"That night, I thought of all the dead, and what adding Bin Laden's name to the list actually meant. I thought of Ingram, and I thought of Arroyo, who would never sleep peacefully again. I thought of the thumbs I'd seen hanging off barbed wire, the pools of blood, like oil on concrete, in small outposts I could barely remember. The memorial services with grown men crying over empty boots. The memorial service with me crying over an empty coffin. The explosions in hotels and government office buildings. I thought of the operators, all of us who'd made our careers off Bin Laden's horror show: McChrystal, Petraeus, Duncan, Dave, the Flynns, Lamb, Starkey, Hoh, Hicks, the twenty-three Navy SEALs who killed him, and even the president himself, who'd ridden to power on an antiwar tide. I thought of the harsh judgement history was going to one day render on us all."
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Military leaders from the United StatesMemoirists from the United StatesUnited States Military Academy alumniPeople from Kansas
Original Language: English
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Sources
Michael Hastings, The Operators (2012), p. 379
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stanley_A._McChrystal
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Stanley A. McChrystal
Stanley Allen McChrystal (born August 14, 1954) is a retired United States Army general best known for his command of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the mid-2000s. His last assignment was as Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, United States Forces – Afghanistan (USFOR-A). He previously served as Director, Joint Staff from August 2008 to June 2009 and as Commander of JSOC from 2003 to 2008, where he was credited with the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqa
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