Extreme Ownership, Pt. 2

For me, one of the most impactful lessons That I learned from war was in the spring of 2006 In the city of Ramadi, Iraq Which at the time was the epicenter of the insurgency Where brutal and determined terrorists ruled the streets With torture and rape and murder And it was in one neighborhood of that city During an operation that I was in charge of When all hell broke loose We had multiple units out on the battlefield Fighting the enemy We had friendly Iraqi soldiers We had U.S. Army soldiers and U.S. Marines Along with small elements of my SEAL team And then the fog of war rolled in With its confusion, chaos and mayhem And with its gunfire and enemy attacks And screaming men and blood and death And in that fog of war Through a series of mistakes and human error And poor judgment and Murphy's Law And just plain, bad luck A horrendous firefight broke out But this firefight it wasn't between us and the enemy This firefight tragically was between us and us Friendly forces against friendly forces, fratricide The mortal sin of combat And the most horrific part of war And when it was over and the fog of war lifted One friendly Iraqi soldier was dead Two more were wounded, one of my men was wounded The rest of my SEALs were badly shaken And it was only through a miracle That no one else was killed And it was reported up the chain of command What had happened That we had fought and wounded and killed each other And we got back to base things didn't get better There was a message waiting for me from My commanding officer And it said "Shut down all operations" It said that the commanding officer and the master chief And the investigating officer were inbound to my location And they told me to prepare a debrief To explain exactly what had happened on the operation And what had gone wrong Now, I knew what this meant It meant that somebody had to pay Somebody had to be held accountable Somebody had to get fired for what had happened So, I began to prepare my debrief And in it, I detailed every mistake that was made And who made it And I pointed out every failure in the planning And the preparation and the execution In the operation and I pointed out who was responsible For that failure There was plenty of blame to go around There were so many people that I could Incriminate with guilt And something wasn't right For some reason, I just couldn't put my finger On who was at fault and who specifically i should blame For what had happened And I sat and I went over it again and again And I struggled for an answer And then when I was about 10 minutes from Starting the debrief, that answer came and It hit me like a slap in face And I realized that there was only one person To blame for the confusion Only one person to blame for wounded men And only one person to blame for the dead Iraqi soldier And I knew exactly who that person was And with that knowledge I walked into the debriefing room With my commanding, the investigating officer Were sitting there waiting for me Along with the rest of my men And I stood in front of them And I asked them one single question Who's fault is this? One of my SEALs raised his hand And he said it was my fault I didn't keep control of the Iraqi soldiers I was with And I said no it wasn't your fault And then another SEAL raised his hand And said it was my fault I didn't pass my location over the radio fast enough So no one knew what building we were in And that's what caused all this confusion It was my fault And I said no, it wasn't your fault either And another SEAL raised his hand And he said boss, this was my fault I didn't properly identify my target And I shot and killed that friendly Iraqi soldier This was my fault And I said no, it wasn't your fault either And it wasn't yours or yours or yours I said as I pointed to rest of the SEALs in the room And then I told them That there was only one person responsible For what had happened And there was only one person to blame for everything And that person was me