Dakota Meyer: Into the Fire

We should have deployed thousands of advisors like Dakota to train Afghan soldiers, and then left. Instead, our generals focused on winning the hearts and minds of tribesmen hurtling headlong into the ninth century. This resulted in top-down rules of engagement that paralyzed mid-level staffs like the TOC at Joyce. The ROE “expressly prohibited” air or artillery strikes unless the ground commander had “positively identified enemy forces within a residential compound.”

Not even the Kiowa pilots flying ten feet above the houses could “positively” identify enemy who didn’t wear uniforms. Capt. Kaplan, who had been on the southern outpost (OP), told the investigators that the rules of engagement shielded the villagers who were helping to kill Americans.

“The ROE protects civilians at the cost of American lives,” he said. “I understand this to be within the spirit of COIN (counterinsurgency), and the intent of the Commander, but it does not adequately account for situations in which there may be no non-hostile actors.”

With the villagers aiding the Taliban, who was not hostile? Using stronger language, Fabayo echoed Kaplan’s condemnation.

“I have never heard of a rule that would not allow you to fire on a house,” Fabayo said. “They always teach you that you always have the right to defend yourself.”

Gen. Scaparrotti had promised, “our fallen heroes and Gold Star families, you’ll not be forgotten.” The angry Gold Star families, however, believed that the investigation was a cover-up for the higher-ups. Swenson was so furious that he mocked the senior staffs for playing video games.

“The ground commander is calling in that mission because he feels that he needs it,” Swenson testified. “It’s not JAG [lawyers’] responsibility to interject to say, ‘Hey, we are concerned that you’re going to hit a building… I am concerned with saving as many lives as I can… When I am being second-guessed by somebody that’s sitting in an air-conditioned TOC, well hell, why am I even out here in the first place? Let’s just sit back and play Nintendo… I am not a politician. I am just the guy on the ground asking for that ammunition to be dropped because it’s going to save lives.”

The senior command had issued rules of engagement without addressing who had the authority to make the final decision. Maj. Williams believed he was only an advisor, and that the Afghan major, who didn’t know how to call in fire, was in charge. Swenson believed he had the right to assume the role of ground commander and make the decisions. The staff back at the ops center in Joyce overrode his fire requests. Authority was diffuse, and no single person was held accountable. What a mess!

Gen. Colin Powell, widely admired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the early 1990s, had a strong opinion about command decision-making. “The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise,” he wrote. “In my experience, the people closest to the problems are often in the best position to see the solutions. The key here is to empower and not be the bottleneck.”

The third—and most important—theme of the book is grit. Under fire, some men put their faces in the dirt, most shoot back, and a very few charge forward. Dakota’s story was remarkable for its dogged aggressiveness. Most acts of bravery occur at a single point in time; Dakota rushed toward death, not once, not twice, but five times. Between each attack, he had time to reconsider. Once inside the wash, he repeatedly left the truck for so long that Rodriguez-Chavez several times thought he had been killed. Can you imagine dodging bullets to carry back wounded Afghan soldiers, or leaning over the side of a truck to shoot a man, or pounding in a man’s face with a rock?

The Medal of Honor pays no attention to rank, education, or background; it symbolized the American fighting spirit. In concept, Dakota understood that the Medal honored the sacrifice of his comrades. At night, though, monsters crept out of his closet. When he sipped a beer with his commander-in-chief, I knew what he eventually blurted out.

“You either get them out alive, or you die trying,” he said on 60 Minutes . “If you didn’t die trying, you didn’t try hard enough.”

Dakota believed he was accepting an award for failure, a burden he no doubt will carry with him for the rest of his life. But had he not driven off the jihadists who swarmed his truck, the medevac helicopter would have been a sitting duck—Fabayo tried to wave off the chopper—and the escape route out of the valley sealed off, turning a tragedy into a full-blown catastrophe. Intellectually, I think he understands that. Emotionally, he focuses on what he is convinced that he did not do—save his brothers.

What drove him forward? Was he shaped by his upbringing in a farming community with traditional American values, or by his tough training as a Marine sniper?

His nature led him to charge into the fire. That instinct sprang from a Kentucky upbringing that stressed determination. Finish the game .

Regardless of his grit, in that valley he was a dead man, had he not been so expert with a variety of weapons. He wouldn’t have stood a chance had he not been able to handle a .50-cal, a 240 machine gun, a grenade launcher, and an M4 rifle without ever thinking. He had the muscle memory of a professional athlete, an instinct acquired by thousands of hours of practice. Four years of Marine training and discipline had nurtured his skills.

So was it nature or nurture that drove him forward into the fire? In the case of Dakota, it was both—testimony to the invincibility of the American warrior.