AFG 4b: CRC Paperwork

Bob and I got on base early in the morning where we went to chapel with a bunch of airborne recruits. Some things that stand out about the recruits were these: how young they were, how short their hair was, and how fired up they were. The chapel also featured contemporary Christian music or CCM, which caught me, a traditional church music guy, by surprise. The lyrics were projected on a screen in the front of the church even though all the recruits seemed to know all the words, which was weird for me.

Soon it was time to leave and get back to CRC, the CONUS Replacement Center. Today we formed up and marched past the open-air concrete pad onto a road. The military guys in uniform went first marching in formation and shouting cadences that they all knew. The contractors, like me, brought up the rear in a rag-tag, undisciplined fashion. I’ve never been so proud.

We marched along this road for perhaps a mile, maybe less, up a hill to the biggest tent I’ve ever seen. In it contained a large, open-air room with row after row of tables and row after row of chairs. Behind the tables and chairs were a few classrooms that we would not see for a couple of days. We were instructed to take a seat. And there we were given forms to fill out. Forms would be passed out, we would fill them out, and then they would be collected. In one section were the military personnel in uniform, and in another section were the contractors. We were not allowed to mix. This went on for form after form, hour after hour. We went home on Sunday, came back on Monday, and filled out more forms. But there was a method to the madness. The instructors knew what they were doing – they had done this before – and it was clear that many people had been in this large CRC tent and had filled out many, many forms.

The day was punctuated by our lining up and marching back down the hill, with the military in the front and the contractors bringing up the rear, to the dining facility or the DFAC. The food was good and plentiful – you could eat as much as you wanted. It was also free; all you had to do was show your LOA. Then we’d march back up the hill to fill out more forms. After a while we also started to receive training, such as not to sexually assault our female colleagues because it could hurt team cohesion and jeopardize the mission. We were also instructed on what to do if we got captured, which was hold out for as long as possible and maintain our honor and morale but realize that everyone breaks eventually. One of the forms we had to fill out was for dog tags, and I remember thinking, “Cool, I get dog tags!”

But something else was happening, something that I did not expect but was fundamental to the CRC process: I was slowly but surely inculcating and embodying military ways. Through the process of being given instructions, implementing those instructions, marching up and down the hill, and eating at the DFAC, a civilian like me was slowly becoming adapted to the ways of the US military machine. The civilian world of hotels and restaurants was slowly fading into my mental background.

AFG 04a: CRC Arrival

It was Friday in late July in Georgia, and I picked Bob up from the Atlanta airport in a rental car, and from there we headed to Columbus and got a hotel suite with two bedrooms. At this early point in the week, everything seemed pretty normal, like an average business trip. Bob and I, once we got into town, went to a roadhouse restaurant where we got to eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor, which was a first for me. Later that day we made it onto the Ft. Benning base and figured out where we needed to be the next morning. With nothing else to do, we left. That night, I went to sleep with little idea of what was going to happen to me the rest of the week.

We got up early and made it onto base first thing Saturday morning, the Army way. We parked the car and made it into the CONUS Replacement Center (CRC), which at this point consisted of a bunch of buildings off to the right and a large, open-air concrete pad of covered by roof to provide shade from the intense Georgia sun. There were hundreds of people, both military in and contractors out of uniform, who were there with one goal in mind: to go off to war. But before you could do that, you had to show that your paperwork was squared away, and that’s why everyone was there. Bob and I had our Letters of Authorization (LOAs), and that was all I cared about, that was all they cared about. When I got up to the head of the line and had my LOA signed off, I was oh-so-glad I had sweated those details earlier in the week because there was no appeal, there was no arguing, and there was no wiggle room: you either had the LOA or you didn’t, and it appeared that some people didn’t.

Bob and I were there as highly-educated analysts, but it appeared to me that many of the people there were mechanics or service providers on their last legs that had spent quite a bit of time and resources to get to CRC in hopes of going to Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere to make some much needed money. And some of them didn’t have their paperwork together. They were arguing, and weedling, and making excuses, but it didn’t matter. There was no way for me to figure out how many people were leaving those desks for the long trip back home empty handed, but there were a few.

 

There were also a few people on the other side of the equation: guys whose paperwork was squared away and who were going over but were leaving loved ones behind. They wanted work in the United States, in CONUS, but couldn’t find any, or it didn’t pay enough. One guy I talked to was leaving his family behind to maintain helicopters, which he said “Hurt his heart.” After getting our paperwork confirmed, there was nothing left to do but leave and come back tomorrow, which we did.

AFG 03: Preparation

After leaving Tampa where I spent a week with Special Forces (SF), which was my first week of work at my new job, for some reason I went off to my second week of work at a conference in Chantilly, Virginia. The event was held at a mega-conference center that had the feel of an American version of Versailles built by the Marriott Corporation on short-notice. There in Chantilly I tagged up with my new boss, JP, and told him that the meeting at SOCOM went well but that I had unexpectedly been invited to go to Afghanistan for six months to be a political-economic analyst for SF. I then gently hinted that he probably didn’t want me to go because he hired me to do important work for him, right?

JP reaction was like a kid on Christmas morning: “You were asked to go to Afghanistan? That’s awesome! You should totally do it! What a great opportunity! That’s a once-in-a-lifetime adventure! You should totally go!”

Thanks JP, I had been sucked into and trapped within his reality distortion zone, and so began the Lowell Goes to Afghanistan (LG2A) project.

Now what I didn’t understand at the time is that it takes a lot planning, preparation, and paperwork to get yourself into a warzone, which is counterintuitive because, let’s face it, who really wants to be in a warzone? Given the work I put into it, apparently I did.

After I got back to work proper, I called my buddy Darrall who was in the Army and said, “SF wants me to go to Afghanistan – what do I do?”

Darrall said, “I hate to say this, but I’m now in the business of sending guys there. You want me to do that for you?”

I said yeah, so that’s how Darrall became my program manager, a kind of boss, for a while. So the paperwork started with me writing up what we were going to do. Now this was supposed to be Bob’s job, because: (1) recall that he was the one who knew the SF guy Fred, (2) this was his dream; and (3) I didn’t even really want to go. However, Bob worked for this gigantic defense contractor for whom a contract in the tens of millions was considered small potatoes, so this small, two-man analysis LG2A contract wouldn’t even appear on their radar, so because I worked for a small company that’s adapted to small contracts, writing up the proposal became my job.

The interesting part was that I had to write about what Bob and I were going to do in Afghanistan, a place I had never been, for a command about which I knew little, and for people I had never met. However, as a professional defense contractor, this didn’t stop me because if it was easy, then everyone would do it. Basically, I made up a bunch of stuff, including a schedule, which is insane because when I’m working for the command, basically I’ll be an analytic resource that will be tasked by the command, in a warzone, so how do I know what their schedule will be. And they’re in a warzone, so guess what? They themselves don’t know what their schedule is! But I made up a schedule anyway, which said that I’d provide a schedule a few weeks after Bob and I got there and figured out what was going on. One thing I made sure to do was write in my coming home for Christmas, the one precondition I had for going on this insane adventure. So we finished the proposal, sent it off, and after a few months, amazingly, it was accepted. Also, because I wrote up the proposal and my company was in charge, I became the project leader, what’s called the Principal Investigator or PI.

Increasing numbers of people in my new company had gotten wind of this proposed project over time because, let’s face it, it was so outrageous and interesting that how could you not have heard of it? I remember walking into work one day, and this other scientist, Ross, came walking in behind me.

Ross asks, “Are you Lowell?”

I answer, “Yeah.”

He says, “And is it true that you’re going to Afghanistan?”

I wonder how this guy I’ve never met knows about this, but say, “Yeah, there’s talk of it, but until I’m actually on that plane, I can’t believe it’ll actually happen.”

And that’s exactly the way I felt. I was going through all these motions and putting in all this work to go somewhere that I didn’t really want to go, which probably wasn’t going to happen anyway for some stupid reason, but that’s defense contracting.

One day, I’m sitting in my office with no windows directly under an air conditioning vent freezing. At my level of seniority, I should have a nice office with windows, but because I’m going to Afghanistan, the company has decided to give me a bad office and will take care of me when I get back. So I’m sitting there, freezing and not really believing that I’ll actually ever make it to Afghanistan, when this crazy senior corporate bald advisor guy with a cane, COL Ted (retired), shows up at my door. “Are you Lowell?”

“Yeah.”

Ted says, “I just wanted to meet you! You’re going to Afghanistan right? That’s awesome! You’re going to have a great time! I wish I was going!”

I have no idea what to say, so I basically just smile and nod. I was starting to feel like a semi-celebrity.

I call Darrall and ask what to do next, and he says schedule CRC and my shots. CRC is the CONUS Replacement Center, which represents one of my favorite military achievements, an acronym within an acronym, as CONUS stands for Continental United States. CRC is a center in Ft. Benning, Georgia that prepares military personnel and contractors, like me, to travel OCONUS, which stands for Outside the Continental United States, to places like Afghanistan. I get on some military website, which requests endless pieces of information, including paperwork with very specific serial numbers. I do my best, can’t complete the paperwork, and move on. Darrall also sends me lists of all the shots that I need to take. So I schedule an appointment with a local doctor for my shots.  

I go to the office building and go inside. Finally I get taken to the back where I am shot with multiple needles filled with various liquids. Suddenly things have gotten very real, and I reflect on the nature of trust in society. Here’s somebody, purportedly a doctor, that I’ve never met, and I trust him to inject stuff into my body that will supposedly protect me when other people who I trust take me off to some faraway and dangerous land. The doctor tells me that I may feel a little weird. I go back home where I actually feel a lot weird – for a while.

After a few more days, I finally get Bob and me scheduled for CRC in late July, but there’s still one final piece of crucial paperwork that I have to obtain, the elusive Letter of Authorization or LOA. I call, I write, but somebody in Afghanistan has to authorize our arrival there, and it’s tough to motivate and move that bureaucracy. Nevertheless, I finish off a proposal to the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency or DARPA, and then head down to a computer-based analysis conference at a Hyatt in Washington, DC.  The conference is a bit of a wasted effort however as I spend most of my time writing emails and making phone calls to try to spring loose the LOA because, without that, Bob and I are not going anywhere. I’m scheduled to get on a plane to Atlanta to meet Bob on Friday as CRC starts on Saturday, and the thought of going back to work and facing my colleagues after all the build-up and excitement is not pleasant. I finally receive the LOA in an email on Thursday, with almost 24 hours to spare before going to Atlanta! No problem! Off to Georgia!

AFG 00: Preface

I’m a computational social scientist, and for whatever reason I got invited by US Army Special Forces to go to Afghanistan, America’s longest war, around the 10^th anniversary of the conflict in the fall of 2011. Upon my return I’ve told a few stories to let people know of the awesome individuals I met over there, and one colleague said to me, “You should really write up your experiences.” I was a little reluctant to do for several reasons. First of all, it seemed like a bit of an ego-trip, in which I didn’t want to indulge. Second, I’ve read a bunch of books either from operators who live and breathe the stuff or from journalists who get embedded for a few weeks and then write up what they see. My experience is a bit different in that I worked for the Special Operations command for six months, so I became more of a colleague from the outside rather than an observer. But as I worked in Afghanistan, a curious thing happened. Multiple Special Forces and SEALs started giving me long explanations about what they saw, their experiences, and their opinions about the war. It happened so frequently that I finally asked one guy why he was telling me so much. He said that I was “on the outside” so his complaints to me about the way the war was run could possibly result in some good. That is, complaints up the Army chain of command would go nowhere, but telling me, a recovering academic, could plausibly result in actual action and change. So that is why I am writing these pseudo-chapters that could someday be reworked into a book: to tell the stories of America’s Special Operations warriors about their experience. But I don’t want this to be an academic treatise. Instead I want these stories and accompanying academic arguments to be told and developed through a literary, “new journalism” style. That way, the reader can get a glimpse into the world of warfare and Special Operations that few civilians ever get to see.

The 3 Big Lies of 20th Century Politics

In looking at the implementation of policy, I often wonder about the difference between the way things are and the way things "should be," -- that is, the distinction between facts and values. After thinking about politics seriously for a while now, I observe that the balance between facts and values have shifted too far in the value direction, which results in negative policy consequences. The reasons behind this merit mention, the increasing availability and power of the media throughout the 20th century, and by this I mean newspapers, radio, TV, and lately, in the very late 20th century, the internet. The premise behind the primacy of media rests with Marshall McLuhan who famously said, "The medium is the message." That is, the media to which I refer -- newspapers, radio, TV, internet, and even to a certain extent, literature itself -- emphasizes some types of messages and narratives over others. To the extent that these messages are over-emphasized and others are excluded, they contribute to the "big lie." 20th century politics, political science, and political philosophy are driven by three themes that, when properly weighted are fine, but when reified to the exclusion of other considerations result in problematic policies that will come to define 21st century politics, and these are (1) equality, (2) rationality, and (3) democracy.

First, equality is concept with a rich and problematic history in American political thought. The United States, as originally envisioned under the Articles of Confederation, was so equal that nobody was effectively in charge, which resulted in the Constitution that featured a more workable and hierarchical organization of the US. However, evidence that radical equality is not a natural feature of the world we see around us is a provided by two sources, one philosophical and one mathematical. The first derives from Marx and his socialist dictum, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," which shows that Marx himself recognized the inherent inequality of the world. Now Marx may have argued that this difference needed to be narrowed, but he still recognized the reality this fundamental social cleavage. The second source of fundamental inequality is more mathematical and natural, but it is the concept of fractals by Mandelbrot, which hold that the world is fundamentally "lumpy" and inequal. That is, if you look at the distribution of oil across the globe, it isn't equally distributed across the planet but is instead "clumped" with certain areas having lots of oil, such as Saudi Arabia, and other sections having not so much, like Japan. So the assumption of equality is not a natural state of the world. I always think of the sculpture Broken Symmetry at FermiLab in Batavia, Illinois to remind myself of the fundamental nature of inequality.

Second, rationality is a concept that too is assumed to be true and is, in fact, problematic. Old-school economists tended to make too much of rationality by assuming that the human brain, being an amazing piece of machinery, could take in incredible amounts of information, calculate it, and make "optimal" or "rational" decisions. Note that this is a flattering depiction of human cognition, and you can almost envision the undergraduates on college campuses being lectured to and thinking to themselves, "Yes, my cognitive capability is amazing." The problem is, evidence from the lab showed that this isn't the way people actually make decisions. Herbert Simon posited a more natural and empirically verifiable way of making decisions based on "bounded rationality," in which it is recognized that the human brain limits significantly the amount of information it can inculcate and process, and this has significant consequences for institutional design, policy, and politics.

Third, democracy generally and the democratic peace literature specifically because it assumes that democratic policies will be correct by definition when in fact, upon further review, democracy-based policies can be shown to be ineffective. The problem is that the assumption that democracy is an unquestionable good -- as well as of equality and rationality -- can be used to shut off debate and prevent a review of a policy's effectiveness, which results in the persistence of poor policy. As regards domestic politics, democratic arguments and assumptions have been used to achieve political power in both Great Britain and the US, though the policy results have been problematic. As regards foreign policy, democracy-based theory was used to inform the Afghan and Iraq wars, both of which did not end with the benefits originally envisioned. In fact, that's what an "unquestionable good," is, something that is reported to be so wonderful that it cannot be questioned. This argument, which is really more of an anti-argument, is at the root of political correctness, the idea that some ideas cannot be questioned.

The reason why democracy is problematic is a fundamental question of political philosophy that I've not seen articulated before directly in the modern context, though there are analogous arguments made through antiquity. On the sider of modernity, there is the "advertising ethic," which holds that, "truth is that which sells." Even Simon points out that democracy is just one way to make a decision, by voting on it, which in no way guarantees its correctness.  Christianity, in contrast, holds that "a tree is known by its fruit," which means that a policy must be judged on its long-term consequences, not its initial popularity. A similar sentiment was expressed by Spinoza who said "sub specie aeteritatis," or "take the long-term view," because short-term views, as emphasized by today's media, can be deceiving. Finally, Plato in his Gorgias made the point, using the example of a ship's pilot, that somebody who appears to know what they're doing is not the same as somebody who actually knows what they're doing. Today's media, by emphasizing appearance, helps to promote people who are convincing rather than those with true expertise. These three "lies" of the 20th century -- equality, rationality, and democracy -- are at the foundation of 20th century social bargains that will prove unsustainable in the 21st, and their re-evaluation will form the basis of this century's political debate and activity.

AFG 02: Invitation to Afghanistan

The February 2011 Education Week at SOCOM covered many topics, and one of them was press relations. The organizing committee had invited a panel of reporters, three of whom were CNN, NPR, and Army Times. The tension was palpable as there is a natural tension if not antipathy between Special Operations Forces (SOF) and the press as they work at natural cross purposes. SOF by necessity must maintain security for multiple reasons. Its tactics, techniques and procedures – that is, how it does its job – must be kept hidden because intimate knowledge about them allows other to counter what SOF does and predict where SOF will be. Operationally, the press must not know what operations are planned nor their timing and location because, once again, such knowledge can place US military personnel in danger. The press, in contrast, has a very different set of incentives. Reporters want information to be free and open, and they get paid for telling a good story that people want to read or hear. SOF and the warrior culture is inherently interesting to many because their job is active, visual, and kinetic. Moreover, SOF generates a pretty much endless stream of interesting stories. The intersection between SOF and the press gets placed into sharp relief when considering that military budgets are not guaranteed in the 21st century, and taxpayers need to know something about SOF if they are going to appreciate the work they do and continue to fund their activities. Helping young SOF soldiers to understand the incentives of the press will help them tell reporters what they need to know without jeopardizing operational security. It’s also important to know which reporters to trust, which is something that only comes only through repeated positive interaction.

On the second day of the program, a Special Forces (SF) Colonel named Fred wanted to have lunch with and meet me. Fred as it turns out was the guy who in fact issued the official invitation for me to attend Education Week. So Bob, my quantitative analysis buddy, and I had lunch with Fred in the Officer’s Club, a building from an earlier, simpler era just a short walk across some patchy grass away from the meeting hall. He was younger, quieter, smaller, and more thoughtful than I thought a SF colonel would be, not that I had met that many, but doubtless he had done something considerable to achieve his rank. Fred said that he ran an analysis group in Afghanistan and that he had heard about some advanced analytic techniques that might be useful there. I knew he was talking about some system dynamics-based, complex social systems analysis work that I had done for DARPA a few years ago. The program that funded that work finished with mixed results, but it was nice that some remembered the work I had done. Then Fred came right out and asked me, “Would you be interested in coming to Afghanistan to work for our analysis group? I think your contributions could be very helpful.” I was taken aback. Bob had of course talked about this, but I didn’t know that the invitation to Education Week was really kind of a tryout or evaluation for a much longer engagement. Also, listening to Bob hypothesize about going to Afghanistan was a heck of a lot different than having a full-bird, flesh and blood SF colonel issue a semi-official invitation. I replied that I was certainly interested, but I had a lot of questions. Where would Bob and I sleep? Fred said the Army provided all that. Would we need special equipment? The Army would provide it. Would we need special training? The Army would provide it. How long would we be there? Fred was thinking around six months. I left that lunch feeling disoriented and confused yet vaguely flattered and excited.

That night there was a meet-up at a local Tampa bar for drinks, and all the conference attendees were invited. Of course, the conference organizers reminded everyone that drinking and driving was strictly prohibited and that anybody caught would be in a world of hurt, including loss of security clearance and the career limitations associated with that. I understood that the same consequences applied to me, but I had to go to see who was there and what information I could dig up. I was also driving Bob’s rental, and crashing it drunk would have been, in a word, “bad.” The first thing I learned is that the journalists are natural raconteurs and interviewers. They were the easiest to talk to, they were interested in what you had to say, or at least appeared interested, and their stories were endless and normally pretty good. I talked a good long while with the reporter from NPR, who told a few stories about meeting Lara Logan of CBS, who I always thought was in front of the camera primarily because of her looks rather than reportorial acumen, but I was informed that she was brave, intelligent, and a friend of SOF. I also met a guy from the Army Times, who was literally swaying in front of the bar and asked me if I wanted a drink. I had made a promise to myself to just nurse one beer for the evening, but I have to admit that I was tempted. I wondered how he’d get home.

The SOF in attendance were much tougher nuts to crack. They were pretty easy to identify because they’re physically fit and stick with their team. The SEALs were the rock stars of the event because they are comparatively rare compared to SF. Also, they are “pure shooters,” which means they primarily perform the types of “kinetic,” shooting missions that SOF like, which involves taking out the bad guys. SF, in contrast, performs the foreign internal defense or FID mission, which involves training local indigenous forces to protect their own country. As a political economist and quantitative analyst, I think SF are very cool because not only are they very capable militarily—operating in small, 12-man, Operational Detachments Alpha (ODAs)—but they also know how to interact with and motivate local populations. As cool as I think they are though, I came across a group of some of America’s most elite SF warriors complaining because they didn’t get the same respect and rock-star status as SEALs. I wanted to give them a pep talk, but in retrospect opted to keep my mouth shut because they had no idea who I was and I probably didn’t know what I was talking about anyway. It was nice to be there, but I was not in that SOF world.

The rest of the week passed without incident, but I was becoming increasingly nervous at the prospect of actually going to Afghanistan. I had just started a new job, and how would my management react to my going? Also how was I going to tell my wife that I was considering this? Did I really want to spend that long away from my family and my home? Bob was driving me to the airport, and he was really pressuring me to go, but at this point, I was getting a little fed up because I knew it was Bob’s dream to go, but it was mine? Did I really want to go, or was I just caught up in the excitement? Finally Bob, getting a little bit frustrated with me, asked me what it would take for me to say yes. I said that I would need to be able to come back for Christmas if it happened, which I wasn’t sure it would. He then let me off at the curb and I went into the airport, glad that the conversation was over because, after thinking about it, I didn’t really want to go to Afghanistan – at all.

AFG 01: Invitation to Tampa

I met my buddy Bob at a conference in Quantico, VA in the summer of 2010. Seeing Bob was memorable because as soon as he saw me, he said, “Hey, do you want to go to Afghanistan with me?” I’ve made it a point in life to always answer totally outrageous questions like that with a hearty, “Oh yeah! Sure!” because there was no way this could actually be possible in real life, right? We hung out for a few days, including a spectacular evening at the new Marine Corps Museum watching the Silent Drill Team, and that was that. I basically forgot about the question and my flippant reply because people say stuff all the time, and how frequently does it work out? In my experience, such proposals work out not very frequently at all.

But about six months later I got another call from Bob, and he had been a busy guy. There was an Education Week being given at USSOCOM in Tampa for Special Operations Forces (SOF) heading over to Afghanistan, and he wanted to know if I would attend as an instructor. I told him I didn’t know anything about Afghanistan, so I didn’t want to over promise my background or experience. Bob said that I had been to a few too many graduate schools and that was good enough for Fred, the guy who was inviting me. I said sure, it sounded like fun and at least good for a few stories, so I made my arrangements to fly down and attend.

I arrived in Tampa a few weeks later in February 2011. Monday was scheduled as a day simply to get oriented with the facility, the staff, and the program content with the actual program starting on Tuesday. I found myself in a control room suspended above an audience of hundreds of US Army Special Forces (SF) and a few sundry US Navy SEALs who were inbound for Afghanistan. Now I confess, much of the reason I was there was because I was the world of SOF fascinating. When I was studying international relations in graduate school, whenever I needed an intellectual break, I’d read a book on SOF with possibly the most influential or eye-opening being Douglas Waller’s Commandos, especially the first chapter on how  each type of SOF is trained and selected. Now, looking down on this audience—all of then young, strong, and potentially lethal—I wondered I all of them would be alive in a year’s time. There was no way to know, but my guess was that some of them would no longer be with us.

There were many speeches given by multiple people. Each education week has its own character, and this one was more academic and intellectual than usual, hence my invitation. Three particular presentations stood out. First Thomas Barfield, a Boston University professor, gave a talk based on his book, Afghanistan: A cultural and political history. Not only did Prof. Barfield exhibit an admirable expertise, but his book was in the right place at the right time, making his research indispensable to this SOF audience. Barfield’s expertise might also have made a significant impression on me due to my comparative lack of it: for example, I was spelling the acronym for the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, GIRoA, with a “J” in my notes, which indicates just how uninformed I was about that particular region of the world.

Second Jeff Weiss, a financier who also taught part-time at West Point, presented his work on “Extreme Negotiations,” that captured the hard-won lessons-learned from previous generations of soldiers who had spent time in Afghanistan. His basic insight is that soldiers who are far from home and in danger, have a tendency to try and placate and mollify the locals, which usually makes the situation worse. Instead, Weiss and his co-authors recommend the following five extreme negotiations strategies for soldiers: (1) Get the Big Picture: Start by soliciting the other person’s or group’s point of view. Use what you learn to shape the objectives of the negotiation and to determine how you’ll achieve them; (2) Uncover and Collaborate: Learn the other party’s motivations and concerns. Propose multiple solutions and invite your counterparts to improve on them; (3) Elicit Genuine Buy-In: Use facts and the principles of fairness, rather than brute force, to persuade others. Arm them with ways to defend their decisions to their critics, and create useful precedents for future negotiations; (4) Build Trust First: Deal with relationship issues head-on. Make incremental commitments to encourage trust and cooperation; and (5) Focus on Process: Consciously change the game by not reacting to the other side. Take steps to shape the negotiation process as well as the outcome. The great thing about these tips for operating and negotiating is that they’re battle tested by SOF, so they can be trusted.

But the best talk, the one I’ll always remember, was from GEN Stanley McCrystal who had just been forcibly retired by Obama due to a take-down piece by Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone. So GEN McCrystal gets up in front of those several hundred SOF, dressed in a suit rather than his uniform, and I could literally feel the sympathy, admiration, and affection well up from the crowd. He seemed impossibly thin and began, “When I was your age, I wanted to retire and be one of those cranky, bitter old guys. I wanted to sit around the house, smoking unfiltered Marlboros and complaining about the old days of how I was rooked over by the system.” He paused for effect, and there was a definite tension in the room as I know I for one was wondering, where is the General going with this? “But I want you to know that’s not the way I feel now. I feel very lucky that I served in the US Army and got to do what I did. But mostly I’m thankful and enthusiastic because I got to serve with people – like you. With memories like that, I could never be bitter or angry. When I think of the skills you have, and the sacrifices you’re willing to make for your country, I’m incredible proud to have served with people like you and filled with optimism for our future.” From somebody outside the Army, McCrystal did the most unexpected thing possible, especially given the recent Rolling Stone incident: he took the focus off himself and put it on the guys in the room and the mission they were about to undertake. The SOF in the audience rose up as one and gave him thunderous applause for what seemed like minutes. I felt like I was in the presence of something special, true leadership, and that I too would be willing to go to Afghanistan to do my part if I were asked.