Retired, you opened your book with this paragraph. Im a United States army general and i lost the global war on terrorism. It is like alcoholics anonymous. Step one is admitting you have a problem. I have a problem. So do my peers. Thanks to our problem, all of america has a problem. Two lost campaigns end a war gone awry. General bolger this is the most serious thing i have ever had to do in my life. Where we are at in this war is not where i ever wanted to be. I owed the American People and an accounting of what i did, what my peers did. To see why and what we can learn from it. Brian whose idea was it to title this book why we lost . General bolger i was going to call it something more neutral. Like the war on terror or Something Like that. After i finished writing it, i realized what i had actually written was a narrative that gave an explanation of why we failed. Brian when did you retire . General bolger i retired in june of 2013 and i was a lieutenant general. Brian what are you doing now . Daniel i teach history at university of North Carolina raleigh. Brian where were you born . Daniel chicago, illinois. The west side of chicago and then the west suburbs, westchester. Brian and you went to college where . General bolger the citadel, the Military College of south carolina. The army selected me for graduate school. Brian what time did you go to college . General bolger i was commissioned in the army in 1978 and i completed my graduate schooling in 1986. My dad served as an infantryman in the korean war. He rose to the rank of sergeant and then got out. He was proud of his service. The people in my community were volunteering or being drafted for vietnam. Until i was older, i never met anyone who resisted the draft. My neighbors were all world war ii veterans. I wanted to see if i could do that. Brian first of all, where did you get your commission . General bolger the citadel. It is run sort of like west point. Brian what were the highlights of your career . General bolger the most important thing, i served mostly during the cold war. We were preparing for combat, so we did not fight. I was a company commander. My Division Commander at one point was norman schwarzkopf. During the gulf war, i was a major. No action occurred there, but we were ready. We had loaded weapons and all that. Fortunately, nothing happened. During the mid1990s, i was with the 101st airborne as an Infantry Battalion commander. I got to go to haiti for a few days, that was a peacekeeping operation. I wore a blue hat, as did my troops. United nations, yes. My first i was a Brigade Commander in korea. A unit of about 3500 soldiers. As a colonel. When i made general, a war had broken out in my first combat experience was in 2005 when i deployed to iraq. I was a one star, a brigadier general. My duties, i was the Deputy Commander for the senior field command. After a few months, i spent a year training the Iraqi Army Air force, navy, and their small marine corps. Working briefly for gen. David petreus. Working briefly for general david petreus. Brian do you have any idea of how many generals there are in the army . General bolger just over 300 generals. Of that number, 43 are threestar generals. Brian what is the difference from someone being a general and a colonel . General bolger if you are a general, you are part of the inner leadership, part of the board of directors. The army is a large organization. Well over one Million People in uniform. You are part of that inner circle. The key thing they tell you, you have been selected, not anointed. Sometimes when people make general, with the military protocol, they can get a little inflated with themselves. We were put in a briefing and the first thing a fourstar congratulations, but be aware, if all 38 of you left the army we have 38 more on the bench. I think thats reflective off the quality of our service. Brian i want to show you a video of a fourstar general that you know back in 2003 testifying in front of the senate. Eric shinseki, he went on to run the veterans administration. [video clip] several hundred thousand soldiers are probably we are talking about control over a piece of geography that is fairly significant with the kind of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. It takes significant ground force presence to maintain safe presence to maintain a safe and secure environment, to ensure people are fed, water is distributed. All of the normal responsibilities that go along with it. Brian why did you put that in your book . General bolger he was the chief of staff of the army. Think of the chain of command, the army works for the secretary of defense. Ultimately to the president and commanderinchief. Responsible to the people. That clip, he was testifying before the senate and they were asking him, how many troops it would take to secure iraq after we knocked out saddams army . He fought in vietnam, badly wounded in vietnam and he served in the balkans. Had a pretty good idea that if you would into a country the size of a rock with 28 Million People iraq with 28 Million People on the ground, a lot of ethnic tension, and dangerous neighbors, he was saying, you cannot do this on the cheap. He was speaking from experience. He was providing his best military advice. When he said that, he was chastised in public by the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, they did not want to hear that. They thought it would be a quick operation and we would be greeted as liberators. People would throw roses at our vehicles. Handing out wather and water and things like that. Turns out general shinseki had a much clearer view. He was the chief of staff of the army. It was leaked when he still had a year of left in office, it was leaked that he would have a successor. Somebody made sure to put the word out. In the military, anyway, they made him a lameduck. They disagreed with his military advice and they publicly undercut him. When he had his retirement, it is usually a big event and sometimes the president comes. Secretary rumsfeld was not there. That was a statement in itself. Brian what did you think of at the time . General bolger in 2003, i just made brigadier general. I was picked the month after the testimony occurred. I was in korea serving with the second infantry division, did not know that anybody was going to iraq. The buildup had largely been kept secret and we werent talking about it and werent supposed to talk about it. When that testimony occurred, i knew he knew what he was talking about. His reputation was good and he spoke from experience. He had seen the cost of partial escalations in vietnam. He knew what it takes to secure villages and he was giving a warning. We should have listened. I knew he was onto something. I have to tell you, like most people in our service, i thought things were different this time. Maybe this time, we will get it right. What happened in the first gulf war, i thought, if we could do that, we had just beaten the afghan taliban, i thought, we will knock these guys out quickly. Maybe they are right. Maybe they know something i dont know. Ryan here is some other video i want you to see. This is from 2007. Our president now was in the senate. [video clip] president obama i think the surge has had some impact. I would hope it would. I would argue the impact has been relatively modest given the investment. It is not clear to me that the primary success has anything to do with the surge. You said that it is political. The reason for the success. Not because of an increase in troop strength. We have seen some modest decline in sectarian violence inside baghdad. That has been purchased at the cost of increased u. S. Casualties. It is unsustainable. Brian put that into context. General bolger it is interesting to see the president speaking as a senator. For one thing, he looks a lot younger in that picture. That tells you something. The last word is the key word. Unsustainable. By definition, it is like a wave coming up on the beach. The surge of troops the majority of those troops in baghdad, what the president was referring to was something that had happened. The sunni arab tribes split with al qaeda in iraq. Killing women and children imposing things. You had to worship a certain way. You couldnt even smoke a cigarette on the street. All of that stuff got out of control. That happened before the surge. It started in 2005 along the Syrian Border and by late 2006 it was beginning to settle down because some of the sunnis had come to our side. Unsustainable is key. As we look at iraq today, we see isis, those guys are the same insurgents we were dealing with in 2005 and 2006, 2009 and 2010. The head of isis was lieutenant at that time. The surge was unsustainable. It created temporary security. When you pull them out, the enemy waits you out. It goes back to the oldest things of guerrilla warfare. Mao tze tung wrote about it. Enemy advances, we retreat. We advanced, the enemy looked at their watches. Brian you relate what happens in iraq and afghanistan to other wars, other times, other generals. Suzn sun tzu people like that. Why did you do that . General bolger the u. S. Experience in iraq is not unique. It has taken myself to task. I thought i understood what they were telling me. I went along with my peers and made some of the mistakes they warned against. In their time, in ancient china, he was captured by french forces. He fought in the russian campaign. He was at waterloo in 1815. He had seen guerrilla warfare. He had been successful and he had failed. As a general, what does history teach us . In that regard, i hope that maybe brian what was your biggest mistake . General bolger not understanding the best way to use our forces. The American Military is built for short, violent, decisive wars against conventional forces. It is not built to do decades long rebuilding, counterinsurgency against irregular forces. With us in the lead, we were almost guaranteed to fail. Because we never controlled the time clock. We never had the discussion with our political leaders. We never controlled the avenue of governance. The locals were always running the elections. We would influence them, but it was going to be an Iraqi Government or an afghan government. As a result, there would be a great deal of dissatisfaction. They would see the government in baghdad and the government in kabul as u. S. Puppets. Brian we have some video of you Training Afghan army troops. How much training did you do in iraq and afghanistan . General bolger i was in charge of the Coalition Military assistance training team. Our team of about 550 allied troops working with the iraqis built large portions of their current army and air force. I did a year there. Afghanistan, i was in charge with their military and they have police. In afghanistan, i have the whole operation. Brian here is video from 2012. Legacy weapons from the soviet era. Building on the existing experience of the Afghan National army with new technology is key, according to natos training mission. Focus on training. We do not deliver a lot of the instruction ourselves. We teach the instructors how to do it. The Afghan Army Officers we spoke to set their soldiers are ready to fight the insurgency. But many worried about the future. Where more sophisticated weapons might be needed to protect their country. Brian weve read all the time that they do not care that much. General bolger i thought alongside both of them. I not only trained them, i went out on operations. I found them to be brave in combat. But when you wanted to get an iraqi or afghan to do it, they only look at training. When he wanted to get a unit to do the best, we looked at training. Giving them the right weapons. That is one component. The next component, embedded advisors. They have got to have somebody who can teach them every day and be with them sidebyside. Americans, british bowl, tash polls poles. Various countries did it as well as us, working sidebyside. Thirdly, it it helps to have a u. S. Or allied partnering. Somebody they can say, ok, i will go do patrols. How do patrols work . The system was built on that threefold step. We have had success training the korean army. It improved quite a bit to after the korean war. They fought as our ally in the vietnam war. They were built to work alongside us. The comment that the reporter made an interesting comment. The afghans were worried. They do not know what the length of the u. S. Commitment is. We saw this in iraq. In iraq we pulled out the bulk , of our force in 2011. We left a small number of uniformed trainers and a small group of contractors. That was the first leg, the training part. They did not have embedded advisors. And they sure did not have partner units. Isis rears their ugly head and this army is very shaky. We should not be surprised by that. You can not undo decades of soviet stuff in eight years. Especially when you have taught them on a model where they have u. S. Advisors. Afghanistan, we have 10,000 troops there in a training and advising role. We will draw down to 5000 the next year. And down to almost zero the year after that. We will probably see a similar result to what we saw in iraq when isis attacked. That afghan army is going to be very shaky without u. S. Help. Brian what did you think of Donald Rumsfeld . General bolger a very forceful guy. Sometimes a little too forceful. I think he had a clearer view than most people think. I dont think he always had as clear a view on how to fight them. In that regard, he was not unusual. Within the military, secretary rumsfeld has this impression that he is a head chopper. And that he is a very oppressive guy. His successor, secretary gates reputed to be superb fired a lot , more generals and admirals than secretary rumsfeld did. His bark was worse than his bite. Maybe if he had been tougher on us as generals, he wouldve gotten a lot better results early on. Brian here he is talking about his book. [video clip] secretary rumsfeld i do not know how many times i said anyone who tells you how long it will last is making a mistake. People are almost always wrong. General bolger he ought to know because he was wrong. Major combat operations, that is the part of the war the americans like. The first few months in afghanistan. The first few months in iraq. We defeat them very well. The problem is, the enemy we were fighting did not choose to end the war. They chose to continue the fight in a style that suited them. Which is to say, in in insurgent irregular terrorist style. Very difficult to tell which guy is a farmer and which guy is an insurgent. It is the second war we were not well suited for. Secretary rumsfeld was exactly right. No one could say how long that lasted. Moreover, guys like him, we were not as blunt as general shinseki was. He warned, hey this is going to take hundreds of thousands of troops. Instead, we always seem to think that just a little bit more, maybe a surge of troops would solve it. The reality was, it would not. In insurgent enemy like that can only be defeated by an effort of decades. We never said that to the American People. The civilian leadership has rarely talked in terms of how long this effort will last. Only recently with the effort to go back to iraq with isis has the president started say publicly, this is an effort of years that may last past my administration. That is welcome but i would tell you as an american citizen, not as a general. Our constitution says all that should be authorized and debated. Before we do it. But, here we are. Brian we hear the generals supporting the president whether it be george bush or barack obama. And then after they get out they write books and tell us what they were really thinking. When you are sitting around talking to your officers and friends, what did the other generals say they thought about this war in the first place . General bolger two things hit all of us. Most of us had some disquiet within the first year or so after the iraq invasion. Things seem to settle down well in afghanistan. We did not really know when that would spur back up, but we thought it might. 2003, 2004, people started to say, things are going wrong. I can remember a general who served in iraq in the first war, work, he knew that area very well. He was the commander, central command, in the korean war. I remember he used the term counterinsurgency and a lot of our ears pricked up. We knew, oh, that is a long, long war. We never heard that strong public u. S. Commitment that we would stick with it. The military guys, we figured, we will keep trying this month and hope the political guys have our back. That they will pass laws and make that happen. By and large, that happened. In general, we kept going. What we never had was that honest discussion with our political leaders to say, if you want to fight a usled counterinsurgency in iraq or afghanistan, you are talking about 20 or 30 years. There needs to be a publicly debated treaty. Like we have in korea. We will help defend this country for a long time. We never had that debate. To this day, brian we have no , treaty with iraq or afghanistan. We could choose to pull our troops out tomorrow. There is no force of law or anything that would prevent it. Our enemies judge us based on past performance. If they are in iraq they have , seen us leave in 1991. They believe we will leave again in the fight against isis. If they are in afghanistan they , saw us pull out when the soviets collapsed in 1989. They have heard us make noises about pulling out now. The taliban is waiting us out. Enemy advances, we retreat. Enemy retreats, we advance. Brian it that, you cite in the book that these wars cost us a couple of trillion dollars, not of it paid for, all borrowed. 7000 people have lost their lives. General bolger 7000 military people. The 3000 civilian people we lost on 9 11. Brian is any of this worth it . General bolger that is where we have to lay out the balance sheet. I would say what has been accomplished, a great deal of attrition against al qaeda. The terrorist networks that at us on 9 11. The old al qaeda with bin laden is no more. Al qaeda is fragmented into successor groups. These organizations that attacked things like Charlie Hebdo in france, the brothers in boston two of my soldiers that were killed work killed in fort hood in a terrorist act in the United States. Those people are inspired by al qaeda. But the classic al qaeda i