Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion 20140927

The lobby as well and i am told that for those who try to buy the book there was the problem up here but the bookstore downstairs is open for those who want to you get the book can get it by assuming you could get at least two of three authors could sign that. Thank you for coming to the books launch. [applause] the fine against insurgents in fallujah in 2007 and rightabout that day in their books Fallujah Redux they talk about their experience and the rise of isis politics prose in washington d. C. This is one of our. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon. I am owner of politics prose in behalf of the entire staff, thinks for coming alex on this lovely afternoon. Now is a good time to turn off your cellphone. When make it to the q a session because we are being filmed g, we would appreciate it if you would find your way to this microphone to the table to pick up your question. At the end normally we ask the audience to fold up their chairs but you dont have to because we have another event this evening. C on this anniversary of 9 11 it is fitting that we should be gathering here for a book that involves our military and look back at an important part of a longterm fight in which the u. S. Armed forces have been engaged. Iraq war of course, was not necessitated by a september 11 the tax attacks. It was the choice but fought with the purpose, in part to keep america safe and its lessons about balancing force and diplomacy and relying on indigenous forces they remain very relevant today. Especially as we prepare to read engage in iraq to go after another enemy with a group that calls itself the Islamic States. Brigadiergeneral mullen and daniel green served in the entire province and our province but the book that they coauthored Fallujah Redux talks about a critical point called the awakening when the tribes joined the battle with al qaeda of the divorces this is dan and that is bill. [laughter] by the way. Dan is a reserve officer and served as a tribal and Political Engagement officer for a Naval Special warfare unit. In fallujah 2007. He also has done duty in afghanistan as a military officer and as the civilian. His first book three yearsf ago was was one year with the passion passion. Also having a degree from George Washington university focusing on Counter Terrorism and insurgency operations. Dan is a regular here at politics prose and were grateful for that. And being a marine 28 years now currently with the combat Development Command in quantico spending two years in fallujah as the Operations Officer and then as the Infantry Battalion commander through most of 2007. Fallujah has significance in the history of the iraq war to be, the center of the insurgent activity and the scene of the biggest setbacksqq for u. S. Forces retook the city in late 2004 by groups continue to operate. In 2006 president bush decided to surge troops into iraq and the local tribes also moved to reject al qaeda officiated fighters in may could we coordinate through the local tribes with the classification campaign of u. S. And Iraqi Security forces. Backward nation has become undone in the wake of the u. S. Withdrawal and sectarian misrule by the maliki government and fallujah is now occupied by the Islamic State fighters. Although much has been written about anbar offering the perspective of those to serve there. In their book they hold fallujah up as an example0of what could be achieved of leadership and perseverance. The story of the Major Military battles the of the more complex and diplomatic moves that did for a time bring peace to that area. And with all the remarks are personal and do not represent those of his command or the u. S. Marine corps or armed forces. Please welcome predator general mullen and daniel green. [applause] i that i would begin with why we wanted to write this book we remember war is called that is important but but when it comes to the city of fallujah it is iconic status but when itk was one in 2007 victory was not a thunderclap but for that reason it was not cover that much by the media and not very many books written. It is more important to have you finished in our use start. One of the primary reasons is what we felt that the time as the final chapter and to learn about counterinsurgency and it was up process to have an understanding of what was required to bring understanding to fallujah. We want to write the book to capture the moment and maybe some day future units would have a similar task maybe they would read them a more. That is partly why we want to collaborate. Cf also a touche showcase that success there were approximately 750 incidents with sniper attacks you name it and by applying a Counter Insurgency approach to partner with those tribes we could slowly squeezed al qaeda to push them out of the area that six months later rehab less than 80 incidents taking place. You want to put on paper so future generations have the chance and one thing we are keent÷ on is it is not the two of us that got a right but we benefited from those prior to our arrival. , but to take a fantasia of that. Eventually we did achieve success so we will talk about what fallujah was like to share the perspective. And one of the things going on in the military right now is the bifurcation of the matter what happens is the only answer to solving problems m because in many cases the use of force is not the appropriate answer sometimes it is the blanket over the fire to settle down. Then we can do something different. And those within the military like putting a of a glass cage surrounded. Then we will do to the best of our ability. But coming into fallujah itself when i was on the joint staff that is when the first fell happen in april. Less than a month before before incident we also went in with the attitude that we go in and smile you will not live up to that reputation but unfortunately the marine commanders themselves said we should not do retribution to the city but went it turned over to the fallujah brigade. Then the decision was made we need to sort this out. Of december 2004 that is a and redid the site survey we needed to inherit the entire area. So essentially we had to clean things up and keep the insurgents out. But the hardest part is with the iraqis we cannot sort out who is to the on the key people who can are the police of the they have been established by the government at that time. That is difficult. And with the unprofessional group of folks but they are cut out for us the difficult process so long deployment to keep things quiet. And when we returned home still keeping a close eye on fallujah because i knew i would be coming back. Men to have that drumbeat lets leave and we had the Intelligence Officer that we could never take it back. Dealing as long as possible. And training young marines. But the biggest thing is to focus your have a job to do. h but to get back into this city things were worse. But they played that game of walkable especially after the first month to say we have to do something different. That is what this book is about. Radically different. Day want to pick up from there . The key lessons that we learned is we will always win engagement against the enemy. What is so whole strategy . Who will take the place to prevent that from coming back . And then you had people who frankly who had cleared numerous ballys the most important piece to didnt . We have 100 per precinct we had the eyeballs watching. Living there in that neighborhood and reporting. And insurgents could not deal with it. Under the strong reaction the majority left to go somewhere else. Something that had not happened before. This was a product to be in the right place data right time. Different things came together to help us during that period to help things calmed down. Talk to the former police chief was terrified and would not go outside from Police Station headquarters you cannot leave that way. Then Brigade Commander was in charge of the iraqi forces was selling weapons. And the guy that takeover and for the second time of fallujah a lot of people thought there is a level of corruption and also to think he is working with the insurgents. And then somebody else took over. City council may have elected and appointed but between the three of them for the Brigade Commander. For a long time the insurgency had the Al Qaeda Branch and the national and surgeons frequently worked with Saddam Hussein and Security Forces of iraq and with those networks they knew how to develop over time but they like the girls to go to school. The brutality of the al qaeda start to cut into the corruption of different smuggling groups so eventually the split developed they may be number two or three from our perspective so we finally had a local partner to work with the that was the process that we had with several local partners many had blood on their hands so we will just set that aside to allow the discussion and al qaeda has a Political Program this proficient that sounds legitimate. He wears of rope he must be legitimate but if you start noticing the City Council Meetings no one would stand up for get into the conversation. [laughter] so to notice these Little Things so when he enters the room he knows a security detail is right before him. So few were not sure that they talk people listen then they stop talking there is a serenity that comes with power. So we had a sheik in town and there were several thousand members he had control of an area that was 70 square miles a mixture of farmland and he could control that area. But the engagement is working with the tribes. But from america as prospective tribes are antimodern but it took awhile to see the social institution was to culture so we had a robust tribal in engagement program. Thank you. And to work with the tribal leaders to help them recruit to be part of the of local protective force to raise those police forces. With regards to classification of the insurgents and the more islamic history next extremist insurgents i bring that up is important what is currently happening with isis. Dont take their cigarettes a way. Bad is bad but your daughter is now my wife. The locals have no say. They were killing people. The people of fallujah and the National Insurgents thought we know the u. S. Military is leaving very professional buddies al qaeda people have to go we cannot live with them. So we may see a similar type of thank they have definitely over reached that we dont do that. That is pretty bad. So at some point the people will turn on them with the government that they could actually trust now that the Prime Minister stood down the in the city westering the Iraqi Military when there is nobody there anymore to be a force Prime Minister maliki took direct steps to push the sunii of the military that is why they did not trust them. That is the interesting dynamic. One of the reasons fallujah switched you have the tribesmen so they have the firepower. The police have the presence they have the manpower but not the fire power so one would bolster the other so that resiliency was crucial but in the political side it was important so to understand the shadow government to use that placement to understand that margins due generally support of mayor. He had no budget whatsoever. So one of the things that i try to do was provide temporary money to provide funds and the even had my parents mailboxes of school supplies. But in return a crucial missing piece of legitimacy. He was very proactive. One thing that was very useful is we had an attack that killed a prominent leader at a funeral procession the next day. That car bomb changed things so the mayor imposed a vehicle p. M. So over nine of the vehicles were allowed in the city the whole city was fenced off for the marine corps you could only enter addis small number of the entry points every some person in the city had the identification card. Every house had a number on the map there was control. It was very important but to impose that vehicle and then to set up a series of buses you could imaginepx people would revolt but the iraqis surrendered they knew that was part of the strategy. The amazing part was the heat was just unbelievable in the summer it gets 130 degrees. So they told us with that car bombing it was horrific. Of lots of people were killed because with their practices they take them into the house as fast as possible. It was horrific. The mayor saidahe would impose the vehicle began day and, i good luck with that i did not see it working. But it did. Their radio from stopping people of driving that did not get the word was to shoot at them there was a lot of shooting going on to get them to stop driving around but they did it. And from the time this was in place they were walking in at 130degree heat. Then you have a Police Captain move out there with 20 or 30 iraqi police to set up a new precinct. Then you add to that a Neighborhood Watch. For example of funny stories we have Neighborhood Watch. It would be one man from every household and work a letter commanding people to do this. They have special shirts and hats made up for them. One of the shirts in the Neighborhood Watch in arabic were threeinch letters which somehow he mistranslated. It went from threeinch tall letters to threeinch wide letters. It was just Little Things like that but essentially what you are doing is employment so all these militaries are getting a job there is an honor wearing the uniform because the the insurgency has so overreach that its no longer considered cool to be with the insurgency. Its now considered to be better with the police force. We do one neighborhood at a time and eventually had to squeeze out cut out of the city so they started working in rural areas. One of the key aspects of getting the police to go out there is we had marines and we have the police and as long as we were there we could prevent the iraqi army and police from fighting which was a consistent problem and we could give them the confidence that if somebody tried to blow up that precinct or attack the precinct we were there to help defend it. That gave them a lot of confidence in many cases the only reason they would stay there is because we were there with them. He was getting off with a Forward Operating bases and getting in a mixing them at these people. A lot more foot patrol instead of vehicle patrol. The barriers we have put around werent he could walk through them which was fine. You just could not drive a car through them. We set up these precincts with two checkpoints that people had to stop. They were manned with the police supervising them so they could check to see was coming into the neighborhood. This gave them a sense of ownership and they really liked it. Again all of these things you think about in the american context i can imagine doing that in america. I cant begin to imagine that. The thing i also wanted to add is why did it take so long to do this . Why is the resting place of our military institutions in combat and conventional warfare. Across the spectrum not just the marines but the army in the state department and usaid they were all generally designed to fight nationstates and work with capitals and national governance. The problem said of al qaedas insurgencies has aspects of that but its predominantly outside the capitol. Its frequently tribal not formal institutions. Its often a very dangerous area so force protection concerns of u. S. Personnel frequently trumps accomplishing a mission sometimes. The problem is the exact opposite frequently and how we are organized for success. Part of this is to capture in book form that theres a differ way of doing this and its not always about killing people and breaking things. Its about their own defense and empowering them at the local level. These arent things you typically hear from earnings were naval officers. Its very different from a career path. We wanted to capture that at least at one point. Again the bison publishing is towards combat. There are plenty of books written by Junior Officers directing directly involved with the combat. Thats not how you win wars at the end of the day. As part of the solution but not the fundamental insurance. Going back to my comments at the beginning there are a lot of folks in the military that think of you can do the highend type or you can do anything else. You can adjust and one of my favorite quotes is if only two of you know how to use a hammer its amazing what can look like nails. Frankly i think thats why it took us as long as it did because there were a lot of units over there. The only tool they wanted to use was a hammer because Everything Else was too slow and too frustrating. It wasnt real combat but how do you win . You dont when by depopulating the area. Thats not peace. You win by getting people to decide okay we have had enough of this. We are going to get involved. We are going to take her neighbors back and calm everyone down. We are going to get the military out of the neighbors. One of the problems we had when i got there was the iraqi army had given space in the city that they were in charge of. It just happened a month before we arrived. How do you tell them now we have a plan to get you out of the city and we will put the police in your place . They didnt trust the police at all. That was and what they wanted to hear. The way explained it to them was like look the role of the Iraqi Military is to defend iraq. Its not to keep control of the cities. The final result in the city was police in charge of the city and false enforcing the rule of law in that city. Thats it. We dont vote along here in the Iraqi Military doesnt belong here. We have to give them the confidence that they can take control. As dan brought up earlier to place his outgunned. They were terrified to go in the city. We were worried every time they win out because they would shoot at anything and everything and many times at us, not purposely but if they get hit by an ied or someone shot an rpg at them or someone shot at them we call it the death blossom. Its murphys rule of conduct when in doubt empty the magazine. The biggest piece is how do you get to be more professional and get them more focused on the job which is to protect and serve, which is not a concept they believe in. I will talk a little bit about isis and what the possible strategy might look like going forward. The president gave remarks last evening. There were a lot of things we try to learn from our experience in Anbar Province and the volusia pacification. One of the key elements is you have to have the army for police and tribes working together in concert. Thats only the service of their broader political strategy which is to say how do you convince the sunniarab who really doesnt like isis but is in an alliance of convenience now to turn against isis and work with the government that has not been made up of people from his religious background or his part of the country. You have to have a compelling political strategy. When youre fighting an insurgency its not just about military arms, its famously 20 of the solution. 80 is having a political strategy and political rationale that defeat the insurgencys Political Program and that involves a listing the community not only in its own governance but its own defense. I like to use Hillary Clintons clintons quote it takes a village. You will be relentlessly clearing and trying to hold all the time and you will lose people unnecessarily for strategy then and wont succeed. The best thing to do would be to open up for questions for any questions you may have. [applause] thank you. Could you use the microphone please . How prevalent are the views you are talking about today and how prevalent is dealing with insurgencies in the military right now. What is the status of fallujah right now . The status of fallujah right now is that is under isis control but we have control in the majority of the people are like well they dont trust the government, the previous government i guess you could say now so how much control do they really have im not sure. I suspect things im seeing and reading at a certain point as soon as you say okay you guys are out of here and they will make it happen like they did before but they will need someone to help them. As far as the prevalence of abuse in the military its very much a mix. You have a lot of people argui arguing. The counterinsurgency stuff is not real, we dont do that. We are going to focus on training with our weapons. We are going to focus on the good war. Havent seen any of those breakout anytime recently. If you watch the news, i talked to the other marines and the younger marines, thats what they join for. They want to go do something a lot of them are frustrated because iraq and afghanistan, the piece isnt exactly breaking out. May not be the big war that you saw on tv or in the movies but when you look at the course of history especially the United States the majority of the things we have done have been these types of operations. They havent been the big ones and a lot of people just dont understand that. It goes back do we have to do what we are told to do not what we think we ought to do. Thank you. You mentioned that and correct me if im wrong that former leaders of the baath party were active in the insurgency at the time. Do we know with the Current Situation with isis is similar like the group headed by former Vice President are they active in isis . Thats one question and the other one is how do you expect fallujah to be taken back the iraqi forces . Is it going to be similar to what happened recently by the americans bombing the area and the iraqi and control the city . After all you have difficulty, the American Army in getting the city in 2007. How will the iraqi army be able to win fallujah again after almost nine months . The reason isis was so, its so easy for isis to takeover was in part because theres an Alliance Taking place of convenience right now between former baptists some tribal leaders colluding with isis in part for the internal politics of pressuring the maliki government and trying to either reform or create their own separate enclave. I think thats been pretty clear. Isis had a very smart ground game of Political Engagement. Before we saw them on our radar screen militarily rest assured they were reaching out to different tribal leaders and networks of former baptists to facilitate their return. I think thats what happened here. I think eventually likely experience in our own tours that alliance will start to fray as a reality of isis control. I dont know exactly how iraqis will pacify these areas. I dont think he will be frankly as sophisticated and sensitive to civilian casualties as we were when they were there. I would like to add that i dont think its going to be real violent either. A lot of the things we saw it looks like somebody has success they want to be on that team. When things start going south on them they melt away. I think whats going to happen is if you get the National Unity government going in the center and they start the polling the military back together and bringing back the kurds into the military like i said eyes i says they are overstaying their welcome. Declaring caliphate. You dont do things like that exceed if you expect to have a long life. What i think is going to happen is the tide is going to turn and it will probably turn quickly because when you think about it they are fighting in lebanon, fighting in syria and iraq. They have a lot of people working against them and i dont think they will last very long. As soon as the tide starts to turn i think the folks putting flags down in downtown fallujah will take the flight down and leave as quickly as possible. Its just my personal view. There are so many dynamics. One of the huge dynamics is the military comes in and is unable to speak the language of the street and needs translators. From past experience translators really dont say the right thing and you have alluded to some of the problems that creep up but in reality the dynamic involves poverty and good governance. It needs no screwing around with corruption and security, proper security and then theres the other problem with drugs and of course oil. The huge problem is the suicide killer and how to deal with th that. I wonder i know a little bit about what general pershing did in the philippines and i wondered if he would be bold enough to say what he did, how to deal with fanatic killers. The approach he used in the philippines . Probably not acceptable. Since we are going out to the internet pershing is sensibly essentially took the bodies of fanatics and have been dumped in a common grave, contaminated them with blood and dumped. I wouldnt go into that level of detail but thats essentially it. Unfortunately the media has made a mess too by taking things out of proportion. Most people in the military are pretty decent but then there are some clowns who create havoc like the year nations on the bodies. In any event the big problem is proper security with the fanatic killers and their revenge killers and how you would deal with that. Your first the interpreters versus translators. Translators is something i focus hard on with the people i worked with and the folks that put people out on the streets. The translators repeat what they hear what the computer in many ways to get the context wrong. If you have an interpreter someone who understands what theyre doing has been working there for a while which i have the benefit of having, you can tell when they are talking with somebody. They are trying to get the answer. Theyre trying to emphasize the right things. I studied arabic before i went over there so i could understand some of what they were saying in some of what they were saying back. All of those things are keys to be of the committee with people and get your point across. That interpreter is key. If you can get a good one they are worth their weight in gold. To put that into perspective someone special to me was a russian woman with some kids. I greeted her by saying and i didnt realize that meant mother. That would be a problem. On the suicide in the west when they hear west when the hairbrush suicide bomber is incredibly jarring to her values and how we see the world that when you attack the suicide bombers are they come in many different flavors. Sometimes people are suicide attackers unknowingly. Theres a famous case of a saudi youth to come into iraq and was instructed that yes you will eventually be part of the operation but in the meantime you pay your dues. He was instructed to move a truck between two places as part of that dues paying a bill to the nova truck was actually a truck bomb. He survived that and its just an example. Some people, there are things that are done to them that create such a sense of shame that they become suicide bombers. There are people with mental problems to become suicide bombers. The fanatical true believers a part of it but its by no means all of them. The other aspect of dealing with them is that the thing we emphasize with armoring solid time is you have to have focus. The insurgent suicide bomber only needs one second to succeed him what they are doing. One second of not paying enough attention and thats hard. They mixed in with the crowd so how do you protect yourself because a very difficult problem we had is we do escalation of force. In many ways it was a cultural misunderstanding between the two and didnt voice is like that there were occasions when the iraqis were hurt or has sometimes killed. When you have a marine who is afraid to protect himself and he let somebody and its an enormous problem. Won anything and thats why its important to have a local ally to partner with. They know who is from the neighborhood and his from the village and who isnt and they can spot those people well beforehand. If you have the local Community Organizing a list that they will provide endless amounts of information to you on whats going on. People we dont know who moved into the house down the road thats been unoccupied. If it werent for the marines in the navy would know that. Since we have a semiliterate youth and hes holding in ak in his own neighborhood, that will do it. I worked for usaid in iraq and in the kurdistan region. I certainly approve of the approach here. One of the things that has bothered me about the surge, and that goes with what you have been saying too is that a lot of the success relied on financing buying off in a sense local people to do good things but clearly this is not very sustainable. How did you deal with that issue . You are exactly correct. Not a good solution but when you are faced with a number of very Bad Solutions you have to pick the least bad when least bad one and that was the least bad one. Its kind of the way look at it. We have a lot of unemployed youth. In many cases they would charge them, heres 50 bucks go shoot this rpg. My first appointment there was very much an emphasis on no we are not going to pay them and get them jobs. We need to get the economy going but we dont have security you dont have so how do you deal with back . The amount of money we were paying the Neighborhood Watch that were hired wasnt very mu much. It was more than they were getting before which was nothing. The other aspect of that as we told them if you do the job and get the police to nudge to your chance of becoming a Police Officer are much better. Your chances of joining the Iraqi Military are much better because you have proved yourse yourself. That kind of resonated with them also. Some of them were just doing it because it was like this is what i want to do. Shop started opening back up in one of the most Amazing Things my marines noticed is kentucky fried opened up. Thats peace, right . Its that kind of, it starts snowballing and it has that effect. You have to get something started. That was the hardest part. Were you able to work on many measures to try to get better finance to get these things to continue . That was his job. [laughter] yes actually. The key thing was getting security to a point where civil governance could take place. When iraq in april we had a brandnew city council a brandnew head of the Fallujah City Council and the new mayor so the beginning of a new change. We had a new iraqi army and Police Chiefs all the new leadership to come in there. The problem as it had been broken up. Parts of the Iraqi Government for meeting locally so getting it together getting a rhythm of meeting regularly and unfortunately within two weeks of my arrival ahead of the Fallujah City Council was assassinated. I had a meeting with the Civil Affairs marines there and as he walked home from that meeting he was gunned down. Then we had another state Council Council made her who was a gym teacher and he was gunned down in his home. There was a real point they there. You can imagine the head of the city council was assassinated in a look around the room and you say who is willing to stand up and be a leader with back . Theres that empty chair just sort of sitting there at the table. Its those moments where you ask yourself what is the insurgency trying to have the due . You persist and in door and push on and thats what we did. For me what we did with the mayor was i finally found someone who seemed to be a local partner. You are always testing the relationship. We establish security around the compound at the outset. I tried to give him money as a bridge to cover his bills. We supported him publicly where we could. I was given advice on who to talk to. You really need to talk to colonel mullen. Hes the man in charge of the city and you are too but he is too. Frankly he didnt need much encouragement. He had standing in the city so once things started happening and the Reconstruction Team arrived and state representatives usaid of who partner with her bare helped him write a budget and worked with the provincial government to regularize deployment. One of the Amazing Things was usaid was working with us throughout the deployment and we were starting projects. We would check on the projects and as things turned of the city towards august and september and into october we started seeing other projects. It would come up and we would say whos doing that one . It one . It turns out the people themselves were. You start to clean the area up and started to do things that were amazing. That was good to see. I have a suggestion for your next project. From fallujah to ferguson. You will even have the same equipment unfortunately. [laughter] we have time for one more question. Hi. Im a student with american university. Im a journalism major. I want to ask from your experience what do you want for his readers to take away from an inspiring story about ice is taking over the city of fallujah and my other question is how did you end up winning the trust of the city in order to change it and make it more prosperous even though isis is taking over the city . I think for a lot of a lot of americans they sea ice is taking over iraq and hear about the growth of al qaeda affiliates and theres a sense of what can we do about it . Is this something we just have to live with is a permanent condition of our lives . One reason i wanted to write the book is to show that success is possible. Its not by accident. Its a process that takes place. Theres learning that has to take place as well. This is not an intractable problem. You can do it but it requires local partnerships. The problem is so much of how we remember war or misremember wars purely about combat. Its not how wars are fundamentally finished in this type of work very. I thats the big take away i would say. I would like to add on that thats one of the reasons we wrote this. To get people to understand when the United States military left iraq for the most part in 2009 and 2010 we left on good terms. Things were very quiet. Four iraqi was pretty quiet and the job we were given to do had been achieved. You hear nowadays we lost the whole thing and a lot of that has to do with the way people felt about it to begin with which wasnt good but the job was done. One of the things, i couldve walked up to Prime Minister melekian said that you do this and this you are going to have a problem and he did every single one of them. Which was absolutely amazing that is what i think with whats going to happen here. One thing youll notice and ken pollack from brookings has talked about this a lot. They havent taken over any shia areas. They cant. They are not Strong Enough to do that. Like mosul, twothirds of mosul is shia. The only areas that have taken over were the areas they were sympathetic to because they hated the Central Government because they accuse them of being shia and iranian. They preyed on television and got some equipment. That doesnt mean they know how to use it. They waved the flags around and cut peoples heads off and the tide is turning i think. I suspect this is going to go back with a National Unity government i think its going to go back to being what it was before this started a year or year and a half ago. How are you guys able to win the trust of the city of fallujah during that time . Part of it was the discussion we had with him. Over time they had seen how the u. S. Military dealt with them in the city in a professional and balanced way. I have more impact than i thought it would. In discussions that was one of the things they talk about. It did mean it like this. 30 years under Saddam Hussein they were told we were the bogeyman. They didnt have to like us us. They had to respect his work with us and thats what they did. I dont know if you could say they really trusted us. They knew we were leaving because we told him that and him that and we show them out. They knew the other folks couldnt be around when they left because theyd have what they have now and they clearly did not want that. Also bill was there for two tours and some have done multiple tours. One soldier did two tours. You become local on the scene and everyone knows you. When you are living the problems everyday as bill did for two tours you know the city better than some of the residents. It starts to become part of your own life and your own hometown in a weird way. As part of dealing fairly with people and honestly it will take you far. Sometimes thats an unusual characteristic. There are other small things to build trust. When he you do something small word gets around quickly. One of the city councilmembers came up to me and said his neighbors son had been arrested by the previous unit and really was not a troublemaker and could i get him back . He had gotten lost in the iraqi prison system. It took me a while but i got them back. I brought them to his house very emotional scene. You cant begin to calculate the effect it has. It didnt take that much effort on my part. There was a combination of all those things going on and a lot of the stuff that dan was doing to help reinforce push the mir out in front, the city Council Getting them motivated and working when they were under threat. We went to his City Council Meeting where dan and i were the only two people that showed up. So it takes persistence and they saw that in us. Another question . She is over there. Pacification is a very complicated process. Empowering people is just chapter 1. The question is how you internalize changes in the population that will last after the u. S. Soldier evacuates. It seems to me that marines and military force in this process is almost unfair. It really requires specialists that know the language, that know the culture which is very different because in the middle east its important that the concept of honor and shame is much more powerful than money. And also to be the school. These people have to be school schooled. Its a variant of psychological warfare. So since the involvement of the United States in the middle east is not going to be shortterm likely, does anybody think about training a special force that will be attached, and you know part of the forces that have come to these countries and do a job that is a specialty job together to enhance and synergize by this shia military of the marines . The u. S. Army special forces is organized around different regions of the soldiers can focus on that part of the world, get that language and training cultural training and thats good in terms of working with local Security Forces forces. On the civil side state department usaid has people staying in the country for multiple years so they have, they eventually get to some wisdom about the place. The state department often has a challenge with manning austere locations with the kind of people who have the skill sets. They also send many of their people to foreign institutes. One of the things we have in afghanistan called the afghan hands program. It was an attempt to get out of this relentless careerism aboveboard promotions of getting