Couch - The finishing school: earning the Navy SEAL Trident

F ollowing their heavy use in the 2001 Afghanistan and the 2003 Iraq wars, American special operations forces have received considerable attention and praise. The words of praise, while richly deserved, often become rhetorical mythmaking. Dick Couch has written a book that gives readers an opportunity to separate fact from myth about one of these special operations groups: the United States Navy SEALs.

The facts of their current training and the details of their current missions take warfighting as mankind's most serious business. It is one worth avoiding, if possible; but if necessary, it must be fought with a professionalism that is constantly on guard against overconfidence and constantly alert to the mistakes that become a vital lesson taught with blood.

Dick Couch's story makes it clear that today's SEAL must have great physical strength and endurance. Further, today's SEAL must have the intellectual capacity to master technical details that seem comparable to those required of medical or engineering students. Imagining what it takes to become SEAL qualified inspires great respect and even a little awe.

However, what struck me in reading Dick Couch's story is the importance and value of human characteristics that have nothing to do with either physical strength or intellectual capacity. I was impressed with the emphasis on the character of these remarkable trainees. Today a man's character is more likely to disqualify him from earning a SEAL's Trident than any physical or mental failing.

Character includes such things as self-discipline, modesty, teamwork, consideration for others, and the ability to dial down as quickly as dialing up the aggression needed to be a successful warrior. SEALs are taught to do a job right the first time, to subtract complaints from their verbal arsenals, to accept realtime criticism of performance, and to never cease the active effort to learn how to do their jobs better.

A few years back, during my second term in the United States Senate and within a few days of each other, I heard two men with strikingly different careers address the importance of character with great eloquence and passion. The first was the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, General Charles Krulak. The second was investor and Omaha, Nebraska, native Warren Buffett.

Commandant Krulak was convinced that character could and should be taught to his Marines. He was urgently including character skills in the basic and advanced training for recruits and veterans. He believed that good character was nothing more or less than establishing and articulating rules that could not be broken no matter what the circumstances. Rather than making a man less flexible and unwilling to change when change was needed, good rules increased the chances that a Marine would be able to perform at the highest level possible by avoiding debilitating distractions and temptations.