U.S. Army Lt. Andrew Exum

DATE July 7, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Andrew Exum discusses his book, "This Man's Army"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest, Andrew Exum, is a former Army captain who completed his military
service two months ago. At the age of 23, he led a platoon of Army Rangers in
Afghanistan, clearing caves and searching for members of al-Qaeda. He was
also deployed to Kuwait and was part of a classified special operations
mission in Iraq. Exum has written a new memoir called "This Man's Army: A
Soldier's Story from the Front Lines of the War on Terrorism."

Now you joined ROTC at the University of Pennsylvania because it gave you a
scholarship, and you need--you know, you didn't have enough money, in spite of
having worked for several years, you know, to pay for your tuition at Penn.
Would you have otherwise enlisted?

Captain ANDREW EXUM (US Army, Retired; Author, "This Man's Army: A Soldier's
Story from the Front Lines of the War on Terrorism"): I think so. I am from
the Volunteer State, and I also grew up in east Tennessee in the city of
Chattanooga. And I don't think--and if you haven't been there, you didn't
grow up there, it's tough to really imagine what it's like growing up in that
city with the markers from the Civil War and just on all the high ground, you
know, the cannons, the monuments. And you just get that sense, that feeling
that, you know, as a young man, when you come of age, when you become, you
know, a young man of the age of 18, 19, 20, it's just your duty to serve in
the military.

And a couple things kind of exacerbated that sense of service. The first was
the fact that my grandfather and his service in World War II always loomed
very large on my conscious. You know, I grew up with his medals hanging above
me in, you know, my bedroom. And the second thing had to have been my
classical education. I mean, you read about the, you know, ancient polis of
Athens or Sparta. And something that went hand-in-hand with citizenship was
service in the military. You know, you couldn't be a real citizen unless you
served in the military. It's worth noting you couldn't be a citizen if you
weren't male, also. But I do believe that young men and young women, you
know, do owe service to their country, especially while they're young and they
can do things that we can't do when we become older.

GROSS: You flew with your men into Afghanistan. Would describe the plane and
the mood on the plane?

Capt. EXUM: Yeah. Well, before I describe that mood, you have to understand
what our previous five and a half months had been like. We deployed right
after September 11th as part of the first conventional forces to deploy. And,
you know, after September 11th we weren't sure if there were going to be more
attacks, you know, in the United States, if there were going to be more
attacks in the Middle East. So we went to Kuwait and beefed up the security
of one of the bases there, and there we pretty much sat for five and a half
months. And, you know, we did some convoy escort missions, but we pretty much
watched the war in Afghanistan on Fox and CNN, just like the rest of America.
You know, whatever Armed Forces Network showed us about the war, that's what
we saw. And it was incredibly frustrating.

So when the US and the coalition planners were really hurt for ground troops
in the battle, in what they called Operation Anaconda, the battle for the
Shah-e-Kot Valley, we were called up and sent from Kuwait. And the mood on
the plane was just exuberant. You know, these guys--it was like they had been
released from prison and, you know, the fact that, you know, we were ending
what we thought was going to be our deployment and then, you know, to be asked
actually to do what we thought we were going to do in the first place.

We descended into Bagram airfield in eastern Afghanistan at night, and there
were no lights. I mean, there was no ambient light, no moon. It was about as
pitch black as you can imagine, with the exception of a few of the lights
coming from, you know, the control tower and the runway. And they kept it
pitch black because there were still attacks on the planes that were coming
in, you know, still rockets that were fired at the cargo planes. And that's
why they only flew at night as well.

But when we woke up that morning, you know, I was just struck by the sheer
beauty of, you know, what we just descended into. We were in the Panjshir
Valley in eastern Afghanistan in, really, the foothills of the Himalayans.
And the view was, you know, quite simply breathtaking. And it was hard to,
you know, match up that breathtaking view with what we were going to be asked
to do, which was, in effect, a pretty grim task.

GROSS: Now, you know, there's a moment in your memoir where you describe--I
think it was nighttime and, you know, you're sitting I guess it was in the
Panjshir Valley, you know, absolutely beautiful, surrounded by mountains. And
a daisy cutter, one of the really big bombs, is dropped on one of the
mountains. And what do you see?

Capt. EXUM: Yeah. That was the first night we landed in the Shah-e-Kot
Valley. We were in the west on a terrain feature that they'd called The
Whale. It looked like this feature at the National Training Center at Ft. Ord
in California that was also called the Whale, so they named it as such. And
one of my squad leaders and I, we just settled into our position for the
night, and it was getting dark. And we were looking across this massive
valley towards where we knew some of the al-Qaeda positions were. And, you
know, I can't even describe it.

Quite literally, you know, we didn't hear an explosion. Obviously, you see
the light before you hear anything. And we just saw this massive red
fireball, which was followed by, obviously, this giant mushroom cloud of
smoke. And, you know, the Air Force had dropped some, I don't know,
5,000-pound bomb. And it literally masks an entire mountain, this giant
mountain that had previously loomed large over the terrain. You know, we
couldn't even see the mountain anymore. I mean, you know, our reaction was
just so stunned.

And, you know, I describe in the book that we just started, you know,
laughing, because we'd never seen anything with that--you know, couldn't even
comprehend that type of military might and just, you know, out of joy that we
weren't on the receiving end of that because, I mean, you know, after seeing
the effects of the United States Air Force when it puts its mind to something,
it is ugly, it is nasty, and the lives for those at the opposite end are
painfully short.

GROSS: Now you killed a man during one of your searches. You saw him, shot
him and then, after realizing he had a machine gun, released four more rounds.
And two other soldiers fired at him, too.

Capt. EXUM: Yeah.

GROSS: And you write in your memoir, `My thought was more amazement than
horror. Actions unleashed by my hand had ended the life of this man. I
couldn't believe it.' Could you describe for us what happened...

Capt. EXUM: Sure.

GROSS: ...that made it necessary for you to shoot?

Capt. EXUM: Sure. Well, about a week prior, you know, I had seen my first
freshly killed body in combat. One of the other platoons in my company had
just killed this guy. And they were in a pretty large position, so I brought
up a squad of my guys. And I turned a corner, and I see this enemy body that
just looked inhuman. This enemy fighter's face was completely gone, and it
was really, you know, shocking and horrifying. And it was probably more
shocking than what I saw with the fighter that I myself killed. You know,
with that incident, I was patrolling with one squad, and I'd sent them to go
clear an enemy bunker that I'd seen. And I'm watching this one. My artillery
sergeant who travels with me, my forward observer, you know, from north
Georgia just across the border from where I grew up, you know, spots this
enemy position behind us.

And we had been clearing positions all afternoon, and I didn't think it was
anything too serious. So I grab my radio operator and my machine gun team,
and we walk up there. And, you know, we advance pretty stealthfully and
pretty tactically. And my machine gunner, Carl McCullough--he was carrying
his pistol at that point--he sees this enemy fighter, and he says, `Sir, I see
feet to the right, feet to the right.' And I turn and pivot and fire two
shots at these feet. And, sure enough, the enemy fighter sat up. And, you
know, I actually couldn't even see his machine gun, but, you know, Carl and I
ended up killing this guy.

And then we came over this rise in what was pretty restrictive terrain. It
was--you know, we shot the guy from only about 10 meters away, and yet it took
us a while to just get up to where he was because of the very rocky nature of
things. And, you know, you see this enemy soldier, or what you hope is an
enemy soldier, living out his last moments on earth. And it was shocking
because the machine gun that I saw was an American-made machine gun. And...

GROSS: The one that he had?

Capt. EXUM: The one that he had. And he had all this--you know, he had all
this American equipment on him. And you know, I tell people the only time I
really, honestly petrified, the only time I was really scared, was that
moment. And as we searched him, we began to discover that that American
equipment he had on him was equipment that had been stolen from Americans in a
fight about two weeks prior or a mountaintop called Takr Ghar in the
Shah-e-Kot Valley. And my heart rate began to fall a little bit. But at the
same time, you know, this enemy fighter was still twitching out his last
moments on earth. I mean, there was nothing we could have done to save him.
He was shot multiple times. But at the same time, the juxtaposition between
that incident and the incident a week prior is that now I was watching, you
know, what was very human, what I could relate to, because I was watching
someone in the last moments of their life. And it was much more different
than...

GROSS: You mean, compared to watching the daisy cutter on the mountain.

Capt. EXUM: Right. Well, right, than that or than, you know, seeing this
lifeless body that no longer that had a face, that looked inhuman.

GROSS: Right.

Capt. EXUM: So, you know, at that once, the inhuman and the surreal, you
know, became very real and very human.

GROSS: You were later interviewed by an Army major about the shooting. Your
explanation is that a national reporter had observed it, and the military was
concerned about how the reporter would interpret the shooting and, you know,
would the reporter think that you used excess force.

Capt. EXUM: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: And you write, `Whoever heard of excess violence in a war? How could
a general who...

Capt. EXUM: Yeah.

GROSS: ...dropped 10,000-pound bombs on enemy soldiers accuse you of being
excessive because you fired half a magazine of ammunition at an enemy
soldier?'

Capt. EXUM: Right. Right.

GROSS: Can you talk about that a little bit more?

Capt. EXUM: Yeah, we had a reporter from the Army Times, which is an
independent magazine or independent weekly magazine that focuses on Army
issues, a guy by the name of Sean Naylor, who I've stayed in touch with. And
he was traveling with my platoon at the time. This was before the Army began
its embedded reporter program and, you know, before it really started to train
reporters on, you know, what they might see on the battlefield. So they were
somewhat worried that, you know, he'd be taken aback by the fact that we fired
so many shots.

And my battalion commander later saw the scene where it took place and, you
know, he told me, he said, `First off, you know, judging from the terrain, the
fact that the enemy fire was partially obscured'--it was in very difficult,
rocky terrain; he was in a dug-in position--you know, he didn't have any
problem with the fact that we fired so many rounds, and it just made sense as
far as the terrain made sense for, you know, two soldiers in their first real
engagement with an enemy soldier.

But at the same time, I guess someone was a little nervous that he'd be
portrayed poorly. And of course, that wasn't the case, you know. Sean Naylor
wrote a great piece on my platoon for the Army Times and made both myself and
Specialist McCulley(ph) look really good. But at the same time there was
definitely that nervousness. And I talk in the book about how, you know, this
is a professional Army, and that's great in so many ways because we have an
Army that really studies tactics. We have officers that make a lifetime study
of war, of warfare and how to keep soldiers alive and, you now, how to win
battles effectively. But at the same time you've also got a lot of very
image-conscious officers, and, you know, they want things to be reported in a
way that makes the unit and themselves look good. So I was frustrated with
that whole process. And, you know, my company commander, God bless him, he
was frustrated right here along with me and--yes, ma'am, go ahead.

GROSS: Can you talk a little bit about trying to, you know, weigh what
`excessive force' means in a war where 10,000-pound bombs are being dropped?

Capt. EXUM: Right. Yeah, it's tough because it's--you know, where is that
moral calculus? Where is that--you know, what is deemed excessive? You know,
what is deemed sane? You know, really, kind of the rules go out the window,
and I think it's easy somewhat to drop 10,000-pound bombs because you really
don't see what happens on the working end of those bombs, you know. Nobody's
down there recording what happened. They may give a battle-damage assessment,
but it's not the same as shooting someone and then watching that person die in
front of you. That seems to make a very much more real portrayal of war.

GROSS: My guest is former Army Captain Andrew Exum. His new memoir is called
"This Man's Army: A Soldier's Story from the Front Lines of the War on
Terrorism." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Andrew Exum. And his memoir,
"This Man's Army," is about his experiences leading an infantry platoon in
Afghanistan and Kuwait.

We talked a little bit about what it was like for you when you shot an enemy
soldier in Afghanistan. I'm interested in hearing what it was like for you
when your men, when the men you led in the platoon, were injured. The first
casualty in your platoon was a young man who threw a grenade into a cave, and
the shrapnel wounded him. How bad was that wound?

Capt. EXUM: Well, it was a lot worse when we first saw it. You know, when I
came upon the scene, you know, he was sitting there bleeding profusely from
his elbow. And I saw, you know, two of my other soldiers rapidly trying to
staunch this bleeding. And that is certainly something that--I mean, like,
you know, it happened probably an hour after we killed that enemy fighter.
And so, you know, that's two cold cups of coffee right there; that's really,
you know, two wake-up calls as to the realities of war. And that was
definitely something that caused my heart to skip a few beats, until we got
the bleeding stopped.

GROSS: Yeah, as the platoon leader, what is your feeling of responsibility
when one of your men is injured? Like what--and what's within your ability...

Capt. EXUM: Right.

GROSS: ...to actually do?

Capt. EXUM: It's a feeling of intense responsibility. I remember, you know,
going into our first mission in Afghanistan and seeing kind of the looks of
fear on some of my soldiers' faces and then looking at my platoon sergeant.
And, you know, he looked back at me, and I could tell what he was thinking.
We both--you know, our thoughts were not with ourselves. It was with the 34
men that we were entrusted with to take to war, to do a mission and then to
bring home. And, you know, there's a British writer, Geoffrey Powell, who led
British paratroopers at Operation Market Garden at Arnhem in World War II.
And he writes in his book "Men at Arnhem"--he writes about how leaders
actually get killed on the battlefield. And it's not by doing anything
heroic. It's not by charging any machine gun position single-handedly. It's
usually just by doing their jobs, and that's the problem with leaders--is that
their obligation to their men and to their mission is so intense that they
forget to be scared. And so that's--I would say that your fear is not so much
that something's going to happen to you but that something's going to happen
to your men. And that's certainly something that I think weighs on all combat
leaders.

GROSS: Did you forget to be scared?

Capt. EXUM: Yeah (laughs). Yeah, in several cases on several occasions. I
think that there--you know, I talk about in the book there were a couple
times which I look back, I'm just like, `Man, that was stupid. You know, I
didn't have to take that risk.' But, you know, you just...

GROSS: What's one of those risks that, in retrospect, you think was stupid...

Capt. EXUM: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and unnecessary?

Capt. EXUM: Right. One of the things I write about in the book was one of my
squad leaders and I went back into a little draw, a small little valley, a
kind of a large gully in a larger valley, in which we'd just blown two
ammunition caches with plastic explosives. And there were secondary
explosions going off. There were small-arms rounds that were flying through
the valley. You know, there were bullets that were basically burning and then
exploding as they burned; same thing with rockets. And we had neglected to
detonate two landmines that were in the middle of this kind of trail leading
up the valley. And so we went back, and instead of prudentially waiting for,
you know, a day or so before the explosions died down, the two of us, with
plastic explosives, you know, draped around our necks, ran back into this
valley. And as literally bullets were going above our heads, you know, we sat
there putting these explosives on top of these two landmines.

And I'll tell you, there's not much that's more harrowing than trying to rig
plastic explosives on a landmine as things are exploding above your head
because you never know, you know, if that's the landmine exploding or if
that's just something above your head. And to keep ourselves off balance, we
just kind of kept joking back and forth to one another about how stupid it was
that we were doing it. And then it was that night, you know, when we kind of
settled down for the night, that we were talking together. And we were
saying, `Man, that really was stupid.' And I think, you know, our eagerness
to do the right thing and to, you know, get those two mines taken care of
outstripped our common sense. But that's the story of my life (laughs): my
courage or stupidity outstripping my common sense. So I guess that's
consistent with everything else I've done.

GROSS: Andrew Exum's new memoir is called "This Man's Army: A Soldier's
Story from the Front Lines of the War on Terrorism." He'll be back in the
second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Coming up, we talk with Larry Diamond about the process of
democratization in Iraq. He's the coordinator of the Democracy Program at
Stanford University's Institute for International Studies and worked with the
Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Also, we continue our conversation with former Army Captain Andrew Exum.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with former Army Captain
Andrew Exum. He led a platoon of Army Rangers in Afghanistan, clearing caves
and searching for members of al-Qaeda. His new memoir is called "This Man's
Army." He says that some men in his platoon were born trigger-pullers, but
many of the men were raised on PlayStation, and they had to be taught to be
physically aggressive and fight.

Capt. EXUM: One of my old football coaches at Penn, he one time told me--he
asked me, 'cause he knew I was in ROTC--he said, `Exum, do you know why we won
World War II?' I said, `No, Coach, I don't know why we won World War II.'
And he said, `Because we were a nation of football players playing a nation
full of soccer players.'

GROSS: (Laughs)

Capt. EXUM: And, you know, I kind of laughed at that, and, you know, I said,
`Well, Coach, wait a minute. What about--you know, didn't the British invent
soccer?' And he said, `Shut up, Exum.'

GROSS: (Laughs)

Capt. EXUM: But, you know, it still stayed with me that, you know, I think
something like 90 percent of the soldiers in World War II played high school
football and, you know, grew up being aggressive, you know. Now I had a
couple football players and, you know, a couple athletes in my platoon, but I
also had a lot of kids that, you know, just grew up playing video games or
goofing off or kind of being a drift and then joined the Army. And so, yeah,
it's like I write in the book, it is tough, you know, training those kids
raised on PlayStation to, you know, actually, you know, be physical and, you
know, be--you know, like my high school football coaches used to tell me, you
know, `Play with controlled violence, controlled fury.' You know, growing up
playing football as a 105-pound free safety in east Tennessee, I learned how
to be aggressive and how to take my licks. But that's something that a lot of
people going into the Army did not learn.

GROSS: Some of the men in your platoon had stress-related problems,
particularly...

Capt. EXUM: Yeah.

GROSS: ...as time went on.

Capt. EXUM: Yeah.

GROSS: One of them had a nervous breakdown.

Capt. EXUM: Sure.

GROSS: You said, you know, like if a man was crying or something, you said
you had no sympathy.

Capt. EXUM: Yeah.

GROSS: You called these men F'ing pansies.

Capt. EXUM: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: Why no sympathy for them?

Capt. EXUM: Yeah, and that's--well, first off, because I was immature. And,
yeah, I never said that to their faces, but, you know, my company commander
caught me muttering that under my breath one time. And he said, `You know,
you can't judge how other people are going to handle the stresses of combat.
You know how you're going to handle it, and you hope that you're going to be
as brave as you want yourself to be. But, ultimately, you know, you don't
know what's going on in other people's heads.' And that was a lesson that I
had to learn. And, yeah, I recall, you know, one of the guys in my platoon
breaking down crying on, you know, the second night of a four-day patrol, and,
you know, my platoon sergeant wisely kept it from me, didn't mention it and
kind of, you know, swept it under the rug, and we left that guy back on our
next mission.

But it would have made me incredibly angry because here you are--you know,
it'd be one thing if it's just you; you know, if the war is just about your
war and just about your fight. However, you know, there are 33 other guys
that are counting on you to make the right decisions; that are counting on
you, you know, to be brave; that are counting on you to pull your share. And
you're not only endangering your own life. You're endangering their lives.
And that's something that I still feel. You know, reading a lot of "The
Defenses of the Deserter"(ph)--I believe it's Camilo Mejia, Sergeant
Mejia--who was sentenced for desertion when he came back home from Iraq and
refused to go back--you know, reading a lot of the apologies for him and a lot
of the defenses. You know, I remember reading Bob Herbert's column in The New
York Times. I wanted to scream aloud at the Op-Ed page page, `Look, you just
don't get it.' It's one thing if you're just an individual guy and just an
independent operator out there. But, you know, a guy like Sergeant Mejia, he
had nine guys counting on him to keep them safe in the town of Ramadi.

And so, you know, ultimately, you know, warfare and soldiers--what makes them
special is--I mean, they're not any better than normal Americans. There's
nothing about them that's inherently more honorable, except for one thing and
that's that they make a decision to give themselves and to sacrifice and to
serve. And, you know, when you abandon that service, when you abandon that
commitment that you've made to your fellow soldiers, you know, I just don't
think there's anything worse.

GROSS: Do you...

Capt. EXUM: Now when we got back, then it changed a little bit. Then when
guys started having issues of post-traumatic stress, you know, you really
gotta give them the benefit of the doubt because, you know, it's like my
company commander told me, `You don't know what's going on in that guy's mind.
Just because you handled everything OK and just because you were able to
process everything you had to do doesn't mean that they were able to.'

GROSS: You are no longer in the military.

Capt. EXUM: Right.

GROSS: But some of the men who were in your platoon are in the military, and
several of them are being affected by the new stop-loss policy...

Capt. EXUM: Right.

GROSS: ...which allows commanders to hold soldiers past the date that
they're...

Capt. EXUM: Right.

GROSS: ...due to leave service if their unit is scheduled to be deployed to
Iraq or Afghanistan.

Capt. EXUM: Sure.

GROSS: Have you heard from any of those men?

Capt. EXUM: Yeah, I sure have. You know, I got involved with the stop-loss
policy in my last days in the Army, and I got, you know, the calls from my
guys and my old platoon, the 10th Mountain Division. And, you know, I'd
ceased to be their platoon leader something like two years ago, but those guys
still stay in regular touch with me. And, you know, a couple of them called
to say, `Hey, we're going to Iraq. We just got our deployment orders.' And
then the second thing they said was, `But I don't know how we're going to go
because, you know, a quarter of our company's supposed to get out of the Army
this summer.' And a couple days later then they found out how they were all
getting stop-lossed. My old radio operator, who's the closest thing I have to
a little brother, was supposed to go back to San Francisco and got
stop-lossed.

And, you know, that is something that is inherently legal. The Army has the
right to do that; it's in the contract. But at the same time it made me mad
because I felt like one of the reasons we were stop-lossing soldiers was to
avoid having a much more difficult discussion, which was whether our Army is
really up to the long-term foreign policy commitments we have in both Iraq and
Afghanistan, not to mention all the other places that soldiers are deployed in
the world. And I think that stop-loss policy, when combined with the
activation of the Individual Ready Reserve--in other words, bringing soldiers
back onto active duty who've already been honorably discharged--I think that's
a pretty clear sign that the military is unable to meet those needs.

So I ended up writing an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times and speaking out,
you know, trying to effect some change. But, unfortunately, it didn't help,
and all my old soldiers are over in Iraq right now.

GROSS: What's your status?

Capt. EXUM: I am still actually on the Individual Ready Reserve, so I guess I
could get called up at any time if the Army grows weary of my protests
(laughs). But we'll see. I've got a pretty banged up knee, so I'm not sure I
could pass the physical. But if I did, you know, and they called me back up,
it's part of my duty. You know, if the military calls me, I don't care if I'm
55 years old and, you know, can barely walk, if the military says they need
me, I'll be there.

GROSS: Well, you mentioned your knee. You had a really bad knee injury, not
in the war but playing street hockey in the United States...

Capt. EXUM: (Laughs)

GROSS: ...when a lieutenant fell on your foot.

Capt. EXUM: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: And that popped your knee, and you blew a tendon and broke a bone
and...

Capt. EXUM: Yeah, split my tibia in half.

GROSS: Yeah.

Capt. EXUM: Yeah. It was nasty.

GROSS: So, I mean, how ironic is that? You know, you survive Afghanistan...

Capt. EXUM: (Laughs)

GROSS: ...and then you come home and you get this really bad injury in street
hockey...

Capt. EXUM: Yeah. Yeah, right.

GROSS: ...when somebody falls on you (laughs).

Capt. EXUM: Yeah. You know, and what made it even more painful is because
people told me the exact same thing that you just said, you know, as I'm
sitting there bedridden, angry because I'm not going into the big invasion of
Iraq. I later served. But, you know, I'm all angry because I'm not deploying
with my platoon over there. You know, people are like, `Yeah, well, how
ironic it is,' you know. `You made it all the way back from Afghanistan and
didn't get hurt. And now, you know, you blew your knee out, and you're all
messed up.' And I'd say, `Yeah, thanks. That's not helping.'

(Soundbite of laughter)

Capt. EXUM: But the good news was that it did give me the opportunity to
write this book, and that's when I really sat down and started writing about
my platoon, the 10th Mountain Division, because you've got to keep in mind in
January of 2003, you know, our nation was not focused on Afghanistan. We were
focused on Iraq already. And I began to worry that, you know, my soldiers'
contributions had, really, kind of been forgotten. So the knee injury ended
up being a blessing in disguise, although, you know, I loved running and I
can't run anymore. But, you know, it did give me the time to settle down and
write this book.

GROSS: So what do you plan for the next phase of your life?

Capt. EXUM: Well, I'm on a book tour right now. And then in September my
plan is to head off to the American University in Beirut, where I'll study
English lit and learn Arabic and work on a new book. I'm looking to do a
study of Arab youth culture. And so that will take up the next couple years
as I'm compiling interviews and, you know, trying to understand, you know,
attitudes about America, you know, about the world from an Arab perspective.

GROSS: Well, Captain Exum, thank you so much for talking with us.

Capt. EXUM: Yeah. No, it was really my privilege.

GROSS: Andrew Exum's new memoir is called "This Man's Army."

Coming up, how security problems are affecting the democratization of Iraq.
This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Larry Diamond discusses the transition to democracy in
Iraq
TERRY GROSS, host:

Now that Iraq has regained sovereignty, it still has a way to go before
becoming a democracy. My guest, Larry Diamond, is the coordinator of the
Democracy Program at Stanford University's Institute for International
Studies. He's also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. He
spent much of the first three months of this year in Iraq advising the
Coalition Provisional Authority. The hand over of sovereignty caught everyone
by surprise when it took place two days before it was planned, avoiding
terrorist attacks that may have been timed to coincide with the event. I
asked Diamond what he thought of the early hand over.

Professor LARRY DIAMOND (Coordinator, Democracy Program, Institute for
International Studies, Stanford University): I think it was a brilliant
maneuver. You know, the terrorists are constantly taking us by surprise. I
think with this shrewd and adept decision, partly driven by concerns on the
part of the CPA, our occupation administration, and part by a request from
Prime Minister Allawi, we saw the beginning of adaptability on the part of
ourselves in kind of outmaneuvering the terrorists. It was a good decision,
and probably it was not the time for grand celebration in any case.

GROSS: What are the documents that are now governing Iraq and saying what the
laws are?

Prof. DIAMOND: Well, there's several sets of documents. The most important,
of course, is the highest one, which is their interim constitution. It's
called the Transitional Administrative Law. It was drafted over a period of a
few months between December and the end of February. But then there are a
number of orders and regulations that were issued by our administrator, L.
Paul Bremer III, over the course of the occupation. And those have, for the
time being--again, in theory--the force of law.

GROSS: You've described their Transitional Administrative Law as the `most
liberal and progressive basic governance document anywhere in the Arab World.'
What are some of the best parts of this?

Prof. DIAMOND: Well, I'd like to mention three. First of all, there is a
Bill of Rights, a very detailed and encompassing set of guarantees of
individual liberties that draw heavily from the principles in our own Bill of
Rights but, more importantly in terms of legitimacy in the Arab world, from
the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant
on Political and Civil Liberties. These guarantee freedom of religion,
freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, due process of law in very great
detail.

Secondly and very importantly in terms of ensuring political stability in the
country, the Transitional Administrative Law provides for, in essence, a
federal system with some significant delegation of authority down to the level
of provinces, which are like our states in a way; there are 18 of them in
Iraq. This gives the Kurds, who have a level of government between the
provinces in the center called a regional government--and it has retained in
this document most of the powers and rights and responsibilities that it has
exercised over the last 12 years. This gives the Kurds some security, some
sense of dignity, some confidence that their rights and their very lives are
not going to be trampled upon, as they were under Saddam.

Third, there is a provision, which some people in the CPA were initially not
happy about but understood the importance of, that guarantees that 25 percent
of all the seats in the National Parliament will be held by women. And I
think this is a very important principle to establish in an emerging
democracy.

GROSS: How concerned are you about the role of Islam in the new government of
Iraq, after the transitional period is over?

Prof. DIAMOND: Well, it could still be a democracy. It just might not be a
very liberal one. I personally think, having traveled around the country and
studied its politics a little bit, that if there is a free and fair election
in Iraq, Iraqis are not going to vote for a strongly, militantly Islamist
government. My concern--and this now gets us into the politics of this
situation--is that there won't be a free and fair election; that the Shiite
Islamist parties have gotten so much money from Iran, have built up their
militias to such a powerful degree--there's money pouring in from Saudi Arabia
for the Sunni Islamic parties with Wahabist influence--my concern is that
unless the international community, in its support role and its mediating
role, take fairly energetic steps to level the political playing field to
ensure some base of political funding for all political parties and to make
sure that the leading parties are not able to use their militias to intimidate
voters, assassinate opponents and intimidate electoral officials by way of
rigging elections, that we could see the real level of support for Islamist
parties in Iraq inflated considerably by undemocratic means.

GROSS: Now you advised the Coalition Provisional Authority for three months,
from January through March of 2004. And I believe you were asked to do that
by Condoleezza Rice and by Paul Bremer, who was the head of the CPA. Was that
the first time that you've put theory into practice and you've actually worked
within a country that is in the process of becoming a democracy?

Prof. DIAMOND: It's the first time I've done it in such an intensive,
full-time way rather than just being in a place for a week or a few days.
I've observed elections in a number of countries, but I've never been working
on a transition in quite such a sustained way, particularly in a post-conflict
setting.

GROSS: So give us a good example of a theory you've always held dear or a
principle you always held dear that wasn't really working out that way in
Iraq. You know, were there--you know, where the theory didn't fit the
reality.

Prof. DIAMOND: Well, one example that I give people--because most of the
theories actually, I think, proved to have some resilience in the face of the
crucible of Iraqi politics and violent conflict--but we think that it's a
wonderful thing to recruit people to be involved in politics; that we go
around and give them courses and training, expose them to different ideas and
models. And then they kind of go out and remake their political system. And
I remember meeting with the Iraqi Higher Women's Council, and one of the
members of the council, who, in fact, was also a member of the Iraqi Governing
Council, got up and said to me, `What is the relationship between personal
security and the overall political process in the country?' And I wasn't quite
sure of what she meant. And then, you know, I asked her, and she said, `Who's
going to protect us if we run for office as you say? If we become involved in
politics, who's going to keep us alive?'

And I had seen the links between personal security and the unfolding political
transition hit me more and more over a period of time. But this hit me
squarely between the eyes because I realized that these women were really
vulnerable, and, indeed, one member of the Iraqi Governing Council had already
been assassinated. And this woman suffered an assassination attempt some
months later, after our meeting, in which her son was killed. And this
brought home to me, in a very personal way, the dangers that Iraqis face in
trying to rebuild their country and take control over their own politics and
the responsibility we have had, which I think to some considerable extent we
have failed on, to provide the climate of security that could enable them to
really achieve this goal.

GROSS: Where do you think we went wrong in providing security in Iraq?

Prof. DIAMOND: We didn't put in nearly enough troops from the beginning. I
think the administration was incredibly stubborn, arrogant, hubristic and
willful in insisting that its original vision of a light footprint was going
to be adequate. What they didn't understand is that the needs for security in
the country after Saddam fell would actually require many more troops than it
would take to topple his regime. You know, we've just underresourced the
mission dramatically.

GROSS: My guest is Larry Diamond, the coordinator of the Democracy Program at
Stanford University's Institute for International Studies. We'll talk more
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Larry Diamond, and he's a
senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He's also a
professor of political science at Stanford and coordinator of the Democracy
Program at Stanford's Institute for International Studies.

A lot of the security and a lot of the rebuilding of the infrastructure was
contracted to private companies like, you know, Halliburton, Bechtel. Do you
think that, from the military's point of view and from the CPA's point of
view, it worked to outsource so much of that to private contractors?

Prof. DIAMOND: Let me make some distinctions, Terry. On the construction
side, I think we should have done much more through Iraqi companies. I think
it was a strategic mistake to put so much money in the hands of a few big
external, in this case, primarily American contractors. I saw instances at a
kind of local level where building had happened very rapidly by American CPA
officials basically paying cash to local Iraqi contractors and giving them
incentive bonuses for finishing the job early. A whole complex of democracy
training buildings in Hillah got built in a matter of two or three months, a
beautiful training center with, you know, computer stations and 18 different
offices, a men's and women's dormitory to house people who'd come to this
regional training center, an auditorium. All of this went up in a matter of
three months by a very different method of contracting. I think there should
have been more of that.

On the other hand, security was an enormous problem. The only way that people
could be safe was essentially by having bodyguards. And having been guarded
during my travels by Blackwater private security guards, I am not going to
knock this company. I think they were enormously professional and effective
in the job they did.

GROSS: Earlier you said that you think one of the greatest problems that you
came upon during the months that you worked in Iraq was the lack of security.
And, like, a woman came up to you and said, `Yeah, democracy sounds great, but
who's going to protect us if we run for office or get involved in politics?'
That there just wasn't enough security to make an open society possible.

Prof. DIAMOND: I have written and said repeatedly it was the single biggest
obstacle to rebuilding the country politically and economically that dwarfed
everything else. We had the people in place. We had the money, $18.6
billion, for economic and political reconstruction and support for a civil
society. We've spent only a tiny fraction of it so far because of the
security situation.

GROSS: Would you explain that to me? How much have we actually spent of the
money?

Prof. DIAMOND: By one account, I've read less than half a billion dollars.
And...

GROSS: So what's happening to that money, and why hasn't it been spent?

Prof. DIAMOND: A lot of it is still there to be spent by the new United
States Embassy, the US Agency for International Development and so on. There
was an allocation of funding to the National Endowment for Democracy, and it
has made some grants and it's ready to make more. But, you know, the problem
has been that we haven't had sufficient security to actually dispense the
money, to actually do the economic reconstruction projects. And much more of
the money than we had anticipated had to be spent on hiring, basically,
private security guards.

GROSS: I don't know how honest you feel you can be about this, but when you
were in Iraq working with the Coalition Provisional Authority and, also, you
know, interacting with the military, did you get the impression that people in
the CPA and the military thought that, in retrospect, you know, invading a
country to help move it toward democracy was a kind of viable model?

Prof. DIAMOND: Well, I was against the invasion, as you know. But what I
found primarily in Iraq among the political officers I was working with--and,
in fact, most people within the CPA were proud of what we'd done. And they
were proud because they were working with Iraqis who were so grateful to be
rid of Saddam. I encountered so many personal stories emotionally told to the
point of people breaking out spontaneously in tears about the terror they
felt, the fear they felt, the lives they lost of family members dear to them.
And, you know, when you hear these stories and you see the mass graves, it's
impossible not to feel that we did something right and good in toppling
Saddam.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Prof. DIAMOND: You're very welcome. It's been a great pleasure, Terry.

GROSS: Larry Diamond is the coordinator of the Democracy Program at Stanford
University's Institute for International Studies, and he's a senior fellow at
the Hoover Institution.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.