My Share of the Task: A Memoir – General Stanley McChrystal (Portfolio)

If you are looking for a book filled with bitterness at the Obama administration in response to General Stanley McChrystal dismissal, then this is not your book. If you’re looking for a book that responds to the Rolling Stone Magazine piece or the follow up book, The Operators, both penned by the smarmy little weasel, Michael Hastings, then this is not your book.

If you are looking for an interesting memoir full of insight not only into the McChrystal’s long, successful military career, but also a story laced with leadership with a local and global worldview, then this is your book. McChyrstal’s career in an interesting mix of classroom, fellowship training and boots on the ground action. This is not the tale of cooridors of  power, perfumed prince, that is more a product of the Pentagon than the battlefield.

 

In My Share of the Task McChystal delivers intimate details of the strategy and the on the ground execution of the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terror leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. McChrystal cut his teeth in special forces, so he was not risk averse to strapping it on and spending a night in the ruts. You can feel the regret in the passages that describe a just missed attempt to take out Zarqawi.

The book takes it’s title from the Army Ranger’s creed which reads in part; I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong and morally straight and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be, one-hundred-percent and then some. That creed rings true in the pages of the book which are long on spreading the credit to colleagues and underlings in place of the, I, me, my approach that’s so typical of these kinds of books.

Along the way McChrystal provides a guide post to leadership of a large, complex organization.

The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan– Michael Hastings (Blue Rider Press)

If you believe:

• That terrorism should be dealt with as a law enforcement matter…
• That you can use diplomacy and negotiate with terrorists…
• That the treatment of prisoners during interrogation at Abu Ghraib amounted to heinous acts of torture…
• That politicians and diplomats have all the answers….

Then this book is for you.

The Operators is Michael Hastings’ book length adaptation of his Rolling Stone magazine article entitled The Runaway General, which profiled General Stanley McCrystal and caused the firestorm that led to McCrystal’s sacking from his role as commander of the Afghanistan operations.

Of course to buy into the story, you would have to buy into Hastings contention that General McCrystal and his team, are the first members of the military that ever blew off a little steam and chose to disagree with their boss, in this case President Obama and his policies. Hastings seemed genuinely shocked that McCrystal and his pals would occasionally consume large quantities of adult beverages and bad mouth the boss and tell a few bad jokes.

Hastings seemed concerned about the honor of no less an intellectual heavyweight than Vice President Joe Biden from being labeled Joe “Bite Me”. Imagine the outrage…soldiers who swear, drink and drop F-bombs! Oh the humanity!

After reading The Operators I can’t help but wonder what the Pentagon leadership is thinking when they delude themselves that they can win friends and favorable coverage by allowing access to clearly liberal reporters like Hastings and equally liberal outlets like Rolling Stone. That magazine came of age during the Viet Nam war and while society has evolved, Rolling Stone has remained firmly implanted in the mindset of mistrust of the military and anything but liberal socialist government.

Hastings disdain for the military seeps through in his writing despite his desire to be a part of the action and fit in with the people he writes about. I can’t quite shake the image of Jack Nicholson’s monologue from A Few Good Men with the line about wanting him out there on that wall…Liberals love to disparage the military at the same time they enjoy and indulge in the freedoms that the military fights to preserve every day.

Hastings seems to have three guiding forces at play throughout the book; he is first and foremost a liberal. Second he is clearly a supporter of Hillary Clinton and is influenced by the Clinton doctrine – that treats terror a legal rather than military issue, that would have us go back to the do nothing approach to dealing with terror where we try diplomacy and to buy our friends. Third, he supports Obama, but only because he sees the President as a fellow traveler while clearly questioning whether President is Liberal enough.

The only real revelations to come out of The Operators was the sickening fact that the Pentagon was actually considering awarding a medal for “courageous restraint” to members of the military who put themselves in harm’s way, but rather than taking out a threat with force they held back. The clear stupidity in this thought process would have lead more often than not to this being a posthumous award. It isn’t now, nor has it ever been the charge of the military to restrain themselves; their purpose has been twisted over time by Liberal outcry.

The second revelation is that even in war torn Afghanistan the Obama administration feebly clings to the ridiculous notion of so-called “green energy” as Hastings describes the Afghan disgust over a $1.9 million solar panel array that ‘didn’t work.”