McChrystal: 'Leadership' Includes Self-Serving, Evil Leaders

"My Share of the Task: A Memoir," by General Stanley McChrystal, 2013, Portfolio/Penguin.

Review by Bill Doughty

Gen. Stan McChrystal, the cat who caught the rat Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has a tale to tell. The chase after the "itinerant terrorist" Al Qaeda operative takes up a good part of this book, which focuses on service, sacrifice and the true meaning of leadership – a "crushing burden" that can be good or bad, depending on the leader.

McChrystal follows Gen. David Petraeus's footsteps in several positions. Adm. Mike Mullen, one of the most respected Chiefs of Naval Operations and Chairs of the Joint Chiefs, selected McChrystal as director of the Joint Staff (chief of staff to the JCS). In this memoir McChrystal takes readers from Fort Benning to Fort Bragg and from Iraq and Afghanistan to NATO and Washington D.C.

"At the heart of the story is Afghanistan itself, a complex swirl of ethnic and political rivalries, cultural intransigence, strains of religious fervor, and bitter memories overlaid on a beautiful, but harshly poor, landscape. Without internal struggles or outside interference, Afghanistan would be a difficult place to govern, and a challenge to develop. And there have always been struggles and interference. But it's not just that. In her beauty and coarseness, in her complexity and tragedy Afghanistan possesses a mystical quality, a magnetism. Few places have such accumulated layers of culture, religion, history, and lore that instill both fear and awe. Yet those who seek to even budge her trajectory are reminded that dreams often end up buried in the barren slopes of the Hindu Kush or in the muddy fields alongside the Helmand River."

Winter on the Parwan Plains and Hindu Kush mountains Jan. 2, 2010, viewed from Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. Photo by Capt. Thomas Cieslak, DVIDS.

He shows how dealing with fatalism and pessimism and "a sense of insecurity" was key to the success and viability of the mission. First step, drive out fear and lead with honor and a sense of duty.

But throughout this important book, McChristal shows why we cannot oversimplify war, surrender to hostage-takers or create a "false drama" through fear and tyranny.

The killing of Zarqawi, after bringing down walls of his hideaway, reads like Tom Clancy:

"At 6:12 p.m., a laser-guided, five-hundred-pound GBU-12 bomb traveling nine hundred feet per second hit the house. The explosion flashed, turning our screens in the JOC white for a split second, as smoke and dust burst up and out laterally in three columns, like the prongs of a toy jack. The F-16 circled again, and a  minute and thirty-six seconds later, using GPS coordinates, a GBU-38 hit the same spot.Thick billows of smoke streamed diagonally up from the house and frontage road, thinning over the tops of the palm grove..."Our medic leaned over the Man in Black, who was alive, but barely. Under the medic's forefingers, Zarqawi's carotid artery was deflated. His breathing was shallow, and blood seeped out of his nose and ears. The pressure caused by the blast waves had cascaded through the concrete walls of the house and pulsed through his chest cavity, bursting vessels and air sacs in his lungs..."The medic continued to work on Zarqawi. When he cleared his airway, the Green team had descended, under an orange evening sun and the long shadows of palm trees extending across the crater, beneath the clenched faces of the operators standing over him, Zarqawi's lungs failed. At 7:04 p.m., our medic called it. Zarqawi was dead."

Wyeth's Navy hero John Paul Jones

We read McChrystal's thoughts about the capture of Saddam Hussein, decision-making of President Obama, the tragic death of Cpl. Pat Tillman, the relationship with generals Charlie and Mike Flynn, the fallout from the Rolling Stone interview and his leadership influences, including John Paul Jones, George Washington, Horatio Nelson, the Scot Robert Bruce and Ulysses S. Grant.

At the end of "My Share" McChrystal shares what he learned about being a leader. Leadership, he says, "is the single biggest reason organizations succeeded or failed." In hindsight, one need only see how the leadership of Gen. McChrystal and Adm. McRaven trumps that of Gen. Mike Flynn.

"Leadership is the art of influencing others," McChrystal writes, acknowledging "it is difficult to measure and often difficult to adequately describe."

"All leaders are human. They get tired, angry, and jealous and carry the same range of emotions and frailties common to mankind. Most leaders periodically display them. The leaders I most admired were totally human but constantly strove to be the best humans they could be..."Leaders make mistakes, and they are often costly. The first reflex is normally to deny the failure to themselves; the second is to hide it from others, because most leaders covet a reputation for infallibility. But it's a fool's dream and is inherently dishonest... "There are few secrets to leadership. It is mostly just heard work. More than anything else it requires self-discipline. Colorful, charismatic characters often fascinate people, even soldiers. But over time, effectiveness is what counts. Those who lead most successfully do so while looking out for their followers' welfare... "In the end, leadership is a choice. Rank, authority, and even responsibility can be inherited or assigned, whether or not an individual desires or deserves them. Even the mantle of leadership occasionally falls to people who haven't sought it. But actually leading is different. A leader decides to accept responsibility for others in a way that assumes stewardship of their hopes, their dreams, and sometimes their very lives. It can be a crushing burden, but I found it an indescribable honor."

McChrystal is agnostic about whether leaders can be good or evil.

He uses Adolf Hitler and Zarqawi as examples of effective leaders who had a sway over believers. Bad leaders can be elected to lead nations or closed-minded minions at least for a time. "Self-serving or evil intent motivates some of the most effective leaders I saw," he said.

More recently, McChrystal – writing with former Navy SEAL and Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Jeff Eggers and former United States Marine Jason Mangone – published "Leaders: Myth and Reality," a book in our Navy Reads reading queue.

Gates presents McChrystal with Distinguished Service Medal in 2010.

He and his co-authors examine both tyrannical leaders and leaders of principle, with some eclectic choices: Walt Disney, Harriet Tubman, Zheng He, Robespierre, Robert E. Lee and, yes, rat-leader Zarqawi, among others.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates calls "Leaders: Myth and Reality" "a superb, thought-provoking challenge to conventional understandings of the nature of leadership. An enlightening, entertaining must-read about why we revere so many leaders who are often deeply flawed and even unsuccessful, and the lessons for thinking about and teaching leadership in the future."

In "My Share of the Task" McChrystal reveals: Evil or incompetent leaders can be shut down by honorable and ethical free-thinking leader-followers who realize that strong leadership is not the same as being a "good" leader.