the school and a moral mechanism has led to a world of extraordinary intricacy, interconnectedness and cooperation. i want to run through a few examples of that cooperation. this slide shows mitochondria that exist in all of our souls. they are the power pack for ourselves. it was realized in the last 30 years that these mitochondria have nothing to do with this in terms of their origin. they or originated as free bacteria a billion years ago in an ancient ocean and came to cohabit the cells of our bodies the way out the cohabit with coral polyps but over a billion years they have become so closely tied with ourselves that

they can't exist for a millisecond without the cells they live in and our bodily cells cannot survive without them. that is just the beginning of the complexity of the human being. >> you watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> up next rory stewart examines t#yod hineí ugh w wrym mrgecauinigairwf1 o thopee chattimei bei

hough >> i'm hoping for more of a conversation than a lecture. someone has just written a book about working in afghanistan. i look to the an end of the rim and see someone in the canadian embassy in afghanistan's around and on every side by experts who are able to contradict me at every stage. as a way of getting this going by talking through a few of the elements of intervention that i think are important. i believe the last 20 years has been the age of invention. the end of the cold war that to a new universe. i remember as a young infantry

officer in the british army in 1991 serving in an army that had no idea what it was doing. many officers had never seen action. my regiment had not been in action since the korean war in the 1950s. fast-forward 12 years and i found myself standing in a cemetery in southern iraq alongside officers from the same regiment who had in the intervening period been in bosnia, kosovo, macedonia and afghanistan and iraq. it was almost unimaginable. i actually left the military believing we would never go to war. i felt we were rehearsing for a play that will never get put on. that two decades seems to me to be a movement initially from

triumph, julie --joy to sudden moments of despair as if it were the second act of a tragedy when confronting the war of the balkans and rwanda we felt we were facing new forces, ethnic hatred and civil war which we were unable to deal with. a third act symbolized by dayton in 1994 when the international community rediscovered its confidence, seemed to feel there were things it could do so as a young diplomat are served when i left indonesia at the east timor referendum and move to kosovo and bosnia participating in the high tide of a new idea that we had the formula. we could go into other countries and engage in state buildings and create governance and end

conflict. this led to numerous -- the triumph that led into afghanistan and iraq. a sense that we had been told we couldn't do it in kosovo and bosnia and guess what we did. when people said we couldn't do it in iraq and afghanistan we were going to prove them wrong. the fifth act, a humiliating mess. the terrible realization over the last nine years of the limits of our power and knowledge and legitimacy, a sense of impotence. i believe we should not come to the end of two decades simply with despair and isolation. the middle period in bosnia and kosovo suggests there are things the international community is capable of doing. even in afghanistan i believe we

achieved an enormous amount but not the kind of things we congratulate ourselves and not in the ways we congratulate ourselves. the story at the beginning of 2002 was we weren't doing enough. by 2003 people were saying we were distracted by iraq. the story was we haven't brought enough troops or money and handed too much power to human-rights abusing war lords. the country was fragmenting. in retrospect that period from 2001-2005 looks good today. that very period when we felt we weren't doing enough and no progress was made was the very period in which three million girls returned to school and 85% of afghans were able to access primary health clinics and there

was an -- my blackberry works better in kabul than in northwest england. we continue to boast about it today. when people say it is not as bad as you think it afghanistan we got three million more girls in school they are talking about what happened in 2003-5. we became frustrated and a story that did not begin in the united states but in europe and britain which was that america had taken it off of the ball and we needed to do counterinsurgency and deploy more money and i found myself in the kitchen table sitting down with the deputy head of the united nations and number 2 in the british embassy

and they perce and we are going to deploy troops into southern afghanistan and i was horrified. i said why would you do that? that -- 300 american special forces not doing a great deal. they wanted to send 3,000 british soldiers into southern afghanistan. they said the reason we are going to do it is to bring economic development, governance, security and have an impact on illegal drugs. i said i can assure you you won't be able to do any of those things. this is not because i am a psychic. i failed to predict how the new bark -- hosni mubarak would fall so quickly. but i had been in iraq and i had seen this tendency over the last

two years. i said you won't achieve those things and we haven't got the tactics right. we don't have the helicopters and you will ask for more and more and start an insurgency with their reaction. these said that they would write down on a piece of paper at the end of 2005 saying that they would achieve these objectives in six months and if they had not they would acknowledge it was the wrong decisions and they would not say we did not have enough helicopters or resources. what actually happened in spring of 2006 is we went from 300 troops to 3,000 to 5,000 to 7,000 to 9,000 to ultimately

32,000 foreign troops holding down an area that contained 3% of the population of afghanistan. nothing sustainable was achieved. no one could travel as a single order safely. a man in his 60s as a you an agricultural expert travels in 2005. i remember him staying in areas which are now war zones. there is a huge debate about the relationship between these troop deployments and the insurgency. many believed the taliban insurgency preceded these and there was no relationship between the troop deployments and the taliban insurgency.

my experience is the big taliban insurgency was after the troop deployments. i suspect although it is difficult to prove that our troop deployments cause that insurgency. allow the taliban to present themselves as fighting for afghanistan and islam against a foreign military occupation. it gave them the perfect propaganda tool. if you go on taliban websites which i don't recommend for everybody, the basic propaganda message is we are against corruption and civilian bombardment. the government's are the slaves of the infidel and we are living under foreign military occupation. these are important parts of their mobilizing structure, how they get people together. what does this mean? one thing i have taken from this is a sense of real confusion

that goes to the heart of what it means to be a politician. i spent a long time in 2005 arguing against troop increases. i move to harvard where i was lucky -- six people who spend over a century in afghanistan. andy wilder born in pakistan in the 1950s and paul fishstalin who worked there since 1997 as a peace corps volunteer and the afghan evaluation unit. michael sample had been working there since the 80s. they spoke afghan languages fluently and had been to every district in the country. they understood the international community and had been saying to anybody who wished to listen that the policy

that surrounded the surge was misguided. by sending more troops we won't improve the situation. our development system was not creating stability. but it was creating instability in the region. we had opportunities for negotiations we were not taking and were undermining. david mannsfield gave a beautiful argument about what we could do to, that the heroin and what we were not and no one listened. in washington d.c. i gathered people to meet ambassador holbrooke and general david petraeus. senior officials listened and we did conferences where people listened to them but in this end it seemed to make no difference

at all. why was it these people who had so much more experience than other foreigners and why they had more experience, let's pause on that. you need to contrast those people of whom there are 50 foreigners working since the 70s in afghanistan with most of the rest including those in this room today. i have included in the second group. the second group after two thousand one had none of that experience. we served if we were lucky. in the british embassy you did a brief tour. you are extremely restricted because security threats -- difficult to spend the night in a village house. you are assailed by demands from the capital. if you are a diplomat working in an embassy spend a lot of time sending e-mails and organizing

visits between congressmen and senators. dealing with journalist requests. even if you are an officer on the front line, i was talking to a company commander in november. what are you getting out of the afghan experience? you are a 38-year-old british major. you arrive in the country. maybe you like afghans or you don't but you don't speak fluent dari or past 10. you walk around in body armor. people are trying to shoot you. you sit in our room to have a meeting with afghan tribal chiefs. out of this you're trying to create government security and above all trying to make your career because what you do at the end of your tour is you say i inherited a dismal situation. i have no idea what my

predecessor was doing. it turned out the police chief was corrupt. the governor had no idea what he was doing. no employment in this place. no one is going to the government. they are dealing with foreigners. i came in, we got rid of the police chief and brought in his deputy. we worked on the barracks side because i understood the tribal structure away my predecessors didn't. we created employment projects because only through employment will use of the insurgency. i open some schools and clinics which went well. at the end it was possible to walk through the national guard in a way that was not possible before i arrived. i have no idea what my predecessor was doing. why wasn't he working with the barracks? this guy he promoted from the deputy police chief turned out to be a crook.

he was telling me the police chief training was fantastic. turns out eight of 100 people are able to read or write or count to 10 but it doesn't matter. we have a new economic development situation. i saw this myself. i remember turning to iraq in 2004 in southern iraq. i returned in 2005 and was briefed by the new colonel was in my job 12 months later. he said i have no idea what my predecessor did. i arrived and it was a disaster. there were hundreds of people lined up outside my building. i said go to the afghan government. we created some jobs. i thought this is insane. everything i have done collapse. everything i've achieved has

been forgotten. this guy has no memory. the bottom line is you should be listening to people who had this experience. you should not be listening to people like me or other people in the room with much less experience and see afghanistan and iraq through the peculiar lens of being a soldier or diplomat or development worker which is a very distorting -- nevertheless we do not listen to people who know what is going on. this is what i am going to conclude on and we will open up the questions. why do we not listen? what i realized in becoming a politician is everything i use to do whether as a diplomat or academic is a waste of time in these debates. there is absolutely no point in my turning up with a 60 page document arguing for the ideal

policy in afghanistan. there is no point in my sitting down with the senior general or senior ambassador and saying this won't work because you misunderstood the relationship between the police chief in two cities or it is difficult to get things done with the afghan government because of the corruption and inefficiency is so extreme. forget it. for get that kind of detail. the things that matter are threefold. this is the only conclusion. fear, guilt and optimism are the only thing this. fear first. a lot of what happens in these countries is driven by fear. afghanistan is or iraq is or vietnam is an existentialist

threat to global security. there are four kinds of fear. the first is we are frightened of that country. we are frightened of afghans or iraqis. iraq poses an essential threat. as president reagan observed in 1963 vietnam poses the greatest threat to the united states than ever faced man since it climbed from the swamp to the stars. the second is we are not worried about the country itself but foreigners who coming to the country. we are not really worried about afghanistan itself. we are worried about al qaeda and saudis who coming to afghanistan and are using it. in 1867 the russian foreign minister says it is in the nature of civilized countries facing while barbarian lands to wish to settle them. if they do not these wildlands

will pose a threat to their civilization. the failed state vacuumed fear. the third is it is not about the country or the people who coming to the country but their effect on their neighbors. the theory in relation to afghanistan is if afghanistan falls pakistan will fall and mullahs will get their hands on nuclear weapons or in the case of vietnam is the domino theory. the fourth category of fear once you have given up on the other kinds. the great thing about the logical structure is they encompass every conceivable kind of fear. the fourth kind of fear is regardless of whether the country does or does not pose a threat we will be defeated and

humiliated. we are afraid of our print -- reputation will not allow us to be defeated. if we are seen to be defeated in afghanistan our weakness will be exposed to the world. this was the argument which was made in the first and second anglo afghan wars. in january of 1842 when the german army retreated from ka l kabul, 14,000 were massacred, 3,000 people stranded in a five mile area. the single largest man on his course. the story in the british parliament was we cannot allow this to happen because it will eliminate the credibility of the british empire. we will never be taken seriously again. we have to occupy these people.

it was the same in 1880. when we were defeated again in afghanistan in 1880 we had the same idea that if we are seen to be defeated reputation is eliminated around the world. the difference between the nineteenth century and the 20 first century is we were able to overcome this. in the nineteenth century it was possible for people to stand up and say it is not that bad. general robert, the david petraeus of 1880 and march to relieve one of the great battles, hero of the moment, he said, quote, we have nothing to hear from afghanistan. as offensive as it may be to our

moral prop, our pride, the less they see of as the less they will dislike us. the second thing is built. the fundamental question as a politician when you try to talk in the way i am talking now is loss of life. when i was speaking to a group of british officers two months ago there was a man missing both his legs. people standing in the back said i don't understand what you are talking about. are you suggesting we die in vain? this is i find as a politician the whole question. this is the only question. no point my standing in the house of commons producing the

most elegant detail explanation why i believe things will not work in the way we hope in afghanistan. the only people want a dress is did the soldiers die in vain. there are ways to add to that question but not very good ways. i made a speech in which i said knows holder dies in a vain. there was a time when people thought like that. this is inappropriate because we're talking about a recent issue but if you by your copy of the iliad which is somewhere down in the corner you don't get a sense that homer believe soldiers die in vain. he doesn't take a position of the trojan war. he doesn't think achilles is fighting for a silly reason, that helen has been abducted. it somehow undermines the heroism of his fight.

there was a time we could honor and respect soldiers within that context for their sacrifice for their units or their regiment or their country without having to connect it to the grander narrative of whether the war made sense. but today that is difficult. today you have to say you do not honor soldiers death by piling more car -- corpses on their heads but it is a difficult one to answer. unless politicians are prepared to find a way of talking about it you end up in a situation where you feel that you are in blood steeped so far that there is no turning back. fear and guilt. the final thing is optimism. this is in the dna not just of

general. i made a joke that i found since 2005 the most extraordinary sequence. david barno in 2004 said he inherited a bad situation but his new strategy required new resources which would deliver the decisive year. 2005 will be the decisive year. in 2006 david richards said it would be the crunch year for the taliban. 2007 the decisive year. 2008 -- we keep going endlessly. 2009 general stanley mcchrystal, we are need deep in the decisive year. 2010 the british foreign secretary, the defense a year. 2011, the german foreign minister, this will be the

decisive year. what is happening is this is not just true of general. you cannot understand why generals want an optimistic military. you don't want soldiers who say we won't be able to do this. it is particularly true of american culture that every problem has a solution. i remember going in to see ambassador holbrooke. the situation in pakistan is completely unacceptable. what are we going to do? very complicated in my to the way -- [mumbling] and he said it is not good enough. i want you to come back with a solution.

i totally understand why this happened. we all feel like this. the situation in somalia. the situation in syria. this is horrible. people are being killed, pirates, terrorists, famine. we have to sort this out. what do we do about the situation? i feel that temptation about situations i know the least about. the less i know about the situation more liable i am to feel it is clear we do what we need to do. there are two things we need to make sure of. back to something that do know about which is afghanistan or the very microbe which is rebuilding the old city of kabul

it seems more absurd. i know how it works in the united states. it is as though somebody said the situation in south chicago is unacceptable. i want you to sort it out in two years. maybe you are a community organizer. it is quite a complicated system. we have some programs that are running. you say don't give me problems. give me solutions. how many resources do you need? ..

then you have a problem. and yet -- and this is why i wanted to conclude on the optimism. for some reason we seem to think those situations must be easier than our own domestic situations. let me just finish and remind you three things.

fear, guilt, and optimism. a question from anybody. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> this is a large crowd. on a child of vietnam. but you were talking all i could think of, one of the things i was thinking of, president johnson, admiral mccain, general abrams. just the observation. are we so stupid we keep going through this every situation? you are talking afghanistan and iraq. we had the same conversations about vietnam. are we really that stupid?

>> was a really good question the answer is not that we are stupid, but that these things are emotional. that's why i'm talking about here and guilt and optimism. there's nothing wrong with the brains of the generals, senior politicians, ambassadors. it is something to do with our culture, and our roles. this is why i want to be a little pretentious. in a way if you are a commanding general or if you are an ambassador there is a real limit to how much you can do. i have enormous respect and admiration for a general itinerary he became the ambassador. but what i noticed is as soon as he began to criticize the strategy he went from being destroyed general who everybody was very impressed by. now he is criticized. not really up to its.

maybe he is not releasing it. and the idea is by no longer -- not because they are not good. i think his analysis of what was wrong will prove to be corrected 20 years' time. as soon as he begins to say those things something about our structure and system means that you are immediately discredited. it's not merely a question of intelligence. these guys are phenomenal. you have an argument with general patraeus. you can chop you up 75 ways. he has statistics, examples, historical analogies. why this is working in that. the problem is that somehow he is an overall where that is the view. i don't know what we can do as a public or as politicians to escape that because what i do know is that my whole speech today sounds fine, maybe.

people can apply here, but in anson i can have a tabloid newspaper break a headline saying trader politician insults' the troops, says afghanistan does not matter. interview with mother of brega soldier, flag draped coffin. i can be destroyed. so long as that is true, so long as that is -- and that is the relatively confident because i spent a few years afghanistan. if you can imagine a politician of the normal sort to has not had a few years but maybe four or five small to a three day visits to actually have the confidence to take on the generals, ambassadors, think tanks, and it is extraordinary how the new york times, washington post, wall street journal has been very supportive of afghanistan. if you're really going to step that far outside the establishment, you are putting

yourself in a vulnerable position. >> if you are in politics of years from now i hope you remember your book. [laughter] >> thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you for coming. for all the work that you have been doing. i had the pleasure of meeting you in afghanistan in 2008. good to see you again. my question involves -- i think you hit the nail on the head with the need for the international community to get things right and understand what we know, we don't know, and how best to go about that. my question involves how you can get the local population, especially the local government to work with you. innocents where something -- that was a government. the budget essentially. it down to what we ask him to do. how do we know when we are correct when insisting and having no when we are wrong and should let the local government run as they see fit? >> eight fantastic question and

the fundamental question. the bottom line is, of course, that we understand intellectually that afghanistan is not our country. we are giving a lot of money to afghans, this year the united states will spend $125 billion in afghanistan. $125 billion is so much money it is almost unimaginable. i was reading the critique of september 11th, and he was complaining in 2002 that the united states was going to bankrupt itself because he reckoned they would spend $8 billion per year. hundred $25 billion a year. but on the other hand, of course, president cars i is directly at least be elected president of a sovereign independent -- independent country and he has a different idea of how he wants to run afghanistan. that has been true for nine years. president. ♪ broadly speaking has a very traditional patrimony of you.

friends, enemies. he wants to work to his brother. his chief. and what we do, well, we contradicting all the time. we say his brother is a drug lord and you can have that police chief. sack this guy. is this sensible? no. what we end up doing overtime is creating a relationship in which we are spending $1,205,000,000,000 a year the rates they supporting the president of the country and at the same time we have humiliated him, undermined him, micromanage tim, alienated him so that he is now in an embittered peridots state, criticizing our country's strategy, undermining our appointments, flagging foreign ambassadors. we continue to give him money. he does not have to be a great -- what you should be doing in this situation is deciding whether you think the guy should be president or not.

if you think he should be, you trust him and support him, a delegate and let him run it as he wants to. and if you doubt you get rid of him. but the worst of all is to keep him and let him keep running for elections while potentially undermining and so you end up with the situation that the central core of the afghan government is not with our program. i went in with the british ambassador to see president cars i recently. he basically sat there for 25 minutes saying the counter insurgency strategy was a waste of time and we were alienating the afghan people and he could understand why people joined the taliban. he might be tempted to, too, if people went around behaving like that. the ambassador said to me, well, it seems like we agree. [laughter] so i don't really have an answer to that question, except to say maybe the answer -- and maybe i

can get back to a slightly more positive message -- the secret, we get this relationship better. they work better and they work a bit better because we did not attempt to micromanage. i can talk about that. a refugee return, restitution, war crime tribunals. more positive message. thank you. >> you mentioned three aspects of how this stuff happens. i'd like to add two more. when you actually started to talk about. couriers, and you spoke about that. it is beyond me to understand how people like clayton powell can kind of somehow speak on memorial day and we forget that this was one of the people who stood up before the united nations and told everybody about the aluminum tubes and all that kind of stuff and got us into a war

that appears to be a mistake. >> right. >> thank you. so that is one aspect. the other thing is, the profits. somebody starts to make a lot of money off of this stuff, and we don't even know where billions of dollars have gone. so i would like you to speak a little bit about what is going on that we really don't see. >> thank you. that is a really good point, and i will try to talk about that. it is true that money matters. it does not necessarily matter in the way that we immediately assume. under and $25 billion in a country like afghanistan, everybody. in a sense it almost corrupts everybody. what i mean is not that there is a military industrial complex

where the chief executive of raytheon is telling the president what to do. it doesn't work like that. what actually happens is that you create a huge industry over 19 years where people who write books, professors at universities, members of think tanks, everybody begins to get sucked into the system. the amount of money is coming around is beyond belief. almost impossible that somebody in the united states to has the slightest acquaintance with afghanistan not be able to make between $501,000 a day as a consultant. almost impossible i have never met anybody. how does this work? like this. this is where money becomes more interesting and dangerous. you can understand arms manufacturers. it takes time to realize that

save the children can begin to endorse some of this stuff, not in the way you would expect, but it is not that they are part of the military. they will be taking money, money for good reasons. schools, delivers humanitarian assistance. they will be terrified about another civil war. they saw one in the 1990's and won't want it to happen again. they're for convenient for them to believe that the people from whom they're taking the money know what they're doing. convenient for them to endorse what is happening with the counter-terrorism strategy because that is where the humanitarian money comes from. an example of how this works. the next chief staff to the president of afghanistan said to me, please stop describing afghanistan as a humanitarian situation. we must be the number one terrorist threat in the world. i said, why? he said because if we are not we

will get any money. we will be treated like an african country. now, this is the way in which the curiosity works. one of the things it does is create a situation where somebody like me is a sale on all sides by, well meaning but middle-class afghan businessman trying to run businesses who think i'm on the side of the tall man. women you think i am endorsing human rights. afghan intellectuals who feel they will have to fight to pakistan. all the major nonprofit organizations to think i'm going to lead to a mass exodus of west and development funding which will lead to a civil war and humanitarian catastrophe. that is before the arms manufacturers. i'm grateful you raise that question. thank you. >> hello. i wonder if you could talk a little bit about something that i struggle with very much in

that a lot of people here did not get hurt very much felt at the time that the u.s. went back into afghanistan that it was a mistake. now that the u.s. is there and have made a huge mass, is the answer to simply admit a complete, you know, failure and pull everything out, whereby you may really damage a lot of the afghans who are all being left behind? i lived on the border in the in between time when the u.s. had already abandoned them and before they went back again. it is not a simple thing. it was a mistake in the beginning, but what do you do to get out of the mess? >> this is the essential question. this is the question which is raised by many, many people who love afghanistan. the answer is we don't have an

answer. we can make up stories about what we can do. what of like to say to you, and what i do say is that with some luck we could achieve a situation which by keeping ten or 20,000 soldiers in a base in afghanistan, we could decrease the likelihood of civil war and increase the likelihood a political settlement. we could create a situation where al qaeda could not sit digitally enhance its ability to harm the united states and development and assistance could be delivered to the country. i think those are all things we should do. we should be aiming at a political settlement, a regional solution. but, and this is the really big by. none of these things are guaranteed. in fact, there are so difficult to achieve. it does not make sense. does not make sense in terms of

american national interest or in terms of our moral obligations of the world for us to continue to keep $1,205,000,000,000 a year and 40,000 troops on the ground afghanistan. this is not to say that we don't care about afghans, but there are 40 and 50 other countries in the world many to think about. our own country. if we are worried about terrorism pakistan. if we are worried simply about human suffering and misery, chad is more important. it we cannot allow ourselves to feel through some -- and this is guilty, the sense of responsibility, obligation, the real trapped in a situation which we are not improving. in the and we need to be able to say as we hope in 2014 we have been in this country 14 and 15 years, given it our best shot.

left a lot of lives, a lot of money, and we are going to start coming out. we will come out in a sensible, moderate weight. do what we can to contain the situation, but we will treat afghanistan in the way that we treat other pork, fresh out, traumatized countries around the world. we will not imagine that because this is some existential threat we need to keep that presence. we need to do the kinds of things the united nations tries to do and struggles to do. >> you were talking about money. i noted in your book that you mentioned the united states paid 1,000 -- 100,000 to $1 million for tour on their road. >> a mile of road. the price has gone up from $11,000. we now spend about a million dollars. >> why some much?

>> okay. you bring in that amount of money to a poor country. you distort everything. every afghan that comes. inflation that is spiraling. the economy is growing at something approaching -- some people estimate it may grow by 67% annual growth. this is insane. to put this in context, the entire taxation revenue of the afghan government is less than a billion dollars a year, and we are putting in hundred 25 billion. put another way, we are spending every year in afghanistan just on training the afghan national army and police, 12 and a half billion dollars, just on training. the entire revenue of the afghan annual revenue would not cover one month of training courses for the afghan. you start doing that and end up with very odd results.

thank you very much. >> you did say that he said it was a failure, but some accomplishments in 2003-53 rest to education and health clinic and you noted that the end goal was to create a gender sensitive multi-ethnic centralized state based on democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. do you feel that was achieved? >> no ma'am. [laughter] >> supposing next week number ten is on the phone to talk about a job in the government, just assume it. given what you have done and what you're interested in, what sort of response would you be hoping they had in mind for you? [laughter] >> yes. a very helpful question. [laughter]

yes. look, i love running things. one of the things that i loved about working, i like organizing things. obsessed with management. so i would quite like to have a go at working in civil service. my biggest dream would be to be able to rebuild the pressure foreign service. we have no -- in the unthinkable last year out of 320 staff we had three hits peak and afghan language and an operational level. the entire section controlling policy in london last year there was not a single staff member who had ever served in afghanistan. the institution has gone mad. it has become obsessed, i feel, too much with management best practice, multinational diplomacy. less and less and less on language knowledge, country expertise. i would like to rebuild that.

that would be my dream. >> to block the -- could block. >> he spoke about many of the ways in which a motion has reinforced the kind of policy. do you have any ideas on how it might dissuade us from that path? , ways in which you could make -- >> this is a wonderful question. i'm not sure what the answer is. one answer is, if you could rebuild the people in the state department who really did have deep expertise and you found ways of listening to them and enabling them and promoting them and giving them space, that would be one important assistance. the second thing is to try to shift people's views of what these kinds of adventures are about. here is an analogy, which have tried. i think that intervening in another country is not a scientific process. not like the rand corporation

idea that you have a set formula of numbers. how many chips into much money you need. it is more like rescue. how many people here klein? hands up. quite a few okay. those of you don't get the idea. if you are doing that and somebody is stuck on the top of a mountain and you're trying to send a team to get them, it is like intervention in a sense. there are some things you can do to prepare in advance. you can have a pac, map, remember to take enough water. secondly, there is some danger that you can avoid if you are planning. if you suddenly find that there is frost, you can work your way around it. but there is a whole set of changes that you cannot predict and that you cannot avoid. if you are stuck in the weather changes and a blizzard comes in, an avalanche, altitude sickness, you can't predict that and you

can't avoid it. and the most important thing in that situation is to know when to turn back. the point is if you are a fireman or a policeman or a rescue guy, you are an intelligent rescue -- risk taker. you don't applaud a fireman for leaping blindly into a burning building. you don't expect a policeman to throw himself in front of a car. that is not the basic deal. the basic deal should be to understand that there may be limits to what you can do. you're going to do your best to get up to the top of the mountain and do your best to stop the humanitarian catastrophe, but you have to acknowledge says something may happen when you hit the ground, and you are going to feel that you have invested so much, climbing and the guy is stock. i have to get up there. that is what gets you killed. so the key message emotionally is to try to get back a sense

that being prudence is not being a wimp. >> we have five minutes left. it will take the last. >> i'll answer three at once. >> high. i wanted to take this in a slightly different direction from afghanistan. i know that regarding libya you advise to the un on security council resolution to not allow any combat troops on the field. the international community had a lot of guilt with optimism that we could just stop troops from planes and guilt that we have funded some many dictatorships for such a long time and fears that if we had not taken any action it would allow other regimes to try to be more pro against the people. how would you advise international community's now against middle east north

africa? fed. >> six you very much. of the to more intensive and together. >> ten years in afghanistan on the first round in the 80's. not making $500 a month. a day. making more like five and a month. i want to complement one key point he made. transferring powers to local leaders as soon as possible being a key to victory. one fellow in afghanistan he did that superbly was major show of the special forces. one tribe and a time strategy. once he succeeded brilliantly their in powering the local tribes against the taliban and the same happened at several other detachment areas, he was yanked out, sent the barack. his team was broken up. about a year ago there was an article in the washington post

saying he is being brought in with gates endorsement, patraeus. everyone is applauding this. as i checked with my special forces contacts a couple of nights ago none of that seems to have filtered down in any way to the ground. for example, this would require that attachments commander on the ground to be there for five years. what the hell did you do before last year type of thing. so have you heard of that strategy, one tribe at a time? something along that line is happening that you can detect and would that be a way to salvage it with much less troops? >> and you very much. >> think you for explaining because that is no matter how much their recommend things until we understand we are nowhere. my question, on the guilt which

was really interesting why after the capture up in law and which was the perfect occasion to deal with the fear and guilt, why wasn't the moment realized? >> of the question to in don. let me go through the three questions. and i will move in sequence. to start with the gentleman and the idea of spending five years on the ground. yes, of course. you're absolutely right. that has to be approaching the right response of situation. it seems to be something very difficult to achieve in the modern world. the modern world has become very odd. i was contrasting the carrier of richard holbrooke, have a lot of admiration for with the career of his equivalent. in his first posting for just

over a debt -- a year. john lawrence was in his first posting for 16 years. by the time he became vice revenue he had been on the ground for 35 years of his career. exactly the same age, became the envoy, he had spent in his entire career approximately five and a half years on foreign tourists, 22 years on wall street, much of this energy was necessarily sucked into washington politics. it had to be. he became very absorptive in the press, congress. i remember a new york profile of him. he said to the new yorker that he understood the politics of afghanistan are some important that he endeavored to visit the region at least once every two months. it is something that has changed in the world in terms o