Welcome. I want to thank you for joining us today. I am cliff may, fdd founder and president and we are pleased to have you here today joining us this event, cohosted with the center for new american security. To mark the release of Michael Gordon excellent new book degrade destroy. Because michael has had exceptional access to top u. S. Officials and military commanders and because of his extraordinary firsthand reporting from battlefields hes produced a must read book on this historic conflict. We were very proud to have michael with us inhouse at fdd while he was working on the book and we understand you also spent time at cns during the same. Are all happy to see it on the shelves today. Its available for purchase all major booksellers, online info that you here in person in the back of the room at the conclusion of todaysen events. Michael gordon currently serves as as a National Security correspondent for the wall street journal. In addition to his latest book he is the coauthor with the late general bernard trainor, i wonder foment a three definitive histories of the United States wars in iraq. Full disclosure, i have known michael for a rather long time. I wont tell you how long because he looks so young and may not want to admit his age but this clue, we were in the same bullpen at the New York Times in the previous century. He was an astonishingly good reporter. I can tell you stories, and byie the way reassuring to note here still an astonishingly good reporter today so some things dont change. To dive into this conflict with us and the Lessons Learned were very glad to have with us Lieutenant General sean macfarland, use army retired. Gentleman for served as ath 3sr commander of the coalition against isis in syria and iraq. During his command from 2152016 coalition forcess recaptured nearly half of the enemies territory and set the conditions for the enemies final defeat. Well talk about that moreou today. We are equally honored to Michele Flournoy posted under secretaryfe of defense for poliy in the Obama Administration from 20092012. Shes the cofounder and chair of the cnas board of directors and also cofounder and managing partner of west exact advisors. Todays conversation will be moderated by my colleague bradley bowman. Rats is a senior director at fdd center on military and political power which focuses on defense policy and strategy. He served for years as a student National Security adviser and before that as an active duty u. S. Army officer, black hawk pilot and assistant professor aa west point. Before i hand the floor over to brad just a couple of quick words about fdd for anybody who may not be familiar with us. For morefo than 20 years beginng just following the attacks of 9 11 fdd has operated as a nonpartisan Research Institute exclusively focus on National Security and Foreign Policy. Our experts are a source of time to research, analysis and policy options. We take no for an government money yetet we never have. We never will. For y more information on our wk we encourage you to visit our website, fdd. Org. You can follow us on twitter at fdd. Or so thank you again for joining us for this important and timely conversation. Rad, im pleased to turn this over to you. Thank you so much, cliff, and thanks to everyone for r joining us here in the room. Havent seen this in a while and thanks for everyone reading and online. I also want to congratulate you, michael, on your extraordinary book and looking for to this conversation. Sector flournoy and joe mcfarland, a distinguished panel and im glad you could join us today. My general plan for the next hour or so is for us to have a conversation about 40 40 minr so and im sincerely with such anhi distinguished audienc. Lets jump right in. Let me start fml with the most obvious question. This is your fourth book on wars and her back if im not mistaken why did you decide to write it and tell us a bit about all the research that went into it. Well, thanks, brad, for having me here. Pivotal roles in this successful. It has to be said, campaign against the islamic state. You know in the United States track record in military complex has been mixed but i think by all reasonable measures youd have to count this one as a success. Well, as you know, ive covered all these conflicts and i was in seven of them in various parts of the world, on the ground as a car spun out. And theres just so guest so much money can do as newspaper reporter and i always every time i was in the middle of the tumultuous and massive events and you get a birdseye view on whats happening and youre in the middle of the combats and i wanted to know what was going on and it was hard to know at theat time. What was the choices, strategy, road not followed and what was happening in washington . Then the three previous perksch which i did with general trainer, you know, our goal and was not to be the first delegate, the first book, but to try and take the time to put something together that stood the test of time. Maybe it wouldnt be the only book on the conflict, but it would be one of the books that people would have to read. One of the things thats still striking to me today is theres no pentagon history of this conflict. Just hasnt been done. Theres a reincorporation on the air and pieces on the army side and no one in the u. S. Government wanted to do this. One of the things was policy strategy and strategy of operation and can you speak a moment about the embedding you did of this. There was no embedding in the military and the Obama Administration didnt do it and has to be said. In terms of poland and mobilize there and try russian aggressioe and reinforce nato and i know because i asked and the unit agreed with highh levels of the Biden Administration and it was not approved, but there were opportunities to get close to the action because this was a war where we worked with a vast array of partners and partners willey take you. Re they didnt have any particular requirements about security and your security and so i was able to go with Iraqi Counter Terrorism service in west mosil and syria and no former embedding process, i was able to do what they call a battlefield circulation where you move around the battlefield but people work. Work. Host thank. You mentioned seizure disorderses and secretary of defense for policy and Obama Administration from 2009 to 2012 and the administration mas been decision for forces from iraq and 2011. Let me start by saying congratulations and how important it looks like this is because of the americans too often pause and learn lessons from them and even avoiding next time if possible. I was definite present in the Decision Making around president obamas ultimate choice to withdraw from iraq. When we came into office, we obviously inherited two wars, afghanistan and iraq. And i think the Obama Administration after its initial review was really kind of following the same approach that the Bush Administration had had, which was a very deliberate phase frane cigs or a drawdown based on conditions as iraqi forces exhibited problems and being repositioned and gradually drawing down and that was started in the Bush Administration and continued in the early years of Obama Administration. We came to a point where do you draw down completely and withdraw or do you maintain indefinitely some kind of individual force . At the time, both the civilian side and military side of the pent gone was unified and in arguing for row sid yule force and we felt like our presence was strengthening the iraqi backbone, was helping to dampen down attentions between the different ethnic elements of the force in iraq. For full some discussion of pros, cons and risks and the people committed their views to paper, we had repeated situation room discussions, debates about everyy aspect and at the end of the day, the president made his decision and he wanted to end one of the wars he inherited and he felt that given the threat of the time t and the assessment of the iraqi forces that theyd be able to hold it together with a secure systems mission only. He thousand theyd make a hard turn back toward secretaryism and alqaida and iraq to reemerge with isis and the safe flavin syria as well. Things very quickly started moving in a bad direction. To obamas credit, i disagree with his initial decision obviously and made that very clear at the time. He did do that thing and he recognized the threat and went back in but at some great cost. I am still of the mind that he might have deterred that rejuvenation isis had maintained. Thank you for that. With that context in mind. Michael, i want to come to you before i bring general mcfarland in the conversation. Mcfarland drawing that in through 2011 and walk us through the key milestones and decisions associated with three things, rise of isis, of the decision to send u. S. Forces back to iraq and then ultimately the battle to defeat the isis. I would like three minutes or less and general mcfarland played a very Important Role and it was needed to beat isis they created a situation who by the way is making a comeback in iraq and sectarian tendencies are unleashed, which create add ground within that country for isis to gain a greater foothold and also the absence of American Forces really led to the deterioration of the Iraqi Security forces. Without that mentoring and presence. It also deprived washington of the Situational Awareness it needed and what was happening and the reason mo soul came as a great shock to the white house. Isis had greater capabilities and was disapproved but some of the things if we had stayed there and the key milestones came there and will go back in. And a different kind of war and the partners we were going to do the mentorship and provide that and needing to took that long with forces on them and the structure on there and some sort of unified headquarters, thats what general mcfarland had to with going out in the front linesto to going after deep targets. That took some doing and pushing by the commanders in the field. Conflicting with the operations and it took a few years it didnt come easy. General coming to you as i may. In the book pages 153 and 154 and for anyone tabooing notes, the commander in september of 22, 2015 on that day secretary of Defense Ash Carter said as michael reports, rather than three generals responsible for different aspects of the campaign as had been the case, im positive Lieutenant General mcfarland isof the single commander of countedder ice activities in syria. Carters efforts will be critical in the coming minnesotas. That was an understatement i would say. Id love to hear you respond in any wayat youd like to what michael d detailed and anything that occurred after assuming command. Guest thank you. The main job at hand was to create this command and control structure that encompassed iraq and syria and that required us pulling together and special operations tribes kemp wall ourselves under one command and they didnt all completely come under that commandnd and the coordination was enhanced significantly with some of the teams. Gee we had to put them in tents in the similar he created in a motor pool in headquarters and that brief to pushing enough cold air into those things but know how many sprinkler heads are in tens by the way . Anyway, we pulled that together and it was important because the command and control in two thcountries had to be balanced against two different sets of authorities for use of force jordan and kuwait and qatar and iraq and 29 contributing nations outon of coalition with almost 0 countries and we had Carrier Strike groups, operating and there was a lot of activity going on. The other thing to keep in mind is in iraq titled 2022 authority and we had a chief mission of fully omitterring embassy. Balancing all the equities and two wars were happening, not just one. We were fighting isis and that was 4 war but we had the civil war going on against the regime and russians showed up isis not constrained by the line and they viewed them as one cal fit and advantage of the entire lines and we were an the periphery around them and unity of effort and command was essential to makingng progress. Guest once we had that in hand, we had to communicate that out to all the stake holders here in the United States and around various capitols. Those were the most important initial things that he thanksgiving we had to get up and going. Host michael describes thee name we gave this particular strategy and i was interested from your perspective as the person leading this, what were the advantages and challenges associated with a strategy iraq pre2011. Guest many in iraq and syria and some of which did not gete along with one another and some of which we didnt get along and this old saw issue friend of anmy of my enemy is any friend and is not always operative and we had to find ways to balance out mutually Hostile Forces and some of these were not principally opposed to isis, especially in syria, they were mainly opposed to the regime and we were trying to get them to take the wolf closest to their sled saying can you fight isis for us too . Isis dun like assad either in why should we fight them . Were asking you too. Other types of support and the important one was their support and we provided them with the operations of interest to them and sthenowe have a challenge to the fact that a lot of these forces on the ground well, first of all in syria, we had nobody on the ground initially to engage with them and in iraq, we had people on the ground but the people who were on the ground went and were trained and equipped for counter insurge insurgencybattle. Isis was a state that had a hybrid forces in the field boring on conventional capables andes we had to retrain and reequip them for getting ourselves properly aligned for the fight with the right authorities rules of engagement andd it includes back stories ad one relates to Syrian Democratic forces and how did we first came to work with the Syrian Democratic forces and it was anc interesting story there and one of the striking features was Iraqi Security forces and not just one partner and terrorist services for the iraqi army and Police Reporting to different ministries one one thing striking to me and i was surprised to learn it and in the course of the research was just how early this Alliance Began and what actually happened was in august of 2014 really the day after mosul dam was taken back andis Chris Donahue later of lat man out and he was 234 the Delta Force Commander and in Northern Iraq and the deal was brokered by the kurdish authorities there who were not on good terms with the kurdish authorities but thats a separate story. He came up with a concept that could be a partner for us and stop volunteers from joining the isis group coming down from turkey and stop from syria and a basic understanding between donahuee and muslim reaching in and other suiters traveling through the day and trying to strike a deal with the syrian kurds and it took time before this relationship gained traction through the action and absence and became the mainstay through the efforts of syria and it was essential and it did take time to arm and equip them. Host based on your reporting, whats the best estimate youve seen in terms of how many casualties the Syrian Democratic forces sustained . There were 20 u. S. Ka in combat in operation resolve. There were thousands ovsecurity force and soldiers and policemen who died and probably 5,000 or more Syrian Democratic forces sdf as they branded themselves that got killed and somewhere on the order of 1600 to 8,000 civilians who died in the conflict so a high price was paid by the Partner Forces in executing the victory and theres a consequence of that and the usual casualties were so low. General mcfarland, i guess that from a American Perspective and thats one of the advantages out of the strategy is that we have motivated partners with shared interests who are enduring much of the sacrifice is it fair to say they would have been casualties . Neither isd good and wed he suffered more casualties or we would havess accepted a far less favorable outcome. Is what weve seen in iraq as bad as what weve seen in syria . We dont know. Dealing with thatal we can only speculate. The standard of how i was thinking about sustaining that operation around the world in this case we didnt always see things from the same Vantage Point and other places where its on going, its facing real one thing im understanding is taking over your line and under what conditions does it work well and when does it not work well . In earlier times and much boater working today and out of your experience, what makes it work and not work. What are the key conditions i can tell you one of the reasons that worked in iraq and syria and naming the trust and political and iraqi governmentth and kurdish government and all though the ypg sdf leadership is a little bit merkier and there appeared toan be buy in and we backed it up with sufficient resources and were able to t deliver what we promised. I came back to headquarters with a listt of things several pages long and a throbbing headache because i knew it would be difficult to provide all the things that were being asked of us, but i had a lot of support when i asked for things, they were provided. Political against the militarynd equities and my boss in the area and i got what i needed when i need it had. Maybe not as soon but in the long run. They provided me all kinds of players that theyve had and including the organizations and people and that we were able to work with all the different parties balance their equities and reaching into syria and turkey, the office of brett mckirk and people like that were critical. Absolutely critical. Im sorry. I came up with a few thingsas and in one theres a conflict with accompanying authorities and took really till december 2016 to fully. Flush that out but under general mcfarland, washington did not allow advisers to go onto the battlefield with iraqi forces and they were advising from within the wire. A lot of importuning from the generals to washington andnt eventually they allowed this to happen. It happened for the first time in the summer of 2016 with advisers and it took a lot of pressure from baghdad and weve got to send advisers out into the field to go with the forces and cant don this remotely. I think that was largely the case and unorthodoxed partners and sitting here and they worked with the sdf or the credit card and the second of all theres an enormous amount in the conflict, there was not a sanctuary in syria for isis. Afghanistan, the taliban, and their allies had a sanctuary in pakistan and that problem was never solved. That was a liability that didnt exist in the particular conflict. We dont have advisers on the ground and not doing air strikes, but it was the tenth special forces group that trained the Ukrainian Forces and we supply intelligence, ammunition and sending arms and you could argue its an abridged modified scaled back version of that weve been through thats being carried out today. The caveats, one it is possible to do too much and trying to find that sweet spot and cops with how much supportdi youre providing because everything i did was against isis. I had to keep russia and iran in mind and what i was doing along the way. If we do too much, iraqis fall back in old habits and step aside and let us take the lead. That was not the model were trying to follow there so, you know, the correct level of advice and assistance in the company. The one thing, the Iraqi Security forces. That was a sign of [inaudible] for that operation. The last time iraqi administermy rolled up towards your area, it was not to shake hands and work together, this was a deferent situation. I want to make sure theres no shenanigans and we provided assurance to both partners by being there. We got away with the support camp and not that case with mosul and camp spikers readying the ninth Armored Division and second operative for the 100kilometer assault. Im eager to bring the audience into the conversation. Host if you wouldnt wait for the microphone to come to you and identify yourself and well go from there. The gentleman here in the middle. Thank you, im tom chancreat for the project with media of National Security and congratulations and nice solid panelist and the record is not very good. In the opening pages, you quote. Obama with the new yorker and says isis is the jv and proved to be a wrong statement and didnt set conditions. Was there no intelligence on the rise of isis reaching a commander in chief, was it inadequate . Was there great intense he wasnt paying attention to . Isis was dedicated to bringing an end to the conflict inug iraq it ignored numerous signs and the Iraqi Foreign minister went to the pentagon and many a meeting with marty and the chairman of the joint chief and asked him for help and continued when colonel Chris Donahue and mike migada, went to iraq in 014 and reported they couldnt have a threat. American air h strikes and its quoted in there. They were hoping not to engage there and they were also contending with to be fair to them a lot of other middle crises inca afghanistan and thee was a lot of area. The white house from the file and how they viewed and prosecuted the war. So during the president ial Campaign Candidate trump made a number of sames that should he become president , he was going to bombas the heck out of isis except he didnt use the word heck. And take the gloves off sotospeak. Basically what the what he did was he reduce add level of white House Oversight and critics say micromanagement and that slowed the pace of decisions. For example at theec end of the Obama Administration, only three helicopters in syria at one time. Hr mcmaster and President Trumps special security adviser and that was all washed away. But the ironic result was what President Trump did with the important caveat to inject a lot of turbulence into the strategy by later taking forces out of syria, back out of syria and back into syria, towards the end which had a lot of challenges for the commanders. Thank you, everyone, for your time. Im with the washington post. I wanted to ask about spats in Foreign Policy and the trumpsi administration and having that in Northern Syria and how do you see that broader information. Thank you. Well, it was a mistake to have troops with about a thousand troops in syria and on top garrison and the u. S. Has a presence because over at the horizon is not an ideal strategy for going apheter rests that just happened a couple days ago in syria. Its important to keep a foothold there but the way that was the way that troops have some part of n the area was certainly it was one of the cement plans and it was a draw and the ammunition was blown up and the pipe and the u. S. Came in and blew up thats fallen into the hole. We had Prime Minister and president abade. Hes a hard negotiator but ultimately was a host other questions from here . A lotot of people that read, degrade and destroy will be surprised to learn how extensive that role was in syria far from being disengaged in the boutique Counter Terrorism rating and to the point where it is. It was running advise and assist efforts in syria and air campaign in an air campaign. I wonder if you could sort of describe how this unprecedented situation came about and also kind of talk about id be curious about general mcfarland about this and pluses and minuses of this in terms of action it gave the u. S. Government versus command and control and obvious transparency with a huge portion of the campaign run by organization t that the u. S. Government wont talk about or even after the fact to get them to talk about it as you have done is like pulling teeth. A guest yeah, playing a essential role and activities in the shadows and they had the essential role in syria basically a soft special forces for the liter. They were few in numbers and had to put the special forces group underneath them and trainingup d build up the contrary and fight and carried out the war and posed doing the physical cal fate and i interviewed people in that at camp lejeune and command and control challenges because i you didnt directly control them and own chain of command and c called them their air strikes and i think for many of these operations its whats on red card authority and veto something they were going to do but you didnt really control it and had an army moving on mosul and conventional army run by the conventional u. S. Army and had a soft war in syria against isis run very much by those guys lashed together but not under direct command and control. What would be your thoughts on that . Th yeah, it wasas definitely a hybrid hybrid line and special Operations Task force and carters initial thoughts is all those guys would be underneath that and going into the sausage making, that wasnt the obvious outcome of the discussion but there was broad agreement because commanders were friends and battle buddies of mine and we were going to get along and we were going to work well together. Tony, thomas, and i and Scotty Miller and we served together and so we were committed to making sure that all this worked so we had Major General jimpe craft commanding the special opportunistics and he was the supported commanderco in syria d the 82nd followed by the 101st in iraq and supporting the other in the country. Jim, you had these operators running around and were they supporting them with the guy that made it all work for me. They believe yogi bear ran aground and the relationship with musloon ask were not going to sever any relationships and if they want to support it, well wrap around it and thats what they did very effectively. I think our special opportunistics Community Ops Community Found ways to makee it all work like which tribe of special forces are you . Why am i talking to you instead of you . They figured it all out. I think exceptionally well and it was really a commitment to teamwork by the special ops folks to each other and me the conventional guy that really p smoothed out a lot of peculiarities of the arrangement. Another question here in the back, please. Thanks, pat and michael. Its great to see you again. My question is about the efficacy and many as a coawe there are of the army and iraq war. Theres no question that will go an anemty of tactical passing through and some of the finals we found is the greatest benefactor of the war may be teheran and so my question then is if we look at iraq and syria today, theyre larger than the iraqi army and control the communication from teheran and by, with and through to deliver effects for that level and so it can affect it. To be occupied and a couple of reasons and one to get control ofr the border and southeast of the heart of darkness there and the thinker was because it was right astride and being created by a number of sewall money back after and through province up into syria and thats probably why the russians accidently bombed us there while i was there. They didnt like us there. So by putting ourselves on the ground this, we were able to largely mitigate some of these iowa hawkeyes rain indian effort at creating, i think, this expanded fear of influence over western and Eastern Syria and include, we reduced it. Like wise by being on the ground with plume in the north. In the east and the tigress river valley and people there, the person in the room to help iraqis, they were able to keep a lot of the iranen influence acceptable at an acceptable level for some time around and this got more complicated, and i cant really talk about it because Steve Townsend had replace med by then but leading up to that, you know, talking to [inaudible] and it he wanted pmf and telefar and it was a real challenge trying to keep him at bay. Because we could provide more help to iraq than iran could iran could cause more trouble for iraq. We could provide more help. There was sort of a balance there wee were able to strike with the Prime Minister. So state queens provide add way to mitigate the communication. The operational approach and you were mitigating second and third reporter effects of a much larger strategic decision made years earlier to invade iraq and take out the regime, which ended a verype long period of iran and iraq essentially containing each other. Being fully preoccupied and containing each other in the region. Once you took away sackmary dams reseem sadams reseem and chaos of iraq, the opportunity for iranen influence to grow was just exponential and i agree. You sat with that reality, you can use that and this strategy decision was made prior that set the conditions with that. One last question from the audience. Michael, thank you for your book and this is a question for the three of you. Talking about prevention and treatment and i wanted to ask you about the billions of dollars arming Iraqi Security forces and then 500,000 500,000 insurgents came out and melted away. The same thing happened in afghanistan. Im just curious to see where is the wheres the problem in arming Security Forces of these countries and me can i Say Something as somebody that served in iraq and afghanistan what the military is trying to do riding a bicycle and run along with a hand on the back of the bicycle seat for quite a while before they pedal on their own and that can take quite awhile. You look at what the british have done with the forces around the world with oman and places that had incumbent officers and taken off and science and art mixed together there and providing reassurance and the level of professionism and going in the right place. You have to have infrastructure there and iraq and afghanistan to negate the model. People on the ground and we have Inspector General and all the stuff provided to the iraqi. Theyre using it but the shoot at isis on through my uav feeds so canev i count for ebola . No, i couldnt in those cases but in syria when we had the troops on the ground, turkey wanted to know, hey, you know, wheres all this ammunition going . Is it going to be used against turkey and we were able to provide a reasonable level of assurance that, no, its going to be used against isis because were there with our hands on the back of the bicycle seat to be sure its being used for the intended purpose. I think that really the model is fine, you know. It just needs to be followed through and stypes it take as lot of patience across multiple administrations. Secretary, do you want to add to that . T . Guest i think the u. S. Hand on the bicycle is key and these things take, you know, a very long time and they take our hand the seat too soon. I think the second challenge is if you were to do it, another one of my favorite proposed Lessons Learned is real historical say is under what condition and we tend not to pay enough attention to it is the credibility and legis massey of the partner legitimacy of the partner. There was a huge benefit and another government, not so much. Really a clear eyed in a way that is special and thats one of the things that weve discounted andnd maybes them a lead to change the lead among their ownat population, which is probably something more than we actually do. I that they were able to turn the tide against alqaeda. Before we conclude i cant resist the temptation to ask one last quick lightning round question, madam secretary and for you general. As some ofle you may see therea press release yesterday from u. S. Central command announcing we have conducted a drone strike against two isis officials and one and maybe both of them were killed. Weve talked about the isis threat and Lessons Learned but, unfortunately, this threat tomp some degree is not completely in the rearview mirror. Understand the difference between a protostate as you said, terrorist organization and an ideology come those the three things are not the same, is isis defeated . One, to both of you. Based on your answer to that what force posture during a Going Forward in iraq and syria to continuing that threat . So i once had a counterpart from the middle east tell me the problem with you americans is you think every problem can be so. Many problems in our part of the world can only be managed. And so ie think we should continue to pursue the defeat of isis, alqaeda, other groups that pose a threat to the United States and her interest and allies but i think these are very longterm projects. These groups ten to regenerate themselves. I dont know why anybody would want to lead isis at this point would be the number one or two because you dont tend to have a very lifelong span in that case but they do tend to regenerate and i think this is something where you have to keep after the problem repeatedly until it goes away which may or may not happen. We can contain the threat to us. Ii dont think isis is posing a huge threat to theom u. S. Homeld but you like it even alqaeda in the arabian peninsula, very busy with the civil war and doing other things but if they turn their attention to the United States they have the historical credibility to reach out and touch us. Youve got to keep your eye on them. We have to have a sustainable, way to keep our eye on these groups and keep putting pressure on them so they cannot be successful in planning and executing external attacks against us. I would say out so the isis was defeated because we prevented them from achieving their stated goal of creating a caliphate. Are they eliminated . No. And they have been knocked from aco protostate hybrid conventional force down toa a terrorist entity, more amorphous, more difficult. And before the famous fm three dash 24 counterinsurgency game, manual came out, all really had was for the old low intensity conflict manual and is that the two principles are low intensity conflict were, one, as we mentioned legitimacy and two, perseverance. We are kind of figured out the legitimacy thing. I hope we have learned a lesson well. Severance as cant i i just very quickly energetic i agree with fully with both those, but its important to note Operation Inherent resolve which was the name of the isis campaign that probably 90 of americans never heard of under that description still continues to this day. Its stills in effect. The caliphate has been defeated i think and destroyed but theyre still goodness but the operation is still there. Theres a commander. Theres 2500 u. S. Troops00 in iq and theres 1000 or so in syria. And seems apparent one lesson the Biden Administration is learned from history is its not planning to take these troops out and to understand the needs to maintain this presence to keep the lid on the situation. One thing on, caveat on the perseverance, absolutely but i think we cant let any of this get on automatic pilot where we just kind of treat it like its unchanging, because situations, whether its the threat, whether its the partners and what they are willing to do, whether its other factors they continue to change. If we dont keep refreshing our assessment of whats going on, what does it take to do with it, the necessary authorities capabilities et cetera we can get in trouble. Im not saying we are there at this point but it do think with all thats happening in the world, the rise of china, was happening in russia and ukraine, north korea, iran pursuit of Nuclear Weapons all these things theres going to be, there is a risk that sort of just putting the counterterrorism work as a background ongoing self generating set of operations, and thats dangerous to do. Weve got to keep focused on that as well. Thank you, madam secretary. Michael, congratulations again on your book. If anyone hasntyeit read it yei highly recommend it. You can see manuel tabbed a version here, and thank you to our Exceptional Panel picu bring such insights and expertise. I really enjoyed the discussion, which we have more time. Thanks to our audience for joy. Wonderful to have folks are in person and thanks to everyone online. For more information on fdd and our political power please go to fdd. Org and thanks again to cnas for cohosting. 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