Angry Planet - ICYMI: The Highs and Lows of U.S. Special Operations Forces

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

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Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Hello, Angry Planet listeners. This is Matthew up here at the top with an introduction to this remastered rerun edition of Angry Planet. It is the holidays, and Jason, Kevin, and I are taking a little bit of a break. Jason and I will be back next week or the week after. for a very weird episode that's just going to be us talking about cyberpunk, but I don't want to leave you all hanging without content. So what I've done here is I've got two episodes from our past. One is incredibly ancient about special operations forces because they've been in the news a lot lately, and there's been some discussion about their behavior,

their place in the American military. If you've been following the Australia story, you know, the operator culture in other countries has come up. So the first conversation is going to be from the old Reuters days. It's a conversation with Sean Naylor about the history of J-Soc. And if you don't know what that is, you're about to learn. The second one is one of our more popular episodes. It's kind of a breakdown of Spartan and operator culture with a military ethicist and a former operator himself.

I hope you enjoy both of these. If you are a premium subscriber, there is a premium episode coming this week. It's a conversation with myself and Jake Hanrahan about his recent documentary about 3D printed weapons and his experiences in Europe. If you want to get access to that, go to Angry PlanetPod.com to sign up. It's just $9 a month. We'll give you two bonus episodes regardless of the holiday season. Without further ado, here is a blast from the past. day, all of the facts in about 30 years' time will be published.

When genocide has been carried out in this country, almost with infinity, and when it is near to completion, people talk about intervention. They will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before. I'm Jason Field, Reuters Opinion Editor, and I'm Matthew Gould with Wars Borough. Today, we're talking with veteran war reporter Sean Naler. He began his career writing for Army Times. He's written several books and is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy.

His new book is Relentless Strike, The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command. A recent review of the book goes so far as to accuse Sean of exposing valuable secrets that should have remained hidden. For a journalist, that's kind of a rave. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it. So could you just start off by simply telling us what the Joint Special Operations Command is?

Joint Special Operations Command, or J-Soc, as it's more commonly known, is the command that runs the United States' most sensitive special operations missions. Examples include the missions that captured Saddam Hussein, rescued Captain Phillips from pirates off of Somalia, and killed Osama bin Laden. But as I explain in the book, those events are the ones that come to the public's attention. They are just the tip of the J-Soc iceberg that has been created over the last 30 years. Take us through a little bit of that beginning history, Sean. When did the Pentagon create J-Soc and why did it create J-Soc?

The Pentagon created J-Soc in late 1980 in response to the failed mission to rescue the U.S. hostages in Iran. You know, that mission was conducted by an ad hoc task force comprised of units unused to working together with a similarly ad hoc headquarters running the show. And its failure was a huge blow to American prestige. And so to minimize the risks of a repeat, the Pentagon decided it needed a permanent counter-terrorist joint task force to run such missions from then on. And and it established J-Soc as that force. Which special mission units are we talking about, the J-Soc controls? The two best-known special mission units under J-Soc's control are the Army's Delta Force,

which was established in the late 1970s, a couple of years before J-Soc, and the Navy's SEAL Team 6, which was created almost simultaneously with J-Soc. Now, now, both of these units focus primarily on direct action, that is missions that involve capturing or killing enemies and or rescuing hostages. But as I detail in Relentless Strike, over the years their role as intelligence gatherers has also grown. And each of those units now has a squadron dedicated to low visibility missions and intelligence gathering. But JASOC includes several other special mission units in addition to those two very well-known ones. The other ones include the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron, which coordinates

air strikes and provides pararescue medical personnel. Another Air Force unit that conducts what is called covered air, basically an undercover unit with civilian-style aircraft. And perhaps the most interesting of all, a unit that's gone by various names over the years, including since 2003 Task Force Orange as a nickname. And that's an army unit that conducts human and signals intelligence gathering. And I have a chapter, for instance, in my book, dedicated to some of the very daring undercover work that Task Force Orange operatives did in Syria at the height of the Iraq War.

Well, can you tell us a little bit about what they did? They infiltrated Syria, I believe, prior to the onset of hostilities with Iraq, as part of a plan to try to get operatives in as many countries around Iraq as possible. Once the fight in Iraq became a fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq, that program of infiltrating U.S. operatives into J-S. operatives. of Zsa' into Syria was used to conduct espionage against the foreign fighters that were flowing through Syria and swelling the ranks of Abu Mousab al-Zarkawi's Al-Qaeda in Iraq organization. So, I mean, some of the stories I relate in my book include, you know, actually breaking into al-Qaeda foreign fighter safe houses in Syria. with lock pick kits and copying all the data there and, you know,

really old-school espionage stuff with disguises and secret recording devices on their persons and so forth and so on. Stuff that sounds like a Mission Impossible movie, almost. Yes, maybe, probably with fewer explosions. At least if things were going right. So can I just ask, I know it's going backwards a little bit, but J-Soc and the Special Operations Command, because there was a separate Special Operations Command, is that right?

There is, U.S. Special Operations Command, but it did not come into existence until about 1987. So when J-S.C. was created, there was no four-star headquarters that had oversight of all U.S. Special Operations Force, the way that there is now with U.S. Special Operations Command. Okay, so special operations, so which actually is in control then? Well, so Joint Special Operations Command is the command that is sometimes referred to as the

National Mission Force, and when the U.S. government wants something accomplished in a particular part of the world that it will give that mission, if suitable to J-Soc. US Special Operations Command for most of its existence was a sort of a, what's called a Title X-10 headquarters, which means that it was in charge of sort of training and equipping forces, but it wasn't an operational headquarters. Once a J-Soc force was sent to, to the Middle East, for instance, it would come under U.S. Central Command. Socom is the administrative headquarters for J-Soc, but it's not the one that's running the missions. Okay, all right, thanks. That helps a lot, actually.

So during the first 20 years that it's been around, how often do they get to run missions? I mean, how often do these missions actually take place? J-Soc ran quite a few missions or conducted quite a few missions. in its first 20 years, but they weren't the sort of missions for which J-Soc was originally conceived. While J-Soc personnel advised other countries' special operations forces, you know, who were conducting hostage rescues in places like Sudan, Thailand, and even Kurosau, the closest J-Soc got to doing its own missions of that type was in 1985, when the command twice deployed task forces to the Mediterranean, prepared to rescue the hostages on TWA Flight 847, which had been

hijacked by sheer terrorists and eventually flown to Beirut, as well as the Achille-Lauro, which was a cruise liner hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and sailed around the eastern Mediterranean. But on each occasion, the White House never gave the green light for action, you know, and it was experiences like this that led General Pete Schumacher, who commanded JASOC in the United States. the mid-1990s to compare J-Sop during this period to a brand new Ferrari that was being kept in the garage out of concern that if it was taken out to race, the fender might get dented. That's the story of why J-Sop didn't conduct the sort of missions that hit, that it was originally created to conduct the sort of the classic hostage rescue missions that, you know,

that seemed to be sort of all the rage in that. in the late 70s. But they did conduct quite a few real-world missions to include spearheading the invasions of both Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989, several manhunting operations, including the hunt for Pablo Escobar in which they work very closely with Colombian. you know, Pablo Escobar being a Colombian cocaine kingpin in the early 1990s, and they worked very closely with Colombian security forces there. The hunt, unsuccessful hunt at the time for Mohamed Farah IDD, the Somali warlord, which ended in the October 1993 Battle of Mogadishu

memorialized in the book and the movie Black Hawk Down, as well as in the aftermath of the Dayton Peace Accords in the mid-90s, J-Soc was given the mission of hunting down, Balkan War criminals to be put on trial at the hate. And they were actually very successful with that, if I understand right. Yes, yes, yes, they were. There were quite a number of successful snatches and or in one or two cases kills in that period in the Balkans. And they involved some sort of some fairly out-of-the-box methods as well, including, you know, in at least one case, I believe, a catapult net that was fired at a moving car to ensnare it and immobilize it

so that operators could then emerge from the hedgerows and smash the windows in and drag their target out. Do they have a lot of things like that? I mean, that does sound like something I've never heard of before. Yeah, they probably had a few. I mean, I know that they were experimenting with ways to remotely sort of interfere with cars by that period. So, you know, I one suspect that for all the sort of juicy detail that's in my book, I would imagine that the stuff that these days might be the most cutting edges, you know,

probably retained in just a few minds at Fort Bragg and Down Neck, Virginia. All right. So they go through these first kind of 20 years, and then September 11th happens. What kind of position was J-Soc in at that time, and then how were they used in the first few months after September 11th? On September the 11th, 2001, J-Soc was actually about to start one of what had become the, it's sort of massive quarterly exercises, which were called joint readiness exercises or JRXs. And this one had J-Soc task force headquartered at a military airfield in Taser, Hungary, with small elements scattered all across Europe. And the focus of the exercise, as with most such

J-Soc exercises by then, was counter-proliferation. J-Soc had in the 1980s been handed the mission of counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And this exercise was sort of a loose nuke exercise. But the exercise also exemplified what many insiders felt had become a problem, which was that J-Soc had become wedded to this operational template in which a big headquarters and many hundreds of personnel had to be airlifted on dozens of transport aircraft to conduct any mission that J-Soc was given.

And in the critic sides, this robbed J-Soc of its ability to respond nimbly, let alone clandestinely. Right, yeah, not very stealthy if it takes a whole squadron to get you there. If you have to fly C-5 after C-5 or C-17 after C-17 big transport aircraft anywhere, it's very difficult to keep that secret from the local. Someone's going to notice. someone's really going to notice. The initial plans on how to use J-Soc in Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9-11 sort of seemed to confirm the sort of critics' view that J-Soc had become this sort of unwieldy,

top-heavy organization. You know, the J-Soc commander at the time, Major General Del Daley, wanted to use J-Sok to make a statement rather than to sort of to hunt down and kill the most senior al-Qaeda and Taliban figure. although it should be said that he was probably coming under some pressure from his military and civilian chain of command in this regard. So J-Soc actually spent a number of weeks planning a raid on a fertilizer plant in northern Afghanistan that some sort of very thin, dubious intelligence reports had suggested might be a chemical or biological weapons facility. and the idea was that Delta Force were going to assault this facility.

But when the lead Delta Force planner in J-Sox's planning team proposed a very stealthy raid, daily the J-Soc commander got angry and indicated that what he actually wanted was a big televised production. Now, in the end, the raid didn't happen as J-Soc found out that it was initially looking, at targets in northern Afghanistan because it thought it was going to have to fly out of Central Asia into Afghanistan to do the raids. But once it found that it could base itself on the island of Messera off of Oman and use an aircraft carrier to launch raids into the Taliban's heartland in southern Afghanistan, the targets in northern Afghanistan just faded in importance, which was probably just as well because the fertilizer factory turned out later to be just that.

I guess we saved ourselves a little bit of embarrassment there. Is Joint Special Operations Command likely to be participating in a fight against Islamic State? If so, what kind of roles would you think it would have? Yes, it already is participating in that fight and has been actually for some time. JASOC has a task force operating out of Iraqi Kurdistan, basically working with the CIA to target Islamic State leadership. So when you hear about a drone strike taking out a senior Islamic State figure, there's a good chance that a JASOQ targeting folder was at the root of of that and J-Soc has its own has its own drones that are conducting those missions. J-Soc has also been involved in multiple raids into Islamic State-held territory,

including the July 2014 raid that just missed James Foley and the other U.S. and the other U.S. and as I detail in my book that, in fact that, That raid was notable in part because JASOC used the same model, roughly, of stealth black hawk helicopter that it used in the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, you know, one of which famously crash landed at the compound. Right, in which they then at least made an effort to destroy so that the secrets wouldn't be made available to the Pakistanis, right? That's right, but unfortunately, whatever they use probably film like grenades to destroy the airframe left the tail boom intact. So there's one thing that you mentioned really early on when we're talking about the various constituents, the fit under J-Sach. I'm just really curious about the stealth aircraft. You said it was part of the Air Force, and do they, how do they operate?

I mean, do they look like commercial liners? or? Yeah, and I just want to be clear on the, on the, on the, on the, on the terminology. So the stealth helicopters that I was talking about are the ones with stealth, stealthy characteristics, but they're military helicopters, sort of like a stealth fighter, same, same idea. The covered aircraft, I believe, is what you're referring to. The Air Force and, and in fact, the army in Delta Force both have covered aircraft capabilities.

Task Force Orange also has covered aircraft. So you've got a minimum of three sets of aircraft, as I'm counting. The Air Force unit includes larger aircraft that can sort of fly a force somewhere, but it looks like it's just another sort of regular civilian cargo plane. Delta Force unit, which is Delta's E squadron or Echo Squadron, is mostly helicopters, and they do a variety of tasks, but mostly they move folks from A to B undercover, or they can be weaponized in a foreign country. And, you know, so you fly in a civilian helicopter, basically add weapons to it at a remote airfield. somewhere in Central America or somewhere else. And then you've got an attack helicopter.

And then Task Force Orange, the sort of intelligence unit, uses a fleet of aircraft to carry its signals intelligence gear. And so they can also be made to appear quite benign. Back to your book while you were doing the research for it, what was the most surprising thing you discovered? Or have you been involved in this reporting on this for such a long time that none of it was particularly surprising to you? No, there were a few things that I was sort of surprised at or sort of really impressed by. One was the missions that we've already talked about into Syria, the undercover espionage missions. And another was, this is actually, I believe, a CIA accomplishment.

But JASOC and CIA were both involved in the hunt for Al-Alaaki, the Yemeni American preacher who was killed, who was part of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And he was killed in a drugs strike. I think he was the publisher of Inspire as well, yeah, which is English language publication intended to lure. Westerners to join the jihad, I think. And I was told by somebody involved in that that the CIA actually had managed to install a camera in the car that Alaki was riding in that was transmitting moving pictures in real time, you know, sort of basically installed in the dashboard or something, looking backwards and was able to transmit pictures in real time that,

that proved that Alaki was actually riding in the vehicle that allowed the CIA, I believe at that time, to pull the trigger on the drone, as it were, and kill him. I think there was also the fact that SEAL Team 6 for years trained for and kept a unit on standby in Afghanistan for a mission to conduct a free fall parachute jump into the Pakistani tribal. areas if actionable intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts was ever obtained. So that was the actual Plan A for a long time was like a halo jump? Yeah, it would have been probably a hay-ho jump. So high altitude, high opening. So in other words, you jump out of the plane at maybe 25,000 feet, maybe just a plane flying along the Afghanistan side of the border and then you use your sort of free fall parachute to steer yourself to a very, you know, riding on the wind, as it were, to a very precise location. And, you know, Seal Team 6 train for this so often that they could put,

you know, dozens of, dozens of operators down at the same point, maybe 20 or 30 kilometers from where they jumped out of the plank. impressive as that is, it also proves out that we really had no idea when Bidlaten was. That's correct, although he wasn't always in Abadabat, obviously. Even when he was detected in Abadabat, and the planning was underway for the mission that became Operation Neptune Spear, a mission to kill him in Abadabat, some in Team 6 felt more comfortable doing the free-fall mission to get him. even though it would probably have required flying some distance into Pakistan before the operators jumped out of the plane,

then they were with the stealth helicopter approach, which was what J-Socke commander Bill McRaven eventually opted for. There's one aspect of your book that I'm kind of interested in. I hadn't really thought about it too much until I read a review in foreign policy, which you actually write for, right? Yes, yeah, I'm a contributing editor at Foreign Policy. Yes. And previously was a staff writer there. The headline on the piece was Nailer's book is very good, but I've got some issues with the people who blabbed.

And I'm sure you remember the article. And it just brings up, the point of the article seems to be not just to praise your book, but to say that, you know, now all of the good tricks are. out of the bag and, you know, this will actually compromise the effectiveness of J-Soc. And I wondered if that was something, whether or not it's true, I wonder if that was something that at all concerned you while you were doing the work on the book. It certainly did. You know, I obviously had to trust my sources in many cases who are, if anything, far more invested in in keeping information that would be of real value to an enemy of the

United States secret and especially you know because they'd grown up in in in J-Soc and in the special mission units and you know I sort of had to trust that if somebody with with many years of experience is telling me something that he or she has has come to the conclusion that this is not actually dangerous. Bear in mind that my book covers 30 plus years of history, 34 years of history. So much of the action and many of the techniques that are being described are years old. Just because something was cutting edge in 2005 or 2008 doesn't mean it's cutting edge in late 2015. So I mean that would be one obvious point that I would make. And I actually

kept a number of names, for instance, out of the book at people's request. So I, you know, I think that the J-Soc story is very important. It's been the U.S. military's main effort in the war on terror. And sort of keeping it hidden from the U.S. public would be like keeping secret the accomplishments of Patton's Third Army in Europe during World War II. And the American people funded J-SOC at considerable, albeit classified expense. You know, they've filled it with their sons and daughters, and it is waging war in their name. And others disagree, and I respect their views, but I think the American public has every

right to know the history of this command and its extraordinary people. Well, thank you very much. I think that's the perfect note to end on. So, Sean Naler, it's terrific to speak with you today. We really appreciate your time. And just also, I figure it can't hurt to mention the name of your book again. It's also going to be posted along with links to everything else. Relentless Strike, the secret history of Joint Special Operations Command.

And is that available now? Oh, yes. Yes, it is available. It's very good. Hello, welcome to war college. I'm Matthew Galt. And I'm Derek Cannon. When you hear the word Sparta, there's an immediate association with war in the military.

of the Greek city states, it's the one most associated with battle. Spartan men were expected to be warriors, and their society was geared almost entirely towards training for war. For generations, military leaders have drawn inspiration from Sparta. Much of the romance around it centers around the Battle of Thermopylae, where the Persian Empire crushed a small and ill-equipped collection of elite soldiers. Since then, historians, Hollywood, and the American military have turned Sparta's epic defeat at the gates of fire

into a myth of slavery versus freedom, East versus West, and Democracy v. Despotism. But the thing is, a lot of what you hear about the Spartans is bullshit. The truth is more complicated. Here to help us unpack the modern-day mythos around Sparta is Pauline Karen. Corinne is the chair of military ethics at the U.S. Naval War College and the author of the Warrior, Military Ethics and Contemporary Warfare. Achilles goes asymmetrical. Pauline, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me. All right. This is going to be more of a roundtable episode because I know Derek has quite a bit to say about this because he's experienced a lot of it firsthand, this Spartan culture. And also our producer, Kevin Nodell, is here and he's going to be speaking to it quite a bit because as a military journalist himself, he has also got a lot of firsthand experience with this. All right. So I want to start a little unconventionally. Derek, you're a former operator. Kevin, you spend a lot of time with service members. You're both steeped in this military culture. What's the deal with the Sparta stuff? Derek, what did you see when you were in?

How pervasive is it? It's pretty, there's, it's, it's, a lot of units are even just, it's pretty pervasive, actually. I was going to try to church it up, but there's a lot of Spartan helmets and a lot of, you know, Spartan battle cries, especially when I was in and I was younger. It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, they're, everyone's really into it. They're like, you know, we're super elite Spartan. you know, holding back the hordes of the Islamic or other evils that are that are headed towards the gates of New York or what I just, it's just this huge giant steeping pile of manliness, romanticized shields of the bygone era of Greek and Roman mythology.

It's, it's super weird to me. There I said it. It's very weird. But it's motivational. It really is. I mean, it's super motivational. I mean, there's, I'm not going to lie to you. I had a Legion patch on my armor, and I thought it was cool.

But you really don't know anything about it. You're like, yeah, you know, we're Spartans. We're holding back the hordes of evil kind of thing. And they just kind of capitalize on that. But you don't really know anything else about it. They just know that they had cool helmets and they didn't survive, basically. They just got slaughtered. Yeah, I've seen a lot of the same sort of things.

It's also just all over T-shirts. people kind of recount this as just a core part of it. Like, it's the ultimate warrior archetype and everybody seems to want to emulate it. Everybody reads books about the Spartans. You see a lot of Spartan tattoos. Some of my personal experiences we might get into a little bit later, but yeah, I can just reiterate everything Derek said there. I mean, Matt, if you, let me, let me clarify what I was kind of say. It's like, Kevin's right.

There's a lot of tattoos. Think about it like this. You've got guys in the military, and that's their, you know, their, it's like their high school, you know, mascot. I don't want to say, it's like a high school or a college mascot. When they go in the military, it's like, hey, hi, you are one of the, you know, you're a legionaire or you're a Spartite. And, you know, this is all this pride is around this specific symbol. It's a lot of symbolism. And people get tattoos.

You wear T-shirts of it. There's, you know, there's inner platoon. or even even intercompany rivalries of who's more Spartan than the other, you know? And it's just like, do you know much about the Spartans and, you know, throwing babies off clips and things like that? Like, that's not what we're trying to do. I want to go to Paul Eid now then, because I want to know exactly what are Spartan values. And why did this become a particular fascination for the American military? I think that's a really good question. I mean, I think part of it is, you know, the Spartan values. I mean, I think the big thing, Derek mentioned in terms of motivation is discipline. I mean, Spartans were very disciplined. They trained from a very young age. Boys started when they were seven. They were separated from their mothers. And they were taken into this military training. It's very tough.

you know, difficult, there's a lot of deprivation, so there's a lot of focus on physical strength, which I think maybe that's the part of the attraction there. The elite piece is important, too. There's a separation from society. So in Sparta, the Warriors were a separate class and intentionally separate and and we're elite in an eliteist kind of way in the sense that they viewed themselves as better than the rest of the society and I think in some ways the society viewed them that way as well. There's also, I mean, it's a highly, it's a particular version of masculinity as well. So I wonder if that is part of the attraction. It's also, I think there's There's also an esprit of core and a very, it's culturally a homogeneous group, right?

It's not a bastion of multiculturalism. So I wonder if all of those things, I'm a little perplexed as to what the attraction is. I suspect it's the elite piece and that the discipline is something that's motivating to people and the sense of identity. I think for Spartan warriors, it wasn't, it wasn't something. they did, it was something they were. In fact, you know, I know you all know the film 300. There's a famous scene in there where that point is made over and against the Athenian. So there's an encounter with the Athenian group and, you know, the king Leonidas, you know,

sort of asks them, like, how many soldiers did you bring? And the point there is that all of the Spartans are soldiers. That's who they are. The Athenians are farmers and politicians and tradesmen. And they have these other occupations and they also fight. But the Spartans are soldiers. That's who they are existentially. And so there's a difference between that kind of existential peace and being in the military as a job.

And so I wonder if that also is part of the attraction, although that's really odd because American soldiers aren't warriors. I mean, they don't go into the military when they're seven, and at some point you leave the military. So it's something that I find interesting and rather perplexing. Something you just said I kind of want to drill in on. You said that they were viewed this way. It wasn't just themselves that they kind of viewed this way. It was also the society at large. And are you talking about Spartan society specifically or like Hellenic society at that time? Like did the other city states view them in the same way that they viewed themselves? In terms of their own society, I think, you know, the warrior class was definitely viewed as elite and, you know, in the mode of protecting Sparta.

So I think they viewed themselves that way. Certainly across the Hellenic world, there was a great, a great. deal of sort of disagreement. I mean, I think they were held in awe. I think they were viewed as, you know, formidable warriors. Plato, for example, doesn't have a lot nice to say about the Spartans. So actually, his republic and his discussion of his guardians is a direct critique of the Spartans. So, and he's not the only one, right? You know, Aristotle has in his discussion of courage has some critiques as well. So I think there's more, there would be more variance, you know, outside of Sparta in terms of how Spartans were viewed. I think they were viewed as formidable warriors for sure, whether that was always seen as a good thing or not, I think is certainly up for dispute.

I want to jump in here with something on that, actually. One thing that I think is interesting about this, and also that contrast that they like to draw between Spartans and the Athenians is that when the city-states went to war with each other, it wasn't necessarily a given that the Spartans would win. In fact, the Athenians roundly defeated them on more than one occasion. Yeah, so maybe this is a matter of the reputation being more formidable than the actuality of it. Their most famous battle is a defeat. Right. So is, but the way it's framed now is that it's a sacrifice that allows the greater war to be won.

And so is there a part of our military culture today that is kind of feeding into that, like feeding into the idea of sacrifice? You know, I think that may be, I think that may be part of it. it may be that the military and Kevin and Derek can speak to this more than I can. It may be that the military feels that that's what they're being asked to do, right? That they're being asked for these profound sacrifices that maybe they think their own society doesn't appreciate or maybe isn't aware of and that this is a narrative that allows people to make sense of what they're being asked to do and maybe motivates things.

them and keeps them motivated. I mean, if you think about, you know, being in Afghanistan for 17 years, being in Iraq, being in other places, and it's not really clear that there's support on the home front or even knowledge on the home front about what's going on. And that distance, that sense of disconnection that many vets, especially coming back, have a sense when they're re-engaging with American society. So maybe that that kind of mythos, or that mythology, like, gives a sense of meaning and, and gives them a sense that this is what they're being, uh, asked to do, especially in a context where they may not feel like it's appreciated. Um, but on the other hand, I think in American history, I think Kevin can speak to this better than I can. I think the, the discourse of the, you know, the small, you know, band of brothers, you know, fighting the tide of, of evil that kind of kind of. good and bad dynamic, all of, you know, the being the underdog and being outnumbered.

I think all of those are themes that echo, at least in our understanding of how we think about American history and the American experiment. And so I think there are also sort of deep resonances that don't have to do with Spartan society, have to do with this idea of, you know, a small elite, a band that's facing overwhelming mean, odds. It's Henry and his boys at Agincourt. You know, it's the American, you know, revolutionists, you know, fighting the greatest empire of the day. So I wonder if it's some of that as well. I can answer from the elite side. Basically, what you just explained is literally what's pumped into us in special operations and special forces is that we're a small, highly trained,

highly skilled group of individuals being asked to stem the tide, if you will, up into and giving our own life. And we do feel like the majority of our society to include the United States takes that for granted for us. It's this, we've romanticized the 300 sacrifice because of the movie specifically, because a lot of us learned about the gates of fire from the movie 300. I'm the first to tell you, I had no idea of the story. I knew of the graphic novel, but I didn't know it was an actual true story. But in the Green Berets, and I can tell you in the Rangers and the other special operations is that we do feel that way. We feel very elitist also because you go through hell to get to the end, to get, you know, to be qualified to do these, these clandestant, you know,

special forces jobs and it's it's the same thing of what you said it's like we feel that our life we are prepared to give our lives for our uh you know to for our empire you know the king the king has asked us to sacrifice ourselves to protect our home and and and you know families and women and children and we we feel like we're jumping into this breach willingly to do that and it's it's different I mean, I know when I was in the middle of this, when I was in the height of my Special Forces career, we did look not so much down at regular Army troops, but almost towards like a superior. We felt superior to them because it's the same thing that happened with the scene in 300 is like, how many warriors have you brought? Well, all of us are, that's our jobs. Because in Special Forces, specifically the Green Berets, you're a gunfighter first.

That's what you do. You're a gunslinger first. Your secondary job, like for me, being a medic, that's your secondary job. You fight first versus the regular military. It's like, okay, that's a pack clerk. That's a medic. He's a, you know, you understand there's different jobs. And that's what they train specifically on to do.

They're all, even in their combat arms, they have that. But it's that, and we do. We come home and we feel like, you know, I was prepared to give my life for you and for this country. And you just kind of feel like this disconnect. And it also, there's, and especially for special operations guys coming out, like I did, getting out, like, you're no longer elite. And you spent so long feeling like you're this spartite, the chosen of the chosen to protect the empire. And then all of a sudden, you're, you know, you're pumping your own gas and somebody's telling you, you know, you have to pay taxes and all this. Do you know, you get my point? It's like you just, it's just draw, the bottom kind of drops out. It's, so that's why they, they romanticize that. It's the discipline. It's the, this is what you train for every day. your job is a professional, you're a professional warrior. And I think that's why we kind of cling to that 300.

This is Sparta, you know, masculine, you know, type of, this is what you were bred to do. You've been chosen, right? You know, you go through the qualification courses of special operations. You didn't get thrown off the mountain. You've been chosen to become a Spartan. And now, then your training begins. So it's kind of like, I can see how that. romanticized version of, you know, the Spartan ethos, the being a Spartan, you know, being a Spartan itself has kind of really kind of dug its, its, its claws into the, the fabric of special operations. I can totally see that. But it's kind of gotten out of control and it's bled out over to the regular units, like the 173rd, you know, third ID. Everyone's got some sort of amalgamation or derivation of the Spartan helmet and the Spartan ethos to include like, you know, Marine Specialty Third.

operations and everything else like that. So it's fascinating to hear this point of view from you because I feel I was going to talk a lot of shit about it. But now I'm like, wow, she's actually talking about me. I feel really bad right now. You know, I'm like, yeah, okay. That's, you know. But that's my point with this.

It's, it's, I can see why this is so deeply ingrained specifically into the elite units of the United States military. I can see why. Because it feels in, it, it clearly feels. some kind of need, right? Or it helps people make sense of their experience or it's motivating or it helps them understand who they are and what they're doing, right? You wouldn't, you know, these things don't evolve without some kind of reason behind them.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, specifically when I was in fifth group, fifth group is called the Fifth Legion. So our, we, we kind of lean heavy onto the, the legion, we call each other legionaires, right? We're the, we're the V Legion or the Fifth Legion. And then there's, there's this, you know, the specialized units within that Legion that consider themselves the, the Spartites or Praetorians, if you will, of the Legion. And we just go through this, this thing, like, oh, my God, you know, you're a direct action, you know, you're, you know, commanders and chief and extremist force.

Well, you're a Praetorian. You're a spartite. You should wear the Praetorian shield on your armor. And you just slap it on there because it looks tough. You know, you're like, yeah, ha ha, you know, I'm in Iraq and I got a spartite shield on my, you know, this motivational patch on your shield. And you're standing next to your, you know, regimental, uh, chaplain, which is hilarious because he on both sides of his helmet are a crusader shields. Like both sides of the chaplain's helmet had crusader patches on the, side of them and we're just, okay, we're getting way too into this, us versus them type of thing. It's just like, you know, let's let's talk about that a little bit. Because I, because I think that there's an idea that maybe some of this is, especially for me, the civilian in the room, maybe a little creepy, maybe a little dangerous. I have thoughts on this specifically. And I'm not the first one to bring this up.

But one of the things I think that's interesting about Sparta and some of the military people that I know of who like to promote Sparta talk about how the military is the chosen guardians of democracy. But Sparta itself was in many ways not particularly democratic. And sometimes the people who espoused this loudest, and I know some people in the special ops community who might not necessarily want to hear me say this. But they do kind of see themselves as being the ones who didn't get thrown off the mountain. And maybe everybody else should have been. Uh, yep. Pause real quick.

I want to make sure that the audience understands what we, we've referenced it a couple of times. Uh, what we mean when we say didn't get thrown off the mountain? We're talking about in, in sport and culture, I believe this is historically true too. Like if a baby was born with birth defects,

it was getting hurled off the mountain, literally. They didn't actually literally get hurled off the mountain. That's what happened in the movie. They would be left at the base of a mountain, um, to see if they would die of exposure. And if they weren't, if they don't die of exposure, then they'll give them a second chance.

But if they do, then they're just dead. They weren't good enough to be a Spartan. Okay, I'm sorry. Thank you for just clarifying that. Please continue. I'll but didn't throw you off. Oh, no, not too badly. But, I mean, we were kind of getting to the end of my point there.

I think there is a feeling, and this is not special operations centric either. This is a feeling that I think his permeated aspects of our all-volunteer force. wherein veterans when they, some veterans, when they get home, genuinely feel that they are better and more important than the society that they serve, and that perhaps the society should be serving them and not the other way around. And I'd definitely love to hear what Pauline and Derek have to say about that. I would agree with that. I have a chapter in my next book, which is on obedience about what I call military veteran exceptionalism, and it's precisely kind of that response. And it is, you know, I would say it's not everyone, but it is some veterans.

And I think that, you know, when you're steeped in that kind of elitism, I mean, I think, I think it's a small step from we're elite and awesome and trained and whatever else. The small step then to look back at your society and say members of my society are not. And therefore, that makes me better or that makes us better. And really, do they deserve our protection? I mean, what have they done, especially for some people coming back, the apathy or the disengagement of civilians like myself, I think people find that really disorienting. I mean, Sebastian Youngers, you know, the tribe is a great book. It sort of talks about that experience. So I think that

military civilian disconnect, you know, I think it's always been there to some degree, but I think you could argue it's gotten worse in some ways. And if you add the elitism and the worship of the sort of Spartan culture, which is really not, I mean, Kevin's right. Sparta was not a democracy. They had a very different civilian military relationship, you know, than we do. In our system, the military works for the civilians, their servants, caretakers of the state, I would say, you know, stewards in a certain way. But that's a different, that's a different, that's a different kind of relationship, servants aren't above the people that they're serving. And so when that shift happens and people start to think of themselves as above the people that they were there to

serve, then I think it can be, I think it can be very dangerous. And I think people, there are a lot of commentators on civilian military relations who, and I mean, Tom Ricks pointed this out 20, 30 years ago in making the core this dynamic, this is the same dynamic that in other nations has led to have led to military coups, which is not to say that will happen in this country, but that's why people are concerned about, you know, this elitism, the gap, and sort of what it means for civilian military relations, both for sort of active duty, but then what happens when veterans leave the service. And now you see people very active on social media.

And people have sort of found a sense, I think, of that continuing community. It used to be when you got out of the service, I mean, you might keep in contact with a few close friends. But that sort of sustaining that connection was more limited to your veteran association or when you got together for reunions. And now with social media, it can be maintained sort of 24. seven. Absolutely. The Vet Bro movement is probably single-handedly one of the worst things to happen to the veteran community. It absolutely is the most, it's absolutely terrible because, Pauline, you're absolutely right. When you get out of the military, if we didn't have social media, you wouldn't have the Vet Bro movement. You wouldn't have guys wearing Moulon La. Oh, my God,

Mulan La Bay, everything. And I, you know, I am the storm stand behind me T-shirts or I'm a dysfunctional veteran because that social media has perpetuated this. And in fact, it's kind of driven the military, the veteran civilian, you know, kind of integration. It's just divided it even further. I'll give you an example. I'm old, right? I'm an older guy. And I think when, when I remember when 300 came out and a lot of the elite more tier one units that we were affiliated with and actually did work with, started adopting Moulon Lobby. I, Derek, I'm sorry to cut you off. I want you to tell the audience what that means, but first, I want to take a break real quick. Derek, you were about to tell us what Moulon Labe means. Well, what Moulon Labe means is, in general, means come and take it,

right? And they were talking about their lives. They were talking, come and, if you're so, it was almost like a, you know, Moulon Labe, come and take it. Like, you want this patch of dirt, come and get it. Because we were fighting in Iraq. And Moulon Labe, and I remember having in 2005, my first deployment to Iraq, you know, a lot of us were given these tabs that said Moulon lobbying, I absolutely loved it. Because as a younger, barrel chest, self-ascribed, mind you, barrel-chested freedom fighter. I'm like, yeah, totally, right? I'm going to throw this on there. I'm just, it's more, I felt more of like it was a psychological value. And then I came home, and the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

amendment people started taking it and just perverted it to something else. And it's just like, nope, and just took it off my armor because now it's become a politicized thing. And that's because this, we, in the early 2000s and mid, early to mid 2000s, we were trying to romanticize the war. And it became hyper focus because it felt like every three weeks a Navy Seal book was coming out. So everyone was like, oh my God, these guys are the elite, these guys are our Spartans. Look at this. And then the T-shirt companies and then the coffee companies and the T companies and the finger widget company. Everything was, you know, special ops, you know, coffee or whatever it was. And it's just, it's just turned into this like capitalist money grab. And it's affected a lot of guys getting out. You mentioned Sebastian Unger's book. That is a great book. I think it should be required reading for anyone separating from the military because we are desperately looking for a tribe. And if you find it on social media and,

you're mentally just not understanding how to transition into the civilian world, there's a lot of people that will tell you, like, look, you don't have to. You fought for this country. They should be, and I'm going to use, you know, they should be kissing our ass type of thing, and people will. There's, oh my God, you serve this country. But the minute I saw some Coast Guard reservists and I'm not, okay, I love you guys. I love you. I know you didn't get paid. Thank you for working without money. But the minute I see a Coast Guard reservist running around with a, you know, multi-cam hat that says come and take it, it kind of deval... Again, in Pauline, you mentioned this, it kind of devalues the feeling that, that elite

feeling that you have. Like, why does he have that? I'm a green beret. He, I'm elite. He just rides around on the boat, kind of thing. And just kind of that, it's that mill, it's that mill vet bro, you know, movement that's really, has really kind of started eating this. And they only just take portions of the meal.

They don't take it all. Like, you know, Spark was the greatest place ever. That's all it was warriors. and extremely attractive women with, like, grotesque men, name the oracle with, you know, gorgeous women dancing around them. It's just, it's not how American society is set up at all. It isn't at all. Like, you, you come out thinking that you're, you know, you're this elite warrior and it's somebody

at 7-Eleven tells you to move your truck. You're like, oh, okay. I guess I'm not elite. You know, no one's, no one's bending the knee for me. And it's, that's why the Milvet bro movement is so toxic, I think, to the, veteran community. And it's steeped in this. It's steeped in this weird, elitist, you know, kind of Spartan kind of mentality. That's my feeling. I mean, it's my opinion. I don't really know if it's true or not, but... I mean, I think this starts even earlier than when people

separate, though, too. I remember a commissioning ceremony at PLU, my alma mater that I was going to go see. Seeing a bunch of young cadets who were becoming second lieutenant's And I remember the colonel, who I'm not going to use his name. I've got mixed feelings about him. Not all negative. Pauline knows who it is. But he expounded upon and was telling these young officers that they are the modern-day Spartans and kept saying that. You are the modern-day Spartans.

You represent the best of the society. You are the best Americans. And when he kept saying you were the modern-day Spartans, I remember just looking at him and thinking, God, I hope not. And why is that, Kevin? What is it that you were reacting to? Well, I just, I think, I'm concerned about everything that Derek was just talking about there. And what I kind of touched on earlier, which is our military becoming more and more separated from the society it serves and becoming a separate society within a society.

That concerns me. It seems like this specific myth is less dangerous. than the way it's being deployed then. It's kind of the gist I'm getting from the conversation. I mean, all myths are separated from actual history. But I mean, Spartan society functioned because you had an underclass the hellots who are essentially slaves, right?

So, you know, Sparta is not a democratic republic. They don't have civilian control of the military. So I think mythology and a mythos can be useful. but I think it can also, you can push it too far. I mean, at the end of the day, members of the military, even elite members of the military, are still, you know, bound by the norms and values of a professional military. There's military professionalism.

There are norms and values that come from that community. Sparta does not define military professionalism. So, you know, as a professor of military, ethics, I think along with the Siv-Mill gap, that's also my concern is that you're sort of substituting another normative structure for one that's already there. There is a normative structure that tells you who you are, what your obligations are, you take oaths of office. There's a way in which we think about our military and there are moral obligations our military has that true, other members of society don't have, but we have a way of thinking about that. It's called

military professionalism. And so this sort of overlaying of the Spartan myth on top of that, I think that's also where it can become problematic because then it's replacing in many ways the other normative structure of things like core values and, you know, the oaths that people take and all of those kinds of commitments. So I think, you know, or they could at least come into competition with one another. Picking backing off of that, I also want to say something about history and context that I think is also particularly interesting when we think about Sparta. Just like with anything in antiquity, a lot of what we understand about it is our own best guests of history. This was a long time ago.

And a lot of what we actually know about the Spartans, we get from the Athenianianian. we get from the Athenians because they were the ones who actually recorded history. You know, they'd had art and science and they wrote things. Spartan society didn't really record their history. Most of what we have is secondhand because they've apparently geared their society entirely toward war. They didn't really make a lot of advances in science or the arts or these other things that we associate with the other Greek city states, like the Thesbians. and a lot of those other city-states were actually present at the Battle of Thermopyla, too. They fought there too and had that last stand.

Sparta was not alone. It's interesting that we associate them being like the ultimate in terms of that, but in many ways they were a poorer society in those ways, and they often lost battles to their more well-rounded neighbors. And let me ask what may be a foolish question. Um, how much of this myth making do you all think comes down to a movie that was released in 2006? I think it's a massive resurgence. I think that movie, I'll give you an example.

Okay. When that movie came out, I was at Fort Bragg. Okay. And I was in, we were, I was in special forces at the time. I was at Fort Bragg. We're going through training. And the movie came out. And all of us were like, let's go.

We're going to go see 300. Uh-huh. kind of thing, right? And we all went, and we got to the movie theater, and I'm telling you right now, it was probably 99.9% white, young white military age males, right? Interspers persons of color, but the majority was young white military age males. We all met as a group, and two of the guys of the group decided to go in cosplay, right? Spartans, showing up in the helmets. And of course, these guys, it was any excuse to take off their clothes because they're of course these dudes are according to them were just chiseled

and abs galore and everything so they're just walking around in downtown Fayetteville towards a movie theater to go see 300 and like nothing but like a loincloth a shield they made at a cardboard and some helmet that they ordered from the from the internet and it just kind of blew up after that it was

like it you know just a bunch of young military age males going to see this movie and then coming out feeling feeling like I can do this and it wasn't just SEP guys it was everybody. It was, you know, everybody that was out in and around Fort Bragg, and it was a very popular movie. Me, though, I'm like, I don't want to walk in with these dudes. This is, this is just not my scene. I mean, I'm all about it. I like Star Wars, but I don't go to Star Wars movies dressed as Bolivet. Do you know what I mean? I just don't do that. But that's just an example. And I think it after that, that movie, it became a deployment movie, too. Like, if you go down in range, there's always like 300 on a DVD and people are watching it. And I will say this.

I think with all the, with all the negatives that I feel like that movie and this, the Spartan culture within the military or the Legion or the Roman culture, the, you know, the SBQR tattoos and everything, I think it, I think it adds value. I think it, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a motivational patch. It, it, it, it, it's, it's a mascot of sorts, you know, some of us don't go to college, but we're in the military. and this this this this is something that you will defend this this this moulon lobby scroll is something that you will defend this spartan helmet this this image is you that's who you are and you kind of

just cherry pick of what what the the you know the ethos of what you're talking about kind of comes out it just you just kind of turn it into a manly you know elite masculine thing and i and i'm saying masculine not just specifically for men i mean women women serve in units that are under the auspice of the Praetorians and legions and Spartans as well. I think it, but I do think that that, that movie just had a massive resurgence of the Spartan, you know, aura, if you will. I think that's true, but I know for a fact that it started even before that movie within, within professional circles, because I think you can't understate Stephen Presfield's Gates of Fire. a book that's been on professional reading list for officers for years. And pretty much all the academies, some of them, I think, require cadets to read that book.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Kevin's right about the Pressfield book. So I think, but I also think Derek is right. The impact of the movie, I think, taken with that book. There was a ready audience when the movie came out. I think it just reinforced sort of, you know, for many people, especially if you think about when that movie came out, right?

Right. You know, and the themes of, you know, a few standing against evil, of freedom against oppression, all of those kinds of things are very, are primed, you know, Victor Davis Hanson, who's a somewhat controversial historian and classicist, was an advisor on that film. And so the way that film is parsed is in a way that will hook right into both Pressfield's book and just, you know, how Americans view themselves. So I think, you know, and you add the masculinity piece to it, you know, I think people were sort of primed for that to make a big hit and be very influential and to tap into something that really, you know, felt real and authentic to people.

Tell us what the Pressfield book is. I'm not familiar with it. Gates of Fire is basically a sort of, I mean, it's not fictionalized, but it's press fields, you know, it's an account of the Battle of Thermopylae, but it's not, you know, I wouldn't, you know, it's not historical fiction, but it's not what we think of as academic history either, but it's very readable, it's very accessible, it's very sort of vivid, fairly short. It's been on professional reading list for a really long time. And Pressfield has several other books about the warrior ethos and about the Spartans.

And he's someone who's very influential in military circles. And those books, but especially the Gates of Fire, are books that people read. And so those also, I mean, literature and movies form how we think about things and how we experience war. So, I mean, we know from Vietnam that people going into Vietnam had watched all these World War II movies and that conditioned how they thought about war and that's what they were expecting. So, I mean, these artifacts can have, you know, a great deal of power in framing and influencing how people think about themselves and think about what's happening to them. Is there anything to admire about the Spartans or is it something that should be something that should be.

aside. I think, I mean, I think there's a great deal to admire about the Spartans. I think certainly the discipline piece is, is, is important. The idea of, you know, being willing to, as long as we understand that for the Spartans, the warriors were, they were servants of their society. They were asked by their society to go, you know, and defend Sparta. And I think if, if we understand, stand it in that way. I think there's value to this, this idea of sacrifice. Certainly, and this is a famous scene in the film too, and the queen says, come back, you know, with your shield or on it. And of course, in Spartan society, that meant come back, come back on your shield meant come back dead, honorably dead, or come back with your shield meant that you hadn't broken the phalanx line. And the phalanx line is how,

how the Greeks fought. And so what that meant is go and fight honorably. And I think that that has value. We want people to fight honorably. I teach military ethics. We want people to, you know, follow the rules, international law. We want them to follow the values and constraints of military professionalism. So if we think about maybe the Spartan values as a,

as a shot in the arm or as an augment to military professionalism, I think it can be really useful. If it replaces that or becomes a rival for that, then I think that's where we might have concerns. And I do think the concerns that both Derek and Kevin have raised about to what degree does it increase civilian military gap, I think, is a real question. especially with the military vet bro movement, right? To the degree that it's increasing separation, I think that's problematic because on that front, the Spartans had different values than we did.

So I think we have to look at, well, where do we share values, where are values that can support who we are as Americans and who the American military is? Great. But we also have to recognize that they're, going to be points of departure too. I agree with Pauline.

I absolutely believe that these ideas of this, of a professional, of professional savagery, if you will, because the Spartans were professional soldiers. They knew how to fight and kill and win. I think that's absolutely important. And again,

I'm leaning towards more of the specialized elite types of types of unit, but that discipline and understanding that you are trained to kill, but you're professional about it, You know, that professional savagery, I think that's very important. But what's more important specifically with, with, with in regards to, you know, ethic, you know, in regards to ethics is you need to modernize it. This, this, there needs to be a sort of like a updated 21st century version version of this, of the, of the modern, of the modern day Spartan. There, there has to, you have to have men and women that are willing to jump into the breach and, and, and do what needs to be done.

There needs to be professional savages, but there also needs to be a metered approach to that. You need to understand how to back away from it and how to turn it on. I think it's very important. I think it's very, I think the Pressfield's book should still stay in required reading. But, you know, it should be buffered with one tribe at a time. You know, you don't want brand new second lieutenant's reading just gates of fire and going, I'm like, okay, these are all my Spartans and we're going to, you know, we're going to go ahead and do this. type of thing, you know, it's like we're going to destroy and kill and do everything.

You got young and prescientable minds in the regular military that need this discipline, but also need to understand that, you know, there's an update to it type of, if that makes sense. Pauline Corinne, thank you so much for coming on the show to talk to us about this. You mentioned that you've got an upcoming book. Do you know what it's called and when it's coming out? It's coming out in 2020 on the U.S. Naval Institute. to press and it's on obedience, the title is still sort of to be determined. We'd love to have you back on when it's out and talk about it.

Absolutely. That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners, Angry Planet is me. Matthew Gull, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell was created by myself and Jason Field. I hope you liked this little episode. Thank you for giving us a break over the past two months. It's been pretty hectic for the news industry, as I'm as I'm. sure many of you would understand, but we have kept up with the premium episodes and we'll

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