NOVEMBER 12, 2009

 

               SPEAKERS: GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS,

                         UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND

 

                         MICHAEL O’HANLON,

                         DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH,

                         BROOKINGS INSTITUTION

 

                         LIZZIE O’LEARY,

 

     MICHAEL O’HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Thank you kindly. And I know General Petraeus is going to want to say good morning in a second. So let me just say on behalf of myself and all Princetonians around the world how thrilled I am to have the chance to interview my fellow graduate student from years gone by, and a person I’ve greatly admired. And General, thanks for the chance.

 

     GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS, UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND: Great to be with you, Princeton, in the nation’s service.

 

     O’HANLON: Nicely said. I think what we’ll do is just go ahead and start talking about the many countries in the – what I like to call the axis of anxiety that General Petraeus has to address. And there’s one that he’s best known for, which also tends to produce the best news in this region today – Iraq.

 

     And so I will begin with that subject. And the way I’d like to begin, General, if you don’t mind, is in a way that I think is also helpful to understand the Afghanistan debate we’ve got now, which is to think about the prospects of success by looking at the strategy that is being considered for Afghanistan, but the one you applied in Iraq.

 

     And the way I want to ask the question is really to what extent were you confident going in that the basic notion of the surge could work? In other words, did the basic principles of counterinsurgency give us a high probability of success in their own rite, or does it matter a lot – the specifics, the details, and maybe even the luck that we happened to encounter along the way?

 

     PETRAEUS: Well all of that matters. And again, certainly the concepts that were employed in the surge – and let’s remember, by the way, the surge was not just 30,000 extra US forces. The real essence of the surge was how those forces were employed and the fact that we focused on security of the population rather than on trying to transition tasks to Iraqi forces that were out of our control, and certainly couldn’t be controlled by them.

 

     So the surge was really a surge of ideas as much as it was a surge of forces. We really did believe that if we applied the right concepts with additional forces that enabled us to employ them, to implement them more rapidly, by having those extra forces, that we could indeed drive down the level of violence, which would enable all of the other aspects of development – whether political, social, security force, you name it – to then take place.

 

     And that was indeed what took place. Was there some luck? Yes, but luck is cynic of the younger set, I think, is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And folks that spent a lot of time Iraq, doing Iraq – and I’ve been in Iraq for well over two and a third years by the time I went back for the last tour. We had spent the entire period that I’d been home after that second tour working on the counterinsurgency manual trying to capture best practices, to share those, to distill them, to figure out what worked where and all the rest.

 

     And we really did have a sense that it could be done, and that again, we could drive then the level of violence, which was critical to everything else. Because security is the foundation.

 

     Now I should note that when I came home from Iraq and that second tour, I was asked to go through Afghanistan by Secretary Rumsfeld and to look at the training equip mission there. I’d just established the training equip mission in Iraq, all kinds of challenges without question. But we’d been making some progress.

 

     We went out there and looked at the mission there. Came back with a number of recommendations, as has been noted many, many times. It had not received the same level of attention, resources. That level of violence was vastly lower.

 

     I actually came back and said that in addition to the observations, the specifics about the training equip mission in Afghanistan that I suspected that Afghanistan – in fact I assessed the Afghanistan campaign – this was going to be the longest campaign in what was then called the long war. And it was for a whole variety of reasons.

 

     But again, you can assess those then in 2005. And if you look at where the level of violence was then and where it is now, of course it was a very different place.

 

     We probably ought to look at Iraq, I guess – again as any four star general has his PowerPoint slides ready. I’m not going to brief from the slides. But I do think they illustrate developments. And I think with respect to Iraq, we ought to go ahead and put those up just to show where we are with the security situation.

 

     Because the fact is that since the spring of 2007 when we launched the surge of offensives, with the surge of forces, and started implementing all these different concepts of securing the population by living with it, 77 additional locations just in Baghdad alone where our forces were located with the people rather than driving through the neighbourhood and going back at night to our base and not maintaining a sustained presence.

 

     Serving the people, promoting reconciliation, being first with the truth, living our values, all of these other concepts. And oh bythe way, also very much going after the bad guys, because again, yes you do stability and support operations and counterinsurgency campaign. But you also kill or capture irreconcilables. And that is something that uniquely only military forces can do.

 

     But this shows where we are. What this slide shows is from – it starts in January 2004 on the left, all the way to last Friday night – it’s always cut off at midnight on Friday night – the level of security incidents. An incident is either an actual attack or an attempted attack. In other words, an improvised explosive device that is found. And there’s different categories on there of all the different kinds of attacks that take place.

 

     The bottom line is that the level of all of that – the level of violence, in essence – is down by 90% now from the spring of 2007. You can see the yellow line shows where it is, and you can see that it’s at historic lows for the data that we have.

 

     By the way, we put a bunch of Iraqi data into this that takes it all the way back into the fall of 2006. And actually you had then over 200 attacks per day in – at the height of the violence in the spring of 2007. Now it’s somewhere around 15 or so. It has been typically less than 20 for a number of months.

 

     That is very substantial progress. Now having said that, there’s no question but that there are resilient and in some cases even returning Sunni and Shia extremist elements. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is still present. It carried out the horrific attacks of the 25th of October. I happened to be in Baghdad that day. It carried out the attacks back in the 19th of August.

 

     But even with those attacks, if you go to the next slide, the number of high profile attacks, as they’re called – this is the summation of car bombs, suicide vest attacks, and suicide car bombs. And you can see that the number was nearly 230 or so back – in fact it was the month I returned, I think, that was sort of welcome back to Iraq, General Petraeus. That is now – I think it was 15 last month.

 

     Now that’s still a substantial number of car bombs and attacks. But again, in a relative scale, it is vastly reduced, needless to say. And it certainly is at the level where if you can limit the really horrible ones like we saw in Baghdad, you can very much get on with the reconstruction, the economic revival, and all the other activities that are so important to the people of Iraq. And that has been very significant as well.

 

     Now you’ve even seen the election law was passed – I think it was on Saturday or Sunday. Very significant. And it has open lists. Thisis – again, as some people have said, this is the development of (ph) Iraqracy, as those of us involved in it call it. Not necessarily democracy.

 

     But interestingly, if you look at the twenty countries of the Central Commander responsibility, that’s the smallest region, by the way, in any of the geographic combatant commanders. But we’re proud to note that we have the most problems.

 

     But if you look at any of those twenty countries, you’re hard pressed to find a country that has perhaps as much democracy, touch wood, because the elections, and probably somewhere around the 21st of January now for Iraq will be hugely – this will absolutely set the foundation for all that follows.

 

     And in truth, there will really be two elections in Iraq. There’s the election that will elect the different – the members of the Council of Representatives for the future. And then there’s the election that in many cases is even more important. That’s the cobbling together of the coalition that can produce agreement on a Prime Minister, President, Speaker of the Council of Representatives and the ministers and all the rest of that.

     So – but again, significant progress. And then finally if you go to the next slide and when you are securing the people, you focus on a terrible metric. That’s violent civilian deaths. And again, this goes, I think, from zero ‘04 to this last month. This is by month now rather than by week on the incident slide.

 

     But you can see even with the horrific attacks of the 25th of October, again, those civilian death numbers really at about an all time low since the violence escalated actually at the – in the early part of spring of 2006, particularly with the accelerant that was provided by the bombing of the Samarra Mosque on the 22nd of February. So that’s what’s taken place there. And you can just go back to the cover slide, if you would.

 

     Now this involved, again, using counterinsurgency concepts. Can they be applied in Afghanistan? The answer is yes, certainly. The concepts, the importance of security and then serving the population, helping Afghans to develop the government that can be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the people, and therefore worthy of their support. Promoting what in Afghanistan is called reintegration of reconcilables so that individuals that currently are either on the fence of perhaps voting against the government, if you will, or intimidated by the Taliban, can be enabled and supported to become part of the solution instead of a continuing part of the problem.

 

     All of these concepts very important. But obviously have to be implemented with a really nuanced understanding of Afghanistan. The fact is we didn’t have the depth of analysis at local levels to carry out some of those kinds of tasks. And we are still developing it in some of those areas.

 

     In fact, yesterday right before coming to Washington for last night’s meeting, we had a session there at the new Afghanistan, Pakistan Center of Excellence in our intelligence center. And it was designed to again develop further this understanding and to build the community of people as we did for Iraq over time that has that kind of depth of knowledge and the nuanced granular appreciation of local situations that enables you to implement counterinsurgency concepts in an intelligent manner.

 

     Lots and lots of challenges. And make no mistake about it, we’re not trying to turn Afghanistan into Sweden. This is trying to help them reestablish the traditional social organizing structures that have governed the country “to a degree”. And so that there’s a process that with our Afghan partners, coalition members, building up from the bottom while you’re also building out from the center.

 

     O’HANLON: I should have said at the beginning, General Petraeus’ area of responsibility is the twenty nations that include this axis of anxiety that we’re all talking about – Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan. The five Stans that were part of the former Soviet Union. And then the Arab states on the Arabian Peninsula over to Egypt.

 

     PETRAEUS: Yes.

 

     O’HANLON: But you also – for fun you -

     PETRAEUS: Egypt to Pakistan. Egypt to Pakistan, Kazakhstan to the waters off Somalia. So we still have the pirates in there too.

 

     O’HANLON: That’s what I was – yes, we wouldn’t want to take those away from you.

 

     PETRAEUS: If we get bored, we can -

 

     O’HANLON: Now speaking of the analogy here of Iraq and Afghanistan and what is comparable or analogous and what is not, put the question to you this way. I think you said, if I heard you right, that when you went into Iraq with the surge, you did not consider it a long shot, certainly not a guarantee of success. But you had a lot of things that you understood that should work for us in a pretty effective way, that gave us a good chance of success.

 

     Is that the same – if that’s a fair way to summarize your initial thinking on Iraq, is that a fair way of thinking about where we are in Afghanistan? Or is this, as I think Richard Holbrooke has sometimes said, just a much harder problem with therefore perhaps lower prospects of success?

 

     PETRAEUS: It’s a different problem. And again, as you’re using analogies, and of course people always bring that up, now you have the Iraq analogy, I guess, in addition to the Vietnam analogy and Somalia and a few others.

 

     What you need to do, of course, is throw away all the analogies and approach the problem and not try to put it in the box of something else. Afghanistan has a unique number of challenges. Frankly Iraq had a unique number of challenges as well. 53 dead bodies every 24 hours in the streets of Baghdad in December of 2006 is a pretty high – by the way, just from sectarian violence. There was other violence as well.

 

     That is a pretty tough situation. And we used to get questions. When are they going to start passing legislation? And we say this is a survival mode.

 

     Now again, as I mentioned earlier, when I did go to Afghanistan, actually for the first time in September of 2005, to do the assessment for Secretary Rumsfeld, I did come back and say this is going to be the longest campaign of the long war. That did not get wild applause necessarily on the third floor of the Pentagon. But it was how I saw it.

 

     And it’s because of the relative lack of developed institutions, human capital experience with strong central government, thirty years of war, very limited infrastructure. As we look at the logistical challenges, if there is a decision for additional resources – and I’m not going to talk about the decision or the substantive positions of any of the participants. But if there is, as we’ve looked at that, it is really hard to get additional forces.

 

     And compared with what we were able to do in Iraq, we put 6,000 additional troops into Iraq for five – each of five straight months. That’s an extraordinary logistical accomplishment. But we had Kuwait, we had really good infrastructure, we actually had access infrastructure because we’d been at a higher number previously, and we were able very rapidly to build that up.

 

     Enormous challenges in that respect in Afghanistan, as there are in a host of different ways in Afghanistan. But the enemy has challenges building up as well. And actually a very good article, I thought – I think it was the cover story in Newsweek several weeks ago – that talked about how the Taliban has, in a sense, regenerated, reconnected in these communities where they were dispersed to after being defeated in the end of 2001. Gradually came back together,

gradually put their foot back in the water and came back out for the winter and all the rest.

 

     And then over time, we established the infrastructure, rebuilt cells, structures to the point we’re now – I think it’s 33 of 34 provinces have a shadow government. And that’s – it is outstripped the efforts of ISAF forces being built over time to the point that we really have to of course get ahead of that, regain the initiative, and so forth, together with our Afghan partners, and create a situation in which those partners can develop adequately so that over time, of course, tasks can be transitioned to them.

 

     O’HANLON: So if I could follow up on that, what are a couple of reasons, in your eyes, for guarded optimism, or at least hopefulness? And I’m not asking you to sell us on the mission, per se. But obviously if Afghanistan needs to be evaluated by its own specific characteristics, what are the couple of things that you would highlight as going for us that perhaps get overlooked in the debate sometimes?

 

     PETRAEUS: Well, first of all, as you know, we’ve actually done this once before. I’m not an optimist, I’m not a pessimist. I’m a realist. And the reality of Afghanistan is that it’s all hard all the time. That’s also what Brian Crocker said about Iraq, as you may recall.

 

     Well first of all, there have been – our forces have learned a great deal about irregular warfare, about the conduct of counterinsurgency operations, about every component of it. About the counterterrorist component, the precision, that diffusion of intelligence. About the employment of this vast array of unmanned aerial vehicles, for example, that we now have helping us. And a host of other enablers that do so much for us.

 

     Our conventional forces are vastly better at interacting with the population. And so obviously we have to learn about this population much more over time. And needless to say, we’ve been emphasizing that a great deal, particularly with the additional focus that has come over the course of the last year or so.

 

     Again, there is infrastructure. There has been a lot of engagement. There are actually – there’s quite good ministers that have been established. I think by and large that most folks recognize as being very competent, for example, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Interior, Minister of Defense, and a number of others, actually.

 

     And there is the gradual development of some institutional structure. To be sure, some of those institutions have to be cleaned up. President Karzai has readily recognized and acknowledged the need to reduce levels of corruption and so forth. There’s no question about that.

 

     But again, there is some of that there. There is an international community that are very heavily engaged. And we went back to Iraq, there were no NGO’s. There were no – they’d all left. UNAMI left, as you’ll recall, for a while after the tragic explosion that killed the Special Representatives Secretary General, I think in 2003.

 

     So again, there are some important elements that can be built on. And then I think perhaps more important than that, you have instances where we think counterinsurgency has been carried out properly with our Afghan partners, and where you then see the kind of progress, nascent progress, the beginnings of progress that give you again a sense that this is what you can do. That over time, you can indeed deny the Taliban the access to or control over the major population center, lines of communications, and so forth so that you can establish conditions in which, again, Iraqi forces and Iraqi institutions can be developed.

 

     O’HANLON: I wanted to bore down one more level of detail on the issue of corruption because it is so much the focus of the Washington debate right now, and of course the effort in Afghanistan on the ground. And if you don’t mind, I’m going to preface that by saying – I was just back from a short trip to Afghanistan myself. And one of the things I was encouraged by was that even though we see this culture of much corruption in Kabul at the national level, although it doesn’t affect every minister, and thankfully some of the good ones are the very important ones you’ve just mentioned, that Interior of Defense –

 

     PETRAEUS: Well they’re going after some of them, too, which is very, very important.

 

     O’HANLON: And on that point of going after it, one of the things I was encouraged by – and I wanted to ask if this is the way you lookat it as well, to some extent – that when we follow General McChrystal’s new idea of partnering with the Afghan security forces and we’d be really the sister unit concept, where for every major Afghan police or army unit there’s a corresponding NATO unit. And they work and live and train and deploy together. It also gives us information, of course, about those units that aren’t doing so well, and about those leaders that aren’t necessarily doing so well.

 

     PETRAEUS: Absolutely, yes.

 

     O’HANLON: And then we had a relationship, I believe, with the ministers at interior and defense who supervised these forces, that allow us to weigh in on our impressions, and ask for some help and some changes if necessary. And that’s sort of a level of addressing corruption at the ground level, at the working level, which I think is going perhaps somewhat more hopefully, somewhat better these days than the issue of addressing corruption at the Karzai level. Is that a fair–

 

     PETRAEUS: Yes, it’s being done. It’s not just – this really has not been done before. Frankly, another factor in all this is General McChrystal. Someone many of us have known for years and years and years. I’ve known him when I was a captain at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and proud to be the fastest long distance runner. And that ended when Stan McChrystal showed up. But we’ve been friends ever since.

 

     He’s an extraordinary officer, an enormous amount of experience in Afghanistan, as well as Iraq. Yes, it was with the counterterrorist standing task force. But he was a full partner in the team there at multinational force Iraq, out of the three and two star level commanders. He spent probably 80% of his time there during those particular years.

 

     So – and the partnership concept – a lot of these – now these were concepts that were developed and refined and then practiced, of course, in Iraq. And we are doing more and more of that there as well, by the way, with the advise and assist brigade concept now coming into force.  Of course we have 670,000 or so Iraqi security force members with whom we now partner. And this is a substantial force. But let’s remember we did go through the process that you talked about.

 

     The national police tragically in the fall of 2006 and into early 2007 were literally hijacked by the militia. And over time, we had to – the Iraqi government had to replace the national police commander, both division commanders, all nine brigade commanders and 70% or 80% of the battalion commanders, and in some case, replace their replacements as well. So that was an enormous effort.

 

     But that partnership, the level of knowledge about the organizations, was what helped us be able to go to Prime Minister Maliki and to the national police – or the Ministry of Interior – and say this guy is – he is just completely compromised. He is ineffective. Or perhaps in a couple of cases, he’s actually working against what it is that we’re trying to do together.

 

     So again, this partnership effort is hugely important. And then actually you add into that the civil piece of this, where as you can achieve security, the civilians come in, the agricultural development teams from the National Guard come in, and everyone then works together in quite an integrated structure, trying to achieve the kinds of cooperation and fusion, actually, that Ambassador Crocker and I were able to achieve between the multinational force Iraq and the US Embassy in Baghdad.

 

     Again, slightly different situation. McChrystal is a NATO commander operationally, not a US led coalition commander as I was. But truly a NATO commander, but dual as a US forces in Afghanistan commander.

 

     And Ambassador Eikenberry, certainly the ambassador of the embassy in the country that provides 70% or more of the overall aide and assistance. But still not completely a civilian counterpart in the sense of the NATO commander. But that’s something also that has to be addressed, and has been, in fact, a topic of discussion in some of the sessions that we’ve had in the White House.

 

     O’HANLON: I know we’re getting close to the time for audience participation, and I’m not going to cover the whole region, obviously. But I do want to ask one question about Pakistan before we go to the group, although I wanted to quickly mention that I remember readingthat in some of the days of the difficulties in Iraq, you were takingsome inspiration from history, and I think from some Civil War battles.

 

     I was just talking to General McChrystal, who was listening to abook on tape right now about the Revolutionary War and Valley Forge,and reminding himself that his predecessors have sometimes had it even tougher.

 

     PETRAEUS: ‘70 to ‘76 was not necessarily a great year, as yourecall, right up until something that took place near a great place called Princeton.

 

     O’HANLON: Well said.

 

     PETRAEUS: Up in Bunker Hill, of course. From there on until Christmas it was pretty bleak.

 

     O’HANLON: Although you’re dangerously close to saying something good about Harvard. So let’s be careful. But – or at least its environs (ph). But I want to ask you about Pakistan, which is that obviously there’s been a remarkable year in Pakistan, incredible amount of developments. The Pakistani military getting very serious about some areas, including the Swat Valley, and of course now South (inaudible). But at the same time we’re seeing the resistance retaliate with car bombs. And it’s been a terrible last few weeks of violence against civilian populations. How do you feel overall about Pakistan right now?

 

     PETRAEUS: Well the bumper sticker, I think, is heartening but tough. And I’ve held that bumper sticker for several months actually. And in fact, I think we have said that as Pakistan remains serious and continues to build on the progress it achieved in Swat district and Northwest frontier province and some of these other areas that are Federally administered tribal areas and so forth, and as they launch the operations into Eastern (inaudible) as they have now, and are almost getting close to the final objectives, the enemy is going to fight back.

 

     And when you go into the enemy safe havens and sanctuaries they come after you. And they tried to open up new areas. This has always been the case.  And so we have seen that. Now we also saw it, frankly, even before they’ve started. They’re going into now what is the organization controlled by (inaudible) Massoud, who was killed a couple of months ago. But that’s the organization that killed Benazir Bhutto, has blown up infrastructure, hotels, Pakistani officials and security forces, visiting cricket teams, you name it. And they have just stepped up the pace at that tragically. But that’s another example. You have to go after the network. You have to get left of the boom. You have to stay after that.

     But what they have done, again, is very heartening. And it really stems to a point some 10 months or so ago when the Pakistani citizenry, political leaders, all of them, including (inaudible), a major opposition figure, and the bulk of the clerics all came to recognize together at about the same time that the extremists in Northwest Frontier Province and Swat Valley in particular were threatening the very existence of Pakistan.

 

     So you have for the first time, I think, recognition that the existential threat to the country that is most pressing at the very least is the internal extremists, not necessarily India. Not saying that that threat has gone away in their assessments. But the fact is the threat that is most immediate, the wolf closest to the sled, as they say, indeed was the internal extremists.

 

     And they have acted on that. Now not only have they acted, they have done so with considerable skill. Pakistani military cleared andleft Swat Valley at least twice since 9/11. This time they cleared and then they have stayed. And they’re holding and they’re building.

 

     So it’s the joke or the adage that with conventional forces, that amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. And withcounterinsurgency, amateurs clear, professionals clear, hold, and build. And that’s what they have been doing in Swat District with a very good core commander in charge of the post conflict portion of this, if you will, although they’re still doing operations. Took very good care of the refugees.

 

     We were frankly all amazed, I think, that such a vast number – I think it’s probably at least 85%, 90% of the internally displaced persons from Swat District were able to get back into their homes, not completely before the monsoon season started, but roughly about that time.

 

     So that’s what’s going on. But it’s a tough fight. And there is a substantial amount of fertile ground there, if you will, because of the enormous social challenges, the poverty, the lack of education, the increased number of ultra, ultra conservative (inaudible) that – and students are very prone and very – really again, they are fertile ground for the seeds of extremism to be planted and grown.

 

     And so that’s an enormous concern. And Pakistan needs, and I think deserves, a sustained substantial commitment from our country and from the rest of the world. It is very important not just in the region, but for the entire world. 170 million Muslims, very strong ties to Western countries – the UK in particular, and nuclear weapons on top of all that.

 

     O’HANLON: I know we’ll all have a chance to thank General Petraeus on behalf of the entire military that he leads and the service of all of our men and women in uniform in just a few minutes. I want to thank you personally for the honor of this conversation as I turn things over to a distinguished colleague who will now, I think, involve the audience in a bit of Q-and-A.

 

     LIZZIE O’LEARY, REPORTER, BLOOMBERG NEWS: Hi. I want to take audience questions. And I just want to put one question to you.

 

     PETRAEUS: Why did I guess that? I’ve known Lizzie since she was at NPR. And it’s been great to watch her progression.

 

     O’LEARY: Thank you, General. I want to go back to a conversation you and I had mid surge. And you were talking not just about the military tactics and counterinsurgency, but you even used a phrase suitcases full of cash in terms of talking about how to involve – at this point we were talking about Anbar Province. Translate the analogy to Afghanistan, because obviously we’re talking about a much more diffuse place. What’s the leverage – not just military, but political and certainly economic – that US forces can use here?

 

     PETRAEUS: Yes, first of all we always were very explicit about money is ammunition. And I think the narrative that we bought off the insurgents, though, is a little bit misplaced. What we did do is we promoted and supported reconciliation in a truly serious way for the first time when we got into the surge in Iraq.

 

     Frankly we – a number of us tried reconciliation as early as 2003. With Ambassador Bremer’s approval, the 101st Airborne Division in Northern Iraq – and I was privileged to be their commander at the time – supported Iraqi conduct of reconciliation commissions.

Unfortunately the results of those commissions were never approved by the Iraqi led (inaudible) in Baghdad. And that was an enormously discouraging result of that process for the Sunni Arabs of Northern Iraq. And that really spread that kind of sentiment.

 

     So you had tens of thousands put out of work with no future, no hope, and feeling disrespected and increasingly angry. And that was again also fertile ground for the insurgents, and ultimately for Al Qaeda in Iraq.

 

     Now what we did – and by the way, there was an attempt at reconciliation in 2005, (inaudible) who sadly though, Sheik’s ended up getting killed. We decided really to defend these individuals, to protect them.  It really started actually a couple of months before the surge outside Ramadi. But the effects of it were not seen until later. And then when the moment we embraced it started to take off. And that was very important.

 

     Initially it took off without our cash. It just took off with us saying we’ll protect you. The first Sheik – Sheik Sitar Abureeshah, we parked two tanks outside his house. And that was important.

 

     O’LEARY: Can you translate that model?

 

     PETRAEUS: You can. Now – so if you look at Afghanistan, what you need to do there again, in some cases, the most important element you can provide to them is legitimacy for a community defense initiative. It may require no cash. It requires a couple of weapons cards, a cell phone, or some means of communication. ICOM Radio that allows them to link to a quick reaction force at a district center or perhaps even a province capital.

 

     So not just securing but mobilizing the population, getting them engaged in the process so that you can help them defend themselves against the extremist elements that are trying to reestablish control over the country as the Taliban tries to reassert itself and has been reasserting itself.

 

     But you can help the traditional Mullahs and tribal leaders again to retain their position or be restored to their position by protecting them from the irreconcilables, and then killing, capturing, or running off those individuals and allowing these individuals to help protect themselves without bringing back warlords or these large proxy armies that were in various places in the country.

 

     O’LEARY: Let’s bring in – someone had a question over there. Go ahead.

 

     QUESTION: Yes, John Gallagher with Fairplay Magazine. We’re an international shipping publication. And general, you mentioned – you briefly mentioned piracy. What – there’s been a significant increase in pirate attacks over the last year, as you know. And even within the last few weeks, particularly off the coast of Somalia.

 

     Two questions – what’s your general assessment – what is your general assessment of that, and where do you – where do you see the US military role in protecting commercial interests against piracy? And what plans are there, if any, to step up those efforts?

 

     PETRAEUS: Yes, first if I could, I probably would – first of all, your assessment is correct that – actually about a year or so ago it really ramped up. It then came down, we had it down a good bit lower. Some of that, to be sure, was higher sea states.

 

     But it also has been that the pirates have adjusted to our tactics. What we are doing is we identified ultimately which of the mother ships where we – these are much larger vessels that tow little skiffs behind them. They go 500 nautical miles out to get unsuspecting ships with low freeboards that aren’t equipped or prepared, even mentally, to counter pirates. They’re just completely surprised and they surrender.

 

     And we really shut down the big mother ships over time. In fact there were only three pirated ships at one point. But then they went to open skiffs that much – we call them mother skiffs now. And they tow the little, smaller skiffs. And these are extraordinary. These are just open vessels 50 feet long full of 55 gallon drums of fuel way off the coast. There’s been one now 700 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia with GPS, pretty rudimentary stuff. But they’re out there enough, and they can get unsuspecting ships.

 

     We think that the shipping companies themselves have to take greater measures. You probably know the US Coast Guard, after we had a big conference last year, issued instructions to US flagships. They were quite clear. And they require them to have certain defensive measures and other actions.

 

     We determined that if you just follow three simple rules you actually dramatically reduce the chances of piracy. The first is if you see a pirate ship, speed up. By the way, I’m not making these up. And we have actually issued them.

 

     The second is if the pirate ship approaches you, take evasive action. There was a ship that was a 100,000 ton supertanker, that’s larger than an aircraft carrier by a considerable amount, taken down by a little Boston Whaler.

 

     Well, if you just take evasive action, there’s no way that thing can close with you. But you also have to have a lookout out there to make sure that – because they’re so automated now that they probably didn’t even realize there was a pirate on board or hooked up to them until he was inside the wheel house with an AK-47.

 

     And that’s why the last step is crucially important. And that is take up the ladder. Every – all of these ships – again, I’m not making this up. These ships have ladders on them for the pilots. The pilot tugboat comes up next to it as it enters the port. Pilot climbs up the pilot’s ladder. This is not a little ladder – a rope ladder like you throw over the side of your speed boat to go water skiing. It takes unbolting. But that’s worth, I think, a couple million dollar ransom to take that particular step.

 

     Beyond that, the US has recommended further measures that include defensive measures, and even in some cases, lethal anti-boarding parties.

 

     The shipping companies generally have seen this as a cost of doing business. And that was part of the problem. It just became a transaction. They sort of saw this as a three week delay. You’re parked off the coast of Somalia, you drop the ransom to the pirates from the plane and they let the ship go on.

 

     Well, we’ve got to break that again, as well. The real root of the problem, of course, is that even if you capture the pirates – and of course we only have the authorities with respect to pirates of police with an alleged criminal. This is not the military with a declared hostile who you can just kill on site. So the rules of engagement are quite restrictive. And that’s an international law issue that the international community has to address at some point in time if it wants to get more serious about this problem.

 

     O’LEARY: All right -

 

     PETRAEUS: But beyond that, the authorities in Somalia do not exist. And if you have a pirate, you want to turn them over to authorities for trial, find an authority who will hold that pirate longer than it takes us to help anchor and we’ll hand them off.

 

     O’LEARY: Alright, I want to get to more questions.

 

     PETRAEUS: We have a (inaudible).

 

     O’LEARY: I know we’ve got one over here.

 

     QUESTION: Yes, General Petraeus, we’ve come a long way in 20 years.

 

     PETRAEUS: We have. Who, if anybody had ever predicted, that you and I would be where we were – we’d be laughed out of the locker room.

 

     QUESTION: General Petraeus and I, we taught together at West Point. And that really is part of my question. In terms of what I understand what are some of the Army’s policies are now in terms of where young officers can go to graduate school, and which may be preventing them from going to Harvard, where some of us went, and maybe even Princeton. With that happening, would David Petraeus be here now? What’s going to happen in the future if we follow some policy that perhaps restricts where we’re going to send these great officers to school?

 

     PETRAEUS: Well you remember that we were told that we were taking our career in our own hands when we took those very high risk courses, going to graduate school. And it was. But it worked out for a number of individuals who did that.

 

     I actually think there are still enormous opportunities out there. And I actually don’t think that this is actually limited – what we’re doing has limited those opportunities. If anything, the fact that so many individuals have so much operational experience – combat experience – they have such credentials they can easily afford a number of years off going to graduate school and then teaching at West Point or what have you.

 

     What we have also done, though, is we have tried to break up that process so that you don’t have a five or six year period out of your basic branch as an infantry officer. And you send them as a senior lieutenant or a young captain to graduate school. And then they go to their branch advanced course back to troops for several years. And then they can go teach at West Point for a couple of years. And that breaks it up a little bit more. And we think that’s a pretty good route as well.

 

     But I think there really are considerable opportunities for that. We were concerned a couple of years ago about this very much. In fact when I was out at Fort Leavenworth and the commander at Leavenworth oversees 17 or 18 schools and centers. And we think it’s the intellectual critical mass of the Army and all this stuff. And you are in charge of commissioned and non-commissioned warrant officer education – the military piece of it, not the grad school.

 

     And we were actually having a hard time just getting them into the staff colleges to get that break because of the number of forces that were committed. The Army’s grown, the Marine Corp has grown. I was actually at Leavenworth earlier this week. And I think we had – well there’s an auditorium that seats about 2,000 people. And every seat was full. And it was overflowing.

 

     So the two classes that are out there now, by the way – and we can run two here not one – were filled just about to capacity. And that was a good indicator, I think, that we have gotten back into the rhythm of enabling individuals to go to the professional military education and also there are lots of avenues to go to civilian grad school still.  So keep mentoring them, keep encouraging, as I know you do, because I think it’s a great opportunity. And if they can’t get into Princeton, they can always go to Harvard.

     O’LEARY: Well let me ask you, since we’re talking about schools, you obviously commanded at Leavenworth, you’ve been a division commander as well. As a division commander, did the commanders at Fort Hood miss the signs?

 

     PETRAEUS: I don’t know enough about – we’re talking about – actually we’re talking about a case that’s under study. And so Iprobably should not get into that. 

     But I think you’re talking about one alleged individual. And I don’t think it was – if you look at the news stories, I think, and who knew what when. So – but again, I have to be very careful about that, as General Casey rightly has been.

 

     When you have a case that’s ongoing that could end up in the jurisdiction of the – what’s called the Uniform Code of Military Justice, senior leaders have to be very careful not to prejudice a case by what they say publicly or private.

 

     O’LEARY: But let me ask you then, since you brought up the word prejudice, that certainly seems to have figured in to this. There is some question about whether the military culture – whether the Army culture – you’ve been in the Army for a long time – was adequately prepared to handle the idea of Muslim soldiers fighting against Muslims. Do you feel like the training up within the Army is addressing that right now?

 

     PETRAEUS: Well I think we have standards for our troopers. It doesn’t matter what your religion is. It doesn’t matter what your race, color is. And people understand that when they take an oath of office, oath of commission or enlistment, that they are swearing to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States and obey the orders of the President of the United States and the officers appointed over it. And according to regulations in the Uniform Code of

Military Justice.

 

     So again, I think that’s pretty clear.

 

     QUESTION: (inaudible). General, we have (inaudible) BAE, (inaudible), Lucent, and EADS, a number of the European defense contractors over here with National Security Agreements actively competing for our procurement dollars. We are increasingly though fighting with allied forces in different venues around the world. Yet we’re the only country, with the exception of UK a little bit, that really has (inaudible).

 

     What are we doing or can we do or should we do to try to get more procurements overseas to help build up their (inaudible) so we don’t have to do all the war fighting?

 

     PETRAEUS: First of all, if I could, just with respect, correct a term that I have never felt was accurate. Warfare is not network centric. It’s commander centric. And that commander is enabled by networks.

 

     And we went through – this is actually a hugely important concept that you approach it that way. And in fact we’ve had to work – in fact when I came home from Iraq the second time and went out to Fort Leavenworth, I was also in charge of our combat training centers and the simulation centers and all the rest of us that do the very high level exercises.

 

     We did some major overhauls because we actually were a bit too networked and too staff centric. And anyone who had actually commanded in real combat, which we hadn’t done for several decades, actually, realized that it’s actually about the commander who’s enabled by this network. And it is a very, very powerful tool.

 

     And in fact, as you know, the real breakthrough in recent years is not any one particular technological development or breakthrough in an intelligence discipline, per say, as some journalists have occasionally offered. It really is the fusion of the products of all of the different breakthroughs and intelligence disciplines. And that in itself is a breakthrough.

 

     And the establishment in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan – by the way, another advance there of fusion centers that bring together all of the intelligence agencies – special mission units, special forces, conventional units, coalition elements, even in the same room without walls and require them to all work together.

 

     And we have a huge challenge in Afghanistan. For example, that anywhere we’re operating there’s a lot of different coalition partners. On how it is that we bring together all these different networks. And I think we have 16 different networks that terminate in the new ISAF joint headquarters – the three star level operational headquarters, another hugely needed improvement in Afghanistan that we’ve established in Iraq several years back – a number of years back.

 

     That is – it’s in a sense outrageous, and in another sense, it’s understandable. That’s just the way life is. But we have to figure out how to get at that.

 

     And one way is – again, you’re always trying to get the big ideas right. And what strategic leaders get paid to do is figure out what are the right big ideas, communicate them to the organization, oversee their implementation and then figure out what lessons or best practices you’re learning to refine and so forth and do it all again.

 

     The big idea with this stuff is that you need to start out with a concept of need to share rather than need to know. If you actually – if the intelligence analyst actually writs the report in the beginning with a sense of sharing it as widely as possible, as opposed to making it the perfect document that can only be released to one or five partners or what have you, you have a breakthrough.

 

     And so we have to do that conceptually in addition. Now with respect to how do you spread that to other countries, I think that other countries have really seen the power of what it is that we have. The challenge is obviously their procurement accounts are nothing like ours. I think it is true now that the United States spends more than all of the other countries put together in that regard in defense. So that’s the challenge that they have.

     QUESTION: Patrick Grayson, GPW. America is bearing an enormous burden in this context in the region. And in the context of the last question, if you could give us a frank appraisal of the contribution (inaudible) and the performance of your allies.

 

     PETRAEUS: Yes, first of all, I very much subscribe to – I think it was Winston Churchill’s comment – that the only thing worse than allies is having no allies. And we really don’t want to go it alone.

 

      We need the power of as many coalition partners as we can. And in fact sometimes you take some limitations because of that. People think that Afghanistan is the first place where forces have caveats on them. Not so at all. There have always been limitations in employment of various national forces.

 

     When I was in Bosnia as the Chief of Operations for the effort there, I had a matrix on my desk. It had – down the left side it was the countries, and then across the top it was different tasks and functions and missions and who would do them. Some in their own area, some in their parent divisionary, and then the rest throughout the entire country. And you literally had to pick and choose and figure out which ones – and there were only a couple of countries that were

willing to allow their forces to be employed for the full spectrum of operations all around the country.

 

     That’s still the case. But I think that what you have – it was the case in Iraq, by the way. Again, there’s the sense in Iraq we just – it was not at all. We had some significant limitations with some of our coalition partners. And you have – you just learn how to work around that as a commander.

 

     So I think that’s frankly the situation that we’re in. there’s no question about that. There are several countries who are very much fighting, and some of them taking disproportionate casualties, given the size of the force that they have in Afghanistan.

 

     But – and then others just not the same. And again, that’s something that you just have to work through. You can certainly raise it. You can make progress with it. There has been some. I think Secretary Gates has been fairly effective in some of that. But at the end of the day, there are going to be limitations and there are going to be some countries that are seen to be, in a sense, freeloading, if you will, on the sacrifice of the main coalition partners. And that again, unfortunately is reality.

 

     QUESTION: Arthur (inaudible). Iran continues to increase the tension and pressure in the Middle East, not only through their nuclear proliferation, but also the sending of military weaponry through Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt to be facing Israel. Do you see any light at the end of the tunnel with respect to some of the concerns that we’re sharing there?

 

     PETRAEUS: I thought we’d get all the way through this without a mention of Iran. But thanks for raising it, actually, because the interesting dynamic in the region is that the best recruiting officer for Central Command right now in our area of responsibility is President Ahmadinejad. His – literally in some cases unbelievable rhetoric, of course outrageous, provocative, and so forth.

 

     And then the actions in Iran have resulted in some countries that used to, as we say, give us the heist men. They used to hold us a little bit at arm’s length. Now literally embracing us or jumping into our arms when it comes to activities such as shared early warning air and missile defense and a host of other different activities. And certainly in terms of procurement.

 

     By the way, if you want to talk about procurement, there is a country in our region that does $18 billion worth of business – that is doing this year $9 billion in foreign military sales and $9 billion in direct commercial sales. A small country. And so there’s extraordinary partnerships that are blossoming out there, in part because of – substantially because of the concerns created by the actions of Iran.

 

     As you rightly point out, continue to arm, train, fund, and equip Shia extremist elements in Iraq, Southern Lebanon, with Hezbollah, Hamas, and even to a limited degree the Taliban and Western Afghanistan.

 

     The efforts that most assess that the various efforts in the nuclear arena are to enable ultimately a decision which – you can argue whether the decision’s been made or not by the Supreme Leader, I think – but certainly to enable that decision to be made at some point to actually establish nuclear weapons and have the means to deliver them.

 

     So all of this, again, certainly causes great concern. I think the initiatives that are ongoing through diplomacy, using the IAEA, frankly if there was an agreement on the 1,200 kilograms of low enriched uranium going to a third country and being reprocessed into fuel rods for the Tehran research reactor, that would be a reassuring step, certainly.  But in the absence of that – again, this is – the prospects are challenging, I think, at best.

 

     O’LEARY: Mike, I’m going to let you sum up or throw in one more question if you want, because we’re getting to the end.

 

     O’HANLON: I guess, General, let me focus on Pakistan with one last question. I didn’t realize I’d have the opportunity, but it’s such an important country that I wondered if there is a new level of American effort that needs to be considered in terms of either our support for their military, reform efforts, or for their economic recovery that is beginning to emerge in the debate.

 

     I’m not asking you to throw out a new idea that hasn’t yet been discussed. But we’ve sometimes heard Vice President Biden and others just emphasize the importance of this country which you have too, but also the potential need to do even more than we’re doing now. Or are we doing as much as is realistic with military to military cooperation, economic support, and so forth?

 

     PETRAEUS: Well again, the bumper sticker I’ve always used there is sustain substantial commitment. There has to be – part of that has to literally be reassurance. Let’s remember our history with this country.

 

     It’s a country that we have left a couple of times, arguably, in a lurch. It’s a country whose leaders who will remind you about the (inaudible) amendment. None of us remember that. That was a twelve year cutoff of access for the Pakistani military to our schools, all security assistance, and everything else. And it had – there’s a lost generation that we’re trying to – with which we’re trying to reestablish ties and so forth.

 

     So again, we have to keep that in mind. I think the Kerry-Lugar bill is very important. It is $1.5 billion in various forms of economic assistance each year for the next five years. That is sustain substantial commitment.

 

     On the military side, we’re doing somewhere between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in terms of again, foreign military financing and security systems and a variety of other components.

 

     O’HANLON: Per year?

 

     PETRAEUS: Yes, per year, yes. Substantial amount. And again, there’s different components of that coalition support funding, (inaudible) and others.

 

     And varieties of assistance provided to them. The important reality, though, is it’s the Pakistanis doing the fighting. By the way, their leaders are very much leading in the front. And just look at the casualty statistics, where its commissioned and non-commissioned officers disproportionately being among those who have been wounded and killed.

 

     And again, as I mentioned earlier, doing a very good job in the conduct of what are now comprehensive counterinsurgency operations in those areas in which they are operating.

 

     Very important and very much deserves our support. And it’s a hugely important country for the entire world. So I think again, that is something that has been in discussions, rightly, and understandably. And that kind of commitment is what we are now seeing.

 

     O’HANLON: Well to thank General Petraeus, I want to quote General Keane, a good mutual friend of ours, who has, I think, accurately said that never in our country have we asked so few to do so much for so long. The men and women that you lead and your own personal sacrifice and commitment have been amazing. And I want to thank you very much.

 

     ***END OF TRANSCRIPT***