Transcripts For CSPAN3 Civilians In War 20141030

And the professor of strategic studies, so welcome tammy, and we have sarah shard, whos our second sarah panelist today and sarah is the author and contributing editor for the solitary watch website and shes a university a uc berkeley visiting scholar, so welcome and without further adieu, i will give it over to bob to start, each panelist will have about ten minutes to speak, and after that well go right into audience participation and questions. Again as a reminder, students will be invited to come and ask questions first. So bob, thanks so much. Thanks everybody for coming today, its great to be here, youre especially remarkable for coming to the topic which is not exactly easy to swallow, i think for most people. In fact, talk about euphemisms, it always sticks in my craw when we talk about dead innocent people. So lets try not to use that. So im certainly not going to use it in my presentation. Its hard for me to talk about this, because it it immediately becomes very personal for me. Im going to explain that. I mean i have never been in war, but it seems to me the best way to avoid innocent dead people is first of all not to have wars. And i think that has to be the starting point. We too easily, in this country in particular, but also of course around the world slip into wars as something that, okay yeah, we have to do because our National Interest or honor is at stake. And for the most part, other solutions, almost always so i find it hard to be objective and analytical about this because as i said it feels a little too personal so im going to speak in part personally when i talk about this, like i said, for me, i have never been in combat, i have never been in the armed forces, and deliberately so, i guess. I came of age in the 19 1960s, a time when everything i thought i knew about this country that i had learned earlier as a teenager in middle school was proved to me to be collectively wrong when our country was engaged in a vast criminal enterprise called the war in vietnam in which we were killing a lot of people for no damned good reason at all, and it wasnt explained to me in my civics classes in high school or before that why Something Like this could happen and how could our government do something so criminally misguided. So i was in college, it was a heart beat center in the Antiwar Movement, it was good for me because i got pass fail grades those semesters. Once in 1968, coincident with that spricng, the second time ws after the invasions or the intervention, or what did they call it . Incursions, i forgot the word they used, there was the killings at kent state, speaking of innocent dead civilians and there was this revolt. And i was involved in all of this, i had no question of what was going to happen to me, when i was through with college, i was going to canada. It was not because i didnt want to be killed, although i didnt, to me this was a criminal war and i wasnt going to be part of it. So it turns out that was the first year of the lottery, i still remember that night in credibly well, when my birthday was picked out of the hat or whatever they used to and i was number 275 and its pretty widely known, they were only going to draft 110 so i was out of the picture. But vietnam was the turning point for me, and the reason i bring it up, i mean its affected everything thats happened to me for the rest of my life. As you know, something im going to put it this way, we killed about 2 Million People in vietnam for no good reason during those years. I have been to vietnam, i have a daughter whos adopted from vietnam, i have been there as was mentioned, but only for the first time in the 1990s when he went to adopt the u. S. Soldiers served there, i think many of them, many, many of them literally went insane, many of them were indeed baby killers, you hear a lot of veterans say they called us baby killers when we came home. I dont know how many were baby killers but quite a number were. The famous quote in the world was we had to destroy this village in order to save it. Its become kind of a cliche, but it was accurate then. A colleague of mine and a person i have written with, has written a brilliant book, i recommend you all write it down and read it. It will change forever what you think about vietnam, its called anything that moves, the real american war in vietnam. He went into the American Archives and he dug up the true city that it was not a runoff, there was hundreds of of civilians, deliberate killings, using civilians as target practice. Pushing them out of helicopters. Executing them in the field for no good reason. By the hundreds and by the thousands. This is what we did. This is what our nation did. So, now im going to skip ahead. You know, you think all of that is in the past and then all of a sudden we elect an idiot from texas i had the Bumper Sticker on my car somewhere in texas theres a village missing its idiot and he invades iraq. Now, look, the war in iraq, you know, im really tired of hearing it being called a mistake or a blunder or Something Like that. This was a deliberate war of aggression, an illegal one as many people, including koe fee anonhave said. It was another criminal enterprise by the United States. We went to war in an unconningsable how could this have happened zbhen how could this possibly be happening again . And if it were me, i find it mind boggling that people could have served in that army. The honorable thing to do was to quit, get out of the army. You go to jail if thats what it takes to been objector. If you were serving in the state department or pentagon and cia, ive talked to people who have been in those agencies at the time, the thing to do was to quit. You cannot be part of a criminal enterprise and say, well, im staying to fight this from within. So, what happened in iraq more hundreds of thousands of people died who would be alive today if it werent for what the United States did. Now, theres a lot of dead innocent civilians all around the world in many, many conflicts. The United States is hardly responsible for all of them, not even most of them. But as an american citizen, this is what i look at, who were responsible for, and last year nick turse, the person i wrote with, and i prepared a feature for the nation magazine, it was a special cover package called americans afghan victims. We looked at the course of the 13year war in afghanistan and tried to estimate or find out who could estimate how many civilians died there. Not just, of course, from the United States, but most of them, in fact, from taliban atrocities and suicide bombings and things, but quite a number, quite a number from american actions. We didnt get a lot of cooperation from the military in looking into this. They didnt respond in a friendly manner to our foiar. They didnt ask us to come in bed as the term of art of reporters with the units that track civilian casualties and worry about strategy and policy. They didnt want us anywhere near them. They said, sorry, nope. You cant come. So we did a piece. Why were they so touchy about it. Well, as you remember, another former colleague of mine, Michael Hastings who wrote for Rolling Stone i wrote for Rolling Stone for a number of years. Did the piece that got the general who was the commander of the armed forces there, fired because of his and his staffs kind of rock us antiwhite house bad mouthing of the president and the Vice President and all of that. And obama, as you know, flatly fired him for this insubordination. Michael, by the way, died last year in a car crash, a horrible loss for journalism and for people who care about dead, innocent civilians in various parts of the world. So, i can talk about the afghanistan work that we did and the conclusions that we came to, but sa suffice it to say, the Afghanistan Government didnt do any count at all. The ngos didnt have the resources to even begin the process. The United Nations tried to do their best and really didnt succeed because although i guess they came the closest because of limitations that they faced. The u. S. Military, which started out as tom e. Franks put it on afghanistan saying we dont do body counts. Eventually moseyed around to the idea of maybe we should start tracking this because it actually works against our counterinsurgency. Were creating a lot of terrorists. So they tried. But, again, that was a flawed process as well. So, we did create an Electronic Data Base which you can access at the nation website showing the number of incidents that were 458 of them in which american troops were involved in civilian deaths, not taliban deaths, but killing civilians with 6,481 people dead up to that many. Its a range actually. As a result of these incidents. So, we can talk in the q a about that but im going to conclude my time is up by noting that were teeter tottering on the brink of another one of these things with syria. Theres an article in the wall street journal today that says that theres another battle inside the white house and in the administration with secretary of state kerry and samantha power, the ambassador to the United Nations, both arguing for an escalation of the war by the United States involving, well, training support, arming more rebels, perhaps military strikes and so forth, where as, guess who, the military in the form of general dempsey the chairman of the joint teefs and other people in the pentagon are saying this is a really dumb idea and as far as we know, obama thinks its a dumb idea. Hes been resisting this since 2012 when Hillary Clinton was pushing him to get more deeply involved in syria. So, i guess my conclusion s we didnt learn from vietnam. We didnt learn from iraq. And we could be bumbling into another one or two, by the way, or more. Iran is another issue we discussed yesterday. Im going to close there and pass it on. I hope theres some questions about all this stuff. Thanks. Thank you, bob. [ applause ]. Now you have sarah holewinski. Hi. Im sarah. Im executive director of center for civilians in conflict. And my last eight years have been intensely focussed on this issue of quote unquote Collateral Damage. And because of that, it actually makes it hard to talk to you because i have so much to tell you. I have so much that i want to relay. Let me just start out with a quick overview of what Collateral Damage actually means. So the military the u. S. Military in vietnam coined this term to mean incidental civilian harm. What does that mean . It basically means lawful civilian harm. And i say that because there actually is a legal regime that governs the killing of killing, injuries of civilians in Armed Conflict. So after the horrors of world war ii, the international community, based on some of the laws that previously existed, created the Geneva Conventions and the additional protocols. So these rules or framework that govern Armed Conflict say a number of things about detainees and prisoner of war, but it also says that you have to distinguish between a civilian or combatant. You have to be proportionate when you are targeting. So, if bob is a weapons cashe and i am a house filled with maybe two or three children, a military can decide that actually that weapons cash is so important to the military objective that they can bomb it and kill the children inside of my house and in many circumstances that would be considered lawful. I did not create these rules. So that is what is meant by Collateral Damage, deaths, injuries, property damage. Now, the term civilian does not mean innocent. Innocent is actually not a word that is a legal term or something that is that makes much sense in Armed Conflict because actually a civilian can be a ballet dancer or a serial killer, as long as that person is not actually participating in the conflict, they are supposed to be protected. Even if theyre a horrible, awful, mean person. So i should say that in the beginning. I think what i want to do is step outside of my role and hopefully you understand that my entire career has been devoted to minimizing as much as possible civilian harm in conflict. But i do want to use this opportunity to step outside of my role and step outside of my daily work to pose some really difficult ethical questions with you. So, the first of three, is where does Collateral Damage actually stop . So, you have deaths, injuries, property damage. This is how the United States and many other nations categorize harm to civilians. What about psychological trauma . What about kids in pakistan who hide under their beds, wet their beds, wont go to school because of the drones . What about environmental damage in iraq because of white fos fer rhus or in other places . What about Community Displacement . I just got back from Central African republic and people have lost their homes. As soon as they have elections, those conflict gains will be cemented. What about those people . So it goes generation after generation after generation, all of that could be considered Collateral Damage, but when youre thinking about how to minimize it, where do you stop . What is the definition . The second question, how much of it should actually be mitigated . And i think everyone in this room would say, all of it. And to bobs point, we shouldnt have war. But if you were to say, well, we are going to make Collateral Damage illegal, you wouldnt be able to have war. If you cant have war, what happens . What happens to states . How do they then engage in diplomacy . If you cannot legally have military action on the table, what does that do to your diplomacy . Im not saying it makes it better or worse. Im asking a legitimate question. How does that change your International Structure . How do bringing up the syria conflict, how do we say, well, were certainly not going to harm you with weapons, assad, because we cant, because we couldnt cause any civilian harm because thats illegal. What does that do to negotiations . What does that do to peace processes . I think its a really interesting question. For those probably not in this room but for those who believe that truman was right in dropping the bomb because it stopped japan in its tracks, how does that make sense if youre not able to use military force and cause civilian harm . I mean, these are real questions that policymakers grapple with. And, you know, International Forces in afghanistan, created a zero tolerance policy for civilian harm. We will not cause one civilian casualty. They had been beat down so much by International Pressure to not cause civilian harm. So i can certainly appreciate that from a moral, ethical standpoint. I actually think its detrimental because if you say youre not going to cause any civilian harm, ever, then the population believes that theyre protected and theyre not. Military actions will always cause civilian harm. That is the reality. So populations stop protecting themselves. They stop thinking that they need to do things to avoid whats happening on the ground in the country and i think Bigger Picture and more detrimental, it makes it easier for us to say we will use military force. Because were not going to cause civilian harm so its okay, dont worry. Well use our military anywhere in the world, but, again, its not the reality. There will be civilian harm and that should be part of what we think about when we think about are we going to use military force. It should be a question and debated. And the third question im going to ask is, when it is better to have Collateral Damage than to have mass civilian death . And this is something that i struggle with all the time and its a very, very hard question. And i dont have the right answer. But let me tell you about a philosophy or actually an ethical question that phillip afoote came up with. An academic many decades ago. Its called troliology and the bridge. So, you have two circumstances. The first is that a trolly is coming down the tracks and its forked. And you have five civilians who are tied up on this track over here. And the trolly is going to kill them. You have one civilian tied up over here on the right and you are standing at the lever and you can pull it so that it goes and kills one civilian instead of five. What do you do . Lot of catholic doctrine out there says you dont get involved, you let fate happen. A lot of other doctrines out there that tell you what to do from a moral standpoint, but what do you do . Then the bridge. Youre on a foot bridge over another trolly coming down the tracks and there are five civilians who are going to be kild, theyre tied u. Youre standing next to an extraordinarily fat, obese man. You could push him over and stop the trolly. Its funny. Its funny. But it actually i wont be able to get that out of my head, sarah. This has nothing to do with governor kris christie, by the hey, now, hes working on it. This creates a much more difficult dilemma, i think all of you would agree. Do you purposefully put somebody in the way so that other people will not get killed . And this, i think if you think about these two circumstances, i think, you know, everyone in the first circumstance with the trolly saying, no, i would not pull that. In the second or, yes, i would pull it. Im sorry. Yes, i would pull it because five certainly better to save that than the one. In the other one, you are actively pushing somebody over. Youre actively killing them. If you think about syria, legitimate question. Two years ago if we had had air strikes, caused civilian harm, caused Collateral Damage, put our forces in harms way, could we have stopped the mass atrocities that happened afterwards . In terms of the calculus that you personally use, what is better and how do you explain that to yourself . That is also what policymakers are trying to figure out. So i think this issue of Collateral Damage is much, much more complicated and has a lot of dilemmas and challenges to it. Thank you very much. [ applause ]. Thank you, sarah. Now we have tammy schultz. Yeah, following that up. Im actually going to start by first of all saying i dont represent the u. S. Government, the u. S. Military. That will become somewhat clear, but im also going to start i just met sarah and bob. Ill be your p. R. Agents. Sarah is the master in this field. Shes a trail blazer. We met at the Truman National security project. I would encourage you to look that up. Its basically the progressive answer to heritage that trains young people in National Security issues. We came up with the idea of doing some awards and so one of the awards we came up with was the life time Achievement Award for basically doing progressive values in National Security. We didnt think we would give it for a while. Sarah won that award at like the age of, what, 12 . So, theres something called the humble brag, where its like im so humbled to be on this panel, but i truly am. Im the novice here. Ill just try to add a couple things. Im going to first list an assumption that i have which is potentially different from bobs. My assumption is that sometimes war is necessary. Not preferable, mind you, but necessary. Theres the classic example of stopping hitler. Theres other examples. I think we should have gotten involved in the 1994 rwandaen genocide and could have done so and stopped more harm. Despite what im about to say, my remarks, im not a warmonger. I actually went toest tes park for a silent retreat and i asked him the question. You know, in the nonviolent circles and i think i told this story last year, you know, chamberlain could have listened to hitler all he wanted and frankly the design was still going to be the same. The harm was still going to be the same. So listening isnt enough. Is there ever a time when a nonviolent philosophy could, in fact, promote violence to stop further violation . And his answer was essentially, yes. But you have to be very careful about how you do it. He said, if a man has a gun in a village and some robbers come through to kill the entire village and he stands on his high, moral perch and basically says, im not going to get involved because im nonviolent and the village is slaughtered, hes committed violence by not committing the violence. These problems are not black and white. Theyre very gray. Im going to basically just throw out three things in terms of civilians in conflict. One, i think were going to see a lot more of it. Two, civilians sometimes are the target in war. And war is horrible. The third, this is i just added because of listening to bob, soldiers should not choose which wars they get to participate in. Thats a very slippery slope. Let me start with the first. I think were going to see more civilians at risk simply because of the numbers in terms of population and where that population resides. So, i would highly recommend to you the book out of the mountains by david kilkolin looks at the future operating environment. He looks at a few trends. Two of which are important for civilians in conflict. Urbanization and population growth. With population growth, were going to add two to three billion people between now and 2050. I could run you through all the numbers, but essentially the aggregate number is growing in addition to the rate of population growth. The second trend in terms of urbanization is that theres going to be more civilians within cities. That will become prr problematic for reasons ill describe in a second. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, there was only two to three percent of the population in the world that lived in a city of a million or more. Now that number is above 50 and by 2050 it will be between 70 . This is exacerbated by the fact sarah gave the example of you were the weapons cashe, right . Shes the nice little house with the children in that. I like how you did that. Very deliberately in fact to get this idea of mood, mutually assured destruction. So the idea of being if the soviet union or the United States were to launch their weapons it would not just be at military targets. You would essentially destroy entire populations. Thats been going on for 60 years. Plus this population growth, plus urbanization means theres just necessarily going to be more civilians around. The second area i want to address is a question that sarah raised in terms of how much civilian casualties should be minimized. She jokes that neither myself or kernel ike wilson can get through a talk without mentions claus whits. Carl was a moiltd theorist who came up with the art of war. And his basic theory was that war cannot be divorced from politics and policy. But he has another idea in there called the center of gravity. The center of gravity basically means you find out what is really important to your enemy and you destroy it. You rip their heart out because thats going to stop the war. So, the center of gravity could be an industrial base. It could be military bases. It could be the population. And indeed, until all the wars the laws of war that sarah so eloquently spoke about, in many times it was the population that we went after. And frankly, the axes went after as well. Lets use the example of the iraq war. Now, im with bob on this that i think the iraq war was a mistake. In fact, its what made me switch from being a rabid independent to a rabid democrat, that and some gay marriage issues. Who knows why on the gay marriage, right . Yeah, i play softball. Okay. Assuming youre going to do the iraq conflict, recall what george w. Bush said the night before we attacked. This is not an attack on the iraqi population. This is not an attack even on the iraqi forces. Its an attack against saddam and his family. So what did we do . We did a thunder run essentially. We left weapon cashs. We didnt stabilize populations like we did in world war ii. It very much altered the way we fought that war. So, some would say by the time baghdad supposedly fell, we hadnt indeed concurred iraq at all. Indeed, we had just taken a city. We mistuk the center of gravity for baghdad and saddam instead of potentially also the iraqi people and the iraqi forces. Some Research Suggests that the most successful occupations occur after high civilian deaths during the conflict, where you utterly crush the population. You can look at the book occupational hazard by david hetle steen. Thats one of the Disturbing Trends that he finds. War is awful. So nothing in my comments suggest i think we should just go and bomb and take over kill a lot of civilians. What i am saying is that again, this comes from clause wits. Mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst. You may, in fact, think youre being kind, but in fact youre elongating a longer suffering in terms of the war. So what if instead of the thunder run to baghdad we had actually used the center we had gone slower. We had stabilized the weapons and populations, we had targeted the population and the military. Would we have killed less than the 122,384 to 135,990 civilians that we ultimately killed . This is the trolly example essentially. We will never know. Thats a hindsight question that we will have no answers to. Let me move on. Bob suggested those in the military should have quit this criminal enterprise instead of essentially participating in the iraq war. Im in the camp that i dont think the military should choose which wars they pick. Thats not their jobs. Thats the civilians jobs in terms of picking the wars. And guess what, more over, its our job as the electorate. President george w. Bush was reelected, people, after the iraq war. Thats not the soldiers fault. Thats our fault. And so lets assume, just for a moment, that most of you in here are democrats, since were in the republic of boulder. Im a colorado native, i love boulder. I love the library i did all my research there before there were kpulters. Do we want a military to be able to say no, im not going to stop the 1994 genocide, screw you. I dont think thats our job. I dont think the military should pick like that. Thats an incredibly slippery slope in terms of civil military. Once they pick operations, they can, in fact, start picking leaders. And we have a history of the civilians being in control of the military for very good reason. So with that, ill leave it and look forward to your questions and comments. [ applause ]. Thank you, tammy. Now we have sarah shourd. Hey, everyone. Im going to start from a personal angle as well. In 2008 i decided to move to the middle east. That decision was bourn out of years of experience and activism. I was in college at uc berkley in 2001 when 9 11 happened. And i was very opposed from the getgo to the kneejerk, what i considered, response of attacking afghanistan and then iraq. I joined the college Antiwar Movement and because its the only thing you can do, we took to the streets after the initial couple years of largescale protests i continued to do direct action against the war and a group of us in oakland, california, where i still live, shut down the port of oakland for 48 hours because they were shipping arms to iraq and afghanistan. We also at one point shut down the city of San Francisco for a whole day. So, it was exciting to be a young, outraged person that had some sort of a way to funnel my anger and my frustration and my confusion. But as the years went on, i started to do International Solidarity work. I worked with a movement but it still nagged at me that i felt like i was never able to have a real impact and that the wars dragged on and on and on and on. So in 2008, i decided to move to the middle east. And i found a program in damascus, syria, called the iraqi student project. I knew that over 1 million iraqis were in syria as refugees. Its one of the only positive things that assad regime did is to open its doors to iraqi refugees but they were barred from Higher Education. So a lot of young people that were in college at the time of the u. S. Led war in iraq, their colleges were shut down, they were destroyed and they fled to syria and couldnt continue their education. So, our program helped get these a lot of these young people scholarships so they can continue their Higher Education in the u. S. And abroad. With the goal that they could eventually return to their country and to iraq and help rebuild it. Over 50 of my students from that year that i lived in damascus are in college here in the u. S. Still and unfortunately they still dont feel that its safe enough for them to return to iraq. So, damascus at the time was a beautiful place. I had one of the best years of my life there. I was pass bli fluent to arabic. I was starting to work as a journalist and, of course, teaching. I lived in a refugee camp and i saw Collateral Damage, you know, on a daily basis with my own eyes. A lot of it was actually quite incredible because the camp that we lived in in the outskirts of damascus is now hell on earth. A lot it was originally Palestinian Refugees and assad never allowed Palestinian Refugees syrian citizenship. And they opened their homes to iraqi refugees. There would be three families sometimes in one home. And it was a beautiful thing to witness, people taking care of each other and to play a small role in that. In 2009, my life changed forever. In a sense, myself got a taste of what its like to be caught in the cross fires of really a lowintensity war between governments. You may know a little bit about my story. I was we decided to go to Northern Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan for vacation. I had a week off work. And if you live in syria, go into Northern Iraq makes a place to go on vacation. Its almost its own country within iraq. It is a kurdish region, has its own language and in fact no americans had been killed or captured there in recent decades. Im an adventurous person but its a relatively safe place to travel. We went to Northern Iraq and visited castles and traveled around for a few days and then we went to a water fall that was recommended to us. And there were hundreds of families at this tourist site. Iraq was actually named Northern Iraq, curd stan was named one of the top 41 travel destination bisthe New York Times in 2011. Hundreds of people there, mostly kurdish enjoying the water fall. We stayed there that night and the next morning we went for a hike. And we later became known as the three american hikers. We were lured across a border by Iranian Border guards, unmarked border. And i was held in arbitrary solitary confinement for 400 days by the iranian government. So i went from trying to play a very small role inlessening Collateral Damage to in my own way being a regular human being being caught in the cross fire of decades of animosity between two governments, the iranian government and the u. S. Government. After 410 days i was suddenly released before my nowhusband and friend. And put into the center of the campaign for their freedom. I met with president obama and right away i was really frustrated by the intransigence on both sides, the unwillingness to change the relationship of hostility decades long hostility that led to my imprisonment and led to so much suffering on both sides. So it was my job to sort of the government of oman, i was working closely with, they negotiated my release. It was my job to try to get the u. S. Government to give some kind of positive gesture in return for my release so that my friend and husband would inturn be released. And everything that i brought up was a no starter. From everything that we had direct information through oman fru fr the iranian government that small gestures like releasing a few iranian students that had overstayed their visas in the u. S. Were being detained would have been a guarantee for the release of my friends. Another guarantee would have been a letter from president obama to the president full of just general innocuous platitudes saying that i hope our countries the relationship will improve in the future and there will be more peace and yad da yad da. That was a nonstarter. So i realized that my government was completely unwilling to change this relationship. And it started because i was caught in that cross fire and i saw the toll that it had taken on me and that my loved ones were still in danger and our families were in the middle of this, it started to really dawn on me just how much pain and suffering in a real sense i mean, it had been somewhat abstract before. Definitely not as intimate as this. And its interesting for me to be on a panel like this because ive had, you know, now the place that i lived in syria is will never, ever be what it was again. And ive had friends that have died that i knew in syria. In a sense, you know, i feel like i havent even had a taste of what people experience. And i guess just to bring it back around to where i started, and also some of the really key things that some of the other panelists have brought up, i think that with our aggressive Foreign Policy no matter what theres going to be retaliation and i consider my imprisonment to be a very small consequence, a small example of the way that people will suffer from policies of aggression. And innocent people will continue to suffer. And what i experienced more than anything on a personal anecdote is being in prison with other Political Prisoners the people that were on the front lines of fighting for freedom and democracy in iran, they in no way blamed me for the policies of my government. The other women in prison would yell that they loved me down the hall way. They would push past the guards and throw their arms around me, sing Michael Jackson you are not alone down the hallway. There was a recent gallup poll that actually said that americans no longer see iran as their number one enemy. Thats really just shifted in the last two years. So and of course iranians are actually some of the most pro American Peoples in the middle east. And when youre caught in the middle of this kind of animosity, its so obvious that it doesnt serve the people. And it actually came to light that our imprisonment negotiated by the omani government in a very small way paved the road for the Historic Nuclear Deal that is still temporary that happened last fall. So, american officials, highlevel officials and iranian officials wouldnt meet face to face to discus our fate but after we were released the omani envoy who paid for our bail, arranged for a meeting. It was the first meeting like this in decades. And that paved the way for progress with the nuclear deal. And its something that ive spent time contemplating and what you brought up about the trolly. That kind of utilitarianism, if indeed my suffering was suffering of my family and my loved ones led to easing sanctions against innocent iranians and really sanctions hurt people more than anyone. I dont believe that sanctions led to this slate warming of relations between our government and iran that were seeing right now. I believe that it was the iranian people that have been fighting for this for decades and putting pressure on their government. When you talk about the greater good and sacrificing the few for the many, i think its very dangerous. As much as it makes sense a utilitarian approach to suffering, who is making this decision and why . And from my own experience, our government could have taken steps. There are so many missed opportunities over the decades to ease the lowintensity war thats been between, you know, been waged between them and the iranian government many, many times. I just think we need to look very skrepticily at the motivations our government has for making these calls. [ applause ]. Sarah, thank you so much. Now were going to open this session to the audience. So we have two microphones at the front of the room here. Please, students first, we ask that you come forward first and then Community Members are welcome to come up if theres no students in line. We just remind everyone to please ask questions and speak clearly in the microphone for the panelists. Thank you. Our first question right here. Looking for students. Youre good. Sir, go ahead. Listening to the discussions of Collateral Damage made me think of Steven Pinkers book which title i cant remember published two or three years ago in which he makes a very convincing statistically valid case that over the last 10,000 years, normalizing for population, humanity is becoming less violent, that even includes stalin and hitler and the holocaust and everything. Would anyone comment on that . Good question. Yes. Yes, i will. Actually so this is im so glad you brought that up. First of all, let me say nobody knows how many civilians have been killed in wars ever. Ever. Nobody tracks it. I mean, bob went into this somewhat, militaries dont track their own civilian casualties, ngos dont do it. I mean, and so we actually dont know precisely, but this is a very good point because so many people try to get attention to conflicts and wars by saying that now more than ever civilians are being harmed. Civilians are being increasingly harmed. I disagree with that. I do. Over the long view of history, if you look back at the romans and athens and consider all of the civilian harm that happened, yes, you can take it, you know, in the past 100 years. Theres been horrible, horrible civilian war. But if you take out the world wars, i dont actually know that thats true and im not sure that its true that increasingly its hard to tell between civilians and combatants. I mean, i was just reading the book about jesus of nazareth. I cant remember who wrote it. Fantastic book, right . And so think about that time where all of a sudden civilians who were priests, who were rabbis, suddenly take up arms and go in and theyre not wearing uniforms and you cant tell this has happened throughout history. And again, im just not sure that were able to actually document or take a step back enough to say, oh, its getting worse, oh, its getting better. I think people use it and they politically manipulate it for whatever they want to do. That is not to say that we should not be paying attention to minimizing civilian harm as much as we possibly can. The fact that 100 civilians are being harmed instead of 1,000, that is not the way to make decisions. Its that every single one of those people is a life, is a family, has ramifications. I teach ethnic conflict at georgetown, one of the things i assign is called the human securities report. That would confirm that thesis. Look at the long trends of history, civilian casualties are going down. But i would echo what sarah says, one is too many. Im not sure i agree, by the way, i havent studied it, so what do i know. But i will say that if the romans had killed every person in europe and north africa 2,000 years ago, they wouldnt compare that many compared to world war ii. But thats numbers not percentage. I buy that. Since were talking about every death matters, 60 to 100 Million Deaths matter one hell of a lot. And so i dont know. I mean, im not sure what point we can make, whether its getting more or less percentage, the fact is we as americans have to decide how we want our government to behave. And if we want the United States to which is a declining power and will be for the next century in every measure other than military most likely, do we want the United States to maintain its ho gemmy, its exceptionalism by exercising its military force or do we need to step back . Whats our solution in syria . Ill tell you what the solution in syria is, we surrender. Assad has won that war. Its over. Now, we can escalate it. We can aid the rebels. We can do all kinds of things to prolong it, but that war is over. So, what accomplishment do we make . Unless were planning to invade syria and occupy it and do another iraq. Its over. Okay. Bob. Just really quick on syria, can i just respond to syria really quick and this will be a tensecond i think the window of opportunity was very different from when the attack helicopter started going into civilian protests and gunning down civilians between now. The opposition looks different. Its more fractured. Theres more al qaeda. Theres more extremists. We had more of an opportunity and do something as sarah sort of suggested much early on in the conflict. I think that one notable change in the way that war is waged in the arc of history is that you didnt use to be able to wage a war to have so few civilian casualties on the side of the aggressor. In the past, to start a war with another nation meant you would have a tremendous amount of casualties. The fact that war has become such a precise and detached kind of violence is i think remarkable and frightening shift. Thank you. Now well take a question from this side of the room. Yes. Its been quite a few years since i read shaws harms in demand kbt. And i was recently instruct by the fact that nra was able to block a very good nomination for surgeon general. In my mind, the nra is they kind of fly under the flagship of the second amendment, but theyre basically a Propaganda Armed for the arms industry. Your question, sir . And the question is, no one seems to talk about how much american industry is involved through saudi arabia into the conflict of the middle east. Anybody got any answers on that . Thoughts from the panelists . Ill just do on the nra. We do talk about at the u. S. Marine corp. College, one of the things i stress, you cant be a strict reader of the constitution and leave out the part in order to have a wellregulated militia. Right . People are selectively reading the second amendment. I absolutely agree with you that it can and should be regulated. The founders intended that. The arm industry, theres the military Industrial Complex, i think that is real. Its increasing. And frankly, the money like i mentioned this with the Supreme Court decision in terms of going into politics is going to get even more extreme. So that includes money from the arms industry. So i think its going to be an increasing problem. Great. Next question right here. I think a lot of the things theyre complaining about is the concept of limited war, objectionless war. A war without objective. Nam was a war where we kept them back, they come in and attack us and we bomb everything. And your question, thank you. Well, i guess thats it. I mentioned clause wits would say war without a political objective is utter violence. Its not war. Its like a mass murder. Thats just my comment on it. Sir . Yeah. Hi, i was just curious, i believe tammy mentioned i dont remember what i said either. Its cool. Sorry. As i get older my mind goes. You mentioned occupations, right . And the ability to create an occupation or win an occupation it goes up as more civilians are killed. Any ways, i was curious in the modern times, is it possible occupation . I dont believe occupation has been won in the last 100 years to my are you a student here by chance . I have a Political Science degree. Outstanding. I was just wondering. I have a prize for the First Student to ask a question. Hinthint. Im in the education department. There you go. So theres a really interesting story about iraq that when the third core general wallace was the commander of the third corp. When he took down baghdad, a journalist said hes seeing all the lewding, general wallace is and he goes, it never occurred to me that it would be my job to get back those chairs the electrical stuff, all of that, they thought it was sell baatory lewding. Whats really interesting and sarah could speak more to this, there are specific laws that come with occupation. You have to provide for the population. And secretary rumsfeld made a very deliberate calculation that we would not occupy iraq, it would look like afghanistan. Because of that there was no decklation of marshall law. He said he didnt know who declared that. Nobody in washington has been able to answer that question for me. And that has huge reprecushions in terms of how civilians are treated after a conflict. Great. Sir . Yes. Ive heard panelists say that civilian casualties have existed throughout the history of war. And i dont doubt that, but the Geneva Convention is a more recent development. Im just wondering wasnt that significant enough that u. S. Policy needs to consider that an account for that . And im curious, i understand that states involved in conflicts dont have much interests in tracking civilian casualties, but is it practical for an ngo to do that . Could they take that task on . And then lastly, ive heard the state department has questioned whether say the drone policy might be counterproductive and that it motivates more people to join the opposition. And it just strikes me that the moral cause, the concept of vietnam winning hearts and minds, i dont hear much discussion of that and im wondering is that obsolete . All right. You just blew my mind with like five questions and subsets. You can do it. Okay. Here we go. First get him, sarah. First Geneva Conventions, yes, world war ii. But all of these rules and laws actually existed in some pry mort yal form before that. So 1906 with the had convention there were a lot of things. Going back further and further and further you get into religious doctrine which every single religion in the world that i know of has protection of civilians, mostly women, children, elderly, the disabled, that kind of thing. So it all comes from a place. And every single culture that ive studied has this and then they were sort of indoctrinated into the Geneva Conventions. Yes, they did actually make a big difference in the how the u. S. Military goes about its operations. Their carry them with them. They carry the Geneva Conventions with them theyre in their rules of engagement, cards that they put into their uniforms. Lot of militaries do this. It goes to your last question, hearts and minds. The reason why militaries want to in many cases protect civilians or avoid causing civilian harm is because of needing to garner that local support in order to do what they have to do. Or, because they dont want international condemnation, or because they need to maintain by lateral relationships with the country that theyre with or with their donors. Theres a lot of reasons for militaries to avoid harming civilians aside from the thing we all believe which is you shouldnt kill them. In terms of tracking, there is also a strategic interest for militaries to track civilian casualties. And i actually think that i needs to be twofold. It cant just be ngos. Militaries i believe that ngos and Civil Society and the un should certainly be tracking civilian harm. But that has to be matched by militaries doing it themselves. Here is why. Even if we never know what their data says, even if its kept confidential, which it probably will be, if you are an armed force, you need to know what your impact is on the population, including for the hearts and minds, including to know, you know, where are the injuries happening. Including to know over time, what that analysis looks like and, oh, god, weve got a lot of civilian casualties at check points. Whats happening . How do we stop that . In order to improve operations, you need to know what you have done out in the community. So thats something that were trying to get African Forces and a lot of other militaries to do. To echo that, i talked about destroying centers of gravity. I also think in Stability Operations or sort of the aftermath, you need to build centers of gravity because youre probably going to be taking those out. So whether its civil it could be Civil Society, rule of law, govern ens, security, you should be building all that up afterwards, assuming you take on the occupier role. Yeah, but lets get back to my point, too. L lets not take on any more occupier role. I really cannot conceive of any situation around the globe right now where the United States has to start thinking and planning about occupying anybody. Let me finish. Let me finish here. We do not need to go to war in this country. In fact, we should do the opposite. And im hoping and inspired by part of sarah shroud des comme. Talk to people going to enlist, saying dont do this with your life. Lets get involved in lobbying, to undermine the military industrial conflicts and cut the defense budget. Lets support people who want peace and dont want the United States to go around occupying other nations because we need their resources or because we dont like the guy who runs it or because were concerned about human rights situations in that country or something else. Im not talking about vast general sides like rwanda, okay. These are outliar cases that are so extreme and by the way there are plenty of situations like that. But if you want to talk about syria, i could give you an extended dissertation on the unbelievable blunders that obama has made in regard to syria starting from the beginning of that revolt, especially when he got up on the world stage and said to the syrian rebels, go for it, boys. Its time for assad to step down. Him and what army, right . And drawing red lines on syria like this was some sort of, i dont know, monopoly board or Something Like that. This is none of your business. And that war would have ended very quickly with an assad victory three years ago because none of those people could have stood up to the onslaught of this guys forces. Do i support that . No. But look at egypt. Now we have the guys that we supposedly like who are gunning down their people by the hundreds. And is anybody calling for air strikes against the Egyptian Armed forces . I havent heard about it. So, before we Start Talking about intervening early . Conflicts with our military, lets stop thinking about intervin okay . And lets start working for peace and undermining the military Industrial Complex and doing what we can to get this country out of the war business. [ applause ]. Oh and by the way, my other comment is im not saying that generals have to revolt against civilian control of the army. Its the right of any soldier as a citizen of america to say, im not going to fight in this war. Thats what a conscious objector does. Thats what a politically aware person does. Someone else will replace him, i guess f he doesnt want to fight in it. But god love the people who are willing to stand up and say, im not going to go fight in iraq. And if more people had done that, maybe less people would have died in that conflict. [ applause ]. Actually its exactly the generals who should have stood up. In fact, when you saw there were none that had the courage in miestation you had the six descending generals who talked about their objection to the iraq war after the fact, after i agree. They should have stood up but they cant resist orders. They have to quit or follow orders. Or stand up to rumsfeld and publicly quit. None of them did that. Right. Great. Thanks. So, i was wondering if any of you had an idea of something militaries could do to limit Collateral Damage without getting rid of war all together because getting rid of war all together is a much harder goal. Are you a student here . No. Okay. You dont have any more tshirts. Are you a student in general . Yes. Here you go. I went to regis university. Grow get a prize for asking a question. You can come up. And youre wearing camouflage too, i cant see you. [ laughter ]. Okay. So, yes, thank you for that question. There are things that militaries can do to limit Collateral Damage. You could not go into conflict. That was a shout outto you, bob. I heard it. Thank you. When militaries go into conflict, theres things they can do before, during and after. Ill make this brief, although it is what i have spent the last eight years doing. If you want to talk about it and unbelievably well. Sarah does unbelievable work. Thanks. Before its all about war planning. When rumsfeld went into iraq, brought the United States into iraq, there was no planning for limiting Collateral Damage. Aside from lets do this at night so people are not out, et cetera. But there was no planning for what are we actually going to do if we harm civilians. What about if this goes on longer than we thought it was going to . So lot of this has to do with thinking about it before the first shot is ever fired and you can minimize so much civilian harm by doing that. I can jump in. I was in room of knee owe cons. Some of the people who made these very decisions who said before iraq, i voted against there was a vote. Should we attack iraq. Myself and three other people from georgetown voted no. The rest of the room voted yes. We were there after called the georgetown squish and not invited back. Their argument was there would not be civilian damage because it would all occur in the deserts. Even if it went into the city, nobody would be around to watch it because we learned the lesson from vietnam. Needless to say, the georgetown squish took on that argument. So if youre not prepared, you can have what we had in iraq, where many, many, many people get killed and injured. During actual combat operations, its all actually about what the commander tells his or her forces. So, yes, you can have good rules, you can have good guidelines but i have seen commanders who will say you will not cause civilian harm. This is going to damage our mission, et cetera, et cetera. And if they create that environment, then their soldiers are very good actually about not creating civilian harm. If they say, hey, its a free for all. You know, these are our enemies. Everyone here is an enemy, then you get what you got in vietnam, which is kill anything that moves. And then after civilian harm is caused, you need to go back and actually do something. Under the laws do something. Under the laws of war if my kids are killed in the house because we were bombing bob, the military has no obligation to come back and pay compensation, apologize, investigate, nothing. This is sort of a you dont know how many civils were killed in any particular conflict, how can you do that . We will go to the student waiting and we have another student question here. My question, why does america or the usa care about the civilians about the war . And just doesnt just stay away and like our countries . Just to be honest, in the middle east, like im from the middle east. The view of the people that usa is the problem, just to be honest, how the people that think. And the usa stay away, its going to be, like, not more complicated and just be thats what i think. Good question. Thank you. Thank you for the question. Well, i have to say that the only time in my life that ive actually been conflicted about what side i was on with a u. S. Led attack on a country is with syria. Because i lived in that country and because several of my friends have been killed in the conflict. My best friend, who is still alive, and hes now in jordan as a refugee, i talk to him almost every day, he wasnt even certain. Because hes a Palestinian Young man. Very critical of u. S. Policy. At a certain point, he said, if no one kill womwill come in andt assad, we dont care who it is. Its okay. I guess i will continue. I was in a very schizophrenic place last summer, because on one hand i was so proud of the American People on both sides of the political spmripolitical sp. We cant do it again. On the other hand, watching my friends and their relatives die on a daily basis i thought, who is going to stop assad . Is it worth it for another million for another 100,000 oh 200,000 or 300,000 people to die. I sympathize with people on the panel even though im antiwar. I dont see where the u. S. Has left a good legacy from their occupations and attacks on other countries. What do do you when no one else will step in . In some situations, maybe no other country can. What is that noise . Fire alarm. We have one question from a student here that has been waiting. If you want to ask your question. Thanks for your patience with the noise. There you go. Do i get a prize . Im out of war stuff. You will get my cwa pin. Would you be sure to speak in the microphone . Depends upon how good this question is. Its kind of vague. Do you think your prize is education. Thats what they tell me. Do you think Group Organizations such as nato and the u. N. And stuff have more of a responsibility to limit Collateral Damage than say, like, america leads an army into syria opposed to nato leads an army . Is there any difference between how they handle Collateral Damage than what a single country is supposed to be responsible for . Thats a great question. You get the pin. I can be really brief on this. No, there is no when you pick up when you pick up a weapon, you have certain responsibilities. When you pick up a weapon as part of a group, you have certain responsibilities. When those groups become part of coalitions, you have the same responsibilities. This is the beauty of the laws of war, even though i know there are some problems with it as we discussed. Others want to respond . We will go to the student question here. I see Collateral Damage as a very civilian issue, because its impacting civilians. So how can we actually engage the people who are being affected in making these decisions . In terms of the publics who are supporting wars or in terms of the people who are actually harmed . Both. How can we actually engage populations in conversation to make it a more grassroots Decision Making process rather than a top down Decision Making process that is affecting these civilians without their consent . One problem is you have less than 1 of the u. S. Population serving in the military. So there was a decision after the vietnam war which didnt actually come to pass, but that essentially you would put the combat support combat service support, which is basically all the stuff that gets the war fight wreers where they need to and they would put them in the reserves. This means we will never go to war again without the support of the population. It didnt work out that way. Less than 25 of eligible age people can serve, because were too fat, too dumb, too drugged up, too whatever. And then that leads to less than 1 serving. One thing that we can do, which im sure bob can be out protesting. Will get the people in. Including from the ivy leagues. Is get people get more of the population from a bigger cross demographic to serve. Getting rid of dont ask dont tell helped. For the first time, rotc was allowed back on ivy league campuses. It shouldnt be its not. But it shouldnt just be kids from lower demographics that serve. It should be from across the swath of society. Part of the thing that bothers me was there a big protest movement. It had failures and affects. But i think that abolition of the draft took a lot of the air out of the ability to create an Antiwar Movement in this country, which i would be very supportive of. I remember a very concrete example of that. In 1991, i guess it was in around january when there were the other bush was thinking about the other war in iraq. And i went with some aclu people and other people at a university in baltimore to talk about why this war was a bad idea. We had 250 people students at the university come to hear this presentation. Thats because at that exact moment, there was talk in congress and elsewhere about reinstituting the draft. Because we had to send 500,000 troops over to the gulf. Two, three weeks later that had been squashed by president bush. We all went back to the same university for a followup seminar. I think there were 30 people in it the audience. I get it. You know, theres a selfpreservation aspect to this thing. But because the draft was removed from the equation, people became less active. Im unhappy that 1 of the country is in military. I think it should be a third of 1 . Our military is way too big, way too bloated, way too expensive, has way too much weaponry for what we need to spend it on. If you want to get involved, theres a lot of organizations that are working on reducing the size of the military all across the board in many different ways. I think we have time for one last question here. Is there a student with a question . We will go thank you for your patience. This will be the last one. I have a question for bob. You talk about things like surrendering or quitting your military job. What happens when everyone does that and then the enemy attacks . [ applause ] i got a big prize for you, son. You come on up afterwards. Im not a pacifist. But there are very few times when that question will ever be raised and have to be answered. Right now, we have a military thats larger than all the rest of the worlds budgets combined. Were the only power aside from russia which has anything like a Nuclear Arsenal which can back up that force. Theres no conceivable enemy that can threaten the United States directly. I get al qaeda and other people who can come and blow up a Shopping Mall or something. But theres no global power anywhere in the world, including china, that can threaten the United States. If we had a military dedicated to defending the United States as opposed to 800 whatever it is military bases all around the world as opposed to a doctrine of american exceptionalism that says we need to bring our enlightened values to all these countries that dont understand the values of democracy and everything else, if we didnt have a military that was so easy for a president to pick up the phone and order into action, there would simply be a lot less wars. I dont know what enemy you think is about to attack us. It isnt assad. It wasnt hussein who presents no threat to us. There are international ways of dealing with war. Someone else brought up nato. Its an organization that long ago outlived its usefulness as we learned in c eed in crimea. Does that mean we shouldnt have u. N. Security council supported actions . Might that have worked in other countries . I dont know. Maybe. But im for that. And im not for more iraqs. Im not for more afghanistans. There were plenty plenty of ways for the United States have dealt with afghanistan after 9 11 that didnt involve us going in there militarily. We could have spent the next four, five, six months negotiating with the taliban to hand over bin laden. They think they that could have been accomplished if we gave it more time. Does that mean the taliban, they are bad guys. I get it. Is it our job to go knocking off the taliban . No. So we could have solved that problem diplomatically if we had given it time. We had a president who instead of trying to calm passions, instead of trying to tell people that in this great hour of National Crisis we need to be mature, he mature, he got on his megaphone and called for war. The revenge motive was inflamed rather than quashed at that exact moment. Maybe there was no other way around it, but thats what happened. Sorry to cut this short. We are out of time today. Thank you so much, everyone for joining us. Thank our panelists here. [ applause ] u. S. Troops returning from Ebola Response missions in west africa will be placed in supervised e ed isolation for 2 days. The remarks were made at the Washington Ideas Forum. Lets start off with one bit of news. Theres some ebola order you signed today. Tell us about that. What i signed this morning was a memorandum to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in response to the memorandum of recommendation i received from the chairman and the chiefs yesterday to go forward with a policy of essentially 21day incubation for our men and women who would be returning from west africa. That policy was put in place by the chief staff of the army a couple of days ago for general williams and ten of his associates who are now back at their base in italy. And what i said in response this morning was, give me within 15 days the operational specifics of how that would work. And then i believe we should review that policy within 45 days. The fact is, the military will have more americans in liberia than any other department. Thats number one. Number two, our people are younger, the cohorts are different. They are not volunteers. And this is also a policy that was discussed in great detail by the communities, by the families of our military men and women. And they very much wanted a safety valve on this. So thats essentially what the directive says. You can watch all of defense secretary chuck hagels remarks at our website. We will have more live coverage of the Washington Ideas Forum at 8 45 a. M. Eastern on cspan2. The cspan cities tour takes book tv and American History tv on the road traveling to u. S. Cities to learn about their history. This weekend we partners with comcast for a visit to Colorado Springs, colorado. In 1806, this man was sent into the american southwest to explore the region. Very similar to lewis and clark who were sent to the northwestern part of the newly acquired louisiana territory. Pike was sent to the southwest part of the territory. And from his perspective, when he came out here, he walked off the map. He went to an area that was unknown. When pike first sees the grand peak, he thinks he will reach the top in a few days. But it takes weeks to approach. They reached what we believe is a Lower Mountain on the flanks of pikes peak called mount rosa. At that point pike wrote, given the conditions, given the equipment that they had at the time, no one could have summited the peak. Pikes peak inspired america the beautiful written by katherine bates. And the view down to the plains from the top of the mountain inspired the poetry and inspired the images that are captured in the poetry of the United States. Watch all of our events from Colorado Springs saturday at noon eastern on cspan2s book tv and sunday on cspan3. Former u. S. Afghanistan war commander general john allen talks about the legacy of former afghan President Hamid karzai. The u. S. Institute of peace hosted this event. I think we can get started. My name is scott smith. Im the director for afghanistan and central asia programs here. Thank you all for coming. Now that you are here, i should say that theres maybe one slight problem with the topic that were going to deal with today. The problem is, is it even too premature to speak about karzais legacy . After all, i think yesterday we began they began an audit of the eight million votes according to a deal that secretary kerry broker l