The American efforts to cobble together a wider coalition were largely undone in a handful of explosions. As the months progressed, it looked much more like an American occupation than an international effort.
* * *
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, our forces were planning what we jokingly referred to as General Abizaid’s “big-ass operation.” The final plan would send a large number of TF 714 forces into eastern Afghanistan, where intelligence reports had placed senior Al Qaeda leadership in the remote crannies of Kunar and Nuristan provinces. Abizaid knew that American presence there—and in fact across all of Afghanistan—was stunningly thin. He could not raise the overall troop numbers because of a cap attributed to Secretary Rumsfeld, so he ordered a temporary surge of TF 714 forces because of our unique agility.
The American military’s normal process for moving troops in and around theater was bureaucratic in design and cumbersome in practice—almost the polar opposite of what we now needed. We realized that for TF 714 to execute with the speed and precision this campaign demanded, only a new construct would do. Fortunately, my predecessor, Dell Dailey, had taken a critical step to secure authority for TF 714 to reposition forces without the traditional staffing. It was a farsighted move that proved invaluable.
In November, I was back in Afghanistan for the final days of planning and then implementing what by then was named Operation Winter Strike. Although like most soldiers I was most comfortable when immersed knee deep in the tactical details of an operation, as much as possible I left the planners alone. As Bill Garrison’s leadership had taught me, displaying trust and instilling a sense of ownership—and the confidence that comes from it—among the soldiers on the ground was almost always more important than any slight tactical tweaks I might make.
As Winter Strike approached, I moved into an office at the back wall of the tent. The operation would demand long days, so initially I put my rickety aluminum cot next to my desk and encouraged others to do the same. I had watched commanders who remained aloof from their units’ actual operations, and I had long ago decided that wasn’t right for me. But that was only the first in a long chain of small decisions and tweaks. I had to take into account not only our mission but also the team around me and the tools, like communications and aircraft, at our disposal.
Within weeks of assuming command, I appreciated the complexity of TF 714’s task, its geographic dispersion, and the array of relationships we needed to maintain in order to succeed. All of this convinced me that I needed to leverage technology to be able to exercise full command, whether forward in Iraq or Afghanistan, or back in the United States.
Our dispersion also drove us to try different distributions of key leaders across our network. After some trial and error, we spread our three flag officers among our main centers, with one each in Afghanistan, Iraq, and our headquarters at Fort Bragg. Although over the next two and a half years I grew close to my two assistant commanding generals, Dave Scott and Bill McRaven, we weren’t able to be physically together in the same room until April 2006, a month before they were promoted to new positions outside TF 714.
The technology and team around a commander were keys to the unit’s success, but the command style still depended heavily upon the leader’s personality. By nature I tended to trust people and was typically open and transparent with colleagues and subordinates. By providing them tremendous latitude, I believed I accessed greater intellect and judgment. Inclusiveness also instilled a shared sense of ownership, which reduced the danger of my becoming a single point of failure. But such transparency could go astray when others saw us out of context or when I gave trust to those few who were unworthy of it.
* * *
While tactically smooth, Winter Strike failed to yield any top Al Qaeda affiliates. Although we already knew slow, ponderous sweeps were no way to target terrorists, the operation confirmed my hunch that the authorities that provided TF 714 with increased flexibility, were brilliant—but slightly flawed. We needed its proposed web of teams and the preapproved authority to reposition them to respond to emerging threats. But the forces that would respond couldn’t be back in the United States waiting for the call. The distance and the necessary bureaucratic deployment approvals would make them too slow and would cause them to lose focus. We needed small nodes, tightly linked together and with an unprecedented ability to act locally. Those local teams would need to be able to make decisions far from the center and would require a network that rapidly marshaled resources, information, and support. To get there TF 714 would need to develop better intelligence.