We know they are buried in secret. We know that in the summer of 2014 one of the most popular organizations in russia was the mother of russian soldiers. Because some of those mothers we are talking about russian soldiers dying and dead boss they were made an illegal organization, they were allowed. We know that family members to talk about their sons or brothers or whatever it is dying as onduty soldiers in ukraine they are threatened, we know the reporters who written about this have faced unpleasant circumstances. So its real. Its real. We also know that first of all the fighting in done boss has not gone away scores of fire incidents every day. There are ukrainian casualties most weeks and certainly every month several or more ukrainian deaths including very recently. We dont have very good information on deaths on our side for obvious reasons. But it is true that there been no major of essence. We know that that offensive a whirl as the offense in the airport of fall of 2014 were spearheaded by spit knots. We also know that largely the order of battle, the way the russians have done things the last several years as they are all over the place but generally speaking not russian soldiers right up at the point likely to get incoming. Theyve tried to minimize casualties that way. John, to carry on your last statement, we also know that youve done a terrific job today. Speaking to this group. The only thing i regret ab in case know you have seen zelenskys program, its on netflix. Its solid, ive seen two or three episodes. Its totally worth watching. Live this evening at George Washington university in washington dc former defense secretary jim mattis will be talking about his military career and leadership and his book callsign chaos. To begin momentarily. [inaudible background conversations] good evening everyone. Im so excited to see such a full house. Before i start i want to give a few housekeeping items. We are more than happy to have you taking photos but please turn the flash off. If you will put your cell phones on silent. If you want to post on social media we would love for you to tag at at politics pros and oevent. I first want to thank all all of you for coming out on friday night for tonights event. We are pleased to bring you jen maddest in conversation with david brooks tonight. Before we get to the next program i want to tell you a few other Exciting Events we have coming up with partnership with gw. Next week september 11 we have an event with Malcolm Gladwell at lismore for his new book talking with strangers. Which will be part of a live recording sam sanders podcasting mpr. September 12 here at betz we have Samantha Power as well as Josh Campbell with james comey on september 16. September 24 patty smith will be at lisbon for a memoir. The year of the young cute monkey. Tickets for all the events are on sale now. Hope to see you at some of them this month. Now onto the event you guys are all here for. Secretary jim mattis is a Pacific Northwest native who served more than four decades as a marine infantry officer. Following two years as secretary of defense he returned to the northwest and is now the debut family distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution at stanford university. athe account of jim mattis story career from wideranging leadership roles in three wars to ultimately commanding order of a million troops across the middle east. Along the way he recounts his foundational experiences as a leader, exacting the lessons hes learned about the nature of war fighting and peacemaking the importance of allies in the strategic dilemma now facing our nation. He makes it clear why america must return to strategic footing to not just continue winning battles but fighting wars. Mattis divides his book into three parts, direct leadership, executive leadership and strategic leadership. In the first part he recalls his Early Experiences leading marines into battle when he knew his troops as well as his own brothers. In the second part he explores what it means to command thousands of troops and how to adapt your leadership style to ensure your intent is understood by your most junior troops so they can form their own mission. In the third part mattis describes the challenges and techniques of leadership at the strategic level where military leaders reconcile wars graham realities with lyrical leaders human aspirations. Where complexity rains and the consequences of imprudence are severe, even catastrophic. Following along as he rises from Marine Recruit to fourstar general. Its a journey about learning to lead in a story about how he through constant study and action developed a unique leadership philosophy that made him into the man he is today. General mattis will be in conversation tonight with david brooks, he is also currently commentator on pbs news hour nprs all things considered. And nbc meet the press. He is the author of bobos in paradise the new upper class how they got there. And paradise drive. In march 2011 he came up with this third book the social animal the hidden sources of love character in achievement which is the number one New York Times bestseller and his latest, the Second Mountain will not stop flying off the shelves at politics and prose since it was published in april. Please help me welcome to the stage david brooks and secretary jim mattis. [applause]. This is the first time ive ever seen an author worked the crowd before the event. Obviously the campaign has begun. [laughter] i loved reading the book. I had a chance to read all about it and there many surprises. The first surprises that you are hitchhiking around the west at age 13. You give us the basic facts about your family but give us the emotional tone of your family and what kind of house did you grow up in, military . Do they prepare you for the marine corps . I was not brought up in a military family at all. He liked being outdoors my family would go camping on weekends. My mother was in the army g2 crypto clerk and went off to south africa and worked in the consulate. The world was a place to be explored they didnt know i was hitchhiking at first they figured it out and it was more trusting time and you could hitchhike around america and be picked up by the crosscountry truck driver in the afternoon not knowing where you would start stop at night by the night nurse coming off duty early in the morning. It was a great education. You are not the most devoted student either in high school or in what passed for college. But perhaps one of the hardest working people you i ever met. When the deck again . I never thought of what i done is a lot of work. Enjoyment of being around people. It was the sort of thing i wanted to be outdoors and explore the world and i love books. I dont think i was much of a student because it seemed too structured for me and everyone had a different way of learning. One thing when you join the marines everyone has to read certain books when they join the marine. When you make corporal theres a whole mother reading list and we make sergeant there is another reading list. When generals make general, they get handed a new reading list. Go back to work. They were really interested in a midlife crisis. I said i didnt have time to do the reading. It was very adamant about it. Little by little i didnt like a lot of the jobs and marines so i love being around young infantrymen i learned to hate minefield at age 21. The only reason i stuck around for 40 years was i love being around the young sailors and marines who made up the units in the infiltrate. Its almost a love letter to the marine corps. When you are in with the troops and especially infantry. You feel that your happiness in the pros and we often wrestle nato. I came in at a time when i probably wouldnt have joined the marines. I cant say for sure but i doubt i would have joined the marines had it not been for the draft. You dont look like youre not fully a man. Some went off to canada, 1969 the vietnam war was going on. While there, thats when i found that the marines really valued excellence. Once i was running the acts took a course and the platoon running through so you could get to fastest. I realized i was going to beat this guy easily, physical things came easy to me. I didnt give it everything i needed. You get to the end and climb the rope and touch the top end up down and youve done so in the sergeant lydon he said to come he were giving it 100 , he said im fed up with you he accused me of actually being a communist and to destroy the marine corps. [laughter] he went all over me and said let me make it clear to you young man, when you give 100 i will be 100 satisfied. You get 99 percent, i will be 100 dissatisfied. When someone that big is in your face, you get the idea. You start learning about what the word commitment means and you apply it from then on whether to your family to your community, wherever you go, that stays with you its a very formative experience. Is one passage the last 60 years of American Culture crumble because in most workplaces and most schools, personal sensitivity is not making people feel bad. Its high priority. Do think that comes at the expense of excellence. The marine corps gets its own place. Its a good point. The fact is, on the battlefield there is no trophy for second place much less ninth place. What you got to win so you are brought up with this very grim set of skills by people who have been there, theyve done it and they are not really interested in the reasons why it cant happen. Youve simply got to carry through but pretty soon what carries you along is you know everybody beside you is also going to be there, when trouble looms, they will come. Even at the risk of their life. Its humbling and energizing. I think thats really what expands you. It does not shrink you to be part of an organization, it expands you to have that sense. Early in the career you are doing wedding recruitment. In the northwest, it sounded like you are working 80 hour weeks or so long amount. There is an officer who didnt want to do that. I didnt ashe busted him and ended his career. What about worklife balance. Everybody is doing everything they can so youb more of the work on someone else. You can be a marine or a quitter but you couldnt be both. Im not going to care more about your career, you tell me what you want to be. You want to be a marine, i will coach you i will be with you all the way through. They decided to test it and the thing to remember especially with the number of young very Good Students are here tonight, we got the count back here actually. You always want to help people but i wouldnt waste my time as a coach. Thats really what i did i would not waste my time coaching somebody whos not humble. If they are not humble enough to recognize they need coaching if im not that humble then really you can help them. In any organization you dont get to be a leader because you have a rank on your caller, the title on your business card, your juniors make you a leader. They will follow a 19yearold pfc of the 28yearold captain doesnt know what hes doing. Remember at times easing jesus of nazareth had 1 12 do a crap on him. [laughter] i missed that part of the gospel. Have had to think about the coaching on this tour you look back on things. The whole point was to pass on lessons that i learned what worked for me. Not to follow blindly but to say does this make sense to you. When you are in the infiltrate your fortunes rise or fall on the ncos. Youre living out there with 40 sailors and marines. You are in the mud you have no Better Living conditions. You are the last officer on the chain of command so you represent all the orders that come time. And Wayne Johnson everyone called him john wayne. He had been overseas for a long time he taught me not just what i did but he told me what not to do. Let other people handle certain. Im starting to learn then about delegating decisionmaking and responsibility my second platoon sergeant also a corporal was manual rivera. He was from, this was 1973 timeframe. He was an immigrant from mexico. He was stern so i just admire how it in a few short words he could get some of the tension and then turn the person in the right direction, mostly spiritually, the physical and mental polyp. I was learning about the immigrant role in the u. S. Military and how they were overrepresented somehow growing 90 of people i was around were native born. The military by its very nature will expand you in a way that no other organization will intensive diversity. The mentors come in all shapes and sizes and its coming from all parts of the world. When you are leading one of the things that come through in the book they say your affection for the marines. Was there always distance between you and those under your command. I use to encourage i was taught and used to encourage the officers theres going to come a time when the chips are down and youre going to have to point to someone and point toward the enemy and tell them to go at that point everything in that young mans body is going to tell him dont get up dont move against them you know it can happen. You are going to need that authority. But use a very critical word because it took me 25 years to come to the word affection. You need trust and respect. Trust is a point of the realm. If you dont have that as a leader, then you probably arent going to accomplish much of anything. It took me a long time to figure out it was the other word was affection i headed 29 sailors and marines in four months 17 of the 29 were killed or injured very tough fighting day in and day out. What held them together was an affection for each other that no matter what happened they would keep fighting. They would keep fighting and fighting and fighting. The affection is the opposite in its own way of popularity. Popularity brings favoritism. This is one of the reasons you find the military so antianything that would bring other impulses combat assault units. When you point someone sending forward you can read very old textbooks when favoritism rotted a unit right out from underneath. The point is, that affection is the sort of thing that does not rest on any sort of favoritism. Its not about being popular. When youre going around making people get up and move when they dont want to, when you tell people that the first thing you have to do when they have clean uniform on his jumper to a mud puddle because you dont want them to be reluctant to hit the deck of the mud did they get shot at. You not doing things that make you popular. You find if youve been honest with your troops, if they trust you then they will stick with you. Deep inside a city that weve lost boys taken halfway through it and we know we got the enemy on the run and we are halted and then told the pullout and a Television Camera gets showed in the machine gunners face. Blonde hair filthy dirty marine who got his machine gun over his shoulders coming out and the reporter saying this is terrible you must feel terrible that his terrible you lost your buddies its terrible now you are being told to pull back you must be terrible. A slow talking kid from down south he kind of looks over at the camera and says, does it matter, will hunt them down somewhere else and kill him. It shows the spirit of these young folks who sign up, sign a blank check payable to all of you in this room to protect this experiment we call america. I would also tell you that if we hadnt been honest with that young man all along if we had it kept him informed, if he didnt trust us, he could have said its terrible. And when morale goes down in the combat unit you know right away you will lose more people. Its affection i think that builds on the trust and respect. But its not popularity. Theres a thing called the grand study which a study of men who graduate from college in 1940 and follow them through life they got drafted in world war ii, some rose to become colonels and majors, some state private and they wanted to know what correlates with success and warfare. It wasnt iq it wasnt socioeconomic status, it wasnt physical courage, it was relationship with mother and that the men who had received a flow of love from their moms knew how to give it to the man. We are a deep emotional reservoir. He referenced falluja, this was this is the first battle of falluja. This was an unpleasant moment, and were filled with a lot of unpleasant moments. You were given orders to take a 10 and if i remember commuting like to be told to take any and you didnt like to be told to stop once you started. How do you march yourself personally and your men and women through an operation that you think is a mistake . You explain a little background to all of you, we were in a place to land the bar the enemy was rising up what would become known as the sunni uprising against us, a guy named r. Kelly was leading it he had plenty of help. It turned out we were outnumbered and we were under troop caps so we couldnt even bring additional troops even though we had them waiting in the Southern California to come in. Shortly after we took over the district from the second airborne division, for contractors, one on the battlefield we used to be very upset about this sort of stuff wandered into a town called falluja they got killed burned and their bodies hung up people were very angry year in this town. It was a tribal town so what we did was we knew we would get a hold of the tribal element basically hated the people who had done it we would find where the parties were we get the bodies back and then find the people who had done it, hunt them down and kill them. But i want to do it with raids into their homes at night that sort of thing. I didnt want to charge into a city of 350,000 people. After a couple days of arguing about this i finally received the order, move against falluja and stay in the fight. I knew that my boss and the boss above him agreed with me theyd fought the good fight with washington and thats why its called orders ladies and gentlemen. Its not called lex. You dont have to like it, you just have to do it. I said lets do it. Then what you have to do is you have to say, im going to do this as well is if i thought the plan. You have to embrace it because if you go into Something Like that halfway, people are going to suffer. I only had two assault battalions, we had many innocent people evacuated as he could. Over 300 some odd thousand or 10,000. Then we went in swinging. I would just tell you that the one qualification i put on it i said, okay, im going but dont stop me. Deep inside the city the enemy is in very infective information warfare. Film footage of artery rounds crashing into falluja. We never fired one artillery round in falluja in the first battle of falluja. I would have if we need