about those things. so, she was always playing up the policy angles and the woman's angle. she used both of those. >> might have been driving improperly. young man. i there other questions? >> i am from britain and was in france when i went to find out that she has been three years as

what you mentioned, a finishing school. pakistan from one biography that he was infected, an intellectual frenchwoman. .. eleanor did not have good memories of her mother. her father was a dissolute individual who died in a drunken

stupor. it was that they home of a mistress. the father and mother had split up. eleanor had a childhood. [talking over each other] >> thank you so much. [applause] >> for more information visit kansaspress. kansaspress.ku.edu. >> get the booktv schedule e-mail to you. press the alert button.

text for word book to 9972. >> from the sixteenth annual military writers symposium a panel of others discussed the future of afghanistan. a [applause] >> thank you for being here today. it is a pleasure being here yet again. another urgent topic relative to so many of you in this room today, soldiers will head downrange in the future issuing challenges. we welcome you and our internet audience and c-span booktv viewing audience. we are happy to have you. i will introduce our panelists. afterwards we will be having a

book signing at the neighboring milano ballroom. you are welcome to take that opportunity if you are book collectors to have signed first editions and explore more deeply the perspective you will hear today. we have another panel this year is that of expertise is matched by their diversity. i will introduce the panel from the end, opposite myself, dr. chris coppola received a commission from the u.s. air force in 1990. he served through the two gulf wars in support of operation iraqi freedom in 2005, and 2007. in iraq dr. chris coppola worked at the trauma surgeon at a support hospital 40 miles north of baghdad, seriously injured u.s. troops and iraqi soldiers and civilians and even some any detainees. he completed humanitarian missions to brazil and haiti, a

civilian pediatric surgeon. the recently published memoir of this time in iraq entitled "coppola: a pediatric surgeon in iraq". he is a 2008 graduate of norway university masters administration program. welcome, dr.. [applause] >> donna mcaleer is the award winning author of a groundbreaking book "porcelain on steel: women of west point's long gray line". she is an inspirational speaker addressing topics of leadership, strong role models, and breaking boundaries. she graduated west point in 1987 and served in germany as an army officer for four years. she left the service in 1991 to pursuing an m.b.a. at the university of virginia's dartmouth school of business. she moved to a successful

professional career in corporate consulting and global logistics for private and non-profit corporations. she committed herself to pursuit of a unique opportunity in 2000 to represent the united states in 2002 winter olympic games. as a bobsled driver. she finished fourth in the olympic trials. welcome. [applause] >> donna mcaleer was awarded the bronze star for meritorious service. he served 22 years as a senior u.s. diplomat at the state department including service as national security council director for russia and eurasia. he served ten years with a nato working foreign policy adviser to in nato's afghanistan commander. he is a visiting distinguished fellow of national defence university and a lecturer at

northeast michigan college. welcome. [applause] >> karl marlantes is a rhodes scholar at oxford and a marine veteran who served with great distinction in vietnam where he was awarded the navy cross. lebron star and two metal the valor and two purple hearts. his novel "matterhorn: a novel of the vietnam war" was a new york times best seller the bridge the usa today best seller, best of 2010 title in time magazine by digital entertainment weekly and the washington post. "matterhorn: a novel of the vietnam war" is the recipient of this year's colby award and we are proud to have karl marlantes with us today. [applause] >> nearest to me is doug stanton. he is the author of two new york

times best seller is, in harm's way:the thinking of the uss indianapolis and the extraordinary story of its survivors "horse soldiers: the extraordinary story of a band of u.s. soldiers who rode to victory in afghanistan". his writing has appeared in esquire, washington post lead to an all-time and other national publications. he is a founder of the national writers series. a book festival bringing great conversations to life with america's greatest writers. he is considered to be one of our country's top tier book events that takes place in michigan. his recent book "horse soldiers: the extraordinary story of a band of u.s. soldiers who rode to victory in afghanistan" spend three months on the best-seller list and was named 2009 notable book by the new york times. "matterhorn: a novel of the vietnam war" doug stanton lives and writes in michigan. so our topic today is the

uncertain future in afghanistan. "an uncertain future in afghanistan: assessing the conflict 10 years on". it is worth pointing out that the u.s. has been present longer than the soviet union did in 1989. i think it is reflective of this. there was a moment the year or so ago when speaking to troops general stanley mcchrystal reflected on the intensity of the motions brought on by the memory of the attacks of 9/11. he told his audience i am sure you recall what you are doing on that fateful day. he turned to a soldier nearby and said i bet you remember what you were doing on 9/11. the soldier replied yes, sir. i was having my braces removed. i was a young kid then. american forces have been there for ten years.

remind us, "horse soldiers: the extraordinary story of a band of u.s. soldiers who rode to victory in afghanistan" is about the accomplishments of special forces soldiers working with the no. alliance, the earliest days. walk us through that moment. what was the sense of mission and how was that mission carried out? >> the sense of mission in 2001 in september and october was very broad. many of us may know the united states's total response to those attacks of 9/11 were initially just 12 u.s. army special forces soldiers asked to land secretly in afghanistan, link up with anti taliban militia fighters led by various warlords who we kept contact with since the soviet withdrawal in 89. it was a broad mission. they had been trained as special forces soldiers are to work independently, to think in a network style, often being the

only senior ranking american on the ground. they affect a brilliant tactical victory in achieving eight weeks what the pentagon initially thought might take a year-and-a-half. it is quite stunning. bob woodward in one of his books points out in his initial phase involved three hundred personnel followed quickly by thousands of conventional troops. it cost $70,000 and as i said a very short timeframe. special forces were never used before as a lead elements in united states history. just before i stop here, just to set the stage a bit, think back to october of 2001 on the nineteenth of october, twelve of these guys land in a helicopter landing zone six miles south of

muddy sharif and afghanistan. they watch their counterparts, there indigenous counterparts dressed in rags. this is a ragtag army. the united states was the underdog, the insurgents in that fight outnumbered and outgunned by taliban forces. we will finish this conversation today by talking about how we did so little with so much or so much with so little and today we seem to struggle to do a lot with a whole lot more. might not be so successful. >> part of the accomplishment was we had a government who was willing to serve as our target. very clarifying effect. >> their mission was very broad. here's what it was for those of you who write operations orders.

to make the country and save for the taliban. how broad can that be? don't go off the road and don't break the law. they did that. what they brought to this battle was supreme support which however it is debatable, a-bomb dropped from 30,000 feet might not be close air support but it was guided by these lasers they had in their rucksacks. the early part of this war was basically a western with lasers because they rode horses believe it or not, had no wheeled vehicles to speak of. >> what was the strategic mission then? what was the perfect -- purpose? >> to secure the country and make it unsafe as a haven for taliban/al qaeda training camps which had been occupying in the

power vacuum which basically had festered and grown during their previous years of civil war. i will note that when these special forces server itself -- soldiers joined by troops road through town on horseback into these cities colonel mark mitchell at the time noted in a journal that he felt like he was back in his grandfather's time because locals came out into the streets lining the street and waving, furrowing papers, the kids loved everybody. we had that country on our side at that time and place. it was quite a stunning moment. >> though the government was overthrown with seemingly light effort on our part the strategic mission was not there -- accomplished at that moment to carry forward to more ambiguous -- >> the next phase would have

been come back creation of everything that makes a society. counterinsurgency strategybat c everything that makes a society. counterinsurgency strategy is giant ring of troops to protect the center. what is missing is police force judiciary. drive anywhere in the city and go to the county seat what do you see? the courthouse. we take it for granted but the whole world evolve from the courthouse. as far as i am concerned the two missing letters in that country still. originally sent of a police force that does not terrorize its own population and a judiciary that can communicate land and water disputes. >> jack segal. >> can we bring you in on this and ask for your assessment ten years on? what was the strategic mission then and where do we find

ourselves today relative to it? >> thank you very much. doug stanton made an interesting statement when he defined as the special forces mission as to make the country and save for the taliban. some of you who i met here made a point that the word to leave --yalib mate means student of islam. if we define our mission as making this place unsafe for the believers of islam we define the population and particularly the male part of the population as a our enemy. that ambiguity that was built in to that initial mission. the we became somewhat more careful about for a while and talk about the insurgents. more recently we have gotten sloppy again and begin to talk

about defeating the taliban. if you are a believer you are obligated to engage in a jihad against those who would destroy your religion. if we are not conscious about what we define as our objectives we create such a broad spectrum of possibilities that we can manage to define everyone in the population as our enemy. that is not our intent. obviously. in the definition, the title of this presentation and uncertain future, it is relieve the uncertainty of what future are you trying to create and i will tell you if you are on the right road. the lack of clarity is a consistent problem here. the president in march of 2009

said our objective in afghanistan is to descriptively google dismantle and destroy al qaeda and to prevent al qaeda from attacking us or our allies from afghanistan or pakistan. i did not hear taliban in that mission statement. we tend to confuse these two things. if al qaeda is the enemy, al qaeda is who attacked us clearly. when that attack took place the united states through the state department contacted the taliban government and said turn over al qaeda to us and they couldn't do it for religious reasons but had they done it we would not have attacked afghanistan. had they simply done that little thing, turn over bin laden and his been to as there would not have been a war in afghanistan because we ignored what i would

consider the cuban rights abuses of afghanistan forever, the whole time they been in power which was more than four years and only when it became a base for terrorism against us that they became our enemy. what exactly are we trying to achieve, probably the real challenge ahead of us now. >> this isn't the first time you wondered what our mission might be and why we might be somewhere. user of in vietnam and you write about in a piece that you wrote, talk about this moment of befuddlement. i can no longer explain why we are here. are we at that moment in afghanistan right now? >> i spent a lot of time with people with a lot of stars on their shoulders. they are sure about what they're doing. but i also have the advantage of

traveling around the country with one of those generals and i ask the people at the end of the day, settle down for the evening, i approached soldiers and asked the question my father asked me when i was serving in vietnam. are you making any headway? i didn't serve anywhere near the distinction in my colleague, won the science -- second-highest medal of valor in the country. i had to answer my father's letter. i sat on it for a month before i even tried and i would go to the mess hall and as young soldiers and officers are you making any headway and occasionally i would get one who said we are doing okay in this little village we

are working on. quite often i would get -- i don't know where it is. if they do not define their objective, out the front gate. the political and military leaders to clearly define what you ask anyone to put their life on the line. if we can't give them a straight answer they should be inside barbwire doing whatever else they can do perhaps training the afghans to defend themselves. >> you talk about fundamental confusions. if you think about what a warrior is. a warrior is a person who

chooses a side. these are my people and those are my enemies. to use violence to try to stop people who are trying to do violence against his people. that is a warrior. a policeman will risk life and limb but they cannot choose sides. they have to be on the side of the law. if a policeman chooses sides it is called corruption. we are fundamentally confuse the role of warriors with the role of police. warriors are trained to oppose another side into a situation to act as policemen where there is no agreed upon law. they have to be on the side of the law. if you go to the state and in any state in this union the

people who are inside will say is it bad to kill or against the law? they all agree there is an agreement. people who are trained as warriors in a situation where there is no agreement. it is perfectly justifiable to cut a woman's years off if she humiliated her husband in some way. which law are we dealing with? the second thing is if you have policemen who are trained they are generally more mature. infantry men are young. would you send them to a troubled neighborhood? an automatic weapon? not likely they will do a very good job. you send him against the enemy and he knows who they are he will do a magnificent job. that is what 19-year-olds do. if we don't get over this confusion we will find ourselves in situations time and time

again where we are putting people who are trained one way into a role that has none of the requirements to make that role successful. >> clarity of purpose in battle is a real force multiplier. in the middle of "matterhorn: a novel of the vietnam war" you have a devastating moment when a u.s. officer realizes and begins worrying over the fact that the north vietnamese army units he is opposing are in fused with a sense of purpose and mission and offered the devastating observation for the americans that kind of clarity was a thing of the past. the marine they're killing people with no objective be on the killing itself. that left a hollow feeling he tried to ignore by doing his job which was killing people. the cycle of this dynamic can quickly detect itself from our strategic missions especially missions with ambiguity,

counterinsurgency. >> it is an interesting parallel between vietnam and the current war in afghanistan because think about world war ii. they all fought in -- are we making progress? we took the canal and -- it was clear what we undoing. you go to vietnam, how do we measure success? it devolved into body counting. i am clear in my own mind that body count is a bad measure of success. first of all it is immoral. a warrior's job is to stop the other side from using violence and when the other side stops doing it then you are done. the job is not to kill the other side. sometimes you have to kill people on the other side, that is the bad part of it. the objective should not be

killing people. that is not a proper objective. it is just inhumane. we have to remember all is fair in love and war. it is not. there have to be humanitarian perspective is. second thing is about body count which i find interesting. the north vietnamese are clear about what we wanted. any number of people die in order to accomplish that mission. the military could say we won the battle. 47 in va dead, five dead americans. wonderful ratio. politically all the americans cared about was five dead americans. that is the other side of the body count issue. nobody here politically will care about how many of the enemy we killed. they will care about how many of our sons and daughters died.

they are very easy to manipulate. those measurements are easy to fake and you never know the accuracy of them. >> if i could bring you here on the question of leadership. how army units have to conduct themselves in these situations where the enemy blends and and doesn't offer himself to battle. how is west point adjusting this? you graduated west point and the soviets were getting retail's kicked in afghanistan. what can we learn from them and what are we doing to learn from experience of the last 30 years? >> you bring up a good point what we study history. the importance of reading books such as karl marlantes's and doug stanton's. we study history so we don't make the mistakes of the past and many of our elected officials have neglected to

study history. through karl marlantes's presentation i can't think of a more appropriate book that every soldier should now be required to read. of big part of the education that west point is studying history and i am sure with a military history curriculum, also the importance of cultural awareness and we saw very early on the commander is the only general in our u.s. army fluent in arabic. he really put an emphasis on cultural awareness and understanding of the anthropology. if we look forward ten years, maybe that was something we have neglected. when we look at afghanistan, it is not a country we really understood. there has been no history ever

of a respected national government. it has been a tribal system. the importance of that understanding of the enemy from all perspectives is what the foundation of a liberal education is about. so at so many of our institutions of higher learning, that ability to study and multiple disciplines take disparate information and as a young officer be able to make decisions based on incomplete information, that is what is so valuable about the training and study and it is important to be able to solve problems from an engineering perspective as it is to speak another language. the military academies are providing what is truly a liberal arts education, hopefully creating our soldiers

of the future. >> your book is a profiles in courage of women in uniform, "porcelain on steel: women of west point's long gray line". what challenges to women confront entering a society like afghanistan which is closer to the ninth century than our own century? >> you will find any service member, the reason women join the service are the same as men. to get an education and to be part of something higher and greater than themselves. not speaking from experience on the battlefield because i don't possess it, the challenges women face are wanting to be equal partners and members of the varsity team, not the j.d. team. the challenge is we have issues with regard to how women can be utilized in situations. we are seeing now many of you

are probably familiar with what the marines are deploying called female engagement. these are groups of service women who are going into different villages and acting as human intelligence collectors. the results of these have been mixed, certainly in the more urban areas they have been well received almost as a third gender. in the rural areas it is a completely different situation. and time to understand and relate to that is a big challenge. >> the unforeseen effect of these engagement teams, the difference situation being what happened in those rural areas. >> exactly. this is a society where women are completely marginalized and that is tough for western women to comprehend the personal

particularly our service men. this is over four five centuries. this is not a recent creation. understanding of that mind-set, one benefit is the military in particular with its counterinsurgency strategy is learning how to use its human capital assets better and to take advantage of different populations within the military to hopefully exploit that intelligence. >> last november nato leadership agreed afghan forces, ready or not, would have full responsibility for security in the country by the end of 2014 and i read at and the wall street journal recently recounting how tribesman would taunt american soldiers by saying you have the watches, we have the time. can you expand on this?

this idea of strategic patience and the degree to which we might not have enough of it? >> it is a classic counterinsurgency problem that we from the outset, it is known that we will not be there forever. they have been doubtful with regard to colonial powers like britain. from the perspective of the afghans who have been invaded repeatedly over the centuries and eventually invading armies have left and they know we are leaving. they had a sense that we are going to leave relatively soon. we then announced at the nato summit that we would be leaving the combat mission in afghanistan by 2014. it was quickly caveated to say we would continue in a supporting role for quite some time after that.

the setting of a time line is a double-edged sword. it can put pressure on the government, our allies in afghanistan with the afghan government. it also tells the enemy who could choose what is known as the most dangerous strategy, the most dangerous enemy strategy they could employ right now would be to withdraw from the battlefield and disappear. because then it would create the illusion that the dispute has been settled and in a few years we would speed up because it would be all quiet and we would get out. then they would resume their insurgency. we have not solved the fundamental political issues that underlie the insurgency and we are not doing that by putting in more soldiers. to the credit of the leadership

they understood that. they began to increase the civilian side of the effort. today there are 1100 civilians operating in afghanistan on behalf of the u.s. government has opposed to 150,000 troops. so it is still not a very good ratio. when in fact we have to back up and say what are the basic needs we are trying to address? in an afghan village like a vietnamese village the people want security. they want to eat enough food at the end of the day. they want to have a situation, let me say for security, they want to be local security. they want their village police by their people. we enter a village in body armor had here and look like innovators from outer space. i was once in an afghan village with my four start general

partner and this guy we were talking to ask our interpreter are they russians? he didn't know that the russians have left. we are back hundreds of years in time when we go into these villages and we see living conditions which i described as like living in the fourteenth century. very little hygiene, very poor health, no education, no literacy. to put in front of them a marine corps or u.s. army officer and i would add i met many navy and air force officers in these situations and enlisted personnel. it is really quite a mismatch. they don't know enough about the situation to understand the people they are talking to. the people we are talking to our viewing us as another set of foreign invaders. we are well intentioned and i

would turn to chris in a minute to add that to described how we do a lot of good things. we try to do a lot of good things. we repair bridges and rebuild roads and provide health care which he can describe. we build schools. we do all sorts of things that we intend to be good deeds. but as the book three cups of tea describes the griddle before you can build a school you have to build a relationship. we don't have time to build the relationship so we build the school. without the relationship, school is something we have planted in a foreign land rather than something the afghans themselves have built on their own. that is a fundamental flaw in the strategy we are employing.

>> i have to remark the past two days joining in with the norwich cadets and their classes has been an incredible experience to step of life and become a student again momentarily. to witness the future military leaders and citizens soldiers of our country. it is something astounding that makes me very proud to be involved. i see professional soldiers, diplomats, and me as a physician who has left military service and as a civilian having settled in pennsylvania i have a country doctor but i am happy i am involved. what i would like to add is

perspective going to mirror what you were saying, that afghanistan is a country of contradiction. the modern times, the primitive living systems. the fact that it has a border but the people see a tribal family identity above the national identity. my colleagues, people are worked with who are currently working in hospitals in afghanistan tell me they are seeing the same injuries, the all too common child who picked up a land mine or unexploded ordnance and had their hands dramatically amputated. and seeing the patients brought in from remote villages with simple medical conditions like a hernia that has gone on ten years with no one to fix them wore an untended wound that has become a game green. a simple antibiotic treatment

that has become amputation. what i have been able to do is they involved to create a remote and virtual set of specialists so that the young doctor starting out facing a difficult problem is able to reach out by the internet tea draw on the wisdom of thousands of battle casualty treatments and many from the greats that have come before us. it is an honor to try to be useful in that manner. but i would say that noting civilians in this area are more vulnerable by far than the combatants and will bear the majority of the deaths and casualties, additionally noting that our young professional

soldiers will do any task no matter how horrible the personal sacrifice, the effort involved and the pain involved, those soldiers and those hon. civilians in that area to tried to see through this uncertain future because as time goes on the cost in lives does continue. so it is a strong duty to those of us who are actively involved in military and civilian leadership and civilian leadership to apply our best efforts to this problem. >> tell us something about the state of the art of battlefield medicine in 2011. how is the system set up and how does it come to be a system of a platoon out on patrol 100 miles from the nearest base here come under attack and sustain casualties. explain what happens and how

these cases work their way up the line to you? give the cadets a sense how advanced the state of the art is now. >> i was fortunate enough to have the development of hippocrates, wilfred hall and so many other surgeons before me who went to war in giving us a transfusion, penicillin, vaccinations to keep people alive. what we in particular have been able to do is develop a system within our hospital, with proper specialists and outside the hospital logistics to have a 98% survival rate for any true to comes to our hospital the bridge the will they have a 90% chance of leaving hospital alive. it translates to a survival of wound rate of approximately 93%. the gap is those who aren't able to make it to the hospital from the time of their injury. it is something we are very proud of.

it is a higher level of survivor than any other war. it does result in a problem of many veterans returning to home life with lost sight or lost limb but i am a breast -- impressed again and again by men and women who surround those obstacles. is not a 70-year-old and you tea. it is a 20-year-old amputee who will be running a marathon. to speak to the specifics of our recent experiences, we have the pipeline which is level 1, and level 2 is a small surgical team that can do six operations before it is completed and level 3 is a center which has specialized trauma care from the general surgeon, cardiac surgeons and orthopedic surgeons, and in our facility it

is 19 different specialties. back to united states level 5 walter reed in roker army medical. that let us get that high rate of survival. putting the surgical specialists in the theater by helicopter within 20 minutes in the country, they helped us. in afghanistan and the transport time is a bit slower. weather is worse and the size is different because hospitals cluster in the southern area. specific techniques within hospitals, we found a resurgence of early application of chronic use including the one handed special forces of applied toward a cut has slaved lives because they don't bleed out. and they say of the limb if it hasn't been blown off initially.

we assumed the vacuum assisted dressing assessing this continuous vacuum to a woman. and specialized techniques like shunting a broken vessel. fixing hemorrhage in that way. something only available in specialized trauma centers in the u.s.. we have on the battlefield. those techniques are being employed today in facilities for military doctors are applying them. 60% of patients are civilians. >> how do you deal with the fact that medical ethics would sometimes compelling you to actually treat insurgents? how do you square this with your duty as an air force officer?

and work through the ambiguities there for us because that is one of the compelling aspects that comes through in your book. >> to be a military physician which is an incredible privilege, an incredible honor and one i am very fortunate that i was able to do that work. the most important work, will ever do in my life. the code of an officer and the code of a physician and the code of an american citizen and my own personal beliefs. taking care of an insurgent, taking care of an enemy detainee didn't break any of those codes because once that detainee was within our custody, it was our responsibility, my personal responsibility if they could survive to make them survive. on a personal level, when i treated detainee's who i know had moments before attempted to drive a vehicle into our own

base, when i treated detainee's i later found out had personally killed patients that i treated and a child i treated, that was a very personal crisis. a very difficult thing to face but part of the code of a doctor and the code of an officer as of military physician, verrazzano conflict. was a duty i swore to do. i would say although my experiences may have been troubling and intends, being a physician and surgeon at home and deployed environment although it was more intense it was the same job. i think our soldiers face a greater stress when they are moving from one occupation in the u.s. but-that is a greater stress than i had to face. >> i would like to ask my

colleagues here. we have addressed a pretty significant portion of iraq and that is its neighbor to the east, pakistan. we know that pakistan has provided a safe haven for al qaeda and other terrorists. we are dealing with rapid population growth, a highly literate population, a very young population, a country that has -- by the way they possess nuclear weapons and a country that has been devastated by floods. is there any of that medical expertise that we have developed in iraq and used it in afghanistan from a goodwill perspective we are bringing to pakistan, one of the keys to develop a relationship with pakistan is that trust and goodwill in the population. is that a consideration? we haven't even discussed

pakistan. >> just to give a brief comments. in the scenario of medical need and disaster like that will the rest of our panelists the mission is unchanging and enemies can reunite to save a life and respond to environmental disaster. once the response is complete it doesn't make the negotiation diplomacy any easier than it was before the disaster. >> let me start off. we have a war in afghanistan and lately we have one in libya and maybe elsewhere. we do not yet have officially a war in pakistan. we certainly are not fighting a war against the government of pakistan. so we face the problem we had in vietnam. we have a sanctuary across the

border from afghanistan where terrorists or insurgents can freely move back and forth. people will ask why don't you seal the border? and i say let's seal the border from maine to key west because that is the length of the border between pakistan and afghanistan. so roughly speaking, that is an impossible task. we need the cooperation of the pakistani government to stop the cross border insurgency. the problem is from their perspective they are quite satisfied to fight the pakistani taliban. they do not want afghan taliban to be their war. they do not attack very energetically anything having to do with the afghan taliban. there are other terrorist groups and insurgent groups and smugglers who operate across the

same border. they also are not necessarily at war with pakistan. they are at war with us or so it seems. we have not declared war on anyone. there is a great ambiguity there and that is a possibility that could lead to a negotiated settlement. it is clear to me that one of the big insurgent groups fighting americans in particular in the east, getting all of the tired -- looking for a way to stop the fighting. we have to be attentive to the signals and encourage them. the second group is what carl was referring to. it is a smuggling industry and we are interfering with their business and that is why they

fight as. th . theyus . they. they have allied with al qaeda -- they don't have anything to do with the taliban. the taliban is the most complex problem. there on both sides of the border because these believers in islam exists in the hills of pakistan just as much as they do in afghanistan. they are trained in these religious schools that are located mainly in western pakistan. they are financed by countries in the gulf region. they teach a form of islam that is extremely conservative. it is comparable to the form of islam practiced in saudi arabia. and saudi arabia's islam is similar to the taliban's version of islam. we have to recognize that this is an accepted form of a world

religion in a particular part of the world. all would say if we try to define that as the problem, we define ourselves as the enemy of that segment of islam. we are not at war with muslims and we have to be very clear about that. the muslims of the world are over a billion people. for the most part have very little in common with these extreme fundamentalists. that is not the form of religion that they practice. if we push people and define them as our enemy because they are muslims or in this case because they believe in the holy koran we will create more enemies in that community and we will broaden the base of people who object to what we are doing. let's be cautious because we are at war in another muslim country. we had a war in iraq which is

almost ending may be. we have a war going on in afghanistan. we are firing hellfire missiles in western pakistan and now we are dropping a lot of ordnance in libya. if you want to be a conspiracy theorist and you are a muslim, i think these americans are at war with islam. that would be a very dangerous situation for us to be in. >> just to raise the question, we are not fighting an ideology which would be that brand of islam. maybe we talked earlier today about we hid the reset button. how do we achieve success? it is not through body count. when we were in afghanistan i remember thinking at the time, this would be last april that success was measured in the number of police that were

trained. the number of judges that were in town. is that still true? is that the new yardstick or the old yardstick? >> very good question. as i said earlier the number one need is security. the numbers 2 need is food. nine or ten years into this war 40% of the afghans go to bed hungry according to the un statistics. they have an insufficient supply of calories which means they are hungry. it seems to me given the billions of dollars we are spending to be unconscionable. to be indefensible. but that is the fact. these are hungry people you see on the street. they want the security. they want food and they want a judge. that seems to be a strange thing in a hierarchy but this is a country without a clear title to things like food, water, water

rights, land rights. they need someone to adjudicate these disputes. what they have is a corrupt government. the government will occasionally send a judge along who is prone to be a recipient of bribes. alternatively in 33 of 34 problemss according to the intelligence officer at the international security force, 33 of 34 problemss had a shadow government, and insurgent government. the insurgent governor appoints a judge, a religious scholar because under this form of islam the only thing that counts is the koran. that is all the law you need. this judge makes a circuit on a motorcycle from village to village on a schedule that they know. he adjudicates whether this land belongs to you or the other

person. whether those sheep are yours or the other person's. he never accepted bribes and he carries out his sentence on the spot. if the decision is that land is yours from that moment on that land is yours. if his decision is that useful and you are guilty of theft then the sentence is to remove your right hand. that is the sentence allowed under the koran. it is clear, unambiguous, quick and free of bribery. i don't want to make that sound better than it is but it is what people want. they want a decision. they don't like bribery. they don't like corruption and they are surrounded by it. we continue to feed that bribery and corruption. we finally huge amounts of money into afghanistan.

the official numbers $171 billion this year into the war effort in afghanistan. the actual number i would argue is quite a bit more than that because some things are not included. whatever of the actual number is it is a bundle even for the united states to invest in afghanistan. given the state of our own economy and given the fact that after all these years of investing that money we have so little to show for it. transition to afghan is part of our strategy. the president has called for that. this transition effort was announced two weeks ago. the president of afghanistan announced we are transitioning to provinces which are in the east and the town of mazar sh i shar sharif, part of kabul province and the city of harat, four

cities and two provinces out of 34 provincess. that is not a lot to show for the amount of effort we have put into it. it would legitimately call for people to ask if that is the pace at which we are making progress, we really have to consider what our options are in the future. >> i want to remind everybody that we're talking about money. the british navy ruled the oceans for several centuries. three or four. the primary innovation that allowed them the supremacy on the seas was the invention of the bank of england and a gilts edged thoughts which allowed the english teams to finance a very expensive military organization.

no one else could keep up with them. when they were doing this they were able to do this because england was a net creditor nation. largest in the world. by the end of the first world war england had ceased to be a creditor nation that became a debtor nation. the united states became the largest creditor nation in the world. and we had capital ships to be filled today we are largest debtor nation in the world and the chinese are the largest creditor nation. we have to think about some very fundamental issues behind military strategy which is how do we finance all of this. ..

i can carry on what is going on, and that's is not just military policy, but economic policy. >> we have gone about an hour. hello would like to spend the bulk of the rest of our time is to invite people to come to the microphone that will soon be set up on the aisles. in previous years the highlights of the symposium has been the questions that come from the cadets. hope you will be forthright and vocal and inquisitive. i invite you to begin doing

that. what kind of instinct with you all be comfortable with if the withdraws to begin by 2014. where should the counterinsurgency effort, diplomatic effort, a development effort, give me a ballpark for, reasonable 40-yard line to a 40-yard line for u.s. withdrawal and afghanistan. does anybody want to start with that? >> okay. thank you all. i think we now have experience there. we have a small base of people who, certainly, admire and appreciate what we have tried to do. we have three distinct in any groups or insurgents who are not necessarily going to try and quit. we have to say, okay. part of this strategy is handing

over to the afghans, as i said before. i think we can accelerate that. i am not convinced personally that's controlling afghan villages is getting much for us. i think too often we are unfamiliar, so unfamiliar with the situation that we are really at such a disadvantage that we are easy targets. we also operate basis. we are competing to the war which is something that general patraeus said we should not do. we were able to stop in iraq. much more difficult to stop doing that in afghanistan because we cannot in bed in their villages. they will not allow it. you were able to invest in small towns and cities of a rock. so that part of the strategy is not working so well. we need to back off. okay. let's operate more from our bases. i think we are investing huge amounts of money in training the

afghans. we need to look at how we're turning them and we're turning them to do. they need police more than they need army. training a bigger army and police force. that may mean something we need to take a second look at. they also need to be practical about what we're trying to get them to do. we are replacing soviet jeeps, which have this very simple six-cylinder engine with humvees now, humvees are great vehicle, not necessarily for afghanistan, but they need a computer to touch them when they go bad. to use a computer you have to be able to read. 30 percent of the male and 10 percent of the women can read. so in the region in order to fix a home the when they can fix the russian jeep without being able to read. we make a jeep that is simple enough or could be made simple enough to sell to the afghans are give to the afghans.

we don't need to recreate the u.s. army model in the afghan national army. we really need to focus on the police force, and we are starting to do that. there is something called the afghan local police program. people have tried this over the centuries in afghanistan of equipping and harming the local police. it creates problems because if you are in the air on a bombing mission and see a guy with the rifle, you have to be sure, is this a local policeman? he's not wearing a uniform. this is one of our gas? is see a bad guy? it is a difficult problem. so we need to refocus that. i would say pull our troops mainly into the bases and let then do the training from our big bases. let the countryside be under afghan control. it was under askin control before we arrived. they defeated the soviet army with money and some weapons from

us, but not with our -- with us running the show. they're not incompetent defending their villages, and that they have to they will. i will never forget a british soldier who last monday, are you making any headway. he said, if i go through another afghan village and i see a kid my age sitting in this age will ask that my body armor and i'm hunting down the road waiting for the next i edt go off i might put a bullet in that so be. and the guy was laughing. the afghan kid that he saw his age was laughing at him. he thinks he was laughing at him. he probably wasn't. that is what was going through his mind. here is this guy my age. he should be the one with the rifle. why am i doing this? and you know, that is a fair question for soldiers to be asking. >> we have the watches and they

have the time. >> i am a novelist. i came up with is the scenario. 1863, and we are in atlantic georgia. everybody is as strong protestant. they are fighting against the government in washington d.c. the french arrived, and they don't speak english. a very strong catholics. as far as the people in atlanta are concerned women just like prostitutes. they are here to build a school and to help. [laughter] >> do we have any questions? please come forward if you would like to contribute to the conversation. >> i have a question concerning the comprehensive approach. we talked about the three priorities in afghanistan, security which obviously would be our burden to bear, but we also talked about the food and the legal system, framework.

this seems to me with this being a comprehensive approach to this issue may be the military should not be a supported effort. maybe we should be the supporting efforts for possibly the u.s.s.r. state department or some other lead government policy to guide us through. as we talked about, the 19 year-old with an automatic weapon might not be the young man or woman that we want to tackle the problem. the odds on that. >> i was really impressed when i made this trip last april with jack to tour the detention center which was created not far . he could not get there during one of my first trips. and so this is the gleaming white concrete barbwire. it looks like a county jail

essentially. everybody can see it. and they mean it that way so that the afghan citizens can say, that is where my humble is because he got picked up in this raid. they can come and come and get on the telephone and sit in plexiglas and talk to him. he has counseled. they have a hearing. it's kind of hard to get out of bed jail. they aren't letting guys out because they think they are innocent. that is one step toward creating this judiciary that is good. but to do that we have had to pour lots of money into the country to secure areas where you might want to build those courthouses and jails. i don't know. that is -- who wears that aid worker, the irishwoman, one of the cities that has been

transitioned. it shows what an individual can do. an incredibly dynamic british woman. she had a lot of experience in afghanistan. she went down to a british-based. she created a little island of stability through sheer willpower, money, some u.s. money, but many british money. a willingness to listen. this is something we are not the strongest that. to listen to the afghans and task the greg martinson question from his book what is it you need? the answer is always consistently security first and then there is a checklist of things. quite often judiciary capability is on that list. so we are trying to train law schools and have warriors and judges in the near term.

they are demanding that. they could set up, they had trouble systems for judging situations. we have imposed a foreign system in the country. different models. if that is not working we can go back. i served in southern africa and botswana. there were traditional courts in botswana. you were offered that as our option, or you could go to the western-style court. but he suffered -- you were disrespecting the elders in your village if you chose the western-style court. you were saying, i don't trust their judgment. so most people went to the traditional court and came up with traditional answers to traditional problems like land ownership, water, and cattle, which is what people were worried about. you know, i think we have over engineered the answer. >> i was just thinking in answer to this question. it would seem to me that the

fundamental way to approach this is that we have to stop being cast as the enemy. the easiest way to do that is to just move behind international organizations. nato is not quite as good as the united nations. political issues. if you are actually supporting by providing security to an international organization and the money is flowing through them to try and do some good and you remove yourself, it's pretty hard for the bad guys to get any good pr by attacking women from some english ngo. i think that, you know, the thing we have to remember is that terrorism is actually a problem for the whole world. we are making it look like a war, and we are actually giving these terrorists the cachet of being warriors and being a legitimate warriors against the united states. we should treat them as

criminals and should, in fact, but as in criminal courts and not given the privilege of being tried in military court and began to have the world view shift. they are attacking solid international organizations to me no harm and only one to help. we will get credit because people will say we did not give them the money. think about how many tanks and trucks reason to rush ahead of the heavy lifting and told the troops that if it wasn't coming from the united states. we beat hitler. let's get straight about it. we are also going to be taking questions from our internet audience. if there are any of those please send those sen. a representative will come to the microphone. every year. >> one of the issues around intervention is the theory that you either intervene in the country overwhelmingly and impartially or you do it with less force but partially.

one of the things that the panel has not addressed is the fact that the taliban and explicitly in the 1990's was an expression of postion ethnic pride and basically a kind of resurgence after the chaos following the soviet withdrawal. the cd as his role in terms of policing intervention, trying to keep the peace between the tribes. at this point not follow question, to use the elements of the northern alliance reconstituting and rearming because they also see the clock ticking? they also see the estate's at some point being pulled back. do you see them getting ready to every fight the civil war of the early 1990's? >> yes. i do. you know, if we worked said the

tomorrow, the country that all these belligerence would be at each other, the stakeholder in the country, yes. i would say, the tall man of the 1990's was not arabic. their interests weren't using their own sense of tell benison within their own country. i was amused and supplies. will we did the interview, call them foreigners. come in from across the border to make trouble. go ahead. >> i fully agree. i agree with you. that is one of the scenarios that is quite likely a disintegration after relief into

a civil war. i would say that they have not completely disarmed anyway. they put weapons away, have you a pentagon. there is also a bit of ambiguity because the afghan national army which we are financing has a very, very few postion officers. they have a few more soldiers because they pay, but we have been unsuccessful in recruiting officers out of the community. we can be seen as harming the northern alliance in well we're doing now. we are doing this cheaply. the budget for this year, this year is $12 billion for training and equipping the afghan national army. last year it was 112 billion. next year it's going to be down to 9 billion. 6 billion from every year

thereafter for the foreseeable future. the argument being that is cheaper than keeping the u.s. troops there. that is an unsustainable force both in size and in terms of complexity. >> good afternoon. in light of the address of concerns the regiment we strategically do reacted damage control would do you recommend as withdrawing or stepping back a little bit? if so, what consideration is do we expect to face in terms of national interests and international image in the global community? >> could you just define reactive damage control? >> this cluster. as far as addressing the issues are where we clearly know we have not made that much progress in strategically and have

exhausted a lot of means. >> what do we want? we started out there in october 19th 2001 simply to set down these training camps. "coppola: a pediatric surgeon in iraq" was running. boston with a knot of the taliban. it is not one we have to ask the one we have to face. are you happy with an afghanistan south that is fundamental where women have very few rights as we recognize them? more cosmopolitan and literate. however, in the long run, and the macro view it is a country that is was a stable. it does not contain a power vacuum. that is a riveting and headed.

i increasingly see fewer and fewer options. i think that is probably what we thought might happen all along. it is so interesting to me when the monthly death toll in afghanistan exceeded for the first time that of iraq which was in june of 2008. nobody was paying attention. and when soldiers came out in 2009 the publicist, the publishing house had to remind the reporters and so on that we were even in afghanistan. so it wasn't until president obama's speech dec. seventh 2009 after my crystal ultimatum in august of that year when suddenly everyone realized we are about to put more troops in the country. no american woke up and said, my god, what is going on. i was a little bit annoyed to be

frank because i had been following this. the problem that we created. it is a statement more than an answer to your question. >> that's one of the things we looked at, what we want, what we have tried to impose in this nation. maybe it is a different perspective and what is realistically achievable. >> one of the unspoken undertones' is that there really has been a struggle between the conventional army of of what to do in afghanistan and the conventional. counterinsurgency in some ways as many unconventional warfare things built-in induction league. aiden robert talking during my

research. the centers of gravity. the people in charge of running things ignore them as well. try to create change. one of the buzz phrases i always heard from people and special forces was insurgency is a social problem. these are guys who trained to shoot, maneuver, and they see this as a social problem. one of them later went on to teach in the counterinsurgency program at west point. listen, we can't even saltine pregnancy and drug use which is a social problem. you're telling us in three or four years or going to have to fly to another country, don't speak the language and understand the social mores and fix their problems, to? i was always reading for those guys because using all kinds of different forms of power, soft

and hard to really look at this and move the centers of gravity and be happy with solutions that may be great and not necessarily black-and-white. >> service is trying to stay, think about our experience as western countries as south africa. we never went to war in south africa. they had a horrible social problem called apartheid. there was enormous pressure put on the south african government to make changes, and it took not six years but 30. i don't know when it started, but simple things. we aren't going to play rugby team anymore which is embarrassing to rugby players in south africa. how come? because you have a social problem that we disagree with. the international community to economic pressures, social pressures actually helped an enormous amount to move that

country out of apartheid. i think that we can take some lessons from that particular success. need to put troops in. >> on behalf of the diplomacy program. taskforce 2010. his question is, what can be done to reduce the widespread corruption in the afghan governments to match several ongoing efforts with the u.s. government's and nato. how does the panel see these as succeeding? >> well, where there is a flood of money pouring into afghanistan and not a lot of financial control on that money, so you're pretty much asking for what you get. i mentioned the figure of

$11 billion to train and equip the afghan national army. some of that is spent in the united states, some is been shipping, and a lot of it is spent building buildings in afghanistan. you have to equip people who are handling cash like that with the expertise and the tools to control those funds. we have not done that tall. we have commanders' emergency response vons which are smaller at the levels. we give those funds to make great officers, lt. colonel sartre commanders. we say, this is your money to spend. you have to account for it. it's basically years. unfair because then we go back a few years later and say what to do with the money you are in a

war zone. we have tried to be fairly liberal in giving people the opportunity to use money as a weapon effectively. let's put it differently. use money as a tool for. but we then have to be realistic about whether they will be able to be accountable for that money. the corruption, the high level of corruption that exists in afghanistan is going to continue to exist. president cars eye in the meeting i attended was questioned about corruption. his response was, well, 70 percent of the funds that you put into afghanistan are not funneled through my government. hoodies you give your money to? it is a fair question. not completely genuine because there are plenty of money left over their is a lot of money

disappearing in this process. a lot of houses being built, multistory mansions in land that has been expropriated by senior officials of the afghan government. no one can explain how someone with a salary of $11,000 a year can build a multimillion-dollar mansion. other mansions are being built in to buy or purchased in to buy the people running double bank. troubled bank is where we put all of the funds for the pay of the afghan national army. now, some of that money may not be there when we needed. this is a situation where there is a tremendous flow of money. $1,701,000,000,000 per year. a lot of financial control. a lot of oversight. i think those were oversights that we made.

since i have the floor let me decide one point. i may have created the misimpression that anything that i am critical of, the brain blocks to mid-level and senior officers and in see dozen soldiers and airmen and marines. that is the furthest thing from my mind. the responsibility for the mistakes being made to rest with generals, admirals, senior diplomats, ambassadors. the people on the ground during the damnedest that they can to execute orders they have. those orders are very tough and ambiguous and difficult orders. i don't want anyone wearing a uniform today to walk out of your feeling like they have been tarred with the brush. anything they're trying to do, they're trying to do it as best they can in an incredibly difficult and harsh in the demanding environment.

>> please. i would like to take a moment to quickly say thank you. obviously for what he is doing being online for all of us. additionally for bringing his brain to war and having the integrity to try to participate in the symposium for our benefit to hear what the ground level frustrations are. and additionally the to be there to try to foster this sort of thought process. is there something that we can do? a want to bring up something specific about the corruption and also following on the needs of the food, water, judicial system, policing, none of which sounds like soldiers jobs. i think back to the past two decades. jack, you may be able to comment. as an outsider i felt i was

witnessing a pillaging of state department budgets. perhaps a loss of reliance on what used to be called soft power and is probably better described as a public diplomacy. i would suggest that one of the solutions for the frustration of the corruption would be the carrot and stick and judicial rewarding of the carrot. besides the once that i am involved with medical, building the homes, additionally a service which leads to a future leaders incivility is education. the schools and both for health care providers and educators, a system that keeps them in the country so that there is not a brain drain because that will be the true future of the country. some sort of a chance for a

feature that is greater than your own. that does lead to a bribe in one country. as an external pressure you get more of this is your corruption happens to stay out of boundaries which are going to be interfering with our national security. maybe also would have more jobs available to afghanis which are jobs employed by insurgents. i don't know if you have any comment on that. >> over here. >> good afternoon. just one thing i want to say. we have seen, in america's history, that recent conflicts, i great difficulty in defining objectives. this seems like we are having a hard time saying, what is the objective? what are we supposed to be doing? what is your opinion on the current situation in libya?

started off saying, okay. the no-fly zone. now the u.s. is involved. we sent 100-ton tomahawk missiles and. striking troops on the ground. blowing up tanks and that and nothing. we have u.s. cia operatives on the ground. how we not following our objective? what is our objective? how can we -- howdy you guys believe, how can we stick to our objectives? >> all right. i am not an active state department officer. it will not be the state department answer. i can only go by what the president told us on television in, that this is a limited mission to prevent the killing those innocent civilians unborn

clearly that is a carefully crafted statement will and is difficult to define bev. some what carrying again fighting the army and civilian are is that person a combatant? this organized or unorganized. we are in a very ambiguous situation, and we are in a very tight spot because at the end of this statement by president ended down his address to the nation by saying that we think enough he has to go. that is this statement that could be interpreted as that is what we intend to accomplish. and that clear that is will we intend to accomplish. what has been accomplished is nato with the great struggle inside have agreed to take on

the entire mission. so it is now the nato mission to melissa is useful because we have 27 of the nation's plus several non native nations. catawba has agreed to send aircraft. the uae will be involved. so it is not just us fighting this force. the commanding officer of the task force of the canadian officers who is a part of nato. so we have made some progress there. but i would caution all of us as voters and citizens to question the congress exactly how far we're going to go with this. this is a legitimate mission to depose a horrible dictator as was the mission in iraq. what about syria?

that is another horrible dictator who has killed thousands of his own people already. that is clear. we have known that. you don't have to stop with syria. yemen, a lot of places in the world. by the way, at this moment on the ivory coast there is a civil war breaking out which we completely ignored because it's in africa. i can't figure any other reason. it is high -- of violence and death toll is much higher than anything that has happened so far in libya. >> lofty ideals, but they are being applied situational. yes. >> good afternoon. i have a question, the libyan middle east situation. more about the army and the people.

there have been some people discussing, the president has not said whether or not we will send arms or other sorts of weapons over to the libyan people to help them fight. but i want to know the merits of the text appointed you, whether it provides the tech to advantage to arm them come a historical point of view whether americans might have seen this show before. the financial point of view, if we can afford it. but take my question sitting down. >> all right. nothing to do with the state department or anything. i can say whatever i am pleased. if you agree with me and brilliant, and if you don't, you don't know. it seems to me the question about libya, the president was faced with a very difficult thing. these revolutionary son were in

danger of being exterminated. he had even gone on record saying that he would hunt them down house-to-house. what can we do about that? well, we did what we could. i think that we stop that from happening by the judicious use of airpower. i thought that was pretty good and then. i think that we can also maintain that. in other words, we get these people. we can keep the forces of basin with very little money and little expenditure of life, if any simply by the minute any of his troops pop-up some redline. you cross this, down, the tomahawks. let those people sorted out. we can at least protect the people who are trying to do democracy.

whether they understand, we have no idea. that is why we should not get any further involved than say we just don't want wholesale slaughter, particularly if it is a movement in the way of our ideals, and i think that we can hold align there. but just say we want him out. >> i recently had the privilege of travelling to egypt and jordan. i get to sit in on sunglasses. one of the main things i took away was hell of raise a are that the words muslim and terrorist can be lumped together in the same category. the reason that we have seen the determination and bravery, i was wondering what kind of role, if

any, you see beyond people playing in the global fight against terrorism to mike. >> well, your experiences fascinating. we keep talking about these new problems we're facing. the combatants being part of the population. we aren't fighting asymmetrical line of troops and weaponry. what you just did by going over their is really, i think, one of the keys to the future. coming here in saying this, as everyone hears that it is a kind of ground truth that is just as important as any kind of satellite map of the weapon emplacement. i really believe that. just what you just did. more of that. i know that -- i don't know the exact figure, but the amount of

the population in the middle east is huge. under 30. it is huge the unemployed. so, i want to step back and look at this. the telescope, what are we trying to achieve? we are trying to achieve peace and stability throughout the world so that people aren't killing each other. that is ultimately what we're talking about. what these folks want are jobs for the future. we can't give them all that. if we start to think about how to have to spend less tax dollars and, it is another way to approach every social problem . >> if you don't mind expanding and bidden. do you have any impression of what your presence is made and your counterparts? >> i mean, they are very

welcoming. in general. we have never met any estelle and -- hostility. i am facebook friends with a lot of the now. we contact each other. one of the main things to talk about was american foreign policy. really, i mean, they are confused about how we go about things, but in general they understand why we are fighting terrorism. >> i wonder some of our problems could be solved by facebook. >> it was such a stimulus in egypt in particular. i think to go back to public diplomacy, one of the strongest programs was the visiting scholar program. this was financing visitors from other countries to spend time in u.s. universities. it is not the only way, but it was a strong message. i think if you look at other countries in the region there is

a large young population that is a potential source of alignment between our countries. alignment in goals apiece. >> in the interests of the last ten of 15 years, those relationships that you formed in that classroom and that exchange are going to become critical. is that just today. it is a significant investment in the future. >> we are coming up against our hard limit. elsie we have time for two more questions. >> vermont national guard. my question is directed specifically at mr. sigell. you mentioned earlier that pakistan's lack of involvement in combating the taliban force is on the afghan border is due in part to the fact that pakistan is already combating insurgency within its own borders. if that is the case, then why is

the pakistan the isi continually involved in supporting insurgent to -- activity within afghanistan in even more stiff to the north? >> in the interest of time with the situation it is a fair question. many pakistan's. a fundamentalist population which has not -- concentrated mainly on the hell's. i s.i. being a military element not completely under the control of the government. the civilian government is weak and pretty correct. pakistan has one of the fastest population growth rates in the world. one of the fastest widening gaps. it is in of the state from the

nuclear-powered. we have a strong interest in not being destabilized and not becoming of fundamental state. if you think that is impossible you need to look back in history who was a fundamentalist. he did not have nuclear-weapons. mysteriously died an airplane crash along with the u.s. ambassador. but they have a history of having a fundamentalist in charge of that country. it would be a different world, indeed, if they take over the nuclear weapons supplied. they are very suspicious that is why we are focused on and intends to do. so a very unstable makes. you add in cash ridge of the picture. sixteen consulates in afghanistan. the pakistanis have no doubt about why.

on the other hand, the unions would say their embassy has been attacked three times, every time by pakistan. so there is a war going on in kashmir. >> and a senior. for the past semester i have been working on my senior seminar project. i have been interviewing alumni that have served in iraq and afghanistan. one of those currently stationed they're right now, stations, a barrier reef. she is in charge of a whole bunch of engineering and recently told me in my most recent interview that any projects under $4 million given to afghani contractors. they can build their own infrastructure. to me this seems like a great idea, and i'm curious what you think about that and i do think

we can expand so that they can take over the more expensive product. >> it is part of our program in all of our's been ditchers. we have by afghan one possible strategy policy. it is not as simple as it sounds because you have companies that really aren't there are companies that really can deliver. there was a shipping contracts given to an individual for 100 to $5 million. turn that he owned the trucks. that said, he was the son of a government minister. so the contract stood. you know, you get into a very correct situations because of the floods and economy. there are not clear rolls. it is a good idea, and we should

do more of it. we should be cautious about where we spend our money. >> thank you very much. >> i think on that note we'll going to adjourn the session. there would like to thank our panel for their very deep into its member of a lot of questions. that bank in now with like to thank the organizers of the panel, snyder, the trustees, donors. not least of all, the cadets, you all here who are our future. we hope that today has been a small contribution to getting some necessary insight for what lies in your future. thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> this weekend on book tv on c-span2 last year's deep water rise in oil rig explosion which killed 11 and released millions of barrels of oil into the gulf of mexico. in a reason to believe he recounts his life from chicago's south side to the massachusetts governor's office. and william cohen shares his insights on money and power, how goldman sacks came to rule the world. look for the complete schedule and get our schedules in your in box. sign up for the book tv alert. >> the author of courage to descend. professor, what was the importance of land in the civil rights movement? >> right. roque, atlanta has not been discussed very often in the civil rights movement. also, it was the home to several

national civil rights organizations. the place that i wanted to explore because i thought it would be a success story. it is usually considered of interest only because it was the home of martin luther king jr. i wanted to explore atlanta because i knew that it was home to us sizable african-american middle class. many black colleges in part because the city fathers always considered it a place of racial moderation to my good place for much of the civil rights movement. >> what did you find? was a success story? >> in some ways it was men including for many members of the black middle class who came of age after a landmark civil rights legislation of the

1950's. but the story that i tell in my blood is a little more complicated. it also shows that for many african-americans in atlanta, a city that one would think would be a perfect place to tell a story about a civil rights excess, it wasn't very successful for everyone. there was a love of failure, including for group of african-american women who tell their story. the third part of the book would challenge not only white, but the black leaders in the 1970's saying they had been left out of the successes. >> when you use the word defends in the title of the book, who is dissenting? >> right. i talk about three ways of the center's. the first wave of dissent is a

pragmatist among people who are members of the african american middle-class who were interested in challenging jim-crow but without giving up the social and economic capital that the black middle class have been able to receive. so this meant, for instance where they were interested in economic, preserving their economic status. they were interested in educational equality, but they were not so interested in school desegregation because that would have meant that black teachers might lose their jobs. >> was there a fear by the black middle class that they would lose what they had? >> absolutely. there was. to some extent that fear was well-founded. the last third of my book would explore this these dissenters who i talk about as welfare

rights activists, i discussed how the black middle class pushed back against segregation because of employment discrimination or at least the fear of employment discrimination against white teachers and principals. >> what was the relationship between 30 marshall and martin luther king jr. >> while. bob, it was complicated. a story that i tell in the middle third of my book right talk about dissenters your street demonstrators and lawyers to represent the center. it turns out that their good martial was not enamored with the student protesters. he told students at the beginning that they should not engage in protests. they were going to get people

killed. they were invading the property and he was very negative toward that end. he believed that it martin luther king jr. had inspired distance to go into the streets in protest. of course for very good reason. his in 1955. >> were you surprised? emmy, the civil rights movement is often looked at as monolithic and vary in agreement. you surprised at the levels of disagreement within the civil rights movement they found? >> you know, i was. i think that is the most surprising thing that i found in my research. how much we don't know about the movement, although, many, many books have been written about the civil rights era. there was so much conflict.

again, i talked about the three historical moments. so much conflict over whether to desegregate schools, how much emphasis to put on voting rights, whether it's the desegregate housing tomorrow whether to engage in street protests were to negotiate. these are points of conflict that historians have not written about in part because we want to tell stories that are simple, stories that are consistent with progress, american progress. for some many years those stories have turned over, brown versus board of education, civil rights was lesson of the 1960's. the long civil rights movement asked us to go back and then press forward to 1970's.

>> if he had to pick a date of the civil-rights movement started to mall with the beat jack. >> skeptical. i can tell you that my book begins in the 1940's. the postwar will work to providing a jumping off point for civil rights activism. this seemed to be such a conflict between pursuing democracy abroad.

>> tell us what the cover of the book. >> the first photograph is ap walden. one of the first african american lawyers. though none today. what i show him doing here, challenging the white primary, the convention that excluded african-americans from voting in the democratic primary in georgia and throughout the south. trying to vote. as you can see he is squaring off against this gentleman who is the registrar. the photograph, the 1970's.

coachella woman by the name of death may matthews who was the leader of the social group of the national welfare rights organization. she was as strong dissenter in the african-american community. at a welfare rights protest. what she is saying there is that the civil-rights movement has not worked particularly well for all blacks. demanding an adequate income, demanding integrated schools, for all housing. the cover is meant to detect the nuances. >> professor, is still alive? >> she is not. >> its chance to chat with the children or relatives? >> i did not. i had extensive with her which was just a joy.

>> he did? >> i did. >> a year been working on this book for several years. >> absolutely. i started out as a dissertation and work done for years. the result is this 500 page. >> that's right. >> so in talking during your research what was she like 30, 40 years later? >> well, she was a remarkably strong woman. she was very passionate. she was very clear in her sense that politicians of all is the logical stripes, of all races had not been attentive enough to

the port. that is where she said in no uncertain terms. that was quite surprising to me. she really opened up to me, i think more than anyone else when interviewed, and i connected of 30. the movement was much more complicated than even the story that i had learned in a graduate school, certainly law school. >> if somebody said to you, professor, that the civil rights movements was a middle-class movement what would be your response? >> well, i would say that it is an ad -- an apt description in many ways in terms of its impact. i don't think that leaders of the civil rights movement like thurgood marshall, certainly not

dr. king and others. they intended for civil rights legislation, for instance, firm civil rights litigation to have a wider impact. for a number of reasons the civil rights movement did. those were the people who were in the best position to take advantage of the opening up of the workplace to african-americans, the opening up of schools to african-americans. but for those like at the may matthews who was the child of alabama sharecroppers, who just was not very well educated. very smart, but not very well educated.