American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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be free people, but they didn’t understand what that really meant—the
other things that come with being free.
The government wasn’t going to be running their lives anymore,
but it also wasn’t going to be giving them food or anything else. It was
a shock. And they were so backward in terms of education and technology
that for Americans it often felt like being in the Stone Age.
You can feel sorry for them, but at the same time you don’t want
these guys trying to run your war for you.
And giving them the tools they needed to progress is not what my
job was all about. My job was killing, not teaching.
We went to great lengths to make them look good.
At one point during the campaign, a local official’s son was kidnapped.
We got intel that he was being held at a house next to a local
college. We went in at night, crashing through the gates and taking
down a large building to use for the overwatch. While I watched from
the roof of the building, some of my boys took down the house, freeing
the hostage without any resistance.
Well, this was a big deal locally. So when it was photo op time, we
called in our jundis. They got credit for the rescue, and we drifted into
the background.
Silent professionals.
That sort of thing happened all across the theater. I’m sure there
were plenty of stories back in the States about how much good the
Iraqis were doing, and how we were training them. Those stories will
probably fill the history books.
They’re bullshit. The reality was quite a bit different.