sometimes, war is imperative. americans say world war ii was not a choice.but having the public recognize what war is and my concern about television coverage of war is that it tends to flatten were out. it lacks perspective, context, particularly any historical context and the very fact you have a flat screen, it is hard to describe it. with the television camera, the viewer has to understand when he is looking at war coverage that the camera is like a flashlight. the camera shows you what is at the end of the beam but does not show you what is above, below, or on either side. understanding the limitations of television coverage, this business of building trust, it's going to be slow but we have to start sometime and now would be a good time to start. mr arnett: a new generation of young journalists being produced high this university and others around the country are up to the challenge. they want to get out -- the successes of dan rather and myself, they want to emulate what we do. they are ready to go out and with the cooperation of the military and news

it does after world war i or world war ii. the civil war has made a difference in the size and role of government. and how those interact concern many northerners, reticular liberal northerners who had -- particularly liberal northerners who had favored emancipation for have to americans. certainly charles francis adams junior argued one of the consequences of what was happening has been the growth of a most corrupt system of legislation and logrolling, where great corporations openly allied themselves with political parties. not like there are any parallels in modern history here. now some of this is -- i will say just regular corruption. and part of this also is because you have a lot of the true ideological leaders of the republican party dying during the early stages and the later stages of reconstruction. that is stevens, charles sumner, charles sumner who was a true believer and a one issue person to some degree -- they are dying and being replaced by a new breed. you have chandler, the chairman of the national republica

that's why we call it the vietnam war. they don't call it the nebraska war. you know, that it was exceptionally difficult time. i remember -- i mean, i watched when president johnson announced he wasn't going to run for reelection. five days later, martin luther king was killed. every large city in america other than indianapolis erupted in flames. the white house could see the fire a couple blocks away. that's just an indication of what was going on in the country at the time. there's no question. i have a memory of what it ft like to be -- say i was in the military. if you were trying to apply for a job, you'd leave it off your resume in the 1970s. there was a whole bunch of things going on at the time, and it wasn't just the controversy of the war, the counter culture revolution, i mean, america was really coming apart at the time. i think we've resettled and i think it began in the late '70s. and it's good news. but to repeat, vietnam is not a disease. it's not a syndrome that we can treat with changing our policy. it is a long and painful story of missed

war. >>> ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the presentation of the colors by the texas army rotc color guard and for the pledge of allegiance led by united states marine corp sergeant daniel hamilton. ♪ ♪ [ star spangled banner ] ♪ >>> i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god,in divisible, with liberty and justice for all. in liberty and justice for all. >> announcer: ladies and gentlemen, please welcome miss elizabeth christian, president of the lyndon banes johnson. >> good afternoon. on behalf of the board of trustees, i welcome you to the second day of the vietnam war summit. controversy and debate is critical to the success of this summit. last night former secretary of state henne kissinger said on this stage, in a statement that is bound to generate serious discussion, that he does not blame u.s. policy for the quagmire and stalemate of the vietnam war. instead, he believes that the massive sp

what did you think of the war then and what do you think of the war now? >> i was living ann arbor michigan and had the first of the teach ins. the war was on everyone's mind and sponsored by the department of an poll gee and my mother was dying of cancer and died the next month, april 1965. a lot of the attention in our family was necessarily divided but it consumed our country and my memory of it is in the same way that we all accumulated the memory from the nightly news, from the protests, from the documentaries that happened at the time to the succession of news events to the elections, all of that stuff, but as lynn was saying, by the time we got four or five decades away, where the historical try angulation can take place. when you can have the distance and perspective necessary not just to make a reactive or journal li response but somethi greater than parts you begin to realize almost everything you thought you knew was not true and that i think i agree completely with lynn that just a testimony of being brought back, we couldn't interview anyone f

after war i or world war ii. the civil war has made a difference in the size and role of government. and how those interact concern many northerners, reticular had -- northerners who particularly liberal northerners who had favored emancipation for have to americans. certainly charles francis adams junior argued one of the consequences of what was growth ofhas been the a most corrupt system of legislation and logrolling, where great corporations openly allied themselves with political parties. not like there are any parallels in modern history here. -- i willf this is say just regular corruption. and part of this also is because you have a lot of the true ideological leaders of the republican party dying during the early stages and the later stages of reconstruction. that is stevens, charles sumner, charles sumner who was a true believer and a one issue person to some degree -- they are dying and being replaced by a new breed. the chairmandler, of the national republican committee. at one point when he is the cha

flatten war out. it lacks -- the advantages of television coverage. but in general television coverage lacks perspective and context and any historical context. and the very fact that you have a flat screen is kind of hard to describe it, i think the late eric receiver said with the television camera, the viewer has to understand when he is looking at, say, war coverage, that the camera is like a flashlight. the camera shows you what is at the end of the beam, but it doesn't show you what is above or below or at either side of the beam. so understanding the limitations of television coverage and then back to your question from which i detoured some, this business of building trust, it is going to be slow, but we have to start sometime. and one man's opinion, now would be a good time to start. >> i have a last comment quickly. >> please. >> i want to tell you that a new generation of young journalists being produced by this university and others around the united states are up to the challenge. they wa

i'm so sorry for anything that i did that brought the war or any war unjust war.ng time ago. ♪ long time ago >> where have all the flowers gone. ♪ where have all the flowers gone ♪ ♪ young girls have picked them every one ♪ ♪ when will they ever learn ♪ when will they ever learn >> when will we ever learn. last time. ♪ when will we ever learn ♪ when will we ever learn [ applause ] >> joe macdonald. [ applause ] >>> thursday american history tv on c-span 3 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the church committee's final report on federal intelligence activities. the senate select committee to study governmental operations held hearings on intelligence activities by the cia, fbi, irs and nsa. that's at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span 3.

war, fight the war, escalate the war, and then come back and tell us how it's going.so to your question about my role, i come from stock is military, and i give the policy should match the sacrifice anything the advantage of being on the ground is that you are all being shot up together. and where the marines go tend to be the most difficult areas. so whether you are in command in general or a corporal, we all had the same objective which is to try to make these wars less read, to convict these wars less awful, to try to make these wars not as long as they have become very i think the people of washington have their own challenges and i shouldn't minimize that but i would rather -- because the marines did know what the state department was, but they were a lot of good team members who thought these wars from far away. >> so one of the questions, the lesson of iraq and afghanistan that should be applied to the conflict now i guess? >> the question is what lessons could we apply to the current challenge with islamic state? that is a topic for another but i think it's a

in war torn london.ow did you end up going to russia? >> the president sent mr. hopkins to moscow and took myself with him. >> harry hopkins was president eisenhow eisenhower's closest adviser. he secretly flew to russia to offer aide to the soviets. >> we went to moscow an tried the find out from the russians what they really needed. >> with a nazis ravaging the country, the russians needed everything, food, arms and raw materials. >> finally it was agreed that we would send to russia. >> shifting crates over the north atlantic to the russian port but this initial aid to keep russia in the war was a gamble for roosevelt. >> vooz velt, the realist, says we must keep the soviet union in the war if we are to hope to defeat hitler. >> he anticipated later on we were going to be involved. >> four days 56 pearl harbor, germany declared war on the united states. the u.s. now faced a common enemy with britain and the soviet union. russia became our new ally. >> a new working agreement between two of the greates

world war i at the time was the bloodiest war in history. millions of people died. there was a significant movement around the world to say, we never going to do that again. point, leading nations attempted to ban the practice of warfare which did not last very long. united stateshe has never repealed the act where we swear we would never use warfare against an opponent. there were other attempts to mitigate the aspect of warfare. a lot came out as the result of the gunpowder revolution. you had prominent thinkers in the 17th and 18th centuries to said, there are limits to what you can do in warfare. note are things that are acceptable behavior. for example, you should not go out and poisoning your bullets before firing them at someone. you should not deliberately kill someone after you have captured them. you should not deliberately spread the disease amongst your enemies. yes, they are your enemies but when wars and, you have to go back to at least being able to coexist. unless your objective is the complete and utter annihilation of your opponent. which is flat w

and the battle of france, this war is a worldwide war.a few hours after the gall and churchill spoke, another speech took place as the baton was taken up across the atlantic ocean. this one little remembered. it was a national radio address broadcast from a house near the campus of yale university which challenged americans to respond to the unfolding catastrophe in europe. the nation was addressed by henry stimson, a 72-year-old private citizen, and elder statesman. numerous federal posts since the theodore roosevelt administration while moving in and out of a successful career as a wall street banking attorney with a break as a 49-year-old, an army artillery regiment in the western front in france. he was a progressive republican, served president william howard taft as secretary of war and herbert hoover as secretary of state. he told his listeners the country faced, quote, probably the greatest crisis of its history. probably based on law and justice instead of force. seems like a quaint notion now. with china and southeast asia parti

go back to a world war -- world war i model. the problem is, they're going to need at least 4 fighter groups. and, some of these evaluations estimatewarplanes, the the atomic crews, we will lose 17% of them. 17%. it doesn't take a math major to figure out accurate long period of time, you are running out of bombers and crews. also, you need to have that intelligence on where these targets are. the problem is, we don't. the soviet union is 63 times bigger than nazi germany. during the second world war, you had literally thousands of people putting together intelligence for bomber crews that could hit these targets. the central interpretation unit had 1500 officers, 12,000 signal troops. don't have anything like that subsequent to the war. you do get your intel from a project called winger. you have 1800 civilian and military personnel interviewing german p.o.w.'s who were in the soviet union, or japanese too, and saying, what did you see? that's the best we can do. it was factory in kiev, over here. that's the best you got. there

but hard war was not total war. while the march was destructive of public property and infrastructure, it lacked the massive wholesale destruction of human life that characterized world war ii and other 20th century conflicts. sherman's primary targets were food, livestock, government, industrial, military properties. they were carefully chosen to create the desired effect and never included killing civilians. indeed sherman claimed his were was more humane than traditional methods between armies. he called the south carolina woman the reason he was ransacking her plantation was so her soldier husband would come home and general grant would not have to kill him in the trenches of petersburg. he was fighting to bring soldiers back into the union, not to annihilate them. as the treatment of savannah demonstrated, there was no need for destruction. nevertheless sherman , demonstrated for the first time in the modern era the power of terror and psychological warfare in breaking down an enemy's will to resist. this conce

but what about the cold war? would we be talking about a cold war that effectively ended 25 years before it actually did? i think that is possible. , ifact, some historians don't like this phrase, but some refer to a cold war one and a cold war to. - two. there is much to be said about your question, but my line is, one is, i don't think the threats that the soviets posed, and i am certainly not going to argue here that there was no soviet threat. i think there was. but the threat in the serious way to not last as long as you were suggesting. i also think that if we are going to hold out containment and the grand strategy of the cold war as a great success, that i think we have to consider the price that the united states paid for holding to that strategy as long as it did, and for the fact that it did leave. i don't want to drop a straight line between containment and vietnam, but it certainly helped to contribute to the intervention in vietnam, to interventions and many other parts of the world, that i think we

and world war i and world war ii. here's somebody who really with the possible exception of franklin roosevelt was presided at more events and made more decisions that shaped the history of 20th century united states than -- i can't think of anyone else. with the exception of fdr. there was his politics. he was conservative republican which didn't rub well with the democrat presidents he had to work with, particularly fdr and harry truman. but he wasn't a conservative taft republican. he was not someone as taft republicans were, interested in overturning aspects of the new deal and the incipient welfare state when he runs for president in 1952. he's more moderate than that. and that offended some conservatives on that point. he's a resolute anti-communist a time when, again, a lot of opec -- a lot of opinion on the left are more sympathetic and more willing to sort of work with the soviet union. and then there's the person -- the man himself. he is somebody who always gives off the air that he is the smartest person i

other titles include war and account of younger's time embedded with army in war in afghanistan. recently mr. junger appeared to describe book tribe, returning veterans. >> it's hard to know to life for a country that regularly tears itself apart in every possible ethic and economic boundary. the income gap between rich and poor continues to widen. the elderly are mostly sequestered from public life and shootings happened so regularly that they only remain in the news cycle for a day or two. to make matters worse, politicians occasionally accuse rivals of deliberately trying to harm their own country. a charge to destruct i have to group unity that most past societies would have punished it as a form of treason. it's complete maddens and the veterans know this. it's no wonder many of them get so depressed when they come home. .. home. >> sebastian younger taking your calls, tweets and text messages on booktv's in-depth sunday, july 3rd at 3:00 pm eastern. >> up next on booktv a panel of constitutional scholars related how each president has related to the constant -- constitution

the red scare and the cold war.aul robeson was considered to be virtually traitorous by washington because of his close friendship with moscow. very interesting about the soviet union and the united states today. united states today the current line with regard to moscow is that it's okay to be pro moscow between un22, 1941 ex-when hitler's forces invade russia, or the soviet union, and september 1, 1945, when world war ii concludes. so, it's okay to be promos scow then. the only people who i know who tend to question that line are the late u.s. president her period hoover, and your home boy, pat buchanan down the road in washington, dc. in in but paul robeson's position was if washington could ally with moscow to defeat his antagonist it would not be beyond the bounds of reason for robeson and his comrades to alie with -- to defeat they're antagonist but washington would have none of it. in fact a turning point in the life of paul robeson takes place in 1946 when he confronts face-to-face the then u.s. president ha

of war from those who were there.ur first program is entitled "the troops: a view from the front lines." welcomingn me in karoni forester. [applause] karoni: good evening. my father is still missing in action in vietnam. many americans still missing from the war in vietnam. four of them are also texans. ford 16 --f 3000 3416 texans to sacrifice their lives in vietnam. but he is the only one i call daddy. stillmily and my family wait for answers. and we greatly thank our vietnam who stand by our side and hold us up, even though many veterans still work to resolve their own demons. and we cannot forget the families of veterans, because they serve, too. [applause] mia families, goldstar veterans, the vietnam war is never over. it never really can be with the empty chair at the holiday table, the what ifs, the need for closure and healing. war.is i have the honor of working with other families like mine, and representing them in talking with our government and foreign governments as well. share what comes with the answers

war department.o even though today it stands as an independent crime in international law, the time of nuremberg it was still a very much new new term. it does emerge in the trial itself, if you you look particular at the closing arguments of the prosecutors, they start to use this new term but the new term of genocide is basically says the description of the nazis crimes against humanity. >> i think it was in the indictment. >> exactly per day in the indictment it is mentioned as a war crime then in the closing argument of the lawyers of the prosecutors then they just start describing it as a crime against humanity. >> well if you're going to hold trials you have to present evidence to support the charges. so late in the war the united states army formed war crimes investigative teams. whose mission it was to accompany combat troops as they fought their way across germany and to seize and collect evidence of nazi war crimes. so let's take a look at how this worked according to nuremberg prosecutor b

cold war strategy. the professor argues many american leaders used an alarmist and excessively military strategy to combat communism, despite what he says was the lack of an imminent threat to the u.s. his book won the 2013 pulitzer prize for history and the 2013 francis parkman prize. this program is about 80 minutes. >> we are very fortunate to have logevall hererik with us tonight. he's the professor of international affairs at harvard university at the kennedy school and professor of history, a specialist on u.s. foreign relations and 20th century international history and was previously professor of history at cornell, where i had the history of first meeting him for he is also the sort of figure who is incredibly generous with his time. he is the kind of colleague we want and looks out for junior scholars, people just making their way in the academy. a great friend and colleague to lots of us here. he's also the editor of nine books, no small feat including a , personal favorite of mine war," abou

i'm so sorry for anything that i did that brought the war or any war unjust war.ong time ago >> where have all the flowers gone. ♪ where have all the flowers gone ♪ ♪ young girls have picked them every one ♪ ♪ when will they ever learn ♪ when will they ever learn >> when will we ever learn. last time. ♪ when will we ever learn ♪ when will we ever learn [ applause ] >> joe macdonald. [ applause ] >>> thursday american history tv on c-span 3 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the church committee's final report on federal intelligence activities. the senate select committee to study governmental operations held hearings on intelligence activities by the cia, fbi, irs and nsa. that's at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span 3. >>> american history tv on c-span 3. saturday night at 10:00 eastern on "real america." >> more than 110,000 cubans flee cuba. they come the 140 kilometers from the port of mural to key west, florida in nearly 2,000 boats. why did they come? why are there so many? >> during the spring through fall of 1980 approximately 125,000 cuban refuge

the war was a huge story. during the almost three years that it raged, there were more than a thousand front page new york times stories about the spanish civil war, more than on any other single subject whether the re-election of president roosevelt, the toll of the great depression, the rise of hitler, anything else. there were nearly a thousand foreign correspondents in spain at one point or another during the war. not just from the united states, but from many other countries as well. now, i usually like to avoid writing about people who are already or well known, but you're writing about americans in the spanish civil war, you can't avoid the figure of ernest hemingway. he was there so much of the time. he wrote dispatched for the north american newspaper alliance, a syndicate of 50 newspapers. his arrival in the country itself was a news event that other reporters reported on. such a great writer and such an obnoxious human being. [laughter] so he's in the story seen as much as possible through the eyes

in the first world war, they just called it the world war, or the great war. nobody conceived of the fact that we would ever need to put a number on it because nobody conceived that human kind would ever do that again, let alone so soon. but within the same generation, another world war started up again in europe. and the sides were a little different for the second one. but just about everybody ended up on a side. ultimately more than 30 countries were full-on combatants in that second world conflict. more than 100 million people were involved in that war. and this time the killing was on an industrial scale. there were more than 20 million military deaths alone. 20 million military deaths alone. and tens of millions of civilians killed. on the order of 60 million people killed in total. i mean, as a species, as humankind, we thought we had seen an unprecedented hell on earth by 1918. but by 1945, unlocking the gates of the concentration camps and watching mushroom clouds bloom over the earth for the first time, by 1945, we were sure we had seen hell. and we

and when he became president, he expanded the war based on really a lot of world war ii analogies that were not apt and not appropriate for the situation in vietnam. and policymakers do it all the time, you know? this is not, you know, people will talk about munich and chamberlain, and robert kennedy during the cuban missile crisis referred -- said he didn't want -- when they were talking about a preemptive strike in cuba, he said i don't want my brother to be the tojo of the 1960s, meaning a preemptive pearl harbor-like strike. so the uses of history actually really do matter. and there have been many times at hearings or markups here in the house where i'll hear somebody cite something, and it's kind of fun to add to it in terms of, yeah, but the other part of that history is x, y and z. so actually having a bit of a command of the history is very useful. >> host: do you share books with your colleagues? do other members of congress share books with you? >> guest: i do. yeah, there's a group of us informally who are constantly sharing titles back and forth. my buddy, brian higgins fr

it's not an anti-war book. i'm not anti-war, but i'm anti-wrong war. i try not to preach along the way. i try to be an honest guide through the pages. whether i succeed or fail, i'll leave up to you. the curtains that i pull back, some will get me in trouble, probably, especially in a capital like ours. but i believed it was an honest obligation for me to do. i was in meetings and in rooms that a lot of our veterans were not in. , and again, i tried to be fair. i tried not to do a drive-by book. i tried not to do any cheap shots. took a lot of editing to get some of those things out, but i think by the end of it we did. finally on one point before i kind of get into the structure of the book as an overview, while you, i hope, read my book, i need to tip my hat to veterans and other writers who have produced a lot of good literature already, and one is in the room, carter. there's veterans like phil, matt gallagher, lee carpenter, elliot ackerman. my book is just one part of a pile of books, and there will be more that follow. someone who normally doesn

>> before the war and even after the war -- is this a common american practice? , andve a cornerstone event that it gets diminished in some way because political factions began to claim pieces of it? and make it their own? elizabeth varon: yes. >> and the momentum created by the event itself. elizabeth varon: the most surprising discovery of all was how, with what relish, the antirepublican democrats, the copperheads, adopted this confederate perspective on things. it just shows you have the instant impulse to politicize this stuff. it was never a moment which northerners en masse celebrate grant's victory and never a moment when southerners en masse celebrate lee's defeat. this have to start with the press. the campaigns, the meeting in the mclean house, the farewell address. i show what happens when the news hit the wires and lands in northern cities and communities and lands in southern cities and communities. the impulse in the news is instantaneous for each side, political rivals try to use it to political advantage. it happens instantly and shows the divisi

war. why would he not give due respect to him like he did it appomattox? >> you can respectfully without the notion that there was a fourth member of the trinity and that was robert e lee. exaltedought people had lee's abilities beyond measure. someone comes in and says we are being attacked on the flanks. i know what lee is going to do. grant says this is bad news. think he is going to do a double somersault and turn on our flanks and our e at the same time. go back and think about what you are going to do, not what lee is going to do. he solve this veneration of lee. lee wasn't even sure he remembered it very well. grant is a lieutenant. he walks into headquarters and there is lee. they were buddies of any sort. lee was not a man of great humor. the last time they meet, rants president -- grant is president. lee comes lobbying for a railroad firm. i know lee, lobbyist. grant looks at him and says you have more to do with destroying railroads then building them. lee doesn't last. -- doesn

i'm so sorry for anything that i did that brought the war or any war unjust war.s gone ♪ long time passing the flowers all gone >> "washington journal" continues. >> long time ago. ♪ long time ago >> where have all the flowers gone. ♪ where have all the flowers gone ♪ young girls have picked them everyone every one (music) (music) when will they ever learn >> when will we ever learn. last time. ♪ when will we ever learn learn will we ever ♪ [applause] >> joe macdonald. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you are watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span 3. follow us on twitter for information on the schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. >> next on american history tv, a panel of vietnam war veterans including a veteran and an army nurse. it was moderated by william adams and is part of a three-day lbjerence at the library in

he saw the -- of war left over by troops. what we have in this case is actual arctic -- actual artifacts and sand from utah and omaha beaches. he talks about shoe polish, showing hand grenades, toothbrushes, razors. columnsignals out in his grading papers. -- writing papers. the other thing they had an awful lot of for cigarettes. he made the comment that a line of cigarettes up and down the beach marked the high water of this sacrifice their at normandy. it is a moment for our audiences after the film to pause and reflect about what was going on in the world d-day, june 6, 1944. it was the date that hitler could have driven our forces back into the waters of the english channel. he failed and from that point forward, we were on our way to the road to berlin and ending the third reich. >> a few miles down the beach -- keith huxen: on this wall, we have the civilian, military, and political leadership reaction to the normandy landings starting with ann frank, of course. a young jewish girl hiding in an attic in holland where s

the very beginning of the war, the urging of secretary of refugee wase war established in the united states and a small plan for rescue was put into place but not really enacted upon. about 900, only individuals were relocated to a refugee camp in upstate new york. the end of the war did not bring relief to the situation. this was a particularly troubling part of the story for me. if you look into the literature of the holocaust and go to the holocaust museum, the national holocaust memorial museum of far from where we are this morning, very often you see pictures of american troops liberating the camps, eisenhower insisting american troops witness it. the troops are smiling and the survivors are smiling it looks like everything is hunky-dory. that could not be further from the truth. policy wasmigration still in place by the end of world war ii and there was little interest in relaxing it, even for the survivors of the cap. -- camp. president truman sends the dean of the university of pennsylvania law school to serve by the situation in europe. harrison,as earl g. and he writes a sc

vietnam war over. he told me. then he came, a friend of mine. >> oh, my. >> uh-huh. >> then i applied with the helicopter and i chop helicopter and coup 30 people and helicopter helicopters. >> i have to show my family and try to go and come other. then i go back to vietnam on every year and marine and trail and little border china vietnam and lend my story and look. >> so you keep continuing. >> continue, yeah, uh-huh. >> good. well, this has been a pretty special afternoon for me. i hope it's been for you. we'd like to take some questions. [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you. [ applause ] >> that picture, is that kim there? >> yes. >> you mentioned several iconic pictures and how they were interpreted when used. adams is a particular instance where i think he regretted to a great extent in the way that picture influenced the outcomes, particularly reputation of general. do you have any comment or opinions on how your pictures ended up? because unlike the written journalist we talked to, you have no control over

in a war. this is due to technological changes that are really on the verge of upsetting human society. in the end, there will be some countries that adopt these changes, that take the new technology and learn how to it, and there will be some that don't. these will be the haves and have-nots of the future in conflict. there is an enormous advantage in being one of the first adopters. if you have a revolutionary change in the way that conflict is occurring it becomes possible , to dominate your rivals in a short period of time. the originator of the term "revolutionary nuclear affairs" argokoff.i it gives me some pain to get ready it -- credit to a soviet thinker but there are times when , fundamental changes occur and the occur so rapidly that they make everything that has gone before completely obsolete. it is my contention that is occurring right now before our very eyes. let me give you an example that people are probably more familiar with. if you go back to the middle ages, this is what c

i was in favor of the iraq war. new model of politics for the region, a middle ground between repressive dictatorships and islamic fanaticism, and i never believed iraqi or arabs were somehow genetically incapable of self-rule. i did urge the u.s. needed to send in more troops than it did to maintain order. i urged a u.n. mandate to provide greater legitimacy and avoid the image of an american occupation of a mostly middle eastern country. i worried that iraq's sectarian divisions would pull the country apart. but it doesn't change the fact that i did support the decision to topple saddam hussein's regime. some good came of it. saddam was a gruesome dictator who killed hundreds of thousands and plunged his country into wars. iraq is now more free and open than almost any other arab country, despite its struggles. kurdistan is a real success story, an oasis of stability and tolerance. but in the end, the iraq war was a failure and a terrible mistake, causing geopolitical chaos and humanitarian tragedy. millions of ir

reporter that we go to war. said there's no where that says i'm a war reporter. i'm a correspondent, i'm a senior correspondent, send me to paris or brussels or something and i went my foreign desk was quite a macho little scene and the guy who is running the office said to me, he wanted me to do something incredibly dangerous the first day that i got there and would have amounted about two lines in a story that was being fed in from washington and i said, no. and i heard him on the phone cackling to some of his friends going, janini lost her nerve now that she had a baby, but it was so awful but really -- i remember get tong phone and calling my husband and crying and crying, but that's a good thing, isn't it a good thing that you lost your nerve and afraid, you're supposed to be afraid, you can't be the last person in the middle of bombs flying, you've got to kind of feel like a human being. but it was hard. >> after you had your baby, what changed? did you stop doing certain things? >> i think for me it was v

the complexity of any war. and you have to be careful about taking the wrong lessons away from the war. sometimes, we allow historians to interprterinterpret what the the archives and draw those lessons. those lessons become the lessons of our history. right, wrong or indifferent, that's what happens sometimes. you need to have somebody who does that. i don't want to dismiss that, but these things are very, very complex. that's why i think something like the vietnam war summit here is is important to have the opportunity to hear both sides of the story and then kind of we need to collectively or individually make our own judgments about what was right and what was wrong. >> look, i think here history is a very good guide. i speak to -- on behalf and to civilia civilians. i think of two great examples. neither of them were connected to the vietnam war. the first is gandhi who insisted we're going to have a multi-religious nation. he died because of it. the more eloquent one, said any fool can make peace of a fri

like "star wars" and those who neither love nor like "star wars." i have read parts of this book to my wife emphasizing those to me which seem especially fun. one night she responded with some combination of pity and exasperation -- cass, i just don't love "star wars." you say in parentheses, i knew that, i guess, but somehow i forgot. there you go. what is it about "star wars"? which is what this book is about. >> that's what i spent many months on. i think what the movies got at was there are these myths and religions and multiple cultures that kind of spring out of people's minds as well as traditions and george lucas and the saga gets at them and gives them kind of an all-american twist. >> rose: right! all about freedom of choice under difficult conditions. so he makes new and kind of modern and something that really resonates in america but elsewhere, that's what it is about "star wars." >> rose: but help me understand this, have you been in love with "star wars" since you saw your very first frame or movie, or did you come to this at some lat

he writes about world war history and world war one. he was writing on the greek civil war and i said which one and it is the one in 1944. 1825? no. he is an ex extraordinary range and it is my delight to welcome him up here. he is widely known, won many awards, i have said enough. let's get him up here to talk about his grand new book "first entrepreneur; how george washington built his and the nation's prosperity" ed langel. >> what he was trying to say, perhaps in not so many words, is i am a hack writer. i try to understand my subject. i try to be honest about my subjects and washington is an endlessly truthful subject. as i found, working at the washington paper sais. we changed our names from the papers of george washington to the washington papers deliberately because he did not want to offend martha. blessed it me suggested that martha was in some sense an auxiliary to george or that she operated in his shadow or her role was to prop him up and help him to become great. we need to emphasize the fact she was in herself a very imp

i knew since the end of the war there have been numerous discussion on this war including those between vietnam and america. all this add to the depth of our studies and reflections. in this panel i've been invited to share with you on the theme america and vietnam in the 21st centu century, a new beginning. i share the belief that this panel will give us a chance to discuss how far our countries have come since the end of the war and what we can do more to further this constructive and comprehensive partnership of our two countries. i wanted to share with you a little bit of history. vietnam and the u.s. has a long history of contacts. nearly 230 years ago thomas jefferson, one of the drafters of the u.s. declaration of independence, and would later become the third u.s. president, had been trying to get the right seed from vietnam to grow in his home town in the state of virginia propp and he wrote at that point in time "this dry rice from vietnam has the reputation of being the whitest to the eye, best flavor to the taste, and more productive." and more than 100 years ago, back in 19

i'm so sorry for anything that i did that brought the war or any war unjust war. ♪ ♪ long time passing ♪ where have all the flowers gone ♪ >> long time ago. ♪ long time ago >> where have all the flowers gone. ♪ where have all the flowers gone ♪ ♪ young girls have picked them every one ♪ ♪ when will they ever learn ♪ when will they ever learn >> when will we ever learn. last time. ♪ when will we ever learn ♪ when will we ever learn [ applause ] >> joe macdonald. [ applause ] >>> thursday american history tv on c-span 3 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the church committee's final report on federal intelligence activities. the senate select committee to study governmental operations held hearings on intelligence activities by the cia, fbi, irs and nsa. that's at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span 3. >>> american history tv on c-span 3. saturday night at 10:00 eastern on "real america." >> more than 110,000 cubans flee cuba. they come the 140 kilometers from the port of mural to key west, florida in nearly 2,000 boats. why did they come? why are there so ma

the war in 1967, had been broken down into four separate wars. up here, the northern part of south vietnam, along here we have the dmz. in that area, the third marine division will be located. down here in the southern provinces, the first marine division. and also there are two main divisions, first and second, and during the year as the war ramps up, we will see more american troops devoted to this area. this is a war in of itself, unlike the other wars in south vietnam. you are facing across the border, you are facing three divisions of the north vietnamese. 35,000 regular troops. and there are troops based in areas along the trail -- the ho chi minh trail, that could threaten from the west. ae of these troops was facing threat from i corp. and what are they have, right across the border? right across here? that is when you answer the question with something profound and correct. i will give you a hint. artillery tubes. hundreds and hundreds of their own artillery, so here is a conventional war where we do not always have the edge with firepow

this exhibit memorializes one of the bloodiest campaigns of world war ii. guadalcanal. he saw guadalcanal as a crucial stepping stone on the road to tokyo from august 1942 until february 1943, guadalcanal became better known as the gettysburg of the pacific. as you'll see, mistakes were made on both sides, and what became the longest campaign of the second world war. the bloody fighting cost the lives of some 7,000 americans and over 30,000 japanese. tonight you'll hear from the heroes who fought from the air, on the ground, and the seas around this sweltering green hell. joe was the farm boy from sioux falls, iowa, who dreamed of becoming the next charles lindburg. >> i want to go to war. i said i'll do anything. i want to do anything to get in a fighter. >> john was a long way from columbus, ohio, and hiss father's saloon. >> it was hell, and it was spotted with screams, hollering, both japanese and marines. >> mitch had walk 2d 00 miles from his pennsylvania home to sign up for the marines. >> all of a sudden you see nothing but bayonets coming at you and the most ho

she is the author or "from the war of poverty to the war on crime." i don't know how many people have any connection to any of the prisons in illinois, but my guess is that they are fairly distant to many of us. prisons are in many ways huge industry in illinois and at the center of the criminal justice system here. although you both come at the issue from different angles, i'd like too first talk about how you came to the subject. baz. >> so, i was -- i actually in a strange way came through journalism. was doing a lot of writing for main stream publications about crime and pop culture and the arts and race, crime and culture from a pop culture perspective and start getting a lot of letters from people inside who read my work. so i got invited by an educational organization operating inside a prison in new york state to come give a talk. i went in, gave a talk, and from then on became obsessed with the issue. about a dozen years ago. by the time it was as john jay college where the focus is criminal justice so it dovetailed and led to my starting a p