fairfax but . n >> first and my far right is the "newsweek" and middle east editor and contributing editor at "vanity fair" at

the start of her career she cover the first palestinian and since then fifth, i had the 87 y said the '90s . n [laughter] n since then she has reported on complex wrote the mill east and beyond. n her latest book the morning that came for rushy chronicles though warwick is syria using seven different perspectives of a ravaged nation as experienced by citizens. n -- may a doctor in physician and student conveying the realities of modern urban warfare, to the herb return of vanquished diseases such as typhus and polio, next to her is the chief foreign correspondent for the sunday times. n her

introduction also cave in the late '80s but in pakistan and afghanistan. n has taken her far and wide to brazil, a south africa, and zimbabwe, iraq, but since mid 11 she has been quite a bit of time in afghanistan she co-wrote curve book with of nobel peace prize winner and her new book highlights the errors and miscalculations made by united states did allies with the war in of industry and it argues that the world has been more, not less dangerous since the 11. n hour but the taliban shuffle served as the basis

>> defense and chronicle the kidnapping and then poured into those held captive in their home in cleveland by aerial castro please join me to welcome our panel n [applause] n . n >> i really

feel that i count having dinner that is impossible to do justice but we will sure have fun trying with a great newsmen of our time and that is a testament to all the work you have done and so first, before we get into other things how did this happen? n others what to do facebook why did you go to war? n . n >> i never wanted to be a journalist was an academic and was doing my master's

degree of compared literature so completely different a wanted to be as a professor and write novels and one day i saw a photograph of the israeli soldier carrying a palestinian soldier all live in the article was about human rights of a jewish holocaust survivor that was one of the few that are ending a military court, it was providence she took be under her wing and i feel that i could never go back again and i couldn't finish my ph.d., she said if you have the ability to give a voice to people that do not have a voice then you have an obligation and i was haunted by injustice that i

could have some type of impact to do this then the war on bosnia came in and that wusses all whole other scenario that opened for my colleagues a and i . n >> did you grow up knowing we would end up doing? n . n >> no. n i say to be a war correspondent i wanted to have the venture's but basically i became a war correspondent after i left to the university of with to be an internet "the financial times" in london. n index last-minute one politician could not go so

why did you go? n so that was then it's your -- and she was living in exile at that time. n so then she announced her a engagement that day so the apartment was full of flowers me gone very well she was very charming for a correspondent . n she went back to pakistan i went back to work with the tv company and one day came home from work and there was a piece of gold escribe imitation on my door mat and it was an invitation to her wedding. n so of course, i went. n it

was the most amazing introduction it was like out of arabian nights very colorful, and each evening after the ceremonial yvette there were questions of all her colleagues who were tortured and imprisoned the biggest thing i ever had to do was find my way home, so i was fascinated to say i would go live in pakistan. n they said year not interested nothing will change. n but we are interested in afghanistan so they cover that so at the time i agreed there was a

man uses his car back to france until the cat was a great loss speemac a bed with don to many other places but your story is equally different of how you got an? n speemac ever since the ticket journalism class i thought what a great, and the whole idea i could get a class to pull my friends out and ask questions alien writes about it seems like the greatest job in the world i never thought about being a foreign correspondent as we didn't travel anywhere the degree of the richest person in the world really staid local to wyoming and montana after 9/11 and that "the chicago tribune" the others

were volunteering to go then i felt not that i wanted to be a correspondent to see if i cover the big story in the world i didn't know i would end up falling in love with it and stayed so long but i did volunteer to go overseas whenever they would send more women because we went with a female friend we both wanted to cover teeeleven so we counted the number of men said doubt and when it was seventy men and one woman. n and wanted to prove a woman could do it. n alleged to distinguish myself i heard there were looking to send more women if they don't speak any foreign languages, had not been to europe but i went in with the biggest argument i had that i introduce myself i in the

metro reporter, i'm single and childless and therefore i expendable . n [laughter] n i did say that he laughed is that i will go in the we are you want to send meet he said pakistan i called my parents and they said no you are not why would anybody said you to pakistan quex it turns out they were wrong and i will formants letterhead speemac and i was said to tokyo i called my mother the was the '90s my mother said what did you do wrong quex . n [laughter] n this is something that kim wrote in her book you can get a flavor for she writes. n afghanistan fell more like home his themes familiar with big sky's and pickup

trucks to in haiti for the government . n [laughter] n it was like montana just a different drug so go back for a second at one point she talks of the book and the phone rings how do you balance these be headings quex . n [laughter] n speemac this says sohn sees thank you ask me the hardest question speemac any journalist and emergency room doctor anybody hasted go through a trauma you use dark comedy to deal with

horrible things just because you are in a war zone does it mean to stop living your life is the laughter is a healer to bring people together is a i guess because my dad brought be up watching mashed. n we didn't go to church every week we had to watch mash and i hate that show . n [laughter] n it only lasted a couple of years but the show lasted 25 the think one of the first authors that i read it i absorb the whole idea of dark comedy to talk about what happened over there and they're used to be a tradition until there was no more draft then once that stopped now that nobody knows somebody who goes to

work, you cannot make jokes of how people really live. n it is full of reverence with the idea of war with everybody fighting all the time is not factual. n >> you could picture yourself there been giving also much of yourself of course, the movie was just made what is tsa like quex. n >> she is serious. n i am funnier . n [laughter] n by &m kidding. n i didn't spend a lot of time with her before they would film the movie solely to of time it inhabit them the others take a character to make it their own so we just had a long lead to a i remember

completing really we talk about high heels and i was proud of myself for the life of rijeka not tell -- remember the story i said something that made her laugh and i don't remember what it was. n i've set she was kind, during the whole process, every single time she was on a late night show should mention my name in my book by the original title so the publisher was seeking you would have her face on the cover but it would be called the taliban shuffle but because they mentioned is so much that was illegal so much so i cannot say enough nice things about her she has been incredibly generous and very much a supporter of women and i have benefited from that of his dignity used to be there or not that the the war

correspondents? and now quite a few other people to also. n so it is very different talk about being a woman in a war zone. n >> there were very few women they were not very friendly to other women because it was so competitive and driven there was a great sense of competition. n it is radically change but i have to ask the question over and over two men and women report different ways? i am a human rights reporter i go into the field to spend a lot of time with people of a certain story, i am a

terrible scoop or sensational reporter i am not a good to find the mother. n but i need to spend a long time. n and that was my generation in vietnam and a small group of us were very committed to affecting policy and we would not let said genocide happen here so we worse start we did enough food or water but we did something and very proud of everyone in that war that covered it feels that it change their lives forever. n that is why

what to drive told syria. n and it must be stopped but now i live in paris and coming to america i ebony's how little attention is getting. n and the only pediatrician was killed and the bravest people in the world five of them were killed. n those that deliver the babies was killed in europe traditionally i do understand that but but then

there was a genocide ended is happening now with those indelible images. n so do women bring something to correspondence you would not get otherwise? there is talk how women are different at the peacemaking table is there reason read the diversity?. n >> yes i do think they are quite different if think that males think more of the actual buying bank fighting

and i can tell us the difference between incoming and outgoing head but i cannot tell you very well what type of weapons so those who are living the war with you see syria or places sunny day everything is fighting there are millions of people trying to educate their children and feed them and protect them and generally they tend to be the women i have spent most of my career in the least it is impossible to go into the women's quarters as a lot of my male colleagues are not speemac in some places like

the coffee shop the women are on one side they are not cut off, all clearly it is an upside in the muslim countries are there downsize? speemac i have never reported as a man . n [laughter] n is hard to say what is different . n [laughter] n there are downsides with the personal life over there you have to be careful what you are doing in there has been books written like emergency sex . n [laughter] n ted you couldn't live like that as a woman you had to be careful speemac as a follow-up

speemac is a book nothing that actually happened is a book that came out but i was saying that a woman has to be protective of your reputation as you had to be careful you were going out with, what time you're coming home working with afghans you had to make sure they wanted to protect their for you almost had an obligation to refuse the idea to be a western loose woman. n becky that bin pakistan, india, and all of us the things you are friendly did you get some calls in the middle of the night you cannot turn off because your editors may call their colleague during ramadan i love you . n [laughter] n use say thanks but i need some sleep so

irritation is like that and i write about the fact i am five foot ten inches i got so irritated every start punching them and that was dangerous obviously. n my photographer would get in trouble, i don't like that , they did not like the punch . n [laughter] n then there is all of this stuff is funny because i read about all this in the book by the bls similar experiences after the book came out this guy pont twitter says it is a professional because all that was probably of the

record-holder federal dq are allowed i think that is on the record and i also feel that writing about that shows billable of i will pretend to be a religious man in public but behind the scenes i think it is okay speemac everybody says the difference between men and women when they try to say cover women in -- orphanages and hospitals i am not interested in guns but i have done a lot of military work, but the moment that changes for me personally is what i had a child, that drew the line completely because i knew my male colleagues have children someone say that you are entering weevil read bedtime

stories by satellite phone but fifth it is a risk to say this but for a limited is very different we kerry and give birth there is an extraordinary bond i will never forget when my son was six months old my old paper which is not the most sensitive paper in the role to women my editor deliberately ; &e -- said the back to my rack -- iraq . .

and i heard him on the phone cackling to some of his friends saying she lost her nerve now that she had a baby. i remember getting on the phone calling my husban husband cryind crying and saying isn't that a good thing that lost her nerve and you are afraid? you can't be the last person. you've got to kind of feel it. >> after you had your baby, what changed? >> it was personal because i very much felt before that i had worked in africa for years and years and i was happy with the militia in sierra leone and

spend months and months putting myself at great risk. i suddenly got afraid. i really believe in what i do and it's hugely important there are reporters that bear witness to atrocities and human rights violations. without us and without our eyes and ears on the ground, we don't get a view or window into what's happening. do you know what's happening right now? you don't and i felt in some way i had to make this and it's been hard i can't say that it's been

easy. >> you balance work and life. it's one thing to balance work of life when you are an insurance person in pittsburgh. if you try to manage risk going about the world's most dangerous place which all of you have been repeated, how do you balance? >> it's very difficult. if you are a mother you have to think about that first. so i didn't go to places where i know so one of the things you learn about this job is that. it's actually very difficult to

plan this. we see these days you can be blown up in brussels and paris anyway. so, it is i think difficult to balance. since i've become a mother, i am much more careful where i go. it's very hard to live with th that. in the war zones people are trying to keep their family together because they are so impressive. when in trying to in the middle of the war.

>> they were in very dangerous places yesterday with their friends. so how did you feel -- spinnaker i was a chicken. i didn't need to have a kid to value my life. you somehow change as if your life wasn't imported before that. and like how important is your life? >> i have parents and more importantly a fixer and age are right for. for me after what happened when his head was cut off after they were kidnapped, they were kidnapped by the taliban and they were released and left behind and he was killed. we don't need to do those things if you feel like they are

dangerous. i am going to go out in the middle of the countryside and me to tell them. they are great and probably better reporters and im. i was happy to give the jail and meats that have a band who had just been arrested because he had been arrested. i was happy to have them come to me because there was a string of times where he would get kidnapped. >> is a case-by-case thing that we all have to deal with. and it's a good point. if the story is the same you can talk about is tha it but if youo be an eyewitness as we will talk about in a minute -- spinet different things triggered how

you got there and i want to read a passage from the book that is towards the end of her book is called the war never leaves you. november, 2014 of course in the end, i went back. i missed afghanistan with a yearning i couldn't explain. i had an adorable house in washington with a rocking chair on the porch and a white picket fence where a school bus came to collect my son just like in the movies and i had a great job and wonderful songs that par sons be was somewhere else entirely dreaming. if i drove through the park with my roof down and it reminded me of the mountains. i had a wardrobe shelves piled

with scarves and bright colors like much into and peacock blue each one with a memory. he went on from there about how you had to go back because it was always you missed sitting drinking green tea and listening to the fantastic stories. i never remembered the bad par parts. we knew and you kept going back. >> it is not a story. you know the people there you know what's happening and you want people to know about it. one of the things i feel very angry about at the moment is the

way people are accepting that the war in afghanistan is over because we declared it over a couple of years ago. in fact, more people were killed in afghanistan and what makes me more angry is you remember when the taliban were toppled to the discussion was now are we going to make women free. laura bush and people gave radio addresses and talked about it. actually, we encouraged women in afghanistan. it's a thing they otherwise wouldn't have ran for office and become security guard giving the sort of things which is good. now we have left those people behind. i think we have a moral

responsibility to do something about that. so, i feel really passionately that we shouldn't forget. >> there's a responsibility to let them know. it was touched bi was touched be passage in the book when my son was born after the occupation of iraq i was unable to cut his nails. it was visceral rather than emotional reaction. i would pick up the scissors and look at his translucent fingers and feel as though i had a vision of a man i knew who had no fingernails. then it goes on at length about this man that used to come into the office and then tortured in all his fingernails taken off and how every type of the baby and it's incredible.

you met these people, stayed close to them and wrote for a -- horrific things. are you going to go back? >> i feel committed to it. i find them absolutely horrific. i do have friends that but i wd say are addicted. they like the fact that they are taken out of their ordinary day to day lives or we have to pay bills and drive kids to school.

you have one war that he fall in love with and the rest is responsibility. bosnia did that to me and i did feel very committed to it in the way that the people i spend so much time with and a lot of what i do is i write about human rights violations, so rape and torture which is hard to report and the only way you can do it is by spending huge amounts of time gaining their trust to get a quick story. i spent months in post above and i worked with the human rights watch so we did a quantitative research gathering data.

i once learned if someone ever gets hit by shrapnel. you have to stanch and sustain it and i feel when i'm interviewing somebody that's been deeply traumatized you just have to sit and wait and listen and gradually the story emerges where they might not want to talk to you. >> dot story that he wrote it to go in the basement it took years before the youngest would start talking. >> we have somebody here in the front.

you mentioned others referred to it for a reaction to your stories and the change that could affect or not in bosnia before it forced the world to act is that what it is a huge incident like that or is that reporting being ignored until that moment occurs? >> it's a good question. either intended or not. bosnia and rwanda it was a kind of empathy and compassion. we have a different administration right now and i think most of us do right to affect policy in some way. that's the role is to shine light in the darkest corners but

whether we can reach policymakers is beyond us but that's our goal to get the resolutions made and to be honored in the transitional justice to have an accountability that is the main thing i work for. i don't want them to have immunity. i want them to end up getting justice served to them it was geared towards telling the public what was happening on the ground. and the war that we have to let even capitol hill or policymakers not listening to the public is. >> we had so many over the last few years in iraq and afghanistan people were immune

to this and it's difficult to actually shocked people anymore and i think that people are tired of it all and wish it would go away. frankly afghanistan and the uk gets almost no coverage now it's also become more dangerous to cover them. there've been changes since i started out. one is technology which made it easier so we can file for stories in the middle of the desert. when i started out i was going into afghanistan for weeks only being able to call back my stories when i went back to pakistan and even then there was no direct dialing.

it was quite a difficult thing to do and you have someone at the other end is saying is there more of this. the other side has become much harder to. it's something i never thought that i would say ten or 20 years ago. in the last ten or 15 years as we've been going through the war there's so much information out there and it's not like people feel like they have to read the entire "washington post" or sunday times they pick and choose what they want to read.

in europe and pakistan at the same time there were people complaining that no one was covering the bombing the same way they were covering those in europe. it turns out somebody studied the readership and nobody read the stories that were done about the bombings in pakistan because people don't care and i think that is the biggest challenge that we face right now is that people only want to read stores is that reinforce the political beliefs that cover areas that interest them added the way the newspapers used to be we are never going to get there and you will read everything. except for the woman in the front row that reads everything. [laughter] i actually lived there from 2009 to 2011; and is for you but i'm

interested. shall i repeat what i'm saying? i lived there from 2009 to 2011. and i was interested and i visited bosnia as well. i was interested if you could talk about the reaction going on at the time and if you see the reaction now as more a product of the racism or if this was a matter of geographic distance and that kind of separation. then equally what can be learned from postwar bosnia but looking ahead to a transition state whae what kind of lessons can we learn from back? >> i worked for the sunday times which at that point i was battling against princess diana and prince charles to get in the

paper. people are bored by this. remember r-romeo j-juliett in bosnia who ran away to get married and were killed on a bridge. he wasn't interested and of course it became the icon of sarajevo. it was a struggle and it was frustrating. but we felt like we were going to keep going and what i would do is they would send me from london and you were going to go for six weeks and i wouldn't come home. in those days there were not cell phones, so they couldn't find me. i would just disappear and go off and investigate the camps but it was hugely frustrating. the question of racism is so in arresting because while bosnia

was happening, we felt we were being ignored even though the sarajevo the rwanda genocide was breaking up in 1994. by that time they sent me there it started in april. and i think that one of the reasons that there was -- but it was not only covered properly but the genocide was allowed to continue his because there were so few journalists that could even get their. had they been there i don't think a million people that have been killed. it could have been halted. lessons learned, we should talk after the event because i wrote a thesis about the lessons learned to the syrian war. let's hope and pray they don't partition because we see what a disaster or bosnia is now 25 years after. it stopped the killing but it's

contributed to the rise of nationalism, sectarianism that never existed before but he can talk after that. >> i guess my question is how do you get to see what you want to see because the fact tha that there's thereis a bunch of repoa government tour it wasn't dangerous for them at all but how do you get to see both sides in the war without subjecting your self to huge personal risk? you can't ever see the war in general. like i was saying, years ago when you came back to write a story you were pretty well-informed. these days it's expected to write immediately and so you can

only report on where you are at that particular time and you don't know what's going on elsewhere. and in fact during the war in iraq i felt like i missed some of it by being there because everyone watched at home and had seen all these things on tv talking about this stuff. and i think it is dangerous when they try to generalize about places when actually they can't see much more than they are seeing. there's a big debate about the troops and whether that is the right thing to do. i used to be against doing that because i thought you should go bows and independent and what we would call unilateral. but actually, that's reporting on the country is true to part of the story and i think the important thing is to try to do both sides.

the same if you can go with the regime and see what they are showing the you can also go independently into the rebel held areas then you are getting a much more balanced picture. it's difficult to do that. i haven't done the unilateral stuff before and i didn't go on very much. i think i went on abc's stage or something like that over the five years i lived over there. for a week or two i felt like this guy said to me be sure to take your photographer with you.

they love it when you say your photographer because it implies your pet. seek your photographer when you go to the bathroom at night because there's only three when men on base. i said you're not going to send me anywhere if you think i'm going to face an issue on the base going to the bathroom at night. i talked to a lot of folks in the military when i would hang around them longer d longer to d women out on a more dangerous mission. would you send me out to the most dangerous area at that point? they said we might send you there but not on the more dangerous patrol. because we worry that and it's largely men in the military who will want to protect you as opposed to the reporters or photographers they feel like it's up to them if they are going to go. i felt like i got stories of

those that would take me -- tell me about about broken marriaged the fact they haven't seen their kids in so long and what it was like to have these constant employments. i wrote a story where they kept telling me they were not locked and loaded. they ended up getting moved to a dangerous place because of what they had told me. the main guy in my story ended up getting blown up in an explosion and i didn't find out until i came back. i wonder if i had known about that if it would have made me pull my punches more because that's a danger that you are going to do stories that you want the troops to like because you are with them so much. i try to make sure i'm going to do the story that i see here. i can't deny i found that out i

felt really horrible. >> what do you do about that and the consequences of reporting how do you deal with it? >> to get them to the regime ine which "the new york times" just did, initially in the beginning of the war i got five or six. it's really not dangerous the way it is to go on the other side through turkey or lebanon with the opposition. but you are incredibly paranoid. and when you are with the government minders or especially whenever you work in a regime, or i was just in iran or egypt last week there is a danger that you'll be taken away and put in prison were killed in a place where security services have absolutely no qualms about taking foreigners.

you are not in danger but it is quite. i've been the most distinct-in a long time and every e-mail. it was very unnerving. >> when she talks about taking a $100 taxi ride from beirut to damascus it is pretty close and you cross the border and everything changes and it gets pretty dangerous pretty quickly. pick a different kind of danger. >> all of these is amazing where we talk about in the news christina interviewed every single one's that is all that you have. then there is a wonderful personal touch and you know the way that you describe things and also to put your self in she's

talking about boyfriends calling and i would rather go to afghanistan. how do you take that? did you name him? >> we are still friends. i am supposed to come off unlikable and supposed to be the flyover america going into this country that it knew nothing about. i am supposed to come off as naïve and fergus' afghanistan but at a certain point it's the sense that i'm going to leave and going to get as much money as we can. who could blame him? splenectom >> do we have time for one more?

spinet you brought up joseph heller. when the pilots are talking to each other and one says i want to have a long life and the other one asks why and the answer is what else is there, i imagine that you know what there is, that there is no guarantee for a long life. so, for the three of you for that risk or the apathy of the editors have you ever thought about stopping it or thought about though, thi this isn't woh it anymore. there's something else to do. i might go back. i can see going back and i make the choice to stay here and it's a difficult choice to make because i miss being in afghanistan into pakistan and living in the middle of the story and having conversations s that night about the future of the countries and feeling like you've are actually seeing the country change and watching a

democracy get built. i miss that feeling. i decided to see if i could live normal. as normal as any journalist. i am a metro reporter. that's what i do. we will see how long it lasts but for right now, it's working. hispanic women of the arguments in my book i as we don't to end the war any more. i wish that we would end so we could go on holiday with our son. you asked if i ever thought of stopping. when i had my son and 99 i did think i was going to stop doing what i was doing. i write other books as well as this, so i thought we would research the book and we were

moved to portugal before september 11 to start writing this book and i often wondered if it hadn't been afghanistan would i have gone back if i didn't have the same kind of background but because it was my first story and i cared so much about it, there was no way i wasn't going to go back. >> i think about it every day and what else i could do. in 2014 i went to work for the un for a year because i spent my

entire career criticizing and going after the un and taking them to pieces. i thought i wanted to work for the agency which is the best on the crisis. i wanted to see from that perspective and gain more insight to go deeper into research. the year after that i was given a fellowship from the law and diplomacy from another degree of international law. if i'm going to spend my life i have to have a basis in the law which i gained i in a field i wanted to go deeper and i just graduated in march. i think all the time can i go work for a bank now, can i go work for morgan stanley, can i work for the british government, the state department? i'm no way addicted to being in the field, but i do feel like the have skills that we have

gained over the years that are important and they are vital. i think that we have something that we need to contribute. at the same time, we need to stay alive. i was there when it fell to the russian forces. it was the closest i have ever come. my husband at the time said to be the best journalist is the one that gets out alive to tell the story. and it's true we are worth absolutely nothing if we get killed or we are maimed. so it is the constant -- we are not insane or crazy. we have a role and i think that we do it well. martha did it until she was well into her 90s. i don't want to be in my 90s doing it but i think that we have -- there is something we do that is quite noble.

>> you wouldn't keep going to these places. a week ago i was at a wedding on the border between turkey and syria. all these people had terrible stories, didn't know when they would see their home again. they had fun that night. they made efforts to enjoy the wedding to show their children dancing and music and you could forget just for a few hours the misery of what was happening. one of the weirdest things that happened to me, she was a good friend of mine and i thought how is pakistan going to survive

this and people talk about pakistan breaking up. he said it's very grim, everything is bad. he said to me though, we have no discos. he said to me we don't have any discos. when you come back after all of these you kind of forget the low lows. the high is our superhigh and

then you are happy to just do the middle but it's never like it is when you are abroad. [inaudible] [inaudible] particularly among young men because you exemplify that come -- card lotter. >> i think it is very importantt that we stick up for each other.

she didn't find that because as it stands. >> as a correspondent and a mother is when other women attack you [inaudible] i wasn't mentor because there were not older women that supported me and i tried to make a then save that for becoming a journalist and i say absolutely. it's the greatest job in the world. i do think that there is solidarity, absolutely. >> the friends of mine before the movie was coming out.

is that based on me. we had some of these that help each other and we would make sure everybody was taking care of antaken care ofand you talk . you are sort of in this zone where you will be friends for life. we barely met each other over there but i think that we got off a similar answers. that's what i usually say between the different news organizations in different places people do that together and it's a great question about solidarity.

when you are out there in a way normally a tip disappears. why are we not paying attention to what's going on and he said there's so much of the conflict and it really kind of does and one of the reasons i was looking forward to that i think collectively the experiences are amazing. but for those of us are trying, there are so many different players and conflicts and the external players and saudi arabia it all seems pretty

hopeless. so i'm curious you said at the highs are the highs and the lows are the bows. what is your sense of this? >> it is incredibly complicated. i literally studied for 25 yea years. they try to put things on the maps to identify who's fighting who and there's a thousand on the opposition right now. russia and qatar and the saudi and iran and egypt. they do and.

they aren't going to go into a 17 year war it will eventually come to a head. we don't want t to export the 400,000 people dead. we had to wait until 199,528,000 men and boys were killed. they made a very tactical decision in 2013 that he didn't want to get engaged in the third middle eastern war because he was elected on a platform to get out and the policy has had a great cost and that was the rise of isis. they didn't come out of nowhere. it was the result of our own policy not paying enough

attention. if i saw them on the ground in 2012 why was the world so surprised when they finally fell we allowed at the compassio allo become fatigued and that is always a dangerous thing to become complacent. it's the truth and it's important. >> actually you can charge it back to afghanistan against the russians went out of focus was defeating them in the cold war and he didn't care how he did it. there were criminals that

encouraged them to come and fight because our enemy interest was defeating the russians and i think that is one of the things i find the hardest in the job you keep seeing the same mistakes being made over and over again and you feel like it and we ever learn. it's removing a regime that thes in the difficult without the military is but what do you do then to each one we haven't had a plan for what to do afterwards. i'm endlessly amazed at how people in the midst of all these difficult situations keep really focused on in particular trying

to educate their children. she is so inspiring for the sake of other children to go to school. it makes it all worth it. >> last word. i don't think that i could do this job if i didn't feel hope even for afghanistan. i would give an entire speech about how things are going in afghanistan and somebody will say shouldn't we just pull everybody home? i feel like what you were saying is the same. we do have a chance and there have been improvements. just the very fact of having cell phone coverage in afghanistan and having the internet and tv stations and the reality tv shows where they feel so empowered that they would do

the presentations this one woman on the international women's day, i watched her performance and you are the bravest we have ever seen so there are positive things happening. and i think you try to hold onto those. the idea that if we don't walk away and we give them stability enough for the next generation to take over would be the biggest mistake. we are looking around saying the world is falling apart. look years ago you can go back through generations, world war ii was no picnic. we happen to know more about it now because of the internet and all the news. there is hope in every place that you've are looking at. >> it is a long and complicated discussion of where america and britain and the western world does and what their obligations

are in afghanistan and pakistan. but tonight i thought was a very special nice to talk to three women to kind of look behind the news and the people. you have done an amazing job on fees three books. the book shake things up and the stories, i am grateful that tonight you kind of helped us to know who you are a little bit and why you do what you do. thank you. [applause]