Sniper Quotes

If there was one thing a former sniper could do well, it was wait. Patiently. Quietly. Without a sound. Barely a movement. Just him, a quiet mind and his breath.

Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

The joke was that President Bush only declared war when Starbucks was hit. You can mess with the U.N. all you want, but when you start interfering with the right to get caffeinated, someone has to pay.

And where were you when my mate was shooting ferals with a damn sniper rifle?" he demanded, exhaustion adding a bite to his words. Ryuu gave him a flat look. "Holding her ammunition.

One sniper. One gun. One red dot. And one liar.

You will never put yourself or any of my men in danger again. You could have slipped, fallen, broken your pretty neck, or fucking died. And I bet you didn’t even think about a sniper taking you out from afar.

If chance be the Father of all flesh, Disaster is his rainbow in the sky, And when you hear State of Emergency! Sniper Kills Ten! Troops on Rampage! Whites go Looting! Bomb Blasts School! It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.

Yeah, that sniper won’t know what’s hit him when I slowly charge at him with my Gillette razor.

Snipers must make themselves calm in order to succeed, and that is why women are good at sharpshooting. Because there is not a woman alive who has not learned how to eat rage in order to appear calm.

Great way to fight a war - be prepared to defend yourself for winning.

My aesthetic is that of the sniper on the roof.

MY REGRETS ARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE I COULDN’T SAVE—Marines, soldiers, my buddies. I still feel their loss. I still ache for my failure to protect them.

The thing we all had in common wasn’t muscle; it was the will to do whatever it takes.

Marines—you beat them down and they come back for more.

Beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young.” Tony

You've been waiting in the bushes for half an hour just to speak to me?" Kit shrugs. "I've done sniper training. I can sit for hours in the dark, waiting and watching." "That's comforting." I say. "And not creepy in the slightest.

But real life doesn't travel in a perfect straight line; it doesn't necessarily have that 'all lived happily ever after' bit. You have to work on where you're going.

Callan sucked in a breath. As a sniper, he’d been trained by the Marines to know and recognize moments.  Moments when all the training—his focused mind, muscle memory, weapon knowledge . . .  When all the preparation—target reconnaissance, angle of attack, position scouting . . .  When all the setup—hidden amid the terrain, barrel aimed, trajectory known . . .  When everything came together in one crucial moment—when the sniper squeezed the trigger and took his shot.

Savage, despicable evil. That's what we were fighting in Iraq.

I tell you this not as aimless revelation but because I want you to know, as you read me, precisely who I am and where I am and what is on my mind. I want you to understand exactly what you are getting: you are getting a woman who for some time now has felt radically separated from most of the ideas that seem to interest people. You are getting a woman who somewhere along the line misplaced whatever slight faith she ever had in the social contract, in the meliorative principle, in the whole grand pattern of human endeavor. Quite often during the past several years I have felt myself a sleepwalker, moving through the world unconscious of the moment’s high issues, oblivious to its data, alert only to the stuff of bad dreams, the children burning in the locked car in the supermarket parking lot, the bike boys stripping down stolen cars on the captive cripple’s ranch, the freeway sniper who feels “real bad” about picking off the family of five, the hustlers, the insane, the cunning Okie faces that turn up in military investigations, the sullen lurkers in doorways, the lost children, all the ignorant armies jostling in the night. Acquaintances read The New York Times, and try to tell me the news of the world. I listen to call-in shows.

I don’t care how much money you get,” my dad used to tell me. “It’s not worth it if you’re not happy.” That’s the most valuable piece of advice he ever gave me: Do what you want in life. To this day I’ve tried to follow that philosophy.

I’ve lived the literal meaning of the “land of the free” and “home of the brave.” It’s not corny for me. I feel it in my heart. I feel it in my chest. Even at a ball game, when someone talks during the anthem or doesn’t take off his hat, it pisses me off. I’m not one to be quiet about it, either.

So you want me to track down a supernaturally fast sniper who can disappear into thin air, retrieve your maps, and do it so nobody finds out what I'm doing or why?' 'Exactly.' I sighed. 'I'll get the paperwork.

When society gives censors wide and vague powers they never confine themselves to deserving targets. They are not snipers, but machine-gunners. Allow them to fire at will, and they will hit anything that moves.

He knows the sniper will fire again, but he isn't afraid. At this moment fear doesn't exist. There's no such thing as bravery. There are no heroes, no villains, no cowards. There's what he can do, and what he can't. There's right and wrong and nothing else. The world is binary. Shading will come later.

I signed up to protect this country. I do not choose the wars.

In my experience, Marines are gung ho no matter what. They will all fight to the death. Everyone of them just wants to get out there and kill. They are bad-ass, hard-charging mothers.

The Chinese poet George Wu ... recorded on his comlog: "Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become." Later, on his last disk to his lover the week before he died, Wu said: "Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

People ask me all the time, “How many people have you killed?” My standard response is, “Does the answer make me less, or more, of a man?

I’m proud of my service, but I sure as hell didn’t do it for any medal. They don’t make me any better or less than any other guy who served. Medals never tell the whole story.

If she’d lost her mind, then Oliver must have lost his hours ago. How could he ask his little sister to do that? To leave the RV in full view of the sniper? It was madness.

I kept my head down and my breathing steady. No idea why. I totally felt like a sniper in the marines. Only I was pregnant. Other than that, and the fact that I couldn’t snipe if they’d paid me to, I embodied all that a sniper should be. Stealth. Grace. The patience of a panther on the prowl.

It's funny --- sometimes the strongest individuals feel the worst when events are out of their control, and they can't really be there for the people they love. I've felt it myself.

JEMAINE Lisa? BRET Yes, she's in Delta Force. She's been deployed to Fallujah. JEMAINE But she works in the croissant shop. BRET Yeah, she's got two jobs. She's a pastry chef and a sniper.

You’re a genius,” she said. “Hardly,” he said. “I just show up and pay attention.

Simon scoffed. ‘Sure, just a misunderstanding. There’s a sniper out there with a high-powered rifle and a laser sight who’s decided to use us as target practice. But yeah, just a misunder standing.’ He’d changed his tune.

It's Mari, Jack," Ken whispered, needing to say it aloud. "What?" Jack jerked around, staring at the sniper as the eyes fluttered closed. "Are you certain?" Ken pulled the woman's belt loose and buckled it around her leg. "Either that or your wife is playing sniper for the other team. It has to be Mari. She looks exactly like Briony.

But the Anderson thing isn’t over yet. And as I’ve said before—this, my friends, is war. I’m talking DEFCON-one, gloves-off, I’ll-knock-you-down-even-if-you-are-a-girl war. You wouldn’t give a bullet to a sniper who’s got his gun aimed at your forehead, would you?

EAMES: Shouldn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, Arthur- Eames lines up a shot with a grenade launcher. Fires- the sniper EXPLODES into the air- Arthur looks at Eames. EAMES: Shall we?

Definition: 'Love' is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometres away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope. Statement: This definition, I am told, is subject to interpretation. Obviously, 'love' is a matter of odds. Not many meatbags could make such a shot, and strangely enough, not many meatbags would derive love from it. Yet for me, love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticle, and together, achieving a singular purpose... against statistically long odds...

Occupation, curfew, settlements, closed military zone, administrative detention, siege, preventive strike, terrorist infrastructure, transfer. Their WAR destroys language. Speaks genocide with the words of a quiet technician. Occupation means that you cannot trust the OPEN SKY, or any open street near to the gates of snipers tower. It means that you cannot trust the future or have faith that the past will always be there. Occupation means you live out your live under military rule, and the constant threat of death, a quick death from a snipers bullet or a rocket attack from an M16. A crushing, suffocating death, a slow bleeding death in an ambulance stopped for hours at a checkpoint. A dark death, at a torture table in an Israeli prison: just a random arbitrary death. A cold calculated death: from a curable disease. A thousand small deaths while you watch your family dying around you. Occupation means that every day you die, and the world watches in silence. As if your death was nothing, as if you were a stone falling in the earth, water falling over water. And if you face all of this death and indifference and keep your humanity, and your love and your dignity and YOU refuse to surrender to their terror, then you know something of the courage that is Palestine.

They had signs about baby killers and murderers and whatever, protesting the troops who were going over to fight. They were protesting the wrong people. We didn’t vote in Congress; we didn’t vote to go to war. I signed up to protect this country. I do not choose the wars.

She leaned over the tabe. I focused on her tight ass. My siren ate me alive with every movement. As she took aim, she no longer resembled the fragile girl at school, but a sniper.

I don't feel like playing whack-a-mole with a trained sniper right now.

Oh, come on,’ Simon interjected. ‘This is turning into Lord of the Fucking Flies. We’re going to end up killing each other, forget about the sniper.

I am a strong Christian. Not a perfect one—not close. But I strongly believe in God, Jesus, and the Bible. When I die, God is going to hold me accountable for everything I’ve done on earth. He may hold me back until last and run everybody else through the line, because it will take so long to go over all my sins. “Mr. Kyle, let’s go into the backroom. . . .” Honestly, I don’t know what will really happen on Judgment Day. But what I lean toward is that you know all of your sins, and God knows them all, and shame comes over you at the reality that He knows. I believe the fact that I’ve accepted Jesus as my savior will be my salvation. But in that backroom or whatever it is when God confronts me with my sins, I do not believe any of the kills I had during the war will be among them. Everyone I shot was evil. I had good cause on every shot. They all deserved to die.

The officers shook hands, and the sniper gave a millimetric nod, which Reacher returned, equally briefly, which for two alleged snipers was effusive, and for a dogface and a jarhead meeting for the first time was practically like rolling around on the floor in an ecstatic bear hug.

Why a ball cap? Ninety percent of being cool is looking cool. And you look so much cooler wearing a ball cap.

A sniper is like a genius - it’s not enough to be one, you have to be one at something.

What a ridiculous word that was. Fine. She was undressing at knifepoint and there was a sniper outside and she was supposed to be dead. But she was fine, you know?

Where you go, I will go,” Shade said, holding his wife closer. “I love you, Lily. Always.” Shade listened to the night, focusing on the sounds around him until he could separate each sound, searching for the one he wanted—the sound of his heartbeat. He concentrated on the speed of his pumping heart then each single beat. Gradually, he slowed his heartbeat, one beat at a time, just how he had learned to do all those years ago as a sniper. It took time and concentration on each … single … beat … before there was nothing other than complete and utter silence.

Everyone talks about there being no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but they seem to be referring to completed nuclear bombs, not the many deadly chemical weapons or precursors that Saddam had stockpiled.

Yes, SEALs did a good job, and gave their blood. But as we told the Army and Marine officers and enlisted men we fought beside, we’re no better than those men when it comes to courage and worth.

Look, I don’t care what the Ooga-Boogas do. It sounds like they need a family counselor, not a sniper. (Steele) They’re not Ooga-Boogas, they’re Uhbukistanis. (Syd) Whatever. My personal belief is that we should leave Ooga-Booga Land to the Oomp-Loompas. Let them fight it out with the Snozzwangers, Wangdoogles, and the mean Vermicious Knids. I’d rather go peal carrots with a spoon. (Steele)

Bolt actions speak louder than words.

I thought I should be stronger than was possible.

We killed the bad guys and brought the leaders to the peace table. That is how the world works.

Thinking too much about what happened and what is about to happen will wear you down. Live in the moment and take it one step at a time.

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,

I’ve had good officers. But all the great ones were humble.

I also learned how to take the images and paste them onto PowerPoint for briefings and the like. Yes, even SEALs use PowerPoint.

Whatever it is that you do, you are making a stand, either for excellence or for mediocrity.

A sniper is cowardly, sneaky; he kills from a distance, unseen.

Oh, is that all?” Riley frowned, gesturing to the broken window. “And how are we supposed to find where this shooter is without taking a hole to the head? I don’t feel like playing whack-a-mole with a trained sniper right now.

My memoir, the unofficial version: Snipers must make themselves calm in order to succeed, and that is why women are good at sharpshooting. Because there is not a woman alive who has not learned how to eat rage in order to appear calm.

anyone who has a problem with what guys do over there is incapable of empathy. People want America to have a certain image when we fight. Yet I would guess if someone were shooting at them and they had to hold their family members while they bled out against an enemy who hid behind their children, played dead only to throw a grenade as they got closer, and who had no qualms about sending their toddler to die from a grenade from which they personally pulled the pin—they would be less concerned with playing nicely.

The traffic warden looked up. "This your car?" "It is," said Skulduggery. The traffic warden nodded. "Very nice, very nice. But you can't park here, day or night." "I wasn't aware of that." "There's a sign right over there." "I didn't think it applied to me." "Why wouldn't it have applied to you?" Skulduggery tilted his head. "Because I'm special." "Don't care how special you think you are, you're parked in a no parking area and as such you're---" "We're here on official police business." The traffic warden narrowed his eyes. "You're Garda? I'm going to need to see some identification." "We're undercover," said Skulduggery. "This is a very important undercover operation which you are endangering just by talking to us." He opened his jacket. "Look, I have a gun. I am Detective Inspector Me. This is my partner, Detective Her." The traffic warden frowned. "Her?" "Me," said Stephanie. "Him?" "Not me," said Skulduggery. "Her." "Me," said Stephanie. "You?" said the traffic warden. "Yes," said Stephanie. "I"m sorry, who are you?" Stephanie looked at him. "I'm Her, he's Me. Got it? Good. You better get out of here before you blow our cover. They've got snipers.

A Manhattan lawyer who describes himself as "America`s leading expert on the militia movement" writes that he hugged his three-year-old kid the night of the Oklahoma City bombing. He told junior that it happened "because they hated too much" For now, let`s accept the premise that one hundred sixty-eight humans died in Oklahoma City because people "hated too much" Now answer these questions if you would be so kind: did a federal sniper shoot Vicki Weaver in the face because he hated too much? Did our government conduct the Tuskegee with syphilis on black soldiers because it hated too much?

Andrew indulged in a little fantasy in which his father dropped dead, gunned down by an invisible sniper. Andrew visualised himself patting his sobbing mother on the back while he telephoned the undertaker. He had a cigarette in his mouth as he ordered the cheapest coffin.

But I wondered, how would I feel about killing someone? Now I know. It’s no big deal.

You can mess with the U.N. all you want, but when you start interfering with the right to get caffeinated, someone has to pay.

I fell in love with a sniper - a man whose basic training instills psychopathic tendencies. I loved a professional dehumanizer. I loved a man who lived in a world where empathy was suicide. I loved a man who had to be ready to put a bullet through a toddler’s skull if necessary. I loved a man highly skilled in burying his emotions, resurrecting them if and when he chose. I loved a man who saw me as his enemy. I loved a man I was disposable to.

German soldiers made use of Stalingrad orphans themselves. Daily tasks, such as filling water-bottles, were dangerous when Russian snipers lay in wait for any movement. So, for the promise of a crust of bread, they would get Russian boys and girls to take their water-bottles down to the Volga’s edge to fill them. When the Soviet side realized what was happening, Red Army soldiers shot children on such missions.

You may never shoot a sniper rifle. You may never serve as part of an assault team, or stand security in combat, or board a hostile ship at midnight on the high seas. You may never wear a uniform; hell, you may never even throw a punch in the name of freedom. I’ll tell you what, though. Whatever it is that you do, you are making a stand, either for excellence or for mediocrity. This is what I learned about being a Navy SEAL: it is all about excellence, and about never giving up on yourself. And that is the red circle I will continue to hold, no matter what.

The sniper puts the cellist in his sights. Arrow is about to send a bullet into him, but stops. His finger isn't on the trigger...His hand isn't even in the vicinity of the trigger...His head leans back slightly, and she sees that his eyes are closed, that he is no longer looking through his scope. She knows what he's doing. It's very clear to her, unmistakable. He's listening to the music. And then Arrow knows why he didn't fire yesterday...She is at once, sure of two things. The first is that she does not want to kill this man, and the second is that she must. Time is running out. There's no reason not to kill him. A sniper of his ability has wihtout doubt killed dozens, if not hundreds. Not just soldiers. Women crossing streets. Children in playgrounds. Old men in water lines. She knows this to a certainity. Yet she doesn't want to pull her trigger. All because she can see that he doesn't want to pull his...The final notes of the cellist's melody reach him, and he smiles.

When the Navy sends their elite, they send the SEALs. When the SEALs send their elite, they send SEAL Team Six.

Someone once asked me if I had a favorite distance. My answer was easy: the closer the better.

I’d tell them how old I was, they’d stare at me and say, “You’re that old?” I was thirty. An old man in Fallujah.

I felt sad for everything he'd been through. And I felt terribly torn about needing him. I did need him, tremendously. But at the same time, I had to get along without him so much that I developed an attitude that I didn't need him, or at least that I shouldn't need him. - Taya Kyle, his wife

Have I been conditioned to believe that if I am not solicitous, if I am not forthcoming, if I am not a never-ending cornicopia of entertaining delights, they will take their collections of milk-bottle tops and their mangy one-eared teddy bears and go away into the woods by themselves to play snipers? Probably. What my mother thinks was merely cute may have been lethal.

kids get into trouble because of curiosity—if you don’t satisfy it, you’re asking for big problems. If you inform them and carefully instruct them on safety when they’re young, you avoid a lot of the trouble.

As I said, the good die young, and the motherfuckers go on forever, pardon my French.

No, the best way to stop a vehicle is to shoot the driver. And that you can do with a number of weapons.

We wage battle with our traumas each day, individually and, to a broader extent, collectively. Too often we are dragged from our sleep by inner skirmishes that invade and dominate our emotions, rile the inner snipers, and hold our bodies hostage to our histories. Often we are ambushed by an unseen enemy from within and for the untrained, unconditioned warrior, there is no safety. We hide, isolate, avoid known landmines, and shield ourselves with alcohol, other drugs, spending, raging, sex, gambling, risk taking. At least, for a moment, the terror dissolves and we can attach ourselves to a sense of safety. Even in the full knowledge that it's all temporary.

The problem with the ROEs covering minutiae is that terrorists really don’t give a shit about the Geneva Convention. So picking apart a soldier’s every move against a dark, twisted, rule-free enemy is more than ridiculous; it’s despicable.

When you’re working with Army and Marine Corps units, you immediately notice a difference. The Army is pretty tough, but their performance can depend on the individual unit. Some are excellent, filled with hoorah and first-class warriors. A few are absolutely horrible; most are somewhere in between. In my experience, Marines are gung ho no matter what. They will all fight to the death. Every one of them just wants to get out there and kill. They are bad-ass, hard-charging mothers.

People want America to have a certain image when we fight. Yet I would guess if someone were shooting at them and they had to hold their family members while they bled out against an enemy who hid behind their children, played dead only to throw a grenade as they got closer, and who had no qualms about sending their toddler to die from a grenade from which they personally pulled the pin—they would be less concerned with playing nicely.

Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake, Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take, I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light. Hark! There's the big bombardment on our right Rumbling and bumping; and the dark's a glare Of flickering horror in the sectors where We raid the Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled, Or crawling on their bellies through the wire. "What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?" Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire: Why did he do it?... Starlight overhead-- Blank stars. I'm wide-awake; and some chap's dead.

AT ANOTHER LOCATION, WE FOUND BARRELS OF CHEMICAL material that was intended for use as biochemical weapons. Everyone talks about there being no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but they seem to be referring to completed nuclear bombs, not the many deadly chemical weapons or precursors that Saddam had stockpiled. Maybe the reason is that the writing on the barrels showed that the chemicals came from France and Germany, our supposed Western allies.

Russkie, promise me a simple thing?" Out of the blue when they had finished, after a mouthful from the mug. Dan seemed relaxed, leaning on his side. Resting back, savoring the taste, Vadim turned his head to look at Dan. Oh, that body. The effect it had on him, all the time, even when Dan wasn't there. Twelve months. "Promise what?" Sometimes, that kind of thing was about letters. Tell my girl I love her. Tell my mother I didn't suffer. Almost painful. Letters. Words that would hurt worse than the killing bullet. "Simple." Dan nodded, "if I'm unlucky, and if you find my body, will you bury it? Some rocks would do, I can't stand the thought of carrion's. As if that mattered, eh? I'd be fucking dead." Dan shrugged, tossed a grin towards the other, made light of an entirely far too heavy situation. He took the bottle once more, washing down the taste of death and decay, chasing away unbidden images. Vadim felt a shudder race over his skin. The thought of death chilled him to the bone, like a premonition. For a moment he saw himself stagger through enemy territory, looking for something that had been Dan. Minefields, snipers, fucking Hind hellfire. He might be able to track him. He might be able to guess where he had gone, where he had fallen. He had found the occasional pilot. But he had had help. Finding a dead man in a country full of dead people was more of a challenge. "I'll send you home," he murmured. Stay alive, he thought. Stay alive like you are now. I don't want to carry your rotting body to fucking Kabul and hand myself in to whatever bastard is your superior or handler there, but it must be Kabul. I can't hand myself over. But I will. Fuck you. He felt his face twitch, and turned away, breathing. "No, I have no home anymore." Dan's hand stopped Vadim from turning over fully. Fingers digging into the muscular thigh. "Not my brother's family. Nowhere to send the body to. Forget it." Grip tightening while he moved closer. Ignored the heat, the damned fan and its monotonous creaking, pressed his body behind the other. "You're as close to a fucking home as I get.

I was just learning how to read and was reading every sign out loud, practising, and when I saw Cockburn Avenue I said Cock Burn Avenue and then asked what's that? And Elf, she must have been eleven or twelve, said that's from too much sex and my mother said shhhh from the front passenger seat and we didn't dare look over at my dad who clutched the wheel and peered out the windshield like a sniper tracking his target. There were two things he didn't ever want to talk about and they were sex and Russia.

There is also the ceaseless outpouring of books on toilet training, separating one sibling's fist from another sibling's eye socket, expressing breast milk while reading a legal brief, helping preschoolers to "own" their feelings, getting Joshua to do his homework, and raising teenage boys so they become Sensitive New Age Guys instead of rooftop snipers or Chippendale dancers. Over eight hundred books on motherhood were published between 1970 and 2000; only twenty-seven of these came out between 1970 and 1980, so the real avalanch happened in the past twenty years. We've learned about the perils of "the hurried child" and "hyperparenting," in which we schedule our kids with so many enriching activities that they make the secretary of state look like a couch spud. But the unhurried child probably plays too much Nintendo and is out in the garage building pipe bombs, so you can't underschedule them either. Then there's the Martha Stewartization of America, in which we are meant to sculpt the carrots we put in our kids' lunches into the shape of peonies and build funhouses for them in the backyard; this has raised the bar to even more ridiculous levels than during the June Cleaver era.

YOU KNOW HOW RAMADI WAS WON? We went in and killed all the bad people we could find. When we started, the decent (or potentially decent) Iraqis didn’t fear the United States; they did fear the terrorists. The U.S. told them, “We’ll make it better for you.” The terrorists said, “We’ll cut your head off.” Who would you fear? Who would you listen to? When we went into Ramadi, we told the terrorists, “We’ll cut your head off. We will do whatever we have to and eliminate you.” Not only did we get the terrorists’ attention—we got everyone’s attention. We showed we were the force to be reckoned with. That’s where the so-called Great Awakening came. It wasn’t from kissing up to the Iraqis. It was from kicking butt. The tribal leaders saw that we were bad-asses, and they’d better get their act together, work together, and stop accommodating the insurgents. Force moved that battle. We killed the bad guys and brought the leaders to the peace table. That is how the world works.

The grenade hit him in the chest and bounced onto the deck [here, the Navy term for floor]. He immediately leapt to his feet and yelled “grenade” to alert his teammates of impending danger, but they could not evacuate the sniper hide-sight in time to escape harm. Without hesitation and showing no regard for his own life, he threw himself onto the grenade, smothering it to protect his teammates who were lying in close proximity. The grenade detonated as he came down on top of it, mortally wounding him. Petty Officer Monsoor’s actions could not have been more selfless or clearly intentional. Of the three SEALs on that rooftop corner, he had the only avenue of escape away from the blast, and if he had so chosen, he could have easily escaped. Instead, Monsoor chose to protect his comrades by the sacrifice of his own life. By his courageous and selfless actions, he saved the lives of his two fellow SEALs.

There’s a common misunderstanding that SEALs are all huge guys in top physical condition. That last part is generally true—every SEAL in the Teams is in excellent shape. But SEALs come in all sizes. I was in the area of six foot two and 175 pounds; others who would serve with me ranged from five foot seven on up to six foot six. The thing we all had in common wasn’t muscle; it was the will to do whatever it takes.

The strident emotional belief that children made you happy, even when all the data pointed to misery. The high-amplitude fear of sharks and dark-skinned snipers who would never kill you; indifference to all the toxins and pesticides that could. The mind was so rotten with misrepresentation that in some cases it literally had to be damaged before it could make a truly rational decision—and should some brain-lesioned mother abandon her baby in a burning house in order to save two strangers from the same fire, the rest of the world would be more likely to call her a monster than laud the rationality of her lifeboat ethics. Hell, rationality itself—the exalted Human ability to reason—hadn’t evolved in the pursuit of truth but simply to win arguments, to gain control: to bend others, by means logical or sophistic, to your will. Truth had never been a priority. If believing a lie kept the genes proliferating, the system would believe that lie with all its heart. Fossil feelings. Better off without them, once you’d outgrown the savanna and decided that Truth mattered after all. But Humanity wasn’t defined by arms and legs and upright posture. Humanity had evolved at the synapse as well as at the opposable thumb—and those misleading gut feelings were the very groundwork on which the whole damn clade had been built. Capuchins felt empathy. Chimps had an innate sense of fair play. You could look into the eyes of any cat or dog and see a connection there, a legacy of common subroutines and shared emotions.

Savage, despicable evil. That’s what we were fighting in Iraq. That’s why a lot of people, myself included, called the enemy “savages.” There really was no other way to describe what we encountered there. People ask me all the time, “How many people have you killed?” My standard response is, “Does the answer make me less, or more, of a man?” The number is not important to me. I only wish I had killed more. Not for bragging rights, but because I believe the world is a better place without savages out there taking American lives. Everyone I shot in Iraq was trying to harm Americans or Iraqis loyal to the new government.

You. Man at the machine and man in the workshop. If tomorrow they tell you you are to make no more water-pipes and saucepans but are to make steel helmets and machine-guns, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Woman at the counter and woman in the office. If tomorrow they tell you you are to fill shells and assemble telescopic sights for snipers' rifles, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Research worker in the laboratory. If tomorrow they tell you you are to invent a new death for the old life, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Priest in the pulpit. If tomorrow they tell you you are to bless murder and declare war holy, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Pilot in your aeroplane. If tomorrow they tell you you are to carry bombs over the cities, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Man of the village and man of the town. If tomorrow they come and give you your call-up papers, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Mother in Normandy and mother in the Ukraine, mother in Vancouver and in London, you on the Hwangho and on the Mississippi, you in Naples and Hamburg and Cairo and Oslo - mothers in all parts of the earth, mothers of the world, if tomorrow they tell you you are to bear new soldiers for new battles, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! For if you do not say NO - if YOU do not say no - mothers, then: then! In the bustling hazy harbour towns the big ships will fall silent as corpses against the dead deserted quay walls, their once shimmering bodies overgrown with seaweed and barnacles, smelling of graveyards and rotten fish. The trams will lie like senseless glass-eyed cages beside the twisted steel skeleton of wires and track. The sunny juicy vine will rot on decaying hillsides, rice will dry in the withered earth, potatoes will freeze in the unploughed land and cows will stick their death-still legs into the air like overturned chairs. In the fields beside rusted ploughs the corn will be flattened like a beaten army. Then the last human creature, with mangled entrails and infected lungs, will wander around, unanswered and lonely, under the poisonous glowing sun, among the immense mass graves and devastated cities. The last human creature, withered, mad, cursing, accusing - and the terrible accusation: WHY? will die unheard on the plains, drift through the ruins, seep into the rubble of churches, fall into pools of blood, unheard, unanswered, the last animal scream of the last human animal - All this will happen tomorrow, tomorrow, perhaps, perhaps even tonight, perhaps tonight, if - if - You do not say NO.

We went back for a few days to work with the Marines when they took down a hospital north of the city on the river. The insurgents were using the hospital as a gathering point. As the Marines came in, a teenager, I’d guess about fifteen, sixteen, appeared on the street and squared up with an AK-47 to fire at them. I dropped him. A minute or two later, an Iraqi woman came running up, saw him on the ground, and tore off her clothes. She was obviously his mother. I’d see the families of the insurgents display their grief, tear off clothes, even rub the blood on themselves. If you loved them, I thought, you should have kept them away from the war. You should have kept them from joining the insurgency. You let them try and kill us—what did you think would happen to them?

Only a few days after my encounter with the police, two patrolmen tackled Alton Sterling onto a car, then pinned him down on the ground and shot him in the chest while he was selling CDs in front of a convenience store, seventy-five miles up the road in Baton Rouge. A day after that, Philando Castile was shot in the passenger seat of his car during a police traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, as his girlfriend recorded the aftermath via Facebook Live. Then, the day after Castile was killed, five policemen were shot dead by a sniper in Dallas. It felt as if the world was subsumed by cascades of unceasing despair. I mourned for the family and friends of Sterling and Castille. I felt deep sympathy for the families of the policemen who died. I also felt a real fear that, as a result of what took place in Dallas, law enforcement would become more deeply entrenched in their biases against black men, leading to the possibility of even more violence. The stream of names of those who have been killed at the hands of the police feels endless, and I become overwhelmed when I consider all the names we do not know—all of those who lost their lives and had no camera there to capture it, nothing to corroborate police reports that named them as threats. Closed cases. I watch the collective mourning transpire across my social-media feeds. I watch as people declare that they cannot get out of bed, cannot bear to go to work, cannot function as a human being is meant to function. This sense of anxiety is something I have become unsettlingly accustomed to. The familiar knot in my stomach. The tightness in my chest. But becoming accustomed to something does not mean that it does not take a toll. Systemic racism always takes a toll, whether it be by bullet or by blood clot.