Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20140915

Quite as extreme as in your case but it did seem like for a long time no one was available. No matter where i was going to be where were going to go. Host i think we are out of time but thank you for spending the hour talking to me and the viewers for spending the hour of listening. Guest thing thank you. That was after words Signature Program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, Public Policy makers, legislators and others familiar with the material. After words airs every weekend at 10 p. M. On saturday, 12 and 9 p. M. On sunday and 12 a. M. On monday. You can also watch after words online. Go to booktv. Org and click on after words after words in the book tv series at topics list on the upper right side of the page. Edward baptist is associate professor of history at Cornell University originally from North Carolina also the editor with the new studies in the history of american slavery and of american capitalism for seidman is schuster. As an ambitious new development on america director for the center of study of race and democracy it is a true marvel groundbreaking research and provocative force scholars of slavery in the aftermath to reconsider longheld assumptions we are pleased to bring you the conversation tonight please join me to welcome edward baptist. [applause]. I will start the stopwatch so i dont go on too long. To meet the economist favorite author of the week. [laughter] i will not talk directly about that yet but we can get into that later. I really happy to be here old friends are here. That is pretty cool. Let me try to describe the book a little bit. And as you will see ive laid out the whole book as the series of metaphors. But that new kind of slavery that the merged right after it achieved independence all but the end of the revolution to some observers look like it would disappear with the head their colonial institutions but it did not instead it transformed the institution. As the world for Cotton Grower after 7090 they began to move south and west. And the trader chaebol the 51 other people in march them to south carolina. And also the sale to his mother years before now they will try to separate him from himself. And then it was backed up with with beings and torture forced to reveal how much work he could do. And the next day and the next day and the next day pushing them to work faster. Even with that cowhide haiti over his head over the next couple decades what would happen would be again and again by the time theyre from the Mississippi Valley cheap cotton made more efficient by africanamericans for the unprecedented transformation. This change would raise millions been billions. Of subsistence agriculture. Role that has challenging implications for every species that lives on the plan and no question the modernization of society benefits many humans but for charles had a foundation of transformation. But then at being moved over to control 80 percent to help make possible in britain and new england as well. As a writer and historian to get a handle on the phenomenon i was inspired by the novel he described American History in the essay of the negro giant. And to have all of them together and then those newspaper ads all the people deprived are part of a system in there across the decades with everything that they tried tear do against their own interests. And demanded more to raise left hand against righthand to divide the working day. As i wrote you could dramatize the image says the feet for the slave trade away from every day they had ever known. The right hand and the left hand the way they were extracted from him. Figure it out the markets but the financing allowed them to buy ever growing armies of the slave migrants. This system the enter the body was building the of wealth of the backs of the enslaved people. They were far wealthier than those in the United States. But what about the second . That is that body of africanamericans in itself a culture and identity called in no small part of the exploited by the corporate relationships by politicians and factory owners and consumers. And in what ways woody think whose bodies are controlled and forced to work against their own controlling interest . This word after they occupied haiti has gone on to become a staple of literature. This was the commentary of slavery supposedly that practitioners can kill a person than raise them up to one that is not really alive anymore. It is really of myth about slavery which of course, the haitian people also intered. As a has something to control over their own bodies. In pushing through debt like separation and we could see in the cotton field that they were no longer truly alive. U. S. Pop cultures saudi actually books more leica replay anxiety the servants turn to the americans on these but it is no accident from Popular Culture to a profit in the 60s but that is a digression. In the 19th century never comerica was in danger of the more classical haitian formulation. By the time they separated with pride in their own labor coming down one conroe after another to become the equivalent of the zombie was a real possibility not just him and all African Americans. As the power grew so too did the ability of African Americans did in spirit in slaver ever in the body for captives. But there is of metaphor in that is the metaphor of the prisoner for. We dont necessarily think of the pow believes those words and we know they dont let prisoners of all nations that develop their own society their modes of resistance this creation and duration of alternative reality with hopes for values that holds those captive this is what keeps a pow from becoming a zombie. The entrepreneurial constantly changing of the 19th century as the author puts it at constant state of war. Says they dropped into a system of slavery after the American Revolution behave more like a pow they were stretched on the route systems of labor control more of them refused far more than the number you gave up. And enslaved people did what they could do to escape the collective identity but those that chose to identify with each other to build a common language to identify with and care for each other. It came from instead of assimilating instead of the oppressors created a history means the process that they try to use and exploit things with a high profit entrepreneurial cut with the evil that they face together. But they put all kinds of force is not one category being stolen if it was those that instructed value lies objecting to a process of destruction yet there was an africanamerican in says the Group Discover their own sense of identity of exploitation and horrific violence. But those two big bodies are not actual bodies but their actual bodies in the book that has a terrific actress instead to metaphorical bodies that grow and entwine and fight each other like siamese twins. That is the story that develops to think about what it will do to recent your the history of the United States and around this one historical process around the enslaved African Americans forced to migrate and whose resistance provided the same time the fuel of america is capitalism the culture and ad is a political momentum to destroy the first persian of american capitalism by the end of the book they each have played their role and as i indicated they brought about emancipation and in 2014 it is still not clear which will be the winner and the struggle continues. Barrow boy to transition to reading of a passage or to. I want to read about charles and i mentioned before and as i suggested before was from maryland and in many ways he encapsulates because he believes in 18 05 the future could be different for him from what his own mother had endured taken by a slave trader when she walked when he was just a boy and sometimes through saving money or through emancipation because the owner has political convictions believes he could have freedom eventually. Because one day he would drive a wagon to a nearby town and set down to eat breakfast and he happened to look out the door he saw his owner and another white man he did not recognize talking. When he walked back out he was quickly surrounded by men in here i will read suddenly he felt the presence out of nowhere of a dozen women had surrounded him before he had time to flicker from one phase to the next someone grabbed him from the caller from behind you are my property now in which his head around he saw the man who was his owner. You must go with me to do georgia he was taken in walk to a place where 51 others were we team in chains. And the fact enslave men were locked together as they marched south is very significant because their feet and their legs were not chained but they were chained together in this prevented them from doing anything except what being in step which prevented resistance very effectively or prevented running away because those men with those chains of iron could not get away quickly or quietly but it did make certain things difficult like normal built bodily functions like going to sleep was very difficult for 51 individuals to manage those simple things. One of the interesting things of the autobiography that he later dictated was the way he talked about his own internal process to be sold and marched south and talks repeated the about his desire to commit suicide. And his frustration he cannot do that because he is chained. The first night as he stepped slumped change nestled between two was just a span of a few links and it took a long time to fall asleep. When at last he slapped his son came to him. The little boy tried to break the chain to set his hands freeze and he could fix the boys broke in world book the hired help in charleses sun faded then his grandfather appeared. Born in africa in the 17 twenties kidnapped as a teenager in the man brought him across the salt water to maryland in they renamed him he never surrendered his own version with those to be gave submissive lee. His father in contrast had tried to be less defiant but then to talk about the rules of slavery the owner grew worried but then they overheard the men talking about the plant is ending his son of bags of dried corn no one in the county ever heard from charles this bothered again. Then would have come for his grandson also that they were dead and gone and these chains with the sun came up there tried to keep time with the rest. Let me just skip to one more story. If you dont mind i will tell you a boston story. Because boston is implicated in this story as you know, in the early 19th century of a group of investors and factory managers and entrepreneurs some of them are called the Boston Associates they spin southern cotton into products for the new england textiles factory is southern slaves. They spend too much time to work in the field to make their own clothes so their owners by them close from the new england to manufacturers. The infrastructure protected the finely woven cloth to impose the tax on british versions of that but they were better for the upper class to allow those to come free of charge to protect those upper consumers. So southern cloth market was very important and dash cotton in particular very conservative group of southern politicians. But there was one man from a very old boston family who had a of a closer connection. He was born in boston and move south when he was a teenager because the father is opening a plantation. When he was 16 he was sent back to harvard where he did his undergrad degree than a unitarian minister and a professor at harvard all ball while his four other brothers were acquiring their own plantations and helping to manage their fathers. One dies but theyre still three brothers. By the early 1840s with the older brother was jerry dash nearing death. As he aged the against brother writes him to say and advises that by the terms of the states civil code to inherit the property the best way to turn it into many is to sell the people he inherited. But you might incur the risk of an abolitionist reporting that the reverend was selling human flesh, etc. Or living off the income of slave labor. 18431 of the first cotton ships to a ride in boston to bring the news of the old third dash he now owns 20 human beings from age of an infant through the ages 65. If their value approached 7,000 in their rich different ways tear calculate but it goes from 300,000 to 1. 7 million in todays dollars. But john the younker even through a complex process had decided he did not want to own the enslaved people any more. Without notifying his brothers he petitioned the legislature to let him free the us leap the sleighs and allow them to stay where they had built families. The brothers learned of his actions after the rejection of the request and one bytes angrily the story would be published in the local paper in all the neighbors would hear about it. And those seven vendor the other 40 unmanageable to send the news up been down to find a lawyer for a freedom suit. John does not agree with that. He travels down to new orleans countryside read the individuals live in and pays for the passage to massachusetts. The interesting thing is pretty clear he did not do this added at the antiracist radicalism there was an unpleasant stuff even for that day. But with his dealings with the formerly enslaved people at the same time what i try tear do i tried to give some credit to do what so many other white americans could not do was to reject his own wealth generating system. It was painfully impossible for almost anyone to directly benefit and to convince himself in the fact that he could do so. With the new set of debates and in charles gets involved and his own little way that emancipation is part of the process leading to the civil war. It even bigger part of the process is what charles did after two were three years working on the Hampton Plantation during aments difficulties he decides the time has come. He moves across the Savannah River waiting until the cornstarch to get ripe and ties his favorite dog to a the tree in the words. He cannot bring with him and he leaves. It takes him four months to get back to maryland because he travels only by night time. 1. He almost died of hypothermia where he fell off our raft. He bin is captured at one point and refuses to give his name or in the information and is later able to escape from that. I will read the last little bit. Said he breaks out of the lindsay jail and then he did the same thing he reached the door of his wifes cabin perhaps he had been replaced then he summoned the courage to knock and his wife responded whos there . He said charles and she said who is this that talks like a husband . So i will stop there and take questions. [applause] you got a great review in the wall street journal. With that body metaphor how might that relate to daviss last book talking about the black body . And at some point he alludes have adieu overlap there . The idea that central is the idea you must reduce africa to an animal. So based on the work that you have done how do we incorporate or get it to the idea with that cultural lessons which that society views that is descended into slaves. It is full of contradictions. I will talk about to contradictions. Stemming the expansion of slavery in the u. S. With whatever effect of the development of civilization as we know it relies relies on his laypeople the pressure there is the debate of increased totals it is 400 almost as fast as the average textile worker as the output is increasing so they are taking much more cotton is they are focused to make people faster every single day. We have great records of that but if they are going faster every day, if they are focused on that, what they are really focused on doing is outsourcing all of the creativity and thinking and innovation of cotton production to enslaved people. We dont have to do a time and motion study with Industrial Production we just set the quota hired to get them to figure it out. Says it deals so many hours and days but if you deal with people who you understand that is every bit as creative and innovative as you, if not more than. The animals dont improve how they do things. But that is one thing. The other thing i point to is we know the specialization of the enslaved women that is important to the system of slavery and i argue it is a feature of the system. Absolutely essential. But what i think is clearings is slave traders use within to enhance their profits to make the commodities more attractive to purchasers. To get in slavers better down in louisiana if they could borrow or not borrow or by slaves or not everything has the tradeoff if you borrow more money you have to pay that back then make calculations like where is the price of cotton going and you do this in the middle of sea of Economic Uncertainty with prices going up and down and sometimes you get into a bubble situation with a cotton boom that you know, will burst. But slave traders want to do get the potential purchasers to override that type of thinking and just by. To what extent they do this intentionally they end up accomplishing the goal to use some actualization not just female slaves but to enhance the extent that people would purchase all slaves to create the slave market to get people to think of it to buy sex. When you introduce sex into a buying and selling situation. With less concern is more then what they buy and credit. But it looks like that is what happened. You dont sexualizing animals. I suppose some do. [laughter] but not on a large scale. [laughter] given the difficulties with victuals end captivity what about the reproduction rates with women . That is that question that we talk about different human societies. But what we see in the United States enslaved women in virginia and maryland have more children by the 17 fifties there of their counterparts in jamaica all kinds of reasons for this is historians have argued for years and years but what is clear from my research is in slave women transported to places like mississippi and alabama have fewer children than their counterparts. There are reasons that youre married if you are take taken away from your family or spouse it will take awhile behalf for you have children willingly and that makes sense also of much harsher diseasing environment with infant death rates and large sugar plantations and Alabama Cotton plantations were critical to the infant death rate in the caribbean plantations. Where there were the biggest we could be sure but it is possible to have a negative population growth rate. Population growth was provided with forced migration. Without referring directly to the economist. Which you just did. [laughter] i did research with the slavery that exist worldwide with just about every country in the world, even america. I notice of reference to one Chocolate Company that by the year 2020 they will stop selling chocolate produced by slavery. Is there anything what you learn to in your research to shed light with that Economic System from the source from the fear trade implementation . Ramekin the United States is very difficult for it to happen. With seven digit thousand or more people that died in fact, it is not clear to me that slavery would and any time soon. It was a colossal blunder of the they work very hard to get it back. I say that as the number carolinian. It is difficult those thats make them more convenient but it is all the more important to understand but off and on more often than on. We have peddled this convenient fiction that slavery is economically back words in there is no reason to think that. Since this what seems to be evidence that in certain kinds of production we havent talked about slaves used as collateral but with the case of the enslaved Cotton Pickers theyre put into a system that extracts more and more, and from them every day take over the World Markets it will underprice Everything Else we can rest easy is that confidence but sometimes it is very painful. But to the productivity is the main benchmark to evaluate the Economic System rather than a standard that what we can decide on. This clearly indicates that. Another really powerful piece on history coming out is the of argument the case for reparations. For your scholarship what opinion has led you as a response to the question of reparations in general . That is the fantastic piece everything that comes off his fingers from the keyboard is amazing. Even his tweets are better than anybody elses. I was standing up for him for a long time but from that perspective how can you help it . I noticed the economist said is the advocacy and i dont know i care a advocate anything except we should tell the truth about this history in here is as interesting and it. But you ask the question about preparation. Let me answer in two ways. First of all, in the 1830s i talk about this in the book financially innovative southern slaveholders in the Innovative Financial products with mortgage and slave peoples bodies they turn those into bonds and they sell those with the major Financial Markets in the world. This may sound a familiar because this is what made a lot of people rich 1980 through 2008 then made a lot of other people pour. But what i say by that is if you are an investor in britain youre not buying the individual but the right of the income flow from the repayment of the mortgages of 1,000 slaves which is better than one slave. Bailor not all die or run away at once. , etc. , etc. Some of the same errors were made or the of this calculations the miscalculations in the book the system that blew up the system. Then they were willing to lend again. So the profits from the suffering has spread across the atlantic world. So it is everywhere not all burned up by William Tecumseh sherman. So we have to remember that with reparations it is not just morality but about the fact that wealth was transferred if we decide to think of that not just as an asset but has said that those to other people is the extensive reckoning past have been. One small footnote that i think talking about the other day jordan and since letter to his former master. Of former slave escapes to ohio during the civil war and then says come back to work for me i will give you wages. I will take good care of your family. He writes this amazing letter and he says they hope you dont try to take care of my family like you did my daughter behind the shed. I hope you dont try to take care of my family the way that you beat my son out of the yard. But wages . That is a good idea lets calculate the back wages that you owe me. Would get that letter. Well get the amount what is owed to him and his wife for 30 years multiplied by as a couple of minutes million you can figure out what number you want to use then put it in the interests calculator with the prevailing Interest Rate what youll see it was almost bigger than all the United States today. I dont know what happened to the money. [inaudible] how did you get to this topic in there is some insights to what you are saying and how did you get to those . Like a guy from North Carolina . I grew up in a place in that time where not only in the schools but then to notice the history and then start to notice those discrepancies. But what i do want to say is the core of the story not just of plantation records but not all. The Court Documents in with brazil or cuba we always wish we had more there were long girl or richer but with survivors of slavery from the 30s and 100 interviews between the civil war and published biographies resources we still have not dugin to yet like a the pension records with the africanamerican soldiers that fought in the civil war and started by getting a federal pension waved in there are some Amazing Stories in there as well. I always tried to put their stories at the center because in the beginning the purpose was to show a the way africanamericans wrath the center of the larger story as it went through 1865. The economist will being the little bit why should we take the testimony of a few ex slaves as describing what the system of forced labor was like . Because they have the clearest view. It is hundreds and hundreds at one point soviets tried to put them at the center of the story. Reading through all those documents over and over in those that were Old Fashioned reading that come from biblical criticism in that with different enslaved people. Through that process if that individual story was different the ways of thinking about the word stealing in that context that you could be sold which was a legal transaction but it to q way from your family. Those stories has certain point to illustrate the smaller things into bigger things. The history of of Lehman Brothers to the financial crisis . It does. Lehman brothers gets it starts as a popup, and former coming to the south with a little bit of hospital capital mont very many have the liquid capital all of the men running the business before they went broke because they had so many complex Financial Instruments and from there they get into other things they come into being because of one financial disaster in parish and another is created. What do you think is behind the knee jerk desire to side with the slavers with a objectivity with a oaters view . Said it is more objective than in the slave . 1835 there is the narrative that people can authenticate a lot of details but the other narrative is by a of a guy named james william. And move through that slave trade process. Some of the details supposedly did not line up. Proslavery writers jump on this and launched a Massive Campaign to discredit the narrative and ultimately they could not discredit all of them. But i dont think that is weird weird that testimony begins to of a straight a process of that need your reaction that is going on for a long time because at times that africanamericans in testimony seems to contradict the beliefs of a large section and it makes sense people would want to discredit. Is that simple. [inaudible] you cannot really commend someone how is it what role does your scholarship player in that activity . What other things have you done to get people to open their minds of the experiences . I have tried to create gripping and retailing sources. And to do this in a way that is cinematic. And we can evaluate one by one. But that is the attempt to do a exactly in the analytical way the larger story tries to tell which is to put the reader as much as possible in the distance of years none of us know exactly what it feels like. But to put them in that position to look through their eyes because it is only when people are able to do that they can still question in their own assumption to say from that other side makes no sense or i can see them on this thin of lies but to be a part of some of the assumptions to be in that position to go to someone elses point of view think you very much. [applause] thanks for coming. The books are for sale. [inaudible conversations]. Talk now about their experiences in iraq and also about isis and the use of american force. This is about an hour. Good afternoon. Im Bradley Graham of politics and prose along with my wife and on behalf of the entire staff, welcome and thank you for coming out on this lovely afternoon. A couple of quick administrative notes, we now would be time to turn off your cell phone or anything that might beat her in the presentation. When we get to the qanda session, because we are being filmed, we would appreciate if you would find your way to this microphone to the table to pick up your question. At the end, normally we asked the audience to fold up their chairs but you dont have to do that at the end of this session because we have another event this evening. On this anniversary of 9 11, it is quite fitting that we should be gathering here for a book that involves our military and a look back at an important part of the longterm fight in which the armed forces have been engaged. The iraq war of course wasnt necessitated by that september 11 attacks that was one word of choice choice but it was fought for the purpose in part at least helping to keep america safe and its lessons particularly about balancing the force and diplomacy and relying on indigenous forces those lessons remain relevant today especially as we prepare to reengage in iraq and go after yet another enemy in the form of the group that calls itself the islamic state. Daniel green and Brigadier General bill mullen served in iraq overlapping in in and our province on the western part of the country. But the book that they coauthored, Fallujah Redux, focuses on a critical turning point in the iraq war, the turn called to be an bar a weakening, which the sunni sunni tribes in the providence joined battle in the affiliated forces. Dan, this is him by the way and thats bill, they are both pretty big. Damn is a reserve officer in the u. S. Navy and served as a tribal and Political Engagement officer for a Naval Special warfare unit in falluja in 2007. He also has done duty in afghanistan both as a military officer and as a civilian with the state department. In fact, his first three years ago, titled bmg was about a year with the pashtuns in central left in esteem. Dan who also has a doctorate in from Washington University is now a Research Fellow at the Washington Institute for near east policy. Focusing on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. I might add as well dan is a regular here at politics and prose and we are very grateful for that. Though has been a marine for 27, 28 years now and currently is with the combat Development Command at quantico. He spent two years in fallujah first as the Operations Officer for the Marine Regimental Combat Team from 20052006 and then an Infantry Battalion commander in charge of the city for most of 2007. Fallujah has particular significance in the history of the iraq war, became the center of insurgent activity and was at the scene of one of the u. S. Militarys biggest setbacks in the first year of the iraq war. U. S. Forces eventually retake the city in late 2004, but insurgent groups continue to operate in and around fallujah. Then in 2006 and 2007 as president bush decided to search the u. S. Troops in iraq, local tribes also moved to reject al qaeda affiliate fighters and the United States was able to coordinate these efforts by the local tribes with the campaign of u. S. And Iraqi Security forces. That coordination, of course, has since come undone in the wake of the u. S. Withdrawal and sectarian ms. Wu by the maliki government and fallujah is now occupied by islam xd fighters. While much has been written about what happened in and bar they offer the perspective of those that actually served there. In their book, they held up fallujah an example of what can be achieved by the right combination of leadership and perseverance. Their story is not really a story of a Major Military battle in 2004 but of the more complex military, political and diplomatic moves three years later that it did for i did for a time anyway bring Greater Peace to that wartorn area. So, ladies and gentlemen i want to make one other note that bill is asking me to make. All of those remarks here are personal and they do not represent those of his command or u. S. Marine corps or armed services. Please join me in welcoming dan green and Brigadier General mullen. [applause] i thought i would begin with why when fallujah was finally won in 2007 from our perspective, it was more of a whimper for those reasons it wasnt covered by the media and hadnt been in the books written about it but at the end of the day it is not important how you finish the war than sometimes how you start it and one of the reasons we want to collaborate is how we felt that chapter and how that u. S. Forces learned a lot about the iraqi culture and thus nobody operations and counterinsurgency and there was a process of learning after its repeated we had an understanding of what was required and it may provide lessons for the future against al qaeda and other groups. So we want to write a book that captures the moment that we had the chance to experience in 2007 for six months. If we were able to put this in paper that maybe someday the future units that may have a profound similar task they are not going to read the dry after action report and probably read a memoir, that is how a lot of people get their understanding. So that is partly why we have to collaborate on this. And then also, we want to showcase that success is possible in this kind of concept when i arrived in april in march of 2007 there were talks of at least 750 security incidents in fallujah and the surrounding countryside that included improvised explosive device and included sniper attacks, you name it. And by applying the counterinsurgency approach in the city of fallujah that bill wyatt are on with the iraq he stand up and the tribes that surrounded the city, we were able to slowly squeeze the al qaeda out of the area to the point that by six months later they had less than 80 security incidents is taking place in the fallujah countryside and in the city. So, we thought we wanted to chronicle this and put it on paper so that future generations may have the chance to read it and also, we want to write a book that showcases and sacrifices because one thing we are very keen on is we want to make sure that we are not saying that the two of us that got it right and thats why things changed, we benefited from the sacrifices of countless others prior to our arrival and a lot of social movements and things taking place in iraq with the anbar awakening that had nothing to do with this individually but we wanted to take advantage of that and after the sacrifices of those that have come before us to show the sacrifices were for not. I thought i would turn over to bill to talk about what fallujah was like before we served together and give you a sense of things if youll share his perspective on how we changed the city. One of the things i want to add to what dan brought up is going on in the military right now is a bit of a bifurcation that is one of the reasons we wrote this book. In many cases the use of force is not the only answer. Its not putting a blanket of foam over something that settles everything down and gives people the opportunity to take a breath, look her pound and say we could do Something Different. Its saying break glass on the case we dont have that option. Whatever we are told today we will do to the best of our ability and in some cases, using the weapons in our hands is not the best approach, so that is one of the reasons i think we wrote this. Coming into fallujah itself, my experience started with why i was on the joint staff before i joined the division. Thats when the first battle of fallujah happened in april. The marines went back into the province less than a month before the battle happened before the blackwater bridge incident when the contractors were hung from the bridge and we kind of went in there pretty cocky and the attitude that we are going to go in there and smile and we are not going to live up to the reputation we normally have. Unfortunately when that happened, the marine commanders themselves were like we shouldnt put into the city. We shouldnt do retribution to the city but they were told to go in any way and they were told to stop when things got ugly and thats when it was turned over to the brigade, an experiment that didnt work and when november came along as when the is when the decision was made you need to go back and get sort this out. I was in the city in 2004 because that is when the reaction to the sites looked around to see what was going on because we knew we were coming in to inherit the entire. When the battle was over, essentially it was our job to clean things up and get things back on our feet and keep the insurgents out the hardest part about that is we are not iraqis. We cant sort out whos who. The only people who can are the police and of course before the november battles of all had been disestablished by the government at the time. So that made things particularly difficult. Not only were we trying to keep people out that we couldnt identify that what we were trying to reestablish the Police Working with the city and frankly a pretty unprofessional group of folks folks that they had been disestablished into preestablished pretty quickly and stuck pretty quickly. So we had our work cut out with us. Difficult process. Very long deployment. Year long. Lost a lot of people trying to keep things calm and quiet. Over the course of the a year we were able to keep things tapped down but when we left and i was assigned we were still keeping a close eye because we knew we would be coming back and i very much had a sense of things continuing to get worse and of course throughout the course of 2006, we had the drumbeat going on the same we are kind of lost its pullout and leave. We had a marine Intelligence Officer write a report saying fallujah is lost we will never be able to take it back. We will deal with it for us long as possible and then leave and frankly it was kind of hard to deal with. Why are we doing this . The members of congress and other folks were losing on the tv news all the time. It was a little bit difficult to do. The biggest thing you had to tell them its focus. We have a job to do and we will do the best to our ability. Dont worry what other people are saying. That is your job. Get back into the city and things are actually quite a bit worse. In many ways they were playing a game of whack a mole and the biggest cents after a month or two is realizing we have to do Something Different and that is what this book is about is doing something to drink. Something radically different. I dont know if you want to pick up from there. One of the lessons that we learned in iraq after the multiple rotations in this we will win anything against the enemy. What is the strategy and who will eventually take our place place and prevent the insurgency from coming back and intimidating blacks it took us a while to figure that out. In fallujah by 2007 you have people that have been repeated tours in iraq and afghanistan who is frankly weird numerous villages and valleys so well they already knew it was incredible. So, the key missing dynamic was enlisting the population in its own defense. Getting it off the fence where it was part of the solution not a bystander to the solution. Part of that is the end bar a weakening that i can talk about it later but it was also in the city of fallujah organizing local police in organizing the Neighborhood Watches so that it wasnt just kind of stuck between the insurgents on the one hand and u. S. Forces on the other but they were actually part of the solution and frankly the villagers or the people in the neighborhood they knew where the bad guys were and they were part of the solution. That makes it much easier for an outsider to figure out we have a local partner to work with. So, this led to what was called the operation that bill can talk about was an attempt to the population approach to the city of fallujah to approach that hadnt been applied earlier and the iraqi population wasnt ready for writing. Its necessary if you have People Living in the area that you have to get off the fence one way or another which to him was a very dangerous thing to do. If they join the government side too early they will torture and kill them. If they joined the insurgent side, even potentially if they get arrested and thrown in prison. So it is a very difficult problem for them to deal with. One of the things the marines were frustrated with on the deployment is the people never seem to help them and ask people can you help us and they just kind of look at you and you could almost see the wheels turning in their head like theres no way that im going to help you. Its your problem, not mine. We have the weapons, they didnt it is a pretty stark contrast. One of the other things we did before we deployed was spending a spending a lot of times explaining to the marines this is what we are going to do and this is why we are going to do it. By the way, the iraqi people are just kind of caught in the middle. They lived there. This is the rest of their life we are just a very short amount of time. If you took the time to explain that to them you then you would see the lightbulb come on to get them to understand why we are are giving it an easy one of the frustration, because many of them from the hollywood war movies they had expectations of what might be happening when they get there and when it wasnt happening that way they were pretty frustrated by it. So we had to eat leafy frustration. You could do 100 things right if you do one thing wrong because somebody is frustrated that is what theyve remember and you they remember and you can do so much when that happens. So it was an attempt to work with the police and set up a Neighborhood Watch to get folks in the different precincts in the city involved fighting their own security to keep them from driving into the neighborhoods which the iraqis appreciated. I didnt think that they would. The response to the questions is these bombs were not going off. But the most important was the Neighborhood Watch. Because they started. They knew it belonged in the neighborhood and who didnt. We hired 100 precincts, so that was 200 100 of eyeballs watching all the time living there in the neighborhood and reporting and insurgents who couldnt deal with it and we thought there would be a stronger reaction to this sort of thing thing but there wasnt. The majority of them left and went somewhere else and we have evidence because the operation in other areas that hadnt been happening for. And again i would like to echo one thing damn sad. This was a product of being in the right place at the right time. In some degree having the right attitude is what we need to do about it. There were a lot of things came together that helped us during that period of 2007 to get things to calm down. The former police chief was terrible. He was terrified, wouldnt go outside the Police Station headquarters, wouldnt go out on patrol. I dont even think that he ever left the building. You cant lead that way. The commander was in charge and was a member of the militia selling weapons. The one that took over was exceptionally good. The mayor when i surveyed the second time the major was terrible. There were a lot of people in fact there was a level of corruption that was kind of acceptable in that culture he was well and above beyond that. We also think that he was working with the insurgents. Somebody else took over. The police chief was brought in and the nadir and of the major. You had the Al Qaeda Branch and then what we called the nationalist insurgents of the nationalist insurgent or former baathists that worked with Saddam Hussein and the Security Forces many people know where the officer corps and the sunni arabs we had a lot of experience and networks of the fighters they could tap into. What developed over time is that al qaeda had overreached vi iraqi men love to smoke and drink of course and liked their girls to go to school. Al qaeda had a very different vision and the brutality they would burn warehouses of cigarettes for example. They started to cut into the corruption of different tribes which is just about money quite frankly. So where the nationalist insurgent side they are the number one enemy and you may be number two or three now which was kind of got from our perspective. So they finally have a local partner to work with and then we would use them to crush al qaeda essentially ended a twoday process. There was a sense that we have ever local partners. The new that they had been involved in that they it but they probably have a lot on their hands or vice versa. So we will set aside and focus on the front of a qaeda and the threat of al qaeda is multifaceted. The discussion is about combat and raising local Police Forces but its also about a Political Program that is very tactical and proficient. There was an individual in the city of fallujah was a who was a sort of political head of al qaeda. He wouldnt say this. He said of the tribal council. From the western eye that sounds legitimate. Hes wearing the road, he has a beard and he must be a legitimate sheik but no one would stand up and continue the conversations. They didnt have the iraqi expedition for standing were sort of influence like for example bill has lost as he picked up on. Im trying to get there myself. So then you have to appear not tribal shake and i can talk about this, when he enters the room you know that because the details are there before with ak47s. Youre not sure what to do. But they stopped talking and theres a serenity that comes with power quite frankly that you pick up on. So hes in the head of the tried and they are largely west along the banks into there were several thousand numbers of the tribes and he had control of an area that was 70 square miles or Something Like this of the extra of farmland and water front of the area if he could control that area so you wouldve a lot of your engagement was working with these tribes in working through them but from the american perspective, tribes are in antithetical building of modern state that it took a while for us to understand how vitally important as social institution was to the iraqi culture and how family ties trumped the political ties. So, we have a very robust tribal link href program and i grew and not attractive mustache to be a respected figure. Thank you, appreciate it. And worked with these tribal leaders to recruit men from their villages to be part of a local protective force anyway marrying with bill was trying to do raising the local Police Forces and the tribal forces. With the bifurcation of the nationalist insurgents and then the more islamist surgeons very much driven by al qaeda and the reason kind of bringing that up was its very important whats going on in the book but i think it is also what is going on today in what is currently happening. Al qaeda was bad. They did a lot of things. They are also saying your daughter, shes my wife now. And the locals had no say in the matter. They were killing people and pretty graphic and violent ways and i think the people of abuja started looking around saying we know the u. S. Military is looking. And the last couple of years theyve been very professional and ive had iraqis tell me that. Very balanced and approach to things. Thats why i think we might see a similar thing happened with isis. Theyve definitely overreached and they are worse. Al qaeda has disowned them. When you get one of the worst groups there is thats pretty bad. So this group will also overreach and they are going to turn on them. But first you need a government that they can actually trust anything they are starting to see that form right now that the paymaster has stepped down. One of the other things that has been irritating to me is they see the u. S. Trained Iraqi Military. Well that ended about in 2011 and 2012. When we left and theres nobody there anymore to try to keep that to be a balanced force. The minister maliki took some very direct steps to push away from that to push the sunnis out of the military and essentially they became another militia. So thats why many of the sunni areas didnt trust him and they always refer to them as iranians anyway. So, that is an interesting dynamic and ive been watching it very, very closely. One of the reasons they switched as you have the army working with the local iraqi police and local tribesmen so the iraq he army typically had the firepower that doesnt often have the willpower and then the police have the presence but they dont really have the power into the tribes have been in power and the willpower but they dont have the firepower. When we secured fallujah we had all three kind of working to do there in the concert of the streets to bolster the other for that kind of institutional resilience he was a good show component of this but in the political side of this was also reported. So understanding for example the council was a shadow government of al qaeda losing the placement to assassinate iraq he is appointed to do well for the city. Understanding that, marginalizing them into supporting for example so they had no budget whatsoever. All of that money sloshing around in iraq and never ended up in his office. So one of the things i try to do with my very impressive mustache was to provide temporary money to help provide funds he could keep his men. I loaned him a humvee and he didnt even have that in his office. It was such a sparking provision that he required that missing piece which was the iraq he leadership and legitimacy. And he was very proactive going against al qaeda. The city pacification we had an attack that killed a prominent leader in the city and it was a car bomb that blew up the procession the next day. That changed the city so they imposed a ban in the city. Overnight no vehicles were allowed in the city and i think sometimes we dont appreciate is the whole city was burned off and fenced off in the marine corps. You can only enter through the small number of entry control points. Everyone had a number of signed. They had their photos taken and that there was a sense of population control that we had that was important. But that may or imposing their vehicle band with the series of buses around the city you could imagine applying it here in the states theyve have those kind of restrictions but the iraq he is surrendered because they knew that was a part of the new strategy and things were going to change and the mayor was the central part of that. When they told us it was perfect we dont know how many people were killed but it was because the iraqi practices driving and people taken to hospitals as quickly as possible so i finally got there we could tell how many people were injured. When you went to the hospital there was an influx of people coming in and it was just a horrific event. When the mayor said he was going to impose a vehicle band i was like okay good luck with that because i just could not see it working. It did work. It was dicey for the first couple of days because their idea of the ones that didnt quite get the word was to shoot at them and so there was a lot of shooting going on even more so than normal in the city to get them to stop but they did it and the amazing thing was over the time that this band was in place myself in a couple of others would stand at the entry points where people were walking in and again wearing the head to toe burqa is in the 120 and 130degree heat. Generally in that society they had to carry stuff into the husband walks ahead of them. Cant imagine it going over very well here and we are asking are you okay with all this and yeah again not pleased there are not bombs going off. We are talking a couple blocks. Some of them had to walk miles. We found it amazing. When we first arrived they were hunkered down in the center and they were very secure. When they would go outside of the center they would go in huge groups to protect their identity. There family may be murdered and their house blown up. So once we put this together we would swarm one neighborhood at the time and it took four months to implement completely so you would go in the middle of the night and completely segments that area with concrete barriers if not physically cut off the rest of the city and you have a Police Captain moved up there with 20 or 30 police to set up a new precinct. Then you add to that a Neighborhood Watch so for example the Neighborhood Watch would be one man from every household and then the mayor of fallujah commanding people to do this. So we had have a special shirts made out for them and one of them had 3inch letters that somehow you just translate. So they figure out the Neighborhood Watch is close enough. But essentially what you are doing is an employment. They are now getting a job and was on her wearing the uniform because the insurgency is so overreached is no longer considered cool to be with the insurgencies. If we do one neighborhood at a time and then eventually they squeeze out out of the cities they start working in the rural areas and thats where the security changes. Getting the police to go out there inside each precinct we had the iraq he army and marines and police and as long as we were there we could prevent the iraq he army and the police from fighting which was a consistent problem and we could give them the confidence that if somebody tried to blow up the precinct or attack a precinct we would help defend it and that gave them a lot of confidence and in many cases the only reason they would stay is because we were there with them so getting off at the Fort Operating bases at the city and getting out there and mixing them with these people. And it was and it was worth of petrol instead of vehicle patrol. The barriers we got around were you could walk through them which was fine just couldnt drive a car through them. Each precinct would have to two checkpoints people would have to stop and they were manned by the Neighborhood Watch so they could check to make sure who was coming into the neighborhood. All these things when you think about it in the american context and i cant imagine doing it here in an american city. Why did it take so long to do this . Why is the resting place about combat and conventional warfare, how is it that they change over time to deal with challenges they were not expressing to handle so from across the spectrum not just of the marines but also the army, state department, usaid they are all designed to work with capitals and National Governments and the problems in the insurgency have aspects of that but predominantly outside of the capital that is frequently tribal so it is trumped the admissions admissions, admissions, so the problem is the opposite and how they organized for success. So there is a different way of doing this and that it isnt always about killing people and breaking things. Its about lifting the coke listing them and empowering them at the local level. This is the things you typically hear from the naval officers. Its different in the career path that we want to capture that at one point because again publishing in the combat there are plenty of books by Junior Officers directly involved in combat and i buy them as much as the next guy. But at the end of the day is a solution not a fundamental solution. Going back to my comments at the beginning there are a lot of folks in the military but think if you can do the highend type of war you can do anything else and easily adjust down to the low end. If the only toy you know how to use as a hammer ive always been against that approach and i think thats why it took as long as we did. The only tool they knew how to use and wanted to use with a hammer because Everything Else was too frustrated and there wasnt a real deployment combat to them. But how do you win . You dont win by depopulating an area. You win by getting people to decide okay we had enough of this pr going to get involved and take the neighborhood back and calm everything down and get the military out of the neighborhood. On of the problems we had when we got there is the army had been given space in the city that they were in charge of and it happened maybe a Monthly Party arrived. How do you tell them now we have a plan to get you out of the city and we are going to put the police in your place. The way that i explained them was the role of the Iraqi Military is to defend iraq. Its not to keep control of the cities. The final result on the city is the police in charge of the city enforcing the rule of law in that city. Thats it. We dont belong here. As we have to find we have to find a way to hand things over to the police and give them enough confidence that they can actually take control because as dan brought up earlier, they were terrified to go out into the city. We were worried every time they came out because they would shoot at everything and anything. And not purposely but if they got hit by an ied or somebody somebody somebody shona family would call it the death plaster. They fired anywhere and everywhere and that made things pretty difficult. But the biggest piece is how do you get them to be more professional and focus on their job to protect and serve which is not a concept they be leaving. Talking a little about isis and with a possible strategy might look like a Going Forward i know the president has remarks on this. There are a lot of things we try to learn from our experiences in Fallujah Redux province. To me one of the key elements is you have to have the army, the police and the the tribes working together in concert and that is only in the service of the broader political strategy to say how do you convince the sunni era that is an alliance of convenience right now to turn against and work with a government that is not made up of people from his religious background or from his part of the country so you have that compelling political strategy because that is the thing to when you are fighting the insurgency it isnt just about military arms. Its 20 of the solution. Et presented as having a political strategy rationale that defeats the Political Program and that involves listening to the community knowing its own government and its own defense. I like to say the title it takes a village to raise an insurgency. How do you crush an insurgency . You have to list the population and the solution otherwise he will be relentlessly holding all the time and you will lose people unnecessarily for the strategy that it wont succeed. The best thing to do is open up for questions before we make the final wrapup. [applause] could you use the microphone, please. Yes, sir. The views you are talking about today, how prevalent is this way of looking at the insurgencies in the military . And also, im sorry that im ignorant about this but what is the status of fallujah right now . We have control and the majority of the people dont trust the government, the previous governments i guess you could say now, so how much control they really have im not sure. And i suspect of the things im seeing and reading at a certain point they will say okay you are out of here and they will make it happen just like theyve done before but they have to have somebody help them. As far as the prevalence of the view it is a mix. You have a lot of people are doing we dont do that. We are going to focus on the big war. You watch the news and i talked to the younger marines. The younger marines thats what they joined for. They want to do something and a lot of them are frustrated because that is what it looks like. It isnt exactly breaking out and it may not be the big board that you saw on tv or in the movies but when you look at the course of history the majority of things weve done have been the types of operations. A lot of people just dont understand that and it goes back to the have to do whatever we are told we should do and not what we ought to do. Correct me if im wrong but former leaders of the party who were active in the insurgency at the time, do we know if the Current Situation in south or as they are known today are they active in isis and the other one is how do you expect fallujah to be taken back by the iraqi forces . Is it going to be similar to what happened in the area when they came to control the city . After all, you have difficulty in the American Army getting the city in 2007, so how will the iraqi army be able to win after almost nine months . The reason it was easy for them to take over the areas is in part because there was an Alliance Taking place at the likes of convenience right now between the former baathists, some tried to send a tribal leaders colluding with isis in part for the internal politics of pressuring the maliki government into trying to other reform or create a separate enclave. I think that is the clear. Isis had a smart ground game of Political Engagement before we saw them on the radar screen of the two really i rest assured they were already making and reaching out to different tribal leaders and networks to help facilitate this kind of return. So i think that is what happened here. I think that eventually, like we experienced in our own tour that a lions will start to fray as the reality of control becomes a daily reality. I dont know exactly how iraq will testify these areas. I dont think it will be frankly as sophisticated and sensitive to the civilian casualties as i think we were when we were there. I would like to add i dont think it is going to be violent, either because one of the things that we saw the love of the younger guys is the bandwagon so it looks like somebody had success. They want to jump around in front of the camera and everything. Things start going south on them they just kind of melt away. And so, i think what is going to happen is if you get the National Government doing in the center and they start pulling the military together to bring back the sunni and kurds into the military, like i said, isis is overstating their welcome and overreaching declaring how theyd. You dont do things like that if you expect to live a long life. Whats going to happen is the tide is going to turneecause if you think about it they are fighting lebanon, syria, iraq. They have a lot of people working against them and i dont think they are going to last long. I think they will take the flag down and leave as quickly as possible. I dont think there will be a lot of fighting. Just my personal opinion. There are so many dynamics one of the dynamics is the military comes in and is unable to speak the language of the street and its translators in the past experience where we dont say the right thing and you have deleted some of the problems that creep up but in reality it involves poverty and Good Governance and this means no screwing around with corruption and security and then theres the other problem with drugs and well. The huge problem is the suicide killer and how to deal with that. I wonder if you can i know a little bit about what the general in the philippines did and i wonder if you would be bold enough to see what he did and how to deal with fanatic killers. The approach used in the philippines probably not acceptable. Since we are going out to the internet, essentially they took the bodies of fanatics and had been dumped in a grave and contaminated with pigs blood unfortunately, the media has made a mess by taking things out of proportion because most people in the military are pretty decent, but then there are some clowns who create havoc like the year nations on the bodies. But any event, the big problem is proper security with the fanatic killers and the regions killers and how you deal with them. But the first point, the translators that something i focus on the people we work with and the folks that put out the people on the streets the translators repeat what they hear like a computer and in many ways to get the context wrong but if you have an interpreter who understands what they are doing and has been working there for a while which i had the benefit of having coming can tell when they are talking with someone they are trying to get the answer and emphasize the great things. I try to understand what he was saying and what they were saying back. So, all those things were kind of key to be able to communicate but that interpreter is key. If you can get a good one they are worth their weight in gold. I greeted her and didnt realize what i said. That would be a problem. I know in the west when we hear suicide bombers is jarring to our values and how we see the world but when you actually start to unpack what they are, they come in many different flavors and sometimes they are suicide attackers unknowingly so for example there is a case who came into iraq and was instructed that yes you will be part of the martyrdom operation but in the meantime if you pay your dues so they were placed between the two part and little did he know that it was a truck bomb and he survived that and he was previously injured but as an example, some people are there are things that are done to them that creates a sense of shame that they become suicide bombers. They run the gamut. There are a lot of people that it is by no means all of them. The other aspect of dealing with them, the thing we emphasize that our Marines Office time is you have to be focused because the insurgent suicide bomber only needs one second to succeed in what they are doing and one second of not paying enough attention and that is hard when there is a lot of heat out there and they mix in with the crowds so how do you protect yourself because a very difficult problem that we have is the duty escalation of force and it is a cultural is understanding between the two end in the case is like that there are occasions where they are hurt and some cases killed because of that. But if you get a marine who is afraid to even protect himself, and youve got somebody in that is an enormous problem. Thats why its so important because they know who is from the neighborhood and from the village and who isnt a vacant help spot those people before handing it if you have the local Community Organized and listed they will provide endless amounts of information what is going on. There are people who dont know that moved into the house. If its just the marines and the navy we wouldnt have that same event 18yearold with a badge on his desk and he is holding an eight page in his own neighborhood, that will do it. I worked in the kurdistan region and so i certainly approve of your approach here. But one of the things that has bothered me about the surge a lot of the success clearly this is not very sustainable. How did you deal with that issue . You are correct not a good solution when you are faced with a number of very bad solutions. You have a lot of unemployed youth in many cases they would pay them 50. My first employment we had a lot of that. Theres very much an emphasis on though we are offering to pay them or give them jobs we need to try to get the economy going but of course we dont have security and you dont have the economy so how do you deal with that . Then the amount of money that we are paying wasnt very much. The other aspect is what we told them is if you do a good job and you get the police your chance of becoming a Police Officer are much better. Your chance of joining the Iraqi Military are much better because you improve yourself. And that kind of frustrated with them also and some of them are just getting it because this is what i want to do. Then things started calming down and moving back up. One of the most major things they noticed is Kentucky Fried Chicken opened up. [laughter] so it starts snowballing and you have that kind of effect that you have to get things started and that was the hardest part. Were you able to work on any measures to try to get to the local governments better financed to get these things . Yes, actually the key thing was just getting security to the point where the civil governments could take place. When i arrived in april behavior and new city council baby constituted as a brandnew head of the council with a new new mayor new mayor so on new mayor solana said the government side, the beginning was the new change, so we had the new iraqi army leader, the new iraq he police chief to all of this leadership had come in but he had been broken up so they were meeting locally and debating in other places. Getting them together and meeting regularly and then unfortunately within two weeks they had been assassinated. So i had a meeting with him and a few of the Civil Service grains and as he walked home from the meeting he was gunned down and we had another City Council Member who who was a gym teacher that represented the local teachers and he was gunned down in his home. You can imagine when you go to that city councilmember and you look around the room and say who is willing to stand up and be a leader now. There is that empty chair just sort of sitting there at the end of the table. Those moments you ask yourself what is the insurgency trying to have you to . Do you just quit or processed and push on and thats what we did so for me i finally found someone that was soon to be a local partner. We just established security around the compound which we didnt have at the outset. I tried to get some money as a bridge to cover the bills and we supported him publicly where we could. I would give him advice on who to talk to. He is the man in charge of the city. You are of course but he is also, too. So troubleshooting to help him and he didnt much encourage me. He had standing in the city. So, once things started to happen we had a provincial Reconstruction Team arrived which had the department of representatives who partnered with the mayor and helped him write a budget and work with the government to try to regularize bs temporary measures i was using. One of the Amazing Things is that when the usaid is working on this and we were starting projects and we missed our other projects must work on the projects and then asking was turned in the city towards august, september and into october we started seeing other projects like who is doing that one and it turned out the people themselves were because they were starting to clean the area of and do things that were kind of amazing. That was good to see. I have a suggestion for your next project from fallujah. We have time for one more question over here. Im a student from the american university. First i want to ask from your experience what do you want for the readers to take away from an inspiring story like what you left behind out of isis has taken over the city . My other question, how did you end up winning the trust of the city to make it more prosperous even though they have taken over the city . I think for a lot of americans they see us taking over and hear about the affiliates in Different Countries and that there is a sense of what can we do about it coming it, is it something we just have to live with as a permanent condition of our lives . One reason i want to write this book is to show that the it is possible. Its not by accident and it is a process that takes place but there there is some learning that has to take place as well. This is not an interactive will problem. It requires local partnerships to the problem is so much of how we remember or misremembered the war is purely about combat. I like as much as the next person or soldier. But that isnt how the war is fundamentally finished in this type of warfare i think. So that is a big take away. I would like to add to that that is one of the reasons we wrote this is to get people to understand when the United States military left iraq for the most part, in 2009 and 2010, we left in good terms. Things were very, very quiet. The job we were given to do had been achieved because nowadays its like we lost and it has to do with how people thought about it felt about it to begin with which wasnt good. But the job was done. I could have walked up to the print industry primitive strands that you do this and this you will have a big problem. And he did every single one of them which was absolutely amazing. What is going to happen here is why it isnt permanent because one thing you will notice is when ken pollack talked about this committee had taken over any of the areas. They cant. They are not Strong Enough to do that. About two thirds of those old they havent gone into those areas. The only areas theyve taken over were sympathetic because they hated the government because the accused them of being iranian. They preyed on television. They got some equipment that doesnt mean they know how to use it. They wave the flags around and execute when the officers ran away which is unfortunate. But the tide is turning and i suspect this is going to go back in the National Government is going to go back to being what it was before all of this started about a year, year and a half ago. Are there other questions . Spec how were you able to win the trust of fallujah during that time . The discussion we had over time theyd seen how the u. S. Military double in the city. At the professional, balanced and that sort of thing had more impact than i thought it would end of the discussions thats one of the things they talked about. It doesnt mean they liked us because they were told we were the were the boogie man so they were the boogie man so they didnt like us very much but they didnt have to. They had to work with us and thats what they did and trust, i dont think that we could say they trusted us, they just knew we were leaving because we told them and showed them that and they knew the other folks couldnt be around when they left. They did not want that. Also bill was there for multiple tours. I know one day before tours at the same base in afghanistan. Eventually you become a part of the local scene. Everybody knows you. Welcome back. When you were living there every day as bill did you know that city better than some of the residence. Residents. It starts to become part of your own life for hometown in a weird way so it is part of just dealing with People Fairly and honestly. That is an unusual characteristic in some of these places