American Sniper

Clear Conscience

Sometimes it seemed like God was holding them back until I got on the gun.

“Hey, wake up.”

I opened my eyes and looked up from my spot on the floor.

“Let’s rotate,” said Jay, my LPO. He’d been on the gun for about four hours while I’d been catching a nap.

“All right.”

I unfolded myself from the ground and moved over to the gun.

“So? What’s been going on?” I asked. Whenever someone came on the gun, the person he was relieving would brief him quickly, describing who’d been in the neighborhood, etc.

“Nothing,” said Jay. “I haven’t seen anyone.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

We swapped positions. Jay pulled his ball cap down to catch some sleep.

I put my eye near the sight, scanning. Not ten seconds later, an insurgent walked fat into the crosshairs, AK out. I watched him move tactically toward an American position for a few seconds, confirming that he was within the ROEs.

Then I shot him.

“I fuckin’ hate you,” grumbled Jay from the floor nearby. He didn’t bother moving his ball cap, let alone get up.

I never had any doubts about the people I shot. My guys would tease me: Yeah, I know Chris. He’s got a little gun cut on the end of his scope. Everybody he sees is in the ROEs.

But the truth was, my targets were always obvious, and I, of course, had plenty of witnesses every time I shot.

The way things were, you couldn’t chance making a mistake. You’d be crucified if you didn’t strictly obey the ROEs.

Back in Fallujah, there was an incident involving Marines clearing a house. A unit had gone into a house, stepping over some bodies as they moved to clear the rooms. Unfortunately, one of the bastards on the ground wasn’t dead. After the Marines were in the house, he rolled over and pulled the pin on a grenade. It exploded, killing or wounding some of the Marines.

From then on, the Marines started putting a round in anybody they saw as they entered a house. At some point, a newsman with a camera recorded this; the video became public and the Marines got in trouble. Charges were either dropped or never actually filed, since the initial investigation explained the circumstances. Still, even the potential for charges was something you were always aware of.

The worst thing that you could ever do for that war was having all these media people embedded in the units. Most Americans can’t take the reality of war, and the reports they sent back didn’t help us at all.

The leadership wanted to have the backing of the public for the war. But really, who cares?

The way I figure it, if you send us to do a job, let us do it. That’s why you have admirals and generals—let them supervise us, not some fat-ass congressman sitting in a leather chair smoking a cigar back in DC in an air- conditioned office, telling me when and where I can and cannot shoot someone.

How would they know? They’ve never even been in a combat situation.

And once you decide to send us, let me do my job. War is war.

Tell me: Do you want us to conquer our enemy? Annihilate them? Or are we heading over to serve them tea and cookies?

Tell the military the end result you want, and you’ll get it. But don’t try and tell us how to do it. All those rules about when and under what circumstances an enemy combatant could be killed didn’t just make our jobs harder, they put our lives in danger.

The ROEs got so convoluted and fucked-up because politicians were interfering in the process. The rules are drawn up by lawyers who are trying to protect the admirals and generals from the politicians; they’re not written by people who are worried about the guys on the ground getting shot.

For some reason, a lot of people back home—not all people—didn’t accept that we were at war. They didn’t accept that war means death, violent death most times. A lot of people, not just politicians, wanted to impose ridiculous fantasies on us, hold us to some standard of behavior that no human being could maintain.

I’m not saying war crimes should be committed. I am saying that warriors need to be let loose to fight war without their hands tied behind their backs.

According to the ROEs I followed in Iraq, if someone came into my house, shot my wife, my kids, and then threw his gun down, I was supposed to NOT shoot him. I was supposed to take him gently into custody.

Would you?

You can argue that my success proves the ROEs worked. But I feel that I could have been more effective, probably protected more people and helped bring the war to a quicker conclusion without them.

It seemed the only news stories we read were about atrocities or how impossible it was going to be to pacify Ramadi.

Guess what? We killed all those bad guys, and what happened? The Iraqi tribal leaders finally realized we meant business, and they finally banded together not just to govern themselves, but to kick the insurgents out. It took force, it took violence of action, to create a situation where there could be peace.

Leukemia

“Our daughter is sick. Her white blood cell count is very low.”

I held the phone a little tighter as Taya continued to talk. My little girl had been sick with infections and jaundice for a while. Her liver didn’t seem to be able to keep up with the disease. Now the doctors were asking for more tests, and things looked real bad. They weren’t saying it was cancer or leukemia but they weren’t saying it wasn’t. They were going to test her to confirm their worst fears.

Taya tried to sound positive and downplay the problems. I could tell just from the tone of her voice that things were more serious than she would admit, until finally I got the entire truth from her.

I am not entirely sure what all she said, but what I heard was, leukemia. Cancer.

My little girl was going to die.

A cloud of helplessness descended over me. I was thousands of miles away from her, and there was nothing I could do to help. Even if I’d been there, I couldn’t cure her.

My wife sounded so sad and alone on the phone.

The stress of the deployment had started to get to me well before that phone call in September 2006. The loss of Marc and Ryan’s extreme injuries had taken a toll. My blood pressure had shot up and I couldn’t sleep. Hearing the news about my daughter pushed me to my breaking point. I wasn’t much good for anyone.

Fortunately, we were already winding down our deployment. And as soon as I mentioned my little girl’s condition to my command, they started making travel arrangements to get me home. Our doctor put through the paperwork for a Red Cross letter. That’s a statement that indicates a service member’s family needs him for an emergency back home. Once that letter arrived, my commanders made it happen.

I almost didn’t get out. Ramadi was such a hot zone that there weren’t a whole lot of