Transcripts For CSPAN Washington This Week 20140831 : vimars

CSPAN Washington This Week August 31, 2014

Conflict that we are in now and we are in ahead, that we remain confident in ourselves. [applause] thank you. Please give final applause to these two wonderful debaters. [applause] thank you. Thank you. Well done. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] night, bill nye the onence guy and ken ham evolution versus creationism. Heres a portion of that debate. Isinherent in this worldview that somehow know what and his family were able to build a wooden ship that would house 14,000 individuals. And a boy7000 kinds, and a girl for each of those. And these people were unskilled. They had never built a wooden ship before. They had to get all of these animals on their, and they had to feed them. I understand he has some explanations for that that i find extraordinary. This is the premise of the bid. We can then run a test, a scientific test. 1900s builte early a large wooden ship. It was the largest one ever felt. Built. At had great difficulty. It was not as big as the titanic but was very long. Sea. Ould twist in the in all that twisting, it leaked like crazy. The crew could not keep the ship andand it eventually sank loss all 14 hands. 14 crewmen built by skilled shipwrights and new england. These guys were the best in the world. They could not build a boat as big as the ark claimed to have been. Evidence concerning one race. When we look at the human population, we see a lot of differences, but based on darwins ideas of Human Evolution has presented in the descent of man, darwin teach to did teach the descent of man. At the present time, there exists upon earth five races or friday of man. The highest type of all the caucasians represented by the white inhabitants of europe and america. It was based on darwins ideas that are wrong. You have a wrong foundation. You can watch the full debate tomorrow night at 8 00 eastern on cspan. Now a look at how the war is viewed on public. Past and current conflicts, politics, casualties, and the success factor into Public Opinion. Hosted by the cato institute, this is one hour and a half. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the cato institute. Logan, is justin director of Foreign Policy studies here at cato. It is my pleasure to welcome you here to our event on Public Opinion and war. In addition to the people who are here with us physically, we would like to welcome those watching online on our website as well as cspan. We always worry planning these events that topics seem important and pressing a few months ahead of schedule and then sometimes will not deliver. Unfortunately, the question of public support for war is quite salient given present news. Here today to discuss a lot of the Academic Research on when and why the American Public supports were. Lot of literature and a lot of disagreement on literature on this subject. To be totally honest, we were able to piggyback on the american clinical Science Association annual meeting, since many of the scholars who are in townsubject already. We really have the most impressive scholarship represented on this panel. What it comes to the question of public support for war. I will introduce the panelists in the order in which they will speak and then turn over the podium to the first speaker, fellow ater, senior cato as well as a member of the Political Science department. For anybody who has read pretty much anything on the question of Public Opinion on work, he needs very little introduction. Work,ition to his seminal he more recently made himself into an expert on both terrorism, and nuclear weapons, offering most recently terror security and money, balancing the risks, benefits, and costs of homeland security, coauthored with mark stuart, as well as overblown, how politicians in the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and why we believe them. And the atomic up session, nuclear alarmism. He has published in an impressive array of journals. As well as popular journals like the american interest, and National Interest and National Interest in a foreign affairs. We are very pleased john is here. He has and a. D. From the university of chicago. His phd is from the university of ucla. Our second panelist is a senior lecturer and politics and studies Political Behavior and Public Opinion about Foreign Policy, correcting factual misperceptions held by citizens, how it is done and when it works, as well as voting behavior. He is coauthor of the human costs of war. A ba from Colby College and his phd is from duke university. Our third speaker today is adam, professor of political of and he from m. I. T. , received his phd from the university of michigan in 2000 and for our purposes today, war d in time of understanding american Public Opinion from world war ii to iraq. He has similarly published in an array of journals. He has received grants from the National Science foundation and was a fellow for the center of advanced studies in behavioral sciences. , perhaps speaker today catos newest minted adjunct scholar, trevor thrall. He works at george mason and is graduatese. Of the he is the coeditor of american volumeand another edited , why did the United States invade iraq . He was associate professor at the university of michigan dearborn, where he directed master of Public Policy and master of Public Administration programs. He received his phd from m. I. T. Normally, we have a lot of university of chicago, m. I. T. , conspiracy. Today, it seems like we have a michigan, m. I. T. Overlap, with john being up the chicago deal to some extent. With the introduction of the speakers, i will turn things over to john mueller. Much. Nk you very it is nice to be here. I will change the order of things im talking about. I did not realize i was going to be going first. Like to put i would on the table, essentially, that fit into this. Sortirst one, basically, of sets the overall image. States has fought four worse come along, ground wars, since world war ii. It is possible to well compare the degree to which the wars have been supported. The same poll question, you think it was involved in get this conflict, was asked in each of the four worse. The pass for the four wars are there at the very top, afghanistan, and it will not be too easy to see, but the other three wars, iraq, vietnam, and korea, are down below. The main thing that basically happens on this is there has obviously been a decline overall and part of the decline happens earlier rather than later. In other words, it is a steep drop off early on, typically, and then sort of gradually rose in or even a stabling reach of stability. I should say there are a couple of things that should be kept in mind. These are years since the war has again. Is frequentlythat brought up is a question of cost. The argument is, as casualties accrue, support for the war dwindles. Soon as they see body guys coming back, they stop seeing the war. This has led to the militarys idea that if they cannot see the bags, they will not stop supporting the work. We have a thing about not letting body guys get off of delaware, and so forth, taking the metaphor and making it into something that approaches reality, for some people at least. Hasny rate, my position mostly been, as the world wears on, casualties accrue and people make something resembling a cost and a fit analysis. But how much is it costing . Other speakers do not necessarily great agree with that way of explaining it. One issue i want to say before moving on, since this is by time, it is not by casualties. A good question would be, how fast does it go relative to a casualty increase, and comparing the war in vietnam and the war in iraq, in the case of these two wars, there is a considerable difference. See, both lines eventually go below 50 approval. Below 50 went approval for afghanistan, there were about 2000 americans who 2000 americans that had died, and it went below 50 approval for vietnam, more like 20,000 or 18,000 americans had died. My interpretation is that people are simply not willing to pay as much for iraq as they were for the cold wars. Casualties. Ut everyone basically agrees, people do not really know what the casualties are. If you ask how many people have been killed in iraq, you get all sorts of weird answers and so forth. But the casualties, obviously, is a fairly good measure of the cumulative cash is of the work, in terms of human losses and economically. There is some indication from one question, which was asked if for the recent work, before the iraq war in 2002. The question is, the basic idea was, george bush might decide to centuries to iraq, but as you can see, 54 , when they are asked, say they would favor going to work. Was, supposetion some americans are killed. Suddenly, the percentage favoring were dropped down to 49 . Asked, what of 100 were killed, it dropped again, but only by three Percentage Points and farther down as it went along. It does seem to be, even though i have been saying from the beginning people who do not understand numbers very well, when you put it this way, maybe they do. Particularly interesting is the question, would you still favor a war if 5000 are killed . As it happens, that question was asked when 5000 or 4000 were killed. Section, 5000 killed, about 32 said they would still favor the work. One 4000 or so american fatalities took place, it was 33. Maybe these numbers hold up a little bit better than i previously thought. Its is much clearer because is only one work, the war in iraq. I do not want to spend too much time with it, but one thing that ought to be put into consideration, there is a decline and stabilization of sorts. One of the things that is the killer and one of the things ive been interested in more lately, the unpredictability of american Public Opinion area this gives you a bit of a consideration. Why do people do certain things . After the fact, you can sort of explain it. Out they did by the loop. Will they buy a new coat, no. Can see, there are ups and downs in various places and seem to be associated with things that associate with the work. For example, you can see there is a drop in support. Then it bounced back to more or less where it was previously. After these london bombings, there is a spike upwards. A big terrorist attack in london caused support or seems to have caused support for United States efforts in iraq to go up. But it did not go up when the majority terrorist attack took place about one year earlier. Katrina caused support for the war to go down. The argument was basically, why do we have a bunch of soldiers in iraq when they should be helping americans . There was basically a spike upward, on the fifth anniversary of 9 11. It reminded people what the war was about, but it is not necessarily something you would overall predict. Ok. So that is the basic outline of things we will be talking about nas on nations will very, as you can see. I want to deal with how these can be reversed. Basically, if i am right about the way it happens, the mechanism, it is extremely unlikely you could get support to go back up. The reason for that is americans, if you make a calculation, the war has cost too much, if the were then you stillo go better, do not think the war is a good idea, because you already said it was not worth the cost. You have basically reached a point where you say it was not worth it. A is basically like buying car and paying four times more than it is worth. You may later come to like the car. It is a good car. But you still make you still think you made a bad deal. Issue ofbility is the what happens if the war does go well. To my surprise, that actually happened. 2008, there was a time of the surge, which cause people to think war was going better. Having no impact went down. The United States was winning the war ended when up by 16 Percentage Points. At the same time, support for the war did not change much at all. Orwho favor the were was the right decision, surging 32 down to 39. Should we stay as long as it takes 12626 area even approving bushs handling of the work, you would think if people are not saying the words going better, you would think they would say, bush is in charge of the war. Thats enough go up either. That is my first point. Let me go back. There is no way to skip past this. Here is basically having to deal with trying to sell ideas to try to go to work. The evidence is pretty good it is hard to do so. It is hard to move Public Opinion. It seems to me overall, the way i look at the marketing of ideas, people come up with ideas and they tried to sell them to the public and the public eyes them or they do not. Most of the time, they do not. 90 of new products, no matter how many no matter how brilliantly marketed, failed. 95 of hightech. People are out there and putting things on the shelf. We shouldbomb syria, not bomb serious. People then relate to it one way or the other and then by and accept the argument. If they do accept the argument, it means it struck a responsive court, it seems to me. It is not clear whether they are being manipulated. They are being offered this and it turns out it sells. But is not easy to tell in advance if that will happen. Let me give you a couple of illustrations of how this may be happening. To compare two things fairly precisely. The runup to the war, the first gulf war, that george bush the in 1990, 1990, this is a trend line, do you think you should go to work, essentially, and in the beginning and middle of this, 1998, november, 1990, the Bush Administration really started to sell going to work. Basically,see, nothing much happened. It stayed pretty much the same as it had been before. The same thing happened for george bush the seconds were in 2002 and into 2003. The question had been asked for a long time, would you favor invading iraq with u. S. Ground troops in an attempt to remove Saddam Hussein from power . Before 9 11, the position was that. Lly, about 51 said it went up very high with 9 11 and then came down and basically stayed pretty much the same the rest of the way through. What is interesting about this is there was a huge partisan division. What happened in the first gulf war was there was an intense partisan leadership split on whether support should be used, and for the second one, the Democratic Party basically folded and accepted going to war. In 1991 and 5247 7723 in the second one, indicating basically that the democrats were now on the same side. Nonetheless, the partisan differences were much bigger in the second work, even though democratic leadership was saying , we do not want to go to work. Me turn finally to the end thing here. Im going to far. There you go. Thist to conclude with point. Basically, the situation we are are in a situation now of debacle. Statesing the united fought for, died for, spent four, trillions of dollars, has gone down the tubes in the last year. Basically, what is the likely reaction to that to be . A usefulto me comparison, as with the previous debacle, which took place with vietnam in 1975. In 1975, the communists took over south vietnam, completely ofiterating the efforts 55,000 dead americans and the huge amount of money spent on that work. Everything went down the tubes. Virtually overnight, and 55 days. The question, what was the public reaction to that, i think there are lessons that could potentially be drawn and other people may want to comment on this, from that lesson. There were basically three lessons. First of all, the americans accepted the debacle with grandeur, with grace. Basically, they shrugged it off. So what. In other words, it was , joe mccarthy did not rise again or anything else. They wanted to continue the cold war. He continued to support the basic idea of opposing communism, including keeping a big Defense Budget going. The big change, they no longer wanted to use one tactic, which was ground war against it. Vietnam had demonstrated that was a bad idea. Part of that was they were willing to say, i do not care if communism advances. Willinge, but im not to use groundwork to stop it. If i have to use groundwork, i prefer to let it advance. Communism did advance in several countries. Those three lessons probably hold today as well. Theeems very likely American Public will be able to accept this debacle with good grace and go on to other things and shrug it off. The other two things i also think hold, we will continue to support the war on teller the war on terror. They still want to do it and there has been very little change in opinion about the war on terror since 2001. Usetheyre not willing to groundwork to stop the advance of communism. Frome conclude with two the same poll. The question was, as a result of the recent violence in iraq, do you think the threat of terrorism against the United States will increase, decrease, or stay the same . 42 said it would increase their that is a bad thing. Poll, the question is, would you use ground force to stop it, and only 19 said it seems to me the same thing will happen, even people are not willing to use groundwork to stop the advance of terrorism. They are still opposed to it as we are opposed to communism, but they have not changed their strategy. They have changed their tactics. Let me end on that and thank you for your attention. [applause] i will keep track of how long i am. This was always one of my favorite buildings, ishitecturally, from it fun to see the inside. Today,ortion of the talk i will try to make three main points. The few with my of the importance of perceptions of success in foring public support willingness to use military force. The second is to rebut some of the criticisms that have been made of our work, particularly those adam will make fol

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