>> the co-author of this book latino america how america's most dynamic population is poised to transform the politics of the nation and he also teaches at stanford. professor, thank you for your time on the tv. >> lieutenant colonel talks about the development and effectiveness of the counterinsurgency strategy the u.s. used in iraq and afghanistan. this is about one hour. [inaudible conversations]

good evening, everyone. thanks for joining us this evening. i am richard fontaine, the president for the new american security. it's a pleasure to welcome all of you tonight for the celebration of the new book upon its publication sites of the memoir a modern war and the practice. if you come to these events before and you've read our publication, that the work is no doubt known. he was the second president and has left very large shoes that i've been attempting to fill since then. he serves as a house member in pennsylvania and he's a visiting professor he is a visiting professor at king's college in london. his book i saw in the proposal form quite a while ago when he was thinking about doing this and i have to confess that in the back of my head even just a few minutes ago i thought a book

on the middle east and iraq and counter insurgency and terrorism and all of this, you know, how could this be possibly relevant to today but he has impeccable timing because the lessons that he's drawn freely direct applicability that our country is wrestling with today. the book draws on sean's extraordinary accomplishments as one of america's finest warriors colors. he was a 1988 graduate of west point and went on to oxford for the doctoral dissertation was later published learning to eat soup with a knife. he served as an army tank commander in the gulf war and returned in the first infantry division after the 2003 invasion. he was tasked to look work at the pentagon for the deputy secretary paul wolfowitz with whom he wrote the now legendary counterinsurgency field manual.

in the later time in the world as the think tanks and the intellectual arena he became a key architect of the military counterinsurgency doctrine and that of course was put to such a dramatic use during the surge in iraq. the account of how difficult the approach was and how difficult the struggle was that within the u.s. military in the department of defense bureaucracy and within the national security apparatus more broadly speaking to draw out some of these lotions and look at the applicability of today we have joining john the host of national public radio.

steve has reported and has written on an array of security issues from locations. he's the author of life and death and he is well-known for his well known for his unique way of drawing out the deep meaning. following the conversation, john will be signing copies of his book. if he hasn't signed yours already but please allow me to turn the microphone over to steve and john. [applause] >> it is an honor to be here and to share the stage. it was great to hear. thinking about some of the aspects you have been to prestigious universities and served in the u.s. army which makes you an expert in a variety of large institutions that have trouble changing.

>> and i now run a school. if you think that it's hard changing an army tried changing a school. >> john as we served tomato herb served in iraq. part of the struggle that ended in 2011 and all of the u.s. troops left iraq and thank god we will never have to fight there again. i realized that his dark humor but you go into the humor to paraphrase you fight a war with the humor that you have and that is what we have at the moment. [laughter] we went on to serve as the headmaster of the school and it's interesting he was an expert at counterinsurgency as someone concluded that was good preparation for watching after several hundred boys. >> they were one hour away from absolute chaos.

is that i want to do another piece of business before we get down to the questions and i just want to mention john as we all knew had a mother who went off to the war more than once and she didn't physically restrain him. what you stand for just a moment please? [applause] >> thank you for what you've done. you write in this book that we are going to be for some time in an age of unsatisfying war what do you mean and why do you think that? >> so i thought since desert

storm which was the genesis of this book of my military service and thinking about work i came of age when the cold war was still hot and there was still a gap when the soviet union was still a threat and its pilot was studying at oxford the first time the berlin wall came down and peace broke out all over the world and saddam hussein invaded iraq and haiti peace haven't quite broken out. i participated in desert storm which may be the last of the great battle. it was an unsettling thought fascinating and invigorating experience to participate in that kind of war but it seemed to me between the end of the soviet union and the fourth largest within allied health.

it seemed to me to indicate a volume shipment history of the conflict that is no one in their right mind would take on the united states again in the conventional combat given what we've just seen. so ideally the future enemies of the united states would look at how the vietnamese, the theater, have taken this on and not how the iraqi army had so unsuccessfully attempted to challenge the military might so i started thinking about the cultural skills, the language knowledge, the tribal basis of society, improvised weapons to defeat the greatest military machine the world has ever seen. the good news is i was right and the bad news is i was right.

the world has seen the lesson very clearly. they played strategically is the national will to continue the fight by fighting asymmetric along the air regularly for. so i believe that there is every indication that these will continue today. steve already mentioned the war in iraq the ongoing war in afghanistan and he hopes that the lessons into the mistakes that we made are not repeated in afghanistan and that we do not again as it is currently the u.s. national policy poll all of the american troops out of afghanistan at the end of 2017 because the taliban is waiting to come back and waiting for the opportunity. but if there is a guiding principle of the national security policy in the wake of

september 11, it is not to yield territory to the terrorists in which they can plan and conduct operations against the united states and our allies. >> we have failed at in iraq right now and we are fighting back against it. i very much hope that we don't make this a mistake in afghanistan. >> use of the mistakes at the end of the war you refer to withdrawing the troops and we could argue about whether it have to be had to be done or did it have to be done. was that the only mistake at the end of the war collects >> that quick >> that was the biggest mistake at the end of the iraq war so the single biggest in the wake of september 11 was the invasion of iraq in 2003. the unnecessary war. i do not believe the uncontrived information. i think that the people putting the case together were scared, they felt that they had missed something on september 11 and were putting together the worst-case scenario but there

was no reason that the deterrence couldn't continue to work against saddam hussein even if he had weapons of mass distraction. and i exited the wmd program in 2003. that was the worst mistake was the invasion of iraq in 2003. it didn't need to be done and if it was going to be done it should have been done much better than it was. if we plan to topple the government of saddam hussein we should have had a plan for what we were going to do once we accomplish that objective. the next really big mistake for strolling all of destroying all of the american troops held at the end of 2011 as my first annual conference as president in 2009 when we wrote a paper arguing after the fire that argued that the united states needed to maintain a long-term security presence in iraq of some 20 or 25,000 to add a spy

into the iraqi army to provide political leverage against the government to guard against the undue sectarianism, and that figure looks really good five years later. we failed to follow those. much smarter people. >> the most amazing thing you said as part of the reason to keep the troops in iraq was to provide a political leverage against the government. so, american troops are not just a security guarantee. they come with political leverage. the government, particularly the government under threat of the resources or perspectives they want the resources that come with american soldiers. access to intelligence, access to air cover, power, which is to support, technical expertise, but also the attention of the u.s. government they don't want to lose those resources. so the presence of 20,000 americans in iraq in 2012 until now would have pushed maliki

away from the prime minister in his worst sectarian influence as general david petraeus, ambassador ryan crocker used the presence of the troops and used their leverage to do just that when we had 150,000 in iraq. we have less leverage that we would have had infinitely more than we ended up having. and a big part of the reason for the success of isis in iraq has been sectarianism of the iraqi government over the past two and a half years and the fact that they no longer trust the baghdad government. >> let ask about the unsatisfying war that you were just discussing. we are warned that it's going to be unsatisfying. no easy options, no quick options, no dramatic changes in the situation. it could take a long time with the uncertain outcome. do we have to plan for that

quick >> we shouldn't be planning for it as poorly as we are right now the other mistake in between was the invasion of iraq in 2003. it was pulling all of the troops out at the end of iraq in 2011. the next mistake wasn't arming theory and rebels in the summer of 12. that is a tough call. they are indicating correctly that. i'm not throwing nearly as bright of a red line in the syrian rebels, but they got us to where we are today.

the president has correctly stated stated and assess the threat presented by isis not just to iraq or serious at the broad middle east and ultimately to the united states. so he has stated and put out a goal for not just the u.s. military and the diplomatic service in the policy machine of defeating and ultimately destroying isis. he is absolutely correct in that. the problem is that he isn't providing the means required to accomplish that objective. they are not going to be able to push isis back.

there is a basic and main strategic mismatch. you don't have to work on the regime. it's another way of asking what the future make a difference as the retired military officer was the other day suggesting that even a small number of troops are making a huge difference because they are not the most competent. they were talking about 20 to 25,000. that number was i think increased the performance of the iraqi army by two or three times

in the supply line with the presence of those advisers in a relatively short period of months we could turn this around and push isis back to what used to be the border between serious and iraq that's where the game gets hard. do you reflect to the widespread opinion? the officers that fought for the ground in iraq was stationed in al and our province since september the 2003 to 2004.

it the fighting is going on right now in falluja so it is a gritty nice neighborhood. we haven't seen the enemies we haven't been trained to identify. and we took a very heavy losses while we were doing that. it would have taken very little to have kept that ground for the iraqi government and the united states, the taxpayer that our children because we put this all in the credit card are going to pay for for the rest of their lives lives we put well over a trillion dollars, 5,000 american lives well over 35,000 wounded.

i'm confident that my friends and people i know will fight the background again and didn't need to happen. to what extent is the same information work. it's relied heavily on the work of the general and it's designed to do counterinsurgency campaign he was fighting in baghdad in 2,004 and 2005 kind of timeframe it describes the combat operations you can identify

certainly building host nation security forces assisting the economic development and the forces to the population but the biggest arrow of all those other five is information operations. ultimately in this kind of a war that we are fighting for is the support of the population and the belief of the population that the future is brighter by standing against the insurgency understanding with the government. and so, what we failed and where the counterinsurgency campaign failed late in the game in iraq was after we withdrew the american troops in 2011 and when the maliki government by spitefully. it conducted a very clear

support of the sunni population that they were able to cut through the same population like a hot knife through butter and a lot of it thought that they would be involved and they were with their own government in baghdad. the beheadings of the americans were a sign of weakness but couldn't strike out at the united united states and any more effectively than beheading someone. they were thrown about al qaeda. isis is the hottest ticket, it's the entrepreneurial terrorist jihadi organization in the world right now. it is attracting jihadis from all over the world from making young girls in england.

the single most worrying part of that for homeland security operators is that an awful lot of those people have western passports. they will be enormously difficult to find in patch. they are re-creating what the afghans created in the 1980s in the war against the soviet union in the invasion created jihad central. it's interesting in this book you recount the drafting of the manual and your note that there should have been a chapter on the information operations and there wasn't a chapter. it's mentioned that it's not highlighted as much as he would

like. it's against the radical islamists has been the failure to create. during the cold war between the u.s. information agency which actually did before. and the information operations campaign. at the end of the cold war we disbanded the agency and we haven't stood up and re-created it in a war that is primarily. so that failing is the single biggest u.s. government failing. the military i think has a

relatively small degree of responsibility for that. the current events in iraq demonstrate is likely to be i think. help me out with about as alien and because one way that i can read the news of the last several months that the united states spent years of dollars in us so that they were alone they left apart. much of the money was spent on the counterinsurgency and it was

money that wasted an awful lot of the actions including some actions my own limits took in al and bar in a free and oval or exacerbated the insurgency. so, on the macro scale the trillion dollars that we spend much of it was in fact wasted. the money that we spend raising the iraqi army allowed the united states to depart in 2011 with an iraq that was recently stable, reasonably democratic and the president of the united states and the vice president of the united states proclaimed at an american success story it seemed so very long ago. that's what they failed to do was having made that the enormous investment made the continuing investment in life insurance policy to rein in the sectarian influences of the iraqi government and continue to help standing up that iraqi

army. and my first book from that rebellion committees are long, slow, unsatisfying but let us remember that after the second war the second world war to the good for, we still have american troops in germany, italy and japan and troops in korea. we don't have the troops in vietnam because we lost that one although they love to stationed aircraft carrier right now. we have american troops in bosnia and when it was important enough, when the issue was important enough for the united states. they continue to leave a few of them there to keep everything pointed in the right direction. it's something they have to do to prevent a third iraq or in my lifetime which is what we are seeing now.

[applause] >> i want to ask one other question and then i'm going to go to your questions in the audience. i'm glad that you are here and you can help us added to the discussion. it has to do with an anecdote you tell in the book and it's a history that perhaps others know but i do not know. in 2004, four of the military contractors were captured in falluja. they were horribly mangled and they were hung from a bridge. the question was how the u.s. military should respond. you write that the commander in the area at the time, general jim maddox wanted to go in a particular way that he was told to go in another way. what happened? >> so, probably the greatest general in our generation was in the first marine division commander of the first remarkable man. he made a model of the first marine division. no better friend, no worse

enemy, first do no harm. and so when you have a marine to start that understands that you can do damage while conducting military operations and be counterproductive, that you've got a remarkable man which he is and there is a reason that they worked together on the army and the marine corps counterinsurgency field manual, not the way that we usually come in because they fight the same enemy and same places at the same time often on the same ground it doesn't mean that they talk to each other about how to do it. [laughter] so the fact it's pretty good work there. what he wanted to do is practice the counterinsurgency. he wanted to gather intelligence on who the individuals were, who killed the contractors and been fairly precise raids to bring those people to justice. he was told that that was not an option and was told to assault falluja with everything the

marine corps had. .. appropriately livid. so much of that first part of the war, from 2003 until

2007 is encapsulated by that. there were people who knew how to do it differently but could not get their voices heard. >> i wonder if there is lesson here. you were talking earlier about not using enough force, enough resources. >> and we have over swung the pendulum. an overreliance on military force. the obama the obama administration, and under alliance. the good news is the bush administration corrected in its final two years. the best individual signaling of that was bob gates. i am extremely hopeful as we spend lots of time talking that we do what is required to defeat isis in iraq and that we learn from this and

make different choices in afghanistan so we don't have to fight a third afghan war in my lifetime. >> let me invite your questions on that cheerful note, and i ask you what i call on you if you would stand and give your name. yes. >> yes. steve, yes. steve, you asked john about the battle for ideas. i am wondering, in terms of cultural lack of understanding of the american political establishment and specifically as an example the need to get a status of forces agreement for example in a iraq were publicly the predication was, we don't want one. it it is not domestically palatable for iraqis to say we want americans to stay. how does that play out in

the future? >> the question is about the status of forces agreement, which is one of the sticking points. the americans insisted on a parliamentary agreement rather than just a signature from the prime minister. i would ask any american how easy it is for our president to get a treaty through congress. as we contemplate what it is we are asking the iraqi people to do, having had their government overthrown, having been occupied by a very large, violent force

that improved over time but in the early years was pretty flagrantly brutal, asking representatives to sign up and asked for that forced to stay i think is an unrealistic expectation. we somehow managed to put advisors in there today without the status of forces agreement. the good news, and there is sometimes comparatively good news, the afghan people very much want american forces to stay. afghanistan, all war that is not talked about as much as it should be, enormously difficult, but one but one that has seen extraordinary improvements in the quality of life for the afghan people, particularly the women of afghanistan. politicians will say very publicly not just that they want american forces to stay , but that it would be extremely irresponsible for the united states to do

otherwise, something i agree with. >> other questions. in the red there, ma'am. go right ahead. go right ahead. wait for the microphone. do that so that the folks on c-span can here you. >> megan doherty. you mentioned the deficiencies and outright failures, what are the responsibilities of our allies and more importantly, the iraqi army? >> fair question. early in my career i studied nato. i wrote my senior thesis at west point. as supreme headquarters, allied powers europe. and so i have some sense of nato and how it works, but our partners are not needing

-- are not meeting the requirements agreed upon. very close allies like britain, a country i love dearly, a country where i spent four of the happiest years of my life is essentially taking itself off the table as a great power, unable to project power internationally as a result of the choices it has made economically. and so i think our allies are willing to follow, if we lead, but have a very limited capability to do so in most cases. turkey has an enormous capability to intervene, but for political reasons of its own it is not willing to do so. the iraqi army has lost --

it is easy to.out the mistakes of the iraqi army, iraqi allies,, but they have paid an enormous cost in blood. the stories of there fight against isis have been heartbreaking. most importantly without their commanders. commanders had been appointed by prime minister malki he fired capable, competent commanders. he is paying the price for that now. and so for all of the failings of the iraqi army, i have seen in enormous courage. and i believe with american advisers, american support,

more focused american air power they could achieve great things. >> somebody from this side of the room. right over there, sir. no, it's good. >> a quick two-part question. question. do you see parallels between what is happening in iraq now and the spanish-american war? we ended up with this country called the philippines. and we ended up with a ten year insurgency against muslim rebels in the unexpected aftereffect. that is the the first part. second, there is a book written by the british commander of the arab legion in jordan after they gained their independence. in his book he wrote that an

arab country is easy to conquer and impossible to occupy. anything we have have learned since you wrote that in the 1950s? >> as a fellow military historian, i think there is more continuity and discontinuity in military history. the successful counterinsurgency campaign that followed. in fact, almost unarguably you have to go back to the philippine insurrection before the best example of an army led counterinsurgency campaign prior to the one in iraq. so i think that their are interesting historical parallels. wrote a wonderful collection

, a book that compiled case studies of successful counterinsurgency and found successful practices travel in packs. there are practices that work. we should all study that history as much as we study napoleon. it is much more likely to be relevant. the problem of holding an arab country is enormously difficult. my own favorite insurgent was able to accomplish great things as an insurgent because the middle east arab countries are so hard to hold. my hope is that isis is about to find that out. i think they have overreached. our friends released a study comparing the current air war over iraq and syria to

the war over serbia. the the average number of daily attacks in the score is seven. over serbia it was 120. so we literally have not yet begun to fight. i hope that we start soon. >> right. >> right here on the aisle in the blue shirt. >> president of international stability operation association. my association. my question is about libya, another splendid war. as this one of those times that maybe we are not using enough military power? >> livia was an example of a war that i think the united states should not have involved itself in. in. in the last chapter of the book i make an argument for a strong a strong capability

to conduct stability operations and counterinsurgency. i believe it is an essential tool. the us government as a whole i then say that i think it is a tool that should be used very rarely and propose fairly strict rules governing american intervention and conflicts. i do not believe the humanitarian crisis in libya had risen to a level of genocide. i i do not believe that the rebellion in libya had affected american vital national interest, interest, and so i disapprove of the decision to intervene, but in particular i disapprove of intervening without having any plan for what followed. so. so saint augustine taught us that the purpose of a war is

to build a better piece. don't fight the war if you don't have a plan to build a better piece that follows, and if you do not understand that is a generational task that we will require american boots on the ground for a generation, sometimes it is worth it. brutally attacked from afghanistan by al qaeda, and the taliban will not hand him over, then you have a responsibility to overthrow it and a responsibility to create a better country their, but that is the only war of the 21st century that i believe was necessary until now this third war in iraq. >> lets go way -- i'm just hunting -- way in the back. the gentleman standing there. >> thank you for being here. i am the marine fellow at

cna as this year. >> who rock. >> who rock. >> i am curious on your thoughts as to how adequately positioned our services are going forward for the long term to train and educate our forces so that we are not writing the next field manual during the next conflict, and if you think that their are changes that should happen, what those would be. >> in what has been an overwhelmingly negative talk , let me say another good thing. your service, the marine corps, has done has done something interesting. it is requiring every marine to be assigned a a foreign language and to work on that foreign-language throughout that marine's career. i

believe they provided proficiency pay. i. i think that is an enormously wise investment. my army is making a good decision. i was able to get my phd at oxford and preparation for a teaching assignment. the army has created a number of strategic fellows who study subjects like counterinsurgency's. a number of my friends. a former military fellow who is now engaged. we are making some good investments, relatively inexpensive, long-term, high return investments. the bad news is the danger and the damage being done by sequestration to the military forces. and sequestration was intentionally designed to be so stupid that no member of

congress would ever allow it to happen. they would do their jobs and make tough calls about taxes and spending, and they would be forced to buy this gun that they held against there own heads. unfortunately congress really is that dumb, and they pulled the trigger. the people who have been hurt by her largely department of defense, the biggest share of the budget, the biggest share of the cuts, but we are cutting ground forces to a level that i believe is dangerous given the world that we are living in. >> you write in this memoir about the importance of arabic speakers that you served with. why don't you explain it to people. what difference does it make >> you are operating not

just blind, but death and down in a roomful of people who are trying to kill you who are occasionally succeeding. and so the failures of the united states to properly harness of our greatest strengths as a nation, and i will quote that classic of strategic thought, bill murray, some of you we will remember, we are americans. our ancestors were kicked out of every decent country in the world. this country with linguists, people who understand the cultures of the places we are working in and have not adequately harnessed that resource. every platoon operating in a counterinsurgency campaign needs to interpreters full-time living with them. i had at best a half a dozen for a task force of 700 people. they were by far my most

precious resource. i would have traded an entire platoon. and we have not taken that problem seriously enough. we better at it over time. one of the fights i fought at the pentagon trying to put energy into the system. they were a combat multiplier. we should be teaching everyone who works in foreign policy of foreign-language. a foreign language, a foreign culture, so that they are able to understand there is something different in the way that the united states operates and then we should be taking advantage

of the native speakers. particularly those who are into math, science, and engineering degrees. appmack. >> go. [applauding] >> go ahead. i will applaud that. ten more minutes. we we can take a couple more questions write. right year, ma'am. in the white shirt. go ahead. there should be microphone throwing skills that are learned. >> then i would need microphone catching skills. you may have seen the new york times reported earlier this week saying that pres. obama instructed the cia to do a longitudinal historical case study to see when the us has supported foreign

insurgencies and if that had been successful. the conclusion allegedly was that this had not been a successful practice with a marginal increase if their were some boots or advisors on the ground which was influential in informing pres. obama's reluctance to support the syrian opposition. what is your reaction? do you think they get the history ron? >> the question, we ran cna as to.out together. wonderful to have so many veterans and alumni here in the room. thank you for your service, keeping us if not on the straight and narrow, at least out of jail. the the cia report, i think, was correctly cautionary. the question is whether a sod was bad enough that it was an us vital national interests to attempt to overthrow him, and we had, i

believe, a window of opportunity when the assessment of professionals i respect very highly, probably as good a national a national security team of any party as we have ever had. phenomenal team who looked at the cost and benefits, the likelihood, and made the assessment. and these are high risk operations. they do they do not often succeed. the more support you put behind them the more likely they are to succeed. it succeed. it is a question of how important this objective is end even if it is loafers on the ground, cia agents, but have a degree of plausible

deniability that soldiers do not. i i do not disagree that this was a high risk option. i i did believe that it was a risk worth taking at the time. i continue to believe that had we done so and in particular had we done so while maintaining a much more capable presence we would not be in the mess we are today, but these are hard choices. it is, and i said earlier, this is not as clear a case for me by any means as was the decision to pull all american troops out of iraq at the end of 2011. that i am comfortable calling a mistake. >> a public study by a couple of academics published earlier this year finding peaceful uprisings

far more successful than violent uprisings. it does seem like the odds would be long. >> i think that is accurate. i also think it is an important subjects to be studying because for many reasons we're likely to see far more over the last 50 years then over the last decade. the uprisings of the so-called arab spring are not a coincidence. the power of information technology to allow people to peaceably assemble against the government. and they and they provide an ability for people to understand more easily how bad their governments are. and so i predict, as climate change continues, as

population pressure continues to increase, resource scarcity continues to rear its ugly head, we are going to continue to see uprisings, violent and nonviolent. in some cases we will want them to succeed, as against a sod. in other cases we want them to fail. and so it is incredibly important that we learn the lessons of the last decade of war,, that we not intentionally burn the books about counterinsurgency after we did in vietnam and that we make more careful choices about when it is in america's interest.

>> i jokingly asked or referred at the beginning to the fact that you had counterinsurgency training. as running a school taught you anything more than you knew before about counterinsurgency? >> a great question. has it ever. [laughter] i i have the privilege of running a boys school, junior kindergarten. one of my lineman is 308 pounds and is likely to go. the boys have a wonderful brotherhood, and they call it that, composed of the long bonds they long bonds they have formed over literally 13 years.

the most important institutional affiliation of their lives. that brotherhood or brother code can be enormously powerful if used for good, but it can also be used for nefarious purposes. and so one of the things i am working with with the boys is, i pick a virtue. virtue. every year we have a wonderful walk of virtues. my my last year was respect. this year it's courage. i have asked by boys to have the courage to speak up, even if it means reporting one of your brothers. and the business of raising children, and my focus is

raising boys is enormously difficult. far harder. and so i have enormous respect for the challenges that they face, i am hopeful i can use my understanding of tribal relationships to help them use their superpowers for good. >> i knew you would have a good answer to that question you will be able to mob them afterwards. before we do, there is a bracelet on your wrist. he want to explain what it is and what it means? >> i do. i had the privilege to serve in iraq with a remarkable group of young men and women

literally could the literally could not have done the last 15 years without them. it was a tank battalion. names of men who fell during a counterinsurgency campaign and those young men died doing what there country asked them to do. their. their country, i don't think had fully thought through what it wanted them to do, certainly had not prepared them to do what we wanted them to do but made heroic efforts. and i wear this on occasions like this to remind me of them and to feel it enormously fortunate to be able to be a voice for them and to remind audiences

composed of people like you, mostly national security folks, to remember those young men who pay the prices for the mistakes that our government makes and to remember to take care, as our greatest wartime president said, the widow and the orphan. we all have an enormous responsibility, having sent them to war, having asked them to do something for us, us, to take care of them when they come home. [applauding] >> the book is "knife fights". [applauding] >> sold out, but it is on amazon. >> at politics and prose tomorrow night at seven 7:00 o'clock. >> thank you. thank you for your qu