Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 207 - Eric Oehlerich and Mick Mulroy

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Olly is a retired 20+ year Navy SEAL Officer, ending his career while serving as the Commanding Officer (CO) of Naval Special Warfare Development Group- Squadron 2, from July of 2017-2019. At the pinnacle of a career as CO of this elite unit, he was responsible for the research and development of technology and tactics for SEALs to use against the nation's hardest problems. The geographic scope of responsibility spanned the Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. By galvanizing over 1,100 personnel combined with collection technology he provided a security blanket against extremism for the International Community. Olly is also a member of the Board of Directors for Grassroots Reconciliation Group, a nonprofit to help rehabilitate child soldiers. Olly graduated from the Naval Academy in 1999 and went straight to Basic Underwater Demolition (BUD) Seal training, a grueling program that pushes young service members to their limits. Out of 144 students who entered his training class, he was one of only 10 who finished. Michael "Mick" Patrick Mulroy is a former United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for the Middle East (Nov. 2017-Dec. 2019). As DASD for the Middle East, he was responsible for U.S. Department of Defense policy for Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. He is a retired Central Intelligence Agency Paramilitary Operations Officer and United States Marine. In addition, he is a member of the Board of Directors for Grassroots Reconciliation Group, a nonprofit to help rehabilitate child soldiers. He is also the co-founder of Lobo Institute, a private firm consulting, advising and teaching on current and future conflicts. https://athleticgreens.com/clearedhot https://magicspoon.com/clearedhot https://superbeets.com/clearedhot https://tenthousand.cc  

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And right now, you can get a free 30-day supply with your first purchase at superbeats.com slash cleared hot. That is superbeats.com slash cleared hot. And that's it, ladies and gentlemen, we've done it. on to my guests for today. Mick and Eric are two of the most interesting individuals that I've had the opportunity to sit down with. And I've said this on the podcast before. I would love to have conversations with people who are flies on the wall when there were meetings taking place about doctrine and foreign policy for the United States. Well, guess what? I found essentially two of them. One of them. Eric comes from the world that I came from. He was a previous seal, but let's just say

this statement applies to both of them. They were able to achieve, breathe and operate in an atmosphere that I was never able to. If you want to talk about that in perspective of a ladder, I was at the bottom rung. They were closer to the top. So I really appreciate their thought process on the discussion that we had. So Eric came from the world that I came from. But he left that world with a breadth and depth of knowledge and experience that far exceeded what I had. And he explains that, so I want to explain it for him. Mick, a Marine. We won't hold that against him. Of course.

I'm just kidding, Marines. I actually love you guys. But after the Marines, why not go into the CIA for, I don't know, over 20 years as a paramilitary operations offer in the special activities center? Focusing on the Middle East, again, sitting in rooms where conversations were being had, decisions were being made about actual policy of the United States of America. And now they both teamed up together and they run the Lobo Institute. Instead of me running my mouth, Mick and Eric cover both of those things. in depth, or all of those things in depth. So I will let you get into it.

Episode 207, enjoy. Probably most people who watch or listen to the podcast know who I am, but they might have questions about you guys. So, who'd like to begin? We're going to go, favorite color? Do you like long walks on the beach? No. Unpack your military backgrounds a little bit.

Let's start there, and then we can talk about life after the military and what led us to this table, and I'll let you guys choose. Okay. Who's the senior man here at this table? The answer is not me, by the way. Is it? Yeah, he's older. We've got a past life.

Past life. Now we're partners, so there's no senior name. He's older. I was older and, yeah. So my military background would probably include the agency as well because I've, yeah. Well, where'd you grew up? Well, I mean, let's start at the beginning of the journey. So I was born in Hayd Ashbury in 1960.

In San Fran. In San Francisco. I hear the military recruits heavily from the Haydashbury. How I got from there to the Marine Corps to the CIA to live in in Montana, it's a saga. My parents swear to God they were not hippies. I don't believe them at all. I don't think they allowed people to live in Haydashbury in 1967 that weren't hippies. I'm from Santa Cruz, which is not Hayd Ashbury, but let's just say some of the lines are parallel.

Yeah. And I get it. I was an anomaly going into the military as well. Yeah. You can grow up in those environments. And for me, I don't know about any of you guys, but once I heard the idea of the military occupation, I wanted to pursue, I was like, yeah, that's me.

Kind of regardless of where I grew up and what was going on. Yeah. And my dad was a professor, and they were very progressive, would be the term today. So they were, when I decided to enlist in the Marine Corps, I think they were somewhat surprised. But, you know, I'm Irish-American. So at the end of the day,

service in the military is very, favored, you know, which is just part of the culture, if you will, or subculture. So they were supportive. And then, you know, I served as an enlisted Marine as a tanker. What year did you join? 1988. Okay. So I got out of high school and I actually went to become a hard hat diver.

And that wasn't anything like I thought it was going to be. I'm going to take a hard pass on that. Because I think I do know what that kind of means. I was an age. Holly and I are both like, no. No. No. Yeah.

No, I'm good with that. Yeah. Those dudes are not messing around. Yeah. Dudes and dudettes. Sorry to exclude the women from that particular profession. Yeah. So I didn't see any duets at the time.

It was basically ex-military people and ex-cons. That was who dove with me when I was a hard ad diver. And I got to meet some Marines and seals. They were, that was kind of the crowd that did the hard at diving. Anyway, it ended up being enlisted in the Marine Corps. So I did that. I was a tanker, like I mentioned. Then I got out and I went to finish college and went to law school.

What year did you get out? So it would have been when I went to law school, Eric knows it's some kind of chronologically challenged. It would have been 92. Okay. So about a four-year list been in the Marine Corps? Yeah. It was, yeah, it was, yeah. And then I went back to the Marine Corps after going to law school was a judge advocate.

And then I realized that being a lawyer wasn't really what I wanted to do. So I went and I became an infantry officer. I'm surprised I let you do that, to be honest. Oh, they did because they didn't pay for my law school. So, you know, if I'd have been smart, like I've mentioned to some of my friends' kids might want to do, get the military to pay for your law school. I didn't do it. So I could easily change and they couldn't say anything.

There's value in that flexibility, though. And for anybody listening who may want to join the military, and perhaps you guys will have a different opinion, when the military offers or giveth, just make sure you read the fine print. I'm not saying don't take the offer. But had you had them pay for that, perhaps you would have had a long and established career as a JAG

instead as an infantry officer. True. That's correct. And I think being a judge advocate's great. So I'm, you know, different strokes for different folks. But to me, being infantry was more I was interested in. And then I got recruited by the agency as a paramilitary officer. What year was that? So that would have been 1999. And I stayed in the reserves until I retired from the Marine Corps. But my experience, you know, in the last 20 years of the global war was. primarily as a paramilitary operations officer in what's called the special activity center of the CIA. So I have two questions, and I have absolutely no idea where the boundaries lie when it comes to that agency,

so I'll let you describe in whatever terms as we talk about this. What is the role of a paramilitary officer? But before that, I don't know if I've ever asked anybody. What does it mean when the agency recruits you? Were you at a bar and somebody circled, like, letters on a newspaper and sent them over to you? Because that's pretty much what I've seen happen in the documentaries that I see in the big screens at, like, the AMC theaters. Right.

Yes. Mine almost sounds like a made-up Tom Clancy's story, but I had a friend that was a priest, or he still was a priest, and he's still my friend. And his father was in the agency. And he invited me to Murphy's in Old Town, Alexandria. Sounds like an Irish bar. Definitely an Irish bar. And a friend of his who was in the agency was there. And then I don't think that's the normal way of being recruited.

But he wrote a fax number back in the days of those on the back of a Murphy's cocktail napkin. Stop it. I swear to God, I was already in the Marine Corps. So he goes like, what are you going to do when he get out of the Marine Corps? I was like, I didn't know I was getting out of the Marine Corps. And he just wrote it and said, you might want to consider it. So that's, and I sent my resume in to this fax machine.

And then. Did they fax you back? I mean, how does this work? So they didn't fax me back. No, I actually didn't know what happened. And then I got a letter. I don't want to get in too depth on how the process goes.

For sure. Honestly, I'm just, I'm fascinated by most people that I know who have gone, a lot of them go the SF pipeline and they'll go over to the GB side of the house or their work. And it was, they would apply or they knew somebody and it seemed like a very,

like, here's my resume, a very, well, stringent, yes, but kind of, streamlined application process. Yeah, so this was pre-9-11. Again, yeah, it's a different world. It was a little different. And, you know, paramilitary officers,

the normal background would be like Eric. You know, I was a guy who, yeah, I was infantry marine, but this was pre-9-11, and they had a small cadre of people that was geared more toward, I don't know what they were looking for at the time, but certainly after 9-11. The norm, actually before and after,

after 9-11 were probably 10 years of some kind of special operations experience. Yeah. Either officer enlisted, they really look at both. But, you know, Special Forces, Army Special Forces is probably the predominant one. But Seals, Recon Marines, Marsok, and then there's a few infantry guys, quite frankly, they do that deliberately. Because your infantry Marines are kind of multifaceted, but also used to be in-handed. whatever they get handed, they got to deal with it. You know, so there's an aspect of that.

Well, you need some diversity of experience and background in there, for sure. Yeah. But predominantly, it's from the SOCOM type units. And so that's, anyway, I was one that wasn't from there, but that's how I started. And I was a, the paramilitary ops officer is a combination of kind of like your special operations operator and what you'd think of traditionally as a spy. Right. We don't call ourselves spies, but people who spot, assess, to develop. What do you call yourself? Operations officers. You know, it's kind of lame, I guess, but it's, it is what we are, right?

We spot, assess, develop, recruit people who are spies, those are the spies, to commit espionage or conduct covert action for the benefit of the United States. So you have to have this hybrid of personality, somebody who would function as a commando, so to speak, and then somebody who would function as a, I don't say spy master, it sounds a little area, but somebody who can run and handle recruited assets. Yeah. Right. So that's generally what a paramilitary operations officer was, and that's what I was for 20 years. I'm assuming all over the world.

All over the world, just about every conflict area, starting, as most of us did in Afghanistan, because I finished right as 9-11. right after 9-11. So Afghanistan, Iraq, southern Pakistan, Yemen, me and only worked together in Somalia. He'll talk about that. We met in Afghanistan. Most of all the conflict areas, but we also,

I did a tour in Europe. I did a tour, several kind of, we call traditional tours in Africa. I was a chief of station and chief of base, multiple places. And then I retired as one of the department chiefs for special activities. center from the agency.

I would imagine that, and Eric could probably talk about this too in his experience, the pre-9-11 seal community, which is all I can really speak about, I interface with the larger soft community in general. But it drastically changed, pre-9-11 versus post from, you know, mission focus very drastically. I mean, obviously we still maintain the core competencies in the water, but a focus on landlock countries and different types of roles. So it's a different, it was a different beast shortly after 9-11. Did the agency kind of go through the same evolution?

Yes. So they had, I mean, we were spread all over the world before 9-11. We were talking plan, Colombia. And we still maintain, you know, relationships all over the world. And I think it's really helped us over time. but then as the entire special operations, special activities, communities just started focusing on the war that was at hand, right? So it was all desert, Afghanistan, Iraq.

And, you know, we can talk about, I don't know how far we can get into it, but we had a really great relationship with the SEAL units in Afghanistan. It's one of the more, I think, one of the programs that really came out of that, not to go into depth, but it's one of the successes, I think, of the global war and terror. And there's not a lot of them, but that was one of them. So then the agency, not just the special activity component, had a very strong relationship with Socom, especially at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, bringing up a war in Iraq, the long-term efforts that we did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So I think the communities combine, the tribes combined, so to speak, in a very positive way during that. It was very much like a creola box, is how I described it, pre-9-11. Everybody had their sleeve. Don't touch what's in my sleeve. Your color, like, Marines are red, Navy's blue. Do either of you guys know what color the Air Force is? Because they can't be blue, too. The Navy's blue.

Are they gray? I don't know. Yeah, I would go with gray. All right. It's got to be gray. I mean, Army is obviously green. Yeah. Yeah.

But we're talking some serious rice bowl hoarding. Like, get the fuck away. Yeah. And then after 9-11 rapidly, it was, let's just put all these crayons and two pot and melt them and work together. And maybe we should share information. Right. And I ended my career before me and Eric did our consulting firm, back in the DOD. So I started as a list Marine, and I ended as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.

because Secretary Mattis's people called me up and gave me an offer. I couldn't refuse as a Marine. So I did that for two years while I was waiting for Eric to retire from the Navy before we could start our enterprise up here in Montana. So how long have you been free and clear of what I'll call traditional or direct service, whether at the agency or at the DoD? Two years. So we're going on our second anniversary for Lobo Institute here.

December 1. Lobo Challenge, one December every year. You're more than welcome to come, Andy. Well, I would like to have details. When people say things like that to me, my first question is tell me more, please. What are we doing? What is the Lobo Challenge? It varies every year, and the good news is it gets harder by the year. Yeah, probably out on this, but go ahead. It typically, well, it starts with a lobo maker, which is in traditional style. It's a shot of fine Irish whiskey dropped in a big bucket of moosterol. Good Montana beer. Yeah. So so far, I'm definitely in. Yeah, I know you're in. Yeah. Okay. And what I've heard so far, this is a fantastic evolution. So that starts with a bottoms up on that.

And then in typical years from there, it started at the base area of Big Mountain. And last year, we basically went up about three quarters way up the mountain, kind of off the resort a bit. We have a little bit of some hooch in the hills that we've been cachet in key positions. They'll turn into a lobo challenge for the public. Shot of whiskey up there. And then we meander back on down the mountain, ran across Haskell Basin, back down off the ridge into town. And we ended at the Great Northern there in the center of whitefish. So you guys are running this?

Yep. There's a 100% chance I'm not participating. Yeah, I was going to tell you to pack a lunch. Yeah, I mean, I could do like a very not-brisk walk. Yeah. Or he could wait until it snows and we could like uphill travel and board or ski down. That could be amazing. Oh, we do every Friday.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this year it'll be a, it'll be about a half a day and overnight and then another probably half to three-quarter day. We're going to lengthen it out every year. Unfortunately, it gets a little bit harder every year. Age will do that.

By 65, like this is really. going to be a nut kicker. Fair enough. We put the hooch in ammo cans, so this will be our third and final. Yep. We're going to put a third and final in our ammo can up there. And then you'll be able to hit a site, get your directions, sign in

a logbook, and there's a yet to be proclaimed prize at the end of every year for anybody that does the Lobo Challenge in the fastest time. I'll probably just need to get some grids for the ammo cans. And then just to

make sure that you guys have what you need up there, I could swing by and check every once in a while. Yeah. I do love spending time at the resort starting in about, it opens about 40, 45 days from now, snow depending. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, somebody needs to go through and make sure that that stuff is still there. Yeah. Well, that's true. No, it's a little concerned that every high school student's going to try to find our huge. I'm not saying give them the grids. But if you guys drop me, it's, yeah, sweet little 10-digit grid, I might be able to make this happen. Yep. And they are placed in. in key positions for some really good pow shots. Yeah.

And just a little, just a little bit of a warm up there. Perfect. Mm-hmm. They're good. Eric, where did it all begin for you? Seventh grade math teacher, Whitefish Central School. So you're born and bred here in the valley. Born and bread, yep.

I feel like Whitefish is exactly the same today as it was when you were in seventh grade. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. But not really at all. There's good and bad with change, right? So can't focus on all the negative. And there's definitely good things that have come from the changes within the valley and within white fish. So, yeah, no, I grew up in the town when it was really hard to make a living for a construction guy. Well, which now.

Relative perspective, too, what was the, what would you estimate the population was back then? It was about 3,000 in the town of Whitefish. And now what would you say? I think it's about eight, somewhere between eight to nine. Okay. Yeah. And at this point, whitefish, and for people who don't know, it's interesting, almost nobody has heard of Callispell. Whitefish is a name that is far more recognizable.

So I will say to people, hey, do you know where Whitefish is? Like, oh, yeah, I'm like, okay, Calispell is 15 miles south. It's, there's not a lot of open terrain between Calispell and Whitefish anymore. It seems like they're kind of dropping, even in my short time up here. Yeah. it will just be the greater whitefish area, the greater Calispell area. Right. The good news about that, you know, for guys like us that like wide open spaces,

it's that it's a donut. And in the interior of the donut, hey, that's the valley. Yeah. And you can do kind of whatever you want in it. And it's all pretty much going to be developed for better or for worse. We can debate that. But it's hard to drive for 10 minutes in a straight direction without hitting public ground. So as long as a public ground,

stage public ground, then you're going to have the mountain biking trails, you're going to have the hiking trails, you'll have the hunting, you'll have, you know, the things that bring you to the Montana, Montana lifestyle, it'll be right here, right? So it's the mountain, it's the lakes, it's the rivers, it's Glacier National Park. And you also don't have to live in that donut. Like I live south of town by about 40 minutes. My nearest neighbor is 60 acres away. Yep. And out of my backyard, I can access a few hundred thousand acres of public land. Yes. And people I hear oftentimes from Billings, Bozeman, Missoula, Callisbill, Whitefish.

Like there's too many people coming into the valley. There's a lot of Montana outside of those five areas. And it's actually kind of funny. Within, you know, just within our SEAL community, you know, a number of people hitting me up. So I basically just came up with a questionnaire. How far away can you live from an international airport? How far away can your wife live from a good, like, cappuccino? You know, like, are schools a priority to you?

Yeah. Do you want to buy one acre that adjoins 10,000 acres of public? Or do you want to have a bit of a horse ranch? You need 15 acres. And then I had guys fill that out and they give it back to me. I'm like, okay, I'm going to tell you three spots you probably heard of. I'm going to tell you three spots you'll never hear of. And I want you to, you know, either you, you.

yourself or you or your family drive through in probably August, check it out. And then you need to go there about mid-February. Yeah. And check it out. And then, you know, I had a number of folks did that. And then they kind of came back and said, hey, like, I never even would have thought of this place. We're kind of looking to do this.

And I'm like, all right, let me make two phone calls. I connect you with the right realtor or the right construction guy in that area. And I mean, you know, for me, growing up here, you know, we all grew up filling our freezers every year. because you had to because as, you know, my dad was a contract painter and then he owned a tire store. So you couldn't afford beef all winter long. So you shot it, all right? Yeah.

You either shot deer, a couple of them or maybe an antelope put in the mix. And, you know, when somebody shook your hand, it meant something. When somebody told you they'd do something, they did it. And it's, that's kind of watered down a little bit over time is what I've seen with the interaction. but the grit of the valley, the strength of the valley, it's still there, you know, and, you know, like outsiders that kind of show up, one of the first things they always say is, man, people talk to you. And it's easy, like, you're sitting in the grocery store line and you're like, oh, hey, how's it going to, you know, the guy that's behind you. And when they look at you, and then they look at your feet, you're like, oh, check, got it.

Like you're new here. You don't understand that even though we're just going to stand in the grocery store line for two minutes, It's kind of, you know, it's way people talk about stuff and, you know, and it just doesn't happen in other places, you know. And so I grew up in this atmosphere. I had a seventh grade math teacher. I expressed an interest. He was a pretty interesting guy. He had flown F-4s in the Navy as a Navy pilot.

He'd grown up in Missoula. He, like, wore a flight suit to school and rode a BMW motorbike. and, you know, he, like, he was a different teacher, right? I have issues with the flight suit, but I'm going to let that pass. Yeah, this will go. There's some gears that are turning up stairs. Yeah, no, I'm sure. Yeah.

You're like, anyway, so, you know, and then Top Gun came out. Yeah. And I was sixth grade, uh, watched a movie at the Mountain Mall cinema, small town white fish. And I'm like, hey, I started thinking through it. And I'm like, okay, if I went to, in the middle, the Navy, I could be 24 years old with a job going around the world, flying planes, making out with Kelly McGillis. I'm like, dude, where do I sign up? That's a good plan. Which is why they made

that movie, by the way. Right. Oh, yeah, totally. That's why they had direct support for the United States Navy to make that movie. Yeah. And for Top Gun too. That's where they made the second one. They're like, yeah, you can borrow some F-18s because they know that the aviation recruitment is handled for about a decade. Yeah, right. So I expressed an interest. He, my, this math teacher was like, you're too dumb, you won't make it. And anger is probably my best motivator. I actually like this guy more now because he said that. And I was like, all right. I was like, I got you. And so, yeah, I started just digging in. I had a couple of parents that were not, not kind of from mainstream. And they're more liberal. So, yeah, I'm like, hey, I'm going to go to a service academy. I'm going to go in one of the services. And they're like, what? And I'm like, no, this is what I'm doing.

So, yeah, you know, I applied to all of them. I was a ski racer. It was my biggest sport growing up out of here, out of a big mountain, and around the Northwest States. And, you know, I mean, I could have skied in some schools or, you know, definitely made a good hard attempt to go on the U.S. ski team, but at the end of the day, I had a primary nomination from Senator Conrad Burns to go to the Naval Academy under his allotment. You know, each senator has allotment of kids that can put into the service academies.

So I just, I was like, all right, nope, I'm going to do this. I'm going to go in the Navy. And when I got into the Navy, the more time I hung out with pilots, the more I didn't like the flight suits back to the flight suits right and wearing them in schools driving your BMW motorbikes right I mean they're being out of no-mex it's not the most comfortable or breathable material yeah I mean we were still wearing them when we were doing CQB when I got into teams yeah yeah and it brings a literal experience to the phrase sweating your balls off yeah yeah it does um but uh no so you know went to the Naval Academy, the more I hung out

around pilots, the more I didn't kind of quite care for that culture. The more I saw from seals and frog band, I was like, hey, wait a minute, I'm like, those guys are all for each other, all for working hard, playing hard, and you could just tell there was bonds and there was commonality and commonality and purpose

and for each other. And that resonated with me. So I made sure as I went through the Naval Academy, you can kind of pencil yourself into having some sort of service selection on the end of that. I made sure that I flew in jets, went on submarines, went and spent

six weeks with the Marines down in Quantico, did the Navy dive school in Panama City, went to minibuds out in San Diego. You're doing all these on your midship mentors? Yeah, all through the summers. And I did everything,

so that I didn't close any doors because I didn't want to, I wasn't sure exactly where I wanted to go, but I didn't want to close doors before prematurely. And, yeah, no, and when it finally came down to fall or senior year, I knew that I was like, hey, man, I'm all about going into the teams. Yeah.

And, I mean, I'd grown up here in Montana, skiing, and you know this environment out here. If you want to go outside and make a bad decision, Oh, Mother Nature is going to tune you up, right? Here's the buffet. How many bad decisions do you want to make? Yeah. And, you know, it was like a 12 and 14 year old boy coming home from school,

grabbing my 270, walking out behind the house and going and hunting for five or six hours on my own. Like, it's just, you know, like, or grabbing a shotgun and going to find grouse. I mean, like, it was just a way of life. And I knew that that transcribed well to what the teams were about. So I had to learn how to swim better. And I dedicated a lot of time to that, a lot of personal time. I was spent early in swim pools and out in the river in front of the Naval Academy on my own at 5 in the morning until I was super confident in the water. But I was ready, you know, when I went to Buds, which was in 99, basically summer 99 after graduating.

2.30s? Yeah, 228. close enough yeah close enough um yeah and then uh you know got through buds uh went to seal team eight well i started out five but they're they had a whole bunch of officers there they didn't need another one so uh a guy got hurt at seal team eight and the exo at time guy i always buy a beer for whenever i see him his name's todd vizy Todd was like hey i know Todd you know Todd you know you know Todd you would remember me but i remember Todd yeah taught and you know um uh Dietz was up here.

Yeah, Tom Deetz, yeah. Tom Deets was up here like a couple months ago. I went to my first Exo mast with him. It was awesome. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah, you're all standing out in the hallway based off of me being a fucking idiot. So the entire platoon was in the hallway getting ready to go through the chiefs board,

which led me to my exos mast and C.O's mast. It's not a big deal. And Tom popped his head out and he goes, oh, it looks like a good time for a platoon picture. Like, fucking asshole. Like the dude I'm about to go stand in front of his desk is cracking jokes. Great. Yeah. That's funny.

No, they were supportive of kicking me TDY to SEAL teammate indefinitely just so that I had gainful employment. And I wasn't sitting around rearranging the ops safe. TDY stands for temporary duty. Yep. Yep. Sorry. No acronyms here. Use as many as you want.

I just do the best to unpack them because people will like stop and just be firing away on Google. Yeah, temporary duty orders. Anyway, I was with a platoon. We were supposed to go enforce some of the oil embargoes on Iraq. You remember breaching those ships that were running the Iraq. Oil embargo was kind of about the only play in town at the time. Yeah, what do they? I mean, Arg alphas used to do a lot of those.

Specifically, Team three. Team three, Argalphas. What did they call them? Basically non-permissive boardings? Yes. And it was essentially they were doing a run. with a tanker that was full, trying to get it from one country to one that was not supposed to have oil in it, right? Yeah.

And we would, we as in the royal, we the military would board, stop and, I'm assuming, seize? I don't know what they did with the vessels. Yeah, they seized it and it got confiscated somehow. I just remember pre-net 11 guys would come back because I started at Team 5, too, and they'd come back at Team 3. They're like, it's no big deal. Yeah. Did a couple boardings. Well, and you know that.

You know the deal then. Fuck, assholes. We're not doing anything over here. It was no-mex flight suits, dive socks. The old guys were wearing UDTs, the young guys were wearing the tight black dolphin shorts. Yeah, right? Also known as Ranger Panys.

Yeah, Ranger panties. Yeah. The big deal was how many deployments somebody had been on. Yeah. And the real, real big deal was if somebody maybe tangentially had been in Somalia and dumped a guy or two. Mike Day. was still walking around like team five and I think he had a BV from Somalia that dude I'm like oh my god yeah yeah yeah walk on water uh mayo you remember mayo the the Vietnam guy it was hard as

wood woodpecker lips I got was awesome yeah um he's like 50 you do 100 pull-ups he was a stud yeah yeah he was a good dude I mean I'm not sure they were all full range of motion but I'm gonna give you know what yeah and um no so that was it um and I was we were basically in our final CQB runs, we were supposed to have probably about three weeks until we were going to deploy. 9-11 hit. And that, you know, I mean, that day everybody was like, okay, everybody's world's changed in that couple hour time period, especially for guys like us. And at that point in time, I thought it was going to change faster, if I'm being honest. Yeah, but I watched it on TV.

I was in San Diego at Team 5. I'm like, well, this is going to drastically change. And a few years later, I ended up in Afghanistan. Yeah. Well, so some of us open instantly. Some of it was. I actually, I had just screened for Development Group at the time. So I went through their selection.

And then at the end of that, we went over. But for some people, it was instantaneous. I think for everybody, though, people in the military were probably packing bags. It was just a touch premature. Yeah. I left just due the timing. I was heading over eight days after. And it took a bit for the buildup for the logistics.

You know, Damnick and the crews, like they, you know, they took over the kitty hawk and they started faster than everybody else. But yeah, it started to tangentially swing the needle that way. And then, yeah, so first appointment, and then they kind of just kept rolling from there. You know, I don't know if it was a background or a choice or whatever, but growing up here in Montana running these mountains, running up as a kid, growing up as a kid hunting and things like that, it was directly transferable to fighting in Afghanistan. So my first, like six or seven appointments were all in the gang, starting right after 9-11 there. I'm actually amazed you did that many going on the other side of the house. Yeah, well, it just... I had one deployment when I was with SDV-1.

I went out to Hawaii for a bit, and we did a deployment deep into the Pacific there with the submersibles. And then basically, as soon as we kind of got done with that project, I was immediately augmenting Damneck back out there right on the, you know, out of J-Bad. Yeah. And really, you know, I kind of ran the course on the regular side, I'd then screen for Damnick, same as you. I was behind you.

You know, I was in 08. And then after that is really when it picked up steam. Because, you know, we were four months in Afghanistan, four months training. Yeah. Four months somewhere else, whether it be Yemen, Somalia, Africa, four months training, four months to Afghanistan. So you hit that cycle for four or five years running. There's not much left in the gas tank. No.

It's like a treadmill, but it's made out of sandpaper and razor blades. It just slowly shaves away at you. Yeah, you're pretty chewed up. That's where Mick and I met. We met briefly with that seal and agency kind of project in Afghanistan. Did he write down a fax number for you and say, what are you going to do when you get out of the Navy? Yeah, no. God, dude, there was your chance.

You've got to pass that shit along. Well, we started planning what we're doing right now. The fax machine. Our fax number to be Lobo Institute. Gosh. Yeah. First off, anybody's still using a fax machine? I don't like you.

It's the government. They still use them. That doesn't surprise me. Yeah. The government still requires. My wife is a security investigator and she has to have a fax machine for the government. I mean, it's only almost 2022. Even right up with the Times, it's fine.

You could just scan it and send it. But they can take a picture and turn it into a PDF. Exactly. Yeah. No, we really met in Kenya. And from the borders of Afghanistan, we were working the Al-Qaeda and the, the al-Shabaab problem. Yep. Yep. So I'm sure you spent time, whether it was in Djibouti or Kenya or Uganda or any number of places there were. I was gone from the command before they really

were having a presence. Oh, okay. Down in the ho, down in Africa. It was all OIF, OEF for me. And then when I rotated back to Team 3, my last deployment was over to Afghanistan again. Okay. Yeah. So I did not. That was, I missed, however you would want to describe that, it didn't align with my operational career. With your timing. Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, the, uh, It would, you know, I found that it was, it was a good difference and it kept guys fresh because, I mean, how many times are you going to go to Afghanistan or how many times you're going to go back into the same, same fight in Iraq and fight for the same ground that you just did, whether 18 months ago? Or go after the same person that you did 18 months ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This time they may or may not end up back at the holding facility. but the African angle or the Yemen angle it definitely was needed for sure there was viable Al-Qaeda threats

coming out against the international community from there. So I'm definitely proud of the inroads and the things that we were able to do in those two countries on behalf of the international community. Did those threats grow out of the initial Al-Qaeda presidents, presence, presence? in Afghanistan. How do they land? Because people will ask me about this. And like, well, you know, in 20 years,

would it be accomplished, right? Like, why were we still going over there? It's hard to unpack. I mean, the easier thing to say is, hey, we haven't had another 9-11, but I think it's more nuanced than that, right? We denied them the safe haven. But we were actually so good at our job

at fine, fine, fix and finish that they realized, maybe we shouldn't get together in groups of two to six people. Maybe we shouldn't communicate these ways. So I noticed that it became much more disparate. And now if you look, what was the number, I think it was triple digits on the number of countries that U.S. Special Operations Forces, and I would have to assume other government agencies now have their operational roles in, whereas I don't think that was necessarily the case in the early 2000. So it seems like it kind of maybe pushed out a little bit, almost due to our own success. I'd agree. I mean, if you look at

the initial push into Afghanistan, which soon became just a fight against. the Taliban, right? Because Al-Qaeda hauled ass, to be honest. Some of them went to Iraq. So the northern, northeastern part of Iraq where Operation Viking Hammer happened before the war started. Those were all transplanted al-Qaeda guys

that went there because we went to Afghanistan. Yeah. And then Al-Rimi in Yemen came there because he was trained and fought alongside the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan before he left and went started al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And the guys that went to northern Iraq was Ansar al-Islam,

but eventually became al-Qaeda in Iraq, which eventually became ISIS. Yeah. That's what we would do, right? It's kind of a hybrid, you know, and I think there were some historical ties there. I mean, you know, like bin Laden had been in Sudan. Yeah.

And then he had gone from Sudan into Yemen, and then he got from Yemen into Afghanistan. So I think there were some historical ties, and there were some personalities. stayed central or dispersed to those places. And Rimi's a perfect example. I mean, you know, he, I don't know how he got rolled up in the initial, if he was rolled up in Afghanistan or where he got, he got detained. But he was detained. And then he ended up in a, in a Saudi, kind of like a reconciliation process. And he basically was a real smart guy. He's like,

yes, always check no. No, I will never do this, this, this, this, this. And it's still over time. Definitely wouldn't lie about that. Yeah, definitely wouldn't lie about that. Yeah. It's like people filling out the paperwork for buying a weapon. Are you a convicted felon? Absolutely not.

Definitely. I mean, I've actually, I asked most guns stores. I'm like, at a curiosity, in the history of you guys being open, has anybody ever checked yes to this box? Right. They're like, no. I'm like, hmm, weird. Yeah. Yeah.

You know. Yeah. But he was released from the Saudi program and three days later got in a, in a high, and drove south across the Yemen border and rolled in with AQAP. On Raleigh-Locki was one of the hardest targets we had. And he, I mean, you know, at 9-11, he was a cleric out of San Diego that was all on board for, you know, pushing the message of deradicalization and things like that. And he got disenfranchised over time and then ended up in Yemen.

But it was interesting to go from, regular kind of deployments and then into more of the the hard fight on terror and the policy things that I witnessed over this you know as a is a senior guy forward pushing for critical targets you're talking policy like the very top down yeah like DOD policy which was probably pushed down on top of them from others above the DOD yeah you know um I mean we went after on Ralaaki and he was a viable threat to the international community, there was no real way to capture him. So it was like, hey, kill him. And that was the only option for him, but that was an American citizen. So we had the targeting of American citizen with what you could debate was due process or undue process. And there were others that we would,

you'd end up rolling up that had zero affiliation with being a citizen in the United States or any country on planet Earth. They were hardened. terrorists and they had a dossier as long as your arm and all sorts of delicate abilities that they were looking to export and you'd roll them up you would you'd get what you know what valuable intel you could that was timely but the very next thing was an FBI clean team would come in and they would read them the Miranda rights so then you have a non-American citizen getting the same rights as Joe the Plummer and then they'd come back to a precinct somewhere for a court case it was meeting the same standards as you if you if you took that

you know went out and got in a DUI and hit somebody on the street so like like I mean you you saw the full spectrum out there at play and and there wasn't like nothing was set and you know the hey we're going to drive policy by PowerPoint yeah it happens you would I mean you'd have a hard problem there weren't any good solutions but you're like we're not just going to stare at fast problems. We're going to solve this. So you'd tee it up. They'd wrestle with it. Sometimes you won, sometimes you lost. But there were some really cool things that were done that don't need to see the light of day, that shouldn't see the light of day, that collectively within the teams, within those groups, guys are proud of it, and they should be proud of it. Yeah, agreed. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I think the vast majority of that stuff would be better served, and the communities would be better served themselves if it never saw the light a day. Yeah. Yeah. And there, and there, There still are a bunch of those, and it's great. I'm glad that they're there. And, you know, like in the reunions or, you know, the stunt musters or things like that, the guys that were part of those things, like, they know it, and you'll see them talking together and stuff. It's cool. There's still some good, quiet, professional pride and things going on there.

So how long did you do in the military? 22 years. So I got out in... 05, probably? Yeah. Yep, yep. So I retired as a 05, so Navy commander, right? Silver oak leaves, for those of you who are.

Yeah, silver. Yeah, there you go. And we met, we really met in Kenya, Mick and I did. And I was kind of in charge of the military side of things. He was in charge of the special activity side for the agency. And the drive was to get into Somalia, specifically in the Mogadish, get back into Moog, because we had viable al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab threats coming out of there. So we needed to get, you know, small teams in there, start developing sources,

get some actionable, you know, target of intel, and then start going after folks. The two shops didn't jive very well. So there had been some bad blood and some things kind of done before us. And in the first week, Mick was like, hey, man, he's like, do you run? And I was like, yeah, sure, you know, I run. I stay in shape. And he's like, well, every Friday we usually run through some of these rainforests and stuff right here outside the embassy. And then afterwards we have a beer.

And I was like, all right, yeah, I'll run with you on Friday. And we just kind of started doing that. Through the course of it, we were able to break down the walls between the two offices and get the two offices actually pulling in the same direction. And it kind of just created some energy there. And then our conversations went beyond Somalia and then kind of beyond government service. And then that's where we really started coming up with the idea of Lobo Institute. And, you know, a conflict resolution company, take our experiences and background and start to use them in places where people typically don't have the perspectives of a former agency or, you know, kind of a higher-end soft DOD type perspective.

perspective. So that turned into Lobo Institute and we decided that I was just like, hey man, I was like, I'm all about this. I'll take my post-government life, dedicate to it. You know, we have similar vision, similar goals. We can work well together. I'm like, I've got to be out of this small town in northwest Montana. And he's like, you understand I'm from Georgia, right? At the time, you're like, hmm, I don't know about this. But now you're probably like, well, I grew up all over. But my wife is, from a very small town in South Georgia. That might have been the hard sell portion of that. You think it would be, but she's all in now. Isn't it interesting how interpersonal bullshit could take very too high-level government organizations and completely stymie and limit their operational ability because of two personalities that probably,

what really was happening, two people and their egos started fighting like fucking Rams in Glacier National Park and they're like, yeah, we're not going to do shit. And in doing so, Al-Qaeda's like, this is awesome, we're just like cruising around. Right, yeah. Yeah, I think that probably happens often, unfortunately.

Yeah. As you were saying that, it reminded me because, I mean, human beings are super sloppy. This is the opinion that I've come to. And I come to that opinion, mostly just by looking at myself in the mirror, I'm like, oh, you're a hot mess today. but everybody's a hot mess.

If you can detain your shit though and try to do well with other people and they're like oh god man I came from a community of people that were probably hot messes that were interfacing with other communities of people that were hot messes and they have these conflicts

and it puts up walls. It's amazing how much effectiveness you can reduce by not being able to work with each other like you just like you guys said that by that interpersonal connection which started with running you were able to probably

an order of magnitude greater increase what both of your agencies were able to do or organizations were able to do in that area. Yeah. Yeah, there was a couple significant ones there. Some of them were about getting after some, we're not supposed to swear on your podcast, right? It's the internet. Have you not listened? I've already swore many times.

I think I said assail already. Yeah. Yeah, no, there's some real grade A assholes in there. and they were totally intent on running some suicide bombers into the 2012 Olympics. So, yeah, we just smack those guys. Not going to tolerate that. What do you say to people, I know what my answer is to this, what do you say to people when they tell you that that's, you know,

do you guys ever take the time to explore other solutions? Why can't you just capture those people and then re-educate them? I would absolutely be more prone. and supportive of capturing them because you get a lot more information. And it just makes you tear that network apart all the faster. Would you let them go? No, I would not. And I love where you're going to this.

So in fact. I mean, because we're talking about ideologies at this point. No. This is a gap that a lot of people, and I'm so thankful, they have a hard time mentally walking across is because they've never looked in the whites of the eyes of somebody who believes at a level that they would rather fucking skin you alive for your beliefs and destroy everything that you stand for. I'm all about rehabilitation and I'm all about ethics, but there are some solutions, or there are some problems, I should say, where the only solution is actually taking the piece off the chessboard. And I am a very, very, very, very open person.

Very similar to you as you were like, you know, we were going back forth about either like vaccines or other things. here pre-podcast and uh the only people that i have no tolerance for are the intolerant if their only solution is that you're going to live by my way by i dictate or else i'm gonna i'm either going to enslave you or i'm going to behead you or i'm going to you know whatever the is whatever the al-Qaeda intolerance is okay then i'll come find you yeah we'll deal with you yeah um And as the war on terror continue to evolve, that was the hardest crux of the problem is, okay, so what is the ultimate disposition of, you know, 16 guys that you roll up in Somalia that were intent on doing this? Or what's the long-term solution to? I mean, right now, there's all sorts of, there's thousands of incarcerated ISIS soldiers being held in.

non- like sanctioned prisons in northern Syria by a non-internally recognized national force, the Kurds. I mean like basically the international community is paying them to run a penal system indefinitely with no ultimate disposition for these guys. They can't be interviewing or back into the society. They have no viability. There's no judicial system. Like what are you going to do of them. Yeah, if they get back on the street, I think all three of us know exactly what they're going to stand by. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, well, they're going to act in accordance with their beliefs. Right. We just saw it. So, I mean, to Oly's point, I would say, if the person has substantial information, we want to kill them. We want to capture them because of the substantial information they

have, right? Then we want to kill them. Yeah, well, okay. Then we could try them and kill them. That's my inside voice coming out. That's what I want to do. I'm not saying that's a policy decision. There should be a process. There should be a process. Yeah, there's a process. But the problem, but just to, to highlight something that just happened. So when the Taliban took back over, they let out every guy that we caught. One of them killed 13 service members before we departed. In a matter of days.

In a matter of days. So which you end up with an incarcerated terrorist usually don't end up with a reformed person. Let's just be honest. You end up with somebody who's willing to go out and commit a suicide attack. Or you end up somebody who comes out so hyper, conform to their way of believe in.

They become Baghdaddy and start ISIS. I mean, most all of the senior al-Qaeda, ISIS, terrorist leaders come out of incarceration, and they were caught and put in their body. So there's no either answer. I mean, I can point out the problems. The answers aren't that easy. I think the answers are also enduring. It's an evolving problem because people, like you said, can go in maybe less radicalized.

and then leave extremely radicalized, and that's a matter of months, years, decades. And the belief system has structured because what did it start off with, right? Al-Qaeda, then ISIS. Well, it really started with the Muslim Brotherhood. Sure. It was the root of Al-Qaeda.

Point being is that it's evolved over time. And as has our response to it, has our tactics and all of those things. The solution and the potential responses or the problem and the potential responses to that. I'm not going to call them a solution. And they're both evolving and complex. Yeah, and you could say we've become very good at finding these people, these threats, eliminating the threats.

But at the same time, we've got to be honest. So ISIS started, as the name implies, in Iraq and Syria. Now it's in some 30 countries. ISIS exists. And it's spreading across Northern Africa right now like a fire. It's, I mean, the toxic ideology we haven't defeated, and one could even say, say, in fact, I don't know anybody that wouldn't after the fall of Afghanistan. They consider himself winning.

Yeah. And they have an objective, empirical way to show that they're winning, right? They're taking over more countries than they were when al-Qaeda started exponentially. They've taken back over Afghanistan and kicked out another world power. So it's, I mean, this is something that I always thought, you know, do pull. Police officers sit around and really talk about the end of crime? No, I don't think so. That's their job is to keep dealing with the effects of crime.

We've got to stop acting like we're going to just end terrorists. It's not going to happen. We might want it to happen. We might declare fake victory or say we've ended the war, but they haven't decided that they're going to end the war. So, you know, I think we have to endure and just prepare to be fighting this in perpetuity if need be. Because if we keep talking about ending it, then it,

gives them more and more hope to keep fighting. Yeah, it's a great academic exercise, but I think it fails outside of those constraints. It does the solutions they fail in their real world execution. I think oftentimes they can throw gas on that fire. Well, what we do is we end up throwing everything at it. So instead of taking units like the units we all came from and saying a portion of you guys are just going to fight terrorists, it's just your lot in life. We throw 160,000 troops into Afghanistan. And then we wonder why we lose thousands of servicemen and women and spend trillions of dollars.

Yeah. Well, the solution would be somewhere down on the lower end, take special units, intelligence, and military, and dedicate them to fighting terrorists around the world. Yeah. And just accept that, you know, they're not going to quit. So if we quit and then something blows up in Times Square, what we put as fifth in a national security strategy, will then be one because Americans get pissed off when the foreign entity comes in and kills a bunch of Americans.

So, I mean, for my two cents, the way we have fought this has not been the most effective. Do you think that the leadership realized it was trending in the wrong direction and they just doubled down? And I ask that, and I'm very interested in your guys' thoughts on Afghanistan in general, because I think you guys saw that world from a very different perspective than I did. I had no experience with strategic or operational warfare. I had a set of, well, I was going to say boots, but they were, they were solomons. They were fucking awesome.

They were green, Gortex. Yeah, and I went through like four pair of deployment. They were 100% consumable. Yeah. Just like, keep giving me those. But that's what I know. And I had the experiences that I had. I wasn't in the meetings that were hired.

I've never been in a policy decision. I would love to have been fly on the wall at some of these meetings. that I hope that were had, where they discussed the cost of human capital and going into these countries and what's it going to take and what might me lose and all of those things. And I suspect, you know, you being on the O side of the house, you being on the very high level side of the house at OGA that you were exposed to a greater, a great, your optic was larger, as it should be. Because mine, I was like, hey, I mean, it's a crude description, but like wind up and point in the right direction.

That was my job. I wasn't responsible for human. or Sagan or develop. And everyone went down those paths. I was just like, cool. I got all my shit. And ready to go. Here I'm getting on, you know, Black Hawk number three.

Sweet. That's when I'm going to go. And this is I know my compound and I know my role. So I have my perspective on Afghanistan, which is largely based on interfacing with the partner force that we were working with. They're constantly shifting after leaving the command, the constantly shifting guidance. That almost seemed like it was a flag in the wind. But that's it.

I'm curious as to your guys' thoughts on that area of the world, seeing it from a different perspective. Because your optic, I feel like, was a couple rungs above mine. And I don't necessarily have the opportunity to ask people about that. So the strategy of Afghanistan, like by the time that we finally left, I think we would be hard pressed to find somebody in the military or even leadership that would really put their back against the wall and say, hey, the way we've been fighting this for the last 10 years is the way to go.

Yeah. So why the fuck were we fighting it like that for the last 10 years? Where did it come that we doubled down on something? Or did they not realize that it was what we were doing was not the most effective? What are your guys' thoughts on that? There's a couple here. So there's quite a bit to kind of unpack there. Absolutely have seen the making or the breaking of policy in crisis and in deliberate times. for Afghanistan in particular to mix point on the perpetuity thing do we still have people deployed to Kosovo yeah yes we saw people deployed to Japan and Korea yes and Germany and Germany so my answer to

or my response when that is well you know is this a forever war sorry but if you look at history for the United States, they've all been forever worse. Especially the ones we've won. Especially the ones we've won. We don't have a bit of the matter is that right before pulling out, we were at like 2,500 people. It was 2,500 people that were basically loading bombs on aircraft, the Gannies were doing

the fighting and the dying. And we've all experienced the corruption of the Afghan system and you can see the frustrations in it. And it's hard for you as an American soldier. to go over their time again and again and again and continue to see the corruption and things like that. But at the end of the day, they were the ones that were doing the dying. We weren't dying anymore. There had been, I think, one American killed in like the last 18 months up until the point that we pulled out. So was that sustainable?

Yes. Was that the backbone that gave them the will to fight? It was. So to say that that was a forever war and that those, that investment of 2,500 people, which isn't even a blip on the radar when it comes. to a military exercise in like the South Pacific was unsustainable no that's a political decision that is not a practical decision so and then okay so let's say it's not about the people then it must be about the money so let's talk about the

fiscal aspect real quick okay because because this is how you're gonna deal with the government you're gonna deal with them with the money yeah so I'm sure they kept track of every penny we walked away we we walked away and left them $83 billion worth of equipment. The Taliban is the most substantial. They basically generationally leapt ahead. 83 billion. They're one of the most well-armed militaries in the region now.

So Mick and I have written a couple of papers that have been published, whether it be in the media or out of global institute, or we also work for a think tank called the Middle East Institute. We've written a couple papers on this, and I don't know where the root of the problem is. I would probably guess it's in the the coziness of our defense industry with policy, but we're selling F-16s to Iraqis that sit on the tarmac when ISIS rolls by in Hylux trucks with AKs and smoke checks the whole Iraqi army, Blitzkriegs across Iraq.

That was a tough video to watch. Yeah. Now, and I was in Jordan at the time, 90 miles from it, watching the watch. the whole thing as I was actually TDIWI from anyway. And now we did the exact same thing, right? I mean, we've got Black Hawk helicopters. We've got all these sophisticated weaponry systems that they work, yeah, tanks, they work well in our style of fighting,

but it did nothing for the Gannies against Taliban, right? So, and now the ultimate irony, which honestly I kind of, I kind of enjoy, Pakistan harbored these assholes And they supplied them And they gave them until the whole way through this whole thing I mean the Prince of Al Qaeda Was basically two miles away from West Point Their equivalent of West Point

They didn't know that They didn't know that There's no way they could have known that Bin Laden was hiding by their West Point And there was only an ISI officer That would make them the worst intelligence service in the world Yeah so We all know they're not

But now You know what's crazy is that it's like there's really nobody that actually addressed that. It just was like swept over. Yeah. Yeah. And I understand that there's like geopolitical consequences and actually being very transparent with that.

But yeah. The number one dude, the U.S. is looking for us two fucking miles from your West Point. Yeah. And how much taxpayer dollars went to Pakistan to help us find the person? Yeah. One might actually be a conspiracy here at this and say maybe they didn't want to find them if we kept paying them money to find him. But now you have an extraordinarily well-armed proxy on their border that they were supportive of when it was convenient for them.

But now they, like, if they don't keep this tiger by the tail, this well-armed machine's going to go back. Yeah, they put the gun's back at them. Oh, yeah. They could have created their own issues. But the other irony is we went to Afghanistan because Taliban Harbored Al-Qaeda. And we went and we smoked checked them. They went across the border. and then we've been dealing with the Taliban

and whether it's counterinsurgency or general force and you know it's ebden flowed the whole time and we expedited the evacuation out of there because we were under threat of terrorist attack from ISIS yeah right so I mean like the entire thing of it and you know through drone warfare and things like that hey I've mowed the lawn you can be an eternal greenskeeper from somewhere outside of a country. But it's only so good.

And even when you are doing that day after day after day after day after day, the odds of them getting one through is high. So, you know what I mean? Personally, I hate to be a pessimist on this, but I'm not going to be surprised when the international community, and by international I mean something in kind of the Western world, I discount, you know, Pakistan and India in this prediction. But either something in the EU or, you know, probably in Africa or in the Americas is going to go boom.

And it's going to emanate from Afghanistan. I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is I've heard this comment made and I've received messages saying, hey, well, now that we have won the war, you know, do we need to continue doing X, Y, or Z. see. And it's an interesting, it's an interesting idea to unpack because you can think all you want to that you're not at war. Everybody in the first world or the free world, whatever you want to describe it, you can think that you're not at war. That doesn't mean that those who have the opposite opinion of you feel the same way. So all you're doing is operating from a disadvantage. You can't unilaterally declare the war over. Yeah. If that was the case, we should have done it in World War II before we lost so many people, right?

I mean, people need to wrap their heads around the concept that there will always be, regardless of what your belief is. If you're an ex-person, I'm sorry, there's white people out there. And some of those white people are motivated enough that they want to come and find you. Pretending that they don't exist is analogous to just driving your head into the sand. It doesn't solve the problem.

But to your, on your question, Andy, about the kind of the policy, big policy. You know, until I actually was in that policy position, which was only for two years. So I'm no expert. but I have at least that experience, which was pretty intense time. I always thought, you know, if I was making policy of only, you know, you can be careful what you ask for, right?

Because you get up there and you find out it's pretty hard. Yeah. You know, it is, there's a lot of really difficult problems out there of which you get, and you have to do it interagency, right? So I represented the Defense Department, but you also have the State Department. You have the IC, which doesn't actually contribute to the policy decisions. They just set the facts. That's the intelligence community.

Right, the intelligence community. They're not supposed to advocate for a policy position, but they're just supposed to basically lay out the facts and at least what they can do. Informed decisions. Formed decisions. But you have Treasury, you have obviously the White House, and now the National Security Council itself actually became almost like a policy entity in and of itself. and it's not really what it's supposed to do or historically hasn't been. So I found out it was a much difficult,

much more difficult than I thought. And I would say, although you think you can just go up there and because of your experience, you would know how to make good policy. It's not necessarily true. There's a whole professional core of people who do that. So I learned that.

But I also would like to put a pitch, especially for the guys and your gals and your audience, who are in the national security field, whether they're in the military or the agency or state department. You know, don't forget our diplomats in this. They're out there, you know, all over the world. Well, it takes them all too.

Takes them all. Yep. That before they get out, if they have an opportunity to do a policy job, a lot of them might, like, no, I'm going to Montana. I don't want to go sit in D.C. for another two years because they just don't like the political aspect of it. But I would say that their voice needs to be heard

because although there's a professional cadre of policy people, a lot of them come out of think tanks when their teams, so to speak, is in charge and they go back when it's not. But having that injection of the military officer or the CIA officer, I think really helps because policies have to be viewed in what's actually practically possible. And that's like a super key point. you would see policies taking shape and coming out that you could never meet. As a practitioner on the ground, with tens of thousands of millions of dollars of equipment and people's lives in your hand, and you're trying to support as best you can, and you're never going to be able to connect that.

Or the vice versa. Hey, I know that we can get this done. We can actually get this done in under six months. Do you want us to crack Al-Shabab? We can crack Al-Shabaab in under six months. It would not be that hard. but you can't get the policy to get you there. To line up, yeah.

And that's part of where we've tried to help get Lobo Institute. You know, like as an institution for conflict resolution, you know, we deliberately went after opportunities to align our perspectives with, you know, people like the United Nations. We consult. We were consultants for them. Yeah. You know, and how many former, you know, folks with us. our backgrounds do you see run around in the circles of the UN?

I'll just give you a guess. They never invited me to a meeting so I haven't been able to take a towel. Yeah. You know, so like specifically, God bless it. They're great. Yeah. You know, so it was stuff like that. But that air gap in policy or capability.

Yeah. And when you miss it and it's then you, then you're, you know, you're already sitting the table and you're not going to be able to make it come about. So, yeah, it's, I don't know what the solution is. Well, I mean, we're going to make mistakes as a country, that's for sure. Sometimes we're a little harsher on ourself than I think we need be. I mean, there's not a whole lot of countries that are going out and doing, like, let's flip the, you know, flip the table a little bit. The United States spends more time, effort, and money helping other people around the world than any other country in the world, period.

You know, if it pisses me off about. We never give our country that credit it deserves. quite frankly. Or people will change the narrative and say, well, that's just the U.S. acting very imperialist. We're just trying to exert our will around the world. I've actually heard quite a few people describe it as that. Well, maybe the U.S.

We're too meddling. Maybe if we didn't meddle, people would leave us alone. That's the other side of that coin that I hear people say. It's possible, but you never hear that from the people were actually helping, right? So if there's another country that's flying helicopters into a remote place in Pakistan because they had a massive earthquake and the government,

I'm not picking on Pakistan, this could be anywhere, it's the U.S. military, right? So if you look at across the board, the country that spends the most, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't. I'm just saying that sometimes Americans should say, actually, we do a lot for the world.

And if it wasn't for us addressing a lot of these problems, they'd be coming to roost in a lot of our key partners countries, right? Yeah. So it's important. And I think a lot of this is coming to roost in some of our key partners countries because they do have a more hands-off policy. Right. I have, as I'm sure you guys do, I'll say broadly Europe.

But let's just say that there are areas where Europeans don't really go, where they're living by their own set of rules and their own set of laws. And occasionally it'll make the news because of things that come out of those organizations. And they're afraid to go in there, not organizations, areas. They're afraid to go in there because they're going to be viewed as meddling. It's like, fuck, do you want to be proactive or reactive? Right. I mean, you know, you might make the news either way. I guess you had to choose.

The United States, I think, should be the leader of the world. I should say the free countries is a world. Should be a leader. Maybe not the leader, but a leader. Because if you're not a leader, you're going to be led. So unless we want to have an isolationist and just bunker up in our own country, which you cannot do economically, that ship has sailed. You need to be engaged in the world.

And the United States, I think we've done a lot more good than harm. I think we're very willing to self-criticize herself, which is a good thing. But I don't see a lot of other countries stepping up to take that spot, you know, if we didn't do it. So we're always going to have critics, and that's okay, and we should listen to them, to be frank. But the United States has done a lot in the world and continues to do a lot. And, you know, as far as policy when it comes to the conflict that we've had over the last 20 years, we've made mistakes. But instead of just thrown in the towel, I think we should just learn from the mistakes and go forward based on those lessons learned. Do you mind if we take a little bit of a right turn?

Go for it. Okay. So one thing that's kind of rubbed and I wrong has been the way that we've, you know the deal. I mean, you can take six, eight operators and go in, and we can train a force for eight, 10, 12 weeks, and then we'll take 200 trained folks to a certain level, put them into a conflict area, and they can really change a lot of stuff, right? So you can have a big impact with a small investment of people. And, you know, with the way that we left, the Syrian, the SDF, Syrian Democratic forces in Syria and Iraq, I mean, we basically, they had 11,000 people get chewed up as we kept our soft advisors kind of behind them. They did the main lifting. We were directing the airstrikes and giving them critical combat support.

There's that. There's the way we've left the Afghanis. It's kind of left a bit of a bad taste in our mouth. And because it's going to be really hard for that seal lieutenant in five years or that Marine captain or that Army SF captain to go convince a partner force that it's in their best interest to help the United States down the road now, right? Yeah. Yeah, we didn't really leave any of these tables set very well.

Right. But if you look back in the history, Missoula is about 95 miles south of us right here from the flag, right? Yes. And so if you go to the, if you go to the farmer's market on Friday in central Missoula, Friday or Saturday, you're going to find that there are like two-foot zucchinis.

He's going somewhere with this. I'm going somewhere with this. Just stay with me. And these really big tomatoes and this kind of stuff. Do you know who's selling that at the farmer's market? No idea. I think I know where you're going, but I'll let you finish it off. It's their Hmong mountain people from Laos, and they were resettled in Missoula because they fought for the United States on the Loation side of the border and during Vietnam.

One of the most pivotal guys that lived to them for five years grew up in Helmville, which is on the Blackfoot River, north of Missoula. And then he was a smoke jump route in Missoula. and him, my dad, about a handful of other smoke jumpers were recruited by the agency, sent over to Laos, and they went and ran resupply missions of rice and arms and things and flew them in and dropped them into those militia forces that the agency case officers or the early ground brancher guys were tied with.

So Jerry fought with those guys and lived with them for five years. He's from Missoula. And when the fall of Vietnam occurred, and they knew that the communists were just going to go mow down all those mong jerry was like you guys got to get to thailand you guys get to thailand i'm going to come there and i'm going to get you out so he came back to thailand into the refugee camps and the people that were loyal and fought with them he was like i know where i can keep you safe and he put him back in missoula montana right and these are super productive members of the american society now

So we're actually in the process of doing a documentary on this, right? Like small town boys from Texas, Idaho, Alaska, Montana in the early 60s, become smokejumpers that then end up undercover and on the ovation side of the border, supporting these natives fighting on America's behalf. And instead of leaving them high and dry, like we've done with the SDF and now we've done with the Gannies, dude like they saw it through they they they kept their word and they and they did resettle them and you know we interviewed um one of the first mong that jerry brought back to the u.s and uh i i don't know his real name but he goes by nicknames classic worm and and jerry nicknamed everybody

um but uh let's be honest you probably couldn't have said their actual names the nicknames are just easier yeah yeah for an expedient way Right. So we interviewed Worm for this documentary that we're doing. And it's the second kind of documentary that we've been doing under Loewens Institute. And when we interviewed Worm, he was so proud. And he's like, look, he's like, you know, he's like, I've done what I can. And he's a successful businessman. He lives in Burbank, North Carolina. Super successful. In California now. But his, he has two kids. One of them just got selected as a lead engineer to work on. NASA's Mars program. So just a classic underachiever. Yeah, classic underachiever. Great American story.

It's amazing. And then the other one is a super successful doctor, cutting edge doctor. I think out of either out of Harvard, MIT. So they're milking the most out of what the United States has to offer. Great American story. Yeah, within a generation, you know. So I mean, I get it, you know.

I'm not super enthused with the way that we've, you know, pulled out of Afghanistan either. I would have been like, hey, take it from 2,500 people to 5,000 and actually do it right. Yep. But keep dropping the bombs and sustaining the will to fight because this is a way that we end wars in America. I wouldn't have pulled this out. So, but we have. And there's a lot of those folks. I mean, man, I had.

I had Gany's shot on the left and right of me. I had an interpreter one night that stood up in the middle of a firefight trying to get us to stop because it was Afghan police and they didn't know who we were. And he was trying to de-escalate the situation. And they started open up on us and we had to shoot them. And it was bad. And I watched that guy stand on top of a rock in the middle of an intense firefight

and yell and scream, yell and scream, and he actually saved a lot of their lives. And a lot of them did. They save a lot of guys we know and including ourselves. So they do get a bad rap, right? 66,000 Afghans died fighting the Taliban. Yeah. They collapsed, but they collapsed mostly because we set them up to really rely on air.

And then we took all the air away and we told the contractors that couldn't even stay to support their air. So we shouldn't have been surprised when they, when they. Well, and I don't think people understand how they were necessarily utilized. Like my experience is more along the lines of interpreters, specifically at the command. Right. And we would surround buildings, and these dudes would walk up to the front door unarmed and knock on it. Right. With the intent of trying to keep everybody in that building as safe as possible in case we were at the wrong place, which, of course, would never happen.

Damn those into, guys. Fuck me. Bad intent. Yeah. I mean, we would show up at a place almost every night, not sure it was all. always the right place. Yeah. But the things that we would ask them to do were things that I think a lot of American soldiers would cringe at because they would feel so uncomfortable and so at risk. And then my partner force with the A&A or the A&P, the Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police,

kind of kind of different in a degree. And there's also, it's a spectrum, you know, of what we asked of them. Some of the A&A and A&P, people have that. ask me, what are your thoughts about Afghanistan? And my personal thoughts, and I'd be interested to hear your gentleman's thoughts on this on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, was that we probably should have left 10 years ago. But if we had left 10 years ago, what happened probably still would have happened. And if we leave in 10 years, if we could roll the clock forward 10 years, it probably would have happened then as well. But I think either way we could have executed it in a manner that was so much more effective and actually honoring the contract that we made with these people

to put their life on the line that oftentimes saved American lives. And I don't want to discount somewhere, and I can't put my finger on it, and maybe you can, Andy, somewhere between 2004 and 2007, that policy went from a, if it's CT, we were clean on that mission a long time ago. C.T. is counterterrorism. counterterrorism. And we could have stayed on the counterterrorism, but it could have, but if you want to use the analogy of a tree, we had already cut it down. And at that point, we were flicking off leaves. Yeah. You know, yeah. But I'd agree with what Eric said before. I mean, we could have kept a very small force. I agree. You know, what we're calling a residual force. But we didn't have to, like, have it go like a mountain and then all the way down and then keep a residual force. We never had to be up here. Yeah. We never had to have a hundred and, I think, we're going. I think, we didn't have to. I think. We didn't. I think. We didn't. We didn't. I think. We didn't. We didn't. We didn't. I It was 130,000 troops with Marines actually taking Helmand Province, you know, not not a partner force.

Yeah. Right. So if we didn't have, if we didn't do that, it would have been a different conversation. So if we had fought, if we would have taken over, toppled the Taliban, gave them a shot at a, at a government that they actually chose instead of wasn't forced on them, and let the international community, us just being a part of it, help build the country, but not not to the point of trillions of dollars, whatever the international community was willing to spend. But we just kept a small, soft, based, intel-based with some conventional Marines or soldiers,

Rangers to back us up. We could have maintained a much smaller footprint. We would have lost very, much less people. And it would have cost us. And we probably, American probably would have forgot we've been there. Yeah, you would have lost, a lot of Afghans would have lost their lives fighting the Taliban. But that's Afghans fighting for their country. Yes. And if they don't have the will to do that, I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you.

But they did have the way when we were there. People just look at after we just, and we didn't even include them on the negotiations for departure. So the idea we basically bailed from Boggham. If the news reports are correct from what I saw where they basically bailed in the middle of the night and said nothing and the looters were the first people to find that. Like whose fucking decision was that? Well, we also made an agreement with the Taliban in Doha without even including the government of Afghanistan. So they felt. completely discarded. And we could have maintained a small presence. It wouldn't have been perfect, but you know, it's Afghanistan's not gonna be perfect. That they already's proven they had the will to fight when we were there with the enablers, like aircraft,

soft when we needed, but you know, not in the front. As advisors. As advisors, Intel, to help tell them what's going on out there. And we could have been there for quite a long time. And I think we would have different discussion. We decided to throw all in, spend trillions of dollars, And then we had to debate whether we should have spent trillion dollars after we already spent it. And then we decided we shouldn't have, so let's just leave.

And so we all that, everything that we fought for is gone. The Taliban's taken back over. They've proven to be the exact same organization they were before. They're already housing terrorist organizations who've already killed Americans. And even the intel community came out a couple weeks ago and said both ISIS K and al-Qaeda in Iraq will have the capacity to launch attacks against the United States within one. to two years. You meant Afghanistan there? Yeah, you said Iraq, but he means ISIS K and Al Qaeda and Afghanistan.

ISIS K and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan will have the capacity to attack the United States in one to two years. And they exist only to do attacks. So the idea we think they're not going to, if they can, is if that's where we're hosting our national security policy on, we got a problem. Because that is completely reliant on a terrorist group, not to. to do what is actually the only purpose of their existence. So. And they're really pretty open about what they do. Yeah.

Yeah. They're not hiding it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like we didn't do that the first time. Okay. You got one over on us.

Good job. Imagine the difference, you know, of all the equipment and material and the infrastructure building that we did had we gone the route of the smaller forest. Say to throw a number out there and have no idea if this is correct. Call it 10,000 on that. the high end, just the difference in equipment left behind, the landscape, the cost, like you already said, it would be such a different conversation. Yeah, absolutely.

Because if we have to go back now, say in one or two years, al-Qaeda or ISIS, who's competing to do a more substantial attack against this, right, does it a substantial attack. We're going to go back and, like Oli already pointed out, we're going to have to fight our way back in with the Taliban that is $83 billion worth of our equipment for Erronic Latvia. 14,000 sets of night vision. Seriously? Yeah.

You and I both know what that means, right? Yeah. Yeah, we do. The technological advantage on the battlefield makes a massive difference. Saves lives. And that, what you're talking about, them having access to those MVGs. I don't care. They're probably gen 3, gen 4.

I mean, they're good enough that it's going to level the playing field. And it'll have a substantial difference. Yeah. Yeah. Toad artillery. Yeah. Yeah, that's what we got out of deciding that we didn't want to do it anymore. We were declaring the end to the war.

It was more of a surrender, for being honest. What year did Bush declare the combat operations were over on that fucking aircraft carrier? That was for Iraq. That was for Iraq just to give him a little. Was that in 2005? Well, it's not like they really ended after he said that anyway. Well, look, we take Iraq, for example, right? So we decided to leave in 2011.

Did we though? Did we? Oh, we did leave. Yeah, a lot of people left. Yeah. We had to go back because it turns out that the Iraqi army wasn't really ready to take on ISIS when they, and then by 2013, 2014, ISIS had taken over Mosul to create. We had to put together an 80 nation coalition to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. It was about the size of West Virginia worth of territory that ISIS had completely controlled.

controlled. So if you want to, if you're really wondering, like, what happens when the United States just decides that they don't want to do it anymore? Well, that's it. Yeah. And in Afghanistan, it happened almost instantaneously. So Taliban took back over immediately and, and terrorist organizations obviously operate freely there. The decision to leave Iraq, do you think that the people that made that decision truly believed that the Iraqis were ready? Or do you think that they realized it's either now or never? We are they're going to commit to this on the long haul, and we're going to have to fight that political battle, or we're going to pull chocks and it is what it is. I would hope they thought the Iraqis could handle it, because if they thought, hey, let's pull out, the Iraqis will get annihilated, and then we'll have to go back in there. I mean, that would be, I don't think they, I hope they wouldn't do that. I would hope that's what they thought to, if I'm being totally honest, I have my doubts. It could be.

You know, maybe they just decided to, like we did in Afghanistan, just kind of wipe her hands clean and just walk out and hope the best happens and the best usually doesn't happen when you do that. One could argue whether we should have gone on the war in Iraq in the first place, but that's another conversation. Yeah, for sure. No, I was just going to say, so if I, you know, is the common denominator in these two decisions, the Afghanistan and the Iraq decision, is it, is it politics? Is that the common denominator? Well, again, I only, my life in both of those environments was it existed at a very myopic scope of day by day. This is what we are being, this is the lines of battle that we are going to pursue.

This is, you know what I mean? We're going to try to assist these battle space commanders by achieving these objectives. I didn't see it upstream. I didn't see what they were getting briefed and upstream from that and what they were getting briefed or the decisions or the policies that were being made. I don't know if it's political. I don't know if the military leaders at the top realize like, fuck, we either stay forever or we cut our losses and we leave.

now. That's what I'm saying. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in some of these decisions to actually hear what is discussed. So I can tell you as being there. The military has a predominant voice in there, the uniform military. Obviously, the policy people are the ones that make the policy. But every meeting I went to, I had a counterpart from a joint staff. So they're not there to present or promote a policy. But they're there to say, yeah, that can't be done. Or that can be done. Or that could be done, but it's going to take this, this, and this. So there is a predominant voice of the uniform military and of the CIA, the other action component, basically, of the U.S.

They don't promote, like, I think we should invade Iraq, but they're there to say, it'll take this many troops. We present that it'll cost this much, we'll lose this, you know, estimates. They are there to say that. And that's part of the discussion. I can tell you that for sure. Who are the decision makers in that room? So if they're there to provide information, who is making the informed decisions? So it's an interagency policy.

It's called the policy coordination board, right? So that's at a lower level than you have where I was, which is kind of the deputy assistance level. Then you have the deputies and then you have the principals. So you're secretary defense, secretary of state, et cetera. And then, of course, the president's there. then it becomes what's called the actual NSC, the National Security Council. And so that's how the decisions made. A lot of decisions are made at a lower level that just don't matter as long as all the agencies agree,

then it can be made at my level or the level I used to be in. If you don't agree that it has to go up and it keeps going up until there's agreement in some form before it has to hit the president because you certainly don't want him or her to have to make every decision when it comes to national security. Probably the least qualified person to make that decision. Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes, yeah. I mean, fuck.

I understand they have the most powerful officer desk in the land, but that doesn't mean they're an expert. Not necessarily. Yeah. And that's why I worry less about who sits in the seat and more about the team that they bring with them and how they utilize that team. Sure.

And I think, yes, there's, and we don't do politics, but there's political considerations at play, of course. Can't take that out. But there's also very informed decisions with the military, the uniformed military, and the intelligence community. That's also an aspect of it too. And sometimes you just get it wrong. You know, I mean, but I think the process,

if it works the way intended, is probably the best process we could have. You have to sit there face-to-face in a table like this and make your point. and that's the way it should be. Because whenever you separate people, all of a sudden, they get, you know, they get in transient. It's a lot easier to be really argumentative over email. For sure.

It's like we're sitting right here. So where do you think the decision was made to just immediately, I'm going to describe it as eject from Afghanistan? So that's a good point because, you know, the entire military chain of command testified, which unusual, that they disagreed with it. So from General Millie, who is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs Staff, General McKenzie to General Miller, I don't know if he testified, but even Secretary Austin said, as Oly said, we should have kept around 5,000. Yeah.

And they were all unanimous with it. And they, I mean, it took them to bring them in under testimony and under oath to get that from them. Yeah. But that's where they were. And that was the advice and that was their position when it came into the National Security Council. And that was their position in the previous administration, because that's when I was there. Yeah.

They were unanimous. And at the time, it was Secretary Esper. He agreed. All the ones I just named all said, keep a residual force. Keep what we fought for for the last 20 years. Understand it might have been perfect, but leaving isn't going to make any of that change. And then they were also, to your other point, how we actually executed the evacuation. in many ways was a national embarrassment.

I don't use that. Yeah. Well, so how does it go from the military experts on the ground who are living and breathing, oftentimes probably with boots on the ground, unanimously recommending a course of action that is ignored? Who, where, in the pyramid leading to the top, where does somebody say, I hear what you're saying, but we're going a different direction? I think that happened at the White House.

I worked, and again, I'm not partisan. I worked with a lot of the transition with a new income, and they're a lot of friends of mine. I can't speak for them. I'm certainly not going to use their names, but I don't know anybody that thought not leaving a residual force in Afghanistan was a good idea. And I really don't know anybody that thought like turning over Bogram before evacuating U.S. citizens, diplomats. Essentially, we sent our military home before we sent our diplomats, American citizens, and IV holders. So by doing that, we ended up in Kabul surrounded by the Taliban, who we've been fighting for 20 years, who had zero interest, especially on the troop level, like the Taliban soldier level, of doing anything that we wanted them to do.

So it was, I think it will go down as, as a, you know, people will point at the military. My understanding is they were given a cap of people. And within that cap, you could not have kept over Bogram. So I don't know, but I don't think any military uniform member suggested in any way that we would have closed Bogram before we evacuated the diplomatic mission. It makes no sense whatsoever. I think they were told you have this many uniform troops you can have on the ground. That's it. And it just was not enough.

And probably a date to have them off the ground as well. Exactly. Yeah. So let's hypothesize. Well, I'll phrase a question which will probably require a hypothesis to A. answer. If it goes to the White House and they are the ones who are saying, hey, listen, Roger, that input is received, whether or not we take it, that's our decision. The decision to leave that country then, would it be a safe hypothesis to say that that decision was

politically motivated versus anything else? You know, I think it would be impossible to say that any major decision by any president would not have a political aspect to it. That's fair. So, Yes. I think it was. And, you know, to be fair, again, I'm not a political person. Ironically, even though I disagree with the current president's decision to withdraw and the way he to withdraw, he was one of the proponents for what Eric and I have been proponent would say. Right. He was one of the say, keep a small force. Don't try to rebuild the entire country or actually build the entire country who was never built in the first place. Yeah. Right. So, you know, to be fair here, that was my understanding of what he proposed. as a vice president for while he was there. But his decision to pull out, I think,

and I think history have already said this, and I'm supposed to testify at the Foreign Relations Committee on this topic, I think the history will show that the president made the decision over the advice of essentially everyone, even Secretary Blinken, the Secretary of State, his staffers won't answer whether he was for not leaving a resolution. They won't answer?

That's the last I saw. So, I mean, any president, you know, the buck stops there and you are the commander chief and you make the final decision. And that's the way it should be. You know, we shouldn't be allowed to just say, okay, well, I don't agree with the president, so we're not going to do it. But I think this, he owns it. And all I would say, you know, that's, I don't want to say it's water under bridge. It's our job to look at what we did right and wrong. But to Eric's point on bringing up our Laos documentary that we're doing and how those heroes,

brought their partners over here. We have an obligation. You know, for the people who fought alongside us, we told them, if they did, they'd get this special immigrant visa. If America can't keep its word on that, then why the hell would anybody want to partner? Yeah, we're fucked.

You know, it's a moral thing. And it's also in our own interest. Because if you think warfare is over, you're crazy. So unless you want to fight every war by ourselves, we need to keep a war. And if we don't, it's going to have dramatically bad consequences. And from my myopic level of boots on the ground, trying to fight either of those wars in Iraq or Afghanistan by ourselves. As a country unilaterally, no way.

No. We needed. I mean, I don't know how many times I'd have an interpreter like elbow me. Like, hey, that guy's not from here. They look, I mean, to my eyes, they look exactly. That happened in both countries, by the way. Hey, something's wrong. That's out of place.

That was completely and utterly transparent to me. Much like where anybody, well, just imagine anybody who's lived at a house for their whole life. You come and go every day and come back. That's weird. My car keys, maybe not car keys because you probably went every day. What a shitty analogy. My special cask soaked bourbon bottle, that's weird. It's over there instead over here.

Somebody visiting your home would never know that. But it's intuitive to you. We have to have that level of buy it. Again, having never touched HOA or everything over in Africa, I would imagine it's probably the same. You need, you have to have that. It's actually, it was exponentially more important because we had such, we had a lot less invested as US in those places. So you were still trying to drive, get to the same results with a much lower investment.

So you had to rely on the partners to a much higher level. It was heavier in the buy with and through. Yeah. Yeah. What's the current state of Afghanistan now where we are with, I mean, it's, not on the news anymore. What did it last? A good two weeks, probably as it was going on,

and a lot of that was focused more on the service members losing their life. And I think, depending on the network you choose to turn to, it was a lot of like, this is all, you know what I mean, like pointing fingers, which helps nobody. No. What's your guys' understanding of what's going on in Afghanistan now? So, I mean, also to be fair to all sides, This policy of departure was crossed to two administrations.

Yeah. Right? So again, we're nonpartisan, but if you're going to not partisan, you can still point out problems on both sides. So those are to point in a lot of fingers. I just hope they would look at it for what it is instead of just political, making a political advantage. The current state of Afghanistan is what, unfortunately, the IC predicted.

It is collapsed. The economy is on the verge of just essentially disintegrating. So it, which you say, well, does that mean? Well, it's going to be hard for people to get food. The winter's closing in. Nobody's growing food for large groups because they're just focused on themselves. It can really get bad. And so when it started, and, you know, George is the one that linked us up.

And he's in the group I was in. So T.F. Dunkirk was a small group of vets from Afghanistan, every service, you know, Green Berets, Marsock Marines and seals and agency people. I was like the token agency guy, I guess. People that had investment in their own personal life, time, sweat, equity, blood in that country. Yeah, and a lot of the Afghans were reaching out to us, and so we didn't know what to do. So we kind of formed a group together. They used the term, the name from obviously the historical reference with the British.

But and then all these groups started from almost whole cloth. So there's Argo, Pineapple, all these other groups. All done great things. And everybody was trying to figure out how to do the same thing, you know, get people to the airport. And it was through a lot of connections, especially with the Marines, but also the soft guys on the airport to actually coordinate how to get there. You know, if they were doing now, it doesn't matter,

but throwing up ladders at certain places because everybody was consolidating at the Abbey gate, we'd get them over the wall somewhere else, or they'd open a gate that never opened, but it was all coordinated. And that, I think, it had its own problem, but it was successful in many ways. But now, after that, like you said, the cameras have turned out and they focus on other things, the problems haven't got away. It's incredibly difficult to get people out of that country. And it's the Taliban, you know, they started off saying kind of the right stuff.

They're not saying anything anymore. They are exactly the same organization they were when 9-11 happened. And they're brutalizing their population, and they're going after the very partners that fought alongside us. And then you have the whole resettlement side, which is also going to be a challenge. So, you know, from our perspective, I don't want the spokesman for Dunkirk, but we advise all these NGOs that's now been set up. It's a volunteer thing to do this. and it's going to be long term. Like it's going to go on for years to get people out and then get, if they're qualified,

come to the United States and then resettled into the society of the United States. Are they having to work through the Taliban government to get these people out? So it varies. Because I can see a problem with that. I am not a policy expert, but I can see a problem with that. Right. So there are, you know, like there's an airline. that coordinates with the Taliban and when they can take off and can't take off and come in and not come in.

And that's, you know. You're talking about in Kabul? Yeah. Well, Kabul, Mazzari Sharif. Okay. And that's, you know, the intermediary on doing that is Qatar. And they've been doing a great job. But yet again, it is, is it coordinating with the Taliban not directly?

Is it under the Taliban's approval and this approval? Yes. Does it go in fits and start? absolutely. And can you get people on to those flights that the Taliban are looking for? Debatable. So, I mean, literally. If I was the Taliban government like, hmm, this organization wants to continue to have these flights leaving. I wonder who's on the manifest. Yeah. Right. And the exact people there after. Right. Yeah. So it's, you know, and that's, you know, we've been, we've been working with with a number of different ad hoc groups and trying to advise folks about the best

ways to go about this. And I mean, you've got everything from from folks looking at potential border crossings, you know, whether it be in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, you know, I mean, the most direct route was out through Torquem Gate, just past Jabad, you know, Kabul, Jabad, Torquim Gate. Yep. But that's now completely almost locked down and so problematic. And there's masses of people there and the Pakistanis are like, they're throwing up bureaucratic barriers because they can see the exodus of people and they don't want them.

And to a mixed point, it's just getting harder and harder in the country. The wheat's not being harvested. This is going to be a cold winter. Well, winter there is as brutal as it is. So, like, it's probably going to devolve into a humanitarian crisis. There are people that still did great things for and continue to great things for the United States that are kind of stuck on this limbo. So how do you keep them alive? How do you offer them hope?

and how do you ultimately work the best solutions to get them out of there. It's going to take a while, and it's not easy. The true breakdown, I think, is, you know, and not to highlight failures, but you have ad hoc groups of civilians from the U.S. that are trying to do this. Like, what have we devolved to? It literally is like send the civilian fleet the fleet across the English Channel to rescue our boys.

Right. Dunkirk. Like that's literally kind of where it is right now. Yeah, we all have some mutual friends that were involved. I know some people who were involved on the pineapple side of the house

and it's just there over there doing the best that they can do. And, you know, the guy in charge, the guy in charge at time of the evacuation, I've worked with him for years.

He is not, he's a pragmatic thinker. He absolutely knows how to put together sophisticated plans, whether they be for, rescuing hostages or or countering insurgencies or building nations he would never make those decisions I know this like he was put in a very hard situation and dictated troop numbers and timelines that's because that's not the work of this man that I know I don't know I the military

did a herculean job to get the people that did get 120,000 plus is that how many people that they pulled out by the time we we pulled out yes I I mean, if you add it now, I'm sure. Are you talking about U.S. soldiers, 120,000? U.S. soldiers. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And the volunteers helped. Yeah. To all these point, you shouldn't necessarily have had to rely on the volunteers. But the Herculean effort of the State Department and the U.S. military to get the amount of people out. But that doesn't make the situation. Any better. Right. So they shouldn't have been put on a situation.

Like, we're going to make it as difficult as possible. We're going to take away our air base, which could have prevented the Taliban from even coming into Kabul region. region. We could have used Bogram to actually ex-fill people out, which would have significantly increased our capacity. So they were given like the most difficult of situations and they performed very

well, but they shouldn't have had to perform that well. We should have been we should have given them more of an ability to actually do the evacuation. Yeah, again, I look at it from the Boots on the ground perspective. Like, okay, let's look at the history of this country. Let's look at the people there that we

have been and are fighting. Let's look at the likely responses they're going to come from us leaving this country. And let's work our way backwards. Let's go with the worst case scenario and assume that this thing is going to collapse on itself, which is what I think most people who serve there thought it was eventually going to do. Pull out those people first, then the military goes. And it's probably still not going to be perfect, but it seems like it could be a hell of a lot cleaner than trying to navigate your way through a crisis where America You know, lives and a fucking ton of Afghanis lost their lives too. Yeah.

Yeah, with that suicide attack. Yeah. Yeah, it was like 170 Afghans. What did they, did they load up a vehicle? No, it was a ISIS, basically kind of like the Jordanian bomber there on coast. It was just totally loaded up with explosives and walked in. A single guy did all that. Yeah.

A whole guy that we let out of, or they let out of prison at Bagram. So he came from Bagram. after the Taliban let them out, loaded up and killed, you know, almost 200 people. Fuck. So, yeah, it's a... How many people do you estimate are still there that the United States needs to get out?

Thousands. So they're, they've, I guess they updated their AMSITs to almost 300. The question is, like, how many of them actually want to leave? I don't know. I was going to say that. Some of those people probably want to stay. I don't think the Taliban would go after the AMSITs. that would be incredibly bad idea.

But the SIVs, right, the special immigrant visa, not only do they want to go after them, those are the people they fought. So if you look at it from the Taliban perspective, it isn't just, well, these are people that like the United States and we don't like people. No, they took up arms against us. Yeah, right?

They were fighting them. So they're after them. They're tracking them down. They're looking for them house to house. So those are the most difficult people to get out now because to your point, do you want to be the guy with the Special immigrant visa that says you fought at the Afghan

National Army that gives it to the Taliban guys and say, I got to go to the airport? They're like, oh no. You're actually in this line over here. Yeah, right. Why is there a shallow ditch over in that line? Don't worry about that. We'll talk about that when we get to the fucking ditch. Yeah. So that's, those are the people, and that's why I say it's going to go on forever. Now we're

helping out, you know. Different organizations. You know, just trying to help. I mean, at the end of the day, the skill sets that you get over time, critical thinking in these environments, the ability to put plans together, they're useful right now. So it's just, it's trying to help keep some of the right people alive until the correct evacuation option is a viable option. What would you, too, put the odds at the United States having a military presence in Afghanistan again at? That's a good question. So is this after,

terrorist attack in the United States? Sure. It would still be really hard to see policymakers go, yeah, let's go invade the country again. I think it would depend on what happened. Really difficult. I think they would look for a soft Intel force that had the capacity. Damn. It would just be really hard to see a scenario where it'd have to be a 9-11 plus attack.

And then maybe if we did it again, it would be for a very limited purpose. We're going to topple the Taliban again, which would be hard, and keep a small CT-based enabling force. Maybe we should just call it enabling force. But then to build another military, I mean, it'd be difficult, I think, to see a scenario where we'd want to redo the Afghan war. We'd have to come at it from a much better place and a much smarter place. And it'd be limited. I don't know. I've done that game.

I've done that game for a number of years about, you know, okay, how do you, how do you protect the international community from a remote location with very selective either strikes or precision raids? It's possible and you can do it. It isn't the best answer. In this case, I think it's a better answer than a full scale going back at it. I just don't. And I, you know, even to you're like, well, what if it's a bigger attack? You know, I mean, I think it'd be pretty hard to have a bigger attack than 9-11. And I do feel like-

Most people, though, 9-11 was unimaginable. It was. September 10th. Yeah. Until, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but if it's something like that, you know, I mean, it might be like, all right, well, here we come.

And we're going to turn this into glass. But I would hope that it would be, because you can do it. right, and you can do it with a small investment over time, over a long time, and you can bring that risk to the international community down quite a bit. It's not perfect, but it's doable. But this concept of over the horizon, as you keep hearing, it's going to be extraordinarily difficult. Yeah. Right? You take, we're coming from Qatar or Kuwait, we're talking a thousand miles away. Yeah. We've already been told, go pound sand by Newspakistan and all the other countries where we could have potentially hubbed out of, probably because the Russians put a lot of pressure on them.

And then even in the press, we even went to Russia to talk to them about potentially coming out of some of their air bases, which is just freaking embarrassing, quite frankly, and of course, a terrible idea. So if we try to do, and then we don't have any intelligence on the ground. So we could send in the greatest unit at conducting raids in the world. But if they don't know where the hell they're going, and we don't control the airspace, and God knows how. how many surface-to-air missiles are going to be injected into that country, it's going to be an entirely different game. And, of course, the $83 billion worth of gear that Taliban has. So conducting over-the-horizon operations, drone or otherwise, direct action,

without the knowledge and the collection efforts on the ground is going to be extraordinarily difficult. We probably don't even know if a threat is emanating from there until it's already manifested itself. you know, Europe of the United States. I think the hardest thing for me to swallow about all this is that we did it to ourselves. Yes. And there's a whole lot of guys out there. I'm sure we could go right through our phones

and pick out, pick out 20 of them. And, you know, the question is, why? Like, you know, I mean, you always fight for the guy on your left and your right. And you hope that you're fighting for a better cause and you're hoping that you're fighting for stability. And there's a lot of that stuff that, you know, I'm proud of and others are proud of. But, God damn, this leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

It does. And I've had quite a few people reach out about that. Like, you know, what do you, not surprisingly, at least in what I saw, the suicide rates among those that served spiked shortly after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Because a lot of people, I think, and I'm hypothesizing because I obviously wasn't there to have conversations, they're equating the value of their service with what happened at the tail end of our involvement in that country. And, you know, the only advice that I was able to land on, even for myself, was that at least in my understanding, it was never actually about Afghanistan, right? We went there to deny the area or an ability for people to train to kill those that did train and perpetrated the tax on 9-11.

But we were never there to build Afghanistan because rebuild isn't interesting. term. You have to build it and then destroy it before it can be rebuilt. Never built. Correct. Which is another, I mean, fourth or fifth world, I usually say between two to three centuries behind when describing most places of Afghanistan. Sure. But I think that the people who served, the only way that they'll be able to wrap their head around it or to maybe have closer closure, hopefully, is to focus on the reasons that they were there. So that it didn't happen again, which it didn't in the time that we were there. Obviously, you can't forecast in the future or the person to their left or right, and they

can't value their service based on a decision that I think we've pretty clearly outlined occurred at a level that was so far above their head. Right. We're talking in the ozone layer, comparison to where they were. And it's, you know, in saying all that, it still feels shallow because at the same, I mean, I spent years of my life over there, and it sucks to see what has happened. And I fall back on the guys that I was there with or the successes that we did have because there were plenty of failures as well too. And I try to balance the two.

But at the end of the day, I try to remember why did I go to Afghanistan? Why did I want to go to Afghanistan? Because I wanted to make sure 9-11 didn't happen again. And I wanted to go after the people that made it possible and deny that. It's conceptually easy to say, but I think it's hard to really get people to grasp onto that concept. and I don't know. I mean, I wonder if it'll, just like with our potential partner forces who are looking at the way we departed, I mean, for the younger generation who's watching this withdrawal

from Afghanistan and seeing what is happening and how the United States is conducting itself, I wonder if it will have an impact on their desire to serve. Like, I don't want to be a part of this, if this is the shit show that we're going to become. And there's a lot of different avenues that you can view it from. And none of them, I don't think are that great. I don't know. In the recent past, I've had a fair amount of, you know, what I call the up-and-comers kind of reach out for recommendations or for insights or for a sounding board. We talk about guys that are still in?

No, well, some guys that are still are still in. You know, some of the kind of the younger crew are kind of reaching out of sounding boards. But more about folks who are looking to get into this line of work, you know, call it a recent college grad. or a recent high school grad, and they're debating about, you know, hey, should I, you know, do this kind of service or not. They still, their glass is still half full. They're energetic, and they're definitely, they're willing to apply their intellect and get behind it and do it.

So to that, it kind of gives me a bit more hope. But my concern is more about the, you know, the dogs that were in the fight for, long time that do have that that kind of that sense of you know was a service worth it like I'm concerned for those folks like if they if they can't grasp onto something um you know I'm I don't know where that road ends for them so and I hope that it's not you know I I came across a number the other day in fact Friday of last week I was kind of shocked so we've lost to just about 6,000, between 6,000, 7,000 service members in combat since 9-11. Do you know how many have taken their lives since 9-11?

It's multiples of that. 114,000. That's a problem, right? So, yeah. That's a pretty startling. Yeah. And, you know, I consider myself to be a pretty versatile guy, right? Selected again and again and again, you always come up to the line again and again.

You're teachable. You'll apply everything you got to it. I was like, you know, suicide. Like, I would never contemplate suicide. But I've always had some driver in my life. If I didn't have a driver in my life as a type A personality, I don't know where I'd end up. But 6,000, 6,000, 6, 7,000 in combat, 100.

This is called 115 to suicide. Hey, this is not going to work. So we help host Lobo, helps host a lot of the veterans that come up here for their retreats. So Memorial Foundation's whitefish feel popular. And there's a huge veteran community, as you know, around it. Surprising, actually. Yeah.

There's a lot of, uh, it's changed. There's a lot of J-Suck up here, to be honest. That's a super new aspect in this place. I consider it to be a good side. I'm like, yes. Yeah, it's going to be the last. Yeah. It's going to be the last holdout of the zombie apocalypse.

I'm pretty sure it's going to be out here in the valley. But my point being is we see them all the time. And these are, we just hosted, I won't get the number from my unit because I don't want to. but incredibly a large amount of gold star wives. Right? So it's a different conversation when you're talking to them. For sure. Why their husband isn't here anymore, right?

Right. We host Gold Star Kids. And it's even different conversation. And four, I have four goddardors are all Gold Star daughters. So it's something they were going to have to deal with because it's hard enough to, I mean, even if it was World War II and your dad died in it. And it was, we won. and we defeated Nazism and we defeated Imperial Japan. It's still hard to talk to a child about losing their father,

but that's not the way with this ended. Yeah. This ended it. It ended, I think, the wrong way and in an incredibly embarrassing way. And then we lost 13 more people. So now we have 13 more. So it's something that the U.S. might want to move on from Afghanistan and Iraq, for that matter. But they shouldn't move on from the vets of Afghanistan and Iraq,

because that is a representation of the country. Whether you agreed with the war or not, it doesn't matter. The United States chose to undertake the war and all these people, you know, casualties from it in their own way. So that's something that I think will be the legacy of this and it needs to be a legacy that we as a country embrace, you know. Not just a vets, vets for sure, but also all the other people that were left behind from that.

50 years from now, if they're still making textbooks, even though I assume they'll likely be digital documents. How do you think they will write about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you think it will go in the W column or the L column? I think the war in Afghanistan will go in the Al column. I don't know how you could, you'd have to be a serious spinmeister to our strategic objectives going into Afghanistan was remove the Taliban power because they safe haven a terrorist organization. They're now back in power and there's already terrorist organizations. So now there's one that didn't even exist on 9-11 ISIS, right?

So I don't know how you could do the math to say that this was a win. It was a loss. And it was a loss that we negotiated, which is really that, you know, the greatest superpower in the world negotiated a surrender. And they didn't, we didn't even include our partner that we fought with alongside for 20 years. It's, it's, but, you know, there's nothing we can do to change that. So I'm really pushing with, you know, this discussion now is you still have to focus on the people who fought the war and the people who were so affected by the war. You know, Gold Star kids, Gold Sor spouses.

Yeah. The next generation, we also have a situation where there's like a military class in this country. It's, you can see the connections. It's like a father's son thing now. Yeah, it's family business. It's family business. So it's easy for the rest of the United States. And that's their issue.

And I'm not saying they are. Like 05% of the population is served. Right. Down from, I think the peak was 11% in the deuce. Right. Which is how I like to refer to World War II. Yeah. The deuce.

Proceeded by the Oon. I don't know if they would like that. That Oud, Tuat. They probably call it the deuce. The deuce. I don't know. It has two names. No, I agree with Mick.

It's just hard to see those two efforts in the win category. And, you know, love the battle buddies, love the efforts. Definitely some good things came for the safety of the community, international community over time. Absolutely. But overall, yeah, no, strategically we went there for terrorism and we left because we were afraid we're going to get attacked again. So that quite simply to me is failure.

And for Iraq, you know, we tried to put a bow on it and we left. And the most horrific terrorist organization that we've seen in the recent history came out of it. And, you know, we've effectively bottled them up into a penitentiary style thing. but, you know, if this were the war on drugs, did we take a bunch of criminals that were smart in dealing marijuana and put them all into a penitentiary, and they all left, you know, a California penal system with a Ph.D. and so on cocaine.

Yeah, they're co-dealers. Yeah. That might be what we're seeing. History is going to be determined here. I think it's a little bit more of a question mark with ISIS, but, you know, the spawn of ISIS was Iraq. And we've told the Iraqis, You might want to have us back in a couple months because we've told the Iraqis we're all out at the end of the year.

So, I mean, according to the government of Iraq, we haven't even asked to keep any advisors there. So we could see a full withdrawal from Iraq within the next two months, and then we'll see how they do. And if it's, you know, to Holy's point, becomes an ISIS caliphate. And that was one of the most significant terrorists' efforts in history. They literally controlled millions of people in a territory size of West Virginia. So hopefully we have helped build their military capacity in a way that's more aligned with fighting an ISIS type. But we'll see. I mean, do we really want to leave our own security in the hands, not the U.S. military, in any capacity?

And my answer to that is no. We could have kept a couple air bases, not our air bases, it's Iraqis, with capacity. We could have kept specialized units. We could have kept intelligence capability. And it's also in the interest of Iraq. I mean, the government of Iraq doesn't necessarily want to fight another ISIS Caliphate either. So we're going to find out a couple months how that goes. So to go back to Afghanistan, because I'd be remiss not to ask you guys this because I get asked this a lot.

There are people in the U.S. who want to do everything they possibly can. can to help with the efforts of keeping people alive and getting them out of Afghanistan. Where would you direct their efforts towards? Do you have any suggestions on how they could meaningfully do so? And my suggestion is don't get on an airplane and try to walk across the border. No. No. Yeah, that's not the, that's not the right answer. Put your body armor with the punisher skull on it back in the safe. Yes. With your A.R. And like, don't do that fucking calm down for a second. Wasn't there a guy that walked into Pakistan with a samurai sword? going to go find bin Laden?

There was a guy that went on that. Probably was. Good initiative. Bad judgment. Execution questionable. A for effort. F for judgment. You know, right now

the backlog is it's within our own borders. I mean, they don't know. We don't know how to take a bunch of Afghanis that 72 hours ago were in Kabul and integrate them into a community

in Texas. or Montana or California or Oklahoma. The people we did pull out are largely still a military basis, correct? They are. Yeah. And so right now, what we have is an understanding is like, hey, don't bring any more because we don't know what to do with the ones that are here. And, you know, people aren't going to want to hear this, but you can either pull and be

part of the solution, which actually means doing something difficult within our own society on sponsoring people and trying to help integrate them into society. Because then that's going to allow us to actually get the rest of the folks that put it on the line for the United States out of Afghanistan. Because right now it's a backlog and we're not bringing any more over. Yeah. So I agree. And I mean, that's a real hard sentence to say.

And I would, and I guarantee you that somebody listening to this is going to say, well, you need to sign up on that sponsorship list there, Eric O'Lorg. and, you know, I mean, rightfully so maybe I should. So that is an effort. I think your skill set is probably being utilized elsewhere. No, I'm definitely putting time and effort into it. But, you know, I mean, like, that's, at the end of the day, that's what's got to happen. Yeah.

And that's going to fall to the everyday common citizen, some of them that decided to step up. To accept the resettlement. But there's actually a program that was just announced where servicemen and women can sign up to help host. Yep. because once again, who's going to be the best advocate for the Afghan National Army soldier that's coming. People that serve with them. Right. They're going to be, they'll be walking around their town saying, this guy fought next to me.

You didn't fight next to me. I didn't see you out there, right? But this guy did. And he fought for the same ideals that we have. So I'm going to sponsor him in my town if anybody has a problem with that come to me. That's a different conversation, right, for most people. Yeah. when the hometown boy from Whitefish that went and joined special operations is now brought family here.

So, you know, my wife signed it up immediately, but it needs to be extensive because it's going to take a long time. But to your point, so Dunkirk, the old group that we don't take money, but we do advise groups, one of them is called Team America. It's a terrible name. I know. I actually asked... Amazing movie? Terrible name. I asked them...

A lot of them are young, right? And they did great. Well, some of them didn't know the movie. I'm like, you know that might have negative conversations. You know your history, people. How would Team America... I was like, have you not seen the movie? Like, what movie?

I thought they were just the American team. Yeah, they're extremely negative connotations. Anyway, other than... Maybe they will change your name. But they've done exceptional work, I have to say. If it wasn't for them, a lot of the old vets were kind of throwing stuff at them, but they were the ones that actually made it work, you know. And then no one left behind is also a great organization.

I'm not affiliated with them other than I know some of the people there. So if people want to donate funding, neither of which, you know, Lobo was connected to. Yeah, we're not. Yeah. And then to Eric's point, resettlement, right? Because it's incredibly hard to get people out of the country to get here, but it's actually harder. The real hard part is going to get them integrated into society and have people really just understand that they're going to make great Americans, the ones that we've identified that were part of our efforts over there. They're incredibly industrious.

They're very family-oriented. And I think they're going to be just damn happy to be here. Like a lot of immigrants that come to the United States and have been for hundreds of years. Just damn happy to get a chance. So give them a chance. Listen to the vets. Listen to the vets that came out of your communities that are going to vouch for these folks and help.

Tell me more about Lobo. I'd say, where the name come from? Well, Lobo is Spanish for Wolf. And, you know, always respected the, you know, the philosophy. via the wolf. I mean, you know, I don't particularly care for the way that they've ravaged the, the ungulate herds here in Montana as an avid bow hunter and rifle hunter and stuff. But, no, you know, the strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is a pack. And that's exactly the way that, you know, you function in the teams and things. And when we looked at it,

you know, we were just like, hey, you know, like that fits right with the philosophy of what we are trying to do post-government service towards conflict resolution in different ways. Because, I mean, we all gave decades of our lives and we watch the trend lines go in the wrong direction. So we're like, okay, obviously we're not doing this right somehow. So let's try a different tact. And Mick and I decided that that was going to be Lobo Institute as a conflict resolution institution. You know, and there's a couple of us. And we've built a cadre of experts.

from some of our past experiences and some people have reached out that weren't soft or agency or anything else that are incredibly talented people and when we come across to opportunities to help or assist or a consult then then we rely on our expert cadre that from this wide background and then we all kind of team into a common effort and we we try to we try to advance the needle as best we can and we hit that work life balance like I said we started out with a little bit of lobo hooch in the hills with the Lobo Challenge and stuff like that. So, you know, we're hitting a good life balance, good life, work balance, but that's what Lobo is about. That's the, that's a profit side of it. There is an interesting thing. There is a nonprofit side to it.

And when Mick was chief in Uganda, I was on hiatus from Virginia SEAL teams, you know, dev group. And I was over at Sok Africa, and I was, he would, we were trying to find Joseph Coney. Joseph Coney is this real twisted African dude that basically is responsible for the Daupharo Crisis. And he needed to get an army to try and topple the Ugana government. He didn't have an army, so he went and just stole kids. And then he built a big child army, right? Well, we came across, Mick specifically came across, and then we both put our minds to

it. We came across this story about this child soldier that had been abducted at 14 years old. And this guy, we think we had it hard. This guy is way beyond hard. He's been shot six times. Seventh time he had an RPG ricochet off his chest. The tail fins basically tore his right arm off his body, almost left for dead, managed to survive, was one of the few that knew how to navigate by the stars when they were getting overrun by gunships during the day from Uganda. So he was the only one that could keep the units alive by moving them at night.

Very ingenuative. How old was this kid? 14 when he was abducted. He was a child soldier for 10 years. Anyway, he it's this incredible story and it goes way beyond being a child soldier.

It's a story about, you know, the human spirit, love, never say die. And so we made we're like this story has to get to a wider audience. We made a documentary. I took leave from Sauk Africa. We'd fly down and see Mick in Uganda. We'd drive up to the Uganda-Southstand border and we'd do reenactments and film these things. We just learned a lot with iPhones.

With iPhones and go-pros. Anyway, we did this documentary. It started to get some legs. You know, we've shown it a couple times at like Masters level. programs at like Yale and for the Jackson Institute and some think some some some some think tanks around DC and stuff a very very very well-accomplished Montana author saw it and he's like hey I'm going to write that story so it's actually being written into a into a book historical fiction book right now we took him to Uganda in June of this last

summer but from it we gained a whole perspective about about as these wars go on, and it's the same as like with Vietnam. My dad will tell you stories about going back and back and back to Laos. And the first time he went there, it was 25-year-old Hmong dudes fighting. And the second time he went back there,

it was 18-year-old Mongs fighting. And the fourth time he went back there, it was 12-year-olds fighting. And I've watched that evolution in Somalia. I've watched it in Yemen. I've watched it in Afghanistan. I mean, it's just part of the culture there. When you're 10 years old,

you're going to go run the ambush with your dad and Uncle. So anyway, because of that documentary and the perspectives we got there, and if you watch the numbers of child soldiers globally, you know, ISIS went hard at recruiting them and using them and things. It's doubled almost yearly around the globe. So we started an NGO. It's called End Child Soldering. And it's a niche, but we believe that it's a niche that over the long haul, fits right with our conflict resolution,

but it's it's at those that aren't making the decisions to start off wars, but end up fighting them with no decision of their own. And you're catching them early too. Yeah. So, I mean, this. Pre-radicalization, pre-experience. Well, some.

Yeah. Some of it. Hopefully pre-rackization. Probably depends on where they are. So if you look at the strata of like economic influence, So these kids are in countries where they're all developing, of course, usually war-torn in the middle of a conflict. And then they're their bottom.

So nobody really cares, to be honest. But I would just say that, you know, if adults want to start wars, they ought to freaking fight them, you know what I mean? Because what we're ending up with is these all, and some of them are sponsored by states, right? So they've decided they don't want to send their folks to fight the war, so they'll go to a developing country. And hired it out.

Yeah, and of course, we say recruit, but that's a nice way of saying. These kids are just told you, hey, you're going to fight. Right. And then they end up fighting the war. So there's perpetual wars that keep going on. A lot of them are being fought by children. And that's unacceptable. The international community in the UN's passed protocol after protocol.

We've passed laws in the United States unanimously. Like, it's not a partisan issue, of course. We're talking like 100 senators voting for the Child Soldier Prevention Act. The problem is we don't really enforce it. We keep giving waivers. to key partners every year, every year and say, okay, well, you're okay, you can have children fighting your wars. So for me and Eric, we've, because of our involvement

with the documentary and Anthony, and we know as, I mean, as young as two kids are my god sons. It's a personal thing for us, but it needs to be a thing for the international community to say. So to your point, we now have how many, what percentage of the population of the United States fights wars? 0.05. Right?

So you only have that many people. fighting wars in the United States and then you take these kids who have no choice are the ones fighting around the world and to Eric's point in Middle East 2019 it doubled so we're talking hundreds of thousands of kids under arms from the Philippines especially in the Middle East Africa and then some in South America and we have nobody will like no I'm four child soldiers well okay it's it's easy to sign on to protocols it's easy to pass laws but you have to have you have to have the willingness to actually.

Yeah, it has to have teeth. You have to have teeth. Yeah, and that's actually kind of the good side to it, is that almost every single one of these entities that are involved in it, you can put pressure on them, whether it's through, you know, diplomatic and sanction channels or if it's, you know, if it's like a proxy force that's using child soldiers, well, that proxy force is getting support from somewhere. And usually that somewhere rhymes with a nation that's, involved within the United Nations that you can still put pressure on.

So it isn't one of these things. It's like, how do you get your meat hooks into this thing and actually, like, move the needle in the right direction? You can. And you actually have the right channels to do it. So it's something that, you know, we don't spend as much time as we want to on it quite yet, but it'll grow legs here, you know, as a bit in a bit. Especially as this author, this great author, who was kind enough.

to dedicate a portion of the book to our NGO. Right? So as that grows, I think our efforts will grow with it. But it's much broader than just what we're doing. There's a lot of good groups out there. If people are interested in, you can Google the groups that fight for kids not to have to fight. And, you know, part of it is legislation to stop it. But part of it is it's still happening.

So are we going to help rehabilitate these kids to give them, any other options and being a soldier. Because once they become an adult, they're no longer child soldiers, but they have nothing else. They know nothing else. They don't have a family. So to rehabilitate them, to teach them how to be a farmer or how to fix cars or whatever it is, to give them a way in life where they can have a family of their own, they could support themselves, even if it's minor, and not be a soldier.

It's not only in the right thing to do, but in the terrorist context, right? The terrorist contracts, it's our issue. It's everybody's issue if we don't try to get these kids to turn away from the kind of... A different pipeline. Yeah. This toxic ideology that they're... Are organizations able to reach out to you guys, Lobo, and have you come on board and just consult? Yeah, I mean...

Or interface at whatever level, perhaps you guys would decide would be best. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, we... I mean, it's info at lobo institute. org is the easiest way to kind of get a hold of us. And, you know, we, but we're selective. I mean, there's, you know, besides the expert cadre, there's two of us day in and day out there driving it.

So we're, you know, we're selective on where we're going to put time and effort. And that's also in the best interest of the customer. Oh, for sure. You know, so. Overcomit. Yeah. And we're sensitive to that because, you know, like once you make a commitment, that's like you're going to see it all the way through.

And, you know, but yeah, I mean if, and really the Afghan thing, the fall of Afghan and the way the withdrawal happened and things like that. You know, we've been in the media about some of those decisions and coming out with some statements. And there are organizations that took note of that and then reached out and said, hey, you know, we entered a dialogue with them. and we've been trying to help them with perspective and backgrounds. Then absolutely zero in the classified side of things. And we've both put down our, you know, we just don't. Even if we do know things, we don't use them to our advantage. We literally just close booked on that aspect of our lives,

the classified nature of things and just let it move on. I think that's the healthiest approach. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we do, so we advise for the UN, like all he says, there's not a lot of people that look like us, maybe not look like us, but have our background in there.

We, media, we work for ABC News, think tank, Middle East Institute. What exactly is a think tank? So, I mean, it's... I've heard the term so often. Yeah. I don't know if I ever actually asked anybody who has any proximal exposure to them,

what exactly it is. So... I want to imagine it's a tank that's full of people thinking about shit. And they, uh, yeah. Well, I mean. This is great, I miss this aspect of life.

Patoon hut. Well, I mean, the positive, I don't really think there's a negative, but if you look at how our policies made, a lot of the senior policy makers are in what we collectively termed as think tank. So we're in the Middle East Institute. There's like the Perkins Institute, Atlantic Council. There's Washington Institute. There's quite a bit. They're all in D.C. as you'd expect. So these are people who, for the most part, are like PhDs in one area, policy area or another.

And they publish their thoughts. And it does influence policymakers. And then a lot of being the senior policymakers. That's why I'm saying there's, you know, while you're your particular group, like if you're more aligned with the Democrats and Republicans, and we're not aligned with either for the record. But that's how think tanks generally are. when the Democrats are in, then a lot of people from those

leaning think tanks will be in the senior policy positions and then vice versa, right? So there's, that's generally, and it drives forward thoughts on what we should do in the Middle East or how do we really, how do we really compete with China?

Because it's easy to say over and over, but, you know, you actually put a lot more thought to it than that. And then there's some think tanks that are looking to put some more people, who have operational experience in there. Not that we have all the answers, because I can assure you we don't,

as you all know. Well, in some arenas. Some arenas, we have a different perspective that might help inform. But in general, that's what the think tank world is. It's groups that do policy. And one thing I did enjoy,

and one thing, going from a practitioner on the ground to now, you know, associated and working within the bit of the think tank environment. Let's say DOD is working on, let's say, uh, Central Command or Soxent, Special Operations Command, Sent, Comm. Let's say they want to look at the different aspects of what

happens if Yemen stays as one country or is partitioned into two. So what, what are the different options there? What does that look like? Um, and how would that play out over time with either option? You know, I mean like, they put a bit of money into, a think tank and then completely independent view, but economists with a PhD that have lived in Sinaw for four or five years while they wrote their thesis and two-time ambassadors that have seen it through it, you know, terrorism, no terrorism, successful and not successful, anthropologists that have been looking at it for, you know, a decade plus. That analysis and that write-up that they

get is so independent than a lot of the group think that they would get out of, you know, a military command. Like that's, those are some of the ways I've seen that think tanks have been very helpful and useful. And it does shape policy. It does start to kind of shape the dialogue and the options and things like that. So yeah, you know, I used to one or two. I'm like, the hell is a think tank.

But I would say it's a deep resource of folks that are very well versed in. in topics or regions that can offer independent analysis and some long-term thought. Other than being in the government, it has the most influence on policy. And probably more so than a lot of people in the government, to be honest. Because a lot of them are going to be in the government or were. So it's almost like a bullpen. I don't know if they would agree with the way that, you know, this former PM CIA guy that spent just two years in policy.

So I didn't want to caveat out with that. But that's the way I saw it in a positive way. Yeah. You know. Hints of like making out with your cousin. You know, you're a little close.

I was trying to figure out what that analogy was. I was like, what the? It's, yeah, it's, they're very closely tied. They're very closely tied. You're making out with a family member a little bit. Yeah, no, they are. There's a little bit of perhaps undue influence.

Those are the analogies and metaphors that I like. They resonate with me. understand some of them just they don't land with people but that's right my head goes I get it yeah yeah they I mean they I think they serve a good purpose I really do and and for our part we you know we'd have to ask the think tank persons but I think we write papers that are not norm like we write like a lot about what I discussed yeah we had a paper that talked about you know if you really want a defective way to deal with partners just

train them enough so they can beat the common enemy why are we trying to to create a U.S. military in Iraq. It's never going to happen. The squadron of an F-16s that nobody flies. Yeah. You know, any bullets you can buy for an F-16?

So we write papers like that. I don't think that's the norm for think tanks, but we use our background. And hopefully that's helping influence, you know. Makes sense to me. Yeah.

Did we not cover? Anything you guys want to cover? We've been at this for almost three hours. Have we? Yeah. What happened? Man. He's going pee pee again.

Okay. He says it's the elevation. He's from Louisiana. We're at like 4,000 feet. Actually, we're under 4,000 feet. Well, I think he's under sea level in where he lives in Louisiana. Talking about kissing your cousin. Yeah.

Just kidding. People from Louisiana. No, I mean, that was kind of all over the map. Well, where can people find you? So you said the info. I'm assuming you have a website. Yeah, we have website. You can Google Lobo Institute.

We pop up right there at the top. Do you guys do social media? It's a more dangerous battle for than both Afghanistan and Iraq. You know, I shy away from social media, but I only have LinkedIn to use for a professional side of things. And that's it. I don't really do social media. But Mick keeps Loebbeau Institute up with Twitter and more things like that. He does a lot more of the media outreach than I do.

Okay. By media outreach is I just retweet other posts and shit. Yeah. We're kind of a two-man band, you know. So people expect, I guess we probably shouldn't have said Institute, but it gives the opinion that we have this. Well, we do have a... Multiple think tanks.

We have a... Well, no, we've actually got an impressive bench of... We do, our local experts. Yeah. And there's some hard-hitting and very accomplished people. And not just in our... Yeah, not just in our field. So we have a lady used to be a child psychologist for the United Nations in Syria.

We have a former chief of staff for the White Helmuch, which is this great organization. And we have a lot of NGO type experience. I mean, it is a on purpose, not just our tribe. Yeah, but we looked at different avenues of people that have been very influential on helping with conflict. Yeah. You know, and, you know, being a soldier is only one aspect of that. Or being a super special soldier that's quasi a spy is also one aspect of that. But, you know, like the psychologist, I mean, she started out as a Syrian refugee in the 80s and 90s.

Right. So, like, these, and the guy that was the chief of staff for the white helmets, like, he's Syrian. I mean, he was, like, the guy wearing a white helmet going into buildings that the Russians had just bombed in Aleppo. right but these people get conflict so these are the kinds of people we have on the bench and these are the types of people that we try to get put onto the best projects to help move the needle you know and uh you know we've we've had some swings and miss um you know i mean we put together a really what i what i'm biased but i a great proposal to get after delivering um education curriculums to children in um um

a refugee camp on the Syrian border called Al Hul, which is, is it 70,000 people? 70,000 people and like 7 or 8,000 kids that have no other way. Oh, it's like 50,000 of our women and kids. Yeah. Yeah. They have no other avenue out of that camp. They were in there because they're all ex-children of ISIS or orphans of ISIS or widows of ISIS.

And so, you know, we put together a puzzle. it was like, hey, okay, let's take internet, get an internet hub there, start running a couple surveys to figure out the levels of extremism that are in there, and then start delivering education curriculum remotely so that you can do it safely and start giving them a path that's not associated with where they came from. No takers. We couldn't get over the goal line. But shit, I mean, if, yeah, I mean, if, but if you have a better solution to figure

out what to do with those 70,000 people and, you know, 10,000 kids. I mean, you, like, bring it. You know, I'd love to hear your, I'd love to hear it. But so, you know, I mean, Lobo, it's, you got to get back up, dust yourself off, keep moving. But, you know, it's, it's been fun. This thing's going to run. It will. Well, I love the fact that you guys are here in the valley. And I would reach out if you guys ever want to come back and sit, like if anything pops up that you guys feel would be important to discuss because like I said earlier, I appreciate the perspective from just a different atmosphere than I had ever worked at because honestly half the time, I'm like, what the fuck is

making this decision? That's what I used to say until I was there. That's so, so classic. Me, God. Yeah, you're like, who is this asshole that's telling me I can't do this? Yeah. Fuck that guy. We're doing it anyway. Yeah. Yeah. We'll find a way. I'll let you guys close it out. Closing thoughts. Mick? Well, thanks for having us on. Yeah, my pleasure. Anytime we have an opportunity to talk about this, particularly the Afghan issue, it's going to be an issue that goes on for years in the United States.

I would just ask everybody that's listening and everybody they're talking to, understand that these people fought with us, with the people they knew that fought in Afghanistan, and a lot of them wouldn't be there if it wasn't for them. They will make great Americans. They're going to be some that screw up, but there's some of us that screw up, all right? So let's keep that in mind. and for the vets, if you're interested in helping, please do. I mean, their voice is going to carry a lot of weight when it comes to that.

And I think it will really help. If people are interested in reaching out to us, like Eric said, info at lobo institute.org, it's just two of us, so one of us is going to respond. But, yeah, thanks for hosting us, Andy. Yeah, my pleasure. Yeah. It's always good to touch base with another team guy in the Valley. We have a couple good events every year.

I really appreciate you hosting us on the podcast. And, you know, we tabled a number of topics, whether it was just getting a general background into some of the soft or intel type things that have occurred over the decades, an independent look at Afghanistan. Some of the factors that go into things like Afghanistan that people may or may not be aware of,

like the dynamics of policy, or the long-term impact without finishing the problem like refugees and kids and isolated kids and extremism. So I hope that you enjoyed listening to it. You know, definitely would appreciate anybody if they want to help out with kind of the Lobo Mission. You know, like Mick said, reach out. And, you know, Montana, it's it really sucks up here. And if you do move. I just saw a polar bear walking up.

Yeah, I know, polar bear. It was actually eating somebody. You know, the flathead is horrible. I highly suggest you move to Bozeman. I was told that the Flathead Lake is actually, it's brackish. It is, yeah. So anyway, no, I totally appreciate it. Thanks for your time, man.

Yeah, that, thanks, gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to tune in, whether you're listening on an audio-only platform, or you're watching on YouTube, I appreciate that you take the time every week to tune in. People ask me a lot, what can they do to help me spread the word? And the answer is actually embedded in the question. The biggest thing you guys can do to help me if you enjoy the podcast and you think it would be helpful to others is subscribe and share it with other people.

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again cleardhotpodcast.com click on the shop tab and hopefully something in there looks like it would be an item you would like to wear around town and then you can tell people what it is when they ask you but that is it the biggest thing i can say is thank you i truly appreciate it until next time see you