Lone Survivor_ The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 ( PDFDrive )

sensationally good news for our enemy.
Every now and then, a news reporter or a photographer gets in the way
sufficiently to stop a bullet. And without missing a beat, those highly paid
newspeople become national heroes, lauded back home in the press and on
television. SEALs are not churlish, but I cannot describe how irksome this is to
the highly trained but not very well paid guys who are doing the actual fighting.
These are superb professionals who say nothing and place themselves in harm’s
way every day, too often being killed or wounded. They are silent heroes,
unknown soldiers, except in equally unknown, heartbroken little home
communities.
We did one early mission up there in the passes at checkpoint 6 that was
worse than lethal. We’d just managed to get into position, about twenty of us,
when these Afghan wild men hidden in the mountains unleashed a barrage of
rockets at us, hundreds and hundreds of them, flying over our heads, slamming
into the mountainside.
We couldn’t tell whether they were classified as armed combatants against
the United States or unarmed civilians. It took us three days to subdue them, and
even then we had to call in heavy air support to enable us to get out. Three days
later, the satellite pictures showed us the Taliban had sent in twelve cutthroats by
night, armed with Kalashnikovs and tribal knives, who crept through the
darkness intent on murder, directly to our old position.
But you can’t prove their intentions! I hear the liberals squeal. No. Of course
not. They were just headed up there for a cup of coffee.
Those Taliban night attacks were the very same tactics the mujahideen used
against the Russians, sliding through the darkness and cutting the throats of
guards and sentries until the Soviet military, and the parents of young soldiers,
could stand it no more. The mujahideen has now emerged as the Taliban or al
Qaeda. And their intentions against us are just as bloodthirsty as they were
against the Russians.
The Navy SEALs can deal with that, as we can deal with any enemy. But not
if someone wants to put us in jail for it back home in the U.S.A. And we sure as
hell don’t want to hang around in the mountains waiting for someone to cut our
throats, unable to fight back just in case he might be classified as an unarmed
Afghan farmer.
But these are the problems of the modern U.S. combat soldier, the constant
worry about overstepping the mark and an American media that delights in
trying to knock us down. Which we have done nothing to deserve. Except,