 Please welcome Mr. Darden Smith, singer-songwriter and founder of Songwriting with Soldiers. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here tonight. I'll be very well-dressed. I should have put on a tie. I should buy a tie. I'm a songwriter. I live here in Austin, Texas, and started a project called Songwriting with Soldiers. What we do is put together retreats, bring together professional songwriters with wounded soldiers, spend three days letting them talk. We take their words, their stories, put them into songs. It's about the scariest work I've ever done. I've been writing songs since I was 10 years old. The reason I started this project was to try to use songs to bridge the imaginary divide between civilians and military communities. I say it's imaginary because it's only there if you think it's there. I did it because I didn't think I had anything in common with soldiers until I met a soldier. I found out we had a lot in common. It's all based on conversations, talking. It's amazing what people say if you give them a chance. If you listen, the song came from a conversation. I wrote it with a man named James Monk. He was a combat videographer. He started telling me about his first time in combat. If you imagine going through combat holding a video camera and they want it, they want good shots. Don't get jumpy. I said, what was that like, James? He said, man, I was just blind scared. I was trying not to get knocked down. I said, uh, why do you think you made it through? He said, I was holding God's hand. I looked at him and I said, I was blind scared. First combat and I prayed back in those old testament days. Bullets are flying. It's crazy in life. I'm down holding God's hand. Holding God was this kid from Texas. It was even at just 19. It just didn't start in life. And he had a dream. He had a life. And he lost it all in that place. Sooner or later, I see his face. Holding God. Well, I'm back home now. And I'm remembering how. That's why I'm telling you. Lost in everybody's fear. Everybody's wondering if anybody cared. Made it through the fate of some loved man. Got me through. Got me through. Got me through. Got me through. Those aren't my words. I could never have written that without James. Everybody has a story to tell. Everybody's got a gift to give. There's a million ways to serve. The way you serve is by being yourself. Turn that gift that you have, that story you have. Turn it around, point it out into the world. Somebody that needs what you have. When you listen to somebody talk, especially somebody who's really different than you, or you think is really different than you, it makes a big difference. We might not be able to change the world, but you can sure change a life. Thank you very much. Please welcome Dr. Gregory L. Fenvis, resident of the University of Texas at Austin. Well, good evening, and welcome to tonight's keynote address, the Vietnam War Summit. The University of Texas is truly honored to welcome Secretary of State John Kerry. Just last Friday on Earth Day, Secretary Kerry helped lead 175 countries in signing the landmark UN's Paris Agreement on Climate Change. And there's a lot of work to achieve the goals of that agreement. Earlier today, the Secretary toured our JJ Pickle Research Center, where UT faculty and students are developing innovative technologies to generate renewable energy. He led a tremendous round-table discussion with our faculty, whose research can help achieve the goals of the agreement. And I can tell you, Secretary Kerry was focused, extremely knowledgeable about the technology, science, the policy, and the business issues involved in reaching those goals. Tonight, we are very much looking forward to hearing the Secretary's thoughts on a very different topic, one so important to his life experience. The Vietnam War remains a complicated and controversial part of American history. As a young boy, I grew up during the Vietnam War, watching on the news, usually the CBS News. And hearing the support and the opposition for the war, it was a formative time for my generation. And I am proud that the LBJ Library and the University of Texas are now convening this dialogue and this introspection, so that we may learn from the past, educate our students and ourselves, and work to build a better future for our country. Thank you, Secretary Kerry, for coming to the Vietnam War Summit. And now it is my pleasure to introduce the Honorable Ben Barnes. He is a distinguished alumnus at the University of Texas, and he formerly served as the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and as the 36th Lieutenant Governor of Texas, the youngest in the state's history. A protégé of President Johnson, Ben took to the heart, took to the heart the president's belief in the importance of education. And his legislative legacy in Texas has benefited generations of public school students in our state. As speaker, he established the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. And throughout his four terms in both offices, Texas increased the funding for higher education more than three-fold, rising to near the top of its ranking among the 50 states. During his tenure, several new universities and graduate schools were created, and there is no doubt the state of Texas advanced because of his leadership. Ben has taken those leadership skills to Washington, D.C., where his law firm is located in the former home of President Teddy Roosevelt. When I visit Ben in his office, I think of the office as the Embassy of Texas in our nation's capital. Please welcome the Honorable Ben Barnes. Thank you very much, President Finvis. It's my pleasure this evening to introduce our Secretary of State, my friend Secretary John Kerry. As he prepares to speak tonight, I'm reminded of the many years of dedication and service that he has brought to our country. Before graduating from Yale University, Secretary Kerry voluntarily enlisted in the United States Navy, serving two tours of duty in Vietnam as an officer. He was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and Three Purple Hearts. Upon his return from Vietnam, he became a national spokesman for the efforts of veterans to end the war. Speaking hard truths about the war that many believed had gone badly off the track, his words echoed with valor, sincerity, and deep consideration qualities that John has always embodied. I first met Secretary Kerry when he was serving as a United States Senator. During his 28 years in the Senate, Secretary Kerry served on the Foreign Relations Committee, where he was one of the most respected voices on issues of foreign policy and national security. And of course, in 2008 and 2004, he was the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. In December of 2012, President Obama nominated him to become the United States 68th Secretary of State. Upon his confirmation, he became the first sitting chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to become Secretary of State in more than a century. Winston Churchill once said, success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. As Secretary of State, John Kerry has shown this courage time and time again. He's traveled over a million miles, visited 81 countries, and what I think the most impressive thing is that he spent 2,368 hours or 99 days in flight time. And we complain about sitting on traffic at I-35. Secretary Kerry has dealt with a wide range of the most difficult problems confronting our world, including the rise of the disturbance in the Middle East, the Ebola epidemic in Africa, the emergence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the Russian invasion into the Ukraine, a global refugee crisis in which more people have been displaced than at any time in the history of our world since World War II. And I agree that our world is much safer thanks to Secretary Kerry's leadership on the Iran nuclear deal. This past August, Secretary Kerry, in front of all the eyes of the world almost, raised the flag up on the United States Embassy in Havana, Cuba as it reopened for the first time in over five decades. In the words of Harry Truman, America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination, and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand. I do not know a person who embodies the courage, the imagination, the unbeatable determination more than Secretary John Kerry. Mr. Secretary, we are truly humbled to have you here tonight. And I can say to all the people in the sound of my voice and other people that will learn of your service that when the history is written in the last quarter of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st century, the name of John Kerry will be indelibly written as a voice for unity and not division, as a voice for security and liberty for all the freedom people around the world. Please join me in welcoming the very distinguished, the Honorable John Kerry, Secretary of the United States. Thank you very, very much, everybody. Thank you, Ben, for an extraordinary introduction. I'll have to find some way to bottle that one, and I'm enormously appreciative of it, and I'm humbled by it. And it's good to have a good friend like Ben Barnes, I will tell you. Anyone in politics in Austin during the 1960s knew about Ben who had barely started shaving before he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives. And then he went on, as Greg said, to become the Speaker and later the Lieutenant Governor. But now he continues his service at the LBJ Foundation. And Ben, wherever you are now, Ben, thank you so much for being a terrific friend of so many people in public service and for your continued contributions. Much appreciated. I want to thank Greg for the welcome to the University of Texas, the UT. He mentioned in his introduction the time we were able to spend over at the Pickles Research Center. What an extraordinary place, what extraordinary people. And what really struck me this morning was that while Texas is obviously so well known as the oil-producing part of America and has built its reputation on that for years, it really is now the energy-producing center of America. And what you are doing with respect to research on solar and wind, alternative renewable, is exactly what President Obama and I and others hoped would happen in the context of our efforts on global climate change and the agreement we signed in Paris. The agreement obviously is not going to guarantee we meet a two-degree centigrade increase in temperature, but what it is going to do is send a message to the marketplace, exciting the allocation of capital, exciting our next Thomas Edison or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs to find a way to have battery storage or some cheaper form of a solar cell. And that is the way we are going to solve this problem. And the University of Texas is going to contribute to that significantly. So, Greg, thank you for what you are doing. I want to add my voice to that of so many people here who I know beforehand have always have been praising what Ken Burns has done in his contribution to the study of history and the art of documentary film. I listened in the corner there to the conversation that was taking place. It was absolutely fascinating, honest, which is important on this topic. And I thought immediately that what I need to do is not give some long, quote, keynote address as it is billed, but just try to share a few quick observations with you and then have the time to be able to have Ken grill me and we can have a good conversation. And I think that might be a little bit more productive and rewarding for everybody. But his unbelievable accomplishments on Brooklyn Bridge, the conservation of our national parks, the epic narrative of the Civil War, his latest film on Jackie Robinson, the film on baseball. This guy really taps into the pulse of our nation and has a way of presenting it that is just absolutely sheer delight, subtle, brilliant, honest. And I am absolutely more than confident that the extraordinary time and the passion that has consumed this particular project means the final product is not only going to be a work of art. And you heard him. I mean, they're changing a word or two after it's locked. It's going to be the definitive examination of Vietnam with profound impact, not only on the way that America thinks about that war, but I think on America's engagement with the issue of war itself. And I think it will do so for the better. I know that this conference and tonight this topic, these couple of days, called for a serious analysis of what happened and why. This is about history. It's also about us, about our heart and soul and our gut, about how wrenching it was in the ways that Lynn and Ken just described to you. And this examination should help us to understand Santayana's famous warning to those who don't heed the lessons of the past. So I look forward when I finish to a good exchange, to lay the groundwork for that conversation. Let me make a few key points that I think are key in the context of this conference that might not otherwise surface as we are principally looking backwards. First, those who expressed concern about the way the war in Southeast Asia was conducted were, I think, this film will show clearly justified in those concerns. I am not going to dredge up all of the old arguments that is well trod ground by myself and by others, including I thought quite definitively by Neil Sheehan, whose book title sums it up. As I know, we're going to be reminded by Ken's documentary. There were mistakes in leadership, mistakes in communication, mistakes in strategy. There were huge mistakes in the basic assumptions about the war. So it is not a surprise that public support virtually disappeared at a critical point of time. And we can talk about that a little bit. My second point is that the confusion that some Americans showed in blaming the warriors for the war itself was tragically misplaced. Our veterans did not receive the welcome home. Our veterans did not receive either the welcome home nor the benefits nor the treatment that they not only deserved but needed. And the fundamental contract between soldier and government simply was not honored. As a result, the vets themselves had to go out and fight a whole new round of battles. I know that well as one of the four co-founders of the Vietnam Veterans of America. They had to fight to get an increase in the GI Bill. Fight to deal with homelessness and trauma. Fight to have the ultimate sacrifice of their buddies memorialized on America's National Mall. And I thank Jan Scruggs for his extraordinary leadership with respect to that. So when we talk about Vietnam, to me here is lesson number one. Whether a war is popular or unpopular or it's not even what we call a war but a conflict, we must always, always treat our returning vets with the dignity and the respect that they have earned by virtue of their service to our nation. My third and final point is that we were right to work hard. And in some cases we still are working to move forward from the pain and the division of the war to begin a process of healing both within our country and between the United States and Vietnam. We were right to think about what had gone wrong and to enact laws that shed greater light on how our government goes about its business. We were right to take steps to help Amerasian children and to welcome the many thousands of Vietnamese refugees following the fall of Saigon. Our Supreme Court was right to uphold the publication of the Pentagon Papers so that more of the truth about the war would be revealed. And we were right to pursue a full accounting of our fellow citizens who were missing or unaccounted for even after our POWs returned to our shores. Now let me say a word if I can about this accounting. It's not a well-known story in America, but it should be. For those of us, John McCain and myself, particularly as we approach the issue of normalization with Vietnam, the accounting for POW-MIA was absolutely a prerequisite and non-negotiable. But this process of accounting frankly tells you something not only about us as Americans and our keeping faith with those who fall in battle. It also tells you something quite remarkable about the extraordinary openness of the Vietnamese people who helped us search for the remains of our fallen troops. Even as the vast majority of theirs, a million strong probably, would never be found. They allowed helicopters to land once again unannounced in Hamlets that brought back bitter memories of the war itself. And I remember negotiating with them to permit us to do that because we had to have the element of surprise in order to prove to people they weren't moving people from where they were being kept. But the Vietnamese did so because they wanted also to move beyond the war. They dug up their fields and led us into their homes, their history houses, their jails. On more than one occasion, they guided us across what were actually minefields. And even today as I stand here, thanks to a process that was fully embraced by President George H.W. Bush with whom I had the pleasure of visiting yesterday in Houston, one of the greatest people in America, and General Brent Scowcroft, together we were able to engage in what has become my friends the single most significant, most comprehensive, most exhaustive accounting of the missing and dead in any war in the history of humankind. And I think the United States should be very proud of that. Literally, we have people over there still today as we sit here working to complete that task of accountability. And I have to tell you having flown in a Russian helicopter, which was an experience of holding your breath for hours across Vietnam and landing in these places, I remember walking down 20 feet deep into a pit that had been dug by archaeologists because it was the crash site of the C-130 and literally looking at the wall of mud in which there was the detritus of the C-130 looking for the remains in order to bring them home and repatriate them. That is the depths and extent to which we currently go. Now, to be clear, and I want to emphasize this here today, certainly for me and I think for most veterans, whatever their feelings were about the war, about what happened in America around the war, the process of reconciliation and restoring diplomatic ties was not about forgetting. If we forget, we cease to learn. And the tragedy of what happened in Vietnam has to be a constant reminder of the capacity to make mistakes, the capacity to see things in the wrong lens, the capacity to miss the signals, and ultimately to miss the constant reminder of the horror and the suffering that war inflicts. But neither should we become the prisoners of history. And I want you just to think for a moment, this is what I thought was a little different from where we'd be otherwise, and I will go, I'm sure, in the conversation with Ken, I want you to consider how far we have come since normalization. Twenty years ago, there were fewer than 60,000 American visitors annually to Vietnam. Today, they're nearly half a million. Twenty years ago, bilateral trade in goods with Vietnam was only $451 million. Today, it is more than $45 billion a year. Twenty years ago, there were fewer than 800 Vietnamese students studying in the United States. Today, there are nearly 19,000. And I was very proud as a senator to join in creating with my friend Tom Valilly, who is here, who was mentioned by Ken and others, the Fulbright School that exists today in Ho Chi Minh City, the second largest Fulbright program, the world that was the largest for a period of time. And later this year, we will be moving ahead with the founding of the Fulbright University, Vietnam, which will offer a world-class education and deepen the ties between our peoples. And I can tell you that a huge percentage of the current governing, the government of Vietnam have attended the Fulbright program or come over here to go to Harvard or to go to some university and share an education. And that is a small measure, those statistics, of a remarkable transformation. And I can tell you a story. I can remember during the war securing a short pass to get to then Saigon and coming up from the Delta where we were stationed and sitting on the top of the Rex Hotel in a momentary pause from all of the craziness. I was looking out at the city at night, watching these flares popping all around the city, everywhere. And in the distance, hearing bursts of gunfire and the occasional roar of the C-130 flying by and occasionally the burp of what we call Puff the Magic Dragon. It was surreal and oasis of sorts, but still the very essence of a war zone. You go back there today, which I have done. Same hotel, same rooftop, but completely different view. A completely different nation. The traffic circle outside the Rex is filled with motorbikes, teaming with passengers in every form of commerce from chicken coops to air conditioners to computer monitors to smartphones. Nobody's thinking about the war. In fact, most people, the majority of Vietnam are too young to even remember it. It's a different era, and that calls for a wholly different relationship. No one back in 1968, I can tell you, could have possibly imagined General Secretary Chum's visit to Washington last year or President Obama's planned visit to Vietnam next month, which I look forward to joining him in. No one could have imagined the broad bilateral agenda that we have developed, including education, climate change, science, health, high tech, the internet, and military-to-military cooperation. And no one could have imagined the United States and Vietnam joining with 10 other nations to achieve a priceless opportunity on trade. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement represents nearly 40% of the entire world's GDP, and it will create jobs, enhance the environment, improve working conditions, and strengthen commercial ties from Hanoi to Tokyo to Santiago to Washington. And to be sure, let me make it clear, the true measure of our partnership is not just whether our economies grow, but it is how they grow. And we are working very carefully on all of those issues with respect to freedom and human rights. By the way, within the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Vietnam has accepted labor unions the right to strike, so some of you may think we made a catastrophic mistake, but in fact, their rights have been enhanced. I have to tell you all, I never thought when I was patrolling the Mekong that nearly 50 years later, I would be involved in a plan to help save that river. But together with our partners in the Lower Mekong Initiative, we are working to improve Vietnam's resilience to the effects of climate change which are already feeling hugely in the entire Mekong Delta. And we are focusing our aid on clean energy and the development of sustainable infrastructure and ecosystem resource management. We're also working together in the academic arena, the Institute of International Education, Arizona State University, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Hawaii all have partnerships with institutions in Vietnam, several involving participation by the private sector. Two decades ago, when the United States and Vietnam did normalize relations, we might have been able to foresee that our countries would eventually cooperate on economic matters. But something far less predictable is now the new normal. We are cooperating on security issues as well. Now there is, particularly I might add, with respect to the South China Sea, but that's not all. On many other issues of security, we are engaged in discussions and in actual programs. Now as I say all of this, is everything where we want it to be? No. There is no question that our government and the government of Hanoi obviously continue to have differences. But the good news is that we talk about them, frankly and regularly and often productively. And for anybody who tunes in to what the original goal was is back to our efforts in Vietnam, which were to protect the country from becoming communist. Let me make it clear to you today that while it is authoritarian and one party system, it's anything but communist because communism is an economic theory. And they are as market oriented as any country I've ever seen. Raging capitalism. What notwithstanding within the constraints of a one party system that still, like the authoritarian model of China and others, tries to contain its population and move forward. History will determine whether or not that ever works out in the long run. So it's clear today that the Vietnam that we are engaged with, none of us could have imagined in the context of the discussion that is taking place here in the context of the war. And it's clear that Vietnam is reaching forward towards the globalized world of modernity. And millions of people in Vietnam are already freely expressing themselves on Facebook and many thousands of Vietnamese workers are already freely associating to defend their interests, even though sometimes risky. They are the ones asking their government to guarantee in law the freedoms that they are starting to exercise in practice. And we know that the more progress that occurs in those areas, the more likely it is that our bilateral relationship, which has already come an extraordinary distance, is going to be able to ultimately reach its full potential. In 1961, when I testified against the war in Vietnam for the Senate, I spoke of the determination of veterans to undertake one last mission so that in 30 years when our brothers went down the street without a leg or an arm and people asked why, we'd be able to say Vietnam and not mean a bitter, not mean a bitter memory, but mean instead the place where America turned and we helped it in the turning. So it has been 45 years since that testimony, but it is clear that we have turned some very important corners. There are hard choices still to make for our relationship to reach its full potential, but now we can say definitively because so many Vietnamese and Americans themselves refuse to let our past define our future. Vietnam, a former adversary, is now a partner with whom we have developed increasingly warm personal and national ties. That is our shared legacy and is one that I hope we will continue to strengthen in the years to come. Thank you. Mr. Secretary, this is an extraordinary honor for me to be at this conference and have the opportunity to have a conversation with you. We have, Lynn and I and our team have lived with you for many, many years. We came to you at the outset of the project and told you that we wouldn't interview you, but you would exist as your colleague John McCain would in the film, in the story, and you do. And it occurs to me because your speech was so correctly addressed to the future that we should dwell on the experience, but briefly, back in Vietnam. How does the war come back to your consciousness in those private moments? Well, mostly in the context of the current wars. I mean, we're struggling to end the war of absurdity in Syria, to end the war in Yemen. We're making progress there to end the struggle of Libya and get a government to stand up, end the war in Afghanistan, prevent a war in North Korea, and prevent other major challenges of failing states or failed states. We are making great progress. We're working very closely with Nigeria to end the plague of Boko Haram there, and I believe we will. We are making progress in Somalia, pushing al-Shabaab back. So we're really in a massive struggle against extremism in many parts of the world. And so I'm constantly confronting the plethora of AK-47s and rockets and artillery and whatever in too many places. So in many ways, I'm still living with war as a reality. But I'm so pleased, obviously, to be in a place to try to be making a difference, to either end it or prevent it as a privilege. And I think the United States is doing great things, some of which are not well understood or articulated publicly, but we're making more progress than people think. We will defeat Daesh, no question in my mind. And if certain things were able to happen with Russia and other players in the region with respect to Assad, we could do it much sooner. So that's the way it comes back. And obviously there are always reminders in terms of, I mean, I don't think any veteran will tell you there aren't moments where there's a flash of some memory or someone that you remember or something. I just lost one of my crew members a few weeks ago and all my crew guys were in touch with me and back with them. And some of them were just very, very moved by that. But I just really grabbed them and I think that it stays with you. We started asking questions even before the war ended. What should Americans have learned from the conflict in Southeast Asia and to what extent have we in fact put those lessons into practice? Well, I was listening to your conversation earlier and I have to agree with you that it depends on where you sit and who you are and where you start. People are going to take different lessons out of it. And some people unfortunately are frozen in a place where their minds are just not going to open up to, and I think you mentioned so something to that degree, they're not going to be able to move beyond the place where they were treated to and found safety. So that's too bad, but there are people in that place. But I think that clearly the lesson I articulated, number one is don't ever confuse the war with the warriors, particularly in a volunteer status where people are serving their country and trying to keep all of us safe and responding to the requests of leaders who are supposed to get it right to me. So that's number one. Number two, make sure that the flow of information is as open and free as it ought to be so everybody can make a judgment and invest in the decision. And obviously with respect to the Iraq war, there are questions about that because of what we learned about the absence of weapons in a time where people were being told they are there. So I think that that still lives with us and we need to obviously insist on that. I think thirdly, as we define our exceptionalism, which I believe in very deeply, but which I believe we have to manage more carefully in terms of how we talk about it and brandish it because other people think they're exceptional too and are. And I think that it's important for us to look at whatever country it is we're looking at and as I mentioned a moment ago, so many assumptions, fundamental assumptions were incorrect in Vietnam because we could only see it through one certain lens. It was a particularly colored lens with respect to World War II, with respect to Korea, whatever frustrations may have grown up out of that, by the way, and I think never talked about enough, but I've always thought about it because of the way we thought about the communist threat and the experience of Joe McCarthy and the scare tactics that took place with respect to communism and people's fear that they never wanted to be on the wrong side of making sure we were tough enough about that. And therefore, when threats of the entire Asia domino theory were thrown at people, there was a bias towards accepting that notion rather than thinking about the history of Vietnam or the history of Ho Chi Minh or the history of their... seeing it as national liberation and not a proxy war. All of the above and understanding the civil nature of it and so forth. So I think those three things are... Now, there are a lot more lessons, folks. You can take the pal doctrine, I mean, you can run through a litany of lessons. Let me ask you something. You're on the diplomatic side now, but obviously that diplomatic side is intricately tied with the military considerations and we tend to, as we made the film in Vietnam, realize that we were hearing echoes ahead to Afghanistan, echoes ahead to Iraq, to Syria. Now, today, they're not mentioned, but they bubble up what has been, you know, is now. But it occurs to me, too, that we have to look at this from the angle of perpetual war. Eisenhower at the end of the 50s warned us about the military-industrial complex and to the extent that we can fashion lessons that are easily identifiable with a particular conflict like Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria. We also have to understand that we're also the victims of kind of momentum of warfare as a kind of perpetual state. I mean, Dr. Kissinger was talking about this last night, you know? I wish I'd heard him. I wish I'd heard how he phrased that. I've talked to him a number of times, obviously, in the last years about these challenges. What he's said to me is that we're dealing with, a very, very different world from the world that he dealt with. And he acknowledges that right up front. And if you read his book, Diplomacy, which I've read several times, it's brilliant. He talks about balance of power interest and state interests and so forth. And that was the world that really defined. I mean, that's, you know, Israeli and Metternich and so forth. I mean, that's the 18th, 19th centuries and so forth. The 20th century was far more defined, I think, in a bipolar way because of the strength we had coming out of World War I, the unfinished business of World War I, which was World War II. And then, of course, we were the only economic power left standing. But we understood what we were trying to go to with the United Nations, with global pacts and agreements on human rights and on universal values and so forth, which were translated into these international institutions. And then with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, forces have been unleashed together with the profound impact of technology and globalization, which has come with technology. And so, all of a sudden, the world is smaller and now you've got millions of people running around with smartphones in poor countries, poor people, but who see and know what everybody else is doing and thinking and getting on a daily basis. And it changes everything. And Kissinger, I think, so I don't agree with your, actually, with this notion that war, per se, I think we're in a different cycle now. We're not seeing a moment, despite what Russia is doing in Ukraine. There's a reason Russia didn't go to Kyiv. And there's a reason there are limits to what it is doing and will do and can do in Syria. And I think what we are seeing today is less the 20th century of nation states being willing to go to war with massive kinds of casualties as a consequence of the kinds of weapons we chose to use. Now we have non-state actors as the principal threat to every nation state. That's a different equation. And when your struggle is against one human being who, if they decide they want to kill themselves, can go out and take 100 people or 200 people with them or more, in case of 9-11, et cetera, it's a very asymmetrical struggle because we, the government, have to get it right 24-7, 365, and they only have to get it right a few hours or minutes of a day. And that's what I think we're seeing today. And I think the greatest challenge we face, which is why I say we can't be the prisoners of Vietnam, it's different. And we have to see it differently. I think the challenge today is that we're not the world, particularly the Western world, the developed world particularly, is not doing enough to protect ourselves by investing in the long-term initiatives that will keep people from becoming terrorists because they actually have a future and there is decent governance in their country and they can get a job ultimately and share in what we translate to people as the American dream and our values. In your extraordinary effort at normalization, you had the opportunity to meet with a lot of the leaders of North Vietnam, some of the people who you were fighting against in that war. How did your interactions then in the late 80s and 90s with the Vietnamese modify or change, maybe even enhance your understanding of the conflict? I don't want to disappoint you, but I have to tell you truthfully, it didn't really change my understanding of the conflict, which I'd already spent a lot of energy when I was there and when I immediately came back trying to understand and I talked pretty publicly about it. What it did was inform me about our former adversary in the way that you were talking about. It instructed me about how just unbelievably disciplined and patient and open and ready to be so fair-minded and thoughtful, but nevertheless, obviously hurt by the war, but it taught me to see how they saw the war. To us, it was not the Vietnam War, it was the American War to them. And to them, it was the American War that followed the French War, that came before the Chinese War, that followed the First Chinese War, and they came after it. We didn't see any of that. We never thought about that longer view and long sense of things. Obviously, we completely missed the internal dynamics and struggle north and south, the civil component of it. But it really refreshed, in a sense. And it was very difficult, I might add, because it refreshed my sense of these folks in a way that gave me confidence to come back and try to proceed with the normalization. But it certainly wasn't something that penetrated easy the body politic of the United States. So the suspicions that still existed. I mean, in the early 1990s, Newsweek Magazine carried a cover story of live prisoners still being held in Vietnam. That's the mood that John McCain and I entered into as we came together to agree that we were going to try to move this process forward, beginning with the PLW-MIA. And it was an extraordinary journey. We spent 10 years doing that, trying to get enough confidence that we could put out a report, which ultimately all 12 members of the PLW-MIA committee signed split evenly Republican and Democrat. It was quite remarkable. This is an early diplomatic experience of you, but hindsight is so easy. How did you two, and I guess Bob Kerry to some extent, even think that that was possible and how did those diplomatic efforts inform your current work as Secretary of State? Well, the current work is informed by probably the lessons of patience and tenacity. I will tell you there were some unbelievably hairy moments where I thought the whole thing could blow up. There was one time where we were going to go into a prison outside of Saigon, then Saigon. Not then Saigon, but for a lot of people, Saigon. And we were taking New York Times reporter with us and ABC and a couple of other media people because the whole purpose of the trip was to prove that it was spontaneous and we could get in and people could see that there was nothing there and maybe the evidence was not there. And we got there and some local official had not gotten the word and the place was closed. And I, for a moment, I said, okay, five years of work is about to blow up in smoke and this will feed all the conspiracies and so forth. But to the credit of the Vietnamese, we had the leadership fully invested in this and I was able to get on the phone and call the foreign minister who was able to call somebody and we broke the walls down and we got in and it actually turned out better because the fact that the local guy refused entrance and hadn't gotten the word and then on the moment we broke it open and got in there, people had total confidence of the spontaneity of it and it actually turned out to be, we couldn't have staged it better if we tried. So it worked. And then another time, a story I've not told in public but I have, it's probably reserved it for a memoir but I won't, I'll tell you a little bit tonight. I had to go into the chairperson, the chairman of the Communist Party and the president of the nation and persuade them to allow me and another senator to go down underneath the tomb of Ho Chi Minh because there was intelligence information that there were tunnels under there and there was a possibility that people were being held and you can imagine what it was like to sit with the chairman of the party with a big bust of Ho above you and I'm telling him, I got to go down and check out whether there's anybody underneath Ho. It was pretty amazing and we did it and I won't tell you the rest of the story about what it was like. We anxiously await those memoirs. That's what I want, you have to anxiously await us. This idea, maybe not of perpetual war but of lessons learned from Vietnam or perhaps missed in various conflicts that we've had since. The Iran deal stands as Mr. Barnes said so eloquently in stark contrast to that and it seems that you and the president have been able to arrest a momentum or a default practice of war. I'm impressed by that. Can you talk about that? That was an extraordinary achievement and many Americans disagree but I think the notion that in an age when the response to everything is let's go in there and put the boots on the ground this was the opposite of that and you placed faith in a tenuous at best outcome that seems to have been at least so far knock on wood. Good for everybody. I believe President Obama and I have talked about this frequently a number of times. I learned through the war and have said many times that one of the principal obligations of anybody in the highest positions of responsibility and certainly the presidency is if you are going to make if you're going to ask young men and women to go and put their lives on the line and if not die suffer perhaps grievous injury and live with whatever kind of injury for the rest of their lives you better make damn sure you have tried everything possible that is legitimate to first exercise diplomacy and make war the last resort. That is critical. You know, those of us who are privileged to come back from Vietnam whole particularly my guys on my crew we still kick it around we get together and we have a saying you know every day is extra and it's true every day is extra and it gives you the opportunity particularly since I am now in a position of responsibility to live those to live my beliefs and to live my lessons and I think that the president I know shares that belief he was deeply impacted by the funerals and the letters he had to write and what you have to go through in terms of Afghanistan, Iraq and so forth and other efforts so you think this was common sense but it's not the automatic instinct of everybody obviously and how did this young guy as a little boy during Vietnam how did he get he understood the lesson of Vietnam he did I think he understood the lesson of Vietnam and more and I think the president has struck me by how thoughtful he is in the questions that he asks and the way that he probes with respect to the options that are put in front of him my sense is that we also are living in a in a different in a different world a different set of choices let me be more precise you know there are places where we have no choice I am not a pacifist even after the experience of war and I've read a lot about war I've read a lot about World War I a lot about World War II particularly I know you have Joe Galloway here one of the battles I most admire and one of the greatest examples of American guts and prowess was the Battle of Theodrang Valley and there were many examples of that and I think every Vietnam vet sometimes probably bristles a little bit about you know the greatest generation references because I think people feel like they fought just as passionately just as valiantly and gave as much attention to themselves but the outcome obviously was different the structure was different and that's part of the tension that we live with that's part of what you were talking about a little while ago it wasn't it didn't invite the great victory parade there wasn't some where you dropped a bomb and you know I was just in Hiroshima and you know you can end a war where you know the war in Europe had already ended and Hitler was dead so that's not very satisfying for anybody particularly the people who fight in it and that's one of the reasons there's a lingering anger by some people who haven't necessarily worked through as you talked about and won't perhaps particularly those who will not see the film that has an impact but I think that we're living in a period now where we have to call on people unfortunately to go into harm's way particularly against the dash some other people who threaten us and with whom there is nothing to negotiate I mean where do you begin there is no negotiation and particularly when they threaten and tell you that unless you are going to be them and be like them and convert and do a whole bunch of things you're the infidel and doomed to be displaced. You spoke in your remarks about one of the big lessons having to do with not blaming the warrior I think that is a lesson that we've learned all of us regardless of our but I want to ask you whether the fact that we now have an all volunteer army that suffers as Lynn and Mark and I were talking it's lost as a part and alone from everyone separates us and permits us both the luxury of that respect but also the distance that permits as well and I think to some extent you know we hide behind a kind of false patriotism about that many Americans do well I'm not going to judge whether it's false patriotism or not I don't know but I think there is a separation and it's a dangerous separation and there is the kind of permissiveness which has been talked about it's and that is dangerous I agree I have always had I mean I'm not now I'm ranging a little bit into the issues that I don't touch on very much in my current role and try not to I might have but in the spirit of this evening I will just say that I have I have deep reservations about just and all volunteer military and I think that there should be shared responsibility among all Americans and I think that's one of the best ways that you don't have wars that if you're you know spreading that one of the great difficulties we had in Vietnam was the way the draft was applied and that created enormous resentment and anger one of the things that probably still lingers as a tension in the relationships but I think every American ought to find a way to serve somehow doesn't have to be in the military there are plenty of other things to do but I rather like still the idea that everybody ought to give back something I think that I do the war in Vietnam had an immense impact on a whole generation of us of Americans and of course also a whole generation of Vietnamese and Cambodians and Laotians when you look back at what's happened in Afghanistan and Iraq and now Syria for the past 5, 10, 15 years what are your thoughts about the long-term impacts there for those people for those societies and to what extent do those thoughts influence your views concerning the importance of diplomacy that we're making every day in the Middle East which seems still the center of all of our concern it affects it profoundly I mean it's a big deal in those countries I'll come back to that in a minute because I just thought of something that I wanted to share with people because it's important to take away from here you mentioned a moment ago you thought that we had learned the lesson and I said for the most part and I want to share with people why I say for the most part we do welcome people home we do say thank you and we have lots of ways in which we have built into our daily lives a recognition for service hire the veteran programs outreach programs service people can get a first class seat on a plane if it's open we say thank you and that's superb wonderful and totally well deserved but there are more meaningful things to veterans coming home from war and we still have too long a backlog we've had 188 we've had a reduction of about 180 plus days for people to be able to get into the VA and get an appointment but that's still that's 188 days taken away from 282 days that it took to get there that's still too long 90 days it's just wrong it's not right let's get down to 4 days a week and in some cases that's the difference between life and death and I think so for mental health particularly we need greater intervention and activity there are other things that matter families need more help there are a lot of families for whom this is extraordinarily disruptive and women women particularly have a different set of health problems and sometimes abuse problems that they have to respond to that's also been complicated so there are things that we need to do even more effectively and I might add one of the dangers of what we have today in this volunteer structure is I've met people who are on their fifth and sixth deployments to Afghanistan or Iraq or somewhere and that's boy is that tough I mean that is just really hard for people to hold a family together with their kids and do the things we expect so we've got to confront this as a country as part of what I say about sharing it more and being willing to do what we need to do you know I probably get in trouble for this but years ago I proposed and I think there are others who have talked about it that that's who want to go to the veterans administration they deserve the hospital they want and deserve the choice but those who can't get in they need to go somewhere or ought to be somewhere else and we ought to be able to take care of them so I would withdraw my false patriotism comment and say more that as I think you've done so articulately Mr. Secretary that we have paid a kind of common and easy respect to the veteran but the harder work of having the resources necessary to reduce that wait time and all the other things you just described is the work that still has to be done now let me come to your other question it's an important question in every country you know you can go to to Czech Republic and they're still worried about a war that happened in 1600 and something and you can go to obviously you go anywhere in the Middle East and you can learn which I know all the details fairly well about Karbala in 682 and what happened to Hussein the fight for legitimacy between 12ers and 7ers and so it's extraordinary which is why I gave a speech last night in Houston about the importance of religion in the context understanding it and reaching out and working with various religious entities and groups as you try to do good foreign policy you can't do it today in today's world four out of five people on the planet are affiliated with one religion or another and many of them are able to take it to some very risky dangerous places and if you think back historically on the 30 years war and other things we shouldn't claim any primacy in our ability to avoid that kind of memory Northern Ireland and other places so my point is we got to think very carefully about the impression that we are leaving and what we are doing in various places because this can become the long I mean look at the crusades and look at their impact on people's attitude about some of the things that we choose to do or not do today in the Middle East it still comes up so we have to be I think particularly sensitive to the aftermath and to what the long term vision is for how we are going to manage to transition people where we want them to go in Afghanistan in Iraq and elsewhere and trust me it is complicated beyond what I had even imagined in the beginning but we've got about six wars going on in Syria and most of you would probably not have thought that but you've got Kurds versus Turkey you've got Saudi Arabia versus Iran you've got Sunni versus Shia you've got a whole bunch of people versus Daesh, ISIL and then you've got a whole bunch of people against Assad and that's before you get into some tribal and other things that go back to Karbala before so this is they're and then you have an enormous Muslim brotherhood challenge with respect to Egypt and its attitude about Qatar and Turkey and Saudi versus other Arab countries in the region so you put all those in a cauldron and bubble it up it's not easy to find the way to go forward and that's why I think we have to think very very carefully that's the lens I'm talking about that is a lesson from Vietnam is we cannot look at other countries and see them only through an American lens we have to try and put ourselves wherever we are into the other person's shoes into the other person's life and see their country as they see their country and we'll do a lot better I just had the opportunity to spend some time discussing with a mentor somebody you know Tom Brokaw a thorny problem that I had subject and he said to me what we learn is more important than what we set out to do and I think Mr. Secretary there's not a person here in this room who doesn't appreciate that you would spend one of your extra days with us thank you very much my pleasure honestly