American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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ours can fight depends a lot on leadership. Much of it is up to the head
shed, the officers who lead us. SEAL officers are a real mix. Some are
good, some are bad. And some are just pussies.
Oh, they may be tough individuals, but it takes more than personal
toughness to be good leaders. The methods and goals have to contribute
to the toughness.
Our top command wanted us to achieve 100 percent success, and
to do it with 0 casualties. That may sound admirable—who doesn’t
want to succeed, and who wants anyone to get hurt But in war those
are incompatible and unrealistic. If 100 percent success, 0 casualties
are your goal, you’re going to conduct very few operations. You will
never take any risks, realistic or otherwise.
Ideally, we could have done sniper overwatches and undertaken
scouting missions for the Marines all around Nasiriya. We could have
been a much bigger part of the Marines’ drive. We might have saved
some of their lives.
We wanted to go out at night and hit the next big city or town the
Marine Corps was going to pass through. We’d soften the target for
them, killing off as many bad guys as we could. We did do a few missions
like that, but it was certainly a lot less than we could have done.
EVIL
I had never known that much about Islam. Raised as a Christian, obviously
I knew there had been religious conflicts for centuries. I knew
about the Crusades, and I knew that there had been fighting and atrocities
forever.