ties and passion for life would have shown much of the same style and panache had he been given that blessing of old age. of course, we're here to recognize and celebrate a singular act of political courage, nearly 1/4 a century ago, when politics and our world was different. i looked at the circumstances surrounding the 1990 budget deal, and i was struck by the challenges that were facing the country at that point in our history. that fall my grandfather sent 500,000 troops halfway around the world to kuwait. meanwhile, he was helping to engineer the reunification of germany that october, and managed reforms that led to the peaceful end of the cold war. on top of that, he was also the

second president elected to serve a full term in office without party control in either the senate or the house. that made progress, any progress, domestically, very difficult. candidly speaking, my grandfather did not want to raise taxes in 1990, but our constitutional system of governance says congress also gets a say. besides that, he felt he owed the american people action and results. "compromise" is a dirty word in washington today because we live in an age of the perpetual campaign. once we get back to realizing the importance of actual governance, i suspect this too will pass. my grandfather wishes to join you in recognizing mayor bridges and congratulating him for his much deserved recognition this year. we can all hope his example of standing on principle will inspire more elected officials on both sides of the aisle.

not lost on anyone i suspect is the symbolism of the grandson of a much admired president of the united states conferring a prestigious award that is being accepted by the granddaughter of another president. perhaps the fact that we are brought together in this way and on this day to celebrate the ideals of public service with this honor, perhaps, just maybe, the torch is once again being passed, not from family to family, but from generation to generation. there is so much need in our world, so much hurt and our world. it will take all of us to meet those challenges. but fortunately, we are lucky to have had and have leaders like john kennedy, like george bush, like barbara bush -- i have to include her or i will be in trouble -- [laughter] and paul bridges to inspire us and help to lead us forward.

on behalf of george h.w. bush and our entire family, i want to say thank you. thank you. [applause] >> just hearing are very speakers today reaffirms what president kennedy said, however he single individual in our country and making difference. and we just saw the examples today, how every single individual can make a difference to our country. before we adjourn, i would like to ask ed schlossberg and rose

jack on theto join stage and pose with a photo for bush bridges and lauren with their awards. remain seated until our honorees have left the room, and then we invite all of us to join our celebration at a reception in the lobby outside. thank you for being here today. this is a great aid for the library and for america. thank you very much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

[applause] [applause] >> to mark memorial day president obama was at arlington national cemetery honoring americans who gave their lives for their country. that is next on c-span. andwar activists, at bes [indiscernible]

governor wisconsin scott walker. >> michael waldman of the brennan center for justice uses the second amendment is the most misunderstood part of the bill of rights. the conservative agenda. eastome of the middle foreign-policy challenges facing the obama administration. you can join the hundred nation on facebook and twitter. live every morning at 7 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> the president and mrs. obama participated in a wreathlaying ceremony at the tomb of the unknowns at arlington national cemetery. they were joined by joint chiefs and pratthair dempsey

-- vice president joe biden.

>> >> halt. present arms. ["the star-spangled banner" plays]

>> ladies and gentlemen,

present arms. present arms. [drum roll]

plays]

>> ladies and gentlemen, please stand for the invitation and the national anthem.

>> the chaplain, national captioning will -- national capital region, and the military district of washington, major general geoffrey buchanan, military district of washington, executive director your army

national military cemetery, general martin dempsey, chairman, joint chiefs of staff, the honorable chuck hagel, secretary of defense. ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. the chief" ladies and gentlemen, the

chaplain. let us join together in prayer. god, we ask that your presence be upon us this day, a day in which we as a nation come us to honor these men and women who gave all they had for our freedom. lord, never let us forget the sacrifice and their willingness to serve. we know they did not ask to become heroes. they simply asked for kurds to leaveere duty, to never their friends, their brothers we continue too command these brave warriors who died for our country in war. today we recognize that their gift to us is peace and liberty,

the kind of liberty that indoors too long struggles, that tries of nation's soul, the kind liberty that is brought from heroes.n and women, our men and women who witnessed the crucible of war and will never be seen again. let us now celebrate this liberty and may give comfort it to those who continue to grieve. but then know that their loved one did not die in vain and that we will never ever forget. lord, help us as we recommit our lives to the service of this great nation and all those brave in and women who served uniform, especially in harm's way this day. let them know they are not alone. we ask these things in your holy name, amen.

navy bandited states in seeing our national anthem. . >> ♪ o say, can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? whose bright stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight o'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? and the rockets' red glare the bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still there o say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? ♪ [applause] please be seated. >> ladies and gentlemen, general dempsey. >> thanks very much. mr. president, secretary hagel,

embers of congress, yes, veterans, fellow americans, and most especially the families of our missing and fallen warriors, and especially those from the tragedy assistance program survivors. [applause] every day but especially on memorial day, arlington's rolling hills remind us on this helen groundnd -- so much valor rests. looking out on these headstones i'm reminded of a stanza of our national ballot, america the beautiful. it goes like this oh beautiful for patriot dreams that see beyond the years, thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears. in our ownington alabaster city and in other national cemeteries around the world. ofhonor the patriot dreams

america's sons and daughters, those who were willing to fight in every client and in every place who were willing to give their lives for our nation's ideals. here we remember, we grieve, but we are also inspired. here we celebrate the timeless strength of america, undimmed by human tears. we know that we are a better nation for the sacrifice for the men of women who serve. memorial day gives us the chance to bow our heads to honor our fallen heroes. we remember their devotion and dedication to our national purpose, to secure the blessings of liberty. it is the responsibility of a grateful nation to look back. it is incumbent on us to look forward. areica's sons and daughters out there today on the frontiers of our common defense, in afghanistan, and all mountains and plains around the world. they are crossed the shining

seas and are in the spacious skies. in the footsteps of generations before, they will marsh or old the day with a commitment to make a difference for each other for us and for people they have never met, but with whom they share a dream for a better future. i am inspired each and every day prior men and women in uniform, by their sense of purpose and character. a represent the best of this great entry. on this memorial day let us remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice for this and show that america stands firmly with those who protect her. let's renew and we dedicate ourselves to the ideals of our nation, its freedom, it's just a possibility, it's patriot reames, undimmed by human tears. may god shed his grace on our fallen, missing, their families, and on this nation. [applause]

>> listen now as the united states navy band performs america the beautiful. ["american the beautiful"

plays] beautiful for spacious skies grainber waves of majesties mountain plainthe fruited america! america! grace on thee and crown the good with brotherhood shining sea

o beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years citieslabaster gleam tearsed by human

america! america! grace on thee and crown they good -- thy good with brotherhood shining sea america! america!

america! ♪ [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen,

secretary hagel. [applause] >> thank you, and good morning. mr. president, mrs. obama, vice president biden, dr. biden, general dempsey, ladies and gentlemen, first i want to acknowledge and add my welcome to the families of our military men and women who are here today and who are watching this all over the world. i want to particularly welcome the families of the fallen who are here with us this morning. we admire you and are grateful. we will never forget your sacrifices and the sacrifices of your loved ones.

i very much appreciate the opportunity to be here. to be here this morning, in this place, as we observe this very sacred day in america, memorial day. we remember people who sacrificed everything in defense of our nation. next week marks the 70th anniversary of the d-day landings at normandy. that was the bloodiest day in all of world war ii. a day with more than 10,000 allied casualties. such a staggering toll is difficult to comprehend. as we commemorate the fallen, i think of the wisdom and the humility of our allied commander, general dwight david eisenhower.

not long after, he said that any battlefield commander would face that his honors cannot hide in his memories. they cannot soothe the anguish of the widow or orphan whose son or daughter will not return. when he spoke, our nation was approaching a period of great transition. victory had been achieved in europe. the war would end in the coming months. soldiers were beginning to come home and get on with their lives. our country began to ask itself, where should we go from here? today as we conclude 13 years of war, we are approaching another

period of transition. these times of change and uncertainty require exceptional leadership. they demand leaders who are strong in the face of challenges, who are wise in the face of complexity. our commander in chief is one of those exceptional leaders. president was in afghanistan less than 24 hours ago. on behalf of all of our military men and women and their families, i want to thank him and his personal commitment to those deployed in harm's way. ladies and gentlemen, i am honored to introduce to you now the president of the united states. [applause] >> thank you.

thank you. thank you. thank you so much. please be seated. thank you, secretary hagel, for your introduction and for your lifetime of service, from a young army sergeant in vietnam to our nation's 24th secretary of defense. vice president biden, jill, chairman dempsey, major general buchanan, patrick hallinan, chaplain brainerd, to our men and women in uniform here and around the world, to our outstanding veterans, and, most of all, to the gold star families here to remember the loved ones you've lost, michelle and i are humbled and honored to commemorate this memorial day with you.

every year this ceremony marks another page in the life of our nation. this year in particular, as we recognize the 150th anniversary of this holy space, arlington national cemetery. 150 years ago, war raged on hillsides and farmlands not far from where we gather today. a nation ill-prepared for war found itself overwhelmed with the task of burying so many of its sons. so we declared upon this hill a final resting place for those willing to lay down their lives for the country that we love. and on a spring day in 1864, private william christman of pennsylvania was the first

american to find eternal rest on these grounds. over that century and a half, in times of war, in times of peace, americans have come here, to pay tribute not only to the loved ones who meant the world to them, but to all our heroes, known and unknown. here, in perfect military order, lie the patriots who won our freedom and saved the union. side-by-side, live privates and generals who defeated fascism and laid the foundation for the american century. here lies the americans who fought in vietnam. those who one the long struggle

against truck -- communism. here lay the men and women who kept the homeland safe over more than one decade of war in afghanistan. early this morning, i returned from afghanistan. somerday, i visited with serving their. -- there. for more than 12 years, men and women, like those i met with, have bore the burden of security. because of the progress they have made, we are in a pivotal moment. our troops are coming home. by the end of this year, the war in afghanistan will finally come to an end. [applause] [cheers]

yesterday and today, we paid patriots whoe 2200 have made the ultimate sacrifice in afghanistan. we will honor them always. , in the small towns across america, and cemeteries throughout the country and , onnd the world, and here this solemn hillside, the families of the fallen share stories. ache from their absence. ull.hearts are also f full in knowing that the legacy shines bright in the people they

love the most. loss, theimaginable families of the fallen have cap courage and resolve that many of us will never know. we draw comfort from the strength of their example. we draw strength from the promise of their children. today, michelle and jill are with brave boys and girls whose parents gave everything they had in service to the country. mothers and fathers like michael . he gave his life in afghanistan four years ago. the years have been hard for his family. andlove of their mother the strength of his daughters, beyond their years. the oldest of the three has become a mentor to other children who have lost their

parents. now seven.girl is she shepherds her little sister. baby when her father was deployed and knows what it means that her father served his country. today.e here we say to you and to all the yourgeous children, lives on.avery you will never walk alone. you will grow up to be the young men and women your parents knew you would be. that is our pledge to you. [applause]

we draw strength from the love of the spouses of those who have fallen. was a veteran of world war ii when he met clara edwards. herpent two years working her before she agreed to marry. he told his young wife to remarry. she told them, no. he had a hard enough time getting her to say yes. he had waited two years for her and she would wait as long as it took for him to come home. when joseph went missing in action, she waited. she waited 63 years. meanwhile, our country continues to work to bring home the

missing from all of our wars. december,ber, last his remains were identified and he was returned home to be laid to rest. remarried during the 63 years. now, 96 years old, she welcomed him home. we are honored to have her with us today. clara. [applause] [cheers]

[applause] we draw strength from the parents. earlier this year, i spoke of a of the rulingry recovery of a sergeant first class who was severely injured by a bomb in afghanistan. andtood in the balcony reminded our entire nation that we are blessed to be protected by patriots like him. that was only part of the story. i want to close with the story of his brother in arms. sergeant sanchez was killed by the same explosion.

wendy remembers that he was larger-than-life. .lways surrounded by friends he had a devastating smile. he admired the army from a young age. he dressed up as a soldier the first time he went out from halloween and for many halloween's after that. he arranged and rearranged g.i. joe's on the bedroom floor. when he watched the twin towers fall on that awful september day, he found his calling to serve his country. .e was a proud army ranger he took care of his fellow soldiers like his own emily. he told wendy, i am your superman. of 2009, he was on his fifth deployment. he was finishing a message -- he bomb went t

off and this family made a sacrifice that few of us will ever truly comprehend. since, finding the strength to live with out rob, she keeps in touch with cory. they shared their memories of him. she runs half marathons. she and her husband poured their hearts into raising their youngest son, who wants to be just like rob. that means she will send another son into the military. today, they are watching the story from indianapolis. she has been made safe by the sacrifice of her son. every day, she looks at the old photo of her son on the dresser and is reminded that he is gone. he will always inspire her.

he will always be her superman. child.se who have lost a for the husbands and wives who lost a partner. for the children who have lost a parent. this is an extraordinary reminder of the sacrifices made. today remind us that for the families and comrades in arms, the service endorsed. endures. few truly understand what it means to send a child into war. on this memorial day and, every veterans arely and who we are sworn to look after. here, we rededicate ourselves to our dedication to where

america'. our troops will have the resources to do the job. the nation will never stop searching for those who have gone missing. for the prisoners of war. do more to keep faith with our veterans and make sure that they get the care, the benefits, the opportunities that they deserve. these americans have done their duty. ask that our nation does ours. now and for decades to come. patriots we are moralize today gave their last full measure. not so that we might mourn them. we do.

not so that the nation would honor their sacrifice. although, it does. they gave their lives so that we might live hours. so that a wife might be able to secure and free and a mother might raise a family. everything that we hold precious was made possible by americans who gave their all. because of them, our nation is stronger. remain a shining beacon of freedom to the rest of the world. may god bless the fallen and all of those who serve. may god continue to bless the united states of america. [applause]

>> please remain standing for taps.laying of ♪

>> the benediction. >> the sacred place for our loved ones. let us pray. lord, continue to strengthen our president and all of the leaders with energy and wisdom. give them strength for the journey that is ahead. bless our families and comrades. the us to be mindful of

principles of freedom, justice, and equality. they have been in our heritage. give it to our fallen comrades. we would be remiss if we did not pray for the safety of all of our brothers and sisters who serve the nation on this day. teach us to pray for their safe return with the knowledge of a job well done. continue to bless this nation, our friends, and the flight that we serve. may the spirit of god being near you to defend you. within you, to refresh you. behind you, to justify you. above you, and to bless you for ever more. go forward. please remain in place until the president has departed and the colors are retired.

♪

>> we will continue with antonin scalia. followed by terry mcauliffe allsop later, scott walker. nearly 40% of european union gas exports come through washington. comes for the ukraine. we will look at the growing influence. coverage from the brookings institution starts at 10:00 eastern. later in the day, donald trump will address the press club. >> you can take c-span with you

wherever you go with our c-span radio app. tv channelsl three or c-span radio anytime. there is a schedule so that you can tune in when you want. by podcasts from recent shows. like the communicators and shoe and a. download the app online for your iphone and android or black area. next, a conversation about the effects of war on civilians. we will hear from robert dreyfuss and a hiker who was imprisoned by the government of iran. this is one hour and 20 minutes. >> good morning. welcome. panel 2467.

12:30 is the beginning of this panel. my name is jenny and i am honored to be here today. i work for the american red cross here. i am honored to be back. without further ado, i want to inform everyone that c-span is recording today. our panelists will not be able to stand up. let me introduce our panelists today. silence thecould noisemakers or other devices, that would be appreciated. we have bob dreyfuss. i asked him where is the most intriguing place he has ever been. he shared vietnam and iran.

he said he was bobbled by those places while he was a contributing editor at "the nation." we have sarah lewinsky, who just came from the central african republic. that is the most intriguing place. we have the executive director of the center for conflict. scholz.tammy storch -- she was a supervisor. a lead supervisor. kind of a big deal. and the director of national security. of strategic studies at the u.s. marine corps college. our second one

today, who is the author and contributing editor for the solitary wash websites. she is a visiting scholar. welcome. without further ado, i will give it to bob and each panelist will have about 10 minutes to speak. after that, we will go into audience participation and questions. students will come and ask questions first. thank you so much. >> make you for coming today. it is a great pleasure to be here. to suchmarkable to come a topic that is not exactly easy to swallow for most people. in fact, talk about the euphemism, collateral damage always sticks in my craw. it means dead innocent people. let's try not to use that.

i am not going to use it in my presentation. this.ard to talk about it immediately becomes very personal for me and i will explain that. i have never been in more. it seems that the best way to avoid innocent dead people is to i think thate and has to be the starting point. in this country and around the world, we slip into wars as something that we have to do because of national interest or honor. for the most part, there are almost always other solutions. i find it hard to be objective and analytical about this. as i said, it is a little too personal and i will speak

personally when i talk about this. i have never been in combat or the armed forces. know, deliberately. 1960's at ae in the time when everything i thought i had learned about this country as a teenager and in middle school was proven to be completely wrong since the country was engaged in a criminal enterprise, which was the war in vietnam. we were killing a lot of people for no good reason. it was not explained to me in whycs or before that something like this could happen. how could our government do something so misguided? in college in the

heartbeats of the anti-war movement. we shut down the college a couple of times. we got past-fail grades that semester. the second time was after the or, what dod -- they call it? into laos. revolt and ither was involved in all of that. i had no question about what would happen to me when i graduated. i was going to canada. i was not going into the army, no matter what. not because i did not want to be killed. to me, it was a criminal war.

theas the first year of rivalry and i remember the night incredibly well full -- incredibly well. it was known that they were only going up to 110. vietnam was the turning point. is reason i bring it up because it has affected everything in the rest of my life. know, let me put it this way, we killed people for no good reason during those years. and i been to vietnam have a daughter adopted from vietnam. when we went to adopt her. their,diers who served many of them went insane.

many of them were indeed baby killers. you hear a lot of veterans say, they called us they be killers. . do not know what percentage a number of them were. a line from the war was, we had to destroy this village in order to save it. it has become a cliché. a person named turse has written a brilliant book that i recommend. it is called "kill anything that moves." he went into the u.s. archives and dug up the true story that one-off.s not a we were using civilians as

target practice, pushing them out of helicopters, executing them in the fields for no good reason. this is what our nation did. i am going to skip ahead. you think that is in the past. , we a like anden idiot from texas. i have a bumper sticker that says, somewhere in texas, a village is missing an idiot. he invaded iraq. i am tired of hearing it being called a mistake, a blunder, something like that. this was a deliberate war of aggression. an illegal one, as many have said. another criminal enterprise of the united states. we went to war in an unconscionable manner against a country that did not attack us.

living through the vietnam experience, how could this happen again? me, i would find it mind-boggling that people could have served in that army. the honorable thing to do was to uit. go to jail, if that is what it takes to be a defector. i have talked to people in those agencies. they refuse to quit. you cannot be part of a criminal enterprise and fight it from within. was happened in iraq hundreds of thousands of people dying, who would have been alive if not for what the united states had done. conference desk complex

and theny conflicts, united states is not responsible for all of them. with,the person i wrote and i, prepared a feature for the magazine. the 13 year war in afghanistan. or find outestimate who could estimate how many civilians died. from talibanare atrocities and suicide bombings. quite a number are from american actions. this, they did not respond to our freedom of information act request. they did not exactly ask us to

, that is the term of art. they did not want us anywhere near them. they said, you cannot,. sorry. -- you cannot come. sorry. why are they so touchy about it? another colleague of mine, michael tasting's, did the piece that got stanley mcchrystal of his and his bad mouthing of the president and the vice president. obama fired him for the insubordination. in a caried last year crash. it will bolt loss for journalism and for people who care about

innocent civilians. i did talk about the afghanistan work that we did and the conclusions that we came to. the afghanistan government did not do any counting at all. the ngos do not have the resources to begin the process. the united nations tried to do their best. they did not succeed. they came the closest. there are limitations that they face. the u.s. military started out, it, as notanks put doing body counts. withmoseyed around to this the counterinsurgency efforts creating a lot of terrorists. -- was a flawed

we created an electronic database. you can access it. it shows the number of incidences, 458 of them, in which american troops were involved in civilian deaths. 6481 people dead. up to that many. it is a range, actually. i am going to conclude -- my time is up -- by noting that we are on the brink of another one of these with syria. there is an article in the wall street journal today that says that there is another battle inside of the white house. and, the administration. secretary kerry and samantha powers are arguing for an

escalation of the war by the united states, involving training, support, arming more rebels, and perhaps military strikes. guess who is saying this is a bad idea? the military and obama. he has been resisting this since 2012. hillary was pushing him to get more deeply involved. we do not learn from vietnam or iraq. we could bumble into another one or two, by the way. iran, we discussed that yesterday. i am going to pass it on. >> thank you. [applause] >> we have sarah. >> hello.

i am sarah, the executive director. the executive director for civilians in conflict. my last eight years has been intensely focused on the issue of collateral damage. because of that, it makes it hard to talk to you. i have so much to tell you. i have so much that i want to relay. let's start out with a slick overview of what collateral damage actually means. the u.s. military in vietnam coined this term. it means incidental civilian harm. it means civilian harm. i say that because there is a legal regime that governs the civiliansnjuring of in armed conflict. after the horrors of world war

ii, the international community, based on some of the laws that previously existed, created the geneva conventions and additional protocols. ese rules say a number of things about detainees, prisoners of war. it says that you have to distinguish between a civilian and a combatant. you have to be proportionate when you are targeting. if bob is a weapons cache and i theyhouse with children, can decide that the weapon caches so important that they can bombings and kill the children inside of my house. in many circumstances, that is lawful. i did not create these rules. that is what is meant by

collateral damage. death, injuries, property damage. the term, civilian, does not mean innocent. innocent is not a legal term or something that makes much sense in conflict. a civilian could be a ballet dancer or a serial can -- serial killer. as long as that person is not involved in the conflict. i should say that in the beginning. i think that what i want to do is step outside of my role. hopefully, you understand that my entire career is devoted to minimizing, as much as possible, the civilian harm in conflict. i want to use this opportunity to step outside of my daily work to pose some really difficult

ethical questions to you. where doesf three is collateral damage actually stop. , injury, andh property damage. this is how the united states and many others categorize the harm. what about psychological trauma? hideabout the kids who under their beds and will not go to school because of the drones? what about the environmental damage in iraq because of white phosphorus? i just got back from the central republic,tral african where people have lost their homes. it goes generation after generation. considered could be collateral damage.

in thinking about how to minimize its, where do you start? .he second question how much of it should be mitigated? all of us in our room would say, all of it. to bob's point, we should not have for. we should not make collateral damage illegal. you would not be able to have for. if you cannot have war, what happens? how do states engaged in diplomacy. haveu cannot legally military action on the table, what does that do to diplomacy? i am not saying if it makes it better or worse. i am asking a legitimate question about how it changes the structure. we are certainly not going to , becausewith weapons

we cannot and we could not cause any civilian harm. what does that do to negotiations and the peace process? that is an interesting question. for those who believe that harry s truman was right in dropping the bomb, because it stopped japan in their tracks, how does that make sense if you are not able to use military force and cause civilian harm? these are the real questions that policymakers grapple with. the international forces in afghanistan created, in 2011-2012, a zero tolerance policy for civilian harm. we will not cause one civilian casualty. they had been beaten down to not cause harm.

i can appreciate that, from and as an old -- ethical standpoint. say you are not going to cause any civilian harm, the population thinks they are protected. they are not. the population stop rejecting themselves and stop thinking that they need to do things to mitigate what happens on the ground and in the country. in the bigger picture, and makes us more likely to say that we will use military force. we are not going to cause civilian harm. do not worry. that is not the reality. there will be civilian harm. it should be part of what we think about when we think about if we are going to use military force. it should be a question and debated. the third question i am going to ask is when is it better to have

collateral damage then death? definite -- this is a difficult question. let me tell you about something. you have to circumstances. down ae a trolley coming track that is forked. you have five civilians that are tied up. the trolley is going to kill them. up.have one civilian tied you are standing at a lever that you can pull, so that it kills one civilian instead of five. what do you do? catholic doctrine says you do not get involved. others say what to do from a

moral standpoint. what do you do? >> you are on a bridge and there are five civilians who are going to be killed. you are standing next to an obese man. you could push them over and stop the trolley. >> it's funny. >> i cannot get that out of my head. >> and has nothing to do with governor christie, by the way. >> hey, he is working on it. >> this creates a more difficult dilemma. all of you would agree. do you purposefully put someone in the way so that others will not to killed? this, i think, if you think about the circumstances, i think everyone says, i would not do that.

.n the second -- i'm sorry yes, i would pull it. than one.tter to save in the other one, you are actively killing someone. if you think about syria. ago, if we had airstrikes cause civilian harm and collateral damage and put our forces in harm's way, could we have stop the mass atrocities that have happened afterwards? in terms of the type was that you use, what is better and how do you explain that to yourself? that is what the policymakers are trying to figure out. the issue of collateral damage is more complicated and has a lot of dilemmas and challenges to it. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you.

>> following that. i am going to start by saying i do not represent the u.s. government or u.s. military. that will be clear. i will say that i just met sara and bob. she is thest heard, master in this field and a trailblazer. we met at a national security project that i would encourage you to look up. it is the progressive answer to heritage. we came up with the idea of doing some awards. there is a lifetime achievement award. we do not think we would get it for a while. we won the award. called a is something humblebrag. i truly am.

the first is potentially different. necessary. there is the classic example of stopping hitler and other examples. we should have gotten involved in the other genocide. we could have stopped more harm. i am not a warmonger. retreat i the silent asked him the question -- silent retreat. i asked him the question. neville chamberlain could have listened to adolf hitler all he wanted. the harm was all the same. is there ever a time where a nonviolent philosophy promotes violence? his answer was, yes.

you have to be careful about how it is done. he says that if a man has a gun in a village and a man comes to kill the village and the village he has committed violence by not committing violence. these problems are not black and white. they are very gray. i am going to give three things. we are going to see more civilians in conflict. war is horrible. the third is that soldiers should not choose which wars they get to participate in. that is a slippery slope. we are going to see more civilians at risk because of the numbers and populations. i would recommend to you the book "out of the mountains."

he looks at a few trends. they are important for conflict. urbanization and population growth. population growth. we are going to add people between now and 2050. i could run through the numbers. in aggregate numbers growing terms of the rate of the population growth. trend in terms of urbanization. , forll become problematic reasons that i will describe in a second. thee was only about 2-3% of world that lives in a city of one million or more. 60%.50, it will be there is the example of the

weapons cache. she had the house with the children and it. i like how you did that. changed torgets have civilian targets elaborately to get this idea of mutually assured destruction. the idea is that if the soviet union or the united states weapons, it would not just be at military targets. there are going to be more civilians around. the second area i want to address is one that sarah raised. how many civilian casualties should be minimized? she jokes that neither myself or ike wilson to get through a talk without mentioning this. military theorist who

came up with the art of war. his theory is that war cannot be divorced from politics or policy. he has another idea. means thatof gravity you find out what is important to the enemy and you rip their heart out. that will stop the war. the center of gravity could be industrial, military, or the population. the laws of war that sarah spoke about, and may times, it was the population we went after and the axis powers went after. let's look at the iraq four. i believe it was a mistake. it made me switch from being a to a rabidendent

democrat. that and they gay marriage issue. yeah, i play softball. said, what george w. bush this is not an attack on the iraqi population. this is an attack against saddam and his family. that changed the paradigm, in terms of what you are trying to achieve. we did a thunder run. we left the weapons caches. so, a very much altered the way that we fought the war. some would say, by the time baghdad fell, we hadn't conquered iraq. we had just taken a city. we mistook the center of gravity as baghdad.

some research suggests that the most successful occupations occurred after high civilian deaths. you utterly crushed the population. you look at the book, occupational hazard, by david edelstein. this is one of the disturbing trends that he finds. war is awful. nothing in my comments should that we-- suggest should kill a lot of civilians. i am saying that mistakes that come from kindness are the worst. you may think you are being kind. you are you long waiting the war -- elongating the war. slowly, we had gone targeted the population and

military, would we have killed civiliansthe 122,384 we ultimately killed? this is the example, essentially. .e will never know that is a hindsight question that we have no answers to. let me move onto the third, for the purposes of time. they say that they military should have quit the enterprise. i am in the camp that i do not think the military should choose the wars. that is not their job. that is the civilian's job. it is our job, as the electorate. president george w. bush was reelected after the iraq war. that is our fault. just for a moment,

that most of you are democrats. i am a colorado native. i did all my research there before there were computers. do we want the military to say no? i am not going to stop the 1994 genocide. screw you. i do not think the military should think like that. that is a slippery slope. they can start picking leaders. we have the history of the civilians being in control of the military for a good reason. with that, i look forward to your questions and comments. >> thank you. now, we have sarah shord. >> i will start from a personal angle. i decided to move to the middle fromand the decision was

years of experience and activism. i was in college at uc berkeley in 2001 when 9/11 happened. go toopposed from the get the knee-jerk response of attacking afghanistan and iraq. i joined the anti-war movement. because it is the only thing you can do, we took to the streets. after the initial couple of years, a group will of us -- a group of us shut down the port werekland because they shipping arms to iraq and afghanistan. we shut down san francisco for a whole day. it was exciting to be a young outraged person that had a way to funnel my anger and confusion.

as the years went on, i started to do international work. i worked with the zapatista movement. never really was able to have a real impact and that the wars were dragging on. i decided to move to the middle east and i found a program in iraqui student project. this is one of the few positive things that assad regime did, opening it up, and they were barred from higher education, and the colleges were shut down. they were destroyed, and they could not continue their

helpedon, so our program to get a lot of these young people scholarships so they could continue their education in the u.s. and abroad, with a goal that they could eventually return to their country and iraq and help rebuild it. the students during my time in doascus are there, and they not feel safe enough to return to iraq. at the time was a beautiful place. i had one of my best times of my life there. i was passively fluid -- fluent in the language. and, of course, teaching. and id in a refugee camp, saw collateral damage on a daily basis with my own eyes. quite actually incredible, because the camp we lived in is now hell on earth.

a lot of it was originally palestinian refugees, and they had never let palestinians, syrian citizenship, so even if you were born as a palestinian in syria, you are still considered a refugee, and they opened their homes to iraqi refugees, sometimes three families to a home, and it was a beautiful thing to witness, people taking care of each other and to play a small role in that. in 2009, my life changed forever, and in a sense, myself got a taste of what it is like to be caught in the crossfire's of a low intensity war between governments. you may know a bit about my story. we decided to go to northern had akurdistan, and we week off, and if you live in serious and go into a rat, it makes sense. it is almost an own country

within a rack. it has its own borders. so i am an adventurous person, but it is a relatively safe place to travel, so we went to and visitedq castles and traveled around, and we went to a waterfall that was recommended to us, and there were hundreds of families at this tour site. northern iraq was named one of the top 41 travel destinations 2011.e new york times" in the people there, mostly kurdish, enjoying the waterfall. we stayed there and the next morning went on a hike, and we later became known as the three american hikers. we were a process the border, an unmarked border, and i was held in incommunicado solitary detention, solitary confinement, for 410 days by the iranian government.

play ant from trying to very small role in lessening collateral damage to in my own way being a regular human being being caught in the crossfire of decades of animosity between their government and the u.s. days,ment, and after 410 i was suddenly released before my now husband and friend, and put into the center of a campaign for their freedom. i met with president ahmadinejad. obama, andpresident right away, i was really frustrated by the intransigence on both sides, unwillingness to change the relationship of hostilities, decade-long hostility that led to my imprisonment and which has led to so much suffering on both sides, so it was my job -- i was working with a group that helped negotiate my release. it was my job to try to get the u.s. government to give some kind of positive gesture in return for my release so that my

friend and husband would be released, and everything i brought up was a no starter, from everything. we had direct information from beaumont, from the iranian gestures,, that small like releasing a few iranian students who had overstayed that it could be for the release of my friends, and another guarantee would be a letter from president obama to president ahmadinejad for general platitudes saying that i hope that our relationship will improve in the future and that there will be more peace and yadda yadda, and that was a nonstarter. my government was completely unwilling to change and it startedp, because i was caught in that ,rossfire, and i saw the toll

and our families were in the middle of this, and it started to dawn on me how much pain and suffering in a real sense -- i mean, it had been somewhat abstract before. definitely not as intimate as this, and it is interesting for me to be on a panel like this because i have had -- now the place that i lived in syria is -- will never, ever be what it was again, and i have had friends that have died that i , and in a sense, you know, i feel like i have not even had a taste of what people and, i guess, just to bring it back around to where i started, and also some of the key things that some of the up,r panelists have brought i think that with our aggressive

foreign-policy, there will be retaliation, and i considered my imprisonment to be a small consequence, a small example of the way people will suffer. aggression, and innocent people will continue to suffer, and what i experienced more than anything, a personal anecdote is being in prison with political prisoners, people on the frontlines in fighting for freedom and they in non iran, way blames me for the policies of my government. wouldher women in prison yell that they love me down the hallway. they would push past the guards and throw their arms around me. they would sing michael jackson down thenot alone" hallway. [laughter] gallup pollrecent that they do no longer see americans as the enemy, and, of course, iranians are some of the

most pro-american people in the middle east. and when you are caught in the middle of this kind of animosity, it is so obvious that it does not serve the people, and it actually came to light that our imprisonment, negotiated by the government in a very small way paved the road for the historic nuclear deal that was still temporary that and american fall, officials, high-level officials would not meet face-to-face to discuss our case, but after we were released, the envoy that negotiated our release and paid our bail arranged for a meeting of high-level american and iranian officials, and this was the first meeting like this in decades, and that paved the way for progress for the nuclear ial, and it is something that have spent time contemplating, and what you brought up about the trolley, that kind of

utilitarianism, if, indeed, my suffering, the suffering of my family and my loved ones, led to teasing sanctions against innocent iranians, and, really, sanctions hurt people more than anyone. do not believe that sanctions led to this warming of relations between our government and iran that we are seeing right now. i believe it is the iranian people who have been fighting for this for decades and putting pressure on their government. when you talk about the greater good and sacrificing the few for the many, i think it is very dangerous, because as much as it makes sense, the utilitarian approach to suffering, who is making this decision, and why? my experience, our government could have taken steps. there have been so many opportunities over the decades to ease the low intensity war that has been waged between them and the iranian government many,

many times, and i just think that we need to look very skeptically at the motivations our government has for making these calls. [applause] >> thank you so much. now we are going to open the session to the audience. microphones, and students can come up first, and then community members. ask questions and speak clearly in the microphone for the panelists. thank you. our first question right here. looking for students. >> you are good.

>> go ahead. >> listening to the discussions of collateral damage reminds me of a book almost two or three years ago, in which she makes a very convincing, statistically valid case that over the last , humanity is becoming less violent, and that includes hitler and stalin and the holocaust and everything. would anyone comment on that? >> yes, i will. i am so glad you brought that up. first of all, let me say that nobody knows how many civilians have been killed in wars ever, ever. nobody tracks it. bob went into this, and military do not track their own civilian , and we actually do

not know precisely, but this is a very good point, because so many people try to get attention to conflict and wars by saying that now more than ever, civilians are being harmed. civilians are being increasingly harmed. i disagree with that. i do. over the long view of history, if you look back at the romans and athens, consider all of the civilian harm that happened. yes, you can't take it in the past 100 years, there has been horrible, horrible civilian war, or if you take out the world wars, i do not know that that is true, and i am not sure it is true that increasingly it is hard to tell between civilians and combatants. i mean, i was just reading the book about jesus of nazareth. i cannot remember who wrote it. anyway, a fantastic book, so think about that time, where all of the sudden, civilians who

were priests, who were rabbis suddenly take up arms, and they are not wearing uniforms, and you can't tell -- this has happened throughout history, and, again, i am just not sure we can document or take a step back to know to say, oh, it is getting worse. oh, it is getting better. it, and theye use politically manipulated for whatever they want to do. that is not to say that we should not be paying attention to minimizing civilian harm as much as we possibly can. the fact that 100 civilians are being harmed instead of 1000, that is not the way to make decisions. it is that every single one of those people is a life, has a family, has ramifications. >> i teach ethics. would also confirm that thesis that if you look at sort of the long trend of history, civilian casualties are going down, but i would echo what she says that

one is two many. not sure i agree, but i have not studied it, so what do i know? i would say that if the romans killed every person in north africa, they would not have killed very many people compared to the 60 million to 100 million who died in world war ii. ok. i buy that. but since we're talking about every death matters, 60 million to 100 million deaths matter one hell of a lot, so i do not know. i do not know what point we can make, getting more or less percentage. the fact is that we as americans have to decide how we want our government to behave. if we want the united states, which is a declining power and will be for the next century in every measure other than military, most likely, to we wanted the united states to maintain its hegemony, it's

excellence at exercising its military force, or do we need to step back? what is our solution in syria? i tell you what our solution is in serious. we surrender. assad is the one who won the war. we can do all kinds of things to prolong it. that war is over. so what accomplishment do we make? unless we are planning to invade syria and occupy it and do another iraq, it is over. >> really quick, on syria, can i just respond on syria, and it will be literally like a 10 second? i think the window of opportunity was different from when the attack helicopters started going into the billion protests and gunning down civilians and now. the opposition looks different. it is fractured. there is al qaeda.

i think we had more of an opportunity to do something as was suggested, much early on in the conflict. >> i think a notable change in the way war has been waged is that you did not used to be able to wage a will or that had so few civilian casualties on the side of the aggressor, so in the past, to start a war with another method, you would have more casualties, and this is more precise and detached kind is, i think, remarkable and frightening. >> yes, it has been quite a few , and i was struck by the nra and a very good nomination and theeon general,

nra, they kind of fly under the flagship of the second amended, -- amendment -- question, sir? >> the question is no one seems to talk about how much american industry is involved through saudi arabia into the conflict in the middle east, and if anyone has any answers on that. >> i will just do on the nra. we do talk about this, and one of the things that i stress is you cannot be a strict reader of the constitution and leave out the part in order to have a well regulated militia, right? the people are selectively reading the second amendment, so i absolutely agree with you that it should he regulated. the founders intended that. and undoubtedly, there is a military-industrial complex, and that is real. it is increasing, and, frank,

the money, and i mentioned the supreme court decision in terms of going into politics is going to get even more extreme, and that includes money from the arms industry, so i think it is going to be an increasing problem. >> great. next question right here. >> i think a lot of things you're complaining about is a concept about a war without objective. vietnam was a war where he could not do anything else, so we just bombed them. >> your question? >> well, i guess that is it. say really quick that war without a political objective is just utter violence. it is not war. it is like a mass murderer. that is my comment on that. >> hi. i was just curious.

sorry. as i get older, my mind goes. [laughter] mentioning occupations and the ability to create an occupation, and it goes up as more civilians are killed. times, ise, in modern it possible to have an occupation? in the last hundred years -- >> are you a student here, by chance? >> i have a political degree. i was going to say because i have a prize for the first student to ask a question. there you go. iraqere is a story about where the general was the commander in the third coreps,

and there is a fantastic washington post reporter who essentially said, he was seeing all of the looting, and he said itnever occurred to me that would be up to me to get back the jobs and the electrical stuff, and what is very interesting, and sarah could probably say more to this, there are specific laws that come with occupation. you have to provide for the population, and secretary rumsfeld made a very deliberate political calculation that we would not occupy iraq. it would look like afghanistan, and because of that, there was no declaration of martial law. when i asked the general if he would declare that, he said he did not know if that was a policy decision. nobody was able to answer that for me, and that has huge repercussions about how civilians are treated after a conflict. >> great. sir? >> yes, i have heard panelists

casualties have existed throughout the history of war, and i do not doubt that, but the geneva convention is a more recent development. was that not significant enough that u.s. policy needs to consider that an account for that? and i am curious. i understand states involved in conflict have not much interest in tracking casualties, but is to doctical for an ngo that? and lastly, i have heard that the state department has say, thed whether, drone policy would be counterproductive, getting more people to join the opposition, and it just strikes me that the moral cost, the conflict vietnam , winning hearts and minds, i do not see much discussion on that, and i wonder, is that obsolete?

>> all right. that was like five questions. >> the geneva convention, yes, world war ii, but all of these rules and laws actually existed in some primordial form before with the hague convention, and there are a lot of things going back further and further and further, and you get into religious doctrine, and every single religion in the world, at least that i know of, has protection of civilians, mostly women, children, the elderly, the disabled, that kind of thing, so it all comes from a place, and every culture that i wereed has this, and they sort of indoctrinated into the geneva convention, and yes, it did make a big difference in how the u.s. military goes about its operations. they carried the geneva conventions with them. they are in their codes of

conduct and their rules of engagement and actual cards they put in their uniform, and a lot of military do this, and it actually goes to your last question, as is hearts and minds, and the reason why militaries want to in many cases protect civilians or avoid causing civilian harm is because of needing to garner that local support in order to do what they have to do or because they don't want international condemnation or because they need to maintain bilateral relationships with the country that they are with or with their donors. there are a lot of reasons for the military to avoid harming civilians, aside from what we all believe, which is you shouldn't kill them. in terms of tracking, there is also a strategic interest for military to track civilian casualties, and i actually think it needs to be twofold. it can't just be ngo's. military, civil society, and

the u.n. should be tracking civilian harm, but that has to be matched by the military doing it themselves, and here is why. ifn if we do not know, even it is kept confidential, which it probably will be, if you are in armed force, you need to know what your impact is on the population, including for hearts and minds, including to know where are the injuries happening, including to know over time what that analysis looks like, and we have got a lot of civilian casualties at checkpoints, what is happening, how do we stop that -- in order to improve operations, you have to know what you have done out in the community, so this is something we are trying to get african forces and other military to do. >> to echo that, i talked about destroying centers of gravity. i think sort of in the aftermath, you have to build centers of gravity, because you are probably going to be taking

those out, and it could be civil society, law, all the rest of it. you should be, potentially, building all of that up afterwards, assuming you take on the occupier role. >> ok, but let's get back to my point. let's not take on anymore occupier roles. i cannot conceive, i really cannot conceive of any situation around the role right now where the united states has to start thinking and planning about occupying anybody. let me finish. let me finish here. war inot need to go to this country. in fact, we should do the iposite, and i am hoping, and am inspired by sarah's comments here that people do, in fact, take direct action. let's demonstrate in front of military enlistment centers to talk to people going in, and don't do this with your life. let's get involved in lobbying to undermine the military

industrial complex and cut the defense budget. let's support people who want peace in the united states, who do not want the united states going around occupying other countries because we need their resources or because we don't like the guy who runs it or because we do not like situations in the country or something else. i am not talking about vast genocide like rwanda, cases that are so extreme, and, by the way, there are plenty of situations like that, but if you want to talk about syria, i can give you an extended dissertation on the unbelievable blunders that obama has made in regards to syria, starting from the beginning of that revolt, especially when he got up on the world stage and said to the syrian rebels, go for it, boys, because it is now time for a thought to step down. him and what army, right? and drawing redlines on syria, like this was some sort of monopoly board or something like

that. this is none of our business, and that war would've ended very quickly with an aside victory because none of those people could have stood up to the onslaught of this guy's forces. do i support that? no, but look at egypt. now we have the guys that we supposedly like who are gunning down their people by the hundreds, and is anybody calling for airstrikes against the egyptian armed forces? i have not heard about it, so before we start talking about intervening early in conflict with our military, let's stop thinking about intervening any dam place, ok, and let's start working for peace and undermining the military industrial complex and doing what we can to get this country out of the war business. [applause] oh, and by the way, my other comment is i am not saying that the generals have to revolt against civilian control of the army.

it is the right of any soldier as a citizen of america to say i am not going to fight in this war. that is what a conscientious objector does. politically someone aware does. someone will replace him, i guess, if he does not want to fight, but god loves the people who are willing to stand up and say, i am not willing to go fight in iraq, and if more people had done that, maybe less people would have died in that conflict. actually, it was exactly the generals who should have stood up. you have the six dissenting generals who talked about their objection to the iraq war after the fact, after they retired. up.hey should have stood they cannot resist orders. they have to either quit or follow orders. >> none of them did that. >> great. thanks. >> so i was wondering if any of you have an idea of something

militaries can do to limit collateral damage without getting rid of war altogether, because getting rid of war altogether is a much harder goal ? >> are you a student here? >> no. >> ok. >> we do not have any more t-shirts. >> are you a student in general? >> yes. [laughter] >> here you go. i went to regis university, so you get a little prize for asking a question. >> and you are wearing camouflage also. [laughter] yes, thank you for that question. you are things militaries can do collateral damage. you cannot go into conflict. at was a shout out to you, bob. when they do go into conflict, there is things they can do before, during, and after, and i will make this brief, although

it is what i have spent the last eight years doing. by thebelievably well, way. sarah does unbelievably well. wart, it is all about planning. when rumsfeld went into iraq, brought the united states into iraq, there was no planning for limiting the lateral damage aside from let's do this at night so people are not out, etc., but there was no planning on what are we going to do if we harm civilians, what is going to happen if this goes on longer than we thought? you can minimize so much civilian harm. >> can i just jump in real quick, sarah? i was with some of the very people who made these decisions the said before iraq, i voted against -- there was a vote, whether we should attack. --were there often thereafter called the georgetown squish. the argument was there was not civilian damage because it would

be in the desert, and even more, if it went into the city, no one would be around to watch it because we had learned the lesson from vietnam, and needless to say, the georgetown swish took on that argument. >> so if you are not prepared, you can have what we had in iraq, where many, many people get killed and injured. or in combat operations, it is all about what the commander so,s his or her forces, yes, you can have good rules. you can have good guidelines, but i have seen commanders who have said, you will not cause civilian harm. this will endanger our situation. their soldiers are very good about not creating civilian harm. if they say, hey, it is a free-for-all, these are our enemies, everyone here is an and then after civilian harm is caused, you need to go back and do something under the laws of war. if my kids are killed in the bombingcause we were

bob's weapons cache, the military has no obligation to pay compensation, apologize, investigate, nothing. this is sort of a missing law of war, so what we are trying to do is get them to come back and dignified civilian losses, and, again, if you are not tracking and do not know how many civilians were killed in combat, how can you do that? anotherdent and then student. >> my question, why does america or the u.s. care about the war? why doesn't it just stay away like other countries? just to be honest, in the middle east, like i am from the middle east, and the view of the people is that the u.s. is the problem, just to be honest with how people think, and if they just i do not know, that

is what i think. thanks. >> thank you for the question. say that theto only time in my life that i have actually been conflicted about what side i was on was a us-led attack on a country was with serious, because i have lived in that country and because several of my friends have been killed in the conflict, and my best friend, who is still alive, and he is now in jordan as a refugee, and i talked to him almost every day, he was not even certain. he is a palestinian man, very critical of u.s. policy, and at if someone will come in and take out a thought, we do not care who it is. [noise] oh oh.

>> it is ok. it was a thought. >> i guess i will continue. last summer, on one hand, i was so proud of the american people side.h sides of the we are tired of this. we cannot do it again. on the other hand, watching people die on a daily basis, i was thinking, who is going to stop assad, and is it worth it for another 200,000 or 300,000 people to die? so i sympathize with people on this panel. even though i am against war. where the u.s. has left a good legacy from their occupations and attacks in other countries, what do you do if no one else will step in, and in some situations, maybe no other country can. >> we will continue. we have one question from a student here that has been

waiting. if you want to ask your question. thanks for your patience with the noise. [noise ends] there we go. >> do i get a prize? >> you will get my cwa pen -- pin. thispends on how good question is. >> it is kind of vague. do you think that group organizations such as nato and the u.n. and stuff have more of a responsibility to limit collateral damage than, say, america leads an army into serious as opposed to nato? is there any type of difference between how to handle civilian or collateral damage, when a single country is supposed to be responsible for it? >> a good question. oh, you get this pin. >> i can be brief on this.

no, there is no difference. when you pick up a weapon come you have certain responsibilities. when you pick up a weapon as part of a group, you have certain responsibilities, and you have the same responsibilities. this is the beauty of the laws of war, even though i know there are some problems with it. >> others want to respond? ok, we will go to the student question here. see collateral damage as a very civilian issue because it impacts civilians, so how can we actually engage the people who are being affected in making these decisions? >> in terms of the public who are supporting wars or in terms of -- >> both. how can we actually engage populations in conversation to make it a more grassroots process rather than a top-down

decision-making process that is affecting civilians? >> one problem is you have less than one percent of the u.s. population serving in the u.s. military. there was a decision after the vietnam war, which did not actually come to pass him a but, essentially, you would put the combat support, combat service support, which basically means all of the things that get the war fighters where they need to go, and you put those in reserve, and this means we will never go to war again without support of the population. it did not quite work out that way. less than 25% of eligible aged people can serve because we are dumb, too drugged is withone thing protesting, i will be getting the people in, including from the ivy league. the population from a bigger demographic to serve. beginning with don't ask, don't

tell, the first time, rotc was allowed back on some of the campuses. it should not just be, and it is not, but it should just not be kids from lower demographics that serve. it should be kids from a swath of society. that bothers me is that in the 1960's, there was a big protest, and it had its and i think the abolition of the draft took a lot of the air out of the ability to create an antiwar movement in the country, which i would be very supportive of. i member a very concrete example of that. in 1991, i guess it was around january when the other bush was thinking about the other war in some aclui went with people and other people at a university in baltimore to talk about why this war was a bad

200, etc., and we had like 60 people, students, at the university come to hear this presentation, and that is because at that exact moment, there was talk in congress and elsewhere about reinstituting the draft because we had to send 500,000 troops over to the gulf, right? two or three weeks later, that had been squashed by president bush, and we all went back to that same university for a follow-up seminar, and i think there were 30 people in the audience. now, i get it. there is a self-preservation thing, buthis because the draft was removed from the equation, people, you know, became less active. i was unhappy that one percent of the country is in the military. i think it should be about one third of one percent. our military is way too big, way too overloaded, way too close

been said, has weighed too much to gety, and if you want involved, there is a lot of organizations that are working on reducing the size of the military all across the board in many different ways. >> we have time for one last question here. is there a student with a question here? we will go there. thank you for your patience. but come on up and ask your question. this will be the last one. >> all right, i have a question for bob. you are talking about surrendering or quitting your military job. what happens when rebutting does that, and then the enemy attacks? [laughter] [applause] i am not a pacifist, but there are very few times when that question will ever be raised and have to be answered. right now, we have a military that is larger than all the rest

of the world budgets combined. we are the only power aside from russia which has anything like a nuclear arsenal which can back up that for us. there is no conceivable enemy that can threaten the united states directly. i get al qaeda and other people who can come and blow up a butping mall or something, there is no global power anywhere in the world, including china, that can threaten the united states. if we had a military that was dedicated to defending the united states as opposed to whatever it is 800 military places all around the world, as opposed to a doctrine of american exceptionalism that says we need to bring our enlightened values to all of these other united countries that don't understand the values of democracy and everything else, if we did not have a military that was so easy for a president to pick up the phone and order into action, there

would simply be a lot less wars. i do not know what enemy you think is about to attack us. it is not a side. it certainly was not saddam hussein, who presented no threat to us, so there are international ways of dealing with war. someone else brought up nato. organization that long ago outlived its usefulness, as we just learned in crimea, so why do we have a nato? that mean we shouldn't have a united nations security council supported actions? might that have worked in rwanda ? might that have worked in other countries? maybe, but i am for that and not for more iraqs. i am not for more afghanistans. plenty wayslenty, for the united states to do with /11 thattan after 9

did not involve us going in. we could have been negotiating with the taliban to hand us over osama bin laden. i have talked to a lot of diplomats who said that might have accomplished if we gave them a little more time. job tot, but is it our go knocking off the taliban and? no. so we could have solved that problem diplomatically if we gave it some time, but what happened? we had a president that instead of trying to calm passions, instead of trying to tell people that in this great hour of we got on thes, megaphone and called for war, so the revenge motive was inflamed. maybe there is no other way around it,. >> we are out of time. thanks to our panelists here.

[applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> there is another panel after this. >> earlier this month, the federal communications commission voted to move forward on a proposed rule change that could allow content providers like netflix to pay for so-called fast lane service. tomorrow, the progressive policy institute will hold a forum on the fcc policy. you can watch live coverage on c-span two.

one of the stories that resonated was the moment when aboutere digitterring whether or not they need to inject seawater into unit one a matter of the clock is ticking and they are just down to the wire. yushita, the plant superintendent who in the end would have to make the final knows that it is desperate, they need to get water in there very quickly. meanwhile, everybody wants a say. tepcco officials and japanese government officials hawing and hed an order that the government hasn't signed off. he has to hold off. well, he has already started and so he basically calls one of the over and says i

will give an order but ignore it. very loudly proclaims to everybody in tokyo can can the seawater injection when in fact they didn't. human element a in that story in which in japan japan where ignoring the rules was not rewarded. things would go worse than they were going. >> more about the tsunami and at the nuclear ater plant saturday night 10:00 eastern on "after words." we will continue with c-span coverage of college commencement addresses. in just a moment, justice scalia dents at william and mary law school and then

legislative at virginia tech and later wisconsin governor scott walker. talks at the william and mary commencement, and then later, scott walker. >> thank you very much dean , douglas, members of the faculty, graduate, ladies and gentlemen. i have a philosophy of commencements. it is that they are not for the benefit of the graduates, who would probably rather have their diplomas mailed to them at the beach. [laughter] but, rather they are for the , pleasure and satisfaction of the graduates' families and friends, who take this occasion to observe and celebrate a significant accomplishment on the part of those whom they love. in that respect a commencement is sort of like a wedding or a baptism.

the primary participants in those events would rather be elsewhere probably, as well. since it is for the benefit of the families, one of the wonderful things about graduation addresses is that you can talk about whatever you want. it really does not matter. [laughter] decided to talk to you about this afternoon briefly, and i promise to be brief, is whether, to be blunt about it, you graduates have essentially wasted one of your three years here, and could have done the job in two. it is a current proposal for reform that law students should be permitted to sit for the bar exam and otherwise be eligible to practice law after only two years of study. to be sure, this is not a new idea.

in new york state for example, , between 1882 and 1911, college graduates needed to complete only two years of law school to , and only non-graduates had to do the extra year. of course in 1911, the new york , court of appeals changed the rule to three years, which is where it remains and where it remains everywhere. but, now and again, it has been a source of controversy. in the 1970's prominent educators from president derek bok of harvard university to president edward levi of the university of chicago said publicly that switching to two years was at least worth a try. then in 1999 judge richard posner embraced the idea.

i think he has written a book about it, but -- [laughter] as did the president of the united states just last year, saying that third-year students would be "better off clerking or practicing in a firm." finally, joining the chorus, and this was a big surprise was the , american bar association's task force on the future of legal education, which suggested in january of this year that "bar admitting authorities could create paths to licensure with fewer hours than the current standards require by devices such as, (1) accepting applicants who have fewer hours of law-school training than the standards require, or (2), accepting applicants with two-years of law school credits plus a year of

carefully-structured skills-based experience, inside a law school or elsewhere." i vigorously dissent. [laughter] it seems to me that the law-school-in-two-years proposal rests on the premise that law school is, or ought to be, a trade school. it is not that. it is a school preparing men and women not for a trade but for a profession, the profession of law. one can practice various aspects of law without knowing much about the whole field. i expect that someone could be taught to be an expert real-estate conveyancer in six weeks, or a tax advisor in six months. and maybe we should train such people, but we should not call them lawyers. just as someone mighco