Welcome, everyone. Im jonathan chancer, Senior Vice President at the foundation for defense of democracies. I am pleased to well in you to todays event marking the release of shatter the nations. Isis and the war for the caliphate. A warm welcome to those tuning in via cspan or live stream. Todays program is one of many we host throughout the year. For more information on our work or our areas of focus we encourage you to visit fdd. Org. There, you can find out the latest analysis and subscribe to receive information on the latest research, projects and experts. This event is hosted by fdds center on political power which seeks to from moat understand g seeks to promote diplomatic strategies to defeat threats against the United States and while advancing american influence. Many of our members know that fdd is a nonpartisan policy institute and we take no Foreign Government funding or Corporate Funding and we never will. We are glad to be joined today by a distinguished audience of diplomats and representatives from congress, the department of state, the pentagon and active military and experts from the policy community and of course, the media. We encourage guests both here and online to join us in todays conversation on twitter fdd. By way of housekeeping, todays, vent is on the record. It is being live streamed and recorded. So please silence your cell phones now. On a personal note, id luke to first congratulate mike on his terrific new book. For those of who you who have not read it shattered nations qwest isnations gripping of the war with isis and you will see the underworld of the isis support network and read to the end and youll find yourself grinding your teeth as mike recounts his brush with the suicide car bomber in the battle to reclaim iraq. For all of you today, please grab a copy of the book after todays panel if you have not already done so. While he does not say so explicitly in the book, mike confirms much of what weve been saying here at fdd about the government of turkey. In this book you will hear about the illicit oil traders and antiquities middlemen from turkish soil. Mike confirms what weve long known about the 565mile border between turkey and syria. The erdogan govern deliberately allowed that border to remain porous as thousands joined the jihad. It did not simply exacerbate the crisis in syria. In some ways it created it. This, of course, raises troubling questions about the recent decision by President Donald Trump to stand aside and allow for the Turkish Military to invade northern syria. Here at fdd our scholars engaged in a robust debate about a range of issues. The majority here, although not all of us, but the majority believe this was a strategic mistake. Speaking only for myself, i believe the decision was tantamount to a green light for the Turkish Military to engage in a harmful and dangerous operation in northern syria, it was also an abandonment of the kurdish partners and the decision to turn on them is something other American Allies and partners in the middle east will not soon forget. Of course, its fair to argue that the affiliation with the ypg was a mistake from the first place. Officials from the Obama Administration and i suspect brad mcgirk would possibly pus g back on this, assertion. With war crimes, ceasefire violations and assad regime advances, one gets a sense that new dangers lurk. So in addition to addressing the key points in mikes book, todays conversation promises to cover a lot of ground. Moderating todays event is vivian solama and shes worked as a correspondent with vast experience in the middle east. Shes served as aps Baghdad Bureau chief from 2014 to 2016 at the height of isis blitzkrieg across iraq and syria. She published a Childrens Book about a young boys family who was forced to flee. And she covers the white house for the wall street journal. Vivian, over to you. Thank you so much. So its great to be here including with all these distinguished gentlemen, two of whom i crossed paths with in the middle east. Mike and i covered the arab string together and brad and i met in iraq and i had the pleasure of meeting bill today. So it will be a great conversation for sure. We are here, obviously, celebrating mikes book and in case you havent heard, and its a bit of a timely discussion. Syria is in the news today and so you dont have a better collection of people to talk about it and you may have noticed i was staring at my phone during the introduction because my colleague who is literally sitting in the cabinet room just alerted and President Trump announced hes willing to keep troops in syria to protect oil. So you never know what the news is going to bring of the day, so obviously, its a fastmoving story. A lot of moving parts and so, we really want to ask these gentlemen to kind of take us from the beginning, get a, you know, a brief background on how we got to this point and then we can dissect whats been happening right now, and im sure a lot of you are interested in that, and so, mike, well start with you again. Congrats on the book. Im happy for you. Maybe a brief recap about how all of the reporters got, and what had taken place in the civil war with regard to isis and some of the various allies that we have there. So, i actually had a big fight with my editor writing the book because they were saying this is a book about isis, start with isis, and i insisted on starting with egypt in the arab spring because that really is the background for this. So is the iraq war, but if you remember in 2011 when the arab spring protest started in egypt and in siria, the Obama Administration was wiendzing down and the u. S. Engagement in iraq and the protests were supposed to be the new way forward for america to engage with the middle east. The protesters were chanting american ideals and they were getting Political Support from the u. S. Government and they were organize being ing on the twitter, google, androids and e phones and there was this moment that vivian and i covered when we actually first met in 2011 in egypt that everything felt the protesters on the street felt connected with American News viewers here who were not just watching the protests on social media and also engaging with them and liking the tweets and sharing the facebook posts and to me it captured this obama firstterm mindset that we can all sit at our computers and laptops and like our way to a better world and obviously, that wasnt the case, and the reason that we all ended up in syria, to answer the question is because thats where the arab spring dead ended and there were years of, i think, failed u. S. Policy to get to the point where in 2014, syria was the worst person possible in the civil war and from a news perspective and the government focus perspective, we all tried to turn away and what happened was obviously, im sure the people in this room all know the rem na remnats of al qaeda and iraq used it to gain strength and they went back across the iraqi boarder in 2014 and took the iraqi city of mosul which was a worldchanging events. Brad, you were obviously working with the government at the time. How what was the response and the sense on the ground here when all of these events were unfolding and you kind of saw this this round of extremism spilling over the border of iraq and syria . So i kind of got into this phase of it in 2013 when i was handling the iraq file and i was deeply concerned by the increasing numbers of assassination, murder, suicide bombers, suicide bombers going in al qaeda and iraq which migrated to syria and became isis and five a month to 10 to 20, 30, 40, 50 a month and when you have that going on and that was happening in 2013 and it just rips apart any fabric of society and particularly, a fragile one. I was concerned in 2013. We did not have the intelligence overhead. We did not have the information. I testified about this in congress in the fall and all these guys and most of them were foreign jihadis coming from all around the world who were coming into syria and as jonathan said they were coming through turkey. I spent a lot of time in turkey in 2013. Look, i love the country of turkey. Its a great country. Erdogan is the leader of turkey, but hes not going to be there forever and i think turkey has a brighter future, but let me tell you about the conversations in 2013. Why was i in turkey a lot in 2013. A number of reasons and one which was Iraqi Oil Revenue is going to the bank and those of you know why that web a concern with the all of these jihadis are coming in through your country, what are you going to do about this . The answer was, thats the second war. Well get rid of assad and then those guys. My response was it sounds to me like youre raising baby crocodiles in your basement. Eventually youre going to have a lot of big crocodiles. In any event, this kept on going, and mike documents it in his book, which is awesome, you should read it, this war against isis was a vicious, brutal street by street war. And no one should be mistaken by that. But january 1, 2014, fallujah falls to isis. It wasnt until the fall of mosul and i was in iraq at the time, and again, it was just hard to know what was going on. I was walking into a meeting with president obama one night, in which i got an urgent call from an Iraqi Security official that baghdad was falling and it was hard to tell. In any event, in the summer of 2014 is where it was decided we have to have a very concerted effort to push back and thats when we developed a campaign, which i think well discuss. But, that was kind of the sweep of it, just starting where i came into it. I remember that time when everyone was worried about iraq falling, baghdad falling, because i was in baghdad getting calls saying baghdad has fallen from my editors in new york. Actually, i think were okay for now but there was the fear of it because they were on the edge of the city and it was a very dangerous situation. Bill, remind us about how isis drew its strength, how it became this powerful socalled caliphate from just an Extremist Group . Sure. The Islamic State or isis, it just didnt emerge in a vacuum. It was the remnants of al qaeda in iraq, from obviously the iraq war. The u. S. Conducted the surge. By 2009 it was driven out of territories in central, northern, and western iraq, that it controlled and it was perceived that al qaeda in iraq, which was also called the Islamic State, making it more confusing, was defeated. But they werent. They went underground. They hustled their forces, they gathered, organized, tens of thousands of fighters from that conflict escaped, and then you had an Iraqi Government that was corrupt. Letting people out of prisons. Things of that nature. So it was feeding from that but i remember watching a video and i want to say it was late 2011, where i saw al qaeda in iraq, organize a large convoy, and take over the town in anbar province, a town between ramadi and fallujah. I remember saying this is extremely disturbing. We saw this happen for years years later. The Islamic State came out of a dispute between al qaeda, between al qaeda central and it was just basically a turf war between baghdad, the now the head of the Islamic State and the al qaeda forces in syria, al qaeda wanted there to be separate entities, one in iraq and one in syria. Baghdady said no, we should be fighting together. The Islamic States, kind of look at them as this might be overly simplistic but they are the hardliners of the jihadists. To them its their way or the highway. The Islamic State, if you dont swear youre apostate to them. Where as al qaeda, they kept this, lets work with other groups. Lets try and work with elements of the syrian insurgency, and its a more subversive way. They get their hooks in and wind up converting individuals to their cause. But at the end of the day the Islamic State came from the failure to defeat al qaeda in iraq, when the u. S. Withdrew in by december 2011. The islamic al qaeda in iraq was already reorganizing and starting to conduct small scale attacks by 2012, you had assassinations. You had prison breaks which really helped the group expand and get its experienced kadri back in. Then they started the Syrian Civil War was a major boon. They were able to reorganize inside syria. Because remember, we actually killed, it was one of the few special forces raids, killed a guy, i think it was in 2007, u. S. Conducted a special forces raid in syria. So al qaeda and iraq, didnt just say, lets cross the border. They had an active network there as well and with the Syrian Civil War breaking out, that really, that was just the match that lit the the withdrawal and the u. S. Fire and you couple that with leaving, abandoning, look, there is a lot of talk today that we abandoned the kurds, this isnt the first abandonment. When the u. S. Withdrew from iraq, they abandoned kurdish allies in the north. They succumbed to the pre additions of the Iraqi Government and the Popular Mobilization forces, militia backed militias. We but we lost this intelligence. It was a slower. Sure. It wasnt policy by tweet with the Trump Administration. The Obama Administration had a more clever and deliberate withdrawal but it was a withdrawal and abandonment nonetheless. These were ally that we built up. We say 11 kurds died. Hundreds of thousands of iraqis volunteered to fight Theis Al Qaeda in iraq, and died during these fights. I want the others to address that point as well, but before we get into that, maybe, mike, could you talk a little bit about the other parties. We keep hearing about the kurds being our allies on the ground right now, but obviously there are a lot of fighting forces that are allied to in us this fight in both iraq and syria. If you could just give us a walkthrough of that. As john mentioned in his introduction, you know, one half of the book is focused on isis and how it worked and why people joined it and who they were. And how it was able to fund and support itself. The other part of the book is based on years of different forces coming together as the ground force for the u. S. Effort against isis. So we had the kurds in syria, its important to remember they also fight with arab battalions, as part of the sdf, so, you know, turkey has problems particularly with the kurds but that was a multiethnic force in the end, and then in iraq, we had the kurdish. I was really alarmed actually, a tweet that trump sent last week that showed he didnt understand the difference between the kurds in Northern Iraq and syria. To not understand that nuance, if youre a regular news consumer, fine, but if youre the commanderinchief and youre directing this policy i think thats extremely alarming, because the difference is actually vast. So the tweet, i assume the tweet youre talking about was when he made a reference to iraq going after the kurds in syria. Basically conflating the number of different groups and also a number of different incidents. And what was so impressive, i thought, the end stages of the war against isis was how many different forces had come together. We had the kurds in Northern Iraq, and you also had the iraqi military, and in particular, the protagonists are the Iraqi SpecialOperations Forces and their elite battalion into mosul and elsewhere and these guys have been fighting with the americans since 2005. They are the troops that do the raids with u. S. Special Operations Forces and special forces, and do the work of rolling up isis networks. Some of the guys i was in humvees with in mosul, had been fighting alongside the americans since 2005. 12 years of almost nonstop war. And i remember, just because i think there is a sense now, it was always going to be a disaster. Its something i always kind of feel emanating out of d. C. , the Obama Administration used this line of reasoning to argue that they could not have done better in syria. It was always going to be a mess, and i think people look at problems with them and say it was all going to be a mess anyway. I really dont think thats the case. I remember, just like a little anecdote to show how unique it was, when it did come together, i was with Iraqi Special forces in a convoy to get to the battle from mosul and we passed through a checkpoint and i got chills down my neck because to imagine that these two sides which had been enemies in the past, were somehow cooperating and the iraqi troops i was with, they were using very bad kurdish to greet their officers, this warm greeting, like welcome to our territory to fight isis, was actually really a special moment. And i think we should understand that to kind of grasp the loss of the policy now. I want brett to kind of walk us through, addressing bills point about the withdrawal in 2011, versus what weve seen today, can you take us back to 2011 and how that withdrawal took place versus maybe today you can kind of get us started on the present. How would you compare, or is there a comparison, and, yes, or, no can you explain. Isis metastasized in syria into the calderon civil war. You had people like speaking to 60 million muslims once a week saying its your religious duty to pour into syria. I think, where bill and i would agree is the United States needs to be very careful. President s need to be very careful before they set National Security objectives. And when you say in 2011, assad must go, that changes everyones calculation and it created like a fever in the region. And th