next step to discusses his novel about afghanistan following the u.s. invasion. the book is "green and blue". mr. ackerman is in afghanistan and iraq war veteran. he spoke at johns hopkins university in baltimore. >> or guest tonight is elliot ackerman. he's a decorated decorated veteran of united states marine corps and a writer whose work has been published in "the new yorker" along with the accomplishments the atlantic the times and the new republic among others. mr. ackerman was introduced to "the daily beast" and a member of the council of foreign relations. he served as a white house fellow in the abundant prior to that he spent eight years as an infantry and special operations officer. he served multiple tours of duty in the middle east and southwest asia and the marine corps special operations team leader operated as a primary combat advisor to 710 afghan commando battalion responsible for capture operations and senior taliban leadership. also let a 75 man platoon that aided in relief operations post-katrina new orleans. elliott ackerman earned a silver star and a purple heart for his role leading a rifle you -- in the battle of fallujah and a bronze star for valor were leading marine corps special operations team in afghanistan in 2008. he has earned a masters international affairs from the school of law and diplomacy at tufts where he studied literature and history as well and graduated summa can lobby -- summa cum laude. elliott has completed many of the u.s. military's most challenging special operations training courses and completed his officer training is the number one second lieutenant frank out of 200 marine corps officers. he is the recipient of other major general edward d. wheeler a word for excellence and "green and blue" is his debut novel and we are pleased to have him here to discuss with you. if you would come forward please. [applause] >> thanks so much to hopkins for hosting and a the ivy bookstore for supporting them. i am going to read from the opening of the novel. many would call me a dishonest man but i have always kept faith in myself. there's an honesty and that i think. i am from a village that no longer exist and their family was not large or prosperous there were the came after the russian before the americans killed our parents. i only have dim memories. my father's kalashnikov hidden in a woodpile by the door, claiming it working and the smell of gun metal and feeling safe. there is my mother secret the one she shared with me. once a month she would count up my father's earnings from fighting in the mountains. she would send me and ali from our village to the large bizarre which was a two-day walk. the bizarre sold everything, fine cooking oils and spices candles to light our homes and fabric to repair our clothing. my mother always interested me with a special purchases paid before we left pressing an extra coin in my hand when she had stolen from my father. among the crowded stalls at the bizarre would lip away from my brother's watchful eye. i would buy her a pack of cigarettes. when we returned home i would place the pack in her hiding spot virtually a cradle where she rocked ali and me. our mud walled house was small to bachelor firms with the courier between them. the cradle is kept in a room i shared with ali. my mother would never a writ of the cradle. it was the one thing that was truly hers. at night after we returned from the bizarre she would sneak into our room her small sandaled feed gliding across the carpet that lined the dirt floor. her hand was cut they handle casting shadows on her young face aging her. her eyes when brown and the other green and miracle of earth shifted around the room. carefully she would lean over the cradle as she had done before taking us to nurse. she would run her fingers between the blanket that once swallowed my brother and me and finding the pack i left her she went to the courtyard and i would fall back asleep this dollar for tobacco pass my door. the secret made me feel close to my mother. in the year since i wondered why she entrusted me with it. at times i thought it was because i was her favorite. this isn't wise. the truth is she recognized her own ability to d.c. for. so that's the opening passage of the novel the voice of the book's protagonists. when i served in afghanistan i served exclusively as an adviser into the afghan troops around the country and as an adviser the afghan troops i was with we did the things that fighting men have always done. we went on patrol together. we were friends together but when the war was over my war buddies weren't a bunch of americans. they were a bunch of afghans and upon returning home i knew that i would never see them again. they weren't bunch of guys i could call long distance keep with on facebook or get quarter bills that they be fw. they were trapped in afghanistan with the conflict. i began really writing this book in an effort to try to render their world and really as friendship because i was reckoning with the fact that i would never see them again. it's difficult to say where the novel begins in the process of writing. there so much groping in the dark. the opening often becomes the metal and your middle becomes year and an year and becomes your beginning but for me there was one and doubt from my experience that i always felt was right out of reach so i would like to share that with you. there was a fellow who i advised his name was commander -- so when i was with him we lived on a very remote airbase wired in with mud walls and concertina. once every two weeks we would have what we called the operational planning meeting and what the operational planning meeting consisted of was i would go for my would have basically walk across the dusty firebase to his hooch and open the door and he had this bumpy sofa. it was a love seat and i would flop down on it and he would sit down next to me. he would put down a pot of chai and we had a pack of smokes. the two of us would recliner on the sofa and looked at the far wall of hooch and hanging out for two things, and map and a calendar. he would stand up give me a cigarette and approach the map and he knew that part of afghanistan better than anyone because he had been fighting there for greater than a decade. where do you think we should go? he would look at the map in the border where we were and often point to one of the villages on the border and say you know mr. elliott we could go to maglev today, always very good hunting in maggert today. esop that sounds good. we will block out 10 days on our calendar and did it look up the trucks of their troopers 100 or 120 afghan soldiers and when would drive up to the bay. a 50/50 chance to get into a gunfight there and we would come back down and take a day to replace tires and take update tracks. the terrain was pretty rugged affair. take a day off. i would be wondering out of my hooch and esop's for the operational planning unit. swing open a store and sit down at the loveseat and esop would come over with hia pack of smokes and look at the map again. what do you think we should do next? what's next on the agenda? come up to the map and inevitably look at the next village south. you know mr. elliott there is very good hunting --. we would get in the trucks and roll out. the whole time i worked with esop the conversation would the mr. elliott kimiko south? shut the door to the border blocking out the taliban and i can go back to my fields. it wasn't that type of war. what type of war was it? in the book as much as it's a book about character it's about his brother and everything he does for ali. it's also manned mission for the book was to try to render the afghan war, to show some of the paradigms that i saw playing out again and again going from village to village of province to province to tell a story that was accessible for those who spent time in afghanistan and that would allow the miniature point into a conflict that is often incredibly complex so people can understand. in the segment that i read it's the opening talking about his family and parents and what happened shortly after that passage his parents were killed in the time after the soviet occupation. after they are killed his older brother ali takes him to his city the nearest largest city to their village. the two brothers basically survive for winters as delivery of boys at the bizarre there. on the fourth winter his older brother is named in a bombing while aziz has no idea how he would support his brother. he is recruited into a -- called the special last car --/gar. as aziz goes off to fight to not only support his brother but also to get revenge to what happened to his brother he is in an increasingly elliptical war one that he realizes being fought. the commander he works for has visions of building an outpost in a village called the fall. the section i would like to read next is aziz being sent by commander to act as an informant in the village to basically gather information on how to build this outpost. when aziz goes to live in the village he finds himself watching with a mujahideen. he is someone who lost a great deal in the war and what i'm 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 had fought. we were heroes in this village. our battles achieved by all earning a sahner, and honor they became greedy. this left a large and more daring impact. when the fighting slug each winter wheat growing patient. the russian state on their bases and was difficult to strike at them. an informative of ours who man who liked our father ran a trucking company he. he told us a russian convoy would pass her village along the north road. eager as we were my brother and i asked two questions. the operation was simple. after curfew we would bury a mine in the road and in the morning if the russians had to show up we would move it. some days later in the darkness my brother and i chipped a ditch of a frozen earth to put the mine in. we carefully repassed the crumpled soil and went home giving the matter little thought they planted a tree and wondered if it would grow. we slept soundly and early the following morning before the sun rose. we returned expecting to be -- are killed. as we walked to the clear cold and the snow on distant hilltop load with firelight. the mine had struck and we approach the road writing on great enthusiasm. still the situation was uncertain. who knew if the russians have sent anyone to aid their convoy? who knew would come across survivor's? these were uncertainties and were prepared for and we were prepared for what we found. as we pressed into the last ridge which saw only the beginning of our terrible decay. toga on this side with the track truck but it wasn't russian, it was a civilian and full of lumber to not burn in the fire sparkling in the snow. we kept our agenda close enough to field of fire interfaces and we could see the cab which curled the scale and the steel but needs a painted sportster raspberry behind a shattered windshield flames without an appraisal what that burned with one who met death immediately without pain and shock and do this seem strangely alive. i can't say how long we watched. then we left the sun had risen that the select had. on their journey home they said nothing and tried to hide in our silence. news of the attacks spread through all the families. the truck had been from our informant company and that the driver had been an employee. several days later my father and our militant sangari were called to a jerika to settle the matter. deliberations were short. lasting about two days and my father returned in ruins. the sangari's on both sides agreed that her father was responsible for her actions and he must replace the destroyed truck the body of another damaged cargo. in this our informant made out very well for the first truck forced us to sell her home and is second wiped out my father's house eliminating him as a business competitor and that is when we moved here. so the story of the mujahideen was very similar to the story of many afghans insomuch in so much as oftentimes the war was being fought for a myriad of reasons than that which had any linkage to the larger objective and as we sit here and the wars have gone on for 15 years and 35 years in the case of the afghans we have to ask questions as to why this war continue for so long. in this book what i aim to set up to show are the economies that exist around the war and i don't mean necessarily financial economies although it's apportioned but the incentive structures that exist. many of the people who become influential and important and war commanders and such have been elevated by the war itself so what happens when they are at their station for so long that they work as an status and potentially they never -- no longer have a -- in those economies perpetuate. that was something i tried to get out in story and what occurred to him. the book is all told from the perspective of aziz in the voice of an afghan and it actually wasn't my original intent in writing the book to write it in an afghan voice. in early drafts of anopoli had i had a construct were actually aziz walks into a firebase and was telling a story to an american character who never made it into the book. this american character was an intelligence officer and a construct of the book kind of had a calmer idea and else around it so it was the heart of darkness with marlowe sitting on the boat telling a story going up the river. it was aziz and the cadence of it was when i aecom familiar with working in the intelligence field in afghanistan where i would be sitting on a firebase and i could almost set your watch to it. i would sit down to do anything an afghan would show up at the door so a stack of pancakes in frenemy about to take a bite and afghan would show up. the rhythm of those discussions wrightwood csc's 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 the conversation so i initially wanted to structure the novel that way but as i was writing it the frame just wasn't holding up i had to ask myself why do i feel the need for aziz to be telling the story? why shouldn't aziz speak with the reader? after wrestling with that issue i felt it was a crutch for me to be able to tell the story and my goal for the novel is honest to try to render the war as the afghans thought i would try to allow aziz to speak directly to the reader and the end product is what you have in front of you another thing that struck me and since leaving afghanistan is we think about these force and how long they have gone on and is always trying to get in the book if you think about it in afghanistan right now there has been nearly 35 year support. the average life expectancy for an afghan is late 60s especially if you live by the provinces. the afghans are in their early 60s right now were her late teens, early 20s. in another 10 years by and large you have a large segment of the afghan population that has died off that will be the only segment that can remember afghanistan after piece. what happens when nobody can remember afghanistan at peace? how do arrived at peace? in the act of arriving there it really becomes one of sheer imagination. by that criteria we also have to reflect on our own experiences as americans and our war which has been going on for 15 years have they progressed much further and they're remembering up at peace will become more and more distant. there's a certain point in the book with a similar point up to aziz reflecting his days with the mujahideen and the future is in remembrance and that's something i definitely saw amongst my peers who are afghans they had no memory of afghanistan and disease. a frightening thing that we might see in our country. at that point i would like to read one final segment and have a conversation. this is when aziz first arrives in cobol where he serves as an informant these were his reflections on the village. the night was cold and i got up stepped lightly and fed dried ranches into the stove. when the last scraps burned out chilled my legs and book me. i walked into the compound courtyard to wait for the dawn. as the early light came i saw how -- his home was nothing more than the small coupe and the for you baltic regard to a ditch ran beneath one of the walls and out the back. dishes were stacked along the side. it would seem these never ended. there were not enough protections from the war but they were enough to preserve it in its tradition. even as isolated as the village was progress had arrived. motorbike, cell phone and a few homemade satellite dishes perched on rooftops all standing as messengers from other more modern worlds but it was a false progress. it measured not moving forward the distance we see traveling backwards where the roar -- the war destroyed everything. thank you. [applause] >> you say that we are close to a point where the afghans would not know peace because there aren't enough of them around to have experienced these because of the russians and the war that has gone on for 35 years. so my question is number one, do the afghans deserve to live in peace and number two, this is my wife was telling me what to say. and number two, if the answer is yes and assuming that in 35 years they have always been put upon by other people's and assuming that this will continue , what role would the united states have to play in trying to bring about that piece and how would you approach it? >> that first of all i think everyone deserves to live in peace and that's my humble opinion. in terms of the world the u.s. can play in afghanistan, i think that the faith of the afghan people and the american people have been working together based on our involvement in that country for the last 14 years and i don't suppose to know exactly what a quick two-minute policy prescription would be to cure the afghan people of all of their woes but i think the complete u.s. disengagement from afghanistan would wind up having seriously negative ramifications not only for the afghans but for americans for the long long-term. we saw what happened after 1989 and we saw what happened after 2011 when the u.s. disengaged. we have other models when the u.s. left these countries that doesn't involve committing large numbers of troops to fight. it involves remaining politically and militarily engaged to a certain degree. but i think as long as that type of engagement continues i'm actually optimistic about the direction of afghanistan and the people i talk to who are going back there on a greater frequency are optimistic thinking dissenters going to hold in afghanistan but only time will tell. >> with that the status of forces agreement? it has the flexibility to increase and decrease depending upon the situation on the ground >> i think a sofa would be appropriate in afghanistan. if you look at all the places that have had wars we have sofas in those countries for years and years and it did well. >> how did you set about making an awful lot of that? >> i wish i could give you a very precise answer that showed me as a master craftsman. for me often the story will pop into my head in the first line. i find myself approaching each project differently. sometimes it's a short story or an entire novel. in the case of this book the first line of the book was one from this american who i mentioned was originally in the framing and was originally in the first line of the book and i quickly realized the book was about peace. so it's a lot of groping and developing but i think. >> did you have to be ready great deal? >> i did, writing and rewriting. .. >> >> 111 dash to the shorthand for the afghan troops for when they kill so those type of actions immediacies them quickly they are morally reprehensible. why would someone do that? are they just born as an evil person? what delivers them by killing an american adviser the only choice offered? >> it does he morally reprehensible or to peel it back that by the time the "green on blue" takes place you may not agree with the action that we can see all of the decisions with the reduction of opportunity that they feel they have to do so with that understanding i hope that bridge but oftentimes in how we read deal these issues. >> what do you think? >> it is difficult to say because there is such a of a large swath of the taliban. but it is very difficult to generalize hell all afghans feel and some are infuriated some look at those opportunities especially with kabul but the invasion mimics the of course, some people like it and support the americans and some people are not as much as we look back at the russian experience ended is almost portrayed they rose up against the soviets each segment supported the soviets and they were progressive with women's rights and education. they also killed 100 million afghans though it is very complex and the response of the invasion is as complex as all of afghanistan. >> talking about moral things that need to happen and decisions of governance. when we were here in europe after the second world war war, there were similarities of past history as most americans were coming out of that. a tent with afghanistan there isn't the same kind of depth as it is further apart but we were there for a long time so what type of progression deal think that we need to be in afghanistan? gimmicky being culturally? >> i think with europe we had similarities. >> title think u.s. should try a to create an afghan society like middle america al will not work. but there are differences between afghans and americans but i think we all know those but what is underplayed is a similarity between all peoples and to spend time to address those differences to cultivate the similarities sometimes we cannot look at the differences. so for me as someone who served as a marine or a soldier there is a lot of experienced a matter where you are. that is the prism through which i became close with basket and -- afghans to have these large barriers from those same pile of church tooth -- dirt to focus on the similarity. >> but then it is removed with a wonderful possibility to do things that should not happen to take something, if you're not working from a similar acknowledgment of the similarity of might take longer. >> i never understood for and tell i saw it. the only semi deployed as a child. i saw a lot of hard things and i recognize there are tough things to see. but they never struck me the same way and tell i concede my own child in the. many times or perpetuates. if i have a daughter i could imagine then what it would be like. you can feel that in the pit of your stomach is said of an american soldier and an afghan soldier if i lost a young family member i would probably be up in the mountains fighting until they kill me and in many respects and has been perpetuated but talk about corruption, it is easy to sit back as americans to talk about the corrupt afghans but i have a young family. my daughter is for the half and my son is three. i was sitting in afghanistan with all of that uncertainty to raise three own family in kabul or can the horror i would not want her to grow what there would is a dream for her education? with the ministry of interior i saw an opportunity to take a certain amount of money to give me and my family out and somewhere safe. i think it is difficult to say if it is right and wrong talking about corruption but many people are operating in a dynamic that is not familiar to us and with that i do more to address these problems of corruption they and excoriating folks for being corrupt. that is my opinion obviously i wrote the book about "green on blue" attacks though they do feel it is worthy to examine those positions. >> first with iraq and afghanistan, why did you choose to set your novel in afghanistan and not to iraq? >> i have been riding on the iraq war. the was indeliberate like i was shunning what happened but i was very interested in the theme that had come up to the afghan troops and this story was coming at me and a lot of times i feel the story i am writing that takes me over. i was a light shining one is just the one that caught my attention. >> will you write a novel about iraq? >> any good ideas? [laughter] >> did you ever personally died j. "green on blue" attack been that you were in danger? >> i never personally salt water had one take place but yes. it is something you knew was out there and was happening. one thing you could always tell some guys would wear a small pistol on their hips or on their back that is a decision you had to make and you were aware but at the end of the day a handful of americans out in pretty rough places rated by afghans and there is a level of fatalism with every contingency. >> telling about begin consultation as an adviser and you thought the afghan commander might say we could go here or here and secure this border, would your role to have suggests that yourself for not? >> sure. as much as i tell the story with the lack of vision i did not have it either and it was elevated by the war with this important militia basically employed them as a pretty significant individual in that community but at the same time for me to work with that unit in a row and dangerous part of afghanistan was part of being involved in missions to read fran small a career that my peers were drawn share. so as much as a look at that to examine why was there no grand strategic terms? i felt we had more in common than we ever did with eisenhower and what constructs lead to that. it is something i try to use in the book to show. >> if not to personal can you describe your thinking as a young adult thing and what led you to college and the marines and how that transition and? is seen as an unusual path. >> i went into rotc at tufts university. it was before 9/11 i had the sense i wanted a job bernanke majuscule with our was better bad did not matter. i wanted a lot of responsibility as a young age and the was also the kid who never stopped playing with his g.i. joe. i see myself as fortunate a good family and loving parents a good university but i had a sense more is fundamental and will happen as a 23 year-old this abstract ideas there may be a war and it could happen, i felt with a platoon of 45 led by somebody like a lieutenant and should they be someone who has not had these vintages should they be fortunate? because that is over the course of their time and to make decisions that will impact them. i have a distinctive sense there wanted to represent for those decisions. and the way it turned out is how my experience involved. >> as far as you know, , have any of your friends that you made it afghanistan read the book? >> the ones who read it or not the ones i served with but basically this is how i remembered it but i sent back to make sure that i had it right as there replaces i would slip into a the language. if you read the acknowledgments in the book i mentioned i don't think very many will read this not only because they're not lovers of american fiction, but they are still engaged in a remote part of the country so that was it involved to read it and to translate bin to find its way to bookstores in very, very far-flung places. [laughter] >> my husband and i enjoy watching events and i am curious any chance they get a lot right to root represent? or can you not stand to watch that at all? >> yes. [laughter] i had instructed it used to say if we were one-tenth as good as people think we are we're doing good. i think there is lots of hollywood of working and government anywhere is a large xerox a. the also the german military service doing things that that was exciting was huge drudgery but there were moments from time to time to think this is pretty amazing. i remember being in it the could our province with the afghan soldiers we were advising with 200 afghans basically involves climbing very steep terrain and i was with that redevelopment to be on this side of the mountaintop but when it afghan had the infrared light on their back on remember looking down it is the seed for a very dramatic valley and was very cool. but there were hours and hours and days and days have forced to foul out to make staff have been somewhere think television divvies the real work they need is get the one guy who makes a decision. >> to what extent from the boys of mexico? >> one of the interesting dynamics of the afghan war that throat the conference of what should the role of the afghan and military be to eradicate to incentivize of farmers that they have met with mixed success. is a real challenge over miles and miles. but war is about economy and it takes on a life of their own and it can be very difficult to undermine and nobody has forgotten how to undermine the poppy trade. >> if you treat the symptoms and everything from it? >> with "fast & furious" that was tried and did not work too well. >> i think united states is the biggest purchaser of drugs sold some of the users are probably the biggest supporters of the up poppyseed but you haven't mentioned civilians. to me as a reader of the newspaper the hardest thing is to read about is the civilian death that is occurring. any comment on that? >> correct. with this war and the iraq war many characters are civilians. and frequently they are rendered invisible and i assure you that it is like an atom bomb for those two countries for the civilian populations there and that cannot be underestimated. adjusting get as much air time with the immediacy of the fighting. >> any ideas? >> nothing. no. it is more a and it is very difficult. have less wars. >> there have been more fighters killed them civilians in afghanistan. >> you change most of your book so it would be his story not an american retelling it but you have a set of history and so much involvement with a story similar to what you write about so how much of this book that you would connect to your own experience? or how much is knowing people in these situations to go off of that with its own back story? >> when i am writing sometimes i feel i