Stanley McChrystal My Share of the Task Review

 
Vincent J. Curtis 

30 October 2013

Book Review 

Of

 

My Share of the Task

By

General Stanley McChrystal

 

Portfolio/Penguin

2013

ISBN 978-59184-475-4

452 Pages

Hardcover

$29.95 US

 

This is as much a book about leadership as it is a history.  General Stanley McChrystal was as important as General David Patraeus was in America’s War on Terrorism in the decade from 2001 to 2010.  McChrystal was the one who organized the effort of the U.S. military against al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The death of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 and the destruction of his network were the high achievements of McChrystal’s organization in that decade.  These, combined with the exploitation of the “Anbar Awakening” and the military surge of 2007-8, were what led to an end of the wave of terrorism and civil war that engulfed Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion that brought down Saddam Hussein, and enabled the Coalition to depart Iraq in 2011 with a stable Iraqi government in place.

 

McChrystal spent most of his military career in the Special Operations community of the U.S. military.  He qualified as Airborne, Special Forces, and Ranger and spent most of his development period either in command of units or as the J3 (Operations Officer) of units.  He spent as little time in the Pentagon as he could get away with.  Eventually, the lack of political instincts which would have been developed by a long stay in the Pentagon were to cost him at the end of his career.

 

The military reader can gain on two fronts by reading this book.  The first is on leadership and the second on the development of “industrial counterterrorism.”

 

In taking the reader through his development period, McChrystal enables the student of leadership to gain valuable insights not only into what made McChrystal the General, the Commander, and most importantly the leader he became, but also what makes good military leaders in general in the modern world.  Seeing the finished product in Iraq, the British saw him as a “soldier-monk.”  Supported by his loyal military wife Annie, McChrystal dedicated his life to the war against al Qaeda.  He spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan, living in spare accommodations immersed in the war, and enjoyed next to no down time back home during the prolonged crisis of the war.  McChrystal did not do a “tour”, he fought the war.

 

McChrystal’s great achievement as a leader was the development of Task Force 714.  There was no model for such a thing.  But in order to fight the metastasizing cancer of al Qaeda inspired terrorism in Iraq, McChrystal invented what came to be called “industrial counterterrorism,” and TF714 was the vehicle by which that method of combatting terrorism was deployed.  All the means by which intelligence was gained and analyzed were fused with the means of fighting in TF714, and industrial counterterrorism was the product of a feed-back loop of intelligence and captures run at very high speed.  Based on information provided by intelligence, US and British Special Operators used to go out on several missions a night, capturing terrorists for the further exploitation by the intelligence side.  Without a leader with the man-management skills of McChrystal, industrial counterterrorism would never have come about.  Industrial counterterrorism was only possible because of the vast, but disparate, intelligence and special operations resources of the United States.

 

McChrystal’s downfall came about when he let a trait that made him a great leader – trust – be exploited by people he ought to have been cautious in dealing with.

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