THE WAY FORWARD

War stories with a motivational twist.

O’Neill, the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden, an event he describes in stomach-churningly graphic detail (“I could smell the inside of his skull, like the funky odor of an animal’s entrails”) and former Marine and Medal of Honor winner Meyer team up to describe some of the rules that will help one “avoid being killed,” literally or figuratively. Some are common-sensical: Keep it simple, follow orders, don’t be sloppy. Applied to a military setting, sometimes those rules can be maddening. Meyer writes about returning from battle, his hands covered with blood, some of it “probably…from a Taliban fighter I had killed,” only to be ordered by an officer to wash up before entering the base. He did, because it’s a matter of military culture, drilled in at every waking moment, that one follows orders—which doesn’t bar the authors from noting that the culture tends to foster generalizable rules that don’t always apply to every situation but that the brass regards as sacrosanct. The authors open with an exhortation to remember how a Claymore mine operates. Printed on every one are the words “Front toward enemy”—to point it otherwise is to invite suicide. Meyer doesn’t have much use for the medal he received—it’s stored in his daughter’s toy box—but still writes with high regard of the ideals of military service even as he allows that the object of Marine training is to create killers and “not to help people.” O’Neill is a touch more political, exploding in anger when Trump “retweeted a batshit-crazy tweet from an account connected to QAnon” to the effect that bin Laden was still alive and that Barack Obama, as president, had murdered soldiers to cover it up. Both authors suggest, knowingly, that the best plans don’t often survive reality, but it’s important to plan anyway, for “you’re never out of the fight.”

Better aimed at future soldiers than future CEOs, but with many valuable lessons.