CHAPTER 1

Extreme Ownership

Jocko Willink

THE MA’LAAB DISTRICT, RAMADI, IRAQ: FOG OF WAR
The early morning light was dimmed by a literal fog of war that filled
the air: soot from tires the insurgents had set alight in the streets, clouds
of dust kicked up from the road by U.S. tanks and Humvees, and
powdered concrete from the walls of buildings pulverized by machine
gun fire. As our armored Humvee rounded the corner and headed down
the street toward the gunfire, I saw a U.S. M1A2 Abrams tank in the
middle of the road up ahead, its turret rotated with the huge main gun
trained on a building at almost point-blank range. Through the particle-
filled air, I could see a smoky-red mist, clearly from a red smoke
grenade used by American forces in the area as a general signal for
“Help!”
My mind was racing. This was our first major operation in Ramadi
and it was total chaos. Beyond the literal fog of war impeding our vision,
the figurative “fog of war,” often attributed to Prussian military
strategist Carl von Clausewitz,^1 had descended upon us, and it was thick
with confusion, inaccurate information, broken communications, and