that is following with british prime minister. blogger activist and talks about civic participation. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] ♪ >> this week on q&a, formate ambassador to afghanistan, iraq, and the united states, zalmay khalilzad. he discusses his men memoir, "the envoy: from kabul to the white house, my journey through a turbulent world." new book oute a and you talk about where you were on 9/11. what is the story? mr. khalilzad: i had been in the office with my colleagues.

i used to have a morning staff meeting in the white house. i was a special assistant to the president and senior director to the region that included afghanistan. , and my own staff meeting the first plane had hit the tower. i was on my way to the senior staff meeting that condoleezza the security advisor, shared. we thought that the plane had lost its way and hit the tower at the first attack with the first incident. then, when i was sitting to condoleezza's left in the staff what happened in the operation area of the white house, the situation room, somebody walked in and gave her a note that a second plane had hit the second tower. she closed the book and rush out -- rushed out. , andt back to my office

the world changed that day for me and for the united states. host: how long did it take them to figure out that you not only were born in afghanistan, you were a muslim and an authority on that part of the world? mr. khalilzad: it took them a few days because i have been so involved in government and foreign policy issues that who i was and my background at the state, a lot of people. that escape a lot of people. i remember at one point there was discussion of reaching out to the head of the northern alliance, and people did not know quite how to reach him, were reallytaliban, the alliance, but claimed it was the government in somewhere in northwestern afghanistan at most of these people were.

i said, "what you want me to call him?" the president said, you know how to reach the president of the northern alliance. i said, "yes, mr. president, i do. when i worked in the reagan administration, i was involved in a policy supporting the afghan resistance movements against the soviets. , and ione of the leaders dealt a lot with him. in fact, i brought him to the white house to see president bush. after he had succeeded president reagan at one point. i have his private phone number. that was a surprise. remember that during the christmas party, when i came to the presidents'christmas party, he introduced me to the

first lady, saying, this is the guy i have been talking to you about. all of the commanders in afghanistan were fighting the taliban and are in touch with him. he exaggerated my role. i think he was surprised. i was touched when one day, he our country is blessed. someone is looking after us, watching our back. to have someone of your background and knowledge and commitment to the united states is a message there there." i was very honored to hear that from him. host: you have the book, "the of the by in the back book you tell us that george bush suggested to you to write a memoir. why? mr. khalilzad: he used to 'sase me because the president

style of leadership was one that he selected the people, gave the , and thenroad mission relied heavily on that person and gave them the room to maneuver to achieve that objective. he always said that he wanted to know how i did some of the things that i did, and he would like to read that. condoleezza rice and others told me that, too, because there were some things we had to do in the initial days after 9/11 because of travel and meeting with people. they did not have all the details that were communicated. this would be one interesting memoir because i was doing

things where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. of in the theater, on the ground, dealing with a variety of interesting and sometimes unusual characters, a in thestories that are book about the characters and events that took place that have not been really a lot written on. host: i want to put on the screen some of your background so that people can know the different job that you had. you can see there that we go back to 1985. i will ask you about before them. special advisor to the under secretary of state for political affairs. deputy undersecretary of defense andpolicy planning, director of strategy, doctrine, and for structure at the rand corporation. were the u.s. ambassador to

afghanistan, iraq, and the united nations. of all those jobs, which one was a most interesting for you? mr. khalilzad: they were all interesting in their own ways. afghanistan was in some ways the most rewarding because i had been born there, and i had always paid attention to afghanistan even when i was hadg other things, and i afghans had done something huge in the 1980's, and they stood up to the soviet union, and they did something that a lot of very smart people who were studying the soviet union believed it would not happen, which is to push them out because the soviets had this

doctrine that once you go in, you don't need at that time. the soviet union disintegrated, which was a huge achievement, their archaeology got discredited. afghanistan may have contributed to that. but then, we abandon afghanistan -- abandoned afghanistan afterwards, and a lot of afghans that killed. there's it is not destroyed in a civil war that occurred. i thought about that given what we had done together. after 9/11, to have had the opportunity to go back and help afghanistan get a new constitution, get a new make progress, it was rewarding. initially, i was reluctant to accept the job. i said to the president when he asked me to do the president, i said, "remember, mr. president, i left there, and what did he do

to send me back? " and he said, why don't you go as a presidential envoy? i was a special presidential envoy right after 9/11 for afghanistan and then for iraq, and free iraqis. they reacted very well to me. .he afghans we did a lot. that was a relatively easy job. it was a rewarding job. i have enjoyed all my jobs and i have been grateful for the opportunity that i was given. hammad, andlike the current president, and names thed all these americans have learned over the years, how many of those folks did you know before all this happened? knew ililzad: well, i

-- the president of afghanistan. he and i came to america together in 1966. shockingthe most syrians of my life, still, probably given i have been in were zones and there have been attempts to kill me. the most shocking expanse was coming from afghanistan to the united states in new york. i had never left afghanistan and i had lived in a small town. a small town in northern afghanistan. city. to a cosmopolitan it was quite a small town, so 500,000. then to come to new york in the heat and the summer, humidity i had not been used to. afghanistan can get hot but it is dry heat. i did not have to use an air

conditioner, the hotel had its own air-conditioning unit. i did not know how to operate a , and i couldhtub not think the first night because of the heat, as i had not turned on the air conditioner, and then seeing new york is a vast city with all , and howeople and it america was, and i ended up saying and i ended up staying in a small town in northern california called ceres, your modesto. ashraf ghani went to college together at the university of beirut. myas teaching at columbia, first job after i got my phd from the university of chicago, he was doing his phd at columbia university. ashraf ghani i have known -- i have known ashraf ghani for well

over 40 years. host: you finish high school where? mr. khalilzad: i finished high school in ceres, california, in 1967. then i went back to afghanistan to get my bachelor. cculareate. it -- ba -- yourur next agree? next degree? from thelzad: university of beirut. i got a masters also from the american university in beirut in 1974. host: and then what? mr. khalilzad: a phd from the university of chicago in 1979. host: this man has tremendous connections. you won't recognize him. this is just a clip. it is the only one we could find what you look like and sounded like. it goes back to 1980.

he is deceased now. >> there are some parts of the world where a law -- america, andentral there are some parts of the world where we have similar common interests as in the persian gulf. of many allies have been recognized, there is sharing the risks as well as the burdens. it is really reasonable. host: who was he? albertlilzad: that is will stood. he is a great general. he was a professor at the university of chicago. i studied with albert will stood

. one encounter can make a huge .ifference in one's life you think getting good grades, studying hard, those are important. they are. sometimes, an event, an incident, and anticipated development can make a big difference in your life. made a bigstetter difference in my life. it was a second or third day at the university of chicago after school started. i was living in the international house and had developed relations with a couple of other colleagues who lived there. i was taking a class on comparative politics, but the professor just sister beaded the syllabus -- just distributed the

syllabus. he did not accept a full class for the entirety of the schedule. i was heading back to my dormitory, the international house, when i ran into my friend in the hall that i had met at the international house, and they say, quite a few come? toold him i was going back the dorm, and they said what you come listen to this professor? very unusual, they said, the course was called "classical and when he talks and about president kennedy, he refers to him as jack. he calls kissinger, henry. . man full of unusual stories you might enjoy just listening to him. so, i went in and said, "why not? " he wanted to talk about the

probability of nuclear war. he was talking about the theory -- theorists who believed that at any one point there was a fixed probability of war and added, so each year nuclear war ultimately becomes inevitable. i raise my hand and said, "professor, isn't there a fixed probability of increasing , and couldn't they apply the same logic and we would get permanent peace at some point?" and he asked me my name, and i told them who i was. and he said, "i want to talk with you after class." he said, you have to take my seminar. i told him i was not even taking his class. history, i took all

of his classes, and he had a big impact on me. i shifted my area of interest. i became a strategist, a nuclear strategist, and i worked with him. penurya company called six. uristics. i could not read my own work for a while until i acquired clearances. was a wohlstetter brilliant man who had made a big in the peace of the world by coming up with the concept of "second

strike." to maintain deterrence in the andear detergent between us the soviets. -- deterrence between us and the soviets. he worked on proliferation issues including visiting iran h, because he was concerned about the nuclear program of iran at that time. i learned a lot from him and his wife, roberta, who was a great scholar in her own right. she worked on terrorism. she had done something on the attack on pearl harbor about warning. host: another disciple of albert wohlstetter was paul wolfowitz. from -- this is from 2004. watch this. >> the early part of the book,

you dedicate your part of it to mr. wohlstetter, who was he? >> he was a great man, a dear friend. he was probably the single most significant influence on strategic thinking in this country in the postwar. . postwar period. he was at once, chairman of the research council at the rand corporation. he was a man trained in mathematics, logic, who was extraordinarily rigorous. he always asked the question, "is this true? " -- havewould he thought thought about what we did in afghanistan and iraq? time,alilzad: the first when i was working in the pentagon, kuwait happened. obviously successfully of kuwait.am out

i used to get a lot of calls from albert at the time. -- he was very persistent. when he became convinced that rankhing, he was not conscious. he would call anyone and everyone at all levels to keep pushing his point of view. time, that at that the united states should have pursued saddam, and brought about a change in iraq by enabling iraqis to overthrow saddam, but by helping them with not only arms, but with some u.s. air power effectively andoyed, he would call me

say i had to tell the , the secretary of defense, cheney, that they are blowing it. they needed to just go the route that he wanted, which is a combination of u.s. air power plus iraqis getting rid of saddam to solve this problem in an enduring way. you,ld say, let me advise albert, not to use the word that they are "blowing it," i will facilitate an appointment with you so -- with the secretary. the secretary and chairman,: powell, think they have achieved the biggest thing since the debacle. they have done a great achievement in terms of armed forces.am's

if you walk in there and tell them you have "blown it," they are not going to be very prescriptionyour of your ideas. what i told them you have achieved a lot, but you can do even better. , i am never going to tell them anything but what i have told you, that they are blowing an opportunity by stopping where they have stopped ." i am sure, would have been very critical of what we did in iraq, not in terms of the objective of overthrowing saddam, because he was a hostile , but how we did it, he would have asked a lot of questions, he would have been very rigorous in his questioning, and i suspect, he would have proposed a different strategy. you talk about telling

stories in this, and these are somewhat non sequiturs, but i want to get some of the story's one story i would like to have you tell is the time when maliki, the prime minister of iraq, they were going to hang saddam hussein. where were you? and what role did he play in a? -- play in it? mr. khalilzad: it was christmas time, and i have taken a few days off and left iraq. host: you were ambassador at the time? mr. khalilzad: as ambassador to iraq at that time, yes. person whol from the was our charge. ministerthat the prime had called her and wanted us to ton over saddam to them

enforce the judgment of the court, which was that he should be hanged. i was concerned about the timing, because the islamic with theon, along visit of muslims to mecca, it was eminent. i said, let me talk to maliki. i called him, i said, are you sure, mr. prime minister, that you want to do it that quickly, because the islamic gathering takes place and there is a time , to hang someone

at that time, usually, you part in as part of that festivity, and it is not the time that you -- youpeople, based paying people, based on islamic traditions. hang people based on islamic traditions. it is based on shia, based on the sunnis celebrating. he also said that they have information that the terrorists or extremists were going to take over a few schools to bargain for saddam. the sooner we dealt with this problem, the better. so, i said, "let me talk to my management in washington and get back to you, prime minister." waslked to dr. rice, who

the secretary of state, and stephen hadley, who was the national security advisor on the phone. we discussed that i pointed out to them the risks that i see in antagonizing the broader as at --ld, especially the sunnis the broader islam at world, especially the sunnis. theeeded iraq because of composition of iraq, because of the shia, but the sunnis as well, that it would make the task of reconciliation profitable. they, at the end, told me that we should defer to the prime minister of iraq, that he was -- thecountry was over and -- country was sovereign. he judges at the end that if he described to him the potential risks, and he wants to go ahead, let him do it.

i told the folks in baghdad to turn them over. just a turn over saddam, in other words. host: how long did it take to execute him? mr. khalilzad: a few hours. host: you are a sunni, and maliki is a shia. mr. khalilzad: right. host: what is the difference? i have asked that question to a lot of guests. no one has really defined difference between a sunni and shia. 97%, 98%, they are the same. the fundamental difference is who was the legitimate successor to the prophet. when the prophet died, mohammed, who should have succeeded him e -- the shiaev who was the ali,

son-in-law of the prophet, -- host: mohammed ali? mr. khalilzad: he was the first imam to the shia's, he was there to the prophet's daughter. tollett --s name alid.ge -- kh khalid.n of people around the prophet had appoint ato successor. ,he sunnis have the caliphate and i visit talking about .eestablishing the caliphate

the caliphate is essentially the ruler. that is what it means. caliphate means the state that has a caliph. so, that was the first offense that the shia think. ofy think he was a usurper the right successor to the prophet. and then, afterwards, there was mamsries of you moms -- i from the house of the profit. they think succession of the monarchy should happen within the house of the prophet. that is the fundamental fault line as to who is the ruler. now, a couple of other differences. ?ow do you pray there are some differences.

then, it became much more significant geopolitically once as thebraced shiaism with arabs and turks mostly adopting sunnism. some other differences are inheritance. in the sunni legal system, the daughter is not entitled to rights as thence son. she is.sm, that is why even some sunnis who have only daughters, in order to keep that wealth in the family, they become shiites so that

their doctors can get all of their wealth rather than some of it going to the other relatives, because they did not have a son. there are some minor differences, but the fact that islam is the last religion, the perfect religion, the last word of god to man, and wanted is the profit and the koran is -- pr ophet, and the koran. host: you married a non-muslim. take her last name to plano that. -- to explain all that. mr. khalilzad: this is to help the kids in their country, the khalilzadtes, because is not an easy name to pronounce. was a feminist, and she

thought that is not only is it right that they should have their mothers name, but also that it would make it easier for them. my last name being so hard to pronounce. enard.their last name is b the last story, the story of president joe biden. mr. khalilzad: i have two stories about the current vice president. when i was a special envoy in afghanistan, he came once. i was very impressed with him, number one, because the embassy was elementary at that time. we all slept on the floor. he had brought his own could be bad and slept on the floor like i did. host: in the embassy? mr. khalilzad: in the embassy, in the office. meetingday after his

that i did not go with him, he came back to tell me that he had caused me a huge problem, and i said, "what happened? " had questioned the interior minister of afghanistan with b-52 attacks. i said, what do you mean question marks he said, well, -- i said, what do you mean? said, the b-52s are still flying over afghanistan. the minister got very angry and he got up and walked out. my reading oft the constitution as senator does not put the senators in the chain of command for ordering attacks. he was saying he was very sorry. to fix thisill have

problem. mean?d, what do you i said, we're going to call the guy and visit him and you are going to fix this. he said, we can do that? i say, what you mean can we do that? we just liberated these people. i can call him. so, we did, and we went there, and he did a great job. the two of them made up. i left because i had an early morning meeting. they stayed on i think until the middle of the night to talk. again, youry is, know, we had very limited facilities in couple in those days. in those days. we had the long lines in the morning to use the facilities. , althought pull rank you could have to go ahead of the line. , in-line,nding

holding a towel. behind tookne from a photo of the back of his head, so he turns around, he says, what are you doing? itsi says, he is taking photo for his mother. and he said, how would she recognized me? so, he turned around and said, take the photo now. and the marine did, and he was very pleased. he said some colorful things president didice come for a visit, and he spent some time there. ast: all right, this is not serious policy issue, but you also talk in the book, when you are you and it ambassador, about staying -- when you are u.n. at thedor, about staying wall of a story of.

we as a country pay for the ambassador from the united states to the u.n. to stay at the waldorf. here is video from you in 2008, and your wife, in the u.n. apartment when you were the ambassador from abc and terry moran. it is an incredible part of ambassador's life. the apartment at the waldorf, which we toured with cal is odd, khalilzad and his wife. >> he can easily get that done. home, filledegant with american art and family treasures, prominently displayed, you find a memento of zalmay khalilzad's previous service. mr. khalilzad: that was a machine gun that belongs to saddam hussein.

they presented it to me as a token of their appreciation for my service in iraq. month, that0 per obviously got your attention. is it worth it for this country to spend that kind of money? mr. khalilzad: i would have preferred that we had taken a beautiful townhouse that is one of the wealthy, and new yorkers wanted to give to the united states to be used by the u.n. ambassador, but the state department, in its wisdom, rejected that, thinking the maintenance and security cost would be, perhaps, significant, but the u.n. secretary-general now lives in that townhouse that was offered to the u.s. it is quite expensive. reason heent, one said that i should take the u.n. job is that he referred to the

accommodation saying that his father had had that job and he used to go for weekends there at times, and the best he said to me is that they are quite comfortable. and they were. that when i was ambassador to afghanistan and iraq, my accommodations were not ambassadorial in afghanistan. i stayed in what we called a couple of containers put together. although there was some improvement, when i went to iraq, nothing like what ambassador of the united states in normal places is used to. so, that was one of the selling points of the president that this was a reward for my years of hardship in afghanistan and iraq. power doeskind of the united states ambassador an a place like afghanistan

and iraq? mr. khalilzad: quite considerable. when you are in a war zone and you have a lot of responsibility, the united states, with regard to the country, we have intelligence operatives there, we spend a lot of economic resources, and that we spend, we have a role in facilitating agreements, for example in both iraq and afghanistan. i helped both countries with their constitutions, being sort of facilitator for the agreement on key issues among iraqis were afghans. your influences considerable. heads of state of government are very anxious to meet of you when you ask for a meeting or if you don't ask for a meeting, they summon you a lot. since you have a lot of resources, people are always pleading with you for help, financial, to deal with problems that they face. you also have a lot of

know what isso you really going on through collective intelligence or people that work with us or for us. situations, in war zones where we have forces there , the american ambassador have an influential job. host: you talk, back in your book, you talk about a man that was assassinated. ine is some video from 2001, a documentary from the national geographic, where you suggest that had a major impact on what was going on over in afghanistan. let us watch. >> my message to president bush is the following. not interested in peace in afghanistan, if you does not help the afghan people to arrive at their objective of peace, then the americans and the rest of the world will have to face

the problems. host: how important was he to this story? mr. khalilzad: very important. he was resisting the taliban in afghanistan. and he had worked against the soviets during the soviet occupation. host: their occupation was 1979 to 1989? mr. khalilzad: yes. there's a period of civil war in a while where he was government. when the taliban took over cabo, he had to go to the mountains in the north. the taliban allied themselves with al qaeda, and al qaeda became kind of a sponsor of the taliban, provided financial, to they assistance

taliban, and the taliban allowed al qaeda to operate and plan and recruit and train on its territory. just a couple of days before two people of moroccan, north african region, that had belgian passports, this was recently in the news, because of terrorist attacks there. the extremist presence in brussels has deep roots and has been going on for a long time. these two belgians, how sport holders, pretending -- passport holders, pretending to be journalists and wanting to interview massoud, but wanting qaeda, blew my food and themselves up. this was a favor that al qaeda was doing for the taliban.

it was an exchange for what they must have known that al qaeda leadership was coming, which was an attack on the united states. by doing this favor, they had hoped that in the coming crisis, the taliban will not abandon them. it given this huge favor, they wanted to get rid of the opposition to the taliban that existed. in fact, the taliban did not turn over al qaeda and osama bin -- at 9/11, when president bush gave them the opportunity. you referred, earlier in our conversation, about you are threatened. it's a major to kill you question like -- somebody tried to kill you? mr. khalilzad: quite a few times. intel about this

or that plot, but one time, the afghan authorities arrested a group near where i was toward , that had my tenure come across the border from pakistan to assassinate . one other tim -- to assassinate me. one other time, that i thought the end had, was in a rock. -- i was in iraq. facility inilitary tikrit, saddam's birthplace. it sounded like a rocket had been fired towards us. knew, general i case he was on top of me, and he had put himself at risk to protect me. i joked afterwards, no one can

say that military operations are not excellent in iraq. there is also several attempts, i don't know whether it was specifically focused on me, the in baghdad. i had excellent security. i did not live in fear. but of course, being in a war zone, flying around, driving around, i did not want to be locked up in the embassy. there were risks, but i understood the risks. we took the appropriate security measures. host: we have lost 6877 americans in afghanistan and in iraq. here is some criticism of the whole event by a fellow named joby warrick. i say this he get some background on somebody who disagreed with some of the stuff we did. this recorded -- this was

recorded back in 2015. that thengly believe iraq invasion was the original sin. not the invasion itself, which give the jihadists the cause that they wanted. they predicted the fight would take place in iraq and was ready for the americans were read and 20 -- in 2003. anybody was a professional inside iraq in the early 2000 had to be a member of the party. he dismantled the armed forces. there was plenty of iraqis that would've thought the americans anyway. he was able to melt this religion extremism -- religious extremism. those people, the start of that movement, 2004, 2006, that is isis today. host: you were in government in 1991 with begich-year-old --desert shield?

mr. khalilzad: i was. have what impact did you on the 2003 invasion? well, i think he had some good points, particularly, whatever you think --when he invaded or not whether we should have invaded or not, and in the context of the time, there was universal --ief that set up the same set up chemical and biological and both the presence of the ice age and the prime minister of great britain, and quite a lot of our other leaders in the united states, given the vote that took place, thought dam with problem of sad w md needed to be addressed.

internet we had a huge intelligence failure that in fact we didn't, and he was pretending, as they later on, that he was pretending to have he wants to deter iran from taking advantage of the conventional weakness of iran. after our defeat of iraqi forces, the balance that shifted against iraq in terms of conventional weapons, he was signaling that he has weapons of mass destruction. i do think that what the gentleman was saying about some of the things that we did afterwards, the spanning of the army, -- the spanning -- di and the of the army, shiite politicians against the sunnis in iraq, that contributed to the violence that later on we thought. we did a number of things that .ogether were problematic

one, we had said we were not going to rule iraq. we declared an occupation authority afterwards, in violation of what we had committed. we have that we were going to reform the iraqi armed forces, not the spanish -- not disband it. authorityoccupation was established, it was decided by that authority to disband the armed forces. essentially, angering hundreds of thousands of people who knew how to use weapons, and then, we thishis deep gratification. some mistakes were made. part of what i tried to do in the book, why the changes occurred. of we went from one set plans. people say we did not have plans for afterwards. the fact is, we did have plans, but we abandoned them afterwards. why did happen?

i took my time. i interviewed the president, president bush, and i interviewed many of the principles who were involved, as , how thee change deliberation occurred, how my assessment of the invocations of the change had been taken into account. we did not have enough forces to maintain order, yet we disbanded the forces we were going to -- toon to have order establish order or maintain order. the borders of iraq were not guarded. together thaties did not help and added to the insecurity and violence that we -- theat the human extremists exploded. we corrected it toward the end of the period that i was there, by the surge, reaching out to the sunnis, reaching out to the

security. bring about violence was way down. unfortunately, when we left, the vacuum was filled by rival regional powers, tearing iraq apart. host: when did you start this book? did you keep a diary? mr. khalilzad: i kept a diary, not every day but often i would write notes. i started work on it, i would say, within a year after leaving the government. host: what year was that? 2009.alilzad: i did not want to do a rushed book. i wanted to take my time. i let the heat of the battle, so to speak, between the various people and forces internally dissipate. i had time to reflect. my goal also was to draw some

diplomats andture intelligence officers and , andary officers hopefully, to be helpful to them. host: your government work all those years, who did you disagree with them is that you have to work with, and what did he disagree about? i had thezad: well, in the disagreement was period when i was going to , and our goal became, not only to overthrow the taliban, but to bring the people who had committed the attack of 9/11 to justice, and to make sure that afghanistan did not return to being a haven for terrorists.

the third goal, i thought, we have a strategy of consensus about what to do to avoid that return. we did not have a plan for afghanistan when 9/11 happened. everybody was shot, my god. this is a country known for quagmires for occupiers. now, what do we do? state and nation building was very unpopular at that time, in fact, president bush had been elected criticizing the previous administration for nationbuilding in the balkans. the same way with secretary rumsfeld of defense, very much a -- against protracted engagement and entanglements. i had thought that a piece of territory that we regarded as that strategic, if not

vital, we needed to have friendly forces control that territory. we had done in europe and korea and japan after world war ii. piece of territory called afghanistan was issuegic, because of the of terrorism which had become a huge challenge, and we recognize it, and it needed to be held differently forces, and that in me had to enable those forces to be able to hold that territory, that meant that we had to help them establish institutions to be able to carry out that mission, and therefore, we had do, or what we would call state and nation building, we came to that reluctantly. i remember secretary rumsfeld telling me, get your hands off of the bike. one time, i lost my cool. i say, mr. secretary, tell me

with a -- tell me where this damn bike is. it was for over 20 plus years, cabo was like a density. city.dead there is nothing in their banks, literally. no army or police. there were worthless. one printed in the -- they had to currencies that were worthless. given the debt of the problems, there was one area at one time of this. slowly, we embraced that idea that we needed to help afghanistan along with others. not only ourselves, because there are other problems for europeans and others, to do it in a burden-shared way.

otherught nato along and countries taking lead on different issues, the japanese britsarming militias, the on counter narcotics, the italians on building the police and germans and others also playing important roles in the police, german in particular, and italians did rule of law. that was an area at the time, that was initially there was some disagreement. host: you mentioned early on that your wife is a feminist, and then you tell us in the book , andyou have got to sons your wife and sons are on two sides politically. mr. khalilzad: i remember when i was at the u.n., and it was the wastion, that john mccain

the republican nominee and ,arack obama was a democrat although during the primaries, hillary clinton was obviously also running. cheryl was supporting hillary. max, -- son,n, max, supported senator obama. my older son, alex, supported strongly senator mccain. we still have very lively debates, obviously, publicly. publicly, i was neutral. i was obviously supportive of senator mccain. i was peeved about our country, and that we did, the vast

majority of the u.n. members did not believe what we would do, which is to elect an african-american as the president. that is a lot -- that says a lot about america. host: the name of the book is "the envoy: from kabul to the white house, my journey through a turbulent world." -- former ambassador to afghanistan, iran, zalmay khalilzad. thank you very much for joining us. mr. khalilzad: thank you very much, brian. i appreciate it. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org.