General shares deep, personal truths
‘Never shall I fail my comrades ... I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong, and morally straight, and I will shoulder more than my share of the task, whatever it may be, 100 per cent and then some.’ — Creed of the U.S. army Rangers
My Share of the Task: A Memoir
Gen. Stanley McChrystal Portfolio Hardcover $31.50
In the spring of 2010, on the way to a meeting at Task Force Kandahar headquarters in southern Afghanistan, a senior American official walked by the Canadian work area I shared with my military counterpart in communications and stopped in his tracks. Noticing that the two of us freely shared workspace and information, he indicated with some envy that this type of co-operation could never happen on the American side, given the rising animosity between civilian and military leadership at the time.
It is a good, if low-level example of what Gen. Stanley McChrystal refers to as a “deficit of trust” in his deeply personal new memoir, My Share of the Task.
It’s no surprise the controversial events that soured the relationship between the White House and the Pentagon, and the details that led to McChrystal’s 2010 resignation as commander of the all U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, have received much of the attention since the book’s release earlier this month.
McChrystal writes plainly of these events. He describes the tensions that arose from the decision-making over the approach and resources the U.S. would dedicate to Afghanistan in 2009 following the election of Barack Obama. He focuses on the “strategic assessment” document that was leaked and increased the pressure on the new president to deliver more resources to Afghanistan — and that irrevocably changed the level of trust between Obama and the Pentagon.
The tension, he writes, “appeared unintentional on both sides. But over time, the effects were costly.” Not the least of which for McChrystal. A Rolling Stone article entitled The Runaway General, in which his staff criticized Obama’s White House, eventually delivered the coup de grace. It didn’t really matter in the end whether the general had genuinely challenged the president: the perception, left unchecked, would become reality, and McChrystal was compelled to fall on his sword.
At the time, his own reaction to the abrupt end to a much-decorated military life was philosophical. It is retold in the book without rancour, even with a bit of sorrow.
“In the end,” he writes, “the rising mistrust was disappointing. As an experienced soldier, I knew that any perceptions of military incompetence or manipulation were unfounded, and I believed that the intentions of leaders in the White House and across the government were equally focused on what was best for the nation. I saw good people all trying to reach a positive outcome, but approaching the problem from different cultures and perspectives, often speaking with different vocabularies.”
The natural tension between the military and civilians is something Canadians who served in Afghanistan can appreciate. While the protracted public debate on the resources to be allocated to Afghanistan continued to grab headlines in the U.S., the outcome of that debate also mattered a great deal to Canada’s task force and the Canadian-led provincial reconstruction team sitting in Kandahar City.
McChrystal’s book also offers important insights into these issues and the challenges of executing a counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, an effort in which Canada played a large part.
Those who know McChrystal describe him as relentless, intelligent, imaginative, honest and unfailingly focused. He proved to be a friend to Canada, endorsing and paying attention to Canada’s counter-insurgency operations under the hand of Gen. Jon Vance.
Even before McChrystal arrived in Afghanistan in the spring 2009 to take command of all U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, chatter of mythic proportions about the man started in the bunkers and helicopter pads and over meals and bathroom sinks in Kandahar. It was obvious from the start there was something different about the new boss.
Unencumbered by past practices, he was known to sometimes use the phrase, “You can be a zealot or a martyr,” when telling people they needed to get on board with one of his new concepts. An elite U.S. army Ranger, he spent much of his career in the world of special forces. As commander of Joint Special Operations Command starting in 2003, he led Task Force 714 — made up of the Army’s elite commando unit and the Navy SEALS.
The bulk of his memoir chronicles how he transformed that traditionally insular force into one that was connected across government both culturally and operationally. Predictably, he faced critics from different parts of government who felt he was straying outside tradition by rewiring the task force to court other agencies.
“The network I sought to build needed not just physical breadth but also functional diversity,” he writes. “This required the participation of the U.S. government departments and agencies that were involved in counterterrorism, like State, Treasury, the CIA, and the FBI.”
He succeeded. What was in 2003, an ensemble of elite strike forces, by his departure was an organization of commandos connected with the intelligence community — an inclusive organization with unprecedented capability.
Ultimately, McChrystal’s intent was “to build a network to defeat a network” — al Qaeda. Specifically, it was centred on the hunt for al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarkari. McChrystal’s memoir describes in surprising detail TF-714’s pursuit of Zarkari and other high value targets.
In the end, the search for Zarkari produced a potent counter-terrorist tool. And while McChrystal does not draw this line in the book, the reader can’t help but conclude that the machine that was so crucial in killing Osama bin Laden was built by a man forced to resign.
It is also worth noting that the memoir presents the moral and ethical dilemmas soldiers and civilians alike must carefully consider in war zones. In other words, he wrings his hands more than the Hollywood stereotype of a hardened warrior would suggest — unlike the hit movie Zero Dark Thirty, which presents an overly simplistic view of special forces and the extent of interagency efforts in pursing high value targets, and worse, presents a blatantly false moral vacuum.
On the question of interrogations, for example, he clear and unequivocal about treatment of detainees, saying that any lapses in discipline by his soldiers would get them kicked out of the task force, he admits mistakes.
“As late as spring 2004, six months into my command, I believed our force needed the option of employing select, carefully controlled ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques, including sleep management,” he writes. “I was wrong. Although these techniques were rarely requested or used, by the summer of that year we got rid of them completely.”
McChrystal says that at every command he questioned whether he was up to the task and that at every decision he gave careful consideration to the unavoidable ethical and moral questions you’d expect from a strong leader. More than that, he presents it all with humility and some regret, being blunt with his own actions when his moral compass was off centre.
He recounts with empathy moments when personal philosophy and public policy, or standard operating procedure, intersect uncomfortably. Readers must brace as he occasionally describes gut-wrenching moments for Afghans and his soldiers.
Sparing no detail he describes an attack at an outpost in which four American soldiers are captured only to be found later that night in abandoned SUV’s. “The attackers had stripped the men of identification,” he writes, “but in the dark, flashlights illuminated the name of one of the perished Americans; a young lieutenant, less than two years out of West Point, had in his final moments scrawled his name into the film of Iraqi dust covering the SUV he had been left to die in.”
Throughout, McChrystal offers flashes of detail that give readers a raw sense of the reality on the ground. There is a sobering moment, for example, during a routine operation in Ramadi when his Rangers motion for gathered suspects to lie on the ground. A boy of four, the son of one of the suspects, mimicking his father, lays down, folds his small hands behind his head and turns his face towards his father.
He explains the reasoning behind his request of his soldiers to exercise “courageous restraint” when calling in air support to minimize the likelihood of civilian casualties. The use of air support received considerable scrutiny during his command but ultimately reduced civilian casualties and rare praise from Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
He continually struggled with the paradox faced by leaders when talking about their efforts with honesty to the public, while fighting the good fight and communicating the confidence required to the soldiers he leads. He also gives his honest prediction of the potential for success and states that he was given an achievable mission in Afghanistan.
That mission was cut short by his resignation. Still, the impact he had in his short year as overall commander led to a course correction in the mindset of those who were on ground from “impending gloom” to more focused involvement of Afghans at every level. It also led to more resources and a refocusing of the mission on training and expanding the Afghan security forces.
From the pursuit of high value targets with TF 714 to the prosecution of a counter-insurgency campaign, it is likely that the south — in Kandahar where the Canadians were set up — is where his comprehensive approach was most needed. It’s a loss for Canada that he didn’t get the chance to complete his share of the job.