I rambling, but there must be class
tomorrow, I think so, but you've
opened up a very important area of
discussion and they're all very
legitimate questions, and I've obviously
don't have time to address everything,
but I'm gonna try to give you a general
answer. The quick answer to you would be
a question back to you,
so what do you think we should do? Not
trade? China is going to be, for example a
great power with or without the United
States. [Student]: I know that. [Hagel]: So, aren't we far better off to try to influence the
direction of China and policy and trade,
as well as Russia and others, versus just
not deal with them. My answer is yes, but
trade is complicated in the sense that
it takes in capital, your point: labor, 
cheap labor. We have, the United States
interests in operations all over the
globe, and there are foreign interest in
here in the United States I mentioned
some of the numbers on this. They went up
almost 30% last year for investment here,
that means a Toyota plant in Tennessee
for example, that means more people -
working Americans (get) very good benefits and
very good wages. The world is now
interconnected into a global economy,
we're not going to unwind that. You ask
the question: how do we compete? We
don't have a choice. I mean even if we
wanted a choice, we don't have a choice
because we are now completely
interconnected into everything. Look at
energy, that's a very clear example we're
60 percent dependent on foreign oil and
that goes up
every year, so we must compete.
We've done very well at competing, and
the ebb and flow of trade balances are
not in my opinion, and you've read
Freedman you know it's not in his
opinion, and Greenspan and some
people who are pretty smart at this, that
that flows and ebbs and it goes up and
down. The real issue is are we going to
be able to, the essence of your I think
all your questions, compete in this world?
My answer is yes, we invented it all, and
we are the most productive nation on
earth. Do we have issues to deal with
cheap labor in some of these countries
yes, but for example China you could quit
trading with China today on apparel,
on tech stuff - that wouldn't change anything. You know why? Because we just buy more
from the Philippines and Vietnam and
South America, because we are no longer
competitive in this country in those
goods. The rule the law of comparative
advantage has been around longer than
any of us, longer than America, and that
rule of comparative advantage is very
clear - the nations and industries that
can compete and have an advantage, a
comparative advantage, they will survive.
That's why we have moved in this
country to high tech jobs, high
information jobs, matter of fact we don't
have enough Americans to fill those jobs.
We don't have enough Americans to fill them. That's the way you compete, keep moving
up toward better paying jobs, high-end
jobs. This is the point that I quoted in
Tom Friedman or not Tom Friedman, but
David Brooks in New York Times, when he
was talking about the disparity between
college-educated people in america and
those that are not. That chasm, that's
developing societally is very very
difficult because where we're going with
that, not only as a societal problem
which will be a big problem, is that
we're going to have to rely on
outside talent more and more and more.
Just like we're relying more and more on
outside oil, to come in and fill
these high tech, high information good
jobs, competitive jobs in this country
because we're not producing enough
mathematicians, scientists, high-end job
people - we are not producing. So that's the
way you compete, and that's why I tried
it in my remarks tonight to tie all this
together in a way that hopefully didn't
confuse everybody, but in a way to give
you at least a sense of your question, of
how all this does relate? I also said in
my speech that we cannot unintentionally
isolate ourselves in the world, and by
that, I mean if we do that because of Mel
Laird's comments in quoting Nixon in
1969: "America cannot bear the burden from every country in the world." We can't
continue to spend the kind of money
we're spending in the Middle East, in
Iraq, and so on I didn't even get into
how we're ruining our military and our
National Guard in the reserves; and
that's an that's another lecture, but all
of it connects because the world is
interconnected, as is our society, but
you're onto a big piece, thank you.
Yes? [Question]: Hi, my name is Drew, I have a question
regarding some of the comments you made in June, on the Sunday morning talk
shows. You said that we are losing the war
in Iraq and that we wouldn't win it
unless we had two to three times as many
troops. I was wondering, I know I agree
with you that's really important to
speak out against policies that we
disagree with regardless of partisan
affiliation, but I was wondering what as
a US senator you've done legislatively
to try and stop, what I consider, the Iraq
debacle? [Hagel]: Okay well your quotes weren't exactly right, but let me thread
them together. In a US News and World
Report interview a few months ago, I said
we were not winning
in Iraq, and I and I said take any
measurement of where we are in Iraq, and
without going into all of that,
that's what I was referring to and how I
measured it and because of insurgencies,
attacks up, less oil being produced, and
even when we got there two years ago
more deaths, more destruction, more
civilian problems, less success on the
Iraqi training side, more corruption in
the government than we've ever seen, so
in other dozen issues, and that's what I
base my analysis on. Now the other part
of that quote, I said as others have said
that we went into Iraq was far too
small force. We have more
soldiers in Iraq today, than we had when
we went into Iraq at the beginning of
the invasion. We have about 161,000
troops in Iraq today. Think of it this
way, when we displace Saddam Hussein from
Kuwait in 1991, we had 550,000
troops in Kuwait just to push Saddam, not
all of his troops, but it's good many
troops out of Kuwait up, back into
Iraq. 550,000 troops, while we went into Iraq with about a
hundred and fifty to a hundred and sixty
thousand troops, not just to attack Iraq,
but to occupy Iraq.
A country is the size of California with
27 million people, and that was my point
about how we never had enough troops
going in. General Shinseki, who was then
chief of staff the United States Army,
said in open hearings before the
invasion of Iraq, when he was asked I
think by the Chairman of the Committee
German Warner, how many American troops
would it take
not only to attack, but to occupy Iraq
and bring stability Iraq? General
Shinseki said hundreds of thousands of
American troops would be required. About
48 hours, I'm not sure it was that, the
Secretary of Defense Mr. Rumsfeld, the
Deputy Secretary of Defense Mr.
Wolfowitz dismissed it as hilarious, as
folly. What does this general know,
this four-star General Chief of Staff of the
Army, been in the Army 35 years, how could
he possibly say to such an outrageous
thing? So, I think you know the
history of what happened to Shinseki, he
was gone. The civilian leadership, the
military didn't listen to the generals
and so when we got there, it was with too
few people, of course what was going to
happen happened. We had no plans, no
preparation, no structure, and not enough
people, so now the other part of your
question: what have I done lately? Well
to start with, I probably was the first
senator to start even asking the
questions back in 2002 about this, in
committee, in speeches, meeting with the
White House, meeting with RICE, meeting
with Powell, meeting with Defense
Department people, and questioning them,
asking them: Do we know what we're doing?  Do we have plans? Have you have you thought
through this, the consequences? Where's
this going? Who's going to govern? How
much is it gonna cost? I know you can't
know everything, I've continued to ask
the questions, I've continued to provide
our senior officials with my thoughts
and analysis on what we can do.
Senator Jack Reed and I are the sponsors
of enlarging our force structure by
30,000 new Army billets and 10,000 more
marine boats. I don't think our army
is big enough today, our force structure
today, our American forces are in over
160 countries today. We are in more
countries today with more commitments
than any time since World War 2, with
by far the smallest force structure
we've ever had since World War 2. Now
you can say: Yeah, but the satellites and
the planes and sophistication. That's
true, but all all these smart guys who
wanted to go to Iraq said to me the same
thing: we have smart bombs, senator. That's true and good, that saves lives, but
somebody's got to be on the ground in
Mosul and in Kurds and Baghdad. Who was
going to secure the pipelines? Who is
going to make sure they don't raid the
armories? And indiscriminate kidnapping
that's going on? Who's gonna do that? The
smart bombs can't do it. So, I've continued
to work for an increased enhanced force
structure, as well as legislation on
increased budget numbers, and I have made
it very clear to the White House what I
think about the Iraqi policy, and they've
got to make some tough choices on this,
but I feel that I've participated, and
continue to participate about as much as
any United States Senator has or can on
this and I'll continue to do that. One
more (question).
[Question]: Sen Hagel, my name is Dean Kleckner I'm a
retired farmer. [Hagel]: Hello, Dean.
Well, you're more than that, you're one of the great agricultural leaders in this
country. [Question]: Well thank you, I agree
with you on trade, but I'm not going to
talk a lot. I wrote a question down
before you mentioned Iran, and and then
you did talk about any in Iran in your  remarks. The president of Iran, a
young - fairly young, fairly new, quite
radical president, a few days ago - a
couple times he said: Israel should be
eliminated from the face of the earth,
they should be blotted out. I mean, my
words are paraphrasing him, I think, I
think he believes it, as do many in that
part of the world. I've happened to been
Israel several times, perhaps not as
often as you have, I support Israel. A
good Lutheran like me supporting Israel,
but that's really how it is. Now you said: we
should engage Iran in conversation and
talks, and I see nothing wrong with that,
however it seems to me that people like
that, when we engage them in talks, they
simply keep on building their nuclear
facilities, they're burying them,
I don't think that's going to be for
peaceful means, but who knows, but I
believe that they believe as long as
we're talking - that's a sign of weakness.
Now your Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Senator Lugar shares that if
you censure Iran on this, shake your
finger at them and cluck-cluck, they will or
he may say well, but you'll keep on doing
what you're doing and they'll see it as a
sign of weakness. Where am I wrong? What would you do rather than
talk or nothing, or isn't it a sign of
weakness? Do they perceive it of you?
Just react to what I'm saying now. [Hagel]: Well, just as I said in my speech Dean,
I said the same thing essentially you
did about how dangerous Iran is. I talked
about how they want to destroy Israel, I
talked about their nuclear weapons, I
talked about their support of terrorist
organizations, no question about that, but
then it comes to the hard part. Do not
talk radio, not talk speeches, how do you
deal with it? This is an immensely
powerful country, now we don't have any
troops left, so I don't think invading is
gonna work because literally, we don't
have any. The latest casualty is
coming out of Iraq, these guys have
been, they're on their third tours, and we
aren't going to have any National Guard
and Reserve left here in a couple years, and by the way, that's not my evaluation. That
is the evaluation of three four-star
generals who just came back from Iraq,
but your question of how you deal with
them? Well it is a tough issue, and I
don't know anybody's talking about cluck
clucking, matter of fact, we do have
sanctions on Iran. I don't know if you're
aware that. We have and have had
sanctions on Iran for some time, but
they're independent and unilateral
sanctions which I don't think ever work.
I mean our policy in Cuba has been
very successful for years, and all we've
isolated there is ourselves - we didn't
isolate Castro and he's outlived what,
eight presidents? We might want to even
just review our policy there, but Iran is
a far more dangerous issue just as you
you noted. Their position on Israel
that's not because some new, outrageous
president has been elected. That's always
been their position, so what do you do?
Well first, I think you need to have some
regional consensus here and some allies
with us on it, not just take Germany
and France and England, which we've been
using them to negotiate with Iran as our
surrogates, but we're holding back
and saying: no, we're not going to talk to
them. I don't think, I don't think that's
the answer. It hasn't produced anything. The fact is we know where they're going
with their nuclear development, so we need to get inside. We need to have some ability to
deal with it. We don't even have any
intelligence capability in there.
It's like North Korea, we have no idea
really what's going on in North Korea or
Iran because what we've isolated
ourselves. Now, most of our allies have
diplomatic relations with Iran, so we
have to get our intelligence through our
allies. They want some things, there are
some things the Iranians want, and
partly as they want some recognition
from the United States. We've got a lot
of things in our favor here, we've got a
lot of leverage in our favor, but with
Iraq, with the Palestinian-Israeli issue,
with Syria
right on I think a very dangerous edge,
with poor King Abdullah of Jordan caught
right in the middle. He could
go at any time, the Saudi government could
go down to the radical extremists. My point
earlier in my speech, Dean, about the
regionalization context of issue, I don't
think you can deal with, as I said in my
speech: Iran, Iraq, Israeli-Palestinian
problem, any of these things in vacuums.
They are all interconnected, so I think
we have to engage them. I think we have
to sit down with them, we have to find
out what is it that you want, let's see
if we can make some progress to
influence the inside, because the
alternative being is having no influence.
Unless you want a neutral, I mean I
suppose there's some who think that
might be a good idea, there is no other
alternative here and the Iranians have
more influence in Iraq today than any
nation, and probably will have continued there. The Iranians have put more than a
million sheas in in Iraq over the last
two years, and with their influence it is
going to be very, very difficult
to see Iraq come out of this the way
we would like it and hoped it would, but
I think the wiser course thing is to,
is to deal with it, is to engage it. 
As I said in my speech, I didn't mean we
give up anything, your point about will
they see it as weakness? They don't see
it as weakness, they don't see its
weakness to engage, but again where are
the alternatives? There are no
happy options here, just like in Iraq.
There are no good alternatives, I
talked in my speech, Dean, about
uncontrollables. I talked at the
beginning of my speech about the most
difficult problems future leaders are
going to have in the world, I was talking
about future presidents, educators, every
Institute, and I said the reason for that
is the uncontrollables that they're
going to be faced with like none other
in the history of man. This is one of
those kinds of uncontrollables. When
you're talking about weapons of mass
destruction, you don't have many, you
don't have many times up at bat there, and
as I said in my speech, the margins of
error are very small now, and I think we're
smarter to get into the inside where we
can try to influence this. Is it easy? No.
Is it difficult? Yes. Are there
guarantees? No. Well, I sure as hell think
there is a guarantee if you do it the
other way, and all you do is you make
the world more dangerous, and then you
may then face the real
tough issue of a confirmation in the
Middle East because the Iranians will
then have the ability, they don't have it
now, I don't think they're close to it,
they will then have the ability to have
that nuclear capacity and we don't. Just
say this in North Korea, and we've got to
do everything we can
and not let that happen, and I understand
your frustration, Dean. I'm frustrated too,
but I think these are days that call for
clear, wise, careful leadership. Thank you
all very much.
*applause*
[Host]: Please join me again in thanking the
senator for visiting Iowa State
University. [Hagel]: Thanks Jeff, thank you. *applause*
[Host]: If
I could indulge you for just a moment,
it's my pleasure to call to the podium
Ambassador Manett and Mr. Phelps for
special presentation to the senator.
[Ambassador]: Thank you, all right we good? YI suppose we should have the
ladies up here too [Mr. Phelps]: It's all right. [Amb. Manett]: We'll do them both. [Hagel]: Nice to have a
little Iowa State Hardware. Yeah, get the only smart ones up here. [Manett]: That's right.
[Phelps]: This is two deserved plaques for the 2005 Manett-Phelps Lecture in Political
Science.
Senator Chuck Hagel, thank you very much.
Please join us for the reception that
follows, thank you.
