and certainly accounts for some of our greatest achievements. but it has a heavy cost. and that cost is that we are far too quick to turn the page and delete our past behind, relatively unexamined. with edmund burke, 250 plus years ago, who warned that those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it. i must say, i was thinking about that this week when a red in the most recent pew poll that 45% of americans believe that the u.s. achieve its purposes in iraq. and i had to wonder what those numbers could possibly mean. our purpose on this panel is not to examine the factual record, but to try to get behind the facts and asked what we've learned positively and negatively from this expensive,

literally and metaphorically, war. i think if you scour the country you wouldn't find two people better suited than those seated next to me. zbigniew brzezinski is of course well known to everyone as a national security advisor to president jimmy carter. but more important for this purpose, i think is that he is among a handful, maybe half a dozen, of the great strategic thinkers in the united states over the past century. there is no clearer, sharper think about national security, active today. he's been a professor at harvard, at columbia, and at johns hopkins. his dozen books which span more than half the countries, have

examined two topics. one has been the nature of communism and totalitarianism, and international security relations during the cold war. and the other, increasingly over the past half-dozen years or more, has been about america's role in the world and it rapidly changing strategic environment, and about america's interests looking forward. and finally i would add the qualification for today's discussion. unlike most former holders of high office in washington, he has been willing over and over again to step outside conventional wisdom when the issue warranted it, taking some risks with his own reputation. general mcmaster is one of a very come one of the most prominent of a very small, very

elite, very important class of individuals who have earned the title warrior soldier. he, too, has been willing to critically examine the past, and has done so with such power that rather than ended his military career, the work is ultimately advanced it. his ph.d thesis contained widely influential book, dereliction of duty, lyndon johnson, robert mic, the joint chiefs mic, the joint chiefs of staff, and the lies that led to vietnam. i think the title gives you some idea of his appetite for straight talk. is equally known for brilliance as a combat commander, earning a silver star for leadership in the 1991 gulf war, and even wider recognition for his enormously influential success in the battle of tal afar in the iraq war. in the rest of the war he was

back and forth between field command and increasingly important staff position, culminating in his role as a leader of general petraeus is brain trust in developing and applying new doctrine on counterinsurgency operations. so we have i think two people who can really help us examine, help us not turn the page to send. and let me start, invite general mcmaster to share his thoughts on the critical lessons that he sees. >> thank you so much. of course, there so many lessons in our military is obviously over the past 12 years, wars in both afghanistan and in iraq, adapted to what initially were really unforeseen circumstances, difficulties associated with both wars. and i think the first lesson is that we have to make sure that we understand the continuities in war and warfare.

and this cuts against a certain degree what you see the emerging conventional wisdom about both afghanistan and in iraq, that some of these wars were aberrations because of their complexity, and they were aberrations because of the type of sustained commitment we needed to sustainable political outcome, to a system with our vital interests. and this is because in the years prior to the war that was a great deal of momentum that built up, what i would call a fantastical theory about the nature of future armed conflicts. this space primarily in the belief that advances in communications technologies, information technologies, computing power and precision munitions that completely revolutionized war and warfare. and, therefore, wars could be waged in the future in a way that would be very fast, cheap,

efficient and low-cost. mainly by the projection of firepower onto land from the maritime and aerospace domain, but also employing small numbers of elite special forces. and that would provide the answer to the problem of future armed conflict. it was an appealing argument because we would all like work obviously to be fast, cheap, efficient and low-cost. but, of course, as it turns out in both afghanistan and in iraq we were confronted with realities that really demonstrated in the 1990s associate with what was called at the time the revolution in military affairs. it was meant a faith-based argument. once we confronted reality, we really had to adapt quickly to i think what our four main continuities in war and warfare that were certainly evident in iraq. and the first is the war is an extension of politics. this is quite consistent with the writings of the 19th

century prussian philosopher of war. what this means is you wage war to achieve medical outcomes. it addresses the cost of the war and gucci to a sustainable political outcome consistent with our vital interests. we perhaps did not get as good a job of defining the in state as we should have in context of the political, social, tribal, religious dynamics inside of iraq. and then how that fit in to the broader geopolitical landscape within the region. and so we were at a disadvantage in not really having that clearly defined objective. and when you look back at war planning in both afghanistan and iraq, you see dominated mainly by how we going to apply military force. what are the numbers of troops, how are those troops and those capabilities going to be applied on the physical battleground? but, of course, that should all conform to a political strategy

that lays the foundation for all military operations, activities, initiatives and so forth. so the first continuity that we learned i would say is that war is an extension of politics. the second key continuity is that war is a profoundly human endeavor, and, of course, we talked this morning really about understanding the history. in fact, history, history. and of course what is most important in understanding what is going to be the nature of a particular conflict and the character of the conflict is that most recent history. and so in iraq, the fact is that were most important was the fact that iraqis have been living under a brutal murders regime for over three decades. a regime that had engaged in a destructive and extremely costly war between 1980-1988 with the iranians. a regime that invaded kuwait after which u.n. sanctions

really put an additional strain on iraqi society, while at the same time strengthening the criminalize networked associate with saddam that really control the country and the police state there. the associated polarizing effect on iraq's communities, how they have become pitted against each other, how the regime had used weapons of mass destruction on his own people, the kurds in the north, and how he had persecuted the majority of the population, the shia population in the wake oof the 1991-92 gulf war. and so, and also other factors associated with his return to face initiatives and the use of really so lofty jihadi ideologies to return peoples frustrations away from his regime and towards the west and israel and so forth. in the context of his conspiracy. the effect that had on iraqi

society. so understanding that human dimension of conflict and in particular understanding local conflicts that could occur, how these tribal ethnic, sectarian competition for power and resources to play out. and then how they would be connected not just in national politics would also to the agendas of other countries and organizations. and i think of particular relevance in this case would be series, iran, and transnational terrorist organizations associated with al qaeda. so the political and human dimensions of war i think our opposite action and for the first remember, and, of course, an important lesson for us to carry forward. the other key aspect i think is that war is uncertain but we heard a lot about the failure to predict the cost of the war, for example. that really is not unusual, obviously for us not to be able to predict the future although we can continue to try to do. in fact, i think you could

define american war planning oftentimes as a bit narcissistic in terms of defining the problem, and what we would like in 10 to do in relation to us. and to assume what we would like to do is not only going to be relevant but precisive to the outcome of the war. it's for this reason when we go to war, it's very important to be able to take actions to adapt continuously for this reason why oftentimes if you try to be efficient in war, by limiting number of troops, for example, in effect you could seize the initiative to enemies come in iraq for example, in what was initially a decentralized hybrid, localized insurgency coalesce. we do not have sufficient forces. enforces frankly were not well prepared for a counterinsurgency or what security mission, to establish security conditions and to address a vacuum of power and rule of law that was left

after the unseating of the hussein regime. and then i think the final of these four main continuities in the nature of war is that war is a contest of wills. and that we have to communicate our determination to see the effort through towards that sustainable outcome, consistent with our interests and the sacrifices and investment we've made in the outcome of that war. and so overall i think it would be fair to say that we are oftentimes fixated when looking back on a conflict, on how we did on the physical battleground, how we really operated against the fielded forces of any organizations. when, in fact, what we have to do is think about how we operate and how we plan to achieve a sustainable political outcome consistent with our interests. and so i think this is an important lesson now, because as

we look at, at the war in iraq, the ongoing war in afghanistan where we sell at 66,000 troops engaged every day, there will be a tendency to again define the problem of future war in a way that we think we can solve that problem in a way that is fast, cheap and efficient, and relies mainly on technological prowess. and i think the wars in iraq and afghanistan are both instructed in terms of the way they have highlighted important continuities in war and warfare that had to be taken into consideration from the outset. >> can i come and i mean this with respect, will we ever learn? [laughter] i mean coming in, certainly in thinking about iran, less so i think in respect to syria but as

i listened to you i thought, we might will learn a lot of those lessons in vietnam, the conflict you studied so deeply, not so obvious that much has changed in terms of the learning. has it? >> that is yet to be seen. you could make the argument that what we learned from the wars in both iraq and afghanistan will be as important as the outcome, could be as important as the outcome of the world wars. to answer your question, we do we learn these lessons every time we go to war. the question is, will we be able to understand these lessons and apply them a to really how we structure our national defense, for national defense and how we prepare our leaders, civilian and military leaders, for future national and international security.

so i think that remains to be seen. that i think there's a major impediments. one of those impediments is the tendency in the conventional wisdom to view these wars dismissively as, you know, wars of choice or aberrations. and less, future policymakers will make perfect decisions in the future. based on your perfect foresight or understanding of the situation at the outset. then we have to be prepared for the interaction that we found both iraq and afghanistan against enemies and in a very coveted environments. the other impediment to learning is just really defining war as fast, cheap and easy is appealing. and one of those manifestations of the appeal is the sort of what i would call a rating mentality that is the most from a misunderstanding of what led to it a success in iraq during

the period 2007-2009, during which i think we have a very good shot at consolidating gains after that period of time, getting to a sustainable political outcome is consistent with our interest and i believe in the interest of the iraqi people. this is the idea that really future war name like is about identifying sort of knows in an enemy's organization. a targeting approach to war. those rates being conducted either by precision guided munitions are by highly specialized special forces. when, in fact, that sort of approach into the military activity with progress for sustainable objectives. and so it's appealing, it sounds great, but when you consider the for continuities of war, human dimension, the uncertainty of war and war as a context of

wars, then you recognize the inadequacy and actually the danger associated with that kind of approach to the future war. .. >> that the record from past u.s. interventions to armed military interventions to change

the nature of governments in countries had a very, very, very slender record of success and that iraq had none of the characteristics that would lead to success of such a venture. and, third, that the argument was being made that such an invasion would trigger a tsunami of democratic transformations across the region was, at best in general mcmaster's phrase, a faith-based argument. you were not there in 2002, but later you became a very strong critic of this effort. what was it that changed your mind, that led you to make the arguments you did in the mid 2000s? >> i remember vividly the night

when the war commenced. i was asked by the "newshour", pbs, to be there. the expectation was the war was imminent, and i was asked to comment on it. and i remember the moment vividly when the news came that major explosions are taking place in baghdad, that baghdad is under air assault and that the war or had begun -- the war had begun. and i had such a sick feeling if my stomach. i said to myself, i just hope to god that we now find those weapons of mass destruction. because that was the reason why the war was started. and i was already by then conscious of this act that there was a deliberate confusion in terminology used by the administration to justify the

initiation of hostilities. for the weapons of mass destruction were alleged to include atomic weapons, long-range capability to deliver them and chemical weapons as well as back tier logical ones. and, of course, anyone knows that chemical weapons were invented back in 1916 and used in world war i and were generally not liked very much by the military as actual tools of war. although they were employed by the iraqis against the iranians in the 1980s, and there's now increasing evidence that they used them in connivance with us. a book has just come out based on documentary evidence, in fact, called "the making of enemies," pertaining to iran and the united states, which provides some evidence for the proposition that the targeting by the iraqis of the iranian

objects and particularly population centers was known to us, and we are providing them precise information where to strike knowing that the effect would be massive casualties. i remember that evening well because by then i'd been to worry -- i'd begun to worry that perhaps what was being publicly asserted was not true. but i wasn't convinced of it. i was uncertain. i was a skeptic. and a few days before the initiation of the conflict several former officials, for example, henry kissinger and myself -- i don't remember exactly who else, but there were several there -- were invited to a meeting with rumsfeld, powell and rice. and i remember asking them, and i was conscious of that that evening when i saw the beginning of the war, i asked them how certain are you that the iraqis

have these weapons of mass destruction? and the answer from all three of them was it's not a question of how certain we are, we know they have them. that impressed me because these are people who i have known for a hong time, and when you say -- for a long time, and when you say to someone you know they have them, it means to me it's a question of certaintude. nonetheless, a few minutes later i asked them one more question. if you know that they have weapons of mass destruction, what is the order of battle for their use and particularly for nuclear weapons? because, obviously, if they have them and they're ready to use them, there has to be an order of battle authorizing either divisional commanders or brigade commanders or whoever else has

the possibility to actually execute the initiation of their use. and here the answer was perplexing. they said we don't know. i found that surprising, because it seems to me that if they have certitude over the fact that they have them, presumably that certitude would extend to some sources of information that would give us an insight into how these weapons would be used in combat, what would be the process of initiation of their use. so that evening i was profoundly troubled, and i wrote an article, basically, arguing that we should defer the attack until sweden has had time to conclude research, the search within iraq for such weapons of mass destruction. and he was being increasingly provided with targets to inspect from the cia. and, thus, one could assume that

the knowledge we have was being put at his disposal, and he was pleading for that time so that he could complete his reports to the u.n. but, in effect, the united states and indirectly to the two countries that were egging us on, prime minister blair of great britain particularly and also the israelis. well, we know what happened subsequently. the weapons were never found, and the war was, therefore, initiated on the basis of assertions which were most charitably described as inaccurate and probably simply as fraudulent. and that concerned me nor mousily -- me enormously, because i said i felt at stake was american credibility worldwide, that this had really significant implications for the position of the united states in the world. and i'm afraid that this has,

unfortunately, come to pass. the standing that the united states enjoyed at the end of the cold war and which lasted into the beginnings of the 21st century have been very badly dissipated. and that affects us adversely around the world and has serious implications for future decisions that involve war and peace. on the basis of what has happened, what level of confidence are we as citizens, is america as a country entitled to have, for example, before initiating a war against iran? we do have some parties who tell us that there are red lines that should be drawn immediately. some of these red lines that were recently drawn have been, in fact, crossed. now they're being extended by one year. but then what happens after that one year from now? and whom are we to trust?

on what basis are these assertions being made? how reliable are they? and are there alternatives to war that could be feasible? i cannot ignore the fact having been deeply involved in the cold war that we managed to deter the soviet union not only from attack on the united states, but we managed to deter the soviet union from the use of force regarding europe, our friends and our allies, because we protected them credibly. that is to say we made it very clear in advance that we identified our security with the security of europe and that any action against europe would be tantamount to action against the united states. and we knew very well giving these assurances that we were directly vulnerable because of them.

vulnerable in a huge scale. we once had a false alarm, and that alarm had not been false, within roughly eight hours about 85 million americans and soviets would have been dead. i was then national security adviser, so i was involved in that. so we had this consciousness of serious responsibility and also credible obligation. and we prevailed. the soviet union never did it, and we never did it either. and we're doing the same for the japanese and the south koreans vis-a-vis a country that is acting openly in a somewhat seemingly irrational fashion -- maybe it's calculated by them, but the impact is disturbing in terms of its questionable rationality. and it's a country which already has eight bombs. and it has delivery systems that coffer all of -- that cover all

of south korea and japan and potentially for the first time, though not i believe yet, in fact, not western parts of the united states. and yet we find that sufficient to protect south korea and japan. why is it we can't do that for israel? what does the president -- why does the president have to use vague language about all options on the table which is a threat of use of force, and why does he have to make categorical verbal guarantees which commit him to the use of that force and create a presumption that he will? as -- has the country as a whole been consulted? i dare say in the present atmosphere most of congress would support it for reasons of domestic politics than with foreign policy, but would probably lean that way on the assumption that it never would

happen. but it could happen. but we're certainly able, if we wish, to protect israel in a credible fashion by guarantees which are as binding or even more binding than those that we gave to the europeans and are giving to the japanese and to the south koreans. and especially so vis-a-vis a country which doesn't have the opportunity to threaten us directly, because there's no way the iranians can reach us. and at the same time, we should not lose sight of the fact that if we do repeat vis-a-vis iran what we did vis-a-vis iraq, we'll probably be engaged in a conflict that's more protracted and more regionally widespread than was the case with iraq a decade ago. so these are some of the concerns that are in history. beyond that let me make one more observation about the nature of war. democracies are very able to wage total war if they are attacked.

they are not so good, they're not predisposed, i think they're mentally not prepared to wage total war if they have themselves started a war but were not attacked. it's an important psychological as well as historical difference. we were able to break the will of the germans in large measure by massive air assaults under civilian population. yes, of course, it was justified by the need to disrupt transportation, undermine industry, but a great part of the motive was also let's break their will by destroying and burning their cities and then, of course, in the course of destroying and burning their cities, killing as many civilians as possible. the most classical example of that was provided by two single strikes, each of very short duration and absolutely calamitous human casualties,

hiroshima and nagasaki, where in the course of minutes we incinerated literally incinerated several hundred thousand people. we were able to do it because we were the victims of an attack. we were defending ourselves. we didn't want to assume the burden of major casualties for our military which an invasion of japan would have necessitated. we broke their will, and we won the war. but look at the last several wars we have waged. where we were not, in a sense, the objects of a threat from an enemy that could devastate us. we settled for compromise in korea after several years of bitter war. we withdrew from vietnam, and we did not prevail fully judging from circumstances now occurring

every day in iraq or in afghanistan in the conflicts in iraq and afghanistan. if we wish to do so, we could have incinerated their populations. we could destroy them. but that is something, thank god, that democracies do not do lightly unless they feel themselves totally threatened. and i think that's an important consideration to bear in mind, because we are today facing the prospect of regional wars if which we'll be fighting aroused populations and not formal states capable of threatening us. what goes on in iraq today poses no military threat to the united states. but it is a geopolitical consequence of some cost to us. the same is true of afghanistan. and god knows what'll happen after we're out of afghanistan in the region as a whole. the a war with iran would certainly spread to iraq and

through iraq to syria, to lebanon and jordan. it would engulf western afghanistan as well which is relatively peaceful and where shiites live, and iran would be able to extend the conflict of war to there as well. the consequences would be massive. because we are now facing the possibility of confronting populations that are politically aroused and who for a variety of ethnic, religious, nationalistic reasons choose to fight. and that is a new reality can which for the united states -- which for the united states if we become more and more embroiled in this kind of conflict will absorb us, tie us down and repeat on a massively larger scale the bitter costs of the engagement that we have had to undertalk -- undertake in afghanistan and of the one that we did not have to undertake in

iraq tender years ago. >> do you see, in general, big distinctions between words undertaken following an attack versus ones that we choose to launch as being equivalent to your distinction between a war of choice? you didn't use the word, but a war of necessity? is that the same dividing line you see? >> i think that there really, we could debate for quite a long time about the decisions to go to war, but i think what is important from a military perspective is to understand really what happens when that decision is made and how the military can contribute again to achieving an outcome consistent with our vital interests and worthy of those sacrifices. so i think that the answer to your question more directly is that we have to understand the character of particular conflicts on their own terms. to try to seek some kind of equivalency between, you know, world war ii and the dropping of

atomic bombs and what our response was to the murder of over 3,000 americans on september 11th, 2001. i think you can only get limited utility out of that. talking about iraq, i think we also have to understand that those conflicts evolve over time. again, war's inherent uncertainty and nonlin yeaty. and it seems as we look at the war many iraq we don't ascribe any agency at all to our enemies. and, again, this is another sort of aspect of the narcissistic approach we take to understanding war and warfare. it is as if only our decisions affect the circumstances and the outcomes. and what the truth is really in iraq is that we faced very brutal, determined, murderous enemies. and what, and the conflict evolved over time. after, after really unseating of

the saddam regime, there was a period of time which he decentralized hybrid and local insurgency coalesced. they pursued a strategy originally, just kill some americans and leave. sort of the blackhawk down approach. and saddam had distributed that movie to his people, and they thought if they inflicted some casualties on us, we would leave. that didn't work. then what they began to do is attack infrastructure; power lines, water pipes. this is lenin's, you know, sort of theory the worse the better. grow pools of popular discontent from which the enemy, the insurgency can draw strength. but then in december of 2003, very early in the war, zarqawi wrote a letter, and he said we are losing because americans are kind of disoriented, they don't speak the language, they won't be able to identify us. but increasingly larger numbers of iraqi forces are becoming more capable. and this was in particular the

iraqi civil defense corps. the strategy around that time add shifted to attacking -- had shifted to attacking, usually these nays sent security forces before they p developed the resiliency to stand on their own. but what zarqawi said was what we have to do is start a civil war, and once we pit iraq's communities against each other, we can gain sponsorship within the sunni-arab-turkman commitments, and they used that sponsorship to gain control of territory and resources and perpetuate a sectarian civil war and pursue our objective in establishing the islamic state of iraq. that's when you have in march of 2004 fallujah one concurrent with some shia militia uprisings in karbala and from that period of time on there was a

slowly-evolving sectarian conflict. so you had a problem of insurgency and transnational terrorist organizations grafted onto that insurgency, and then the character of the conflict at that time began to evolve into a sectarian civil war. that really was in full blast after after the samarra bombings but pre-existed in february of 2006. now, the other parties to this conflict were not just, not just, you know, insurgencies, insurgent and terrorist organizations that were committing mass murder attacks and trying to keep a cycle of sectarian violence going. increasingly, these were shia islamist militias associated with the islamic revolutionary guards corps of iran, increase ingly so after 2003. after the uprising in early 2004 and the destruction of large numbers of sadr's militia, they took a different approach, began to get more training in iran,

more training on how to conduct assassinations, how to conduct a subversive campaign, how to operate in smaller groups, how to emphasize sniper attacks and especially employ ieds and roadside bombs, and the most destructive ones being efps. so by the time, by 2006 the dominant feature of the war had become a sectarian civil war. our strategy had not kept up with that. once we caught up with an understanding of the character of the conflict, we were able to develop a political strategy aimed at bringing iraq's internal communities toward a sustainable political accommodation that would remove support for either shia islamist militias or for al-qaeda in iraq. the military strategy aimed at breaking the cycle of sectarian violence through more effective security of the population and by targeting those who were

irreconcilable among both parties to that civil war. i mean, these -- the extremist murderous groups that were perpetuating that cycle of sectarian violence. with the idea being that as we destroyed elements of those organizations, others would learn vicariously and say my best alternative to a negotiated agreement here is looking pretty bad. and so what we are willing to do now is to advance our interests through politics rather than through violence. and this is when we had a much more successful election, the parliamentarian elections and so forth. there was an opportunity, i believe, at that stage to consolidate some gains and to move toward a sustainable political outcome. and we know that some of those efforts failed or weren't sufficient to consolidate those gains. and so the future of iraq is, obviously, very much in question beyond this point, but i think it's very important to understand that these conflicts

evolve over time, and we're fighting enemies there who have a say in the future course of events, and we need to talk more about those enemies. what are they trying to achieve, what are their goals, what are their strategies? because then we could inform the public about what the stakes are. but instead we talk about only us, and we talk about only our number of troops and what we did and as if everything we did led to the outcome without any interaction with those against whom we're fighting. >> let's open the conversation now, and -- [laughter] i think what we'll do given the number of hands i see is we'll take two or three questions at once if by speakers will allow -- my speakers will allow. let's start right there. please do wait for the mic. >> thank you so much, and great conference. general mcmaster, you alluded to two very important concepts

propounded by 19th century germans, of course, bismarck's iron dice. so my question is given the fact that the last election was relatively speaking fairly close and that one of the two candidates was advised by a number of neoconservative theoreticians, how do you -- and given the three previous sessions' focus on the economic losses, the opportunity costs in afghanistan, the reputational losses that the nation as taken -- how do you explain the continued prevalence of this philosophy in the american political discussion? thank you. >> which philosophy? >> neoconservativism. >> all right. we'll take two right there on the aisle. >> three sentences please? i'm sorry. >> my name's -- [inaudible] and i'm a journalist in town but having spent five years in iraq

where i had the pleasure of meeting general mcmaster in many baghdad, actually, i can tell you that iraq is destroyed beyond redemption. almost a million iraqis have died, infrastructure completely destroyed. yet iraq and iran, they're much bigger in the ongoing debate. so i want to ask dr. brzezinski and general mcmaster, who should bear the moral responsibility for what has happened in iraq? thank you. >> okay, right there. >> thank you. mark katz from george mason university. thank you for both presentations. with regard to dr. brzezinski's comments about iran and the president's statements in israel, i have to admit i'm very confused by what he means by all means necessary. i don't think that the israeli government is interested in occupying iran, and i don't think the obama administration wants to do so. but it seems that the strategy, if there is one, is to make some kind of surgical strike to knock

out the iranian nuclear capacity. and i'm just curious, is that possible? or is that another example of faith-based strategy? and for the general if -- in particular in that, you know, you have raised the importance of understanding how the opponent is going to respond, how -- what is the likely response of the iranians to what is, what we hope to be a surge call strike such as the -- surgical strike such as the israelis delivered on iraq or syria? >> okay, i think we've got it. go ahead. >> why don't i deal with iraq and iran, then there's another issue which i want to address. on iraq the question's very simple, who bears responsibility? i think the answer's very obvious, we do. we started the war. the iraqis didn't attack us. we went in. some may feel for legitimate reasons, others may feel for dubious reasons, some, like myself, feel for fraudulent

reasons. but in any case, the fact is we started it, so we're responsible for what happened. i wish we had done better even though i am critical of the war, i wish we had been more successfulment less brutal. the general referred several times to the murderous character of those whom he fought. he's doubtless right. but i wonder how they look at us in that connection? every war is murderous and, therefore, it depends a little bit, also, on what its historical antecedents are and what its geopolitical and moral consequences are. on iran, well, i don't know what a surgical strike means, because we haven't tried one many that set of circumstances -- one in that set of circumstances. we will be attacking nuclear facilities. some of them are located close to urban centers, one particularly.

a lot of other fallout -- what about the fallout? what about radiation? how surgical can an attack on a nuclear facility be? what about even without radiation, simply the casualties from the explosives used, casualties, first of all, of the scientific staff that's working in there and then of people in adjoining areas. how surgical would that be? then beyond that, how decisively effective will that strike be? well, of course, it depends on its scale. and if it depends on its scale, then the consequences of the earlier question, how costly it would be, depend a little bit on that scale. so it may be surgical, it may be lethal on a massive scale at the same time. and then suppose it has to be repeated in a year or two from now. what happens in iran itself?

will the iranian people joining us in justified out rage at the mullahs -- as the mullahs rise in righteous indignation, overthrow the regime and apologize to us for having provoked us into attacking them? [laughter] [applause] i think the probability of that is not very high. [laughter] and i think a more likely probability is that they'll join the regime in frustrated, protracted anger at us which depending on the scale of the casualties and damage wrought may last for decades. but without even waiting for decades, they certainly can do some things around iran immediately; impede the access of the world to energy by causing incidents in the gulf which our navy can overcome, but our navy cannot prevent

insurance companies from tripling, quadrupling the cost of acquiring energy. so there's an enormously negative impact on global economy immediately, particularly in asia for which neither the japanese, nor the chinese will be particularly grateful to us. but also push the europeans much more into the hands of the russians. and then every adjoining area next to iran is susceptible to local war which used to be called in the communist lexicon people's war. i once had a meeting with xiaoping in which he informed us that he's going to invade vietnam, and he wanted us to be sort of passively friendly expecting soviet reactions. he was asked what is the likely soviet reaction by the president of the united states. and he sort of breezily said, well, you know, they may do this, they may do that, they may send arms, that will take a long

time because we're not going to be doing it for a long time, they may stage border incidents, we have add lots of them, so we can have a few more, so what? and then he says they may invade us from mongolia where they have 22 armored divisions and strike southward towards beijing directly. and he says we will use people's war on them. and i know what he meant. it meant the kind of thing that we have experienced also. and people's wars don't end that quickly. and at the same time, the aggressor is less inclined to go all out for total war because the aggressor wasn't threatened. so there are self-inhibitions at work here. and particularly so if a case like us, a democracy. we're not going to go and kill all iranians even if they do these things in the region. so we're going to be faced with a protracted conflict which will make this experience of the decade ago really seem like a

trifle. and, therefore, i am worried as to why we're trying to buy off this pressure that the president is feeling for commitments to military action against iran without fully contemplateing the large-scale geopolitical consequences, the effect that we'll be alone in this adventure. have no illusions, even those who are kind of semi egging us on as was the case with sarkozy, that's not the -- as with the british somewhat. they're not going to be in there with us, and there will be a lot of countries that will indirectly suffer that will resent it bitterly. so it's a bad choice. i don't think the president wants to do it. i think the president wants to avoid it. and i am sympathetic to his position. but i just wish that some of our rhetoric was more careful, because that rhetoric could then be, is so to speak, applicable and used by those who favor war

as, in fact, already legitimating such a decision. >> and we saw that, i think, in 2002. let me turn back to you. >> well, i think just to -- i'll just address one of the questions about moral responsibility and just to tie in to what dr. brzezinski said, i think it does have a lot to do with historical antishe dents and what evolved inside of iraqi society really from the 1970s onward, especially against the destructive war against the iranians from '80-1988. the decision to invade kuwait and then the u.n. sanctions that followed that and the effect that that had on iraqi society which made it all the more difficult for that society and that pollty to move toward stability in the wake of unseating of the hussein regime in 2003. and then, you know, from my perspective i would blame al-qaeda in iraq and the murderous bastards, frankly, who

use mass murder as their principal tactic in the war. and this is where i think you have to pay attention to local realities. and i would ask dr. brzezinski to, you know, to go visit the cities in iraq that were rocked by these, by these murderous attacks and ask them who they blame. and what they, what they will tell you is they blame the people who committed those murders, and that's who they should blame, i think. in 2005 when we went into a city that the life had been choked out of it because of a really systematic attack, a very sophisticated attack by al-qaeda in iraq and their associated groups. they turned that city into their training pace. i command fort benning, georgia, now. this was the fort benning, georgia, of the insur general si -- insurgency. these aren't just insurgencies that kind of happen because people don't like america, these are organizations to mobilize resources and people. this is an enemy organization.

courses offered there in tal afar included kidnapping and murder and, obvious b obviously, of course, in terms of ied courses and so forth. and they literally choked the life out of the city. schools have been closed for over a year, marketplaces have been closed, communities have fallen in on themselves because they had succeeded in pitting the sunni and the shia communities against each other. and i think this is the tactic that gives, i think, us a window to understanding other conflicts, you know, really across multiple regions. the first lesson i think is understand every local contact, conflict on its own terms, understand its connection to larger political struggles and conflicts at the national level and regional level. but one general observation you can make whether it's in mali or whether it's in northern nigeria or whether it's in syria or, i

think, in lebanon or northern yemen or southern thailand or, you know, pick -- or pakistan, in the fatah and so forth is that these groups who are pursuing political agendas by the use of terrorist tactics, and those tactics involve trying to gain sponsorship among certain aggrieved portions of the population. and to use that sponsorship to gain a foothold and then to use that foothold to perpetuate violence between groups, pitting groups against each other. so what was necessary in, tal afar was to set the security conditions to bring people back together, to forge an accommodation between parties who had been fighting against each other and to, for the good people who had to develop a common vision for the future in which they could believe their interests would be advanced and protected. and then to remove sponsorship for these murderers who were

inflicting so much pain and suffering on that, on those communities. and so my experience has been in both iraq and in afghanistan that american soldiers, marines, airmen, sailors took great risks and made tremendous sacrifices to break the cycle, these cycles of violence and provide security so that those accommodations can be made. i think it is analogous to what's happening in afghanistan where you essentially have a pashtun civil war going on, a civil war that was perpetuated in part by a perception that there had been the establishment of exclusionary political economies that left key elements of the population outside the tent. those became recruiting grounds for the taliban, groups, various taliban groups, haqqani network. as people saw that really providing sponsorship to these groups means a return to the same sort of taliban brutal rule

that they experienced after the is 1992-'96 civil war and as soon as they saw they were going to be victims of that kind of presentation again and then when they saw there was an alternative and we could move toward a more inclusive political settlement at the local level, then that broke that sponsorship for those taliban groups, and we've been able to consolidate gains -- at least temporarily -- in southern afghanistan and in eastern afghanistan. the same, i think, was true in the period after the very destructive civil war for a costly war from 2006 to 2008. iraqis came together, began to force these sorts of accommodations at the local level and what we hope to see is more of those accommodations at the national level. and we talked, obviously, in the first panel more about why that hasn't occurred. >> okay. this gentleman right here, and we'll try to take a group right here. >> thank you, ma'am. i'm -- [inaudible] with phoenix tv. the this question is to

mr. brzezinski. since the president right now is taking his very first foreign trip in his second term to the middle easts, how do you see his middle east policy, and can he really achieve something in his second term? thank you. >> i, um, we're going to take a couple of questions. i, um, i'm hoping -- i don't want to rule things out, but i'm hoping to keep the focus on the big question we have before us which is the lessons of a decade of war. right here. >> jeffrey -- [inaudible] from senator angus king's office. given that the general mentioned how war often doesn't turn out the way we want it to that if the air/sea battle concept would be, perhaps, too much tending towards that direction and towards mr. brzezinski, sir, i was wondering how the vast investment we put into iraq has sort of possibly shifted priorities away from, say, the

asia-pacific and europe during the 2000s. >> we'll take one more. go ahead. >> yeah. i'm -- [inaudible] from the arab league. this is to the general. you said regarding one of the conduits of history, three decades of -- [inaudible] that's correct, but the iraqis were doing this for three decades. it's only at the end when the united states realized that iraq on that sanction that they owned weapons of mass destruction threatening one of your allies there upon forced information. -- false information. so it was not that regime was brutal all the time. thank you. >> where okay. well, we've got the whole world on the table, but maybe briefly here if you can -- [laughter] >> the brief question addressed to me was, you know, how has our expenditures on iraq affected our ability to operate elsewhere. well, the united states is the number one superpower, we have

the largest economy, so we manage to remain engaged in other parts of the world, and i hope act responsibly and effectively. but that doesn't refute the propositioning that the war in iraq was excessively expensive not only morally, but financially and physically, and it has not contributed to greater regional stability, but has enhanced greater regional instability. the kind of phenomena that were described in terms of internal conflict in a variety of these countries is an increasingly pervasive global reality. if the lesson to be drawn from it is that whenever there are, quote-unquote, murderous groups doing nasty things, the united states has to go in militarily and deal with it, i think is a recommendation for a policy that will be ultimately suicidal. i think that is the kind of policy that our adversaries who would like to see our power

decline would like to see ourselves spent in endless conflicts all over the place for doubtful reasons will be, in fact, a gift to them. so i'm sure we can maintain a reasonable and stable policy towards the far east, and we're doing it. but i hope we also draw some lessons from the experience of the conflicts that we have waged many recent years -- in recent years with rather dubious geopolitical effect. >> can i ask you maybe both to address the question of syria, which seems more than iran to have echoes about the kinds of choices that we and the kinds of difficulties of intertwined military and political considerations that we face in iraq. >> well, i would say on syria is that we got off on the wrong foot in the first mace. remember the trouble -- in the first place. remember, the trouble started

about two years ago. not long thereafter the president of the united states declared publicly that assad of syria has to go. that was a choice that he made. one would assume that declaring it publicly involves a commitment by the united states which the united states is prepared then to make effective. and that, therefore, we have the means and the strategy for achieving that objective. it soon turned out that this was a rhetorical commitment without a real capacity for follow through on our part. so we went to the u.n., and we demanded that the u.n. security council support us on this. not surprisingly, the russians and the chinese said, well, we don't share this conclusion, and we're not going to join you in forcing assad out, and we object, and the resolution

failed. we thereupon denounced the russians and chinese as having engaged in a stance that is infantile and disgusting, those were the words used by our ambassador to the u.n. which is not a way of soliciting their support for further -- [laughter] further common policy. on top of it, it became increasingly clear that the opposition to assad is very mixed. some of it involves some of our friends who are sponsoring salafi movements. some of it involves infiltration of al-qaeda types into syria. some of it involves iranian involvement, and, therefore, the picture is far from clear. it was also increasingly effort that we didn't really have strong support from groups that were capable of organizing an effective military resistance. so we have been stalemated. recently, we have announced that we'll provide money to the

resistance groups and humanitarian aid, but we'll not give them arms. well, which is a curious decision because, first of all, we don't really know to whom to give arms in the first place. so we're not going the give arms, because we don't know who the recipients are, how reliable they are. but we're going to give some people some money and humanitarian aid. since humanitarian aid, in particular money, is fungible, they can buy arms. so whom are we really arming indirectly having decided in the first place that there aren't any people that we want to arm? so i think our policy really is rather shortsighted and not particularly effective. i think the best that we can hope for is some international settlement still in which somehow we will manage to get the russians and the chinese and through them, therefore, also the iranians to participate. because otherwise the conflict will go on, it will involve the

fragmentation of syria and probably will have a negative destabilizing impact on iraq as well as on hebb nonand -- lebanon and on jordan. and these are not conditions that are felicitous to the kind of the middle east that we would like to promote. >> general. >> okay. i'd like to just go back to the question about air/sea battle quickly. air/sea battle is a really -- an operational approach designed by mainly the air force and the navy but with participation of the other services as well to defeat what is seen as emerging enemy anti-access capabilities. i think it's great, i mean, i'm a huge fan of it because, obviously, you know, as a soldier you can't get anywhere unless you travel through the air or by sea, right? to contingency operations overseas, certainly. but, of course, the question is really -- it's not an answer, and i don't think anybody, you know, i would say in their right minds would say it's a solution to the prop of future war -- to the problem of future or war, it's just a way to be able to

get, to use joint forces in a position to do what they need to do given the situation. and so the question is when everybody poses something like in this as an operational capability, how does it get to a strategy? well, it would have to deal, i think, with those four continuities of war that we were discussing at the beginning. on the question of syria, i can't really comment on that because, first, i'm not an expert at all, by any means. i'm not an expert on iraq either. but i think the main thing for us to consider looking back at iraq as a will-lessson, and it may be applicable more broadly, is we have to understand all the battle grounds that are contested between us and our enemies. and, again, you know, we can't, we can't just assume that what we decide to do either is going to be sufficient for us to achieve our objectives or explains everything that's wrong in a particular area. what the u.s -- it seems like we're ready to affix blame for everything to ourselves as well which i reject having encountered enemies who do use mass murder as a principal tactic. and i think any sort of comments

that go toward the equivalency of what our forces do and what forces do who take a 13-year-old girl and strap her with explosives and have her hold the hand of a 3-year-old mentally disabled girl, walk them into a crowd and remotely detonate them, you know, i just don't accept that kind of equivalency argument. and so i think, i think we have to recognize that we're contested on the physical battleground but also on the psychological battleground. because this is a battleground where our enemies use fear and intimidation to advance their objectives. we also have to be concerned about a battleground of perception where our motives are portrayed as being, you know, imperialist or associated with some sort of, you know, zionist crusader conspiracy and so forth. so we have to become more effective at clarifying our intentions, countering the enemy's disinformation, exposing

their brutality and bolstering the repsychiatry massey of those whose interests are congruent with ours. and then there's the battleground within governmental institutions that often times we don't really recognize. and this really would have to do in iraq in the case of the infiltration and subversion of state institutions by islamist groups, mainly shia islamist groups and those connected to the iranians in particular. and this made it particularly difficult to strengthen the iraqi state and especially the to move toward, you know, toward rule of law and effective governance. and often times we don't even see that subversive campaign. this is nothing new. sir robert thompson wrote many decades ago that there are five keys to effective counterinsurgency operations. one of those is to defeat enemy political subversion. what happened in iraq during the period of time when the civil war was particularly destructive

is that surrogates of iran were using state institutions to mobilize resources in what became, you know, a sectarian cleansing campaign in certain portions of the country. and that perpetuated, perpetuated the violence. the approach that the rgc and the proxies have taken in iraq is to try to make the iraqi government feint on them for -- dependent on them for support, but at the same time to support the development of militias that lie outside of government control that can be turned against the government if the government talks action against iranian interests. so i think if you look at syria, the key things to keep into consideration are what are the multiple battlegrounds, and they'd be able to understand what we would define as enemy or adversary activity on those battlegrounds, and that could be a step toward understanding what could be done to support really the, an outcome there that will stop this humanitarian

catastrophe of colossal scale, but do so in a way that's consistent with our interests and what i believe is the interest of all civilized people. >> thank you. i, um, there are dozens of questions in the room. i have several dozen more, but unfortunately, we've run out of time. i want to -- >> [inaudible] behalf laugh. >> i want to thank all of you who have been with us all day for this discussion and in particular dr. brzezinski, general mcmaster, i thank you both very much for joining us. [applause] [inaudible conversations]