Victory Point by Ed Darack Page B

from the president, through the secretary of defense, to Central Command (CENTCOM), to the Afghan theater-wide umbrella command: Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan (CFC-A), which was chiefed by U.S. Army Lieutenant General David Barno. Authority flowed to 3/3 from CFC-A through Combined Joint Task Force 76, a U.S. Army-led coalition responsible for not all—but virtually all—military operations in Afghanistan. The Twenty-fifth Infantry Division, commanded by Major General Eric Olson, formed the core of CJTF-76. The command path to 3/3 then channeled through Combined Task Force Thunder, commanded by U.S. Army Colonel Gary Cheek of the 25th Infantry Division—Cooling’s direct boss while in-country. Task Force Thunder controlled military operations in Afghanistan’s eastern reaches: fourteen contiguous provinces known as Regional Command East (RC-East), including, of course, the six provinces assigned to 3/3, which were designated as “Tactical Area of Responsibility Trinity,” but also referenced simply as Area of Operation Trinity, or AO Trinity.
    While limited in terms of supporting assets, including aviation and logistics, and although his battalion was spread thinly across six provinces, Cooling and his staff succeeded in maximizing his Marines’ capabilities in the difficult COIN fight, in great measure due to the relationship Cooling forged with Colonel Cheek. Both are war fighters down to their bone marrow, and Cheek understood how Marines fight—in the COIN realm as well as in the hard kinetic fight. Cheek also understood the Marine Corps’ elegantly unfettered command structure and the powerful synergy of the MAGTF, not to mention the famous USMC ethos. Furthermore, while each hailed from different service branches, the two shared one very, very important thread: each understood the critical importance of gaining and maintaining the support of the indigenous population as a conduit to gaining the intelligence needed to root out insurgents. They recognized that, although kinetic operations were necessary to destroy terrorists and insurgent leaders, those operations would be self-defeating if they were conducted indiscriminately, without regard for their impact on the average Afghan citizen. However, while RC-East fell under the command of Cheek’s Task Force Thunder, special operations forces— non -conventional units—also undertook missions in the same geographic area. However, not only did they not fall under Cheek’s or Cooling’s commands, special operations forces—“SOF”—could conduct missions without apprising either commander of mission details. In fact, SOF units, whose priority mission was counterterrorism and not counterinsurgency and whose preferred method was the direct-action raid, could actually initiate operations anywhere in the AO without informing either Cooling or Cheek that they would be there at all. This difference in priorities and approach posed an immense challenge not only to unity of command, but to the greater, theater-wide unity of effort.
    Military units trained for highly specialized, focused applications such as deep reconnaissance, targeted kill-capture missions, and sabotage (among many other nonconventional roles) trace their roots into the furthest recesses of warfare’s history. Throughout time, a combatant’s “main effort” has often required specialized augmentation forces to help pivot the odds of a campaign’s success toward that combatant’s favor. Modern U.S. military units trained for special purposes first saw action in World War II; the U.S. Army Rangers and the U.S. Navy’s Underwater Demolition Teams played vital roles in the greater war effort’s ultimate victory. Initially established in 1952 as part of the U.S. Army’s Psychological Warfare Division, the fabled Green Berets, aka Special Forces (the name Special Forces, which refers solely to the Army’s Green Berets, is often incorrectly used as a substitute for the broader general