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. enabling [inaudible]

it's minds boggling howment of tens of billions dollars we have wasted in countries like iraq and afghanistan building while elephant projects of no earthly use and actually battling the insurgency. the water treatment plants. i'm not sure why we were doing it. i think it's something we call the gratitude theory of counterinsurgency. if you give them cool stuff, they will like. you a. if you give them cool stuff and not in control of the area, the other side claim credit for it. and so if you build stuff inside the city but don't control the city, guess what, they will claim it. but the larger problem is if you don't have security, it doesn't matter how much people like you. they're not going to come over to your side if they get killed for doing it. they're not suicidal. they're not going commit suicide because they love a water treatment plant. so you have to have basic security.

and to establish basic security. you have to have men with guns on the street 247. it's the essence of the surge implemented in 2011. it was the realization you can't just do drive byes. you have to be able to control the neighborhoods, protect the people. that the point they're willing to come over to your side and. sure, there are some spending helpful some jobs programs to put unemployed young men to work so they are not planting bombs. at the end of the cay, it comes down to security by legitimacy, and a lot of runway spending on -- not going win a lot of counterinsurgencies.

[inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] and seems that especially toward the latter day of iraq and afghanistan, we were kind of pushing -- [inaudible] >> well, first let me reintegrate what i said earlier, which is thank you for your service. and the service of so many others in this room. if you answer your question, it's a good one. because you're right. traditional the army special force the green beret have taken the lead role in unconventional warfare and dealing with gorilla

and act as gur gur little wills themselves. they have been resist toant that kind of mission. we have paid, i think, a heavy price in our recent military history for that resistance. because we went in to vietnam with a fairly arrogant attitude on the part of some such as, you know, a u.s. army chief of staff in the early '60s who famously said, any good soldier can handle gur riel wills. but in fact guerrillas fight in a different manner. and the same armed forces that wipe the floor of the vermont wound up losing to the vet congress. along the way, i think, the army and the marine corps. learned a lot of lessons. by the end of the vietnam war. they knew what they were doing. the tragedy is what happened after wards. then the counterinsurgency manuals were literally thrown in

the trash and said we're done with that! >> yes never want to do this again. let's get back to fighting the red army. when army went to afghanistan and iraq, the big army, i'm not talking about special forces, the big army was not well prepared. i think we paid a heavy price for the fact we didn't have an army marine counterinsurgency until the end of twirks. they figured out what to do. they didn't have a manual. along the way, they have become perhaps the finest counter insurgety force the world has ever seen. what the young officers are able to do in the field is mind boggling. they are manipulating so many different -- they are good at doing this kind of stuff.

so to a specific cultural concept. they understand in in the way they didn't at the beginning of the war. my concern is what happens out now we are out. i hear lot of people in the army saying thank goodness that's over with. we never want to do it again. let's get back to -- there's no red army anymore. we'll fight somebody like the red army if they kind enough to come out and let us wack them. well, i wish there were more leaders out there stupid as saddam hussein but i'm concern there had may not be. because, you know, saddam hussein was obliging putting them in the tanks in the desert with the "hit me signs." there are not other leaders willing to do. i expect they are learned from the experience of saddam hussein who wound up getting kill forked

the troubles. i suspect they have learned it's smarter to fight with a regular tactics. my concern is that's what we're going to see a lot more of in the future. and i'm worried that the army and mat -- marine corps. are in for a nasty surprise. i'm concerned they're going to forget the lessons they have learned. i would like do you stay in place for him to get out the door. he's got another appointment he's got get to. he's time sensitive with it i give you the final two minutes to wrap it up. leave us with closing. >> well, i would like to leave you, essentially, with where i started. which is by reminding you the way we think about unconventional warfare is missed

up. it's the norm. not going away. adopting new ways to attack us. they're not going do it on a conventional battle field standing toe to toe. nay going to attack our weak spot whether using weapons of mass destruction. whether using cyber weapons. whether it's going to be staging all sorts of terrorist plots and hostage places. this is what warfare is all about. we're never going achieve the idea of conventional warfare. there are few of those wars throughout history. senator not -- there is not going to be a lot in the future. like it or not, we better get ready. which i fear and suspect the future is going look a lot like the past. which means a lot of unconventional warfare in our future. [applause]

>> and i have always been a pioneer in race relations. and i'm probably one of the first one to marry a white woman, and that's a story in itself. a divide between both races. and it's been very enlightening to me to be able to do this and

have respect for all people. >> the book is called "shocking the conscience." the author, simeon booker. here's the cover. this is tv on c-span2. >> next on booktv, film director m. night shyamalan to start a foundation to give scholarships for college to inner-city students visited successful schools around the country to find out what could be learned from them. he identifies five key factors that they all share. this is about one hour. de >> well, this is fun. i'm a fan and i don't see anyle dead people here today. a little joke.is [laughter] wh actually, one of the memorable lines of your films is i see to dead people which is really fun. i like it.en pe w i anwant to sta