YouSaid · the spoken record

David Petraeus

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64
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2024-11-11
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2024-11-11
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1
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  1. “I am generally able to subordinate some of my competitive instincts when playing cards with kids and others, but not always completely successful. But no, look, my aid when I was a commander of the 101st Airborne Division said that I was the most competitive person on the face of the earth, in part because he had to run with me every morning and we were training for the Army 10 mile or he got tired being beaten by somebody who was 30 years older than he was or 20 years older. So no, I mean, there is some of that that makes its way at times when you should be able to subordinate it and you can't. But again, welcome to competition and those that pursue it.”

    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. “Times that you have to subordinate your sort of real inclination or desire for the greater good. But yes, some of this, you know, the guys just uber competitive, all out for himself and his unit, you have to contend with some of that. But you try to mitigate that to the extent you can. But when your unit, at the end of two years of command of the battalion in the 101st Airborne Division, we had three times the enlisted rangers of any other That is a really extraordinary accomplishment, as because of the way we went about it. Yeah, it grates a little bit for some.”

    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. “The 101st because General Order number one stated the 101st Airborne Division has no history, but it has a rendezvous with Destiny. And this was on the eve of its entry into World War II by jumping into Normandy. But again, life is competitive, but you've got to be the best team player. You can be. We subordinated our desire to air assault onto that and recognize that the armored division, third infantry division mechanized, was the one that should actually take it. And said, we're going to do the following support mission for them. We're going to put our attack helicopters in front of them. They ask for 155 millimeter Howitzer ammunition. I gave them the entire unit that we had with the rounds all uploaded on it. I asked them, what else do you need? He said, how about an infantry battalion? I sent him the battalion I had actually commanded. We aerosaulted it right to where he needed it. And it proved to be a decisive element in sending off the Iraqi counterattack on Baghdad International Airport. So again, you have to recognize it.”

    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. “Yeah, I mean, again, if you're seriously competitive individually and the units you're leading are seriously competitive because you're building a culture of competition. But you try to be the best team player you can be. I've always said, you know, the young aspiring officers, life is a competitive endeavor and you need to embrace that and you need to be the very best that you can be. But as you're trying to do that, you also need to be the very best team player that you can be as well. And there are episodes where we subordinated say my unit's objectives or goals or vision. Say during the fight to Baghdad, the 101st Airborne Division, I was a two-star commanding this great historic organization, which had 254 helicopters. It's the biggest fleet, but it's three times bigger than any other in the world at a division. And we wanted to aerosault onto Baghdad International Airport. That was going to be our air assault into history. Rendezvous of destiny is the term always used for”

    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. “Is without question that has to be there, and I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. But the reason I was there in some cases was because people had put me there. So that phrase, that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, I think is very, very valid. And I spent a lifetime really preparing for these opportunities that did come along. In particular, by the way, a fascination from a very early age with counterinsurgency. My dissertation at Princeton was on the American military and the lessons of Vietnam and so forth. And by the way, they sent me to get a master's degree. And I said, you know what? I can try to get a PhD. And you have two years. That's all I had. So you have to race to get all of the masters courses and general exams and all that stuff and managed to do that. So again, you have a sense that there's a capacity there. And then it's a question of being prepared.”

    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. “Everything is competitive in the military, in the army. And, you know, there's a basic course you go to. Well, I was an honor graduate of that. Then there's a ranger school. There are three awards in Ranger School. This is the toughest of the courses in the U.S. military. And I won all three of them. And one of them is for peer rating. So it wasn't just that you climbed over the back of your fellow Ranger students, but they actually said this guy is also best ranger buddy. Then you go on and a few years later that as a staff college and 1,200 students, I was literally the youngest in the class and ended up number one in that. So you, you know, you're constantly being evaluated. And if you're performing at the top, it's pretty apparent at a certain point in time. You have a sense that I can actually do this. The truth is, in fact, people will have said it various times, you know, Petreus was lucky. He just happened to be here and there and everything else. And I would contend that, yes, there is something to the timing 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

  7. “I think everybody has sort of some designs in mind and think that they could do this or that. But this is why I mentioned earlier the three components of, if you will, success in the military, particularly if you're in infantry and airborne and so forth. So there is a very significant emphasis on the physical. And it turned out I was pretty darn good at that. There is the leadership component and that evolved as well and became a really confident and reasonably competent leader. And then there is the electoral component, if you will, the academic component, which is hugely important. And further you go, of course, the more important that becomes because at the end of the day, as you get to the senior levels, you're the one who has to get the big ideas right.”

    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. “I don't think we even had leave during the entire first year. If so, it was maybe to go to the Army Navy game. But you're basically in this cloister to existence. In fact, one of the challenges for the military has always been you live in a somewhat cloistered existence and you have your nose to the grindstone and you don't often look out and up. In fact, you famously work really, really hard. You never leave until the boss leaves that kind of approach to life. And it's not necessarily the most contemplative or reflective form of life unless you can get out of your intellectual comfort zone at a critical juncture where I went to graduate school at Princeton instead of going to another infantry. In fact, I go to the Ranger Battalion.”

    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. “No, I actually entered in the summer of 1970, and certainly that was the height of the anti-war protests, also race riots. The country was really torn. There was an awful lot of anti-institution sentiment. But again, this is growing up in this little town. We weren't riven by all of this. Even Woodstock, which took place, I think the summer before, you know, it sort of bypassed us. The cars went on the throughway, not through Cornwall. We sort of knew this thing was going on, but it wasn't something that many of us participated in. And the student body, there was a little bit of activism, again, 69, 71 we graduated, but not a huge amount. It was not the kind of place where this, and it was a very patriotic area again, again, very heavily influenced by his proximity to the U.S. military academy. And then when you enter West Point, you're sort of shielded from all 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

  10. “The leadership component and then the athletic, the fitness component. And I realized that I did all three of those really pretty well. In fact, I think it was one of two members of my class that had a varsity letter in a sport that was in the top 5% of Starman, as it's called, and then also a cadet captain, again, on the brigade staff. And then I think you enjoy the mix of these different challenges as you go through an Army career.”

    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. “Yeah, I think if you grow up in the shadow of West Point, I had a newspaper route, for example, for two and a half years in the morning. It was great. But about half of my customers were either serving U.S. Army on the staff and faculty at West Point, retired U.S. military products of West Point, former instructors there. So you have a tremendous footprint, if you will, tremendous influence, tremendous shadow that is projected by West Point. And I think you do a lot in life to be like Mike, as the saying here. I want to be like Mike. And in this case, Mike was West Point Cadets, products of West Point. And that's what I wanted to be like as I decided at a certain point in my high school years and then did go there, obviously, and found, frankly, that the three components that are valued at West Point, the academic component, obviously, because it is, after all, one of America's best colleges,”

    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. “Generate power settled in this lovely little town. We had sailboats always great athletic programs for kids, terrific schools, wonderful churches and community activities. So just a lovely place in which to grow up. I played a lot of different sports. My parents were very much into reading intellectuals. They would take me, my sister every summer. We'd go to historic locations and would retrace the Paul Revere's ride and go around Walded Pond again and put another stone in Thoreau's grave and then go up into Maine and Vincent Ballet. Again, so it was a wonderful childhood”

    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. “Rapidly, Liberty Ship every week or so, but they couldn't build crews. And as a result, at the age of 29, he was the captain of a Liberty ship. It did a Merman's run over the course of many months. The convoy was told to scatter when a German battleship and submarines appeared among it. They couldn't defend against them. Miraculously, they made it his ship did half the ships did not and then came back. So again, very, very challenging war. And my mother was growing up in Brooklyn. She was helping with the Siemens Institute to show our appreciation for those sailing on the seas, met, married, moved up north of the city. And eventually my dad, who was doing civil merchant ship captain after the war, decided that 11 months at sea and one month off was just not a way to raise a family, became an operating control engineer in a generating station. Every ship's captain knows how 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

  14. “Well, I grew up about 50 miles north of New York City, a beautiful little town about seven miles north of the U.S. Military Academy of West Point, where I eventually went to college. My dad was a Dutch-American sea captain. He came to the United States from Holland when he was on a Dutch ship down in the Caribbean. The Nazis overran Holland. They couldn't go back to Rotterdam, which is where he'd gone to the Dutch for the Merchant Marine Academy. He sailed up with a ship along the eastern coast of the United States, turned into New York Harbor, turned into the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and said, we heard you're hiring and you need crews. And the U.S. desperately did need crews as the war went on. In fact, the merchant Marine, which was part of the Department of Defense during the war, took the highest per capita casualty rate of all of the different military services. So they could build ships.”

    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