by Mark Moyar
Hagee concurred: Piedmont, Det One, 91–93.
smaller reconnaissance units: Peter Nealen, “A Brief, Recent History of Force Recon and MARSOC,” SOFREP, March 8, 2013; Piedmont, Det One, 93–96; Andrew Feickert, “U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF): Background and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, November 19, 2015.
stint in the new units: Andrew deGrandpre, “Task Force Violent: The Unforgiven,” Military Times, March 12, 2015.
segregated from the rest of the Army: Linda Robinson, “The Future of Special Operations Forces,” Council on Foreign Relations, April 2013, 9.
“elite” any longer: Tucker and Lamb, United States Special Operations Forces, 47; Dalton Fury, Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander’s Account of the Hunt for the World’s Most Wanted Man (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 48.
58 percent of Marine respondents said the same: Moyar, A Question of Command, 299.
Sunni and Shiite alike: Peter R. Mansoor, Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013); Bing West, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq (New York: Random House, 2008); Kimberly Kagan, The Surge: A Military History (New York: Encounter, 2009).
forestall the arrests: Gordon and Trainor, The Endgame, 542–545.
alleviating pressure on the Sunni insurgents: Dave Butler, “Lights Out: ARSOF Reflect on Eight Years in Iraq,” Special Warfare, January-March 2012, 32; Gordon and Trainor, The Endgame, 607, 759–760; Wells, “Eight Years of Combat FID.”
transiting from Pakistan into Afghanistan: Donald P. Wright, with the Contemporary Operations Study Team, A Different Kind of War: The United States Army in Operation Enduring Freedom, October 2001–September 2005 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 2005), 213–218.
“… situation is worse”: Linda Robinson, One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013), 12–13.
aversion to the use of force: Jonathan Alter, The Promise: President Obama, Year One (New York: Simon and Schuster), 225; Vali Nasr, The Indispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (New York: Doubleday), 13–14.
removed the terrorists: Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), 297; Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 101–102, 166–167, 235–236; Alter, The Promise, 368; Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York: Knopf, 2014), 364.
control of much of the country: Woodward, Obama’s Wars, 104, 190, 273–275; Gates, Duty, 364, 373–374.
responsible for controlling: Mark Moyar, “The Third Way of COIN: Defeating the Taliban in Sangin,” Orbis Operations, 2011, 45.
number of villages: Mark Moyar, Village Stability Operations and the Afghan Local Police (Tampa, FL: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2014), 9–10.
bolstering economic activity: Brian Petit, “The Fight for the Village,” Military Review 91, no. 3 (May-June 2011): 25–32.
known as Village Stability Operations: Todd C. Helmus, Advising the Command: Best Practices from the Special Operations Advisory Experience in Afghanistan (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2015). McChrystal assigned other white SOF and international SOF to the development of elite Afghan units such as the Commandos and the Provincial Response Companies.
villages and their environs day and night: Moyar, Village Stability Operations and the Afghan Local Police, 12–15.
tête-à-tête: Gates, Duty, 488–491; Karen DeYoung and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Gen. McChrystal Allies, Rolling Stone Disagree over Article’s Ground Rules,” Washington Post, June 26, 2010.
authorize Local Police for the village: Moyar, Village Stability Operations and the Afghan Local Police, 17–26.
first 10,000 Local Policemen: Joseph A. L’Étoile, “Transforming the Conflict in Afghanistan,” Prism 4, no. 2 (September 2011): 3–16.
varying levels of effectiveness: Damon Robins, “Special Operations Forces and Conventional Forces Integration: Lessons Learned in Village Stability Operations,” May 22, 2012.
Afghan government could offer: Moyar, Village Stability Operations and the Afghan Local Police, 77–86.
“… go out without fear”: Carmen Gentile, “Afghan Self-Defense Groups Give Communities Freedom,” USA Today, August 16, 2012.
“… work with you”: Luke Mogelson, “Bad Guys vs. Worse Guys in Afghanistan,” New York Times, October 19, 2011.
taken root: Human Rights Unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, “Afghanistan Mid-Year Report 2012: Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict,” July 2012; United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, “Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody: One Year On,” January 2013.
ten raids per night: US Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), “DoD Media Roundtable with Gen. McChrystal NATO Headquarters in Brussels,” June 10, 2010; Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan (New York: Knopf, 2012), 277; Carlotta Gall, “Night Raids Curbing Taliban, But Afghans Cite Civilian Toll,” New York Times, July 8, 2011.
corruption and other flaws: Naylor, Relentless Strike, 361–362; Emma Graham-Harrison, “NATO’s Afghan Night Raids Come with High Civilian Cost,” Reuters, February 24, 2011; Gall, “Night Raids Curbing Taliban”; Nick Paton Walsh, “U.S., Afghanistan May Be Close to ‘Night Raids’ Deal,” CNN, April 4, 2012.
rather than just individuals: Yochi Dreazen, “Joint Special Forces, CIA Hit Teams Are McChrystal’s Legacy,” National Journal, September 1, 2011.
mines around the exterior: Marty Skovlund Jr., with Charles Faint and Leo Jenkins, Violence of Action: The Untold Stories of the 75th Ranger Regiment in the War on Terror (Colorado Springs, CO: Blackside Concepts, 2014), 320–378.
“… take casualties”: Naylor, Relentless Strike, 366.
incriminating evidence: Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Rod Nordland, “U.S. Is Reining in Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan,” New York Times, March 15, 2010; Naylor, Relentless Strike, 369–370.
unilateral operations by one or the other: William B. Ostlund, “Irregular Warfare: Counterterrorism Forces in Support of Counterinsurgency Operations,” Institute of Land Warfare, Land Warfare Papers no. 91, September 2012, www.ausa.org/publications/ilw/ilw_pubs/landwarfarepapers/Documents/LWP_91_web.pdf. See also “Generation Kill: A Conversation with Stanley McChrystal,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2013; Lamb and Munsing, Secret Weapon, 50.
CHAPTER 10: OVERREACH
heat and noise: Nicholas Schmidle, “Getting Bin Laden,” New Yorker, August 8, 2011.
whiff of him: Declan Walsh, “In Hiding, Bin Laden Had Four Children and Five Houses,” New York Times, March 29, 2012.
“enhanced interrogation techniques” of the Bush administration: Mark Bowden, The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012), 112–116, 248–249.
small number of senior Pakistani officials: Carlotta Gall, The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001–2014 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), 247–251.
identities of the inhabitants: M. Ilyas Khan, “Bin Laden Neighbours Describe Abbottabad Compound,” BBC News, May 2, 2011; Sam Greenhill, David Williams, and Imtiaz Hussain, “How a 40-Minute Raid Ended Ten Years of Defiance,” Daily Mail, May 3, 2011; “What Was Life Like in the Bin Laden Compound?” BBC News, May 9, 2011.
he did not possess: Bowden, The Finish, 161.
“a perfect grand strategy”: William H. McRaven, “Special Operations: The Perfect Grand Strategy?” in Bernd Horn, J. Paul de B. Taillon, and David Last, eds., Force of Choice: Perspectives on Special Operations (Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queens University Press, 2004), 61–78.
Bin Laden’s presence: Bowden, The Finish, 155–156.
“… complicating factor”: Peter L. Bergen, Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden
from 9/11 to Abbottabad (New York: Crown, 2012), 166–167.
struck from the air: Daniel Klaidman, Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 235; Bergen, Manhunt, 199.
wounded banshee: Richard Lardner, “After Bin Laden’s Death, a Hunt for Information,” Associated Press, March 16, 2012; Barbara Starr, “Pentagon Double Checked Actions of Seals During Bin Laden Raid,” CNN, September 7, 2012.
arrival of Pakistani authorities: Schmidle, “Getting Bin Laden.”
“… compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan”: “Remarks by the President on Osama bin Laden,” May 2, 2011, www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-dead.
commander-in-chief who had authorized it: John Hudson, “More Revisions to the Official Bin Laden Raid Story,” Atlantic Wire, April 12, 2012.
safety of their families: Sara Sorcher, “Top Officials Warn Against Leaks in Wake of Bin Laden Raid,” Government Executive, May 19, 2011.
“Shut the fuck up”: David E. Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (New York: Crown, 2012), 107.
“… celebrity profit from their service”: Barbara Starr, “Scathing Message Sent to Navy SEALS On Discussing Secret Work,” CNN, September 5, 2012.
impede former SEALs: The problem persisted to such a degree that Pybus’s successor, Rear Admiral Brian L. Losey, felt compelled to issue the same warning across Naval Special Warfare Command two years later. Kelsey Harkness, “Top Navy SEAL Officials Aren’t Happy with Teammates Spilling Bin Laden Secrets,” Daily Signal, November 6, 2014. For a detailed analysis of the issue, see Forrest S. Crowell, Navy SEALs Gone Wild: Publicity, Fame, and the Loss of the Quiet Professional, Master’s Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, December 2015.
deemed high threats to the United States: Government Accountability Office, “Foreign Police Assistance: Defined Roles and Improved Information Sharing Could Enhance Interagency Collaboration,” May 2012, 14.
resurgence of those groups in Pakistani cities: Bruce Riedel, Avoiding Armageddon: America, India, and Pakistan to the Brink and Back (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013), 169; Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder, “The Ally from Hell,” Atlantic, December 2011; Zia Ur Rehman, “The Pakistani Taliban’s Karachi Network,” CTC Sentinel 6, no. 5 (May 2013): 1–5; Kathy Gannon, “In Pakistan’s Punjab Area, Militants Plan for Next Afghanistan War After Foreign Troops Leave,” Associated Press, September 7, 2013; Tom Hussain, “U.S. Pullback in Lahore Another Sign of Growing Al Qaida Violence in Pakistan,” McClatchy, August 9, 2013.
ground forces by 100,000 troops: US Department of Defense, “Defense Budget Priorities and Choices,” January 2012; White House Office of the Press Secretary, “Remarks by the President on the Defense Strategic Review,” January 5, 2012.
substitute for a broad counterinsurgency campaign: Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan (New York: Knopf, 2012), 278–279.
offset their losses: Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York: Knopf, 2014), 364; Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 190; “Generation Kill: A Conversation with Stanley McChrystal,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2013.
“… change anything”: Sean Naylor, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of the Joint Special Operations Command (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 424.
thirty-eight people aboard the helicopter survived: Jeffrey N. Colt, “Executive Summary (Crash of CH-47D Aircraft in Wardak Province, Afghanistan on 6 August 2011),” September 9, 2011, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB370/docs/Document%2012.pdf.
thirty were injured: “Details Emerge of Afghanistan Raid in Which Four GIs Were Killed,” Stars and Stripes, October 10, 2013.
from 2,886 to 12,560: Jim Thomas and Chris Dougherty, “Beyond the Ramparts: The Future of U.S. Special Operations Forces,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, May 10, 2013, x; Michele L. Malvesti, “To Serve the Nation: U.S. Special Operations Forces in an Era of Persistent Conflict,” Center for a New American Security, June 2010, 32.
between 9/11 and the middle of 2014: John D. Gresham, “Interview with 75th Ranger Regiment Commander Col. Christopher Vanek, USA,” Defense Media Network, June 30, 2014.
“signed by an automatic pen”: Marty Skovlund Jr., with Charles Faint and Leo Jenkins, Violence of Action: The Untold Stories of the 75th Ranger Regiment in the War on Terror (Colorado Springs, CO: Blackside Concepts, 2014), 432.
deeply troubled the senior SOF leadership: Thom Shanker and Richard A. Oppel Jr., “War’s Elite Tough Guys, Hesitant to Seek Healing,” New York Times, June 5, 2014; Thomas and Dougherty, “Beyond the Ramparts,” 39–41.
bureaucratic brawl with the regional military commanders: “Leaders Shift from Rumsfeld Strategy,” Associated Press, May 11, 2008.
beck and call: USSOCOM, “Global SOF Network Operational Planning Team: A History,” March 2014.
assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict: Linda Robinson, “The Future of Special Operations Forces,” Council on Foreign Relations, April 2013, 18.
capabilities of the Washington office: House Report 113–113, Committee on Appropriations, 2014 Department of Defense Appropriations Bill, June 17, 2013.
“… directives and regulations”: House Report 113–473, Committee on Appropriations, 2015 Department of Defense Appropriations Bill, June 13, 2014.
integral to the Global SOF Network Campaign Plan: Howard Altman, “McRaven Legacy: More Globally Agile Command, Better Care for Troops,” Tampa Tribune, August 27, 2014.
evidence to support the accusations: Kimberly Dozier, “Inside the Takedown of the Top Navy SEAL,” Daily Beast, May 13, 2016.
career to an abrupt end: Craig Whitlock, “Powerful Admiral Punishes Suspected Whistleblowers, Still Gets Promotion,” Washington Post, October 21, 2015; Meghann Myers, “Navy SEAL Admiral’s Promotion Denied After Review,” Navy Times, March 21, 2016.
“… decades of service”: William H. McRaven, “A Warrior’s Career Sacrificed for Politics,” Tampa Tribune, April 24, 2016.
“… manipulate them”: Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., “Killing Is Not Enough: Special Operators,” Breaking Defense, December 16, 2014.
intervention became necessary: Charles T. Cleveland and Stuart L. Farris, “Special Operations—An Army Core Competency,” Army, June 2014, 25–28.
“… indirect action is decisive”: Department of the Navy, Naval Special Warfare NWP 3-05, May 2013, 4–10.
large percentage of them special operators: Joel D. Rayburn, “Rise of the Maliki Regime,” Journal of International Security Affairs, no. 22 (Spring/Summer 2012): 45–54; Richard R. Brennan Jr., Charles P. Ries, Larry Hanauer, Benn Connable, Terrence K. Kelly, Michael J. McNerney, Stephanie Young, Jason Campbell, and K. Scott McMahon, Ending the U.S. War in Iraq: The Final Transition, Operational Maneuver, and Disestablishment of United States Forces–Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2013), 310–311; Patricia Dias, Tobias Feakin, Ken Gleiman, Peter Jennings, Daniel Nichola, Simone Roworth, Benjamin Schreer, and Mark Thomson, “Strike from the Air: The First 100 Days of the Campaign Against ISIL,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute, December 2014.
ISIS facility near Kirkuk: Matthew Cox, “Delta Force KIA Led Assault Team on ISIS Prison in Iraq, Source Says,” Military.com, October 27, 2015, www.military.com/daily-news/2015/10/27/delta-force-kia-led-assault-team-isis-prison-iraq-source-says.html.
no combat role: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, “When Combat Isn’t Combat,” Atlantic, October 24, 2015; Charles Hoskinson, “Iraq Raid Signifies Stepped-Up Effort Against ISIS,” Washington Examiner, October 24, 2015.
“this is combat”: Kristina Wong, “Officials Parsing Words over ‘Combat’ in Iraq,” The Hill, October 25, 2015.
required much larger forces: “U.S. Sees Syria Rebels in Political, Not Military Solution: Asharq Al-Awsat Newspaper,” Reuters, October 27, 201
4.
“four or five”: Luis Martinez, “General Austin: Only ‘4 or 5’ US-Trained Syrian Rebels Fighting ISIS,” ABC News, September 16, 2015.
terminated the program in October 2015: Phil Stewart and Kate Holton, “U.S. Pulls Plug on Syria Rebel Training Effort; Will Focus on Weapons Supply,” Reuters, October 9, 2015; Martin Matishak, “Obama Abandons $500 Million Program to Train Syrian Rebels,” Fiscal Times, October 9, 2015.
high-priority targets: Michael M. Phillips, “Treading Line Between War and Peace, U.S. Special Forces Groom Afghan Troops,” Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2015; Heath Druzin, “Fresh Taliban Assaults Test Boundaries of US ‘Noncombat’ Mission,” Stars and Stripes, December 15, 2015.
entirely under Taliban sway: US Department of Defense, “Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan,” December 2015, www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/1225_Report_Dec_2015_-_Final_20151210.pdf; Bill Roggio, “Taliban Overruns District in Southern Afghanistan,” Long War Journal, December 9, 2015.
“… remnants of al-Qaida”: White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “Statement by the President on the End of the Combat Mission in Afghanistan,” December 28, 2014; White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “Statement by the President on Afghanistan,” October 15, 2015.
small counterterrorism force: John Vandiver, “Security Concerns Delay NATO Assistance to Libya,” Stars and Stripes, May 19, 2014; Christopher S. Chivvis and Jeffrey Martini, Libya After Qaddafi: Lessons and Implications for the Future (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2014), 82–83.
permission was denied by the State Department: Mark Moyar, Countering Violent Extremism in Mali (Tampa, FL: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2015), 21–34.
“… government last March”: Vicki Huddleston, “Why We Must Help Save Mali,” New York Times, January 14, 2013.
improvements in skills and organizational culture: Moyar, Countering Violent Extremism in Mali, 55.
frequent reshuffling: Simon J. Powelson, Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No: Lessons for SOF from Mali, Master’s Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, December 2013.
