My Share of the Task (67 page)

I wasn't satisfied with where we were; that's not my nature. But I was fiercely proud of the effort so many people had put forward to get us this far. We thought if we didn't blink, we would come out in a better position than we had been in the previous year.

On Monday, June 21, we gathered again at Kandahar's convention center. Afghan and ISAF military and civilian leaders convened in a large room outfitted with tables facing a briefing screen. As we mingled before the session began, familiar faces engaged in animated conversation: Karl Eikenberry, Mark Sedwill, Abdul Rahim Wardak, Dave Rodriguez, Sher Mohammad Karimi, and Richard Holbrooke—who'd flown in from the United States for the session—and a host of key planners and staff.

Eight days earlier, Karzai had held a second
shura
in the same location. Smaller than the April
shura
, it brought together only a few hundred elders. As before, Karzai brought Mark and me. There, as I'd anticipated, after some discussion the elders had voiced their support for the operation. We now collected to rehearse the specifics of Hamkari. Under Rod's patient guidance, we drilled into almost every aspect of the complex plan. More interesting than the operation, to my eye, was the interaction between Afghans, Americans, Brits, and Australians. Relationships, now scuffed and dented by regular use, had the power of familiarity among comrades that was so vital, yet took so long to develop. If Hamkari succeeded, it would owe less to any brilliance of concept than to the sinew of trust.

*   *   *

T
hat night, at about 10:30
P.M.
I went to my room above the operations center and read, as usual, for about twenty minutes before drifting off to sleep. My PT clothes were arranged to work out early before the day's activities began full bore. About 2:00
A.M.
Charlie Flynn woke me.

“Sir, we have a problem,” Charlie said in the darkness of my room. “The
Rolling Stone
article is out, and it's really bad.”

How in the world could that story have been a problem?
I thought, stunned. But I replied simply, “Thanks, Charlie. I'll be right down.”

I put on my PT clothes and went quickly downstairs to where Charlie and Rear Admiral Greg Smith, our director of strategic communications, waited and handed me a printed copy. The article was the work of a reporter writing for
Rolling Stone
magazine who had interacted with my command team several times over the previous few months, including during parts of our April trip to Europe. This story, one of a number we'd done over the year in Afghanistan, was designed to provide transparency into how my command team operated. But, beginning with the provocative title “The Runaway General,” the article described a hard-driving general, a struggling U.S. policy, and attributed a number of unacceptable comments to my command team.

I was surprised by the tone and direction of the article. I thought back to the night of Annie's and my thirty-third wedding anniversary in Paris. At the end of the evening Annie had said she was glad the reporter had been present to see what she had seen: the command team, including American, British, Afghan, and French officers, all together. Annie felt the brotherhood among the soldiers, each a veteran of multiple combat tours over the past decade, was evident and was something the reporter needed to see and understand. I had agreed with her. The printed story cast it in a very different light.

For a number of minutes I felt as though I'd likely awaken from what seemed like a surreal dream, but the situation was real. Regardless of how I judged the story for fairness or accuracy, responsibility was mine. And its ultimate effect was immediately clear to me.

After an hour or so of meeting with key staff and making several phone calls, including one to Annie, I went outside to run. When faced with something frustrating, frightening, or confusing, I've found it is often the best thing I can do. Well before normal physical training time, I ran alone in the darkness around the inside of ISAF's small compound. It was a good opportunity to think, and I needed to. For thirty-four years I'd served knowing many fates were possible. But I'd never anticipated the one before me now.

That evening, as the controversy swelled, I was directed to fly back to D.C. for meetings the following morning with the secretary of defense and the president. The flight provided hours for reflection, free from the cacophony of opinions I knew were filling the media. A number of e-mails came in. One in particular struck me. A member of Staff Sergeant Arroyo's platoon who'd been present at the meeting described in the
Rolling Stone
article expressed frustration with the account, and his support.

From the moment I'd seen the article, I'd known there were different options on how to act, and react, to the storm I knew I would face. But I knew only one decision was right for the moment and for the mission. I didn't try to figure out what others might do; no hero's or mentor's example came to mind. I called no one for advice.

It was light when we landed at Andrews Air Force Base and we drove to my quarters to shower and put on dress green uniforms before going to the Pentagon to meet with Admiral Mullen and then Secretary Gates. Two hours later I left the White House after a short, professional meeting with President Obama and drove to Fort McNair to tell Annie that the president had accepted my resignation.

Entering our quarters, I met Annie, who had been waiting. I told her that our life in the Army was over.

“Good,” she said, clear-eyed and strong. “We've always been happy, and we'll always be happy.”

Looking into her blue eyes, I knew she was right—and why.

Epilogue

He went like one that hath been stunn'd,

And is of sense forlorn:

A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the morrow morn.

—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

I
n the late afternoon of July 23, 2010, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates came to our quarters on Fort McNair, and we sat briefly in the living room before walking across the street to McNair's parade field. We had moved into the large brick quarters in the summer of 2008 after leaving TF 714. For the first year I'd run each morning alongside the field as I headed out the wrought-iron gates of the post, along the Potomac River, and across Memorial Bridge to the Pentagon. On weekends I'd cross the field to McNair's gym, often passing soldiers practicing drill.

Today the field was uncharacteristically crowded with a formation of 3rd Infantry “Old Guard” soldiers and a setup of chairs and bleachers on either side of the brick reviewing stand. In and around the seating were a sea of family and friends who'd gathered. My father, the now-old soldier, was too weak to travel, but my four brothers and a group of classmates from West Point, one of whom had flown from his farm in North Dakota, were on hand. Importantly, some of the men and women with whom I'd shared the fight of the last decade were there. I wanted to thank them. The occasion was simultaneously happy and sad, a beginning and an end. I'd been to countless retirement ceremonies in thirty-four years, but never my own.

We walked out the door and to our designated seats. Although we'd set the ceremony for early evening, it was still blazing hot. I'd asked an old friend, Major General Karl Horst, commander of the Military District of Washington, if the Old Guard could do the ceremony in army combat uniforms, ACUs, instead of the normal dress blues. Although it was uncommon, he'd readily agreed. I wanted the last uniform I'd ever wear to be the one I believed most reflected the soldier I'd been. And in the heat, I hoped it was more comfortable for the troops that stood on the field.

As I stood on the field, I thought about the future. In a few days Annie and I would clear our quarters and make what I assumed would be our last of so many moves. Everything else was unclear.

I had no idea that a few days later I'd get a note from Jim Levinsohn, the director of Yale University's Jackson Institute of Global Affairs, and in September begin an extraordinary experience teaching young people.

Life would go on. In April 2011, the Department of Defense inspector general's office would release a summary of its review into the allegations outlined in the
Rolling Stone
article. The investigations could not substantiate any violations of Defense Department standards and found that “not all of the events occurred as portrayed in the article.” These conclusions came out quietly, almost a year after the tornado of controversy the article created, but they were important to me. Maybe more important, also that month, I would accept First Lady Michelle Obama's request to serve my country again, this time on the board of advisers for Joining Forces, a White House initiative for service members and their families.

That evening on the field, as they were supposed to, every part of the ceremony went smoothly. The precision of the soldiers on the field, the sequence of speeches and awards, and even the emotional appearance of old friends, projected a sense of orchestrated perfection. It was life, as we might have once hoped it would be. No friction, no mistakes, and no casualties.

But my life hadn't been like that. Instead it had been a series of unplanned detours, unanticipated challenges, and unexpected opportunities. Along the way, more by luck than design, I'd been a part of some events, organizations, and efforts that will loom large in history, and many more that will not. I saw selfless commitment, petty politics, unspeakable cruelty, and quiet courage in places and quantities that I'd never have imagined. But what I will remember most are the leaders.

I remember events through the personalities who shaped or responded to them. The examples they set, the decisions they made, and sometimes the price they paid are the lens through which I view the sliver of history I shared. The leaders I studied inspired me. The leaders whom I knew, those who touched me directly, share a special place in my mind, and often in my heart.

As a child I'd been fascinated with heroes, first fixating on their talent, bravery, and commitment. I read again and again of the new American John Paul Jones on the deck of the
Bonhomme Richard
declaring he had “not yet begun to fight,” and of the Scot Robert Bruce regaining lost hope by watching a spider spinning a web fail six times without giving up. I'd listened to my father's letters from Vietnam and seen occasional photographs of his lean frame in green jungle fatigues and combat gear. It was a romantic, sometimes two-dimensional model of leadership, embodied in heroism, wrapped in service, most often in uniform.

Over the years, through age, experience, and example, my model of a leader matured. My mother was raised in the south and deeply admired Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, stubborn leadership of the civil rights movement. She made me understand how someone breaking the law and disrupting an orderly way of life could represent leadership, while those in uniform holding water cannons might not. She taught me that leadership is not command. Some of the greatest leaders commanded nothing but respect. And I learned of, and sometimes saw, commanders who never tried to lead.

So, after a lifetime, what had I learned about leadership? Probably not enough. But I saw enough for me to believe it was the single biggest reason organizations succeeded or failed. It dwarfed numbers, technology, ideology, and historical forces in determining the outcome of events. I used to tell junior leaders that the nine otherwise identical parachute infantry battalions of the 82nd Airborne Division ranged widely in effectiveness, the disparity almost entirely a function of leadership.

“Switch just two people—the battalion commander and command sergeant major—from the best battalion with those of the worst, and within ninety days the relative effectiveness of the battalions will have switched as well,” I'd say. I still believe I was correct.

Yet leadership is difficult to measure and often difficult even to adequately describe. I lack the academic bona fides to provide a scholarly analysis of leadership and human behavior. So I'll simply relate what, after a lifetime of being led and learning to lead, I've concluded.

Leadership is the art of influencing others. It differs from giving a simple order or managing in that it shapes the longer-term attitudes and behavior of individuals and groups. George Washington's tattered army persisted to ultimate victory. Those troops displayed the kind of effort that can never be ordered—only evoked. Effective leaders stir an intangible but very real desire inside people. That drive can be reflected in extraordinary courage, selfless sacrifice, and commitment.

Leadership is neither good nor evil. We like to equate leaders with values we admire, but the two can be separate and distinct. Self-serving or evil intent motivated some of the most effective leaders I saw, like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In the end, leadership is a skill that can be used like any other, but with far greater effect.

Leaders take us where we'd otherwise not go. Although Englishmen rushing into the breach behind Henry V is a familiar image, leaders whose personal example or patient persuasion causes dramatic changes in otherwise inertia-bound organizations or societies are far more significant. The teacher who awakens and encourages in students a sense of possibility and responsibility is, to me, the ultimate leader.

Success is rarely the work of a single leader; leaders work best in partnership with other leaders. In Iraq in 2004, I received specific direction to track Zarqawi and bring him to justice. But it was the collaboration of leaders below me, inside TF 714, that built the teams, relentlessly hunted, and ultimately destroyed his lethal network.

Leaders can call to the best in us. I thought often of the inspiring flag signal Horatio Nelson sent on the eve of Trafalgar. “England expects every man will do his duty.” The flags above the
Victory
didn't ask or demand obedience in the upcoming fight; they expressed Nelson's unshakable admiration for and faith in the sailors and patriots he knew them to be. And I remembered the effect Major General Bill Garrison's faith had on me when I was a major.

Leaders are empathetic. The best leaders I've seen have an uncanny ability to understand, empathize, and communicate with those they lead. They need not agree or share the same background or status in society as their followers, but they understand their hopes, fears, and passions. Great leaders intuitively sense, or simply ask, how people feel and what resonates with them. At their worst, demigods like Adolf Hitler manipulate the passions of frustrated populations into misguided forces. But empathy can be remarkably positive when a Nelson Mandela reshapes and redirects the energy of a movement away from violence and into constructive nation-building.

Leaders are not necessarily popular. For soldiers, the choice between popularity and effectiveness is ultimately no choice at all. Soldiers want to win; their survival depends upon it. They will accept, and even take pride in, the quirks and shortcomings of a leader if they believe he or she can produce success.

On the evening of May 7, 1864, Ulysses Grant's Army of the Potomac cheered when, after bitter fighting in the Wilderness, they turned south into more fighting, instead of north to refit in safety. They were not celebrating the fights to come but instead their belief that in Grant, they finally had a leader willing to do what it took to finish the war.

The best leaders are genuine. I found soldiers would tolerate my being less of a leader than I hoped to be, but they would not forgive me being less than I claimed to be. Simple honesty matters.

Leaders can be found at any rank and at any age. I often found myself led by soldiers many levels junior to me, and I was the better for it. Deferring to the expertise and skills of the leader best suited to any given situation requires enough self-confidence to subjugate one's ego, but it signals a strong respect for the people with whom one serves.

Personal gifts like intellect or charisma help. But neither are required nor enough to be a leader.

Physical appearance, poise, and outward self-confidence can be confused with leadership—for a time. I saw many new lieutenants arrive to battalions and fail to live up to the expectations their handsome, broad-shouldered look generated. Conversely, I saw others overcome the initial doubts created by small stature or a squeaky voice. It took time and enough interaction with followers, but performance usually became more important than the advantages of innate traits.

Later in my career, I encountered some figures who had learned to leverage superficial gifts so effectively that they appeared to be better leaders than they were. It took me some time and interaction—often under the pressure of difficult situations—before I could determine whether they possessed those bedrock skills and qualities that infantry platoons would seek to find and assess in young sergeants and lieutenants. Modern media exacerbate the challenge of sorting reality from orchestrated perception.

Leaders walk a fine line between self-confidence and humility. Soldiers want leaders who are sure of their ability to lead the team to success but humble enough to recognize their limitations. I learned that it was better to admit ignorance or fear than to display false knowledge or bravado. And candidly admitting doubts or difficulties is key to building confidence in your honesty. But expressing doubts and confidence is a delicate balance. When things look their worst, followers look to the leader for reassurance that they can and will succeed.

People are born; leaders are made. I was born the son of a leader with a clear path to a profession of leadership. But whatever leadership I later possessed, I learned from others. I grew up in a household of overt values, many of which hardened in me only as I matured. Although history fascinated me, and mentors surrounded me, the overall direction and key decisions of my life and career were rarely impacted by specific advice, or even a particularly relevant example I'd read or seen. I rarely wondered
What would Nelson, Buford, Grant, or my father have done?
But as I grew, I was increasingly aware of the guideposts and guardrails that leaders had set for me, often through their examples. The question became
What kind of leader have I decided to be?
Over time, decisions came easily against that standard, even when the consequences were grave.

Leaders are people, and people constantly change. Even well into my career I was still figuring out what kind of leader I wanted to be. For many years I found myself bouncing between competing models of a hard-bitten taskmaster and a nurturing father figure—sometimes alternating within a relatively short time span. That could be tough on the people I led, and a bit unfair. They looked for and deserved steady, consistent leadership. When I failed to provide that, I gave conflicting messages that produced uncertainty and reduced the effectiveness of the team we were trying to create. As I got older, the swings between leadership styles were less pronounced and frequent as I learned the value of consistency. But even at the end I still wasn't the leader I believed I should be.

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.