Videos, author information and to talk directly with authors during our live programs. Facebook. Com booktv. Elliot ackerman is next on booktv. The decorated afghanistan and iraq war veterans book is a novel about an afghan boy who joins a u. S. Funded militia following the u. S. Invasion. So our guest tonight is elliot ackerman. Hes a decorated veteran of the United States marine corps and a writer whose work has been published in the new yorker which alone would be an accomplishment for me for the rest of my life [laughter] the atlantic, time and the new republic among others. Mr. Ackerman is also a contributor to the daily beast and a member of the council on foreign relations. He served as white house fellow in the obama administration, and prior to that he spent eight years as both an infantry and special operations officer. He served multiple tours of duty in the middle east and southwest asia. As a Marine Corps SpecialOperations Team leader mr. Ackerman operated as the primary combat adviser to a 700man Afghan Commando battalion responsible for capture operations against senior taliban leadership. He also led a 75man platoon that aided in relief operations in postkatrina new orleans. He earned a silver star and a purple heart for his role in the november 2004 bat of of fallujah battle of fallujah and a bronze star for valor in afghanistan in 2008. He has earned a masters degree in International Affairs from the Fletcher School of law and diplomacy at tufts where he studied literature and history and graduated summa cum laude from there andfy beta Phi Beta Kappa in Phi Beta Kappa in 2003. He has completed most of the most challenging special Operations Training courses. He is the recipient of the Major General edward b. Wheeler award for infantry excellence and green on blue is elliot acker matchs debut novel and this evening we are very pleased to have him here to discuss it with you. So if you would come forward, please. [applause] thanks so much to the ivy book store for supporting this event. Im going to read from the opening of the novel. Many would call me a dishonest man, but ive always kept faith with myself. Theres an honesty in that, i think. We are from a village which no longer exists, and our family was not large or prosperous. The war that came after the russians but before the americans killed our parents. Of them i have only dim memories. Theres my fathers kalashnikov him cleaning it, working oiled rags on its parts and the smell of gun metal and feeling safe. Theres my mothers secret, the one she shared with me. Once a month shed count out my fathers earnings from fighting in the mountains or farming. Shed send me and ali from our village to the large bazaar, a twoday walk. The bazaar sold everything; fine cooking oils and spices, candles to light our home and fabric to repair our clothes. My mother always entrusted me with a special purchase. Before we left she would press an extra a copy in my hand one shed stolen from my father. Among the crowded stalls at the bazaar, i would slip away from my brothers watchful eye and buy her a pack of cigarettes, a vice forbidden to a woman. When we returned home, i would place the pack in her hiding spot, the cradle where shed rocked me and ali as infants. Our mudwalled house was small, two thatched roof rooms with a courtyard between them. The cradle was kept in the room i shared with ali. My mother would never get rid of the cradle. It was the one thing that was truly hers. At night after wed return from the bazaar, shed sneak into our room, her small, sandaled feet gliding across the carpet that lined the dirt floor. Her hand would cup a candle its smothered light casting shadows on her young face aging her. Her eyes, one brown and the other green, a miracle or defect of birth shifted about the room. Carefully, she would lean over the cradle as shed done before taking us to nurse. She would run her fingers between the blankets that once swaddled my brother and me, and finding the pack id left her, shed step into the courtyard and id fall back asleep to the faint smell of her tobacco just past my door. This secret made me feel close to my mother. In the years since ive wondered why she entrusted me with it. At times i thought it was because i was her favorite. But this isnt why. The truth is she recognized in me her own ability to deceive. So thats the opening passage of the novel, and its the voice of aziz, the books protagonist. When i served in afghanistan, i served exclusively as an adviser to afghan troops around the country. And as an adviser the afghan troops i was with, you know, we did the things that fighting men have always done, you know . We went on patrol together, we bled together, we mourned friends together. But when the war was over and my war buddies werent a bunch of americans, they were a bunch of afghans. And upon returning home i knew i would never see them again. They werent a bunch of guys i could call Long Distance keep up with on facebook or even get quarter beers with at the local vfw. And i began really writing this book in an effort to try to render their world and really as a last act of friendship as i was reckoning sort of with the grief of knowing that i would never of see them again. You know, its difficult to really say where a novel begins because i think the process of writing, theres so much groping in the dark that accompanies with it. As you begin the story, the opening often becomes the middle your middle becomes your end, and your end becomes your beginning. But for me there was one anecdote from my experience in afghanistan that i always a felt was sort of right out of reach. So id like to share that with you. Theres a fellow who i advised in southeastern afghanistan his name was commander esoc. So when i was with esoc we lived on a very remote fire base as big as three baseball fields wired in with mud walls and conner is tee that. And about once every two weeks we would have an operational planning meeting and what it consisted of is i would go from my plywood hut, my hooch and id go to esocs hooch and open the door, and esoc had this lumpy sofa it was actually a love seat. I would flop down on it, he would sit down next to me. In front of us was a cheap wooden table and hed put down a pot of chai lay out a pack of smokes, and the two of us would look at the far wall of esocs hooch, and hanging on it were two things; a map and a calendar. Esoc would stand up, smoking his cigarette and kind of approach the map, and he knew that part of afghanistan better than anyone. Hed been fighting there for almost a decade, and id ask him, id say so, esoc, where do you think we should go . Hed look at the map and the border where we were and hed often point to one of the villages right on the border and hed say, you know mr. Elliot, we could go to the mangritay always good hunting. All right, that sounds good. Patrol up to mangritay wed block up seven days ten days on our calendar, load up our trucks with about 100, 120 Afghan Soldiers, and we would drive up. 50 50 chance we would get into a gunfight up there and then we would drive can back down take a day to fix up the tires give the troops a day off. And inevitably a couple weeks would have passed and i would be wandering out of my hooch across our fire base to esocs for the optional planning meeting. Operational planning meeting. Swing open his door, i would flop down on the couch esoc would come over, pot of chai pack of smokes esoc, well, what do you think we should do next . Whats next on the agenda . And he would smoking his cigarette, come up to the map inevitably probably look to the next village south and say is you know, mr. Elliot, always very good hunting in rarakuray. So we would get in the trucks and roll on out. And in the whole time that i worked with esoc, you know, the conversation was never, you know mr. Elliot if we hit them in mangritay, then we go south we can do one last operation and shut the door to the border the war will likely be won, i can go back to my fields, you can go get your master of fine arts, write that novel you keep talking about. You know it just it wasnt that tube of war. That type of war. And so what type of a war was it . And in the book, you know as much as a book about character and its about his brother ali and the things aziz does for ali, its also my ambition for the book was to try to render the afghan war in micro, to show some of the paradigms that i saw playing out again and again, you know, valley to valley, village to village province to province and to try to tell a story that was accessible to people who hadnt spent time in afghanistan and that would allow them an entry point into a conflict that is off incredibly complex and difficult to understand. So in the segment that i read is the opening with aziz talking about his family and his participants and what happens shortly after that passage is azizs parents are killed in the time after the soviet occupation, but before the americans invaded. A after theyre killed azizs brother takes them to another village, and the two brothers basically survive for four winters working as delivery boys in the bazaar there. And then on that fourth winter azizs older brother is horribly maimed in a bombing and finds himself in a hospital, and aziz has no idea how hes going to support his brother. Hes recruited into a militia, and he goes to fought in the border mountains with the deal being that his wages as a soldier will keep his brother cared for in the hospital. And as aziz goes off to fight to not only support his brother but then also to get revenge for what happened to his brother, he gets sucked into an increasingly complex and elliptical war one that eventually he realizes is being fought for every reason but the ending of it. And the commander he works for a man named command or sabur, has envisions of building an outpost in a village called gamal, and the section id like to read next is aziz is sent by commander sabir to act as an informant, to gather information, and sabirs plotting how to build this outpost. And aziz finds himself lodged with an old knew ya that deep fighter from the 80s, a man named munpaz and hes someone who lost a great deal in the war. And what im going to read right now is a little bit of his story. When my brother died he said, it was not in the war we thought we fought. We were mujahideen b and treated as heroes in this village our battlefield achievements known by all earning us honor, honor we became greedy for. This led to larger and more daring attacks. When the fighting slowed each winter, wed grow impatient for it. The russians stayed on their bases, and it was difficult to strike at them. An informant of ours a man who like our father ran a trucking company, told us how in a few nights a russian convoy would pass our village along the north road. Eager as we were, my brother and i asked few questions. The operation would be simple. After curfew wed bury a mine in the road and in the morning if the russians didnt show up wed remove it. Some days later in the darkness my brother and i chipped a ditch out of the processen earth froze p earth and slid the mine in. We cowerfully repacked the crumbled soil and went home giving the manner little thought as if wed planted a tree and casually wondered if itd grow. We slept soundly and early before the sun rose wed return to inspect our kill or recover the mine. As we walked through the clear cold air the snow on the distant hilltops glowed with fire light. The mine had struck, and we approached the road ruing on great gusts riding on great gusts of enthusiasm, but still our situation was up certain. Who knew if the russians had sent anyone to aid their convoy. Who knew if wed come across any manic survivors. These were uncertainties we felt prepared for. We werent paragraphed for what we found. As we crested the last ridge and glimpsed our kill, we saw only the beginning of our terrible mistake. Tilted against its side is the carcass of a great steel beast of a truck but it wasnt russian, it was civilian and full of lumber that now burned in the pyre sparkling on the snow. We kept our distance but were close enough to feel the tour on our faces. We could see the cab and its white paint which curled to [inaudible] beneath the heat. Behind a shattered windshield flames licked out an upright silhouette that burned with the dignity of one who met death immediately without pain and shock. And through this absence seemed strangely alive. I cant say how long we watched the pyre. When we left, the sun still hadnt risen. But the silhouette had been consumed. Op our journey on our journey home we said nothing, and tried to hide in our science. News of the attack spread. The truck had been from our informants company, and the dead driver had been his employee. Several days later my father and our village were called to orgun to settle the matter. The deliberations were short lasting but two days, and my father returned in ruin. Both sides decreed that our father was responsible for our actions and that he must replace the destroyed truck and buy yet another to recoup the damaged cargo. In this our informant made out very well. For the first truck forced us to sell our home and the second wiped out my fars accounts, eliminating him as a business competitor, and thats when we moved here. So muntazs story as old mujahideen was similar to the American Experience in afghanistan inso much as oftentimes the war was being fought for a more idea of reasons, none of which had any linkage to the larger objective. As we sit here and wars have gone on for 15 years 35 years in the case of the afghans, we have to ask the question why do these wars continue for so long. And in this book what i aimed to set out was to show some of the economies that exist around war. And i dont mean necessarily financial economies although those can often be parts of it, but the incentive structures that exist. Many of the people who become influential and important in war, commanders and such, have been elevated by the or war itself. So what happens when they have been in their station for so long potentially they have no incentive to end b the war, and those economies perpetuate it. So that was certainly a theme i was trying to get out in the writing of the story and i think thats a theme that obviously, mu next tsa muntaz. The book is told in the voice of an afghan, and it actually wasnt my original isnt in writing the book intent in writing the book to write it in an afghan voice. The early drafts of a novel had a construct where actually aziz walked onto a fire base and was telling his story to an american character who never made it into the book at the end of the day. And this american character was basically an intelligence officer. And the contract of the book kind of had a conradian build around it in so much it was the heart of darkness when marlowe is sitting on the book in the thames recalling his time up the river. And the rhythm of the story, the cay department of it was one id become very familiar with working in the excellence field in afghanistan where i would inevitably be sitting on a fire base and i could almost set my watch to it. If i were to sit down to do anything, an after p began would show up at the door. So stack of pancakes in front of me, im about to talk a bite, afghan would have to see me. But the rhythm of those discussions where i would basically be sitting across the desk from an afghan who claimed to have information that was essential to me, that type of back and forth became almost like a song i could hear even after i came home. The banter of those conversations. So i initially wanted to structure the novel that way. But as i was writing it, that framework just wasnt holding up. And i had to ask myself, you know, why do i feel the need for aziz to be telling his story to this american . Why shouldnt aziz speak directly to the reader in and after wrestling with that question for a while, i realized i had built in that american character as a crutch and that if my goal for the novel was honest, to try to render the war as i thought the afghans saw it i should try to allow them allow aziz to speak directly to the reader, you know, and the end product is what you have in front of you. Another thing that struck me, too, and its struck me since leaving afghanistan, you know is, you know we think about these wars and how long theyve gone on, and and as much as, again, that was something i was trying to get out in the book, if you think about it, in afghanistan right now theres been nearly 35 years of war. The average Life Expectancy for an afghan is late 50s, early 60s particularly if you live outside kabul or in the provinces. So the afghans in their late 50s, early 60s right now were late teens, early to 20s when the soviets invaded in 1979. So in another ten years, by and large, youll have a large segment of the afghan population that has died off that will be the only segment that can actually remember afghanistan at peace. What happens when nobody can remember afghanistan at peace . How do you arrive at peace . Then the act of arriving there really becomes one of sheer imagination. But by that criteria, i think we also have to reflect on our own experience as americans in our wars which have now gone on for 15 years and if they progress much further the remembering of that peace will become more and more distant. And theres a certain point in the book muntaz brings a similar point up to aziz and he tells him to that the future is in the remembering. And thats something i definitely saw and amongst my peers who were afghans who were men my age, they had no perform of afghanistan at peace. And i think its a frightening thing that we might soon have no memory of our country at peace. And so at that point id like to read just one final segment and then perhaps, we can have some conversation. So this is when aziz first arrives in gamal where he serves as an informant. These are his reflections on that village. The night was cold and all through it i got up, stepped lightly over muntaz. Once the last scrap burned out in the fire a chill set into my legs and woke me. I walked into the compounds dirt courtyard to wait for the dawn. As the early light came, i saw how poor muntaz was. His home was nothing more than a small coop, the mud room we slept in and the four walls of the courtyard. A ditch ran beneath one of the walls and out back. Dishes were stacked alongside it. This was the kitchen. Past the compound were the mountains. It would seem these never ended, they were not enough to protect the village from the war but they were enough to preserve it, it and its traditions. And even as isolated as the village was, sprouts of progress had arrived. Motorbikes, cell phones and a few homemade satellite dishes that perch ped from perched from rooftops all standing as messengers from orr, more modern worlds. But it was a false progress. It measured not movements forward, but the distance