>> a great question. i would write when i came home. and that was because the thing i saw or made my notes on i just put a little -- i had a little pad and i would make a note and i needed to get it down and one of the things about writing humor is a becomes humorous once you take the concept and then a wordsmith. it's a little bit laborious writing humor because you have to think in terms of the reader's pacing and how was i going. so i wrote and edited as i went. yes, sir. i know you're doing sign language and i got that and you want to let everybody know that bodying he want fries with that

is a way -- do it for the children? [laughter] got. you all heard that. do it for the children. and if you do it for the children and purchase a copy not just for yourself but for your friends and neighbors perhaps i will have an opportunity to publish another book and i will come back down and we will all go out for a beer after. [laughter] does anybody else have other questions? one last question. >> were you nervous at all about making this big change in your life? >> to be honest with you, it was time. it was a sort of dim the torpedoes full speed ahead and buy was done.

it was time to put that part of my life in parked. now i will admit if i had had kids i would still be there swallowing grenades. kids change everything. my wife and i don't have kids, we have three wonderful bulbs but no kids. so there's a freedom that was just the two of us making this very stupid decision and harmony and when things got rough i would say it was your idea. so i wasn't too nervous. i got nervous once the check book was going to try and the opposite direction but we pressed ahead. if there are no more questions thank you so much for coming. this was such fun, and this is a huge crowd for a book signing. [laughter]

it is and the people in the upper seats, i know you can barely see me out there yet you all came it's just wonderful. and a special thanks to arcade publishing, publisher, my agent keith cornyn, to the wonderful vero beach book center which people should come from all over florida to this to replace, especially if they want to buy a copy. [laughter] and obviously a special thanks to my wife for putting up with all of this. thank you so much. have a great evening. [applause] to learn more about prioleau alexander, visit his web site at www.southernfriedwriter.com.

the author of armed humanitarian is the rise of the nation builders. mr. hodge, defined nation-building. >> it's one of those tricky terms nobody ever really wants to own a and that's one of the reasons i chose to write about it. i'm not using it as a political science to the development sense. using the replete george tebeau bush, barack obama or david petraeus would have used it was just describing the kind of mission of armed nation building but we are involved in that sort of been described in ways as the armed social work and i am trying to describe the phenomenon to the reader that might have this idea that when they look at the news and see

what journalists call the bank and from places like iraq and afghanistan and show another picture of what goes on, as of three cups of tea side of the war which is what the military calls the non-kinetic side of things and what i wanted to get was the experience of people who were getting their hands dirty doing these kind of things, rebuilding schools, digging wells and roads, in places like iraq and afghanistan. >> so the u.s. military currently building schools, building roads, doing non-military functions? >> you'd be surprised to see the extent they've embraced an especially places like afghanistan we're doing this kind of nation building missions is a cornerstone of the exit strategy creating a capable government that's actually capable of delivering things like criminal justice in places like afghanistan and taliban could not govern the coalition. so that's where the civilians

who have long military expertise to be able to step in. >> where did the term of nation-building come from? >> it's one of those terms that's a very unsatisfying. that's what i really wanted to dig into because back in the 1990's there was a lot of hand-wringing in the national security that the u.s. military was tied down on nation-building and in fact when he was running for office in 2000, george w. bush said he didn't believe we need to the nation building a cadre the military shouldn't be involved in, but in the terms he had embraced it to the extent which he even called for the creation of a sort of civilian nation-building response corps in the state of the union address so those are the dramatic turnaround in part of it is because the sort of armed humanitarianism was a way of getting out of the mess we have gotten into in iraq. >> how is it that nation-building became a

political term where george w. bush in 2000 said we are not -- we don't nation build. >> or barack obama in december of 2009 saying that he wanted to send more troops to afghanistan on with the caveat that the nation he wanted to build was our own. nation-building is kind of a dirty word. it's not what the military is supposed to be doing. they are supposed to be training from the high end conflict, the kind of conflict and a lot of ways the military organized and eclipse and kind of i will say plans for inouye because it is simple and direct and your opponent wears a uniform, they've got formations you can count. this is a lot more difficult and involves navigating the tricky cultural differences and barriers trying to get at these problems has proven a lot harder in practice than it is an pherae. >> what has been the reaction of the pentagon to the new rule?

>> interesting if you see the more recent remarks by the secretary defense robert gates, he talked a little about his worries that the military could become the sort of 19th century. it's not at that point yet but the military is trying to master a lot of those stores, the sort of fundamental nation-building tasked. but there is the worry within the military establishment that the pendulum may have swung too far in the direction. there is the need to kind of quick and concentrate on the basic fundamentals and get back to sending the tank rounds that kind of thing. but there is a reasonable argument behind that which is fundamentally they are not military missions. these are missions for the development agencies and they're there for diplomats. but part of the problem is diplomats aid workers are not necessarily trained to operate in the kind of hostile environment where basically they are doing development work will been shot at and there is the

difficult transformation for agencies like the department of state, for usaid to send the people who are kind of built around the embassy and get people to be willing to volunteer on the sorted frontier in afghanistan. >> so, does this devonish the role of the state department in our foreign policy? >> what i try to reason the book is there's a fundamental disconnect between the ambition to put more wing tips on the ground, and the ability of agencies like the state department to do it is a simple matter of massive the department of defense at this point spends north of around $700 billion a year. it's if you look at the japan real these operations going on right now that's got the person of the equipment and training to get the places in a hurry. i salles and i described in the book with the haiti relief

operations in the military side look like as well. part of the efforts under way and it's sort of put into the bureaucracy speak because we need to fix the interagency and get these diplomats out there and we will all be together jostling around back of the humvee to drink three cups of tea with an elder. it's not as simple as that because what happens if you get shot at along the way. >> has it been an effective foreign policy tool? >> i would argue that it depends on the next messaging who we are as a nation. >> armed humanitarian. >> this sends a signal that for instance if we are talking about parts of the developing world we think an important principal of civilian control is the military yet it's the military people who are doing at. is this something interesting about who we are.

and especially when it comes to operating places like this we adopt a little bit of a fortress america mind set and i talk a lot and part of the force protection and the military, and inevitably sometimes that ends up putting because the risk and some of the situations putting barriers between you and the people you're reaching out to help. >> you mentioned greg martin's and three cups of tea and you were also referencing thomas barnett. who is he? >> thomas barnett in a lot of ways is the guide is best known for the briefing called the pentagon new map. in early 2000, he was the kind of guy that captured the zeitgeist of the department of defense and he had a couple of famous briefings, a powerpoint briefing he would deliver to the military audience which explained how the post-9/11 world shifted. but i went a little bit more into what he was sort of are doing. and part of what he was also getting at is that there needed to be something like a nation

building a cadre available to address what he called the gap states, the feeling states. i think that he called at before some and his idea was you've got the army, the big forces that do regime change and the nations have called on to do so but they need people on call and they are a mix of diplomat aid worker boy scout u.s. marine, this kind of mishmash of different things but he was one of the early people articulated in a lot of ways and sort tried to explain what the new reality was to the people on the department of defense. so he has kept. >> how does the center for the new american security plan into your book? >> it became the locus of -- the sort of became the home for the

counterinsurgency said. really the counter insurgence in washington started in a lot of ways rebellion by the kind of rank-and-file within the military establishment, intellectual, not anything more than that by people who had experienced the first tour in iraq and afghanistan and came back to why u.s. military was failing. why we were losing iraq. and they reached back and they found these sort of intellectual antecedents french counterinsurgency theory and the rule and the missions and how to sort of refashion government to get at this problem and they played an interesting rule and advocacy and they've become in some ways as described by other reporters a farm team to the obama foreign policy. >> what is your déjà? >> i work for "the wall street journal" covering national security.

>> finally, nathan, what is the image on the front of your book? the young boy on the wraparound, and the soldier, where did you get this image? >> i think the image conveys a little bit of sort of how i felt about this mission as i observed it which is kind of like at times the ronald reagan saying i'm from the government, here to help. yes, our military is there. they are there to help to do fundamentally humanitarian things come and that is a mission that they have embraced. it's a rewarding mission but also has unintended consequences. so i wanted to at least share a bit of this. >> armed humanitarian says the name of the book's subtitle the rise of the nation buildings. author is nathan