Call Sign Chaos

by Jim Mattis

The investigative report, issued weeks later, found no evidence that we had struck anything other than an enemy-occupied desert camp. But by then it was too late. The initial false reports had become ground truth; correcting it was not considered news. We had once again lost the battle of the narrative. As Churchill noted, “A lie gets halfway around the world before truth gets its pants on.” In our age, a lie can get a thousand times around the world before the truth gets its pants on.

You can’t fool the troops. Our young men had to harden their hearts to kill proficiently, without allowing indifference to noncombatant suffering to form a callus on their souls. I had to understand the light and the dark competing in their hearts, because we needed lads who could do grim, violent work without becoming evil in the process, lads who could do harsh things yet not lose their humanity.

“Be polite, be professional—but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”

But when someone shoots at a Marine, he becomes fair game. I wanted my lads to keep an offensive mindset. If fired upon, their job was to hunt down the enemy and take him out; I wanted no passivity or ceding of initiative to the enemy. “There are some jerks in the world,” I said, “that need to be shot. There are hunters and there are victims.

priority of accomplishing the mission. For this reason I came down hard on anyone who said, “Sir, my mission is to bring all my men home safely.” That’s a laudable and necessary goal, but the primary mission was to defeat the enemy, even as we did everything possible to keep our young men and women alive.

I had never before left a job unfinished, yet I was leaving my troops facing a maddening situation: we were playing defense. American policymakers were still restricting necessary tactical actions. I had been raised by Vietnam-era Marines who drummed into me the importance of making sure the policymakers grasped the nature of the war they were responsible for. Don’t get trapped into using halfway measures or leaving safe havens for the enemy. I believed I had spoken clearly. But I hadn’t gotten through.

The Marine motto is “Semper Fidelis”—always faithful, not just when things go your way.

In today’s insurgent wars, the vital ground is not a mountaintop or a key road—it’s the people.

a leader’s role is problem solving. If you don’t like problems, stay out of leadership.

I often reminded my American officers, with their hard-won pride in combat leadership and tremendous capabilities, that not all good ideas come from the nation with the most aircraft carriers.

“You’re disappointed in their input. Okay. But your criticism makes that input worse, not better. You’re going the wrong way. You cannot allow your passion for excellence to destroy your compassion for them as human beings.”

Entropy prevailed; process had replaced output. They had many papers about what NATO needed to do, but, reviewing them, I could detect no steps taken as the outcome of what looked like good thinking.

While we couldn’t get the future exactly right—no one ever can—we sure couldn’t afford to get it totally wrong.

For those who question the post–Soviet Union value of NATO, it was telling that an alliance designed originally for the defense of Western Europe fought its first combat campaign in response to the 9/11 attacks on America. It must not be forgotten, in our too often transactional view of allies, that these nations offered up the blood of their sons and daughters in our common defense. As Churchill said, “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them!”

Culture is a way of life shared by a group of people—how they act, what they believe, how they treat one another, and what they value.

Culture - how we treat people - and the need for culture to reflect leadership, reminds me why I insisted on giving the leads a chance (as valued stakeholders) to review the process. Also - to edit out the snippiness of the CRM response. We don't treat people like that - and we don't talk to people like that. Her voice is our voice...

The output of any organization, driven by its culture, must reflect the leadership’s values in order to be effective.

Initiative has to be practiced daily, not stifled, if it’s to become a reality inside a culture. Every institution gets the behavior it rewards. We had to reward battlefield behavior, not what in an earlier time we called garrison Mickey Mouse, or worse.

When asked how he would order his thoughts if he had one hour to save the world, Einstein sagely responded that he would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and save the world in five minutes.

The concept I heard constantly was “effects-based operations.” In its original design, EBO was, and remains, a sound Air Force targeting concept. By employing a “system of systems” approach to attacking certain target sets and by forecasting the degradation in enemy capabilities, some air operations could be precisely calculated to work based on predicted effects. Effects-based targeting had worked well when targeting physically defined, closed systems such as power grids and road networks. For instance, by destroying certain railroad bridges, we could force the enemy to, predictably, move by motor vehicles along certain highways. By bombing road choke points, we could curtail enemy movement. But JFCOM had bastardized this Air Force doctrine, generalizing it to open systems like warfighting, where adaptation and unpredictability are the norm.

Without “precise” intelligence, “precise” targeting was impossible.

EBO “terminology used was too complicated, vain, and could not be understood by the thousands of officers that needed to carry it out.”

EBO had two fatal flaws. First, any planning construct that strives to provide mechanistic certainty is at odds with reality, and will lead you into a quagmire of paralysis and indecision.

“Adaptation is smarter than you are.” The enemy is certain to adapt to our first move.

General George C. Marshall had written: “The leader must learn to cut to the heart of a situation, recognize its decisive elements and base his course of action on these. The ability to do this is not God-given, nor can it be acquired overnight; it is a process of years. He must realize that training in solving problems of all types—long practices in making clear unequivocal decisions, the habit of concentrating on the question at hand, and an elasticity of mind—are indispensable requisites for the successful practice of the art of war….It is essential that all leaders—from subaltern to commanding general—familiarize themselves with the art of clear, logical thinking.”

I cautioned them that their natural inclination to be team players could not compromise their independence of character. They had to be capable of articulating necessary options or consequences, even when unpopular. They must give their military advice straight up, not moderating it. Avoid what George Kennan called “the treacherous curtain of deference.” Don’t be political. They had to understand that their advice might not be accepted. Then they must carry out a policy, to the best of their ability, even when they might disagree.

Reminds me that "sugar-coating" in the policy realm is disempowering (for the WHOLE policy team). Cowardice, self-preservation, and a focus on self-importance are not desired traits for policy-makers.

any President gets the advice he desires and deserves, but in the dawn’s early light you need to be able to look in the shaving mirror without looking away. As Secretary Shultz had said before Congress, to do our jobs well, we should not want our job too much.

Exactly - never compromise your principles to keep your job.

I wanted disciplined but not regimented thinking. Commanders must encourage intellectual risk taking to preclude a lethargic environment. Leaders must shelter those challenging nonconformists and mavericks who make institutions uncomfortable; otherwise you wash out innovation.

If you’re uncomfortable dealing with intellectual ambushes from your own ranks, it’ll be a heck of a lot worse when the enemy does it to you.

Once established, a government bureaucracy provides steady jobs and steady routines. It grows deep roots in the community, attracting the protection of influential politicians. It becomes a self-perpetuating entity. But the American taxpayer is footing the bill, so every organization must serve a worthwhile purpose or it should go away. Who can best judge whether an organization adds value to the lives of the American people? In this case, I was the commander who had studied this organization for two years. I was confident that I’d made the right recommendation. Secretary Gates was not a leader who sat on decisions. It was done. Over the next months, the valuable parts of JFCOM were moved elsewhere, and the rest of the command was disestablished. I had succeeded in firing myself.

It was to prove a time for fighting, and not just for our troops on the ground. At my level, the next several years would be a fight to keep faith with our troops and the rules of engagement under which we sent our young women and men into combat; faith with our allies and friends who had stood with us; and faith with coming generations, to whom we owed a responsible strategy by which to build a better peace despite the existence of implacable enemies. It was to be a time when I would witness duty and deceit, courage and cowardice, and, ultimately, strategic frustration.

Preparing for my Senate hearing, I had written out succinct answers to anticipated questions. The discipline of writing always drove me to be more exact, even at times driving me to different conclusions than I had originally held.

I found myself grasping to define the policy end states and the strategies that connected our military activities to those end states. In the back of my mind rang the adage “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” What I had seen in Baghdad and Fallujah had taught me the dangers created by a lack of strategic thinking. Based on both experience and study, I could not identify a sustainable vision for our diplomatic and military efforts across the Middle East. In some cases, I could see what our policymakers didn’t want to happen—we didn’t want Israel attacked, didn’t want Iran with nuclear weapons or mining the Straits of Hormuz, and so on—but I couldn’t find an integrated end state we were trying to achieve: What does it look like when we’re done?

No one contributes money to a presidential campaign to be assigned ambassador to a Middle East country. We military leaders in CENTCOM realized that we had a varsity team of diplomats. We had the best, the most proven, and the most experienced.

While our intelligence community’s and military’s successes had prevented additional terrorist attacks on our soil emanating from overseas following 9/11, I did not patronize this enemy.

I consider myself the most reluctant person on earth to go to war. But once at war, our field commanders must be given what they need without delay. We could not have them fighting a two-front war, one against the enemy in the field and the other against us in the rear, extending from Tampa to Washington.

a call from the field is not an interruption of the daily routine; it’s the reason for the daily routine.

coalition warfighting denies what is considered axiomatic in military circles: that when you assign anyone a mission or duty, you must also provide them with sufficient authority over everyone assigned to execute that mission.

Speaking with young generals and admirals, I would explain that in coalitions, I could not give them sufficient military authority to override an ally’s decision. “Nonetheless,” I explained, “your nation expects success from you.” Nothing new under the sun: this was the same challenge Marlborough and Eisenhower had to deal with.

General Zinni, had taught me to break information into three categories. The first was housekeeping, which allowed me to be anticipatory—for example, munitions stockage levels and ship locations. The second was decision-making, to maintain the rhythm of operations designed to ensure that our OODA loops were functioning at the speed of relevance. The third were alarms, called “night orders.” These addressed critical events—for instance, a U.S. embassy in distress or a new outbreak of hostilities. “Alarm” information had to be immediately brought to my attention, day or night.

Was I getting “snappish” with my staff? What kind of feedback did that encourage? (Note to self: I wasn’t immune.) Are my manners deteriorating? Was I becoming an impatient tyrant rather than a coach? The tougher the situation, the more I needed to choose to set a calm example, not allowing long hours and wicked issues to dictate my behavior around a team doing their utmost.

“What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?”

Early on, a staff officer, thinking I was in Tampa, sent me a short email asking if he could come by the office regarding a sensitive issue. I typed back, “Hard for you to pop up to 30,000 feet over Saudi Arabia, where I am now. Understand what you want to do. You are cleared hot. Run with it and next time you know this sort of matter is your call. / M.”

Love this - empowerment

“The only thing that allows government to work at the top levels,” he said, “is trusted personal relations.” Within my theater, the American team—diplomats, intelligence, and military officers—exhibited a high degree of trust in one another. You can’t achieve this leading by email.

I had to gain the trust of foreign leaders, civilian and military. If regional leaders didn’t know me and didn’t feel comfortable with my understanding of what they faced, I’d be nothing more than a place card at the dinner table. The intimate conversations and the sharing of confidences would flow around me as if I didn’t exist. I’d be irrelevant, treated with indifferent courtesy as a tourist instead of a player. To avoid that, I was determined to be a good listener and to be direct in laying out my thoughts, explaining the courses of action I was considering and asking for their views. I represented the world’s most powerful military. But they lived in the Middle East, and I wanted them to know that, where our interests overlapped, their problems were my problems.

“Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home,” the President said. “We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq.” The words “sovereign, stable, and self-reliant” had never been used by the Pentagon or the State Department, and I had never seen them in any intelligence report. After all we went through and all the casualties we suffered, I thought, surely we were not just giving up. “You know I say what I mean and I mean what I say,” Obama said in the fall of 2012. “I said I’d end the war in Iraq. I ended it.” Rhetoric doesn’t end conflicts. With America’s influence effectively gone, Prime Minister Maliki imprisoned numerous Sunnis, drove their representatives from government, and refused to send funds to Sunni districts, virtually disenfranchising a third of his country. Iraq slipped back into escalating violence. It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion. Soon the Sunnis were in full revolt and the Iraqi Army was a hollow, powerless shell, allowing the terrorists to return like a barbarian horde, exactly as the CIA had predicted.

This wasn’t a military-versus-civilian flaw, or a Democrat-versus-Republican error. It went deeper. At the top, then as now, there was an aura of omniscience. The assessments of the intelligence community, our diplomats, and our military had been excluded from the decision-making circle. After the fact, some political leaders called it an intelligence failure; that was scapegoating, because we had been warned that an Al Qaeda–aligned terror group would come again. That assessment was ignored. It’s frustrating to listen to any leader blame his predecessor, especially a political leader regarding a situation that he knew existed when he ran for office.

Much talk has been given to having an “exit strategy.” My thought was that “exiting” a war was a by-product of winning that war. Unless you want to lose, you don’t tell an enemy when you are done fighting, and you don’t set an exit unrelated to the situation on the ground.

demonstrated the importance of never having only one course of action to achieve your aims. If in a crisis you find yourself without options, you will be pushed into a corner. Always build in shock absorbers.

After a rebellion, however, power tends to flow to those most organized, not automatically to the most idealistic. Many Arabs wanted democracy. But the revolt was against unjust and unresponsive governments more than it was a pell-mell rush to democracy and inclusive government. I was certain it was unrealistic to believe that, in a region lacking democratic traditions or civil society institutions, the path to liberal democracy could be swift or free of violence. The French Revolution unleashed six years of terror and trial by the guillotine, ending with the rise of the Napoleonic militaristic state. During World War I, the Russians rebelled against czarist rule, but that ultimately ushered in Stalin’s totalitarianism and the deaths of millions. Rebellions, no matter how idealistic in origin, can as often as not produce chaos that often leads to tyranny.

My ironclad rule was to never imply by silence that I agreed with any criticism of the policies of my Commander in Chief. On one visit to a kingdom in the region, after Mubarak had been deposed, the reigning monarch began voicing harsh criticisms of our policies. “Your Highness,” I finally interrupted, “my loyalty is absolute to my country and my Commander in Chief, President Obama. I will not agree by silence when they are criticized. I’m here to help ensure the security of your kingdom. I carry out the last six hundred meters of American policy. Believe me, I know how to do that, and I will do that. Where our interests overlap, your problems are my problems. And I’m here looking for the overlap so I can help.”