Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/24/23: Jocko Willink SOUNDS OFF On Israel Hamas War

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

Saagar joins former Lieutenant Commander and popular podcast host Jocko Willink to give his military analysis of the Israel Hamas war. BP Holiday Merch LIVE NOW (Use code BLACKFRIDAY for 15% off Non-Holiday Items): https://shop.breakingpoints.com/collections/breaking-points-holiday-collection  To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. jaco thank you so much for joining me it's really appreciated thanks for having me oh well uh you are the one who's being so gracious for using your studio your setup so uh won't ever forget it the reason the genesis of all of this is I was listening to your podcast with Daryl Cooper on Jocko Unraveling. It was on October 15th, and you said something that really caught both my eye and actually a segment that we did that got quite a lot of attention. You said that Israel is losing the information operations in this war,

that if you were the emperor of Israel, that you would stop bombing Gaza and you would shift towards a traditional counterinsurgency campaign. So it's been more than a month since you made those comments. What are your thoughts generally on where the war is today? I would say that actually after that podcast came out, it did seem like Israel started to shift some of its media. And I think they've done a decent job of that. Not an outstanding job, but a decent job. And as I look at where the war is, I haven't actually looked at it today, but you can start to see what does look more like

a traditional counterinsurgency campaign. Primarily what you're seeing is sort of the isolation of northern Gaza, which is an important move. And I think there's a, there's a, a limitation that Hamas is going to run into what do you think that is? I think You know, there's that quote at the beginning of the Civil War I Forget who said it off the top of my head, but he told the South you have the will but you don't have the means and You know in the in the South what they were doing was making cotton and once they made cotton, they had to send it over to France to get it turned into, to get it woven into cloth. Because they didn't have the capability of doing that in the South.

So really all they could do is grow cotton. And in the North, the North was making locomotives. It was just a completely different scenario. They could make weapons. Finance, trade. The technology that they had, the manufacturing capability that they had was was Not even comparable not comparable in any way shape or form So I think Hamas is going to run into that problem where they have the will but they don't have the means I

also and and I have not been to Gaza But I also, and I have not been to Gaza, but you see a lot of a unified front or what appears to be sometimes a unified front in Gaza. Meaning you see the right from October 7th, people cheering in the streets celebrating. That unified front, I believe in many cases, is not true. It is people that are intimidated. It is people that are trying to live their lives and trying to, when the mob moves into your neighborhood, you know, when the cops come into town, you don't talk to the cops.

Of course. When you have't talk to the cops. When you have the opportunity to support the mob in some way that's going to make your life and your family's life better and easier, you show support. And this is the situation that the Palestinians are in. Now, is there a large group of Palestinians, especially younger Palestinians, that have been brainwashed to the point and raised in that culture? Sure. And it's going to be a hard time to get them to come back. But I think that the unified front in Gaza isn't as unified as it appears to be on TV. And I think once the strain is imposed on Gaza, they're going to have problems. And this is, again, a very close comparison, or you can make a close comparison to the Battle of Ramadi, where

when we showed up in Ramadi, it certainly appeared on the surface that the local populace was in support of the insurgency. But as soon as the insurgency started to break, the local populace was very thankful and they took the opportunity to support the coalition forces. So I believe we might see that kind of thing in Gaza. And I think the Israelis are starting to, it certainly appears to be that they are treating this more like a counterinsurgency. I think they're making efforts to take care of the civilian populace. And I think they're moving in the right direction. Interesting, because that's one of the main reasons I found you such an authoritative voice, is with the Battle of Ramadi, our mission was to destroy al-Qaeda in Iraq,

the insurgency embedded inside of the city. You participated at the height of that war in a similar modern combat environment. And so given the similarity to where we are right now, how would you say what were the most strategically important tactics and decisions that were made to actually achieve that victory in the interim period while we had some sort of security control over that city. In Ramadi? Yes. The most important thing essentially was building relationships with the local populace. And when you build relationships with the local populace, the local populace starts to give you information that you need. And then you build relationships with the power brokers inside the city.

So there was sheikhs, the sheikhs that had stayed or the sheikhs that had come back. Once they, what we did was we helped them because once we helped them and by helping them, it meant hiring the sheikh to help us rebuild this section of the bridge. So then what does he do? He gets with his tribesmen. They work construction. He got three guys that work construction. They run this project. They rebuild this section of the bridge. So then what does he do? He gets with his tribesmen. They work construction. He got three guys that work construction. They run this project.

They rebuild this bridge. We pay them money. He has money now. What does he do with that money? He reinvested in the local populace. He hires someone to start taking care of his yard. And all of a sudden you start rebuilding the economy and you're moving in the right direction. So that's, I hate the expression hearts and minds,

but hearts, minds, and wallets, very important. And that's where you make true progress in these situations. That's why it's interesting because as I understand it, the most important thing that happened during the campaign against Al-Qaeda in Iraq was separating the jihadists from the local population. The worst critics of Israeli military strategy would say that hasn't happened at all. If anything, you've seen collective punishment, the denial of water, some of the general treatment, even some of the calls, you know, just generally for making the Palestinians and all of them pay a price. From a military perspective, why is that the wrong thing to do? Just from a conceptual level,

as opposed to tactics, why is it the wrong thing to do to not try to separate the jihadists from the civilian population well it's for what you just said yeah it's for what you just said if you treat everyone in Gaza as if they're Hamas then you're gonna end up inflicting harm on people that as I said earlier may on the the surface support Hamas, but they live with Hamas. That's who they live with. That's who their government is. That's who is going to give them or not give them food, give them or not give them water, give them or not give them medical treatment. That's who's doing it.

So if they don't build, if you're a local Palestinian and you live in Gaza and the government is Hamas, what are you going to do? Are you going to be the one that stands up and stages a rebellion? You can, but what's going to happen to you? You're going to get killed. So what do you do? You try and keep your family safe. You try and do what you can to get by. And part of getting by is showing support to the government. So that's what they're doing. So now if we start treating, or if the Israelis treat everyone there as if they're Hamas, they're going to inflict harm on people that are not Hamas,

and that is going to end up being problematic. Now, there are some people that make this reference to, you know, if you kill one innocent person, you've just created five more terrorists. I have not found that to be true. I've not found it to be untrue, but it is not completely true. There are times that most of the time, the local populace, they recognized the difficulty of the job that was happening.

And so when an innocent civilian would be killed, of course, they'd be heartbroken. But there was also the recognition that, oh, we know what you guys were trying to do. We know that my son was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that's what happened. And of course, you know, we would pay them money to you know Apologize for what had happened when civilians got killed so and and it would rarely would you see that kind of Animosity in fact most of the time the animosity was directed towards the insurgents and not towards the coalition forces So I would my guess is that in Gaza

You would find some of that as well again. I haven't been to Gaza but my guess is if you're a normal Palestinian and you're not a Hamas supporter and One of your family members gets wounded or gets killed Sure, you might be mad at Israel, but I bet you're a lot more angry with Hamas for putting you in the situation in the first place. So I think that Israel's probably aware of that as well. And I think that Israel's weighing that to the best of their ability to try and keep the local populace safe. I mean, they're setting up these corridors. You can see people leaving through these corridors.

They're doing the best they can. This is a terrible situation. This is a nightmare. This is a nightmare to try and solve. This is a problem that no one is going to come out of unscathed. It's not going to happen. It's getting into a knife fight. When you get into a knife fight, you're going to get stabbed, and you're going to come out of unscathed. It's not going to happen. It's getting into a knife fight. When you get into a knife fight, you're going to get stabbed and you're going to bleed and the other

person is going to bleed and die. And that's what's going to happen. So thinking that we're going to go into a knife fight and you're somehow going to miraculously not get cut, not get wounded, it's not going to happen. So that's the situation that Israel's in right now. It's true. I've described as a Gordian knot. I think that's really the best way. I think just to maybe parse a little bit what you're talking about here, it seems to me that there needs to be a baseline level of trust. And so a lot of the early criticism, actually in the early podcast you guys did, was really in the bombing phase of the campaign. And I was curious, you know, as somebody who operated in a similar type environment, what were the considerations that went in? Like, let's say, if you were calling in an airstrike, what level of thought and consideration would you have to make

when you're employing air power? Because I think the critics that I've seen of the Israeli strategy would say, you know, the U.S., we went to pretty extraordinary lengths, I think, and we can get to this in a little bit, to protect the civilian population. The civilian casualty number in Mosul, I think, bears that out, you know, for the battle against ISIS. So what were the thoughts and the decisions in your mind when you were trying to think about inflicting damage on an enemy target, weighing the possibilities of civilian casualties, and then also when not to call in an airstrike and instead put your troops in harm's way? Because you're a commander who's actually had to make all these real-time decisions. The effort that was made to not have civilian casualties in Ramadi was extraordinary. It was absolutely extraordinary. The amount of air support that was used was

minimal. I'm talking a handful of times when I was there that buildings were hit with air support, were hit with bombs. And in those situations, it would be because there was no other way to resolve a scenario that was happening. And you had confirmed, let's say, a multiple sniper, multiple jihadist sniper element in a building and They have now killed two three four coalition. That's Americans and Iraqis People have tried to maneuver on it and can't get it done in those Few situations you would get okay, they're gonna drop this but we're gonna drop this building We're gonna hit this building with with some kind of air assets. We used occasionally AC one 30 and do you know what AC one 30 is?

So AC one 30 is very precision and, and they also have very good target identification. So there was a couple of times where AC one 30 was used to engage, but that's a, like I said, it's a, it's about as precise as you're going to get from the air. But the vast majority of the time we didn't use any air support at all. Why? Because the chances of collateral damage and civilian deaths was too high. And so we probably used close air support five times. Wow. In, you know, a sevenmonth deployment where we were troops in contact hundreds of times. So was there ever—so obviously you had to justify that to your men. When you're rolling into this combat environment, they're like, hey, wouldn't it be easier to just drop a bomb?

We're putting our lives at risk. Every time we go outside the wire, we can get blown up by an IED. It seems to me that Israel has made a different calculus, where they are trying to minimize their IDF casualties as much as possible. And it sounds like a stupid thing to say because everyone said, well, isn't that obvious? Isn't that what every military should do? So how did you work through the calculus? I assume that there was also a strategic decision made at some point where like, no, we're not going to do this explicitly for the civilian mission. Was it

because this overall strategic goal was we have to separate the jihadists from the population? Was it because that there was you felt like you could still militarily accomplish the mission and risk is just inherent whenever you're conducting these type of operations? I'm curious if you can go into that. I mean, you'd have to really trace it back to the fact that Maliki had been elected prime minister. He was a Shia. The Iraqi army itself was vast majority Shia. And they're now rolling into the city of Ramadi, which is vast majority Sunni. So you already have a very tenuous situation here where if the Shia army goes into the Sunni city and just starts wantonly killing, it's going to be a problem.

So they had done that in Fallujah or coalition forces had done that in Fallujah and really gone super kinetic and cleared the entire city and left no one living that were enemy. And they'd also gotten all the vast majority of the civilians out of there. When you stayed in Fallujah,

after there was the 14th leaflet put on your doorstep, you knew what was coming. And those jihadists didn't keep the civilian populace there either, where it certainly seems that in Gaza, they're being kept in Gaza, they're being kept in areas where they're being told to leave. So because Maliki didn't want to start a civil war between the Shi'a and the Sunni, he knew that it had to be a more surgical operation,

a slower, more methodical operation than it was in Fallujah. And therefore you can't go in and just start dropping buildings. And furthermore, for my guys, they're going out in operations and seeing a bunch of civilians and seeing a bunch of civilians with wives and kids. And these are normal people. And my guys are seeing them there. That's the vast, there's 400,000 people in the city of vermont there's estimated between somewhere around 5 000 insurgents is what these kind of like what the average report sometimes they say three sometimes they say seven but you're talking about five thousand enemy combatants in a city of four hundred thousand so it's not like it's hard to look in there and go oh yeah these

five houses that we just entered that had a bunch of normal Iraqis in them, we don't want to hurt these people. So it wasn't a hard conversation or it wasn't even that big of a deal. No one thought, no one, there was no, there was no, no one coming back to me saying, damn it, Jocko, we should be able to drop these buildings. Never had that conversation with any of my guys. When a building, like I said, if there was a building that was housing an active insurgent group that was doing actual damage to coalition forces, yep, we'd attack that building or we possibly could drop that building. But most of the time it was, oh yeah, there's insurgents in that building right now. And now they're moving to another building and the building that they

were in and the building that they're going to all have civilians in them. So for us to start dropping buildings is not what we're doing and we didn't do it. Well, I'm curious because, you know, again, if we think back to some of the early phases of the Israeli campaign, it was the, all the conversation evolved around what we're talking about here, which is what are legitimate targets and what are not. What was the threshold that you, in your experience, that the U.S. military would go into an area where collateral damage was not just, was likely, and yet the military necessity of going into conducting that operation was such that the commanders were

willing to send somebody out and put American troops in harm's way or even drop an airstrike. Just in your overall experience, what was the calculations that were being run? And then do you think that Israel is employing the same one or is it a different threshold? I would say that their threshold right after October 7th was pretty open, right? Hey, look, we, we've just suffered a significant attack, a horrendous attack, and we need to put some people in check right now. We don't know what they're planning next. There's 300 miles worth of tunnels. There's, we don't know what supplies they just caught us off guard. What else are they going to do to us? We need to put them in check right now and and i

think that's why they were very open to that uh immediately after the october 7th attacks so i think that's the calculus that they ran i think they wanted to um i think that they wanted to regain their their footing yeah and it took them a couple weeks to to where they probably felt like they it probably took them a week to regain their footing and then. And it took them a couple of weeks to, to where they probably felt like they, it probably took them a week to regain their footing. And then another week of like, Hey, we still don't know. I still don't feel comfortable.

We need to get them. We need to put them, put the enemy off balance even more. And I think that's what they did. That's probably the calculus. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, hell and gone. I've learned one thing.

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Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. They were running. It's interesting too, because, you know, the initial talk, and you guys touched on this, about the 300 miles of tunnels, something like that. We don't know the exact number. And you were like, man, I'm going to take a lot of casualties if we start doing that. I've just been,

I found it odd, you know, looking at it, because the number of IDF casualties as of today that you and I are talking, it's somewhere between 50 and 60. I would say relatively low. What does that indicate to you in terms of the way? So now we have actual operators on the ground. We have guys clearing the hospital. How do you achieve that? Is it through being very slow and methodical? Does it mean that they're not necessarily?

Has Amos given up? What do these things tell you? Yeah. So I believe on one of those two podcasts that I do with Daryl, I talked about siege warfare. Yes. Right. Hey, if I'm looking at this city that has 300 whatever miles and booby traps and a bunch of enemy fighters, I'm not I'm not looking forward to going in there. And yet I'm in Israel.

I have all the time in the world. I have unlimited supplies. We can live forever. We all the time in the world. I have unlimited supplies. We can live forever. We have water, we have food, we have unlimited ammunition, we have power, we have energy. Why am I rushing in here? And I was sort of hoping that they would go into a siege warfare mentality because when you go into a siege warfare mentality, you let time do the work instead of your men. And so it certainly appears that that's what they've done they've they took some bold action in the beginning regained their footing now they've the premier it looks like again i'm not on the ground and you know only i take everything that

i read with a grain of salt as you should But when I see battle maps in the past few days, they have northern Gaza enveloped. And you're going to take casualties as you push in there, as you set up sort of containment around this area, which they took casualties. And now I think you go into siege warfare. And listen, I look at a tunnel. I'll drop a microphone in that tunnel and listen to that tunnel for three days. Why am I going in there? I'll listen. Oh, put a camera down there. Put dogs down there. Cut off the power. I'm going to do all kinds of things before I send my guys

down there. And what's nice about that is that also provides us more opportunities to help the civilian populace. It gives us more opportunity for discretion between civilian populace and Hamas fighters. So I think Israel certainly appears that Israel has taken a, has shifted their mentality and they're now into a slower slower more methodical phase of the war

looks more like siege warfare i think that's good and i think they're moving in the right direction and i also think they recognize that hamas might have the will but they don't have the means and and i also think they're probably they're on the ground talking to the locals and as they talk to the palestinians what do you think those palestinians are telling them you think the think they're probably, they're on the ground talking to the locals. And as they talk to the Palestinians, what do you think those Palestinians are telling them? You think the Palestinians are saying, oh, we all support Hamas and we hate you. You would probably see a different mentality from Israel if that's what they were hearing from the local populace. The local populace is probably saying, yeah, thank you for coming in.

We hate these people. And look, like I said, are there some Hamas supporters? I'm sure there are, of course there are. But once you're sitting there in a refugee camp and you've got some medical care for your kid and the Israeli soldier's talking to you and the Israeli intelligence officer is sitting down and wanting to know about what you've been going through. And all of a sudden you're saying,

wait, these aren't the monsters that we were told they were. So that's, that's my assessment. I think that Israel was, is probably making adjustments and I bet, and it certainly seems as if their adjustments are, oh yeah, we can do this in a more methodical way. You know, I got asked, I was on a panel recently and people were talking about war with China and what would you, what would your, what would your mindset be going? And if we were going, if China invaded Taiwan and you were, Jocko, you were going to be leading troops into the battle, what would you be doing? What would your strategy be? And you know, there was a couple other people on the panel and they all gave their kind

of assessment of the technology and the peer-to-peer or near-peer adversary and how this is different these kind of things and and i said my my major mindset would be the mindset that i always have especially when going into combat and that is keeping an open mind because We don't know and anybody that says they know Is arrogant yes, you don't know what's gonna happen when you engage in combat You don't know what's gonna happen when you start it. You don't know what's gonna happen 20 minutes into it You don't know what the enemy you don't how the enemy is gonna react

You don't know how your troops are gonna react you don't know how the civilian populace are going to react You don't know what the enemy, you don't know how the enemy is going to react. You don't know how your troops are going to react. You don't know how the civilian populace are going to react. You don't know these things. And sure, you can have suspicions, but if you are too married to your suspicions, you're going to get caught in a situation where you're doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. So it certainly appears that Israel, their initial assessment was probably like, oh my gosh, we just got caught off guard. God knows what they have in store for us next three days. We need to reestablish our footing. That's what they did. Then they said, well, it looks like we kind of got this under control, but I'm not sure yet. We need to put more control. Okay. They got that done. Now they're looking

around going, okay, we need to isolate. We need to isolate, slow this thing down. And it certainly seems that that's what they've been doing. So I think we're going to see continued modification from Israel. I think they're going to continue to adjust. I think that we are all going to learn. And I think the world will learn about what Hamas is like as a government and what it's like to live under Hamas, it certainly appears from the outside that that is not a great place to live. And the chances that people, Palestinians that lived in Gaza, who had lived in Israel, who had lived in other parts of the world, who had lived in Gaza during different times,

that remember that are looking around saying, wait a second, this doesn't make sense. This doesn't have to be this bad. So I think that will come to light. And I think Hamas will come out over time as looking like a really bad group of people. It seems like everything you're saying is that there has to be a real baseline of trust for the people who have now been hopefully liberated by Hamas, we'll see, that something better will come. And last time when you had talked about with the podcast on Jocko Unraveling was the necessity of immediately showing Palestinians that a better way is possible.

So you were like, well, we should give work visas. We've got to get these people into Israel. We've got to make sure that there is not only a commingling, but a light at the end of the tunnel. It's something that the U.S. obviously did quite well, I think, at least during the surge years in Iraq and during that period while you were operating there as well. It seems, though, that you have to do that simultaneously. And I'm curious, you know, you talked about the work visa and all of that. At the same time, the Israelis have got to manage their own domestic politics, which is they don't want any of those people coming in there. If anything, they want to build a wall 10 feet higher. They want to include a security zone and all that. It seems to me that's probably the more

likely scenario. So if we do end up with that, which is, you know, you come in, you blow everything up, you, or, you know, you envelop Gaza city, you clear out the al-Shifa hospital, and then you include some, let's say, 50-kilometer zone or something that's been floated by the population. You have no commingling. Is that just setting up the fight for another day? Or is it an acceptable thing from a military perspective? The first, some kind of peace has to be established, right? So you talked about there has to be some kind of trust. Well, in order to get some kind of trust, there has to be some kind of peace. You know, I used to say in Iraq, one of the best things we could do is like, oh, let's bring in Walmarts and Starbucks. And because when people see like, Oh wait, I I'll go work for that

place. They pay me $7 an hour and I'm going to get, you know, a 10% discount and it's this huge place and we can get food and we can get water and we can get, uh, clothing and all these things are there. So when people start to see, Oh, this way of life is possible for me and for my family there's that's that's what people want Essentially art. Hey look are there extremists that don't want that and they see that as Western and evil and Satan Yep, absolutely. There are but that's not normal. That's not the normal person. The normal person wants to take care of their family They want to have a good job. They won't have an income They want their kids to have more opportunity than they did. They want to own a house. This is, I'm not, I'm talking when, when you would talk to an Iraqi family, that's what they would talk about. Oh,

you know, I used to have this, I used to, uh, I used to sell tires and right now there's no cars driving through here. So I can't sell any tires. And, uh, you know, I'm just waiting for, I've got, look, come on, come back and go back in their garage. And they've got some big stacks of tires some tires for our little tractors and some tires for cars And they just want to get back to that life. That's what they're concerned about and they don't care about Al Qaeda They don't want them there and so giving people some kind of stability seems like a That's sort of a precursor to any kind of co-mingling and then I think you just have to be really, really strict about the commingling. Like here's the protocol that you've got.

If you want to work in Israel, here's the protocol that you've got to go through on a daily basis until you get to your what we have down here in California for Mexico is like a century past. Like, okay, if you're this person, if you've been cleared and you've had this and you haven't had that, then you're going to get kind of a expedited protocol but again when you talk about Israel separating Hamas from the populace I I would hope that the world can do that as well because I think that the world much of the world is looking at Gaza as if everyone is hardcore anti-Israel and borderline, if not full support of Hamas. And I don't believe that to be the case. And I think it'll play out that way in the long run. But you do have to give the opportunity for prosperity and growth and peace before people accept that. And if you're Hamas and you want a population that hates Israel, what do you do? You keep them poor.

You keep them uneducated. You keep them suffering. And the more that they're uneducated, poor, suffering, the more they're going to hate Israel. Yeah. The status quo is good for them. That's what I think a lot of people also didn't understand is that, no, they liked it. They actually really enjoyed the way everything is going. And, you know, you said previously Hamas doesn't have the means. Well, they don't really ever. I mean, the jihadists never had the means to destroy or defeat the U.S. military they did have the capacity to just outlast them which in the end they were kind of right at least whenever it came to ISIS and all that it came to a hole in their military operation that was required is this then a battle of wills or is it a battle of

means well if that makes sense all wars are a battle of wills for sure but here's one big difference between iraq and gaza israel is in like america well you can out you can outweigh you can outweigh us in afghanistan you can outweigh us in vietnam you can outweigh us you can kill us with the death of a thousand cuts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam. Yep. Our populace will eventually say, what are we doing? We don't care about this anymore. And we'll go home.

But Israel's got no place else to go. Yeah, it's their house. And so they're not going anywhere. And that's why it'll be a test of wills, but there's also the test of means. And I think that's what Israel's focus is. I think they see Hamas as a finite group of people. And what's the number being floated around, 30,000? 30 to 50 is PIJ plus Hamas.

PIJ is like probably 10K of that, if we're thinking on the high end. When we think about those numbers, last I checked, I went back. The Battle of Mosul was, I think, 8,000 ISIS fighters. It took about one-to-one civilian casualties, and it also took a ton of Iraqi casualties. That's something that a lot of people have forgotten how literal heroes fought in that war. It doesn't seem to be tracking at all like that, though, right now. The civilian casualty number, we don't know what it is, somewhere between 20, 10 to 20,000. It'll

probably drop as they move away from bombing towards the more ground operations they're pursuing. But as they go south into Khan Yunis, are they going to go back to air power? Like, we'll see. But with the 30,000 to 50,000, do you think it's militarily feasible that they could accomplish that within the embedded population of 2 million? Because you had, what, 5,000, I think? Yeah. As I said, too, with Mosul, it's a bit different. It depends on the strategy that Hamas takes. It depends on the strategy that Hamas takes it depends on the strategy that Hamas takes if Hamas If Hamas stands up and fights

It's feasible. Yeah, if Hamas goes to ground it's gonna be long guerrilla insurgency and and a terrible nightmare so That's what that's that's the way it'll go down. That makes sense. And what is Hamas going to do? They're going to do what Hamas does. They're going to go to ground and go into a long insurgency of terrorism. And then it'll go back to sustained kind of intel operations. But I think one of the best things that Israel could do is the more they

can prop up the economy and the general life, way of life in Palestine, the more local Palestinians will be like, hey, we don't want this anymore. We want normalcy. We want prosperity. That's what we want. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day.

The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister.

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I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT.

Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy, or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. They'll root their own problems out. There was something I wanted to come back to about there's a pretty decent chunk of Israeli society and to a lesser extent some Americans who are like, look, these people voted him in.

They're all the same. We shouldn't care about them. You're right in that many Iraqis didn't – they don't like al-Qaeda. But many of them were probably observant Sunni Muslims who believed in very similar values that are a couple of different places away from an ISIS extremist interpretation. I'm pleased to disagree with you. Feel free. Not so much. OK. I'm pleased to agree with you. Feel free. Yeah. Not so much.

Okay. I mean, really not so much. There's a, there's some very small number of like hardcore jihadists that were Iraqi, but the, the normal hierarchies, the normal Iraqi populace, they were not supportive of Al Qaeda. And, you know, there was a great piece that vice did and it was as it was I forget what year it was But basically Isis was starting to surround Ramadi and the the governor of Ramadi or the mayor of Ramadi was he's talking It's like please get me on the call. We need American. We want the Americans back like that's what he was saying

That's how that's how they felt. I think I meant it more the reason I was framing that way is more so like they're not the same as us and I think that that's an easy way to other them and then to put them together and so there's a desire for collective punishment and I think I just want to return not even just from a military perspective but as somebody who actually had to see some of this and kind of parse it together you probably heard similar things at least from people around, especially after 9-11. I remember this. The only thing I ever needed about Islam was I found out on 9-11, just bomb the crap out of Afghanistan, and that will solve the problem. Obviously, I guess, but it's not necessarily feasible. How did you work through that then whenever you're talking and having a conversation with somebody who would have that type of mindset and wanted to employ it in a military setting as somebody who actually would have had to carry out such things?

No one said that. Yeah. Inside the military. There was no one that was saying, oh, well, we should just kill everyone and destroy all the buildings and bomb everything. No one said that. No one said that. No one said that. Wow.

Well, yeah. I mean, it's interesting because I'm watching. I guess I don't know the mind of the individual Israeli soldier, but we've seen some cabinet officials and others, people in the security government. It's a similar-ish type thing. Part of why I'm asking is just to say I guess what I'm really learning is that there was profound lessons that were learned from the U.S. military inside of Iraq to eventually get to the high level of capabilities that we reached, you know, at the peak of like the operational tempo against Al Qaeda, against ISIS.

And with all that, what was the learning curve like as somebody who had to go through and experience that? Yeah, well, the learning curve like as somebody who had to go through and experience that? Yeah. Well, the learning curve was definitely steep and, you know, luckily for me, I deployed in 2003, 2004, 2006. And, you know, this was, this was us failing to recognize what was happening. And there's a whole series, you know, Daryl and I did a whole series of podcasts about the Iraq war and about how that thing kicked off and what we did with the Bathurst and how we, we fired all the people from the, from the military. And we, we made all kinds of mistakes there. And we took us a while to recognize that we were fighting an insurgency and that we needed to employ people and take care of them. So we made all kinds of mistakes. And once we figured that out, we did a, a pretty good job. It just took us too long to figure it out.

So the learning curve was very steep. And then unfortunately, once we, once we figured it out, we did a pretty good job. It just took us too long to figure it out. So the learning curve was very steep. And then unfortunately, once we figured it out, we left. And I've seen Daryl defend the sort of counterinsurgency that took place in Ramadi a couple of times online because people say, well, look, it didn't work because you had ISIS and all this other stuff. But we had ISIS because we left. Right after we left. And if we stayed, there would have been embers of extremists that would have popped up. And U.S. forces in direct conjunction led or actually we would support.

We would have supported Iraqi forces as they went in and as they took out these last remnants of extremists, whether it was ISIS or Al Qaeda, they would have taken them out. And it would have been, we would have moved in a really good direction. Unfortunately, we left and that's where you got the, you know, I always describe it as if you had a fire in your kitchen and you kind of put out the fire real quick. And then you said, all right, well, I'm going to the movies. And you left. Well, you're going to come back and your house is going to be burned down because there's still little embers that you didn't take care of. So that's what we did in Iraq. We left and we let those embers start to burn again.

Yeah. Well, it was mismanaged in all kinds of ways. Even if you defend the withdrawal, there are certain things we can look back on. But I'm not sure I answered your original question of what's going to happen here. I'm not sure yet. Yeah, I know. We'd be a lot better off. We would be very lucky if we were able to be clairvoyant and to kind of look at it.

I guess from a counterinsurgency perspective, Israel is almost in a situation where, as you said, they have a border with these people. They don't have a choice, I think, they have a border with these people. They don't have a choice, I think, at least to eventually learn these lessons and get to the point where this is going to happen. That's the only type of sustainable solution. Whereas, as you said, with the U.S., you can outweigh the U.S. in Afghanistan. You can outweigh – and they did successfully in Afghanistan. They did it successfully in Vietnam. They did it successfully to a certain extent in Iraq, requiring the U.S. to go back in. They're almost in an ideal scenario for having to eventually arrive at this to get to a peaceful resolution,

simply because they really don't have another choice in the long run. At least that's how I see it. There are a lot of people who would disagree with me, though. Yeah, and so that's what I—when I think about Israel's situation, Israel's situation—if I was Israel, I wouldn't want to be on defense for the next thousand years. And the only way you're not on defense is if you start making friends with your neighbors.

Otherwise, you got to protect your borders to an extreme level. Look, are they always going to have to be wary? Yes, they're always going to have to be wary. But I would want to have to be less wary. And how are you going to have to be less wary? It's by having better relationships with the people that are around you. And look, Israel's tried that. They've also done things

that have cost them many, many more years of attacks. But essentially what I'm saying is the best solution for Israel is some kind of normalized relations with the people that are their neighbors. Right. And I think that they understand that. Are there extremists that think, well, nope, we would rather just build, like you said, build a 50-foot wall and put a no man's land for 20 kilometers around that and we'll just be Israel here. That's tough. Whether it's even feasible, I'm not sure. But I think most people would rather have some sort of normalized relationship with our neighbors and have a lower level of security and live a more normalized existence.

Yeah, I totally agree. I want to zoom out even from just Israel-Gaza, which I know it's tedious to talk about, I totally understand, is to just think about employing use of force and negotiation. So you guys have talked previously about Ukraine, and this is something we focused on quite a bit. Where I live in Washington, it's basically anathema to float the idea of negotiation. You get immediately tarred as like either pro-Russian activist or, oh, are you saying that's Russian propaganda? Are you saying that Ukraine doesn't have an absolute right to defend all of its territories? Like, well, no one is saying that. What we're saying is that it's just simply not feasible. I've heard you talk a little bit about this in the past, but I've often heard it as an idea of caving, whereas to me it just seems like a level of feasibility about a test of arms means, as you said.

So as somebody who was in the fight, how do you think about negotiation and diplomacy and, you know, peaceful resolution? How do we separate those two, even when we're thinking of both the Ukrainian fighting man on the ground and then also the big strategic perspective. Yeah. The people that are always anti-compromise, and there's usually a lot of them, they're not the ones that are on the front line getting killed. And, of course, they don't want to compromise. Right. So that's what happens. They don't want to compromise because they're not out there having drones drop grenades on them. That's what happens. They don't want to compromise because they're not out there having drones drop grenades on them. That's what's going on.

And if the leadership better understood what the people on the front lines were going through, they'd be a hell of a lot more open to compromise than they are. So it kind of disgusts me when the people that are, you know, shaking the sword are shaking the sword from a thousand miles away. And they're shaking the sword or shaking the sword from a thousand miles away. And they're shaking the sword. It's the young guys on the front line that are that are suffering and dying. Yeah, it's horrifying. I mean, the level of prosthetics is now reached like World War One levels inside of Ukraine, which I didn't even think you would ever see again in 2023. We're talking about the average age, I believe, of the Ukrainian fighting soldier right now is like 43. I mean, you have an entire generation of young men, which is valiantly, you know, wants to defend their territory. And God bless them. You can't think anything otherwise. But then when you look

at the long term strategic picture, and you realize where it's heading, and continue to put arms into the country, and then, you know, dispel any idea of negotiation, it just feels, as you said, as if it's like saber rattling from thousands of miles away and looking at these guys as pawns. And that is just dehumanizing to them at a very real level. A hundred percent. Yeah. That's what it is. It's watching. I often find, and this was actually, I was curious too, is because I'm, you know, around Washington politics and, you know, everything, everything is talked about at a 50,000-foot level, I think out of necessity, actually, because they have so many different decisions

and things that they had to deal with. When you were actually fighting on the ground, to what extent was it even important or were you paying attention to big-level discussions about, should we go Petraeus' way, should we go Joe Biden's way, like the bigger strategic conversation? How much does that even factor whenever you're operating? You're definitely paying attention to it. Are you paying attention to it while you're receiving machine gun fire? No. Nope. You're not thinking about it then.

But when you're planning for an operation, when you're in between operations, you're definitely paying attention to what's going on and how we're conducting this thing because it's impacting how you're conducting your missions. I think I told a story with Daryl where there was a battalion-sized operation that was going to take place. And my guys, we were supporting it. So we were going out with a big army battalion. And as we pushed this plan up the chain of command, the army battalion was told, hey, we're not doing any battalion-sized operations in Ramadi. And the reason was because a battalion-sized operation

is like a flex of, oh, we're doing a big battalion-sized operation with 700 soldiers. We're not doing that. You guys are not allowed to do that. Okay, well, why not? Okay, well, it's because we want to show that the Iraqis are taking the lead. We want to show that we don't, we're not engaging in battalion sized missions in the war anymore. That's not what we're doing.

Okay. Roger that. And you know, the, the operation got changed to a two company plus operation, which is almost a battalion, but it, but that's what we were doing. So we're all thinking about this. And yeah, so those things have an impact for sure. Right. If you had a message, I think, to people who are cavalier in their, so in Washington, it's very in vogue to call for war with Iran. It's very in vogue to call really for war with Russia, with anyone. Everything starts to become pieces on a chessboard. It's like, oh, well, if they do this, we'll do this. What would your message be to people who are very cavalier in their discussion of the use of force in the U.S. military? From everybody, from the people in Washington, D.C.

that are cheering for war to the people in the streets that are cheering for war on either side, I would say get your shit on, get your gear on, and go lock and load a weapon and go fight because you have no idea what you're doing. You have no idea what you're talking about, and you're sending young, brave people to fight, and you have no idea what it's like.

So I'd say if you want war, go get your kid on. Well, I think that's a great place to end it, but I do have one last question for you. This is, as somebody who works up at 4.30 a.m., this may seem random, but it's a personal pet thing of mine. Are you pro-standard time or pro-daylight savings time? Would you rather the sunrise earlier, or would you rather have more sunlight in the afternoon?

I would rather have more sunlight in the afternoon. Wow. Because right now in California, it's getting dark at 4 sunlight sunlight in the afternoon and because by that like right now in California It's getting dark like at 438 in the evening, so That's not cool. And in the morning I can do the stuff I do in the morning I don't need light for right. I'm in the gym. I can go for a run It can be like dark outside is not that big of a deal, but you know, you can't surf

You can't surf in the afternoon when it's dark outside. And California had some weird thing happen where we voted to stay on permanent daylight savings time, but then it somehow didn't pass. It needs to get approved through the federal government. So it's one more reason for everyone to be mad at the federal government. Well, you've put a knife in my heart as someone who's pro standard time, but it's okay. Jocko, I really appreciate you doing this and taking the time out of your schedule for all that. It was a great discussion and we thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Over the years of making my true crime podcast,

Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I know. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know.

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