The eight years of war since 9/11 had meant several Christmases away from home for most of these men. For soldiers at war, there's comforting continuity in the traditions and inevitability of Christmas.

Military leaders, many of whom were students of counterinsurgency, recognized the dangers of an incremental escalation and the historical lesson that 'trailing' an insurgency typically condemned counterinsurgents to failure.

We need a strong civil society where the connection between different people and groups is firm and vibrant, not brittle and divided.

Americans enjoy the exciting, cinematic vision of a squad of muscle-bound Goliath boasting Olympian speed, strength, and precision - a group whose collective success is the inevitable consequence of the individual strengths of its members and the masterful planning of a visionary commander.

Strength is leading when you just don't want to lead.

Our bureaucracy had excelled at compartmentalizing intelligence - we had a 'need to know' system - but by 2004, it was impossible to foresee what elements of our organization would and would not need to know a given piece of information.

Leadership contains certain elements of good management, but it requires that you inspire, that you build durable trust. For an organization to be not just good but to win, leadership means evoking participation larger than the job description, commitment deeper than any job contract's wording.

I was raised with traditional stories of leadership: Robert E. Lee, John Buford at Gettysburg. And I also was raised with personal examples of leadership. This was my father in Vietnam. And I was raised to believe that soldiers were strong and wise and brave and faithful; they didn't lie, cheat, steal, or abandon their comrades.

You're going to find out who your friends are. Anything that happens in your life is one of those challenges. It may not be at the level of celebrity, but everybody's going to travel that road.

By nature, I tended to trust people and was typically open and transparent... But such transparency would go astray when others saw us out of context or when I gave trust to those few who were unworthy of it.

Leaders must establish common purpose and build trust within an organization.

I came to believe that a leader isn't good because they're right; they're good because they're willing to learn and to trust.

Trust is an amazing commodity. The Afghan people often talk to me about having to develop trust in America, because they believe that we deserted them in 1990 and 1991.

I'm not good at eating small meals. Some people can sit down and be very disciplined. When I sit down at a meal, I sort of eat everything I can reach. I know medical people say that's exactly the wrong formula, but I've made it this far.

My dad was always the soldier I wanted to be.