General David H. Petraeus, USA - Academy of Achievement

<!doctype html> <html lang="en-US" prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("http://www.achievement.org:80/achiever/general-david-petraeus","20190102111132","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1546427492"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="57x57" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-114x114.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="60x60" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-60x60.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="120x120" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-120x120.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="76x76" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-76x76.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="152x152" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-152x152.png"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-196x196.png" sizes="196x196"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-96x96.png" sizes="96x96"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-32x32.png" sizes="32x32"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-128.png" sizes="128x128"/> <meta name="application-name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#000000"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-144x144.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square70x70logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-70x70.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square150x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-150x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-wide310x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square310x310logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x310.png"/> <link href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132cs_/https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic,700,700italic" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <title>General David H. Petraeus, USA - Academy of Achievement</title>  <meta name="description" content="Hailed as the "the world's leading expert in counterinsurgency warfare," General David Petraeus capped a brilliant career in the United States Army by leading the campaigns that turned the tide of battle in both Iraq and Afghanistan. A graduate of West Point with a doctorate from Princeton, Petraeus held leadership positions in airborne, mechanized, and air assault infantry units in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. When President George W. Bush decided to change strategy in Iraq, he chose General Petraeus to lead the surge, turning around a seemingly hopeless situation. President Barack Obama called on him to lead U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. After 37 years of uniformed service, General Petraeus won the unanimous approval of the United States Senate to become the 20th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Now retired from public life, he remains a sought-after authority on strategic leadership."/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="General David H. Petraeus, USA - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">Hailed as the "the world's leading expert in counterinsurgency warfare," General David Petraeus capped a brilliant career in the United States Army by leading the campaigns that turned the tide of battle in both Iraq and Afghanistan.</p> <p class="inputText">A graduate of West Point with a doctorate from Princeton, Petraeus held leadership positions in airborne, mechanized, and air assault infantry units in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. When President George W. Bush decided to change strategy in Iraq, he chose General Petraeus to lead the surge, turning around a seemingly hopeless situation. President Barack Obama called on him to lead U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.</p> <p class="inputText">After 37 years of uniformed service, General Petraeus won the unanimous approval of the United States Senate to become the 20th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Now retired from public life, he remains a sought-after authority on strategic leadership.</p>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/petraeus-Feature-Image.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">Hailed as the "the world's leading expert in counterinsurgency warfare," General David Petraeus capped a brilliant career in the United States Army by leading the campaigns that turned the tide of battle in both Iraq and Afghanistan.</p> <p class="inputText">A graduate of West Point with a doctorate from Princeton, Petraeus held leadership positions in airborne, mechanized, and air assault infantry units in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. When President George W. Bush decided to change strategy in Iraq, he chose General Petraeus to lead the surge, turning around a seemingly hopeless situation. President Barack Obama called on him to lead U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.</p> <p class="inputText">After 37 years of uniformed service, General Petraeus won the unanimous approval of the United States Senate to become the 20th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Now retired from public life, he remains a sought-after authority on strategic leadership.</p>"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="General David H. 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/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/petraeus-Feature-Image-1400x560.jpg"></div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <figcaption class="feature-area__text ratio-container__text container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">General David H. Petraeus, USA</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Military Strategist</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-1675 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-military-soldier"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane fade in active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">Life is a competitive endeavor. And there's nothing more competitive, obviously, than combat.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">Professor of War</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> November 7, 1952 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p class="inputTextFirst">David Petraeus was born and raised in Cornwall, New York, a few miles up the Hudson River from the United States Military Academy at West Point. His mother was a librarian; his father was a Dutch sea captain who had fled the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. After the war, Petraeus senior worked in a power plant. A great emphasis was placed on both academics and athletics in the Petraeus household, and David Petraeus excelled in both.</p> <figure id="attachment_42718" style="width: 2273px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-42718 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp-1974-Petraeus-Holly-and-General-David.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-42718 size-full lazyload" alt="" width="2273" height="2843" data-sizes="(max-width: 2273px) 100vw, 2273px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp-1974-Petraeus-Holly-and-General-David.jpg 2273w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp-1974-Petraeus-Holly-and-General-David-304x380.jpg 304w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp-1974-Petraeus-Holly-and-General-David-608x760.jpg 608w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp-1974-Petraeus-Holly-and-General-David.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">June 1974: 21-year-old cadet David Petreaus and fiancée Holly Knowlton — a student at Dickinson College and the daughter of The Academy’s superintendant, General William Knowlton — before his graduation ceremony at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. Petraeus and  Knowlton would marry one month later.</figcaption></figure> <p>The influence of West Point was strongly felt in the community, and although he was accepted at other colleges, when he won a coveted appointment to West Point, David Petraeus gladly joined the United States Corps of Cadets. He continued to excel at West Point, following the demanding pre-med curriculum and competing in soccer and downhill skiing. Although he did well in his science courses, by his senior year he realized he did not have a calling for medicine and sought commission as an infantry officer. He graduated in the top five percent of his class and received his commission as a second lieutenant in the United States Army. Shortly after graduation, he married Holly Knowlton, the daughter of General William Knowlton, Superintendent of the Military Academy. The couple would raise a son and a daughter while meeting all the challenges and upheavals of a career in the military.</p> <figure id="attachment_2615" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-2615 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-003.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-2615 lazyload" alt="Graduation Day at West Point, 1974: Cadet Captain David H. Petraeus celebrates with his fiancée, Holly Knowlton. (© Bettmann/Corbis)" width="2280" height="1518" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-003.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-003-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-003-760x506.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-003.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Graduation Day at West Point, 1974: Cadet Captain David H. Petraeus celebrates with his fiancée, Holly Knowlton.</figcaption></figure><p class="inputText">After leaving West Point, David Petraeus continued to distinguish himself as a soldier and scholar. He was first in his class at the physically grueling Army Ranger School, where he won all three of the top awards, including the William O. Darby Award, named for the officer who led the first unit of Army Rangers during World War II. Petraeus spent most of the next decade serving in infantry and mechanized units in the U.S. and Europe, and received the first of many promotions.</p> <p>He was first in his class again at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and subsequently earned MPA and Ph.D. degrees in International Relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. While writing his dissertation on “The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam,” he returned to West Point as Assistant Professor of International Relations.</p> <figure id="attachment_2629" style="width: 1950px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-2629 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-019.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-2629 size-full lazyload" alt="Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus stops to pick up a young Iraqi boy when his convoy stopped in Karbala, Iraq, April 6, 2003. (MAI /Jason L. Austin)" width="1950" height="2097" data-sizes="(max-width: 1950px) 100vw, 1950px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-019.jpg 1950w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-019-353x380.jpg 353w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-019-707x760.jpg 707w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-019.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2003: Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus stops to pick up a young Iraqi boy when his convoy arrived in Karbala, Iraq.</figcaption></figure><p>Petraeus honed his administrative skills in a series of staff positions. He served as military assistant to General John Galvin, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), as assistant executive officer to General Carlo Vuono, the Army Chief of Staff, and as executive assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton. Over the course of these assignments, he rose from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general.</p> <p>In his 37 years in the Army, Petraeus held leadership positions in airborne, mechanized, and air assault infantry units in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. He acquired invaluable expertise in the arts of post-conflict reconstruction, serving as Chief of Operations of the United Nations Force in Haiti, and Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations of the NATO Stabilization Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina.</p> <figure id="attachment_2614" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-2614 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-002.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-2614 size-full lazyload" alt="In 2004, General David Petraeus celebrates return of the 101st Airborne Division to Fort Campbell, Kentucky from combat duty in Iraq. (John Sommers II/Reuters/Corbis/)" width="2280" height="1744" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-002.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-002-380x291.jpg 380w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-002-760x581.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-002.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2004: General Petraeus celebrates return of 101st Airborne Division to Fort Campbell, Kentucky from combat duty.</figcaption></figure><p>In 2003, Petraeus, now a major general, commanded the 101st Airborne Division in the assault on Baghdad. This campaign was recounted by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson in his book <i>In the Company of Soldiers</i>. Tasked with the occupation and pacification of the Iraqi city of Mosul after the collapse of the Iraqi regular forces, General Petraeus set the standard for executing successful counterinsurgency operations: restoring security, building a local security force, rebuilding the city’s university and other institutions, and organizing the region’s first free elections. Promoted to lieutenant general, he was given command of the multinational Security Transition Command Iraq. In 15 months, his command executed a massive reconstruction project, and trained and equipped 100,000 Iraq Security Forces, the largest operation of its kind since World War II. During this period, Petraeus published articles in the military and civilian press sharing the insights he had gained in counterinsurgency and reconstruction.</p> <figure id="attachment_2616" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-2616 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-004.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-2616 size-full lazyload" alt="General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces of Iraq, at a 2007 press conference in Baghdad. (Associated Press)" width="2280" height="1449" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-004.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-004-380x242.jpg 380w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-004-760x483.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-004.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">General Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, at a 2007 press conference in Baghdad. (Associated Press)</figcaption></figure><p>After returning to the United States, General Petraeus was appointed Commanding General at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he also oversaw the Command and General Staff College. At Leavenworth, Petraeus and Marine General James Mattis assembled an unprecedented team of experts from military officers, scholars, journalists and human rights advocates to research and compile a new army field manual for counterinsurgency operations, <i>3-24: Counterinsurgency</i>. After integrating the new material into staff training and field operations, Petraeus refined the essentials of the new teaching in his landmark treatise <i>Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance</i>, now studied around the world.</p> <figure id="attachment_4523" style="width: 2627px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-4523 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/AP090201019776.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-4523 size-full lazyload" alt="Gen. David Petraeus, commander U.S. Central Command, left stands with his wife Holly before the NFL Super Bowl XLIII football game between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2009, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)" width="2627" height="2798" data-sizes="(max-width: 2627px) 100vw, 2627px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/AP090201019776.jpg 2627w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/AP090201019776-357x380.jpg 357w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/AP090201019776-714x760.jpg 714w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/AP090201019776.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">February 1, 2009: Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, stands with his wife, Holly, before the NFL Super Bowl XLIII football game between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers in Tampa, FL.</figcaption></figure><p>In 2007, deteriorating conditions in Iraq called for a change in strategy, and President George W. Bush chose General Petraeus to lead a renewed effort, designated “the Surge.” The president, with the Senate’s unanimous approval, promoted Petraeus to four-star general and named him commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq. The year that followed saw a marked reduction in sectarian violence and in attacks on U.S. personnel. Professional Iraqi security forces took the place of irregular Shiite militias in Baghdad, while tribal leaders in Sunni-dominated areas turned against Al-Qaeda terrorists who had attempted to build bases there. Petraeus’s skillful turnaround of an apparently hopeless situation made him the most admired leader in the United States military, one who enjoyed enthusiastic support from political leaders of both parties. His awards and decorations include four awards of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, three awards of the Distinguished Service Medal, the Bronze Star Medal for valor, and the State Department Distinguished Service Award.</p> <figure id="attachment_2622" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-2622 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-010.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-2622 size-full lazyload" alt="Director of the CIA David Petraeus addresses the Academy of Achievement on the opening evening of the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. The dinner was held at the Hay-Adams Hotel overlooking the White House and Washington Monument. (© Academy of Achievement)" width="2280" height="1824" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-010.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-010-380x304.jpg 380w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-010-760x608.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-010.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Director of the CIA David Petraeus addresses the American Academy of Achievement on the opening evening of the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. The dinner was held at the Hay-Adams Hotel.</figcaption></figure><p>He assumed leadership of the United States Central Command in 2008, taking responsibility for all U.S. military operations in the Middle East, until President Barack Obama tapped him to directly lead U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. With the end of the U.S. combat role in Iraq and the winding down of military involvement in Afghanistan, President Obama called on Petraeus to serve in a civilian capacity for the first time. After 37 years of uniformed service, General Petraeus retired from the U.S. Army, and with the unanimous approval of the United States Senate, assumed duties as the 20th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. As CIA Director, General Petraeus was responsible for human intelligence, covert operations, counterintelligence, relations with foreign intelligence services, and open source collection programs on behalf of the entire intelligence community and the U.S. government. In November 2012, Petraeus admitted to an extramarital affair with a female journalist, and resigned his position at the CIA. Petraeus publicly shared his disappointment in his own private conduct, but by resigning immediately, he spared the agency and the nation the embarrassment and distraction of a prolonged scandal. After leaving office, he pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information in connection with the affair.</p> <p>Since leaving public life, David Petraeus has accepted a visiting professorship at the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York and an endowed professorship at the University of Southern California. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. A partner at the investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P., he chairs the firm’s KKR Global Institute, which researches investment opportunities in new locations.</p> <figure id="attachment_42716" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-42716 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp2280-LondonSummit_1177.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-42716 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp2280-LondonSummit_1177.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp2280-LondonSummit_1177-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp2280-LondonSummit_1177-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp2280-LondonSummit_1177.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">October 2017: Awards Council member General David Petraeus addresses the Academy delegates and members before dinner in the Long Library at historic Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England, during the 52nd annual International Achievement Summit. He discussed the special relationship between the United States and Britain and focused on the role played by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the son of an American mother, in forging a wartime alliance, through his collaboration with President Franklin Roosevelt and General Dwight Eisenhower.</figcaption></figure><p>Today, David and Holly Petraeus maintain homes in Northern Virginia and Springfield, New Hampshire. Their son, Stephen, is a United States Army officer who has served with an airborne infantry combat team in Afghanistan. The tradition of military service runs strong in the Petraeus family. Holly Petraeus is the not only the daughter, wife, sister and mother of U.S. army officers; her grandfather and great-grandfather also served. She has made a personal cause of assuring that military families are fairly treated by their nation’s financial services industry. For many years, she taught financial education classes to service members and their families. After serving as director of the federal government’s Better Business Bureau Military Line, Holly Petraeus accepted an appointment by President Obama in 2011 to direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office of Servicemember Affairs. Her office promotes financial education and combats the predatory lending practices that pose a special risk to military families. In addition to his professional and academic commitments, David Petraeus serves on the boards of numerous nonprofits, including American Corporate Partners, which connects Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to business professionals for career guidance.</p></body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 2012 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.military-soldier">Military/Soldier</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> November 7, 1952 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p class="inputTextFirst">Hailed as the “the world’s leading expert in counterinsurgency warfare,” General David Petraeus capped a brilliant career in the United States Army by leading the campaigns that turned the tide of battle in both Iraq and Afghanistan.</p> <p class="inputText">A graduate of West Point with a doctorate from Princeton, Petraeus held leadership positions in airborne, mechanized, and air assault infantry units in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. When President George W. Bush decided to change strategy in Iraq, he chose General Petraeus to lead the surge, turning around a seemingly hopeless situation. President Barack Obama called on him to lead U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.</p> <p class="inputText">After 37 years of uniformed service, General Petraeus won the unanimous approval of the United States Senate to become the 20th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Now retired from public life, he remains a sought-after authority on strategic leadership.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/wdquRktzOkQ?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=4742&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.01_16_13_21.Still019-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.01_16_13_21.Still019-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">Professor of War</h2> <div class="sans-2">San Francisco, California</div> <div class="sans-2">September 13, 2014</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What do you think President Bush saw in you that caused him to pluck you out of the chain of command to lead the Surge in Iraq?</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: I’d only met him a few times at that point in time. I hosted him for a full day at Fort Campbell, Kentucky when I was a two-star, after I came home from the first year in Iraq as the commander of the 101st Airborne Division for the fight to Baghdad, and then the subsequent beginning of the counterinsurgency campaign in Mosul. Indeed, I’d like to think our division had some unique approaches, but they didn’t all survive, unfortunately. The reconciliation issue in particular was not supported in Baghdad, and it was reversed after we left.</span></p> <p class="p4"><span class="s2"><b>But you did have some success, at least for a time.</b></span></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/ECx1bn9R3Vw?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=117&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.01_11_47_09.Still007-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.01_11_47_09.Still007-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">David Petraeus: We had some pretty good period there, and it was seen as an area that, I guess, was what “right” looks like, if you will. He came out to see us and that was a wonderful day, actually. I was really impressed by the President and the amount of time that he spent. I think we’d probably lost 60 soldiers at that point at Fort Campbell, not just in the 101st, but some also in the 160 Special Ops Aviation, Special Forces Group. The family members of each of those soldiers were positioned all the way around in the museum at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He spent a full five minutes, I think, with every single one of them. He was so far off schedule it wasn’t funny. I was sent back, of course, fairly soon actually after getting home, to establish the so-called “Train and Equip” mission to try to develop, train — really recruit, train, equip — develop all the forces of the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defense, including the ministries themselves ultimately. Not to mention building all the infrastructure that they need and all the doctrine, every piece of a modern military and, again, police force in all respects. It was a gargantuan task. That was a 15-and-a-half month tour.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I had actually been sent back to do an assessment of the Iraqi Security Forces shortly after I got home as a two-star. I came back and reported to Secretary Rumsfeld. Then essentially his reward for that was, “Okay, go over there and implement what it is you say you need to do.” So we did, and we made a great deal of progress, although this was an effort — it was truly Sisyphean in some respects, and it really was pushing a stone up the hill.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/dzFSCw-K9p0?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.01_07_57_16.Still017-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.01_07_57_16.Still017-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">He did know that we had written the <em>Counterinsurgency Field Manual</em> while I was at Leavenworth after coming back. He (President Bush) called me in after I came back as a three-star. I remember I gave him some fairly frank assessments and I’d written something up. I hadn’t cleared it with the Secretary or the Chairman. And you know, I’m just a three-star at this point, and you got all the National Security team there in the Oval Office. But then he starts asking, “So what are your takeaways? What are your conclusions? What about this guy? What about that guy?” And it was a wonderful conversation. Perhaps he remembered that later on. I think he actually took me out and did a Rose Garden (event) saying thank you, or maybe in the Oval Office as well. But the truth is, what happened I think is, as the situation in Iraq spiraled downward so seriously — in 2006 in particular, after the bombing of this very sacred Shia shrine north of Baghdad,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>it just unleashed sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni, and it played — and Al Qaeda wanted that to happen. They wanted to be a catalyst for civil war, frankly, to tear the country apart. It was very, very serious. He had different individuals in to advise him. They did not always agree on the way forward, frankly. Some said there should be a surge. Others said you should hand it off quicker and get out. Others said put more Special Forces in, that’ll solve it. But apparently, they typically agreed that what he also should do is actually send me over there, back over there. So that’s what happened, obviously.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I remember going to see him after we had the confirmation hearing, and I think I gave him a signed copy of the <em>Counterinsurgency</em> <em>Field Manual</em>. I said, “Well, this is what we’re going to implement.” And he said, “Yeah, yeah.” And he said, “I guess we’re doubling down, General.” And I said, “Mr. President, we’re not ‘doubling down’ in the military. We’re going ‘all in,’ and we need all the rest of the government to go all in as well.” And he really pushed that.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/F5Nd_R3lWhM?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.01_09_01_17.Still018-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.01_09_01_17.Still018-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">He had such unbelievable focus on the effort in Iraq. The week in Washington, every Monday morning, began at 7:30 with the entire National Security Team around the Situation Room table, the President at the head and Ambassador Ryan Crocker and me on a video teleconference, for an entire hour. It started promptly on time. It ended on time. It was all dialogue between him and us, and occasionally someone else could chime in. It was not asking the people around the table how they thought it was going. It was going directly to the two of us that were most charged now. They had the Central Command Commander would be on video teleconference, and of course the Chairman and the Secretary and the Secretary of State and others were all there. But again, it was dialogue between the three of us generally, and it was quite an extraordinary degree of focus. In fact, then the Secretary of Defense would have one with me the next day. And then most weeks, Prime Minister Maliki had one with the President that Ambassador Crocker and I would also attend. So there was a huge amount of focus from the White House, from the President, and that obviously galvanized all of the Executive Branch to try to do as much as they could to retrieve what was a very, very desperate situation.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_2618" style="width: 2172px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-2618 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-006.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-2618 size-full lazyload" alt="General David Petraeus meets with President George W. Bush at the White House in January 2007, shortly before assuming command of the Multi-National Force in Iraq. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)" width="2172" height="1816" data-sizes="(max-width: 2172px) 100vw, 2172px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-006.jpg 2172w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-006-380x318.jpg 380w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-006-760x635.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-006.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">General David Petraeus meets with President George W. Bush at the White House in January 2007, shortly before assuming command of the Multi-National Force in Iraq. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>There was a sense of fearlessness about what you were proposing with the Surge in Iraq, a very dramatic change in strategy. Can you talk about those ideas and changes?</b></span></p> <p class="p2"><span class="s2">David Petraeus: Maybe here I should talk about strategic leadership because, arguably, I’d done strategic leadership before. But this is really strategic leadership. A definition of strategic leadership would be that you are leading a very large organization, and you are the one charting the course for it. You have quite a degree of latitude. So this is a CEO kind of position. We ultimately had 165,000 Americans on the ground there, almost that number of contractors, and many more on aircraft carriers, or in bases in the Gulf states supporting us as well. So it was an enormous effort.</span></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/6jZ8hksNhwQ?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.01_04_18_21.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.01_04_18_21.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>A strategic leader has four tasks, in my view. The first is to get the big ideas right. As I mentioned earlier, those don’t come easy. It has to be the result of a lot of thinking, inclusive discussions, seminars, conferences, whatever it may be. But you’ve got to get them right. If you don’t get them right, if you don’t get the strategy right, all else is for naught here. Everything else you’re building then is on a foundation of sand. The second task is to communicate those big ideas effectively throughout the breadth and depth of the organization. And you do this in every way possible. The third task is to oversee the implementation of them, because of course, you’re not the one implementing them directly. That’s many levels below you. But you certainly have to go out and see for yourself. You have to have metrics. You have to have a battle rhythm. You have to have a whole series of tasks that you perform yourself, campaign plan reviews and on and on. It’s quite exhaustive. And then the fourth task is you have to identify how those big ideas need to be refined. It’s the process of identifying lessons, if you will. But lessons aren’t learned until they’re actually incorporated in the documents, the campaign plan, the policies, the procedures, the SOPs — whatever — that are the mechanism for conveying the big ideas. In Iraq, the big ideas were, in most cases, a complete shift from what it was that we were doing before. The biggest of the big ideas was that the human train was a decisive train, <i>i.e.</i>, the people are the prize. You have to secure the people. And you can only secure the people by living with them, by locating your bases where they live in their neighborhood. So at a time when we were retreating to big bases, concentrating all our forces on big bases and going out and driving around a few times a day and then be back at the big base to handoff quicker to the Iraqis, we reversed that. We ultimately established, for example, we had to fight for and establish 77 additional locations at which our troopers were located — together with Iraqis typically — 77 just in the Greater Baghdad divisional area.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p class="p1">Another idea concerned the handoff to the Iraqis. I stopped the transition to the Iraqis. They could not handle the level of violence. In fact, their units had deteriorated. Not only had they not gotten better, they had actually gone downhill as violence had gone up. So we stopped the transition to them. In some cases, we reversed it. We took units offline. We had the government replace commanders wholesale in many cases. We had to take every one of the brigades of the two police divisions offline, one after the other, and go through a 30-day retraining program and going back into the fight.</p> <figure id="attachment_2626" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-2626 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-016.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-2626 size-full lazyload" alt="General David Petraeus (front left) joins U.S. soldiers in the village of Jadihah, Iraq, north of Baghdad in 2007. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)" width="2280" height="1588" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-016.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-016-380x265.jpg 380w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-016-760x529.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-016.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">General David Petraeus joins U.S. soldiers in the village of Jadihah, Iraq, north of Baghdad in 2007. (AP Images)</figcaption></figure></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/Jp-XrOL8VCI?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=85&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.00_59_59_19.Still016-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.00_59_59_19.Still016-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">The third big idea was that you can’t kill or capture your way out of an industrial strength insurgency, and that’s what we faced. Ultimately, we reconciled with some 80- to 85,000 Sunni insurgents alone, just to give you a sense of the scale. And some 25,000 Shia militia extremists as well. This is industrial strength. We’d been killing or capturing every night.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Joint Special Operations Command — Admiral McRaven’s force subsequently, it was General McChrystal at the time — they were doing ten to 15 operations a night, and the situation in some of the areas was getting worse, not better. So it’s not enough to go out and do kinetic operations. What you have to do is persuade as many as possible of those who are part of the problem to become part of the solution, to give them an incentive to support the new Iraq, rather than to continue to oppose. And we did. And that was reconciliation, ultimately was “the Awakening.” Sunni Arabs decided that they would throw off Al Qaeda if we could secure them, to be sure. Then they joined in and helped the security. Then we got them incorporated as “Sons of Iraq” and all the rest. But this was, again, a huge change. There was a tiny bit of reconciliation that was going on, but it wasn’t developing at all the way it was. I made my first trip to see that, in fact, within three days of taking command. And I said, “This is what we’re going to do and let’s get on with it.”</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/0TeQcyG_oQA?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=89&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.00_44_04_16.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.00_44_04_16.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">You have irreconcilables. You can identify them now even more than before. So General McChrystal’s Joint Special Operations Command or counterterrorist forces — later Admiral McRaven’s — they amped up their operations even more. Then we had detainees. We had, when I took command, probably 18- to 19,000 detainees, and we were releasing them because of pressure from the Iraqi government. And I said, “Stop! We are not going to release any more detainees until we have a program for rehabilitating them, for preparing them to go back into society. But we can’t even do that until we identify who the hardcore detainees are who are corrupting all the others and who have turned our detention facilities into a terrorist training university.” So we stopped that. Huge pressure from the Iraqi government, who wanted their sons back, regardless of what they’d done, the tribes at least. And it ultimately was 27,000 before we started actually the process. But we had a review process, rehabilitation, job training, basic skills and a variety of other tasks. But we had to go into these enclosures and find the most extreme, pull them out. By the way, you do that unarmed, because you never take a weapon into a detention facility. These are open. There’s 700 to 800 detainees in one of these enclosures. All very humane, very good food, health care and everything else, but very, very challenging mission for our military police.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/VZmsDo0WOp8?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.00_42_53_07.Still004-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.00_42_53_07.Still004-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I changed the mission statement, and the first piece of our campaign plan within that first week. I knew what I needed to do. I didn’t need to go through a process of — you know, I’d been in Iraq for two-and-a-half years at that point in time and had studied it when I was not there and worked out these ideas for counterinsurgency. And I started communicating them — the second task — the very first day, right after taking the colors, if you will, and becoming the commander in your first change of command remarks. And that’s where the focus is, on securing the people. It can only be done by living with them, not by consolidating on big bases. Then I gathered the commanders together who were at the change of command, of course, and talked to them about what we were going to do. Put out a letter to all of our troopers on the very first day — the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and civilians of Multi-National Force Iraq. It went on and on from there. Then, ultimately, we revised the whole campaign plan and <i>et cetera</i> and <i>et cetera</i>. Then the overseeing the implementation. We had to work metrics very hard. It took six months before I was willing to actually release how we reached the metrics, how we arrived at them, what were the definitions of the terms and all the rest of that. To sit down with <i>The New York Times</i>, <i>The Washington Post</i>, the major networks, and go through them, so you can tell “Are we winning or are we losing?” “Are we making progress…” is a better way actually of saying it, “… or are we not?” Because I don’t think you win these kinds of endeavors.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_2628" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-2628 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-018.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-2628 size-full lazyload" alt="President and Commander in Chief Barack Obama smiles approvingly as Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, introduces him to a crowd of some 3,500 service members and civilian in a hangar at Bagram Air Base. The president made a surprise visit to the base, where he visited wounded troops in the base hospital and pinned five with Purple Hearts before meeting with Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. Obama thanked service members for their dedication and sacrifices, noting that important progress is being made. (Photo by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Lorie Jewell) (Released)" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-018.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-018-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-018-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-018.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">President Obama smiles approvingly as Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, introduces him to a crowd of some 3,500 service members and civilians in a hangar at Bagram Air Base. The president made a surprise visit to the base, where he visited wounded troops in the base hospital and pinned five with Purple Hearts before meeting with Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. Obama thanked service members for their dedication and sacrifices, noting that progress is still being made.</figcaption></figure></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/JRgQbC2oLp8?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=103&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.00_46_25_15.Still005-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Petraeus-David-2014-MasterEdit.00_46_25_15.Still005-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="p1">There’s no taking the hill, planting the flag, and going home to a victory parade. Rather, you drive the level of violence down. But you have to maintain focus. And, in fact, tragically, we saw what happened when that focus was not maintained over the past two-and-a-half or so years. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Maliki undid a lot of what we’d done together to bring the fabric of society back together, Sunni back with Shia, by going after Sunni political figures, by putting down peaceful demonstrations very violently, and essentially giving the Sunni Arabs once again a stake in the failure of the new Iraq, rather than a stake in its success. And then we had a formal “lessons learned” process. We had the Center for Army Lessons Learned teams with our units. We had the Asymmetric Warfare Group, very formal, special operators and serving special operators out with units. We had the Joint Lessons Learned team. And every time I sat down with our commanders, whenever we had a commanders’ conference as part of overseeing the implementation, or a campaign plan review quarterly with the ambassador as well, we’d go through — everybody had to identify one or two lessons or best practices that were applicable to all. And then we’d work on actually tracking. Because again, a lesson isn’t learned when it’s identified. I actually used to joke and say the Center for Army Lessons Learned should be renamed. It should be the Center for Army Lessons Identified, because it’s not learned until they’re put into the doctrinal manuals, the instruction to our leaders, the collective training exercises or combat, whatever it may be.</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>We’d like to learn something now about your early life. Could you tell us about your dad? What did he do for a living?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: My dad was a Dutch merchant mariner who came to the United States when the Nazis overran Holland and his ship was at sea. They couldn’t obviously go back to Rotterdam, from which they’d sailed, and so they went into New York Harbor eventually. And virtually all of the crew signed on with the U.S. Merchant Marine, and that meant that they had a very long war. It was the service that had the highest per capita casualties in all of our military services. It was treated as part of the military at the time. The casualties were so high in fact that, although the United States could replace the ships — they were producing Liberty ships left and right — they actually couldn’t produce the crews. So very young officers ended up with very high responsibility. My father was actually the captain of a Liberty ship at the age of 29. They did a Murmansk run that took them to northern Russia. They lost a huge number of ships in the convoy. So it was very hazardous war for him. He ultimately then — he met my mother in Brooklyn during that time and they ultimately settled in the Hudson River Valley, about 50 miles north of New York City, in a little village called Cornwall-on-Hudson. It’s quintessential small town America, seven miles around Storm King Mountain from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. My dad ultimately left the sea because at that time they were expected to sail for 11 months straight and then get one month off. Like any good ship captain, he knew how to generate power. That’s what’s done, obviously, to power a ship. So a number of them all went into the booming industry of new electrical generation stations that were being created all over America as part of the post-war boom. He was an operating room engineer — supervisory engineer — at one of those, about ten miles from our house.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">My dad was really a crusty old Dutch sea captain at heart, even though by the time I was arrived in the world, if you will, he had already taken up his new career. His attitude was one of results, boy. And he was not a guy who looked kindly on excuses. I mean, he was a very loving father — and occasionally a bit of gruff love — but again, very devoted, as my mother was to both of their children. Extraordinarily so, in truth. I mean, there was nothing they would not do for either of us. But we had a sailboat the whole time that I was growing up. We actually had two for a while. I had a sailboat, about a 20-footer. It was not a trivial little Sunfish. It was a real sailing boat. And it was a great experience to do that. He was very supportive of, obviously, the academic endeavors, but also of various athletic endeavors. He taught me how to ski. He took me to games. We did all kinds of different activities. In fact, even around the house, we had… I mean, this is an incredible… it was a very small, little — again, small town America — house built right after World War II. But we had a high bar for doing pull-ups. We had a rope under a tree that you could climb. We had a pitcher’s mound and a backstop for baseball. We had a little croquet golf course with coffee cans in it. We had a croquet set. We had lawn darts. You know, there was every — we had a basketball backboard and net. And even in the basement, we were using little two-by-fours, we could play floor hockey, because I also skated and played hockey over the years. But eventually I settled in on soccer and on skiing, downhill skiing. I played both of those all the way through college.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>That sounds like boot camp at home.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: No, it was great fun actually. Some of this was just being creative. </span><span class="s1">We were just a sort of typical middle class family. We weren’t rolling in money. My mother was really focused at home. She did work at the local library part-time. But again, it was a household of modest means, but one that focused a great deal on school, on academics. And they both were very significant intellectuals. They both loved to read. In fact, the house was overflowing with books. My mother had, I think, at one point in time, three or four full sets of Dickens, for example, from secondhand bookstores. The joy in life for them was to go and — they had a big camper — and they’d go around the country. And if you found a secondhand bookstore on the way, that was a special, special day.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You went with them on these trips?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: Some, at a certain point in time. They really did a great deal of that after they retired as well. But when I was growing up, we would usually have one-week or maybe even two-week vacations a summer. And one of those would always end up at Boston. We would recreate the route that Paul Revere followed and visit the North Church, and we’d go to Lexington Green, and we’d go to Concord and “the rude bridge that arched the flood.” And we’d read all the stirring novels. “Here the embattled farmer stood and fired the shot heard ’round the world,” and all of that. If you fast forward some 50-some-odd years, I commissioned our son as a Second Lieutenant in the Infantry in the U.S. Army at the Minuteman Statue in Concord, right by the bridge. It was really a special moment.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>I believe you placed jump wings belonging to your father-in-law.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: Actually, we had done that before, because he went to jump school as a cadet. In fact, it was interesting, because I was back for what might have been the most emotionally-charged hearings that any military commander and diplomat — Ambassador Ryan Crocker — had in recent memory. These were the hearings of September 2007 on the surge. It was our first opportunity to report that we were actually making progress in the surge, although it had not been apparent back in Washington at that point in time. In fact, a vote to cut off funding for Iraq was only narrowly defeated by two votes. So that was an interesting moment. Then we went down to Fort Benning, Georgia for our son’s final jump. We were on the drop zone. Then we went to a Ranger graduation and I spoke at that. They had the ceremony to pin on jump wings, and I got to pin my father-in-law’s jump wings on him, which was a special moment.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>It certainly indicated that you had a visceral concept of what was at stake with American lives.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: Obviously I did. Command and combat is a fairly grinding endeavor. I occasionally would play with folks a little bit. They’d say, “What is it like to be the commander of the surge, to command all these forces in Iraq and these big missions?” And I’d say, “It’s the most unbelievably awesome experience that you can possibly imagine on a good day, but there aren’t many good days.”</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What books were important to you growing up or that you particularly liked?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: We had a lot of history books around. We had the Landmark series as you’re growing up. An awful lot of those were very attractive. And reading about the old frontiersmen, West Pointers, and so forth. And really growing up in a town — gosh, half the people on the newspaper route that I had. In those days, kids still delivered newspapers, and I had 40 or 50 customers or something. And half of them were either West Point graduates or employed at West Point. So it had a huge influence in our community. My math teachers in high school, one of them was a former professor of math at West Point. Our high school soccer coach had actually coached the West Point team when it won the national championship some couple of decades earlier, when he was a younger officer. He coached our team for a dollar a year, and we actually did win the championship in my senior year, which is sort of… That’s one of those “Glory Days” moments, that Bruce Springsteen sings about. It’s pretty extraordinary really. The whole town follows you to the game, follows the bus back. It was a real thrill.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>When did you see yourself in the military or at West Point?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: I guess it was a few years into high school or so, looking at the different options. To be candid, my mom was not all that enamored of the idea. She had gone to Oberlin. She was a very liberal arts kind of person. She saw this as a bit of a rough-and-tumble affair and wanted her son to have the — I don’t know, slightly perhaps more academic approach, whatever it may be, noting that West Point is typically assessed to be one of the top ten or 20 schools in America. So they were very proud, obviously, when I got an appointment to West Point and went there. They were there for the first day and many, many other times after that. But I think she had really wanted me to go to a small private liberal arts school. Colgate, or one of those kinds of colleges. I did consider those, and I applied to some of those and was accepted. But at the end of the day, there was something about those I knew who had been to West Point. If you really think about why people do what they do in life, it’s often that they want to “be like Mike,” if you will. You know, they see Michael Jordan. “I want to be like him.” You see Captain Carpenter, and he earns the Distinguished Service Cross in the battlefield in Vietnam, which I remembered delivering the newspaper that had his picture on it when he came back from that. He had married a local girl and so forth. Those that I knew who had gone to West Point, the graduates, those who were working there, it just seemed to be an awfully special place. And it is. It was and it is. I count myself very lucky to have gone down that course.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Did you feel a sense of patriotism at an early age? You mentioned following the trail of Paul Revere and visiting Lexington and Concord.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: Yeah, there’s a bit of this. There’s a certain romantic view of some of this as well, a slightly heroic image. </span><span class="s1">My mother also made me one summer read a book called <i>The Royal Road to Romance</i> by Richard Halliburton, which was about a Princeton graduate, one of the reasons I actually went to Princeton for graduate school. He was quite an adventurer. He was one of those who, when he got out of college, instead of going into the family financial business or whatever, he went on a tramp steamer and went to Europe and did all these different exploits. He swam the Hellespont like Byron. He ran the original marathon, although he got drunk in the final two miles. He climbed the Matterhorn by himself. Many of these were quite significant accomplishments in their day.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">When you raise your right hand and take the oath on the plain at West Point — noting that that’s pretty quickly dispelled and you get into the normal routine — Groundhog Day sets in pretty quickly. It does in any profession. Perhaps for those — the delegates at an Academy event — I used to note on occasion that even in the loftiest of positions — I mean, you could be the commander of the surge, a commander of Central Com, the Director of the CIA — there is a Groundhog Day syndrome that does set in. It doesn’t matter how high you are, you start to get into this, “Man, today is going to be just like yesterday, and tomorrow looks like it’s going to be as well.” Maybe different Congressional visitors, different press, different activities. In truth, it’s not, but you get into that. Particularly, frankly, in military and combat, because you’re going seven days a week. There’s very little time of your own at all. You read a couple of pages of a book each night before you fall asleep with the light still on. So it’s important, I think. I used to say that when this happens to you — the people with whom I was privileged to serve at the time or whatever — occasionally, you want to go on up to 30,000 feet and do a little out-of-body experience and look down at what you’re doing, and look down at the endeavor in which you’re playing a part, and realize how special that is. What a privilege that is to be serving a cause larger than self, a mission that really is important, not just to our country but to all of the coalition countries. And then get on back down and go to work.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>At West Point, you pursued a very elite academic strategy, which was the pre-med.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: Yes, it was. I really enjoyed the chemistry class that we had. I guess it was the first semester of second year or maybe the second semester of first year, but it was early on. I decided to take some more. Interestingly, the roommate that I had most of the time that I was there at West Point was doing pre-med. He did eventually become an Army doctor and served as a colonel. I really enjoyed those courses very much. This is a very competitive program. One percent of the class was allowed to compete to go to medical school. If you got into that one percent, which I think was nine people in the end, you were guaranteed a slot in the medical school. It has a very good program. And the Army took care of everything, so there was a great deal of interest in it. But in the latter part of the first semester of senior year, I realized I was about number five or so. You knew what everyone else’s grades were in those days. They were all posted.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I asked myself if I really had a calling to be a doctor or not, and I actually couldn’t answer in the affirmative, so I decided maybe I shouldn’t do that, because there’s a huge commitment attached to it. I thought it would be difficult if you actually get into it then and say, “Geez, why did I do this?” It was just because it was the highest mountain to climb academically. So I sort of had the peak in sight, but then I decided to seek the infantry and I enjoyed it very much. Again, there was an interesting mix. I always found in the Army, in fact, a very interesting mix between the intellectual and the physical. The infantry clearly had both of those. You can be literally out under a rucksack in field conditions one year, and you’re at graduate school at Princeton University the next. Or you’re writing speeches for the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO one year, and the next year you’re the Operations Officer for an infantry battalion right on the Iron Curtain. So I loved that mix back and forth and found it very, very stimulating.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Tell us about your training as a Ranger.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: We all wanted to go to Ranger School if you were an infantry lieutenant, or at least you should. I set my sights on that and tried to prepare as well as I could. Frankly, I was really in extraordinary physical condition when I went there. What was grinding to some really was not to me. It sort of plays to the strengths of a guy who can run and carry a rucksack and all the rest of the stuff. So that was a piece of cake. My Ranger buddy and I — who was a West Point classmate of mine — approached this as a very competitive endeavor. So we were the first ones through in the land navigation course. This is at night with everything else. Then you’re doing a lot of leadership stuff and leading patrols and helping others with that. It’s very, very demanding physically. In those days, you ended up with a final two-week period in the field in the swamps of Florida. You actually start in Georgia, you then go to the mountains of Georgia. We did it in January, which is a brutal time to be in Dahlonega, North Georgia. It’s quite a bit of altitude and there’s a lot of snow on the ground. It’s almost a physical survival kind of endeavor at certain points in time, if it starts to flirt with zero degrees and you’re out there day after day and the exposure starts to accumulate for a lot of people. The first-time pass rate, I think probably was below 50 percent, maybe even 40 percent in Winter Ranger (school). We ended up in the swamps, and you go two weeks where you have one meal a day. People lose 30-35 pounds in those days. Well, that nonsense was stopped. That’s just foolish physiologically. But you get so tired that you can fall asleep standing up. We literally had people that just started to have some form of delusions, and we had to put a sling rope on them, what you use for mountain climbing, which we always carried with us. We’d put a sling rope on them and we just pulled them through the swamps. You’re in water up to your thigh or waist a good bit of the time, even when you’re not actually in the rivers and doing river crossing or operations like that. So it’s very, very challenging. I was fortunate and had a couple of breaks, and I ended up number one in the class. There were three awards in those days, and I took all three of them. It was a nice day. Even though my wife didn’t recognize me. She thought I looked like somebody out of a refugee camp after having gone through this experience.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>One of those was the William O. Darby Award, wasn’t it?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: Yes, it was. They didn’t award that to every class. It was just when they thought they should, and they did that particular time.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You’ve experienced very demanding physical discipline, at West Point and as an Army Ranger. Would you also say there’s always been an intellectual component to your approach as a military leader?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: I think that’s an accurate depiction. I did always cherish, frankly, physical fitness activities, various sports. Frankly, competitions. In fact, we used to have a saying in many of the units which I served, “Life is a competitive endeavor.” There’s nothing more competitive, obviously, than combat. I had a captain walk in one time when I was a lieutenant colonel, a battalion commander. He was this incredibly inspirational company commander. He had a great sense of humor as well. He walked into the office and he said, “Sir, winners win stuff every now and then.” And I said, “That’s very profound, Fred. Thank you very much.” But he was exactly right. And we tried, we did our best. Now occasionally you have to compete to be the best team player you can be in a collective organization. So you want to compete fairly. You want to compete. When you don’t bring home the gold, you’ve got to be graceful in defeat as well as in victory. So there was always a physical piece to that. In fact, I just had a run along the water here in San Francisco, six miles — it was awesome — and hit the gym. There is something about that that I think is terrific. But there is the affinity for, I guess, the intellectual side of it, for the thinking side of it, for trying to identify the right big ideas. They may be new big ideas. They may be old big ideas. But it has to be the right strategy. It has to be the right approach. And I did put a fair amount into that.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">When I was a three-star commander out of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, it was the year that we did the <em>Counterinsurgency Field Manual</em>. We had all the pre-command course students there, so I would talk to them for 90 minutes each time. It was once a month. It was all the future battalion and brigade commanders, and their command sergeants major as well. I would ask them how many had written this command philosophy letter that everybody wrote. And, you know, all hands. And how some had done 20 drafts. And I used to say, “Tear it up. They’re meaningless.” You know, it was a big blow to them. “My God, tear up my command philosophy?” So one page usually — they’re all the same. It says “Mission first, troops always,” somewhere in there. Some are more eloquent than others. And I said, “Instead, focus on what the big five areas of focus are going to be for your unit. And don’t just identify them, then figure out what are the actual programs that will operationalize those areas of focus.” So if you say, again, physical fitness, which is a pretty good big five if you’re, say, an air assault or airborne infantry unit, as I was privileged to command. What does that mean? What are the standards? What’s the standard for a four-mile run? For various other events? How often do you road march? How do you earn excellence? What happens if someone is inadequate, is in a sense, deficient? What are the penalties? What are the rewards? What are the incentives? What are the various activities, the components? Oh, by the way, is it more than just sort of physical training? Is it also, perhaps, health? Smoking cessation is a big one that we used to focus on. No dipping was another one, believe it or not. It was a huge epidemic for a while.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>That’s fascinating.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: In infantry units, in particular. Use of alcohol and so forth. How do you, again, operationalize this, and spend time on that? That takes serious thinking and a huge amount of very, very hard work. It’s not easy. I’ve often said that big ideas don’t hit you on the head like Newton’s apple if you sit under the right tree. You have to really work at them. You get hit by a little seed of a big idea, and you involve as many people in it as you can. It’s an inclusive process. Then, like someone with clay, you shape it. You try it. You throw it at the wall and see if it sticks. But that’s how you ultimately arrive at good big ideas.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You had a meeting with General John Galvin when you were still in your twenties, and he talks about remembering you very well because you escorted him to the base outside Savannah. He had some changes in mind that he wanted to implement. Can you tell us about your response to those changes he had in mind?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: Actually, what he was trying to do was to develop his big ideas. He was going to be the Division Commander of the 24th Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia, where I’d been assigned for two-and-a-half years. I’d commanded a company, and then I was a Battalion Operations Officer, which is normally a position for a major, and my Battalion Commander wanted me to do it as a captain, with just about a year-and-a-half time in grade.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">So they were looking for an aide for the new Division Commander, and the one-star said that, “Here’s a nominee for you,” and so he picked me. So he arrives and he said, “I’m sort of thinking through. Do you have any thoughts on what I might do here?” And as only a young — I guess idealistic — captain can do when you’re very serious and earnest, I put a lot of work in this. I wrote a big memo that talked about big personnel changes in certain areas, some very significant different ways of doing business, if you will, than his predecessor had. And I remember he called me into the office and he said, “Are there any more copies of this?” I said, “No, sir.” This is back in the days of typewriters. And he said, “Good.” He said, “This is very, very good, but I don’t want it going out anywhere.” Ultimately, he actually took about every action that was in this. Again, some of these were very significant changes in personnel. And I’m not saying.. I mean, some of those were self-evident, I would assume, as well to him. But what it began was a relationship that was really quite extraordinary. I spent that year as his aide and it was a wonderful experience. He was very much a soldier-scholar — and ultimately, statesman as well — in his four-star assignments as the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Southern Command, all of Latin America, and then the NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. I worked for him again as a temporary duty Special Assistant in Panama, where the headquarters was for Southern Command, traveled with him all that summer. And then, when he was named the next Supreme Allied Commander, he requested that I be released from West Point a year early, where I was teaching, and go over there and spend this first year with him as a speechwriter. The truth is, we had a correspondence that continued forever. I might add, I am literally right now finalizing the foreword for a book — this will be his memoirs — <i>Memoirs of a Cold Warrior</i>.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">We’ve been doing it together, to a degree, and it just reminded me of what a joy it was to work for him. He was a speechwriter as well, earlier in his life. He was an English professor. He had written three books. He was really quite an extraordinary individual. He was highly decorated on the battlefield in Vietnam, but was also known for very calm forthright responses to senior officers, one of which got him fired and he still survived.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What was that?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: It was a case where a very senior commander came in after a battle. He (Galvin) was a major, and the senior commander said, “I see all these — it looks like about this number of bodies.” And the major said, “Sir, actually, it’s not that many.” And he stuck to that and he was reassigned. God bless him. He was a very — again, a very low ego — but there were moments where he could be very, very determined in a very forthright way. I saw this during the years when he was the Supreme Allied Commander in particular. It was quite an experience to be, to a degree, at his right hand. I might add, when I took that job I said, “There are conditions for me to take it.” Again, only a major could dream up conditions for working for the Supreme Allied Commander. But I told his Executive Officer, “Brigadier General,” I said, “I have to hear the speech if I write it. So I have to travel with him. I have to be in the car with him on the way to the speech. I know him personally. I know what it takes to get him fired up if it’s been a really long day. I know how to get him focused, get him in the zone, and all the rest of this stuff. And I don’t want someone else in there, and then he arrives in the wrong sort of frame of mind and not in that zone.” And then I said, “We have to get some computers and automation.” The NATO headquarters was way behind the times at that moment and that was an easy one. But it was a great experience and it continued for years and years. And in a day when people sent correspondence back and forth, we had sent two- and three-page, single-spaced letters to each other every couple of weeks, really. He was a great correspondent. He was a fabulous mentor. He was very generous with his time. He was wonderfully considerate of others. He had a wry sense of humor, and he could see things in other people, and then we’d compare notes afterwards. We’d be bumping along the trail in Fort Stewart, Georgia there, going on an exercise and quoting Kipling’s “Tommy” to each other.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_2617" style="width: 2178px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="wp-image-2617 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-005.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-2617 size-full lazyload" alt="NATO Commander John R. Galvin holds a press conference in Boeblingen, Germany in 1990. General Galvin was a significant friend and mentor to the young David Petraeus. (AP Photo/Thomas Kienzle)" width="2178" height="2999" data-sizes="(max-width: 2178px) 100vw, 2178px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-005.jpg 2178w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-005-276x380.jpg 276w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-005-552x760.jpg 552w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-005.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">NATO Commander John R. Galvin holds a press conference in Boeblingen, Germany in 1990. General Galvin was a significant friend and mentor to the young David Petraeus. (AP Photo/Thomas Kienzle)</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Would you say General Galvin was the most important influence in your life and career?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"> David Petraeus: General Galvin was a huge influence. He was, I think, the most wonderful mentor anybody could have and certainly the most wonderful I had. And I had a lot of great ones over the years. I think about General Vuono and General Keane, General Shelton, General McNeill, all these. And then some below me, if you will. A command sergeant major or a first sergeant. I was very privileged to serve with some extraordinary individuals, some above me, some peers, some subordinates in the chain of command. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>One hallmark of your military career has been the ability to communicate well. Do you stress that in your teaching? The importance of being an effective communicator?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: Yes. This course that I teach now at the Honors College of the City University of New York, after two semesters, the students have all agreed that what they got out of it most of all, the most important skill or knowledge they got, was writing and briefing of all things. In fact, there’s a delegate here who I think is one of the only students who got an A plus in that course. They actually bring him back to teach the other students in the first session of each semester how to write a policy paper and how to give a Power Point briefing. We work that quite hard. In fact, some of the students get to do it more than once because they’re honor students. I don’t want them to have a grade that would be less than what we would expect of honor students, so they occasionally get a second or even a third chance. Although at a certain point you have to call them like they are.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_2620" style="width: 2148px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-2620 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-008.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-2620 size-full lazyload" alt="General David Petraeus salutes the troops during a 2011 change-of-command ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)" width="2148" height="1558" data-sizes="(max-width: 2148px) 100vw, 2148px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-008.jpg 2148w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-008-380x276.jpg 380w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-008-760x551.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-008.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">General David Petraeus salutes the troops during a 2011 change-of-command ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You did some very in-depth writing about Vietnam when you were in graduate school at Princeton. Could you tell us how looking at that conflict influenced your later thoughts about strategy?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: Sure. The dissertation was titled “The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam.” It looked at how Vietnam influenced the senior military leadership in giving advice to the President, Secretary of Defense and other civilian leaders, on the use of force. Whether you should or should not, and if so, how it should be applied. It was a very useful exercise in a host of different ways. One, it taught me more about how to communicate, how to write. I was very privileged to have as my senior dissertation adviser an individual who had been at the editorial page of <i>The New York Times</i>. He was a Harvard Rhodes Scholar, Oxford Ph.D. under George Kennan. He was the Head of Studies of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was the Editor of <i>Foreign Policy</i> magazine at the time that I was working with him at Princeton.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What was his name?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: Richard Ullman. An extraordinary individual. In fact, one who gave a tremendous amount of himself. We just had the memorial ceremony for him recently, and it was astonishing the number of people who were there overall. And then, second, what many of those people had achieved — national security advisers, trade representatives, generals, titans of the financial industry, you name it. All of us felt an enormous debt of gratitude to him for the time he gave to us. It’s something we’ve tried to do for others as well.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I specifically chose a topic that I thought would help me develop intellectual capital that I might use later on in my career. So I didn’t want to do something about the Peloponnesian War or the Revolutionary War or something. I wanted it to be a bit more current and to get at the most important issue that senior military leaders ever confront in their careers, if they confront it at all. And that is the issue of military advice on the use of force. So there I was, years later, working for the Supreme Allied Commander, working for the Chief of Staff of the Army, and ultimately as the Executive Officer for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when we were doing Bosnia, Kosovo, strikes against Saddam Hussein, strikes on Osama bin Laden and all the rest. And I could bring back up the lessons that I’d learned in looking at the lessons of Vietnam that military leaders took. What was the character of their advice? What was it that again led to that advice? What were the factors on which they drew? When it came time, when I was the one actually offering a recommendation and options to two different Presidents in two different wars, I found that a very, very useful study.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">T</span><span class="s1">he job of a military commander, in combat in the field in particular, is to provide the President his best professional military advice based on his understanding of the mission that he’s developed with the President in that context, in those conditions, in that battlefield, informed by an awareness of the issues with which the President has to deal that the commander doesn’t have to deal with directly. So you know, you have to acknowledge there are national politics, Congressional politics, coalition politics, fiscal deficits, strain on the force, programs, you name it. But at the end of the day, that advice is based on — is driven by — the facts on the ground. There was a moment where — and I reminded each President of this at some key moments — in one moment, I did not change my recommendation after several meetings, to the surprise of some of those in the room who were all changing or at least agreeing to a new forthcoming decision. It didn’t mean that I didn’t support the decision fully, publicly, and so forth. But it did mean that my recommendation was unchanged. That was, at least to me, an issue of integrity.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>In some circles there was an attitude that, “We just got out of Vietnam sooner than we should have because of popular opinion.” Is that what you found?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: There were a lot of different theories. A lot of different handy conclusions, if you will. The “stab in the back,” that if it weren’t for the press or the civilian leadership, we would have won. When perhaps, in truth, it might have been that we didn’t have the right strategy at the right time. Really, it went on for quite a long time with a very high level of casualties.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">There were a lot of lessons out of Vietnam and, as I mentioned, I tried to draw on those and particularly with this very, very important one, about when it really comes down to it, and you’re sitting at the Situation Room in the West Wing, and the eyes go to you and you’re the commander of that particular theater. That’s a fairly big moment. It helps if you’ve thought it through, if you have an intellectual construct for what your responsibilities are. Because I’ve seen others do differently. I had, one time, someone above me who, rather than focusing on the military advice in commenting on what I had recommended right before him, said, “Well, I’m not sure Congress will buy this,” or something like that. The President’s response was, “Let me worry about Congress. What do you think of the military aspects of this?” And that was exactly right.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>That brings up a more difficult question. How do you deal with officers — subordinates — who are not able to perform as you would wish? You’ve given some very demanding assignments, and not everybody is up to them.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: We had some units that took very, very tough losses and very tough casualties.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>How do you deal with that?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: There was a unit in Baghdad, for example, that I decided needed to be moved from the location in which it was positioned because it just couldn’t take any more of that level of combat. And so what we did — and you don’t — I’ve never been one who believes in public executions, if you will. You know, public firings. I’ve always thought that you ought to try to allow a person to have as much dignity and respect as is possible, even if, frankly, you’re replacing the individual, or clearly recognize that this individual should not progress further. But there’s no reason, I don’t think, to be harsh in that kind of activity. There’s no reason you can’t try to make the individual — at least allow them to retain as much of his own dignity, and self-respect as well, as is possible. So we did what — in that case, we did a battlefield geometry re-examination, and we decided we’d shift some units around, and it was part of a big shift. As opposed to saying, “This unit can’t take it anymore.”</span></p> <figure id="attachment_2613" style="width: 2000px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-2613 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-001.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-2613 size-full lazyload" alt="Iraq while appearing before a joint hearing of the House Armed Services Committee and House Foreign Relations Committee, Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)" width="2000" height="1204" data-sizes="(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-001.jpg 2000w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-001-380x229.jpg 380w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-001-760x458.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-001.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">General David Petraeus testifies on the future course of the war in Iraq while appearing before a joint hearing of the House Armed Services Committee and House Foreign Relations Committee, September 10, 2007, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>It seems like executing these ideas requires not only discipline, but creativity, and a sense of trust in yourself. Is that so?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: Yes, but you have to be careful not to take that too far. You can’t trust yourself to the point where you think you’re infallible. I’ve tried to work on that pretty hard. </span><span class="s1">You’ve got to try to keep your ego in check. It can lead you down the wrong path at times. Again, you are constantly looking… and, of course, if you get sufficiently senior, folks tend to say, “Yes, sir,” not “Excuse me, have you really thought about this?” So you also actually have to try to foster a command climate — a culture, if you will — in your collective unit. That is one that welcomes people being forthright, and you’re not committing professional suicide if you raise your hand and challenge the boss. It’s okay to say, “Emperor, you know, you’re scantily clothed today intellectually.” That’s very, very important to do. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Galvin did this amazingly well. Galvin used to have me do a monthly performance evaluation of him. I mean, I’m a young captain, mid-rank captain, he’s a two-star general with extraordinary accomplishment already. And he said, “Every month I want you to give me an efficiency report, an evaluation.” And, again, as only a young captain can, you took it seriously. And I would grade every one of his speeches. I flunked him one time. We had a huge fight over this. I said, “Sir, you didn’t want to be there. You communicated that effectively to your audience and it was deficient.” Oh, my God! “But we all wish you could work this out.” And, again, you don’t normally — you do this in an affirmative way. In fact, I’m a believer in affirmative leadership. In other words, as opposed to saying, “Hey, you better get that report in on Monday close of business or I’ll have your backside.” Instead, you say, “Hey, I look forward to confirming your excellence on Monday. I know this is going to be a great report, and I’m really looking forward to seeing that on my desk and to going through it. It’s going to be terrific.” Now you’ve made the same point. “Get the report on my desk on Monday without fail.” But again, the kind of affirmative rather than negative leadership, I think, is very important. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">People constantly ask folks who have risen to a certain level about their leadership style. And so they say, “General…” or “Director, can you describe to me your leadership style?” And they presumably want to hear, “Well, I’m hard but fair,” or “I’m a really good guy,” or “I’m a…” whatever it may be. And I’d say, “Actually, I’ll tell you what my leadership style is for each of my direct reports and for the organization collectively, if you’ll tell me what style of leadership is required for each of those direct reports and the organization collectively to help each be all that he or she or it can be.” Because the truth is every organization’s different, every person’s different. I might need guidance twice a day. Someone else might need guidance twice a year. I need pats on the back every half-hour. Others don’t need anything. Some may need an application of a foot somewhere. But you have to understand each individual and your style with each individual is slightly differentiated. The leadership style that works, what I tried to do at the CIA, for example, is a very different leadership style than what works as a romping, stomping infantry platoon leader, where it’s literally, “Follow me,” and again, a fairly visceral experience. The Agency is a combination of very highly developed analytical folks and superb operators. Again, you have to be all things to all people if you’re going to lead effectively, I think.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You have to be a bit of a psychologist too, don’t you?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: You have to be that too. You have to do it for yourself as well, because you’ve got to motivate yourself. </span><span class="s1">You’ve got to get out of bed every day. As Bill McRaven says, “Success starts by making your bed in the morning.” Everything after that? So. Actually, for me it was dragging yourself out and getting that workout in, especially in combat. I’d get up at five or so and get a cup of coffee and go through overnight stuff that had come in, and reports and so forth from the battlefield intel and everything else. And then hop on a stationary bike that was actually in our complex usually, and pedal away for 45 or 60 minutes, if it wasn’t a run day. We tried to run a few days a week in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But it’s tough. You know, the problem in a combat situation in particular is, again, because it’s seven days a week and it really is sort of 24 hours a day, or it’s at least 18 hours a day. You’re on the edge of what you can physically handle. You’re right at it and you’re trying not to go over the edge, because if you go over the edge, you start falling asleep in meetings when people are briefing you. And that’s not a good place to be. You’re also not as coherent as you ought to be. I reached points during the fight to Baghdad where I couldn’t stay awake unless I stood up. And I mean, you’re the commander of the division. This is a foolish position to find yourself. In fact, God bless the command sergeant major. He’d sort of put his arm around your shoulder and say, “Sir, you’re not very good to any of us right now. Why don’t you let the one-star take this for a while and you go down and I’ll wake you up in five hours or something like that, or four hours.” But you’re right at the edge of what you can handle physically, and if you get a long phone call at night, or you get something and you don’t go back to bed, or you’re turning it over, you’re right at the edge of that. So for one thing, physical fitness helps you a great deal. But boy, it’s tough sometimes to contemplate that when the alarm clock goes off.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What do you see as the next great challenge militarily?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: We have a challenge in which we’re just embarking, of course, in Iraq and in Syria. The President, I felt, made a very compelling case for the threat that the Islamic State poses to the region, to our allies, and ultimately to us. I think he had a very convincing argument for the need to take action to combat that threat. And then he provided a good point of departure for the strategy that we will now follow. But this is going to be a different approach. I think it’s an approach that can achieve its goals in Iraq. Actually, I think we may be underestimating the capabilities of the Iraqi forces based on the reverses, the collapses that we saw in the north where they didn’t have good planning, competent leadership, and they didn’t have the enablers that we can provide: close air support, intelligence support, and so forth. Frankly, it’s going to be very challenging in Syria. This is going to be hugely difficult, and that’s where we’re going to need the next big ideas.</span></p> <figure id="attachment_2624" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-2624 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-012.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-2624 size-full lazyload" alt="U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta greets the Director of the CIA, David Petraeus, at the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington D.C. Petraeus succeeded Panetta as CIA Director when Panetta moved to the Pentagon. (© Academy of Achievement)" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-012.jpg 2280w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-012-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-012-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-012.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta greets the Director of the CIA, David Petraeus, at the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington D.C. Petraeus succeeded Panetta as CIA Director when Panetta moved to the Pentagon. (© Academy of Achievement)</figcaption></figure><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>You were in government service for a long time. Could you tell us a little about what you’ve been doing since you left?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">I served for 37 years in the U.S. Army. I then served as the Director of the CIA. Since leaving government in late 2012, I have become the Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, a visiting professor of public policy at the Honors College of the City University of New York, the Judge Whitney Professor at the University of Southern California, a non-resident Senior Fellow at Harvard University, and also the co-chairman of a Council on Foreign Relations task force on North America with Bob Zoellick, the former World Bank President.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>So you’re not retired.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: No, by no means retired.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>What is the course you teach at City University?</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: It’s “The Coming North American Decades.” And this is founded — you look at all the economies of the world, you then gradually focus in on North America. All the others are either slowing down, treading water, experiencing reverses. This has been what we call an “asynchronous recovery” for the world, and the United States is recovering at this point in time. I think it’s established now, and I think it’s gaining momentum. This is a result of the kind of spirit of innovativeness, inquiry. Our system, if you will, that has led to the energy revolution, the IT revolution — which enabled all the others — the manufacturing revolution. And now the beginning life sciences revolution. Our country is quite extraordinary. We face a lot of headwinds. We need those in Washington, the elected officials, to help us deal with the debt-to-GDP ratio, with the education reform, comprehensive immigration reform, infrastructure investment. A whole host of topics that need to be addressed that could turn into tailwinds to our economy, rather than impeding the progress that is going to be made because of these revolutions and because of the system and so forth. But we need that help there. Perhaps some of the delegates can at some point assume some of those positions and help us do that.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>The American Dream is still alive.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: It is very much so, yes.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Thank you, General, for your time and your service.</b></span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">David Petraeus: My pleasure.</span></p></body></html> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">General David H. Petraeus, USA Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>21 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0749646393211" title="Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus stops to pick up a young Iraqi boy when his convoy stopped in Karbala, Iraq, April 6, 2003. (MAI /Jason L. Austin)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus stops to pick up a young Iraqi boy when his convoy stopped in Karbala, Iraq, April 6, 2003. (MAI /Jason L. Austin)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-019.jpg" data-image-caption="Major General David H. Petraeus stops to pick up a young Iraqi boy when his convoy arrived in Karbala, Iraq, April 6, 2003. (MAI/Jason L. Austin)" data-image-copyright="Lieutenant General (LGEN) David Petraeus in Iraq" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-019-353x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-019-707x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.25" title="Academy members Admiral William McRaven, USN, General Philip Breedlove, USAF, General David Petraeus, USA." data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Academy members Admiral William McRaven, USN, General Philip Breedlove, USAF, General David Petraeus, USA.">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/400.jpg" data-image-caption="Academy members Admiral William McRaven, USN, General Philip Breedlove, USAF, and General David Petraeus, USA, at the 2014 Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies in San Francisco, California. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="400" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/400-304x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2015/12/400-608x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="President and Commander in Chief Barack Obama smiles approvingly as Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, introduces him to a crowd of some 3,500 service members and civilian in a hangar at Bagram Air Base. The president made a surprise visit to the base, where he visited wounded troops in the base hospital and pinned five with Purple Hearts before meeting with Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. Obama thanked service members for their dedication and sacrifices, noting that important progress is being made. (Photo by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Lorie Jewell) (Released)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - President and Commander in Chief Barack Obama smiles approvingly as Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, introduces him to a crowd of some 3,500 service members and civilian in a hangar at Bagram Air Base. The president made a surprise visit to the base, where he visited wounded troops in the base hospital and pinned five with Purple Hearts before meeting with Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. Obama thanked service members for their dedication and sacrifices, noting that important progress is being made. (Photo by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Lorie Jewell) (Released)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-018.jpg" data-image-caption="President and Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama smiles approvingly as General David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, introduces him to a crowd of some 3,500 service members and civilians in a hangar at Bagram Air Base. The president made a surprise visit to the base, where he saw wounded troops in the base hospital and pinned five with Purple Hearts before meeting with Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. Obama thanked service members for their dedication and sacrifices, noting that important progress is being made. (Photo by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Lorie Jewell) (Released)" data-image-copyright="101203-A-4584J-220" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-018-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-018-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2541254125413" title="General David H. Petraeus, USA Retired (Courtesy of General David H. Petraeus)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - General David H. Petraeus, USA Retired (Courtesy of General David H. Petraeus)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-017.jpg" data-image-caption="General David H. Petraeus, USA, Retired (Courtesy of General David H. Petraeus)" data-image-copyright="General David H. Petraeus, USA Retired (Courtesy of General David H. Petraeus)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-017-303x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-017-606x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.69605263157895" title="General David Petraeus (front left) joins U.S. soldiers in the village of Jadihah, Iraq, north of Baghdad in 2007. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - General David Petraeus (front left) joins U.S. soldiers in the village of Jadihah, Iraq, north of Baghdad in 2007. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-016.jpg" data-image-caption="General David Petraeus (front left) joins U.S. soldiers in the village of Jadihah, Iraq, north of Baghdad, in 2007. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)" data-image-copyright="David Petraeus" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-016-380x265.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-016-760x529.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="General David Petraeus, USA (Ret.), former Director of the CIA, addresses the Academy of Achievement during the 2014 International Achievement Summit in San Francisco. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - General David Petraeus, USA (Ret.), former Director of the CIA, addresses the Academy of Achievement during the 2014 International Achievement Summit in San Francisco. (© Academy of Achievement)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-015.jpg" data-image-caption="General David Petraeus, USA (Ret.), former Director of the CIA, addresses the Academy of Achievement during the 2014 International Achievement Summit in San Francisco. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="pet0-015" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-015-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-015-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta greets the Director of the CIA, David Petraeus, at the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington D.C. Petraeus succeeded Panetta as CIA Director when Panetta moved to the Pentagon. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta greets the Director of the CIA, David Petraeus, at the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington D.C. Petraeus succeeded Panetta as CIA Director when Panetta moved to the Pentagon. (© Academy of Achievement)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-012.jpg" data-image-caption="U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta greets the director of the CIA, David Petraeus, at the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. Petraeus succeeded Panetta as CIA director on September 6, 2011. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="pet0-012" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-012-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-012-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson presents David Petraeus with the Gold Medal of the Academy of Achievement during the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson presents David Petraeus with the Gold Medal of the Academy of Achievement during the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. (© Academy of Achievement)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-011.jpg" data-image-caption="Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson presents David Petraeus with the Gold Medal of the Academy of Achievement during the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="pet0-011" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-011-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-011-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.8" title="Director of the CIA David Petraeus addresses the Academy of Achievement on the opening evening of the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. The dinner was held at the Hay-Adams Hotel overlooking the White House and Washington Monument. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Director of the CIA David Petraeus addresses the Academy of Achievement on the opening evening of the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. The dinner was held at the Hay-Adams Hotel overlooking the White House and Washington Monument. (© Academy of Achievement)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-010.jpg" data-image-caption="Director of the CIA David Petraeus addresses the Academy of Achievement on the opening evening of the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. The dinner was held at the Hay-Adams Hotel overlooking the White House and Washington Monument. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="pet0-010" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-010-380x304.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-010-760x608.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.91184210526316" title="General David Petraeus and his wife Holly attend Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa, Florida, 2009. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - General David Petraeus and his wife Holly attend Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa, Florida, 2009. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-009.jpg" data-image-caption="General David Petraeus and his wife, Holly, attend Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa, Florida, 2009. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)" data-image-copyright="David Petraeus, Holly Petraeus" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-009-380x347.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-009-760x693.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.725" title="General David Petraeus salutes the troops during a 2011 change-of-command ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - General David Petraeus salutes the troops during a 2011 change-of-command ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-008.jpg" data-image-caption="General David Petraeus salutes the troops during a 2011 change-of-command ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)" data-image-copyright="David Petraeus" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-008-380x276.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-008-760x551.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0644257703081" title="General Davis Petraeus and his wife Holly enjoy a farewell tribute during the ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, marking the General's retirement from the U.S. Army in 2011. Shortly after announcing his retirement, the General was appointed Director of the CIA. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - General Davis Petraeus and his wife Holly enjoy a farewell tribute during the ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, marking the General's retirement from the U.S. Army in 2011. Shortly after announcing his retirement, the General was appointed Director of the CIA. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-007.jpg" data-image-caption="General Davis Petraeus and his wife, Holly, enjoy a farewell tribute during the ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, marking the General's retirement from the U.S. Army in 2011. Shortly after announcing his retirement, the General was appointed Director of the CIA. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)" data-image-copyright="Super Bowl XLIII Football" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-007-357x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-007-714x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.83552631578947" title="General David Petraeus meets with President George W. Bush at the White House in January 2007, shortly before assuming command of the Multi-National Force in Iraq. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - General David Petraeus meets with President George W. Bush at the White House in January 2007, shortly before assuming command of the Multi-National Force in Iraq. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-006.jpg" data-image-caption="General David Petraeus meets with President George W. Bush at the White House in January 2007, shortly before assuming command of the Multi-National Force in Iraq. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)" data-image-copyright="George W. Bush, David Petraeus" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-006-380x318.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-006-760x635.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3768115942029" title="NATO Commander John R. Galvin holds a press conference in Boeblingen, Germany in 1990. General Galvin was a significant friend and mentor to the young David Petraeus. (AP Photo/Thomas Kienzle)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - NATO Commander John R. Galvin holds a press conference in Boeblingen, Germany in 1990. General Galvin was a significant friend and mentor to the young David Petraeus. (AP Photo/Thomas Kienzle)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-005.jpg" data-image-caption="NATO Commander John R. Galvin holds a press conference in Boeblingen, Germany in 1990. General Galvin was a significant friend and mentor to the young David Petraeus. (AP Photo/Thomas Kienzle)" data-image-copyright="Germany General John R. Galvin" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-005-276x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-005-552x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.63552631578947" title="General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces of Iraq, at a 2007 press conference in Baghdad. (Associated Press)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces of Iraq, at a 2007 press conference in Baghdad. (Associated Press)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-004.jpg" data-image-caption="General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, at a 2007 press conference in Baghdad. (Associated Press)" data-image-copyright="David Petraeus" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-004-380x242.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-004-760x483.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66578947368421" title="Graduation Day at West Point, 1974: Cadet Captain David H. Petraeus celebrates with his fiancée, Holly Knowlton. (© Bettmann/Corbis)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Graduation Day at West Point, 1974: Cadet Captain David H. Petraeus celebrates with his fiancée, Holly Knowlton. (© Bettmann/Corbis)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-003.jpg" data-image-caption="Graduation Day at West Point, 1974: Cadet Captain David H. Petraeus celebrates with his fiancée, Holly Knowlton." data-image-copyright="David H. Petraeus at West Point" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-003-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-003-760x506.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.76447368421053" title="In 2004, General David Petraeus celebrates return of the 101st Airborne Division to Fort Campbell, Kentucky from combat duty in Iraq. (John Sommers II/Reuters/Corbis/)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - In 2004, General David Petraeus celebrates return of the 101st Airborne Division to Fort Campbell, Kentucky from combat duty in Iraq. (John Sommers II/Reuters/Corbis/)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-002.jpg" data-image-caption="In 2004, General David Petraeus celebrates return of the 101st Airborne Division to Fort Campbell, Kentucky from combat duty in Iraq. (John Sommers II/Reuters/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="File photo of David Petraeus, then commanding general of 101st Airborne Division, gesturing in Fort Campbell" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-002-380x291.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-002-760x581.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.60263157894737" title="Iraq while appearing before a joint hearing of the House Armed Services Committee and House Foreign Relations Committee, Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Iraq while appearing before a joint hearing of the House Armed Services Committee and House Foreign Relations Committee, Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-001.jpg" data-image-caption="General David Petraeus testifies on the future course of the war in Iraq while appearing before a joint hearing of the House Armed Services Committee and House Foreign Relations Committee, September 10, 2007, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)" data-image-copyright="David Petraeus" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-001-380x229.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pet0-001-760x458.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.71447368421053" title="Former CIA Director David Petraeus presents Admiral William McRaven with the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement at the 2014 International Achievement Summit in San Francisco. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Former CIA Director David Petraeus presents Admiral William McRaven with the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement at the 2014 International Achievement Summit in San Francisco. (© Academy of Achievement)">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/mcr0-005.jpg" data-image-caption="Former CIA Director David Petraeus presents Admiral William McRaven with the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement at the 2014 International Achievement Summit in San Francisco. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="mcr0-005" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/mcr0-005-380x271.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/mcr0-005-760x543.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp2280-LondonSummit_1177.jpg" data-image-caption="Retired General David Petraeus addresses delegates and members before dinner in the Long Library at Blenheim Palace during the 2017 International Achievement Summit." data-image-copyright="wp2280-LondonSummit_1177" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp2280-LondonSummit_1177-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp2280-LondonSummit_1177-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.25" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp-1974-Petraeus-Holly-and-General-David.jpg" data-image-caption="" data-image-copyright="wp-1974-Petraeus---Holly-and-General-David" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp-1974-Petraeus-Holly-and-General-David-304x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wp-1974-Petraeus-Holly-and-General-David-608x760.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Twitter"><i class="icon-icon_twitter-circle"></i></a></li>  <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-email" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever via Email"><i class="icon-icon_email-circle"></i></a></li> </ul> <time class="editorial-article__last-updated sans-6">This page last revised on February 5, 2018</time> <div class="sans-4"><a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/how-to-cite" target="_blank">How to cite this page</a></div> </footer> </div> <div class="container interview-related-achievers"> <hr class="m-t-3 m-b-3"/> <footer class="clearfix small-blocks text-xs-center"> <h3 class="m-b-3 serif-3">If you are inspired by this achiever, you might also enjoy:</h3> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever public-service experienced-war-firsthand illness-or-disability imprisonment-persecution racism-discrimination ambitious spiritual-religious join-the-military pursue-public-office work-in-medicine " data-year-inducted="1968" data-achiever-name="Inouye"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/inouye-Achiever-Profile-Square-760-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/inouye-Achiever-Profile-Square-760-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Daniel K. 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Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Congressional Gold Medal</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1991</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever public-service experienced-war-firsthand imprisonment-persecution resourceful join-the-military " data-year-inducted="1976" data-achiever-name="Stockdale"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-james-b-stockdale/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/stockdale-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/stockdale-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Medal of Honor</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1976</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> </footer> </div> </div> </article> <div class="modal image-modal fade" id="imageModal" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="imageModal" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="close-container"> <div class="close icon-icon_x" data-dismiss="modal" aria-label="Close"></div> </div> <div class="modal-dialog" role="document"> <div class="modal-content"> <div class="modal-body"> <figure class="image-modal__container"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <img class="image-modal__image" src="/web/20190102111132im_/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus" alt=""/>  <figcaption class="p-t-2 container"> <div class="image-modal__caption sans-2 text-white"></div>  </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </div> </main> </div> </div> <footer class="content-info main-footer bg-black"> <div class="container"> <div class="find-achiever" id="find-achiever-list"> <div class="form-group"> <input id="find-achiever-input" class="search js-focus" placeholder="Search for an achiever"/> <i class="icon-icon_chevron-down"></i> </div> <ul class="find-achiever-list list m-b-0 list-unstyled"> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/hank-aaron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hank Aaron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kareem-abdul-jabbar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lynsey-addario/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lynsey Addario</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/edward-albee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Albee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tenley-albright-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tenley Albright, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/svetlana-alexievich/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Svetlana Alexievich</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julie-andrews/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Julie Andrews</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-angelou/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Angelou</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-d-ballard-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert D. Ballard, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-roger-bannister-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Roger Bannister</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-banville/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Banville</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ehud-barak/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ehud Barak</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lee-r-berger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lee R. Berger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-timothy-berners-lee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Tim Berners-Lee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/yogi-berra/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Yogi Berra</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeffrey-p-bezos/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeffrey P. Bezos</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/benazir-bhutto/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benazir Bhutto</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/simone-biles/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Simone Biles</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/keith-l-black/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Keith L. Black, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elizabeth-blackburn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-boies-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Boies</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-c-bradlee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin C. Bradlee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sergey-brin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sergey Brin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carter-j-brown/"><span class="achiever-list-name">J. Carter Brown</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linda-buck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linda Buck, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-burnett/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Burnett</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-h-w-bush/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George H. W. Bush</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/susan-butcher/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Susan Butcher</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-cameron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Cameron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-s-carson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin S. Carson, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-carter/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Carter</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-cash/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Cash</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William J. Clinton</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/francis-s-collins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/denton-a-cooley/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Denton A. Cooley, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/francis-ford-coppola/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis Ford Coppola</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-dalio/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Dalio</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Olivia de Havilland</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/michael-e-debakey-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael E. DeBakey, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/michael-dell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael S. Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-herbert-donald-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-doubilet/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Doubilet</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-s-fauci-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leymah-gbowee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leymah Gbowee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-ghosn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Ghosn</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-john-gurdon/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir John Gurdon</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-b-schaller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George B. Schaller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/neil-sheehan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Neil Sheehan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-alan-shepard-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral Alan B. Shepard, Jr., USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ellen-johnson-sirleaf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ellen Johnson Sirleaf</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-slim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Slim Helú</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frederick-w-smith/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick W. Smith</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-sondheim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Sondheim</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonia-sotomayor/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonia Sotomayor</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wole-soyinka/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wole Soyinka</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/esperanza-spalding/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Esperanza Spalding</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/martha-stewart/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martha Stewart</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-james-b-stockdale/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/hilary-swank/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hilary Swank</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/amy-tan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Amy Tan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dame-kiri-te-kanawa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Kiri Te Kanawa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/edward-teller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Teller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/twyla-tharp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Twyla Tharp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wayne-thiebaud/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wayne Thiebaud</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lt-michael-e-thornton-usn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Michael E. Thornton, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/charles-h-townes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Charles H. Townes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-trimble/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Trimble</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ted-turner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert Edward (Ted) Turner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/desmond-tutu/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Archbishop Desmond Tutu</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-updike/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Updike</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gore Vidal</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/antonio-villaraigosa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Antonio Villaraigosa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lech-walesa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lech Walesa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/herschel-walker/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Herschel Walker</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-d-watson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James D. Watson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/andrew-weil-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Andrew Weil, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leslie-h-wexner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leslie H. Wexner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elie-wiesel/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Elie Wiesel</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/edward-o-wilson-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/oprah-winfrey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oprah Winfrey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tom-wolfe/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tom Wolfe</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-wooden/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Wooden</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/bob-woodward/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bob Woodward</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/shinya-yamanaka-m-d-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-chuck-yeager/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Chuck Yeager, USAF</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/andrew-young/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Andrew J. Young</span></a> </li> </ul> <div class="list__close"></div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 col-lg-3"> <ul id="menu-footer-menu-col-1" class="menu list-unstyled"><li class="menu-item menu-item-has-children menu-our-history"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/our-history/">Our History</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li class="menu-item menu-about-the-academy"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/our-history/">About the Academy</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-academy-patrons"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/our-history/patrons/">Academy Patrons</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-delegate-alumni"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190102111132/http://www.achievement.org/our-history/alumni/">Delegate Alumni</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-directors-our-team"><a 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