Washington National Cathedral

Dean Lloyd: Good morning. It’s wonderful to have you with us as we carry on our ongoing conversation at the intersection of faith and public life. No one can deny the fact that our country is facing a lot of issues these days, and we have someone who has spent a major part of his career tackling directly a lot of the fears that we are now facing. Senator Chuck Hagel was for twelve years in the U.S. senate, where he addressed the whole array of issues by and large that we still face in different ways, and we’re going to want to talk about today.

Senator Hagel was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, member of the Banking, Housing, Urban Affairs, and Intelligence committees; he chaired a Senate Economic Policy Committee and the Banking Committee, as well as being part of Senate Climate Change Observer Group. So he’s touched just about every area we’re looking at now.

He has not slowed down since leaving the U.S. Senate; he is the new chairman of the Atlantic Council of the United States and a distinguished professor of both Georgetown University, the School of Foreign Service, and the University of Nebraska in his home state. He’s also the author of a book, America: Our Next Chapter, in which he employs his familiar straight-talk perspective to the challenges that we are facing now. Senator Hagel, it is wonderful to have you with us today.

Sen. Hagel: Thank you very much.

Lloyd: Well, tell us about this new job as the chairman of the Atlantic Council. What is it and what’s it up to?

Hagel: The Atlantic Council is the longest surviving, I think, speaking somewhat parochially as its new chairman, the most relevant institution that has, for many, many years, enhanced and sustained a strong transatlantic relationship. The former chairman, who most Americans know or will get to know over the next couple of years, is General Jim Jones, who is helping President Obama serving as the National Security Advisor.

I was elected to replace General Jones, and as I have noted, it was not a good bargain for the Atlantic Council. They traded a four-star general for an old sergeant. So, aside from that flaw in the logic, I am obviously proud to be part of an institution that is, I think, so important, will remain important to a relationship that I think, as we enter the twenty-first century with the great challenges of our time, remains the one institution—the transatlantic general institution of NATO, European Union, transatlantic alliances—that has the capacity to deal with these great issues in a way that there is no other institution out there like it. It’s imperfect; it can’t do it all. But if we allow that relationship, that transatlantic relationship, to fray, then there will be nothing to take its place.

And so this institution, the Atlantic Council, is there made up from former leaders of all the Atlantic countries and business leaders of today, because the economic dynamics that flow into our place in the world, the geopolitical influences in the world, are significant and will continue to be significant.

Lloyd: You mention your rank as a sergeant at one point. Why don’t we just touch a little bit about your past? You were a Vietnam War veteran for a while. How long were you in the war?

Hagel: One of my brothers, Tom, who is two years younger than me and now a law school professor at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio… He is the legitimate professor in our professor family, and believes that I have set back American education by decades, that any respectable institution would be associated with me… But the reason I bring Tom up, not only is he a dear, dear and close and much beloved brother, but he was with me in Vietnam, side by side, in 1968. We spent 1968 together in the United States Army with an infantry battalion in the Mekong Delta.

Lloyd: And you were injured.

Hagel: Matter of fact, my brother and I were both wounded twice together, and he was wounded a third time, but, fortunately, the wounds were not wounds that inhibited our ability to go forward and live a good, complete life.

Lloyd: And then you were a businessman on the way to running for the Senate in 1986. Is that when you were elected?

Hagel: Well, I’ve done many things. Not been very good at any of them, obviously, that’s why I’ve had to shift professions so often, but I had been in and out of business over many years. I was President Reagan’s first deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration, and, after that, got enrolled in the cellular telephone business in 1982. We were, my partners and I, right at the front end of those days. And in 1988, it happens that I was the president of the World USO, then did that for three years and put together the first President Bush’s economic summit of the G7 in 1990. And then went back into business as the President of McCarthy Company in Omaha before I ran for the Senate, which is an investment banking company.

Lloyd: So twelve years in the Senate is about as long as time as you’ve been able to hold a job. Is that right?

Hagel: Surprisingly so. The night I was elected in November of 1996, my wife, Lilibet, asked me if I seriously thought I could keep one job for six years because, as you noted, I had never had a job for six years. So I was able to not only hold a job for six years, but got back to the good people in Nebraska and ask for a renewal on my contract and they gave me that in 2002. But I said at the beginning, when I first ran and started campaigning in 1995 for the Senate that I thought if people in Nebraska wanted me to represent them, that I thought twelve years, two terms, was enough. It was for me. Everybody has to make their own decisions.

But I think this business of politics in governance should be renewed with fresh energies and fresh ideas. And, again, experience is important. I’ve never been one to believe that you should force people out after a certain amount of terms are accepted. I think the presidency is right at two-term limit there. But that’s really up to the people, and that’s what democracy’s all about. They should decide. But, for me, twelve years, it was a privilege like none other I’d ever had and I’m sure will ever have in my life, and I enjoyed it.

It’s like anything else; you have your ups and downs. But to try to shake the world for the better and to try to influence the direction of the country, it doesn’t mean you’re right, is a tremendous, not only responsibility, but opportunity; and so it was a great twelve years.

Lloyd: And one more piece of your background, you are an Episcopalian now.

Hagel: Yes.

Lloyd: And just a little word about the faith piece of your life.

Hagel: Well, I don’t know if there is any one dimension of one’s life that’s more important. We are obviously multifaceted creatures, and we are rocked every day by different dynamics, we are shaped and molded by experiences, by the environment, by influences.

But the one core, piece of all that that never shifts, never changes, can’t change, is faith. And it is up to each individual, obviously, to decide how they want to shape that and have that shape them with their own beliefs and their own God, their own church, their own way. But it’s a indispensable requisite for a complete life.

Lloyd: I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that you’ve been a very independent thinker and actor in your positions of leadership. You were a harsh critic, as a Republican, of the war in Iraq, although you did vote for it in the beginning. And one point you said, “I took an oath of office to the Constitution. I didn’t take an oath to office to my party or to my president.” Those are pretty strong words.

Hagel: Well, I don’t they’re profound words. I don’t think they are any different than many people who had the opportunity to serve their country, whether it’s in Congress, in the military, or any dimension of service. When you take an oath to office, you take that oath to the Constitution. And I think we have veered off track over the last few years.

Lloyd: And I was going to say: You don’t think that’s unusual, but looking at what’s happened in the last number of years, to be an independent thinker and not a down-the-line partisan player is a fairly unusual thing.

Hagel: Well, unfortunately, it’s probably not been the norm over the last few years, and I never questioned the motivation or issues or any dimension of my colleagues’ reasons before their votes or their words.

All I can do, all any of us can do, is be responsible and accountable for your own. But we have allowed our country—and, we being the general group of leaders elected by the people of this country—to drift, I think, dangerously close to a part of our country that is the most unattractive. And that is defining who you are, defining everything in life by ideology.

And when you do that, you shut your receivers down. And it is transmitters twenty-four hours a day. You can’t learn, you can’t understand, you can’t educate yourself, you can’t govern if you do that. Because governing in a democracy is about consensus. And if we are governed by ideology, if we are governed by what our party gives you in the talking points, or by the president or the leader of your party, then you will take a country and a democracy off a cliff if that continues to happen.

And I understand the strength of parties and beliefs and ideology, and it’s important, but that produces tension, and tension’s good. But in the end, you can’t allow tension to dominate or capture the process.

In the end, consensus must be formed to govern, and the only way you do that—at least the way I think you do it, what I’ve seen how it could be done—is if you focus on what’s right for the country; if you make your evaluations, you cast your votes, you make your speeches based on what you think is the right direction for your country, not your party.

I think we will come back, I think we will self-correct. The world self-corrects, we’re going through a major global self-correction today, not just in economics, but in the tremendous diffusion of power that we’re seeing played out, the redefinition of a world order played out. But it really does have a lot to do with leadership.

Lloyd: Let’s touch on a few of the issues that you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, starting with the war in Iraq. At one point you—or at a number of points, you’ve likened that war in Vietnam and the dangers of getting into something you don’t know how to get out of. Do you think we’re moving in the right direction, now as we have set more or less a schedule to extricate ourselves?

Hagel: Well, if we frame up the realities of where we are today, which policy makers must, leaders must, we are now in Afghanistan for our eight year, in Iraq our seventh year.

Iraq will unwind, as there is now a timetable dictated by the facilities of a structure, and what is referenced as a Status of Forces Agreement that the United States government had signed with the Iraqi government. That, I think, as everyone recognizes, sets in motion the drawdown of American troops on a timeframe, on a timetable. If some of you notice the front page of the New York Times today, there’s a very significant story about all of this, as we have seen the violence escalate.

But we will unwind as we must unwind because, as I’ve said many times at the front end of this issue, it will be up to the Iraqi people to determine their future.

The Iraqi people will determine their future. It won’t be the United States; it won’t be our troops: we can help, we can shape, we can support, we can counsel. We’ve given an awful lot in Iraq; we’re still spending about twelve billion dollars a month there, still 145,000 troops there. We can’t sustain that.

When you go back and review what was told by the leadership of this country to the American people and the Congress how quickly we were going to be put of Iraq, how it wouldn’t cost the American people anything, and there were many few tough questions asked. So it will unwind.

I don’t know how it works out, but it’s beyond our capacity to control that. The real issues for the twenty-first century will be whether we recognize, the most powerful nation on Earth, whether we recognize the limitations of our power, recognizing the uncontrollables that are now in play. That’s why alliances are so important. That why the future of our country, of the world, is really going to be directed by alliances, spheres of influences, because we can’t do it all. We’re finding that out the hard way. Afghanistan is a different situation. Pakistan, Afghanistan…

Lloyd: Should we be in Afghanistan?

Hagel: Well, it is my opinion that we had no choice but to do what we did in the fall of 2001.

But where we think we made a huge mistake, and now we are paying a heavy price, is that we took our eye off of that effort when we moved to Iraq. We took troops out, intelligence out, leadership out, capability out, attention out, and that allowed a vacuum to develop, which we are now dealing with today.

At the same time, we’ve never ever dealt, I don’t think, in recent times, with the larger framework of strategic thinking. We really haven’t had strategic thinking.

We ricochet from crisis to crisis. We kind of work on this “Well, this is a good idea, don’t you think?” or whatever. “This is a threat.” We’ve used fear to control our thinking. We’ve come loose of our moorings of common sense and reality. And that’s produced a pretty dangerous situation.

I don’t blame all this on the United States. But… we carry a heavy burden, but I don’t think any American would want to change that. I don’t want my eighteen- and sixteen-year-old children to grow up in a world where America’s weak, where American doesn’t lead. And with that burden comes huge responsibility. We are seeing a world transform before our eyes. And we have got to get ahead of that as much as we can and understand how we use all of our instruments of power to deal with Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is not going to be in any way resolved with more troops. We need to have troops. We need to have security; we need to use the military. But that is part of the whole universe of components of instruments of power that great powers use: economic power, development, diplomatic power, alliance power, military power.

We’ve not been good at assembling those influences and then working them down through all this. These are regional security issues: the Middle East, for example, including Iraq, South Asia, as well as Central Asia, where we now the most troubled, dangerous spots in the world. Those will be resolved, at least getting to some high ground of resolution, not as a result of American military power or American leadership alone. They’ll be resolved as a result of bringing in all the powers, including Iran, finding common interests to define relationships just as we did after World War II, when we built coalitions of common interests, not defining relationships based on our differences. Based on our common interests.

They’ll be imperfect, they’ll be raggedy, but if we have any hope of bringing some stability, some security to the Middle East, that’s the way it’s going to have to be presented and focused on, and they… commensurate policy and strategic thinking. Regional. All of the countries in those areas have to be part of the resolution.

Lloyd: We’ve come a long way from the time of unilateralism, where it was going to be American power setting things right in the world. Sounds like you’re offering a very different picture of what it looks like.

Hagel: Well, I do, and, the twelve years I’ve been in the Senate, I have. I’ve given speeches on this and, of course, not everyone agrees with my reasoning or my way of thinking, and it doesn’t mean I’m right.

But, as I said here a couple of minutes ago, great powers usually have learned too late the limitations of their power. All powers have limitations; all great powers have limitations.

The wise powers that have sustained their ability to lead in the world of those who have understood that for some time; and history is complete with this and replete with examples. Britain—always an overreach, always going too far.

And the world, I think, today can be defined… And this is the beginning, this is the base of then working your policies and your place in the world from this. The world can be defined as a global community of 6 1/2 billion people, underpinned by a global economy. And I don’t think many people can question that.

We don’t need much evidence beyond this global financial crisis that has washed over every country in the world.

Now if that is the case, if that’s the world that we’re living in, it also presents new complications for our power, for our ability to solve problems, because it’s all interconnected.

For example, when you’re dealing with non-state actors, terrorists, let’s use Al-Qaeda. A great military power like the United States, how are you going to direct all that power? We have the former secretary of the Navy sitting up there in the front row; he’s had to deal with some of these things. With all these great armaments, what are you going to do? Go level Baghdad? Are you going to level Kabul?

This is a different kind of a world, where the definitions of the threat are now much more complicated. And the world is much more combustible.

Look at the Middle East: does anyone really believe that the Middle East is better off than it was eight years ago? Or ten years ago? Is it less dangerous? Is it less complicated? Is it less combustible? I don’t think so; I don’t think so. It’s just the opposite.

So we’ve got to work our way through with these great issues and these entanglements. And the other things we’ve got to understand, which we’ve not done very well, is if you look at the violence in Iraq today, front page in the New York Times, front page Washington Post, our secretary of state is over there today is trying to calm things in the way of trying to continue American support; that’s why she’s there. She personally brought the new ambassador, Ambassador Herald, over there. When you look at those complications, they’re religious complications; they’re ethnic complications; they’re cultural, historic complications.

The United States of American can’t solve that problem. Now, we can try to bring it to some high ground. Look at the Palestinian-Israeli issue: every one of those issues, whether it’s in Afghanistan, the whole of the Middle East, in Iraq, goes back to an issue far deeper and wider and complicated than just whether a nation should have nuclear weapons or not.

Lloyd: To move to a much simpler issue: the economy.

Hagel: That’s very simple.

Lloyd: We are obviously at an unprecedented moment, at least the particular shape of this, and certainly the most serious moment in the economy, world economy, since the Great Depression. Do you think, broadly, we’re moving in the right direction, doing the best we can? Would you have some counsel you’d like to give to the leadership at hand about things that we ought to be paying attention to better than we are?

Hagel: Well, I don’t think you can disconnect your question on the economy, the world economy, our focused economy, whether there’s the automobile industry, housing industry, financial services industry, from what’s going on in the world.

I start with this premise—and maybe it’s wrong—that the world is redefining itself. The world order is transforming like none other we’ve ever seen at any other time, at a rate of transformation unprecedented in the history of man. Now, if any of that is true, and I think it is true and I think there’s ample evidence of that, the economy drives that.

The economy drives the power of a nation. Aside from America’s Constitution, and our essential structure, being a nation of laws: next to those two things, our power has resided in our economic power. And what I say nation of laws and our Constitution, everything that’s emanated—what’s good about America—from that: religious freedom, individual rights. Now, we didn’t always have that right, half of the people in this church 95 years ago couldn’t vote in America, and I constantly remind some of my friends who want to use American 2009 as the role model. Well, why can’t Russia be like us? Why can’t Ukraine, why can’t eastern European nations, be like us? Well, we had to make some corrections. I doubt if Barack Obama would be in the White House today if we would not have had the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act in the Sixties. So we’ve had to fix some problems along the way and we’re not done.

Well, my point in bringing that out is because everything that we is emanated from that culture, that system, that belief in shrine in the Constitution, and from that flowed the rest of it.

Our economy has essentially been the guarantor of our rights. It’s been the guarantor of our power. Without economic choices, with options, it’s like each one of us, if we don’t have any money, your options are probably pretty limited. You’re going to lose your house; you’re probably not going to send your kids to school. It’s fundamental. So what we’re seeing in the world today, and your question about what advice I might give or are we doing it the right way, if you start with the framework that I have presented, the second part of that is again the uncontrollables in all of this.

And no industry, no institution, no structure can last forever without renewal, without revitalization, without recognizing the market. And I use the market in the big generic sense, the world is a market, I mean, everything we do and say and but… Religion, there’s a market place for religion. And the world is a market, and we’ve got to adjust to make our institutions relevant and our policies to that new emerging market.

So I think what the administration is doing, it’s imperfect, they’re going to make mistakes, they have made mistakes, but when you’re dealing in a world where we have never been before, and the phraseology of uncharted waters, it is uncharted waters, and if there’s somebody wise enough in America to have the answer on this, I wish they’d come forward. I’ve not found that easy answer from one wise person. Even Warren Buffett has lost money and hasn’t figured this out. But we’ll work our way through it.

The reason we’ll work our way through is because this self-correction is historic, these things come in evolutionary times, they come throughout the history of man, whether it’s the environment, the little Ice Age, the heating up, it’s the world.

The real issue is, do we have the system, do we have the structure, do we have the capacity within our culture and our society to adjust? The last point I’d make on this, and I’ve used this before and I talk about it in my book… The great historian, Arnold Toynbee, once said that every civilization has been defined by one simple equation and that is challenge, response.

Challenge, response. How does every civilization, every generation, respond to the challenge of its time? Every generation has challenges. Every civilization has many challenges. How we respond is really the issue. So I think the Obama administration, the Congress, where we’re going it’s imperfect, but that’s the world we live in, we’re all imperfect, is generally moving to the right point, because, after all, this is about one thing.

And I was there last year when we voted the TARP moneys in and spent a lot of time in those issues. It’s about one thing: it’s injecting confidence, injecting confidence in the markets, in the system, in the process. And that’s what all of this effort is about: bringing new confidence to consumers, to investors, opening up credit markets, to every component of our economy. We will do that.

Lloyd: You raise the key point, is our system nimble enough and creative enough and courageous enough to make pretty drastic changes? Because, as you point out, things are moving very fast, comparatively, in just about every area from war to the danger of the dispersement of nuclear weapons to energy crisis to health care crisis to you name it.

Just take one, for example: global climate change. The big question seems to be, Can we respond fast enough? Does our political system have the capacity to make the kinds of hard decisions that need to be made in the short term—the next five years, the next ten years—to get us on a course that isn’t going to do permanent damage to the planet? What’s your sense of that?

Hagel: Well, I think that the great debate on climate change, which is a relevant and important debate, fits within the great arc of all these challenges that we—the world faces today. When you look at the challenges America faces, every one of these challenges are global, and they’re not indigenous to us, they’re not special or unique to us.

It’s everybody, whether it’s pandemic health issues that could come across the border from Mexico with the flu issue, AIDS, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, energy, extremism, terrorism, economic issues, and to get to the environmental issue.

So my point is, I don’t think you can come at this issue, climate issue in the environment, by disconnecting it to the rest of the issues. So what do you do? To answer your question, do we have all the qualities and virtues to deal with it?

I think we do and I’ll tell you why, because history is clear on this point as well. There’s always a confluence of events and dynamics that will come together, and they’re usually twice in a hundred years. And when that occurs, those moments present tremendous opportunity, because the greatest weight upon a leader’s shoulders, aside from the challenges that he or she faces, is the status quo.

The status quo is the mightiest of all forces that will pull you down when you see a problem, when you see out on the horizon that problem looming, and you are headed straight for it and we’re not dealing with it, because, whether it’s Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac—and I was the first one in the Congress to start warning about Fannie and Freddie years ago at my own legislation, people would say, “Well, what’s the problem? There’s no problem. Everyone’s doing great. Everyone’s making money. People are buying houses. Why do you have to look down into something? Why do you have to stir something up? Why do you have to get involved in something that’s not a problem?”

Well, that status quo pulls you down. There is no status quo at a time of crisis, at a time of great challenge. That is all about finding a solution. And with all this confluence of economic issues and all the other issues that I’ve talked about, the environment’s part of that and cannot be separated.

You can’t separate the environment from energy use. You can’t separate the issue on climate change, policy, whatever we’re going to do about it from the economy. So it has to be a balance. But it opens an opportunity up to deal with it. I think you’ll see in this Congress—this Congress being, as everyone knows, two years (this year and next year), you will see some kind of climate change legislation that will be passed.

As you know, the president has made a big issue. But it must accommodate, it goes back to that word I talked about earlier, a consensus. No one person, no one body, of course, this is the point of our Constitution, can dictate. A president can’t say, “We’re going to do this.” Or a Congress can’t say, “We’re going to do this.” So, consensus has to be arrived at. Do we have the capacity? Sure, we have the capacity. Do we have the innovation of the brains? Absolutely. Do we have the structure, the resources? Yes.

Lloyd: One more question I’m going to ask, and then we’re going to take some questions from the audience, and Deryl will be going around to collect questions from you all. A quick word, if that’s possible, about the immigration challenge, something that you have a lot to say about. There does seem to be in the last few years, I’m thinking you’ve used the word “xenophobia” at one point, or a sense of real fear of the other, people who are different from us, a fear that they’re going to do something to the American way of life. You think there’s a way for us to find a balance to approach to immigration, and what do you see to be the urgency in our facing this issue?

Hagel: Well, there is an urgency for two reasons. One is that it’s, no question, a security issue. Second, it’s a social issue. And, actually three… And third, it’s an economic issue. And that universe, and we’re not sure how many undocumented aliens there are out there. We think twelve million, maybe fifteen, we don’t know.

You might know that it was my bill that passed the Senate about three years ago. It was a bipartisan bill. We got sixty-some votes on it. The House passed the bill, but it really wasn’t an immigration reform bill. It was essentially a border security bill, which… Border security is one thing and, obviously, the most significant responsibility of a leader is the security of the nation. I don’t think anybody questions that.

But enhancing your border security doesn’t fix the issue of immigration reform. Because immigration reform in this country right now is all about that universe of twelve million undocumented aliens.

What do you do about that issue? And I said, and it passed in my bill with bipartisan support, you’ve got to accept the reality of where we are. And any time you deal with these imperfect problems (and they’re all imperfect) you will produce an imperfect answer. And I think you’ve got to focus on that issue, and we have as system that gave those in this country opportunities to step forward and start developing a path toward some legal status in this country.

Law enforcement likes that, because law enforcement can focus on the bad guys. It’s a social problem too, as much as anything, because we Americans have to answer to ourselves when we look at each other and we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, “Wait a minute. How did this great fabric come together called America, and who among us”—I used to kid my friend, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, I told Ben, I said, “You’re probably the only real American here,” but I said, “Even you had to come down to the Aleutian Islands in a canoe.” So, you know, Americans, what does that mean?

So we all come from very cat-and-dog background which is, I think, the strength of our country and the diversity. So it’s a social issue. What are we going to do about this? An economic issue, clearly, I don’t have to recite the list of industries in this country that would be in pretty difficult shape (the also means the comfort of many Americans), in our economy if we didn’t resolve it. It needs to be addressed; it needs to be addressed soon, and they need to work on it. I know the president, the Congress is dealing with an agenda of immense proportions, many issues. But this is fundamental, because it cuts right to the core in the social fabric of who we are.

Lloyd: Let’s go to questions. Deryl.

Question #1: One of the issues much in the news this past week was the release, the Obama’s administration release, of torture memos written under the Bush administration. This question is, “How does the U.S. move ahead regarding torture?”

Hagel: Regarding what?

Question #1: “How does the U.S. move ahead regarding torture?”

Hagel: Torture. Well, first, it has been my position on this and I’ve been quiet clear on this when I was in the Senate, I was in the Intelligence Committee the last six years, that torture is unacceptable. That’s it. We got ourselves dangerously off course.

The release of these legal memos is some evidence of how dangerously off course we got. When you have to event legal reasons to give our intelligence agencies and their personnel some legal justification to, let’s say, waterboard someone—and, by the way, many of you know waterboarding was prosecuted as a war crime at the Nuremberg Trials. I mean, we executed people for doing that. And it tells you about the fraying of a social contract and fiber of a contract when you start doing it.

One of the most magnificent dimensions of our country over the last 250 years, is that, almost in every case… Now, I know in World War II the Japanese internment camps, different, so on. Lincoln did some things during the Civil War.

But aside from really those two, and there are other examples, this country has never given up or bargained away or justified away the individual rights enshrines in the Constitution in a trade for more security. We’ve not done that. We don’t need to do that.

When you lose your moral compass and you lose the base of who you are as a people as you define yourself down into the same muck of the standards of your enemy, then you’ve lost something that you may never regain in this society. This needs to be addressed.

And I was very clear on that, and I think that it’s a hard call on the memos. I think Secretary Gates said it probably as realistically as anyone. Those memos were going to come out, most likely, because I think most people know ACLU had filed suit on this using the Freedom of Information Act. I just talked to Dianne Feinstein yesterday, who, as you know, is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. As you know, they are undergoing a classified study, investigation now, some of that they’ll probably declassify.

But she asked me, interestingly enough, if I would accept or okay her writing about declassification of some letters that she and I wrote a few years ago on these things. And Senator Feinstein and I were pretty clear on these issues.

And I think we will self-correct. We need to self-correct. We undermine our position in the world when we do these kinds of things. And there’s a real legitimate question here, and some in this audience have probably had some very close familiarity with these issues, but interrogation techniques themselves, there’s a very clear question on whether you get information and intelligence that’s correct, that’s worthy by torturing people. There’s a significant body of evidence that shows you do not. And I fall on that side of the ledger.

Question 2: This question follows generally on that one. “Can morality be a central part of a realistic foreign policy?”

Hagel: Well, that’s a very important question. In my opinion, when you talk about morality, you have to always be a little careful in politics. You have the Moral Majority and what does all that mean? That I’m more moral than you? Because my position on whatever social issue is, I’m more moral than you? I don’t use that term, or rarely use that term in politics, because I don’t think that has a role in governing.

But this point here, your question is an important question, because, again, I go back to at least the limited experience I’ve had in the Army, in combat, in the Senate, in the Intelligence Committee, different things, been all over the world.

I think the so-called base of morality or belief, or conducting yourself in an enhanced way that keeps you above the lowest common denominator of conduct is always important, and always has to be connected to policy.

A nation will always respond in its own self-interest. Sovereign nations do that, must do that. But that doesn’t mean that you disconnect from standards—and I think standards is a better word than morality—from standards of conduct. And you need to hold true to those standards of conduct, because, in my opinion, what you will see, as I have said already, you’ll see a fraying of society and the margins of error will decrease, and you will just keep pushing further and further out in what’s acceptable.

The last point I’d make on this, and I think this is also part of the issue we’re dealing with, what happened in the economy… Over the last, I don’t know, maybe the last generation, I don’t know enough about it, I’m quickly out of my depth here, but I know what I believe and I know what I’ve seen. Our society has unfortunately, in too many cases, just blown right out the ethical boundaries, and we play on the edge of the legal boundaries. So, let’s just push it as far as you can without being indicted.

That’s not good enough for this country. That’s not good enough. The ethical boundary should be the boundary. What’s ethical? What’s right? What’s the standard? If you want to use moral, use moral. We know there isn’t a person, unless there’s a real problem with the individual, that doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong. Of course we know the difference between right and wrong.

And we can talk ourselves into anything. We can talk ourselves out of anything. And we can get all the legal council memorandums and all these smart lawyers to say, “Yes, you can torture,” because all these things override the morality, or however way you want to say, of the other side… ethics, in our daily lives, in our policy, in our strategy.

Truly last point on this, you know, history is very clear on this the last one hundred years. German prisoners of war, other nations that we fought, World War I, World War II, always wanted, if they were going to be taken prisoner by the Americans. Sure, we treat them better, the prisoners of war, than anybody else. But we held to a standard of decency, of humanity. The consequence of that, and the reservoir of good will that built, and I have friends who were prisoners of war in World War II who were in Colorado, German friends, and how that built back into the image of America… They aspired to be, these countries aspired to be who we were. Not in every way, because we’re not perfect. And so we shouldn’t give that up. No way can we give that up, because it is the soul of who we are.

Question #3: Education has been a particular interest of yours. What needs to be done to get America get back on par with other industrialized nations, particularly in regards to science and technology?

Lloyd: And you have to do this quickly.

Hagel: I talk about that in my book, by the way, and in some detail. In the interest of time, I’d say, Tom Friedman had a very good column in the New York Times this week on this. Reassess who we are, what we want, the realities of the challenges of today, knowing full well, and I strongly support Obama on this, it’s education. Next to education… Let me put it this way: next to parents, education is critical. Faith is in that as well. But we have got to reassess, restructure, redevelop, an education system that prepares the young people for the kind of world they’re living in today. We’ve done a miserable job over the last, I think literally, fifty years on this, especially the last twenty years.

Lloyd: This has been a wonderful conversation. I hope you all will join with us next week when we have with us James Carroll, the well-known writer and Boston Globe columnist, one of the finest commentators on faith and public life around with a new book called Practicing Catholicism, but it’s really about what’s happening to Christianity in America.

For now, if you’d like, you can join Senator Hagel in the west end of the cathedral where he’ll be signing copies of his books and there’s coffee there, as well. But by all means be back at 11:15 as we begin our service.

Please join me now in thanking Senator Hagel.

Hagel: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.