And in fact what happens is the department of defense and the cia refused to cooperate with any psychological review boards. So they can get information and therefore every complaint filed against them has failed. Has the licenses im a psychologist. Have the licenses been pulled . And the answer was know. I want to thank you all for coming. Thanks again. I hope we can do it again soon, maybe with something more cheerful. [applause] well done. With the u. S. Senate in recess all week book tv in prime time continues wednesday night starting at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Chinas secret strategy to replace america as the global superpower. And after months and months of cleaning the house Charles Halpern who had been given that task was making one more walkthrough. And in the attic he looked over and saw an envelope with a kind of green seal on it and walked over and noticed the date was in 1832 document. He removed a single mail from a panel in an upstairs attic room and discovered a truck and books and portraits. And this was this treasure of dolly madison. Madison. We have had this story available to the public displaying different items from time to time but trying to include her life story from her book to her death in 1849. Some of some of the items that we currently have on display ivory calling card case that has a card enclosed with her signature as well as that of her niece some small cut grass perfume bottles and a pair of silk slippers that have tiny little ribbons that tie across the arch of the foot. The two dresses other reproductions of a silk peach silk gown that she wore early in life than the red velvet gown which hasnt intriguing that it lasted and is part of this collection and there is also a legend that is now accompanying the stress. Watch all of our events from greensboro saturday at noon eastern onto one book tv and sunday afternoon at 2 00 oclock on American History tv. With the u. S. Senate in recess for president s day cspan2 is bringing you book tv in prime time. Former adviser to dick cheney and author of the book warrior diplomat at the knew America Foundation in washington and was introduced by peter bergen who wrote the books forward. Feel free to come forward if you like. It is my great pleasure to introduce my colleague and friend. His his wonderful book, warrior diplomat was really outlines mikes quite unusual career as both being somebody who is creating policy in the white house south asia adviser to Vice President cheney and also carrying out the policies in the field as a special forces officer. Mike also runs a professional successful business, a fellow here. And and so he is going to outline kind of the big ideas and some of the interesting stories in the book. Then then we we will open it up to a questionandanswer session. Thank you, peter. Thanks, everyone, for coming out today. Lets take a brief moment and talk about some of the broader Strategic Issues that i have tried to address in the book and that really underlined a lot of my experience as peter mentioned in the white house working for the secretary Vice President cheney in the pentagon working for gates and rumsfeld and then as a reserve special forces officer out in the field. Bear with me. Lets take a little bit of a History Lesson looking back on the war. Looking back on it thus far where i think i think we have made some critical mistakes that historians decades from now will look back on. The 1st is that our strategy never really adjusted with the insurgency as it began growing past 2,001. We we had a very focused strategy, counterterrorism focused strategy targeting al qaeda and key taliban leaders but as we died down and as the Afghan Government stabilized our strategy did not evolve with it. What that what that drove unfortunately was a perennial under resourcing of the war effort. We found ourselves as violence began to grow in the 2003, 2004 2005 time frame chasing the violence rather than five time frame chasing the violence rather than putting the resources and necessary to get ahead of it. There were Important Reasons for that, one of which most obviously was the iraqi war. I was on the ground and saw the kind of 2nd out of resources whether it was helicopters, competitor drones, what have you getting pulled away from the afghan theater into a rock but where it really came into play was once the insurgency had reconstituted and the taliban had truly reconstituted and i came back from my tour back to the pentagon and said this is an going well and there was nothing to give, we truly were the depth of the war. We found ourselves more and more reliant upon nato to provide resources that we didnt have at that. Which is not a moral statement. So thats one. The other kind of critical stage looking back which i just mentioned is handing the effort over to nato and ending a mission over to nato that it wasnt prepared to do. As we transitioned the security over to nato they frankly thought they were getting into a bosnia style peacekeeping mission. Their when the dutch took over. And they came prepared to do what they call a kind of patrolling and engaging. The political constituency was not prepared to deal with it. They signed up to do peacekeeping and found themselves by the time they deployed in a fullblown counterinsurgency effort. I write to that quite a bit in the book being on the ground French Special forces that did not have the equipment, did not have compatible radio, sometimes didnt have enough ammunition to be with the dutch forces and asked them to work with us, had to go all the way up to the parliament for approval. So did both instituted, and promulgated promulgated this kind of under resourcing and it also really tied our hands trying to fight an enormously complex war with the 42 nation coalition. That is two. Three, we never got our arms around pakistan. The sanctuary that they afford. Seth jones and others have done studies of counterinsurgencys overtime and none have been successful when the insurgent enjoys a better sanctuary nextdoor. Im what i would say is probably the most critical was announcing our withdrawal years in advance of the withdrawal. I was standing in my headquarters in 2009 when pres. Obama gave his speech at west point announcing the surge and in the same speech announced the end of the search and Operations Officer standing next to me, can you imagine Franklin Delano roosevelt announcing today . Announcing to the germans in the world it would only last six months to year. Not a perfect analogy, but one that he threw out and it had immediate effects on the ground. Two weeks later i was up in the mountains meeting with the tribe elder a gentleman i have been building a relationship with for the better part of the year many cups of tea, many meetings, many hours of getting the know each other, building a relationship and building the level of trust because it was the largest tribe they wanted to work with the Afghan Government and against the Accounting Network and three had about 1500 tribal militia welltrained, well armed that i want working with us. Two weeks after the speech at west point i go for this final signing of a statement of commitment and negative very cold reception, did not offer to finally got to the bottom of it. We always suspected it, have seen it in the past but your president has said it, you are going to abandon us. They we will have a gun in my family said tomorrow night. And i tried to talk the nuance. He was only announcing the withdrawal of the surge, not all it was lost. They heard that america was leaving and it had detrimental effects in other ways. We saw corruption spike government officials were less inclined. We really frankly were undermined by the policy statement within days weeks of its announcement. A fascinating case of our policy intended to go this direction immediately on the ground set operational efforts totally different direction and this is how i in the book the thing that he left me with was as we were leaving that meeting where he withdrew all the support and placed not only to not work with us the frankly told me they will be hedging their bets with the haqqanis network. He network. He said, and tell you are prepared to have your grandchildren Standing Shoulder to shoulder with my grandchildren we can work with you and this will never work. That is a theme, that commitment or lack thereof that runs throughout the book. The signal that said has hurt us throughout the war effort. That theme runs throughout. Where does that leave us . Today i think we frankly have a policy of hope. Right now we are assuming just discussed today at the london conference, conference, we are assuming the Afghan National army and police can stand on its own. Own. I find it difficult to wrap my mind around how the Afghan NationalSecurity Forces are going to do alone without our support what 42 nation store 42 western nations can do in the last ten years. Personally i have been hearing that in the pentagon briefings in the white house since about 2,005. The afghan the Afghan National army would be able to stand on its own. The next assumption is we are assuming there is unity government. As we all know the afghans have politically peacefully transitioned. We have a very tenuous situation right now in the same year and at the same time we are announcing a zero option. Frankly almost borderline irresponsible from a policy standpoint and are assuming any type of reconciliation we will progress in our interest. We are assuming that ethnic tensions we will continue to rise. Washington rise. Washington grossly underestimates the amount of tension on the ground right now. Most most importantly we are assuming that al qaeda cant and wont and isnt already reconstituting in the wake of our withdrawal. I just did a q a. He said my, i, i got it. The simple lessons are hard. We have been at this for ten years billions of dollars have lost thousands of lives that all why should they care . We see what can happen in the wake of our withdrawal. If that makes you nervous having ices on the doorstep of baghdad makes you nervous having a reconstituted al qaeda on the doorstep of islamabad should petrifying. It certainly does me. We can talk about the nuances of that analogy, and theyre are a lot but i think that theyre is real issue and i have real issue and i write to that in the book. So what is the policy Going Forward . How are we going to get what is aptly called one more to a better place. A few years ago i gave a talk to russias that were coming in. And i talked about a country in asia that at one point had a higher Literacy Rate afghanistan does today, know roads, know infrastructure know political system and certainly know army. It did indeed have a higher Literacy Rate in the 1940s and afghanistan does today. Many, many smart people in this room that could poke holes in it but its a great example of work sustained Us Engagement can do over the long haul and i argue at the end of the book despite all the mistakes we have made in the certainly need to learn from that the sooner we stop attacking this in an 18 month threeyear four year increment is start wrapping our minds around that this we will be a generational multi decade effort the sooner we will be in a better place. The examples of germany, south korea japan while not perfect are examples of what american engagement can do. That is to fund those of the underpinnings of the book. What i try to do is rather than talk about these things i try to have you experience them through my time on the ground, my time in the white house, my time in the pentagon and also of course women with it. The issue of civilian casualties. What we do with the Nuclear Arsenal we do with the nuclear support and yet we are dependent upon it for air and ground supply. But yet theyre i am getting rocketed by Pakistani Military bases along the Afghan Border and how we bridge that. I lack of continuity in terms of learning the previous lesson i wrote in another chapter about a patrol we conducted outside of by vermeer base. Just talk to me about who had been theyre before the United States, we talked to, what Coalition Efforts we knew their had been development. Why. It just didnt exist. All i could find were a few target packages targeting some of the key taliban leaders. I tell that chapter patrolling the ambush. We we went out to the area to figure that stuff out for ran into ambushes. Nearly killed and afghan sergeant that i became close to was killed died in my arms still taking care of his family today. That sacrifice was worth the information that we gathered im not confident that that went into some type of apposite depository that others can learn from. So i talked to a number of those issues. I also tried to address some fundamental issues that the army has yet to deal with. What with. What is the layers of bureaucracy that we had to go through to conduct. One one chapter i write about the approvals we had to have to go after one commander. I literally had an elder on the phone powerful men and we had a great relationship with interiors. The commander that had threatened his life was nextdoor looking for him begging us to come get him. I could not get the approvals to go about ten km down the road. We ended up not only losing that elder and that village because we could not. So there is looking at it from a different perspective we have all heard about the negatives of conducting direct action. A lot of positives and negatives. Also also look at the overall issue of risk aversion that we found. One of the issues i dont think that we fully wrapped our minds around this is the 1st and longest war in our history. But the 1st but certainly the longest. We need to look at what that does to our incentive mechanism. In previous wars coming out of the draft you are in it to win it, you are pulled out of your lives whether as a lawyer our plumber or what have you and i sent to the war, every incentive to take every risk possible so that you can come back to your life. Now a tour is a oneyear blip on an otherwise promising military career. The incentive often became not to mess anything up take too many casualties lose too many mobile we call sensitive items, night vision what have vision, what have you, so the default reaction became an action. And i say that carefully because i never want or intend to disparage anyones motivation or service to the country. It is more of a fundamental issue that we started to deal with. We felt that risk aversion permeate in a number of ways one one other quick anecdote was i came across kind of a perfect example. I came across that we were working on the Pakistani Border manned by an infantry two 18 soldiers in his platoon. If you think back to everyone saw the movie lone survivor the four navy seals were killed and eventually one was captured the fourman unit. After that a rule or edict came down the know less than six individual soldiers. That makes sense. The firebase was overrun in 2,008. Another edict came down to the less than 14 us soldiers guarding the base. You can see now is putting an 18 soldiers. They could not leave their base because they would not have enough. They ended up having reinforcement float in every time they wanted to go down that the taliban and openly harassing a girls school that was done in the village below the base. Think about think about the signal that that sent. Military signal with taliban commanders openly shopping in the bazaar. Every time they saw a helicopter come in they knew the americans are coming out it was kind of the operational permutations of risk aversion that really cut through some fundamental issues that i tried to address. We saw another outcome and. Hes looking at me. What we do make the call. All of the put a warning warning shot which he did. It came back out. Another round came in and wanted some. I still made the decision to keep putting warnings around the kid until he fled. Who knows if they had a gun to his family said or what the situation was but that was a call that i made at the time. Was it right or wrong . I think it was right. What i feel that way explaining thats one of my soldiers families . Want to bring that to the american reader aside from these broader policy issues. A few other things and how we move forward today than what and when i am convinced is a hundred year effort. Yes this is our nations longest war. We are about 13 years into this effort just as we were in the early days with the effort against communism. At the end of the day were fighting an idea, an ideology and that is by far the hardest thing to defeat. We have seen that now. The idea much like the idea of communism in a survived. It we will take a long time to undermine that. One of the things that i i think were doing right is forming a moderate arab coalition. This is not the 1st time we have done it. One of our key partners has been with us in somalia bosnia, afghanistan. They were with us in the intervention in libya and to have like that, i was out on the ground with them in southern afghanistan. To put a face on this to have an american officer standing next to an arab officer talking to groups of villagers and to have the arabs say this is not the way. Proper muslims and followers of islam. Look with the United States did for germany, japan battalions of us soldiers. The other piece of the compassionate about we need to take that out of this feelgood humanitarian realm and put it squarely in the National Security realm. No ideology can suppress 50 of the population and oprahs 50 percent of the population, and the more that we put brave leaders the Nobel Peace Prize with the nobel piece committee doesnt get a lot of things right in my opinion but they got that one right. I i about fell out of my chair. Those are the type of Women Leaders that we need to empower. The last thing i we will leave you with an intern over the questions is the issue of our veterans and the impact is having on us particularly