General McChrystal Discusses Remaking The Special Forces

you're credited with making the Joint Special Operations Command JSOC into a highly successful and effective operation that has had a major impact on the US military you you began and could you begin describing how you revolutionize and help this leadership transformation to really impact the US military because if there's one person that has had a real impact most independent in that analysts will say it's you how you really turned around JSOC and what you made it into this incredible efficient and powerful potent operation yeah first I'm getting credit for the work of a lot of people of course I happen to be a charge and a team did this but I got to tell you a little bit of a story to get to context first Joint Special Operations Command was created at the in the aftermath of the failed Iranian hostage rescue mission in 1980 and the decision was made that we had tried to use an ad hoc organization to do a very difficult task and so this command was was created to pull the most elite forces together Delta Force SEAL Team six the Rangers and make them a cohesive team as opposed to siloed organizations I was a part of that command both in a subordinate unit then on the staff for the years from 1981 and what not until I took command of it in 2003 but it wasn't a bad command it was a great command it was the greatest command in the world and it was the most proficient in what it did ever and so when I took it in October 2003 it was this amazing machine unfortunately it wasn't the right machine for the war we had in 2003 and sometimes I think shame us changing was harder because we were so successful because people felt so good about what they did and they literally were peerless in their skills that it was harder to get people to let go of the side of the pool and change but essentially the challenge was we had been designed and our Charter said bombed two terrorist acts now by definition that's reactive and we were really a hostage rescue force you think in the old days we were all young a airplane would get hijacked and they'd take it someone they'd ask for money and safe haven and some people released from jail and if you if you did all that they let your people go maybe blow up the airplane if you didn't do that you try rescue and we did a little bit of both so we were designed for those episodic events that come or for a very deliberate operation where you plan and train for months and then you go do this thing after 9/11 we spent the first period 2001 in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq but what happened was al Qaeda was suddenly much bigger much wider spread geographically what's different culturally than anything we were prepared for and they didn't do an act and then give you time to respond they blew stuff up they flew planes into World Trade Centers they acted and they simply presented you with a fait accompli so our requirement changed from respond to terrorist acts to destroy an enemy Network to protect America's allies and whatnot so we had this network which was largest in 2003 in Iraq although it wasn't there before the invasion it really grew in the wake of that and it was in Pakistan but it wasn't it was spread across the region so I was put in charge of the military part of defeating al Qaeda which is this movement that's franchised and it's this diverse network across many areas with some pretty pretty darn good people so that's a completely different kind of problem spearfishing is what we've sort of been designed to do if there's a good analogy was absolutely inappropriate for defeating something like this so what we had to do was change how we operate it and we had a burning platform to do it with we were losing in Iraq in 2004 and although you can go back to the newspapers now and read it you will never see someone say yes we are losing in Iraq they'd say we're not winning yet and that's the military euphemism for we are losing and so we had this impetus of we had to turn things around so what we started is we started with the organization we had and say well how do we do better and so what do you do first when you want to do better you do what you already do really well you shoot better you fly faster you do whatever it is your strengths but then you run into physics you can't do more of what you do you can't sleep at a certain point you can't sleep less so we realized what we had to do is form a network that was better than the enemy's network it was wider it communicated faster we had this siloed insulated organization that had to suddenly break down walls communicate really fast so that if sort of like a human body if in Mosul Iraq somebody stepped on your toe you knew it in Kirkuk instantaneously if an enemy force moved from there to there you knew it and you could respond immediately and so we started building techniques and relationships with the intelligence agencies the FBI Department of State conventional forces Iraqi forces we started building this network and we went the analogy I used to use is we started the war as the greatest booksellers in the world and we ended as amazon.com the product was the network we could do anything by leverages network and what we thought was our core strength which was going in the door and shooting someone before they can return fire it was no one where they were it was understanding them it was building this responsive capability that allowed us to operate it was completely different from what we had been before we had been the analogy we were a bullet if you aimed us correctly wherever we went we would strike through and have effect but that wasn't good enough because we're dependent upon who aimed us who aim the gun and when they pull a trigger we became the gun and we became a thinking organization and and I had this collection of people who just took up that task and they got better at it every month and I didn't start with my vision I didn't have a for that we started doing it as we did it we started getting better and better at it so we started doing more and more of it you reinforce what worked and so for us it was a complete revolution the other part of it is we touch leadership is it revolutionized the way we lead it had to I was a 46 year old Brigadier General on 9/11 and at 46 you are just to the point in your life where you don't want to change anymore you've bought all the clothes you want to have till you die loaded your iPod you've learned everything in your organization you don't want the rules to change you just don't want it different because you've mastered it and you're doing pretty good and suddenly almost everything I knew I had to do differently instead of leading commandos with big shoulders and big knuckles I'm leading a group that looks a lot like this group men women old young civilians military and I'm trying to get them to form this this extraordinary network and I can't order them because most of them aren't military most of them work for the CIA or Department of State or somebody else so all I can do is say this is a really good idea wouldn't you want to do this and it required leading by influence in a way that I had not been brought up to do but but it worked really well and you're dealing with good people I mean we're people who really wanted to do well so it became an extraordinary experience

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Keywords: General, McChrystal, Special, Forces, Afghanistan, Iraq, Rolling, Stone, Magazine

Id: 7VdGAkdSWLI

Length: 7min 49sec (469 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 23 2012