Generation Kill: A Conversation With Stanley McChrystal

Generation Kill: A Conversation with Stanley McChrystal

Generation Kill: A Conversation with Stanley McChrystal

The United States remained involved in a battle in Afghanistan and Iraq from past fifteen years. The war was aimed at combating terrorists, which were suspected of the 9/11 attacks of 2001. The United States started combating those terrorists ferociously after the 9/ 11 incident. Despite spending billions of dollars on this war against terrorism, it is an obvious understanding that terrorism today still possess a range of challenges, both at the social and political level. In consideration of these issues, this essay will analyse, those challenges inferred from an interview of a commander in the Iraq war, Stanley A. McChrystal.

As reported and described by Stanley McChrystal, a centralized and narrowly focused fight was ongoing with the terrorist’s organizations before the attack of 9/11. For instance, most of the actions were not grounded on a high mark of intelligence. Further, only a few operations were executed with a high level of concealment, before the 9/11 incident ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"n8dteBh3","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(S. McChrystal & Rose, 2013)","plainCitation":"(S. McChrystal & Rose, 2013)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":2143,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/JB686VSL"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/JB686VSL"],"itemData":{"id":2143,"type":"article-journal","title":"Generation kill: A conversation with Stanley McChrystal","container-title":"Foreign Affairs","page":"2–8","volume":"92","issue":"2","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Generation kill","author":[{"family":"McChrystal","given":"Stanley"},{"family":"Rose","given":"Gideon"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2013"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (S. McChrystal & Rose, 2013). Things changed after the 9/ 11 incident, which totally changed the pattern as to how these operations were planned and conducted. Precisely, it also became appropriate to look into the issues clearly. In order to attain this objective, the US army allied in all the parts of the battlefield. The basic aim was to collect evidence and gather intelligence, right after any incident takes place anywhere in the world.

This resulted in the need for high intelligence and secretive operations. In addition, to that, the 9/11 attacks carried a new prospect to counterterrorism. As a result, the American Army had to stay connected and interlinked so that they could obtain information in no time. The five-step procedure that was used initially to communicate was taking more time and was inefficient to get the communication where it was required to move. Hence, the commander had to come up with something new that could cut the steps involved in the process, keeping it simple yet effective. In addition, they required to move far being capable to catch just one person at night. “You understand who or what is a target, you locate it, you capture or kill it, you take what intelligence you can from people or equipment or documents, you analyze that, and then you go back and do the cycle again, smarter ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"G4yK9yaM","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(\\uc0\\u8220{}Generation Kill,\\uc0\\u8221{} n.d.)","plainCitation":"(“Generation Kill,” n.d.)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":2146,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/V36EZ82H"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/V36EZ82H"],"itemData":{"id":2146,"type":"webpage","title":"Generation Kill","URL":"https://www.foreignaffairs.com/interviews/2013-02-11/generation-kill","accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",8,25]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (“Generation Kill,” n.d.)”.

McChrystal devised a plan that not only reduced the steps involved in the process but also enabled to catch more than one person at night. McChrystal also shared that things have changed strategically. It commenced with their well-trained commandos, but McChrystal mentioned three things to be changed. The first thing is this global positioning system, the second-night vision goggles and the third one unmanned aerial vehicles. The first one enables navigating from one part to another, the night equipment enabled perform night operations by seeing in the night and unmanned aerial vehicles enabled them to have a bird’s eye view and sharing the live feed. In addition, these technologies reduced the number of commandos needed in the field ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"UeBIxJx8","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(G. S. A. McChrystal & McChrystal, 2014)","plainCitation":"(G. S. A. McChrystal & McChrystal, 2014)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":2148,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/GZMFTPD7"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/s8f0QVnP/items/GZMFTPD7"],"itemData":{"id":2148,"type":"book","title":"My share of the task: A memoir","publisher":"Portfolio","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"My share of the task","author":[{"family":"McChrystal","given":"General Stanley A."},{"family":"McChrystal","given":"Stanley A."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2014"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (G. S. A. McChrystal & McChrystal, 2014). The number of raids also increased since technology also enabled night raids.

McChrystal believed that using technology against terrorists will make them more vulnerable to them. For instance, he believed that using sophisticated technology against terrorist will make drag them more close to a terrorist. This can also impact the United States counter-terrorism measures negatively. If for any unfortunate reason, the terrorists are able to get a part of their technology, they can make it more destructive. This can also make the allied forces working against those terrorists more vulnerable to them. This is the reason McChrystal has remained against the use of technology against terrorists.

References:

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Generation Kill. (n.d.). Retrieved August 25, 2019, from https://www.foreignaffairs.com/interviews/2013-02-11/generation-kill

McChrystal, G. S. A., & McChrystal, S. A. (2014). My share of the task: A memoir. Portfolio.

McChrystal, S., & Rose, G. (2013). Generation kill: A conversation with Stanley McChrystal. Foreign Affairs, 92(2), 2–8.