That air force worked very, very hard. And they are trying to ferry commandos who are really quite good fighters, very well trained by our Special Ops, and well equipped. And they did go out in these early battles, and they were holding off the Taliban, but I think at a certain point in time they realized that there was nobody coming to the rescue anymore, nobody has our back, there is no emergency resupply, there are no reinforcements, there is no emergency medical evacuation, and there is no close air support.
And I think that happened in a couple of cases, and those troops did what I think troops do in those circumstances, if they are left alone and isolated and no one is coming to the rescue. Along with local leaders of those districts or provinces, they either cut a deal or they negotiate a surrender or they flee.
And then I think the psychological collapse of the Afghan military set in. And I think that was infectious. You talk about infectious enthusiasm.
This was an epidemic of, basically, surrender. Was there an error somewhere along the way, given that when we pulled out this collapse just happened? How did we not prepare for that in twenty years? I just think it was premature to leave. Now, you can say, Well, when do you leave? Ideally you say that there are certain conditions.
Well, part of nation-building is developing security forces. It is developing institutions that can take over tasks that we were provided. Undoubtedly, there were innumerable mistakes made in the name of nation-building and infrastructure overbuilt.
You can name the different shortcomings. But, again, you have to build something you can hand off. Keep in mind that, once we topple the Taliban, we own the country. What are you hanging around for?
Well, there are a lot of lessons. There are actually five lessons from the last twenty years of war, if you want to hear them.
The first is that Islamist extremists will exploit ungoverned spaces, or spaces governed by kindred spirits in the Muslim world. It is not a question of if, it is a question of when and how it will be. I was walking. The sign I am really serious about this, and giving someone my best attention, is that you walk the dog instead of doing it in front of a screen.
Lesson No. And these situations tend to have violence, extremism, instability, and, most significantly in the case of Syria, a tsunami of refugees in our NATO allies, causing the biggest domestic political challenges since the end of the Cold War. We should. And you should have Muslim partners with you, as we did. By the way, the validation of No.
We know the U. You saw people in the U. You can say the Taliban did that, but they had bases in Pakistan, and that is something you cannot forget. We knew we could do it. And we got that. He chooses his words carefully without masking his indignation. It is tragic. And I think it is disastrous.
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It was treated as part of the military at the time. So very young officers ended up with very high responsibility. My father was actually the captain of a Liberty ship at the age of They did a Murmansk run that took them to northern Russia. They lost a huge number of ships in the convoy. So it was very hazardous war for him. He ultimately then — he met my mother in Brooklyn during that time and they ultimately settled in the Hudson River Valley, about 50 miles north of New York City, in a little village called Cornwall-on-Hudson.
Military Academy at West Point. My dad ultimately left the sea because at that time they were expected to sail for 11 months straight and then get one month off. Like any good ship captain, he knew how to generate power. So a number of them all went into the booming industry of new electrical generation stations that were being created all over America as part of the post-war boom. He was an operating room engineer — supervisory engineer — at one of those, about ten miles from our house.
My dad was really a crusty old Dutch sea captain at heart, even though by the time I was arrived in the world, if you will, he had already taken up his new career.
His attitude was one of results, boy. And he was not a guy who looked kindly on excuses. I mean, he was a very loving father — and occasionally a bit of gruff love — but again, very devoted, as my mother was to both of their children. Extraordinarily so, in truth. I mean, there was nothing they would not do for either of us.
But we had a sailboat the whole time that I was growing up. We actually had two for a while. I had a sailboat, about a footer. It was not a trivial little Sunfish. It was a real sailing boat. And it was a great experience to do that.
He was very supportive of, obviously, the academic endeavors, but also of various athletic endeavors. He taught me how to ski.
He took me to games. We did all kinds of different activities. In fact, even around the house, we had… I mean, this is an incredible… it was a very small, little — again, small town America — house built right after World War II.
But we had a high bar for doing pull-ups. We had a rope under a tree that you could climb. We had a little croquet golf course with coffee cans in it. We had a croquet set. We had lawn darts. You know, there was every — we had a basketball backboard and net. And even in the basement, we were using little two-by-fours, we could play floor hockey, because I also skated and played hockey over the years.
But eventually I settled in on soccer and on skiing, downhill skiing. I played both of those all the way through college. David Petraeus: No, it was great fun actually. Some of this was just being creative. We were just a sort of typical middle class family.
My mother was really focused at home. She did work at the local library part-time. But again, it was a household of modest means, but one that focused a great deal on school, on academics. And they both were very significant intellectuals. They both loved to read. In fact, the house was overflowing with books. My mother had, I think, at one point in time, three or four full sets of Dickens, for example, from secondhand bookstores. And if you found a secondhand bookstore on the way, that was a special, special day.
David Petraeus: Some, at a certain point in time. They really did a great deal of that after they retired as well. But when I was growing up, we would usually have one-week or maybe even two-week vacations a summer. And one of those would always end up at Boston. If you fast forward some some-odd years, I commissioned our son as a Second Lieutenant in the Infantry in the U.
Army at the Minuteman Statue in Concord, right by the bridge. It was really a special moment. I believe you placed jump wings belonging to your father-in-law. David Petraeus: Actually, we had done that before, because he went to jump school as a cadet. In fact, it was interesting, because I was back for what might have been the most emotionally-charged hearings that any military commander and diplomat — Ambassador Ryan Crocker — had in recent memory.
These were the hearings of September on the surge. It was our first opportunity to report that we were actually making progress in the surge, although it had not been apparent back in Washington at that point in time. In fact, a vote to cut off funding for Iraq was only narrowly defeated by two votes. So that was an interesting moment. We were on the drop zone. Then we went to a Ranger graduation and I spoke at that. It certainly indicated that you had a visceral concept of what was at stake with American lives.
David Petraeus: Obviously I did. Command and combat is a fairly grinding endeavor. I occasionally would play with folks a little bit. What books were important to you growing up or that you particularly liked? David Petraeus: We had a lot of history books around. An awful lot of those were very attractive. And reading about the old frontiersmen, West Pointers, and so forth. And really growing up in a town — gosh, half the people on the newspaper route that I had.
In those days, kids still delivered newspapers, and I had 40 or 50 customers or something. And half of them were either West Point graduates or employed at West Point. So it had a huge influence in our community. My math teachers in high school, one of them was a former professor of math at West Point.
Our high school soccer coach had actually coached the West Point team when it won the national championship some couple of decades earlier, when he was a younger officer. The whole town follows you to the game, follows the bus back. It was a real thrill. When did you see yourself in the military or at West Point? Petraeus US Army, Ret. He is also a member of the boards of directors of Optiv and OneStream, a venture investor in some 20 startups, and engaged in a variety of academic endeavors. Central Command, and command of coalition forces in Afghanistan.
General Petraeus graduated with distinction from the U.
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