Who just aches to get back into some more theme where i can get shot at. I do admire those who do but its just not what i do. What im interested in doing is policy and ideas and where do these ideas come from . They dont just drop from the sky. They usually do not automatically appeal to everybody as a matter of logic. Where did the ideas come from . Who were the people and there were a lot of comp eating ideas. How did this particular set of ideas get transferred . Was there resistance . How was the resistance overcome . It usually isnt just one person. Its a community of people. How did this Community Form . Will was the basis of a . That is what history is all about. Its a story. That is what the stories are about. Its about the interplay between personalities in politics and policy and accident, coincidence. That is what im interested in and i am interested in how this applies to war because war and all of the arenas of human conduct, this is the most highprofile thing there is. I mean, its the difference between life and death for thousands of people. Its the difference between National Victory and national defeat. Its the highest level although in some ways the most brutish and in some ways the most abstract level with the human plague so the stakes are very high. This isnt just talking about ideas that are discussed in the university and end up in some academic journal. This affects the most highprofile waffled of human conduct. So that is why im interested in this and that is what this book is about. Also what enters into this particular story is that it covers a pivotal era in American History and world history, when everything is his changing. The cold war is over. A new world is coming into focus and its still not really in locus. We are still living in this world. What is the nature powered . What is of place of america in it and how does this group of people that im interested in following, how do they affect whats going on . Its about a generational shift. It begins though most of the book takes place during the iraq and afghanistan wars as a backdrop but it begins with the first iraq war ,com,com ma the gulf war of 1991 and i come into this young lieutenant who is was just three years out of west point and he is leading a platoon in iran iraq. He just got out of west point as i said one of the top students ended chosen to go into the armor corps because the big war that the army was preparing for was going to be nato versus the United States versus the soviet union. He had gotten fluent in the language of german because that is where he would be spending most of his career. He is on the plains of iraq and you might remember they did a months worth of arming and four days of ground operations and completely destroyed the iraqi military. He is looking around and realizing, we just destroyed the 4 the worlds fourth largest largest in four days. A few months before this the soviet union went up in smoke. The cold war is over and he is thinking what am i going to be doing for the rest of my life . What is the army going to be doing the rest of my life . He came with the idea that nobody is ever going to challenge the United States again in a headon contest of strength. Its going to be other kinds of complex. Maybe insurgencies terrorist attacks, that sort of thing. He didnt know anything about this because he never learned it at west point. They didnt teach it at west point. They didnt teach it and Staff College so he went off to oxford and got a graduate degree and wrote a book called learning to be soup with a knife which came from lawrence of arabias description of fighting a guerrilla war and he compared the british experience in malaya which succeeded and the American Experience in vietnam which didnt. He tried to figure out what was the difference . The difference was that the americans fought in vietnam as if it were a conventional battle in the british fought as if it was a new kind of war. Actually as we will discover later there was more than that. He goes back to west point to teach and a lot of his colleagues, they are fighting these new kinds of wars that are emerging. They have been fighting in el salvador or somalia or haiti or bosnia and they realize that their army has no kinds of conflict. Its a little hard to believe but its true. The army defined war as strictly major combat operations, tank battles against comparably mighty foes. The other kinds of complex, terrorists, insurgents and that sort of thing, they are called in capital letters military operations other than war. It wasnt even a war. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at the time once said real men dont do and yet the real men that john was surrounding himself with head and it felt like a war to them. They called them the other than war wars of the 90s. They were wars. In the meantime the main character David Petraeus who is one of the few people in the book that most people of heard of, and would later become a protege of petraeus graduated from west point in 1974, one of his first exercises and one of his first assignments was to go join up with airborne battalions in france and italy. While he was there he came across some books that were about counterinsurgency warfare and again petraeus hadnt studied any of this at west point either. But he is reading this books and especially a book by a retired french colonel named david kahlua called counterinsurgency warfare and he comes across some ideas that he had never crossed in any book he had read. For example these kinds of wars are only 20 military and 80 political. They are battles for the hearts and minds of the people. In these kinds of wars a mimeograph machine can sometimes be as useful as a machine gun. Its cement that can be as useful as a mortar shell. This is just a revelation to me. Several years later he goes down to el salvador. Hes a special assistant to the commander of of the Southern Command and sees this kind of war going on. In el salvador and nicaragua and peru. He later goes to bosnia where this isnt really quite wellknown, he was heading up a clandestine counterterrorist unit in bosnia. Soon after that, he goes to ira. Starting in 2003. He is part of the force. He is the commander of the 101st airborne division. He goes up the desert to baghdad and then he is assigned to to go up to mosul in Northern Iraq and occupy mosul. Now again this is one of these things that is hard to believe but the United States had no plans for what to do after Saddam Hussein fell. They deliberately had plans. It was an oversight. It was deliberate because the plan was overthrow saddam and get out. Just like we overthrew the taliban in afghanistan and then got out of there and of course afghanistan fell apart. I and iraq is falling apart very quickly. We are facing an insurgency we dont know what to do with like all the officers who are there have not been trained to fight this sort of war. It was not in the manuals and they didnt know what to do so they do what they usually do which was to bang down doors and arrest people. Anyone who has read kahlua would have known as counterproductive because you end up killing the wrong people and you inflame you make them mad so the insurgents is flaming and meanwhile petraeus in mosul decides to put into effect the ideas in these books he has been reading. He and his guys start setting up an election for the new district. They vet the candidates candidatecandidate s and they said that the elections. They bring in fuel trucks. They reopened the university. They get Communication Systems going. They get some iraqis to open up newspapers. He opens up the border to syria along Northern Iraq. He does all this on his own. He is not doing it in the coordination of anybody washington, baghdad or anyplace and it works for a while. Then he is rotated out and the brigade comes than half the size of his division led by somebody who spent the previous four months bashing down doors in until someone else comes in later. Heres where the story starts to get interesting. Heres where the groups on each other. I am condensing a lot of things but let me give you some of the basics. Petraeus is sent off to ft. Leavenworth. A lot of people in the army didnt like petraeus. They didnt like officers who were too bookish or who stood out too much and petraeus was very much on many counts. Zero he was sent to ft. Leavenworth kansas and a lot of people are thinking the fairhaired leg, they are sending them out to pasture. He gets to ft. Leavenworth and he realizes something. He realizes that this is actually the intellectual sector of the army. They write doctrine. They form the curriculum and command general Staff College. They organize the National Training centers and they loop these together the lessons from one affects the lessons of the other which affects the patterns of the next. He says to himself as he is learning all this, and the powers he potentially has. He says holy cow and he talks like that. He says things like holy cow and jeepers. He says holy cow they have put an insurgent in charge of the exchange. He viewed himself as an insurgent. Meanwhile though there are a lot of meanwhiles. Been while there is a professor at the school of National Studies in wishing to d. C. And in the mint historian and a leading neoconservative. He was one of the people who signed the petitions that we have to invade iraq by force. He is also a member of the defense policy Advisory Board. So he goes over to iraq and hes the only member of the board that goes here and he sees its a disaster. There is this insurgency and nobody knows what to do. Now he comes back feeling really upset because again and feeling kind of pangs of guilt because you know he was advising this administration. He had advocated for this war. His son who like him had graduated from harvard and recently joined the army and was going to be sent to iraq. He was going to be sent into this mess that he sort of helped create said he thinks he has to do something about this. He sets up a seminar in basing harbor vermont and he goes through his rolodex and its military journals. He invites everybody that he can find who has written anything remotely interesting about the subject of counterinsurgency. He comes up with about 30 people and they all assembled in basing harbor for five days to discuss these things. The pivotal thing about the speaker is not so much what they discussed is that they met. Most of these people didnt know each other before. They didnt know of one anothers existence. They thought they were out on a limb on it during them writing stuff that no one was going to read that was way against what was going on in the mainstream army. A lot of these people were Junior Officers and some of them were midlevel officials thinktank types. They realize they had formed a community and they might be feel to do something if they worked together. They come away from basin harbor with a great sense of mission. Meanwhile petraeus is sitting in leavenworth. He knows a lot of these people who are at this conference. Some of them were his students, his colleagues are people who had been under his command. He decides to one thing he is going to do in leavenworth is write a new counterinsurgency field manual for the army. There hadnt been one for 20 years and he draws on this group from the basing harbor conference to be his inner circle, to be his aides, to be the people who help him writes this write this conference. In other words outside the usual doctrinal channels within the army. It was all part of the plot. Would use the word plot, i generally and not a conspiracy but they called themselves the cobol or west point mafia they came at of the social Science Department of west point with their own graduates. This happened not by a coincidence, sitting in leavenworths betray us had a vast network of colleagues in deliberately forms a back channel and cultivates a person from the National Security council and seized she is wavering and theyre talking on the phone practically every day. This is outrageous. A threestar general from fort wet weather worsened talking on the phone every day with the Senior Advisor to the president of the United States general casey you is a fourstar general commanding troops he says we only need one more brigade so those are arguments why it isnt enough so when it comes, by the way it is not paula bridewell but strictly professional. But subverting the chain of command he always has been off the reservation guy to do what is necessary here but at the same time a civilian analyst used to teach history he rode a steady advocating the surge at the American Enterprise institute. Said to get this into the warehouse into the pentagon to some of these subordinates in iraq so basically by the time the trade is becomes the commander everything is lined up to impose a strategy with the United States government this is not a coincidence, it is very exclusively coordinated. What does he do . One thing that is already starting to have been is this is a Pivotal Moment serial iraq and allied with al qaeda, it goes several steps to fire their getting upset and one to break with al qaeda and there is a criminal named Shawn Mcfarland to canada this group to switch to our side to fight but the triestes realizes what is going on to apply this struck the country and does this by setting up a program called the sons of iraq. He pays them out of the commander discretionary fund. With a Neighborhood Watch those who have been shooting at americans two weeks earlier and at the same time he needs to go after the militia Prime Minister maliki told the Prime Ministers day at of sadr city now in some kind of alliance he just send these guys in and does not wait for approval. There is a huge decline of sectarian violence but here is where we come into a problem with counterinsurgency, pretorius has said the goal of the campaign is to create a breathing space so the factions can get there act together to forge a Cohesive Group but maliki had no interest to do any of this to set up the oil revenue sharing plan or no interest to bring in the sons of iraqs into the iraqi army as was promised so what we see now at a much, much lowerlevel sectarian violence and an unstable state. Afghanistan, of betraying us comes from iraq is a miracle worker. I am condensing but he creates miracles and iraq may be afghanistan. Obama as an experiment bought onto it with their Counter Insurgency strategy. The problem is remember the book i mentioned the trade is and others are consulting regularly, it is a good book but there is one chapter called conditions for a successful insurgency that might make an effort to ground and they include a corrupt central government, a largely illiterate role population, now minister rein, a neighboring state that is used as a sanctuary sanctuary, it is a description of afghanistan. To be then drop a diagram of the typography of what it would look like you could do the overlay so he knows going in this is extremely long odds that bass. In iraq top commander, it was the third tour of duty. He brings the same on dryish, and it is common to all of us look at the prism of what we know. He had power point slides afghanistan is not iraq. I interviewed well over 100 people and they said a problem came up he would say in and bar we did this are we solved the problem this way when time in a meeting with president rsi he said with this problem happened in baghdad reid didnt like this his assistant in the room said it may be useful intellectual experiment not to think about iraq. He said i am thinking about it but it never felt together. There were ingredients there for the Counter Insurgency to work where that we in the local tribesmen had a common interest that leads to a final observation from another Counter Insurgency experts named david who was an australian who came to the United States picked up as a consultant and he was responsible for the idea is and how to put those into effect by Junior Officers in the field. In 2008 he should be feeling good about himself but a lot of these guys was a stupid idea but to weve got to fight them. Its got my job to revise on policy. You should throw out the people you elected. Im trying to minimize as an expert in relation to advise the policy. At the time secretary of state condom use the rice putting together Counter Insurgency manual because bureaucracy should get involved but with the policy makers it is folly to even begin a Counterinsurgency Campaign abroad unless the country is interested in reform. The insight they had to come added that the situation they appeal to the people because the government fall short whether opportunistic lee they offer the alternatialternati ve and let counterinsurgency hasted do is coopt to drive up the support so it can do its job and the government just isnt going to do a job and policy makers must do a calculation if they seem inclined when they go in. From july 2009 in europe ministration comes then one week later but in fact, this did not represent deal the administration but it would have done them well to read this. After this side will take questions their worthies meeting this obama and his National Security team to be in the world it was big enteral arguments but obama decided we give the 40,000 troops you want, 30000 want, 30000 7000 with a Counter Insurgency strategy but heres the thing after 18 months, after the search is over, i will start withdrawing some of the surge troops within 18 months you could turn around so much the afghan army could