Good morning. Im christopher prebrle, the Vice President for defense and Foreign Policy studies here at the cato institute. Thank you for being here today and thank you also to our outstanding conference staff here at cato who do such a terrific job organizing our many events. Welcome also to those of you watching on cspan and online at cato. Org. Following the september 11th terrorist attacks in october 2001 the United States initiated combat operations against al qaeda targets inside of afghanistan and against the taliban government that had harbored the terrorists there. In the ensuing 16 years u. S. Goals have changed marginally, but they typically include defeating al qaeda and other terrorist groups with global reach, strengthening the Afghan Government, and Security Forces to prevent the taliban from retaking political power and denying terrorists a safe haven. Assessments of our progress to date are mixed at best. In june secretary of Defense James Mattis stated, we are not winning in afghanistan right now. One could say its not for lack of effort. Estimates of what weve spent range from 840 billion to over 2 trillion plus over 2,300 u. S. Troops killed and another 20,000 wounded. A recent report by the special Inspector General for afghan reconstruction noted that the United States had spent 70 billion alone over 16 years to train afghan Security Forces but concluded that the effort had been hampered by corruption and inadequate oversight. And the Afghan Government is struggling to defeat the taliban. Several years ago the government controlled about 70 of the country. Today that figure is down to about 60 . In late august of course President Trump announced a modest u. S. Troop surge and pledged to turn things around. In his speech the president acknowledged that americans were weary of war without victory. Hes right. Many americans seem unwilling to walk away. But an equal number or so are reluctant to continue the war indefinitely. U. S. Strategy reflecting the publics mood remains a work in progress. What better time, then, to discuss the way forward in afghanistan . Can the United States win as President Trump promised to do and at what cost . If outright victory is unrealistic or too costly, can a negotiated settlement bring peace to afghanistan . What are the risks of u. S. Withdrawal . Can america secure our vital interests without a permanent presence in the region . Or should we be prepared for an openended commitment along the lines of the decadeslong american deployments in germany, japan, and south korea . We have an excellent panel here today to consider these and other questions. Our first speaker is u. S. Army major maxwell pappas. A 2006 graduate of the u. S. Military academy at west point, major pappas served a combat tour in iraq from late 2007 to early 2009 followed by three combat tours in afghanistan in 2010, 2011, and 2013. Pappas completed Army Ranger Training in 2007 and was then assigned to the 25th Infantry Division during the iraq surge. He went to Zabul Province in afghanistan as a member of provincial Reconstruction Team in 2010, returned to the states to complete additional training at fort bening, georgia and was then assigned to the 10th Mountain Division where he commanded troops in the 1st squadron 89th cavalry regiment in kandahar process and paktika province in afghanistan. Major pappas earned a masters degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University in 2016 and he graduated from the armys command at general Staff College at fort leavenworth, kansas earlier this year. Hes currently the executive officer of the 4th battalion 3rd infantry regiment also known as the old guard at arlington cemetery. Following major pappass remarks well hear from our three other distinguished panelists. Michael ohanlon is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at the brookings institution. Hes also director of research for the Foreign Policy program at brookings and an adjunct professor at columbia, princeton, and syracuse universities and the university of denver. Hes a member of the International Institute for strategic studies and was a member of the external Advisory Board to the Central Intelligence agency from 2011 to 2012. Mike is the author of many books including the future of land warfare pushed published in 2013. Healing the wounded giant maintaining military preeminence while cutting the Defense Budget 2013. And toughing it out in afghanistan, published in twts. Hes also written three marshall papers. A new monograph series from brookings Foreign Policy program. Id like to put in a special plug for beyond nato a new Security Architecture for Eastern Europe which was published earlier this year. Dr. Ohanlon has published several hundred op edds in all the major newspapers and since september 11th, 2001 has appeared on television or radio more than 3,000 times. So if he looks familiar to you, he should. Mike earned a ph. D. In Public International affairs from princeton. Our second speaker today is stephen biddle, professor of Political Science and International Affairs at my alma mater, George Washington university. Hes published widely, writing mostly about how modern social science can inform defense policy. His book military power explaining victory and defeat in modern battle 3ub8d by princeton in 2004 won four prizes including harvards huntington prize and the council on Foreign Relations arthur ross award silver medal. Hes also published articles in all the leading jushlgz including international security, foreign affairs, survival, and the journal of strategic studies and shorter articles in the new york times, washington post, wall street journal, and many others. Professor biddle has testified many times before congress including on the wars in iraq and afghanistan. In 2007 he served on general david petraeuss joint Strategic Assessment Team in baghdad. On general stanley mcchrystals initial Assessment Team in kabul in 2009. And as a Senior Adviser to general petraeuss Central Command assessment steam in washington in 2008 and 2009. He was awarded the u. S. Army superior civilian Service Medal in 2003 and 2006 and was presented with the u. S. Army commanders award for Public Service in baghdad in 2007. Steve holds a ph. D. From hafshds. Our final speaker today is my colleague erik goepner, a visiting Research Fellow in catos defense and Foreign Policy studies department. Retired colonel in the u. S. Air force his assignments included unit commands in afghanistan, iraq, and the pacific region. His Research Interests including national security, civil war, terrorism, and trauma. He has published in the washington post, parameters question, newsweek and the National Interest among other outlets. Erik is a doctoral candidate at jooinl George Mason School of government. He received m. A. S from George Washington university and the air command and Staff College. He is the coauthor with trevor thrall of two cato papers including step back lessons for u. S. Foreign policy from the failed war on terror which is available in hard copy for those of you here in attendance and online for those of you watching from afar. I should also note that weve made available in the foia recent articles on afghanistan by mike ohappen lop and steoh steve biddle. Erik, who deserves all thec would like to begin by telling a firsthand story about major pappass exploits in afghanistan and then major pappas will take it. Good morning to all. Major pappas and i served together in afghanistan. 2010 youre in southern afghanistan for those fands of can the deliverance imagine the ban joez playing out in the distance. 8 30 at night. Long duty days behind us. And were playing the worlds best video game for a combat setting, which is call of duty. Correct. Major pappas is winning. Its him, me, and two other colleagues. And in comes the senior nco from our operations center. And he announces theyve detected three insurgents, 1,200 meters outside of our base, implanting an i. E. D. , putting a bomb in the road. And we go through the checklist of Different Things we could do and none of them make any sense because theyre not going to get there in time. May cause civilian casualties for villagers that live nearby or otherwise our presence would be announced too early and they would be gone. So max comes up with what would be a completely technically unsound plan for anybody if it werent max. The plan is this. We know we have three insurgents weve identified. So im going to take a team of myself and three guys. Were going to go out with four against an enemy force that we know has at least three and we assume of course theres going to be other insurgents out there kind of screening their position for them. But because max is max i readily agree and say why dont you guys go do that . Its now 8 30 at night, pitch black, max is going to don his 6 65 pounds of gear on him. Nightvision goggles. You have zero depth perception. Max is going to traverse more than a mile because you cant go in a straight mile toward the enemy. That would be unsound. Hes going to go up and down a river bed. About 2 3 of the way. Because i should tell you im where old men go in combat, which is the operations center. So im watching all this on our thermal iming device. And i watch max cruising along, cruising along and were about 2 3 of the way to making contact with the enemy force, and i see max leave two of his teammates. Now its max and one man going against three known insurgents. Im not going to bother asking him any questions because i figure his stress level is probably pretty high. Hes running with 6 350u7bds of gear dead of night and he knows hes about to have a Lethal Encounter with three other human beings. Shortly thereafter, obviously the stillness of the zabul summer night erupts. When the night concludes max and his team have wounded one insurge insurgent. Theyve detained a second insurgent. Third one got away to fight another day. Weve safely detonated the i. E. D. So no harm will come to afghans or American Forces and theres no harm whatsoever to u. S. Force thats night. May i introduce the audacious and youll soon find out intelligent maxwell pappas, major u. S. Army. [ applause ] thanks a lot for the introduction. I hope i can absolutely live up to that hype. Im here first of all as a citizen here to discuss some of my experiences, 18 months total, in afghanistan. In order to share kind of a tactical perspective, highlight some of the challenges in place implementing the policies we discuss pd in places like this when it gets down to the person on the ground, its not necessarily as clean and easy to do as we like to think it is sometimes at the higher levels. Anything i discuss here doesnt represent any official views of the army, department of the defense. I wanted to start off with just that. What ill say is anybody whos pretty well versed in Foreign Policy right now knows about 9 war in afghanistan, fm324 counterinsurgency published by general petraeus serves as a guide for the surge in iraq, which we thought was going fairly well. And also serves as kind of our guidelines for strategy in afghanistan. So it focuses on separating insurgents from the populace, separates our training host nation Security Forces, addressing grievances usually through improvement of governance and transitioning that authority back to locals. What im going to talk about just a little bit, my experience in 2010, 11, and 13 is mostly on the tactical side. Support to governance, improving that governance thing, while i was deployed on the provincial Reconstruction Team, to Zabul Province and Security Force assistance when i was deployed to paktika province as Company Commander two years later. Perspective. This is in may of 2010. Im sitting going to a small village pasani. Four or five miles out of the district capital. We were just ambushed. Im outside trying to direct fire, convincing afghans they want to shoot in this direction as opposed to that direction, trying to make sure we are able to survive the day. I see my counterpart at the time, abdul qayam. He was 50 years old. Hed fought the russians smoezedly. And hed continued to survive in afghanistan, which on its own is an accomplishment, to the ripe old age of 50. He was the district leader or sorry, district chief for sajoy district in Zabul Province. As you can see it gets very complicated very quickly. He comes over to me, while were getting shot at and he looks at me and he yells at me something in pashtun. I have no idea what he says because i dont speak pashtun obviously. I look at my interpreter. He says it again. He laughs. He thinks its funny. He says sir, he doesnt think that were welcome here. That is the story of most of my time in afghanistan. So what we were trying to accomplish right there is the implementation of this policy to support the governance. As we began to deploy in february of that year into afghanistan on this provincial Reconstruction Team, what we determined is probably the place we could make the most money was in terms of connecting the lowest part of the government of afghanistan at the district level to those cultural and tribal leaders that existed all throughout afghanistan, had existed as the way that it had been governed for probably millennia. So as part of that connection thing we talked a lot about touch time, touch points. Making sure that when we interacted with afghans or when as advisers we interacted with count counterparts, maximized that time. Which gave us additional chances to kind of impart any sort of information that we had onto these people so we could be successful in afghanistan. The other part of that was improving the touch time between that lowest level of the government and the tribal leaders. There i was in pasani just outside of shajoy attempting to bring the district chief the embodiment of the government of afghanistan for all intents and purposes to most of the people in his district, trying to bring him to the vimmage so we could have a shura, wes a collection of elders there, to discuss. And try to determine some of the grievances these people had in order to be able to deal with those problems. Perspective. Colonel goepner referred to the banjos playing in the background when you entered zabul. Zabul not to offend anyone from alabama, but is the alabama of afghanistan. Economically depressed area, very socially conservative, by afghan standards very socially conservative group. So theyre very uninterested when outsiders come into their area. When we bring the government of afghanistan which is seen as an outsider in these places of course theres going to be some resistance. That day we fight through that ambush just a few people trying to harass us, we get to the village and inside the village we say this is a shura. The district chief being em30urd as the leader of that district nobody shows up to his shura. Thats not okay. That doesnt give you a lot of confidence in your ability to govern. So we go around and we round up all the houses knocking on doors. Afghan police going out talking to people. Bringing them in in order to have the shura. And they all sit there and theyre quiet for a while. So qayum being who qayum was, an im literate 45yearold afghan man who understood not necessarily bureaucracy and not necessarily governance but he understood how to interact with people. He understood how to build that personal relationship. He taunts them. He says, hey, your ambush, that didnt stop me. Im here. The government of afghanistan is here. And that broke the ice. Because thats how that works there. These individuals began to talk to him. A little bit. Wasnt super successful. After 30 or 40 minutes of that discussion we decided to break down. That was the first time qayum had been able to make it that village in his tenure as a district chief. So we break down and we leave. We get ambushed again because thats, again, how that works. So we get back to the District Center and we say, all right, in a week were going to go back. Qayum says why . We just were there. Touch points. Its the idea of actually integrating ourselves into there. We didnt have a whole lot of money in order to be able to throw at them. If we did what would we build . An afghanistan whos survived in the desert for that long in these places. They dont need anything. They needed faith in their government. So if their primary conc