Fat Ninja

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I just finished Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, which was a great read. I’ll start by saying that author Marcus Luttrell is unabashedly conservative in his politics and he wears that distinction as proudly as he wears the SEALs’ Navy Trident. His politics find their way into his recounting of Operation Red Wing, and his narrative stops just shy of implicating the “liberal media” in the deaths of his team mates and friends on that fateful day. This raised the hackles on my inner liberal, but there was a bigger part of me that more than empathized with Luttrell. This is ultimately thanks to Luttrell’s candid and brutal honesty. His less than subtle reminders that civilians are incapable of fully understanding this war and the life and death decisions faced by our soldiers are as unapologetic as they are effective.

The book sheds a light on the complexity of this conflict from a soldier’s perspective, highlighting a new fog of war that is nearly opaque. Despite his best efforts to convey it via diction, I can only imagine the pressure felt by soldiers like Luttrell as they struggle to discern enemy combatants from a civilian population when the differences are indistinguishable. How do you maintain the rules of engagement when the enemy uses them as one of their primary weapons? How do you wage war with honor and nobility when your enemy has none? These are the questions at the heart of Luttrell’s book.

In spite of his politics and his open contempt for liberals, I like Luttrell. I admire the hell out of his commitment to this nation and his unwavering conviction in this conflict. He pays homage to his fallen comrades with reverence, respect and dignity. These are people that gave everything of themselves not only for this country, but also for each other. It’s a brand of selflessness that I may never understand, since, like most of this country, I’m too selfish to grasp such concepts. I am humbled by these very ideals that lie at the very core of the armed services.

Still, in all of this is a surprising and touching portrayal of Afghanis, as a severely wounded Luttrell is eventually taken in and defended by an Afghan village. I think that given the nature of the conflict and the nature of our enemy, it’s easy even for us civilians to fail to distinguish friend from foe. Luttrell’s recounting of his days in the village portray a noble people and a culture steeped in a tradition of honor. In the end, I think this portion of the narrative illustrates that the same thing that separates us from our enemy is what separates our enemies from our friends in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, when you’re fighting an enemy that doesn’t have a uniform, making the right call is about as muddy a prospect as you’re apt to find. I think the uncertainty will always be there and that our enemy will always seek to exploit our sense of honor. But I think it’s important that we maintain that honor and nobility, because it is exactly what separates us from them. I may be wrong, but I think Luttrell understands this.

So, there you have my mini-review of Mark Luttrell’s book Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10. If you’re a fan of military history, I highly recommend it. I have since started reading David Bellavia’s House to House: A Soldier’s Memoir, so you can look forward to my impressions/review of that next.

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May 18th, 2008 | Category: Book Reviews |