And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.

Welcome back to Conversations.

And I'm very pleased to have back General David Petraeus

to continue our conversation from a couple of months ago.

Good to be back with you.

Thanks. Thanks for taking the time.

I was thinking of you the other day as I heard Donald Trump were speaking in April of 2016,

and he's, I I guess the leading Republican presidential

candidate right now saying we don't win war we'd ever win wars anymore we don't

win wars anymore we don't win wars anymore and that's clearly resonated a little bit and what's the answer?

Well I think it's somewhat understandable. I mean Iraq and Afghanistan in

particular have been very very frustrating experiences that cost enormous

amounts of money and obviously of blood and seriously wounded great

young American men and women. Afghanistan were still achieving the mission,

in other words of keeping al-Qaeda from having a sanctuary on the soil there

as they did when the 9-11 attacks were planned there, but it's been very difficult

and it appears as if the results are eroding somewhat right now.

Iraq seemed to be in a very good spot several years after the surge.

It continued in a good place, and then the Prime Minister pursued highly sectarian

policies that basically undid the progress that we'd achieve there.

You see other places that are just

plain incredibly complex conundrum, Syria, Libya.

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