the private sector. >> why would a team not want their team expose the product, the brand exposed to tens of thousands of people? so, we think that the blackout rule is obsolete and the fcc took the first move and they will vote, finally at the end of this year but we believe they'll follow suit. >> it tries to address concerns over carriage rules, over retransmission consent, basically giving people a level footing when it comes to being able to negotiate with broadcast and being able to negotiate with the providers and the people who are trying the delivery. -- trying to deliver that media. to the consumer, so, it puts people on a level playing field when it comes to those kinds of negotiations. >> republican representative bob latta from ohio, new york democratic representative brian higgins and colorado republican representative cory gardener, monday night at 8:00 eastern ton the communicators on c-span2. >> on july 26th, 1947, president truman signed a national security act. it established the national security council. the cia, and the secretary of defense. next, author and professor andrew bacevich discusses his book, "washington rules." and argues national security strategies have essentially remained the same since president truman was in office. he is a west point graduate and vietnam war veteran and answered questions about american conflicts since world war ii. this event is from the boulder bookstore in boulder, colorado. it is about an hour. [applause] . >> i'm grateful for the opportunity to speak with you this evening and thank you for turning out in such impressive numbers. i'm on day 15 of this tour. homeward bound, minneapolis, chicago, still to come, back to boston. my blazer is ready to disintegrate, at this point. my second stop on the way -- this is a wonderful independent bookstore. i happen becoming an expert in independent bookstores. my second stop along the way was at a store called politics and prose, which is in washington, d.c. i don't know if any of you have been there. it is owned by two remarkable women, not only devoted book sellers but, really terrific entrepreneurs. and the one, barbara, who introduced me the other week or whatever it was, mentioned that i had been in politics and prose for my previous book, "the limits of power" and she liked it and she told the people in the audience that that year, the year of "limits of power" -- had come out, she had given a copy of the book to her various friends for christmas gifts and it occurred to me that this is the sort of thing that really ought to catch on. with the reading public. so i don't know how many friends and relatives you give gifts to for christmas or hanukkah or kwanzaa or labor day or whatever... but, you know, assuming there must be at least 10 or 12 redundant intimate friends or relatives that you have and if you would cull consider giving them a copy of "washington rules," you'll not only make the bookstore and my publisher happy but you will make me happy. just a thought, before we started. the way i prefer to do these things is to speak relatively briefly, hoping i can tell you enough about the book that will cause you to be interested in it. without telling you so much about it that you will say, okay, got that, let's go on to the next thing. but, seriously, to speak briefly, in order to allow opportunity for questions and discussions, because i really think that is the part that you like best, and to tell you the truth, it is the part i like best. we can go back and forth a little bit. so i'm thinking i'll probably talk for not more than about 15 or 1 minutes. and then we -- 18 minutes and we can use the balance of the hour for your question. so, let me hop into this formal part of the text. everybody, it seems to me, is talking about afghanistan these days. why are we in afghanistan? why were we in vietnam? two questions. in my judgment, one answer. we are there today. we were there then because washington stubbornly adheres to a national security consensus, an approach to national kurt policy, consisting of two elements. the american credo defines purpose, the sacred trinity defines practice. the credo is a claim. it summons the united states, and most emphatically, alone, to liberate and out taelt transform the world. according to the sacred trinity, which really describes the relationship of military power to that credo, according to the sacred trinity, the minimum potential of international peace and order requires the united states and, again, we should emphasize, emphatically, the united states alone, to first maintain a global military presence. second, to configure its armed forces not to defend the country, but to provide instruments of global power projection. and, third, to marry this global military presence with these global power projection capabilities to support a pattern of global interventionism. together, credo and trinity constitute the essence of the way that washington has attempted to govern and police what many people have called the american century. the trinity lends plausibility to the credo's best claims. the credo, in turn, justice the trinity's vast requirements and vast exertions. 1 together, they define the rules to which washington adheres and has adhered since the beginning of the cold war over 60 years ago. and they also determine the precepts of which washington attempts to rule. yet, there is a problem. and the problem is that the rules don't work. at least they don't work any longer. i, myself, believe that i can make the case that when this approach to national security policy was forged in the wake of world war ii, at the very beginning of the cold war, it actually did make a certain amount of sense. i think you can make the case that in the early days of the cold war, in the late 1940s to the 1950s, adherence to the washington rule may well have contributed to our security and contributed to our prosperity. but the world that exists -- existed then has long since vanished and the washington rules have proven to be counterproductive. something that events since 9/11 have made increasingly apparent. promising american safety and security, the washington rules have produced something akin to permanent war. we need to recognize the significance of the fact that we now live in a society in which the vast majority of us have come to accept war as, in essence, a normal condition. practicing to preserve the american way of life, washington rules have set the united states on a course toward bankruptcy. both fiscal bankruptcy and, at least as troubling, moral bankruptcy. so, replace the washington rules. in my view, we should replace existing american credo, with a new credo, revising the conviction that america's primary purpose and obligation is to be america.pirationed in our founding documents, not least of those aspirations, the closing preamble of the constitution of the united states declares that the purpose of this union is to, quote, secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. and i think the words in that expression, that most demands our attention today is the word posterity. i would argue that securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves, in that regard, much work remains to be done. but, to secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity is an obligation that it seems to me increasingly, we simply have forgotten and have abandoned. now, there are those who will hear the words that i have just spoken and say, well, obviously, he's an isolationist whose only interest is in turning his back on the world, raising the draw bridges and ignoring everybody else. that is not the case. i would argue, however, that to the extent that america has admission to the world at large, the united states would be best served -- and the world would be best served, if we attempted to fulfill that mission by serving as an efxemplar for others rathr than imposing liberal volumes on the people of iraq, or the people of afghanistan or maybe i should rephrase that. rather than vainly attempting to impose liberal values of the people of iraq and the people of afghanistan. perhaps we would be better off demonstrating through our own actions that attempting to create a society based on liberal, humane values has something upon which others may draw in pursuing their own destiny. yet even that, i would insist, if we could serve as an exemplar, we should not confuse side benefits with primary purpose. when it comes to the use of military power, or thinking about military power, i think we need a new trinity. and my preferred trinity would go something like this: first, we should define the primary duty station of the american soldier as america. the primary duty station. not the exclusive duty station. i can easily envision there will be times and places where our interests will require that we send american soldiers to some far-off place to accomplish some purpose. but that's quite different from expecting that we have some kind of a responsibility or obligation to garrison the planet, which has come to be our practice in recent decades. the second element of my alternative trinity would be one that would say that we should design u.s. forces to defend the united states and to defend its most vital interests. now, this is a tricky phrase, "vital interests." it is a phrase that can be abused. it is a phrase of significant elasticity. right now, there are many people who would insist that we have a vital interest in the transformation of afghanistan, for example. there are people who, no doubt, do argue or will argue that we have a vital interest in destroying the punitive nuclear program of iran. probably within the next year or so, somebody argue we'd have a vital interest in trying to pacify somalia or yemen. i recognize that introducing that phrase, "vital interests," into the conversation, sort of opens the door for the kind of overmilitarized policies that i'm criticizing. i would insist that, for the phrase, vital interest to be meaningful, then the number of those interests have to be relatively limited. what i would hope is that in the country in which genuine democratic politics prevail, there could be an argument about what really qualifies as vital and what falls outside the category of vital and that out of democratic politics, some legitimate consensus could be reached as to what constituted true vital interests. and, finally, the third piece of my trinity would have to do with the actual use of force. and my argument would run like this: consistent with the just-war tradition, the just-war tradition chiefly developed by christian thinkers over a period of several centuries. consistent with that tradition, a tradition, by the way, intended to provide us guidance and help us think about when the use of force is moral or not moral, consistent with that tradition, we should employ a force only as a last resort and in self-defense. and, even then, we should recognize that violence has limited utility as an instrument of statecraft. and, that the use of violence almost always gives rise to have unintended consequences and exacts costs far in excess of those the people anticipated from the outset. well, how likely is it that we will see any significant departure from the existing washington rules? and my answer is, alas, not very. or none. two reasons. the first reason has to do with washington itself. we need to appreciate the extent to which the persistence of the washington rules can be explained not by any pragmatic assessment of whether they work or not, but, by understanding the extent to which the persistence of the washington rules benefits washington. even if it doesn't benefit the american people. adherence to the washington rules delivers profits to the military industrial complex and adherence to the washington rule is useful for the institutions comprising the national security state. helping them to justify their prerogatives, to justify their pledges. adherence to the washington rules allows ambitious senior military officers or ambitious civilian officials to imagine that somehow they are occupying the cockpit of history and doing god's work. i think adherence to the washington rules is something that even mainstream journalism has embraced. nobody gets more excited about the prospect of american soldiers being sent into harm's way than do reporters for the mainstream press. for all of those reasons, washington, which is deeply invested in the existing national security consensus, will be reluctant to permit any departure from that consensus. but, there's a second reason, i think. one that gets a little bit more closer to hope. it explains why the washington rules are likely to persist and that has to do with us. because it seems to me that we, the people, have been too long conditioned to believe that any departure from this status quo, leads directly to isolationism, disaster, and chaos. we have come to believe that there really is no alternative to global military presence, fashioning forces for global forward projection and engaging in this pattern of interventionism. we no longer in that sense have the ability to pose first-order questions about national security policy or to put it another way, we defer. we defer to washington's judgment. and, it seems to me that the tendency to defer may, in the end, pose though greatest o stackal to restoring good sense to u.s. policy. with that statement i will stop and i very much look forward to any questions that you have. thank you. [applause]. >> thank you very much for your work, not only this book, but a prior book -- >> i'll make a request, if you will please don't refer to me as colonel. i have been out of the army now for 18 years. i was only in the army for 23 years, and i really feel like it is sort of flying under false colors. >> i like it, yes. i seem to remember that is how they referred to you on television to give you a military credential but i'm happy to take that advice and i much prefer it myself and i wanted to call attention to one of the brief exceptions to washington rules that occurred during the kennedy administration, in ted sorensen's book, called "counselor" which came out two years ago, he pointed out even though the -- kennedy's inaugural address had the normal bellicose, we can -- we shall go anywhere in the world and bear any burden for liberty and that sort of thing, that his experience with relying upon what we might call the hawkish wing of the pentagon in the bay of pigs taught him a profound lesson and after that, sorensen said the policy became one of directed by the president, and not by the pentagon and one of patience, vigilance, and restraint. >> i just don't agree with that, i have to say. >> okay. >> i mean, there are some things that president kennedy did that i think very much deserve our great admiration and gratitude. chief among them his cool-headed management of the missile crisis of october, 1962. that said, the overall record i think clearly is one of recklessness that suggests that whatever lessons kennedy was learning he was learning them a heck of a lot more slowly and tentatively and partially than kennedy apologists contend. we have to remember that the president's response to the bay of pigs fiasco was to create the campaign -- what is today called state-sponsored terrorism that went under the name of operation mongoose. this was a program of dirty tricks, sabotage and attempted assassination that was intended to overthrow the castro revolution. we also have to remember that the president's policies towards south vietnam increased the number of u.s. advisors there from i think roughly a thousand at the time eisenhower left office to 17,000, by the time president kennedy was killed. and, perhaps, most troubling, you have to remember that it was his administration that became complicit in the overthrow and, by extension, the assassination, of the president of south vietnam in october of 1963. the act which i think more than any other single act really pushed us down the path that would lead to the americanization of the war by lyndon johnson. so, my own -- i want to be fair to president kennedy. but, my own sense is that the argument made by mr. sorensen and others that his experience in office led to this radical shift in his thinking, simply doesn't tell the whole story. >> well, thank you for that illumination. i wonder then if you think, is there anything since world war ii in our history that would point toward an example of people that have broken the washington rules? >> well, i think... i think worth considering here is kennedy's predecessor. dwight d. eisenhower. now, there, too, somebody whose record is mixed. eisenhower certainly, when he went to meet st. peter probably had answered some pretty hard questions about, for example, the use of the cia in places like iran and guatemala. but, the president performed a tremendous public service, however belated, when, on the eve of his departure from office, he gave us as a gift his farewell address, which brought to our attention the fact that during the course of his administration he had, for all practical purposes, lost control of u.s. national security policy in very fundamental ways. we you a remember that to the extent that we -- to the extent that we remember it because that is where the phrase "military industrial complex" was coined. when you go home tonight, carrying your bushel basket of my books, and when you get hope and put the bushel basket down i want you to go to your computer or wherever and google the farewell address and take 10 minutes to read it. that is all it takes. 10 minutes to read it. and notice the phrase which i won't be able to quote from memory, which says that the necessary response to the dangers posed by the military industrial complex is that we must have an alert and knowledgeable citizenry. he said, it is your job, meaning, it is our job, to rein in the tendency if we are to have any chance of reconciling the military power which he fervently believed we needed in the context of the cold war, with the potentially unintended consequences of that military power compromising our liberties. and i think one of the things that troubles me most today in a period when i'm in the catch of the people who say that our policy has for some time now been excessively militarized. and that the once deep-seeded skepticism of the american people regarding military institutions and military power has now basically been forgotten. we are not an alert and knowledgeable citizenry and that, too, is one of the things that contributes to the fact that we find ourselves involved in perp war and in a sense don't know what to do about it. >> i have two questions and they pertain to the view of the soldiers themselves. the first one is the kind of near or virtual mutiny that was occurring in the u.s. infantry at the end of the vietnam war. and, what your perspective on that might be. as a kind of possible agent of change. and if there is any analog for that today. and my second is, your own personal experience -- i started reading your book and you cite, as a follow-up to the berlin wall, going into east germany and you mention that what you saw there kind of shook your world view. and i'm curious, i'd like to hear more about that. if that is an example that you yourself, cite of a soldier who somehow sees something that changes their whole signed of internalized paradigm. >>... the question, sir? >> the questions are two-fold. the first question is, given the way that the american military towards the end of the vietnam war pretty much came close to disintegrating, is there any analog for that here in the ninth year of what used to be called the global war on terror. and the second question he was asking me to expand on some person reflection at the beginning of the book. question number one: that was the vietnam that i served in. toward the end of the war. i served 1970-'71. and the army was disintegrating. terribly undisciplined. probably the worst expression of that was soldiers trying to assassinate their leaders. but, there was widespread abuse of drugs. there was also most an unbelievable amount of racial tension between white soldiers and black soldiers. and it was a truly awful situation in which to be. i see no evidence -- well, almost no evidence, that anything like that is happening in today's military. there are reasons why, as citizens, we should be having second thoughts about our embrace of a professional army. and our abandonment of the concept of the citizen soldier. and i think that the very fact we find ourselves engaged in endless wars where washington calls the tune and citizens more or less feel they have remarkably little say, can be explained in part by the fact that we have embraced what george washington would have called a standing army. but one thing we should not complain about with regard to this standing or professional army is its durability. i, myself, and astonished at the extent to which this force, subject in my mind, to enormous abuse, has held together. so there is very little evidence of the kind of undiscipline that i witnessed, what is that, now, 40 years ago. the one hint of an exception may well be the wikileaks incident of two weeks ago now. where we did have a soldier, allegedly, allegedly, a pfc in the ranks, who leaked this mass of classified information, clearly with the intent -- i imagine with the intent, to try to subvert support for the afghanistan war. now, where we can see a pattern of that kind of action and behavior coming from the ranks, that might begin to suggest that this internal disintegration had now begun in the current force but to my knowledge, we're not seeing any kind of a pattern of incidents. with regard to the second question, the question was referring to the fact that -- i was serving in germany, when the berlin wall went down and i had -- my family and i had spent quite a number of years serving in germany during the latter half of the cold war. we had never visited berlin and after the wau went done i wanted to go to berlin. i wanted to see berlin. i wanted to see berlin before berlin was changed as a consequence of unification. and, in particular, since i wanted to go to the brandenburg gates, i suspect for many of you who are more or less my age, the brandenburg gate continues to be a great symbol of that time. they say an evocative symbol of the cold war. i just wanted to go there. i wanted to see it. it was winter. it was late at night. it was cold. it was rainy. and we ended up in a station in what had been east berlin and i insisted to my family -- i hope they have forgiven me -- that we walk up this long road in what had been eastern -- east berlin and approach the gate from the east side. and we got there. and what we found was huddled among the pillars, several young men dressed in civilian clothes but obviously not german and they were hawking bits and pieces of russian uniforms and other military memorabilia. pins, buttons, hats. i bought a wristwatch. i think i paid about ten deutsche marks for it. big, clunky metal band with the face emblazoned with the symbol of the soviet tank corps. it broke within two weeks. and what struck me about the stuff that was being sold -- well, two things struck me. what struck me first of all, was sort of the forlorn nature or aspect of these young men who were obviously off-duty russian soldiers. and, the second thing that struck me was the junk. cheap. it was crap. and this impression was radically at odds with the in precious i had developed of the other over the course of many years, this other that is only now actually encountering for the first time. it was not, as i think the questioner was suggesting, sort of a scales fall off my eyes and everything suddenly looked different moment. it wasn't that at all. it was, rather, a moment in which certain seeds of doubt were planted. that there was a disconnect between what i have expected to find and what i found. and i think over time, in particular as a result of observing other events and developments, not least of all actions by the united states with regard to its own foreign policy, those seeds grew. and in some respects, what the book tries to do is to share if that is not too pretentious a term -- what i have learned over the course of the ensuing 20 years over rethinking what i thought i knew then. >> good evening. >> good evening. >> can you hear okay? >> i'll repeat the question because they can't hear. >> okay. i'm an international relations major in college and one of -- >> what school do you go to? >> in southern california -- >> one of the five colleges, i was there a year-and-a-half ago, giving a talk. totally gorgeous place. >> it is pretty. >> i imagine nobody goes to class, is that true? >> no, we are... i go to class! but, one of the sort of theoretical models we've looked at is sort of, in various classes, is a bureaucratic or institutional organizational model, so, kind of, you know, how bureaucracies kind of take on their own life. and, i think that kind of relates to what you were talking about earlier. where it seems like maybe some of the washington rules made sense right after the end of world war ii but then, now, maybe partially due to sort of bureaucracies getting entrenched and stuff like that, now it is kind of -- it is old and it's not very relevant anymore. and, then you mentioned in your answer to one of the questions that, you know, a lot of the burden kind of falls on us as citizens. and then -- well, one thing in the limits of power, which i read for a couple of classes, is you talk about, the draft and citizen soldier versus this professional army but at the end of that -- >> that is when the -- >> at the end of the book you also say bringing back the citizen soldier or the draft is kind of impossible? or very unlikely? and so i'm wondering what other -- what are some other sort of specific things that like we as citizens can do to sort of pressure this massive bureaucratic momentum that is so huge? >> so, the question reduces to this: if citizens really don't have any say in how policy is made, how can they acquire some? is that fair? and indeed i think, what fascinates me a lot, is that -- and it sound serious, every talk i give, whether it is a book talk or some other unrelated thing, every talk i give, the conscription question comes up and what is interesting about that is that it really does suggest at least to me as i trav around and talk to groups like this one, that this idea really does -- is now requiring a currency that perhaps means that i need to take it seriously. my skepticism about the draft -- skepticism about reinstituting the draft, or indeed, recreating the tradition of the citizen soldier as a way to close the gap between the military and society and give society some say over how the military gets employed, is it still seems to me that, politically, it is not going to sell. looking at the crowd, and i'm guessing that at age 63 i probably am pretty close to the mean of the age of you all. and, that is who comes to these sorts of events, those of us who are 63 or 65 or 61, to put it mildly, we're all past the draft age. i'm guessing at pomona college, and boston university, the 19-year-olds are not keen to renew conscription. i'm guessing, but i don't know, that the parents of the 19-year-olds are not keen to renew subscription. it is very much a fact that the senior military leadership, which opposed the abolition of the draft during the vietnam period is, today, completely committed to the all-professional model. so it is small groups of us, i think, bothered by this sense of powerlessness, who possibly that that is a solution. i have seen it happen. but let me offer another approach to solving the problem of the -- frankly it is one that probably is equally implausible from a political point of view. if the conscription idea -- the conscription idea says we'll fix the problem if a greater percentage of the people are called upon to serve and sacrifice. rather than this, i think, otherly immoral situation we have now, where all the service and sacrifice is imposed upon roughly 0.5% of the population while the other 99.5 cheer them. i think another approach is to say, well, another way to get at this is to recognize not only don't we all serve and sacrifice, we also pay for the wars. both of those cynical things the george w. bush administration did, in committing the country to what it called a global war on terror, and when the bush administration did this, the bush administration understood instead is that the global war on terror was going to go on for a long, long time and one of the most cynical things they did was simultaneously cut our taxes and basically said, from their point of view, this military enterprise is tremendously important, nothing should get in the way of supporting it and funding it on the one hand, and on the other hand, none of us who pay taxes have any responsibility for defraying the cost of the enterprise. instead, what we are doing -- and you know this is true -- we are in posing those costs on, taking the phrasing from the preamble, on posterity. which will, someday, curse us, or them, when they awaken to the predicament in which we have put them. so, another way to fix the problem is, pay for the war. raise our taxes. for us old codgers, that includes me, debit our social security payments. by a few thousand dollars every year, and the higher taxes and the reduced benefits would very quickly get the american people engaged and enraged in ways that would limit the freedom of action of the government. but, of course, who is the statesman? who is the leader in washington, d.c. who is going to stand up and say that the current arrangement is wrong, unacceptable and must be changed? well, the woman said... kucinich and that is exactly right. and that actually makes the point. you know, in the presidential campaign of 2008, we had two different candidates who sit outside of the washington rules. on the left, haves kucinich. on the right, there was ron cole and the two were treated like wackos, treated like people who should not be taken seriously. they were not taken seriously, they were marginized and i think their fate testifies to the risks involved of anybody who wants to achieve high office of not conforming. yes, sir? >> you have been a critic of the establishment policy in the military area. there are other critics like yourself who were once part of the establishment. bruce both from the area of law and civil liberties and paul craig roberts from economics, treasury department. chalmers johnson, ray mcgovern from intelligence. do you find yourself in a kind of community of critics with these people? and do you find it ironic that you are -- you, too, are being marginalized in a way? >> do i find -- the question is, do i find myself part of a community of like-minded critics. and do i think i'm being marginalized. i don't think i am important enough to be marginalized. i mean, i never got off the margin. you know what? i'm serious. i am so grateful -- i'm not grateful to be sleeping in the sixth marriott hotel i have slept in over the last ten days. i am very grateful that i have the opportunity to teach young people, to write books and articles, to travel around and talk to you. i don't kid myself that it has any particular influence but it is tremendously gratifying to have this opportunity. i don't view myself as part of a community. i'm aware of everyone you mentioned except for bruce fein and i understand what they are about and what they do. i kind of do my own thing and i'm willing to let doing my own thing suffice. >> would you address the push for more aggressive military action towards iran based on unsub tan shated and inflammatory claims by the very -- >> do you have an opinion about this, ma'am? >> and could you also address our support of israel, no matter what they do and how that affects national security? >> so, the iran and the israel question. just so you -- right? iran question, israel question. iran question: we, the two are not unrelated. so, let's go ahead and bring them together. i'm an american catholic. at least once a talk i try to make sure i say something about catholicism because, as many of you know, even if it may sort of annoy you, the catholic church really believes that sooner or later everybody is going to come to rome. so, this is my little gesture of evangelism. i simply say, i'm an american catholic. as an american catholic -- forget the catholic part. i don't view iran as posing an existential threat to the u.s. and i don't know if there is an iran program that aims to create a nuclear weapon. i would say, parenthetically, were i the national security advisor of the iranian government, i would urge that we acquire a nuclear weapon. because from an iranian perspective, iran poses some significant threats, not least of all, given the history of u.s.-iranian relations, and, there is significant evidence available that says that if you can get away with the acquisition of a nuclear weapon, suddenly you get treated differently. you know, look at pakistan. look at north korea. but, i don't view the iranian nuclear program even as it exists as an existential threat to the united states. i also believe that were they to acquire a nuclear weapon we could deter them. i believe that ultimately iranian government act rac rationally and not trade the existence of the iranian people in order to destroy the state of israel. but that is an american perspective. i also have to tell you that were i an israeli jew, i might not have the same view. meaning were i jewish, and therefore, have a lively appreciation of the history of judaism and all that it has entailed, not the least of all the holocaust, and were i an israeli and, therefore, had a lively appreciation of the antagonism that had been engendered since the creation of israel in 1948, regardless of where you want to put the blame, there's lots of antagonism. so, were i an israeli jew i'm not sure that i would not view an iranian bomb as an existential threat and i'm also not sure that i would be as confident in israel's ability to deter iran, despite the fact that as you know and the word knows, even though the israeli government will not acknowledge it. they have a very potent nuclear capability of their own. and, here it seems to me is where you get to the nexus of the problem. that israeli interests and american interests with regard to iran and, i believe with regard to any number of other issues, not least of all the question of the palestinians, have begun to diverge. we are reluctant to acknowledge that divergence for all kinds of reasons. some of them i think attributable to the perceived power of the israel lobby in the united states. some of them, also, i think, perhaps related to a concern of what would be the implications of allowing israel to feel that once again the jews were being abandoned. and what pattern of behavior on the part of israel would perhaps be produced by a sense of abandonment. so, now, if i could tell you, here's the five-point program that will bring peace to the middle east and guarantee the security of israel at the same time, i wouldn't be on the margins. i would be -- i would be a famous guy. the five-point program does not exist. the only thing i have to offer is i think it is time for us to fess up to the fact that there is this divergence of interests. only if we acknowledge that fact it seems to me it becomes possible to address it, if we persist in the kind of rhetoric that says that, you know, we will be israel's friend forever. our interests and their interests, we're all engaged in a common struggle against terrorism, i think that actually allows very real and dangerous problems to fester. >> ladies and gentlemen, we have one more question but before that i want to thank everyone for coming and thank c-span. there will be a book-signing after the event. >> one more question. don't clap yet -- unless are clapping for him, which is okay. >> how would you respond to robert gates' charge that wikileaks has blood on its hands and is a threat to national security? >> well, the wikileaks question is the question. i think that -- for the sake of argument, pfc manning did the leaking. it has not been proven but for the sake of argument we'll say that he did. it is wrong. it is reprehensible and he should be disciplined consistent with the uniform code of military justice in my view. if we are going to have a military, you have to have a military in which good order and discipline prevail. it has to be a military in which soldiers do not take it upon themselves to try to undermine the policy of the commander in chief. that is a direct assault on civilian control. that is what the wikileaks attempted to do. on the one hand. on the other hand, let us recall one year ago, just about exactly one year ago, when president obama was in the throes of the loc long, drawn out attempt to figure out what he wanted to do about afghanistan. well before he had reached the conclusion there was a leak. what was leaked was the mcchrystal plan. and what the leak of the mcchrystal plan was hijacked the entire policy process. it handcuffed the president. and what i would say is, what pfc manning allegedly did was wrong, then whoever leaked the mcchrystal report did a much more serious

Related Keywords

Vietnam , Republic Of , New York , United States , Pomona College , California , Germany , Afghanistan , Iran , Boston , Massachusetts , Guatemala , Russia , Washington , District Of Columbia , Pakistan , Iraq , Rome , Lazio , Italy , Israel , Colorado , Boulder , Marriott Hotel , Sindh , North Korea , Ohio , South Vietnam , Vietnam General , Yemen , Chicago , Illinois , Berlin , West Point , America , Russian , East Germany , Iranian , Soviet , German , Israeli , American , Brian Higgins , Chalmers Johnson , Bruce Fein , Lyndon Johnson , Ron Cole , Dwight D Eisenhower , George W Bush , Bob Latta , Ray Mcgovern , Paul Craig Roberts , Ted Sorensen ,