Sublime

advised many officers that the right amount of involvement—the proper position for them—was somewhere in the middle, generally with the bulk of their force: not so far forward that they get sucked into every room clearance, but not so far back that they don’t know what is going on up front.

These weaker commanders would get a solid explanation about the burden of command and the deep meaning of responsibility: the leader is truly and ultimately responsible for everything.

In time I witnessed several such discussions between McChrystal and various senior leaders from partner agencies. These paraphrases of our organization’s core narrative would often go as follows: We clearly share a determined adversary—one that, unlike our organizations, is networked and thus moves with incredible speed. In the Task Force, we are n