Transcripts For CSPAN Iraq Afghanistan Vietnam War Veterans 20240713

Enduring war. And that as we needed to undertake a serious study of the relationship between war and society. Moreover, it seemed that few could argue that war had not made an impact on our national character. On who we are as americans. Startedram we built from the mission that we would examine the social moral, and cultural aspects of how societies go to war, how they experience war, and how they deal with wars consequences. Programbelieve that our in applications understanding the implications of war by examining the conflict of the social if not human phenomenon. We wanted to take a serious approach to the studying the problems posed by war. Our vision was for a Chapman University to become a National Resource for practitioners. A Program Designed with the ultimate aim of helping understand the war and costs of war around the globe. That vision is on full view this evening. As we examine three american wars, vietnam, afghanistan, and iraq. From those who have fought in them. Each have fought long and hard about their own experiences and s written honest and important works about what it is like to serve in wars that defined our nation, our politics, and our culture. It is my distinct honor to introduce you tonight to our veteran authors. From yaleraduate university and a Rhodes Scholar at oxford university, this person served as a marine in vietnam. Earned two Navy Commendation medals for valor, two purple hearts, and 10 air medals. He is the author of matter bor war. Ovel of the vietnam awardswon numerous including book of the year and the marine corps heritage jamesns jan webb award. He also is the author of the new novel deep river, released in july. Please welcome him. [applause] Marjorie K Eastman is an awardwinning author of the front line generation how we serve post 9 11. She served 10 years in the u. S. Army reserve as an Intelligence Officer and commander. Before being awarded a direct commission within her first two years in uniform. Wasorie deployed twice and awarded the bronze star and the combat action badge. She has her ba from Political Science and na in international mba from the owing graduate school of management at vanderbilt university. 2018, she was selected as one of the nations top 25 influencers supporting the military community, and was recently named the 2019, 10 Outstanding Young americans by the Junior Chamber international usa. Please join me in welcoming her. [applause] gregory finally, scott is a retired u. S. Army oh my god. Oing]d snickering and bo [laughter] marines a retired u. S. Major. Service of honorable both enlisted as commissioned officer. His career spans 10 deployments. His 2018 bestselling book is a secondf echo companys battalion fourth marines during the second battle in 2006. Scott has written articles, editorials, and scholarly pieces for usa today, fox news channel, and marine corps the dailyd signal. He is also the executive director of a certified nonprofit that connects veterans and areach programs, nonprofit that helps veterans and activeduty marines. Please join me in welcoming marine scott. [applause] i am going to join our panelists and i will start off and ask a specific question for each of our panelists, and then we will move into general questions for the entire panel to discuss and ultimately, we will have a dialogue as the open of the audience to participate with their own questions. West point, was a Preparatory School . [laughter] navy. T [laughter] gregory i would like to start with you and what it is like to go to war. I always wanted a metal, ever since i looked at my fathers metals from world war ii. Dueas not enough to their own things, i had to be recognized for it. Can you help us understand . I hope i can. It is hard for me to understand it myself. , i thinkall, my father all young men we got some bad feedback here. Is this going to get fixed. My father was in world war ii and he had metals, and he never would talk about it, so there was a lot of mystery to the metals. I was sort of like a, i wonder if i could do that. It is sort of like a, i wonder how i would be and the metal is sort of a symbol of that. And my father, it was christmas time, and my dad was at the battle of the bulge, and he looks up and he says, yeah, i was in that. It was the first time i knew. If i sneak in and see his metals, he would not show them or anything. First of all, it is sons and fathers. It is almost genetic. In my as good as my father. Can i do it. That. Ght about it is sort of a combination, i think of societal genetics and that is all mixed up, but you think about kids in high school. The girls do not want to be in the right group, they want people to know they are in the right group. I have three daughters and they would spend an hour getting ready for school and it would not look like anything happened to me. [laughter] it was very clear to them that they were in this group, and they wanted people to know it. The boys, it is sort of the same thing. What is that all about . It is about status. It is about being recognized as a member of the group, and it is about being an alpha female and an alpha male. We have different ways of doing it, we just do not go beat somebody up. We wear jeans with holes in them so that we can show that we are iis kind of kid, and think it is the same sort of thing from metals. It, what people see that i did it. Those of you in the military, you have it all right here and believe me, people check it out. So you immediately can sort of put somebody in a place, and i think that showing it that you have done it is apart of it, but it is part of saying i am of this special group, look up to me, and that is about status. I talk about the fact that it is too bad that we all have to do how, and we just realize special we are from childhood, but somehow, our society does tend to beat that out of us. By the time you get a college, you are not special at all, and you want to be special. Not know any, i do other way to explain it. Did any attraction, did that change at all as you got older . Well, no. When i was in combat, every once in a while i thought, it would be nice to get a metal. I wrote about that in matterhorn, and the issue is why do you want to get the metal. Ishink part of growing up that if you are doing it for the save reasons, that is to somebody in your unit to get yourself out of trouble. And usually people understand of the metals are given out, something is messed up and things are not going well, or you are really unlucky. I talk about it and what it is like to go to war, and i did and i was the young man, did not have to go get him. Them,ght, if i go get maybe somebody would write me up for a medal. I literally thought that. Secret, when i turned sergeant,oon and i said if i go get him, what you write me up from metal. He said yeah, posthumously. [laughter] but i went anyway. It turned out quite tragic because i had to keep the machine gun from shooting at me going up the hill. The kid had gone up and cut the brush out and feels the fire, and he got nervous and pointed out. I was firing to keep the machine guns head down. I got them, we rolled back down and i realized there was a bullet hole in his head. It was not until later that night, he cried out, how could he have cried out with a bullet hole in his head. Maybe i put the bullet hole in his head. The whole thing about trying to get the medal, it turned to ashes because it was for the wrong motivation. It was a very tough lesson for me. To this day, i dont know. The second medal, the navy cross, it was with the opposite because i had already learned that lesson. We thing about that medal, were in a hump. We had been under assault and bogs down. It happens in the marine corps, it is bogged down and they were hitting us with mortars and they had machine guns up in front of us, and the marines do not go backwards. There, getither stay slaughtered, or go up the hill. I had to figure out something to get us out of the pickle. So i stood up and started running up the hill, and it was almost like an out of body experience. I talk about in the book. That is amazing to me is was probably running up the hill for a machine gun buffer for maybe five or eight seconds and i caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and i rolled ofa soldier, and it was one my squad leaders and the whole company was coming up behind him. We got out of the pickle. Way to gete right out of a pickle, and unfortunately, it does not come cheap. It is a hard lesson. In the frontline generation, you share a slightly different reason for joining the military. One was your parents were decidedly unhappy about. What was it like to have proud parents who nonetheless were skeptical about you serving . You are referring to the line i think where my mom says, you have a college degree, you should not have to go. She was from the vietnam generation. You know a little bit about that, right . My mom and my dad were born and raised in part of big, midwest farm families. Time, myint in mom had four of her brothers serving in vietnam. It was very difficult for her and my father. My father who was unable to go to vietnam because of medical disqualification, but he still has his draft card on his bedside stand to this day, because all of his brothers went. They were decidedly unhappy, but they also knew that i was doing it for the right reasons. Joined the military after 9 11 because of 9 11. I saw what happened on that day, and no one does that to our country. No one does that to our country. Ineeded to do something and did not want to sit on the bench. I knew things were going to change and president bush at the time, he said something very important. He said as americans, you have to continue on with your way of life because the terrorists want us to change our way of life. They are trying to terrorize us. He said something very important. Also, they left no call to action. We needed a call to action because we just spent the 1990s down in every single development change. So even in his calling to continue on with regular lifestyle, i did not just want to go shopping. I started looking at my options, and it turned out that the army was the right fit for me, and i stepped up and stepped into my generations history. Opened your book with a phone call that you had to make to a mother in your unit. Why did you start the book that they are and what does this episode tell us all about your responsibility that military leaders have . Greg is trying to get me to cry on cspan. [laughter] better have tried and failed, but i love you for having us today and the panelists, and all of you for showing up, because without you, the stories of our nations heroes, and greg is absolutely one of them. A slick professor on tv by day, but he is a warrior at heart. Is a great event for that. It is an interesting question because you have to let me leave , so 30 so i can get to lax i could go to the first annual corporal bus in libya memorial run, and he was the and i have not seen his mom and dad since 2007 when we came home. It is going to be pretty emotional, we will have cameras there for that. Kept in touch, i but starting the story off with adi, but ram every person deals with those small pieces of trauma in life and are important to share. I have never been a writer or storyteller about events and things and chronology that is not what i am great at. My skill is telling stories of people and the emotion and what it felt like to have that happen in your life, and the huge train wrecks that rolled through at times. And then how to not just talk about the bad things, but really, how they affected you, and how you move through that. Everybody has been a drunk at some point, or crash to their car, or failed in a relationship, or gotten bad grades. Great. I dont want to hear about those stories, i want to hear about how you got through that and how you share those wins and losses for everybody that read your work, listens to your stories, or all of those problems of how you get better. Athink as a society, as veteran community, those are absolutely vital stories to share. I think three generations of war fighting and this culture that we have been in immersed in, we are so very our stories share now without having to wait four decades. We have a responsibility to do that and when i open the book with what is probably the most. Ut wrenching story chuck and i have gotten some marinesories from saying, things are making me cry on the plane, and i just tell them to socket up and break out the kleenex, and move on. I think those are really the important things that we need to talk about. We should never shy away from it. Carl is a master at sharing that human emotion, although there are characters in those books, but we get it. I think those are great. Gregory i would like to opens up for all three of you now. There are elements of what we would call a command philosophy in each of your books. And marjorie knows that there is no one style of leadership are one set of traits. Teachid your service you about leadership and what were the key elements in your leadership philosophy . Marjorie i like it when marines go in front of me. [laughter] i will take this one. What a gentleman. Ladies first, i love that. The chapter in my book is you see a light, you dont hear one. We all get what that means. It is simple and fundamental about leadership. You can say it this way as well. How you lead your own life has more influence on others and any command that you may one day espouse. Character matters. How you walk the walk matters, and by the way, each and every one of us has a sphere of influence. Life,rank, every walk of and the big secret is that you do not need a title to be a leader. , saw this time and time again every day i was in the military and my favorite example of that that i can share is one with Staff Sergeant joshua eldridge. He was dr. Eldridge as his day job as a chiropractor. He was also in the reserves. And after a battle update brief to my kernel and which i informed the colonel that in one area of operation where i had some teams, there was an orphanage. So there might be an opportunity to do a Good Community building type of mission. My company was doing fullspectrum intelligence operations, so that was perfect. Any given day, it could be offenses, defensive, stability support. So that would fall into one of those buckets that we were doing. What did the colonel say, great, make it happen, captain. Do youoint in training go through like a briefing or you have a little skills manual that says it is how you perform a mission to an orphanage. So i am walking out of the briefing thinking, how am i going to do this. Eldridge is giving me that eye, and my team, my soldiers were amazing and they looked out for me. I was so fortunate to serve with such wonderful and outstanding men and women. Room, out of the briefing and eldridge is like, i have an idea. Church let me call my back home and we will figure out how to rally and we will get some gloves, hats, scarves, jackets because it is really cold this time of year and when the team goes up, they can deliver the humanitarian aid as a warm welcome and say, we are new to the area, we are doing operations in the area, but we want to bring this as a peaceful gesture. I am thinking, can we do that . Thing you want is American Christian Church Giving cold weather gear to islamic blah blah. But i see this energy and eldridges eyes, and i knew. One of the things about being a leader is you have to incite an initiative with those who lead and that means you have to be uncomfortable, and you have to say yes. And you not only ask why we do it that way, but you have to say why not. Why not. I said you know what, make it happen. [laughter] i said let me go and figure out some of the paperwork process, call your church. A half, wemonth and had boxes arriving in my sergeants delivering the mail were like, thanks, man. Nearly 70 children benefited when my team went up to the province and we delivered that. And we built great relationships. You will hear stories throughout my book about talk and give you moments and opportunities and where you lead, and how you can lead, and do it well. But just remember, how do you lead your own life . Start there. What was the question again . [laughter] scott i am like overwhelmed and inspired. I have to to take notes in his class. Leadership philosophy. Many great are so example sitting right in front of me. They train you in schools as the and majorsnd colonels on how to write a leadership philosophy, but i kind of broke the mold of that. I never wanted it to be a pays long soliloquy page long soliloquy in a urinal. Because to inspire young men and women 18 to 20yearolds who are whog our nations bidding, have the responsibility to ultimately take another human life, which we ordered them to do as commanders, you have to inspire them and you have to understand that you need to do that in your absence. My leadership philosophy was very clear. It was very short print will train hard, we will fight, and we will win. That was it. I think if they could not remember that in my absence, i did something terribly wrong. I always envisioned it Something Like this. The hunker down in ramadi, and things are going pretty bad, they are going over and and crawling saying, things are getting pretty bad over here. It is not looking good for us. So i turned to him and say, yeah, what should we do. He looks to me and says, i dont know. And i say when. Win. That is the guidance i wanted to impart in my absence. Being a strong leader and i talk about this all the time people will look at my book and they see this marine who will kick in your door, which they will do, but is really a book about teamwork, leadership, and people. This amazing power of human connection. If anybody asked me what that book is, it is meeting people like tom and saying i remember we came to that panel discussion. Youngat is when meeting people in combat, and parents who expect us to lead their young men and women in the worst instances, if you are not doing that every single day, you are failing as a leader. I will call anyone out on that. There is no room for error. If you drop a couple of sales orders at xerox, the company is not going under. If you fail the marine corps or army, it is a lot different. There are two things that come to my mind. One is confidence. The other is authenticity. They are kids, their lives depend on you. If you cannot call in the airstrike in the right place, it is bad. Any controlnot have over your confidence, and that competency it has to be demonstrated. You cant just say you went to school, and i learned it. They will say, yeah right. You want to strip the machine gun down, you have to show them that you know how to strip the machine gun down. Competency really is a lot because it builds confidence. You are not going to lead them astray. The authenticity part is really interesting because these kids [beep] detectors that will detect a cow fart five miles away. You cannot put the wool over their eyes, and if you try to, it will not work. I see new sergeants show up and te isn a minute, their fa sealed. You think it is almost mystical but the kids are looking, and they are going to make a judgment on whether they are going to follow them or not. What i think is i notice is the one to succeed in winning them over are the ones who are who i am, iere is have this job, we are going to get through this together, and im not going to bull [beep] you about it. So competency and authenticity of the two keys in my mind. I think we have all seen the phenomenon of modern wars being intertwined with civilian world. Was likewhat it and if you could share. We have been hanging out for the last few days and we have all been penpals, and we just met, but we have known each other for years, me and grabbed hangout all the time. But this cool thing, social media, sharing the network and we talk about these things in the different types of war where you are sliding through the jungles of vietnam and the sky is raining on you every day and night and it is humid in an you areent where fighting this threedimensional war where you are literally fighting every single day, two to three to four to 5 six times a day and very close proximity. How you deal with that and those conditions is something that you learn as you go. All the preparatory training you get from entrylevel to advanced level training as a young marine does not ever prepare you for that type dynamic nature of of warfare, and i think as we were thrust into this city of ramadi, it was populated by 300,000 iraqis. These were people. They were not collateral damage. They were a husband and wives, and sons and daughters, and they wanted their kids to grow up and get their drivers license, and playskool, and they were people. At times, they took us in, they fed us, they gave us a, they gave us information at times on their own lives were not at risk. I think that was a unique experience because our military in this day and age, we did have a very unique understanding of the culture that we were fighting in. I think that is different in a ande degree in the vietnam world war ii and korean generations on how these guys were trained and we dance around the issues of dehumanizing the enemy and making it easier to kill, but my analogy is i can always give when young marine or giveer and some drives to and get that same 18yearold kid to go from 50 to zero is a real leadership challenge to the commander. Experience, years to not view that enemy that is living next door the same as the guy you just killed. That needed to be killed. That is a tough challenge, in that type of urban environment. Theorie when you asked questions about civilians being intertwined and the conflict today, i thought of it from a different perspective. I thought of the civilians on our team as we were going in. That is part of the conversation, especially post 9 11 that is very different about the global war on terrorism. Time, there would be ist as many, but there contractors, Government Agency workers, state department officials, and it was just unbelievable. As a forceut it multiplier, but we also need to ask are questions of the militaryindustrial complex circa 21st century. If we cannot fulfill our Foreign Policy commitments, but if we are augmenting half the force with other civilian and sees, come on. We need to talk about this. Those civilian teammates of ours, they need to have just as much respect and it does not matter if they are defense contractors, they were hoping in their way, they found ways to serve, and they need an incredible amount of respect. When i think about how civilians are intertwined, i think about the team members that we have that were a part of the equation and they still are today. I think there is a moral issue here that we would have to think about. Contractors and there is a whole bell shaped curve of them, but you take someone that is running the Bowling Alley for ever the coffee company. That is right. Marjorie green beans. If we are at war, we are killing people. Normally if you are killing people, it is called murder. It is only if a state decides that you have to defend yourself that you are allowing the military to kill people. Those people are under the protection of the moral authority that this is a military that is constituted by the civilians to defend the civilians. If you are killing somebody for pay, that is called being an assassin. I think it is a very big difference and i think that we are starting to be very loose about just where these lines are drawn. When i was in vietnam, the marines did their own dishes, and a cook to their own food. We did not have mcdonalds. You have to start wondering about, well if you are going to pay mcdonalds to actually participate in the war effort, people back home are making food us into the military. If you go out on the battlefield, where is that line andeen being an assassin being a newly constituted member of a republic that is trying to defend a republic. I think we are losing sight of it and i think we have to do some careful thinking about it. I am completely against having paid mercenaries do our fighting for us. I think it is really morally wrong. Period. I wonder if i can shift slightly to talk about the one unfortunate necessity of war which is killing. Scott inll of you, particular, you say, i was ordering my marines to kill and it was going to be my burden to carry. You discussed the weight as well. How did you all deal with this burden of killing, not just for yourselves, but for your soldiers and marines who are and thewith this burden unfortunate necessity of war . We jokingly say that a writers nothing is original, and that certainly was not an original thought. It was garnered from years of great mentors and marines that i was surrounded with that i knew when i led 250 marines and sailors into iraq, and that is not hyperbole we lost more marines and sailors in that city than any other during the search strike in 2006, 2007. I knew how important that was to these young men who are about to be thrust into the chasm of war. Theyhad never seen it, all noted was that on hollywood. It looks all glamorous and the meda are attractive. But the only thing that mattered was bringing as many marines home as possible. One of the ways to do that when i set them down and i looked at them in the eye, and i ordered them to kill. I said you will kill. I am ordering you to kill. Because i never ever wanted that marine to hesitate when he had to put that rifle in his shoulder, put his finger on the trigger, and make the conscious, lifechanging decision to take another human life. Terrible and horrific thing to do, and to ask an 18yearold kid who is probably playing football on the High School Team in the year before, that is a hard thing to do, and that is something that i felt as a commander that was my burden to carry. I never wanted them to leave that space, that horrible place of war that humans create to think that it was their fault. That was my burden. One of the things that i have come to understand and we talk a lot about bringing people home and bringing veterans back into community, there is this rifle, it is built in factories by factory workers who are fed by farmers and the people who designed it were taught by secondgrade school teachers, and the whole rifle is this buddhist chain of events that eventually gets in the hands of some 18yearold and at the end of this long chain where everybody is involved to pay their taxes to pay for the rifles, the kid pulls the trigger. He did the killing. Uhuh. We have to get more conscious about it. We did the killing. That rifle, he did not make it. He did not pay for it. Sorry to everybody in this room. Everybody in the room is responsible for all of the killing over there. He voted for the people who sent us there. He paid the taxes. You drove the car that burned the gasoline. So the idea that some 18yearold does the killing, we have to get it out of the of our heads. It is up of a very apart of a very important distinction we are not talking about it. Arms,ie i was not combat however, i have a combat action badge like tens and thousands of other soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who are not combat action. Ofhin just a couple of days arriving in the country of afghanistan, the base we were on received rocket attacks. Those rocket attacks repeated the entire time we were there and it would depend on your location if it was weekly or daily. Within a couple of weeks of being there, about two and a half, one of the soldiers in my battalion, an intelligence professional, died when his mra drove over an iud. In this sense of killing and when you think about killing, and he gets back to the aspect of a greater purpose the greater purpose pretty quickly, when you are on the ground, is about a person to your left into your right. It always has been, and always will be. Every generation. Hey afghanistan, if you have been deployed in afghanistan, if you have been deployed who has been deployed . Can you raise your hand . Thank you. Thank you. You know that we get a lot of care packages, especially after halloween, you get all of the junk candy. One of the care packages we received at least halfway into my tour, wonderful teachers had their students write letters to Service Members overseas. Ontone in my unit had a the letters out of this care package and taped it on the role all. Iked in after some walked into the Operation Center and they were like, you have to go read the letter. I go over and see it on the wall. It is obviously a very young human being learning how to write, and they are saying, troops, fortrooper, freeing us from al qaedas e vil grasp. Alkidk. As spelled this child at home understood the greater purpose and they were writing this to us. It was fascinating and it was entertaining, and it was absolutely a great reminder because you do get into it is about the person to your left and right, but you have to get back to the greater purpose. Each of you and your own war and way, faced a committed enemy on the battlefield. One that inspired a great deal of emotion that you all have written about. Marjorie, you wrote in one journal entry that after one episode, tonight, i hate the taliban more than ever. There was always potential for people to become very ordinary and war given that combat, as you say, that a whole lot of aggression will help save your life. Scott, you recall your men seeking retribution after a soldier was killed in battle. How did you deal with this anger and not hatred toward your enemy without allowing the violence to spiral out of control . I cant even step into that. I failed once. With anto the same mode who wasarly popular guy killed, saving his platoon. Everybody was just furious. On the next assault, we just decided not to take any prisoners. And i went, that is fine. And i regret that. I slipped into that. It is real easy. It is real easy because it is like well ill kill him and we will kill all of them. But we have to understand as a civilized people that we are all capable of this, that civilization is the spiderweb that hangs over us to keep us under control, that without that morality i call it the mad monkey just comes out and were not the top animal on the food chain because were nice. Ok . Were the top animal on the food chain because were really a vicious species. Were also a wonderful, kind, caring species, but we have this part of us. So the leaders job is to try to maintain what i call that spider web of civilization, the order, the laws. We have the geneva conventions. A lot of people who dont understand war say everythings fair in war, theres no rules. Nonsense. Nonsense. Because theyll do it to you if do you it to them. It works both ways. So weve come up with conventions about not killing prisoners because you dont want them to kill our prisoners. Ok, so we got to play by the rules. There are rules. And this idea of ive told the story more than once but its an important story because we had been surrounded and it was a very bad, six, seven days of fighting and there were dead m. V. A. Down below our fighting holes and i was doing a fighting check and a couple of our kids had ears stuck in their helmets. They had gone down and cut the ears off a couple of the bodies below the fighting holes. At that time i had just turned 23. I was not as mature as i am now but even then i knew that you couldnt let go on. I had seen horrible stuff. Ears in helmets. Thats not what bothered me. That was like yeah, and you see a stack of bodies hit by a mortar. Thats carnage. But i knew it couldnt last, so so i said to these kids, look, i know they killed your friends but you killed their friends and theyre just humans and youve cut their ears off and you just cant do this. We just wont allow this to happen. I didnt say, im going to Court Martial you because i have some compassion for these kids. I said, we are going to go down and bury those bodies. And this wasnt trivial because it was maybe 20 meters below the fighting holes and we were still getting fired at. Occasionally, these occasional pot shots. V. A. On thethese m. Hill that were shooting at us. So they had to go down there with their shovels and started digging a grave for these bodies to bury with the ears and they both started crying. They started crying as theyre digging this hole and what it was is burial is a civilized, civilizing ritual that we care for our dead and suddenly they were doing a burial of human beings, not the goose, the towel heads or whatever else. You do that because you have to do that. An ordinary person cant kill another person but you can kill an animal. Thats why it happens. Leadership has to bring you out of that quickly. That was what was happening there. Here we have rules and the minute that happened, the mad monkey that had gotten hold of them and i recognized it because it had gotten hold of me, gets put back in place. And the thing is if you repress it and say we dont have that, its worse. You just watch it come out in mobs. Watch it come out in hatred. Youve got to understand that its there but then youve also got to understand that your job is to guide it, keep it under control. Like i call it the spider web of civilization. Thats the point of leadership in war and about killing is keeping it sane that way. Thats part of the training that we get, even as a young lieutenant and being a guy that manages several lieutenants and Young Marines that think theyre doing the right thing or you have to control that type of chaos where you have all this friction surrounding you at any given time. And those experiences of war are absolutely timeless, that carl experienced, that our world war ii vets experienced, korean war vets experienced. I experienced those things. We see this playing out even to this day in the media where theres u. S. Service members, whether its desecrating bodies or a conflict of a Service Member killing a captured prisoner. Theres one thing that we have a responsibility to do, not just as officers who take an oath. But as people and responsible people of our culture and our way of life, is that you absolutely have to enforce not only the uniform code of military justice and the law of war and our code of conduct and our oath of office that we swear to but the basic american rule of law that once you capture someone and put handcuffs on them or flexi cuffs, you own them. You literally own them. And at that point you accept full responsibility for that human life, to care for it at that stage, not harm it, maim it, whatever it is you do. And i think that the public can easily get emotional about certain issues when they see this as, like why is this Service Member being tried for this . At the end of the day i dont want to serve in a marine corps that allowed murderers to be cut loose on society. I dont want to bring those type of people, sociopaths, back here and reintegrate them into society because we have enough problems reintegrating guys that have compartmentalized all these pieces of trauma doing the legitimate killing of enemies in combat so thats a tough thing that as this war, this discussion, this theme of protracted war how long do we pull these wars up, when it enough enough and how do we define winning at the political and strategic levels so we dont have these second and third order of effects of trauma and the American People accepting our veteran Community Back in knowing full well theyve bought the rifles, they signed the orders and gassed up the airplanes and sent young men and women over there so we can build tvs and xboxs. Thats what we do. But we can never lose sight of that as an element of leadership within our military, those basic tenets are essential so we continue to survive as a marine corps, 250 more christmases. One of the things thats important to me that i wish people would understand, you start sending young men to their seventh and ninth tours, at some point theyre going to break. At some point somethings going to go wrong. That doesnt mean you excuse them. Im in agreement with scott on this. You cannot excuse it but you cannot do it with disdain or moral superiority oh, this person committed this horrible thing, he killed a prisoner or peed on a dead body or whatever it was. Its part of the same tragedy as the war itself was but you have to punish them because otherwise that civilizing thread is broken and you never get it back but you punish them without hate or without moral superiority. You punish them with sadness because they finally broke down and that did something wrong. But you cant let it slide but the attitude that they were horrible people. They werent horrible people. They just broke. Most of the time they were just really young and its a tragedy that theyre in jail but theyre in jail for a reason. I think these guys really covered that question really well. Lets do another one. Margorie argues in her work that showing compassion is not a weakness. And that theme is really shared by our panelists as well. Scott, you note that breaking down after a marine was killed and wanting to be emotionally steady and carl, you talk about the needs for empathy. How did you each deal with the emotional side of war as a leader, finding that balance between sharing your own emotions, yet being reliable and steady in front of your soldiers and marines . You have to show i mean, youre human. You have to have compassion in you, right . For me, i just you talked earlier and you asked about dehumanizing. Let me say this, let me back up. Especially as a woman, were often reviewed and graded that she has great compassion as a leader and whatnot. Thats great but youre not going to be promoted if you have excellent compassion, right . Its been proven by studies. I encourage you to read an excellent book called athena rising, why men should mentor women written by two awesome ph. D. s at the Naval Academy and it speaks to this because men are reviewed as analytical and who are you going to promote at the end of the day . If you have to cut jobs, who do you want on the team . Analytical, right . Think about it that way. What i will say, you will go further you have to have both. You have to know when to drop the hammer and you have to absolutely know when you need to hold someone and hug them because you just delivered a red cross message that someone they love dearly back home just died. You have to have these tools in your tool kit. You have to just be human because by the way that helps you in your job. One of my soldiers, ashley, she was just a phenomenal interrogator and one Early Morning, it was an Early Morning report, we had a local National Come up to the base and they wanted to give us some information. Kind of nervous, right, as most of the walkups are. Ashley was on call at the time and she sat with him in what we call the booth, getting the information. And it was through compassion and being analytical and not dehumanizing this source that walked up, this local national, that she was able to figure out why he wanted to talk. Now, this is a person that most likely been a taliban sympathizer or fighter or whatever at some point in his history, ok. But she still worked with this individual. At the end of the day, figured out and empathized enough to realize he had information about the largest weapons cache outside of baghran airfield and his kids were playing near and he didnt want them near it and she figured out how to do that because she was so good at her job and within 24 hours i was on the the convoy with her. We went to the edge of the cleared landmine field and we removed and detonated on site that cache of weapons, over 600 munitions. That was in 2010. You must have both tools in your tool kit and ashley was a wonderful example that day and she continues to be so. Im reminded of a story this is a marine corps, how they show compassion. [laughter] a short answer . Its going to be a short answer. [laughter] so so his mother died and the captain called him in and said smithers mother died and you have to figure out how to break the news to smithers so it goes easy on him. Youve just got to do it. Ok. So then he goes out and lines up the platoon and he says everybody with a living mother, one step forward. Not so fast, smithers. [laughter] to you have anything to add . Nothing to add, thats tough to top. But there is a mask of command. A friend of my wrote about it, the mask of command. You cant cross boundaries. Each level of command, you know this because you were a lieutenant. You werent born a colonel. You have a closer familiarity at the platoon level, company and battalion. As you rise, you increase more responsibility and you have to know that and i applied this as i was leaving, 250 marines in combat, i wasnt there to be their friend. I was there to be their commander. Theyve got enough friends. They only have one commander. They have one guy that will make those decisions that will bring the majority of them home alive and i think thats a tough thing to balance because we all agree on the aspect of its absolutely vital to be authentic. I dont want to sit up here and have a bunch of bullet points and buzz words and talking points every time i speak. I think that the message has to be clear, but being authentic in everything you do and everything you write and communicate at every level, i think theres a way to filter that and still maintain boundaries so the marines dont think that me and tom are drinking buddies and at end of the day, that just aint the case because hes been in the marine corps 18 months and i have been in 15 years. There are vast areas of gray in there. And you have to know that. But as a great leader, you also have to understand that the textbooks that we learn all these great leadership tools, theres words that arent written there, and those words are the ones in between the lines like love and compassion and caring and concern and the really great leaders can see in between the lines and they apply that and i think thats what sets the good ones apart from the great ones. Ive got two more questions and id like to turn it over to the audience to join in the conversation. The first and really supporting our theme this evening about the United States being in this era of perpetual war, are we becoming increasingly more comfortable with this idea of enduring war and if so, what are the implications of that especially on those who serve . Well, since i was the representative tonight for afghanistan and we have been fighting in afghanistan for 18 years and we continue to fight there today. In fact, on monday, we lost a First Sergeant. His name is jeremy. How Many Americans do you think know that . Thank you. We are still fighting this war. In fact, we have had 775,000 Service Members that are worn a uniform that have been deployed to afghanistan and been in theater over the last 18 years. The most revealing part of this number this is a terrific article from the washington post, i think the name was donna mos, the journalist that wrote this, the most revealing fact about that number is nearly half of those Service Members who have been deployed in the longest war in our history have served multiple deployments, multiple deployments. So as i ask you to remember a name, First Sergeant jeremy, you need to remember names like schmitty and graf and vazquez, and tess. Being one of my soldiers they were all my soldiers but tess took four oneyear combat deployments by the age of 25 when he was with me in 2010 in afghanistan. I said two tours. How many did you serve, scott . 10. Many. A couple. My husband served 17 combat tours. So there are names and prevailing, enduring war has a face and if americas comfortable with it, we need to ask ourselves why are we comfortable with this . Because less than 1 of americans are performing our Foreign Policy commitments overseas. So talking about enduring conflict. And the second aspect of enduring conflict and endless wars is not putting a time line in 2009 through 2010 when i was in afghanistan, president obama said we will draw down forces in 2011. The very next day, my intelligence collectors couldnt get anything because they were talking to villagers, community, all of our sources and they said you guys are leaving in two years, why would i work with you . Because youre leaving in two years and i have to still live down the road from the taliban fighters. So you never, never put a time line on enduring conflict like this. And last thought on this is that you dont fight a war, an 18year war one year at a time. We need to think about what is our greater vision. Scott mentioned it earlier. What are our goals, objectives . And we need to we dont go to war to fight wars. We go to war to win them. And thats what we want to do. Cogitating. I am, i am thinking. Speechless. [laughter] while hes milling around, coming up with some 20pound brain club answer. I will deal with it. Illinois state, not yale. We talked about this, and i actually wrote an article about it and carl and i were talking about it earlier. It was pretty simple. It was walmart wins the war , because im a Firm Believer that we have to go into these areas of conflict and we have to show what right looks like. Not iraqi democracy or afghan democracy but democracy. Theres only one flavor and the guys in the marine corps and the army and what we do in the infantry, we are really good at doing a few things. One of them is breaking stuff up and blowing stuff up. Were not great at building stuff up. Thats not what were great at. And i write about this, and it bothered me when i would see senior military officials who were geniuses like me who had a criminal justice degree, worth absolutely nothing, by the way, in the military, talking about governance and infrastructure and rebuilding countries. Really galled me to no end and i thought, until we get to the level where the administration is going to implement the right people for the right job for the right reason, our political power do you see any senators or congressmen going over to iraq or afghanistan, saying hey, this is how you build a congress . No. Do you see anyone from walmart or home depot or google going over there to say this is how you build infrastructure and build these small little megastores of commerce and that creates throughput and money . No. They wont risk their bottom line to support our national security. Thats way too crazy of a concept, so crazy, right, it just might work, right, brother . We know this. [inaudible] what if there was a walmart in iraq and a kids like oh, a soccer ball is not the only toy in the free world . Amazing, right . [laughter] its so crazy it just might work, but until we get to that point where we have a world war ii mentality where people are turning in metal goods to support the war effort and if we can get back and be great students of our history from the Pacific Theater and the european theater that we have to stay, we have to be committed to win and show people what right looks like. I like that fan back there. Shes shaking her head yes. I think thats really the end state, not just my vision but i think i share that with a lot of people that have sacrificed. I think one of the problems with the 18, 19year war is its a chicken and egg problem which is that youve got a professional military that is over there doing its job and you get the feeling that its like outsourcing. Its outsourcing the responsibilities of the republic. I dont think we would be in 18 and 19year long wars if we didnt have the ability to outsource it to a professional military, if kids that went to harvard and yale were also over there fighting. I think the war would last way shorter. So the problem of perpetual war is aided and abetted by a small, tiny percentage of the country carrying the burden. If they didnt carry the burden, the rest of us would have to carry it and i dont think wed have perpetual war. I think youve got the equivalent of the praetorian guard now, the president can send the military where he wants with no blowback because those parents of the kids who work at harvard and yale do not care. Those kids, their parents work at walmart. I think were in danger of a terrible class structure thats increasing, its making wars last longer because were in this pickle. We talked yesterday about National Service, the only fair way to sort of break ourselves of this continuing to grow problem. I dont want everybody to join the marine corps. Because i mean i have three kids out of five i wouldnt want anywhere near the marine corps certainly teach kids how to read in the inner city and dig fire trails for the forest service. There are all kinds of service we can do and then i think we would start to get out of this problem. Its not just tiny its a half of 1 of the population is carrying the burden. Seven Southern States account for more than half of the military. Seven. We have 50. Hello . And the other one that is damning is that if you take the top three deciles in terms of income, their neighborhoods, the higher earning neighborhoods compared to the bottom three deciles, and you would suspect, the bottom three deciles take more of the hits. In world war ii, it was 1. 2 times the top three. By vietnam, it was 1. 4 times. Now its 1. 7 times. Thats a very bad trend, that the poor kids are taking the hit, increasingly. Is the republic at war . Or are we just outsourcing it to the poor and im not talking about ghetto kids. Im talking about lower middle class, working class kids. Those are the ones that carry the burden. I think weve got to break that or were going to be in big trouble. All right. In one sentence or less [laughter] what is the most important thing that you want everyone here tonight to take away from a conversation about the relationships between war and society . One sentence or less. Thats yours. [laughter] carls books are like this. [laughter] my gosh. Our country will not survive if we do not have some form of National Service going forward. [applause] and ill keep last thought. I just need to say this, because weve had a lot of current news about the peace talks in afghanistan. We need to have women im not saying this because im a woman but the studies show throughout several decades of research. Go to the council on Foreign Relations website and find this research. We need to have women at the table for these peace talks and building out the agreements because when we do, these agreements have a 35 chance of lasting. [applause] and i dont know about you but i want it to last. So just a thought. My one sentence would be, i think we have to start remembering that were a republic and that everybody in the republic is responsible for fighting the republics wars. Being able to train and teach a lot of things over my career , to shoot the rifle straight and run faster and take care of Young Marines but i can never, ever teach anyone to care. You cant teach someone to care. If you dont care about being an american, if you dont care about what you do in your profession, in your life, its all completely worthless to me. So it starts here as a community. It starts taking action and having the compassion and care and that ability to share the message and not think that nobody wants to listen and go out there and do something and make a change and were simply doing it through one medium of writing. All of us do that on a daily basis, some structure. But you have to care. If youre not willing to do that, i think you dont get a voice. So care. I need to be respectful of scotts time because he needs to head to the airport so join me in a round of applause. [applause] o [laughter] [applause] so for those of you that are in the military, you understand the importance of unit coins, challenge coins. We have those here and theyre a token of appreciation but also a token of you joining the family and i cant think of a better way to say thank you for joining the chapman war society family. Karl, thank you. [applause] our authors will stay here this evening for a little bit longer to have a conversation with you and will be available to sign their books. Your table you have a flier for a followup event, on the 23rd of october at Chapman University on the psychological cost of war. It will be just as great as the conversation you heard this evening. Thank you so much for the support, coming out this evening. Thank you for engaging in this conversation and have a safe trip home. Thank you so much for coming. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [inaudible conversations] thanks to your comments, we go today the next intel for, oklahoma, on the democrats line. Think the big winner in this whole process is cspan. It is the one network that President Trump did not criticize. It is the one network that will open the phones to the speaker, to his guest performing and to myself, and i am in a state as a democrat where all 77 counties in 2016 voted for President Trump. I think theres been enough evidence in what i have seen, which is uncensored on cspan and without commentary from millionaire anchors that there needs to be a trial in the senate. Let the process work its way out. If trump is not guilty, let the process work its way out. Coverage of the impeachment inquiry and the administrations response on cspan. Cspan, your unfiltered view of the impeachment inquiry. House impeachment inquiry hearings continue next week as the House Judiciary Committee talks with constitutional scholars. The Judiciary Committee will take recommendations from members of the intelligence committee, and they want to hear about constitutional grounds for president ial impeachment. The committee has invited President Trump and ask westons. On cspan three, wednesday morning starting at 10 00 a. M. Eastern. It will also be live on cspan. Org, or you can listen on the free cspan radio app. Here are some featured programs on cspan this weekend. Today, starting at 3 30 p. M. Eastern, spend a day in the life with three of the 2020 democratic hope old. Senator Michael Bennet, mayor pete buttigieg, and senator cory booker. U. S. E will look at relations with iran and security in the gulf region with a panel of formers terror persian gulf countries, from the clinton, and obamaush administrations. Saturday at 10 00 eastern, the house ways and Means Committee on the difficulties in catering her aging americans, including the price of longterm care for senior citizens. 8 00 eastern, ted danson testifies on the Environmental Impact of plastic pollution at the house Natural Resources subcommittee hearing. 9 00 p. M. Ht at eastern for campaign 2020, cspan speaks with president ial candidates Deval Patrick and Michael Bennet. Deval patrick talks about his background, his relationship and hissident obama, entry into a crowded field of candidates. And senator Michael Bennet on why he decided to run for president , his leadership style, and his stance on various policy issues. Watch cspan this weekend. Our cspan campaign 2020 bus team is traveling across the country, asking voters, what issues should president ial candidates address . I think one of the most unaddressed issues is reforming u. S. Federalns, prisons as well as ice detention facilities have a more than staggering death rate of prisoners. I think it is an important issue to address because the federal government has the power to do so. What i want the candidates to focus on his constituents who never get their voices heard. Constituents are nonhuman animals. As an investigator who has blown the whistle on multiple factory farms where animals are being criminally abused, for doing that i am facing felony charges. One of the things i want candidates to focus on is how the public has a right to know what is going on behind the closed doors, inside of pig farms and chicken farms, places where animals are being criminally abused, but also the fact that ordinary individuals like you and me have the right to rescue these animals from criminal abuse. Love for the candidates on all sides to Start Talking more about gun safety, gun issues, how we can how we can keep legal guns and illegal guns, for that matter, off the streets and out of childrens hands, but also make our societys places of peace and common ground. We dont really want to live in a world where we need handguns and assault rifles not in our public safety. They should definitely be removed. I would like to see the reinstate voting to the Voting Rights act and bringing fairness back into elections. Andeed to not only control make sure the elections are secure, but we need to make sure that everybody who is a citizen is able to vote without having penalties and fines that they can never get out of. Voices from the road on cspan. President trump is back in the United States after his thanksgiving day visit to afghanistan. Air force one landed in florida, where the president is ending the holiday weekend. He spent several hours with u. S. Troops and had a brief meeting with afghanistans president. Heres his speech to the troops