maybe you could say for those who are not familiar with the term about what you mean when you define the adversary as the furious. >> i use the term pherae because that is what the iraqi and palestinians and pakistanis and afghans i've worked with in the field called the enemy and it means in islam someone who believes another muslim who doesn't share it stockley the same belief system is there can be declared an infidel and can then be killed. we in the west use terms like jihadist or mujahideen. i don't use those terms about the enemy. that gives them a secret status which is exactly what they're looking for. jihadists paints a holy warrior. these guys are not warriors buy any means. i will give you an example of that from iraq in a minute. i also don't like the term -- people sometimes use the term to

describe these guys. the first four generations of muslims are believed to represent the most pious generations of muslim believers. very large numbers of people in the muslim world what describe themselves as this. millions of people in indonesia, 80% who are muslims call themselves this and yet there are a couple of hundred terrorists in indonesia so i think it's not a good term. another term you sometimes hear means terrorist and arabic. again. that describes the violence but it doesn't describe the ideologies. so when i talk about the etiology of al qaeda i and other people that have worked in the field tend to call them [inaudible] so i would describe al qaeda as terrorists. not all of these are terrorists but al qaeda are certainly both

h.r., where are you? i'm going to refer to you if i neglect to mention something. but let me tell you about iraq. we would go into areas of downtown baghdad and find bodies with the first two fingers of the hand cut off and there would be guys found smoking by al qaeda and killed and had their fingers cut off message to everybody not to smoke. we would find women with acid thrown in their faces for wearing their failed to four back. children baked alive in a couple of cases and al anbar bayh al qaeda trying to impose barbaric control measures on the tribes. people beheaded. you can go on and on. we talked to many young men who felt that they were falling

legitimate jihadi or muslim principles and would get the messages from the sheik by e-mail and think they are falling a holy warrior and one of the most effective things we did when we detained people and wanted to break them from falling al qaeda was to introduce them to other al qaeda prisoners and they would realize the guy they thought was a holy warrior was a common criminal covered in tattoos in some cases smuggling drugs, a guy who wasn't worthy of the sacrifice that these guys were putting forward and certainly not in the bar parity with the work carried out. al qaeda was easy and defeat. we had to show the population was light and make the population feel safe turning against them. as soon as we did that the house of cards collapsed which is why i'm reasonably confident with regard to al qaeda in the long term. i think the ideologies of basically attractive to pretty much everybody. the only thing that could happen that would sustain that is

ideology over the long term would be if we were to treat al qaeda as a competitor and make bin laden and pump up the che guevara value of ideologies. unfortunately some of the things we have done since 9/11 have done that but i think there's still time to calmed down, take a deep breath and i think that this with appropriate control measures which will include shooting bad guys with appropriate control measures will appropriately by a natural death. >> let's talk in detail about the campaign plan and iraq. you are best known to this audience and to the world as one of general petraeus's key advisers putting that strategy together in early 2007. we are fortunate tonight to have other people crucial in that effort here. john, who gave the lecture and through dave just mentioned.

but take us back to the beginning of 2007. it's hard now to remember just what that was like. but what did it look and feel like in baghdad? what was your sense of the trajectory of that time, and talk about the analysis you and h.r. and others put together and gave general petraeus that led to the change in strategy that we call the surge. we will talk in a minute about how durable the process is bought take us back in time and explain how the strategy was put together. >> i don't want to overstate my role here and i was just one of a group. and i think that some of the key leaders are here in the room. but let me give you some numbers. the worst months of the war for

civilian casualties were september to december of 2006. in those periods about 100 to 125 iraqi civilians are being killed in baghdad city alone every night night after night after night. several thousand per week in the worst months of the war. what had happened was that we had moved into the society, we had done an about of damage to iraqi society the first year of the war. the enemy exploited that and turned what was basically resistance against occupation in 04 into a completely catastrophic secretary and civil war by 2006. we were repeatedly about six months to lead in coming up with strategies to deal with the situation. in 2005 it was an insurgency. by the end of 2005 we had the right and were working well on the counter insurgency side.

the 22nd in 2006 with the samarra bombing al qaeda turned overnight into a secretary and more but it took another six months to catch up to the fact we were going to need to control a bunch of people who hadn't and a lot of cases and my case for a simple hadn't supported the of original idea of going into iraq but decided the job of the moment isn't to cry over spilled milk. it's to help clean it up and we tried to apply best principles of what we knew how to do after the population and building a political consensus to the environment we found ourselves. as i was landing back into iraq in february of 2011, f-16's were attacking targets on negative street by the embassy. the embassy was getting bombed five-to-10 times a day. people were getting blown up at their desks in the embassy. and that was just the americans.

the people that worked there across the district were terrified to leave. the environment was just so incredibly dangerous and all of the trend lines for pointing south. to turn that around we realized we needed to first break the cycle of violence and reduce the amount of death and fear. we realized people wouldn't be willing to put down a weapon and engage in any kind of political process on till we've sort of lifted the foot of terror off of their neck and made them feel that they could be safe enough to work with each other and so our first order of business was to stop the killing of iraqi civilians both by us and also by the enemy. to do that we had to get out on the ground and get in close contact with the population and create a genuine relationship of trust and local alliance with the population. quite often in the early phases

of the war we would turn up in a district and swap the local population out of the way and say get out of the way we are backing up the democracy truck and unpack democracy like a gift. and of course that did not work so well and at the start of the war, the start of the surge we went in and had a different attitude. we said take me to your leader. i want to know who's running the district and a deal with you so we can secure the district together. i had one meeting with guys who snuck out of diversity and we met at a safe house outside of the green zone and there was an engineer, a former army officer, and an accountant. and they had snuck out. they were members of the district council supposedly run by muqtada al-sadr and they came to see me and said when are you guys going to secure the district? we want you to come in and make it safe.

they are abusing the population and killing people and we want you to come and i said how long have you been working with the coalition and they said we've been working with you guys through 2003 but covertly and i said this is interesting because we have got economics, military and engineering development. if you were me how would you secure your district? and they sort of sat back and went into a huddle and talked to each other and i felt i had offended you. i said i'm sorry to offend you. they said it's okay just no one has asked us that before. so we'd been working with these guys for years. they have all the requisite skills but no one ever said to them how would you secure your own district? that's the fundamental change, we took a bottom-up approach and worked with the population to secure them and create the environment in which political progress became possible. now we have seen political progress since the start of the

surge. we are nowhere close to being done with it. i think the war has got another five to ten years to run frankly but we reported back and saved a lot of iraqi lives. in baghdad now there's one or two getting killed compared to 130 at night and 2006 so the most conservative estimate we saved several files and if nothing else by what we did. >> it's become common among some commentators who write about iraq to say that it wasn't the surge in numbers of troops so much as it was the change in tactics moving people much closer to the population that was decisive, it was being able to work with tribal leaders and flip the tribes. what is your own judgment? we will be debating this for

decades i sure but what is your sense about that? >> i think it's very difficult to separate those things in reality. we couldn't have done the right tactics without more troops. we needed those additional troops so that we were able to generate to protect the population. similarly in terms of the population turning against al qaeda we've already described what al qaeda would like. it didn't need much for us to get the population to hate them and turn out against them. the alana bar uprising that happened in 2007 was the fifth uprising to happen in our landmark. the reason the previous four field wasn't because people didn't pete al qaeda. it was because there were not enough to protect them when they turned against al qaeda said they would turn against them and be killed. what we were able to do is provide security so they were able to sustain that movement against al qaeda and throw the al qaeda guys out and getting back to the accidental guerrilla

thing, again, 90% of the people we were fighting or accidental guerrilla fighting because their community was that threat from another community in the cycle of violence provoked by al qaeda in iraq which is a tiny group of externals fighters led by turks and syrians and foreigners who had come in and provoked the war. we had to make it safe enough they would feel able to reject those guys and get back to political dialogue with other communities. >> you talk in your book about the fragility what we have accomplished in iraq. you just said we have another five or ten years. my colleague is in the audience and said the decisive defense in iraq lie ahead of us, not behind. so i wanted to ask you to focus on that question of fragility and durability and media in the context of the defense of the last week. we haven't -- in baghdad we have

charismatic former al qaeda leader, a person on herd volumes about in january 2008 who described the story how he had fought against the americans and then come over to us and had given us the names of 11 of the 13 ki al qaeda leaders in the area who had been been killed and all the sudden a kind of symbolic figure in this awakening process he seems to have turned against the government to have gone off the reservation if you will. he's been arrested along with his supporters, and you now have deep anger at least amongst some of the sunnis who had been backing him. you have a comment in your book i will read. it's a final set up for this.

you say there's an outside chance tribes who flipped from aqi could simply flip back or go their own way once the coalition begins to withdraw. talk about about what's happening now and what concern you going forward. >> there are a couple of big things that are concerning. one is the issue of tribes slipping back and the sustainability of the political turn which happened in the sunni community in 06 and 07. another is the risk of the coup we should talk about as well. but again, no -- i don't want to keep referring to my job but a chore can tell what happened after the battle when people in the iraqi central government tried to undermine some of the things that had been achieved in that area by restocking the police that had been cleaned out and made to respect human rights and protect the population we

stacking them with secretary in appointees. a similar thing has been happening in some ways in iraq where ministries in the iraqi government which are critical to the process of reconciliation have sort of refused to play their assigned role and said we don't want these guys to be partnering with us. we want to control things. why should we have the sunnis having such an important voice in the political process? i'm so happy we've durham and those outside the dogs out of the district. now that we've done that we are going to turn on the shia and finished the job and i was like well that's not in the plan, buddy. [laughter] but part of this as you know the iraq war isn't about loss, it was never about office. it's about iraqi finding a combination with each other. they're still for a ship without a fight and i think there will be a need for them to find their

own level and figure out where things sit so as i said i done don't think the war is over. people in iraq who have the least appetite for fighting is last. the iraqi is are still ready to fight each other if need be. iraq to me today looks like lebanon after the courts. we have a fragile ethnic balance of power and a government that is barely able to police the balance of power and keep things in hand. if you remember it was external interference from another power so we need to worry about the role of external power interfering in iraq. the final thing i want to talk about briefly is a coup. the best that i ever worked with who i went out with many times on the ground said to me some hussein was a bad man but he understood iraq. you guys are good.

[laughter] and i was like okay. i get it. and i said, you know, what does iraq need and he said we need a good saddam hussein. and this is a very common attitude because people said the politicians are not space and they don't represent the people, they represent the parties and because of the system they have no constituency other than their own party. they sit there in the green zone and trade sources are the nationwide institution that looks after the people, cares for the people. that was their attitude. this is extremely common. this isn't an iraqi phenomenon, this conflict phenomenon. it just happens that target geometry is good. we've got all the politicians inside a wall with 300 entrances and troops in the city. negative one of the things we need to be talking about is strengthening civil government

rules of law, the representation of constituency of iraqi politicians to strengthen that grass-roots democracy in such a way that it does seem meant the on armed political process and it's worth pointing out in that context sunni tribal leaders involved are some of the few politicians in iraq today who actually have a real constituency whose view they have to take into account. >> let me turn to afghanistan. i've written that i think this book is the best guide to the policy choices that we face in afghanistan. we now have president obama's announcement of what his afghanistan pakistan strategy will be after a review process of several months and i want to put you on the spot a little bit and ask you to comment on that policy with this preface.

to me as an observer it seems as if the president is leaning in two directions at once. you talk in your book about an enemy centric strategy that would focus on al qaeda in afghanistan and a population centric strategy that would get you more into nation-building area. and i've been trying ever since the president's speech to figure out which of the strategy really is most focused on and i decided both. this really is leaning in both ways at once. but you were part of this process. you consulted with officials but separating yourself from that, given your thoughts about what the strategy is. whether you think it's wise, what concerns you have about the details of it. >> in the discussion about the strategy i kind of made the

point that we are at a fork in the road. we can decide to do more to commit to escalate and try to protect the afghan population, or we can give up that endeavor and just focus on dealing with al qaeda to read the difficulty with the first option is we might not be able to afford it. it takes a long time to do this kind of thing. it will take a lot of money to do it right. and it's something perhaps the country doesn't have the appetite for. the problem with the second one is it's not going to work. and bear with me for a second. i know a lot of people in the audience like me used to do this for a living but i want to explain how the process of counterterrorism works. if i am on the ground and i have all eyes on a terrorist target, i need to know where that target is, not now, but at preparation

time plus flight time plus approval time for my strike asset. so if my strike as it is a personal unit that's ten minutes flat time away and it takes half an hour to get ready and approval then i as the body until where is the target going to be in one hour. if mauney strike asset is a naval service unit in the indian ocean and the strike asset needs to launch a missile with a two hour flight time and it takes me eight hours to get approval from the white house i need to know where the target is going to be not now but around lunchtime tomorrow. that's extremely difficult. it was and is the logical facility that caused the administration not to get bin laden. it was the fact the acid was naval assets in the ocean that the approval time was too long and you could never get the fidelity of information to do that. when you are working a terrorist target in a close based asset

and access and enough relationship with the local population to generate the information to que your other assets so you can bring the strike asset and. so even the most enemy focused completely kinetic terrorist approach or anti-terrorist approach in afghanistan would require close basis with u.s. forces on them and let's imagine that strike asset i talked about, the special forces unit is 50 guys which is what you need to take down ten terrorists. if it's 50 guice you need 150 guys because they have to sleep and you need a base for them to live on and someone to protect the base and a road to get your food in and headquarters. you need a relationship with the population otherwise why are they giving you assistance so it turns out to boy lit all down if you're going to do counterterrorism even the basic form of counterterrorism you need to also do a certain minimum level of counterinsurgency to protect the

population and get them on sight before you can be effective and that certain minimum level turns out to be substantial. so unfortunately the need clinical destructive bad guys approach isn't going to work. now with the current administration has done i think is focused on the immediate crisis and i think it exactly why is. what they've done is said let's look at the troops we need to secure the environment now. let's look what we can get from the allies next week and what we can sell to the american people as an easily understood explanation for why we are engaging in this conflict and they've gone with that and well i think they've done is kept powder dry to see where things develop and you can fault them for saying you should be committed both 100% right now and unless you make that long term commitment than people are now going to side with you. i think there is truth to that

but it's also wise for them to see how the allies react and how the situation develops before the committee. so, you know, i perhaps like the president am leaning in both directions. i think it's not a bad first response and we will have to see how we develops as the fighting season goes on. >> and what would it take to convince you -- i've quoted you saying you think it would be folly to make a very large additional commitment of troops now. but what would it take you to convince that was a wise course? what would things have to look like nine months, one year from now? >> well, i think what is actually most important is the situation in pakistan. you know, afghanistan is not going to fall to the taliban any time soon. the situation in afghanistan is bad and it's getting worse, but the real problem is in pakistan and i don't mean to suggest the

pakistanis are the enemy. i'm talking about something different. the scale of the problem in pakistan is a huge by comparison to the scale of author iraq or afghanistan. iraq is 31 million, afghanistan is 32 million people, pakistan is 173 million people with 100 nuclear weapons and army bigger than the u.s. army and al qaeda headquarters sitting there in to third of the country where the government doesn't exercise effective control. so we could do all kind of things right in afghanistan and still be completely screwed if we fail to stabilize pakistan and somehow present state collapse and extremist takeover. so i think the focus needs to bea what are we doing in pakistan and then afghanistan becomes the ad -- add job rather then the other way around. >> i feel we just scratched the surface and it's a good time to turn to the audience for

questions. let me ask you to keep questions brief because we would like to take a lot. please identify yourself asking the question. do we have microphones for folks? we do? yes, please raise your hand and i will call on people as i see you. yes, please. yes. >> [inaudible] >> if you could repeat your name. >> rob smith. i noticed in the book that most counterinsurgency ferris talk heavily about a role of intelligence and when i read the book and noticed an absence of that so you get to the very end and talk about the need to restructure the intelligence community for purposes of going after non-state actors. could you elaborate on that a little bit? i was just struck by the absence of the intelligence story. >> is tom here? like can't see him. i actually writing a chapter on

intelligence for tom's upcoming book. haven't got injury for on it i'm afraid. i had a sort of a editorial issue in the book about how much to say about the intelligence process and conflicts that are currently ongoing. i had a lot of material how we did intelligence and iraq and how the intelligence process has worked in afghanistan. ultimately i decided not to put that in the book. i felt like i don't want this to become the cooper book so i pulled back from putting that in but what i did leave was all that stuff about the anthropological characteristics and the way the politics of these groups work. so i tried to leave the discussion of human terrain intelligence but take out some of the discussion of threat intelligence and as you know we probably shared similar views how the community needs to work. i think most of us that worked

in the field have similar views. this is probably not the right than you to put them out, but i don't suggest intelligence isn't important. it's just something we shouldn't be publishing on amazon. >> let me just ask a quick follow-up and then i will turn to you. on the subset of intelligence policy is the use of predator drones to attack targets in pakistan in particular in was your astana or the pakistani army and frontier corps basically withdrawn, what do you think about the wisdom of the use of those drones to kill al qaeda and taliban targets in those areas? ..