of a one drop rule. in other words, that anybody with any african ancestry whatsoever by the 1920s is legally considered black, labeled that way, you know, which was a process, it was not always that way. my question is did miss anne, did these women ever acknowledge that their privilege came from this one drop rule system where they have the choice to say does it matter what i look like? i can be white or black and may the same with your folks in near black, did they get that? that people of african dissent couldn't necessarily pass for whites? >> yes and no. some of the women in the book, and it is important for me to reiterate that miss anne was never a monolithic. they came with with different motives, different

understandings, different experiences, and somewhat different outcomes, and some absolutely understood that, and the reason they wanted to be voluntary negroes was effort on their part based on fundamental misunderstanding of the phrase, was to dispel the one drop myth, was as ad race -- radical way of saying that any reliance on blood or biology to determine race is ridiculous. race is a social construction that works politically. some of them were very canny in using it that way. what they didn't understand is that at the time, the phrase "voluntary negro" with a lot of currency in the day, it felt to the one preferable. those who were volunteering negroes were blacks who looked so white they could have passed for white, but chose not to, and the most famous and celebrated voluntary negro was walter white

behooves so white he was almost translucent. you can't get whiter. >> blond hair, blue eyes. >> he refused to be identified as white. he encysted on his black identity, which he could claim because he had the drop. even harlem was all over the place about this status of the one drop rule. some of these women were simply exercising prief leming. we're saying that i can be anything i want. there was one script laid out for them, the post victorian lights as matrons playing with, doing charity work, and so for them saying, no, i'm over here k i'm this other thing, i'm something else was a way to claim freedom in other sphere.

it's complicated, i guess, is what i say. i'm sure you have an answer too. >> similar. i mean, it's the same mixed bag in my book in terms of the characters. it's a source of evaluation for me, again, how attuned they are to the kind of white privilege. you have a character like johnny otis, for instance, pioneer, greek born who passed as african-american in various con tensions, wrote a book using the "we" liberally to refer to himself as an activist and so on and so forth who's very attuned to the issues, and the ultimate privilege of saying, hey, i can choose to pass for blacks because it's benefiting me in certain contexts, but not necessarily in others.

passing for blacks; right? >> i'm elsa. i finished your book yesterday. well done. >> thank you. >> if you don't mind a plug, i find it faze enating and very well written and i certainly recommend it, and i epsz appreciate your treatment of nap sigh. i just changed my whole opinion of her. you didn't judge her. it was a very beautiful treatment. my question is what is the response of -- what's been the response of black scholars? for both of your works. >> oh. >> let me repeat the question. i thank you very much.

well written, especially appreciated. the question was what has been the response of black scholars, not just with this project but to all of our work? >> what are the things i want to say about that? i'm not going to attempt in any way to answer for others who experienced differently. what are the things i want to say is this book, which is a missing piece of the history of the harlem renaissance, could not have been written too much earlier than it was because it was very important to me, and i think it's important to other scholars who have supported this book that the white women did not come first. they do not come first. we worked for decades now to resurrect the lost, neglected, and derided history of black culture expressions from this period, and one of the things that made my comfortable enough to do this book is that i have been part of the archaeological effort. my own work on hurst was very

much rooted in what i call a scholarly archaeology, an attempt to bring back the missing pieces of literary and culture history of women and african-americans, particularly. had that book been written before the ark longer call work, which is not over, but ongoing, there would be a different feeling about the book. i don't think anyone wants a harlem renaissance history that's missing a big hole in it, and this hole was missing. i will admit, and the question points to a salient fact that my own experience, as a white scholar in black studies, informs this project. please do not go away with the misimpression this is a book in any way about me. it is not. i promise you. you would not have to suffer through any stories about me,

but having been here for 25 years, i have an understanding of what the joy and challenges are to be part of the community to remain an outsider, and that is brought to bear on women, and maybe that's why you use the word "generous," i don't know, i noticed that kept coming up, so that is part of that experience that informed the larger study. >> i have the same reaction that people see this hole of passing, but not reverse racial passing, and there was appreciation of the fact i distinguished between those passing. that they do not work the same way, there's prof ledge involved in one and not the other and can't conflate the two. my book came out at a time when there was a lot of talk around

the issue of whiteness studies and scrutiny, never a good thing in a classroom in any context so it's not -- this is not this invisibility factor or a blank page that does not need analysis and has not been construed in history and culture in the same way that blackness has, and so it's fitting into that niche, i think, fairly well. >> i teach at the community college. >> a little louder. >> i'm carol. i teach english at the manhattan community college, and i heard you speak first at bernard. that's why i got interested in your work. my mother, born in mississippi, she did use a term "miss anne"

so i think you need to broaden it because the way i hear you using it, you're saying that the black women are sarcastic, but for no reason. >> oh, no, for good reason. >> this is what i'm hearing. i just want to bring that to your attention. before you sell out because most of the black women did domestic work, raised the white chirp, took care of the white families, especially in the south. >> yeah. >> all right? i'm going to give a quote. this is not from my mother, but she used miss anne. this is other women i heard use the term, and they said, it's too hard to work for a white woman. she has to sleep with her husband, raise her children, keep her house clean, cook, and she's never satisfied with what she did. that is how they use miss anne, and i think you should put that out there to give a context ever why.

i first heard it like that as a little girl. >> thank you for letting me clarify that in case someone misheard. i did not say for no reason. i said for good reason. this was every reason for the black community to try to not just -- not just use the term, but it's a dismissive term. so many black women in particular, as you say, had to work for white women who they could not dismiss, that finding a way behind employer's backs to put them in a category where they could be dismissed is very important. >> [inaudible] >> they are not dismissing them, but describing them as tyrants, all right? that's really important. secondly, my father physically looked white with green eyes, so he didn't pass, but people thought he was white.

that was a part of his life experience so i hear my mother say miss anne, and listening and watching my father, people think he's white with me a brown child, all right? i think -- i'm happy you did the book. >> well, good. >> i read some of it, not all of it, because i really have negro -- i have, you know, the anthology. i have it. >> you own the original? >> yeah, i got one. when i came to new york, michelle's bookstore was open, and he was still alive, and you could talk to him who knew all these things. >> you know what the copy is worth; right? >> negotiations will take place after. >> if you don't know, can we meet outside for a moment? >> a lot of stories short, i do think this is important. i always admire lillian woodian smith. >> uh-huh. >> her writings, and what she did, always admired her. >> people like nancy have real question marks about because i spoke to dorothy west who was

hurst's roommate. >> that's right. >> dorothy west said wherever it was, a political party, wherever, whenever a white woman walked into the room, it was trouble. all right? >> absolutely. >> if you were in the southern states, it couldn't mean a thing. if they spent the night in a home, when the people went back up north, the house was burnedded down. i think it's -- did you -- i have not finished the book, but do you have the trouble in there? >> not only the trouble, but one of the reasons -- so glad you said that in particular, this is a hard book to research, is some of the white women who were most important and influential in harlem, like mary white, believed deeply and for good reason, that the only way they could contribute effectively to the harlem renaissance was not to draw attention to themselveses, not to make it about them, and they went to great lengths, sometimes to

destroy their own papers or in other cases, like mary white, to write what they wrote so carefully that you can hardly get to the women underneath this really, really constructed prose because they understood that. there were women who understood that white women had so long been troubled, capital "t" in boldfaced type, 28 inch font; right? , that they had to tread extremely carefully if they were going to do anything that they could feel good about. it's a wonderful point. >> i think we have time for one more. >> you used the word "complicated" that this is a very complicated issue, and yet i never once heard in the discussion whether or not you explored the psychological

reasons why these women or these human beings wiewld feel so strongly about wanting to -- i don't know if we want to use the word "pass," but experience blackness or be blacks, and to me, quite frankly, that's more interesting thought. >> one of the very difficult things, and i know there's a lot of biographers in the room, and any biographer faces this is trying to thread the needle and trying a way between trying to imagine what somebody's motives would be and get inside their heads, and i did consider that to be part of the job, without agenting like an amateur sigh colings and pronouncing or diagnosing them, and i'll leave it to readers to determine how effectively or ineffectively i

managedded did thread or did not thread the needle. i picked women who left enough of a record, either in diaries, letters, or in unpublished writings, that i heard them talking about their motives, talking about their reasons, talking about how this fit their lives and what it meant for them, and women for whom i could not find that discussion at alling and one of them was mary white. i ended up not making major characters in the book because i thought that question of why anybody steps outside themselves to try to step into a world in which they are not entirely woked is a really important question. >> and i think in my book there's some common threads, and one of them is music. there were a lot of musicians in my book passing for blacks, and the reasons for doing so was connected to the art and the authenticity question of

performing black music as a white musician or white artist. i think art plays a tremendous role here in terms of someone wanting the authenticity that they envision that coming with a different race. >> i think we're out of time, unfortunately, but we'll be here. carla will be signing books, and you can chat to us then. thank you, and thank you, carla. >> thank you for coming. [applause] .. >> thank you for being with us, we have copies the great book, we invite you to have your books signed. thank you all, and good evening.

>> what we know of the founders that the court those that were against the constitution with the entire federal list of those very much included patrick henry wanted to have religious test for office holdings. of founders were the cosmopolitan spent most workers to inspect why did they take the approach they did? why where madison came down? they believed no faith including their road was we on refractions so a multiplicity of sects. >> over the last couple of decades in terms of government funding and institutions there was some real issues to work through what governs this area

during the clinton years were different. they changed over time and people think it is a good thing or a bad thing but there is important issues that people fight about with legitimate disagreement. >> what's going on today comes down to two words.

fundamental transformation. those are hautboys words i ask a couple of questions. look at the aha constitution does the president have the power to fundamentally transform america? of course, not. why would he? you don't like america very much? private property rights you don't like our constitutional system very much. when you hear the fundamental transformation you need to understand this is a direct attack on the constitutional system. that is what he means. >> to ann griffith radio personality takes your calls and questions life. three hours. noon eastern. the first sunday of every

month on c-span2. booktv. "in-depth."

[applause] >> it is an honor to be introduced. julia's parents were teachers in the bicycle and both kids were educated byh themer banded is great to see you here. it is wonderful to be in theat coolidge center theater with this great bookstore to be co-sponsored with the historical society that istely essential to my life as a historian. i feel that i have taken up residence in the archives there. every book i have done there has been essential information that has come from their but none more so than "bunker hill." many of the characters i delve into, their papers or they are

and what we call the mhs and it's just an organization that is essential to anyone who is looking into not only the history of austin but this country. and the genesis for "bunker hill" really goes back to the summer of 1984. my wife and i had just moved to boston full-time. we were living on print street on the north end. add it was at that time a journalist but my primary responsibility was to be at home with our almost 2-year-old daughter, jenny so i have a lot of free time on my hands and i would push the stroller through the corrected streets of the north end. it was there, cops phil was a favorite hangout and it was there that i began to think what was it like back then? when i thought back then i thought of the book i had read

in middle school along with many people of my generation, johnny tremaine. that just captivated me as well as the movie and what was revolutionary boston like? i began to actually look into the history of boston that year in 1984 on sundays when melissa was at home. i went go to the boston public library and begin to look into the history of the city. soon after that we would end up on nantucket and quickly my growing interest in history was directed to my new adopted home. i went on that path but it was after writing mayflower which begins with that famous voyage that ends with king philip's wae english native peoples of this region and i began to realize i wanted to continue the story so to speak. mayflower ends in 1676 and even

during the midst of this terrible battle it was amazing, the governor of massachusetts insisted to an agent from the king, king charles the second that the king would be wise if anything to give more liberties to those in america. their own general court, the laws enacted i doubt which superceded anything they were going to get from parliament. it sounded very eerily like what was going to be said 100 years later. it was with that i began to think at some point i would want to continue the story and do something about the revolution. i would then write a book about the battle of little big horn, the last stand. i was working on that look about a very complicated battle that i began to set my sights on the battle of unhcr hill. from the beginning i didn't see this as a battle look. all of my looks one way or

another about communities under enormous stress whether they are on a whale ship or a whaleboat or taking a passage into an unknown new world. those are the kinds of stories i find it interesting and what interested me what happened to the people of boston in the revolution. i knew that bunker hill was going to be the pivot point and it seemed to make sense that i should start after the boston tea party when britain responded with the dumping of three shiploads of tea into the boston harbor where the institution of the boston port act, which basically shut down the town commercially, sealed off the port and would begin there with the arrival of the lieutenant general and royal governor thomas gage military governor and his four regiments of british regulars and it would

take the story to the up tick of tension is boston became an -- a militarily occupy city to the skirmishes at lexington and concord with bunker hill ain't the point at which violence turned from skirmishes into all-out war and the battle of bunker hill was the turning point when it was realized that this was going to be something more than a dust-up that could be dealt with diplomatically. this was going to move into new and truly terrifying directions. and what a lot of people think of outside of boston is when they look to revolutionary austin they think of boston as the center of patriot defiance which it originally was but with the arrival of general gage and his growing army of british regulars that would grow to almost 9000 by the end of the occupation of boston, boston

became instead of the center of patriot defiance it was turned inside out as patriots began to flee the city particularly soon after lexington and concord which created a waive of panic and not just bostonians began to leave the city by people who lived around boston began to flow out. boston became emptied of most of its inhabitants. this was an island, this was truly an island community and it was interesting to me being an island or that has a year-round population of 15,000 to think that on nantucket, to think that boston was basically an island connected by a thin neck of land known as the neck that was as narrow as 100 yards at high tide in some places that led to roxbury. then it was this island dominated by three hills almost of mountainous proportions with a small town of 15,000 people

crammed into a group of houses in the north and south ends. this was an island and it was easily, after lexington and concord the patriot inhabitants fled al to. they would be about 3000 nonmilitary people left in the city. most of them loyalists, refugees and a smattering of patriots who decided to leave, decided to stay so they could look after their houses along with 9000 soldiers. so boston became a city under siege as paid trip militia who had been involved in the skirmishes of lexington and concord and towns well beyond flooded cambridge and roxbury on either side of boston and literally surrounded the city. so boston was now the former center of defiance was a british garrison under it a patriots siege.

now the point of the siege is to cut off the city and starve it to death. this wasn't going to happen in boston because the english had the navy, the british navy with ships or off the harbor and you know today the town of nantucket nantucket -- excuse me, the town of boston is now the city of boston and it's almost unrecognizable to the way it was. many of those hills that once defined the island that was lost and were shaved down to fill in the back bay, the back bay was a day. it was water. then upon sunriver came in much closer than it does now. what is now washington as you walk that end, that was the neck as you come and from now the south bend into boston. this was an island and one of dozens of islands that occupy

gigantic boston harbor. they had ships scattered throughout the harbor in strategic areas and cap the entrance opens so that they could get revisions whether they be from england or from canada. this meant even though they were completely surrounded by land boston as it british occupy a garrison is going to starve. so it became a stalemate that then erupted into violence in the battle of bunker hill in june 1775. and this was a battle like none other. it was a terrifying cater for those not only living in boston but in towns around because all of the roofs of boston were filled with people watching as more than 2000 british regulars made their way across the harbor

into the charles river to the charles town financial and began the assault that would erupt into the battle of bunker hill. so this was something viewed i everyone there. then they would settle into a stalemate that would then have george washington arrived and that would change everything. eventually, in march 1776, the british wood he forced to evacuate with the arming of george esther heights and i will get to that later but that was the arc i wanted to tell them the story. with the up tick up tensions with the arrival with the boston port act and then with the evacuation. so when i began this research almost immediately i realized i was going to -- the characters i was going to focus on were not the characters most of us are familiar with is

what was happening as tensions were building with boston was the continental congress met for the first time in philadelphia in the fall of 1774 which meant that leaders such as john adams and sam adams were out of town when all of this was beginning to unleash. and tensions were escalating with the boston port act but it was really an act that followed this, one of many acts, the massachusetts government act which brought vitale not only of its commercial way of life but of its government, the entire province lost -- the town meetings were outlawed except for an annual one and the town meetings have been the fundamental way of life of the town. they have also been the fundamental lifeblood of the patriot movement because it was sam adams who really was in many ways the presiding presence as

tensions built between great written and the american colonies particularly in massachusetts. but he had a problem. by 1772, two years after the boston massacre and unsettling call settling on boston. the patriot movement was losing steam and it was in doubt fault that he instituted the boston committee of correspondence. it was a brilliant move because what he did was create a network of communication that had never existed before in which a 21 member committee in boston would write up tracks that were then distributed to 250 pounds throughout massachusetts. remember this is a time when massachusetts included what is now modern maine and this set ud town meetings that usually were

devoted to discussing things like repairing roads and bridges on the issues of the day. one of the first tracks that was distributed was an argument how the natural rights of man superceded anything parliament could determine. they soon got a bunch of responses from towns throughout massachusetts about why we feel this is important and suddenly adams had found a network of communication that was independent of the royal government that allowed people throughout massachusetts to talk among one another, to share ideas and these letters began to come in from committees of correspondence in towns throughout massachusetts. they began to get unusual responses. i would like to read one from the book, one response from the town of quorum which is about

10 miles inland of what is now portland me -- port lomé. what became clear is if there were radicals in massachusetts they are not necessarily in boston. they were in all the towns surrounding them because many of these people saw their current problems not so much in terms of what representation in parliament but in terms of their freedoms, the freedoms that they felt had been earned by their ancestors in the lead of the indian wars that had preceded all of this. i think this, and for the citizens of quorum the fight for liberty and now i'm quoting from my book, was not about the current frustrations with parliament. it was about the terror, anger and violence that went with colonizing this ancient and bloodsoaked lands. our eyes have seen our young children while turning and therefore in our own houses and are dearest friends in captivity

they wrote to the boston committee of correspondents in january of 1773. just 16 years before it and attacked in a native rate. several people have been killed and several of that good. this was still fresh in their memories. we had been used to earning our daily read with their weapons in our hands. therefore we cannot be supposed to be fully appointed with the mystery sochor policy but they look upon ourselves as lee equal to judge soap or dark concerning our rights as men. we look with horror and indignation on the violation. many of our women who used to handle the cartridge and load the musket and the swords for our enemies are not yet grown rusty. what they have discovered was if these growing tensions should ever move in the direction of violence the militiamen and the

250 towns of massachusetts were there for them. if the words from gorham as early as january 1773 were any indication these people were willing to fight. and so tensions would uptick. sam adams and john adams and several of the other leaders were away on their way to philadelphia at the end of august and early september of 1774. thomas gage has been put, the british general has been put in an impossible situation. he might've had a chance at convincing the people of boston to pay for their tea and to begin to respect the authority of parliament if parliament had stuck with the boston port act but they came up with the massachusetts government act which meant that royal appointees were replacing people that should have from their perspective been elected. they went crazy and many of

these royal appointees were attacked, forced to flee into boston and gage decided with these growing tensions it was time to round up as much of the gunpowder as he could. each town had legally a certain amount of gunpowder. they were in powder houses all around the province. gage determined to get the powder, the powder house that is now modern somerville so in the early morning hours he sent some soldiers in boats up the mystic river and the operation went on without a hitch. they were able to get the powder, take it to castle william which is where the fork was where they were stopped piling this kind of thing. it went off without a hitch except the rumor was spread. the rumor spread like wildfire and as the british were there in what was then part of cambridge

they fired upon some militiamen and several people were killed. it hadn't happened but that was the rumor and the rumor spread through towns throughout massachusetts. this was early september 1774 and suddenly the entire region to rub did with a call to arms. hundreds and thousands of militiamen began to stream and towards cambridge and began that night and all the next day cambridge began to fill up with militiamen. they soon learned that there was no violence but there were all these people with their weapons in the middle of cambridge. it was a very volatile crowd and these were the country people who had turned into the rabble-rousers. it was then -- sam adams wasn't there and john adams wasn't there. they needed someone from the boston committee of correspondence to show up and try to calm things down.

in samuel adams absence a new person began to emerge as one of the leaders of the boston revolutionary movement. he was a young dr. named joseph award. 33 years old. he had been an accolade really of samuel adams for more than a decade and he had gained more and more of a public presence. he was a different kind of guy from sam adams. sam adams was almost two decades older. he had a different approach. joseph warren, there was a charisma about him and i'd like to read a passage in my book that describes warren as he -- because the quest went out that he come to cambridge said he and other members of the committee went to cambridge to try to quiet things down and they were successful in this. it was the key point at which this young 33-year-old man joseph warren stepped to the

forefront of the patriot movement and here's a brief description of his background. whereas saying no adams was part political boss in part ideologue warren close to two decades younger processed a swashbuckling personal magnetism. gorham just across from the boston neck was a boy often seen wandering the streets of boston selling milk from the family farm. the oldest of four brothers warren was recognized as an unusually gifted lloyd and when he was 14 he began his studies at harvard or the fall of that year his father was paid thing apples from the top of a tall ladder when he fell and broke his neck. warren's and his brother john had been two years old at the time of the tragic event and one of his first memories was of watching his father's lifeless body being -- lifeless body being carried away. warren was able to continue in harvard and later served as a surrogate parent for his brother's particularly for john

hood recently finished his apprenticeship with warren and was now a doctor and salem. at harvard warren's talent for pursuing a variety of extra creek that 70's. early on hesed aged several performances of clinically themed play keto in his dorm room. the french and indian war was in full swing and he joined the college's militia company. the classmate told the story of how warren responded to being locked out of the meeting of fellow students in an upper dormitory room. instead of pounding at the door he made his way to the building's roof, shimmy down a rain spout and climbed in through an open window. just as he was making his entrance this bout collapsed to the ground in a spectacular crash. warren simply shrugged and commented this bout served its purpose. for a boy who lost his father to a fatal fall it was an illustrative bit of bravado. this was a young man who dared to do what should by all rights have terrified him. it was at harvard that warren

showed an interest in medicine, great challenge for medical students in 18th the 18th century was finding human cadavers for dissection. it's likely that warren was a member of the club of medical students for which we know his younger brother john and warns apprentice william eustis remembers who regularly raided graveyards jails and poorhouses in search of hotties, illegal yet all in the name of a higher good to this grisly game of capture the corpse was a perfect training ground for future revolutionary. so this was a leader with a difference and he would be successful in cooling tempers and what was known as the powder alarm. he would then be instrumental in writing the suffolk resolves which would make their way down to that first continental congress, be approved by them pushing congress into a more radical direction than they probably would have gone and then has time continued as a

leader in the movement. he would become a member of the provincial congress that the columnist put together to provide them with some kind of organizational forces they prepare themselves for potential violence. it would be warren who on the night of april 18 would give paul revere those famous orders to tell the countryside that the british were headed for concord. warren was one of, probably the only patriot leaders still in boston. he would cross the river the next morning after a meeting of the committee of safety which was operated as the executive ranch of the province at this point. he would then join the fighting along the battle world as the british who had made it to concord for their way back towards boston and warren took

took -- was right there in the midst of the fighting and in fact he was a very stylish dresser. he had a pin that was holding up the horizontal curl at the side of his hair and a musket ball past soap close to him that it knocked out the pin. this was a sign to everyone that this was a leader who was very willing to put himself in dangerous path. after lexington and concord as cambridge and roxbury filled up with militiamen warren would be a lot did president of the provincial congress. he was also the leading light of the committee of safety so in effect he was the leader of the legislative body and the executive body. he was way overtaxed in terms of what he had to do but his standing was so high that people in massachusetts felt that there was no one else who could do it. this was a 33-year-old man.

by this time is for children and his new fiancée were in worcester and he was managing things in cambridge. during those 60 days he was the one overseeing the creation of a war, of an army and it was the battle of bunker hill approach. he was named a major general and so from the beginning he had decided that if it should turn to war, he wanted to be in the fighting. he would be at the battle of bunker hill and he would die at the very end of the battle and thus become a hero. because he died, many of us have never heard his story. and just a word on the battle of bunker hill. it began as a mess. it was not supposed to be that way and this is a battle name for the wrong hill. they were supposed to put the --

which is an earthen fort. the patriots knew that the british were planning an attack. in the hope to delay that they'd they decided to build an earthen fort on bunker hill which is to the north of the charles town peninsula have way -- half mile away from breeds hill where the monument is now but for reasons we are unsure of even today we impress god, more than a thousand people tilt their fort not on bunker hill but i'm breeds hill right in the figure face of the british in boston. general gage woke up the next morning he felt he had no choice but to attack this threat to that shipping and to boston itself or the fort that was supposed to delay an attack actually provoked an attack and this battle would unfold causing all sorts of mayhem. and it would become the bloodiest battle with more than

2000 british regulars involved. they would suffer casualties of close to 50% which is just devastating. this would be a british victory technically. they would take the red out but as william haugh the general on the ground during the battle would admit it was a victory bought at too many lives. washington would arrive in washington was one of the great surprises to me. it was a great relief to find out he was not born a statuesque person that stares at us from the dollar bill. this was a young washington who arrived from virginia and was appalled at what he found, this group of 30 provincial soldiers none of whom were disciplined or interested in following orders. washington decided that he had no choice but to try to attack as soon as he could. fortunately his soldiers were

not as sincerely the best trained and he also didn't have the gunpowder he needed. his decisions to attack were luckily for all of us were opposed by his council of war. but he was always pushing, pushing and pushing. he provided a real electrical force to an army that was in disarray after the death of joseph warren. finally with the occupation of george esther heights which involves one of the great stories of new england history with a bookseller henry knox going to fort ticonderoga and returning with the canons some of which would be placed in dorchester heights to force the evacuation of the british. that is boston that went from being a city that have been occupy to being a city that had to pull itself together.

this had been a devastating experience for everyone and 9000 soldiers left along with about a thousand loyalists never to return. bostonians would filter back and the town had been beat up terribly. many structures had been burned as the british tried to keep themselves in the winter but bostonians by and large have survived. i would like to end my remarks by quoting a passage from a sermon that was delivered by reverend samuel cooper on april 7, 1776, his first after the evacuation of the british and much as we have seen boston in the last few weeks his have been a community that had seen the worst of times but they had made it through and so he delivered the sermon. i would like to read it.

this quote serves as the epigraph for my book. it's a short one but i think it's to the point. boston has been like efficient of moses, it was burning but not consumed. thank you very much. [applause] do you have any questions? i would be happy to try to answer them. see you feature a number of characters that are not household names. you talked about joseph warren, his fiancée. he didn't talk about but it's wonderfully described in your book, joyce junior and malcolm a wonderful cast of key year's. how did you settle, what was

your process unsettling on those historical characters as opposed to perhaps others that were known or maybe the thought of that rejected? >> well thank you and this is dr. samuel foreman who is the biography of joseph form was a huge help to me so thank you, sam. it's a real contribution to all of us. [applause] thank you for that question. it was a story that was full of surprises for me. i kept discovering these characters and there is this joyce junior character who appears in a nathaniel hawthorne short story in the fictional warmth of a kind of thuggish vigilante who is dressed in a costume like an evil, that kind of thing, and organizes patriots in tar and feather in. he describes himself as the chairperson of tar and feather

in, the committee of tar and feathering in boston. in my first chapter i describe the tar and feathering of a customs agent john malcolm and it was just a horrifying affair that happened in january of 177f that winter. they would pour the hot tar on his flesh, place feathers on it and drag him around the streets of boston often in a cart and on occasion beating him up for hours until finally they dumped him at his house in the north end. he would be in bed recovering for six weeks but he would live. he was -- his younger brother daniel who died several years before had been a foremost patriot and there in the malcolm family you could see how much of a civil war this wasn't how it divided families. we think of it as patriots

versus british but bostonians were deeply divided as these issues began to bubble up and it was a truly traumatic occurrence. the nathaniel i still have not read "moby dick". i hope to one of these days. thanks to dr. foreman. i have lived here in boston for about a year and a half now. i am a new yorker and i'm rooting for the knicks tonight. they don't need my help. thanks to dr. form and who i went to hear talk about bunker hill our -- learned of this gentleman joseph warren. i had never heard of joseph warren. my sister has lived here in boston for four years and i have

visited every historic site in new england and boston several times. never heard of it. dr. foreman said this is a unique human being. since then i have talked to in number of native australians and i'm amazed at how few of them have ever heard of joseph warren. thanks to europe book which he did send me an advance copy of so i just got ahold of it yesterday. you mentioned your book talks about two charismatic men one from massachusetts and one from virginia. i'm assuming i know the answer to the man from massachusetts is joseph warren. i have wondered since i've been here wise in their bridge named after joseph warren? >> yeah. speed reading the book there was a ridge named after joseph

warren. can you tell me what happened to it? >> my history of boston passed 1776 is very thin. joseph warren was the hero of his day. he was someone that was a revered icon of the time, and would perhaps have been a founding father if he had lived but he didn't live. so he did not become part of that pantheon that we are so aware of today. but it's interesting, i loyalists who did not necessarily appreciate joseph warren's efforts probably gave him some of the greatest praise where it years after his death and this was as much an attempt to take it to george washington but he said if joseph warren had lived instead of dying in the battle of bunker hill washington would have been in obscurity

which just gives you a sense of how highly respected he was. and how absolutely pivotal he was to the events that created our country and the city. you are right, he is largely unappreciated. speak in new york we rename the triborough bridge the robert f. kennedy bridge. there is richer in boston that i think should be named after joseph warren. >> okay we will talk to our congresspeople. >> him i have one more brief question and? >> you have got to cut to the chase. >> do you know where that famous statement was made, do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes? >> we have all heard that. don't fire in till you see the whites of their eyes. it may never have been said at the battle of bunker hill. there is no document. so-and-so said to me don't fire. the one reference i saw that was

documented with someone saying don't fire until you see the whites of their half gators which are the splash guards. it doesn't quite have the same bring, does it? but it was a phrase that have been used a four the battle and after so it very easily could. it's interesting when you think about looking at people that's very close. what is interesting in my account of the battle is that was the big that the patriots were using. they didn't have a lot of gunpowder. they were dug in so those provincial soldiers knew they had to make every shot count. their officers were telling them they had to wait, they had to wait and they also had to aim low. they listen to those orders

without devastating results. >> hi. i first of all wanted to say i enjoyed -- and secondly i am very familiar with joseph warren and i'm a descendent of mercy scollay who eventually did marry. my question is about your description of 9000 troops in boston, british troops in boston. and i'm wondering if for a lot of people left with the population was. in other words, were there more than 9000 boston residents who were surrounded or less than 9000 that were surrounded by

british officers? >> yeah. there were about 3000 show we call them civilians in the city at the time. a lot of the loyalists and some people just they're caught in the middle of it. and so you have the city that was the population pretty close to what it had originally been that it was largely soldiers. and so they had taken up residence in houses, turned the other war around. just the ultimate indignity. the green dragon, the tavern that had been the patriot in her center was turned into a hospital and so the city was beat up and it was city of military occupation.

so this was a real trauma for all involved. >> i would think so. thank you. >> thank you. >> they had 9000 british troops and they have the ships and that is how i understand they were fed by the ships coming from nova scotia. why did they stay in boston? they could've gone up the north shore and they could've gone down this floor -- south shore. they could've gone around charles town. why did they stay? >> that's a very good question and one that the british asked immediately after bunker hill. they said hey what are we doing here? boston is not a strategically placed city when it comes to caring on what is obviously award. very quickly after bunker -- bunker hill age made this

suggestion we should reform and free lunch and invasion of america to the south, perhaps new york and that is exactly where they would go that summer. the parliament, the british ministry of. with them so by the end of that summer at the decision had been made that they were going to evacuate boston anyway. that is one of the great ironies the british had decided to leave there was no need to attack but of course the americans did not know this. prior to all of this the british had made an attempt to sort of show there might. they had earned the town which is now portland, maine and instead of striking fear into the hearts of the new englandero such a point that i made it

clear that it isn't helping our cause at all. what they were finding is what happens to any empire that finds it has to in conducting a war in which they have to attack civilians. it's hard to feel good about those kinds of wars and that is what the british found themselves in the middle of. it was not a situation and if the british soldiers enjoyed. in fact it was a horrible duty and would become the graveyard of many an officer's career. >> hi. i have a question about the primary sources that you used. you bring so much light to the story and it's not like they are new sources. this all happened long time ago. what kinds of documents and how do you find so much vitality and them? >> well you know for me it's all in the details. it's finding those traits, those

characteristics that bring a person to life are a situation to life. you really have to go to the primary sources to find them. in the case of those, the sources are extraordinarily rich so the papers of the warren family are at the massachusetts historical society. the book still exists and the notes on who he was taking care of and what time, what the prescription was and it runs right up to april 1775. it's just an extraordinary document. that's just the beginning. barrow all sorts of primary source materials. the diaries are wonderful when it comes to bringing the past to life. you have not only were these people witnesses but you had their voices coming through. those can be of great help and then the other interesting source which is not necessarily as reliable or the newspapers.

what you find is the newspapers all had a political ax to grind for combining newspapers from both sides it's interesting you can often get the side of the story not revealed from other sources and that is the rate challenge and also trying to get a balance and an account if possible. >> thank you for the talk. the gentleman from new york with a question about the warren memorial. if i'm not mistaken there are several warren streets. there is one in roxbury and anyone in this country whose first name is warren is named after joseph warren the way people might be named after washington and i believe anyone named wayne is named after anthony wayne of the west. i could be wrong about this but the warren building is named

after joseph warren and the entire line of doctors from the warren family. would you want to comment about that and am i correct in saying warren burger of the supreme court and so forth, the surname is their first name coming from joseph warren? >> i can't vouch for that certainly that might actually be the case. it's almost like archaeology in terms of warren was such a popular name in the early 19th century that got past him and is part of people's genealogy and where that came from his publicly in an individual case. the point you made joseph warren's younger brother john found mass general. this is an extraordinarily capable family that would spawn generations of leading doctors.

so this was a person with talent that went way beyond anyone's. in many ways joseph warren was a victim of his tremendous talent. he was doing everything in those final six to eight days of his life as he ran into one crisis after another. all of my looks in one way or another about leadership. a very different personality and different kind of leader kind of a leadership vacuum left by the death of warren. do things firmly and do things in a way that settled things down because times have changed. it's gone from the screwing revolution into a stalemate that will ultimately turn into a war. that takes a different kind of government. i think one of the great what-ifs is how helpful it would

then to washington because washington had real trouble when it came to improvements at the end of the year. he lost most of his army. when it was done they were going to go home. washington didn't really have an effective goal between him and the soldiers. warren would have been perfect at that. it would have been appealing to their better nature but such the what-ifs that are not a part of history. thank you very much. [applause] long tradition that

dates back to antiquity. this is just under an hour. >> good afternoon and welcome to the heritage foundation and our louis lehrman auditorium. we of course will come those joining us on all of these occasions on our heritage.org web site in-house as we prepare to begin. please make sure cell phones have been turned off. it is a courtesy or speakers to appreciate. we will post the program within 24 hours on a homepage for your your further reference as well. hosting are then today is steven bucci director of r. douglas and sarah allison center for foreign-policy studies. he previously served heritage is senior research fellow for defense and "homeland" security.

he was well-versed in the special area operations in cybersecurity areas as well as defense support to civil authorities. he served for three decades as an army special forces officer and top pentagon official in july 2001. he assumed the duties of military assistant to secretary rumsfeld and work daily with the secretary for the next five and a half years and upon retirement from the army he continued that the pentagon as deputy assistant secretary of "homeland" defense and american security affairs. please join me in what coming steve bucci. [applause] >> let me add my welcome to all of you. i think you are going to have a real treat this morning. as john mentioned i'm a special forces officer by profession so this area is near and dear to my heart. this is what we did. they don't let me do it anymore.

i mentioned max. when i was a cadet at west point i bought a book that had just been published. it was a 2-volume set. it's called war in the shadows, the guerrilla in history by robert aspirate. the book from 1975 until now really has been the sort of benchmark for this kind of historical review of this subject area. that is a long time for it book to keep that sort of position. well, with apologies to mr. asprey i think his book is being replaced now and max has done that with this book which is on sale outside, "invisible armies". he i think is that the new benchmark for the subject area. his look is very comprehensive,

and it's somewhat chronological but not entirely. it's somewhat regional but not entirely and it's somewhat not functional isn't the right word, topical but not entirely. that sounds like it's not organized well and don't let me give you that impression. it works very well and flows well. max is a really fine writer and i say that from the standpoint of a reader. it's very easy to read in a way that sometimes historical works are not. so i would recommend it highly. what we are going to do this morning is when i get done introducing hymns is going to give opening remarks for a little bit and then we will open it up to questions and answers when he is done with his prepared remarks. i will come back up and play moderator. i will tell you now when you ask a question stand up and identify

yourself very briefly and if by the end of the second sentence i don't hear it question mark i'm going to ask you to sit down very politely because the object of this exercise is for you to ask questions and draw from max 's knowledge and from information he presents about the book, not to give a speech. if you want to give a speech come and see me afterwards and we will see what we can arrange for you to get your own program. that is where we are going this morning. for those of you that don't know max boot is one of america's leading historians and one of our best historical writers. he is presently the gene j. l. patrick senior fellow for national security studies at the council on foreign relations. he continues to write in "the weekly standard," "the los angeles times" and a regular contributor to the new york times, "the wall street journal." he has been an editor and a

journalist for "the wall street journal" for "christian science monitor". he has written two other major hooks in the past that are of interest to me, the savage wars of peace, small wars and the rise of american power and war made new, technology warfare and the course of history 1500 to today. max tends to write really big hooks. big books. this morning he's going to talk to us about his latest, "invisible armies." i will turn it over to you. [applause] >> thank you very much steve for that warm and generous introduction and thank you also for your many decades of service and indeed i see a lot of folks here who are either current active duty or retired military and i thank all of you for your years of service to the nation.

what i'm here to talk about today is the contents of my new look which as steve mentioned as a history of guerrilla warfare and although it may seem sick and daunting i did try to tell a good story, i sort of encapsulated by a thousand years of guerrilla warfare history into one book. that may seem like a formidable undertaking but here today in front of your very eyes i'm going to do something that i think it's even harder. i'm going to try to encapsulate the entire look into a 25 minute talk so that's going to work out to be about 200 years per minute fasten your seatbelts. we are going to go for a little historical journey here. what i'm going to do his first talk about guerrilla warfare and then i'm going to talk about how to counter guerrilla warfare and finally i'm going to conclude about why it's important we figure out how to counter guerrilla warfare. the question that i most often

asked when i tell people i've been writing up look on the history of guerrilla warfare is what is the first guerrilla war? the answer is guerrilla warfare is as old as mankind itself. it's impossible to say when the first guerrilla war to place because that is essentially tribal war. tribal warrior going back to the time of mankind have been fighting with hit-and-run tactics. they have been attacking enemy villages and fleeing before the main forces of the enemy could arrive. they don't stand toe to tell them slug it out with the enemy the way we imagine the conventional army should. in essence, tribal warriors have been taking part in guerrilla warfare for countless years. by contrast, turns urgency warfare and conventional warfare are both relatively recent inventions. they were only made possible by the rise of the first city states in mesopotamia 5000 years ago. by definition you could not have

a conventional army without a state so until you had states you had no conventional armies which have officers and enlisted ranks in a bureaucracy in logistics and all these things we associate with conventional armed forces. but guess what? as soon as you have the very first city states of mesopotamia they were immediately attacked by nomads from the urgent highlands, sensually guerrillas. so from the very start organized militaries have always found a lot of their time fighting unconventional air regular warfare and do you know what? those terms don't make a heck of a lot of sense. that is one of the big takeaways that i had from doing six years of reading and research for this book. the way we think about this entire subject is all messed up. they think that somehow conventional warfare is the norm that the way you want to fight is to how these conventional armies slugging at out in the open but the reality is though

civilized than the exception. just think about the more modern world. what is the last conventional war that we saw? this is a hard question to answer because in fact it was the russian invasion of georgia in 2008 which didn't last very long and yet all over the world today they're people who are dying in war whether in afghanistan or mali or syria or the, or myanmar or colombia or many other countries. all these people are victims being ravaged by unconventional warfare but the terms are off because this is in fact the norm. we have to flip our thinking 360 degrees and understand unconventional warfare is the dominant face of warfare, always has been at odds will be. every great power throughout history, every great general including the great generals of antiquity had to deal with the threat of unconventional warfare including of course the greatest army of all, the roman legions in putting a formidable force even when they were not led by

russell crow. [laughter] they bested every power in their neighborhood but roma's we also know was ultimately brought down in the fifth century and what was responsible for the downfall of rome? well roma's much like the united states and that it did not have great power rivals. it was not surrounded by great states other than the persian empire. ultimately he was basically surrounded by those that were labeled as barbarians and how did the barbarians fight? well they did not have organized militaries. they did not have centurions. they did not have the infrastructure of the roman legions. they fought in a very different style and yet ultimately they were successful. the follow from was precipitated by the invasion of europe and the four century by a fierce group of warriors known as the hunt.

a four century historian left a very interesting and perceptive description of how the haunts fought. he said they are very quick in their operations of exceeding speed and surprising their enemies. they suddenly dispersed and reunited and after having inflicted vast losses on the enemy scattered themselves over the whole plane and irregular formations always avoiding and entrenchment. think about that description. that sounds a lot like guerrilla warfare to me and that's essentially what they were practicing under their formidable leader of attila the han. they were masters of guerrilla warfare such that they pushed the dramatic tribes further west to the roman empire led to the collapse of the greatest empire in antiquity. in many ways there is truly nothing new under the sun about the threat posed by guerrillas. they have been around as long as

civilization itself and the u.s. army and marine corps and other modern militaries including the french have to deal with the threat today is absolutely unsurprising. i don't mean to suggest that absolutely nothing has changed over the course of the last 5000 years. there have in fact been significant changes. the biggest one has to do with the power of public opinion and propaganda. this was something that was demonstrated in our very own war of independence. now when we think of the american war of independence we tend to think of battles like lexington and concord or the yankees slithering on their bellies and shot at the -- between trees and rocks. these were no doubt affected tax fix but in the end what is striking to me about the american revolution is the extent and which was decided not so much by what happen on the battlefield but what actually

happened in the parliament in the commons in england. when you read conventional accounts if i may use that word of the american revolution they usually conclude with a battle of york town in 1781 in which lord cornwallis surrendered 7000 troops to general washington. there is no doubt his was a massive setback for the british war effort but the fact remains that even surrendering 7000 troops to washington the british had tens of thousands more troops in north america. they could've summoned tens of thousands of more troops if they had decided to do so. but they were not able to do so because of the power of a new force in insurgent warfare, a term that was only coined faithfully in 1776. the power of public opinion. now, if the founding fathers had been battling the roman empire i

can assure you that the romans to matter how many battlefield deaths they would have -- the fact that this did not happen is because of what happened in the institution that the romans did not have to worry about at least not after the rise of the empire. the was the house of commons parliament. in 1782, a year after, the year after the battle of yorktown there was a close vote in the house of commons to discontinue offensive operations in north america. the vote was 234-215. it was a nail biter but because lord north who was the hard-line prime minister who wanted to prosecute the war against the american rebels he lost that vote and therefore he had to resign office. lord rocking him and his whigs who work committed to a policy of conciliation with their american brothers took office. that i would submit to you was truly where the american

revolution was won in something the founding fathers were very well aware of. they tried hard to influence public opinion not only in the american colonies but also in great britain. when you think about documents such as thomas paine's common sense or declaration of independence, as much as anything these were propaganda used against the british and they had their impact over several long years of war. they were down the fight that resulted in the vote to discontinue the war in america. that is some new and warfare. that's something that was completely different. that was some bring that the haunts and the romans did not have to worry about. but the rise of democracy or the spread of media that becomes a major force and in fact many others in the future would seek to emulate what the american rebels did including some such

as the viet cong or the iraqi or afghan insurgents who have tried to use the power propaganda and public opinion against us. all these factors are especially important if in the theories of mao tse-tung who was one of the great of course and most influential theorists of guerrilla warfare that ever was. he had a very different deal of guerrilla warfare than that practiced by the nomadic warriors. he wrote an incredibly influential look in 1938 called on protracted warfare which he wrote sitting in a cave in northern china working so intently that he didn't notice a fire from a candle was burning a hole in his socks. what mao emphasized is as he famously said people are like water and an army is like fish.

he said that it was essential to keep the closest possible relationship to the common people that guerrilla force in winning the support of the public among whom it was operating. he gave instructions to his soldiers to be courteous and polite to pay for all articles and establish -- for people's houses. believe me this is not something that the huns worried about thousands of years before. their iq was killing as many people as they possibly possibly could and as gruesome a fashion as they possibly could. mao understood in this new age you had to pay attention to public opinion and that is something that has been incredibly influence liver sense and especially influential but, even more so with terrorist organizations because terrorism as the anarchist said in the 19th century propaganda by the deep. even more than guerrilla warfare terrorism is about selling a

public relations point. in fact osama bin laden obviously the most famous terrorist of our age went so far as to say that the media war is 90% of waging jihad. he placed the emphasis not on battlefield attacks but on the perception he could foster among his enemies. now the very fact that the media has become so important that the public opinion has become so incredibly important puts a great power like the united states especially a great democratic power like the united states at a disadvantage. something very interesting comes out when you look at what has changed in guerrilla warfare and as part of this book we did a database of insurgencies in 1775 which is included as an amendment. what we found was that the wind rate or insurgents has gone up since 1945. prior to 1945 insurgents went about 20% of their wars.

since 1945 they are running about 40% of their wars. the wind rate for insurgents has roughly doubled in what accounts for that? i would argue it's the power of public opinion and propaganda, the ability of even relatively weak groups to bring downs drunk or adversaries by marshaling public opinion against them. that's something that all insurgents try to do these days and sometimes very successfully. but there is a danger here and we should not swing too far from one extreme to the other. we should not underestimate the power of guerrillas nor should we overestimate the power of guerrillas and terrorists. they are not invincible and i think there has been a fallacy and the tendency in the post-world war ii era to focus on a handful of successes that the mao's in the ho chi minh's think wow these gorillas are superhuman.

that is in fact not the case because if you go back to the figure i cited even if insurgents are winning 40% of the wars that means they're losing 60% and the reality is just as most business startups don't become apple or microsoft most insurgent groups don't become the viet cong or the chinese red army. to make that point i would refer you to one of the most famous insurgents of all time, che guevara who once used to adorn every dorm room wall in the world. he became a legend because of the success that he and fidel castro had in overthrowing the tieser regime, very impressive campaign that made possible by the fact that batista had no legitimacy. he lost the support of the entire society and that is why castro with a few hundred followers is able to overthrow the state defended by tens of thousands of soldiers who supplied aircraft with heavy

armor. they were incredibly successful in cuba but when. shay: got a little cocky and decided to export the cuban revolution it didn't work out so well for him to read what he tried to do in 1966 is he went to bolivia. what he discovered in bolivia was not a country with an unpopular dictator. what he discovered was a country that popularly elected president. che guevara had no legitimacy because he came in as this outsider originally this argentinian who became a cuban citizen from the outside with a handful of followers. they didn't even speak the language is the local indians and in fact shaye's best friend was -- so it's no surprise that

by 1967 he was hunted down by these guys the bolivian army rangers trained by u.s. army special or says. this is how che wound up, if even shaye guevera this icon of the revolution could be defeated and killed then i don't want to hear anybody suggest that it's impossible to defeat any group or insurgency. you can do it. you just have to have the right strategy. the question is what is the right strategy? there've been many approaches but essentially they come down to what i would call -- what is known today as population-centric counterinsurgency or hearts and minds. there was kind of a controlled experiment run by to the great nations of europe, britain and france in the 1950s to show which of these approaches is more successful because britain and france were each fighting

counterinsurgency is an different colonies on different sides of the world. the french were fighting in algeria from 1954 to 1962. the british were fighting in malaya from 1948 to 1960s and they adopted very different methods of fighting with the french exemplifying the -- approach in the british applying the british -- if you want to find out one good way of doing it is by simply renting this wonderful movie the battle of algiers which i would recommend to anybody interested in what happened in algeria because it's actually pretty accurate in what it depicts is what happened in 1957 when the french try to break up an insurgent cell and the city of algiers by planting bombs killing civilians and especially european civilians. what they did was they rounded

up tens of thousands of muslim men in the casbah the native quarter of algiers and they sent them in for interrogation to find out what they knew. how did the interrogation process were? we know because of what happened to this gentleman. he was not an algerian. he was french. he ran a republican newspaper in algiers and it was for this sin that he was picked up by paratroopers from the tenth pair trooper division in 1957. he was taken to an interrogation center. now we all know about the torture like the rack or the iron -- but a new modern instrument of torture. it has two clips and you attach the clips of the appendages to

the person you are interrogainterroga ting. you turn the crank and the faster you turn the more electricity comes out. what happened to him? he was taken to this interrogation center by the paratroopers. he was stripped and put on a wooden board, strapped in with leather straps and he had initially the clips apply to his ear and his finger. what he later wrote of his experience that a flash of lightning exploded next to my ear and i felt my heart racing. i struggled screaming but he did not give up information the paratroopers wanted. so then they took one of the clips off of his era and attached it to his. he wrote my body shook with nervous shocks stronger in intensity. this newspaper editor did not give up the information that the paratroopers are demanding so they dragged him off the table using his tie around his neck as a leash and after beating him

savagely with their fists they tied him to a board. they subjected him to what the paratroopers called french slang for a practice that we know of as waterboarding. he said i have the impression of drumming and terrible agony of death itself to possession of me. after this ordeal he was dragged still thrown into a cell on a mattress stuffed with our dwyer and left to spend that night listening to the bugs and the screams resonating around the interrogation center. now that is a very tough approach to counterinsurgency. we sometimes hear that torture doesn't work. don't you believe it. however questionable or or reprehensible that maybe or reprehensible that maybe it can be tactically effective and in fact it was tactically affect you for the french in the battle

of algiers. within nine months they managed to get all the insurgents to rat each other out. they rolled out the entire insurgent network in algiers and by the end of 1957 algiers was safe. you can argue in a tactical sense the french won the battle of algiers. the problem was the publicity that attended their practices. they could not keep secret. andre was for some inexplicable reason allowed to do -- and he wrote a book which became a bestseller in france. then there were others who spilled the beans on what was happening in algeria or that caused a huge public backlash not only in france but around the world and ultimately it was that public backlash that cost french -- france the algerian war. the attack takes which have been very effective tactically that

led to eventually the defeat in algeria. on the other side of the world at virtually the same time the british were fighting their own counterinsurgency in malaya. the war effort there starting in 1952 was led by this man, general gerald templin who should not be confused with this man the actor for whom he is a dead ringer. this man, not this man for this man was the british commander in malaya. when he arrived in 1952 he found it deeply entrenched insurgency much as in algeria two years later. the one in malaya was being raised by the group trying to take over in the post-war era. they dynamited trains in the evening killed the previous high commissioner. in fact gerald templer drove from the air for in the same

rolls-royce in which his predecessor had been shot to death months before. that must have been a chilling experience. it would have been very understandable if under those circumstances general templer had resorted to absolute savagery to terrorize the population into acquiescence but that is not what he did. he understood his success was not terrorizing the population. it was securing the population and he went about it in a friday of ways. one of his most effective programs with setting up what were known as new villages. he understood the heart of the communist appeal on the china squatters a half a million who were not citizens of malaya who are outcasts with no real jobs were a prime breeding ground for insurgency. what he did was he relocated hundreds of these new villages where they would have fields to work and they would have medical clinics and oh by the way they would also have fences and armed

guards around them to keep them away from the insurgents. essentially what he was doing was preventing the chinese squatters who continue to support the insurgency. ..

by heards and minds he didn't going hand out a lot of good yis. we're going control the people. first of all, it requires establishing security for the people, which he certainly ask. but requires having some legitimacy to make the people ak acquiesce to what the security forces are doing. and the most powerful weapon was the promise of indpeps. because he told the people that if you help us dpe feet the communists insurgency, we will

make you free and an independent nation. that's exactly what he did. well this be is not something the french understood in at gear ya. they were trying to fight for the continuation of the french colonialial empire. not surprisingly there were not a lot of al gear begans eager to fight for continued french role. he got it. the frenchedness. he understand the importance. that's something which is also proven crucially important in recent years. in places such as northern ireland or colombia or iraq. many of them have followed pretty closely open the temp particular play book. this is not just a major of historical interest. because in fact, just as insurgency has been the dominant

form of warfare it remains so today. on september 11th of last year should remind us. it's not a threat going away despite the death of bin laden. in my way, it could actually -- i hate to say it, could get worse. one of the major trends over the last 100 or so years is that the fire power available to insurgents has been increasing. a century ago western army battled insurgent who had nothing more than a few rusty muskets. today there is no corner of the world so remote that every inhabitant doesn't have access to an ak 47, a rocket propelled grenade. very hard to deal with even though they are basic infantry weapons. what does the future hold? we have to contemplate the possibility that insurgents could get their hands on weapons of mass destruction and alass we

may not have george klein any around to save us. i don't mean to be overly alarmist something. it's something we have to think about seriously. what happens if insurgents get their hands on a weapons of mass destruction. this is a map that comes from a magazine i'm sure you averred readers of called the "international journal of health agree graphic." you can check out your copy at home. what it demonstrates is what happens if a 20 kiloton nuclear device were to go off in downtown manhattan. a 20 kiloton device, i'm sure you know, is not a very big nuke. it's the same size of one that flattened nagasaki. that was a long tyke ale. -- time ago. they are full of many nuclear weapons many times bigger than this. this is a very rough and ready nuke, the kind not be hard for the iranians or the north koreans or the pakistanis or others to design.

what happens if one of them was popped off in downtown manhattan? well, the map shows with certain assumptions about wind speed and other factors what the devastation would be. and of course, it's worse around ground zero and getting better as you go farther out. but the estimate in this in the ?irveg journal is that the relatively small nuclear device would injury about 1.6 million people and kill over 600,000 people. just from being set off in lower manhattan. and of course, you would see similar devastation if one were to set off in washington. now, i don't mean to alarm anybody here. but i think we need to think about these kinds of dangers. because they are not going away. and as the iranian nuclear program accelerates, as pakistan destabilizes. these are real possibilities that we have to think very hard about. rome was brought down by bar bar begans. we have to be careful that we ourselves are not brought down by them. and i think the first

self-defense to understand the nature of the problem. and that's what i've tried to contribute to with this book to show the kind of strategy that insurgents have employed over the century as well as the strategies used to encounter them inspect is something we need to think about. insurgency is not going away. even after afghanistan it's going to remain the number one threat we face. thank you. [applause] [inaudible] okay, ladies and gentlemen, we will now take questions. please identify yourself. >> thank you.

[inaudible] >> rule of law can be a very important part of establishing legitimacy, because as i said, it's very hard to win with a pure strategy. even though when you're willing to be as brutal as the nazis. say that still didn't manage to pass if i the ball kins in world world war ii. even though they were willing to kill a million people. because the nazis and the soviets offer nothing positive. they offer no reason why the people of yugoslavia or the people of afghanistan would support them. they offer nothing but death and desolation. that ultimately, was not a winning strategy. i think what people want to see is the rule of law. not necessarily our law but our law. socialit's something people respond positively to. if they see that, the soldiers around them are enforcing the law rather than preying upon them. rather than stealing from them. rather than raping their

daughters if see they the soldiers are upholding the law, they're going to be much more likely to support those soldiers response upholding the resume of law is, i would argue, a crucial element of successful counterinsurgency. right here. robert price. how do we do this cheap and easy? we have done it before here now twice in iraq and afghanistan. protective periods of counterinsurgency long-term, even after they -- the immediate -- threat were taken down followed by extensive amount of nation building, et. cetera. you do it every time or is there an achievement easier way to do this? >>ideally, you will not have to wage future counterinsurgency by sending thousand of thousand of american -- i think being to be partner --

which is something we can do with some degree of success. we have seen the strategy backfire. we wound up overthrowing the government. to my mind, a great template of how to do this successfully comes from somebody we tend to forget these days but should remember. edward, the quiet american once a legendary figure. a former advertising man who joined the air force and the cia. and sent to the philippines in the late '40s when they were facing the rebellion. one of the major communist uprising of the post world world war ii period. what he did was didn't send an army to back them up. he drove to the boondocks to get to know them. he didn't sit in the embassy. he went out there to figure out what was going on. the most important thing, he identified a great leader who

can lead the philippines out with some support. who rooted a lot of corruption causing people to turn away from the philippine government. he ended brutality on the part of the army which was causing villagers to flee to the hands. he established elections and basically took away all of the ideological appeal that they could possibly have.

who will be honest, uncorrupt, tough beneficiary a true leader that the people of afghanistan can respect. i would suggest to you that we need or modern day edward who understand the situation in afghanistan. when the trust of loyalty and find an honest man. yes, they exist. even in afghanistan. find an honest man and promote him as much as possible to the presidency. that kind of leadership can be worth more than entire situation dwitions of american troops. a point of rule of law and public rule of law and how that

rolls in to probably the biggest rule overseeing right now which is in mally. and more broadly you have an organizations like that are portraying themselves as pseudo rule of law organization which is law they support, obviously, which they claim is culturally more appropriate to the region, obviously, is a hard core [inaudible] cutting people's hands down and tearing down shrines. the question becomes -- [inaudible] is there a universal rule of law that is humane, or should we just accept that what they're saying is a former rule of law and might have to go another way. well, i mean, what we found in recent years you have the fundamental groups take over areas. and try to impose their rule of

law this the puritans look like easy going vacationers by comparison. when they actually try to impose the code even in die hard conservative muslim area finance proves very unpopular. it was why iraq al qaeda suffered a backlash. they didn't like to be ruled by people told them they were executed for smoking a cigarette. it that's why the taliban were not that hard to overthrown in 2001. the people of afghanistan turned against this bar backic code that the tennessee were trying to impose. this is, you know, in iraq and afghanistan hardly two of the most liberal countries in world. today i connect you see it happen in northern mali. i suspect it's not proving popular. however, the reason why the groups can have enduring appeal is because there's not a good

alternative. and the problem that we face, for example, in afghanistan, is that brutal and unpopular as the taliban are, the government is often been worse. because the government has not delivered any kind of justice. what the government delivers is a decision that goes to the highest bidder. and so that is the taliban may be, they are less corrupt. you will get a more or less honest judgment. that's not the eye teal but it may be better the than the alternative. in -- is try build up nonfundamentallist rule of law that deliver a modicum of justice comp is what the people want. but not to do it with the kind of bar barracker i think we will be successful.

[inaudible] voice of america. what about syria -- [inaudible] it's interesting what happened as the power of the media has grown the strategies are becoming less successful. these days they can only work in places where nobody is paying attention. it works in sure sley lane can. it worked recently for russia and. but look what happened in libya. there's no doubt in my mind that 100 years ago he would not have succeeded. he did not succeed because the tension of the world news media about united states and the international organizations focus odd whon what he was doing. before he could come in and torch benghazi and kill all the

rebel, we in our nato allies intervened to stop it. it in the case of syria, i have not intervened but certainly other outside powers have. and the rebels have been able to get support, for example, from the gulf states. which keeps them from being simply swept off the board. both sides have, you know, some degree of support but not overwhelming. assad is unpopular but they haven't been able to push them out all the way. assad, it goes back to a point i was making earlier about the incredible importance of the legitimacy. i would say more most syrians he likes legitimacy especially for the sunni majority. it's al wait and part of a minor it . me has support in the alawite community. he has support in the other minority. they're afraid of what happens if the sunni take over. they are able to cling to power with a small degree of almost no, but a small degree of

legitimacy left. the rebel, in turn, are arguably forfeiting by allowing extremist slammists to take a prominent role in the rank. and so, you know, the conflict is stalemated. but this is, you know, a classic insurgency and courage insurgency i suspect at the end of the day will end as a victory . what is the problem going look like after wards? that's what the government has to worry about. what is hard to establish security and stability after wards. it's the big challenge. it's where we've strugged in iraq and afghanistan and struggled even more in syria.