicious of them and speak loud. one the people against them because they're dangerous. this is the sentiment left behind in the last six weeks or so about politically correct. everybody should be correct. i want someone who talks about me to be correct. it is not a maneuver. it is propriety. it is not that they are politically correct. they are as false as the other side saying that he does not want to go fight and kill muslims. where is a psychiatrist in the field going to kill anybody? by that logic, the guy has great

integrity and did not want to kill muslims. you try to help him and if you can not, you cannot. there is no hero here. he doesn't want to go treat patients in a dangerous area. you cannot call him a hero who does not want to go and fight against the enemy. that is nonsense. i want everyone to be corrected me, honestly. i do not want anyone to say that, because you are egyptian and muslim, i am afraid of you. i will not accept that and politeness.

-- impoliteness. did we ever express that we were upset that the fbi was spying on us? [inaudible] [unintelligible] 8 even rhymes. [laughter] -- it even rhymes. [laughter] i feel an album. [applause] [laughter] what is the difference between spying and come and pick me? behind the sign, in my language,

is a place that you do not want to go to. because if you go there, you will not come back. the notions need to be cleared from the discourse if we want to reach concrete results. >> our next question deals with law enforcement. everyone here deals with law enforcement, in terms of engagement, in terms of partnership. but, at the same time, we are progressive thinkers and we are critical of law enforcement policies. how the balance between being critical of certain law enforcement agencies and not disengage from them with the notion that we are reforming our own communities and are working in partnership with these same agencies in dealing with these potentially criminal problems?

>> since i see law enforcement for 20 years and, in the last seven years, have worked very closely with them, when chief bratton left, he gave me chief of police badge. [laughter] my closest to delay partners are unlikely allies, but they are law enforcement. to take the question on -- you cannot disengage. it is extremely dangerous to stay apart from them. i have made it my policy to them that they get sick of me. i do not let them out of my sight. police power is extraordinary. after 9/11, i was so afraid that

we would have a case where concentration camps were ok and that detention camps were ok. we have to help them think clearly. we have to help them solve this problem. we have to help them protect us. and we have to protect them from what they do not know. i say, move into the new police headquarters. i say, assign permanent veto to tagalong with the fbi. keep them engaged. you had a huge fight inside. you had to have a real wrestling match. do we cooperate or do we not? we had to get the lawyers ready. it is still a terrible time, but it was a particularly terrible time. in the middle of that, you engaged in a discussion with her family and you came up with we

are going to engage. now it is going to be like a marriage. there are going to be days when you will kick them out of the house and not talk to them because you're angry with them and there will be days that you come back and come back to the table and work it out. however you need us to help -- i am not going to presume that can help -- bring as and when every need s, the rest of us. but, together, we have to make sure that law enforcement is engaging with the muslim community, the immigrant muslim committee, all the different communities because there are so many of them and i do not know all of them. law enforcement is still just now -- lapd, for the first time in its history, the new chief, charlie beck, is saying, you know what? we, the police, have caused the riots. we, the police, have caused racial risk in this city. we, the police, it must become partners with the community.

if that is coming from them now. it took 100 years of fighting, hand-to-hand combat. you don't have to start there. they are actually wanting your help. they want our help. so the engagement has to happen. but you have to realize that it is a terrible burden, but you will have to educate all of us on how to do that. >> i agree with miss rice. it is critical to forge relationships with law enforcement. the fbi los angeles office has designed a diversity committee. i think that is a good model for law enforcement to follow. it allows all the communities to come together and for all of us to get to know each other better and i think that is a successful model and one that, hopefully, other law enforcement agent people follow.

it is critical for all of us to work with law enforcement and for them to work with us. when it is necessary, sometimes we need to work against law enforcement. for example, there are limited circumstances, such as may 1, a couple of years ago, when the lapd engaged in a melee against immigrants and people who were marching for immigration reform act macarthur park. i am sure a lot of you heard about it on the news. many of our community members were really harmed in that police action. that was one instance where we had to sue the lapd to get not only monetary damages for declines, but also some really important structural reform within the department and to educate them and to bring information to them, like you should not issue dispersal

orders in english only when you are addressing a crowd of mostly spanish speakers because they do not understand what you told them to do. i think it is important, sometimes, to take that approach and to litigate and to advocate on behalf of your community and let them know how to work better with your community and have to be more responsive to the community. >> thank you. back to you. we have vito questions, a double header. -- we have two questions, a double header. you mentioned that death is not celebrated in islam, but martyrdom for a just cause is. this is the argument that extremists use. how you counter that?

then -- hold on. there's more. this is something similar, but different in perspective. although lichen down your -- although i condone your march views -- >> thank you. >> i do not see -- although i condone your moderate views -- a >> thank you. >> osama bin laden-style views are still glorified. why? >> martyrdom was never meant to go guess what, i am going to die and go to heaven.

trying to live through it and achieve victory is life. if, in the process, you die unwillingly, you are a mortar. that is the difference between martyrdom and suicide. suicide means i am fed up with it. i do not care about this life anymore. they are so bad, i am going to blow myself up on them and kill them and myself mortem is i stand up for justice -- myself. martyrdom is i stand up for justice. this is not only in a fighting situation. in life. a great mortar is one who goes

to an impressive ruler and says, you are an oppressor. he was not going to die. he was going to advise the ruler not to be an oppressor. if, in the process, he dies, god bless them. that is different from let me wrap the things around my belt and let me go because tomorrow i will be in heaven. [applause] we have to be aware of these differences and we have a terrible crisis of definitions. i am blaming probably the intelligentsia in general. but muslim scholars should come

with an inventory of definition. what is sacrifice and with his victory? we have to know what we're talking about because, unfortunately, most people who are bigmouthed and healthy and fat and comfortable send young impressionable people to die. why do not go yourself? why not? [applause] you would be even less suspected when you find an older man with a cane and things. they may not search him as they would pay 20-year-old beira's boy. but they don't do that. they send people to die. -- they send young people to die. we should be fed up with this. call their bluff.

the most valuable thing we have is our young people. [applause] do not give them that kind of opium that makes them go and die. [unintelligible] what is more clear than the profit teaching -- do not wish to face the enemy. what is more clear? the idea is not to die. if i can find a peaceful solution or something or a compromise, i did because life is good. life is to be lived. the crimkoran, in chapter 9, the

messenger that calls you will give you live. it never says that it would give you death. another question is why other pitches to not -- and other creatures do not say that? i do not want to volunteer reading their mind because i may read it wrong. but i think you can sense that i have lots of anger about that attitude. i am a preacher and i send other people to die. that is terrible. that is unacceptable. [unintelligible] [applause] >> we really only have time for one more question although,

there are several that we can put on our website and have the panel answer later. how do we teach our children love of countries even though immigrants who do not believe in the u.s. -- i would say that there are people who do not believe in the system and do not feel a part of the system. how do we deal with this issue of raising children in the muslim community? >> i am itching to take a shot at it. you said immigrant. that is with the question says. i will be quiet for the rest of the evening. >> dr. hathout is absolutely

right. what we do not do in this country is that we do not teach why is so great. look at any other great democracy or look at monarchies. look at any country in the world and think about -- and i use my family as an example -- i am a great granddaughter of slaves and slave owners. in for generations, my family is at the pinnacle of choice and freedom. my cousin was the secretary of state. in no other country could descendants of slaves have ascended so quickly. was it easy? no. [applause] do we still fight every day? did we have anger? yes, but our anchor has never

exceeded our love of this country's credos. it is only in this country, no matter for you come from, where there is at least a path and a common ideology that says that everybody can belong. we are not there. we have not achieved it. we're still achieving the american pluralism. but no other democracy does it as well as we do. it takes generations, but we do it. do we have ghettos? yes. we have indian reservations? yes. like i said, i could write myself a reparations check end do a native american treaty obama itself with myself. -- treat all by myself with myself. good to any other country, egypt, you will find equally -- >> [unintelligible] [laughter]

>> there is not a nation on the planet that does not do that. a poor miss unknown -- people nervous-- e pluribus unim. that is how we teach our kids. >> today, on c-span, william eggers talks about what government does and does not do well. then secretary of state hillary clinton on human rights. bruce randall looks at u.s. policy in afghanistan and pakistan. richard burr kaiser remembers the life of the magazine's founder, william s. buckley.

>> we will talk with clark kent irvin, henry farrell, and ken walsh. "washington journal" starts at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. no available is c-span's book "abraham lincoln, great american historians on our 16th president. it is in hardcover at your favorite bookseller and now in digital audio to listen to any time, available where digital audio is sold.

>> author of williame eggers spoken sentences go about his book. this is just over an hour. >> it is wonderful to be here in beautiful sunny california. a lot of my cousins are here. it really means a lot to me. we can put a man on the moon. how many times have you heard that phrase.

if we can put a man on the moon, why can we not hear homelessness. if we can put a man on the moon, why can we not fixed schools. if we can put a man on the moon, why can we not make killer robot police? >> before this decade is out, landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. no project will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long-range exploration of space. >> john o'leary, my co-author, does a wicked kennedy impersonation.

it was an impossible challenge, but america pulled together. in july, 1969, neil armstrong spent his flag on the moon. the trip to the moon inspired a generation. climbing mount everest, flying across the atlantic, and reaching the north pole all rolled into one. no one alive at that time could forget that feeling of pride at that moment. do you remember that? most of you probably remember where you were exactly at that time is made up -- at that time. it made an impression on americans, especially the young. like barack obama. he said, "my grandfather explained that we americans can set our minds to do anything we decide to do."

we had won world war ii. we had to rebuild europe through the marshall plan. and we build the national highway system. we were justifiably proud of our accomplishments. but is our government today capable of executing our greatest challenges? iraq, katrina, the brutal economic meltdown, where once again facing questions about our government's ability to execute. the men on the street believes that we have a crisis. people are mad. they are angry angry. they're angry at wall street, but also at our government. those who run our government programs also believe that we have a crisis. 60 percent of their senior executives said that government

today is less capable of executing than it was 30 years ago. most people will then ask who's to blame for this state of affairs? the answer, of course, depends on whose side you're on. george w. bush, barack obama, newt gingrich, nancy pelosi, the republicans, the democrats, if the free contractors, the unions, michael more, rush limbaugh -- who's to blame? it is a natural question asked. but is it to the right question? all you need to do is visit a local bookstore and go into the current events section which is filled with them. -- filled with villains. i wanted us to appear on the cover of our book in short black many dresses. but my brother dave talk this

out of it. there's always the paperback. instead of who is to win, we ask a different question. why do some issues fell and why do some succeed? we look for great successes and monumental failures. we wanted to look for patterns. we wanted to look at the success of the marshall plan to the integration reform and vietnam. we reviewed all of these initiatives. we realized that it would require a small army of individuals who understood the government and were willing to work for free. the answer was clear. we needed cred students. [laughter] with of the help of more than 70 grad student, we -- we needed

grad students. [laughter] we were looking for a path to success. my co-author and die each bring a different perspective to this issue. john is an engineer by training, and he developed a process map for making toast in the morning. like any good engineer, he said we need to look at this and break it down into discrete processes. while all of these initiatives were different, they followed a very predictable path, a journey to success. there are lots of ways that an initiative can end in disaster. but you must have a good idea. you must have unemployment doubled as i entered the design must win approval -- you must have on employman implementable.

and it must win approval. [unintelligible] there must be confident implementation and the initiative must generate the desired results. by simply visualizing it as a map, we could see the root causes. i am a consultant. my perspective is different. a consultant is often called in when an initiative is in the ditch and they need to get it out of it. but this map, while technically correct, it really does not reflect the real world that i

see every day of government and government initiative. i tend to look at all the possible problems and look at the systemic barriers to success. the potential for failure looks everywhere. -- the potential for failure loolurks everywhere. to learn about the traps, you have to read the book. that means you're going to have to buy the book, which is available after. i am told that they make fine holiday presents. you take the process map and then you take the trap and you put those together and then you have the map, which we think is the more realistic map. it looks a little bit like that. there are copies of the map behind you.

we will start out by looking at the idea phase. not all ideas are critical. the robocopter was a bad idea. it got a patent even. new coke, bad idea. the is the buttons were designed to whip double-digit inflation. bad idea. how does an idea like this come into place? you can have a successful initiative if you have a bad idea. bad ideas become reality when they are not exposed to external criticism.

this phenomenon is called tolstoy syndrome. it occurs when people in groups shut themselves off from critics, from those who think differently than they do. a few years ago, a professor from the university of georgia said that this is how the brain works. he had ardent republicans and ardent democrats watching debate bbetween george bush and john kerry. he had their heads wired up so that they could monitor their brains. it looked a little bit like that. it is available on ebay for $29.95. he found that republicans thought that the bush had won. democrats thought that kerry had

wondere. both sides ignored it when each side is being inconsistent. it was the emotional part of the brain. those watching the debate were not thinking at all. they were just pulling for their guy. this causes a lot of problems. think of the world we are living in today. so much of the news we get confirms our views rather than informs us. a route of the problems we have today is this that shows up time and time again. the answer is to expose these ideas to new ways of thinking. it is like having an engineer and consultant look at the same problem.

that is the approach that was used to solve one of the biggest environmental problems of the 1980's -- acid rain. in lake michigan, my family was crazy about the beach. throughout most of my childhood, when never actually got to go to the beach. why? it was covered in dead fish. really ugly dead fish. why? because of acid rain. it occurs in coal-bearing plants and cents pollution into the air and then it goes about hundreds of miles and land somewhere else and kills lakes and rivers and the animals and wildlife within it. it was the biggest environmental issue of the 1980's. you think something would have been done about it could

unfortunately, -- about it. unfortunately, the debate fell into two camps. you had one group wanted to eliminate all pollution. they wanted to put plants out of business. each was locked into their world view. they did not disagree. they despise each other. there was an impasse. into this quagmire came to senators. they were a democrat and republican. here is how they broke through the logjam. they brought in economists to look at the problem. they were from a think tank adherence 7 cisco called the

environmental deaf -- they were from a think tank out here in san francisco called the environmental economic fund. are there any economist in the room? you know what they say about economists. and they are really good with numbers, but they lack the personality to become engineers. [laughter] .

>> most importantly, by the time my little brother came along, all our home town beach was free of dead fish. overcoming this syndrome is all about listening. if we think we know the answer, would close off all these avenues of exploration. let's go back a few years ago to something to all experience here. in the 1990's, california had a problem. the economy was in a slump. in part it was because of high energy prices. governor wilson and the

legislature had an idea. what if we replace public monopolies in the competitive market with the goal of innovation and cost savings? it was not a fundamentally crazy idea. the regulation was largely successful in the airline industry's in the 1970's. it all depends on how it was designed. the design of the new electricity market was really quite simple. power generators had to divest themselves of transmission lines. the old monopoly generators -- the generators were prohibited -- did you get that? not many people really understood how the new system would work, including most of the legislators.

do you know who figured out how the whole system would work? enron and a few other firms understood the new system better than the system's creators and better than the regulators. enron soon figured out how to profit from the loopholes in the design, using schemes with kid names like ricochet, fat boy, and death star. it would send it back over the grid to oregon at a higher price and make a huge profit for doing nothing at all, because electricity travels at the speed of light. in the summer of 2000, the crisis hit. you know how the story goes from here. you all lived through it. there was a heat wave. it bought -- it got up to about 109 degrees in san jose, the highest temperatures ever seen.

energy demand shot up and the lights went out. the weird phenomenon of global black out became a feature of life in california. in silicon valley, they had the electricity supply of a third world nation. they are using electricity generated by people on a bicycle. billions of dollars were lost by consumers and the state. governor gray davis was kicked out of office. how did such a bill become law? that is where the process gets really scary. why? because it was an exemplary process.

they had hearings and meetings and visited other jurisdictions with bipartisan cooperation. they worked until late at night. they did such a good job at the law passed unanimously, 98-0. as you know, nothing passes california legislature unanimously. nobody voted against it. the problem was the legislation. they did not design it to work in the real world. they thought there were crafting a bill that could pass, and they wanted to see as many votes as they could get. they put in a lot of stuff to make everybody happy. the problem was, the different parts did not work together in the system. the design would not hold up. california's electricity deregulation points to a big factor behind many governments failures. it actually lies at the design

space. the. only 16% said the federal government actually designs policies that can be implemented. similar results when we surveyed members of a senior executive service. it is not always easy to get them animated. all you need to do is ask them about the policy design process. policy designed at the federal level is pathetic. there is a gap between communication and understanding. it is done without implementation considerations. there is a big problem here. what is the cause of this? the civil servants will say it is the politicians. the politicians will say it is the bureaucrats. what we found actually was that neither one is the case.

the problem is the gap between the two that has actually gotten better in recent years. this wall of separation -- severson tech -- the wall of separation which was iis betweeo designed and those to implement it. the real goal is way down the line. nowhere is it more apparent than in the quest for energy independence. in 1974, president ford signed a law that energy policy and innovation act. by 1980, imports of oil were higher than 1973. in 1978, president carter signed the national energy act. the goal was to add 20% of all

the energy we use from the sun by the end of the 20 century. we did not quite get to 20%. in 2005, president bush signed the energy policy act with the goal of economic security. the result, the act of 2007. getting through the legislature is a milestone, but you do not get the ticker-tape parade until the results actually roll in. if you forget this, you will end up drowning in the river of failure. that is not a place that you want to be. our next phase is implementation. the biggest threat in this phase is over confidence. this often occurs when really smart, capable people become overconfident of their ability

and failed to prepare for all the risks. i am sorry, i just could not resist that. implementing complex public initiatives is a lot tougher than it looks. the key to avoiding failure is to take failure seriously. anyone who has ever done a rehab on your house knows that an estimate of $15,000.30 weeks means that actually you should take out a loan for $40,000 and moved in with your in-laws. that is how to be successful in this initiative. let me give you a quick story. if you are like me, a few things are more frustrating than sitting in traffic.

economists have been talking about congestion pricing for decades. no one wants to actually paid for the roads. the result is that numerous cities talked about the congested charge for decades, but no one had actually done it. london was one of those cities. by the 1990's, traffic was so bad that traffic in london was moving at the same speed as when they had carriages in the victorian age. the convergence of events occurred to change the political dynamic. the most important was the election of a new mayor. he is unapologetically a man of the left. he counts fidel castro and you ochoa's as among his closest friends.

-- hugo chavez. livingston had the most unlikely profile you could imagine of a candidate. there are many ways this thing could blow out. think about the times it has been proposed in san francisco. the initiative would impact a lot of people's lives. had to be done all at once, not street by street, and it had never been done before on this scale anywhere. political of visor's said don't do it, because if it did not work, he could kiss the next term goodbye. the media said it would be an unmitigated disaster.

a rabbi in the guardian newspaper said my synagogue was bombed during the war, but livingston is going to do more damage than the germans. but he did not panic. what he did was, he took failure seriously. he had to take a lot of extraordinary steps to make sure it went well. they tested the plan and test it again. there were fanatical about mapping out every single risk. they did some more games of everything that could go wrong. two weeks before the launch, they had a dry run. they wanted to put the control room to the test. they would get calls all day long to respond to potential crises. the day of war games started at 7:00 a.m.. the team had just sat down for coffee and suddenly a call comes in. a major traffic accident has

called a huge bottleneck. the team is ready for it. because entering the zone at a detour side or electronically flag and they will not charge. communications between the cameras and a hub are broken down and there is no way the target will come into the zone. again, they are ready for it. they have a backup computer system. someone has jumped off tower bridge. it would like that all day long. they were ready for it and were able to handle everything that was thrown at them. just in case, before the launch they said a woman named kate who was sadly one of my colleagues to walk the entire route, 26 miles, armed with a pin and a piece of paper. her assignment was to make sure that nothing was going to happen on the road network without them knowing about it.

it is 5:30 a.m. the day of the launch. mayor livingston steps out and flash, he is mobbed by photographers. they all want a picture of the mayor on the day they believe will be his waterloo, but they did not end in disaster, it ended in triumph. everything went smoothly. there's not a single glitch. the streets were nearly quiet that day. remember the doom and gloom headlines? here are the headlines from the day after the launch. he tell me those headlines were one of the best days of his life. he knew it could have a tragic ending. as he put it, nothing in public life had turned out better than hoped for until now. this goes into the last phase of the journey.

that is the results phase. that means we are near the end of the speech. recall the greek myth about sisyphus pressing a rock up the hill. those who work in government know, and some of you over there know the public sector hill is really tough. i have worked in government, the i have worked in government, the private8jt sector, and the hill0 who are deeply skilled at navigating the public sector to rein. i like to think of these people as kind of like the indiana

jones of government. when they seek the golden idol who is just there and looks like they can grab, they look around for the poison dart. the white does not look very much like indiana jones. -- dwight does not look much like indiana jones. he was one of those unsung heroes. he worked at a senior level for seven consecutive american presidents. he is now in his 80's, and the pictures on his wall are pictures of great people in history. he helped eisenhower write the

nuclear test ban treaty. he was there when kennedy signed it. he was the guy that lbj turned to for the alaska earthquake recovery. it was the biggest earthquake in north american history. dwight told me he was watching the news of the earthquake at home with his wife. two days later he got a call from lbj and he said he was going to alaska. he helped johnson also create the department of housing and launched the war on poverty. he was in charge of the new federalism for richard nixon and civil service reform for jimmy carter. ronald reagan came in and actually put the whitdwight in . he was kidnapped once by

colombian drug lords while leading the war on drugs in the state department. soon after he retired. one story i love about dwight, he was in a meeting when kennedy was first elected. they did not have the national security council. he was sitting in on the limited nuclear test ban treaty. in that meeting, arthur schlesinger was there, the president's historian, very close to the kennedy family. dwight was arguing for the limited nuclear test ban treaty, and schlesinger was arguing against it. they got into really heated argument, and after the meeting, dwight went back and tendered his resignation. he peered they would not want him around any longer.

-- figured they would not want him around any longer. the funny thing was, during the meeting, who was looking over -- he was looking over and realize that bobby kennedy was watching. he thought he would have to have another career and go into the private sector. actually, he went back, and he was invited back to the next meeting. arthur schlesinger was gone, and dwight was there. what that story shows us is the importance of courage and speaking up for what you believe in. our nation faces very serious challenges today. the difficulty we have been having actually tackling these challenges. there is only one way out of this predicament. it is to choose wisely which policies to pursue an execute them effectively.

i hope we are a little better able to navigate the process of making government better so we can all have a better future. thank you very much. [applause] >> our thanks to william eggers, co-author of the book. thanks for your comments this evening. my name is joe epstein. i am a past chair on the board of governors, and i will be moderating tonight's audience question period. we have a lot of questions here for you, and we are about to begin. many of the questions addressed your new book's central theme, that being the process of ideas

through implementation. let me begin with this question. how would you rate the obama campaign for its design and implementation strategies during the election process of 2008? >> that is a great question. i actually wrote the whole thing that did not make it into the book about how the campaign actually performed from the standpoint of execution. it was one of the most flawlessly executed campaigns. the head their idea and they stuck to that idea. in terms of bringing in a lot of people, to help them execute that, and in the face of some hard things, they stuck with it. the campaign really kept their eye on the goals in the end.

from an execution standpoint, it was really a model. nor government initiatives -- if war government initiatives operated like that, it would be easy. it is of being a big barrier to doing things that seamlessly. >> let's talk about the marshall plan. you write a lot about it and it is a quintessential example that you use. you refer to it as an example of a successful government program. might not be obama stimulus plan be a modern-day version of the marshall plan, but this time actually for us? >> i have not all of it that way. on the marshall plan, what was interesting about it was that when the marshall plan was first proposed, as a lot of you my remarkmight remember, it was not

terribly popular. the public was split. what was interesting about how they did it was that rather than try to ram it through, what they did was allow for a lot of thoughtful legislative debates, and they sent a lot of the senators and others who were not quite convinced it was the right thing to europe to actually take a look at it. they also had a big public relations campaign where they would do town hall meetings and went across america to try to make the case for this. it was a huge effort. there were buttons and everything involved at that time. it was an exemplary process for how to go about that. when you look at these major initiatives, there are few successful initiatives that we found that actually were done on

a strictly partisan basis. you had bipartisan cooperation and the majority of the american people behind it. hawke >> what are the back -- the best managed government programs? >> a lot of ranting and raving is done on the radio. we have had a lot of failures. we have had some real successes in the last 30 years. people looked at me sometimes like i am a crazy person. we have actually had some really good successes. let's look at a few of them. one of them was acid rain reduction, a great in purnell success. another one was crime reduction. in american cities we have seen 7% reductions in crime over the

last 15 years. that was due to really strong execution. welfare reform was of a bipartisan initiative between president clinton, republican congressman, and also the states were involved. a huge reduction, a lot of people got into work. it had already been tried in the states like wisconsin, wyoming, and cities. the person who drafted the bill said we are just riding the wave now. they gave a lot of flexibility to states for have the cat actually implemented. that is a good model -- how they can actually implement it.

>> how does one best regulate big government without increasing the size of the bureaucracy? is that even possible? >> regulate the government? regulating government is one of our big problems to date. if you were one of the senior executives that i talked about, you are faced with so many rules and regulations and constraints on how to manage. when we did our survey, we ask, what is the biggest reason we are having problems today? they said partisanship and other areas. all the administrative rules and constraints and everything that make it impossible to actually do anything if you are in government. we have made that hill for sisyphus of lot steeper than it actually was. what we need to do is the regulate the government allots

-- deregulate the government a lot. those of you work in the private sector, if you had the same kind of constraints, you would find it incredibly frustrating. we need to take steps to remove a lot of those. >> let's identify ourselves. you are listening to the commonwealth club of california radio program. our guest today is william eggers, author and commentator, who is discussing when government works and when government does not work. here is an example, in my opinion, about the tsa. after 9/11, the transportation security administration was established to inspect it -- to ensure the security of air travel. how would you rate the tsa?

was it designed and implemented effectively, in your opinion? >> sometimes you mentioned tsa in polite company, and everyone has a story to tell. charitably, it was not exactly known for its customer service in its first few years. it is interesting, we talk about tsa in the book, because there is a positive story. a new director came in several years after it had been in operation named kip hawley. with 55,000 screeners there, there have to be a lot of them with really good ideas for how to make things easier for all of you when you go through the screening process, while keeping us say. right now, there is no way for him to get through all the layers of management. he was trying to find a way to reach down and get the ideas from individual screeners, which is a wonderful thing to do. he came up with something called

the idea factory. using collaboration technology and the internet, they put something up that allow any tsa employee to submit ideas for improving operations and making customer service better. a lot of agencies have ideas suggestion boxes that do not go any place. now they could not only submit the ideas, but other employees would get to vote on whether they were good ideas or not and participate in the debate. kip axle was there participating in the forums. over time, a lot of the ideas actually became adopted. if any of you have ever been through airport security where they have diamond lanes and black planes, that came from this idea factory. they also had another one called simply job switching. dozens of ideas coming from the front line are actually

implemented at tsa, and it has made it a much better agency. it is a wonderful example of how to break through the syndrome by reaching out to a much more diverse group of people to come up with good ideas. >> i have a real-life example myself in terms of the tolstoy'' syndrome. i was recently visiting a customer in heavy construction business. he had several pictures of a big big on his office wall. -- a big dig. i think that tolstoy's syndrome is seeing only the possibilities that you want to see. he proceeded to tell me he had worked for three years on the

big dig project at a very high level. i saw what you wrote in the book which was very interesting. could you elaborate on that as an example of the tolstoy syndrome? >> if any of you have been to boston, you know about the big dig, one of our biggest urban infrastructure projects ever. it was supposed to cost a couple of million dollars and the federal government put in a lot of the money. it ended up having huge cost overruns and took decades to actually finish. that actually had a collapsing tunnel that ended up killing a woman. it was a pretty horrendous process overall. one of the problems was that they were actually standing mostly federal money. when your spending other people's money, those cost

overruns and other things in that occurring. it was called the case of the red herring bold. a bold kept slipping, and they kept on misdiagnosing why they were slipping. they did not look at obvious. they could only see it in a certain way. basically, over time, it ended up in the collapsing of the tunnel. what occurred with the big dig was simply the notion of, they wanted to see it in a certain way and refuse to look at alternative viewpoints and see it differently. a lot of infrastructure projects we looked at had massive cost overruns and massive problems. we need to spend a lot of time figuring how to do those better. one of the things we found is that the more the money tends to come from the locality itself, the more efficiently they are

done. >> the next question has to do is comparing china's former government to ours. china's form of government has been referred to as authoritarian capitalism. how would you compare their former of capitalism to ours? which form of capitalism can take ideas and then implement the most effectively? >> that is an interesting question. before we tunnel -- title the book, it was originally called a " mussolini's cursed." everyone used to say that mussolini could make the trains run on time. that is actually a bit of a myth, that that actually happen. it is this longing we often have in times like these when everything seems to be going wrong and everyone is screaming at each other, we have that longing for this more

authoritarian form of government, where they are just going to get things done. remember during the olympics, that bill all these incredible projects fairly quickly -- they build all these incredible project fairly quickly. articles were saying, why cannot we as a democracy do it that well and as quickly? it is a big reason why we wrote that book. we do believe that we can be successful. it will always be a little tougher. there'll always be more political obstacles and more debate, but that is the price. we would not give up the freedom to actually have the debate for that deficiency. >> the government is spending more and more on washington- based consultants, and the role

of lobbyists has also been extremely active. they are doing this as more government projects get initiated. what do you think about this? >> as a consultant, i think it is a wonderful, very smart thing to do. i did write another book dealing with this issue about governing by network. the complexity of our problems today means that whether it is a private company, the government, or any organization, when you look at a lot of the big things we got done over time, they were not done by one agency or another. they are done by a network of different agencies and often by university scientists and others. the manhattan project actually had over 50,000 academics,

scientists, researchers who are non-government. there were only 5000 government officials. when we decided to put a man on the moon, nasa was really small. there is no way nasa would be able to realize putting a man on the moon without a lot of people. they had to go into academic areas, as scientific contractors and consultants, and bring the men. over time, about 69,000 were actually employed to help realize that goal of putting a man on the moon. over time, they were able to quickly scaled back again. there is a lot of benefit for using people from the outside who have done these projects time and time again. >> one of my earlier questions had to do with comparing the marshall plan to the obama stimulus plan. here is a follow-up to that.

in a time of economic despair and while we are in a recession, are you in favor of government expansion and even more stimulus spending? >> what we do in the books, we take a process look at government in general. the question is about the role of government and what it should do in the first place. that is a really important question and answer. if you do not answer that, then a lot of the other does not make sense. we try to address the second question, which is what -- wants to decide what to do, how you actually executed? it does not matter whether you are a liberal who want universal health care or your a conservative who wants to make government smaller and have school vouchers and other things. execution is really important. i have been working in government reform for over two decades now.

believe me, i have been involved in many examples of actually trying to find cost savings in government, trying to trim agencies. one thing i can tell you is that actually making government smaller is a lot harder than it actually launching a new program. too often, people who believe that governments should be smaller and not spend enough time thinking about that. they want to just come up with an idea and toss it over the wall. when it doesn't work, they blame it on the bureaucrats. it is really important for people on both sides of the aisle to understand how government really works and get out of the notion of the blame game. >> you are listening to the commonwealth club of california radio program. our guest is william eggers, discussing when government works

and when it does not. in the book, you talk about how general macarthur to charge in japan after the surrender. for six years, macarthur was successful in integrating the civilian and military leadership. can you compare this to the role that paul bremer played after the fall of saddam hussein in iraq? >> we did look at iraq when we wrote this book, because how can you not look at it? in terms of iraq, we actually fell into a number of the traps that we talk about in the book. one of those traps was told story syndrome. when the decision was finally made to go in, and looking at reconstruction, what they failed

to do, a lot of people in the state department and elsewhere have a lot of knowledge and were looking at this for many years who argued about all the things that could go wrong and all the different problems and possibilities. what happened was that a lot of the administration did not want to hear contrary voices, and they were then shut out of the process. one guy named tom warwick was infamous leaked kicked off the team by rumsfeld. that was a very big problem there. they did more war gaming in terms of looking it then we did and looking at the after raft -- aftermath of iraq.

we learned a lot of lessons from iraq from an execution standpoint. one thing we then have to say is with the surge, we have another thing called a re-evaluation phase that we did not talk about. looking at it over time and seeing whether it works or not. in this case, they did a really good job of reevaluating what was working and not working in iraq. in some of the provinces you had some really terrific general's and other soldiers who were basically using this method. i think there are some real problems there, but in the end, there was the surge that could overcome a lot of the problems

they fell into initially. >> this is such a short question with a huge possibility of answers. maybe you can highlight an answer here. how can health care reform be effectively implemented? >> i will try to keep it really short. the health care reform, what it illustrates is actually one of the biggest issues, the biggest conundrums we face today. for healthcare reform to happen, two things need to occur. first, you need to get the bill passed congress, and secondly, you actually need to have a plan that will work in the real world. in some cases, those two things actually end up contradicting each other. what happens with a lot of legislative bills is that to get enough support, you end up

having to add a lot to it and changed the design around and put in a lot of extra things into the bill that you might not have wanted. that is one of the issues where fake -- we are facing with health care. they are trying to get it through and trying to get the number of votes. the big question is whether it will actually work in the real world. that is the most important question. if you do not have a success -- you do not have a success just by getting the bill passed. it will not actually be implemented until 2014 or 2015. it is very early to say. you can find some aspects -- they will do some pilot projects. they have innovation centers they are thinking about.

you don't know how exactly hell lot of this is going to work in the real world. with welfare reform, one of the things we did know, it had been tried in a lot of the states before that actually passed a welfare reform bill. >> what do you see government doing to better work with industry? both small business and big business. >> when you look at most of these big initiatives today, they are not just government alone. government is involving contractors and independence and academics in it. the key skill you need as a public official is the ability to do that. i think we have some great examples. the person who helped get us to the moon was a guy named james

webb. he was the head of nasa when president kennedy announced this. what he did, he had to basically find a way to work with industry, a lot of the defense contractors and space companies to figure out a way to call them all together. one of the funny things when you look at the aircraft that was going up, it was actually put together with low bids in the end, which is a little bit scary. we need to move away from ideological fight about whether we should privatize or not, or more government or less government. with almost all these initiatives, you have partnerships between the public and private sectors. more closely together they can work, the more public value you can create.

weather is infrastructure here in california, where the public sector does not build much of the infrastructure, they need to do more in the public-private partnership. >> i hate to see the program end, but we only have time for one last question. in your judgment, what is your judgment on al gore's reinventing government programs of the late 1990's? >> the reinventing government program was based of a program that i had an opportunity to manage for several years. it had a lot of wonderful aspects to it. one of the things the program did was try to create innovation in a lot of different federal agencies. they had awards that would give for people who did innovation.

a lot of time and attention went into it the first couple of years. one of the overall issues, it did not end up radically reforming the federal government. one of the reasons is that this step is not very sexy, the things we have talked about. what happens is, politicians and others kind of lose interest after the first couple of years and move on to something else. when that happens, the interest wanes a little bit in these programs. i believe this is absolutely critical. the most important government issue we have today, and when you think about california and where the state is at an the troubled state has had, the very difficult nature of the state, for the next governor of

california, this notion of making government work better and restructuring it, there cannot be more important issue. i would just hope that it becomes part of the campaign debate. >> something we do not always do at the commonwealth club, but i want to thank all of those in the audience for the wonderful questions you submitted. special thanks go to william eggers, co-author of the book. we also thank the audience that is here and on the radio, television, and the internet. the program has been part of the american values series. i am joe epstein, and this meeting of the commonwealth club of california, where you are in the know, is adjourned. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

>> coming up on c-span, a recent speech by secretary of state hillary clinton on human rights. a former cia analyst looks at policy in afghanistan and pakistan. later, historians discuss the life of senator ted kennedy. >> now available, when abraham lincoln, great american

historians on our 16th president. from $56, journalists, and writers, from his early years in the white house and his relevance today. now in digital audio to listen to any time, available or digital audio downloads are sold. >> recently, secretary of state hillary clinton laid out the obama administration's human- rights approach during a speech at georgetown university. topics include efforts to address human rights abuses in russia and china. this is an hour. >> the honorable caroline kessner and the hon. hillary rodham clinton, secretary of state for the united states.

[applause] >> their students, faculty, and staff, it is my honor to welcome you to the human rights agenda for the 21st century, with secretary of state hillary clinton. december 10 mark the international human rights day. we are reminded of the historical drafting of the international declaration of human rights. a simple, yet powerful statement that we were entering a new era in which genocide, torture, and other crimes against humanity would not be tolerated.

i have had the unique opportunity to take a course on the human rights culture founded upon this universal declaration. our course observed that the past six decades have paid a rather different picture. since the holocaust, impassioned cries have never again fallen upon deaf ears. although identifying a responsibility to protect, the international community remains and negligent in dressing crisis like that in the condo. financial giants continue to line their pockets as the impoverished world try to put food on their tables and clothes on their backs. nevertheless, the human rights culture thrives on the support from various actors such as celebrities and ngo's, and georgetown has played its part.

it will require champions like secretary clinton. i am especially honored that secretary and will deliver her address and human rights here at georgetown university. [applause] john is the president of georgetown university. the university has completed a $1 billion capital campaign, significantly increased student financial aid, and strengthened endowments for faculty research. he also helped expand georgetown's initiatives such

as emerging economies. he is a member of the council on foreign relations. he is a board member of the national association of independent colleges and universities. most recently he was honored in 2008 at the washingtonian. [applause] >> it is my pleasure to welcome all of you here this afternoon. it's an honor to have with us the united states secretary of state, hillary rodham clinton to discuss the human rights agenda for the 21st century. in this new century, no nation can achieve its lowest potential if any segment of the population -- is the list of

potential if anyone is disenfranchised and their skills are ignored, it their potential and promise is squandered. at a time when nations are increasingly interdependent and interconnected, the situation in any one nation affects every nation in the global community. for nearly four decades in various roles, secretary clinton has been a champion for the cause of human rights. a champion of human dignity, human worth, both here and abroad for the neediest and most vulnerable and most wounded in our midst. she has long been a voice for the voiceless and powerless, most especially women and children. her acclaimed speech in beijing in 1995, where she declared that human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights, not only helped inspire and galvanize women throughout the global community,

it is now considered a milestone event in the history of the struggle for universal human rights. the last time the secretary was here with us was in 2004, when then senator clinton joined senator jack reed and other distinguished guests for a conference on national security in the military reserve. hillary rodham clinton now serves as 67 united states secretary of state. predecessors include thomas jefferson, james madison, james monroe, daniel webster, george marshall, and of course, madeleine albright. when she was secretary of state, madeleine worked together with secretary clinton to launch the federal government's model voices democracy initiative, and today vital voices is a nonprofit organization that works to train and organize

women leaders from around the world. before being appointed to work current position by president obama, secretary clinton served as a united states senator from new york, where she was a strong advocate for the expansion of economic opportunity and access to health care. prior to that, she was first lady for eight years and worked -- on many issues relating to children and families, especially health care, leading a successful bipartisan effort to provide care to millions of children through the children's health program. her biography is also one of firsts. the first first lady to hold a law degree, the first sitting first lady to be elected to the senate, or any public office. the first woman to win statewide election in new york, the first woman to win a presidential state primary, and the first first lady to ever win a grammy. [laughter]

that was for her ground- breaking audio recording of her book ago children, it takes a village." her thoughtful and thought- provoking remarks resonate with us at georgetown in our catholic and jesuit heritage by promoting social justice. it is my honor to introduce the united states secretary of state, the hon. hillary rodham clinton. [applause]

>> thank you it is wonderful being back here at georgetown in this wonderful cast and hall, and to give you something to do during exam week. [laughter] it is one of those cause i- legitimate reasons for taking a break, which i am very happy to have provided. i want to thank chaz for his introductory remarks. those of you in the foreign service her reflections of the extraordinary opportunities it is to be here. it is an honor to be delivering this speech at georgetown because there is no better place than this university to talk about human rights. the administration and faculty

embody the long tradition of supporting free expression and free inquiry in the cause of human rights around the world. i know that the president himself has taught a course on human rights, as well as on the ethics of international development with one of my longtime colleagues, carol lancaster, the acting dean of the school of foreign service. i want to commend the faculty here who are helping to shape our thinking on human rights, conflict resolution, development, and related subjects. it is important to be at this university because the students here, the faculty, every single year ad to the into religious dialogue. you give voice to many advocates and activists who are working on the frontlines of the global human rights movement for the human rights institute here at the law school and other programs. . .

thank you for all ofthat you do. [applause]

today i want to speak to you about the obama administration's human rights agenda. it is a subject on the minds of many people who are eager to hear our approach. because it is a critical issue is that warrant our energy and attention, my comments today will provide an overview of our thinking on human rights and democracy and how they fit into our broader human policy. let me also say what this is not. it could not be a comprehensive accounting of abuses within nations with whom we have raised human rights concerns. it is not a checklist. we issue a human rights report every year. that goes into great detail on any concerns we have for many countries. i hope we can use this

opportunity to look at this important issue in a broader of light and appreciate the full complexity and urgency. let me turn to the business at hand. in his acceptance speech for the nobel peace prize, president obama said that while war is never welcome or good, it will sometimes be right and necessary. only a just peace, based upon the rights and dignity of every individual, can be truly lasting. throughout history, there have been those who violently denied that truth. our mission is to embrace and work for lasting peace through a practical strategy to implement it. the speech reminded us that our basic values that are enshrined in our declaration of

independence are not only the source of our strength and endurance, and they are the birthright of every one in, man, and child on earth. -- endurance, and they are the birthright of every new one in woman, man, and a child on earth. we will have every effort to foster developments. the potential within every person to learn, discover, and embrace the world around them, the potential to join freely with others to shape their communities so that every person can find fulfillment. it is the potential to share the duties and tragedies of life, laughter and tears, with the

people we love. that potential is sacred. that is a dangerous belief to many who hold power and who can stretch their position against another. it expands the circle of rights and opportunities to all people, advancing their freedoms and possibilities is why we do what we do. we observed steven wright week. -- human rights week. week proclaimed a new framework for laws and institutions that the phil the dow of never again. they affirmed the universality of declaration.

it challenges discrimination against women and religious minorities. every person counts. it exposes those who violate the standards. if we celebrate the progress, our focus must be on the work that remains to be done, and the preamble it encourages us to use it as a standard of achievement bri. we cannot deny the eloquent promises and the life experiences of so many of our fellow human beings. we must finish the job. our human rights agenda is to make human rights a human

reality. the first step is to see it in the broader context. people must be free from the oppression of tierney and discrimination and fear of leaders who will imprison them. they must be free from the oppression of want of health, food, and education. to fill their potential, people must choose laws and leaders, a share and access information, criticize and in debate. they must be free to worship. they must love in the way they choose. they must be free to pursue the dignity that comes with self- reliance and improvement. human rights have both negative and positive requirements.

people should be free of tyranny in whatever form. that is why fostering development is a cornerstone of our human rights agenda. this administration will promote, support, and defend democracy. we will relinquish neither the word nor the idea to those who abused it to nearly or to justify unwise policies. we stand for democracy because we want all people to enjoy a consistent protection of the rights that are naturally theirs, whether they were born in tallahassee or pteron -- tehran. it is crucial that we clarify what we mean when we talk about

a democracy. democracy means not only elections to choose leaders but also active assistance and transparent institutions that are accountable to all citizens. respecting rights is not a choice leaders make day-by-day. it is the reason they govern. democracy protect citizens every day, and not just on election day. of democracies it demonstrated their greatness by using their principles to make themselves and their union more perfect britt.

human development must be a part of our agenda. from it is necessary for people to exercise their rights. democratic governments are not likely to survive long get their citizens to not have the basic necessities of lights. the desperation caused by poverty lead to violence that further in perils the right people in threatens the stability of government. democracy delivers on rights in development for their people. it is most likely to enable people to live up to their potential. human rights, democracy, and

development are not three separate goals with three separate agendas. that review does not reflect the reality we face. to make a real and long-term difference, we have to tackle all three simultaneously with a commitment that is smart, strategic, determined, and long term. we should measure our success by asking this question, "are more people in more places better able to exercise their universal rights and live up to their potential because of our actions?" our principal are our north star. our tools must be flexible and reflect the reality on the ground were ever we are trying to have a positive impact. in some cases, governments are willing but unable without support to establish strong institutions and protection for citizens.

for example, the democracies in africa. we can extend our hand as a partner to help them try to achieve authority and build the progress they desire. in other cases like cuba or nigeria, governments are able but unwilling to make the changes at their citizens deserve. there we must vigorously press leaders to in depression while supporting those within society's to a working for change. in cases where governments are both unwilling and unable, like the eastern congo, we must support the courageous individuals and organizations to try to protect people in battle against the odds. the challenges we face are diverse and complicated. there is not one approach or formula, documentary work.

they can they apply. i want to outline for elements of the approach to putting our principles and to action and share with you some of the challenges we face. commitment to write star to the accountability. president obama issued an order prohibiting the use of torture by any u.s. officials and ordered the closure of guantanamo bay. next year, we will report on human trafficking as we do every year. this time, not only just on other countries but also on our own her we will participate through the united nations on their own human-rights record just as we encourage other nations to do.

by holding ourselves accountable, we reinforce our authority to demand that all government adhered to obligations. we must counter the pretensions of those that deny our abdicate their responsibilities and told violators to account. sometimes you have the most impact by publicly denouncing a government action like the coup in honduras. other times will be more likely to help the oppressed by engaging in tough negotiations behind closed doors like china and russia. in every instance, our aim will be to make a difference, not to prove a point. calling for accountability did not start or stop and naming of vendors.

-- offenders. our goal is to have government alternate responsibility by putting human rights into law and embedding them in institutions, by building strong independent bloc in police enforcement. the government should be expected to resist the temptation to restrict freedom of expression when criticism arises and to be vigilant in preventing loja becoming an instrument of oppression. we know that all government and leaders sometimes fall short. there has to be internal mechanisms. often the toughest test for government, which is essential to the protection of human rights, is observing --

absorbing criticism. we should lead by example. in the last six decades, we have done this with significant outcomes. we have established legal recourse for victims of discrimination when in justice is ignored, injustice everywhere is denied. remitting mistakes did not make us weaker. it reaffirms the strength of our principles and institutions. we must be pragmatic in pursuit of our human rights agenda. we must do what is most likely to make them real. we will use all the tools of our disposal. when we run up against a wall,

we will not retreat with resignation or recrimination or run up against the same problems, but respond with strategic resolve. for we acknowledge that one side does not fit all. we will not be afraid to attend a new approaches. in iraq and, we have negotiated with the government on nuclear issues. president obama said we had them on their side. we will hold government accountable for their action.

as the president said last week, we must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement, pressure and instances, so they human rights and dignity are advanced over time. we are working for positive changes in multi lateran institutions. they are viable tools. we have rejoined the human rights council not because we do not see the flaws but because we think that participating gives us the best chance to be a constructive influence. in our first session, we co- sponsored the resolution on freedom of expression, a forceful declaration of principle in a time when the freedom is jeopardized by new efforts to constrain religious practice including recently in

switzerland. i was privileged to share the september session where we mandated protection against sexual violence. principal pragmatism informs our approach. cooperation is critical to the help of the global economy and nonproliferation agenda. it addresses global problems like climate change. the united states seeks positive relationships. that means candid discussion of the views. in china we call for protection of rights of minorities.

religious organizations can advocate their positions within a framework of the rule of law. we believe strongly that those who advocate peacefully for reform with in the constitution should not be prosecuted. with pressure, we deplore the journalists and supports the courageous individuals who advocate and great peril. we are engaging on issues of mutual interest. there also engaging societal actors in the same countries were working to advance human rights and democracy. the assumption that we must pursue human rights our national interests is wrong. the assumption that only coercion and isolation are effective tools for advancing

change is also wrong. across our efforts, we keep striving for innovative ways to achieve results. that is why commissioned the diplomacy and development review to develop a forward- looking strategy to build on an analysis of our objectives and capacity to achieve america's foreign-policy and national- security objectives make no mistake. issues of democracy and governance are central to this review. we supported changes driven by citizens in their community. it cannot beat this one for government. it requires cooperation among individuals and organizations within communities and across borders. it means that we work with others who share our commitment to securing lives of dignity.

in morocco, i met with activists across the middle east. they exemplify how lasting change comes from within and how dependent activists to create the state in which they can build a foundation. civil society cannot impose change. fofor this means using tools lie our global human rights defender fund that has provided targeted illegal and relocation

assistance to 170 dinners around the world. we can stand with them publicly by sending a high level of diplomatic mission. we are working to the back channels for the safety of protection in from persecution. we can amplify the voices. we shine a spotlight on the process. they often pursue their mission in isolation, often so marginalized within their own society. we can endorse the legitimacy of their efforts. we recognize these like the

woman of courage awards. we can applaud others. we can enlist other allies like international labor unions who are instrumental in the solidarity movement or religious organizations who are championing the rights the people living with hiv aids in africa. thousands of protesters have

broadcast their demands. in virtually every virtuallcouni visit, i conduct a town hall or roundtable discussion with those outside the government to learn from them and provide a platform for their opinions. when i was in russia, i visited an independent radio station to express through word in feed our support for independent media. i made a point in meeting with women activists.

in 1998, and it did a small group of lawyers in a crowded apartment on a fifth floor of a walkup building they described their efforts to win rights for women. when i visited china and again, i met some of these same women. they had grown and expanded the scope. now women were working not just for legal rights, but for economic rights as well. many regimes have tried to limit the effectiveness by restricting their activities, including more than 25

governments that have recently adopted new restrictions our funding can get a foothold to local organizations, training programs, and independent medians. it fosters broadbased economic development. to build success, our assistance needs to be as effective as possible. it paves the way for broadbased growth and long term self- reliance. economic empowerment to give them a stake in the futures.

our development activities act in concert with our efforts to support democratic governance. that is the challenge we face in afghanistan and pakistan today. the fourth element is that we will widen our focus. we will not forget the positive change must be reinforced and strengthened when hope is on the rise. we will not ignore places of seemingly intractable tragedy and despair. we must do what we can to tilt the balance toward a better future. our efforts to support those working for human rights and democratic governance are driven by commitment, not convenience. they have to be sustained. they cannot be subject to the winds of political change. democratic process is urgent but not quick. we should never take for granted

the permanent. backsliding is always a threat in kenya, the perpetrators of violent having escaped justice. we are worried about leaders that have accused justice to enhance personal rule. when democratic change occurs, we cannot afford to become complacent. we must continue reinforcing democracy. they need our help to improve health, education, and welfare. we must stay engaged. they experienced democratic breakers. the struggle to consolidate the democratic gains because of internal and a external factors. we stand ready both in our bilateral