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 Col