announcer: this week on "q&a," former ambassador to afghanistan, iraq, and the united states, zalmay khalilzad. he discusses his memoir, "the envoy: from kabul to the white house, my journey through a turbulent world." brian: ambassador zalmay khalilzad, you have a new book out 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. i had my own staff meeting, and the first plane had hit the tower. i was on my way to the senior staff meeting that condoleezza

rice, the security advisor, chaired. 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 condoleeza's left in the staff meeting, 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 rushed out. i went back to my office, and the world changed that day for me and for the united states. brian: 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 had been so involved in government and foreign policy issues that who i

was and my background had escaped 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, because the taliban, were really the alliance, but claimed it was the government in somewhere in northwestern afghanistan at most of these people were. i said, "well, do 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. he was one of the leaders, and i 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. later on, i remember that during the christmas party, when i came to the president's 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 who are 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 said, "i think 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 at this time, there is a message

there." i was very honored to hear that from him. brian: you have in your book, "the envoy," in the back of the book you tell us that george bush suggested to you to write a memoir. why? mr. khalilzad: he used to tease me because the president's style of leadership was one that he selected the people, gave the person a broad mission, and then relied heavily on that person for advice, 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. thought this would be one interesting memoir because i was doing things where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. i was sort of in the theater, on the ground, dealing with a variety of interesting and sometimes unusual characters, a lot of stories that are in the book about the characters and events that took place that have not been really a lot written on. brian: i want to put on the screen some of your background so that people can know the

different jobs that you've had. you can see there that we go back to 1985. i will ask you about before them. you were special advisor to the under secretary of state for political affairs. deputy undersecretary of defense for policy planning, and director of strategy, doctrine, and force structure at the rand corporation. you 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. but one in 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 doing other things, and i had

felt that 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 -- the soviets had this brezhnev version of doctrine that once you go in, you don't need at that time. and then, the soviet union disintegrated, which was a huge achievement, their archaeology got discredited. afghanistan may have contributed to that. but then we abandoned and a lotn afterwards 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 government, to 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 -- and what did i do that you want 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. the 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. brian: names like hammad, and the current president, and maliki, and all these names the americans have learned over the years, how many of those folks did you know before all this happened? mr. khalilzad: well, i knew the president of afghanistan. ryan: he is the president of afghanistan right now. mr. khalilzad: he and i came to america together in 1966. that was the most shocking things of my life, still, probably given i have been in war 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. i came to a cosmopolitan city. by comparison. although it was quite a small town, 5000. and then to come to new york in the middle of the summer, heat and 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 shower or bathtub, and i could not sleep the first night because of the heat. i had not turned on the air conditioning. and then seeing new york is a vast city with all kind of people and it, and how america was, and i ended up staying and i ended up staying in a small town in northern california called ceres, near modesto.

but ashraf ghan and i went to college together at the university of beirut. and then again, i ran into him when i was teaching at columbia, my first job after i got my phd at the university of chicago. he was doing his phd at columbia university. i have known ashraf ghani for well over 40 years. brian: you finished high school where? mr. khalilzad: i finished high school in ceres, california, in 1967. then i went back to afghanistan to get my bacculareate. brian: your next degree? mr. khalilzad: from the university of beirut. a bachelors. brian: what year did you graduate from there?

mr. khalilzad: 1972. i got a masters also from the american university in beirut in 1974. brian: and then what? mr. khalilzad: a phd from the university of chicago in 1979. brian: this man has tremendous connections. you will 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. [video clip] >> there are some parts of the world where a law -- in asia, in central america, and so on. but there are some parts of the world where we have similar common interests as in the persian gulf. they are more direct landmasses ban our own. in such cases, of many allies have been recognized, there is sharing the risks as well as the burdens.

it is really reasonable. brian: who was he? [end video clip] mr. khalilzad: that is albert wohlstetter. professor. one of our great nuclear strategists and a general. he was a professor at the university of chicago. i studied with albert wohlstetter. it happened accidentally. sometimes one encounter can make a huge difference in one's life. think gettingould ready and getting good grades, studying hard -- those are important. they are. sometimes, an event, an incident, in unanticipated

development can make a big difference in your life. albert wohlstetter made a big 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 distributed the syllabus. he did not hold a full class for the entirety of the schedule. so i was heading back to my dormitory at the international into my friendn in the hall that i had met at the international house, and they said, why don't you come and listen to this professor? said theual, they course was called "classical and

nuclear wars," and when he talks about president kennedy, he refers to him as "jack." he calls kissinger, "henry." a man full of unusual stories. you might enjoy just listening to him. so, i went in and said, "why not?" i sat at the back of the class. and he started when the class was convened to talk about the probability of nuclear war. he was talking about theorists who believed that at any one point there was a fixed probability of war and over time, each year added, so nuclear war ultimately becomes inevitable. so i raised my hand and said, "professor, isn't there a fixed probability of increasing -- a fixed probability of

permanent peace at any time? 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 him who i was. and he said, "i want to talk with you after class." he said, "you have to take my seminar rather than class." i told him i was not even taking his class. the rest is 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. he had a company called panuristics. they advised the defense department. whileed for him for a until i acquired clearances. albert wohlstetter was a

brilliant man who had made a big difference in the peace of the world by coming up with the concept of "second strike." toequirement in the nuclear, maintain deterrence in the nuclear deterrence between us and the soviets. and what the requirements of a second strike was and he worked hard toward the end of his life on proliferation issues, enclosing -- including visiting iran under the shah, 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 had worked lately in her life on terrorism. she had done something on the attack on pearl harbor about morning. brian: another disciple of albert wohlstetter was paul wolfowitz. and this man, who married his daughter. this is from 2004. let's watch this. [video clip] in 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. he was at once, chairman of the research council at the rand corporation. he was a professor at the university of chicago. he was a man trained in mathematics, logic, who was extraordinarily rigorous.

he always asked the question, "is this true?" [end video clip] bryan: what would he have thought about what we did in afghanistan and iraq? mr. khalilzad: the first time, when i was working in the pentagon, kuwait happened. then, we obviously successfully pushed saddam out of kuwait. i used to get a lot of calls from albert at the time. he was very persistent. when he became convinced that something, he was not rank conscious. he would call anyone and everyone at all levels to keep pushing his point of view. he thought, at that time, 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 employed, he would call me and say i had to tell the undersecretary, 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. i would say, let me advise you, albert, not to use the word that they are "blowing it," i will facilitate an appointment with the secretary. the secretary and chairman colin powell, i think they have achieved the biggest thing since the debacle.

they have done a great achievement in terms of defeating saddam's armed forces. if you walk in there and tell them you have "blown it," they are not going to be very welcoming of your prescription of your ideas. why don't it you tell them, you have it you do a lot but you can do even better. said, "zal, 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." albert, 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. brian: you talk about telling stories in this, and these are somewhat non sequiturs, but i want to get some of the story's in. 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 you play in it? mr. khalilzad: it was christmas

time, and i have taken a few days off and left iraq. brian: you were ambassador at the time? mr. khalilzad: as ambassador to iraq at that time, yes. i got a call from the person who was our charge. margaret. she said that the prime minister had called her and wanted us to turn over saddam to them to enforce the judgment of the court, which was that he should be hanged. i was concerned about the timing, because the islamic celebration, along with the visit of muslims to mecca, it

was imminent. 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 of festivities, to hang someone at that time, usually you pardon of prisoners at that time, it is ,ot a time you hang people based on islamic traditions. he argued with me about exactly when this begins. 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." i talked to dr. rice, who was 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 islamic world, especially the sunnis. we made it sunnis support for iraq because of the composition of the population of iraq which was majority shia but a

significant number of sunnis as well. that would make the task of more difficult. they told me we should defer to the prime minister of iraq because the country was sovereign. hey said at the end if described -- if i described to them 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. brian: how long did it take to execute him? mr. khalilzad: a few hours. brian: you are a sunni, and maliki is a shia. mr. khalilzad: right. brian: what is the difference? i have asked that question to a lot of guests. no one has really defined the difference between a sunni and shia. mr. khalilzad: 97%, 98%, they are the same.

the fundamental difference is that who was the legitimate successor to the prophet. when the prophet died, mohammed, who should have succeeded him ? the shia believe that ali, who was the son-in-law of the prophet -- brian: mohammed ali? mr. khalilzad: he was the first imam to the shias, he was married to the prophet's daughter. , -- that he his , father's name was khalid. he is ali, son of khalid. should be the successor. , and hisunnis believe

division started right after the death of the prophet. that the community of people the right prophet had to appoint or select a success first that would be the caliph. the sunnis have the caliphate, and even isis is talking about reestablishing 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. they think he was a usurper of the right successor to the prophet. and then, afterwards, there was a series of imams from the house

of the prophet. they think succession like the happen withind the house of the prophet. that is the fundamental fault line as to who is the ruler. now, a couple of other differences. how do you pray? there are some differences. and then, it became much more significant geopolitically once iran embraced shiaism as the state religion, with arabs and turks mostly adopting sunnism. some other differences are for example, inheritance. in the sunni legal system, the

daughter is not entitled to equal inheritance rights as the sons. in shiaism, she is. that is why even some sunnis who have only daughters, in order to keep that wealth in the family, they become paper shiites so that their daughters 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 mohammed is the prophet, and the koran. and sharia is the law that should be applied there, most

sunnis don't believe in nose. brian: you married a non-muslim. your two sons take her last name -- explain all that. mr. khalilzad: this is to help the kids in their country, the united states, because khalilzad is not an easy name to pronounce. my last name. and my wife was a feminist, and she thought that not only is it right that they should have their mother's name, but also that it would make it easier for them. my last name being so hard to pronounce. brian: their last name is benard. go back to another story, the story of president joe biden. mr. khalilzad: i have two stories about the current vice president.

one, when i was a special envoy in afghanistan, he came once. i was very impressed with him, number one, because the embassy was very rudimentary at the time. we all slept on the floor. he had brought his own sleeping bag and slept on the floor like i did. brian: in the embassy? mr. khalilzad: in the embassy, in the office. so, one day after his meeting 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?" threatened the interior minister of afghanistan with b-52 attacks. i said, what do you mean, and he said the northern alliance did and we wouldoperly

do the same thing to them. he said the b-52s are still flying over afghanistan. he said the minister got very angry and he got up and walked out. i told him that my reading of the constitution, senator, does not put senators in the chain of command for ordering attacks. so he was saying he was very sorry. i said, we have to fix this problem. he said, what do you mean? i said, we're going to call the guy and we are going to go visit him and you are going to fix this. he said, we can do that? i say, what you mean can we do that? i said, we just liberated these people, remember? of course 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. another story is, again, you

know, we had very limited in facilities in kabul in those days. there were only two operational bathrooms. we had 180 people so in the morning we had long lines to use and he did not pull rank, although he could have to go ahead of the line. he was standing in line, holding a towel. his towel around him and a young marine from behind took a photo of the back of his head, so he turns around, he says, what are you doing? and the guy says he is taking a photo for his mother. how will she recognize me? said,turned around it and "take the photo now." and the marine did and he was very pleased. he said some colorful things

also, so the vice president did come for a visit, and he spent some time there. brian: all right, this is not a serious policy issue, but you also talk in the book, when you are u.n. ambassador, about staying at the waldorf astoria. you say in the book that did we pay as a country $60,000 a month for the ambassador from the toted states to the u.n. stay at the waldorf. here's some video of you in 2008 with your wife and in apartment when you are the ambassador. from abc and terry moran. [video clip] >> it is an incredible part of ambassador's life. >> home sweet home. >> the apartment at the waldorf, which we toured with khalilzad and his wife. >> who is this?

>> he is a nice little dog, the problem is he can easily get stepped on. >> in this elegant home, filled with american art and family treasures, prominently displayed, you find a memento of zalmay khalilzad's previous service. [end video clip] brian: what was that on the wall? mr. khalilzad: that was a machine gun that belonged to saddam hussein. the u.s. armed forces, the command in baghdad, they presented it to me as a token of their appreciation for my service in iraq. brian: $60,000 per month, that 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 one of the wealthy new yorkers wanted to give to the united states to be used by the u.n. ambassador rice. but the state department, in its

wisdom, rejected that thinking the maintenance and security perhaps,ld be, significant, but the u.n. secretary-general now lives in that townhouse that was offered to the u.s. it is quite expensive. the president, one reason he 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 -- the beds, he said to me, were quite comfortable. and they were. he had known that when i was ambassador to afghanistan and iraq, my accommodations were not ambassadorial in afghanistan. i stayed in what we called a --, which was really 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. brian: what kind of power does the united states ambassador have in a place like afghanistan or 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 armed forces there, 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. for example, i helped both

countries with their constitutions, being sort of facilitator for the agreement on key issues among iraqis were -- or afghans. your influence is 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 information, so you know what is really going on through collective intelligence or people that work with us or for us. so in those situations, in war zones where we have forces there, the american ambassador has an influential job. brian: you talk, back in your book, you talk about a man that was assassinated. here is some video from 2001, in 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. [video clip] [speaking foreign language] >> [via translator] my message to president bush is the following. if he is interested in peace in afghanistan, if he 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. [end video clip] brian: 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. brian: their occupation was 1979 to 1989? mr. khalilzad: yes. there's a period of civil war for a while where he was in government.

a defense minister in couple. in kabul. when the taliban took over kabul, 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, military assistance to the taliban, and the taliban allowed al qaeda to operate and plan and recruit and train on its territory. just a couple of days before 9/11, two people of moroccan, north african origin, 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, passport holders, pretending to be journalists and wanting to interview massoud, but wanting him and themselves up. massoud 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. by doing them 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 laden after 9/11, when president bush gave them the opportunity. either turn over al qaeda or they would attack the taliban. brian: you referred, earlier in our conversation, about you awere threatened. somebody tried to kill you? mr. khalilzad: quite a few times. it was always intel about this or that plot, but one time, the afghan authorities arrested a group near where i was toward the end of my tenure, that had come across the border from pakistan to assassinate me. one other time, that i thought the end had come. generaln iraq where casey was the commander of our forces and we were turning over

a military facility in tikrit, saddam's birthplace. it sounded like a rocket had been fired towards us. the next thing i knew, general casey was on top of me and he had put himself at risk to protect me. afterwards no one can , say that military operations and relations are not excellent in iraq. there was also several attempts, i don't know whether it was specifically focused on me, the residence in baghdad. so, 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.

brian: we have lost 6877 americans in afghanistan and in iraq. here is some criticism of the whole event by a fellow named joby warrick. we play this so that we can get some background on somebody who disagreed with some of the stuff we did. this was recorded back in 2015. [video clip] >> i strongly believe that the iraq invasion was the original sin. not the invasion itself, which the jihadistsve the cause that they wanted. they predicted the fight would take place in iraq and was ready for the americans were ready in 2003. anybody was a professional inside iraq in the early 2000 had to be a member of the party. anybody was a professional inside iraq had to be a member of the party.

dismantling the armed forces. there were plenty of iraqis that thought --ught -- fought the americans anyway. he was able to melt this religious extremism. those people, the start of that movement, 2004, 2006, that is isis today. [end video clip] brian: you were in government in 1991 with desert shield? mr. khalilzad: i was. with the pentagon. there ind you were 2003. what impact did you have on the 2003 invasion? mr. khalilzad: well, i think he had some good points, particularly, whatever you think of whether we should have invaded or not, and in the context of the time, there was universal belief that saddam

hussein had chemical and biological weapons, and both the president of the united states 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 that the problem of saddam hussein with wmd needed to be addressed. it turned out we had a huge intelligence failure that in fact he didn't, he was pretending, as i later on learned when i was in a rack, he was pretending because he wanted 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. but i do think that what the gentleman was saying about some of the things that we did

afterwards, the disbanding of the army, the deepti ratification and the politicians it used by others. mostly politicians led shiites against the sunnis anorak, -- against the sunnis in iraq, that contributed to the violence that later on we saw. we did a number of things that together 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 had said we were going to reform the iraqi armed forces, not disband it. and then after the occupation , authority 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

did this deep the ratification. so yes, some mistakes were made. part of what i tried to do in the book, why the changes occurred. why we went from one set of 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, interviewed many of the principals who were involved. ambassador bremmer included. as to why the change, how the deliberation occurred, how my -- how might an assessment of the implications of the change have been taken into account. we did not have enough forces to maintain order, yet we disbanded the forces we were going to count on to establish order or maintain order. and then the borders of iraq were not guarded.

so there was a set of policies together that did not help and added to the insecurity and violence that we saw, that the extremists such as zarqawi exploited. then corrected it toward the end of the period that i was there, by the surge, by reaching out to the sunnis, reaching out to the forces, to bring about security. violence was way down. left,fortunately when we the vacuum was filled by rival regional powers, tearing iraq apart. violence escalated and we have a -- isis now. brian: when did you start this book? when did you start the research and 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. brian: what year was that? mr. khalilzad: 2009. 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 lessons for future diplomats and intelligence officers and military officers, and hopefully, to be helpful to them. bryan: over -- over your government work all those years, who did you disagree with the most that you had to work with. and what did you disagree about? mr. khalilzad: well, i had the

biggest disagreement was in the period when i was going to afghanistan, 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 did not 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 shocked, my god. in our leadership. 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 doing nationbuilding in the balkans. the same way with secretary rumsfeld of defense, very much against protracted engagement and entanglements. i had thought that a piece of territory that we regarded as vital, that strategic, if not vital, we needed to have friendly forces control that territory. we had done it in europe and korea and japan after world war ii. if this piece of territory called afghanistan was strategic, because of the issue of terrorism which had become a huge challenge, and we recognize it, and it needed to be held by friendly forces, and that in me -- that meant we 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 to do, or what we would call state and nation building, and 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 said, mr. secretary show me where this damn bike is. because when i went to afghanistan, there was hardly anything. this was a country that had been at war for over 20 plus years, kabul was like a dead city. there was nothing in their banks, literally. if they had no army or police. there were two currencies that were worthless. one printed in the north and one

printed in the south of the country. we had taken what on given the depth of the problems. there was one area that at one slowly,said give me -- we embraced that idea that we needed to help afghanistan along with others. not only ourselves, because terrorism was a problem for europeans and others. so to do it in a burden-shared way. we brought nato along and other countries taking lead on different issues, the japanese on disarming militias, the brits on counter narcotics, the italians on building the police force, and germans and others also playing important roles in the police, german in particular, and italians did rule of law. so that was an area of, at the time, that was initially there was some disagreement. brian: you mentioned early on

that your wife is a feminist, and then you tell us in the book that you have got two sons, and your wife and sons are on two sides politically. mr. khalilzad: i remember when i was at the u.n., and it was the election, that john mccain was the republican nominee and barack obama was the democrat. although during the primaries, hillary clinton was obviously also running. and cheryl was supporting hillary. my younger son, max, supported president obama, who had been then senator obama. and my older son, alex, supported strongly senator

mccain. we used to have have very lively debates, obviously, publicly i was neutral. representing the united states in the u.n.. but i was a republican and i was obviously supportive of senator mccain. although i was pleased about our what thend that we did vast majority of the u.n. members did not believe we would an which is to elect african-american as president. that says a lot about america. brian: the name of the book is "the envoy: from kabul to the white house, my journey through a turbulent world." former united states ambassador to afghanistan and iraq, 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] ♪ announcer: for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. "q&a" is also available as c-span podcasts. announcer: if you enjoyed this week's "q&a" interview, here are some other programs you might like. former ambassador peter galbraith on his book. : how americanrock incompetence created a world -- a war without end."

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at how banks sold mortgages before the financial crisis. later, richard rubin talks about the estimated host: good morning. the senate returns from a recess. votes will be expected at 5:30 p.m. we begin right now on a washington journal discussing the independent or third party candidate in 2016. after donald trump knocked out , welast two rivals wondering if our viewers would consider