Chris Kyle - American Sniper

The Army analyzed the terrorist groups in the city and decided there were three different categories: hard-core Islamist fanatics, associated with al-Qaeda and similar groups; locals who were a little less fanatic though they still wanted to kill Americans; and opportunistic criminal gangs who were basically trying to make a living off the chaos.

The first group had to be eliminated because they would never give up; they would be our main focus in the coming campaign. The other two groups, though, might be persuaded to either leave, quit killing people, or work with the local tribal leadership. So, part of the Army plan would be to work with the tribal leadership to bring peace to the area. By all accounts, they had grown tired of the insurgents and the chaos they had brought, and wanted them gone.

The situation and plan were a lot more complicated than I can sum up. But to us on the ground, all of this was irrelevant. We didn’t give a damn about the nuances. What we saw, what we knew, was that many people wanted to kill us. And we fought back.

There was one way the overall plan did affect us, and not for the better.

The Ramadi offensive wasn’t supposed to be just about American troops. On the contrary, the new Iraqi army was supposed to be front and center in the effort to retake the city and make it safe.

The Iraqis were there. Front, no. Center—as a matter of fact, yes. But not quite in the way you’re thinking.

Before the assault began, we were ordered to help put an “Iraqi face on the war”—the term command and the media used for pretending that the Iraqis were actually taking the lead in making their country safe. We trained Iraqi units, and when feasible (though not necessarily desirable) took them with us on operations. We worked with three different groups; we called them all jundi s, Arabic for soldiers, although, technically, some were police. No matter which force they were with, they were pathetic.

We had used a small group of scouts during our operations east of the city. When we went into Ramadi, we used SMPs—they were a type of special police. And then we had a third group of Iraqi soldiers that we used in villages outside of the city. During most operations, we would put them in the middle of our columns—Americans at the front, the Iraqis in the center, Americans at the rear. If we were inside a house, they would sit on the first floor, doing security and talking with the family, if there was one there.

As fighters went, they sucked. The brightest Iraqis, it seemed, were usually insurgents, fighting against us. I guess most of our jundi s had their hearts in the right place. But as far as proficient military fighting went…

Let’s just say they were incompetent, if not outright dangerous.

One time a fellow SEAL named Brad and I were fixing to go into a house. We were standing outside the front door, with one of our jundi s directly behind us. Somehow the jundi ’s gun got jammed. Idiotically, he flicked off the safety and hit the trigger, causing a burst of rounds to blow right next to me.

I thought they’d come from the house. So did Brad. We started returning fire, dumping bullets through the door.

Then I heard all this shouting behind me. Someone was dragging an Iraqi whose gun had gone off—yes, the gunfire had come from us, not anyone inside the house. I’m sure the jundi was apologizing, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen, then or later.

Brad stopped firing and the SEAL who’d come up to get the door leaned back. I was still sorting out what the hell had happened when the door to the house popped open.

An elderly man appeared, hands trembling.

“Come in, come in,” he said. “There’s nothing here, nothing here.”

I doubt he realized how close it came to that being true.

Besides being particularly inept, a lot of jundi s were just lazy. You’d tell them to do something and they’d reply, “Inshallah.”

Some people translate that as “God willing.” What it really means is “ain’t gonna happen.”

Most of the jundi s wanted to be in the army to get a steady paycheck, but they didn’t want to fight, let alone die, for their country. For their tribe, maybe. The tribe, their extended family—that was where their true loyalty lay. And for most of them, what was going on in Ramadi had nothing to do with that.

I realize that a lot of the problem has to do with the screwed-up culture in Iraq. These people had been under a dictatorship for all their lives. Iraq as a country meant nothing to them, or at least nothing good. Most were happy to be rid of Saddam Hussein, very happy to be free people, but they didn’t understand what that really meant—the other things that come with being free.

The government wasn’t going to be running their lives anymore, but it also wasn’t going to be giving them food or anything else. It was a shock. And they were so backward in terms of education and technology that for Americans it often felt like being in the Stone Age.

You can feel sorry for them, but at the same time you don’t want these guys trying to run your war for you.

And giving them the tools they needed to progress is not what my job was all about. My job was killing, not teaching.

We went to great lengths to make them look good.

At one point during the campaign, a local official’s son was kidnapped. We got intel that he was being held at a house next to a local college. We went in at night, crashing through the gates and taking down a large building to use for the overwatch. While I watched from the roof of the building, some of my boys took down the house, freeing the hostage without any resistance.

Well, this was a big deal locally. So when it was photo op time, we called in our jundi s. They got credit for the rescue, and we drifted into the background.

Silent professionals.

That sort of thing happened all across the theater. I’m sure there were plenty of stories back in the States about how much good the Iraqis were doing, and how we were training them. Those stories will probably fill the history books.

They’re bullshit. The reality was quite a bit different.

I think the whole idea of putting an Iraqi face on the war was garbage. If you want to win a war, you go in and win it. Then you can train people. Doing it in the middle of a battle is stupid. It was a miracle it didn’t fuck things up any worse than it did.

The thin dust from the dirt roads mixed with the stench of the river and city as we came up into the village. It was pitch-black, somewhere between night and morning. Our target was a two-story building in the center of a small village at the south side of Ramadi, separated from the main part of the city by a set of railroad tracks.

We moved into the house quickly. The people who lived there were shocked, obviously, and clearly wary. Yet they didn’t seem overly antagonistic, despite the hour. While our terps and jundi s dealt with them, I went up to the roof and set up.

It was June 17, the start of the action in Ramadi. We had just taken the core of what would become COP Iron, the first stepping stone of our move into Ramadi. (COP stands for Command Observation Post.)

I eyed the village carefully. We’d been briefed to expect a hell of a fight, and everything we’d been through over the past few weeks in the east reinforced that. I knew Ramadi was going to be a hell of a lot worse than the countryside. I was tense, but ready.

With the house and nearby area secured, we called the Army in. Hearing the tanks coming in the distance, I scanned even more carefully through the scope. The bad guys could hear it, too. They’d be here any second.