America’s Warriors

I had just finished reading Eric Greitens’s book, The Heart and the Fist, when I heard the news of the downing of an American Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan which resulted in the death of 30 of America’s best, brightest, and toughest, including 22 Navy SEALS from SEAL Team 6. 

The account of a humanitarian and Navy SEAL (Photo/Bergeron)

Earlier this summer, I had read the first two books by Richard Marcinko, Rogue Warrior and Red Cell.  All three books were written by former Navy SEALS from Seal Team 6.  Written in the 90’s, Marcinko’s first two books describe personal accounts of his early efforts and training which eventually led to the establishment of SEAL Team 6.

In the other book published this year, Eric Greitens, a Rhodes Scholar who earned a PhD from Oxford University, describes his humanitarian work in Bosnia, Rwanda and Bolivia, prior to his becoming a Navy SEAL.

Greitens writes of how he was troubled by his firsthand observations of the suffering being inflicted in those countries and elsewhere by regular as well as rogue military forces.  That’s when he decided that there were times when the proper application of force becomes necessary as a  balance to compassionate civilian help. 

Matching action to his thinking, Greitens joined the U.S. Navy. There, he would make it through the most difficult military training in the world.  He graduated from Officer Candidate School; endured punishing BUD/S (basic underwater demolition/SEAL) training, followed by advanced combat preparation before being deployed as a Navy SEAL to Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Kenya, and eventually Fallujah, in Iraq.

Shortly before Greitens was to complete his tour of duty, one of his fellow SEALS was killed in a firefight while covering Greitens after an Iraqi insurgent suicide bomber attacked their quarters. 

A Chinook helicopter just like the one that took the lives of those American warriors in Afghanistan came under enemy fire when it evacuated Greitens and others.  It was his last mission before leaving for the U.S.

In its account of yesterday’s downing of the Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan, The Boston Globe quotes a U.S. Captain of how, after a decade of fighting in that country, not only are the Afghan National Security Forces unable to control the area where the attack took place, but that “The [Taliban] fighters [there] are entirely Afghans and almost all local residents . . . we don’t capture any fighters who are non-Afghans.”

And for that, we continue to empty our treasury and to spill the blood of our best, brightest and toughest warriors.  Enough!

Afterword:

A.   Dear D.S., Thanks so much for lending me your copy of The Heart and the Fist.  It is a real mind opener.

B.   As promised, the photos in the previous blog, Nature goes its Own Way . . . are of the Hummingbird Hawk Moth.  When I first spied it flitting about in my garden, I thought surely that it must have been a hummingbird – close, but no prize!