I was jolted awake when the speakers lit up with machine gun fire and the television screens projected intense, raw war footage.

Then the man from that footage took the stage with a rush of energy. It was JP, the newest member of Echelon Front and Chris Kyle's counterpart in the platoon Babin didn't lead.

JP's message was that the only reason he was able to survive the extreme conditions of the Battle of Ramadi is because Willink had instilled in the entire unit a 'why.'

He explained that having candid conversations with your team about what compels them to succeed is necessary if there is going to be any chance of the team's making it through a difficult situation.

In a "Jocko Podcast" episode I later listened to, Willink said that one of the major mistakes of the Iraq War was assuming that once Saddam Hussein was toppled, the majority of Iraqis would share the same vision as the American forces did. But because the Iraqi allies didn't have the same "why," as JP put it, as the American troops they were fighting alongside, many American plans unraveled.