victories following the invasion of afghanistan. the event just over an hour was hosted by the university club of chicago. >> welcome to. it's a pleasure and an honor to speak here about "horse soldiers." it's true, i did work for -- work, robert frost's former estate in vermont and had a kind of varied -- various checkered jobs on my way to becoming a full-time writer. in 2003 had published the last addition of my first book, in harm's way, and that led indirectly to "horse soldiers." i'm going to talk about that this afternoon about how i arrived and the story of these special forces soldiers in

afghanistan means. "horse soldiers" is a book about 900 young men in world war ii who in july, 1945 were dumped into the pacific ocean and through negligence left to drown. we come to know this story through the movie "jaws," the monologue about captain guinn being aboard that ship and so on and so forth. these men really existed and some were from our area here who, and i went and i met them and it was really a book in their story about selflessness and service and community. i wondered if i could write a similar kind of book about the modern soldier. and 2001, october of that year just six weeks after 9/11, we -- and all of us in that room don't know that now, like me, but was going to happen next after we

turned on the radios and heard the news of those attacks. i remember where i was. i was -- i was walking into a coffee shop. at the same time, someone who has now become antiquated since through the process of writing this book there was a soldier named cal spencer getting out of a river in kentucky after a night of routine training. he is nearing 40, feeling like he's getting too old for this kind of business. he wishes he were home having a martini. well, when he turns on the radio he hears what i am hearing and what you heard, too and knows however that something is going to happen. what happened was something historic that never happened before in the history of the united states. that is special forces soldiers, just a band of 12 men, middle-aged for all practical purposes, are sent into afghanistan to attack the taliban and the al qaeda camps that sponsored those 9/11

attacks. they were actually plan z if you want to think about that moment they can plan a and it was a brilliant plan and what they did work. they did oust the taliban. their structure did collapse, and for all intensive purposes as the book says, as the subtitle of the book says they did achieve a strategic victory. so, the book begins with that 9/11 crisis, and we follow them from their homes, and then into afghanistan and we come back to their homes because i feel this is a book about, as one of the people on the teams, named dean, who after the business of the book, after the action of this combat, went on to actually teach at west point in the new counterterrorism program. very smart guy. all of these people were so intelligent and interesting. i've learned more about problem-solving by talking to members of this part of the

military community than i have anywhere else to be quite honest. i've been privileged to traveling around the country and speak at the united states army special operations command at fort bragg and meet with three-star general john mulholland, who at the time was at fort campbell on commanding these guys. i also went to fort campbell and went back and addressed the troops, many of whom are in the book. i tried to send a copy of the book to most people in it. i am still in the process of doing that waiting for the reduced to come back by mail box and they were all great reviews. it's been a very interesting, long process. the book took quite a while to write. i traveled to afghanistan and interviewed about 100 people. interviewed the guys on the ground. i interviewed many afghans and also the pilots and so on. we will talk. on it and then we will take some questions, but i just want to

describe to you the return to the beginning and have us set our mind back to what it is we faced back in september and october of 2001. i'd like for all of us in this room to imagine we are a small village afghanistan. and i have just arrived to meet you. and my job is to hopefully convince you to do something that is in both of our -- both of our self interests. so i know that in the room here there are people at this table who have their own self-interest and people over here have their own as well and they may not get along and somewhere in the back of the room there may be the nominal leader of the village. perhaps this gentleman over here that once his position of power. when i moved into this room or society i already in my base camp in my tent and uzbeckistan preferred over my scott have been going over intelligence reports, language skills, i have been reading about you. so when i enter into the room or

the village i know quite a bit already. and my job is never really to have to pull the trigger if i don't have to. simply to begin to move about and create political change and social change by trying to get you guys and you guys over here to get along and point in one direction. the person in the back of the room who thinks he's in charge, maybe i am going to convince this part of the remote for here that you are in charge. my job is not to change your world and make it mirrored my own. it's simply to marry a mutual interests. and in october of 2001 those interests were this: afghanistan was the site of the camps the incubated the 9/11 attacks. you in this room in this village, you are not happy with the taliban at all. you have been living under them now since 1997, 98. the rooms in this window have been painted black. that is so the people outside cannot see any women sitting in here eating. those of you in this room

sitting next to a man you are not related to, you just broke into law. all of the males in the room are clean shaven, well, most of us any way, and you, too, have broken the law. for this you may be stoned, with, carried to the soccer stadium and even more serious punishment could be meted out. this has been your life. now, this life that you have not necessarily chosen, however, has been thrust upon you for a very simple reason: after the soviets pulled out in '89 from afghanistan the country, that country, these various groups in this room all began fighting each other. we are of one ethnic background in this room. let's say we are all tajiks, the same group that was a part of the ahmad shah massoud group. you may know him, he was somewhat of a famous afghan leader. he was assassinated september 9, 2001 just two days before

september 11th. in an effort by al qaeda to cut the head of the leadership of the remaining resistance to the taliban movement, which had that time controlled about 90% of afghanistan. massoud is hanging on by his finger fingernails and the folly and in fact according to the people in the book, and i have been in phone contact with many of them as i've been traveling, it seems probably the resistance are what we now know as the northern alliance would have collapsed within a matter of months had not the american forces arrived. so we are tajiks so we've been fighting with the uzbeks and so on. after the soviet pullout, what's happened is that we can't even move from this room to the next floor without paying a tariff or being held up at gunpoint by a bandit. we can't take our goods to market. the country has devolved into the wild west. and so, one day, however, the bandits go too far.

and these are free lancer is of no political stripe. there's not a religious orientation. they have no agenda accepted their own self interests. one day, however, two young children are killed by these bandits. the villagers near kandahar are so enraged that they want to mullah omar, the man we now know more about in the news. he is the mom of leader of the taliban, and they say to mullah omar please, do something about this. he has amongst him a collection of non-fundamentalists -- young fundamentalists who believe in the kuran and their students. this young call trey or policy goes after and then actually addressed the perpetrators of this crime and hang them. this is a very happy thing for the villagers and in fact suddenly the policy increases in

strength and force and its vital in nature so now that they are actually kind of stealing this center of the universe at the point of their own sword. but by the time that some nominal peace and security has been secured in the country, the price of that day's we now all realize here in this village the windows are black, the women cannot move freely, etc., etc.. so into this than september, 2001, come the attacks on america. and our leaders in our villages are bent down to their small radios listening to the bbc, listening like we were to these attacks. and one of them, the leader, is thinking finally, finally, the americans are coming. because she is tired of fighting alone. he has been scaling mountain cliffs and in the snow his men

dressed in tennis shoes with dress socks and shorts carrying ak-47s with duct tape whistlings made on them climbing through the snow with the taliban on the top firing down at them. his men won't give up. they are so low on bullets they are scouring of the dirt around them finding on spent rounds putting them in buckets of crushed glass they shake and that polishes the case and again so you can reload it into a magazine and three fire. this is how desperate things are. so, you can match and then when, back in the states when cal spencer gets into his truck, he doesn't know any of this either. but when he arrives suddenly after a harrowing helicopter ride through the himalayas it's night, it's dark, it is freezing. i mean, it's 16, 17,000 feet sometimes, and these are the famous pilots on the 160 of

operations regimen also known as the 160 of the sort. many of you may know them from that great book "blackhawk down," and the movie as well. they are the best of the best when it comes to helicopter pilots. i was privileged to spend a week or so with them talking and taking their oral history as well. just flying into the country. it's at night. there's the borders. there's so much dust and grit in the year that the blades are striking this particular it and creating double golden he blows at top of the helicopter as it moves through the night. there's no light blinking accept this theory glow and there are guys on the ramp with straps on these guns waiting for any kind of fire to come up from the ground. and sometimes there was some fire from the ground. at some -- they are always in threat of logging to a fatal dead end of a fatal physics

equation, which is they had no more power and no more left to get through this thin mountain air and what have to turn on their own axis and stairstep. one of these guys flew 80 nights in a row. unbelievable. sitting in the middle jump seat, pilot here, another crew member here he has a map open and they all have night vision goggles on and they are flying and have this jeer and electronics but basically in the end he says you know it looks like if we turn left and right here we will gain 5 feet in elevation because you can't just suddenly power the helicopter and lifted because you've run out of left and power in thin air so it's like they are creeping through the air. and they do this and in fact i say to those guys when you've done is incredible. can i put it in the book and they were actually quite glad to

cooperate with me. they had never -- no one had ever flown so high according to them in u.s. army history. the land. 12 people. before they get in the helicopter i should say that no holland, then colonel hollen that the crew to leave coke camp, shakes their hand, looks than in the eye and he says you guys are it. i don't know, he goes i believe this will come out okay but i don't know what to tell you about what it is you're going to face because we don't know a lot. it's only six weeks now since 9/11. remember the whole world has been going on. the news cycle is bubbling and burbling but what's next and what's going to happen. in their team rooms and fort campbell they've been given discovery channel video tapes and old national geographics to study what afghanistan is like. that is their intelligence at the beginning.

it got much better and more robust and complex, but at one level or on the other hand i think there's nothing wrong with that because they are doing everything for anything they can to prepare these guys. they write letters home saying if you are reading this letter things didn't turn well for me. they are taking off their wedding rings and putting them in an envelope and handing it to the chaplain, and now they are landed. mulholland said to them before i got on the aircraft trust no one, even the afghans themselves may try to kidnap you for ransom, etc., etc.. so they are really in no man's land. but the odd thing is special forces relish this kind of opportunity. much like the us is officers of world war ii out of which special forces eventually grew confirmed officially in 1952. they are trained to work behind enemy lines. they speak the language like i said they know everything about

the culture they are going in too often as much as any college professor anywhere and so their job and is to just sit on monks the population and try to make things happen and exploit opportunities. this is different than the regular army, quote on quote, the army we know more about. which stands up and ranks in the thousands and often will have a plan and interest execute to the best of its ability. again these guys are inserted into the middle of no man's land. it's dark. the helicopter pulls away and suddenly out of the gloom, the afghans dressed in robes and shall minn -- shawls, they can see within sticking out and they don't know if they are good guys or bad guys. maybe the whole landing zone has been compromised and they are about to be ambushed. well, they were not in most.

they were actually welcome to. very little less safe. it's important to get off the landings on quickly and they start moving to a base camp and now they are in guerrilla country. because as in say world war ii they are behind enemy lines and now their job is to get all of us in this village here to work with the next village over. they have got money, bullets, blankets and their job is now to point everybody in one direction at the taliban. this is to say at the end of the story when they finally do achieve their victory, they do capture the northern city of mostar asia read, the streets are lined with the villagers welcoming and cheering and clapping. it is amazing. colonel mark mitchell then major mark mitchell along with another

gentleman, along with his old team looked up from either their saddles or motorized buggies they are writing in and they feel like they are back in world war ii because they are being welcomed as liberators and that is key and that is why i think this book is a book about relationships and power of relationships. it is a book about afghanistan but in the end i think i try to write this so that he would be interested in it even if you didn't know much about afghanistan because he would be intrinsically interested in the human drama of ordinary people to do extraordinary things with very little so you feel a kinship with the characters or the people, the real people in the book because you meet them in the beginning and they have families. cal spencer, the same guy that gets in the truck and hears about the attacks is sitting in his team room and fort campbell

the ceiling tile rain stained, gray linoleum floors from the mica tables, these are not brand spanking new davis and he is off to go off to be america's answer to 9/11. it is humble any way that is appealing to me that he's sitting there looking out the window wondering i wish i was a couple miles down the road because my son is playing his baseball game tonight. this is what he is thinking as he is about to go into this unknown land. as the writing to this base camp they are awaiting the arrival at this particular team now the first there were 12 and later on another team came in of 12 more plus air force combat controllers and then major mark michel's lieutenant colonel mix our's element came as commanding control unit. but in the and there were

probably 300 u.s. personnel in the beginning phase, and fell since of afghans going after anywhere between 40 or 60,000 taliban soldiers, and it is amazing what they accomplished by november 10th 2001. the planned october 19th. they are right in this city with a cheering crowd. the pentagon thought this might take a year and a half, and it took just from october to november 10th to do. as they are rolling into the city's the general many of you may know from the news, a rather famous figure in afghan politics, he now has some nominal part in karzai's government, but he has run the northern part of that country for many years he had his own currency, his own airline for instance, his own radio

stations. when i met with him as a matter of fact i was aware of all of this. he traveled in a large train of vehicles and i was interviewed i think by someone from one of his radio stations and he made a very big show of this. he's a survivor. he, as they are rolling into moss fishery for after the 60-mile horse ride up the valley, he says to lieutenant colonel that's the worse let's waste the american flag. bowers thinks for a while and says no that's not a good idea right now. think a moment about that. it seems counterintuitive because without the american held this victory would not have been achieved but what the hours preceding as a trained special forces soldier is to waste the american flag at this moment would send signals to the cheering crowds. number one the baseline ethos is we are not going to capture afghanistan for america.

it isn't going to become minneapolis. it's been to be returned back to them and right now it will raise the american flag and send the signal we have arrived and are in feeding your country. it was an afghan victory for afghans and so the general agreed and the other guys, the other americans saw the wisdom, too. but the book is filled with these guys do and you will see them again and afghanistan and in the middle east in 2009 they are filled with those kind of momentum and i wrote a force soldiers to dramatize and i fear the human way out in this this kind of training can be applied in terms of resolving conflict. i should probably talk about the title for a moment because as i began that anecdote i was about

to say they were told -- they were not told a lot for instance the discovery channel to the tapes come national geographics and so on but one thing they certainly were not told us they would have to ride horses while they did this. it sounds rather romantic and picturesque but believe me, it wasn't. these ponies, they are really horses, certain breed from central asia, finn leggitt, strong, sturdy on a mountainside in what used to carrying a 220 lb american male with lots of the year. the saddles are made of wood tacked down with oriental carpet and the strips are very short because the general afghan mail is shorter than the american male and the strips are made of iron rings and since they don't wear combat boots the way we do they wear dress shoes honestly of times in battle or slippers or shower shoes or something they couldn't put their feet in the stirrups so they would try

-- number one, cal and another captain named mitch nelson and and the marshall and pat and been milo and a wonderful metic named bill benet, some members of this team are light and the general comes up in a cloud of dust and his white stallion says i am general and i'm glad you have come. now we are going to go after the taliban. and they have a meeting and talk for a while and he on rolls his map on the dirt and nelson looks at it and is very impressed. it's filled with -- it is his own marks and pence about taliban movement because he's been fighting these guys for a long time and he's very happy americans have come but he is deathly worried that if they are scratched or attacked or hurt in any way they will be yanked out

by the u.s. government and go back to the united states, so the team's first order of business is try to get dostem to let them get close to the taliban on the first day. first he wants to keep them for, five, six, 7 miles away and you can't accurately sit on a mountainside with a pair of binoculars or spotting scope and target a bunker with a bunch of antennas in a taliban position of you're that far away. you can try and do it but that's what we fear there. they are there to be close and get accurate and these guys have the willpower and passion to fight the taliban. with the americans have brought in their sack and part of a year away and on these small horses or laser designator is to guide bombs and satellite radios and things like that that the marriage of this -- their passion and force, their knowledge of the country with the training of the special forces guice to work with this

indigenous culture, not work against it or change it or make it into the, you know, how we want to do things but to be smart enough to move into this village and work alongside it is what achieved this victory. the technology in this old world kind of sweat equity will be reassessed after this quick meeting, dostem says we leave now. leave now. this is kind of on heard of in the army. you don't just leave now. usually you are deployed among your own kind. you are now working with a host nation so closely like this he says we leave now i will take you to my mountain headquarters. the americans look at each other and say who has ridden a horse before because they see that dostem is saddling up and to gaius say when we were kids back at summer camp, and if there is very little discussion. there is -- this isn't the chance to say i haven't signed up to ride a horse.

six of them get on board and start writing these trails and later on it was major now colonel marc mitchelson said writing course was the most terrifying moments he had during this journey aside from the firefights and gun battles because sometimes the trail was two or 3 feet wide and there were ravines on either side and it was my time and you could see their hopes of the forces sparking off the rocks and how did this animal know where to go and just for fun sometimes the afghans would come out of the darkness and slap your horse on the hind end and make it run down the trail and they would laugh and see how well you could hang on. this was a great sport and sometimes he would be riding at night and hear this, you know the sound things make when they are coming undone like the saddle slipping off the horse and the big american is now hanging on the side of course going down the trail and one of them fell off and mitchell is

watching. he falls on the trail, it's a little wider here and he rules and goes off the edge. he says he's gone because it's a thousand feet or more and he runs over and this was not the pitch dark, this is when there was light. he's actually fallen on the age before that liking some buster keaton movie and a lift him up and he is white as a sheet. another time one of the horses took off. he couldn't -- the very otherwise capable american soldier on board couldn't control it and decided to run down the mountainside and so here is what he thought. he said you know i saw that movie once the man from snowy river and i remember he put his head back and grabbed hold of the main and hung on for dear life and his running down the mountainside as horse is

galloping and says i don't want to die, i don't want to die. he beats everybody to the bottom of course because they are taking switchbacks back and forth and dostem rides up with the most emmys to look in his eye and he says something to him i believe it was probably in the uzbek or persian and the americans is what did he say and he said general dostem says truly you're the most amazing force and i have ever seen. [laughter] and again thinking quickly on his feet the special forces soldier said thank you, general, i know that, or something to that effect. so, while the book is serious and some ways, and i think filled with a lot of trauma there is actually quite a bit of humor because one of the reasons for their success is they didn't take themselves too seriously. i guess by that i mean on this helicopter ride in that i've discussed about the doors open and it's freezing one of the

engineers on the first team pat, again, very sharp, very capable, has a family, when you meet pat you think here is someone that i know. this guy does not look to me like my clich decision as a soldier. he's both very knowledgeable about the country. you know, well, number one fees are generally older man leader on in their career who've been selected and the special force so they have more life experience and so on. so i think they are a little more settled in who they are. but pat, he falls asleep on the helicopter ride on the way in. i don't think i could do that. it's freezing cold but he says there's nothing i can do about it. if they start shooting at us and

something goes wrong then i will have to deal with it but for now everything's fine and i will just take a nap. and that is a very interesting way to not be overexcited about problems before they present themselves. .. or behind ridges, two 300 at a time in ranks. and some like dostam would sit off to the side with his walk talk can i, when everyone got arranged, they

would look down the field, 1,000 yards, 2,000 yards away would be the taliban line with tanks. so that is their position. motorized vehicles bell kming smoke and artillery, mortars. our allies will charge it and charge it carrying rpg tubes and ak-47's and they will run across the field and try their best to take this position. i think that is, an amazing, sense of, sacrifice, really. so, the general yells charge! first line goes. crests uphill. crest, crest, drops down, keeps roaming, keeps running. you hear pound of the hoofs. they get halfway across 2/3 across. suddenly the ban guns open up. they're shooting back at horsemen. the horsemen are being shot

back laying down on the field. they're firing rpg tubes. they're rocked back saddle. they have firing their rifles at taliban line. what you have is collision and of horse and machine and the horses win. because of swarm of this massive moving bodies is overwhelming the ability to adjust and correct its fire. you can imagine in your mind, tank barrels trying to move quick enough. they just can't. so eventually they lose. previous to arrival in that country, they would retake the position. you can emergency also that the afghans would be on this hilltop having just captured, suddenly in the distance you hear the grown of the tank coming back because it is probably retreated. it would begin firing and blow and shoot these guys back off the position. they would, ride their horses again, because the motorized vehicles couldn't go into the hills, into safety like the horse. that is why they're on

horses. and they would wait and try another day. so, when people like cal spencer and mitchell and mitch nelson and so on, arrive, they pull out those things in their backpacks. they swarm the line. the armor retreats, that's when the bombs hit. and that's when they can't reattack the position. and the first couple of times, when i was doing my oral histories and traveling around the country, i would say what happened when the bombs hit? what do the tall do? they didn't really know was going on, because sometimes we observe them through our binoculars emerging a bunker we had missed and, looking, walking out and looking at it and seeing a smoking hole in the ground and looking across the horizon if it came from a tank or some kind of machine that had lobbed it. it didn't occur this was coming from above because some of these jets, these bombers are very high up. could be 15, 20,000 feet. but they're being guided either by two things.

or actually three things. a gps retrofit understood the bomb that is being programmed. is almost like your own onstar or garmin you use in your car. leading you to the destination to the gps coordinates you plugged in or lasers which shoot out invisible light of beam. the bomb comes down. it drops on to the coded laser and can actually direct it in flight. so that, they had never experienced anything like this. and this is really why in this short amount of time they were able to roll the command, the taliban command structure because, so they would swarm a hill, or a position. take it. bomb it and just keep moving. and pretty soon the taliban are in full rout. but again, now we're talking about bombs and bullets. but this wouldn't have worked had they not had their training to get into those villages and get all these people to work together and charge the taliban. so it's really, this story

really dramatizes both aspects of the changing society on the end of a bullet or the end of an idea. these guys are trained to do both very well. this takes, this is about 60-mile journey. a bit like riding through colorado with the himalayas. they ride through villages, dusty, tired. they're wrapped in scarves. they have got sunglasses on. sometimes the people didn't know what to make of them because they hadn't heard of their arrival. so they would line the streets and kind of watch them past. and they would keep on moving. and then come to another village and have to at that because the taliban are dug in there. soon the taliban are in full rout. they retreat to a strategic northern city. it is the city back in uzbekistan said you have to get mazar. with mazar we own the north. if we own the north we can go after cap bull.

if we own kabul we can go after the south. everything is resting on this city and they make it. dean tells me, he is actually in a truck at this point. he is not on a horse but watching barbers pull their chairs into the streets, and men lining up for the first time in a long, long time for a haircut and a shave. young kids are suddenly flying kites. it's true much like in the kite run ir. that is a very moving and incredible book. people are walking by with radios on their soldiers, listen. within hours the radio station was back up playing muse. just the day before anyone caught listening or operating a radio station would have been severely punished. so the town is immediately springing back to life and, they seem, it is november 10th, 2001. and, they're now going to enter another phase of their combat, which is the shooting will slowly die

down and now it is time for these guys to help rebuild the city. they're very capable of that. the engineers i talked about, pat essex who fell asleep in the helicopter, his train something engineer, to help things work and design things. they want to get the airfield open. they want to open hospitals, all this stuff. again, our village here, you know, listen, we may have gotten along now for the last eight weeks or so, now that we have got the city, trouble is brewing again. we have all got to keep getting along. there are, they have a big meeting they draw everybody together and say, you can have this part of the city, you have this part of the city. so there's a great attention to paid to the diplomatic part of resolving this conflict as well by these guys. things cook along, until suddenly, november 24th, 2001, 14 days after their arrival into the city, something very strange and

odd happens. 600 taliban show up at the gates of the city, unannounced, idling in trucks, idling in big kind of delivery trucks. high wood sided carting trucks you see packed with prisoners who said they want to surrender and come back into the city. at the same time, the bulk of the teams are driving past them, literally six to 20 feet away headed east while these guys have come from the east, to give up. and our american guys are moving into another city called kanduz, where the big battle is supposed to happen. unbeknownst to everybody and in the friction of this, high tempo of this moment, the afghans do not thoroughly search these guys. general dostam, one of the leaders at this moment of the city, along with another gentleman and general named ataa who is a tajik.

they don't search them. the americans are somewhat concerned about them. what dostam's error he did not realize within this group were real professional, belligerents. committed al qaeda fighters. these were not local taliban. these were folks that were pakistani, chechen chinese. they're taken, as a kind of last resort for holding to a mud fortress that rises out of the desert, looking much like something out of the arabian knights. 30 foot thick walls. big parapets. tunneling ports. they're put in the southern courtyard or the house of, which is the translation of the persian. unfortunately, in the southern end of this courtyard were all these weapons that had been stashed there by the taliban because just weeks earlier lived in this fortress. and they have been kicked out and they fled.

so in a move as old as literature, these taliban prisoners have actually performed something like the trojan horse maneuver and been let back into the city. then major mark mitchell and nine to 13 americans are left kind of to run the store while everyone else has gone off to the east to fight what would be the big battle. well, on the morning of november 5th, 2001, two ci officers leave what is called the turkish schoolhouse, the local headquarters about nine miles away from the fortress and drive out. there is a gold mine out there. someone in that crowd has to know where osama bin laden is. they have to know where the al qaeda leadership is. so these two gentlemen, mike span and his colleague dave drive out to do some questioning. couple hours after the questioning begins, a grenade goes , off and within minutes, dave's guards have been, or escorts have been killed.

mike's band is brought down in melee of fifths and gunfire. and, it is presumed that he's dead. dave runs out of bullets. he can feel the rounds passing past his head. he is surrounded. he dashes through the middle wall, into the northern courtyard and up to the safety of general dostam's balcony. he makes a frantic phone call back saying i'm in trouble. i think mike's dead. and i think we're, we are under attack and we really need some help here. because if we lose this, and they get out of this fortress we could lose this city. mitchell is back at the schoolhouse. he hears this and immediately gets in some trucks with some of the cia officers and drive through the city. at one point a track trailer backs out into the street blocking their way and mitchell thinks, uh-oh, we're in an ambush. they know we're coming. they swerve around it. he has never driven a british vehicle however before i should say.

so little things of war that make it so interesting. he is trying to shift and drive on the wrong side and he is trying to think at any moment he is going to be attacked. he thinks when gets to the for the what will fort what will he find. mortars arcing over the walls. he can hear the gunfire. thus begins what comprises last third of the book, a horrendous battle that, over, really takes doesn't end until december 1st. kicks off on november 25th. at the end of it on the 1st, amazingly enough, this is how i came to really first know about this story, a young calfornian named john walker lindh emerges from smoking rubble of this fortress. mike's band has been killed. he is the first american to die in post 9/11 combat and lindh is discovered and soon his face and span's make worldwide news.

it's a story that hadn't been told. it's a story when i began to start with the fortress and move backwards, i thought, this is interesting. these guys did something that no one else had done before, and, after i had met them, after several visit to their bases and posts, i said, i think that what it is they have to say about problem-solving, about thinking, about cultural awareness, their nuanced appreciation of how violence is used, how it's not used, is so interesting that we, all of us here, as taxpayers, as parents, as citizens, i think, need to become more aware of it. we need to know who it is out there that are on front lines solving our problems. whether or not we think they're problems or not, they are there and how are

they doing that. and so, i have, family of my own and i in the end, i wrote horse soldiers to try to articulate that vision for myself and for them as well, because it is, they will be the ones who will become adults and be handed the, emerging issues that we are now just thinking about. which is to say although this book takes place in an earlier part of afghanistan, in many ways you can look at what these guys did in "horse soldiers" as a lens for what is going on there today. i will stop with my comment. there is a microphone in the room if you would like to ask me a question, they will move to you and i would be glad to answer anything at all. [applause] thank you. yes. elbring the microphone right there to you. there he is. >> is it possible that similar techniques can be used in pakistan?

>> yes, it is although at the moment, no because these, well, army forces in general aren't allowed to move in pakistan the way we did in afghanistan. but that's not to say the pakistani army can't do that as well. what you're seeing in pakistan right now, i don't know if you know this, but it's interesting, certain class of pakistani society has never really admitted to the fact that the taliban is one of their problems. they have been in denial that they have this, this group in their society called the taliban. pashtun people who have, they have supported in many ways, in afghanistan because pakistan is often felt that i can't is its extensional threat. so if you support this people called taliban, fighters and do your bidding and put them in afghanistan it is a security blanket for you.

but that's changing and, this, what you have asked about can they do this in pakistan, it is as old as war itself. this is guerrilla war. it is reminiscent some ways of the american revolutionary war. these same tactics were used in the united states civil war different groups. so yes, the answer is yes. yes, sir? how about right here on the front table. >> what, what do you have to say about the current status of things in afghanistan where the taliban, if i have got my right, seem to be resurgent? do you see an answer to this? do you think we're, obviously, what, another 20,000 troops there? >> right. >> and, you know, what might unfold or what you would hope to un? >> well, if, he wonders what is going on there today and what might unfold and the

power vacuum ensued after, so these guys, these two couple particular teams, are gone from afghanistan by say january, february, at least of '02. many of them were then drawn off and went into iraq and did equally interesting things there we just also have never read about. very different than the large army, large-scale movement troops. however in that vacuum, you're absolutely correct, the taliban have moved in. the government, as, some of the special forces soldiers have told me, they'rering, karzai needs to provide a real viable government, providing jobs, goods and services to these people. this believe it or not, although i have i talked a lot about people on horses with rifles but this is a social problem. as dean nosaru, captains and went to west point and

taught counterterrorism curriculum and still engaged in this actively, he said on the phone, insuresy, you, doug is social problem with military component. i hadn't thought of that. i think i had but hadn't put so succinctly as he did as well. teen pregnant, drug addiction in the united states are social problems. we have not been able to beat that in the united states with all of our own resources. so, you got to remember then, when you go to a foreign land where you don't know the language, you don't know who will vote for who, cultural mores, and doublely hard to solve what is also a social problem. because insurgency not rising out affront line symmetrical. rising out of people who are disenfranchised and want something and going after it by these unconventional marines. the marines are in the southern part of afghanistan. there are a lot of them there.

they are trying clear what they call the battle space. they're trying to hold that area so people can vote an upcoming election in afghanistan. you need those guys operating in a more conventional fashion. at the same time you're asking what will happen in afghanistan. you will see that but also see the discrete teams move in and try to create change from the middle of this room outward very different. you come in from a country, from the outside you begin pushing in and pushing everybody out of the way you don't like. you either crush or kill them or capture them. but the other teams move into the middle and try to change the room in that way. but you need the other guys too because if i ask you to come out to me and say, you know what? i'm here. i want to help you. i want to vote for whoever you want to but go vote because that is what you need to do as an afghan citizen. that night you get knock on your door and cadre of taliban saying if you go with that guy, if you go with that stanton guy, that american we'll come and kill your family. so what needs to be created then is, that is called

adjusting your preferences by the way. that is the term for that. so you need some sense in your own space that you can do that freely, and, so we need these other troops, can provide that at the same time you've got these smaller discrete teams developing intelligence, social fabric from the inside. it's, it's an interesting hybrid of the two if you think about it. and trying to integrate both of them. yes, right over here. >> recently -- oh, president obama recently appointed a new commander in afghanistan, special forces officer. time i believe that has ever been the case anywhere world. what is the significance of that? >> the significance of appointing mccrystal, he, comes from a special operations command. he's very good at doing,

part of my last answer, very good at going after those targets, those hard-core committed folks who won't give up. so he is going to bring some excellent skills at going after those guys. the other side or part of that coin is that, at the same time, we need to develop that intelligence and you can use special forces teams to do that, and then that stuff is hand over to what are called direct action teams, which actually go after the targets. the sf guys or people like them don't necessarily go in the night and capture people. they develop it. what it means is, just, it's a further look at using less to do more. and i think it is very interesting. see, i don't know how many of us here would, if we ponder for a moment, i don't have the answer, what if we sent half a million american troops into afghanistan in october of 2001?

i mean as we leave here today, we might think what would that country look like today? i'm not sure we would have achieved our the collapse of the taliban quite so quickly because the moment you insert that many people and, the afghans, may not like each other, often and fight each but they like even less people to invade the country and tell them what to do. the genius what happened here and genius of the world of the mccrystals of the world, they don't appear to be invader or heavy-handed imperialist. they wear local garb and move within the society outward. way in the back. >> yes, in the past week, robert mcnamara died and if anything he was antispecial forces guy, more bombs, more tanks, more men. has the united states done

anything to win the hearts and minds of the afghan people beyond this simpler that he just described? or are we spending more material, men, and other resources to prop up a society whose only contribution over last 2 1/2 millenia has been to exact a to between the empires of persian shaand cathay by controlling the silk road? >> i don't know if that is their only contribution. >> [inaudible]. >> yeah, which only, didn't become the huge cash crop it is today until after soviets completely destroyed agriculture in that country. opium is something we haven't talked about and here's what i think about that or here's what the people involved in addressing this problem think about it. particularly sf guys. you know, major general

lambert, jeffrey lambert, who ran special operations, special forces command at the time of this whole deployment, said to me recently, he said, if you go in and kick out the opium economy, which is like one of the, one of the legs on the stool, it would be like going to iowa and burning down all the cornfields, and then walking into all the coffee shops in iowa and telling farmers that you are going to promise them the world and do this and that while you set their cornfields on fire. he says the narc coeconomy needs to be changed and fixed but at this moment if you try to yank it out from underneath them, it would further destablize the economy. what you, what you want to do is create a parallel economy that replaces what the taliban have. the taliban are funding themselves off of opium profits, but at the same time, they are providing jobs and a sense of livelihood and security to some of us in our imaginary

village here who don't really care about them. and what these guys are doing, and what they did in iractually very well in anbar province during the awakening one of them for instance, andy marshall, went in and said there is 70% employment. most of it is illegal. some has to do with drugs and smuggling and contraband. that is how people are making their living. because there is much unemployment i realized this is not about a bomb or a bull lit or who is the baddest cat on the neighborhood. is about who is the guy with the jobs. so they sat down. they did and economy study and area study and they said well, here's what these people want and what they can do. i'm going to create those jobs. what happened was, just like, a losing football team, the guys who didn't really want to be on that team, weren't really committed to it, left and came over to andy's side, started working for him. then started reporting on bad guys who were left over

then they sent in direct action teams and went after those guys. those guys themselves started eating each other because they were fighting over dwindling resources. so, that is, i mean, pat essex, one of the guys in the book as well, he, this is either in iraq or afghanistan, he came up with a plan to bring palm trees in, as a cash crop. they did a study. and they decided that they let this go for 10 years and really worked it they would be making more money off of plywood made from palm trees than they could from poppy. doesn't sound, again that is not really a military solution but it is a special forces solution and it is a social solution to the problem of how are people making money and are people holding under control? i don't think it is a lot of cause. i think the one thing we can address is that, afghan, as, you may be also suggesting, doesn't have a sense of

nation hood in they think of it in the united states. that is actually one of the base problems. what is the glue that is holding these various factions together. they're not fighting for the nation of afghanistan. they're often fighting for their own religious affiliation or tribal affiliation or their family in their village and so on. yes, sir? >> yes. given that this approach was used successfully, early in the afghan conflict, why don't you think it's been used in the intervening years? especially since our military resources there have been quite constrained? >> he is wondering why it hasn't been used in intervening years i'm assuming in afghanistan? >> in afghanistan. >> well, because the troops were needed elsewhere. that elsewhere was iraq. and there is only so many of them to go around with a volunteer army. they were however, according to, colonel mitchell they

have been there and they have been doing things and, but it just has not received the front page play that the larger, force troop movements have but, so, and also, nato, which was never really designed to do this kind of thing and had been hobbled by each country's own kind of caveats about what it is they could and could not do had been one of guiding bulwarks there and they have been dog paddling essentially in place. and, you know, to say to you that it is all going to change immediately, i'm not sure. several more? here's one up here. >> your book describes the tactical success that this small group of special forces personnel had, but do

you have a sense how they feel about the success of the wider strategic vision of u.s. policy? you know, for instance, the horse they were given to ride was does stamp, who in afghanistan is quite nefarious fellow. he fought with the soviets. fought against the soviets. he fought with misud. >> right. >> fought against misud. was mixed up in the drug trade. i'm told in kaduz when taliban were boat he willed they wanted to surrender to the u.n. or u.s. forces, not to does stamp. >> right. >> and general franks would not put u.s. forces in. they surrendered to does stamp. maybe 1,000 or more taliban were suffocated in shipping containers and buried in mass graves, which inflamed pashtun nationalism in the southern part of the country. >> right. >> i'm just curious, how

these small group of guys who carried out their mission so remarkably, how they feel about the wider effort? >> well, the wider effort is really what they're about. if people are hearing his question, how do they feel today about where afghanistan is? i mean, they're trained to actually deal with folks like does stamp because, -- dostam. because dostam is the red meat on the floor. you can go into that country and say, i wish he wasn't here. i wish he wasn't in criminal activity like the drug trade, so on, so forth but he is not so how do i deal with him? are you asking, are they happy where we have ended up in afghanistan or -- >> yeah. whether they feel given, i mean, i don't know, the possibly there is some disappointment where they feel they put their lives on the line, remarkably successful, yet. >> i see. >> yet the u.s. larger policy of unwillingness to

maybe commit some troops which has left the tri, you know, largely lawless still today. in kunduz i don't think you can probably travel to today. >> in general, i probably say there is disappointment but i can't speak to, i'm sorry, anymore specificity than that. because the thing is, they did achieve some success, and, i think, the disappointment is over the suffering that has happened in the intervening years since 2001. they, they did do some things in iraq. for instance, when andy marshall and others were part of that up there, they, they're not used to getting credit or feeling, or, being asked for their opinion about anything. so, i would say, however that is some disappointment that what they did was left to languish. some of the more senior

officers said there really wasn't a plan with what to do with afghanistan once it collapsed quickly. and, they said the same thing, sometimes about iraq as well. but being, being, members of the military, the u.s. military, their disappointment voiced to me anyway, doesn't go any farther than that. how are we doing on time? >> [inaudible]. >> i would. i'll be glad to continue this over here, or up here. i want to thank for coming. it's been a real pleasure. thanks for listening. [applause] >> this talk was hosted by the university club of chicago. for more information on the club, visit ucco.com.

>> this summer "booktv" is asking, what are you reading? >> early on this year i was given a copy of this book by kirsten downey. the woman behind the new deal. is the life of francis perkins, first woman cabinet member and first labor secretary back in the great depression. she was nominated by franklin delano roosevelt. i find a lot of similarities with respect to the kind of challenges that we're facing right now as we see high rocketing unemployment. it is a really interesting book. she was someone who had great courage and someone who broke barriers for women. every time i think about

what she was going to i can relate to it. i see it as i go around in the country where we travel to continue to still see poverty and financial crisis effecting so many people. and just how she helped to resolve and give strength to the administration and president in terms of proing good leadership for reforms, for basically wages and hours to be met. safety in the workplace. there were many people that were, for example, killed in shop. she saw that first-hand. and as a result, created laws and procedures to make sure there was safety outlets for people in the workplace which is really important. a second book that i want to, look at, is one that have read and actually, a good friend of mine, caroline kennedy wrote this. "profiles in courage for our time." she continued the legacy of the kennedy family. profiling people of courage. and her father was the original ought this of the -- author of the first book and she has since taken up the torch there.

she has looked at profiling different people, that could make decisions that could cost them their political careers. people that would come forward and fight the good fight on behalf of everyone. she just gives different examples of people she showcases in the book. one that i think of that was of great interest to me was henry gonzalez a congressman here from texas who was one of the first hispanic members of the, of that background. and really exciting reading, and in fact they have a little chapter about me in here. that is kind of interesting. this last book here, the "the grabs of wrath." kind of a historical book for me. john steinbeck. i remember reading it in the 9th grade. felt so drawn to stories and humility of people back in the dust bowl era were faced with hardship, depression and trying to find a job. saw a lot of mistreatment and abuses that were going on. more importantly just the

fighting tenacity behind these people that wanting them to be successful, make a new life. many of them came from the midwest, southeastern part of the countries and came to california. it's a great story to always reflect back on, the plight of americans and how they kind of laid the frontier for many of, many of the changes that we see now, that we, were actually benefiting from because a lot of the changes that occurred in society, laws, protections for workers so the for me the theme is here, women, women of courage, people of courage, people that have been able to go through great challenges in their life and were able to supersede and go beyond. so i think these are good things to think about as we look at where we are right now. >> to more summer reading lists and other program information, visit our web site at booktv.org.

>> we're at book expo america in new york city. booth for regeery publishing. with marjory ross publisher and president of the press. what do you have coming out this season. >> we're very excited for several of our books for summer and fall. of course it is a good time to be a conservative publisher in washington, d.c. because there is a lot to talk about. our first book tell you about is a book by repeat best-selling author, michelle malkin. this is book called, "culture of corruption." probably the big anti-obama book coming from any publisher. we think it is going to be very, big. michelle malkin has done a real investigative reporter's job looking at president obama, his team, who he mommed who he brought

to work with him. who came from the corrupt city of chicago and what they're up to. and i think the story here, really she is going to tell, unlike the promise of change, and, maybe some reform in washington, government is up to the same old tricks and you're not going to like what you hear when you hear about what's happening in the halls of government. >> another book coming out this fall by dinesh d'souza. "life after death cott. >> that is another great selling author. his last book was what so great about about christianity. this was a book counter argument to all the antigod books come out a couple years ago. dawkins and hitchens talking about their argument there was no rational basis for believing in god. dinesh d'souza said quite the opposite. there is logical rational reason to believing in god. this takes up where that

book left off. life after death, why it make perfect sense, call sense, to believe in heaven, after life and miracles and things not particularly consistent with the eight theist point of -- atheist point of view. he take as very logical, rational approach proving why it makes more sense to believe in the aft life than to dismiss it as a fairytale. >> finally mark furm, the murder business, high-profile of crimes and justice. >> another big regnery. did his first book with us. that is the book that broke open the o.j. simpson murder case. he was the lead police detective. he has come back to regnery with a very interesting book. he is best known as analyst of crime and he has solved a lot of biggest crimes that we have seen. he is a "fox news" contributor.

he talks a lot about crime and justice and detective work on it. v. this book is, probably a media bias book. the media's role complicit and accomplice in solving crimes but sort of our obsession with crime as entertainment. and his point is we have probably gone too far in treating crime as entertainment, and, reality tv, and how that gets in the of solving crimes of investigators and police detectives doing their job. and what is means for us as society. should be a very good book. >> marjory ross, regnery publisher. >> thanks very much. good to see you. >> here's a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals over next few months.

>> please let us know about fairs and festivals in your area. we'll add them to our list. e-mail us at "booktv"@cspan.org. >> this summer "booktv" is asking, what are you read?

>> bob schiefer, what are you reading this summer? >> well, i just finished a book called, "big rich." which is about the great oil fortunes that were made in texas and it is by a writer named brian bureaus. writer for "vanity fair." one. best book i read this summer. and one of the best books i don't know when which is called the "the help." by a young writer named kathryn stockett. it is a story of what black maids and white woman in mississippi in 1963 tells you more about the relationship with blacks and whites what was going on in the south. that was the year james meredith was enrolled at the university of mississippi. that was the first big story that i had covered. this is a wonderful book, and i just recommend it to everyone.

>> to see more summer reading lists and other program information, visit our web site at booktv.org. >> a former self-describe an aist and punk rock stripper talks about how her life changed after marrying a military intelligence officer. lily burana talks about living at west point, coping with post-tramatic stress disorder and building new friendships in "i love a man in uniform." from at that timered cover bookstore in denver, this program is about an hour. [applause] >> i am general genuinely thrilled to be here and to support wonderful institution of at that timered cover books, which gives so much support for authors around the world. so