tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. as america continues to fight the longe war in history, with some calling for even more military action, it leads to this question -- are we becoming numb to the fact that the united states seems to be in a permanent state of war? one person asking that question is an iraq veteran and paul captain -- and captain paul chappell. he is author of the new text "peaceful revolution." we are glad you can join us with a conversation with the former army captain and now peace advocate paul chappell, coming up right now. >> every community has a martin

luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. tavis: paul chappell graduated from west point and went on to serve seven years in the army, including in iraq after retiring with the rank of captain in 2009. he began to think critically of the notion of war and then published. he is now the peace leadership director of the nuclear age peace foundation and author of the new text "peaceful

revolution, how we can create the future needed for humanity's survival." paul, good to have you on the program. >> thank you for having me, tavis. tavis: something that is oxymoronic for me, you say you are anti-war. how does that work? >> i believe i grew up believing that war makes us safer. if you read television, comic books, "batman, " "spiderman, " they all win by beating people up. presidents say we are promoting freedom and democracy. and a lot of people join the military with those intentions, and macarthur says all conscientious people want peace, but where they disagree is the means, and i think i had this realization that there is actually more effective way to make the world safe, which is through waging peace, and war is

a very outmoded method. but it cannot be in the 21st century. >> tavis: before the recent presidents, i wonder if you think we are selling young men and women and an authentic or false bill of goods, when we suggest to them that joining the military is about promoting peace and democracy throughout the world, and yet we find ourselves now in what is essentially a permanent state of war, or so it seems at the moment? to be more provocative about it, lying to young men and women? >> that is a question and something i think about a lot lately. the first president ever to identify middle eastern hatred for america was eisenhower, and he called it a campaign of hatred, and he wanted to find out why they hated us, and he got a security council together, and they found out that they hate us not because we are free but because we block democracy

in the middle east, and if you looked at every government we support, saddam hussein in the 1980's, the saudi arabian government, which is more oppressive to women, supporting the taliban, dictatorships in egypt and bahrain, all of this oppression, and the greatest threat to american security is the hypocrisy of the american politicians, and you cannot even called the hypocrisy of america, because americans do not know this is going on. they believe they are free, but if you look at all of the government's we support their, another one, pakistan, we support dictatorships, and if you look at the arab spring, where you have people protesting for democracy, protesting for freedom against government support. tavis: a wonder if whether or not you think that is a case that can be made to the american people. i am trying to just oppose the american patriotism, american

exceptionalism, you know, with what you just said now, which is that our policy if not the american people, the american policy around the globe is often hypocritical, and i agree with you, but i wonder if you think the american people are going to buy that. how much hate mail are you and i going to receive? >> i think they will buy it, because i think america has the most amazing ideals in the world. freedom, justice, equality, opportunity, and the world for the most part is not angry at our ideals, the world is angry that we do not live up to our ideals. if you look at martin luther king jr. or frederick douglass, they said, "look at how great our ideals are." if you look at the average american, should be -- should america support dictatorships, the answer would be no, and if you ask them should we not be hypocritical and live up to our own ideals, i think most

americans would agree, and it comes down to what it means to love your country. if you love your child and find that your child is beating people up or stealing, if you love your child, you try to correct them, and if you love your country and find that it is doing something it should not be doing, you try to correct your government. i cannot think of anyone more critical of their country than martin luther king jr.. no one is going to call susan b. anthony or mark twain or frederick douglass and patriotic. they are as patriotic as apple pie. you have to board your country accountable and help your country live up to its own ideals. >> -- tavis: i know what you mean when you are saying about not calling martin luther king and patriotic, but he got this invited to the johnson white house, and opinion polls of them found that the overwhelming

numbers of americans, including the majority of african americans had turned against martin luther king when he came out against so vehemently against the war. when king dies, he thinks he is persona non grata in this country, because everybody turned on martin. he was found to be unpatriotic and the communist among other things, although i take your point. i raise that because the part of martin luther king we do not want to deal with is his critique of american foreign policy. what to keep him in the state of being a dreamer. we now have monuments of him. president obama goes to celebrate the monument with every other speaker, and no one wanted to draw attention to where he stood on a question of war and peace, so even when you have a great american, an iconic american, i think the greatest american ever produced, and martin luther king, we don't want to talk about the foreign policy. the point i am getting to is that the american people do not want to wrestle with those issues. this is not just historical with

dr. king, who they did not want to wrestle with about foreign policy, let's bring it to today. i cannot count the number of times by on airplanes, and i know the flight attendants are well-meaning, but it always gets me when it was as to give a round of applause to the military personnel sitting on the plane. i notice many times, the airlines will letilitary veterans or those who are active duty board the plane first, that is just a simple example, and there are other examples i could point to where we want to celebrate. i get the point. we celebrate them uncritically. a hot -- there is nothing about the nonsense we have been engaged in. we just want to celebrate them because they are a military personnel. it is a long way to get to have to begin the american people really wrestle with the issues of war and peace when we seem to be stuck on king as a dreamer and celebrating military personnel because they are fighting for our freedoms.

it is a long statement, but does that make sense to you? how do you get a conversation about this? >> you are right. profits are not treated well in their own era, and martin luther king was a profit. when he stood up against the war, it did not go well in many churches. and when you look at what is going on now, people often ask me, how are you going to wake up the american people? thatay that the reality is the reason we have a collapsing economy is not because the teachers or immigrants. it is because of the war economy and the war spending and the war machine. general douglas macarthur said that preparation for war is as materially destructive as war itself, and general eisenhower compares war spending to crucifixion. you have to show the american people that we're spending trillions of dollars on war. not only is it destroying our

economy, it is also not making us safer. if you look at the american economy compared them 2012, you cannot even compare in terms of how much we have declined economically and in terms of international prestige. tavis: paul, that argument has been made time and time again, and yet, there has not been a cry. you know this as you work in it every day. where is the peace cry? by and large, we have seen no where near the peace movement that we saw during the vietnam era. there was no human cry when the administration said they are not going to let bodies be seen returning to dover air force base, so we can really wrestle with what war really is. we do not see depictions everett -- pictures every night of the people we are killing. barack obama has dropped more bombs, killing innocent people. i am not trying to demonize the president. i am just trying to put the facts on the table.

when you say reality is going to wake up the american people come apart in my english, but it aint' happening, brother. >> the myth of the war machines is that war makes us safer. if you truly believe that war makes you sick or that wore a major family state corporate tax york democracy, what are you willing to pay? you are willing to pay almost everything, and if i say we need the majority of the budget to go to war spending and that it protect your family and children, you will go with that. not only does war not make you and your family safe, war actually put you and your family in greater danger, and we can offer a more effective security paradigm. we just cannot say we are against war. we also have to offer a more effective security paradigm. and what you said earlier about people respecting the military, i think there is something very interesting about that, how we have so much greed and

selfishness. i grew up in the 1980's, and i heard greed is good. selfishness is a virtue. the idea that there are men and women in this country who would risk their lives for people they do not know, it really inspires people, and firemen and police officers and first responders are put in that same category after september 11, but americans, they want to believe in goodness. they want to believe that there is someone out there with all the corporate corruption and greed that someone will do something for someone they do not know. uplifting the human spirit. we have to show that there is a better paradigm. tavis: and yet, maybe i misread this, but you argued that war is the price for peace? >> i grew up believing that you need more to create peace. you need violence to stop violence, but i had a change of attitude just looking at

evidence, how 200 years ago in america, anyone who was not a white male was suppressed. if you're african-american, femf you were white but did not own land, you were oppressed. 200 years ago, women could not own their own property. they did not get the right to vote through war. and if you look at non land owners getting the vote, and even in the civil war, it took a peaceful movement before african-americans truly got their human rights. and if you grow up in our culture and are taught checks and balances or the legislative and judicial branch, the one thing you are not taught is the citizens and social movements, and that is why you and i are able to have this discussion today because of martin luther king jr., susan b. anthony, frederick douglass, all of these activists. >> how far would an elected official go, how high up the

ladder could one goal in electra policy, speaking the kind of truth that you are speaking now? i am asking because you said it is not so much the american people, it is our politicians who are engaged in hypocritical policies. we just look the other way while they do this, and we wrap ourselves in the flag. advancing things they really ought not to be advancing, but how far? could barack obama have been elected president if he had taken this line? could george bush have been reelected if after 9/11 his response had been one that sounds similar to yours? my point is that i do not know that the american people even want to hear elected officials tell them these kinds of hard truths about the fact that were ultimately does not make us safer. you do not get elected if your barack obama's saying that. you do not get elected if you do not beat your chest to say that you took out osama bin laden. he keeps saying that.

"took out osama bin laden" when foreign-policy comes up, you have got the first african- american president who comes out of the king tradition -- if it were not for king, he would not be present. king is vehemently opposed to war, and to get reelected, he has to brag about the fact that with his nobel peace prize, he took out osama bin laden. if he were to tell americans the trick, what would happen? >> that is a really good question. i can offer some evidence. woodrow wilson was opposed to the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, but he was pressured by the women's movement. roosevelt was pressured by the women's movement, and lincoln did not begin his political career as an advocate for the abolition of slavery, but he was pressured by the movement, and things and changed so dramatically in our country. if any politician running today and said we should bring back slavery, bring back segregation,

women should not vote, people would look at him as if he were in same, but to wonder years ago, that is how americans thought, and that is how politicians spoke. toward slavery, why can we not change our attitudes towards a war, nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction, especially when those threaten our survival? tavis: maybe that is it. those do not threaten everybody. but where does threaten everybody. they have a vested interest in this issue, this war machine issue, because they think it makes all of us safer. everybody felt threatened after 9/11. >> i also think that if you show the american people this is what is best for the country, what is best for american security, what is best for the american economy, what is best for the american ideals, living up to these ideals, this is a more

effective way to move our country forward in the 21st century. >> there is debate right now, as you well know having been in the army, about what is going to happen to the defense department and whether these cuts to their budgets will ultimately stick in the long run, which raises a bigger question about will the military be more about spreading freedom around the world and advancing democracy in his and peacekeeping and humanitarian work. one that has that as its first in the name as opposed to war and dropping bombs? >> absolutely. right now, the military is have killing machine and have peace corps. the military is killing people, but it is also building schools and hospitals, and there was a recent pugh research study that showed of the post 9/11 veterans, many of them think that using violence makes terrorism wars, and the best way

to win hearts and minds is to live up to your own ideals and to help people around the world, and when it comes to terrorism, terrorism is a transnational criminal network, and the best way to deal with that is fbi, police work. and another thing i assert is the overwhelming evidence that human beings is not naturally violent. if you look at military history, the overwhelming evidence is that human beings are not naturally violent, and one episode is that war traumatized human brain. war is one of the most traumatizing things a human can go through. why can we not go through war and become more mentally healthy? why would we have more mental trauma if we were not naturally violent? tavis: i am glad you asked that question about whether or not we are predisposed to having these kinds of animalistic impulses, but i am glad you address that.

how does one do his or her job while they are unlisted when one is having these kinds of thoughts about the war machine, the killing machine that they are part of? you grew up feeling one way. as i said earlier, that war is what you have to engage in to protect the peace, to have the peace. you have a different point of view now, but enough been wrestling for these things for years, and you were wrestling with these things while you were in the army, while you were in iraq. you were marinating on these issues. how do you do both every day? how do you do your job as part of a killing machine and have these thoughts about what the value of war really is? >> i think it is really difficult. i read a lot of speeches from general douglas macarthur, and he said we have to abolish war as conflict resolution, and he says a virtually all conscientious people want peace.

he says every tribe comet every nation, virtually all conscious people want peace, and general douglas macarthur said the yearning for peace is so powerful that when a dictator goes to war, he always says he is fighting for peace, even if you look at extreme examples like hitler, where people committing atrocities say they are fighting for peace and for self-defense, and i think we have to show people that there is a more effective way to arrive at that. tavis: human beings may not come into your point, paul, be violent, but i wonder if the notion of world peace is as laughable as the contestants in miss america saying they want world peace. is that even possible, this notion of world peace? >> i think the evidence shows it is possible, and it takes a while to go through all of the evidence, but a little bit of evidence, if you look at europe,

one reason europe was able to conquer every continent was for several centuries, europe was the bloodiest place on earth. they have several centuries of nonstop warfare, and a lot of that was religious conflicts. can you imagine a war in western europe now? can you imagine germany and france or and the western country going to war with another western country? for a long time in human history, that was one of the bloodiest places on earth. if you look at america as an example, you were a virginian first and an american second, and now you are an american first and a virginian secondary if you tell people you are in virginia before being an american, they will call you unpatriotic. of we can shift to the national identity, why can we not shipped to the global identity. the reality of the century is the world is so interconnected, we are truly a global family, and if we do not achieve that attitude as a species, we will not survive.

>> -- tavis: one thing i find fascinating about your career is that it starts at west point, and it is hard to find a greater military school. i am wondering if the people at west point would be ashamed of your evolution now or whether the people at west point, a military institution that it might be, are open to produce a officers whose minds are fertile enough and open enough to wrestle with these ideas and to come to a conclusion that war is not what it is all cracked up to be. >> from what i have read from general eisenhower and others, i think that the purpose of the military is to make the world safer, and general douglas macarthur, he said the soldier above all other people prays for peace for human suffering and bears the scars of war. i cannot -- if i think that this

is what has to be done to make our country better, critical thinking, and it taught me to speak the truth as i see it, and we live in a democracy, and we have the right to speak our mind, and i think if we're not going to take a different direction, what we are doing now is obviously not working. so i think we have to begin this discussion, have this dialogue, and that is how we will go forward. t -- tavis: tell me about what you do. >> we work in california, and the idea is to abolish nuclear weapons. one thing i learned in the military is out excellent the training is. the military has excellent training in the ways of war, but most activists have no training in waging peace. how do you promote change and a positive way? our website is wagingpeace.org,

and i hope people will get more involved and have this discussion. tavis: you said that your work is about involving the abolishment of nuclear weapons. how do you view the engagement of obama with iran at the moment? do you like the tactic right now? >> there is a famous story with condi. my son will not stop eating sugar. gundy said to take this note -- son home and bring him back and three days. she did, and he said stop eating sugar, and that was it. and she said, "did you make me go through all of that trouble to take him home and bring him back? why did you not tell them three days ago to stop eating sugar? and he said, "because three days ago, i was still eating sugar." if we truly believe, if we truly

believe that nuclear weapons work as a deterrent, why would we not want every country to have nuclear-weapons? if we really believe that deterrence work, -- tavis: because ahmadinejad is crazy, and we are not. >> that theory assumes that you have rational actor with a nuclear deterrent. tavis: his name is paul k. chappell. his book is about creating the future we need for humanity's survival. i do not think that is an overstatement at all. it is an honor to have him on the program. that is our show for tonight. until then, thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org.

tavis: hi, i am tavis smiley. join me next time for an acclaimed filmmaker. that is next time. we will see you then. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. thank you. >> and by contributions to pbs stations from viewers like you. thank you. stations from viewers like you. thank you.