Pleased to have you here today joining us for this event cohosted with the center for a new American Security to mark the release of michael gordons. Excellent new book degrade and destroy the inside story of the war against the islamic state. From barack obama to donald trump. Because michael has had exceptional access to top u. S. Officials and military commanders. And because of his extraordinary firsthand reporting from the battlefields, hes produced a must read book on this historic conflict. We were very proud to have michael with us inhouse at fcd for a period while he was working on the book. And we understand you also spent time at cns during the same. Were all happy to see it on the shelves today. Its available for purchase at all. Major booksellers online, im sure. And for those of you here in person, in the back of the room at the conclusion of todays events. Michael gordon currently as the National Security correspondent for the wall street journal. In addition to his latest book, he is the coauthor with the late general bernard trainor, a wonderful man of three definitive histories of the United States wars in iraq. Full disclosure. Ive known michael for a rather long time. I wont tell you how long because he looks so young and may not want to admit his age. But this clue we were in the same bullpen at the New York Times in the previous century. He wasnt astonishingly good. Reporter i could tell you stories. And by the way, reassuring to note, hes still an astonishing good reporter today. So some things dont change. To dive into this conflict with us and the Lessons Learned, we are very glad to have with us Lieutenant General sean macfarland, u. S. Army retired general macfarland served as a three star commander of the coalition against isis in syria and iraq during his command from 2015 to 2016, Coalition Forces recaptured nearly half of the enemys territory and set the conditions for enemys final defeat. Well, well talk about that a little more today. Were equally honored to have michele flournoy, who served as undersecretary of defense for policy in the Obama Administration from 2009 to 2012. Shes the cofounder and chair of the cnrs board of directors. Shes also cofounder and managing partner of west exec advisors. Todays conversation will be moderated by my colleague bradley bowman. Brad serves as senior director at the center on military and political power, which focuses on defense policy and strategy. He served four years as a senate National Security advisor and before as an active duty u. S. Army officer, blackhawk pilot and assistant professor at west point. Before a hand the floor over to brad. Just a couple of quick words about ftd. For anybody who may not be familiar with us. For more than 20 years, beginning following the attacks of 911, ftd has operated as a nonpartisan Research Institute but exclusively focused on National Security and foreign policy. Our experts are a source of Timely Research analysis, policy options. We take no Foreign Government money. We never have. We never will. For more information on our work, we encourage you to visit our website, just ftd dot org, ftd dot org. You can follow us on twitter at ftd. So thank you again for joining us for this important and timely conversation. Brad, im pleased to turn this over to you and thank you so much, cliff, and thanks to everyone for joining us here in the room, which is exciting. Havent seen this in a while and thanks for everyone tuning in online. And i also want to congratulate you, michael, on your extraordinary book. And im really looking forward to this conference session. And secretary flournoy and joe mcfarlane, what a distinguished panel. And im so glad you could join us today. So thank you. My general plan for the next hour or so is for us to have a conversation for about 40 minutes or so. And im sincerely to get two questions from the audience, because we have essentially the same audience with this day. So thats the plan. So with that, lets jump right in the book is here. You see it displayed in front of us. So let me start, michael, if i may, with the most obvious question. This is your fourth book on wars in iraq, if im not mistaken. Why did you decide to write it . And tell us a bit about all the research that went into it . Well, thanks, brad, for having me here. And i also i just looking around the audience, i see that whats really interesting about this event is there are a lot of people who are real played pivotal roles in this successful. It has to be said, campaign against the islamic state. You know in the United States track record in military complex has been mixed but i think by all reasonable measures youd have to count this one as a success. Well, as you know, ive covered all these conflicts and i was in seven of them in various parts of the world, on the ground as a car spun out. And theres just so much one can do as a newspaper reporter. And i always every time i was in the middle of these tumultuous and massive events, you know, a war, you get a very close birds eye view of of whats happening. And sometimes youre in the middle of these combat operations. But i always wanted to know what was really going on, which was hard to know at the time. What were the choices . What was the strategy, what was the road not followed . What was happening in washington . And then the three previous books, which i did with general trainor, you know, our goal then was not to be the first out of the gate and write the first book, but to try to take the time to put something together that would the test of time. Maybe it wouldnt be the only book on the conflict, but it would be one of the books that people would have to read. And thats the approach i took here. Certainly wasnt the first out of the gate since it took me six years, but but and i what i tried to do is what ive in the past, which is do a lot of shoe leather reporting in washington at the highest levels. I could get to. And in this case, it was multiple administrations, but also on the ground in the middle of these battles in mosul and and sinjar are and experience in in syria and in fused together and one of the things thats still striking to me today is there is no pentagon history of this conflict just hasnt been done. So this is something that theres a Rand Corporation of the air. Theres pieces of it on the army side, but no one in the u. S. Government is bothered to do this. So i think its important to get the record and establish it as best i could while the getting was good thats great. Now thank you. And one of the things that struck me about the book is reading is that you really went from policy grand strategy to strategy to the operations and tactics kind of seamlessly. Can you speak for just a moment about the embedding that you did . Is that you discuss in the book a little bit, you know, the combatants that youre embedded with in key moments during the war. So one of the striking features of this war, unlike the previous, unless Operation Iraqi freedom, the invasion and occupation of iraq is there is extensive embedding. And those conflicts, which i took great advantage of and stayed with units for a long periods of time, in all parts of iraq, there was no embedding in this war. The military didnt do it. And the Obama Administration didnt do it. And it has to be said that today the Biden Administration doesnt do it in terms of our forces in poland that were mobilized there to deter russian aggression and reinforce naito. I know because i asked and the unit disagreed, but they had higher levels of the Biden Administration. It was not a i approved, but there were opportunities to get close to the action because this was a war where we worked with a vast array of partners, all in partners who will take you. They didnt have any particular requirements about security, namely your security. And so i was able to go with the peshmerga in mosul in sinjar. I was able to go with the Iraqi Counterterrorist Service. And in in west mosul and i was able to interview general mazloum in syria and also on Positive Side on the military. Well, there was no formal embedding process. I was able to do what they call a battlefield circulation and where you move around the battlefield. But general townsend and people like colonel pat work, who was a key person in the battle for west mosul. So i had that kind of access. But the embedding was with the Partner Forces. Thank you. We mentioned policy secretary flournoy. You obviously, as cliff said, served as undersecretary of defense for policy in the Obama Administration from 2009 to 2012. And youre the the administrations then decision to withdraw u. S. Forces from iraq in 2011 is an important antecedent. Id say, to the events that michael describes in his book, before i ask michael to walk us through some of those key milestones and decisions from 2014 to 2019, im wondering if you be willing to provide your insights into the thinking and policy debates within the administration surrounding the 2011 iraq withdrawal. Let me start by saying, first of all, congratulate michael and how important i think books like this are, because as americans, we too often are in a hurry to get conflicts in the Rearview Mirror and not to actually pause and try to learn lessons from them so that we capture what works. We from what doesnt work and we do better the next time or even avoiding the next time, because if possible, and thanks to tv for cohosting, this was seen as so. I was definitely present in the Decision Making around president obamas ultimate choice to withdraw from iraq. You know, when when we came into office, we obviously inherited two wars, afghanistan and iraq. And i think the Obama Administration, after its initial, was really kind of following the same approach that the Bush Administration had had, which was a very deliberate Phase Transition or a drawdown based on conditions as iraqi forces were able to exert control and have the capacity and capability and a given province, there would be a transition of that province. U. S. Forces or Coalition Forces would be repositioned and gradually wed be drawing down. And thats that was started in the demonstration. It continued in the early of the Obama Administration. And we came to a point where there was really a question of, do you drawdown completely withdraw or do you maintain indefinitely some kind of residual force at the time . Both the civilian side and the military side of the pentagon was pretty unified. And in arguing for a residual force at that point were taking very few casualties. Thankfully. But we did feel like our presence and the advise and assist role was strengthening the iraqi backed backbone was helping to dampen down tensions between, the different ethnic elements of the force in iraq, not ethnic or religious, but sunni, shia, kurd, kurdish and we still had a pretty important glue role of growing it all together and keeping it going very fulsome discussion of pros, the cons, the risks and, you know, the people committed their views to paper. We had repeated situation room discussions, debates about every aspect, and at the end the day the president made his decision and he wanted to and one of the wars he inherited and he felt that given the threat at the time and the assessment of the iraqi forces, that they would be able hold it together with a Security Assistance mission only. What i think he didnt anticipate was the extent to which maliki the Prime Minister at the time would be so insecure with the withdrawal of u. S. Forces that he would go a hard turn back towards sectarian islam and persecution of the sunni, which then created space for what had been aqi, al qaida in iraq reemerge as isis with now the safe haven syria as well. So i think things very quickly started moving in a bad direction, you know, to obamas, i would say, although i disagreed his initial decision, obviously, and i made that very clear at the time he did do the right thing. And you the threat and and i went back in but i think at some some great cost. I mean, i still am of the mind that we might have deter that we jubilation over isis had we maintained a residual force. Thank you for that with that context in mind, michael, i want to come to you before i bring general mcfarlane into the conversation following the withdrawal of us forces in 2011, can you walk us through, if you wouldnt mind, the key milestones and decisions associated with really three things the rise of isis, the decision to send u. S. Forces to iraq, and then ultimately the battle to defeat the isis caliphate. Well, ill do that all in like 3 minutes or less, a very concise because i think general mcfarland, a very Important Role along with some people here in the audience in building the structure that was needed to defeat isis. But i agree with michelle that the with withdrawal of u. S. Forces from iraq created a situation in which maliki, who, by the way, is making a bit of a comeback in iraq now, a sectarian tendencies were unleashed which created a ground within that country for isis to gain a greater foothold. And also the absence of American Forces really led to the deterioration of the Iraqi Security forces. Without that mentoring and presence, it also deprived washington of the Situational Awareness it needed of what was happening and the reason mosul came as a great shock to the white house, but less of a shock to the u. S. Special Operations Community because they saw ice coming was not so much that not only that isis had greater capability, that was anticipated, but the Security Forces were so hollow. And if we had stayed there, we would have been aware of that and weve been able to address that in terms of the key milestones, the president obama made the decision to go back in, it wasnt such a simple thing because this was an entirely different kind of war. They the partners are going to do the fighting we were going to do the mentoring and provide the air. So they had to figure out a scheme to employ advisers. That took about two plus years to get right because. It took that long for advisors to be fully deployed on the battlefield. The iraqi forces they had to create a command structure for both iraq and and some sort of a unified headquarters. Thats what general macfarland did. They had to evolve the air strategy chief from just going after targets on in the front lines to going after deep targets that took some doing and and pushing by commanders in the field to make happen they had to work out a system for conflicting operations with the russians after they came into syria which base actually worked although with some tensions and so there a lot of really big pieces had to be put into place to make this work and it took a few years for all of that to happen and finally reached its fruition before the end of the Obama Administration. But it didnt come easy. Thank you, general. Coming to you, if i may, as michael accounts in his book, pages 153 and 5431 154. For anyone taking notes, you assumed command camp ashraf john in september second, 2015. On that day, secretary Defense Ash Carter said, quote, as michael, rather than three general generals responsible for a different aspects of the campaign as been the case, i have empowered Lieutenant General mcfarlane as the single commander of counter activities in both iraq and syria, unquote. Carter said, quote, efforts will be critical in the coming months. That was quite an understatement. I would. Id love to hear you respond in any way youd like to. What michael just detailed especially anything that occurred after you assumed command. Sure thanks, fred. Well, first of all, you i was honored by the confidence that secretary carter had in me. And i hope i justified it. But the main job at hand to create this command and control structure that encompassed both iraq and syria. And that required us pulling together some of the special operations tribes, as they call themselves, under one command, although they didnt all completely come under that one command. But the coordination was enhanced significantly with some the chase soccer teams. But we brought that together building up that headquarters presented its own challenges as michael recounts a bit in his book. You know, the fire marshal at camp arifjan wouldnt let them move into their building because it didnt enough sprinkler heads. So we had to put them in in the summer heat of kuwait in a motor pool next to my headquarters and, you know, backed up reefer vans to, you know, push enough cold air into those things. You know, how many sprinkler heads are in tents, by the way . Tell us. But anyway, we pulled that together and that was important because the command and control and in two countries had to be balanced against the fact that we had two different sets of authorities, really, for use of force, one and half. And in syria, one in iraq, we forces distributed in turkey and jordan and kuwait and qatar and and, of course, in iraq. We had 29 troop contributing nations of the coalition of, i think almost 60 countries. And we had, you know, Carrier Strike groups operating. And there a lot of activity going and and then the other thing to keep in mind is we were under in iraq title 22 authority. We had a chief of mission, a fully operating embassy. And balancing all those equities in syria. We had really two wars happening, not just one. We were fighting i