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>> at u.s..worldbooknight.org. i'm mentioning this evening because the deadline tonight is to sign up tonight. so there's still time after this event. and now a word about our guests this evening. paula broadwell, and vernon loeb and their book the education of general david petraeus. petraeus, of course, has become the most prominent general since world war ii and while he's already been subject of several

books, paula was given unusual access to him and had brought his story up-to-date. as paula writes early in the book, one of petraeus' most important mentors general jack galvin once talked to petraeus about the concept of what galvin called the big m which stood for individual mystique or mythology. the idea as galvin explained the troops need to be able to make their commanders bigger than they are. petraeus has stood out as the

she takes readers into briefing

rooms and command posts onto training sites and battlefields. and she was granted a number of opportunities to travel with petraeus and even to jog with him which anyone who has tried that knows that probably deserves new normal. paula was helped in the writing

of her book by a very talented former colleague of mine at the "washington post" vernon loeb. vernon who has lots of experience himself covering the military and intelligence world is now the "post" metropolitan editor. paula plans to speak for about 20 or 30 minutes and then she will take questions. if you have a question, please remember to step up and use the microphone right here in the center of the room. afterwards, paula will be happy to stay and sign books. so please silence your cell phones and join me in welcoming me paula broadwell. [applause] >> before we get started i'd like to see how many veterans we have in the room so i know who i'm facing, okay, great well, first of all, thank you for all your service. and i know we might have a few folks that belong to team red, white and blue as well. are there any folks from this

veterans support organization. thank you for coming. it's very important to me to take advantage of the national media platform that i have right now with the book. it just became a bestseller this week which is pretty exciting, "new york times" bestseller number 6 on the nonfiction list and number 13 overall and for someone who doesn't really like to light that much it's very humbling but i have to give credit to my writing partner for helping us get to this point. but i felt that it was important to do something consequential with the attention that the media is bringing to the book and want to call americans to go all in as well to support our wounded warriors as they come back from these theaters and we owe it them and it's our turn. so i'd like to tell you a little bit about how i came to write the book and then we'll bring out some characters that are actually in the book, that are in the room and we'll talk a little bit about their adventures and then i'd like to share some stories about general david petraeus and his development. can everybody hear okay, in the back?

in 2006, general david petraeus was the commander at fort leavenworth the army schoolhouse and he was helping to write the counterinsurgency field manual. i should say i was overseeing it. he edited 30 times the first chapter so i likes to pay attention to detail. but he came to harvard university where i was a graduate student and wanted to speak to students counterinsurgency and fighting the iraq war which we were losing at the time. and he invited a group of veterans, of young students, soldier scholars if you will to meet with him after his presentation to the larger student body. and i went to him and i was writing my thesis with negotiating with terrorists and i think it could help your team win and you should really read it and he was kind enough to indulge me and take the paper and give me his business card. as he does with a lot of young soldier scholars. he's very open-minded about taking ideas from anyone and everyone and, in fact, use what he calls and what is -- has long been known as directed telescoping to reach out to

those in different sectors and fields to gather ideas. so we kept in touch via email for a couple of years. and i was still a graduate student. two years later, i reached out to him and asked if he would speak to a group of students at harvard who are trying to find ways to galvanize against the intelligence committee, the military and other national security organizations that we as midgrade field officers if you will were frustrated seeing the lack of cooperation. so he agreed to do a video teleconference from baghdad and this is just after the surge had started to achieve some success in iraq. and he opened his presentation with a quote from a roman philosopher seneca, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. and i feel like that has been exemplary of his life and in my instance with this book. it really captures the feeling of how i got this opportunity to write the book. and i'll go into that a little bit more in a bit. so fast forward again.

he went the surge was as we all know instrumental and doug may argue otherwise but it's with the iraqi's frustration with the insurgency in iraq and the tide was turned over and we started to draw our forces down and petraeus came back to centcom in 2008 and i was intrigued by how this individual had galvanized organizational transformation in the army, had shaped this new doctrine which is kind of new doctrine repackaged and brought this new doctrine and shaped the training and equipping of those forces and so forth. and i was looking at this from a management perspective. how does an insider affect transformational organizational transformation? and i asked him if i could use him as a case study in my doctoral dissertation and he agreed and so i began to interview him via email for approximately a year and a half

and then we had a chance to go for a run and i asked if i could interview him on the run and i brought a tape-recorder and this is a test. it's in the preface of the book. but basically shows -- why i gained rapport with him. i could keep up with him on the run and we ended up getting down to a 6 mile pace but needless to say i didn't transcribed the interview. there was a lot of heavy breathing. [laughter] >> so we continued that sort of email correspondence and i was writing and incorporating his thoughts and i was able take advantage of my tribe, if you will, the military and my classmates at west point four of him were his aids and several other aides had been in my company at west point, for example, and were great informants needless to say. i think they were loyal to him but, obviously, they trusted me so i was able to get a lot of great access and i got to know his family mentors and they

shared correspondence that he shared with them over three or four decades so i could see lieutenant david petraeus, captain david petraeus writing to general jack galvin and talking about in 1978 or '79 how this is how the military needs to and in the 80s after he visited general galvin in central america and he wrote the only way to change the army is to change its doctrine and i will do that some day. and, in fact, they had a small competition going on between the two and as brad alluded, general galvin was big m and general petraeus was little m and if you ever see him call him little m, he'll know what you're talking about. these letters were very candid and i could trace the development of his thinking about the organization of the military, about grand strategy and u.s. foreign policy. not all of that made it into the book and there's a lot as vernon knows ended up in the cutting

room floor but that may be in my dissertation if i ever finish it and we took the wave topics and finished it in the book and you can see at various points of his life what he was thinking back at a certain point and then flash forward to afghanistan and see sort of how it was playing out. so, so in the summer of june, 2010 when and the general mcchris and the rolling stone article came out and i remember sitting on the couch watching television watching the faces flash across who could potentially replace him and i had colleagues at centcom do you think they will send him but as we portray in chapter 1 in the book he already knew that his name was probably in the hat even though the media was not speculating about it at the time. he had received a call from mccrystal right when the rolling stone article broke and mccrystal said it was going to be bad and he was pretty sure -- he was certain he'd received

some vibes from the white house that he would probably lose his job. admiral mullen said that there's a pretty high probability that you'll be the one selected for afghanistan. so if any of you read the first chapter or the paper or followed anything he gets into the white house. he's there for a regularly scheduled meeting but someone from the oval office comes down and says the president wants to see you upstairs and as he's walking into the oval office, secretary gates and other senior leaders are walking out and they do not give eye contact and he knows he's about to get a new job and he was excited to serve. when the announcement was made in the rose garden, that's when i thought i have a need opportunity to frame my dissertation within a larger framework of a story of how this plays out in iraq and i was thinking of tom's book and linda's book on iraq and so i went to work to find a writing partner and find a truly extraordinary mentor and writing

coach and partner in vernon loeb. one thing is vernon is a huge runner. he's run 55 marathons so if you think petraeus is good, check out my partner here. in any case, the challenge i hadn't written anything like this. i hadn't even finished my dissertation. i have attention deficit disorder so it's very hard to see it in place and write something liektsz but having someone so seasoned and accomplished was so helpful in defining the ark of the narrative and relate them to the story. but i'm sure you're all familiar with one of petraeus' stags it was building a aircraft in flight while getting shot at really because we didn't know which characters were developed. we didn't know how the war would turn out, how would the surge would impact the operations and so forth. so there was a uphigh uptempo to

meet our deadline. i and i had applied for a visa and showed up in afghanistan and i sent general petraeus a note and he had been helping me with my dissertation thinking, you know, here's this benign doctoral student and nobody is not going to read hur dissertation and it's not a big deal. i don't think he realized i was writing it into a book until my fourth visit when i sent an email from the pakistan border and showing my odd sense of adventure. general petraeus, we're having a blast out here. we just got shot at. and he wrote back and general campbell who was his boss in the 101st airborne division commander and he realized i was out there sharing hardship with the troops and at least accepting some risks to get the story, to get the scoop and he then said to his staff let's try to accommodate her a little bit more. i spent about almost four months on a ground but in three-week

doses at the time and it was helpful to see how things were changing to get out of the environment and how the war was being reported in the united states and europe and then go back and get the story. and as brad alluded, i spent time embedded with infantry troops and other troops on the ground with special forces at the local afghan police sites traveling around with general officers who were heading the rule of law effort or the village stability operations but most of my time was spent traveling with general petraeus, to security with senior afghan and just sitting in meetings with him in kabul itself to the extent i could. so that's the story we reported over the year and then we fit in these biographical digressions in every chapter. as brad also mentioned earlier what i really tried to show and i pulled from my dissertation were the variables that were

influencing david petraeus' thinking and i categorize as those social networks but primarily his mentors and there are four key mentors. the first is general nolton whose daughter david petraeus married and holly has been a wonderful source of information for this research as well. and the second key mentor is keith nightingale who was un-hurd of but he's part of the ranger regiment and he helped to start the joint special operations community concept. before that he had been involved in the iran hostage rescue so their letters show how young david petraeus is thinking about special forces and in that whole community and that not a whole lot of people have interest in albeit sort of academic interests. the third key mentor and the most influential mentor is

general jack galvin and he was assigned with general galvin several times but that your correspondence is the richest and for sure they're the closest today. and he not only learned military history and leadership and management but they both had this passion for small wars, low intensity conflict. and so in the book you'll see how galvin influences his thinking about this in particular by inviting him to central america to panama which is where the southern command was headquartered at the time and there's six insurgencies going on and petraeus flies around with galvin and most young officers or anyone who has been to iraq or afghanistan and my peers and doug's peers have only really known this type of war but for a young david petraeus who is in a peacetime army after vietnam, it was quite an eye-opening experience for him to walk up to the mil group commanders in el salvador and be

handed a machine gun and he writes holly a letter and he's really blown away about it but he realizes that this type of warfare is important to pay attention to and so forth. the fourth mentor we all know and he's here in washington is general jack keene and david petraeus first met jack when he was working for general carl the chief of staff of the army at the time. and keene had been commissioned to stand up to the joint readiness ready center, the training center that focuses on low intensity conflict but it was unconventional at the time but we were really looking at large scale -- actually, the gulf war had just ended so that kind of warfare was not really welcomed or looked highly upon. and they needed someone with a huge personality like jack keene to use his force of personality to stand the center up and he would take petraeus' aide to the jrtc to check on how things were

going and keene would pull petraeus over and what did the boss really think? and he was able to gather some insights to petraeus and petraeus spoke candidly to him and they had this instant rapport. jack keene calls it a visceral sort of rapport. and then everyone knows the story of david petraeus getting shot and, of course, jack keene was there with him when that happened but really that is what i think solidified their friendship and relationship and then they worked together for several assignments after that. so, okay, so the social network including the mentors was a big variable. the second thing was just to look at his education. obviously, i could sort of relate the west point experience myself. they had a different curriculum back then but i was able to get access to the records that his class, pride of the corps '74 studied and looked at sort of what -- what conflicts they were studying and there was nolo intensity conflict or insurgency course and there was an elective and he never took it that was an

interesting little find. but then i also traced his military education and his experience the princeton which was for him one of his most formative experiences and one way he really encourages young people to have an out of their intellectual comfort zone because it really broadened his horizons beyond what the military had been indoctrinati g indoctrinating. i say that tongue and cheek. again, i looked at his education and then the third thing we looked at was his experiences. not only the typical military experiences of an infantry officer but his experience in haiti, which was a nation-building exercise which is where he had his first real exposure to rule of law development and where he got ideas that he took forth to the 101st airborne division on some of the rule of law initiatives they had there. we look at his experience in bosnia where he was greatly exposed to the intelligence community and special operations

command. after the mission there switched from one of hunting war criminals to hunting terrorists. he was there just when 9/11 happened and they had -- they stood up a joint interagency counterterrorism task force and he helped to spearhead this and he would go out on these night raids with the green berets and the special opps community so both the rangers and delta force skies as well as the green berets the special forces. this is the first time those two communities had the same mission. and so, you know, this is important for his development as a future commander in iraq to understand how to use those teams if you will. but he was out there in a baseball cap and after the guys would go in and knock on the doors for the war criminals, he fancied himself a negotiator and would go in and deliver letters for the workers to turn themselves in. we don't go into too much detail but in his oral history review which i conducted with michael o'hanlon from the brookings institute, this is really kind

of a transformational period for him not only working with the intelligence and special opps community and special mission units and to working on the multiyear roadmap so basically a comprehensive plan with interagency international joint combined everything, you know, all of these players where he made a lot of great contacts but it was the first time to really run in that circle and have sort of operational command if you will even though avenues deputy. so we look at all of these experiences and then -- and then we try to show how some of it plays out in iraq. there's not a heavy emphasis in iraq in this book because i felt and vernon felt those experiences were pretty well covered with him, for him in the rick and robinson and jaffy great books. but the real story is how all of this education has played out and plays out in afghanistan.

now, the war in afghanistan, i don't think the book paints a rosy picture for how the war's going. one thing he said on his way out of kabul and when we flew out that day, is he regretted having to leave so soon. he wanted to stay through another fighting season. andiet, he recognized the great opportunity he had going to the agency and they need to get someone at the agency because i don't know you remember the threats around the 9/11 time frame but the president wanted him to be in place. but he looks back -- that was really showing progress when he got there all the surge forgeries were not in place yet and so there wasn't quite the momentum in the clearing operations in the south and the southwest that we can see now.

in some areas insurgent attacks are down 30% in helmand, for example, and others in rc east where doug was, they're up by 19%. he regrets having claims that counterterrorism and the night raids and so forth were the war was heading and the discussion of where we're at today i guess is an extension of that, but he also wishes he could have focused earlier on preventing civilian casualties. a u.n. report came out today that talked about this is the fifth year in the row where civilian casualties in afghanistan have risen and while u.s. or isaf caused casualties are decreasing, insurgency caused civilian casualties are on the rise so how does that translate into how our campaign is working? do you want to say a few remarks at all. i mean, i can go more on afghanistan in the war there but what i would like to do is open up unless vernon has a few remarks to say to questions. >> i'm good. i'm happy to answer questions.

>> okay. all right. do we have any questions. i guess you should use the microphone. [inaudible conversations.) >> please, go ahead. >> in your book, it was mentioned that petraeus wanted to be determined the joint chief of staff but he was told that no way he was going to become joint chairman. could you tell us why he couldn't be joint chief of staff chairman if he was this good? >> that's a great question and i get it at every stop. he was not considered for the position as we wrote in the book. and in part it was because the rumor has it or the sources which i had which are secondhand

that washington is only big enough for one superstar and david petraeus is not it. i think the thought was that he would not be mall i can't believe as chairman and with tough budget cuts that lie ahead in the department of defense and restructuring and equipping and thinking about how we're going to fight the next war -- planning for the next war on the horizon i think this thought having him in that position would -- he would serve as sort of -- he would stymie the white house's objectives there. on the other hand as young he was interested in the cia position and i think it's the best possible position for him. we really show in the book how he's been a voracious of intelligence. he worked with 16 different agencies and the intelligence community for quite a while as a consumer of intelligence and intelligence drives operations and he's interested in what he can provide -- he understands

what needs to be provided to the commander so, you know, maybe it's a blessing in disguise. i think the bottom line is that he's almost too good for them to handle. i'm trying to be diplomatic. [laughter] >> really need to be stated or said -- michael hastings actually torpedoed mccrystal and they make the puritans of america as greenwich village. it wasn't insubordination but discretion and fratterization somebody is not in the military is not supposed to be buddy buddy with an inferior. he is a soldier's soldier. when you have a not touched upon really -- or at least you have done so in passing and very

scantily is the problem of corruption and governance at all levels in the middle east. proper security and that involves the killers, the fanatic killers, the religious killers, the revenge killers and the thug killers and how you deal with that. all it takes one jerk to create havoc in a community and then the third thing in the middle east at least in afghanistan are drugs and how you deal effectively with that so all those things play a role. and then, unfortunately, in the military, the fitness report determines who get promoted. and it has sometimes less to do with ability but who likes you. >> so is there one question there? >> well, it's actually putting substance to the making of david petraeus. >> no, those are all good questions and thoughts to up

pontificate. i will talk about general mark martins who was in iraq and if you read the book we kind of traced some of his efforts there to show how very difficult it is and, frankly, everyone who's involved in it says it will take a generation to change the culture there and to teach them our ways and then the question is, is it really right to teach them our ways? but when you look at the competition with the taliban and shari'a law and they're settling disputes whether it's by cutting someone's hand off for stealing something and they are settling disputes and the government of afghanistan can't do it so mark martins started up field of law and they went basically down to the district law, correct, to set up these training teams that would teach the district level afghan officials how to do speedy justice or some kind of justice. their system is totally archaic they're taking notes pen and paper. they don't have a computer

system to share files on, at a local level. it's getting better but there's a long way to go. and one positive step they have made is this biometric system and i think about two years ago we started scanning any afghan employee, any afghan insurgent or any insurgent if that matters if they are coming into the country again and if there's recidivism but rule of law in failing states is one of the most complex challenges we will face anywhere we try to do nation-building. >> i said it before and i'll say it again, the rule of their law there is not habeas corpus but habeas corpse and, unfortunately, it takes one jerk or a few jerks to create havoc in any community. >> thanks for your question. >> congratulations for the book. i can't wait to read it, exciting. greg mortensen got a lot of

credit at one time for some really ways for building it up -- what is it three cups of tea author and i heard he was widely read over there by the officers. and then he's kind of come under a cloud about something about fundraising and stuff but nevertheless, there's a huge upsurge in education, elementary schools and all that over in afghanistan. did he get a lot of credit and did he have a role in inspiring that and getting that moving it's important for troops to have what different role models especially what the nonkinetic activities can have and i think it was reading at some levels but i don't know that he's necessarily galvanized that change. i think when we look at the -- what we've learned from iraq and

the earlier years in afghanistan those kind of engagements in civil society can help but, you know, the question is how much does it help? and does it matter for our national security? right? if these kids can go to school or these women have better rights that's great. but does that matter for u.s. national security? that's when you have a to ask at the end of the day. >> i'm interested in the art form of collaborative authorship. i wonder if you and your co-author could say how you planned and executed this book? >> yeah, it is an art form. i'd like to say i did the drywall and paula did all the work. and paula would go to afghanistan and we were reporting often about a month behind real time she would sort

of unleash this fire hose information on me. and i would basically rough out the chapters and we had a front story -- it turned out to be a year in his command, a year and it turned out to be his last command so we had the sort of a blessing of a natural front story which we digressed off and so following that, you know, i would basically rough out the chapters and then it became an art -- sort of matter passing aspect where i would produce a very rough draft to paula and she would refine it or information that i didn't have or hadn't seen and the process would sort of go back and forth until a kind of final draft emerged and then it became even more collaborative when theairies of penguin got involved and the whole book was produced quite fast. i mean, the -- it was published on january 24th and the last event in the book is petraeus

being sworn in by biden september 6th so about a six-month lag time. so that's about as fast as you can produce a book so it was fun. you have to -- you have to have a good relationship and a good relationship with the partners -- i'm an editor and i used reporter so it's a combination of writing from my viewpoint. >> did you both edit with the publisher. >> uh-huh. >> thanks a lot. that's very interesting. >> one of my favorite part of the book is -- you know, petraeus is sort of the dominant character and we had great access to him and a lot of it is obviously told from his point of view but we established a group of secondary characters, three of them were lieutenant commanders who were commanding combat battalions so we tell the story of their world, one fighting in kandahar and one was

fighting in the eastern mountains in afghanistan and one was sort of in the rolling hills of ghazni province and they all interacted with petraeus in the year and the fourth secondary character is sitting right here a guy named doug oliphant. >> where did he go? there he is. >> we have one of the commanders who was one of the general's aide i think first in bosnia? >> yep. >> and then he was petraeus's aide during the invasion of iraq in 2003 so here he was back in afghanistan commanding a combat bloomington and it was the first time -- no, the fun part of the book is petraeus has a special relationship with the 101st because he commanded them during the invasion of iraq in '03 and it was his first combat command and so during his last command it so happened that the entire 101st was in afghanistan

deployed together for the first time since 2003. and, again, david was one of the three combat leaders bloomington leaders we write about and it's cool that he's here and doug oliphant was his senior commander in eastern afghanistan and doug was also has a kind of special relationship with petraeus and that doug was the planner of the surge in iraq in 2007 when he was with the first cavalry division. so it's great that they're here and i think if you read the book, i think you'll enjoy that interplay between sort of the dominant character of petraeus and the secondary characters who are, you know -- fought very, very difficult and interesting battles and it's really a brutal

war and, you know -- writing about them from my vantage point from afar was really interesting and really inspiring to me just to see the kind of lives being a nonmilitary person, seeing the kind of dedication and dose and the weight they carry to this day from the people they lost there. >> two questions, if i could. not having read the book yet, i'm wondering whether you cover the political attack on the general as exemplified by the general betray-us comment and the other is could you speak about your cadet experience at west point? >> goodness. we talk about the general betray-us ad and those who don't know the history, some moveon.org took out an ad the

day general petraeus was testifying in september of 2007 and there was a question about the veracity of the statistics he was using to report progress in the war and so this ad was meant to question whether it was petraeus or betray-us as he was misleading the press. one of the most hurtful things he ever experienced is to have that and another thing we try to show in the war is the human side of him the burden of command and the mask of command and someone at that level to keep the mask on to keep the troops up and it's difficult to be questioned at that point in time. okay, there's a lot of graduates in the room, in hindsight it's wonderful. i'd do it again in a heartbeat but i kept a journal the four years i was there and and i had a chance to look through those about three months ago and i think i didn't really have that great of an experience.

[laughter] >> it pretty much sucked. [laughter] >> but, you know, and i would add especially as a woman but it's hard -- it's hard for everyone. but now i remember it with fond memories and i'm so prayed of being the long gray line and, yeah, it was the most formative thing that ever happened to me and the most important thing was to embrace the honor, duty, honor, country and i think we show how this new greatest generation of young leaders are doing that as well. i can tell lots of stories about west point but i'll stop there. go ahead. >> thank you for taking time today. i actually have a 2.5 part question but i'll be quick. the first is regarding the other force of nature ambassador holbrooke, unfortunately, who we lost and the relationship between general petraeus and him and the wingman and i tended general petraeus and the second question is how did the afghans find general petraeus and the

last half question is, among his many great strengths what are some of his actual weaknesses. thank you. >> thank you. good questions. bruce rydell who was at the brookings institute ran one of president obama's afghan reviews and he was working with holbrooke, with petraeus and clinton and to succinctly answer your question he would say that petraeus was and everybody knew he was the de facto leader of the team but it was important to have holbrooke as the face. >> but -- [inaudible] >> yep. think of the knowledge he had and the experience he had and the network he had so even holbrooke acknowledged that to bruce rydell, that's my source. your second question was -- >> the afghans. >> so, you know, the interesting thing to juxtapose is david petraeus's experience in iraq where they called him king david and maybe he gave himself that name, i don't know.

[laughter] . there's a drone up there, oh, no. [laughter] >> but he's very well respected in iraq. i mean, they name streets after him. i can't tell you the number of emails i see from iraqis who would give up their children, their riches to thank him what he did for their country for their country. afghans not so much. in his entry level position in this country was a much more complex terrain, counterinsurgency or insurgency, i don't know you can say much more complex insurgency a very complex area he had visited but he did fought have the depth of knowledge, the networks knowledge not only of the training of the army of the architecture there that he would have to work with of blue forces if you will. and green forces. so i think he felt he had to prove himself and this is just paula's judgment. a lot of people felt like he talked about iraq all the time and they're thinking maybe these people with many years of afghan

experience this is not iraq. but in his mind at the end of the day there were many principles and lessons we could make no, it's not transferrable. no, you can't take what we did here and do it there, obviously, but i think he never really gained the rapport that mccrystal had, for example, with karzai and the afghan ministers respected him but it certainly wasn't the same level of respect that he had with the iraqi government. and the third question -- sorry, i should be writing it down. some of his weaknesses. he is such a driven individual. i think that can be a strength, too, obviously he channels that drive and ambition to serve the country. i think his ego is in line with that but it's not egotistical. it's ego-centric if that makes sense. he put duty, honor and country of the nation before his family so i almost consider that a strength and a weaknesses. i mean, as a working mother and

wife, my husband works really hard too and it's hard to find balance but it's pretty clear and holly is clear the chief supported them and they have this wonderful marriage and established children. other weaknesses -- >> there may not be any. >> no, there are, there are. [laughter] >> i mean, i like to tease him that he doesn't really -- like i call him monodirectional, you know, not multifaceted and that's a joke, obviously, he's extremely well read. he reads a book a week and now he's into spy novels and it's kind of funny. but, you know, he doesn't like to do anything besides run and do p.t. and read and work and, you know, go out to dinner with holly. i don't know if that's a weaknesses but i feel like he could have more balance and learn to relax but at the end of the day it all comes down to his voice in his heads, results, boy, his dad in chapter 2 -- his father was very tough on him and we don't get into it that much

in the book but his father had really high standards and david petraeus could never please him so he was just driven to always do better and to always deliver results whether to win a newspaper delivery contest in school or, you know, playing on the soccer team and the ski team. he was just always driven to please his father. and probably all of us can relate to that in some sense. >> good evening, i understand you're donating a portion of your proceeds to an organization that supports wounded warriors. i was hoping if you could tell us a little bit about that organization and how you chose to support them. >> yes, i'd love to thank you. the group is called team red, white and blue and it was founded by a west pointer named mike irwin. he's a major now and teaches in the behavior sciences and leadership department at west point. and mike was -- he's an intelligence officer but he serves with the special operations community and had several tours in afghanistan and mark started this group to try

to help wounded warriors find their new normal through physical fitness. a number of studies show doing fitness helps to allay depression and suicidal tendencies so forth and so on but the other idea was to give wounded warriors something to belong to that they lost when they left the esprit de corps in the military. but it becomes even more so when you fought together when you died or lost limbs or lost friends jointly and to lose that and come back to the not be able to discuss it with your family because they can't relate or you feel shameful, our wounded warriors who have invisible wounds such as post-traumatic stress disorder don't get a purple heart and i feel we're not recognizing that we have an epidemic right now in our veteran community. 47,000 veterans from iraq and afghanistan have debilitating levels of post-traumatic stress

those who have come forward you can imagine tens of thousands more who are afraid to admit it. you get a stigma and it's hard to get hired if you have these issues. traumatic brain injuries is another invisible injury. i'm working with the uso and i'm making a video tomorrow to call americans to go all in for our troops and that doesn't just mean donating money. what the hope -- this group embraces is that you will find ways to get active and to mentor some of these wounded warriors. if you can't run a race with them, then maybe you can help online, you know, raising awareness, post on facebook or whatever. in whatever way you can, at least welcome our wounded warriors back and try to reach out to them and give them thanks for what they sacrificed for us. >> i'd like to go back to the afghanistan matter, having served there in the embassy before the surge, i wondered about the application of the

iraq surge idea to afghanistan. a major part of the iraq idea was buying off local leaders while we've been buying off warlords in afghanistan forever and the taliban have access to unlimited resources from the drug trade, did petraeus really feel that the -- the surge idea could just be plucked up from iraq and put down in afghanistan and be successful? >> no, i think nobody is presuming success in either country for that matter. i mean, really what the surge is meant to do in both countries and to create the time and space so the local host nation national security forces could stand up and defend themselves. you have to deal with the whole -- have you seen his anaconda slide i'm not going to get a powerpoint for you if you want to see it. there's obviously the rule of law. there's international relations.

you have to get a lot of partners, 49 coalition members to agree, you know, on mission on the stated objectives and the withdrawal plan and so forth and so on. you have to find out who has the capability to deal with counter-drug operations and, you know, should we handle that or should britain or should we get money from the poles and you can imagine the complex discussions that go on trying to decide who will do what. i don't think he thinks there's any solution in either country. and, you know, especially if we have a precipitous withdrawal in afghanistan. what we've given the iraqis now is a chance -- in fact, he gave maliki a picture of george washington about two months ago. he was in iraq visiting the symbolism there. this is your chance. we've created this time in space. it's your chance, iraq to be there and start a new beginning or what. so nobody knows how either of these wars are going to end and i don't think he was naive to think that the surge would be

enough. >> you can hop in. >> how many questions do we have? >> we have five more minutes. you can have 1 3/4. >> how much have president obama's interest in having him go somewhere was political to get him out of the way and you know what i'm talking about. and the other part is -- part of a question, part of a concern but you've mentioned petraeus was a great consumer of intelligence. but on the other hand, it appears to me he was just a newspaper reader so to speak, that there is a militarization of the cia going on, that's the core underneath my question and that he was selected in part because of his special operations background and his use of all those kinds of devices in order to move this

process within the cia further than it has been in the past which i think should be some concern. so if you could comment on all that i'd appreciate it. >> he doesn't talk too much, you know, the direction is going now. but if you look at open source reporting, since he's come in to the agency and the number of months he's been -- five months he's been there, there have been more drone strikes in the five months with his predecessor under secretary panetta. but they've been more effective, too, they've taken out seven of the top 20 al-qaeda and, you know, now we're seeing al-qaeda -- their opps have improved so some of the strike numbers -- the strikes have gone down lately but i don't know how to read into that. does that necessarily mean we're increasing, you know, the para militerzation of the agency?

i don't think that president obama -- let me step back. petraeus suggested the cia position as we write in the book. and gates embraced it in november/december, didn't talk to obama about it until january. the first time obama and petraeus talk about the potential for the position is in march. and the president really had been, you know, just mulling it over. i never got the sense from him, from the president, from petraeus or anyone on the national security council the thought was let's put him there to militarize the agency but petraeus is thinking look how we're drawing down and how the defense department is shying away from large scale boots on the ground type operation and if secretary gates said the next leader who decides to commit to one of these operations should have their head examined i think that's in all our heads right now. we want to avoid at any cost such a large scale operation. so petraeus is thinking even if as he goes to the agency, that's

the kind of future of warfare. so i'm -- i would be speculating if i guessed that the president, you know, had an intention of really turning the agency into an oss again. but they're keeping up their drone attacks and they've shown some effectiveness. and, obviously, you know, they're precision strikes, they have less collateral damage and that's really important in we don't want to create more enemies by collateral damage so i guess we'll have to wait and see. the challenge is, you know, the transparency there and we don't really have a lot of information on what they're achieving. >> congratulations on your book again. my question is about the personal relationships you highlight specifically with eikenberry, karzai and general petraeus. you mentioned there was a lack of conducive working relationship between karzai and eikenberry so general petraeus

did make the executive decision doing one-on-one meetings without karzai and you mentioned petraeus stressed the importance of civilian military partnerships. i'm just wondering a little bit about your reflections as to how that came into play. was that the right call? the overall picture of that? >> well, i think one of the things he learned in his education in iraq was just how critical it is to have unity of effort with the civilian side because you can't kill your way out of an insurgency. it needs to be a comprehensive civil military plan ideally a whole of government effort. the surge of security forces arrived in afghanistan but we never did see a surge of civilian forces and i think that was pretty frustrating to him but he found innovative ways to work around it. one way i would like to frame the book is really it's a study in strategic leadership, you know, how to get it done when you have a troop cap.

if you want to have this afghan local police initiative but you only have so many special forces officers how can you be innovative and augmented? so he brought in conventional forces, that's really atypical but there's some neat examples of kind of strategic leadership action and, you know, i think in his dealing with karzai he just realized anytime he brought eikenberry, karzai would become mercurial to the point of irrational almost so he did stop bringing him but petraeus maintained a good relationship with eikenberry. they weren't best friends from my perspective they both were cordial and speak polite to me but when you speak to the staff you understand there's a little bit of tension and so forth. he had -- i didn't really write about this in the book except to say that when petraeus left the rose garden that day he found out he was taking the job he was writing notes in his notebook of all his things on his to-do list and the first people he wanted to call after holly was ryan

crocker, his former partner in iraq and he did call crocker and crocker was interested in joining him and so they made a lot of calls to the white house and around washington to get crocker here who had this dynamic duo who worked so well together and obviously crocker didn't get there till a year later but you wonder would have it made a difference? we'll never know. one more question, okay. >> thank you and because we're in politics and prose i have to ask about future possibilities. do you think there's any role in politics for general petraeus as time goes on? >> did you watch "the daily show" a week and a half ago? [laughter] >> i gave it up. >> all right. i was on the jon stewart daily show a week and a half ago and i'll borrow my line there, but jon stewart asked the same question. i said well, my husband says i should say he's going to run for office because it would sell

more books but i can't -- i can't tell a lie. no, he's not interested in running for office. in fact, as a sort of mentor of mine -- i've mentioned my interest in potentially running for office, he said politics corrupts, absolutely. he's seen some of these individuals -- even though some of are his collegial friends, if you will, but, you know, the tres amigos they will stab him in the back in an instant to push forth his political agenda and he doesn't want to go like that and he would have to yield on his principles to win the primaries, you know, to win the peripheral voters. i don't think so. i think he's electable by either party, frankly. i think people admire that he values oriented individual and, you know, some of the mantras he subscribes to would be the first as truths and leave your values, a lot of people can relate to that and sort of, you know, the

ideal of serving something than yourself but he doesn't want to. he would be great but i don't think it's going to happen. he has said he would love to stay in his jobs, for four years and 8 years as long as the administration would keep him. it's funny because he's like -- it's like a teenager he's so excited about the agency and i think, you know, recognizing the quality of people there, after dealing with -- you got doug oliphant who's brain and brawn but the military there's a lot of brawn and now he's got these intellectuals and he at heart is really a professor. one thing he thought about doing after he retires is becoming a president of princeton. he really loves academia so he's enjoying where he's at now. i don't see a run for office. >> thank you very much. >> yep. well, thanks everyone for coming. this is very exciting and just an honor. [applause] >> to be at the most prestigious bookstore in washington. i hope you all support brad and keep this bookstore thriving and, again, another shoutout to those who have served and do

serve for our wounded warriors and thanks again for coming. [applause] >> you're watching 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span2's booktv. >> up next, robert silvers moderators a panel discussion on the current global economic crisis. taking part in the discussion are george soros author of financial turmoil in europe and the united states. paul krugman, author of end this depression now. jeffery sacs who wrote the price of civilization reawakening american virtue and prosperity and edmond phelps author of rewarding work. this is about two hours. [applause]