My Share of the Task: A Memoir

598 Pages·2013·21.61 MB·English

by  General Stanley McChrystal

Praise for My Share of the Task
“General McChrystal is a legendary warrior with a fine eye for enduring lessons
about leadership, courage, and consequence. He took me inside the command
bunker, on nighttime raids, and through the fog of war, political and military. My
Share of the Task is an important, riveting, and instructive account of the
triumphs and trials of America’s two longest wars.”
—Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation
“Written in the tradition of Ulysses S. Grant, My Share of the Task is a clear,
compelling, self-critical, and utterly unpretentious memoir. I know of no better
book on the nature of modern military command.”
—John Lewis Gaddis, author of George F. Kennan: An American Life
“Stanley McChrystal has written the finest military memoir of his generation.
Lucid, thoughtful, and steeped in military and strategic history, My Share of the
Task is not just the story of one man’s service; it is the story of the development
of a new way of war. What Grant’s memoirs did for war in the age of railroads
and the industrial revolution, McChrystal’s does for armed conflict in our age of
information, high tech, and nonstate actors. This book is not just for aficionados
of military history or for students of American foreign policy; it’s for anyone
who wants to understand the challenges of leadership in America today.”
—Walter Russell Mead, author of Special Providence and God and Gold
“A remarkable memoir by one of the most exceptional and thoughtful leaders of
his generation.”
—Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between
PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN
MY SHARE OF THE TASK
Stanley McChrystal retired in July 2010 as a four-star general in the U.S. Army.
His last assignment was as the commander of the International Security
Assistance Force and as the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He had
previously served as the director of the Joint Staff and as the commander of the
Joint Special Operations Command. He is currently a senior fellow at Yale
University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and the cofounder of the
McChrystal Group, a leadership consulting firm. He and his wife of thirty-six
years, Annie, live in Virginia.
My Share
of the Task
| A MEMOIR |
General Stanley McChrystal,
U.S. Army, Retired
Portfolio | Penguin
PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in the United States of America by Portfolio / Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA)
Inc., 2013
This paperback edition with a new preface published 2014
Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Stanley McChrystal Maps copyright © by Gene Thorpe / Cartographic
Concepts, Inc.
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Photograph credits appear here.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
McChrystal, Stanley A.
My share of the task : a memoir / Stanley A. McChrystal.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-10160142-6
1. McChrystal, Stanley A. 2. Generals—United States—Biography. 3. United States. Army— Biography. 4.
McChrystal, Stanley A.—Military leadership. 5. Afghan War, 2001– I. Title.
E897.4.M38A3 2012 355.0092—dc23
[B] 2012027306
Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this
book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other
contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any
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Version_2
With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.
Dedicated to those who kept the bridge—
and to those who made it possible.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Author’s Foreword

Part One
1. Ghosts of Christmas Past
2. Journey to the Plain
3. The Army in Which I Should Like to Fight
4. Renaissance
5. Preparation
6. The Fight Begins
Part Two
7. Through the Hourglass
8. The Enemy Emerges
9. Big Ben
10. Entrepreneurs of Battle
11. Out West
12. The Hunt
13. Hibhib
14. Networked
15. The Long War
Part Three
16. The Ticking Clock
17. Understand
18. Design
19. Decide
20. Execute
Epilogue

Photographs
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Photo Credits
Preface to the Paperback Edition
A
ll wars are different. And every soldier’s experience is unique.
Or so we each believe.
But when I left the Army in the summer of 2010, more than
thirty-eight years after I’d entered West Point, it was clear I’d been a part of
something special. The roles and the experiences I’d had were different than
those I’d expected. And the people I’d met, those I’d served with, and even those
I’d fought bitterly against shaped what I did—and who I was—in surprising,
even curious, ways.
Earlier in my life I’d thought that at some point I might write about
leadership, because it has always fascinated me, but had never considered
writing about my own. For that reason—and for many others—I’d kept no
journal, notes, or files. My wife, Annie, produced boxes of my letters she’d kept
from separations early in my career, but when I decided to write my own story I
began with little beyond what was in my head and in my heart.
What I’d learned during my service—and what I felt about it all—wasn’t
immediately clear to me. I was proud of what we’d done and knew that the
experience of my career, particularly the final decade in Iraq and Afghanistan,
had transformed me. But it was only after the laborious two-and-a-half-year
process of researching, writing, editing, and reediting; months of media
interviews and book talks; and ultimately reading and hearing the judgments of
readers, reviewers, and comrades that it has all begun to come into real focus.
And I suspect that process will continue.
To some, My Share of the Task will be a war story. After the first section in
which I recount my formative early career, I seek to provide a detailed, often
gritty account of the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq and of our effort to recover a
faltering effort in Afghanistan. You are taken into the shadows of wars marked
by their brutality and vexing complexity, and introduced to actual protagonists
too often viewed as one-dimensional stereotypes. Yet they are real and all-too
human.
At its heart, however, is a story of change. It tells of how America’s most
elite special operations command, carefully constructed from the ashes of failure
in the Iranian desert in 1980 into a force of stunning competence, had to
transform itself in the midst of combat to avoid defeat. And it shows how I, after
being molded by twenty-five years of military leadership, came face-to-face with
a terrorist network whose ruthless leader leveraged tactics, technology, religion,
and emotion to effectively change the rules of the game. Zarqawi’s challenge
demanded that I change how I thought and how I led.
Change is disruptive and frightening. People and organizations develop
habits and cultures based upon what has worked in the past. They cope with the
environment around them and deal with challenges that over time can become
familiar. They grow confident in proven solutions. What worked before becomes
the default response. Seniority and experience start to become synonymous with
wisdom. Process guarantees predictable competence—and it is comfortable.
As organizations grow this phenomenon is magnified. There seems to be
safety in size, wealth, or technological superiority. Mass compensates for the
loss of speed and agility. People judge little problems less as problems and more
as small distractions. Big is reassuring. Even potentially mortal threats seem less
daunting. Rome fell, to be sure, but it took quite a long time. Such thoughts are
comforting to all but those around when things finally come crashing down.
I found that this was exactly what had happened to the special operations
command when I took charge of it in 2003. We were great at what we did—
indeed, unequalled—but we weren’t right for what needed to be done. We were
losing to a side that lacked our resources and professionalism. But no one
outside the force would dare tell us to change; it had to come from within.
Most of us knew that real magic resided in small teams: the basketball team,
the assault team, or even the small group of roommates creating a start-up. From
our own experience we knew that in small teams communication flowed
effortlessly and we seemed to think and act as one. When part of such a team, we
could analyze a situation, decide, and act as though it was a single, uninterrupted
motion, like catching and throwing a baseball. Even a complicated double play
required no meetings, e-mails, or orders. We instinctively knew what to do—or it
least that’s how it felt.
The challenge, then, was to retain our inherent strengths of competence and
precision, yet regain the innovation, adaptability, and focus of a small team.
Unexpectedly, I found that the very tools that held the potential for our success
were initially limiting our effectiveness by hampering the ability of small teams
to act. Our ability to instantaneously communicate, to command and control our
forces, and to collect an inexhaustible volume of intelligence was being applied
to legacy processes that pulled information to the top and tended to centralize