Center for a New American Security

While waiting in Logan Airport at o-dark-thirty for a flight back to Washington on Monday, I typed out a brief explanation of the risks and rewards of direct-action special operations for Allen McDuffee's Think Tanked blog, which is now hosted by the Washington Post. Let me know if anyone would be interested in a more detailed, hyper-linked explanation on the blog.

One of the most experienced Afghanistan hands I know had this to say about General McChrystal in an email to me yesterday:

All the heavy breathing about him being A Killer Man and not right for COIN is way, way off base.

"Dalton Fury" -- the nom de plume of an old Delta commander (and the brother of one of America's most legendary warriors, if I am correct) -- had much more enthusiastic words for McChrystal. Gang, this piece on Small Wars Journal is the only must-read profile to have been written about General McChrystal since his nomination. It's worth about eight times what those features in the Post and Times are worth. Read this, because this is the no-%$#@ Inside Baseball stuff. (In fact, I am a little surprised anyone is allowed to write about this stuff. One of the reasons I have never written about my time in Iraq, for example, was because of the kind of op-sec stuff talked about here.)

I served as a staff officer under McChrystal in the late 90’s before leaving for 1st SFOD-D. My Ranger peers and I had a unique opportunity to see the good and the bad in the 1976 West Point graduate. I think if McChrystal were wounded on the battlefield, he would bleed red, black, and white – the official colors of the 75th Ranger Regiment. He is 110% US Army Ranger, rising to become the 10th Regimental Commander in the late 90’s, and still sports the physique to prove it. Even with a bum back and likely deteriorating knees after a career of road marching and jumping out of planes he doesn’t recognize the human pause button. Maybe by now this is a good thing as the junior officers of today might be able to keep pace with the General.

As the Ranger Regimental commander, McChrystal was considered a Tier II subordinate commander under the Joint Special Operations functioning command structure. The highest level, Tier I, was reserved exclusively for Delta Force and Seal Team 6. This always seemed to bother McChrystal. His nature isn’t to be second fiddle to anyone, nor for his Rangers to be considered second class citizens to the Tier 1 Special Mission Units.

Terms like “kit”, often used by Delta and Seal Team 6 operators to collectively describe the gear, weapons, and equipment an assaulter carries was banned from the Ranger lexicon. The term “assaulter” or “operator” was also verboten speak within the Regiment. The men wearing the red, black, and white scroll were Rangers, not assaulters and not operators. They also didn’t carry kit. They carried standard military issue equipment.

McChrystal also deplored the idea that the Regiment served as an unofficial farm team for Delta Force, or even the US Army Special Forces Green Berets. In his eyes, the Rangers were just as skilled in their primary mission of Airfield Seizures and Raids as Delta was in land based Hostage Rescue or the SEALs were in assaulting a ship underway. All things being equal, McChrystal was right. The Rangers were, and still are, just as skilled in their Mission Essential Tasks as are the Tier I units in theirs. He believed that losing quality officers and non-commissioned officers to what many considered the true tip of the spear outfits – those granted the most funding, most authority, and given the premiere targets - hurt the Regiment.

One of the great things about this blog's readership is the readiness it displays to challenge me when topics drift into things about which I know less than a true subject matter expert. If I were to start holding forth with strong opinions about, say, Canadian politics, I have no doubt my readership would keep me as honest as it has when we talk about economics, health care policy, and insurgencies in regions of the Earth I do not know as well as the Middle East.

By the same token, if you're a blogger who has -- in the past week -- written things such as "Andrew Exum’s idea to dispatch SEAL teams is absurd" and "Exum’s idea to dispatch Navy SEALS is simply silly" then you better have either a) some direct professional experience in direct-action special operations or b) be prepared to explain why that's not a good idea in response to my (what I thought was fairly obvious) suggestion that Navy SEAL teams might be exactly the right answer to a hostage situation on the high seas. If, by contrast, you have no idea about what you are writing and no relevant experience or knowledge but nonetheless have strong opinions, you should keep those opinions to yourself lest the following news emerge 72 hours later:

The operation to rescue Capt. Richard Phillips involved dozens of Navy SEALs, who parachuted from an aircraft into the scene near dark Saturday, landing in the ocean. The SEALs were part of a larger group of Special Operations Forces involved in the effort, according to military officials.

U.S. military observers believed that Phillips was about to be shot. SEAL snipers, who were positioned on a deck at the stern of the Bainbridge, an area known as the fantail, had the three pirates in their sights. The on-scene commander gave the SEAL snipers authority to fire.

"As soon as the snipers had a clear shot at the guy who had the rifle, they shot him and the other two in the hatches," said the senior military official.

A member of the Special Operations team slid down the tow line into the water and climbed aboard the lifeboat. Phillips was then put in a small craft and taken to the Bainbridge.

I do not have the time to explain the training, missions, and capabilities of our nation's special operations forces. To even those without a security clearance or any relevant military or policy background, the value of these forces should be gobsmackingly obvious. And anyone who has closely read what I have written knows that I -- far from being "obsessed" with special operations forces -- have been quite critical about their employment in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This criticism is based on both personal experience and a careful study of policies and operations.

No, an average platoon of Marines or Army light infantry does not have the capabilities or the training to carry out the missions executed by Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, and other SOF (to include the SMUs). That's okay. Because in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the so-called "general purpose" forces are the ones responsible for carrying out the main effort. But parachuting into the middle of the Indian Ocean, swimming to the USS Bainbridge and then shooting three pirates from a boat that is rocking up and down and side to side is pretty effing difficult. If this operation to rescue Richard Phillips isn't the damn poster child for why we need special operations forces -- and why it's important that those forces are able to work in tandem with normal U.S. Navy and U.S. Army forces -- I don't know what is.

Sorry. I usually don't go off like that. But I have been holding my tongue for three days. And I don't get angry when genuine subject matter experts respectfully criticize me on issues about which they know more than I -- think Josh Foust on Afghanistan -- but do when others attack me in a know-it-all fashion about things they don't have any experience in or knowledge of.

For the rest of you, meanwhile, this short, fun essay by John Collins at Small Wars Journal should be required reading for all of those who don't know much about special operations but want to know more.

P.S. Hahaha. Great quote from a member of the readership, in an earlier thread: "Well, I think this puts an end to the pirates vs. ninjas debate."

Longtime defense and foreign policy journalist Dan Sagalyn has a great PBS podcast on command and control in Afghanistan. There is some especially good stuff on the relationship between SOF units and local "battlespace owners". Goodness gracious, though, the story Dave Kilcullen tells about an anonymous NATO ally? Awful.

I never thought the day would arrive when I would have to rise to the public defense of a former aide to Dick Cheney, but that day is here. A few weeks ago, Seymour Hersh said the following in a speech in Minnesota:

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.

I read all this and chuckled. Describing the Joint Special Operations Command as an "executive assassination ring" is just hilarious. And Hersh later walked back from some of the language he used. But the progressive media has jumped on this story like it's the next great scandal of the Bush Administration.



John Hannah was then called upon to talk about this on CNN, which was probably a bad choice because a) anything defended by a Cheney aide is immediate dismissed as evil by approximately 70% of the country and b) it's not like the JSOC is some partisan task force that went away when Obama was elected. But if you ignore who the messenger was, what was said by Hannah was essentially correct. I cannot, I think you all understand, get into the task organization or mission of the organization, but we all understand that within the U.S. military there exist special operations task forces which specialize in direct action missions -- killing and capturing high-value targets. Understand that there is a real need to tie these task forces into the greater overall strategies in play in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I talked about this need at length in my recent op-ed for Small Wars Journal. We cannot have a special operations task force pursuing missions uncoordinated with the theater and local commanders. But I don't think any of us would dispute the need for highly-trained, highly-specialized commandos capable of carrying out "capture or kill" or hostage-rescue missions of some high degree of strategic importance. (Remember Desert One?)

But there is some really great irony in play here. It is pretty much one of the worst-kept secrets in the U.S. special operations community that one of the most prominent commanders in this task force is also one of the most politically liberal general officers in the U.S. military. Like to the left of the Center for American Progress. So trying to paint the task force as the minions of Dick Cheney is really funny if only for that reason.

In the end, one of the problems with carrying out training and missions under a high degree of security classification is that it encourages some really silly conspiracy-mongering. And hauling out John Hannah to respond to those conspiracies probably wasn't the best decision.