An Army of Normal Folks - Lt. Col. Scott Mann: Green Beret, Author, Playwright, Hero (Pt 1)

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Scott is the ultimate patriot and renaissance man. He served in Colombia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, co-founded Operation Pineapple Express (which rescued over 750 Afghan allies), wrote the play “Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret,” and is the author of the new book “Nobody is Coming to Save You: A Green Beret’s Guide to Getting Big Sh*t Done”. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I get a text from one of my buddies. He said, hey, it's a veteran. He said, are you watching the news? And I said, no. And he said, turn it on. And so I turned on the news, which I never watch. I cannot watch the news. I turned it on and I see Afghan Taliban rolling into Kabul on our gun trucks, in our uniforms,

wearing our kit, carrying our carb beans and terrorizing Afghans on international television. You know, and I'm standing there just trying to make sense of it. And my phone, it's blowing up, you know, and then it rings and it's an asylum. And I knew something was up because he was calling me voice. And he said, you know, sir, it's over. He said the Taliban are here. They're texting my phone.

They're circling the block. I'm hiding in my uncle's house like Anne Frank. The president has left the country. Generals have taken the money. The commandos have disbanded. You know, and then he just got quiet and I'm out in my backyard because I didn't want money or anybody to hear it. And he's on speaker.

And he said, you know, I never worried about dying. I just never, I never thought I would die alone. God. And I just thought. That had to just crush you, bro. Oh, it was the worst possible thing that happened that day. And I just said, the only thing I could think of, I said, look, Sergeant, you're not gonna die alone.

Welcome to an army of normal folks. I just said the only thing I could think of was look, Sergeant, you're not going to die. Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I am a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in inner city Memphis. And somehow that last part led to an Oscar for the movie about our team. That film's called Undefeated. Guys, I believe our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big words on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks. Us. Just you and me deciding, hey, maybe I can help.

That's what retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, the voice you just heard, has done. This Green Beret, Scott didn't let Nizam die alone. And from Tampa Bay, Florida, he led his own army of normal folks to rescue Nizam and get this over 750 Afghan allies who are being hunted down by the Taliban in the wake of America's withdrawal from the country and this is just the beginning of how Scott has served his fellow man both at home and abroad I genuinely cannot wait for you to meet this man right after these messages from our generous sponsors. Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, welcome to Memphis. Bill, thanks for having me.

Flew up from Tampa, I guess, last night, yesterday? Actually, Monty flew up from Tampa. I flew down from New York. I was doing some stuff on the anniversary of the collapse of Afghanistan up on the news in New York, so I flew down from Manhattan. I got it. And let's go ahead and reveal to our audience, you said Monty came up from Tampa. What's this Mon money situation? All right

So this is this is my bride of 29 years this Veterans Day that a boy who? She's she's been with me through thick and thin raising three boys But you know through a very long war as well a war abroad and a war at home Yeah, and while you're overseas and you're married to Monty, did you feel like you were defending an enemy on two fronts? Because Monty's beautiful and you're just kind of dumpy like me. I am, man.

And I just, every time I introduce her to somebody, they just look at me like, dude, what the hell is going on right now? What is going on? And I just, I don't know. I just hope nobody figures it out. Monty, this isn't about you, but it's gonna be for a minute.

You're from Mississippi? I am. Where? Meridian. Meridian, Mississippi, and you're an Ole Miss girl? I went there for a year. Well, hotty toddy anyway. Yeah, I had a little too much fun.

Yeah, well, I, I, I, I, why wouldn't you? It's Ole Miss, right? Well, welcome to Memphis as well, and I think it's cool when our guests are with their spouse.

So we do everything together. We travel everywhere together. I'm a keynote speaker on the for-profit side and everything I do, she's there, she's got my back. And we promised each other when I got out of the military, that's what we would do. We're empty nesters now and so we're living into it. I love it.

And Lisa and I are the same way. In fact, I was just in Phoenix for a speech and she was there and she's always there. She's my person. Yeah, mine too, man. I get up on the stage and I start thinking I shouldn't be here. I'm not the person that should be on this stage.

I'm a fraud. She's the first person I locate. If I can find her, I'm good. Yeah, well, before we get into you, one more thing. Alex will tell you what's one of my first lines within the first three minutes of every speech is. Lisa's hot. Yeah, Lisa's hot.

I do some house cleaning items because they do the bio introductions and all that. And I'm like, okay, you heard all that. Now let me tell you who I am. First, one, my wife Lisa is smoking hot. That's how I'll start. And it's because it's true. Not to brag, but just, you know.

What? And I'm scared to death of her. And that's why we have that comment as well. So it works out well. But you have a big story and there's a lot to unpack here. And I don't know if I'm supposed to identify you as a Green Beret, as an author, as a playwright, an actor, a storyteller, a leader, or just say you really

are all of those things. So across from me sits a little bit of a Renaissance guy. And I know you probably shutter when I say that, but I do see you that way. And so much of what, what you do and what you have done to serve others and what you are doing now ties back to I think a lot about who you were as a kid. Yeah. And so tell us about, tell us about Scott. Yeah, well, you know, the Renaissance man thing

doesn't hit as hard as it used to. I mean, I do think myself more as a, you know, I think of myself as an artist now, as a creative, because it keeps me alive and I've come to terms with that. But I used to not at all. And I was born the son of Rex and Anita Mann. That's her last name, or that's her name, Anita Mann. So I was a tough kid growing up. And we moved all over the South. My dad is a forester. And the US Forest Service mom's a school teacher. And we just lived in little logging towns and little communities all over the South East, Southwest.

My dad was usually a forest ranger and fought big wildland fires. And so grew up really, really simple in the country. And when I was 14, a green beret came into the soda shop where I was hanging out. His name was Mark. And the minute I met that guy and he sat down and talked with me, that was it. I knew that's what I wanted to do. What did he say? Was he in uniform?

He was. And but that wasn't, I mean, that got everybody's attention because, you know, anytime anybody walks in a little town, it is, because that's bad to the bone to a kid when that dude walks. It is, it is. It's almost moving, like absolutely. But it was more the way he carried himself. It was more the way he conducted himself. And when he sat down and talked to me, because man, I was... God, I was so scrawny as a kid. I mean, I was pretty bullied. I mean, and I struggled a lot. You're a big dude, weren't you, really? When I was younger, I mean, it was bad.

And we moved all the time too, which made it worse. And so I was always on the outside looking in of things. And I just tried not to make waves. And this guy, like, you know, he sat down with me. I went up to him, I talked to him and asked him who he was. And he sat down with me and he started explaining to me what Green Berets are and what they do and how they do and

how they work with indigenous communities and how different they are from the Navy Seals and Rangers, that they actually they do some of that door kick and stuff, but they they build relationships, they build rapport and they'll go into a community with 12 guys and they'll come out with 1200, you know, and that just fascinated. I think that OK, so. I think that, okay, so I think 95% of the non-military people on the face of the planet who owe this enormous debt of gratitude to those of you who served and have served and bled and died for our freedoms. We get so much of our attitude and appreciation and belief set of the military from movies and the books.

It's true. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's true. So we get desensitized, I think, to what a Green Beret is, to what a seal is, and to what just your run-of-the-mill average military guy is also, which is unfortunate because of the service. Unfortunately, the most popular green bray in the American psyche is a fictitional person named John Rambo. John Rambo, absolutely.

But that's unfortunate to me. It is, it is because it gives this persona that they're kind of kilimolic, God sort of amount kind of individuals. Kilimolic, God sort of amount. That's military stuff. Yeah, and it's just not true. You know, I mean, even in the seal communities

and the rangers, and you know, they're very surgical. You know, that's what I try to tell people is that special operators are very surgical individuals. Even when they apply lethality, it's surgical, you know, typically. And with green berets, we're the only unit in the inventory that is really chartered to go into areas and build social capital from the inside out.

See, I don't think anybody knows that. Nobody knows that, and I tell people that is... When I read that about your story and what he told you as a kid, that is not at all what people think a Green Beret is. No and that's what it is. Go kick doors, kill people, kick and move on and hoorah and all that. Absolutely and you know we draw our origins all the way back to World War II when the Office of Strategic Services got volunteers of school teachers and attorneys mostly, who volunteered to be on these teams

called Jedburg teams, three-person teams. And they dropped into Nazi occupied Europe in three-person teams and they stayed the entire war. And what they did was they built relationships as teachers and advisors of subversion and sabotage and these partisans that were already resisting, they mobilized them, trained them, organized them, equipped them, organized them, equipped them, and then advised them to resist against the Germans.

And that became modern-day special forces. That's what we do. Not at all. That is, that's so cool to learn. Hey, who's the guy that we're interviewing, Alex, that wanted to assassinate Hitler, the preacher? The Bonhoeffer story. Do you know the story?

I do know that story. OK, well, you refreshed me on it last night. I can't help but hear you and wonder if there was crossover there. There could have been. I mean, the OSS was very involved in that kind of work. And we were actually partnered with Canada. Canada actually put members in it.

So not only does Special Forces draw its lineage to the OSS, but the CIA as well. In fact, in the 50s, after World War II, the OSS split. One group became the intelligence arm of the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency. The other group became Special Forces. And that became, and this was in the early 1950s, 1952. So Green Berets have been around a long time. I tell people that we're very different than Navy Seals, Army Rangers. Those guys have way better hair than we do. You've got better hats.

I'm telling you, man. But here's the thing. I do a lot of work with young people like you do as well, and, you know, folks that are thinking about going in special ops. And I try to help them figure out which branch is right for them. And what I tell people is a modern day Green Beret is a combination between John Wick, Lawrence of Arabia and the Verizon guy. Why the Verizon guy? Well, so we've already covered John Wick, right?

If you think about John Wick as a character, the dude is lethal. You don't want to mess with him, but he's really reluctant to apply that lethality until he's pushed. And then he applies it and it is very rough, but very surgical. That's why I use him as an avatar. And that's the baseline capability for John and for a Green Beret. Then you have the Lawrence of Arabia, right? T.E. Lawrence, 1917, British intelligence officer, walks into modern day Syria during World War I. He had worked there as a geologist. The British military sent him in.

He mobilized an entire tribal nation to overthrow the Ottoman Empire, who was allied with the enemy. And he did it by mobilizing these tribes from the inside out and riding across the Sahara and taking the city of Aqabaq. And he did all this through interpersonal skills. So Lawrence of Arabia is a big chunk of what we do. And then finally, the Verizon guy. This is the ability to make connections that are massive,

to build networks. It's kind of what we did with Pineapple Express. In Panama, when we invaded Panama, Green Berets actually went to payphones and were calling Panamanian soldiers in their barracks, speaking to them in Spanish, telling them to come out or there were going to be bombs dropping and they got these surrenders without a shot fired. They're these amazing connectors. They can build these massive networks over time that are almost impossible almost, it's almost impossible to

believe how big these networks can get. And Green Berets are just naturals at it. They just, they're really great at connecting beyond their comfort zone. So did this gentleman back in Arkansas teach you this as a kid? He told me, what he really told me was about how Green Berets go into these trust depleted places where nobody else wants to go. And they go in there and they build trust and rapport and they teach those people how to fight on their own. Trust depleted places. Sound familiar? Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting. Did he use that phrase with you as a kid?

Remember, low trust, I think was what he said. But same thing. Yeah, same thing. And just there was something about that. And the way he talked to me, he was just, he was so calm and self-spoken. He wasn't trying, there was no bravado. He was extremely intelligent. And I could tell, and I know this sounds crazy,

he knew that was what I wanted and he was recruiting me. He knew that's what I wanted to do. He could see it in me. You know, and he took the time to talk to me, not as a 14-year-old kid that was pushed around and ignored. He saw me, you know, and this guy mentored me until I retired. What year was this? 1983.

So in 83, 40 years ago, yeah, yeah. The idea of a green beret was still to build consensus to build groups to reach out. Yeah, I am trained. Do you know? Oh, my gosh. The Medal of Honor winner. Do Bell will be happy to. I do know David. Recipient. I'm sorry, recipient. I shouldn't say winner. It's a common mistake, but it is the proper term.

He's been a guest. Yeah, he's amazing. And he's an incredible guy. He is incredible. And he's one of the bravest men I've ever met, but also one of the just most humble. Oh, I know. He's one of the, and I think he's the only living Medal of Honor recipient from Iraq war. Pretty sure that's right. Yeah, I think that's right. He's incredible. Anyway, yeah.

The thing I love about him is his humility and everything. But he also will say this. You mess with us, understand somebody else is going to raise your children. Which is a profound thing to say. But when I hear you, what I hear is, yep, we're trained. Yes, we're high speed. And if it comes to it, we'll eliminate you.

But that is not what we want to do. We want to build relationships. We build those relationships and make no mistake so that the people who live in these areas at a local level can apply their own levels of coercion to take care of business. And so just to be clear, it's not the Peace Corps. We mobilize. In fact, there was a statistic, and I don't know if it held true all the way through the war, I think it did, that more Green Berets were killed in the global war on terror than

all Special Operations Forces combined. Okay. And I don't know if that held through all the way through, but it was at one point that and the reason is because all of the forces go through massive losses, but Green Berets are living out in these communities in and amongst the people. And when you're dealing with insurgents and when you're dealing with bad actors

who mobilize the population, you are getting at their breadline. And so they come at you with all four feet, 24-seven. But that's no different than Germany. That's no different than I would assume Vietnam. And now the more modern wars, the same effort of a Green Beret sounds similar. It's a very distinct mission, just like all of the other special operations forces, but ours is to, again, to mobilize large populations by, with, and through. So go back to Lawrence of Arabia.

This dude walks into modern day Syria. Now he wasn't a green beret, but he applied the same mission. And he got a group of Bidu tribesmen, nomads, who couldn't sit in the same tent together without unsheathing their knives on each other. And he told them a story of what would happen if you liberated Aqaba, the crown jewel of the Ottoman Empire. What if you could liberate that from the desert?

What a narrative that would be for history. And he mobilized these nomads and they did it. They rode across the Sahara desert, but here's the kicker. Lawrence knew that Aqaba was vulnerable from the desert because all the guns pointed to the sea. And he learned that when he was a geologist there. It was his understanding of the local environment. It was his understanding of the local environment. It was his understanding of the local dynamics

and his ability to tell a story that hadn't even happened yet to these individuals and build rapport and trust that was so strong. He had authority over none of them. But he could tell a story that was so compelling that these nomads bridged across their tribal rivalries, banded together and rode across the Sahara Desert and liberated Aqaba.

And you talk about an economy of force for the military, like that's huge. The same way these three-person Jedburgs stayed behind enemy lines for years and mobilized partisans to disrupt Hitler. You know, so that's what's actually going on. It is relationships and coercion, but it's a depth of trust that's so deep that that farmer will go up on a rooftop beside you and fight at your shoulder with no authority. And he will die fighting alongside you because of the trust that you've built. And that's what people have such a hard time understanding.

And that's why I think people couldn't get their head around why we were so devastated when Afghanistan collapsed. Most people saw people falling off the wheels of airplanes. We saw people that kept us alive and brought us into their homes and shared their families and their meals with us. And now a few messages from our generous sponsors. But first, I hope you'll consider signing up to join the Army at normalfolks.us. By signing up, you'll receive a weekly email with short episode summaries in case you happen

to miss an episode or if you prefer reading about our incredible guests. We'll be right back. At 14, you were told this story and you started to understand it. Your life has been, a large part of your life has been this story and understanding it, the real purpose of a green bret and the unbelievable history you give behind it in the metaphorical story you tell of Lawrence of Arabia, even though he wasn't a green beret, but like you say, the mission is the same. Then it follows that, duh, who better to go into Who better to go into a trust depleted, your words, nation like Afghanistan, full of a bunch of different tribes that would, in your words, unsheathe their knives if they were under the same tent and try to create a coalition or an alliance among trust depleted people who had been decimated

by internal strife and Russia back in the 80s and tried to create a coalition to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda. I mean, that seems like what the mission of the Green Beret is. It is. That very job that needed to be done. And honestly, you know, even in the 90s when I went into special forces, this was, I worked in South America during the drug years. Columbia.

Columbia, the Andean Ridge. Yeah, it was sporty times. Sporty. Bet that was sporty. And then 9-11 hit. And it changed our lives for Monty and me and our boys. My oldest son was three when the towers fell, and he's now an infantry captain to give you

an idea of how long that war was. But it really changed our lives. I remember one of my commanders said to me, Scotty, you're two phases of your life now. You are either in Afghanistan or you're getting ready to go back. And that's it. That's it. That became our life.

That's how we raised our boys. That's how Monnie lived her life. You were either there or you were getting ready to go back there. And it went on for years. And I had three long deployments there, but I've got buddies that's got 10, and it was just a long war of working in these places.

But to go back to what you said about that mission, I remember something that you said that struck me about the turkey, about not being a turkey, and having a conversation with that guy on the on the team. That's what you do in SF is everybody's trying to win over the local population, the conventional army, the all the units are trying to win them over. But you, you gotta, if you got to go local, or you got to go home, man, like that's the

only way to build trust and rapport. And you know that, I mean, that's true in America. Couldn't agree more about that as a broad statement about everything. Everything. And so- Everything. Politics is local. Everything. Service is local.

Fixing communities is local. That's right. Cultural and societal ills are local. And apparently fighting a war is local. 100%. And that's what Green Berets, I think, do differently than anybody else is we live in the communities. We grow our beards out.

We don the garb. We speak the language. We help them solve low tech farming problems. We think through dispute resolution. We try to figure out how to do sun dried tomatoes when it's not working well. Like, you know, you really I mean, all of those things. You try to figure out why farmers are killing earthworms with their thumbs in a tilled field. Why would a farmer kill an earthworm with

his thumbs? Why would they get online and kill all these earthworms? I don't know why they kill it with their thumbs, but I would assume the earthworm kills their crops. No, the earthworms are great for soil composition, but they think that because they grew up in a refugee camp during the Soviet occupation and the Civil War, and they've never farmed in their life. And the only way you would know that is if you lived in the community with them and you listened to their stories about their life versus throwing soccer balls out the window and saying, I'm from the government, how do you like me so far? So what you're saying is to wage a proper winning strategy of war

in a place like Afghanistan, you have to get out of your comfort zone. You have to get out of your vacuum of thought. You can't surround yourself with people who look like you, think like you, vote like you, believe like you, worship like you, and love like you. You cannot. So that then you are able to understand the very people you seek to serve.

Exactly. And that is the fundamental tenets of leadership. It is. And the reality was for the first, to back it up, the first 10 years of the war in Afghanistan, when 9-11 hit, of course, it caught the whole country off guard. We can all probably remember not only where we were, but what we were doing, wearing. My ranger buddy, Cliff Patterson, was killed in the Pentagon that day. He was a very dear friend, and it wrecked me. I remember Monty was the one that told me that he had been killed. This was a couple of days that I learned about this after the attack. I was already pissed, and I went immediately into vengeance mode, as did every war fighter.

I don't care if you were a green beret or not, all you thought about was payback. Like it is retribution time. Even President Bush said it. I think the whole country felt that way. I think they felt that. So we- Military, non-military, all of us.

Yeah, but we had open hunting season. And it was open season, right? We went over there and I went in a couple of years later, but the initial SF guys that went in, they worked by with and through. If you ever saw the movie, 12 Strong. Okay, so that was the mission of the horse soldiers, fifth special forces group. But then we kind of settled into this Vietnam style top down counter insurgency campaign where I think we really snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Well that's weird because everything you just told me was bottom up, build relationships with the community up. Why did we flip the top down? I think we forgot it. As a regiment, and I'm saying this about my own organization, we were so focused on walking the enemy down and surgical targeting. In some ways, as a community, we almost kind of became another direct action unit versus working out in these local communities to really address-

Did you feel it? Did you see it as it was happening? I did not. I was caught up in it. That's my question. I was myopically caught up in retribution, payback, walking the Taliban down, body count. Now, we were still living in the communities and doing local things, but it was to get at the enemy. It was to kick a door in, snatch a dude out of his house in front of his family, run him off to a prison and put him in that detention center or kill him in front of his family. And think about that in a tribal society

where you're kicking in doors in the middle of the night, you're snatching dudes in front of their women. You're not building relationships. You're not building relationships, right? Probably fear and hate you just as bad as al-Qaeda or Taliban or whoever else. And a lot of the times, or at least early on in the war, you would have a white bearded guy come up and say,

those folks over there are Taliban. Okay, and it was a guy that you'd built rapport with, you'd drink tea with, you'd go hit those guys. Turns out he has a feud with this dude over water, right? And you just took out his third cousin who he wanted gone. And that's a bit of an extreme example, but there was, in my assessment, this is Scott Mann's assessment,

the first 10 years of the war, we were myopically focused on retribution. We were focused on payback, on walking the enemy down. And we tried to put a square peg in a round hole. We did not go local. We came top down for 10 years. And by 2008, I was flying home from my second deployment. We had killed thousands of Taliban on that rotation.

And I could not sleep because there were more Taliban in the rural areas of the country than when we had started. And it was a rural insurgency. So we're looking at it's 2008, 2009, we've got more Taliban than when we started. You have a new president that's talking about leaving in a couple years and that was when the Special Forces community decided to get back to its roots and start working bottom up. Well see, but that man, I mean, I love history. And I'm also love, you know, Kurt events, I drive Lisa crazy with it. That is not the story we were told. Nobody told that story. Because Kabul, women were free and going to school. And we were taking out the Taliban and they had been quote neutralized. Yeah. I mean that's the story. We were told. We were told. Right. And we were told it by

generals and admirals who looked congressional leaders in the eye and said the Taliban are fractured. But what you just said is there were more Taliban in the rural areas than there were before you arrived. And our senior leaders knew it. That's not what we were told. I know. And that's, let's call it what it is. Yeah.

It's a lie. And if you read the Afghan papers, it's documented. By 2008, 2009, it was clear that we were losing the war. The rural insurgency had taken on such a dimension. And here's the other thing that people have to know about Afghanistan. Afghanistan is what you call a status society, right? So it is, we all come from status society. These are societies that are traditional in nature, where honor and shame are, because

the group is everything. You know, most folks are farmers or hunters or gatherers. And so the group is how you survive. You have to form groups, clans, tribes, and the group dynamics are what govern the country, right? Honor and shame, old school justice, old school vengeance. Feud is a normal part of everyday life. It has its own way of managing justice, but it ain't what you and I know is justice in a contract society like America, where the individual is at the heart of everything. Mike Rowe and I talked about this,

where in this country individualism is that we have a constitution that preserves the individual. In Afghanistan, as a status society where the group is dependent on each other to survive, they don't care anything about the individual. That actually runs counter to their survival, to their narrative. It is the collective that must band together.

And whatever the collective needs to survive or do to survive, that's the law. That's the way it works. And if you go, there's only one paved road in Afghanistan. It's Ring Road. It runs around the country. You go a mile off that paved road in any direction, you are no longer in a society that is rule of law. You are in a society that is tribal, you know,

and I tell people that 80 to 90 percent of that country is honor-based society. It is bottom-up, community-based, tribal society. And we never understood that. And we were trying to put a new government. Hold your finger up and show that you voted. Show that you voted, right? Yeah, I'm from the government. How do you like me so far? And they don't. In fact, what happened was we would run these elections and everybody would show their finger that they voted. You know, well, the council of elders that runs most of these communities is how water gets managed, is how grazing is managed, how disputes are resolved. It's a council of elders, an egalitarian council.

It's not, it's not individuals, you know, voting. And so the Taliban who had eased their way back into the country after they got pushed out because of how we were now coming top down, they're out in the communities. And they're pointing at all these things to the elders saying, you see that right there? You see all these individuals voting? I wonder how that's gonna work for the Jerga Council.

What do you think your tenure is gonna be on this council of elders? How long is that gonna last? You know, and so what they basically did, we gave them an engine running of a narrative that they just got in and drove off in. Like it was, we are basically going to change your society, you know, fundamentally.

And we never even thought about it. We're driving by throwing med supplies and soccer balls out the window, thinking that we're changing this society from the top down for the better. We're creating a democracy. What we actually created were the social conditions for the Taliban to come right back in and run a bottom up insurgency.

So where we started in Kabul and got to the gates of the villages at the end of the war, they started in the villages and ended up at Kabul at the end of the war. They started in the villages and ended up at Kabul at the end of the war. And the metaphorical irony of that is, this is exactly what Lawrence Arabia did. Same.

Which is not the duty of a Green Beret. No, no. But we got back to that. I get it. Yeah. So there was a flip. So we said, hold it. Yeah, there was a flip.

On the way, there was a group of Green Ber that that were looking at what was going on in the country. And we said, we got to flip this thing. So we started this program called Village Stability Operations, VSO, around 2010. And it was a complete return to bottom up community based operations. And the cool thing was the real mentors for this were Vietnam era SF guys. No kidding. Yup. Who had worked with the Montagnards in the highlands of Vietnam.

That's phenomenal. That's so cool. It really was. And they were so helpful in helping us think that through because we knew we needed a new approach. And the regiment came at that wholeheartedly and started with seven villages. And I was fortunate enough to be an architect of one of those, of that program.

And we started with seven villages and like 75 farmers. And by the time the program was 18 months into duration, it was gosh, 113 villages across the country and something like 30,000 fighters. Okay. Phenomenal. Yet. It was too late.

Is that what it is? It was too late. That was my question. It was too late. We started it too late. The... It was... There was no way. And the other thing was the political appetite for the war,

you know, now you're talking talking this is 2012, 2013. There's this push to turn everything back over to the Afghans and let them fight it and us get out of there. And honestly, a lot of the Afghan senior leaders in Kabul did not like green berets running around their villages advising tribal elders because the way Afghanistan is set up is in Kabul you wield your influence out into the rural areas through these elders. And we were influencing it.

You were usurping their influence. Yep. And so the leaders in Kabul talked a lot of our general officers and admirals into terminating the program, even though we had said, look, if we do this, if we start this, it's a break it, you buy it kind of thing. You start this, you're going to ask these people to take massive risks in their lives. And we got to stay with them. This could be based on what's happened in Columbia with us with our work there.

It could be 50, 75 years of sustained engagement of Green Berets in Afghanistan. Like this is a long game. Everybody agreed to that. And so that's what we told the elders when we went in there. It's like, we're with you for the long haul. We're staying with you for the long term on this. We're not going anywhere. And so in 2013, they started pulling us out of the villages. And I started getting phone calls from elders that I'd worked with when I'd be back stateside. And you could hear the Taliban tossing their house, you know, and you could hear gunshots.

And then it finally got to the point that every elder except one that I personally recruited was killed. And that was when I looked at Monty. I was a lieutenant colonel. I'd been selected for battalion command. And I turned down three commands in a row and I retired. I just couldn't do anymore.

I was like, you know, I saw where 2021 was headed in 2013 when we left those villages like that. So I'm just going to connect dots and tell me where my dots are inaccurately connected. Sounds to me like we went in to kill Taliban and we did that. We forgot our mission as traditional American green braids of building relationships from the ground up, which created the atmosphere for the Taliban to be able to creep back into the rural areas. We recognized it and we went back to what the traditional world of a Green Beret is and started to build relationships at the bottom up and made relationships, agreements, friendships, trusted, I don't even know what the word is,

but we said to people in these rural areas, we're here for you for the long haul. Yeah, I will back one thing up is, I wanna be really clear, the Green Berets from the outset at the team level, they were doing the right things. I mean, a lot of us were focused on what the enemy had. When I say we, I mean, we

It was like senior leaders and really as a coalition, I think we lost our way. There were a lot of Green Berets who were screaming for this, but our special forces regiment was divided. A lot of them wanted to walk the enemy down. A lot of them wanted to do this by, with, and through thing. We were a house divided. But we got our act together, like you said, in 2010. And what this program looked like, Bill, is what would happen is you would go into a community. And at first, I mean, these teams,

like a team would go into a community and there was no trust. These people were afraid. This team might sleep on their trucks outside the village for like two weeks trying to get into this village. And they would, the medics would work with the kids. The team leaders would engage the elders and until finally they would let you in for tea. Oh, you mean you would serve them. Absolutely. And they would ask you, are you bringing a turkey? Right.

Why are you here coach? Right. And that's it. Are you bringing a turkey? Right. Or are you here to stay? Why are you here, Coach? Right. And that's it. And you know what's ironic is in the Q course, in the Green Beret Q course, there's an exercise called Robin Sage at the end that culminates everything.

And it's the world's largest role playing exercise. It's in five counties in North Carolina. Everybody that lives in those towns are role players as an occupied nation that are in green, you go in as Green Beret teams and you work with these guerrillas and you help them stand up against this fictional army. Wow.

It's exactly like what I just described. You have to try to get into the community, build your rapport, build your relationships and really relate to what's going on. But in doing that, you're making promises. You have to, right? And that's the whole thing. And the promise is, we're here for the long haul,

we're gonna have your back. If you will have the courage and your words to come up to your rooftop, I'm gonna defend you from your rooftop, but eventually I want you to come up and join me. That's right, and eventually it happens. I'm glad that you brought that point and join me. That's right. And eventually, it happens. I'm glad that you brought that point up, because invariably, that's what would happen.

You would see a team go up to their rooftop, and they would fight. And then usually, a week or two later of watching that happen, you'd see one muzzle flash on another roof. And then a few nights later, two more muzzle flashes. And then eventually, the muzzle flashes on every roof and this collective defense of a community,

which they had done for, and this is the part I was trying to get across, these communities had defended themselves like this for hundreds of years. They were wired for this. Communities know how to be resilient. They know how to do what they do. But the real thing that we had lost as a nation

was that the damage in Afghanistan that was so substantial was not the damage to the Kabul's infrastructure and to their government. It was bad. The communities were decimated from 40 years of nonstop war. The Soviets, the civil war, the Taliban, us, every elder in that community had left years before and had never come back. Imagine a community with no elders. Well, you don't have to, you can see it. You can see it in South Memphis sometimes

when you drive through. And that was what struck me when I came home from this war is I looked at these communities and I'm like, oh my God, like that churn that was over there, it's here. We're getting there. It's, it is this, there's so much to all of this, but the thing, the thing that gets me the most as just an American is we went over there with our best and our most courageous, You, you and your brothers and sisters, wearing my flag on your shoulder, representing us, our democracy, our constitution, our way of life, and made promises to build

these relationships. And what I want people, the one thing I do know that I've read a lot about is there's this lack of political and public will to stay in Afghanistan because of body bags coming back on planes, which I certainly understand. But what I don't think most people understand is we were always like, well, eventually they have to defend themselves. They were defending themselves.

They 100% were. And they gained the temerity and the courage to defend themselves against the Taliban and then al-Qaeda because they finally believed we would have their back. And that was the whole thing. And they counted on that. And remember that when we got there, there was no military in Afghanistan. The military had been dissolved for years.

And we trained one. And we stood it up. Now, it was a 20-year-old military. How many 20-year-olds are you going to give the keys to a community to? Right, here in the United States. They needed more time. Right?

They needed more time. And that's part of capacity building. It's not nation building. It's capacity building. And this is what I always try to get across to politicians and citizens and they just can't seem to get their head around it. We are facing an Islamist violent extremist enemy in Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban. There is no Taliban 2.0. That's a farce.

Yeah, it's the same. They are the same. They're different sides of the same coin. This Islamist threat has a multi-century narrative of eradicating our way of life based on an end of days scenario of life based on an end of days scenario that they believe it is their solemn duty to usher in. They are not afraid of us. So say that one more time. If, if, if our listeners, please hear what in, you know what I'm able to call you Scott, because in this capacity, I want what you hear a Lieutenant Colonel who has spent years in Afghanistan and defending this country, say that one more time.

It is really important. This sinks in, people need to get their arms around the uncomfortable truth of what you're saying. Yeah, when you look at an enemy, you have to look at will and capacity, both. China has the capacity to attack America. Russia has the capacity to attack America. Al-Qaeda has the capacity to attack America.

Does China and Russia have the will to unilaterally attack America? No, not right now. The Islamists- But because ultimately, China and Russia and the people with power and money in those countries that have the capacity to order an attack on America, they also believe in self-preservation.

Self-preservation, exactly. Yeah, I should have made that clear. Self-preservation is what- That's just my Green Bay training. It's strong, brother. Yeah, I know. But that's true. It's true.

You know what that is. Nations act in their own best interest. It's human nature. We act in our own best interest. Yeah, I know. But that's true. It's true. You know what that is. Nature's acting in their own best interest. It's human nature. We act in our own best interest. Self-preservation. Absolutely. Putin, y'all may think he's a madman, but what he is before he is anything is a self-preservation. He's calculating.

That's right. Same thing with Jesus. Same thing with all. But it is different. No. If you look at ISIS's, the ISIS meta-narrative, right? They want to restore the seventh century caliphate, but their ultimate goal is an end of days scenario.

It is the apocalypse. It is the return of the prophet. And it is their solemn duty to usher that in, to create the conditions by which that final battle happens. That is a merit, meta narrative that is in their solar plexus. It is conditioned in them and it is a multi-century narrative. You can chop down all their leaders, you're just like mowing the grass. That narrative courses through them the same way our national narratives used to course through us. It runs strong in their blood. And they are relentless in the pursuit of that narrative,

hence the will. When you look at Bin Laden, at 19 hijackers attacking the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and their other target, the Capitol, the audacity of that attack, he knew what was coming. He killed Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance two days before 9-11, because he knew we would go to the Northern Alliance and work with them.

He had two suicide bombers posing as cameramen that went in and interviewed Massoud and smoked him on 9-9, because he knew what we were gonna do. He wasn't afraid of it. And that's what I'm trying to get across to folks. So you're dealing with an enemy that is extremely resilient, extremely good, and extremely driven, and they will not stop.

The only antibody that I... And you know what? If I thought that turning some of these places into a parking lot or total war like we saw in World War II would actually do it, I'd probably say let's go for it, right? If that was the only, but it won't. It actually fuels the narrative. The only thing that I've seen work in my almost quarter of a century doing this is local communities that serve as an antibody to violent extremism. Yeah, because we need to say, as I hear you, I cannot stand generalizations and painting

with broad brush. The proverbial they is dangerous. It's dangerous in the United States, it's dangerous everywhere. We are talking about the enemy. The enemy is not an Afghanistan tribal leader. No, it's not even Islam. But people hear what you say. And we gotta be so careful

because I don't want people to hear what you say. And then they're thinking, oh, everyone in Pakistan, Afghanistan, everywhere. No, it is the enemy within those borders. Let's back it up. And if you take the word that I said, I noticed I did not say Islamic violent extremist. I said, I noticed I did not say Islamic violent extremist, I said Islamist.

And this is the application of a virulent strategy meta-narrative that is holistically violent. Right? And it is seventh century in nature, it is draconian, and it is not representative of the broader ummah. It's not, you know, it is, it is. And that's why I also was very specific in saying Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, these are groups that subscribe to a draconian narrative that has no place in civil society. Much like the Ku Klux Klan claiming Christianity. 100%. It's the same thing. We got gotta get our arms around as Americans.

Obviously, every Christian is not a Klansman. Every Muslim over there is not part of this extremist groups, but claiming some of that within their bounds is a smaller subset of people. They're really dangerous. That's why I didn't like the term war on terror. some of that within their bounds is a smaller subsect of people. They're really dangerous. That's why I didn't like the term war on terror. It's like declaring a war on snipers or a war on ambushes.

What does that even mean? I don't even understand. The enemy in this case are Islamist violent extremist groups bent on destruction of the West. And it's not going to stop. And so where I'm trying to go with this is, if you're going to even just protect yourself at home, the best... These guys set up shop in under-governed, trust depleted places where they can operate within the local population. So when I meet them where they are. Yeah. And so rather than go in and strike these places unilaterally, which is so difficult

to do, over the horizon doesn't work. You end up killing innocent people. And even if you have a surgical strike team, I mean, there's some of that that works. But the real antibody, most of the communities that I've seen that are sanctuaries to violent extremists, they don't want us there, but they don't want them there either. So equip them. So be an advisor and help these people stand up on their own.

Equip them with knowledge, intelligence. But that is a multi-generational, multi-decade invention. But that's exactly the work the Green Berets were doing. We've been in Columbia 50 years. No one even knows it. We've got, we still have bases in Europe from World War II for the same reasons. Yeah. And that concludes part one of my conversation with Scott Mann. And I'm telling you, don't miss part two. It's available now.

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