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.
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