 Thank you so much Admiral Howell for the gracious welcome. Thank you all for having me here. It's a real honor and privilege I actually prepared carefully for this evening and in the last hour or two I've been Reconsidering whether I should just say say nothing at all and just begin a question section of anybody who might have things I might See differently from what I was presenting In the in the Atlantic in my article But I thought in the tradition of respect to the Navy and to the arms forces in general my own dad was a Navy doctor I spent about the first five years of my life and various Navy bases when he was Traveling around during the early Korean War era out of respect for the higher Educational institutions of the military which I've been impressed with throughout my years as a correspondent I'll tell you a story about that in a moment and just as part of the spirit of fair play and in gratitude to the Naval War College Foundation and to the Ties family who are making this this event possible I thought I should do my part to give you an opening pitch I'll try to say some things about the argument that I was presented in the Atlantic that might not have been evident from the article itself Say some things that I've learned since in the months since that magazine has come out and then try to augment it with Ways in which I think the argument I'm making to a mainly civilian Readership what implications that might have for the military professionals from the United States and around the world who are represented here So that's the plan of action about which I'll tell you a little more in a while first I want to tell you the story of my initial Exposure to military higher education when I got back from graduate school in England in 1972 I got into the the fledgling magazine business I knew there were big bucks in political journalism So I signed on with a magazine called the Washington Monthly and whenever you're thinking about the Economic sacrifices that go with military service. I'll tell you that the day after I signed on with the Washington Monthly It declared chapter 11 bankruptcy And it is that was a very good conditioning for the life the glamorous life of a journalist that would would follow But the Atlantic is the Washington Monthly is still still going on and a little while after that I worked on my first freelance article for the Atlantic which was back in 1974 And I was was supposed to it was a the introduction of a then radical concept that National security might involve things other than just nuclear bombs and and a correlation of forces in that sense So I spent a lot of time the National Defense University talking to people who are saying that resource flows might be important for the United States and Sustainable sources of energy and supplies of oil from the Middle East again. Remember this is 1974 and so since then I found immersion in the military culture and with your institutions to be Always stimulating sometimes I've come to conclusions that were different from the people. I've been been talking with but always It's been it's it's made me take seriously the way that professionals in this branch of American life train for the broadest possible way to do their jobs and so if Journalists try hard but if journalists prepared themselves as carefully as the military did or business people or politicians or others We would be in a better situation The plan I'm going to do for my talk is I'm obviously not going to try to tell you anything about the operations of The military in which you are now either spending your lives or teaching people about how to spend their lives instead, I'm going to give you a Parallel perspective From the view of somebody who has been interested in military affairs for a long time Let's try to explain them to a general public and what implications. I think that's that's having in American public discourse About how our military works. I'm going to say something about I'm going to talk about the origins of the article. I did I'm going to talk about the the argument I tried to lay out what I've learned since then and then what that means for the Last topic of my my talk this evening, which is what the military is that what the country owes the military and and vice versa First I'm going to tell you a little bit about About why I wrote the article that came out this year Is how many people is there anybody who has not seen this article for whom? I should be sure to sum up its argument and don't feel feel shy You can hold up your hand there was when I first joined the Atlantic magazine in 1979 I'd spent the previous three years working for Jimmy Carter first as a writer for him for him on the campaign trail and then for the first two years as a speech writer in the White House and If any of you are thinking of a second career in the glamorous business of political speech writing I'll give you this episode, which is the parallel to the chapter 11 bankruptcy When I signed on the in the Carter campaign as a as a bushy-tailed young person idealistic I got my assignment of the very first thing I was to write in Candidate Jimmy Carter's voice Which was an article for the NRA magazine called my first kill by Jimmy Carter It was about a I got from him all the details of the squirrel He had mercilessly shot in southern Georgia I had it was a heart-rending and yet heroic tale of a young man and his has got so I'd been spending the previous Three years doing that for for candidate Carter and then president Carter and one of the things that struck me as I left the Administration to join the Atlantic before it came to its end actually the administrative Jimmy Carter was at his highest Presidential point of popularity the week I left which was either because I was still there or because it was the week of Camp David Peace Agreement one at one or the other and I thought that one of the a structural problem for American public discourse Was that the left side of public discourse? That is a Democratic Party was not equipped to talk about the military people in the Democratic Party Even though Jimmy Carter himself was a Navy veteran as you know that they most of the politicians would say we just need to Spend less on the military. We need to have fewer wars the Republicans would mainly say we need to spend more on the military Without much engagement on the realities that made troops effective or not effective in the field that gave commanders the kind of training They needed etc. And so the first long article I did for the Atlantic was the the result of many months of reporting It was published as the muscle-bound superpower And it was saying if we were thinking not about more or less for the military But about the lessons of actual combat and about ways money can be spent more or less effectively, etc What would be the conclusions we would come to and I interviewed an Air Force? fighter pilot named John Boyd some of you may have known of and budget analysts and all the rest and From that time onward My my work for the Atlantic in around the world and in Washington DC has been sort of two interweaving strands one of those strands has involved the welfare of the United States itself in terms of Economics and culture and education and all the rest the other strand has involved Military issues of how we think about the right way to maintain the peace to defend ourselves to use the great power The United States has had I spent a lot of time talking with Gary Hart in 1980s during his time when he was was talking about Defense reform in the years I spent living in Japan and China one of the angles was to say How are is the emergence of these countries affecting the military balance? What does it mean for the good and ill of the United States? then about a dozen years ago when I was back in Washington from from overseas and As the in the aftermath of 9-11 most of the reporting I was doing for several years was on America's Decision to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan the management of that war the consequences and and otherwise It's probably worth noting because I'll come back to the Iraq debate later a process of Journalistic decision-making I'm going to tell you this story both because How other institutions work may not always be apparent from outside? I'm going to tell you how a journalistic organization works and also because it's relevant to the way the Iraq discussion is coming back to our latest political decision-making so I Had on everywhere all of us remember at September 11th 2001 and in the aftermath of that we at the Atlantic were deciding what to do by January of 2002 our Decision process in Washington is that whatever the official rhetoric coming out of the administration was Whatever the degree of congressional involvement had been we knew for sure From all the signs we're getting that decision had been made to go to war in Iraq So starting in late January 2002 in our early February I began several months worth of reporting of people who were Experts on Iraq who were experts on occupation who were experts and all sorts of things about what it would be like Once the war was over and the premise we made a year before the combat began was that the United States was going to war and That we would win the the kinetic stage of the battle fairly quickly and it would be worth then knowing What what happened that next I mentioned this partly because this is the way monthly magazines with long lead times have to Plan for things that we see coming in the future But we think the newspapers aren't going to get around to and also because there is a debate that's Zooming now about when the decision to made to go to war in Iraq was made in on what bases I did that kind of reporting for a couple of years I decided to absent myself from that and come back and move to China I lived with my wife for four plus years and then on return to the United States about a couple of years ago I was talking with my My colleagues at the magazine about the specialty for magazines of our type Which is the stories that are hiding in plain sight That is the stories that are obvious once you point them out But the day by day and week by week don't make their way into normal Political discourse or the normal excellent coverage that some of our major newspapers and broadcast networks did and the The premise that we decided to investigate was the one that eventually led to my my article which I Which I'll summarize this way which was sort of the the tagline the article saying that America has become What you could call Insultingly a chicken-hawk nation and which I mean in fuller explanation a nation willing to do anything for its military Accept take it seriously and that was the argument I tried to to put out in the in the in the article that Followed the the prep some of the the premises that were involved here any of you who remember the article I was starting with a scene of Barack Obama down in Tampa Talking about his decision about more troops in in Syria or someplace I don't even remember where he was planning and thinking about talking about committing them then and the announcement was We were not going to be committing troops there and then he was going on to talking about honoring the heroes What was so impressive to me as I watched this broadcast from O'Hare Airport with millions of other people there is that people Gave their attention to the president for the 15 seconds in which he was announcing the news About whether the war is going to go on or not and then everybody was back to his or her business with their iPhones with their laptops with their beers or their Cinnabon's and meanwhile the military of the United States was in its business of more or less the longest period of open-ended war In in our nation's history and so this disjunction between a nation that is spending more in its military than Then other nations do that has been at combat at war for a longer time than it has been in this past That is recognized as heroes during halftime ceremonies and things like that But is not taken seriously by its nation in a variety of ways And that is the that is the the dilemma or the situation I wanted to to explain let me Explain why I used the loaded term chickenhawk Which I knew to be poisoned when I when I used it and we deliberately didn't use in the headline I think that that Our magazine editors made a mistake. I will say and then perhaps I made a prudent judgment the Headline they chose for this article was the tragedy of the American military Their mistake was the line they put on the cover after that, which was why the best soldiers in the world keep on losing This was a mistake because it's something that I never said in the article itself It's because 90% of the hostile reaction I got to the military was from people responding to that line and it was the the and I'm sorry they did that although You know these these decisions are made in real time like like many others But the the argument the reason was probably better to call it the tragedy of the American military than chickenhawk nation Which was actually might the working title until it went went to press is that Peep even fewer people might have stayed put for the argument if they just saw the words chickenhawk rather than Why the best soldiers keep losing but those who stayed The argument I was trying to make is was to find a chickenhawk nation as one that kept going to wars Without thinking about them seriously all of you think about them seriously The 1% of the population that's in the military and the relatives think about it very seriously The three-quarters of 1% of the American population that served in combat in Afghanistan or Iraq at any time Take it very seriously, but the public as a whole I contended did not And this in ways I'll try to to outline briefly here was bad for the military bad for the country bad strategically and deserved our collective attention so to preempt any Question that you may have been hatching in some of your minds about what the hell do you mean? Why the best soldiers keep on losing what I mean is why do we keep choosing wars that we would not Undertake if we were thinking if the entire nation thought we're really committed here And so that that's that's the the argument there. So now what I'm going to do for the next next stage of my of my talk is Recap briefly how I think we got here Recap why I think this matters for the military and the public and then go on to say in some ways Then go on to say what I've learned since this article came out in the voluminous Historic response we've got to the Atlantic front from the article and then I'll have the promised what to do section We all know that in any diagnosis, it's true if you look at life often there are things you can Diagnose without necessarily having a prescription But in all of our public discourse there always has to be a what to do about the section So I'll get to that later on but I'm going to briefly review how I think we got here and why that matters What the consequences are what I've learned from since the article had come out and then what we might all do with it In the how we got here We all recognize and especially you as members of an academic institution now that history the historical background depends on when you cut off the history and If you cut off history essentially with my lifetime as one of the baby boomer generation You think that where we are today is it is a sort of either a shift or a decline from a historical norm of post World War 2 at post the mass mobilization war of World War 2 we had a Country very deeply connected to its military because most males a most able-bodied males served in the military then The cohort that came of age in the 1950s was small the military requirements were large So you had the broad experience of military service and things have gone down I have declined since then in terms of the connection Those of you who start history at an earlier time know that you can define the norm for American life in many different ways America of the pre-civil war era was different of course during the Teddy Roosevelt era. So I'm not saying that the military of the Korean War Vietnam War era is the norm for American society But it is one in which we can compare Modern life in the military that took on the scale of the one you're all part of and the commitment It has worldwide that you all carry out is one that was born in that time where a large military Was connected in broad ways to the public that was paying for it and was was was serving serving in it There's the one of the cultural points I tried to make is that when the military was as Broadly connected to America as it was for for 20 plus years after World War two it had the traits of other broadly representative institutions whether we're thinking about School boards or the medical system or even the DMV something that everybody has some exposure to and those Institutions as we know are not universally respected or loved But people understand the range of experience if you talk about going to the talk doctor if you talk about a TSA line if you talk about schools people have some frame of reference and During that time in the 50s and 60s and through the early 70s I argued that people were supportive of the military they understood the collective heroism that it had demonstrated in World War two and afterwards and in Korea and the many acts of Individual heroism that men and women had carried out Without record without assuming that the institution was perfect or different from other human organizations or made uniformly of heroes and if you think of any of the mass cultural representations of the American military during this time of broad participation They all show this range of human life think of catch 22 for example In which half the people in the military had these little side scams going on or Sergeant Bilco if any of you are old enough like me to remember that or the musical South Pacific and all the different schemes that people had going on or the bridges at Toko re or TV shows like McHale's Navy or Gomer pile or F troop or whatever else and so my view of Small-D Democratic Society is that it works when people are connected to the results For the last year or so my wife and I have been flying around the country in our little Cirrus airplane Looking at small communities that have had economic or cultural shocks and how they've recovered and the ones that recover are ones where There's some connection between most people and the welfare of the town that can see it's worth investing in the school system Or it's worth trying to bring back in industries or whatever else and for better and worse I argue that during the time of mass military connection. There was that respectful but Irreverent view of the military we took it seriously enough not to worship it and the mill our most experienced military President Dwight Eisenhower obviously respected the military, but knew the ways in which it had its systematic flaws For reasons I don't need to go into in elaborate detail now clearly the change the big phase change came during that the Vietnam War as I've it's Richard Nixon as any of you Alive then recall was very deliberate in his determination to end the draft because it had been a source of such friction about the Vietnam War and He was deliberately looking for a way in which the executive would have a freer hand to have commitment of military force because You would no longer have people in the military who you had to threaten with arrest You know to get them in there you wouldn't have all the problem training problems that were coming in the 1970s etc etc and so You had the beginning of the institution that I assume Almost everybody here has spent almost all of his or her professional life in as a side note I was living in China a point that students of the PLA made to me the People's Liberation Army is that Whatever else is going on there the PLA has almost no combat veterans in it Because our last serious combat was in the early 1980s. It's good. They haven't had combat since then but it also means the factors the features for a military of people who don't have the experience the u.s. Military has from its constant exposure and Something similar is happening now happening now with the increasing gyre an increasing division between the country at large and the military itself I Operationally, there's no doubt that what's happening now is better for the military in terms of day by day you have Better recruits easier training fewer discipline problems a higher caliber of people all the things that I need to tell you There also is a fact of scale differences that so many more people turn 18 each year Then the military could possibly absorb that that the idea of a mass draft would be implausible But from a civic point of view I argued that was the beginning of what I now call the chicken-hawk era When it's become too easy for politicians and too easy for the public to say yeah, let's go put some boots boots on the ground Let's go to war and then say you know who are the Mets playing tonight But it's not connected to the nation in a way that's been during during the time of our of our The post World War II era the So the that's that's the change and again, I could give you more details here You know them, but I'm just gonna leave that the main change is the historic post Vietnam change towards an army That has ended up being small in number fewer than 1% of the population are in uniform Concentrated regionally and by family you all know families or military families We published a map on the Atlantic showing the counties of the US which had high military participation and High military casualties in the last dozen years and the other areas that that didn't and it's very quite striking So that's the that's the fruit. We have born in this era of the long long wars Why does this matter I'm going to just touch briefly on topics each one of which I'd be happy to defend or elaborate if you'd like, but I think this is the range of reasons why What I'm calling deliberately the chicken hawk nation phenomenon is bad for you and bad for us and bad bad for the world First and I think most importantly It's bad in terms of policy and that there's a pre disposition to careless wars My argument about the two years after the 9-11 attacks is that what was initially a Justified and well-considered and necessary strike against Taliban sites in Afghanistan Spread into a much more encompassing war in a way that it never would have if there were a broader sense that the country was at stake You know, yes, of course, we all know there were the wave of heroic enlistments in the time after after the 9-11 attacks We know that there was a sense that the nation in general was was endangered and people wanted to help there was that mood Irreverently, I'll say the moment I knew that the 9-11 moment era had passed Was about nine weeks later when I was driving on the Washington Beltway and somebody gave me the finger in traffic I knew that was that was why I marked that the 9-11 11 time, but it's it's Beyond that I think that that the the commitments of the last dozen years I think would have been different if there's some way that the nation as a whole felt that Individuals that families who were not themselves in uniform had a connection through tax payments through relatives through some other sense of there being at stake in wars the nation was under undertaking I Know that people in your business spend a lot of time as I have around the world Most people in the United States do not realize how much America's image in the world now is Shaped by the fact of our wars of the past dozen years Now what I've learned by living overseas is I am purely an American after going to graduate school in England My main conclusion was our greatest war was the Revolutionary War and then we had to get rid of that of that that queen and the royal family but Patriot that I am I am sobered around the world and recognizing the effect of That what our decade of open-ended war has done to our image and reputation Most people in the country don't recognize that because they're not not connected to it And when I say we say on the cover of our magazine Why do we keep losing in my view? It's because we keep undertaking wars that the public if properly Involved would recognize we can't really win or at least not win on the terms that we would would want to take I think a second factor of this disconnect in my view is Spending that is both Excessive and ineffective you can have ever growing military budgets and still shortages of the most routine and unnecessary spare parts and training and and and all the rest It's probably worth recognizing that we know that the United States is the richest country in the world It's important for us to have a big military budget if you take the and we also know that our spending as a share of GDP has gone down from its height after the after World War two But still United States share of GDP that goes to the military even now is about twice the average of the rest of the world It's not just that we spend more one by one we spend twice as much as the average for even China even Even Russia and all the rest An illustration that I was having to defend a couple of days ago to the head of the F 35 Program when I was seeing him in the JPO office was that the Solyndra scandal which became so famous during the the the previous election cycle The entire amount of federal spending that went to the Solyndra project Was less than the overruns on the F 35 and yet Solyndra is this huge issue And the F 35 is sort of a background noise for most of the public again I think most people in the public don't have a sense of where the money is going. They're not taxed for it They're not exposed to it's it's operating or realities I think a third consequence of this divide is something that I know is part of your life a day by day, which is a Often wonderment about the kinds of weapons that are actually procured and the ones that day by day Are effective that do the job and I go into that in great length in in my article I'll just skip past that to another and more Sensitive one. I'm sure for everybody here and one that when I was doing interviewing This is the one that the end after four beers or late at night My friends who are career military would say that this is what really worried them was a sense that within the military The system of excellence and accountability Was not working the way it should because they knew that the public wasn't paying attention I know this is something that's on the minds of everybody here I'll simply say that viewed institutionally viewed the way a historian might I think there would be a case that the separation of the Large professional excellent military from this rich country means that the standards of Accountability that one would have for success in combat for success and leadership and all the rest Are don't seem seem to be Different from historical norms You're all familiar with the studies showing that during all of America's previous wars a number of flag officers were relieved for Failures in command Most of the famous cases of flag officers in trouble these days involve what we think of as scandal of one kind or another Whether it's sexual or financial or some other other sort and that we recognize that any Institution has good and bad leaders and we recognize they need to be held accountable The press is always drumming people out politicians are good and bad in the last decade in the chicken hawk era I would argue It's been harder for the military to have what had traditionally been its standards of genuine accountability and excellence for the people who are rising rising to the top and Finally, I will say of the consequences of a chicken hawk nation. We have a We have a discount. We have a social distortion that historians writing about our age will note I many of you know a one-time retired army officer named John Noggle. He was a a hot shot He was a road scholar. He was a prominent young young officer in the the army He left he argued to me that actually this is the best of possible worlds now because he was saying the United States any quasi imperial power just taking all pejorative terms away from that Pejorative meetings away from from imperial any power with worldwide reach Needs to have a Praetorian guard of people who will do the hard work and the general public can't really be bothered to have ones To say this person should be on duty here. This person should be on duty there. So he said this is good While I respect and like him I Profoundly disagree and I think from from distance distant perspective I would imagine almost none of you would think it's a good thing in the long run to have a public That cheers the heroes but doesn't pay attention to where the heroes are sent and what they are doing And I'll give you these illustrations of why why this disconnect is bad in policy terms during the During the debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney about during the previous presidential time There was essentially zero discussion Military budgets military spending the only discussion as you may recall was Romney saying we have fewer Ships don't be used to in the Navy and Obama saying well. Yeah, we have fewer cavalry too And it was a nice little sort of moment for a debate Perry But that was the extent of the military debate the latest budget that came out of the House authorizing committees was 61 to 0 Approving it. This was the same house that has a hard time passing a highway bill The it's very striking to me the current debate if you will About the Iraq war seems to have reduced itself to whether the intelligence intelligence reports were flawed You know the answer the question that's being asked all the candidates in sort of gotcha mode is Knowing what we know now. Would you have done it not about all the other mechanics that went in there how the war was fought? I'm not aware of any I know that many people in this room have written important books and articles assessing the military Lessons of the past dozen years. I assert that almost none of that has made its way into our politics And that is a result in my view of the chicken-hawk phenomenon. So I'm saying that because of this This gap in which the public makes up for its lack of attention to the military by Agulation that if you say hero often enough, then you don't have to actually think about what people are doing The result of that is bad for you bad for the contrary bad for the world and bad If that is so what might be done? I'm going to give you a brief Brief message of what I've been saying to my civilian colleagues and then what I think Would be the implications for the military itself for the For the civilian public this argument tends to short-circuit itself saying oh you must want to draft And the argument is there's not going to be a draft You know absent some invasion from Mars or something that really changes the strategic calculus the United States is not going to have a military draft There's nobody there's apart from Chuck Wrangle and one other Charlie Wrangle and one other person I think are in favor of a draft But that's it within in the Congress the cost is such the scale is such that it's not going to happen So that's not even an argument worth having because it's not going going to occur Instead I think for the civilian public it's worth recognizing that this is another Long-term challenge without a fix like the draft where the matter is that the solution is not Changing rules or have some one-time fix that will change things but rather shifting norms over time so that people politicians will find it There'll be more reward in talking about military policy. The press will pay more attention to this There'll be more attention to service. I think styles and the way people live their lives and set examples have a big effect I think it's it's all the efforts to try to make people more willing to serve without mandatory service are important And I'll give you this this example my Atlantic. I have an Atlantic colleague named Tana Hossie Coates If any of you don't know him you should pay attention to him He's a very very important rising rising writer He wrote a very influential piece in our magazine six months ago called the case for reparations Essentially arguing the history of legalized segregation and discrimination was such that it still still is going on And he's been writing a lot about Baltimore recently. There's not a fix for what he wants He's trying to change the consciousness the norms the awareness of this ongoing challenge to be dealt with and for the Civilian public. That's what I'm trying to do too. I'm trying to have reporters pay more attention to this politicians find some advantage in talking about Military as part of their their standard kit of things to talk about of having institutions reward service of having other ways to say This is the direction we're going to go and not that direction If I were in the military What would I do? I'm going to introduce this by telling you about the response I've gotten to this article and then I'll come to what what would be the only payoff for Military members in the audience this article came out just after Christmas last year and within the first day or so was online I'd gotten about a thousand email responses. I've gotten about 15,000 now What is striking to me has been number one Their excellence. These are people who've spent you know There was there was always the normal fringe of the oh you jerk. We hate you type of response This is part of the public life as you all know, but I'd say 90% of these were long carefully argued Paragraphs sort of spaced cases for how this or that person had experienced this when on a Navy When serving in the Navy what this or that person felt about his own Korean War experience What this or that person felt about designing certain weapons? So there was this deep well of people making arguments about a topic that in most media accounts Most mainstream media accounts or most political accounts was not really part of the mainstream discussion That was the first thing that impressed me the second thing that impressed me in a Good and bad way was that 90% so 90% are excellent and of those 90% were from people either now in the military or recently in the military if you consider that 1% of the public is in the military. That's an interesting disproportion It was striking to me because these were people in the institution thinking very carefully about its welfare and its future It was depressing to me that the other 90 90% of the public was not writing in very much I was sort of confirming the the argument. I was trying to make that there was this disconnect of The 90% that were excellent and the 90% of those that were from the military now down to 81% I'll let you all do the math from this point onward I'd say that that 90 then percent you were 90 to the third now 90% of those were basically positive saying yeah You don't know the half of it. Oh, things are really bad. Let me tell you this. Here's what I hate Etc. One person was was saying that every time he heard thank you for your service He what every time somebody said to him? Thank you for your service What he heard was shut up and get back to the foxhole. So, you know 90% were of that sort but the ones who were Who were angriest? Were either the ones who misunderstood the cover line about continuing to lose or those who said you have Undersold what the military is doing for itself now One of the things I argued in the piece was in the aftermath of Vietnam Which was devastating for the country and for the military as some of you will recall there was a profound Reaction both destructive and constructive within the military many of the people who are recently retired officers or senior officers were very young people then and they knew the soul searching and the examination and the Recriminations and the serious work that happened in the military through the late 70s and much of the 80s trying to say We've been through the first major defeat of American history now after we got it get over the anger and the blame What do we learn from this and so I argued in the piece that there was a really profound Reform movement in the military after the trauma of Vietnam. I Asserted in the piece that we had not yet seen that after the long wars that there were There was an increasing Corpus of excellent literature both journalistic and academic and from witnesses on the scene from soldiers and then marines and airmen Sailors who had been there, but there had not been yet. I argued the same kind of internal Cleansing process we saw be so powerful after Vietnam. I Probably shouldn't have said that or I should have said it differently. I should have said that there was not Enough of it yet or there needed to be more because the part of the response I got that was angry from the military and that I took seriously with some people saying Yes, we're doing what you say We recognize that there is a this is a structural moment unlike any other in the military's history We recognize that our record over the past dozen years has not been successful for the nation Even though we've been brave and sacrificed we recognize that there is a broader range of good to bad officers Then the public discusses we recognize that this is a time of reckoning to and so I as a journalist Plan to be giving more attention and time and airspace to those people who are saying yes, the new reform movement is beginning and If I were in the military, I guess what I'd be doing is not simply Continuing the efforts of institutions like this to connect people from different services different walks of life civilian and military in different countries of the world but also to Foster the sense that this stage in America's military military history. It's military civil history civic history the Imperative is on it's a it's a time with his or history's Obligation and attention on the military is for this to be another reform era and to have to make that be known To foster and encourage The young people who are saying yes, we have to learn x y and z to have them be involved with The universities and with the politicians and with the reporters saying yes Rather than just wanting to have another salute to the heroes exercise. We're going to have let's learn from the last Long years. I know this is starting before any of you stand up to say. Oh, you're so wrong We're already doing these things. I'm glad you're doing them. I hope there are more I think this is the main way the military can try to Re-knit the fabric not by getting more people in uniform necessarily because that's not going to happen not by having more parades, but by showing that the that people in this institution are Aware of this strained moment in history are trying to find ways that they that you all of you can Rebuild the institution of the lessons of the last dozen years, and I think there will be a tension From the press and from politicians and from and from the general public if this becomes the news of the next stage Of the military's career. So what does the country owe its military? The country owes its military that it will take it seriously Taking it seriously in terms of how the military is committed how it is equipped how it is paid How people are taking how cared for after they are after they serve or if they're injured or they're they're there Families and so the general public has failed in the obligation to take the military seriously And I've been doing what I can to address that What the military owes the public I think apart from the things you all know and all practice now of Discipline and fitness and strategy and planning and all the other things that are part of your your your your whole Professionalism is to recognize that it's a historical moment that is shifting. That's a time when the military I think like the country needs to learn from what the way you've been exposed of the past dozen years and join the rest of the country in a Genuine exercise of how do we go to war when we go to war? What are the limits? What are the tactics? What was the training? We all need some accounting for the the wars of the past dozen years And I think that will be a means towards having the country fulfill its duty It'll be one step of having the country fulfill its duty of taking the military seriously There is more I could say but I've talked for a long time. So let me now pause to take any Complaints within reason any questions any areas for our elaboration, but essentially simply I'll close by saying I'm very grateful that you all are bringing me up here that you're doing in the honor of showing up They're hearing me out at this great length and after an institutional Critique of the kind that I was putting out in the magazine. I appreciate the the the graciousness and open-mindedness and and and Engagement with what I found here. So sincere. Thanks for having me here. I'll be happy to continue the discussion in any Way that you would like. Thank you Good So actually I might start by asking you all one question who has a better idea for repairing this divide than these kind of Hazy ones I had who has who has a better idea. Yes, or at least and I'll actually it might yes. We have a microphone. Yes Hello, sir Lieutenant commander Randy guy or United States Navy So I'm not saying that my my idea is a better one I'm just saying that I think that it is that it could be a possible one Yeah, I think that we're a victim the military is a victim of our own success and not just the military But probably the national security agency and the other people that keep the United States free of terrorism in our within our borders Winston Churchill from what I understand was Glad to see that the Japanese had tacked Pearl Harbor because then we had committed to the war so I know it's not appropriate to talk about hypotheticals in an argument But I would say that if we were attacked on a monthly or weekly basis Along the lines of something that happened in Oklahoma City or even what potentially could have happened in Dallas But the American public would take the military more seriously and we would have a better relationship with how we use our forces how we Outfit our sort of art our military so that they were weekly Monthly engaged in the in the wars that are happening around the world. I think that the you know, it's kind of like When you watch the news at the in the evening There's so much violence that shows on the TV about what's happening around America But if it's not happening to you then it's just something that you kind of tune out And so for the military we can't tune it out because we don't know what we're going on the next mission But they can tune it out If we had something happen on a weekly basis or a monthly basis if Isis Start sending their their their folks back here and we start seeing some of those things I think that we'll have a connection you're looking for I was asking for a better idea So no, I mean that that's a very that that's a very serious point Let me say a couple things in response first We're gonna hear a lot in the next year and a half from presidential candidates They're gonna say oh, why I don't want to deal with hypotheticals Whenever they say that We should respond oh cut the BS everything about running to become president is about hypotheticals It's about how they're gonna deal with challenges. We don't know about yet So don't let any candidate say oh, I'm not gonna get the hypotheticals. So that's point number one Point number two. It's really interesting when you say if there are attacks like Oklahoma City or the other places It's really intriguing the threats and challenges societies decide to become sensitive to or not There's something like what is it 40 people a day shot to death in the United States and a hundred a day who dying car crashes And so in a week's time, you know, there's a considerable toll But there's it's interesting the kinds of things that become That we define as as terrorism I know there's a lot that is irrational in people's response to threats But it also is intriguing of what we think of as as dangers a side note here I was mentioning earlier in the session about China that The latest figure is something like a million a million plus people in China per year are dialing dying prematurely because of pollution If there are a million people who are you know a million person threat That's a huge toll even in China And so if there were some kind of other threat that was causing that to them They would think this is the this is war on your basic premise of people are attuned to things that affect them directly Yes, of course, that's right And Israel of course is a society that lives with this sort of threat all the time And people both they have a lot of security about it, but also a kind of resilience And there's going to be a certain toll and you try to kind of go on You open up the restaurant two hours after its bombs and things like that For the United States If you're saying if the war came home in a sense, you know, if more of these attacks were visited inside the United States That would be a kind of puric victory because of course the success that you're all doing is keeping that from happening happening within here I guess I fear that the reaction in the US would be more negative than positive if that happened The civil liberties balance would be set differently and all the rest So taking seriously the thought experiment you pose I think we're going to have to find some other way That then sort of dismantling the border patrol or the watch list or all that But you're right if there there there was a different sense of the civil liberties balance after 9 11 and there as it was in the wrong long run I think the ratchet was set too far towards security in the immediate aftermath of 9 11 because in the long run a free society is going to encounter some risks But it's a very interesting thought experiment that you have and yes. Thank you. Yes Megan Iverson from the Office of Naval Intelligence to your question. What is a better way to address these concerns? I believe that the national security community owes the military clear goals and strategies what they want to achieve overseas What are our goals in the Asia Pacific and quid pro quo? I believe that our military owes the public a phase 3 plan Shaping and keeping the status quo are not an option in the future security environment We face three major existential threats the rise of the near peer competitor in the Chinese radical jihadism and what the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction With guidance we can shape our forces to address these threats and determine what the security environment should look like post combat But until we talk about a post combat world and what that looks like and to find those combat situations you're only going to try to keep putting that toothpaste back in the tube Thank you. That's very very interesting too So I will I will simply stipulate for later argument we can argue later having lived in China for a long time I don't view them as an existential threat Apart from what their environmental destruction is doing to everyone but but that's that's for later I stipulate we see that differently and I understand you see it in a different way The my answer to your question is yes comma but and of course there needs to be clear guidance I mean you all are in the business many of you are in the business of kinetic solutions to things where there's a sort of zero versus 100 outcome The thing is destroyed or it's not that the forces are committed or they're not and the last thing you need is sort of tentative well maybe type suggestions from political leadership I think it is the nature of life the nature of politics the nature of the soupy world in which we live that that's any political leaders of any party in a circumstance are going to give you less of that than you would like to have Because they always want to keep options open they always want to have gray areas they all want to want to do this or that so I think the military is if the hope is for crystal clear guidance from the political leadership of the kind you would want internally It's simply not going to happen you know except during actual engaged large scale war where we were the big decisions have been made and so the question If all of life is living with uncertainty and living with the certainty of we know in the long run we're all dead The military analog to that is living with the uncertainty of uncertain political guidance I think that just is I think time we've spent hoping for something different is worthwhile as hope but not as a plan Because it's it's I think it's not really going to be whoever is in control and it's nature of the of the shifting world so there are certain things I'll give you one example that like some other comments I've made might be controversial here I think that for the foreseeable future the best outcome between the People's Republic and Taiwan is just letting things go without rocking the boat on either side that that you know that there's a famous There's a famous story about a British economist who was taken to see a factory and he saw all their new techniques and he said well that's all fine in practice but what about in theory So it's the same I think between between China and between the PRC and Taiwan in theory they simply cannot get along at all there's a complete zero sum conflict between them in practice day by day and month by month the connections increase So that's a place where it would be frustrating to have that status quo guidance but it may be what even a wise political leader would give you So I understand and sympathize with the the wish you're expressing and I think political leaders should do a better job of being clear But I think that you will need to live in the sort of the world of frustration with limited clarity and guidance and I'm sorry to say it but this is the voice of grizzled age So sir yes sorry Kevin Matthews United States Marine Corps first of all thank you for the speech that was really great I'd like to start by saying that I read your article the day it came out and it was actually the sub-pital that caught my eye and why I read it and I might not have read it had not been for that The wisdom of my editors So I was going to say thank you editors for putting that on there but there are two things that I think need to be addressed and the first one is that thing about thank you for your service I get concerned about that but I feel like people are afraid of me I get a sense that people are afraid of the military that they're afraid of the challenge of American military leadership And what we get is kind of a lack of dialogue here and people accountability for performance So that's the first thing and then the other thing I'm actually a little bit tearing so you'll be shocked when I say this here I think that we need to pay for the wars and these operations that we undertake by financing and giving me a tax refund at the end of the year and tax cuts this really doesn't you don't get that accountability from the folks because we're never going to go through the draft right but if I got money in this thing here I want results So to start with the second I agree entirely and actually I can imagine a political candidate putting myself in the role of a one-time speechwriter having this part of his or her platform you know we're going to have an actual when we go to wars we're going to pay for them and if we're not going to war you know they'll be this this account and either it'll be either you'll get money back or you'll pay money in depending on where we're going to war and I think that's one way to get people's attention so a hard lesson of politics is you never say you're going to raise taxes but this this might be wacky enough for somebody to say but I think it's also it's something that the founding fathers would have thought was a good way to connect the public to its wars on I agree with you I think most people who've grown up in the volunteer army era and themselves are not of it are basically afraid of the military you know they're afraid of being disrespectful they think that there is a kind of using his term in advised way more manly than they are you know male or female there's a kind of there's something that is better about people in the military and this is this is an unwholesome relationship that is sublimated in different ways you know of too much worship too little criticism here's one more thing that many people here might not agree with but I'm going to say it anyway I think that when President Obama came into office I believe he was imprisoned by this when it came to the Afghanistan operation he was reluctant to challenge the military people who said yes we got to make a new effort in Afghanistan I think if he comparable leaders of other institutions he would have been more willing to challenge I think that's generally true of the intellectual civilian leadership that they are they're just unfamiliar with the military and therefore just having all the relationships all the reaction to say so a challenge for all of us is how to rebuild a healthy relationship absent a mass military service which is not going to be the case I think anything which sort of increases exposure familiarity is to that end but thank you very much for saying that yes so so yes here yeah I commander Michelle cool I was just wondering what you think the role of the veterans community has to play in helping to bridge this divide and just three quick examples I think I was reading today there's an article about the post 9 11 GI bill and if you look at Georgetown's military veterans and you see that at Harvard Business School and really scattered across all the universities in the United States number two is organizations like the Mission Continues six veterans and community service projects and then lastly members of Congress who veterans as members of Congress were serving across the political spectrum and certainly haven't proven themselves too shy yes yes those are great points to and I think that is a great a great prospect you know there was a time when the military military veterans were underrepresented in Congress right now they the veterans of recent wars are overrepresented you know it's about one percent of the population that was in Iraq or Afghanistan but now five percent of the Congress and they're of varied political hues Tammy Duckworth and Tom Cotton being the sort of two two polls that so I think it's good to have through American history military veterans have played large political roles so I think this is a good thing the as my wife and I have traveled around the country the part of America's educational system we've come become most excited about is actually community colleges and and vocational schools and these are ways that people that sort of divide of America into the plutocrat class and the McDonald's class there is sort of an option for people who are not going to become plutocrats of twenty three dollar an hour jobs as repairmen or whatever and they are engaging seriously the veterans community in lots of places and Howard Schultz of Starbucks has tried to pioneer some of this so I think this is also a good positive suggestion of ways where an interesting psychological twist in this way just as I was saying earlier there's a a not just the proper respect for military service but an unhose unhealthy deference to military among a lot of our civilian leadership I think for the veterans community there's a combination of a proper respect and excessive pity a sense of you know the people who are disabled or mentally troubled or whatever else and so the trick there is to find ways to rebuild the fabric for the proper respect and then paying societies proper dues and support for people who have served but that's also a very good idea thank you should have interviewed all of you before I did this piece but then you wouldn't have read it so yes sir Sir Major Robinson Marines sir much of the military's recruiting is beginning to recognize a value based change with younger generations in arguing that perhaps building the awareness that you're talking about short of a draft building the awareness exposing people to this argument maybe too late once they're a little bit more mature you have any ideas about how to build that awareness in younger generations that may be going to a value based change this is something where I understand what you're you're asking answers serious question I have this isn't the rare good news part of my presentation it's been quite striking around the country to see locally based local service organizations or the AmeriCorps operation just about a month ago we were in Arizona seeing about an AmeriCorps team of people from a really wide variety of backgrounds from Indian reservations to to Harlem to whatever doing these these volunteer projects and I think there is more of that remaining value than than than what one might think and I think that the main my observation is the main limit to those people joining the military is the military's own standards you know that they're educational standards and health standards and all that so your experience may be different I think there is a there is a more of a renaissance if there's a values base change there may be more of a positive counter surge only may have thought I'll give you just one illustration I've been writing recently about town called San Bernardino California I don't know if any of you know it it's right near where I grew up it's about as hard-pressed a town as there is in the United States now it's lost all its employment it's bankrupt everything is bad about San Bernardino but there's a group of mid and late 20 something people there mainly Latino or black who are saying this is our home we're going to make something of it and they just spend all their time trying to in sort of a civilian conservation corps type way to remake this really beleaguered community I'm not trying to cherry-peak illustrations I'm just saying that there are signs of what I think you would want to see as a spirit of servicing the United States among younger people so that's not really an answer to your question but it's the best answer I have yes sir sorry major air KO United States Marine Corps sir to pose a question to your your question about what's a better way of being a reservist I'm very lucky to be amongst the civilian populace and being a Philadelphia myself I spoke many times many congressional delegates about the military I found it very interesting when I would go from my home my home you know neighborhood of northeast Philadelphia and go all the way out to the main line which is way more affluent the reception the questions I got vastly different so I would pose a question to you is like how do you feel about a talent tax to make sure that every congressional district is represented by a limited draft not a full draft in principle that would be great and so let me explain that so anything like that that would enmesh us more as a society I'd be in favor of as a practical matter for that to happen some president has to endorse it and you know a majority in the House and Senate have to vote for it and so I my observation of national politics is anything difficult is not going to happen just you know just a sort of a general principle so this is difficult therefore by my principle it won't happen and the question is what could you do short of actually passing legislation to make this work and you could have universities in each of these districts you know the universities are disproportionately concentrated in the kinds of places you're talking about they could have they could give scholarships more and more of their scholarships for military service or whatever so I think that if we have as a thought experiment the goal of an actual system we recognize that's not going to happen and so then how close can we get to that through other means recognizing that legislation passed by both houses and signed is is not in the world we know going going to occur so that that's actually very interesting and I think it would be worth having networks of the military working with like you know the Ivy League presidents than the other sort of fancy university leaders say how can we increase the connection I know that a number of these institutional leaders they think they should do that and are looking for ways to do it but that's an interesting idea too did I give you all my 15 second theory of America here it is everything about America actually is going better than you think except the workings of national government you know that we're dealing with a system whose rules were set 200 plus years ago that we can't change and that are no longer functional you know when the Constitution was written the most popular state had 10 times as many people as the least popular state now it's 70 to 1 Madison and all would never have had an equal representation for the senate with a 70 to 1 disproportion but that's how we are we can't change it so anything that involves national government functioning will leave you discouraged and so the question is where below national government functioning I realize for members of the military that may be a depressing thing to say but I'm just passing it on that's my theory yes sir Derek Koker Lieutenant Commander US Navy recently retired so the solution going back to your original question the solution that I would pose to the chicken hawk dilemma is that we need to get the American public more engaged in what's going on in the world they seem to be very disengaged if you're sitting in your living room in America and you want to become educated on what's going on and what happened in that at any given day throughout the world you have to try very hard you got to get on line if you try to see something on the news you're more likely than not to see stories about your neighborhood or your state even on the world news programs that are going on so any kind of educational changes that I think that would get people more aware about the world interested in it and get them to get out in Peace Corps programs something so they take an interest I think would be a step in the right direction that's a great idea and sort of indirect solution to the problem we're talking about if Americans know more about the world they will naturally be more aware of what you're doing in our military presence in the world living overseas I'm always encouraged by the number of young Americans I see teaching English starting business traveling around smoking dope whatever you know they're around the world and I think that anything that that makes this so I think I think I have a figure in my story saying that something like twice as many people will do a junior year abroad this year as join the military or some some comparison like that that also is a worthwhile sort of part of the arsenal of any private incentives for people to do this again we're talking about incentives and norms because requirements aren't going to work but if there is expanding the Peace Corps expanding junior year abroad expanding the expectation that people will see the world when whenever some younger person makes a mistake of asking me for life advice one of the things I always say is before the age of 25 make sure you spend at least one year but preferably two living outside the country just because there's no way you can understand the US without doing that so yes that's a very good part of the solution too so at least we're getting a solution set of a wide range of different things to do we can plug this into some candidates campaign or all the candidates campaigns or you all can have a report yes sir in the back yes sir lieutenant Haney United States Navy I like the lieutenant commander if you watch Jay Leno for instance Jay walking they'll ask basic questions and the average American has no clue rather than focusing primarily on the military maybe reshape it to government as a whole where you bring in the public education system starting from grade school all the way through high school where you have a more active role in history current affairs as well as government and how students play a role in their good government as well as civilians in the society maybe add some type of exercises in coordination with the government where you'll write your congressman or you'll take trips to DC and get them more involved cause right now I don't think most of the population realizes what power they do have I mean I'd like to know what percent writes their congressman or their governor that also is a very good idea and it's interesting I think how we're seeing all the different parts of the national realm of instruments of power and improvement we're all talking about which is actually this is very interesting to me and encouraging to hear all the different things that you all are saying on public education let me say another surprisingly positive thing I know what you mean about Jay walking you just want to kill yourself when you see that I did a story for the Atlantic a couple of years ago whose subtitle was are we going to hell about whether America was falling apart and I interviewed a woman named who you may have followed named Jill LePore who's an American historian at Harvard when I was an undergraduate at Harvard I studied American history it's something that I've paid attention to so I said what about American state of knowledge of the world and she said the bad news is that Americans are appallingly ignorant the good news is they always have been this is that it's just tests of civics have always been bad you can sort of look back and see things college entrance exams from the 1910s that were higher level but most people were illiterate then or weren't in schools or whatever so she was arguing there's a kind of constant level of ignorance in our national birthright and that we're seeing more of it because of Jay walking that doesn't mean we should be happy with it as you say and so I'll give you one other example of civic engagement this town of San Bernardino I mentioned one of the reasons it's now in bankruptcy is it's the poorest town in California and its pay for police environment is the highest in the state and the reason is the police environment about 50 years ago got through a civic charter saying that their pay would be indexed to that in Pasadena and Oceanside and La Jolla and San Mateo you know the towns that are way way way richer than San Bernardino and the only way to overturn that was with a civic sort of constitutional amendment and nobody votes there so they can't overturn it if anybody would get out and vote and these young people I mentioned they're trying to organize people to vote to overturn that so yes consistent with what I was saying earlier that there's no one solution there's the ongoing challenge of looking for lots of different answers I think what you mentioned is a very good idea too so I actually I'm getting more encouraged the longer I'm here yes sir sir at Captain Doug Howell U.S. Navy thanks for your presentation tonight I feel we've had an opportunity this year to look in the mirror as security professionals but with your background maybe we have a chance to look through a window in American journalism at its ethics at its accountability and you've had an extraordinary opportunity at the presidential level overseas here domestically to see trends in American journalism what broad trends and what insights can you offer maybe we can employ both as currently serving officers and in the future we're full-time citizens again that might help re-knit this fact that you spoke of that's a great question too so lest you think I am a Pollyanna about my own business I wrote a book 15 years ago called Breaking the News how the media undermine American democracy and sort of went on from there and talked about the ways in which by when the media present public affairs as just like a more boring form of professional wrestling you know that it's just you have candidates and they just sort of make fun of them for the mistakes they make as opposed to recognizing these are the people who will send us to war or not or raise our taxes etc. they repel people from politics or from public life because if you just want to be entertained then watch sports sports is always more entertaining in public life the challenge for journalism is to make things that matter as interesting as they can be journalism is in another of its chronic economic upheavals and crises I say chronic because at almost any given time in the history of the media it's been going through some transformation there's never been a time in history where news as we think of it news about your civic life news about foreign affairs news about the government when that's been a profitable business it always had to be attached to something else as a subsidy and when I was a kid for the Los Angeles Times it was 500 pages thick with movie ads and all this stuff and that supported the real news so the host body of the thick newspaper is being killed off and journalism is finding a new body now I think journalism is better and worse now than it's ever been the high end you can inform yourself now in a way that nobody in previous human history could if there's a coup someplace tomorrow you can see video on site you can have professors writing op ads on their blogs etc but the distractibility of everything is low too so I think it's like everything else in a free society it's a mixture of goods and bads and so people in our business the Atlantic is the oldest magazine in the United States it's now a successful business it's a combination of our print magazine, our website and our events business and we found that our brand that is working is essentially high end journalism trying to sell better stuff and so I think that just as democratic politics is always chaotic American education is always chaotic journalism is a big mess too and the main thing you can do for your individual information is finding good information sources and the main thing you can do for the business is subscribing to publications that you think are good and that you want to survive I'm just saying so with that I may yes this may be our last question yes sir Edward Kent I'm a physician and I teach anatomy and physiology now at the college level I'd like to say first of all thank you to everyone here for taking care of us civilians I miss Vietnam by a little bit Vietnam was on the TV every night for us we saw what the soldiers were doing we don't see that with this war so your profession has some doing in that as well for not bringing to us what Vietnam or what the Vietnamese call the American War on the topic of congress how many people write letters as part of our national organization I have been in the congressional offices as a quote-unquote physician lobbyist Medicare things like that and the statistics that they had given us those that actually write congress as Americans is 0.3 to 0.7% which means only one half of 1% of Americans have ever written a letter or contacted their congressional leaders so a lot of people may bitch about government but very few are willing to convey their opinions and to everyone here what they told us is the best way to communicate with congress is to take a letter type it up put it in the fax machine and send it you then got in through the front door you didn't have to go through the mail system through anthrax and everything yes those are all good points on the letters to public officials here's a very important thing to bear in mind about that I'm speaking from the time both the time in the White House and also knowing a number of politicians since then if some group your member of says here's a form letter you can send whatever it is don't even bother sending that the politician can tell in one second it's the same letter they're getting from 10,000 other people and so they register it sort of but an actual letter where you're saying things in your own words that has tremendous impact precisely because it's so rare people think you've actually taken the trouble it is true bizarrely because of that anthrax scare you can't mail things to congress anymore so the only place for the fax machine any longer makes any sense is in our democratic system of government so you're right fax letters to your congress so I will say sincerely I am honored by your attention and you're coming here and I'm genuinely stimulated by all the things you said and I will think about these and see how in our journalistic institution we can play our part in trying to knit things back together so thank you all very much let me just say quickly so seeing how I wanted to perhaps frame a thank you tonight I was reflecting upon drivers of a successful democracy and I'd say that two key drivers of that democracy are probably mechanisms for illuminating diverse perspectives and then creating a culture or sustaining a culture of thoughtful reflection and discussion and so I think it's appropriate that on behalf of the staff the faculty and the students at the naval war college to thank you for your efforts in supporting both of those drivers over the course of your career and then especially most recently the recent article and then your discussion of engagement with us tonight I think you've done both giving us new perspectives to think about and you'll be stimulating some thoughtful discussion on the campus in the days and the weeks to come so sir thanks very much for spending time with us tonight thank you gentlemen I really appreciate it thank you all