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David Petraeus

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2024-11-11

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2024-11-11

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1. “Thank you for your wise counsel, Alistair, and great to be with you again. I'm huge admirers of both of you, and it's a privilege to be with you on your show.”

   2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Turned out to be the case. But that one was really, really important, not just for Iraq, but really for the entire region. And so when asked what was the most significant, it clearly has to be a command of the multinational force in Iraq and what an extraordinary privilege that was.”

   2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Managed to pull that country out of a civil war, drive violence down by enormous amount, and give Iraq the land of the two rivers an entirely new opportunity, which it did really quite well with for the first three and a half years after the end of the surge until the unfortunate decisions by the Iraqi Prime Minister right after our final combat forces left. But that one was, it was also arguably the most grinding experience of my life. It was as if you're in a boxing ring and you're just getting hit all over the place and all throughout a day and your just notes are slid in front of you multiple times and said we just lost four soldiers here. The bridge was just blown up by the way the bridge built by the British a century earlier between east and west Baghdad. Again, just every day there are enormous challenges and setbacks and mistakes even as you are making progress, which ultimately”

   2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “I actually have enjoyed and been challenged and stimulated and been in a way gratified, if you will, by almost all of these. And it's really Commanding two wars is unprecedented, really, in modern times. I'm not sure maybe ever. But at the end of the day, I think the bigger question is which was the one that was the most important and that has to be the surge in Iraq. Iraq was an escalating spiral of Sunni Shia violence. It was in a civil war. And the great work of the extraordinary men and women of our coalition and of our Iraqi counterparts.”

   2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Michael Corleone trying to leave the mafia. You just keep getting sucked back in. So, why don't you just recognize it and have an efficient, modest force so that you're not doing these backs and force that we seem to be involved in?”

   2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Might keep a situation from getting worse, in some cases, might even be able to resolve it. So those, I think, would be the ones. Beyond that, I think we really have attention to the major issues out there, but whether it's enough attention or the right attention, I think, is the other question and how to keep it all in balance. You know, we have repeatedly tried to leave the Middle East, the United States, for example. You know, we've had the pivot asia, the rebalance. And there are a couple of central command truths that are relevant here. One is, of course, always know who your enemies are and who your friends are and don't confuse them. And Iran is our enemy. Number two is that what happens in the Middle East doesn't stay there. Las Vegas rules do not apply rather than tends to be violence, extremism, and instability and a tsunami of refugees way beyond Middle Eastern countries. And the third is that for the US to try to leave the Middle East is like...”

   2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “There's a number of dynamics and developments in Africa that I think could be very important, could have ramifications for far more than just the country in which they're located or even the continent. Certainly like to see greater attention to some of the situations there that could escalate further in particular. I mean, I'd like to see the resolved within the boundaries of the country where they're taking place. In a number of cases, what you need to do is, again, keep an eye and pressure on a particular challenge. noting that if you don't do that, it can metastasize and then you have to require much, much more. And again, the Islamic State is very instructive in that regard. I think it's the most instructive. So the challenges there, I think there are issues in some other parts of the world that, again, we don't pay a great deal of attention to and where modest amounts of assistance, involvement, and so forth.”

   2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Turbulent times, different times, challenging times, an era of populism to some degree, a lot of grievance out there that can be played on expertly by those that can do that. Not the only place where we've seen that kind of activity. But yeah, I mean, this is not the political party that was even as recently as, say, the George W. Bush era, much less the Ronald Reagan era. I mean, it has evolved very considerably. In terms of positions, actual policy positions as well. But again, all part of life's great adventure.”

   2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Where there is a mistake in your organization for which you're responsible, or if you are the source of the mistake, as in that case.”

   2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “No, it's very difficult. And I look, I felt that I'd exercise bad judgment and that you shouldn't have a CI director who exercised bad judgment, which is why I took responsibility and published it, sought to make amends, resigned, and then over a period of time you get back on your feet, dust yourself off, and pick up the rucksack and start putting one foot in front of the other again. The truth is, look, I've dealt with all kinds of setbacks and mistakes and shortcomings as a commander of forces. You're responsible for everything that everyone in that force does or fails to do. And so, again, intellectually, I knew that what I needed to do is understand what took place, figure that out, again, take appropriate action, make amends, and then try to learn from it, and then move on. And that's true, I think, of any situation.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Matter what the organization is, what type, if you understand the context in your authorities or responsibilities and how it all functions, and that's true of a founder of a startup or to 200,000 men and women in uniform with hundreds of thousands of host nation partners as in the surge in Iraq.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Well, what's interesting is that leadership at the very top requires the performance of four tasks. And success generally is a result of superb strategic leadership. The first task of which is to get the big ideas right, to get the strategy right, to understand the context. In conflict, it's your forces, the enemy, the area of responsibility, the human train, the physical train, the neighborhood, all of these dynamics. And that is actually true in the private sector as well. It's true in the nonprofit. It's true in other government organizations. It's that the context is different. You have to understand the differences.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “So I've been a partner at KKR now for a decade or so. I've been with KKR for 11 years. It's been an extraordinary period. Very, very intellectually stimulating. And again, really quite something to be with a company that goes from $83 billion under management to over $600 billion. So I'm extraordinarily fortunate to be doing what I'm doing and to have been able to continue to do what I have done, noting that not many of those in that particular administration had particularly happy endings.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Been accepted. I said that the answer to that kind of question always has to be yes. But I'm in a different position. It's a different time. It's a different context. The actors are different. And I just don't think it's a realistic possibility, frankly. But I think you would have to consider it. But I don't know that the answer would necessarily be yes.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Think first of all, I don't think I would be even considered at this point in time. The qualities this time will not just be expertise and experience. I think there will be a loyalty component that I would certainly not satisfy. Again, and frankly, on the other side of the administration, I was pretty forthright at various times, including with Vice President Biden in the National Security Council in the Situation Room. And I think, again, that would ensure that I was not part of the consideration. So look, I think, you know, I said after President Obama called me into the Obama office when I was a four-star in sat me down any preamble, said, I'm asking you as your president and commander in chief to take command of our forces in Afghanistan, which, and I hadn't realized that my predecessor had resigned at that time.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Administration in the US very impressively together with the administration in the UK at the time very impressively responded to that albeit over time there have been a number of decisions that have been delayed far too long and have had consequences on the battlefield. The delay on the M1 tank decision, which led to delay in the German Leopard decision, delay on F-16s, the Army Tactical Missile System, still restrictions on the use of those on Russian soil, the multiple launch rocket. A lot of these just took far too long. They were inevitable and yet still delayed. Otherwise, I think, again, by and large, the current administration in trying to shore up alliances, rejoining the World Health Organization, the Climate Accord, all of this generally, I think in foreign and defense policy terms, generally fairly sound.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “The bedrock of which is to ensure that the elements of deterrence, military deterrence are rock solid, and there's a lot of initiatives for that. To be tough on China when that is necessary, and this what is severe competition, the description of our national security advisor, et cetera. There's one component missing, though, and it was a huge missed opportunity by the previous administration, which controlled not just the White House, but both houses of Congress and had fast-track authority, and that would have been to do the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But populist forces scuttled that you no longer have the fast track authority. You don't have control of all of government with one party. And that's a glaring absence in a comprehensive integrated system. With respect to some of the others, I would not have left Afghanistan. And by the way, I think the withdrawal from Afghanistan was one element, and the way it went was one element that led Putin to think that he could get away with Ukraine much more than was the case.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “I met with President-elect Trump, and it was actually a very good meeting, quite constructive. He had a list of questions he read down them. I had questions for him. I said, you get two. I get one. And I was called that night and told I was going to be announced the next day, actually. And I said, no, no, no. Hang on here. I need two more sessions. And these are the subjects I need terms and references. And so for this before, it was obvious how non-standard, if you will, that administration was going to be. And that night, the president-elect happened to have dinner with Rex Tillerson, decided on the spur of the moment much better to get the CEO of the largest corporation in the world than, you know, an old soldier turned spymaster in the investment world. And so that was it. So, you know, what would I have done different? Actually, China, I think, by and large has evolved in a reasonably good way. The big idea for China is that it has to be a comprehensive, integrated whole of governments with an S on the end, policy for China.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “On a dark night, can see that this is in this case was not going to turn out well. And tragically, sadly, that assessment has borne out and it's provided, that's the source of a number of the challenges that your party has dealt with, Rory, and not particularly well, in part just because they're so difficult as a result of this. It's handicapped the UK in a way that would not have been the case had they stayed within the EU with its privileges intact, of course, still controlling its own currency and the degree of independence that many of the other countries didn't enjoy and perhaps could have gotten a little bit more of that.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “When it comes to international and international security issues, I think it's an area in which I have a degree of expertise and I'm asked about it and I feel that I should answer questions. And I was asked what I thought the prospects were for the UK if Brexit was approved. And I assessed that I thought it would be damaging for the economy. It would be damaging for Britain's influence, obviously within Europe. I mean, the UK used to be a hugely important player within the EU. In fact, it balanced some of the other major actors that were trying to go in different directions. Very constructive role. You know, we still keep its place in the world because of the UN Security Council seat and the tradition, the histories and all the rest of that and the expertise. But that would be diminished as well. But it really was about the effect in a broadly macroeconomic way that you could just, you know, as the old saying goes, a blind man.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “I actually do not do domestic politics in the United States. I don't even register to vote much less support candidates of either party. And I engage with candidates of either party as a result because I'm not engaged.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Policy in India first, from some understandable reasons from their perspective, and makes it much more difficult for him to do that. So I think the virtues of authoritarianism and the continuity that it enables can be overemphasized unless you have the kind of incredibly capable and benevolent figure such as Ali Kwan Yu or Sultan Cabus in Sey Oman. And those are very, very rare”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “And the way that China has, yeah, it gives you an opportunity to have a five year plan and a this and a that and all the rest of that, that hasn't actually turned out all that well. Their economy is really faltering. They pursue policies that have led now to a very significant demographic decline. You don't see the kind of innovation in some areas. Again, don't get me wrong, this is a formidable country with an extraordinary economy. It's become the manufacturing center of the world, et cetera, et cetera. But the policies are pursuing in many cases are counterproductive. And you're seeing the effects of that. The EU puts the investment accord on the shelf because of Wolf Warrior diplomacy. Other countries pushing back the Philippines back into the Western fold, et cetera, et cetera. So Indians beaten up in the line of actual control and killed in three different encounters that forced Prime Minister Modi who would like to have a balance.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Oh, it's a challenge, obviously. I mean, there's no question about that. Although the system, of course, at the end of the day, till this time at least, continues to move forward. I mean, our economy is doing great. Our universities are the envy of the world. Innovativeness is propelling productivity to all new levels. AI is going to transform everything we do. And it's all right here. So there's something very, very special here. But yes, there is a degree of noise, chaos, whatever it may be that's associated with our democracy and many others around the world. Your own country has experienced some of that, obviously, as well. At the end of the day, I think as Churchill said, you know, you can count on the United States to do the right thing after we try all the other things. And I still have faith that that will be the case. It does remain to be seen and it's difficult. But I would also caution that centralizing power”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Extraordinary influence. That kind of leadership was absolutely invaluable and hugely impressive. But it's true. There were two different George W. Bush's on the Iraq war. There's the one who decided to invade and largely subcontracted the conduct of the war to his secretary of defense and then the one who took it over, replaced the commander, ambassador of defense, and others, and drove that campaign from Washington as we were trying to drive the campaign in Iraq. Different, obviously, with his successor nowhere nearest committed on Afghanistan. Again, stunned us by announcing the drawdown date in the same speech in which he announced the buildup. We were always doing exit seeking, if you will, it seemed, as opposed to just being committed. Again, you're in a contest of wills with an enemy. At the very least, don't tell them that you're trying to go home or you want to go home. And President Bush empowered me to refuse to tell”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “In fact, I remember he called me in. I thought he was going to give me guidance. She realized it's just a photo op, and that's fine. We didn't need guidance. We knew what we needed to do. And he knew it. That's why he had selected me. So after my confirmation, I go to the Oval Office and he's making conversation. He said, well, generally, you know, I know our military is doubling down in Iraq. And I said, Mr. President, your military is going all in in Iraq. And we need the rest of government to go all in with us. And he said, I will ensure that that is the case. And he starts every week with a 7.30 to 8.30 a.m. National Security Council meeting. He's in the chair directly with the ambassador and me that is totally unprecedented. I mean, just the fact that you do something before 10 a.m. in the morning officially like that is extraordinary. But to do it at 7.30 to do it every single week. And by the way, the next day at 7.30 to 8.30, he does a video teleconference with the Prime Minister of Iraq. He's starting to feel a rock like this at a certain point in time. He was a really...”

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27. “Don't know that it's quite as clear cut as that in all cases, Alistair. I think it was uneven. I would contend that the leadership provided by George W. Bush in the wake of his firing of Secretary Rumsfeld, where he took over the conduct of the war in Washington, was extraordinary.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Worse fire than ever before, wildfires. The desertification of the Sahel, which results in such enormous migration of humans and so on. So the list can go on and on. And there are others that I could provide. But that presents a very, very challenging situation. And I think it is absolutely in America's cold hard national interest and that of our allies and partners to provide the leadership, to work with our allies and partners to deal with these challenges, to keep them from getting worse or trying to even make them much better and to preserve the so-called rules-based international order for all of its flaws, shortcomings, and so on against those that are trying to make the world safe for autocracy rather than for democracy.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “And militia Houthis, et cetera. And also the nuclear program that is closer to the possibility of a nuclear weapon than at any time in their history. There are cyber threats of various types out there. There are still Islamist extremist organizations that have to be kept an eye on and have pressure on them because we know if we take that off, they can reconstitute the way the Islamic world.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “I think it starts with recognizing that we, now I'm talking from a US Western perspective, we Europe other allies in the Indo-Pacific and so forth, we face the greatest number of challenges and the most complex challenges, at least since the end of the Cold War and arguably since the end of World War II. If you use the metaphorical image of the guy in the circus that has a bunch of plate spinning simultaneously, the leader of that effort has to be the United States, but we also want all of our allies and partners in there helping us keep those plates spinning too. But there's more plates in that tent. And some of them represent more complex issues than ever before. The China plate is obviously more important than all the rest put together. It's larger than all of them. The Russia plate, much more menacing, still a North Korean nuclear plate. Iran probably three plates, missile and drone programs, support to nefarious malign actors in the region, Hamas, Hezbollah.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “That brings it home. And the size of that commitment. So noted many times that Vietnam literally was unsustainable for the United States. Afghanistan was actually sustainable. We have a professional force. We're rotating. We had lost a soldier in 18 months. Again, the cost was not that high. So in this case, in the case of Afghanistan, yes, I get it. There's this shibboleth that we must endless wars. But do we really have to? I mean, look at your own country's experience over the years. Look at our experiences, places like Korea and elsewhere. We had troops on the ground for 70, 80 years or so, or even Europe. Yes, they're not in combat. But in this case, our forces actually in Afghanistan were no longer on the front lines. We were conducting what's termed advised assistant enable operations not fighting on the front lines, with the exception of the occasional special mission unit operation to go after”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “No, actually, not entirely. Because I was writing about a time when we had a massive commitment, well over 500,000 troops and a drafty army.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “So we needed a counterinsurgency campaign, which is conducted by large conventional forces, not the special mission units they're conducting maybe at most 10 to 15 highly focused operations every night.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Of the attackers there. And so we had to take down the Taliban regime. And again, those who say, well, mission was accomplished, we should have gone home. You know, I mean, you walked across Afghanistan. You have lots of Lary boots on the ground time there. Had we left at that point in time, country would have gone back into a civil war. So we had to do nation building. That wasn't optional. It wasn't a mistake. It was inescapable. You have to build security forces and institutions that can take over the tasks that we were performing in Afghanistan, but it took us far too long to get the big ideas right. That was about eight years into it. General McCrystal that Comprehends of Civil Military Counter-Isurgency Campaign, which is, again, inescapable. Vice President Biden at the time wanted to do a counterterrorism campaign. I pointed out that we weren't actually fighting terrorists in large numbers. Yes, Al-Qaeda would try to come back, the extremists. We were fighting insurgents.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “I mean, first of all, to be accurate, of course, it was the previous administration, the Trump administration that reached this, the worst diplomatic agreement in our modern history, I believe, giving the Taliban what they want, which is our withdrawal, and actually forcing the Afghan government, which is not at the table for the agreement, to release 5,500 Taliban detainees to get the Taliban to accept what they want us to do. Again, it just is mind-boggling. I said that at the time we will come to regret this decision, and I certainly believe that we have and we should. And then, of course, the conduct of it, obviously, absolutely, absolutely reprehensible. Now, the challenge in Afghanistan is that it took us nine long years to get the inputs right after yet, again, a brilliant campaign toppling the Taliban. When they refused to hand over the al-Qaeda elements that planned the 9-11 attacks in their sanctuary under Taliban rule in eastern Afghanistan, and then conducted the initial training.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Well, the surge that mattered most was not the surge of forces, as important as they were in enabling us to implement more rapidly the essence of the surge, which was the surge of ideas. So it's a complete reversal of what we have been doing. We had been clearing areas and then leaving them or handing off to”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Bureaucrats, many of them, again, Western educated, spoke good English, some of them drank. I mean, what more could you want in partners to run in Islamic country? And yet we were deprived of this. Now, in the North, I was given this special dispensation, the only one that had it, to do a reconciliation process. And we did this in mass scale, tens of thousands that we brought in and reconciled with and then tried to put to productive work once again had it interrupted. Sadly, all of the cases that I ultimately took to Baghdad, we took a huge Chinook helicopter and flew them all down and gave them to Dr. Shalaby, who was the head of the D-Batterification Committee, and he refused to approve the actions of our reconciliation process, which was a huge setback and why Mosul then went downhill just like all the others, just about right after I left. And then they also fired the interim governor that I had, who was really quite an effective guy. Of course, Shalomi, a very...”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “It was maddening. It was infuriating. It was very, very serious. And we made our views note, but we were not consulted at all, actually, not just inadequately. We were consulted on issues that we would have recognized immediately, as did the CI station chief, that these are going to be catastrophically bad. Yes, I understand the need for a DDR policy, say, for the military, but it should have been organized and structured and take care of them while you're going through this and try to provide jobs and alternatives. As we ultimately did with our reconciliation program. And then the same with the Bath Party. Certainly the top two levels. We're proud to, frankly, to kill Saddam's two sons when they shot back at our soldiers when we tried to tame them. And some of the other major figures that I got the former Minister of Defense to surrender to me and so on, all that absolutely right. But when you get to level four and tens of thousands of essentially”

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39. “It is, and they did not consult those on the ground who actually have been dealing with it and actually had learned a bit about how to move forward in the wake of the collapse of all of the government. So, you know, what's interesting is to ask, why was there a coalition provisional authority at all instead of just right away establish a US embassy? And the answer, I think, is that the Pentagon, Rumsfeld, wanted to run the war and didn't want any competition from Secretary of State Colin Powell. And so convinced him to have this kind of interim authority.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “To Baghdad, found the individual responsible for that. I said, Your policy is killing our troops. We have to pay them stipends. But again, this is serious. This is life and death for our soldiers. And that's why you saw the animation. It was earlier than October, I'm pretty sure. And I suspect it may have been the meeting in which Bremer unveiled a new strategy, which had never been circulated with those of us on the actual ground. And it was going to fire all of the government state-owned industries. And I said, you know, you fired the military. You fired the bureaucrats, the government structure, and now you're going to fire the final employment. Yeah, I got it. They're inefficient. I got it. It's not free market capitalism. But, you know, could we just hold off on that until we address the issues that have resulted from these earlier two catastrophically bad decisions?”

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41. “Of individuals whose incentive was to oppose the new Iraq rather than to support it. And, you know, I had a sign in the wall of my command post in each of my general officer commands, or five general officer commands in combat. And it asked a question, will this operation take more bad guys off the street than it creates by its conduct? If the answer to that is no, in other words, you're going to create more bad guys trying to take a few off the street. You're not supposed to do the operation. The same is true of policies. And that question clearly was not raised at that time. Again, I felt very strongly about these issues. Eventually, five weeks into the firing of the military after facing down a huge demonstration in between 10,000 and 15,000 former soldiers in the square around the governance center in Mosul and addressed them on a public address system and everything. And I said, I will go to Baghdad. If you will just stand down, there were killings by now in these riots. And I went to the airport, got a helicopter, flew two hours.”

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42. “By firing the entire Bath Party, Saddam's party, all the way down to level four, which included tens of thousands of bureaucrats, many of them Western educated, who we needed to run a country we didn't sufficiently understand. And we were already using them up in the north. We'd gotten them all back into position. We were mentoring each one of the ministries, reviving them, rebuilding, and all the rest of this. And so this cut our knees off. Now, I was fortunate to be given an authority to conduct reconciliation because the critical element here was you didn't just fire them. There was no process announced for reconciliation, for appeal that you could say, hey, look, I'm just a level four bureaucrat. I had to do this. And it was advanced to that level. And let me perform my job. We had the authority up in the north. I got it from Bremer fairly early on. It's one reason why Mosul went so much better than the rest of Iraq for so much longer. But again, this created tens of thousands.”

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43. “And Graham Lamb, the commander of the British commander of my comrade, and so many of these different operations starting in Bosnia, two-star in Iraq, three-star in our respective, then he is my deputy during the surge. I asked Tony Blair to leave him there longer because I needed him to help convince our own soldiers of reconciliation with something that needed to be done. And he had experienced that in Northern Ireland, of course. Well, the truth is that Bremer came, there's a lot of debate about where the actual order originated. It appears to have originated in a certain office in the Pentagon. Bremer took it with him. There was not an explicit decision made actually in the White House by this. And in fact, the CIA station chief said to Bremer that if you do this, you're going to have a million enemies in the morning or something like this. And of course, it's hundreds of thousands of men in uniform who now have an incentive to oppose the new Iraq, which is just fired them rather than just support it. So this is planting the seeds of insurgency. And then this was compounded.”

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44. “Military without telling them how we're going to enable them to provide for themselves and their families. That was the really big mistake. You can argue that they needed to go through a DDR process, disarmament, demobilization, reintegration, but there was nothing like that. Just you're fired and you're on your own jack. And of course, they all have military training, took their weapons home when their forces collapsed.”

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45. “Less time than was at all anticipated and far, far fewer casualties. But then, of course, we're wholly unprepared to consolidate the peace. And not only were we unprepared, we then made catastrophically bad decisions when the coalition provisional authority, which was a successor to the Organization for Reconstruction Humanitarian Assistance that had been essentially fired by Rumsfeld when he didn't think they were moving quickly enough. And the challenge here was that the new administrator comes in Besser and immediately doesn't consult any of us. We've been on the ground now for months. We already had run an election in Mosul, which is where the 101st ended up. Ultimately, we had an interim province council, interim governor. We were rebuilding even security forces, police academy. All of this is actually going really well. 24-hour power up there and everything else. And he comes in and he fires the entire Iraqi.”

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46. “Well, what went well, I think, was the frankly takedown of the Saddam Hussein regime. It was much more rapid than people expected, far fewer casualties. It was a real tribute to the training and equipping, and frankly, leadership of our forces, particularly at the tactical and operational level. The division that I mentioned earlier, third impetuosis, mechanized, was just a juggernaut. The thunder runs were incredibly audacious, demonstrated extraordinary professional skill initiative and so forth. And I'd like to think the same was true of our forces that were conducting air assault operations, clearing the major cities that they had blown by, which we needed to do to ensure that our lines of communications, which were critical, because that's the fuel that is fueling those tanks in our Apache helicopters and so forth. So that was really quite, quite impressive. And again, it lasted far.”

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47. “Is better than anybody you're going to send me. So it was really wonderful of him. And of course, he went on to four stars with Calm Isaf in Afghanistan and so forth and a great man and a great mentor.”

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48. “Around the hospital bumping into people, and they finally said, Let's get this guy out of here. But I came back too rapidly, actually, and then had other running injuries that were difficult. So you learned that lesson as well. And it's hard to learn if you want to get back to it. And, you know, you're serving battalion commander. You need to get the rucksack back on. The skydiving injury was a very, very serious one because the fracture of the pelvis front and rear is pretty destructive. And it required major surgery to put you back together, plates and screws. all the rest of that stuff. But again, managed to come back from that. And very grateful there that my then commander, I was a one-star general at Ben Fort Bragg, North Carolina, having just been in the 82nd Airborne Division and followed my boss to 18th Airborne Corps, Lieutenant General Dan McNeill, and he was called by the Army and said, you want somebody who can jump because I couldn't, I was on parachute jump status, but I couldn't jump for about, I think it was six or eight months. And he said, nope, Petraeus uncrunched.”

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49. “Oxygen is running out of you, then they got me to the post office where they put a chest tube in with suctions so that you're not going to suffocate on your own fluids, which is the next big fear. That was the most painful experience in my entire life because no kind of anesthesia at all. They just cut an X in your side right to the bone, pull the skin apart and jam this tube into you. Then they put me back in a helicopter, sent me down to Vanderbilt Medical Center in nearby Nashville, Tennessee. And then of all things, the doctor called in, this is a Saturday was none other than Bill Frist, who would eventually be the Senate majority leader. And as I used to jokingly say, I was dying to meet Bill Frist. So he came in when he did a magnificent job and we became lifelong friends. The recovery, though, I tried to take too fast. First of all, I convinced them to let me out of the hospital by doing 50 push-ups after pulling all the tubes out, and they were tired of me doing laps on. I had a wheelchair that I put all the tubes in and do laps.”

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50. “You have to exercise or demonstrate a considerable degree of resilience. You also, by the way, have to be careful not to try to come back too rapidly. So I got shot through the chest as I used to say. It was great that it was over the A and Petraeus rather than the A and Army, which would not have gone as well. Didn't bleed out, obviously. So it didn't sever an artery, in which case you last a minute and a half or so it did nick an artery though. And so they bedevacked me or medevac. This is a freak accident and a very aggressive live fire exercise where a soldier tripped. I was following the unit together with then Brigadier General Jack Keane later four-star general, big mentor of mine. And he saw it happen. The soldier tripped coming out of a bunker that he'd knocked out with a grenade and he tensed up as he hit the ground. He was knocked out for a moment and squeezed off a round that went right through my chest. And the soldiers did a magnificent job dealing with a sucking chest wound. They put barry plastic over it, tape it up so it's not a gaping hole.”

    2024-11-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 107. General David Petraeus: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military's role in the world · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source