home alive; it meant more Iraqi soldiers and police lived to fight another
day; and it meant more of Ramadi’s civilian populace could live in a
little less fear. No longer could the enemy ruthlessly torture, rape, and
murder innocent civilians. Once the local people no longer feared the
insurgents, they were willing to join with U.S. and Iraqi forces to defeat
them.
* * *Shortly after Task Unit Bruiser’s return to the United States in late
October of 2006, Jocko was asked to build a presentation for the chief of
naval operations—the most senior admiral in the Navy, a member of the
U.S. joint chiefs of staff, and a direct advisor to the president. Jocko took
a map of Ramadi and built an overlay that depicted the geographic areas
that had been completely under enemy control—al Qaeda battlespace—
when we first arrived. These were areas that, when I arrived in Ramadi,
the SEAL platoon commander who had spent the previous six months
there pointed to and said to me: “Don’t go in there. You will all get
killed and no one [U.S. forces] will even be able to reach you to get you
out.”
From this map of Ramadi, Jocko built a PowerPoint slide that
depicted how the Ready First Combat Team’s Seize, Clear, Hold, Build
strategy systematically, through months of effort, established a
permanent presence in the enemy-held neighborhoods and pushed out the
enemy fighters. U.S. forces and the Iraqi forces with them demonstrated
to the people of Ramadi that we were now the strongest side. As a result,
the local populace joined us and turned against the insurgents who had
terrorized them. The slide depicted how Task Unit Bruiser SEALs had
been the lead element for virtually every major operation to build a