This could be a movie, or a bad idea altogether

It was a dark night, but that was by design. The moon was hidden in the shadow of the earth as it is every month during that particular part of the lunar cycle. The Chinese used that night to mark the beginning of a new year, but a new American president had chosen this evening to mark a new era of U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, a step that President Obama was hesitant to take as he felt that it would mean escalation in a war in which the United States really wanted no of when it started three years before. Up to this point the US had kept its support in the air with drone strikes and air support of the the Saudi Arabian air force, but now boots were being put on the ground, and they belonged to Seal Team 6 and their support teams. General Mattis sat with his team in the situation room in Washington D.C. while aides kept President Trump up to speed while he took care of matters elsewhere.

The target was a small village essentially turned into a military compound and base for a powerful family in the Al Qaeda organization. One of the patriarchs of the family, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was an American citizen, had been killed in 2011 by an American airstrike. The family was accustomed to being in the US military cross-hairs, but this evening their surveillance network informed the leaders still in the compound that more than just a couple bombs was on the way. It was the intelligence that was housed in this base that supposedly made it important to the American government in the first place, and some of the leadership that frequented the home insists the team was looking to make a capture as well. The Obama administration chose it as a target multiple times as they tried to destroy the leadership, but a change of tactics was suggested late in the Obama term in order to improve future impact. Instead of simply killing off the leadership of terrorist organizations, perhaps the military should go in and replicate the success of the mission against Bin Laden, killing the leader in a surprise raid and collect as much physical intelligence as can be gathered by one elite team of Navy Seals. 

 As the Seals' boots planted on the Yemeni ground the theory became reality, and groups of soldiers local to the area teamed with their American allies to begin the hazardous approach to the targeted location about five miles away. Theories abound as to how the defenders of the compound in question discovered the presence of their attackers, but whether there was an informer or it was simply that the sound of the drones seemed closer than normal, something put the occupants of the Al Qaeda base at alert, and surveillance by the Americans informed them that their element of surprise had been lost. Imagining the movie for this, I can see this moment as the grim reality moves from face to face as the members of the Seal Team realize that the task became that much more tricky. I can see the scene adjust to show the team flip their night vision goggles down over their eyes, and then the camera follows the seamen as they move on to their target into the darkness.

Whatever words were exchanged at the moment, the order was given to proceed and the march began, the 24 Seals and their compatriots trying to reach their target before all preparations for defense were complete. The first to actually raise the alarm was a young man by the name of Abdullah, who was also the first combatant to fall lifeless. From that point chaos ensued. Defensive positions were found on and in buildings all over the small village, and anyone who could carry a weapon, it seems, fired on the intruders. At one point women who seemed to have been evacuating from one particularly harsh area of fighting turned out to be militants re-positioning for better firing positions. More than once the Americans and their allies were surrounded.

At one point air support was called in with gunships and jets responding. The images from the days following show buildings with windows blown out and surrounded by rubble. All these images resulted from one night of intense fighting. Chief Petty Officer William "Ryan" Owens was miraculously the only American serviceman killed in this night of action, while three others were injured. Two American military personnel sustained injury when the M-22 Osprey they were in suffered a "hard landing" forcing another aircraft to be pressed into service to recover the evacuating personnel while a GPS-guided bomb reduced the damaged Navy aircraft to mangled bits of metal.

In the aftermath locals reported several civilian deaths, including the eight year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, who lived in another city, but happened to be visiting her grandfather the night of the attack. Our military is investigating these claims, but it will be difficult to verify all claims since some of the seeming civilians turned out to be combatants. Despite the death of Chief Petty Officer Owens, the civilian deaths, and the loss of the Osprey, the mission was deemed a success by the Trump administration.

Doesn't it sound just like a movie? We could certainly play up the scene when the Seals let the group of women pass, focusing on the guns out front, only to find themselves surrounded when the women pull out their own AK-47s and open fire. And imagine what was going on at home when the news broke- we were grappling with the president's executive order crippling immigration. The screenwriter could have the plot swing from the drama in airports and courtrooms at home while the team collects back at home base and deals with the loss of Owens. Not only that, but consider how we could move into the reaction of the family upon learning that the president they cared nothing for sent their son and husband into hellfire for hard drives and cellphones. 

The camera could follow the president from a distance as he boards Marine One with his wife while the camera shifts to show a room where the seaman's father angrily refuses to agree to meet the president as his wife and daughter-in-law step up to shake President Trump's hand. The music of the score could crescendo as, four weeks later, the president nods with his chin up to the widow in the balcony as he addresses congress, and the whole crowd erupts into three standing ovations altogether lasting four minutes.

It would make a great movie, but as I look this over I think to myself that it looks more like a preview of coming attractions. Our president called the raid a success, but when the Pentagon released a video as an example of the "good intel" that was recovered, it was revealed to have been from a decade before. In fact, the locals report that none of the buildings were entered for the retrieval of anything, a claim disputed, obviously, by those in the Trump administration, and that the individuals that seemed to have been targeted were actually in support of the Yemenis who were allied with the U.S. Government. In the future it seems that we could be seeing our military sent into questionable situations that have poorly designated combatants, and somewhat uncertain goals. It is true that the Obama administration started the work on this raid, but it was the Trump administration who pulled the trigger. In the end, he needs to bear the responsibility, and I certainly hope he doesn't see fit to send too many more of our guys into raids like this for laptops and cellphones.