Eventually, the SEAL team leader agrees to bring the tribe with them to the pickup point, but the situation turns into a moral struggle; leave these people in a place of great danger or lead them to safety beyond the borders of their country. .
Instead of performing the most logical course of action by having the helicopter pilot fly the sixty or so tribe people flown by helicopter thirty miles to the boarder and into a non-combat zone, and then flying the doctor out of the country, Lt. Waters goes against his better judgment an decides to guide the tribal people out of their hostile country. Following proper military protocol, the lieutenant obeys the chain of command and gets denied permission for the tribe people to be flown the thirty miles, leaving the only option to march them the thirty miles out of the country putting himself along with his men in danger.
Eric Greitens has a similar situation while deployed in Kenya, however not as extreme. One day while Greitens and his team finish a test run on their operational jet skis, when one of his men waves at a contractor operating a fork- lift. The contractor, believing there is an issue, drives out onto the beach to help and becomes stuck in the sand. Because the forklift is in a port used by both Americans and Kenyans, it is necessary to move the obstruction. Greitens notes:.
What should have been a very simple affair (hire local Kenyans with a tow truck to haul the forklift out of the sand during low tide) became complicated. In my office, previous commanders had a stack of memos filled with advice about "the Forklift. I learned that the United States couldn't legally give the forklift to the Kenyans (they offered to drag it out for free if they could use it for scrap metal) unless it was officially declared non-serviceable. And though the forklift had been stuck in the salt water for months, officer in Djibouti-one thousand miles away- wanted to debate its functionality.
