what she thought was on the roll and the photographs she had taken in the bathtub, and amy listened and said, you know, i think what's likely to happen in this case is if police are concerned about these photographs enough, they might pass them along to the prosecutor. if the prosecutor is concerned enough, he'll pass them along to children's services, and if children's services is concerned, they'll send a social worker out to your house or to find nora at school. and try to find out what the intent of the photographs was. what did you plan to do with these, what are they about? so she had cynthia write up an affidavit in which she explained the photographs, and, um, they had it notarized and submitted to the police. six weeks went by, and in that six weeks the police never returned to the house, there was never a search warrant to ask to see the photographs, they never asked any other questions of the family. the county prosecutor did not

contact the lawyer and ask further questions about the client, and children services never showed up. so everyone assumed this little incident was over, that everything had been taken care of. on september the 28th, two sheriff's deputies came to the door and arrested cynthia. and took her to the county jail. and david had to bail her out by putting a $20,000 lien on their house. cynthia was arrested on two felony charges. the first felony charge was, um, a law -- ohio law said you cannot take a photograph of a naked child. i saw someone's eyes go like this, because that would make most of us felons, right? [laughter] fortunately, the law had been constrained by this ohio supreme court and the u.s. supreme court to cases where there was a lewd

exhibition or a graphic focus on the genitals. so nudity alone was no longer going to be the standard by which the photographs would be judged pornographic, there had to be a lewd exhibition or graphic focus on the genitals. the second law that she was indicted under was a law that prohibits the photographing of a child in a sexual performance. the photographs that cynthia had taken that day were taken after she and nora had been to a photo exhibit at a local art gallery, and there was one photograph of a woman in a bathtub rising mysteriously out of the bathtub, and nora asked if they could replicate that photograph at home, so when they got home, they filled the bathtub with bubble bath, and nora had risen up mysteriously from the water. but once -- and cynthia had taken photographs. but once the water had run out, cynthia continued taking some photographs, and she took a series of four in which nora was rinsing off with the shower sprayer in her hand. she took one of her -- she

rinsed off her head, her neck, and then in the third photograph the water was streaming towards her genital area which was obscured by the water. the shower sprayer was not touching her. you could see the whole bathroom and her whole body, and the last photograph in the sequence was the same with her body. it was those last two pictures that brought about the second felony charge. when this hit the newspapers, and it did big time not only in our little town, but beyond the region, the cleveland late night news was cynthia's mug shot with these allegations. you can imagine the town was really shocked. this was a family that was beloved in the town, a well known family, an admired family. cynthia was a school bus driver. nora was a very gifted, bright, lovely child, and everyone was completely stunned. ..

and now kim barker talks about "the taliban shuffle". >> welcome to the twenty-seventh annual chicago tribune with fast. thank you to our sponsors. before we begin today's program

please turn off your cellphone and all other electrolytic devices. photography is not permitted. today's program will be broadcast live on c-span2's booktv. if there's time at the end for a q&a session we ask you use the microphone located in the center of the room so the whole viewing audience can hear your question. if you would like to see this program again our coverage will be repaired tonight at 11:00. please welcome moderator colin mcmahon of the chicago tribune. and kim barker, author of "the taliban shuffle". [applause] >> thank you. good afternoon. >> can you hear us? >> is that a yes or a no. excellent. >> i have a louder voice. i was curious. >> we are here today to talk

about "the taliban shuffle". and kim barker's strange days in afghanistan and pakistan and she was a foreign correspondent for "the chicago tribune" for six years she was in the region. she worked with me as a correspondent and for me for a brief stretch. >> you were the first foreign editor i worked for. i hated him. >> it was a mutual dislike. so we are here to talk about this. it is a great time to be talking about pakistan and afghanistan. a lot of tension on it but let's talk about the book and then your impression of what is going on now. first question is probably what you have been thinking about. you were a foreign correspondent working mean string journalism. how is this different from that and how would you characterize

this? as a memoir, what is a journalistic memoir? >> there are a lot of questions and i will try to get to all of them. this is not journalism writing. it is everything i would leave out of journalism stories. was what it was like to live over there. what was like to be a woman in the region, a female correspondent. it is a memoir match up with politics and what actually happened in the region. i did that deliberately. i felt i didn't know ten years into this war whether anybody wanted to read another book about afghanistan and pakistan but i felt so passionately about the subject and i wanted to come up with a way to tell the story that people would find compelling. made sense to make myself the main character and that is how i treated myself. i didn't look at it and say i will only put the good stuff about me. a lot of foreign correspondents do that. nobody else understood how this

place works except for me. i am very honest and a book about the fact that i didn't know what was going on, the fact that i was completely unlikable that certain points especially when i was there for too long. i behaved badly. i deliberately did that because i wanted to treat myself like the main character or in any store you write which means warts and all. i had to separate myself from this main character because if i thought about it too much i would think that is really embarrassing. july want people to read that especially now that i am investigative reporter? is funny because i had a guy come to the office in new york the other day and he is considering working on a story with us and he is a big-time tv guide and says i'm in the middle of your book. you just broke up with your boyfriend and i was mortified. what was i thinking?

>> talk about that first time exposing yourself personally. is there anything -- you are living this out and talking to people about across the country. anything you wish you had done differently? anything you might regret having put in? >> no. i am very comfortable with everything that is in there. i didn't put absolutely everything in. i feel like i protected the people, be innocent in this book. i didn't write about any afghan women. people ask why didn't you write about the afghan women? i did that deliberately because i know every single time a book is written about an afghan woman that afghan woman usually ends the bearing the brunt of it and it usually ends up to bat for them so i only wrote about people who live felt could take it. the former prime minister of pakistan, former attorney general of afghanistan. people who really showed the

corruption in various countries. farouk is the main character in the book. one of my closest friends. i wanted to give him a pseudonym and leave certain things out about him and he said no. a m farouk. he refers to as book. how is book doing? it is like its own entity. like it is that human being and we did get him to chicago. he is living in a canada and we got him to chicago in april and he was thrilled to be here and to see chicago where he worked for so long. >> one of the themes of the book for those who haven't had a chance to read and enjoy it is farouk's macho persona and how that represents a lot of a men in afghanistan. >> that he represents

afghanistan. well-intentioned, bumbling, no clue how to do this. no clue about the cultural sensitivities. i am american and farouk -- he has to get what he can while he can. so he likes telling people i am a 3-dimensional character. where did you get that? i was telling him i am trying to make this not just one dimensional, you are three dimensional and refers to himself as a try dimensional character. >> tim mentioned the former prime minister of pakistan who has an interesting relationship or had an interesting relationship with him -- kim. he misinterpreted their relationship and her retelling history funny but also unsettling because the relationship a person might have with a source can be difficult

so tell us briefly about that and the question is what has happened since then? have you heard from him? what is the upshot of this? >> we are getting married. for those who don't know the story i was front-page news in pakistan for a week. it took osama bin laden being killed to knock me off the front page. some people have heard about this story too often especially if you live in pakistan. i meet this guy, former prime minister of pakistan, very powerful man and i met him right after benazir bhutto was killed. sharif is the opposition leader. he is someone on a need to cultivate as a source. i want him to make my phone calls. it is this delicate dance you're doing with people you are developing as a resource.

you don't want to be too friend friendly, you don't want them to think you are friends. but you're friendly with that particular source and he misinterpreted. i joke around with everybody. that is the way i interact with the world and he definitely misinterpreted that and at one point -- i didn't know he was misinterpreting but at one point he asked if he could find me a friend and i said ok, he wanted to set me up on a date i thought. that is pretty funny. i have to see how this goes so he asked my criteria and i said call and funny and smart and that lead to a question i will always remember, what do you mean by smart? so i had to explain that to him and he says but you do not want a cunning friend. i said no. who wants a cunning friend? this goes on for a couple months

where it is getting progressively creepy year where he is ending phone calls by saying don't do what is it you people say? don't be naughty. who says that? nobody says that. he wanted to buy me a phone because he said my phone was tapped and his phone was tapped and i told him you are former prime minister. you cannot buy me a phone. is not acceptable and this culminated in shortly after the mumbai attacks, i kept talking to my editor saying i think this guy is interested in me. i can talk to him anymore but i had to talk to this guy because he is the most powerful opposition leader so i went to see him after the mumbai attacks and he told me where the one surviving gunman was from. pointed me into the right village. i was the first western journalist to get to that village but during that meeting

my translator was with me and he asked the translator to leave and said he had bought the a fun and eyes that i can't except the phone and we went back and forth about it and he said i want to be your friend. i said no, absolutely not and he gave me a line that i am sure is going to be used as a pickup wind for route bars in america which is hear me out. i know i am not as tall as you want. i am not as fit as you want. i am fast and i am old but i would still like to be your friend. you have got to give him credit for honesty. i was very honest about everybody when i was leaving the chicago tribune in a blaze of glory and when i quit my job there i was very honest about the fact that i was writing a book and i knew exactly what i wanted to do and how i wanted to

tell the story so this word got to him that i was writing a book and so he tracked me down and a surge in point when i was in new york. he sent an emissary to me and we went out for caesar salad and sharif called him and we're still friends, what is it with you and this word? what is it with you and freds and he desperately did not want me to write a book and i said i am writing a book and he said you know i was just joking. you can tell your country that. and so he knew exactly what i was doing. i didn't pull any punches on that. the day before the book came out he all of a sudden got heart problems and went to london for heart treatment. he just stayed there. he was staying in london and waiting for pakistan to find out about the book so he just stays

and weights and a month later explodes in pakistan and it is everywhere. he won't say a word. he does not appear in public. he is still in london. nobody from his party will answer anything about the book or about me. put out a press release calling sharif a playboy for trying to give me an iphone. i couldn't make this stuff up. every day on twitter and back-and-forth with all the folks in pakistan. so he went back to pakistan after osama bin laden was killed. that is when he finally went back. there has been a lawsuit filed against me in the high court asking the i s i to look into my false allegations against sharif and saying it was all made off because i'm a member of the cia

and it is retaliation against mr. sharif because of his stands on a case from earlier this year which means i would have had to turn around a book in three weeks. >> the final meeting with mr. sharif is funny in the book. net one point he says but we are friends, right? and we are friendly. was there any concern on your part? he was pakistani prime minister and he does have power and he does have access to people who do things. was that a concern to you? >> no. it was not a concern to me. i deliberately changed the name of my driver in pakistan who works for somebody completely different and there's no way to find him. tammy is a character in the book

who is the pakistani female journalists who wanted her name used and she knew about the stuff in there. she wanted to be associated with it. i had no fear he would retaliate. what is he going to do? once it is out it is out. there is no putting that back into the box and there hasn't been a lot of fallout personally for me at all. there have been people who suggest how could you write about that? that was private. my feeling is when you are a leader of a country we believe occupied a position like that, that behavior needs to be recognized and won a person puts themselves out to be a very conservative fundamentalist moslem leader and he wanted to be called commander of the faithful and is hitting on western women, the way women are viewed their, the public face versus what happens behind-the-scenes, that is important to talk about and

something i had access to and mail correspondence with day. >> on the theme of personal safety is your writing the book a lot of times you go back over things, you recognized how dangerous the situation was. >> i feel like the first year after leaving, you are going through this stuff and reliving it and you are realizing that probably affected me a lot more than i thought. going to suicide bombs, seeing body parts. you don't think about it at the time because you are just running from place to place trying to file the story and meet deadlines. you don't think about what happens inside because if i am

going to do this job and i still see this as a journalist, and cover these painful stories i have to feel every single story i am doing. i have to connect it because only if icy this as a real person, not just as a number can i translated to readers and make it seem like people there are just like people here and this is what it is like for them. that takes a toll on you. i couldn't face riding pakistan. afghanistan for some reason was very easy to write and i could not face riding pakistan. it was ryder's block. i was only riding the funny bets. i didn't even put it together and then i went to visit my mother for ten days over christmas which is a great way to write a book because if you ever consider doing it you realize you have an excuse to get away from your mother for half the they. my mother likes to talk a lot about feelings and the motions and in like that.

i would take half the day and write the book and then come and read it to her. i wrote all of pakistan in those ten days. i wrote about 5,000 words a day. it was all inside me waiting to come out and i needed my mom around almost to hold my hand and walked me through it. my parents didn't know any of the stuff i would for because you are protecting them. it was really sort of difficult for her as well to hear everything i went through. people always say you wrote a funny book. what is funny about this? parts are very funny but parts are very sad. coming to terms with that was difficult but now i am all better. >> you mentioned in your initial comment that another theme is the kind of feeling you had when you first get to a place and

don't really know it and overwhelmed you feel and out of place so you get up to speed. there are certain parts of the book where you are too hard on yourself and i think that is probably part of life. you don't know something until you start doing it. do you now look at this? do you know what i am talking about? do you look at that time differently? or is it still how you feel? >> it is a self-deprecating book. i did not want to come out as a hero in any event for the reasons i stated earlier. i wanted to be very honest and open about the fact that i didn't know much. it is funnier the way i wrote it and i am hard on myself in places but journalists often are. hardest on yourself. maybe you think you are great. i don't know.

>> not any more. >> we are actually very good friends and i think the world of him as an editor just to correct that from earlier. people read it and say you come worse than anyone else in the book and that is what i wanted to do. that was my goal in doing it and there probably are not a lot of books especially by female authors where their memoirs and the main character comes out worse than anybody else. i have no regrets about anything that is in there and it is an honest book that reads really well. as a piece of time it is a good history and it works but i had to separate myself as a human being from the character in here because i don't -- you can't do that. you can't put everything of yourself because who wants to read that kind of naval gazing. that is a very good book but this is the opposite of that. there's not a lot of self reflection in here when i am

going through these experiences. even though i had more as a human being at the time because that is not what you are doing. you are running from bomb to bomb and don't have time for that self reflection. that comes later. >> one thing we talk about before the session began was how this allowed people to keep reading about afghanistan and pakistan even though it might be ten years on in the war and people might not pick up a book about pakistan are now reading it. let's talk quickly about where we are and where you think we are headed. we have a potential pullout of troops beginning. we have -- whether there's a deadline or not, that is the question but how do you size it up right now and where do you think the u.s. needs to go? >> i stick with what i wrote in the book. we are on a path doomed to failure if we stay on the road

we are on. we have been sticking on this road which is a strange mix where you put a lot more troops and a lot more money in. we ask spending $190 million a day in afghanistan. that is $2,200 a second. in the time we have been talking think about how much money we have spent for an effort that everybody agrees is doomed to fail. we had to a narrative being created out of this and the military is creating this narrative. the obama administration is creating a narrative of success. doesn't really match with what is actually happening on the ground and we will start pulling out troops and redefine success and move those goalposts and bring everybody home. a couple months after we leave, i would say almost immediately the civil war will start. it won't be the taliban marching in all over again. it will be a civil war. the warlords we have empowered over there since the fall of the

taliban and they are in kabul and airmass sandwiches -- weapons and they're getting ready for us to leave. i almost feel it is inevitable what is happening. people say what is the solution? what would you do? i am a journalist who spent a lot of time in the region. i am just a journalist. any time you give people a deadline and say we will pull our troops out it tell them we know what the time line is. we know how serious they are about this place. this place has been abandoned repeatedly by the west. these are survivors. it is two nations of fence sitters waiting to see which way it is going to go and as soon as we telegraph and say we will pull out our troops everybody switched and that is when things get really bad. my answer, much fewer troops. stop the drone attacks and the

night raid. that is controversial but those create more enemies over there. you have coordinated development. most of it is going to people's pockets and we are pouring too much money in. we need less money and more toward the nation and fewer troops and remove any sort of timeline if we want it to work. if we are not willing to do that than what are we doing there now? pull everybody home. >> when the afghans talked about the worst time in their country they don't talk about time under the taliban or the soviets but the timing between the civil war. so afghanistan. with pakistan, obviously very much in the news with bin laden killing. >> i wrote about it in the book,

where he was killed. was a total shocker that he was there. >> what about the pakistani intelligence, what the secret intelligence didn't know. what effort will have on pakistan if any? >> you can't look at the i s i or the army, the eye as i is the top spy agency in pakistan. they pretty much control everything. there is a combination of the cia and the fbi and their focus is on what is happening inside their country. not necessarily what is outside the country. as journalists we would be followed. they would come to the wars. there are a couple funny scenes of them following us around. if we meet with an afghan or an indian than you are on their radar. in other words the i s i is pretty much everywhere in that

country but it is not a top-down organization. is not as if they know what is going on below. they had different sort of cells working with different jihad groups to work across the border in afghanistan and fight against the soviets. you have this mentality that you could have these self-contained sells like a terrorist organization so getting back to your question do i believe that the leadership of the eye as i and the army knew that bin laden was in havocabad? i find that hard to believe. do i believe the civilian government knew what was about was? they have no idea what is going on. they have no idea. do i believe somebody and have aabad new? definitely. no way he would have been able to live in that compound with barbed wire on the top.

no way he would have been able to live there without somebody knowing he was there. without some level of protection. getting back to your question, what repercussions those that have on everything that increasingly was obvious that double game was played that pakistan. is going to have an effect. everyone is taking a hard look at this partner in this war that we are sort of stuck with and try to figure out do we want to keep giving them money to fight a war against india. pakistan will go away of afghanistan. aid will be cut. we will go back to what happened in the 80s when we cut ties a little bit and we will see the fallout of that.

pakistan is a more troubling country than afghanistan because of the nuclear weapons issue although i believe those are safe and because of the fact that they create this sort of frankenstein enemy that is coming back on them and you are seeing these sophisticated attacks on the establishment. we will see where it goes. >> when we turned away from pakistan the last time, there was not a nuclear armed country. a totally different experience. we have 15 minutes left so i thought we could take some questions from the crowd. anybody have anything they want to bring up? if you could come to the microphone? >> what made you decide you wanted to be a foreign correspondent? >> that is a good question. i am unlike a lot of foreign correspondence. a lot of foreign correspondence know from the beginning this is what they want to do.

they want to go overseas and study the different culture. in college they learn the language. for me i wanted to tell stories. i always just wanted to tell good stories and i wanted to tell the most important stories. when 9/11 happened are was working at the chicago tribune in the metro office and are saw them sending metro reporters to fill in in different places. i knew it was the biggest story in the world and want it in so i volunteered having no idea what i was getting myself into and they're feeling was i make a joke about it in the book. they're feeling is here's someone who knows how to tell stories. let's see what she can do. >> you went in and said to the editor i am single, i don't have any ties. i am expendable. >> the speaker spoke of war lord that we empowered in putting out

our troops. hi, pacifist so i do not have troops and so i felt misrepresented by that kind of language. you speak of the actions going on in afghanistan. >> do you have a question? >> the question -- >> there's a line of people behind you. >> the understanding the united states went into iraq for israel. >> seriously. this is live on tv. do you have a question? >> do you believe also the united states is in afghanistan and pakistan to wreck it for the benefit of israel as a general idea of world conquest? >> no. >> thank you. >> next question. >> i don't really have a question. i read for affairs magazine and they have some perceptive

article about afghanistan and they would reiterate the points you may that development is not -- the personnel are not trained in how to do development programs so there's a lot of money being wasted. >> exactly. >> that raises a good point. talk about the afghan police and training of the afghan police. f one point at you said something about something very unflattering. what did you see? >> the 4 afghan police. we play these huge practical jokes on afghanistan. after the fall of the taliban we divided up what we were going to do and had our on iraq and what was going to happen there. i am just using that for america or the west. you had this decision made that america was going to train the

army, the germans were going to train the police. the british are going to take care of drugs and the italian were going to do the court system. the italians. couldn't make this stuff. they are known for their courses. no wonder they have a corrupt core system. the germans are kind of a joke over there because they will not go out of the base after dark even if they are being called to support other troops. they will not go out after dark and if they go out during the day they have to have an ambulance with the metal times. you have these sort of decisions made. the police training was not even thought about. you had to have police that were trained. until 2006/2007 and the americans realize these folks were on the front lines of the war on terror and haven't been trained and started giving training and oftentimes it was three weeks. and they would go down the street and say we pay only about

$60 a month or $100 a month. would you like to be a police officer and the on the front lines of the war on terror? i referred to him at one point as mo. these guys you go to training and it would be like they would know how to close one eye so they couldn't a.m.. you have these american trainer is going like this and the best shot and one class have only three fingers and they would do things like leaning on their gun and shoot themselves in the foot. you watch these guys in training and you would find yourself trying not to laugh because it is a serious problem and it still is. they still haven't figured out how to get long-term training leaders and how to get enough money that they are not tempted into corruption. the police are key. >> must of been the only afghan

men who did know how to handle it. >> they knew how to fight over there. >> in writing the book, researching and everything, did you find there is a direct correlation between the problems we are facing now and our failed policy in the 80s, and putting osama bin laden in the position that he became because we armed him, he was our man? do you think that is why they wanted him dead and not brought back for trial? >> a lot of questions there. let me start with the 80s question. there is no doubt -- there's a reasonably say history. it leads to where we are today. everything that happened in pakistan and afghanistan is the

result of supporting these groups in the 80s and abandoning these countries. that is the key point. abandoning these countries and the idea of education or doing any development. if people have not seen the movie charlie wilson's war it is a pretty good movie and the way to get quick education as to what happened in the 80s. you get the sense that the charlie wilson character is asking for education. what would have been different if we had stuck around? if we hadn't just left and allow the civil war to happen, allow these textbooks to stay in pakistan that teach jihad to little kids, allowing these kids to grow up in camps where they're taken care of by militants. as far as where the war is now, let's be absolutely honest. it has nothing to do with al qaeda in pakistan or afghanistan. it really doesn't. it has to do with all these

different groups. it could have goals allied with al qaeda but they are more local goals. is not about world domination or attacking america. it is about attacking inside these countries, getting rid of the u.s. backed government, hitting troops inside afghanistan. it is a bit different. as far as bin laden goes and whether we killed him to avoid bringing him back here for trial, i don't know. i don't know what the decision was. there were orders to shoot to kill no matter what and that was maybe because of everything that happened on 9/11 and everything that happened since then and worries what would happen back here perhaps. >> attorney general holder a year ago said osama bin laden would not be brought in a live. that was clear. >> you say our aid program is a failure. would it be better to turn it

over to ngos? >> no. >> that would operate on a much lower -- >> we need ngos but they are part of the chain. when you give money to -- usaat id is our aid organization grew. that goes to be droops like for-profit places and they subcontract down to the afghan groups and subcontract down. by the time the money gets down there is a tenth of what it started out and you have these guys -- don't get me started on the way the foreign community lives in afghanistan. i take a pretty vivid picture in the book but what needs to happen is all the countries need to work together in a better fashion. the way you do it now is a very piecemeal. the u.s. military will build up in one community but the community didn't want a well but that was great and someone else

will build a well five feet away. that is lack of coordination and decisionmaking and prioritizing and coming up with a coherent plan. the idea of having a marshall plan in afghanistan which everyone talks about is still not done. >> thank you. >> you told all kinds of stories about incompetence but then you said pakistan's nuclear weapons are safe. >> i do. there are protocols that are very much in place and the one establishment that works in pakistan is the military structure. they proved that pretty much. we might not like what they are doing but they definitely know what they're doing. there are so many protocols with nuclear-weapons and the u.s. officials here are not necessarily worry about them and that says something. you never know which direction that country is going to go but

my sense is it will just muddle along has is. >> my question is as a senior reporter, the you have challenges dagamail reporter perhaps down? and how the whole situation -- punch him in the face. >> that is kind of true. female reporters have different experiences than mail reporters. i would have loved to experience it as a man so i could say for sure what the differences are but my sense is as a female especially in a country -- in pakistan i would get grabbed a lot more in crowd situations which ended up getting me access to people because they would try to pull me out of that which was helpful to my reporting and i did occasionally when i got frustrated just punch let guys who were grabbing me. in afghanistan it is very

interesting. being a female reporter in afghanistan is actually much easier than being a mail foreign reporter because you're not seen as a local woman. you are not seen as a foreign man. you are seen as a third sex who gets access to everybody. if colin mcmahon was in afghanistan he would not get news stories for half the population. won't do stories about women or girls setting themselves on fire because they don't want to be married to an 80-year-old. . i can do those stories and also even the conservative clerics want to see the foreign woman reporter. they are charged by the idea of running around the country and i challenged somebody to find a male reporter that hamid karzai has talked to. it is not a sexy thing. he wants to give credit to the women who are willing to tell

stories. with others that might not be the case. women get a weird actress and it is not just me. i think all female reporters feel that way. >> we just have a couple minutes left. what happened with hamid karzai? >> there are a couple different things that i think happened with him. we set him up to fail. we love 0 leader who speaks english and dresses well. we do. we especially love -- we like having those horrible dictators in the middle east with our foreign policy does -- we preach about democracy but we like having a strong man to deal with. in the beginning the sense was here is our guy and the bush administration we love having our guys in places hamid karzai was our guy.

can you remember when the iraq war happens and everyone said if only there was a hamid karzai iraq. think about that for a minute. over the years -- he is known to be paranoid. he has become increasingly isolated. he is in this palace by himself. if you haven't read the story by elizabeth reuben about him it is a great story in the new york times magazine and pretty much describes how he got to this point and he is caught between the idea that he really believes he is the person who will save his country. he really believes that the west is against him and america is trying to kill him and america is killing people there. all these crazy press conferences he gives he actually believed that and that is a problem with your partner has turned into the person who is always doing a wag the dog. allegations of corruption, look at this florida preacher who set

a koran on fire and you have riots where afghans are killed. >> a great observation about everything will be going to hell and hamid karzai will coming when things are over and appealed for calm. last thing, you mentioned charlie wilson's war, terrific book turned into a terrific movie. this is a terrific book and will be a terrific movie and i heard there is already -- >> i am not supposed to talk about that. >> so look for it. thank you. [applause] >> thank you for coming. thank you for attending today's discussion and supporting the chicago tribune commitment to literacy. a book signing will take place in the art room. we ask that you exit the room unless you have a ticket for the next program. thank you.

[inaudible conversations] >> kim barker discussing "the taliban shuffle," strange days in afghanistan and pakistan. we will be back live with more from chicago in just a moment. >> you were talking about fundamental confusions. if you think about what a warrior is a warrior is a person who first of all chooses a side. the warrior clearly knows these are my people and those are my enemies and he will risk his

life and limb to use violence to try to stop the people who are trying to do violence against his people. that is a warrior. a policeman will also 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 have fundamentally confuse the role of warriors with the role of police. and warriors are trained to oppose another side are put 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 can in any state in this union the people who are inside will all tell you is it bad to kill or against the law to steal?

they all agree. there is an agreement on law. we put people who are trained as warriors into 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? and the second thing is if you have policemen who are trained and, they are generally more mature. infantrymen are young. would you take a 19-year-old and send him into a troubled neighborhood with an automatic weapon? not likely he is going to do a very good job. 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 fundamental confusion we will be finding ourselves in the situation 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 you have a devastating moment when a u.s. officer suddenly realizes and begins worrying over the fact that the north vietnamese army units he is opposing are infused with a sense of purpose and mission and this devastating observation for the americans that clary was a thing of the past. the marines are 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 telling people. the cycle of this dynamic can quickly detach itself from larger strategic missions a specially missions with ambiguity, counterinsurgency. >> an interesting parallel between vietnam and the current

war in afghanistan because in world war ii my father and uncle, are we making progress? we took guadalcanal and it was clear what we were doing. you go to vietnam and it is becoming an clear. how do we measure success? it devolved into body counting. high and clear in my own mind that body count is a very 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 and the job is not to kill the other side. he is sometimes have to kill people on the other side to dissuade them from doing what they're doing. the objective should not be killing. that is just inhumane. >> you can watch this and other

programs online at booktv.org. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> a book called 1861, jeffrey goldberg, it is about the beginning of the civil war. those of the books i have been reading most recently. >> tell us what you are reading this summer. send us a tweet at booktv. >> that is one of the most interesting aspects of this society, the women of hezbollah are the cornerstone of the movement and what has turned it into something that has such an

enduring and resilient bedrock. each time there is a war, 1993-1996, 2006, there are massive amount of destruction. homes are destroyed every time. people's kids get killed. for it to happen once, anything can happen once. for people to be willing with good cheer and high energy to volunteer again and again for this requires something hezbollah managed to do which is to buy in the level of households at home that women in the household worked hard to reach and teach, these women become the bedrock of the ideas and willingness to fight for them. i right about this a fair amount

in the book. these murders have a very different flavor or psychological profile than those in gaza or the west bank. people i met in lebanon were grieving for dead children. not a single one of them ever said i am happy my child died in service of this war but they do say i am proud. i would say -- send another kid to do it. they work assiduously with their surviving children to instill in them a sense of pride at the martyrs in their family. it is the thing that makes hezbollah--people who are willing to die such a stable movement they can count on. in some ways it is breathtaking

the sophistication of the social network that has built up around this idea. when a young fighter dies and becomes a martyr the party sends psychologists and social workers to the family to work with them and make sure they deal with the depression, make sure the kids are doing okay and adjusting and succeeding in school for two reasons. one is because they care about the members and the second reason is they want people in the society to see that the families of the murders from of the most so if you have a martyr in your family the martyr foundation will make sure kids go to the best schools and encourage the widow to remarry. and usually to someone of high status in the party, often

another fighter and the result is they build and belief and the core of this phillies are the mothers and widowselite are the mothers and widows of these martyrs who exemplify thaw most successful resistance and islamic society and people say this is the pinnacle of society. if i am willing to give my life this way and if i am chosen to die than my family will be more blessed. incredibly effective. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. we ask what are you reading this summer? here is what you had to say.

>> send us a tweet at booktv to let us know what you plan and reading this summer. you can e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. >> booktv is that book expo america, the annual convention in new york city looking at some of the fall 2011 books that are coming out and we are pleased to be joined by george gibson who is cover of bluesberry press. let's start here with carl bogus's book on bill buckley. >> this is the first full biography of bill buckley. an icon of the conservative

arena. he was the father of conservatism as it is known today. a remarkable man. very little has been written about him and this is the first full-scale biography. >> did mr. bogus have access to his library? >> he had access to every available resource. interestingly enough he is more liberal and his political persuasions and is an interesting balanced biography that will fascinate people on both sides of the aisle. >> someone not liberal in their persuasion is an offer we cover off and on booktv who is victor davis have been but now i see a novel coming out by him. >> this is his first novel and a remarkable lack about the great creek general and extraordinary battles he fought. it brings a lot of warfare in the ancient world in a way that very few people can and because he knows so much about ancient history this book is a live with