It looks as though things are winding down in Afghanistan, but more conflicts are looming on the horizon. Our troops have done amazingly well to this point, and several people who know my background in the special operations community and what I do for the military these days have expressed surprise at the fact that our troops handed the Taliban and al-Quaida fighters their butts on a plate while suffering very few casualties. It’s no surprise really. The vast majority of U.S. personnel involved have been special operations troops of one kind or another. To make an analogy that everyone around here is sure to understand, basically, we sent in the best pro team in the world to deal with a second rate (at best) junior high team, and the results were predictable.
The media, which will always be the terrorist’s greatest friend and asset, flashed images of al-Quaida members training on monkey bars out in the desert and shooting their Kalashnikov rifles at a makeshift range. Naturally, Americans, who will blindly believe what they see on television, worried that this bunch of rabble would inflict massive casualties on our boys.
Nonsense. I’ve seen better trained Boy Scouts who can swing on jungle gyms and shoot every bit as well as, if not better than, these sand rodents, and they wouldn’t stand a chance against our special operations troops either.
The media and Hollywood like to present a certain image of the average special ops commando. Often we are presented as brooding social outcasts or bloodthirsty lone-wolf assassins.
Look at my picture. Most people can’t believe it when they find out what I used to do full time and now part time. I guess I don’t exactly look like what they were expecting, but then, most don’t. I won’t go so far as to say that these men are just like everyone else. They pride themselves on being different than the average human being, but if you bumped into one on the street in plain clothes, you probably wouldn’t pick him out as being special in any way. You might notice that he moves a little differently and is more aware of what’s going on around him than your average person, but he definitely wouldn’t stand out. What people usually notice first is that these men are a little more polite than most. Allow me to dispel the Hollywood myths and give you a more realistic view of these special men.
Most graduated from high school, but all have at least a GED, and many have college degrees in one field or another. Most did well in school but didn’t necessarily excel. Some played sports and did well there also, yet again were not standouts or quite good enough to receive a scholarship to a university or be recruited into the pros. Instead, they found themselves recruited into the pros, as it were, of another sort. You could say that the job picked them, not the other way around. It’s a defining moment in anyone’s life when, after many fruitless years of being merely mediocre at different pursuits, they suddenly find that they are good at something, and in the case of most career special operations troops, not just good, but remarkably talented-talented at a job that few people on this earth can even do, much less do well.
A fortunate few have families. The nature of the job is unfortunately not very conducive to the family life. It takes a very special family to love a man who is gone much of the time and is not always allowed to, or even knows how to, share “how his day went” with them. Many of these men are divorced, some more than once. Death on a foreign battlefield is not the worst fear for these warriors. Many fear that they will never find a special someone who understands them, loves them in spite of what they do and will be there for them when they are too old to do this thing that they love and feel they were born to do.
There are human enemies aplenty in this wide world, but loneliness will haunt these men worse than any of these. How is the faithful dog that spent his life protecting the sheep supposed to retire among them? He may understand the people he protects, but it is almost a given that many of them will never understand or appreciate him.
The job is very hazardous, not merely because of the threat of combat. When I was on active duty as an Army Ranger, we published a sort of yearbook. In this book, three pages were set aside to honor those of our ranks who had fallen in various engagements in foreign countries. After this, a full eight pages were used to honor those who died in training.
An author once wrote that going to combat was almost a vacation for the Rangers because it was safer than our day-to-day lives. He said this, of course, in jest. No one longs for combat, but his words still had a ring of truth to them. We lived with the knowledge that we were more likely to die at home than overseas.
I was about to say that the job is a very thankless one, but that isn’t really true. No special ops trooper will ever become rich and famous, but they are in it for something greater. The men who do this job take the idea of being quiet professionals very seriously and don’t seek fame or fortune. Those who do this kind of work, and do it well, love it and can’t see themselves doing anything else. There is a certain amount of pride in being the best at something, and there is reward in that. Even if that weren’t enough, there is a quote that comes to mind: “You haven’t really lived until you’ve almost died. For those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor that the protected will never know.” That’s enough reward for anyone.