Stanley McChrystal | Biography & Facts | Britannica (2025)

Stanley McChrystal (born August 14, 1954, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, U.S.) is a U.S. Army general who served as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan (2009–10).

McChrystal was born to a military family, and his father attained the rank of major general during the post-World War II occupation of Germany. The younger McChrystal attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, graduating as a second lieutenant in 1976. A series of infantry assignments followed, and he was promoted to first lieutenant in 1978, prior to his enrollment at Special Forces school. McChrystal commanded a Green Beret unit (1979–80) before attending advanced infantry officer training school and receiving a promotion to captain. In the 1980s he served as an intelligence officer with the United Nations Command in South Korea, and he was promoted to major during an extended stint with the 75th Ranger Regiment at Fort Benning, Georgia. In 1990 he earned a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College, and he was assigned to Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)—a standing task force that integrates special operations units such as the army’s Delta Force and 160th SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment) and the navy’s SEAL (Sea, Air, and Land) Team Six—at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. With the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War (1991), McChrystal was deployed to Saudi Arabia, and JSOC oversaw the search for Iraqi mobile Scud missile launchers. Shortly after the conflict he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

For most of the remainder of the 1990s, McChrystal held commands in the 82nd Airborne Division and the 75th Ranger Regiment. In 1996 he was elevated to full colonel, shortly after he had begun a year of study at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. McChrystal embraced the “warrior-scholar” ethic that was not uncommon among field- and general-grade officers of his generation, and he was appointed a military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 1999. He returned to the 82nd Airborne in 2000 and was promoted to brigadier general the following year.

After the September 11 attacks of 2001, McChrystal served as chief of staff to the combined joint task force operating in Afghanistan. In 2002 he was posted to the Pentagon as vice director of the Joint Staff, and in 2003 he assumed command of JSOC. During Donald Rumsfeld’s term as secretary of defense (2001–06), increased importance was placed on the use of special forces units, and JSOC was tasked with high-profile missions during the Iraq War. McChrystal oversaw the capture of Ṣaddām Ḥussein in 2003 and the air strike that killed al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006.

Nicknamed the “hidden general” during his tenure at JSOC, McChrystal quietly received his second (2004) and third (2006) stars, and he was credited with initiating an era of cooperation between the previously insular JSOC and the Central Intelligence Agency. His time at JSOC was not without controversy—he was criticized for his role in suppressing evidence in the friendly fire death of Ranger and former National Football League player Pat Tillman, and incidences of prisoner abuse were alleged to have taken place under McChrystal’s supervision of Iraq’s Camp Nama. Nevertheless, he remained a rising star in the upper echelons of the U.S. armed forces, and he was named director of the Joint Staff in August 2008.

In June 2009, as the tide in Afghanistan appeared to turn against the United States, McChrystal was given command of the joint NATO-U.S. mission there. He received his fourth star within days of his appointment. Under McChrystal’s command, the broad strategy for the Afghan theatre changed from the “light footprint” counterterrorism operation conceived by Rumsfeld in 2001 to the comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign proposed by Pres. Barack Obama in March 2009. To support that mission, McChrystal requested the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops, which Obama approved; this brought the total U.S. force commitment in early 2010 to almost 100,000 troops. McChrystal advocated a “hearts and minds” approach to interaction with the Afghan people, with the goal of reducing civilian deaths and promoting security and development at the local level. He was relieved of command in June 2010 after he and members of his staff made derisive comments about top Obama administration officials to a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine. The following month McChrystal retired from the military. In 2011 he was appointed to a panel overseeing Joining Forces, a new government initiative to assist military families. That year, he also cofounded the McChrystal Group, a company that offered business consulting services.

McChrystal released a memoir, My Share of the Task, in 2013. He later coauthored Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (2015), which sought to apply his military experience to business strategy, and Leaders: Myth and Reality (2018).