This book presents us with the dark side of one of the most legendary and highly-esteemed U.S. military units in our history. It’s about the U.S. Navy SEALs, and especially the most elite SEAL team and its members, known as SEAL Team Six.
The author first tells the story of the Navy SEALs, going back to their initial formation as UDTs (underwater demolition teams) in World War II, divers whose job was to swim ashore on landing beaches to scout the terrain, and blow up obstacles that would otherwise impede troops as they landed on the beaches. He then traces their evolution through the growing U.S. emphasis on developing special operations capabilities in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, including the rise of other groups like the Army’s Green Berets and Delta Force, as well as the SEALs.
Everyone knows about SEAL Team Six, who are by now the most famous of all the U.S. special operations groups. Their members included the snipers who killed the Somali pirates who had kidnapped the captain of the hijacked American cargo ship Maersk Alabama, and also the team that attacked and killed Osama Bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan. These were both astonishing feats of military technical skill, planning and heroism, and they have been rightly celebrated by Americans.
The problem as Cole presents it is that SEAL Team Six had at its core from the foundation an ethos of loyalty and secrecy to the team and its commander that were counter to the general SEAL values of loyalty to the country, self-sacrifice and a willingness to stay quiet and not seek personal gain from the silent work they are charged with carrying out.
The original founder of SEAL Team Six, Richard Marcinko, was considered by many to be an egotistical self-promoter, who wrote books about his exploits and did public speaking tours, and who was eventually dismissed. Based on the example he set, though, others in the organization have since taken the same route, as has been seen in the years since the Bin Laden action, where several veterans of the raid have written “tell all” books, and tried to take credit from each other for firing the shots that killed Bin Laden.
Cole does a thorough analysis too of what the “Forever Wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq have done to the SEALS generally, and particularly to SEAL Team Six, in forcing them to move from being a small, secret elite force used for occasional special missions, to being deployed on a nightly basis for years on end as just another set of skilled killers in the “War or Terror”. He describes the negative effects on the fighters in terms of PTSD, ruined marriages and family lives, and other familiar symptoms of these wars’ combatants, but also on how some of the SEALs eventually decided to leave the team, and then tried to monetize their special operations skills and experiences by going public about their exploits.
I recently reviewed Ryan Busse’s autobiography Gunfight, in which he describes how in the first decade of the 2000s, the NRA began to lionize elite fighters from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to use them to promote military-style weapons, equipment and combat apparel at NRA Conventions and in the gun industry’s media promotions. I realized when reading the descriptions in Cole's book of how some of the self-promoting SEALs became “rock stars” of the NRA that they were undoubtedly some of the same people that Busse had been describing.
We are probably seeing some unintended after-effects of this glamorization of the trappings of elite special operators in the spectacle of young men arming themselves with AR-15s, and wearing camo apparel and body armor to attack their local children’s school or grocery store, as well as in the heavily armed presence and paramilitary appearance of young male political protestors at rallies in the past several years.
Cole is clear in pointing out that most of the men (and they are almost all still men) in the SEALs and other special operations groups are dedicated, brave and highly-skilled American patriots, who routinely go above and beyond the call of duty to do what the country asks of them. His point, though, is that the very code of the SEAL Team Six organization, and its tendency to keep secrets about problems and individual malfeasance within the group, creates a dangerous opportunity for operational mistakes and corruption to remain unexposed and unchallenged within the team, and by the political leadership of the nation and the public, and thus to continue.
This is a valuable expose’ about serious problems within one of our most storied and revered military units. Highly recommended.
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