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By Root 1700 0

individual special operations soldiers and airmen, their units, and their domestic home base. Interestingly, this use of actual names and personal data about these special warriors is, or was, in keeping with U.S. Special Operations Command guidelines. Yet I was uncomfortable with this policy. These men are on the front line in the global war on terror, and they’ll play a pivotal role in defeating the insurgents. Put another way, these men risk enough on deployment without giving out their names. There’s no need to place these brave men, and their families, at further risk by making public their identities. When I took this issue to the public affairs and command staffs, they agreed with me. So the men you will meet in these pages are real from the perspective of their personal background and personal history, their motivations and their sacrifices. Their strengths, struggles, and shortcomings are real as well. But with a very few exceptions, I do not use their real names.

My job is to tell their story—in the classrooms, on the road marches, on the timed runs, in the swamps, on the weapons ranges, and on the tactical field problems. You’ll see them excel, and you’ll see them fail. From the perspective of the Special Forces students and candidates, there’s training that is really great and training that really sucks. From the perspective of the training cadre, there are candidates who have the potential to be superb Special Forces soldiers and candidates who shouldn’t be here at all—but are. And there are candidates that fool everyone and make it—they blossom in this crucible called Special Forces training. As I followed this curriculum, I was amazed at the passion and desire that is a part of Special Forces training. The fervor of both the training cadres and the trainees was something that continually surprised me. Chosen Soldier is the story of young men who desperately want to join this elite force and who dedicate themselves to this goal—physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s also about the training cadres who test and train the men who want to join their ranks—seasoned veterans who must be counselors, taskmasters, mentors, and gatekeepers. Chosen Soldier is about the forging of Special Forces warriors. Above all, the foundation of this unconventional warrior is his mind-set. His thinking is not “How many terrorists can I kill?” It is “How many terrorists can I get them to kill—or to expose or expel from their village?” The Special Forces warrior believes that he’ll accomplish his mission by, with, and through those he trains to fight. He believes in the T. E. Lawrence dictum “It is their country and their war and your time here is limited.” But with respect to that limitation, he’s committed to his allied fighters—his foreign warrior brothers. This commitment means he will stay in Iraq, Afghanistan, or wherever and train and fight until he’s no longer needed.

How important is the Special Forces warrior? In a word, critical, if we’re to win the global war on terror and prevail in the current insurgent environments. The unique ability to move within a culture—to gain the trust of the village chief or the tribal elders—is key to success in these campaigns against the Islamists. How successful have the deployed Special Forces detachments been in these efforts? Remember the infamous deck of cards, each of which detailed the name and/or face of one of Saddam’s Baathist loyalists. Thirty-nine of the forty-six rogues in that deck were captured by, or taken into custody as a result of intelligence developed by, Army Special Forces.

Concerning our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, a great deal of media attention will continue to focus on daring direct-action missions, our Special Mission Units, and our SOF raider components. As with the capture of Saddam and the killing of al-Zarqawi, the raiders cannot do their work without intelligence. When we do get bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar, it’ll likely be from a scrap of intelligence provided by some obscure tribesman along the Pakistani-Afghan border.