ABOUT THIS EPISODE
I served on an ODA during the 2012-2013 campaign against the Taliban, and I came away feeling we were playing checkers while Task Force 714 was playing 4D chess against Al Qaeda in Iraq. In this episode, I break down how Stanley McChrystal and TF 714 built a counterinsurgency war machine, and why it worked.
We start with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, tracing his path from a Jordanian street sweeper and small-time criminal to the leader of the most violent franchise in Al Qaeda’s network. From there, we look at why AQI was so hard to track, and how Zarqawi’s war against Iraq’s Shia pulled the group away from fighting Americans and toward terrorizing Iraqis. We then get into McChrystal’s realization that killing the top leadership wouldn’t end the organization, and why it would take a network to defeat a network. That means fusing the CIA, NSA, FBI, DIA, and NGA with the operators who act on the intelligence, and empowering decentralized leaders to move fast. We also cover Fallujah in 2004, where the city became a safe haven for AQI and TF 714 answered with ISR, pattern-of-life analysis, and relentless raids, growing from 10 targets a month to roughly 300.
Along the way, we compare TF 714 to the British in the Malayan Emergency, the Rhodesian Fireforce in the Bush War, C.E. Callwell’s Small Wars, and Field Marshal Slim’s campaign in Burma. Separated by decades, these organizations kept landing on the same conclusions, and this episode explores why.
A note to the Marines and conventional Army: the fight in Anbar doesn’t happen without you. This episode focuses on TF 714 because of time constraints, not because your contribution wasn’t essential.
