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U.S. Navy, Getty Images

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Navy SEALs Matthew G. Axelson, Daniel R. Healy, James Suh, Marcus Luttrell, Eric S. Patton, and Michael P. Murphy. With the exception of Luttrell, all were killed during Operation Red Wing in Afghanistan. (FPinfomart: Restricted, Canada.com: Allowed)

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Marcus Luttrell's noble 'Christian soul'
National Post
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Page: A12
Section: Editorials
Byline: Jonathan Kay
Column: Jonathan Kay
Source: National Post

In 2005, U.S. military commanders dispatched a four-man Navy SEAL team to assassinate "Sharmack," a Taliban commander operating from a base in the Hindu Kush mountains. As the commandos lay in wait for their target, Sharmack himself ambushed the Americans with a force of about 150 Taliban. In the battle that followed -- described in detail by surviving SEAL sniper Marcus Luttrell in his 2007 best-seller Lone Survivor -- three of the four Americans were killed. When backup troops came to rescue Luttrell's team, their helicopter was blown up with a rocket-propelled grenade, killing all 16 SEALs on board.

Luttrell himself narrowly escaped death during the gunfight, and then almost died from dehydration as he fled through the Afghan outback. But his greatest agony was emotional: Every American who'd died that day might still be alive if Luttrell had put bullets through the heads of three Afghan goatherds when he had the chance.

The goatherds had randomly stumbled on the SEAL team earlier that day. One of them "was just a kid" -- around 14 years old, remembers Luttrell. At gunpoint, the Americans conducted a crude interrogation. "No Taliban, no Taliban," was all they'd say.

Luttrell believed them. But it didn't matter: When the trio returned to their village, they'd tell Sharmack what they'd seen -- thereby writing the SEALs' death warrants. With their firepower and training, the four U.S. commandos could hold off a force many times larger -- but the 30:1 or 40:1 odds they'd face if Sharmack brought his garrison were too high.

On the other hand, what kind of soldier kills three innocent people -- one of them a child--at point-blank range?

In Lone Survivor, Luttrell recounts how the four SEALs staged a surreal conference to decide the goatherds' fate. Matthew "Axe" Axelson, the second sniper on the SEAL team, wanted to liquidate the goatherds on the spot. The other two Americans wavered. And the decision effectively came down to Luttrell.

"In my soul, I knew [Axe] was right," Luttrell recounts. "But my trouble is, I have another soul. My Christian soul. And it was crowding in on me. Something kept whispering in the back of my mind, it would be wrong."

Luttrell motioned with his rifle for the goatherds to be on their way. They didn't smile, express gratitude or even look back. They simply trotted back to their village -- and immediately proceeded to do exactly what Luttrell knew they would.

As a reader, it's impossible not to be awed at the heroism and sheer military prowess of Luttrell's team. But I was also flabbergasted that men in this extraordinary situation could debate the morality of their actions with such levelheadedness -- and in the end, do something that jeopardized their own lives for no other reason than that they collectively concluded it was the right thing to do.

In his book, a guilt-racked Luttrell second-guesses himself. "It was the stupidest, most southern-fried, lame-brained decision I ever made in my life," he writes. "I'd turned into a f--king liberal … No night passes when I don't wake in a cold sweat thinking of those moments on that mountain … The deciding vote was mine, and it will haunt me till they rest me in an East Texas grave."

But would it have haunted Luttrell less if he'd shot those three goatherds? I doubt it.

In purely operational terms, the sort of men who become Navy SEAL or Canadian JTF commandos are a species of supermen. Their training is designed to transform them into unfeeling combat machines. But all that target shooting, scaling cliffs and carrying around telephone polls can't erase a soldier's underlying values. Men such as Luttrell, raised in a Western, Judeo-Christian society that respects the sanctity of life, simply don't have it in them to knowingly slaughter the innocent. It's not in our cultural DNA. Ironically, the Muslim fanatics who cite Koranic verse to justify indiscriminate murder don't have a moral stitch on even this obscenity-spouting jarhead from Texas -- a man whom jihadis regard as the very personification of infidel evil.

There are lessons in this extraordinary book -- not just for those liberals who falsely demonize U.S. troops as reckless murderers, but also for conservatives, who think we should cast all moral strictures aside in the prosecution of the war on terror.

Although Luttrell doesn't frame it in these terms, the debate he and his comrades had on that mountaintop essentially broke down as a conflict between two giant traditions in philosophy: John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism and Immanuel Kant's concept of the categorical imperative. Mill says that decision-making is about costs and benefits. Kant says the opposite: Forget consequences, and "act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

Following Mill, the goatherds die. Following Kant, they live. Luttrell picked Kant, under this unstated "universal law":Decent human beings do not follow the terrorist path of intentionally killing innocents to further a larger political or military goal.

It's a great pity that 19 Navy Seals died for this principle on June 28, 2005. But it is an extraordinary tribute to the society that produced Luttrell that he held it to be true.

jkay@nationalpost.com

Illustration:
• Black & White Photo: U.S. Navy, Getty Images / FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Navy SEALs Matthew G. Axelson, Daniel R. Healy, James Suh, Marcus Luttrell, Eric S. Patton, and Michael P. Murphy. With the exception of Luttrell, all were killed during Operation Red Wing in Afghanistan.

Idnumber: 200802050046
Edition: National
Story Type: Column
Length: 873 words
Keywords: BOOKS; ARMED FORCES; TERRORISM; UNITED STATES; AFGHANISTAN
Illustration Type: P

PRODUCTION FIELDS
NDATE: 20080205
NUPDATE: 20080205
DOB: 20080205
POSITION: 1