Retired Gen. David Petraeus shares insights at Judson forum

Former CIA director and retired four-star Army Gen. David Petraeus spoke Friday during Judson University's World Leaders Forum at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg.

Petraeus talked about the U.S. troop pullout in Afghanistan and shared highlights from his 37-year career, including overseeing U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and heading the CIA under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Petraeus resigned in 2012 after an affair with his biographer came to light as part of an FBI investigation. He eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information and was sentenced to two years' probation and a $100,000 fine.

Here are excerpts from his Q&A session with Mark Vargas, a Judson alumnus who served as a civilian on a special defense task force in Iraq.

Q. Thoughts about what transpired in Afghanistan after U.S. troop withdrawal?

Petraeus: I've said for years that what we should achieve in Afghanistan is what might be termed ... sustainable commitment. We have to understand that Afghanistan isn't Iraq. Afghanistan is just a place that you can't win. You can manage it ... and managing it is as good as you can get. I actually believed up front that this was going to be catastrophic. I said three months in advance that I feared a psychological collapse of the Afghan forces. They fought previously, it's just when they knew nobody was coming to the rescue because we pulled 18,000 contractors to maintain the very sophisticated American-provided helicopters and planes, that was the key to their whole defensive strategy. I can't describe these results as anything other than heartbreaking, tragic, and frankly, disastrous. On one hand, it is an extraordinary logistical accomplishment to get 123,000 people out in less than two weeks by the tragic loss of 13 of our young men and women in uniform and nearly 200 innocent Afghan civilians. But, on the other hand, absolutely chaotic, and certainly not the way that those of us who served in that would have wanted to see it end.

Q. What can the United States learn from what happened in Afghanistan?

Petraeus: There's huge numbers of lessons. We did not get the inputs right in Afghanistan for nine years. The leadership of our country very quickly focused on Iraq. We devoted our attention to that. That then went badly. It was really almost irretrievable. Everything was devoted to Iraq. Afghanistan, we did what we could. We made mistakes ... we threw more money in problems sometimes than we should have ... it took us far too long to get something like that anti-corruption task force going. At the end of the day, what happened is we just ran out of steam.

Q. Where were you on Sept. 11?

Petraeus: I was deployed in Bosnia as a one-star general. I was the chief operating officer for the NATO stabilization force in Bosnia and was the deputy commander of the biggest intelligence deployment to find war criminals.

Q. Thoughts on the Iraq War?

Petraeus: In a situation such as we had in Iraq, you have to have security. Security is necessary but not sufficient. You are competing for the hearts and minds of people. Iraq was completely out of control. We were on the verge of a full-blown Sunni-Shia civil war. But once you get security, you solidify it by then what you do building on it, by improving basic services, by showing the people that they should support us and then the new Iraq, rather than al-Qaida and the insurgents or the Iranian-supported Shia militia. Nation building, I know, gets some criticism from time to time, but it's absolutely essential.

Q. Who influenced you during your very young military career?

Petraeus: You find influences obviously from those with whom you're serving. The command sergeant major (of the 101st Airborne Division) who did four of those five combat tours with me. It's many, many people. The term leader ... it's just someone from whom others take inspiration, example, energy, direction. Is not just those whose title might be commander, or president, or mayor, or whatever. There's a host of folks along the way. In life, you want to be not just the best overall, you gotta the best team player, as well. I actually married the daughter of the superintendent of West Point (military academy), a four-star general. He was really what I wanted to be. He was a soldier, scholar, statesman. And that's what I sought to be.