Transcript

Leading without illusions | Caroline Glick | TEDxTelAvivUniversity

[Music] in March 2003 I was on the tip of the US military spear during the invasion of Iraq as an embedded reporter with the US Army's thirdd infantry battalion on the eve of the invasion Battalion Commander Scott Rudder looked at me and he said Carolyn we don't gamble we take calculated risks as I saw it the difference between a Gamble and calculated risks was like the difference between craps and poker in poker if you look at the cards and you pay attention to your opponents you can expand the odds of winning whereas in craps it's always a role of the dice there is absolutely no doubt that on the eve of the invasion the United States held the best cards they had the best forces they had the best arms they had the best technology the question was did they understand their opponents now on the eve of the invasion many of the men came up to me separately and they told me that they felt like their grandfathers must have felt in 1944 before the US let before the US liberated France that is they thought they were the Americans the Iraqis were the French and Saddam Hussein was Hitler initially they seem to be Vindicated the day after the invasion as we drove along the highway on the outskirts of nasaria a Shiite uh town in southern Iraq the Shiites came to the roadside and raised their thumbs shouted out go USA yay Bush now as an Israeli I did share their exhilaration at the scene but my historic reference point was not France in 1944 it was Lebanon in 1982 in 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon in order to defeat the Poo which at that point was uh fighting a terror war against Israel Northern Israel and um over the years many of my friends who had been young soldiers during the invasions had told me about how when they entered Lebanon the Shiites and the Christians in the South greeted them as liberators as their Heroes when the idea they threw rice at them as our forces walked up to Beirut their path was basically as uninhibited as the Americans were was as they drove through Iraq now at a certain point back in 2003 the Convoy of the Battalion stopped on the side of the highway men were throwing cigarettes and candies at the uh people gathered on the roadside and after a few moments being stopped a lot of the men started walking towards the Convoy now me with memories of Lebanon racing through my brain well I couldn't restrain myself I shouted out at the men what are you doing move them back they might be carrying grenades a sergeant in one of the cars behind me heard me he pulled out his M16 and pushed the Shiites back the men around me looked at me with a mixture of astonishment and annoyance why because I was a buzz killer now a week after that happened four of the men in the 27s became the first US casualties to die in a terrorist attack during the Iraq War when a roadblock that they were Manning on the highway was attacked by a bomber they opened up a trunk of a car and the whole car exploded in front of them killing them and the terrorist and another complice now after that happened the commanders of the 27 got it okay Iraq in 200 3 not France in 1944 and they changed the Rules of Engagement from then on anybody on the on the road facing them was considered hostile until proven otherwise and they engaged them but while it only took them one horrible occurrence in order to understand where they were leadership back in Washington never really got it they continued to insist that the Iraqis were the parisians they kept saying that all that was needed in order to win the war was was to defeat Saddam or to defeat the Shiite and Sunni militias or to have elections or to have more elections or to have a constitution or to have a better Constitution but they never accepted that their enemy was their enemy it took the US government three years to acknowledge that terrorists were fighting US soldiers 3,000 men died in the meantime and they launched the surge but even after they launched the surge they refused to acknowledge that the engine propelling the war was Iran no matter how valiantly the men fought and they fought valiantly for eight years in Iraq the leadership back in Washington refused to acknowledge the nature of the enemy and therefore refused to put together a strategy that fit the war that they were presented with and as a result today there is no more Iraq now in a way the US analogy between Iraq and France was apt it's just that it wasn't 1944 that they should have thought about but 1940 and the Americans weren't theer Americans they were the French now I'm sure all of you have heard of The Mao line the line of defenses that the French built in the 1930s to protect themselves against the Germans for us the maano line was always considered a punchline right but for the French but the fact of the matter is that my my late professor from the Harvard Kennedy School of government Ernest May explained that the magal line was no joke it was the last word in technology it represent presented what was considered to be a victory of Technology over Manpower as he said it was a smart bomb of its day the Precision bomb of its day now one of the things that he taught us or the main lesson that Professor May explained to us at the time was that almost everything that we know about the French from 1940 is wrong and it's based not on facts not on accuracy but on German propaganda for instance the French weren't weak the French military was more powerful than the German military from the perspective of the platforms and from the perspective of the uh technology that they brought to bear the French weren't cowards throughout the 1930s particularly in the late 1930s the people of France were itching for war with Germany they wanted to defeat the Nazis they weren't cowards they weren't defeatists in seven weeks of fighting the invading Germans 128,000 according to May 128,000 French soldiers died 200,000 casualties that's about the combined total of us casualties killed in action and wounded from the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined but they lost these men in seven weeks the French weren't poorly LED Paul Renard their prime minister was a pretty good leader so what happened how is it that the French failed so miserably in their stand against the Germans what happened well as Professor May explained they didn't get the Germans now the French looked at the map they said we're stronger than the Germans so we'll build the magino line along the most probable path of invasion because only a Madman would invade Iran through the Arden Forest which is B basically impassible now who are they facing Adolf Hitler the French knew a lot about the relative capabilities but they didn't get Adolf Hitler they cared about life and casualties they were Democrats they had to think about winning the next election who were they facing in battle a diabolical dictator who didn't think in terms of one battle or another he envisioned a Reich of Germany that was going to rule the world for a thousand years so their basis for thinking about the Germans was completely irrelevant to who the Germans were it didn't make any difference to Hitler how many men he lost in battle when he was fighting a war for a thousand years and so as they say the most people on the ground in Paris when the Nazis watched in their most palpable emotion was not defeat was not sadness it was shock they were shocked they thought that they were going to win now the truth is had the French had more time they probably would have come to their senses the problem was that throughout the 1930s they were preparing for war against an enemy that they refused to recognize the nature of they projected who they were on the on the Nazis and said we wouldn't invade through the Arden we wouldn't sacrifice men for nothing therefore they won they wouldn't understand the Germans now it's not NE necessary for you to do that it's not necessary to lose it's not necessary to think the best of your opponent it's not necessary to project your own values on people who stand opposed to you you can do it otherwise for instance take Ronald Reagan now I grew up in the United States in Reagan's America I was a teenager when he was president and I have to admit that growing up in America I had no idea what was happening and I had no idea who Reagan was it was only later when I was well into adulthood that I recognized what happened and who Reagan was because when we were growing up we were told by the media that Reagan was a fanatical ideologue and kind of dumb and therefore growing up I believed that Reagan was a fanatical ideologue and kind of dumb now Reagan came into office in 1981 2 years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ended deant that had existed in Soviet American relations during the 1970s when Reagan came into office he wasn't interested in resuscitating Dayton he said that his goal as president was to defeat the Soviet Union to defeat the evil empire he didn't want to be Kissinger and Nixon he wanted to be Ronald Reagan so in order to advance that aim he set about advancing a strategy of confrontation with the Soviets what did he do in order to advance that aim well he increased massively the side of the size of the US defense budget uh he he modernized and built new nuclear warheads he initiated the Strategic Defense Initiative Star Wars whose goal was to build a missile Shield that would block I incoming icbms from the Soviet Union and he uh deployed uh short range nuclear bombs to uh Germany in order to blunt the impact of the Red Army as conventional Force he wasn't congratulated by the media for carrying out exactly the strategy in order to advance the goal that he had been elected to accomplish rather he was pillared in the 1980s in the early 1980s in the United States Reagan was portrayed as a Madman who was bringing the world to the brink of nuclear armagedon as a teenager who was a consumer of Pop Culture it was in the pop culture Sting the TV movie ABC's TV movie The Day After That portrayed a Soviet bombing nuclear bombing of Kansas City it was seen by over a 100 million people absolutely everybody around me anyway was sure that Reagan was crazy but then something unaccepted unexpected happen in 1985 M Gorbachev Rose to power in the Soviet Union now M Gorbachev after breev and a bunch of really old guys who died in office after six or eight months he was young he was photogenic he smiled he was married to Risa Gorbachev who many of you I'm sure remember was pretty she had a warm smile they were out of Central Casting really for communism with a human face now if Reagan had been the fanatical idealogue that people had portrayed him as Gorbachev might have been able to beat him why because if he had been the ideological fanatic that people portrayed him as being he wouldn't have noticed the significance when Gorbachev came into office and he began to enact unprecedented policies of political and economic liberalization he would have said same thing same thing evil empire he's evil let's confront him let's build more nukes right that's what he would have said but instead Reagan recognized that something was new here parista glass notes that was new and so he realized that he had to develop a new strategy for confronting ding garbev I mean think about it if you're playing baseball and suddenly the hard ball turns into a stick of butter and you hit it with your baseball bat you're not going to get a home run you'll get a gooey bat so you build a new tool for dealing with a new uh new challenge and what did he do he moved from a strategy of Confrontation to cooperation no he didn't change his goal of defeating the evil empire he simply went about it differently Reagan began negotiating Arms Control agreement with Gorbachev and what he wanted was an agreement that expanded American power and contracted Soviet power in order to bring about the demise of the Soviet Union through peaceful means with nice Gorbachev first what happened was they went to the uh negotiating table he was offered a deal that did the exact opposite it expanded Soviet strengths and contracted American strengths well Reagan ignored it now if he had been a normal run-of-the-mill American leader Reagan might have taken it anyway why because Gorbachev was adored by the media he was Man of the Year for Time magazine in 1987 in 1989 and then in 1990 was man of the decade so if he had gone with this media superhero and just laid down and given him everything he wanted he could have ridden into retirement on waves of agulation the likes of which we haven't seen since I don't know when but instead he said no this isn't a good deal I'm going to get a de I I don't want it and he walked away from the table everybody hated him Republicans Democrats the media cool everybody said he was horrible then he came back to the table when he was offered a better deal got a better deal that built on American strength Soviet weaknesses he signed it went into retirement three years later the Soviet Union dissolved without war and America was Stronger from a social perspective than it had been since the 1960s now there are a lot of differences between the Iraq war between the Battle of France and between the Cold War and Reagan presidency but there is one lesson that we can take from this comparison of the three of them Reagan succeeded where others failed because he led without Illusions he knew who he was he knew what he believed but his intellectual and moral Universe allowed for people to be themselves recognized things enemies friends for what they were and allowed that space for them and watch them and listen to them question question is what about us can we do that can you do that are you sure enough about who you are in order to be able to stick to your guns and not lose your head when somebody whistles or Smiles in your direction are we capable of believing people of listening to people when they say that they hate us how about our leaders because I would submit to you that the difference between a leader and a fanatic between someone who is weak and someone who is strong between an adolescent and a grown-up is the ability to take the world for what it is accept people for who they are and deal with it thank you [Applause]