In 1982 a freshly minted Army captain named Stanley McChrystal arrived at Fort Stewart, Ga. and was invited for a run by a more experienced captain named David Petraeus, head of Central Command and the man credited with turning around the Iraq war. Petraeus said, “I take a lot of pride in my running.” In fact, Petraeus famously was, and remains, a fitness fanatic. “But by the end of the run, I knew I was no longer the fastest at Fort Stewart. More important, we had talked about a lot of things, and I realized that I had met a kindred spirit.”
When things started going sour in Afghanistan in 2009 and most of the American public was asking, “What are we doing there anyway?”, Secretary of Defense Gates and General Petraeus knew it was time for a change of command. The result: General David McKiernan was out as the head of American-led NATO forces and General Stanley McChrystal was in. “McChrystal was absolutely my first choice,” Petraeus said. McChrystal, like Petraeus, is kind of an ascetic who eats one meal per day and sleeps four hours per night. According to Petraeus, “Stan was willing to have experiences that were outside his comfort zone.”
The friendship they built up over the years stands at the heart of the transformation of the U.S. Army in recent years, from the world’s most fearsome conventional-warfare force to the world’s most sophisticated counterinsurgency force. Whereas McKiernan tended to prosecute the war, as if it was beating the enemy on the battlefield, McChrystal shared Petraeus’ view that winning was about gaining the hearts and minds of the local population making the Taliban irrelevant. (For more info on COIN, see my Smart Power video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MotjlkvpKoE)
McChrystal quickly came up with a 100-day plan that included thee parts: 1) Dealing with the immediate crisis caused air bombing missions; 2) Advocating for an Iraq like surge (troop increase) to prevent the Taliban for gaining more territory in Pakistan; 3) The build up of the Afghan Army and police and the restoration of basic public services. These steps form a template that any new leader in their first hundred days can follow.
Step 1. Deal With the Immediate Crisis. General Mckiernan had allowed airstrikes on Taliban in Afghan towns that had ended up wounding innocent civilians. He also allowed US Army truck convoys to scream through neighborhoods with their sirens blasting, which terrorized the local population. On day three of his job, McChrystal banned the airstrikes and changed the traffic rules for army convoys. “Afghans take huge offense at the killing of civilians,” McChrystal said of his aerial-warfare directive. "”They assume we’re omniscient and omnipotent, so if we bomb innocent civilians, they assume that was our intent.”
Step 2. Change the Game. At the time McChrystal was given command, many America leaders (including VP Biden) were advocating troop reductions. McChrystal took on the role of being a change insurgent making a speech in London that landed him in some hot water. He said that troop reductions would result in “Chaos- istan” and insure that the war wasn’t winnable. At President Obama’s strategic review of the war, he advocated an Iraq war like troop surge designed to take out Taliban leadership strongholds and keep them from gaining more territory. He won and within 90 days of his command, the troop surge began. However, he stuck to the principle of winning the population vs. defeating the enemy on the battlefield, even if it sometimes meant spending three weeks winning a fight they could have won in a day.
Step 3. Make Success Sustainable. As President Obama has set a near-term deadline for withdrawing USA troops in Afghan, McChrystal is operationalizing a COIN strategy of “clear, hold, build and transfer.” Once a city or town is cleared of Taliban through military action, the next step is to hold the area and provide a sense of security. McChrystal demands coalition forces get out from behind the wire (USA Army Base Camp) and actually live with the local population to get to know them and protect them. USA troops then move into the build phase, which involves working with community leaders to install good governance and rule of law and basic services: schools, clean water, electrical power. Finally, the last step is to transfer operations over to Afghan leaders and military and security forces.
This approach has been very successful in the early part of March (2010) in Kandahar province, and especially in coalition operations in the city of Marja. McChrystal and the Afghan surge has already utterly transformed the momentum in that war. There are many signs that we are winning the populations confidence and trust. The Taliban is now in retreat and its leaders are being assassinated or captured at a steady rate.
The net effect of McChrystal’s 100-day plan was a dramatic turnaround in USA and Coalition force morale, keeping the Taliban relatively in check, and making great strides in winning the population. General McChrystal may be the ultimate American Spartan, a driven ascetic. His troops may not succeed in this near impossible mission, but they will be well led.
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