310.539.6685 310.884.1870 310.326.9528 866.BEYOND.5 310.534.9560 310.539.2993 310.530.3079 310.517.0324 310.326.3354 310.530.4888 310.534.0220 310.326.4477 310.530.0566 310.539.1808 WineShoppe 310.539.1055 310.517.9366 310.326.8530 310.530.3268 310.539.3526 TORRANCE TOWNE BEAUTY CENTER 310.530.8411 310.997.1900 www.cflu.org CUT * COLOR * STYLE 310.539.2191 310.325.2960 310.891.2237 310.530.5443 Northwest Corner of Crenshaw Blvd. & Pacific Coast Hwy. in Torrance ~ For Information, Call 310.534.0411 A LA CAZE DEVELOPMENT COMPANY PROJECT © New Smiles Dentistry Stephen P. Tassone, DDS 310.791.2041 Bosnia, Haiti and Kuwait and had a sense of the magnitude of the undertaking. I meekly asked my superiors for details on what would happen after we took down the [Hussein] regime. I was told, ‘Dave. You get us to Baghdad, we’ll take it from there.’ When we liberated Najaf, the Shiites’ holiest city, without putting a bullet in a single mosque, I called my bosses and said, ‘The good news is we own Najaf. The bad news is we own Najaf. What do we do with it?’” “I was told, ‘We’re still getting organized.’” Petraeus’ own grim and controversial assessment at the time was disclosed by Washington Post reporter Rick Atkinson. “I made the mistake of having a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning reporter in the back of my Humvee,” Petraeus confessed to the Distinguished Speaker audience. Petraeus asked Atkinson, just six days into the battle for Baghdad “Tell me how this ends?” And then he answered his own question, “Eight years and eight divisions.” He was quoting what General Matthew Ridgway told President Dwight Eisenhower when asked what it would take to win a war in Vietnam. Petraeus said he foresees a similar problem in the current effort to push ISIS out of Mosul. He called it the “battle after the battle.” “Mosul was my home for four years. It was a city of two million people. Now it has one and a half million. The campaign for Mosul is a textbook design on how to circle a city and take it down. “ISIS are dead men walking and they know it. They are deserting and they execute their deserters. The Iraqi government needs to clear every building and leave people in them or the enemy will fill in from behind.” “But the real battle is not defeating the ISIS. That will happen. The real battle will be the battle after the battle – the struggle for power and resources between the area’s Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis, the Turkmen Shiites and Sunnis, the Christians, the Kurds and the tribes.” “My advice is endless patience, fierce determination and an occasional demonstration of the full range of emotions,” Petraeus said in a rare expression of his own emotions. “I’m not one in favor of breaking up Iraq into Sunnistan, Shiitestan, Kurdistan… Look at Syria,” he said. Instead, he offered a surprisingly hopeful outcome. “Iraq is developing in a heartening way. It needs to make the most of its extraordinary blessings. It has one of the world’s three or four largest oil reserves. With its two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, it is the only Arab country with water. South of Baghdad is very fertile.” Petraeus summed up his Distinguished Speakers talk by relating five lessons he learned in his nearly two decades in the Middle East. “These are points I would have loved to see debated by the candidates in the current presidential campaign,” he noted. “One, the ungoverned spaces in the Middle East and Africa will be exploited by Islamic extremists.” “Two, Las Vegas rules don’t apply. What happens doesn’t stay there. It creates a spewing of violence and instability and a tsunami of refugees. The Chernobyl meltdown that is Syria has displaced half of its 20 million people.” “Third, the U.S. has to lead. We have five times the assets of all of our allies, aggregated. But that doesn’t mean we go it alone. Churchill said the only thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting against them. “We need Islamic allies. Muslim hate speech is absolutely counterproductive in this effort.” “Fourth, we must craft a comprehensive campaign. We can’t drone fight, or Delta Force fight our way out of this problem.” In another allusion to the presidential campaign, he said, to applause from the audience, “I’m hugely in favor of carpet bombing if the enemy arrays itself as a carpet in the desert, away from civilian populations, in which case, bring in the B52s.” The fifth and final lesson reflected his belief in “facts on the ground” assessments. “We are engaged in a generational struggle, not one of a few years or even decades. Even if we put a stake through the heart of ISIS in Mosul, we will not put a stake through the heart of the ideologists, who will continue the combat in cyberspace. We must contest the activities that go on there as well” “How do we measure a sustainable strategy?” the general asked. “The two measures are blood and treasure.” B 20 Easy Reader / <strong>Beach</strong> magazine • <strong>Nov</strong>ember 10, <strong>2016</strong>
Phil Pavesi, Michael Zislis, Jerome Unatin, M.D., Mike Philbin and Van Honeycutt. Barbara and Mark Lurie, M.D. and Dave and Song Klein. Nina Wratschko, Sally Eberhard, Shintia Lynch, Marshall Varon, David Petraeus, Mary Jo Unatin and Jerome Unatin, M.D. Charlotte, Greg and Russ Lesser with General Petraeus. <strong>Nov</strong>ember 10, <strong>2016</strong> • Easy Reader / <strong>Beach</strong> magazine 21
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