Chancellor William McRaven

thank you, mr president, given admiral

mcraven

's long interest in a military career, i asked him very frankly why he studied journalism at the university of texas and, in typical navy tradition, he looked at me and said that's where the girls were one of the girls he met at the University of Texas is here with us this morning his wife of 37 years georgeanne georgeanne thank you so much for being with us admiral

mcraven

recently retired as one of our four star admirals after serving to our country for 37 years as a Navy SEAL since 2001 he has worked almost exclusively in counterterrorism operations and in 2008 he became chief of the Joint Special Operations Command, where he led a force of approximately 69,000 men and women and in that position he was responsible for leading Conor terrorist operations of our country around the world as one. one of our country's most experienced terrorist hunters, so to speak, turned to a special Navy SEAL unit for the mission Osama Bin Laden, a former Navy SEAL, oversaw the weeks of intensive training that were necessary for that covert operation that Now we all know that he was very very successful, but that is just a snapshot of this man's responsibilities and achievements.

What about the man himself? Let me give you some brief examples. Admiral Mcraven simply said that he does not believe in leading from behind; He has frequently quoted Pope Francis, who said and I quote a shepherd should smell like his sheep. Well, admiral mcraven did and fortunately not this morning. Admiral, you frequently accompanied his teams on special operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, why did he do so well? He did it because he wanted to know the fears, the stress and the capabilities. of the men and women he commanded and compassion is also an important characteristic of this man in 2010 our special operations forces mistakenly killed five Afghan civilians he quickly admitted that a terrible mistake had been made there was no cover-up he frankly admitted a terrible Se He had made a mistake but wanted to do more, what did he do?

He decided to pay homage to the historical tribal codes of honor and after being warned by his staff, the admiral, he cannot do this, he will be killed, he personally met with the tribal elders and offered it to them. two animals and he offered to sacrifice them as a mercy-seeking gesture that was consistent with existing codes of honor in Afghanistan but equally important, he told the tribal elders' quote I am a soldier. I have spent most of my career abroad. I also have children and my heart aches for you, the tribal elders understood and accepted his gesture.

There's a sign in their office that I think typifies and certainly underlines their philosophy and says that the ships in the harbor are safe, but that's not what they were built for. Admiral mcraven is a leader. in the truest sense of the word and we are very happy to have him as

chancellor

of the University of Texas system, a position he accepted in February of this year. Admiral Mcraven, well, thank you very much, uh, David and uh, and I know that Jim Comey is gone, but I would tell you that I have spent much of my year working with the great officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and there are no better men and women in these United States and they do an incredible job protecting us. and I would like to once again recognize Jim Comey and his fine people for the great work they do.

Thank you Jim and thank you very much David. I appreciate the kind presentation. It's great to be here with the best trial lawyers in the United States, you know several. Years ago, the father of American terrorist Anor Al Alaki sued me after Alaki was mysteriously murdered in Yemen and then after Bin Laden's death, his son threatened Assumi, but after leaving the military and stopping pursuing However, now that I am president of the University of Texas and I am involved in Texas politics, I still need a good trial lawyer, so I have a bowl up here, if you could leave your cards presentation in that place. bowl, I would appreciate it um having said that I know where to find one of the best trial lawyers in the country and he happens to be one of my regents within a few months of him coming to the board.

David Beck has already made a huge difference to the temperament, thoughtfulness and decisiveness of the board, David, it has been a real pleasure to work with you and I look forward to the next few years together, although I have never had any formal legal training ago many years. I was asked to defend one of the most complex legal arguments of our time on 9/11. I was in a hospital bed at my home in Coronado, California, recovering from a serious parachute accident shortly after the events of that day. The president stood up. I added what was called the counterterrorism office to the National Security Council staff, and on October 1 I was limping into the old Executive Office Building as a new member of the White House staff.

A week into the job, I got a call from a man within the president's inner circle and he said, is that you, Captain Mcraven? I said yes, sir, I'm a Navy SEAL, right, I said yes, sir, and he said well, I need you to do something for the president and I thought, well, here's this. I've been waiting at work for a week and the president is already asking me for military advice. Maybe what you want to know is how to deploy naval forces in the Gulf of Rabban or maybe you want my advice on how to overthrow the Taliban in Kabal. or maybe he wants to send me on a secret mission to catch this guy Bin Laden, then the voice on the other end of the phone says the papal nunia is coming next week and the president needs you to write a letter to the Pope explaining why. war. in Afghanistan it would be a just war a just war oh well nothing nothing too difficult just something that academics and philosophers have been wrestling with for centuries and then the guy says uh and keep it short, about two pages, well of course I mean How much effort?

Do you have to go out of your way to explain just war to the pontiff, and by the way, I was a Texas Methodist, this really wasn't my field of study, it wasn't in my wheelhouse, yet I contacted several staff members who I I called cardinals and bishops and within a few days I finished my first staff assignment, the papal nunia arrived the following week, the letter was delivered to the Pope and we went to war. Now I don't think the two things had anything to do with each other, but you never know. but over the course of the next 10 years and two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan I had the opportunity to participate in some of the most notable Special Operations of our time, some of those missions came to light, most did not and they were so serious and intense.

As can be seen from the outside, there is invariably a humorous backstory that accompanies most of these missions. In December 2013 we captured Saddam Hussein, the special forces soldiers brought him from Toit, which was a little north of Baghdad, where he was captured to my secret headquarters in Baghdad we had a small detention area where we intended to hold Saddam. for about 30 days, but the whole world was waiting to see that we had captured the most wanted man in Iraq. My chief of staff came to inform me that Saddam was in the holding pen, but that for the last six months in his hideout he had grown this enormous beard, the Navy Captain was worried that the photos of Saddam would not look like him. to the former president, so I ordered my chief of staff to shave Saddam's beard and return him to his original appearance a little later, after ID finished making calls to my bosses and letting them know that we had gotten Saddam .

A three star general shows up at my headquarters and wants to see this Butcher of Baghdad, so we walk over. I got to the waiting area and there, to my surprise, was Saddam Hussein with a pair of scissors in his hand cutting his beard. I carefully removed the scissors. I had a few choice words with my staff and then ordered the soldiers to finish the job, but when Saddam was moved to a nearby sink, the three-star general was quite taken aback and asked me: Do we have the authority to shave Saddam? I told him, sir, I had the authority to kill him.

I think I have the authority to shave his beard next time. On the day that a clean Saddam Hussein appeared on the front page of every newspaper in the world and not a single word about who shaved him appeared in the article over the Easter weekend of 2009, we received the news that Captain Richard Phillips of the tanker Mary Alabama had been captured by pirates. and he was being held hostage off the coast of Somalia. I sent the seals out to assess the situation and see what our options were. There were now four pirates and a hostage in a very small lifeboat.

I knew that what we would have to do is Let the situation develop and stay alert for any opportunities that may present themselves. The problem was that the White House wanted a deliberate response plan. I tried to explain to my military chain of command that we couldn't do a standard assault, it was a very small lifeboat, we couldn't bring in seals or helicopters or the fast point R. It was a very small lifeboat, but you still needed a plan, so So at 2:00 in the morning I called Admiral Mike Miller, who was the superintendent of the Naval Academy, and asked him to get me the smartest professor he had on naval architecture.

Several hours later, we picked up this mild-mannered civilian in the middle of the night and took him to a secret location in the United States and he worked all night doing calculations. to determine if we could ram the lifeboat with one of our cigarette H boats and not inadvertently sink it, so the next day I had my answer. I informed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that we had a plan to ram the lifeboat with one of our ship sends everyone over the tea Kettle jumps into the middle of the compartment kills the bad guys and rescues the good guys and the president through the video conference says bill that's your plan that's your deliberate plan yes sir that's my plan 2 days later The opportunity presented itself and the seal snipers eliminated the hostages and rescued Captain Phillips.

That night we returned to the wide-eyed Professor at the Naval Academy with a story of midnight intrigue that he would never forget. Two years later, May 2, 2011, was the night I Got Bin Laden and was on a video conference with President. He asked me if he was sure we had the right man. I informed the president that he had to do a visual verification before confirming the disappearance. I drove a short distance to where The Seals were bringing the remains. We removed the heavy body bag from the vehicle. We unzipped the rubber container and I began to inspect the body.

I looked at the facial features that after two headshots didn't look very good, however, knowing that Bin Laden. He was about 6'4. I turned to a tall young seal standing nearby and said, Son, how tall are you? He said sir. I'm about 6'2. I told him fine. I need you to lie down next to the remains here. I I'm sorry, so you want me to do what he said. I want you to lie down next to the remains here, so he lay down next to the remains and of course the remains were a few inches taller so I went back to my makeshift headquarters and informed him. to the president that although without DNA it could not be positive, I told him that there was a seal next to the body and the remains were clearly taller, so there was a pause at the other end of the video screen and the The president now very good humor responded so Bill let me clarify this: we had $60 million for a helicopter we had lost on the mission and we couldn't afford a tape measure.

Two days later I returned to the states and the president invited. He took me to the Oval Office where he gave me a plaque with a measuring tape. Well, a lot has happened since that first day I arrived at the White House and I think about the letter I wrote to the Pope. I don't know if My thoughts were consistent with the Jess's theory of war, but what I know today, after years of fighting this war, is that this may be the fairest fight we have had in the last thousand years; It is a fight between the civilized world and the barbarians who seek to destroy it the extremists the core of al-Qaeda in its franchises in North Africa Yemen and Iraq from Baharam in Nigeria to al-Shabab in Somalia from Abu Saf in the Philippines to the Taliban in Afghanistan from Isis to al-nusra they bring nothing but destruction tyranny Savage and slavery there are no redeeming qualities in the extremist views and supposed justice they exercise on their subjects in Afghanistan.

I saw Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters make their way into rural V villages and the first thing they did was kill. Elders who did not comply with their orders, if they had a particular elder that they needed to get the support of The Village, they would bring a member ofthe old man's family and they would kill them in front of the elders, the young girls were not allowed to go. At school the young people were forced into servitude and schooled only in small madrasas where nothing was ever taught, nothing enlightening, wherever there was resistance, there was death, they practiced a preferred perverted form of Sharia law, where any violation could lead to death. mutilation, torture, execution.

Western values ​​are scary. They, more than anything, liberal thought, academic work, the power of the individual, the role of women and any practice of law, religion other than Islamic was worthy of a painful death in the province of Kahar Pro, In southern Afghanistan, the Americans founded a small girls' school that had about 50 girls who were members of the school, it was a small two-room building in a reasonably safe area of ​​the Kart district, every day, dozens of Girls put on their uniforms and went to the Taliban school, it became a symbol of all that. He was wrong about the West educating women.

It was clearly the work of the devil. One night, Taliban fighters infiltrated the village and placed mines around the school. Fortunately, we have been watching The Village through our unmanned aerial vehicles, our drones and the next day we went in and spread the mines the next night the Taliban came back once again we cleared the mines and let the girls go to school. The third time the Taliban came in we were waiting and never had that problem again, but think about how committed those spiders must have been. to risk and eventually lose their lives just to prevent girls from going to school what who and what thinks so Afghanistan however seems docile to some of the atrocities I saw in Iraq there was a special evil reserve for Al-Qaeda in Iraq or here , as we called them in 2004, aqi took over the city of Fuia, it was a decaying and expanding city of approximately 300,000 people.

Aqi systematically murdered the city's leaders, lined up young men who did not support them, and summarily executed them, laughing throughout the execution. They had torture houses where unspeakable horrors occurred. I watched through our surveillance as men were taken from their homes and shot in front of their families. Finally, in late 2004, the Marines, Army, and special operations forces moved in and cleared Fuia in 2005. Tribal leaders began to unite in what was called the Sunni Awakening to take on Al-Qaeda and by 2009 we had begun to change the course in Iraq. One of my proudest achievements was that we helped establish Iraqi court houses so that Iraqis themselves could bring Al-Qaeda to justice.

We had Navy Seals, Army Rangers and Green Berets setting up courts helping with dockets that protected judges and prosecutors, allowing justice to be real justice, not a kangaroo court, but real civilized justice to unfold in Iraq. I watched it incredibly. Brave Iraqi trial lawyers risk their lives every day to practice law; Some days they did not return not because they did not want to but because they had been discovered and killed by Al-Qaeda. It was inspiring to see the power of the law. In the hands of men who believed in it, but who was the exception in North Africa, Ala and the lands of the Islamic Mcreb or Aqim were run by a former cigarette smuggler, Mdar Balm, who routinely kidnapped Westerners and rescued them. to fill their coffers when Ransom was not paid he returned and then executed his hostages it was MBM who took over the BP oil refinery in January 2013 37 hostages were killed aqim has been emboldened by the fall of Gaddafi and has been reinforced with sophisticated weapons left after the fall of Libya The army fell they now control a large swath of land running from southern Algeria through Mali and Libya just south of the mcreb is northern Nigeria, home of baharam baharam whose name means that Western education is bad, that is what their name means, these are the Savages who kidnapped and sexually abused the 270 school girls of Shabach in northern Nigeria and then when their acts of violence were not controlled by The Nigerian forces or any Western army, attacked another city and another and another killing rap, raping and torturing those who did not support them.

It doesn't take any deep social theory to understand that any act of barbarism left unchecked only encourages more of the same behavior. There are those in the US government who hope the bad behavior will stop. There are those who believe that goodness will prevail. or that Miracles will come and everything will be fine, then there is no Al Shabab in Somalia, it was Al Shabab who without any conscience attacked the Westgate shopping center in Nairobi in 2013, killing 63 innocent shoppers, the Westgate shopping center is not a third world . The run-down Shanty Mall is a high-end Western-style open-air shopping center with all the amenities you'd expect.

I spent many hours wandering around the mall. It would be no different than if a group walked into the Woodfield Mall here in Chicago and started shooting. At some point you will see that the murderers completely lack compassion for the men, women and children they executed in Yemen. There is Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as mentioned above. Aqap was once led by Anir Alaki until his very fortunate demise. Alaki and his bomb maker, Aleri, who sent Umar Farouk, Abdulla Mataba, the underwear bomber and the cartridge bomb, intended to blow up civilian airliners and sink the aviation business now.

Yemen is a major failed state from which the Houthi rebels descended. the north and controls most of the capital. Al-Qaeda owns most of the central part of the country and the southern successions own the south and then of course there is Isis. Isis is an outgrowth of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Abubakr Al Bagdaddy, their leader is a former Al-Qaeda fighter who is a brutal and relentless megalomaniac, attracts fighters to his cause by allowing them to carry out whatever perverted fantasies they may have and cloaking their actions with Islam. They have swept across Syria's eastern desert and key cities. of Iraq they move like locusts destroying everything in their path and leaving nothing good behind they routinely destroy world heritage sites in an effort to erase the past they use fear and torture as a tool to enslave the people they invade beheadings crucifixions and systematic rape -Muslim women fighting these bar bar Arians has been my life for the last decade and I believe we are in an existential struggle, but the slow progress of this battle will not change our lives dramatically in the next year or five years or maybe even 10 years. but, nevertheless, it is one of the most important struggles of this generation.

We can already see the impact of the fighting in Syria and how that impact is affecting Europe. Thousands and thousands upon thousands of refugees are moving west or fleeing North Africa and crossing the Mediterranean. that cannot afford to reach Europe are taking refuge in Lebanon and Jordan creating pressure on those nations and if we lost King Abdullah of Jordan, one of our closest allies, and if Lebanon fell back into the hands of Hezbollah The entire region could collapse. We have been playing defense prevention for several years, allowing extremists to gain ground in the hopes that we can hold on to the Red Zone.

Well, they're marching through the countryside. Syria Iraq Yemen North Africa Nigeria its profits will affect economies. from Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and if you think that the problems of the Middle East do not affect your world, think again, there is no local problem, everything in the world is connected and the oceans that used to protect us no longer exist. Longer Buffers Against Extremist Ideology Economic warfare and air-to-sea threats are now adding to those problems between Russia and Iran and creating a global crisis like we haven't seen in 70 years, so what are we going to do? do?

To do what we must do, we must fight them and we must fight them with everything we have. We must see this conflict for what it is, an assault on everything we hold dear, not a little regional dust that will quietly seep into the history books. We must accept the fact that more young men and women will pay the ultimate price to achieve Victory. We must accept the fact that funding ourselves will cost us billions or trillions more dollars if we continue to approach this war with an impartial sense of commitment. Then we will surely lose.

Many people say that this is not our fight and that we should let the Arabs deal with an Arab problem. We cannot be the police of the world. I hear it over and over again. Oh yes, we can and we must, our strong European Union. Partners are likely to join us because they see the inevitable outcome if we do not drastically change our approach. All of us who have spent time in the region know that the Arabs do not have the resources, the leadership or the ability to take this fight to the enemy. The Somalis, the Nigerians, the Algerians, the Egyptians and the Libyans, none of them, none of them can do this alone and whether we like it or not this is our fight but if we don't aggressively attack this problem it will only get worse first we We must expel Isis from Iraq, that means putting American soldiers on the front lines with their Iraqi counterparts.

We must reengage fully in Iraq, providing troops with the aerial artillery and logistical support they need to turn the tide. We must pursue Isis in Syria once again. we will need boots on the ground as partners with our European allies and with those Syrians who are willing to support us we must be prepared to inflict casualties and suffer casualties we must be prepared to endure the wrath of world opinion the war is dirty, brutal and costly, no there is a way to achieve Victory without considerable pain and ugliness, to think otherwise is simply naive, we must also take the fight to those terrorist havens in Yemen, Somalia, North Africa, Nigeria and others, we must not have nuances in our administration of justice, we must be firm and we must be fully committed.

Anything less would be a disservice to the men and women who fight. We must engage with moderates in these geographic areas, but they won't show up unless they know we have their back, and so far. We have not demonstrated the resilience necessary to prevent the rebirth of some of these extremist organizations. We must mobilize the international community with the same vigor with which we engage the American people. Every effort should be made to cut off the flow of money. Terrorist manpower and supplies, if we contain them, isolate their activities and then systematically destroy their leaders and their message through military, economic and diplomatic law enforcement efforts, we can achieve success, but it will not be easy or quick now , if all this sounds quite alarmist.

We should be in dangerous times, but it's easy to see these atrocities as someone else's pain, someone else's misfortune, someone else's country. I love the final courtroom scene in Matthew McCc's film A Time to Kill. If you have seen it, you will know that it is set in a rural area. Mississippi M plays a wise local Young Street lawyer who, against everyone's advice, takes a case to defend a black man responsible for killing two white supremacists who raped the man's young daughter and threw her off a bridge. in the pivotal scene in which McAn is presenting his closing arguments.

The general jury tells them about the events of that night. The two older men, drunk on whiskey, kidnapped the young woman. They brutally raped her. They threw her into the back of their truck and then, as if she were a piece of trash, they threw her off a McAn bridge. P paints a vivid picture of the horror of that night in the barbaric treatment of this young black girl in the film, you see the jury with downcast eyes struggling to visualize the scene and then MCC says now imagine the white girl now image the white girl look the news today and imagine the families escaping Syria like yours, imagine the border filled with refugees as our borders are projected on real life film and then ask if we are doing enough, but in the midst of all this chaos we have the ultimate weapon we have the key to success we have the American soldier there are rich and poor men and women white and black Christians and Muslims gay and straight they come from all corners of the United States from small towns and big cities they are the Millennials and Generation Not only did they do it four years, they've been at it for 14 years, they've seen everyoneTheir Stars and Stripes-clad friends return to the United States in the back of a C17, and yet they keep coming back knowing that one day it could be them, but by accepting those terms as part of their service, they are stronger than any group of young Americans I've seen in the last 40 years.

They are unashamedly patriotic. They believe that the words duty, honor, and country mean something important, something worth fighting for. something worth dying for and they won't stop fighting until we're safe and no matter how bad things seem, sometimes I'm still incredibly optimistic because I've had the honor of serving with such fine Americans, when a soldier dies In combat, we have a ceremony on the ramp. before placing the remains on the plane to take them home after saying a short prayer of payment the clergy will always quote Isaiah 68 and I heard the voice of the Lord saying who will I send and who will go for me and I said here I am, I send me continue to lift hand and they keep saying send me all I ask is your kindness your understanding your support and your prayers the world can look pretty bad at times but if we are determined if we are not afraid of action and if we know that sacrifice will be necessary and if We trust in the great young Americans who are the greatest generation of this century, then everything will be fine, thank you all very much.