correct the share is the hands but anybody else goes to the record from? that will be he is amassing

some of it is absent. he is the fifth generation of americans that is how far back the family with and since it is probably broke ahead but to be paid back with to begin merchant ship. some of his diversion to of make for citizens is banishes we're not late if that was concerned. which had an audio recording. anybody else? >> thank you very much it

has been very interesting. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] spread the afternoon from politics & prose and on behalf of the entire staff to methinks for you to come out on this lovely afternoon. a couple of quick administrative notes, now is the good time to turn off the telephone for anything that may be put during the

presentation and when you get to the question and answer session we were getting filled so come to this microphone so we can pick up your question. we normally asks the audience but we know. >> on this in a blank dash anniversary of 9/11 i feel we should it was not necessitated september 11 attacks but to be a part of

america's space and its lessons but from either country the book co-authored focus is on a turning point in their rapport some follow-up with the 70 -- sydney or simplified traded at some blind dash mouth

piece and perhaps that she is an issue has his version as a -- where a naval special warfare works with some of benefits. >> i am sure she tracks if you don't pay your rent for someone that has stirred fresh tears to shift of this bug dash tour pros say ahab

to make those operations than it bet then as the infantry and italian bread and and and but u.s. forces eventually takes the student

that groups can handle and is 92 their richard x. since his hoof but it is now occupied by the islamic states rare version to

achieve the right combination of perseverance perseverance, the story of the main beddoes but the personnel did not represent into this demand. the u.s. marine corps for the american armed forces. ladies and gentlemen, please join me to welcome in grain and to brigadier-general.

[applause] >> thank you very much. i thought i would begin to why we wanted to read - - write this book or haul we remember war is so important in there so many books first food but it was what we felt that the time for the final chapter. in u.s. forecasts -- forces turnabout counterinsurgency and there is a process

repeated but then they both had a chance to experience one of those in the head high. >> if we could put this on pay for it said sunday but then does he have that understanding? but it had more incidents to ever write explosive instant half.

>> but then to push up tied at of the area to the .6 months later i used since the wave 1224 of this that is where the things change. we benefit for the sacrifice the benefit from the space saving mediums, and nothing to juju a bit every crop. russian.

>> and would like to talk about what it was like to give you the essential thing is like perception -- make it seem. >>. >> just go into that matter what happens to own an explanation to solve the problem. that is one of the reasons i wrote this book is because in many cases louisa may not have the appropriate answer sometimes it is just like of blanket of foam to try

something to give people the opportunity to look around and maybe do something different. >> the only reason we should never go to war is like putting cuts glass case around and we don't have an option. to the best of our abilities reason a weapons in the hands that is one of the reasons i wrote this. coming into fallujah itself before actually going into the division that is when the first battle happened. to go back into the province less than the month before the incident also with the

attitude that. >> unfortunately the commanders in souse we should not. we're told to go there anyway. >> stand up and it did not work. >> to say need to go back in. and to go in december 2004 to look what was going on.

so when end of the battle was over essentially we are iraqis we cannot sort them out. the only people who cannot are the police so not only are returning to keep people out but to do laundry for the military in this city. it is something real -- accomplished very quickly in rehab aerolites contact.

but that was the sign of the times i knew was coming back. but then for reasons lost we could not take it back. just deal with it for as long as possible then just put the biggest thing to tell them was to focus to the best of our ability. don't worry. that is not your job. just do your job.

i get back to the city to think it is worse? no. pretty much playing the game wacked at a mall. that realizing we have to do something different. something radically different. >> one of those key lessons we can clear any valley. who eventually will take our place to prevent that insurgency from coming back? it took us awhile to figure that out. but those who have repeated to hours of iraq and afghanistan it is pretty

incredible. so they see that day make because part of the solution not just a bystander. support of that is also the city of fallujah organizing neighborhood watches so as not just of between the insurgents and but if their employment neighborhoods in as that the look at the approach that from emily for

the. >> one thing is necessary you have to get off the fence one way or another that is a dangerous thing to do to join the government side to early you're in trouble but if they join the insurgents side even quicker is the difficult problem. one of the things of previous deployment you ask people to help and then they say no. that is your problem. not mine. we have the weapons. they didn't. it is a stark contrast into one of the things this is what real do it and the

iraqi people just come off. because they don't put this in the quarter and try to get to understand what we're doing. room i was not happy in that way. sue but we hired 200 sets of

eyeballs of the time. in that neighborhood reporting and insurgents could not deal with it. very be a strong reaction when the book of women's was told to go somewhere else we have operations of that. and again and would like to echo what dan said a lot of this is a product of the

right place at the right time. and some have the right attitude what we need to do about it. really helped us during that period 2007. for instance we talk about this but then with station but actually a of a member of the sodom shed but to go to the bar when there is a reception that we go to. [laughter] but my second time the air

was terrible. there is no level of corruption that is acceptable and he was waltz and also with precision's. >> so they make up say can we choose? you did you bring in? and iraqi men love to smoke

and drink that girls to go to school and al qaeda had a different vision the brutality for example, they start to cut into a correction of tribes which is about money. this is a split developed where the u.s. knows there then a member economy but just from our perspective. so we finally have a local partner then we would use them to crush. it is that since the process with the local partners. we knew they were involved in operations.

so to set that aside and the threat of the al qaeda is multifaceted to raise local police forces also a program with the individual that was the political head of the al qaeda. from the western i it sounds with general -- a legitimate. he must be legitimate. by filling that you take -- take that back wall at a meeting nobody would stand a prayer for pretty would tailor the conversation. and then the ball glance at what he wrote. [laughter]

>> than there were several thousand members of this tribe and a mixture of farmland and could into active meet its but the building of modern and state

debt it took us awhile to see how important the social institution works. >> get away trying to do what they forces but it would not be more extremist extremist? [laughter] >> ours is also a day and you do things they don't think will make her a censor

it. but then you look and act made job but the last couple of years and has been very professional. buried balanced and i bet the al qaeda folks they have to go. we cannot live without them. we may see as some others and that the person they needed was the everett who

would contrast that is training right there. >> so at this point out of the military. that is why they did not trust them. vincent watched very closely. . .

you can only enter a small number. every single house had a number assigned to it on a map. every person who entered the city had an i.d. card and had their eyes scanned at a photo taken. there was a sense of population control that we had there.

that was very important that by posting that vehicle vehicle ban and he set up a series of buses to move people through the city can imagine applying here in the state people might have a small revolt over those kinds of restrictions that the iraqi surrender to it because they knew as part of a new strategy and things were going to change. the mayor was a central part of that. >> he also implemented a pragmatic -- during the summer it gets up to 130 degrees and we saw that several times. when they told us the car bombing and the funeral we don't know how many people were kill killed. the iraqi practices taking people to the hospital as quickly as possible so by the time we got there you couldn't tell how many people had been injured. when he went to the hospital there was in a book for people in. this was a horrific event. the mayor said when he was going to impose the vehicle ban i was like wow. good luck with that. i couldn't see it working but it

did work. it was a bit dicey for the cusp -- first couple of days because they didn't quite get the word was to shoot at them so there was a lot of shooting going on even more so than normal in the city trying to get them to stop from driving around but they did it and the amazing thing was over the time the ban was in place myself in a couple of others would stand when people were walking and many women were walking and wearing head to toe black burkas in 120 or 130-degree heat. in a society they have to carry the stuff of the husband walks in front of them. can imagine that going over well here. i asked them, well what do you think? are you okay with all this? again we still have bombs going off. we are not talking a couple of blocks. some of them had to walk miles. we found it absolutely amazing.

>> fallujah was divided into 10 neighborhoods of the police when we first arrived for hunkered down in the center. lots of reinforcement and very secure it and when they would go outside of the center they brought huge groups. they would wear masks to protect their identity. if they went home they might get killed or their family might be murdered. once we apply the approach you would swarm one neighborhood at a time. it would take four months. you go in the middle of the night in a completely segment off the neighborhood with concrete barriers. it's not physically cut off from rest of the city. then you have a police captain move up there with 20 or 30 iraqi police and set up the precinct. after that you have a neighborhood watch. for example a funny story as we had a neighborhood watch with one man from every household in the mayor fallujah wrote a letter essentially commanding people to do this. we have special shirts made up for them and that's. they would be screened and one

of the shirts to have neighborhood watch in arabic letters. if you mistranslated it went from three-inch tall letters to three-inch wide letters. essentially what you are doing is military aged males who are getting a job and it's an honor to wear the uniform because the insurgency had the insurgency itself or reach there was no longer considered cool to be with the insurgency. now it's better to be with the police force. one neighborhood at a time and essentially is squeezed out kite out of the city so they started working rural areas and that is where the security change. >> one of the key aspects in getting the police was we had marines and police as long as we were there we could prevent the iraqi army and police from fighting which was a consistent problem. and we could give them the confidence that if someone tried to blow up the precinct or

attack the precinct we were there to help defend them. that gave them a lot of confidence and in many cases the only reason they would stay there was because we were there. getting into the city and getting out there and fixing it with these people and a lot more foot patrol instead of vehicle patrol. the areas we put around you could walk through them. you just couldn't drive a car through them. each precinct would have two checkpoints. they were manned by the neighborhood watch so they could check to make sure it who is coming into the neighborhood and who wasn't. this gave them a sense of direction and they really liked it. all of these things you think of from the american context and i can american doing that in an american city. i can't even imagine that. >> the other thing i want to add also is why did it take so long? why is the resting place of our malaise -- military institution about workfare? how was it that they change over

time. across the spectrum the marines and army in the state department and usaid are generally designed to fight nationstates or work with capitals and national governments. the problem set about cutting the insurgency aspects of that which is predominantly outside the capitol. it's frequently tribal. it's a date -- very dangerous area so force protection and personnel frequently trumps accomplishing the mission sometimes. the problem is the exact opposite and how we are organized for success. part of it is trying to catch in book form that there's a different way of doing this and is it's not always about killing people and breaking things. it's about empowering them at the local level in the same things you typically hear from marines were naval officers. it's very different from a career path but you want to capture that at least at one point. the bias in publishing is towards combat. there are plenty of books with

junior officers that are directly involved with complex. i like those books that i buy them too. >> again going back to my comments from the beginning there are a lot of folks in the military do think you can do the high-end type or you can do anything else. you can delete easily jet adjustable in. my favorite quote is when you have too many hammers it's amazing how many things look like nails. the only tool they wanted to use with a hammer because everything was else was too slow and too frustrating. it wasn't real combat to them. but how do you when? you don't when by depopulating the area. that's not peace. you win by getting people to decide okay we have had enough of this. we are going to get involved and take her neighborhoods back and calm everything down.

they look at the military out of the neighborhood. one of the problems we had when i got there was the iraqi army had been given space in the city they were in charge of and it happened a month before we arrived. how do you tell them now we have a plan to get you out of the city and we will put the police in your place? they didn't trust the police at all. that wasn't what they wanted to hear. the way explained it to them was like look, the role of the iraqi military is to defend iraq from external enemies. it's not to keep control of the cities. the final result in the city is police in charge of the city enforcing the rule of law and that's it. that's it. we don't belong here. the iraqi military doesn't belong here so we have to find a way to hand things over to the police and give them confidence so they can take control. as dan brought up earlier they were terrified to go out into the city. we were worried every time they went out because they would shoot at anything and everything

and sometimes at us, not purposefully. if someone shot an rpg at them or someone shot at them it's murphy's rule of combat. they fired anywhere and everywhere that made things difficult to work with them. the biggest pieces how do he get them to be more professional and how to get them more focused on their job which is to protect and serve which is not a concept they believe in. >> i will talk a little bit about isis and what it might look like going forward. the president gave remarks last evening. there are a lot of things we have tried to learn from our experiences in anbar province and the fallujah pacification. to me one of the key elements is you have to have the army to police and tribes working together in concert. that's only in the service of a broader political strategy which is to say how do you convince the sunni-arab who really doesn't like isis but is an alliance right now to turn against isis and work with the government that is not made up

of people from either his religious background or as part of the country. you have to have a political strategy. when you are fighting an insurgency is not just about military arms. that's 20% of the solution. the 80% is having a political strategy in the political rationale that defeats the insurgents political program and that involves enlisting community not only in its own governance but over the fence. i like to use hillary clinton's quote it takes a village. you have to let that population in the solution otherwise you will be relentlessly trying to hold all the time and you'll just lose people unnecessarily for a strategy that in the end won't succeed. >> i think the best thing to do would be to open up for questions before you make some final wrap up. [applause] >> could you use the microphone please?

>> how prevalent in the military or the views you are talking about today? how prevalent is this way of looking at dealing with insurgencies and also what is the status of fallujah right now? >> the status of fallujah right now is that it's under isis control but we have control and the majority that of the people are like well they don't trust the government, previous government. i guess you would say now so how much they really have eyed am not sure and i suspect at a certain point the sunnis will say okay you guys are on a pier and they will make it happen just like they have done before but they have to have somebody help them. as far as the military is very much a mix. you have a lot of people arguing that counterinsurgency stuff is not real war. we are going to focus on

training with their weapons. we are going to focus on the big war. we haven't seen any of those break out at any time recently. i have talked to the younger marines. that is why they join. they want to go do something a lot of them are frustrated because peace isn't exactly breaking out. it may not be the big war that you saw on tv or in movies but when you look at the course of history especially with the united states the majority of things we have done have been these types of operations. a lot of people just don't understand that and again it goes back do we have to do it we are told to do is and not what we think we ought to do. >> dan you mentioned and correct me if i'm wrong the former leaders of the baath party are active in the insurgency at the

time. do we know if the current situation with isis is similar like the group headed by former vice president, are they active in isis? that's one question and the other one is how do you expect fallujah to be taken back the ad -- by the iraqi forces? is it going to be similar to what has happened in anbar recently with the americans bombing the area and the iraqis controlling the city? after all you had difficulty the american army, and getting the city in 2007 so how will the iraqi army be able to win fallujah again after almost nine months? >> i think the reason it was so easy for isis to take over the

arab areas within part because there's alliance taking part -- place between former baath is some tribal leaders colluding with isis in part for the internal politics of pressuring the maliki government and trying to either perform or create their own separate enclave. i think that's pretty clear. i think isis had a very smart ground game and political engagement. before we saw them on our radar screen militarily the rest assured they were argued making, reaching out to different tribal leaders and networks to help facilitate their return. i think that is what happened here. i think eventually likely experienced in our own tours that alliance will start to pray and the reality of a isis control becomes a daily reality. i don't know exactly how iraqi's will pacify these areas. they don't think it will be frankly a sophisticated and is

sensitive to civilian casualties as we were when we are there. >> i would like to add to that i don't think it's going to be real mildly there. one of the things we saw especially these young guys if it looks like someone has success they all want to be on that team. if things start going south on them they just kind of melt away. so i think what is going to happen is once again a national unity government going and they start pulling the military back together and bringing back the kurds into the military like i said isis are overstating their welcome. they are overreaching and declaring caliphate. you don't do things like that if you expect to have a long life. what i think is going to happen is the tide is going to turn and it will probably turn quickly because if you think about it the fighting in lebanon and fighting syria and fighting iraq. they have a lot of people

working against them and i don't think they're going to last too long. as soon as the tide starts to turn i think the folks that are putting flags in downtown fallujah would take the flag them as soon as possible. i don't think there'll be a lot of fighting, just my personal opinion. >> there are so many dynamics. one of the huge dynamics is the military comes in and is unable to speak the language in the street and needs translators and from past experience translators really don't say the right things. you have alluded to some of the problems that creep up but in reality the dynamic involves poverty and involves good governance. there is the other problem with drugs and of course oil. the huge problem is the suicide killer and how you deal with that. i wonder if -- i know a little

bit about what general pershing did in the philippines and i wondered if you would be bold enough to say what he did and how to deal with fanatic killers? >> the approach that he used in the philippines? >> i will say since we are going out to the internet pershing essentially took the bodies of fanatics and have them dumped in a common grave and contaminated them with blood and dumped in the pics. >> i wasn't going to go to that level of detail. >> unfortunately the media has made a mess too by taking things out of proportion because most people in the military are pretty decent. but then there are some clowns who create havoc like the on the bodies. in any event the big problem is proper security with the fanatic killers and their revenge killers and how you a deal with that. >> your first translators, is

something i focus hard on. the people that i've worked wi with, translators repeat and in many plays to get the context wrong but if you have an interpreter someone who really understands what they're doing it has been working there for a while which i had the benefit of having you could tell when they are talking with somebody. they are trying to get the answer. they are trying to emphasize the right things. i studied arabic before i went over there so i can understand some of what he was saying in some of what they were saying back so all of those things are key to be able to communicate with folks and get her point across. that interpreter is key. if you can get a good one they are worth their weight in gold. >> to put that into perspective someone special to me was a woman with some kids. i greeted her and i didn't realize that it mads -.

>> that would be a problem. >> in the west when we hear suicide bombers is incredibly jarring to our values and how we see the world that when you actually impact to the suicide bombers are they come in many different flavors. some times people are suicide attackers unknowingly. there's a famous case of a saudi who came to iraq and was instructed you will eventually be part of the martyrdom operation and meantime you need to pay your dues. driving the truck between two places was part of the dues paying and little did he know that the truck was a truck bomb. he survived but justin is an examples there are things that are done to them that creates sets a sense of shame that they become suicide bombers. they are people with mental problems have become suicide bombers. the fanatical believers are part of it but it's by no means all of them. >> the other hand spec -- aspect

and the thing we emphasize with armor until the time is you have to be focused because the insurgent suicide suicide bomber only needs one second to succeed what they are doing and one seconds of not paying enough attention. that's hard and they mix in with the crowd so how do you protect yourself because a very difficult problem we have had is we do escalation of force. in many ways it's a cultural misunderstanding between the two and in cases like that there are occasions where iraqis have been heard and in some cases killed because of that. if you get a marine who is afraid to protect himself and he let somebody in it's an enormous problem. >> one other thing, that's why so important to have a local partner to ally with. they know who is from a neighborhood in his from the village and who isn't and they can spot the people of the people of the poor in. if you have the local community organized and enlisted they will provide endless amounts of information to you on what's going on. they will say there are two

people that we don't know that it moved into the house has been unoccupied. because we have a semiliterate 18-year-old with a badge who's holding in ak in his own neighborhood that will do it. >> i worked for usaid in the iraq and kurdistan region so i certainly approve of your approach here. one of the things that has bothered me about the surge and accounts of that await you have been saying too but a lot of this success relied on financing by in a sense local people to do good things but clearly this is not very sustainable. how did you deal with that issue? >> you are exactly correct.

it's not a good solution but when you are faced with a number of bad solutions you have to choose the least bad one. if you have a lot of unemployed youth and in many cases insurgents with was say hey here's 50 bucks. my first deployment we have a lot of that. we are not going to pay them and give them jobs. of course when you don't have security you don't have an economy so how do you deal with that? the amount of money we were paying the neighborhood watch wasn't very much. it was more than they were getting before which was nothing. the other aspect was what we told them was if you do a good job your chances of becoming a police officer are much better. your chances of joining the iraqi military are much better. that kind of resonate with them also. some of them were doing it because it's what i want to do. as things started calming down, shop started opening up again. one of the most amazing things

demering's notice was that a kentucky fried opened up. that's peace, that's winning. it starts snowballing and it has that effect but you have to get something started. that is the hardest part. >> were you able to work on any measures to try to get local governments that are financed? >> that was his job. >> the key thing was getting security to a point where civil governance could take place. in april we had a brand-new city council that have been reconstituted and a brand-new head of the fallujah city council in a brand-new mayor. it was the beginning of a new chain so we have a new iraqi leader and a new iraqi police chief. i'll post a leadership that comment that the problem is that have been broken up. part of the iraqi government was meeting in separate places of getting them together and

meeting regularly and unfortunately within two weeks of my rival the head of the city council had been assassinated. as he walked home from a meeting he was gunned down and then we have the city councilmember who is a jen teacher who represented local teacher said he was gunned down in his home. you can imagine when they go as the head of city council you look around the room and you say who's willing to stand up. there's that empty chair sitting at the table. those moments where you ask yourself what is the insurgency trying to happy to? do you quit or do you persist in the door and pushed on? i finally found someone who was a local partner. we establish security rubber compound. i tried to use the money to

cover his bills. we supported him publicly where we could. i would give him advice. i said you really need to talk to colonel mullen so just troubleshooting and trying to help him. frankly he didn't beat much encouragement. we had a reconstruction team arrived from usaid who partnered with the mayor and started to work with the provincial government to regularize some money versus temporary measures i was using. >> when usaid was working with us we were starting projects and we would check, probably with -- projects and into october we started seeing other projects happening. it turns out the people themselves were starting to take pride in their cities and starting to do things that were amazing.

that was good to see. i have a suggestion for your next project. from fallujah to ferguson. you will even have the same equipment unfortunately. [laughter] >> we have time for one more question. >> hi. i am a student from american university. i'm a journalism major. first i wanted to ask from your experience what do you want for your reader to take away from? and my other question is how did you end up winning the trust of the city in order to change it and make it more prosperous even though isis was taking over the city? >> i think for a lot of americans hearing about al qaeda

affiliates in different countries there's a sense of what can we do about it and is this something we just have have to live but as a permanent condition of our lives? one reason i wanted to write the book is to show this success is possible. it's not by accident as a process that takes place. there's learning that has to take place as well. this is not a retractable problem. you can actually do it but it requires local partnerships. the problem is so much of how we remember war or misremember wars about combat. it's not how wars are fundamentally finished in this type of warfare. i think that's the take-away i would say. >> i would like to add on that is one of the reasons we wrote this is to get people to understand when the united states military left iraq for the most part in 2009 in 2010 we left on good terms. things were very quiet. for iraq it was pretty quiet and

the job we were given to do had been achieved. you hear nowadays like we lost the whole thing and a lot of that has to do with the way people felt about it which wasn't good but the job was done. one of the things, could've walked up to prime minister melekian said if you do this, this and this you will have a big problem and he did every single one of them which was absolutely amazing. that is what i think is what's going to happen. one thing you'll notice and can't collect from brookings has talked about this a lot they haven't taken over in shia are areas. they can't. they are not strong enough to do that. about two-thirds of mostly shia and they haven't gone into tho those -- to those areas at all. they accuse them of being shia and iranian. really they parade on television and they have equipment and they

know how to use it. they wave the flags around and cut peoples heads off. the tide is turning i think and i suspect this will go back to the national unity government and it will go back to what it was before it started about a year or a year and a half ago. >> how were you able to gain the trust of the people of fallujah? >> part of it was the discussion we had over time. days have seen how the u.s. military had dealt with them over the city. that had more impact than i thought it would and in the discussion that's one of the things they talked about. that didn't mean they liked us. 30 years under saddam hussein they have been told we were the boogie man. they didn't have to like us, they have to respect us and work with us and that's what they did. i don't know if you could say

they trusted us. they just knew we were leaving because we told them that and we show them that and the other folks couldn't be around when we last. they clearly did not want that. >> also bill was there for two tours and i know one soldier did four tours. eventually become part of the local scene. everyone knows you. welcome back you know. when you were living the problems every day as bill did for two tours you know the city better frequently than some other residents. it becomes part of your own life and part of your own hometown in a wordplay. it's part of dealing fairly with people and honestly. i think sometimes that's an unusual characteristic. >> there are all -- also small things. when you do small things word gets around quickly. one of the city councilmembers came up to me and said his neighbor's son had been arrested.

and he's not a troublemaker and could i get him back. it took him a while but we got him back. very emotional scene. you can even begin to calculate the effect that has. ..

>> >> does anybody think of a trained special force that is impacted of these powerful empresses -- powerful forces that come here to do its job? to enhance from the share military? >> i know the special forces is those to focus in that part of the world have trading to were the global

security forces on the civil side like usaid frequently it has people stay in the country at least four years so they do get some wisdom about the place but there is the challenge to manage pilot locations but they also said many people to foreign services for language trading but in afghanistan we have the afghan hands program as an attempt to get out of this relentless career promotions to get people to get out of the country that after language training in multiple tumors -- tour. and held back to the normal resting place. but your career is