RSS Feed MenuThere are a lot of officers out there who know their stuff on paper but putting it together under field conditions – even in training – is another thing altogether. Having leaders who are able to field and lead forces, against an enemy willing to stand and fight, calls for very unique leadership capabilities. This is something I know about. Gen. McChrystal proved himself in this department: as commander of Joint Special Operations Command he got al-Zarqawi’s scalp and nailed it to his lodge pole.
During spring of 2007, McChrystal led JSOC, attached forces and other government agencies in a series of highly effective covert operations in Iraq that coincided with the troop surge. McChrystal’s forces employed a concept dubbed “collaborative warfare”: a range of tools from signal intercepts to human intelligence to find, target, and kill insurgents. It has been suggested that it was this effort, not the well-publicized surge, that was responsible for the drop in violence in 2007–2008.
McChrystal got egg on his face in the aftermath of the Pat Tillman Silver Star fiasco. Former professional football player Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. McChrystal approved a posthumous Silver Star for Tillman. The day after sending the paperwork forward, however, McChrystal apparently sent an urgent memo warning senior government officials not to quote the phrase “in the line of devastating enemy fire,” in the citation because it “might cause public embarrassment” if Tillman had in fact been killed by friendly fire, as McChrystal suspected.
McChrystal was recommended for discipline by a subsequent Pentagon investigation but the Army declined to take action against him. I personally have a hard time forgiving him for this. A friend of mine, Brigadier General Gary Jones, took the hit on this when Army Special Operations Command made him one of the scapegoats, after the fact. Jones was retired but they let McChrystal walk. To me the whole thing smacks of officer CYA after-the-fact; why did McChrystal sign the citation if he suspected friendly fire?
As long as I stood in formation and wore jump wings on my chest – 25 years – the Army always told me the worst thing you can do is screw up a military funeral. You can screw up anything else and we’ll cover for you, but a veteran’s funeral must be pulled off without a hitch. McChrystal was a key player in the Tillman tragedy of errors – he must be pretty good; they kept him around and now they put him in charge of the main effort of the GWOT, or whatever it is we’re calling it these days.
Originally posted at STORMBRINGER.
sinz54 // May 13, 2009 at 7:49 am
The problem is that McChrystal’s approach of getting al-Qaeda terrorists with Special Forces isn’t going to stabilize Afghanistan. And if Afghanistan remains a failed state, it will continue to be a haven for terrorists who will continue to travel there from Pakistan, and our Special Forces will be playing Whack-A-Mole with them forever.Petraeus stabliized Iraq with a strategy, backed up by adequate force, of sweeping through Iraq, town by town, securing it and then HOLDING it indefinitely in a “clear-hold-build” strategy. And this required making friends with some undesirable characters, who nevertheless weren’t going to attack America, in order to isolate al-Qaeda.In the case of Afghanistan, this means putting out peace feelers to some elements of the Taliban. The Taliban are a human-rights disaster. But they’re not a terrorist force trying to attack America. We need to keep that in mind, not blur it as Bush did.