[applause] a number of you know me from previous years. Its hi pleasure to be here to welcome its my pleasure to be here to welcome you and on behalf of Miamidade College, the college that really puts forth maximum effort in terms of solen b tiers volunteers from all its constituents, students, faculty and staff to make this book fair happen as it does every single year. And for the past 30 years. Id like to thank our sponsors, there are many of them, but in particular o. H. Aryan know and American Airlines for their sport. Id also like to thank our friends, many of whom are seated right here in front. Thank you so much for all of your support this year and for the past years that this fair has been made possible in part because of your generosity. The end of the session, as you know, the authors will be signing their books. Theyll be autographing on this floor on the other side of the elevator so you can proceed to that end, and you will also have an opportunity to ask questions after
And one of the most amazing coincidences in pakistan a man who was at the exact same place of a speech was actually shot and killed by supposedly a lone gunman. The individual was shot several times it even though he was subdued by the crowd and take it away they shot him six times. See you would never know who was behind it to. So today there is speculation of the 56 years before because of id honor of that private mr. Because i found it interesting and they are assassinated to take to the Military Hospital if they try to receive him and revive him successfully but 20 years later the doctor there receives benazir bow benazir bhutto. Lot of coincidences. Host with that we will wrap up. Thank you very much for joy to be here tonight. Year, jeremy hill, dirty wars. A break to welcome you here this morning to miami books are international. Those of you joining us to Chapman Center in the lou harrison and absurd as a volunteer for many, many years. Its happy anniversary to the 30 years her
Policy. The council of Foreign Relations member and former analyst is the author of six nonfiction books, including the village, the strongest tribe and his 2011 release, the wrong war. Being wise, why do you call afghanistan toward the wrong war . Guest because we had a strategy that was misplaced for the war. We shouldnt have had a strategy of trying to build a nation with 31 million tribesmen hurtling into the ninth century. That was too much. So what was the wrong war for the strategy we chose. Maybe you could do that in japan or germany after world war ii, but doing in afghanistan, which is a pile of rocks in the middle of nowhere was the wrong war for that strategy. Host what wouldve been the right were . Guest very sent will. We shouldve finished al qaeda in 2001. Our general despair, but i think all of us. The rack, we were attacked on 9 11. More americans died in pearl harbor. We had al qaeda and we had Osama Bin Laden trapped in some mountains called tora bora. And then we le
Here are some programs to look out for this saturday and sunday. For a full schedule of authors and books this weekend visit us at booktv. Org. Up next, author and military strategist bing west, the former assistant secretary of defense talks about counterinsurgency, the wind down of the war in afghanistan and current foreignpolicy. The council for relations member and former rand analyst is the author of six nonfiction books including the village, the strongest tribe war, politics and the end game in iraq and his 2011 release the wrong war grit, strategy and the way out of afghanistan. Why did you call the Afghanistan War the wrong war . Guest we had a strategy that was misplaced for the war. We shouldnt have had a strategy of trying to build a nation with 31 million tribesmen going headlong into the ninth century. That was too much. It was the wrong war for the strategy we chose. Maybe you could do that in japan or germany after world war ii but doing it in afghanistan which is a pil
Oh, yes, you can. Thats what a war is all about. And general mccristal and others said mcchrystal said we should spend 95 of our effort persuading the people and 5 attacking the enemy. That makes no sense. If you start putting all these restrictions upon the use of force, do you know that we ended up having a lawyer in every battalion who had to decide whether we could use air in an attack for fear that somebody would be courtmartialed . So we put restrictions on ourselves beyond the restrictions that police have in major cities in the United States. Host bing west, in your view, was the iraq war necessary . [laughter] guest with perfect 20 20 hindsight . Absolutely not. Host at the time what did you think . Guest at the time i did because i believed then, as did most of the American Public and the congress, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and would give them to terrorists. That turns out to have been wrong. Wrong idea. Host in your book about the iraq war, the stro