two other things in his illustrious career. he is the national security columnist for slate and author of four books, most recently the insurgents, which i think he will tell us has at least more crossover with this new book than some people might necessarily imagine. fred is a pulitzer prize-winning journalist back from his days in the the boston globe , and i m very pleased to be able to host him here today. just a word on format, shortly i m going to ask fred to give a few minutes describing the book and telling us a little bit about what s in it, then i m going to take the opportunity to have a conversation, dig into a little bit more of the detail and explore some of the themes and what we might conclude from that, and then i will open it up to the floor to give you the opportunity to ask fred some questions. we ll all to wrap up at 1:45. that ll actually give us plenty of time to get into some quite interesting conversation. so without more ado, fred. ms. . [applause
from carrying out completely the missions that he has been tasked with. is that correct? yes sir. my greatest concern of sequestration would be the impact on the workforce, particularly the civilians. they would argue what i want to be aligned with that. i can replace equipment. it takes years to replace people. there is a real likelihood, if we continue the sequestration that you will not be able to continue to employ these outstanding and highly selected individuals yes. sometimes, i do not want the american people to see what goes on at these hearings. i certainly wish the american people could hear and see your statements that you re making today rather than that s just what democracies are all about. and so i thank you for your good work but also want to thank you for your straightforward answers to questions that were posed by the members of this committee. and we thank you. the meeting is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] ..ible con .. [inaudible conversatio
up the project and run with it. great. please, yes. give her the mike. please stand up so they can see you to give you the mike. i m the executive director of the u.s. afghans council at georgetown university. we are so grateful you are here and i d like to publicly thank you for staying up in the middle of the night. very quietly, i don t think people know this. and you have been sending us support and at times when you don t have the staff to do it. we re so grateful for reaching out to us here in washington, d.c. i d like to ask specifically if you could talk further about one of the myths that you brought up. the myth of the afghan male, the afghan man as being uncivilized. part of why i the about that, in my work, what i found is with all of these successful, beautiful, talented afghan women that you talk about, there is always usually a strong and supportive and feminist and wonderful father, husband, brother, cousin, uncle. that i think we don t always hear about.
and did not do especially well. he missed a chance to fight the russians because he got there too late he had some unique ideas that al qaeda rejected. following, arful core group that he formed around himself. he became a powerful and strategic force. there is an important story that needed to be told and broken down and understood. it became more important under the isis context. theree without zarqawi, was no isis. he was the innovator of everything we see today. the focus on building the caliphate. it was something he decided in iraq had to be done immediately as a short-term proposition. thesing on building caliphate as a field of dreams. declare it, it will happen. his successors did it more overly but he was doing it as early as 2005 or 2006. he was the innovator of by sheer objectives brutality. he did not want to be liked, he wanted to be feared and respected. he wanted to make things happen. he innovated the idea of parading men before a camera and cutting their hea
second, despite advances from toolsa. to develop new and programs, as well as public-private partnerships, young servicemen and women are generally not prepared for that transition. how to do even know that planning. leverage the tools that dakota talked about. that led us to the third question. how do we help them navigate the sea of goodwill goodwill? it is a collective effort. we want young servicemembers to have a guidebook that helps them navigate the process. points them in the direction of great resources across the space. we did not want a one-size-fits-all approach. we did not want to take that, but we saw commonalities between the transition process between all classes of service members. elementis an essential to all servicemembers. we continued to work with the great coalition to develop tool we are releasing today. we have worked up until last night, quite frankly, on the tool you have before you. it captures and consolidates the essential steps and processes