Jocko Podcast - 300: War is a Racket

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Insane profits from war. Smedley Butler.0:00:00 - Opening0:21:22 - War is a Racket2:17:39 - Final thoughts.2:24:02 - How to stay on THE PATH.2:41:08 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 300 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us tonight, Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. The Secretary of the Navy takes pleasure in transmitting to First Lieutenant Schmedley-Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps, the Brevet Medal, which is awarded in accordance with Marine

Corps Order No. 26 for distinguished conduct and public service in the presence of the enemy while serving with 2nd Battalion of Marines near Chen Sin, China, on 13 July 1900. On 28 March, 1901, 1st Lieutenant Butler is appointed captain by brevet to take rank from 13 July 1900. Awarded for actions, War Department General Order's number 177, December 4th, 1915, the President of the United States of America in the name of Congress. Congress takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Major Smedley-Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps, for distinguished conduct in battle in the engagement of Veracruz, Mexico on 22 April 1914. Major Butler was eminent and conspicuous in command of his battalion. He exhibited courage and skill in leading his men through the action of the 22nd and in the final

occupation of the city awarded for action. The President of the United States of America in the name of Congress takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor second award to Major Smedley-Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps for extraordinary heroism in action as commanding officer of detachments from the 5th, 13th, 23rd companies and the Marine and Sailor detachment from the USS Connecticut. Major Butler led the attack on Fort Rivier, Haiti on 17 November, 1915. Following a concentrated drive, several different detachments of Marines gradually closed in on an old French bastion fort in an effort to cut off all avenues of retreat for the Caco bandits. Reaching the fort on the southern side where there was a small opening in the wall, Major Blastion, Butler gave the signal to attack and Marines from the 15th company poured through the breach engaged the Caicos in hand-to-hand combat took the bastion and crushed the Caco resistance. Throughout this perilous action, Major Butler was conspicuous for his bravery and forceful

leadership. So there you go. Major Schmedley Butler, United States Marine for 34 years. fought in the Philippines, China, Central America, fought in the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, fought in World War I, although against his wishes he was more in a support role. He's one of only 19 men in history to receive two medals of honor. He's one of only three men to receive the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor.

And he's the only man in history to receive two medals of honor and the Brevet Medal. And with that career, after he retired from the Marine Corps, he wrote a book called War is a racket. You heard that right. War is a racket. This is a book that harshly condemns war, denounces the military industrial complex, vilifies the captains of industry and politicians along the way, and disparages Americans. America's foreign actions in war.

So there's a bit of an about face going on. And these are some extreme views that he has. And when individuals make extreme statements, sometimes that's not the best approach to take because sometimes extreme statements, though they may be true or parts of them may be true, it can also alienate the general populace. and kind of lead people to throw the baby out with the bathwater on some stuff,

meaning that they throw away someone's ideas. They throw away all of someone's ideas because some of the ideas that the person has or the way that they state them is in an extreme manner, which is I personally don't think it's a good idea. Well, it's a good thing to understand. It's a good thing to understand because what that should tell you is that if you back off the extremity of your statements a little bit, you're going to get more people to listen to them. So that's a good thing to understand. And it's also a good thing to understand that if people

are talking in a really extreme way, you shouldn't just say, you know what, this person's just crazy. I'm not going to listen to them. Maybe you should actually listen to what they try and say and decipher what's just extreme and maybe not true, but are there kernels of truth in what people are saying? So I think it's a smart idea for us to listen. And I think, As we have watched America's withdrawal from Afghanistan in the late summer of 2021, after 20 years of war, after thousands of lives, after trillions of dollars, and no progress, maybe we should at least listen to what this Marine major general, Smadley Butler, one of the most decorated Marines that ever lived,

maybe we should listen to some of what he has to say and see if there are some things in there. that makes some sense. We have to get a little basic understanding of Smedley Butler, who he was, where he came from. Born July 30th, 1881, eldest of three sons. Father was a lawyer and a jump and a judge. He came from a good background. His grandfather was a congressman,

and his father was connected. He was a connected guy. And Smedley Butler went to an exclusive private school, which is sort of an East Coast thing. I mean, I guess they have them out on the West Coast, but on the East Coast is a bigger thing to have exclusive private schools. He went to one called the Haverford School.

And so you kind of get this image, you know, you kind of get this image, okay, well, you know, he's this rich kid that went to this exclusive school. And then you hear that he left school 38 days before his 17th birthday to enlist in the Marine Corps, which is. I think we have to give him credit, right?

We just have to say credit. That's pretty much what you say, credit. He still got his diploma. They allowed him to graduate. He lied about his age and gets commissioned a second lieutenant. So I don't know how he pulled that off. But this is back in the day, man.

There's no records. You're just showing up. How old are you? 23. I went to college, whatever. People like, oh, okay. You know what I'm saying? This is back in the day.

There's no... Isn't it the kind of... like your ID card is written in yeah like by hand yeah you like change that one to a seven you're good yeah or even just yeah just making adjustments yeah yeah yeah so I feel like I missed out on a lot of stuff

because I didn't have that kind of I mean we were close you know but we were just they were still tracking stuff so he's 16 years old and he leaves his high school to go and join the Marine Corps shows up gets a commission as a second lieutenant

and he's the Spanish American War is going down but he gets there a little late ends up showing up in Gitmo after it's been invaded after it's been captured doesn't really see any combat gets assigned to the to the Philippine American war he shows up there he's bored at first gets in trouble gets temporarily temporarily relieved of command because he's drunk and doing whatever gets his job back however October 1899 he gets his first combat action Leads 300 Marines in to take the town of Novaletta one Marines killed tenor wounded his first sergeant's

company first sergeant's wounded There's a little noted about him like panicking at first a little bit And then he kind of gets composure ends up in the boxer rebellion So Battle of Chin Sin this is in China He definitely kind of shows up now There's a wounded Marine officer and he is in the trench. Smedley Butler's in a trench and he exposes himself to enemy fire to rescue this Marine. He ends up getting shot in the thigh.

His commanding officer, Major Waller, who later became the best man at his wedding, he commended him and wrote, for such a reward as you may deem proper for the following officers, Lieutenant Smedley D. Butler for the admirable control of his men. in all the fights of the week and for saving a wounded man at the risk of his own life under very severe fire. And that's what got turned into the brevet promotion, which the brevet, if my memory serves me correctly, the Marine Corps had it for like maybe 20 years. And it basically was you're getting promoted.

It was a promotion. So that's why even when I read it, it says, oh, he went from first lieutenant to captain. It was a promotion and then they people that got promoted that way they eventually got an award called the brevet medal Which looks like the ribbon of a medal of honor you know the metal of honor has the white it's it's a light blue the brevet with stars the brevet is red with stars But it looks very similar as far as the ribbon goes So he gets that promotion he ends up in the banana wars These are police actions and these are police actions that we're conducting to maintain, you know, trade and the way we want things to be, the way America wants things to be in Central America and in the Caribbean.

Honduras rolls into Honduras. He gets tasked with defending the U.S. consulate during a revolt there. He rescues the consulate in Trujillo. He gets this nickname. His nickname is Old Gimlet Eye. Gimlet is a hand drill. It's an old school tool that used to drill wood. So he had this piercing look that he would give people.

And they called him old gimlet eye. Broken service gets out, gets married, has kids, runs a coal mine in West Virginia, goes back in the Marine Corps. It must have been easy to get out of the Marine Corps back then. He does it a couple times. More fighting in Central America. Battalion commander in, in in Nicaragua

fought in the battle of Mazzaya Leads the assault The bombardment the assault and the capture of Coyotepe Hill Next up is Veracruz These guys are he's rolling I mean they're doing they're getting it on With these low intensity conflicts

I remember one of my old senior chief said What we need is a low intensity conflict In a high per diem area Which I would got a kick out of. So that's what he's got going on. These guys are in low-intensity conflict, high-per-deme area.

Mexico, Veracruz, first medal of honor. So they end up going through Veracruz. They're kind of clearing it door-to-door. There's 5,800 sailors and Marines on this operation. 17 killed in action, 63-wounded in action. Which, if you think about that, there's 5,800 sailors and Marines. There's 17 killed. This is, so the fighting, I'm trying to say that the,

fighting wasn't that extreme but there was medals of honor given out pretty pretty um a lot so one army guy got a medal of honor nine marines got a medal of honor and 46 navy sailors got the medal of honor from this action at barracuse so he eventually tried to return to metal and said hey i didn't do anything to earn this and they not only did they tell him to keep it they told him you better wear it too so that's his first medal of honor he didn't feel comfortable about it but he got it Haiti second medal of honor fighting the Haitian the Caicos rebels the rebel group down there and they have this stronghold he kind of heard me talk about it in the in the citation there but he's getting the medal of honor the whole battle was 20 minutes long this assault

there was a one marine wounded and he was wounded by being hit with a rock in the face. All 51 of the rebels were killed. So he got the Medal of Honor for that. And that's what happened. After that, he became like a public administrator or sort of the military, I don't know, mini dictator kind of running things a little bit.

The public works and keeping things, you know, the social order. And he also, it's also said that they hunted the remaining rebels like. pigs world war one comes around he requests he wants to go into combat again he had a reputation of being brave he had a reputation of being smart he also had a reputation of being a little bit of a little bit of a rebel a little bit unreliable and and so I don't know if that's why they decided not to put him in

combat because I'm thinking if World War one they would have been like oh yeah you're just the guy we're looking for You're brave and you're smart, but you're super crazy. Come on up to the front lines. We got something for you. But they didn't. He ended up running this debarkation depot, you know, in the rear. And by all accounts, he did a great job and squared this thing away.

It was a real mess when he showed up and he squared it away. And he got the Army and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. After that, he goes and he's the commanding general at Quantico. when he was the commanding general. This guy was always doing something. He's one of those people like he always was doing something. When he was the commanding general at Quantico, they used to form up the troops

and they would march to various battlefields, civil war battlefields, and do reenactments. And he would lead the marches. So, yeah, I mean, he's just,

they march from Quantico to damn Gettysburg, right? And he was in front leading it. And they got up. up there let's do let's do the walk at Gettysburg so so then he's so he gets done with that now he has a broken service and he becomes the Philadelphia director of public safety and and this is like I might need a movie reference here echo Charles yes sir what's a movie where they're like gangsters they're trying to crack down untouchables okay he so there's there's this is the time

there's speakeasies and the prohibition is going on and he comes like law dog right he is he comes into he has a personal war on crime for two years and it seems like when you read about it seems like it's its own movie right this guy is going in just ready to take things on he will he wasn't allowed to fire if I remember this correctly he wasn't allowed he found out he wasn't allowed to fire individual police because the union and whatever so what he did was he to just take and just move them all around all the time. So they didn't have time to get to know the local criminals and get paid off. He just moved them all the time.

They were moving. That's like one of the things that he did. And he made a lot of enemies because of so many people are corrupt. Made a bunch of enemies. He finds he gets kind of a little bit. He did it, does it for two years. He cleans up a lot of stuff, but also makes a bunch of enemies. His final shot in the papers before he went back in the Marine Corps.

He said cleaning up Philadelphia is worse than any. battle I was ever in. When he comes back in, he comes the base commander in San Diego. Deployed with the Marine Expeditionary Force to China. Does a good job there. Politically influences a bunch of people. Makes Major General at 48 years old. And in that time, also his dad died.

His dad was super influential. He was, like I said, he was always kind of, you always kind of had a spotlight put on him. And one of the things when Mussolini's now in power, he, and there was some weird, like a conspiracy about Mussolini, it hit and run or something like this. I forget. But he sort of spread those rumors, you know? I think if he had Twitter, he would have been a real popular Twitter dude because he started spreading this guy, you know, this guy is a murderer. And the Italian government, this was before the war.

And the Italian government was like, hey, get your boy in check. and they pressured the SECNAV to court-martial Butler. And they did. They court-martial Butler. I think he was the highest-ranking military person to be arrested after the Civil War. So he got arrested, and he apologized. They let him off of the reprimand. The commandant of the Marine Corps died at the time, and he was kind of in the running.

And he ends up, it's pretty obvious that he's not enough of a company guy to get commandant. He doesn't get it. So he retires from the Marine Corps, October 1st, 1931. He starts going on like a lecture tour speaking. And he gets paid for it. He donates a bunch of the pay that he gets for the unemployment relief. He runs for Senate. He loses.

He supports the bonus army, which was when the World War won vets. They had these things called service certificates that they bought. and when they bought those things, they had, again, I'm sorry if this isn't perfect, but it was something along the lines of, when you bought these things, they had like a 20-year maturity time on them.

And the depression's going on, and everyone's like, hey, we want that money. And all these veterans, thousands and thousands of veterans are saying, hey, we gave you that money. We bought those service certificates, which were like bonds.

We want to cash them in. And the government was like hey those are 20 years man you bought those in 19 you got another you got another few years before you can cash those things in And this is when they had all the the big standoffs in the you know the the the world war one veterans marched down and Set up camp in Washington DC and he he supported that Gave more speeches Here's a here's an example this is what is when we know where he's heading mentally right? I don't mean that in a bad way I mean We can see what his angle starts to become. This was, and this was a summary of one of his speeches that was published in Socialist magazine that was called Common Sense.

It says, I spent 33 years and four months in active military service, and during that period, I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico, which is a city in Mexico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902 to 1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interest in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.

In China, in 1927, I helped see to it that standard oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. So he's kind of pissed. 1934 again this guy would have been all over Twitter 1934 he's sort of the leader of this thing that was called the business plot which was this that there's this this conspiracy that there was this plot for business leaders to overthrow president Roosevelt and in 1935 he wrote this book called war is a racket now we're going to read it some of it's extreme

some of it may be too extreme some of it's not accurate some of it's his feelings his emotions um you know in colonel david hackworth when he

went and talked to the press and you and I have had that discussion Dave like did he give up his influence he could have been in a division came or brigade commander next and a division commander and I think people sometimes reach a point where they emotionally can't take it anymore and I think David Hackworth got there where he had had seen enough American soldiers and he loved his soldiers and he loved all soldiers and he loved the army and just to see

the soldiers being utilized in a way that he didn't think was tactfully sound eventually he just couldn't take it anymore And I think that Major General Smedley Butler got to a similar point. And of course, this is 1935. So, I mean, we got Hitler in power in 1933. So he sees the, he hears the war drums beating. And as he sees the war drums beating, he doesn't like it. What are your thoughts so far, Dave? It's interesting to hear you recount some things that I remember.

Because obviously, as a Marine, this is one. one of the characters in the history of the Marine Corps that you are given early on. So they give you Smadley-Butler early on. Oh, yeah, yeah. Is there not risking that? Aren't they like, well, the weird thing was, the Medal of Honor's, right?

Look, I'm in no position to be like, well, I'm not sure. But when 46 Navy sailors got a Medal of Honor and there's 17 killed in action, like that's a, that seems very, seems that seems that seems that seems strange yeah right for sure seems strange and that's the that's really kind of the point that I'm thinking about in my mind is you know there's a little bit of a contrast this is a guy that you what you hear about and certainly in and listen you could I mean I got to be careful with my words too because I don't want there to be a negative connotation

to it but there's a there's an indoctrination you go through and you're a marine and that indoctrination is we're kind of awesome and our history is pretty awesome and we've got some amazing people that did some amazing things and you start to think about who those people are one of the things that's interesting about the name smedley butler is when you see the pictures of this guy and like you'll be in a class and it'll be about marine corps history and they'll literally have a slide or a picture up on the wall of the person and he's not he doesn't really look like a a a i guess he looks like poster boy marine he looks like a guy named smetley he does that went to maybe a private school in the East Coast.

And then, you know, you're seeing Baz alone and you're seeing Chesty in these pictures. And just the pictures alone are enough to be like, okay, this dude is legit. But, you know, they also, I don't have any recollection of the things that he did and the times that he did them. And the awards, I don't ever remember being given sort of the other side of it was, hey, listen, it was a different time, different circumstances. So as I hear you talk about that, and I'm listening to that. I just did some basic math, you know, 5,600 people. And then you sort of did the W wounded and killed. I'm like, well, I've seen that.

I know what the middle or more of the other side of that looks like. And those numbers are good numbers. You know, by standards, like you said, this is probably not the most high intensity thing that Marines have been through. But the other side is, is, this is also, you just said he's 48 years old. He's a major general. This guy that went back in the Marine Corps twice.

This is a guy that left high school. and by rights could have probably just coasted on a pretty easy life. So you're kind of forced to reconcile in your mind that I think to maybe the whole point of this podcast is I probably need to listen to what he has to say. But yeah, no, he's he is one of the characters that, and I'm using that term just, you know, to illustrate that we are introduced to historians that have had impact in history. And that's someone that we know about for sure. we could probably do a whole podcast about awards and whatnot, but I forget what year, like the Bronze Star and the Silver Star, they didn't have those yet at this time, I think.

And so this was, if you were going to get an award, it was going to be the Medal of Honor. And there you go. Again, it's like crazy because you've got this guy that has two medals of honor and this Marine Corps brevet thing, which there's not many of those things handed out either. It's a tiny number. And, and also the type of combat that they were going into, I mean, this is pre-World War I

is the combat you're talking about. So combat was totally different between, ah, you know what, I mean, you got the Civil War. We knew what combat was, but, but, yeah, there had been, there been a generation maybe that was a little bit that hadn't quite been there. Yeah, and I think the sense that I've always had was that, the, that, the, we're when you think of conflict or you think of combat and you think of World War I, it has a very strong sense of organized conflict between two well-established, well-organized sides that have design and structure and components that you can almost align against each other. And that,

certainly for World War I, produces probably like the most heavy intensity of conflict. Whereas before that, you have this sense of this well-organized team, the United States Navy, the United States Marine Corps, the organization of those. two working together where we're going to get you to the beach, you're going to embark and you're going to, or debark and get onto the land and we're going to support you. But the people you're in conflict with don't have that level of organization. So when you said, you know, one wounded on the good side and 57 killed, I'm like, I can, and again, I should be careful.

Wounded by a rock. But you can picture that like, this is a lopsided scenario. And it doesn't mean that weren't incredibly brave actions that didn't happen to solicit that outcome. But when you think of World War I or World War II or really conflicts we've had since then that organized versus organized, you don't get those sense of that long period of Marine Corps history. And those are all in Marine Corps history. We learn about all those things. But you don't get a sense of this force-on-force conflict that we're in the near-peer, the near-peer World War I, World War II. We're going against someone that's pretty much like we are.

Professionally trained, professionally outfitted, and prepared for this type of conflict. Check. So he writes his book, War's a Racket. And people, people, I don't know, I've had this book for five years. In fact, I couldn't even find, I have two copies of it. And I hadn't able to find them. So you can get this thing on PDF. And the reason I couldn't find him is because of the moving scenario.

I mean, call it. All my books are in big, giant boxes. And I was like, it's time to do it. And yeah, what makes it time to do it? Because, well, one of the things that just totally provoked me was, a trillion dollar price tag on Afghanistan and thousands of lives lost and you're thinking hold on a second Who what was what was the overall goal here? What are we doing? Because if I I could spend a trillion dollars and do literally anything

You give me a trillion dollars a trillion dollars You're telling me you couldn't square away a country with a trillion dollars in 20 years and basically an unlimited supply of people and assets. It's crazy. So what was going on? So as I'm thinking about that, here I am a guy that supports the military, that is very patriotic.

And I'm thinking, who spends a trillion dollars and doesn't get the job done? How does that happen? Who are you? What are you thinking about? What is your ultimate goal? And that very quickly, my mind very quickly jumped on,

Oh, this is probably what Smedley, but I'd read War as a Racket. I was always kind of like, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, that's one way of looking at it, right? So let's look at it. Here we go. Chapter 1, War is a Racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope.

It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to be to the majority of the people. Only a small inside group knows what it's about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the very many. Out of war, a few people make huge fortunes. Okay. if we're just going to fact check this thing as we go so far we are factual right that's what a racket is right a racket is something where a couple people kind of know what's going on everyone else is

getting fooled the couple people insiders are going to make a bunch of money other people are kind of going to get screwed that's what's going to happen in war there are people that make a lot of money he calls it the world war because there was only one at the time in the world war a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the world war. That many admitted their huge blood gains or sorry, that many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns? No one knows. Okay. So a lot of people made a lot of money in the war. I just saw an article.

that there's several billion dollars in taxes that are avoided by the top 1% earners in this country. So are there people that are doing things to get around taxes? Yes. Were there people that were made into millionaires and billionaires after September 11th? Yes, there were. Next. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench?

How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dugout? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Rhetorical questions that I think we all know the answer to. Not many. out of war nations acquire additional territory if they are victorious they just take it this newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few the self-same few who rung dollars out of blood in the war

the general public shoulders the bill fact check kind of negative on this one i mean america speaking of america we haven't we've we've we we we kind of of are established what we have territory-wise and we haven't taken any new territory in recent wars that's not been our goal so and even you know the idea that oh war is going in there to take the oil we don't actually go in and take the oil it doesn't it hasn't happened and what is the bill this bill renders a horrible accounting newly placed gravestones mangled bodies Shattered minds, broken hearts and homes, economic instability, depression and all its attendant miseries, backbreaking taxation for generations and generations.

Factually true. Horrible accounting. And taxation to pay for these wars for generations. For a great many years as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket. Not until I retired to civil life, did I fully realize it? Now that I see the international war clouds gathering as they are today, I must face it and speak out. And again, that's because he's looking at World War II. What do you call them the war clouds?

Again, they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand by side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonts their dispute over the Polish courts. order and look at what nonce was it means a it means like a one time a one time deal just hey we're just going to forget about our dispute over here because we're going to be friends right now the assassination of king alexander of Yugoslavia complicated matters Yugoslavia in hungria hungry long bitter enemies were almost at each other's throats Italy was ready to jump in but

France was waiting so was Czechoslovakia all of them are looking ahead to war not the people not those who fight and pay and die, only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit. What do you got? You get a fact check that? No, no, no, no. That's, yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of sitting here listening to you talk, which is his work.

Have you read this before? No, I have not. So that's why this is like a. It's hard. This is hard. And so, I mean, I wrote down a bunch of different notes. The last one I just wrote down was just literally the word angry. And I don't think you're trying to convey that emotion on purpose.

It's literally the words that you are reading if you just, if you try to put yourself in his shoes. And I was just kind of recounting. We were talking about low-intensity conflict and maybe the things that happened up until prior to World War I. And I did think of something after I was talking a minute ago about, you know, the word low-intensity conflict. I do remember the first time I was shot at, like for real. And there's a moment when you're the one who is, you know, the victim or the potential victim here, it feels like World War III. Because when you're the one being shot, it doesn't really matter the scope of what's going around you. That sense of things like, oh, damn, those people are they trying to kill me.

And they're actually pretty darn close. You don't say, well, you know, in the grand scheme of historical things, this is a very low intensity conflict. And this particular engagement isn't, you don't think like that. You think, okay, this is a big deal. This is a huge deal. And then if you observe that and you're in his shoes and you lead up to the travesty of World War I, I'm just trying to be empathetic to the level of frustration you would have at the hands of a few number of decision makers, both military and civilian, by the way, when we talked about World War I,

it's not hard for me to try to understand that as he said, I'm just almost picturing him writing this down and just the frustration and the anger that he has. and how clearly that's coming through and hearing you say his, the words that he's saying, that it's hard not to get a sense of his frustration. And you've even talked out with how, hackworth is it when you just kind of boil over, you're not able to really even articulate yourself.

I don't mean to say correctly, but the way that you would normally want to when you can keep your emotions in check. Yeah. Which you can't. Yeah, and I know you got to, you found it very interesting when we did,

when we talked about B.H. Liddell Hart, just the fact, like once you realize, he was in the battle psalm, you're like, oh, got it. Okay. So this guy has a totally different perspective, which is completely grounded and, and fermented in what he experienced on the battlefield.

And this is a, yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely a similar, a similar deal. Moving on, there are 40 million men under arms in the world today. So this again, this is 1935. And our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity. say that war is not in the making. Hell's bells. Are these 40 million men being trained to be dancers?

Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He at least is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Ducche in International Conciliation, the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said,

quote, and above all, fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. War alone brings up to its highest tension, all human energy, and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it." End quote. That's a, it's one thing for Ronald Reagan to say peace through strength and hey, we've got to be strong and we've got to, you know, the best way to avoid war is to be prepared for it.

But when you got Mussolini just saying, hey, there's, I don't believe in the possibility or the, or the freaking utility of peace. War alone brings to its highest tension, all human energy, and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it, that's the leader of your country. Guess what's happening? You're going to war. Undoubtedly, Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his Navy are ready for war, anxious for it, apparently.

His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Yugoslavia showed that, and the hurried mobilization of troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dolphus showed it too. There are others in Europe whose saber-rattling presages war sooner or later. Herr Hitler With his re-arming Germany And his constant demands for more and more arms Is an equal if not greater menace to peace France only recently increased the term of military service

For its youth from a year to 18 months All this stuff is going on He's just tracking it He sees everybody's just heading to war Yes all over nations are camping in their arms The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked our old friends the Russians and back Japan.

Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the open door policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90 million a year. Or the Philippine Islands. We have spent about $600 million in the Philippines in 35 years. And we, our bankers and industrialists and speculators, have private investments. There are less than 200 million then to save China to save that China trade of about 90 million and to protect these private investments of less than 200 in the Philippines

We would all be stirred up to hate Japan and go to war a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars Hundreds of thousands of American lives and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men Of course for this loss there would be a competent Intervenating profit fortunes would be made millions and billions of dollars would be piled up by a few Munitions makers bankers shipbuilders manufacturers meat packers speculators They would fare well yes they are getting ready for another war why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters? Their wives and their sweethearts What does it profit their children? What does it profit their children?

What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits? Yes, and what does it profit the nation? So I kind of have my thoughts on all this that I'm going to save a little bit. But what's what's what's the the I would say the methodology of the argument that he's presenting is to show one. side of the argument, which is very, it's a good argument. I mean, you can't, you can't really, you can't really come at this argument. You can't say, well, people aren't going to make money.

No, people make money. That's what happens. And that by itself isn't automatically a bad thing either. This is true. That's the other part. That's what I'm saying. I know you've got thoughts on this soon. I've got to be careful.

I could probably chime in like I usually don't every single thing that said. And there's thoughts going through my head like crazy. Yes. Yeah, I mean, there are profiteers and there are people that profit. And if I'm using the terms correctly, you can distinguish between those two. Right. And they can be aligned. For sure.

I mean, it's easy for me to sit here in retrospect, but it's like, hey, Hitler, Mussolini. Yeah, we probably want to go to all those people now, not let them do what they want. That's not a good plan. And I know this now, sitting here looking back. But you're right. And I think to your point, his point, his point. perspective is correct. It's not the whole story, but it's a perspective that what he sees and the way he's presenting it is correct. Yes. It's just that there is more. There's more time. And as you said,

there's nothing more obvious than that than a guy named Adolf Hitler. Right. That's about to go on a tear and kill millions of people. And it's interesting. He's using him like, hey, he might be worse than this other guy. Yeah, he might be. Yeah, 1935. He didn't seem so bad compared to Mussolini. He's going to give a little example here take our own case until until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of north america at that time our national debt was little more than a billion dollars then we became internationally minded we forgot or shunted aside the advice of the father of our country we forgot george washington's warning about entangling alliances we went to war we acquired outside territory at the end of the world war period as a direct result of our fiddling and international affairs

our national debt had jumped to over 25 billion. Our total favorable trade balance during the 25-year period was about 24 billion. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might as well have been ours without the wars. Again, when you just look at the numbers, run the numbers, man, we were a billion dollars in that debt, and now we're 25 billion dollars. in debt, that hurts. It would have been far cheaper, not to say safer, for the average American who pays the

bills to stay out of forward entanglements. For very few, this racket like bootlegging and other underworld rackets brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people who do not profit. And now we get into chapter two, who makes the profits. The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some, 52 billion dollars figured out that means 400 dollars to every American man woman and child and we haven't paid the debt yet we are paying it our children will pay it and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war

the normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six eight ten and sometimes twelve percent but wartime profits ah that is another matter twenty sixty one hundred three hundred and even eight 1800% the sky is the limit all that traffic will bear Uncle Sam has the money Let's get it of course it isn't put that crudely in wartime It is dressed into speeches about patriotism love of country and quote we must all put our shoulders to the wheel But the profits jump and leap and skyrocket and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples take our friends the Duponeman The Powder People.

Didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war or saved the world or saved the world for democracy or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the DuPonts for the period of 1910 to 1914 was $6 million a year. It wasn't much, but the DuPonts managed to get along. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. 58 million dollars a profit a year we find nearly 10 times that of normal times and the profits of normal times were pretty good An increase of profits more than 950%

Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials Well their 1910 to 1914 yearly earnings average six million dollars then came the war and like loyal citizens Bethlehem steel promptly turned to mission munitions making. Did their profits jump or did they let or did they let uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914 to 1918 average was a $49 million a year. Or let's take United Steel. Normal earnings during the five year period prior to the war were $105 million a year. Not bad. Then came along the war and up with the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914 to 1918 was $240 million. Not bad. Then you have some of the steel and Outer earnings.

Let's look at some, let's look at something else. A little copper perhaps. That always does well in war times. Anaconda, for instance, average yearly earnings during the pre-year, pre-year wars of 1910 to 1914, $10 million. During the war years, 1914 to 1918 profits left to $34 million a year. Utah copper, average of $5 million during the pre-war period, jumped to an average of 21 million yearly profits for the war period.

Let's group these five with three similar companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period, 1910 to 1914, were 137 million. Then came along the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to 408 million. A little increase in profits of approximately 200%. Does war pay? They paid them. But they aren't the only ones.

There are still others. Let's take leather. For a three-year period, before the war, the total profits of Central Leather Company were at 3.5 million. That was approximately $1.16 million a year. Well, in 1916, Central Leather returned a profit of $15 million a small increase of 1,100%. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war and profits jumped to $12 million a year, a leap of 1,400%.

International nickel company. You can't have a war without nickel showed an increase in profits from a mere $4 million a year to $73 million a year. Not bad. An increase of 1,700 percent. American sugar refining company averaged $2 million a year for three years before the war. In 1916, a profit of $6 million was recorded. Listen to Senate document number 259, the 65th Congress reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues, considering the profits of 122 meatpackers. 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, 340 coal producers during the war.

Profits under 25% were exceptional. For instance, the coal companies made between 100% and 7,800% on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago Packers doubled and tripled their earnings. Let us not forget the bankers who financed the Great War. If anyone had the cream of the profits, it was the bankers being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations. they do not have to report to stockholders, and their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and billions, I do not know, because those little secrets never become public even before a Senate investigatory body.

People make money. I mean, and part of that is supply and demand. And one of the reasons that America does so well during war is because we have capitalism, and that's how we're able to outproduce other countries. even especially companies that have socialized or communist controlled industry they just can't do what we do why because they're not driven to do it there's no hey look i'm running this factory for whatever for the soviet union they want me to make 100 tanks they want me to make 200 tanks i'm going to get the same paycheck regardless and if i'm a guy whatever working on the the the fabrication of one of those

tank treads I don't care if I make 20 today or if I make 100 today I'm gonna get the same paycheck So these people are gonna make a lot of money because they're gonna turn out Something that is in high demand Here's how some other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits take the shoe people they like war It brings business with abnormal profits they made huge profits and sales abroad to our allies perhaps like the munitions manufacturers and arm armor makers they also sold to the enemy for a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France but they did well by Uncle Sam too for instance they sold Uncle Sam 35 million pairs of hob-nailed service shoes so that's a big number there were

four million soldiers eight pairs or more to a soldier my regiment during the war had only one pair to soldier per soldier some of these shoes probably are still in existence They were good shoes. But when the war was over, Uncle Sam has a matter of 25 million pairs of shoes left over, bought and paid for profits recorded and pocketed. And this is, you know, you should start getting into the idea of just like the government waste. And it's just the crazy, crazy government waste, which is why the free market is so powerful. Because people try and streamline things.

There was a lot of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan. Saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas. Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it. So we had a lot of McClellan saddles. We probably still do.

Also, somebody made a lot of mosquito netting. They sold Uncle Sam 20 million mosquito nets for the use of soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches. One hand scratching cooties on their backs and the others making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito. nets ever got to France. Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be

without his mosquito net. So 40 million additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam. You know why? Because you're not spending your own money. You're not spending your own money. When you're not spending your own money, man. You spend it on stuff.

Because it's really easy. You know what? They might need them. You know what? Let's get them. And all politics are local. Who knows who was putting in those where those mosquito nets were made? These were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose if the war had lasted just a little bit longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.

Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they too should adjust their profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else is getting theirs. So a billion dollars Count them if you live long enough Was spent by Uncle Sam and building airplane engines That never left the ground Not one plane or motor

Out of the billion dollars worth ordered Ever got into battle in France Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit Of 30, 100 or perhaps 300% Remember the fraud waste and abuse hotline Apparently they didn't have that Like in the military Echo Charles I got a thing called the fraud waste and abuse hotline

You can call up and say hey We're buying plane engine We got them lined up. We're not using them. We're buying mosquito nets. We're not using them. Did anyone actually use that? Or do you know of anyone who used it?

I never used it. Did you ever use it? I never use it, but I know the sticker on the wall. I know if I would have had to use it. I probably used it on my tasking or my platoon for the money we were wasting on ammunition. Just slaying ammunition. Undershirts four soldiers cost 14 cents to make.

And Uncle Sam paid 30 to 40 cents each for them. A nice little profit for the undershirt man. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturer and the steel helmet manufacturers all got theirs Why when the war was over Some four million sets of equipment knapsacks and the things that go to fill them crammed warehouses on this side Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them and they will do it all over again next time There were lots of brilliant ideas for making profit during the war one very versatile Patriots sold uncle Sam

12 dozen 48 inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That's the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and manufactured, and the manufacturer had profited from them, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them.

When the armistice was signed, it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the runches. Then he planned to sell those to your Uncle Sam. Still another brilliant idea that the colonels shouldn't ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding on a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use by colonels. Not one of them was used.

The buckboard manufacturer got his war profit. Buckboard is like a wagon. It's like a carriage with leaf springs to be towed behind a horse, 6,000 of them. The shipbuilders felt they should come on on some of it too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit, more than $3 billion worth. Some of the ships were all right. But 635 million worth of them were made of wood that wouldn't float. The seams opened up and they sank.

We paid for them, though, and somebody pocketed the profits. It's been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your uncle Sam $52 billion. Of this sum, $39 billion was expended in the actual war itself. The six-manager yielded $16 billion in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16 billion in profits is not to be sneezed at. It's quite a tidy sum, and it went to a very few. The Senate committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits,

despite its sensational closers, hardly had scratched the surface. Even so it's had some effect. The State Department had been studying for some time methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The administration names a committee with the War Navy departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator to limit profits in wartime. To what extent isn't suggested? Hmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600% of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited.

to some smaller figure. Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses. That is the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain, there is nothing in this scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye or one arm or to limit his wounds to one or two or three or to limit the loss of life. There's nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12% of a regiment shall be wounded in bottle

or not more than 7% of a division shall be killed. Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters. So they put together a committee and say, well, you know, they're making a little too much money. We should put a limit on how much money they can make. Possibly limit those war profits. Chapter 3. Who pays the bills? Who provides the profits, these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500, 1,800, 1,800.

We all pay them. in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty bonds at $100 and sold them back at 84 or 86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers controlled the security markets. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds.

Then all of us, the people got frightened and sold the bonds at 84, 86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom. And government bonds went to par and above, and then the bankers collected their profits. But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill. If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veterans' hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am doing at the time of writing this,

I have visited 18 government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men, men who were the pick of the nation 18 years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home. So this was interesting because we hear a lot about what happens when we come home. We hear about PTSD. And you see like the images of shell shock in World War II, especially in England and the Brits. You don't hear a lot about it from World War I. And this is a weirdly written sentence.

I tried to read it in a way that made it sense. But it says the very able surgeon, the very able chief surgeon at the government Hospital, semicolon at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead told me that the mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home. So what he's saying is people that fought are three times likely to die, three times more likely to die than someone that didn't fight. It doesn't talk about how, but my guess is a lot of those are suicide. or just like the crazy violent deaths that military people that have that experience end up having.

And here he goes into it a little bit in the most simplistic and so obvious way. Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. They were remolded. they were made over they were made to about face to regard murder as the order of the day they were put shoulder to shoulder and through mass psychology they were entirely changed we used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed then suddenly we discharged them and told them to make another about outface this time they had to do their own readjustment without mass psychology without officers aid and advice and without nationwide propaganda we didn't need them anymore so we scattered them about with any three-minute or Liberty loan speeches or without any three-minute or Liberty loan speeches or parades many

too many of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed mentally because They could not make that final about face alone. That's pretty straightforward and he gives a example here. He says in the government hospital in Marion, Indiana 1,800 of these boys are in pens 500 of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around the outside of the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the look on their faces physically they are in good shape mentally they are gone there are thousands and thousands of these cases and more and more are coming in all the time the tremendous excitement of the war the sudden cutting off of that

excitement the young boys couldn't stand it I'm gonna have to dig into that I'm gonna have to get some research going on that because that sounds horrific 1800 god 1800 men boys he's calling them but but but I mean, this is 1935. You know, the war ended in 1918. So he's, these are young men. And you just don't hear about this. You hear about it now.

You don't hear about it from World War I. And in fact, World War II, I've talked about like, well, you know, in World War II you got to come home on a ship with some other guys and you got to decompress for five or six weeks and you were held up as a hero and all this stuff. And that's why it was easier to adapt. It's like, well, what about World War I? And that freaking psychotic war. Yeah, I mean, everything that's in my mind obviously has to be tempered with the fact that I truly cannot claim to appreciate the reality that he's describing.

He said he's been basically talking about VA hospitals. He's been to 18 different VA hospitals. This is a passion for him. He's going around seeing what's going on. And at least in this sense of when you think about World War II that there was this. And I got to assume it was felt at the time, this very clear sense of good and evil, right and wrong, and the sides that we are on and the justification and the necessity, the global necessity. And if you think about World War I to at least try to reconcile the loss and what was it for

and what was really at stake and how much blurry or not. You don't feel that in World War I. And you talk about probably a nation that's just totally ill-equipped to have a 25-year-old comeback. after seeing what they saw, without even be able to say, hey, I at least saved the world, you know, from Holocaust or nuclear war, whatever could have been at stake by the end of World War II, and being totally ill-equipped to know how to even handle that.

At least in modern times, right, you're at least a little bit desensitized, right? You've seen horror movies. You've seen blood and guts. You're playing first-person shooter video games. games like this isn't can you imagine coming from freaking Omaha Nebraska where you're like going to school you you know I mean you're just a a normal kid that might not even be the best example because at least in Omaha Nebraska you're you're you're slaughtering pigs

you're shooting guns but if you're in whatever if you're from the city and you just you're just not around that you're not seeing it and then boom you're thrown into world war one yeah And there was another section that I know about Smelly Butler. There was a point, I think it was when he was in China where he, for the first time, saw, like, mass slaughtered Japanese. And it's just one of those points that he had seen some real violence. And that was before World War I. But, yeah, at least nowadays, this might be a bad thing, is that people are desensitized somewhat. You know, go on, go on whatever, YouTube.

I don't know, does YouTube filter out, like, heinous shootings and stuff like that? Yeah. So where do you see stuff like that now, I guess? Oddly, and I don't want to go too deep into it, but oddly they had a few websites out that you could just go. Yeah. They say, click here, make sure you're 18, whatever. Yeah. And then you can watch whatever sick video you want.

But as I've noticed, not that I frequent these things, but as I've noticed, they've been kind of disappearing. Yeah, that's interesting. Like I remember there was a video of a Russian soldier being killed by a by a Cheshon. And it's brutal. They're putting his boot on his head and they're just he's screaming and they're cut in his throat and he's sort of like slowly The impact of the knife blade. Yeah, that's old school. There's way worse stuff I'm saying that's old school But I haven't seen that in a long time And but I'm sure there's like some websites where you can just see all that stuff. Yeah and I

Like I said, I think they're kind of quietly doing away with them. Maybe because they encourage certain, like, groups to be like, oh, let's see if we can put ours up, you know, because in that dark area of the Internet, it's like the people who are responsible for making those videos. Sometimes they get into these little competitions to see who can make the sickest video. Well.

And they go hard for sure. Even if you just saw rated R movies. you would be more accustomed to this kind of scenery. Oh, yeah. And you have like, like, yeah, the exposure of what war actually is is way more now compared to time like that. Like, hey, if you watched Saving Private Ryan, you're like, okay, man, I mean, this is. Oh, yeah. And there's reports, plenty of reports like World War II veterans that were at D-Day were totally, you know, thought that nailed it.

And they were very disturbed in watching it. and had to take a break, had to walk out, whatever, because it was so realistic. So that's going to condition you. Yeah. But if you leave freaking Maryland, where you live in a small neighborhood, and your dad works at the factory,

and next thing you know, you're in World War I. And then all of a sudden, three weeks later, you're back in Maryland in your neighborhood. It's going to be a rough one. That's a good way to put it. I was like, hey, they take you out of your normal world and make you do an about face with all this essential training and like all this cook you know this influence and stuff and then when that's done

just all of a sudden hey do another about face but hey do it on your own kind of a thing it's like dang that's exactly what happens huh you know that song by the white buffalo that he played when he was on here it's called wish it was true well when he was on here he played that song and and i actually had like asked him to play it's a slow one yeah and um but the song you know it's got a line in there that basically says hey You're just a number and we used you and you're through and there's a couple people that you know left some comments or hit me up like this is an anti-war song What are you talking about? I was like hey bro This is what happens

It doesn't happen all the time, but this is a this is a song written from someone's individual viewpoint of Hey went to war whatever war it was maybe was World War one World War II World War Korea Vietnam There's plenty of people that went to those wars came home and this is exactly what happened that's what that song is about It's not saying, oh, you just got used by every single soldier. It's not saying that. But this happens. This does happen. And that's why it's such a powerful song.

This might sound a little bit insensitive, but you don't rambo. That's what that story was essentially about. When you watch First Blood, right? Like, that's essentially what it was about. And then they, of course, they do them dirty again, sent them to jail. And then Rambo, too, they're like, oh, wait, wait, we need that guy again. You know, let's go get that guy. And then they do them, try to do it in 30 again, see what I'm saying?

That is essentially the story. Yep. And it's not. And look, there's plenty of people that come home from war and they get, they're able to deal with it. And they go, cool, you know what? I did what I had to do. And now I'm going back to the work and I'm going back to the factory. I'm going back to the construction site, going back to the insurance business that I'm running or that I work at.

Like people, people deal. And they also saw different things. What did this person see? They'll do different things. What did this person do? So we got to take all these things into account. But like you just pointed out, Echo, the fact that you're going to take hundreds of thousands of people In World War I and World War II, you're taking hundreds of thousands of people and train them to kill and then when it's over you're like, cool, we're good. I appreciate it.

See you later. And I mean, Eugene Sledge, I mean, he had a really hard time when he came home from war a really hard time when he came home from war and he still carried on with his normal life. I mean, actually, all those guys did. All those guys that were over there had a real hard time. But there's also millions of veterans that came home and, like, they carried on with their life. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I've had him on this podcast. I mean, Charlie Plum, how does he come home from six years of captivity?

And it's just like, okay, cool. Well, you know, deal. You know, we're going to move on. William Reeder. By the way, William Reeder 40 years, like stayed in the Army for another, whatever. whatever 38 years doing his job getting a fit rep how do you write a fit rep for for William Reeder how do you not just say hey sir what look I'm supposed to be in charge of you you tell me what you want to do because you have done more than for the military than I could

have ever hoped to have done and I appreciate you sitting here and not like not like beating me up or whatever not not counseling me on what an idiot I am so there's plenty of people that come home and they they are now I will say this and Charlie Plum pointed this out to me they're the amount of like post-traumatic stress that the guys that were in the hanoi hilton had was less on average than normal infantrymen and it's because they had this camaraderie at least that's what he said at least i think i remember what he said but but they had this camaraderie so it was like hey you know we were all and they had time to process it and and then they got this huge beautiful welcome home and i mean when i i i i i

It was Jim Sorlesley. I think it was Jim Surlesley when he, you know, he's lost both legs and his arm. And the guys came home from being POWs with the white, you know, with the big reception. He was like, hey, bro. I understand you guys were held captive. I'm sorry. You know, I got back and just went to a freaking rehab for nine months. And then I'm out here with one arm.

So that probably helped. the guys that were captives in Vietnam as well, is that they got a very warm welcome home. And as we know, a lot of Vietnam veterans did not get a warm welcome home. And from what it sounds like here, same thing, World War I. Oh, the look on their faces. Physically, they're in good shape.

Mentally, they are gone. I wrote that down to you. The metaphor that he describes about, we take them, we have him doing a bad face. and then we have them doing another bout face and they can't do that second one. We have them do the second one on their own. On their own.

They can't do it. It's not unreasonable to think. I was literally just thinking about who are you if you're a 21, 22 year old male in 1914 going to World War I? Who are you? And it's

it's not unreasonable to think that they had no idea what war was, period. What war was? And if you think, think about today, like joining the military, to your point, at least some exposure is accessible to anybody, you have some idea what war is. You've seen platoon, you've seen full metal jacket, you've seen saving private Ryan, you've seen apocalypse now, you've seen all these movies. Yes. And it's in the national psyche. People are talking about it. People have been talking about it. If you were in

World War I and you're 20, I mean, the last, there's historians that probably do some math, but like unless you have some connection to the Civil War, which ended 50 years ago, and you're getting stories from your grandpa, you have no idea what war is. And then you're going to World War I, where the use of human capital, the use of a human being was less significant

than any other piece of material that was out there. And today, like, I did 23 years. in the Marine Corps and I retired like five years ago. It's like 30 years coming up on my military experience. We take excessive, sometimes tactically unsound lengths to preserve American lives. Now, obviously we know that doesn't always work out, but we don't by design waste lives.

And you can kind of almost count on that, like, hey, there are no more human waves. There's no more, hey, listen, gents, have a seat, let's talk about this plan. We know we're all gonna get wiped up, get wiped up, but we have to go do this. Like those conversations aren't really happening. And so you kind of know what you're getting into a little bit, at least softens out a little

bit. You know what war is, some idea what the word's going to be like. I can't imagine a bigger contrast of being 19 years old. Hey, you're going to Europe. Like, hey, where is that? Okay, cool. It's here. Hey, what country is that?

That's this country here. Okay, who are we fighting? These people over here. How does this going to work? Well, when you get there, we'll show you. Okay. Cool. And then you see World War I.

Yeah. The second about face to do on your own. Yeah, it's going to be a rough way. It's not going to work out, right? And he's not touring the country going, yeah. And yeah, the frustration is, should we probably take a couple of those dollars? I mean, the sarcasm with, just the, he's so, should we take a couple of those dollars and maybe help these folks with that about face? These patriots over here making money.

Again, and this is just me saying, I can appreciate this point. If you get where he's coming from. I get where he's coming from. And this is, this is not some coward. This is not some, um, this is not a dude who's sitting on the sidelines casting judgment.

This is a guy who, who for whatever got back in the, this is a guy who can speak, you know, from a first person point of you. Certainly can. So he gets done talking about that part of the bill. And he says that's a part of the bill.

So much for the dead. They have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded. They are paying now for their share of the war profits. But others paid too. They paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in their lives and in their communities. They paid for it in the trenches where they were shot at and they were shot, where they were shot, where they were.

They were hungry for days at a time where they slept in mud and cold and rain with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby. But don't forget, the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too. Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War, they were paid bonuses in many instances before they went into service. The government or the states paid as high as $1,200. hundred dollars for an enlistment in a spanish-american war they gave prize money when we captured any

vessels the soldiers all got their share at least they were supposed to then it was found we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it but constricting the soldiers anyway so just going to the draft then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor either everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't. Napoleon once said, all men are enamored of decorations. They positively hunger for them. So by developing a Napoleonic system, the metal business, the government learned it could get soldiers for less money because the boys liked to be decorated.

Until the Civil War, there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War, no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War. in the world war we use propaganda to make the boys accept conscription they were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army so vicious was this war propaganda that even god was brought into it with a few with few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill kill kill the germans to kill the germans god is on our side it is his will that the german should be killed and in germany the good pastors called upon the germans to kill the allies to please the same God that was part of the general propaganda built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die this was the war to end all wars this was the war to make the world safe for democracy no one

mentioned to them as they marched away that they're going and dying would mean huge war profits no one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was going to be a glorious adventure. Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war too.

So he gave them a large salary of $30 a month. All they had to do for this magnificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lion swampy, trenches eat canned Willie when they could get it and kill and kill and kill and be killed. But wait, half that wage, just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer and a munitions factory safe at home made in a day, half that wage was promptly taken from him to support his dependents so that he would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance, something the employer pays for

an enlightened state. And that cost him about $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left. Then the most crowning insolence of all, he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition clothing and food by being made to buy liberty bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on paydays. We made them buy back, we made them buy liberty bonds for $100. And then we bought them back when they came back from the war and couldn't find work at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2 billion worth of these bonds.

Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They paid in the same heartbreak that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights as he lay in the trenches and watch shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly. His father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters. When he returned home minus an eye or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too.

As much and sometimes even more than. He. Yes, and they too contributed their dollars to the profits of the munition makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They too bought liberty bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the armistice in the hocus pocus of manipulated liberty bond prices. And even now, the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who were never able to readjust themselves are still suffering and paying. fact check I'm gonna go ahead and say truth so what's going on chapter four how to smash this racket well it's a racket all right a few profit and the many pay but there is a way to stop it you can't

end it by a disarmament conference you can't eliminate it by peace parley's at geneva well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions it can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war. The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before nations manhood can be conscripted. And there's just an interesting thing I got to point out when he talks about capital industry and labor,

he's talking about those groups of people. And I'm not going to change. It would be saying like the capitalists and the industrialists and the labor force. You could say that, but there's the words he uses, is capital industry. He's talking about those people.

One month before the government can conscript the young men of the nation, it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and munition makers and our shipbuilders and airplane builders and the manufacturers of all other things that provide profit in wartime as well as the bankers and the speculators be conscripted. To get $30 a month the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

But the workers in these plants get the same wages. All the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers. Yes, and all generals and admirals and officers and all politicians and all government office holders, everyone in the nation can be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches. Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay. half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy liberty bonds. Why shouldn't they? They aren't running the risk of being killed or having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered.

They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are. Give capital and industry and labor 30 days to think it over and you will find by that time there will be no war. That will smash the racket, that and nothing else. Maybe I'm a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of profit out of war until the people those who do the suffering and still pay the price make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding and not that of the profiteers

You know so here you get to like a kind of a An argument you know that's like Hyperbole right hey what you need to do is first just if you're gonna go and and if you know no one will argue with it because it makes sense But it's just it's it's it's just an unrealistic thing to think about unfortunately guy we all get the idea yep you want to go you want to go to war cool and he's the interesting he's not even talking about them going to war he's just talking about you just get the pay for and he's only talking about for 30 days he's only talking about for 30 days 30 days you know you're the CEO of a of a defense

company for 30 days you're going to get this pay I actually don't think that's enough right now I think it'd have to be a lot more you know you always hear that and actually when you when you read about the Vietnam War one of the things that really started to turn the tide of the American public against the Vietnam War

was the draft because all of a sudden it wasn't just you know the the freaking poor redneck from West Virginia or the inner city black kid from Harlem that was getting shipped off the war

all of a sudden it was like oh you're in a you're from wherever and your your dad is a lawyer your dad is a judge your dad is a business owner and you got a bunch of money and guess what yep yeah load up load up on the bus because it's time to go get some and that's as that expanded and normal richer people started going to war it was like rich kids the rich parents started sending their kids off to war that's a problem and that's one of the things that started to push the the the the resistance against the Vietnam War because when it was just hey we're sending a bunch of damn poor people hey cool whatever and it's not my kid my kid's not

my kid's going to freaking uh college next year he's not going to boot camp he's not going to nom so i don't care yeah it seems like a great idea let's stop communism over there until little johnny gets freaking called up and then they're like ooh maybe not so i would say from that person That's that that's a good assessment Realistic assessment that if you start saying oh yeah you want to said you want to send America to war cool your kid goes People start changing their freaking minds real quick Factually he doesn't stop there. He's got another step Another step which is funny because he he starts off by saying this is the only thing you need to do

But he does have another step another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is limited a limited Plesit Plebiscite sorry Plebocyte, which is a plebiscite is a direct vote. Like, it's just a vote. Plebiscite. Another step necessary in this war, in this fight to smash the war racket, is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared.

A plebiscite, not of all the voters, but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international baking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant, all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms

to sleep in the trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war. There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those affected. Many of our states have restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must own property.

It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be physically examined. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of a war, would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide and not a Congress. Few of those, few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in the physical condition

to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote. There you go. And as I said, in Nam, that kind of worked. People said, not Johnny. And he said there was one step. And he's introduced two. Here's the third one.

A third step in this business of smashing war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only. At each session of Congress, the question whether further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel chair admirals of Washington, and there are always a lot of them, are very adroit lobbyists, and they are smart. They don't shout that we need a lot of battleships. We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation. Oh, no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125 million people, just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy.

For what? To fight the enemy? Oh, my. No. Oh, no. For defense purposes only. Then, incidentally, they announced maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense.

Uh-huh. The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh no, the maneuvers will be 2,000, yes, perhaps even 3,500 miles off the coast. The Japanese, a proud people, of course, will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon's shores, even as pleased as would be the residents of California where they did dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles. The ships of our Navy, it can be seen, should specifically limited bylaw, should be specifically limited by law to within 200 miles of our coast. line. Had that been the law of 1898, the Maine never would have gone to Havana Harbor.

She never would have been blown up. There never would have been no war with Spain with the attendant loss of life. 200 miles is ample in the opinion of experts for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if it is ships can't go further than 200 miles off the coastline. Plains might be permitted to go 500 miles from the coast for the purpose of reconnaissance and the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation. To summarize, three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. One, we must take the profit out of war. Two, we must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

And three, we must limit our military forces to home defense purposes. Again, not a great strategic plan to sit back and like just stay in your own a.O. You want to project power a little bit. You have to piss people off. but you definitely want to project some power out there. What are you writing down, Dave? I'm just summarizing what he said. I'm just trying to, I'm spending this all this time,

just trying to appreciate what he's saying. Because obviously, and I'm going to wait, you know, I know there's a couple more things to read here. I'm going to, I'm going to wait to the conclusion, but I spent a lot of time in my own brain saying, I hear what you're saying. I hear what you're saying. Well, this is a, but there's a, yeah.

Well, this is the thing that we have to do. That's like what the whole start of this thing. Hey, hey, listen, man, we just spent a trillion dollars. Totally, man. In a 20-year war. And when we got there, the Taliban was in control of whatever percentage of the country. And now we left and now they're now going to control 100% of the country. Totally.

We spent a trillion dollars. We have thousands of lost lives. We have thousands more wounded, maimed for life. Yeah. And you have to at least open your mind and say, okay, what's this guy talking about? What was he talking about? Because like you said, this isn't some armchair quarterback. This is a guy that fought.

Chapter 5. To hell with war. I am not as fool to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war. Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was reelected president in 1916 on a platform that he had, quote, kept us out of war, and quote, and on the implied promise that he would, quote, keep us out of war. Yet five months later, he asked Congress to declare war in Germany.

In that five-month interval, the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The four million young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die. Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly? money an allied commission it may be recalled came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the president the president summoned a group of advisors the head of the commission spoke stripped of its diplomatic language this is what he told the president and his group there's

no use in kidding ourselves any longer the cause of the allies is lost we now owe you american bankers american munition makers american manufacturers american speculators American exporters, five or six billion dollars. If we lose, and without the help of the United States, we will use, we, England, France, Italy, cannot pay back this money, and Germany won't. So, end quote. Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had the radio been available to broadcast the precedings, America never would have entered the world war. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy.

When our boys were sent off to war, they were told it was a, quote, war to make the world safe for democracy. And a, quote, war to end all wars. Well, 18 years after the world has less of democracy than it had. Besides, what business is it of ours, whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy, or Austria live under democracies or monarchies, whether they are fascists or communists. Our problem is to preserve our own democracy. And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.

Yes, we have disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed. The results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens? The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship.

No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men, both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. and at all these conferences lurking in the background, but all powerful just the same, are the sinister agents who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments. The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament

to prevent war, but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential flow. Fo, I remember having this thought when you and I were in the Battle of Ramadi. And that thought was how freaking awesome the U.S. military was and how much of that awesomeness relied on these individual human beings that were making things happen. Because when you look at the operations that were taking place, when you look at the effort that was put forth, it was literally platoon commanders, company commanders,

battalion commanders, brigade commander, that was through force of will, making things happen, making things happen. You could, if, if the brigade commander didn't really care

and just wanted to kind of do a deployment and get it under his belt and just like, yep, I did my deployment. If he didn't care, if you didn't want to do good, we wouldn't have done anything. A battalion commander that's going to push into an area of operations

that hasn't been pushing into. There is individual effort. And here's what's scary is look in the battle of Ramadi we were trying to stabilize and secure the city of Ramadi. If there's no goal like that, a clearly defined goal, and you have people that are trying to do, make their best individual effort to make their mark to leave their mark to do something to get a good fit rep what are you going to do you're going to say why we're going to do this we're going to do

that we're going to expand we're going to grow more i need more people this idea that there's no real competing competing um asset or competing competing competitive of someone that's saying hey wait a second what what are you actually doing over there i mean if you're Let's say you were in the Marine Corps and you were supposed to train Iraqi soldiers and I do turnover with you and you say, yep, hey, Jocko, we trained 100 Iraqi soldiers and I go, that's great. How many Iraqi soldiers do you think I'm going to train? How many think? 101.

At least 1001. At least 1001. I'm going to do more than you. Totally. I'm going to do more than you. I remember, this is back in the day. I remember going out on a workups with the with the fleet and you could see I did a workup with the fleet that was I wasn't I wasn't embarked but we did some work with Marines Then my next deployment I did a full workup with the Marines then the next one I did another full workup with the Marines

So I did basically saw three workups in a row with the Marines and each one of them was a little bit more each workup was a little bit more Each workup was a little bit more For sure Hey, oh yeah, you guys did You guys did four amphibious landings Oh yeah We did five Oh, what about the next?

The next guy is doing six This is real Yeah I had similar experience And even in training You know Classic question is The outgoing squadron

versus the incoming squadron How many pounds of wardens Did you drop You know 74,000 Cool Hey right on the board We're dropping 75K And that's why I said

101 Yeah yeah Yeah A hundred one yeah Yeah A little bit more in year Yep, whatever that is. Yeah, 100%.

100%. So that just reminds me of what we're talking about here, which is no admiral goes, you know what, I think we need less ships. The amount of admirals that say that is zero. Totally. The amount of generals that say, I need less divisions.

I need less brigades. I need less battalions. The number of generals that say that is zero. Or, you know, sure are there some. I'm sure there are. But the vast majority. And those few that say, well, I think we need less.

He's definitely not getting promoted. He's not going to be the CNO. He's definitely not going to be the CNO. Hey, I'm the guy that downsized the Navy. Promote me. It's not happening. Right. It's not happening.

Hey, I got us less brigades, less combat brigades. Good job. Yeah. Let's promote you. No one says that. So you have this self-fulfilling prophecy

and this self-licking ice cream cone, which is a term. I understand what it means, but I'm not exactly sure, you know, where it came from. Right. But that's what you have,

right, is we want to have more. And that's exactly what he's talking about here. There was no one, there was very few people that would come back and say, hey, yeah, the Iraqi soldiers, we had to do it in Ramadi. We had to say, these guys are not ready yet because it was so obvious what would happen if we just sent them out on their own. And they tried.

I mean, you remember they turned over like some of the checkpoints like two nine or five and they turned it over and two days later the insurgents hit it and overrun it. uh, EC3 down there by, on the bridge. Same thing. Turned it over to the Iraqis. Hey,

these guys are ready. You know, it's like actually, no, they weren't ready and they got annihilated. So there wasn't really the, the opportunity for us to be like, well, yeah,

the Iraqi troops that we are trained are now 100% what'd they call it, what they call it? They're ready for unilateral operations. Right. I didn't send up a message saying, yep, our Iraqis that we've been training for six months are now ready for unilateral operations,

even though that was what everybody wanted us to say, but we couldn't say it there because you would find out on their first operation that there is no possible way they were ready. But if we would have been a more permissive environment, the pressure to say, yeah, hey, they can conduct unilateral operations. The pressure would have been so great because otherwise me like, hey, Jock, the last task unit commander that's out here has, you know, he trained up four platoon special mission unit elements that are now, that were now ready to perform unilateral operations. What did you do? I'd be like, well, actually, I don't think those four are even capable, and we should downgrade them. Well, what's wrong with you, Jocko? The last task unit commander was able to do this.

Why couldn't you do that? So you would have felt that pressure. And a lot of times people break to that pressure. I mean, obviously, I think that happened a lot in Afghanistan. Yeah, we trained these guys for six months. And who says, yeah, we trained somebody for six months. They're not capable. We train them for a year.

They're not capable. It's difficult. It's a difficult. thing to do. It's also difficult to assess. So I think you get this. That's what he's talking about here. There's no no Admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be out of command. So what do they do? They want more. There's only one way back to the book. There's only one way to disarm any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship every gun, every rifle, every tank, every warplane. Even this if it were possible would not be enough. The next war, according to experts,

not be fought with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns, but it will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases. Secretly, each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits, and guns will still be manufactured and powder, and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms for the manufacturer must make their war profits too. But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.

If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendished mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. by putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war, even the munitions makers. So I say, to hell with war.

And that's the end of it. Again, you know, he's in the end, you know, kind of got the fantasy, got the fantasy argument of, hey, can't we just have people working on good, have the scientists working on good stuff instead of evil stuff and like yeah cool like so it's it's such an extreme argument that people go oh he's he's just crazy right and let's throw this whole book out um but if we're to actually listen to what he's saying and maybe put some of it in the crazy pot

and put some of it in the just factual pot and then some of it is debatable like okay what does that actually mean how does that apply today i think it's i think it's very important important for us to do that I was recently on Russell Brands podcast and the thing is it's behind a paywall is that right yes sir pay a firewall paywall it's behind a paywall and so Russell Brand if you don't know who he is he's a guy from England super nice guy very funny guy he's he originally a comedian kind of a movie comedian yeah kind of and a performer as well so he does a aka all this snow his snow all this snow that's his other alias oh really yeah that's like his character you know

and what's that guy supposed to be like singer really yeah get him to the greek uh forgetting sarah marshall look into it that's who russell brand is okay he's a man so it was he's an actor too yes sir everything super nice guy yep um and he asked me to be on his podcast and it was pretty it's pretty cool because he started off the podcast. He was saying, like, he was being real complimentary of me and like, and, and, and just being nice. You know, this guy, you know,

he thanked me for my service and, and, you know, he, he said I did a great, bunch of great stuff and real complimentary and a little nice. And I kind of said, hey, man, I appreciate it. I said, bro, I'm not like this, I'm not a rare hero from the military. I said, I had a kind of

average career. And then he goes, well, you know, I just wanted to say that because I want you to know that I respect the military, but because I want to set that up properly because I also have like some issues and I'm going to probably go. He didn't use the term hard in the paint because he's from England. But he basically meant I'm going to go hard in the paint on some topics. And then I said, well, hey, you should then know that even though I spent my adult life in the military, I was also like, a hardcore kid growing up, listening to heavy metal playing in bands. I'm a rebellious kid.

I listen to punk rock and heavy metal. And so you should just know that too, that even though I, because he also mentioned that he was like, as I look like a hippie, and I was like, because I know I look like the most military human that you could imagine.

That's true. Yeah, that I also know that, you know, you should know that I'm kind of a rebel and that as well. And so then we had a little laughing. So eventually, you know, we start having the conversation.

And then he posed this kind of two questions, and they were somehow paired up, or they were somehow, there was like a semicolon between them, meaning they were attached. They weren't quite separate, but they were still attached, but they were a little bit separate. So one of them was like, isn't war driven by the profitability of the military industrial complex? That was kind of question to one number one. And then similar question isn't capitalism and and businesses and corporations aren't they simply driven by the profitability for the rich owners and shareholders? So that was kind of the question. Aren't these two major forces in the world, the military and the corporate world, aren't they just driven by greed essentially? And then I answered him.

And you know, my answer was, well, Russell? The answer is yes. And I think he was a little bit taken aback by that answer, but the fact of the matter is, it's true that profits certainly drive corporations to do things, to make products, and defense companies certainly get rich during wars, as we just heard from Smedley-Baltler. Those are totally true.

Totally true. And just like Smedley Butler, like you and I were saying, Dave, that that's like one part of the argument. That's not the only driver. That's not the only driver. And I mean, for the corporate example, I've worked with hundreds of companies. And Dave, you've worked with hundreds of companies. And the companies make money. They make a lot of money.

And they are certainly driven by profits in some way, but they're also making products that people want. and they're making products that people need, and they're employing people, and they're making products that makes people's lives better. That's what's happening. In the vast majority of cases, no better example than medical device companies, pharmaceutical companies.

And I've worked with scores of medical device companies. I've worked with scores of pharmaceutical companies over the last decade. And some of those companies that I've worked with, that you've worked with, Dave, Some of those companies make hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in profit, billions of dollars in profit. And so you could say to yourself, well, that's what's driving them just want to make money. But I have also seen and met their patience along the way.

You go to a vent and they got a man or a woman or a child, a little boy or a little girl. And the only reason that that child is still alive is because of this device that that company makes or this drug that this company makes. That's why they are on stage. They will present and they'll get these people up there and say thank you. And those patients who are only alive because of these companies are grateful to be alive and they are overjoyed that those capitalized. capitalist doctors were greedy enough, right, to take the risk and invest money and push hard and toil and do the work to create products that actually saved people's lives. And the same thing, the same thing can be said for war.

The same thing can be said for war. And I have participated in wars that made some defense companies tons of money. And I said this Russell Brand, something along the lines of like, listen, I could be talking to my platoon and say, all right, guys, here's what's going on tonight. We're going to go out. We're going to risk our lives. And I just wanted to let you know that every round that you fire is going to put 12 cents into the pockets of the wartime profiteers. Right. And that would actually be true because that is true.

Those rounds cost money. And those defense companies make money from those things. but I also know what happens on the ground Dave you know what happens on the ground I know I know that we help people the people on the ground I know that we killed evil terrorists and insurgents that systematically tortured and raped and murdered the innocent local populace I know that we did that I know that we were able to protect children from these insurgents, from these terrorists. I know we were able to protect families.

I know that those families wanted these insurgents out of their city and out of their country. And so while there were defense companies certainly making money, there was a simultaneous good that was taking place. Then we took lives, but we also saved lives. And that's the truth. Enriching global corporations and enriching the military, complex, that enrichment certainly influences behaviors, right? It influences someone that's making a weapon system to try and make their weapon system

better, to try and make better body armor. There's someone right now, as we speak, that is trying to make better body armor. And part of the reason they're trying to make it is to protect the American soldier. But guess what? They got a mortgage to pay. And they want to make better body armor because they want to make more money. And if they can make better body armor, then the U.S. government goes, wow, that's lighter, it's stronger, it provides more protection, we're going to buy it. It's not that the person is just thinking about money, but the money, the two goals are aligned.

There's a simultaneous drive that is moving behavior in the right direction. And oftentimes, like I just used that example, body armor, they're aligned. There's a company out there Acme body armor They want to make best body armor And they want to make it Do they want to protect Americans? Yes, they do Do they want to make money? Yes, they do

So I have no problem with that If they're aligned, it works out perfectly Here's the problem The problem is if they're out of alignment That's where it can become awful And that's what we need to watch out for What is the driving force behind going to war Are we going to war because it's the right thing to do?

Are we going to war for benevolent reasons? Are we positive that it will have a positive impact that will offset the natural negative impacts of war? Because when you go to war, there's going to be negative impacts. People are going to die. People are going to get wounded. And is the positive impact going to offset that negative impact? Is it going to help stability in the world? Is there a strategic benefit for us as America?

If we're going to war for those reasons because there's going to be a strategic advantage because it protects our national security because it's going to be truly good for the people on the ground that need protection that need help to get out from a tyrannical a tyrannical regime or an evil regime and there are evil regimes and if you don't think there's evil regimes you're wrong because there's people in the world there's regimes in the world that will systematically rape little kids So if we're going to war, for those reasons, okay. We can consider it. If the primary driver of going to war is to make money, if it's to profit, if it's to sell more guns and bombs, if it's not going to stabilize the world, if it doesn't help us protect our national security, if it's going to be a strategic defeat, then we're wrong. And can there be alignment by these two drivers?

there absolutely can. I don't mind, I don't mind someone making great body armor making money off it. I don't mind somebody making a great weapon system that makes a bunch of money and it helps us win a war. I have no problem with that at all.

But if these things aren't aligned and we're fighting for money or we're fighting for profit and we're not getting positive impact and we're not getting strategic benefit, well, then we need to listen to Major General Smedley Butler and say, to hell with war.

That's what I'm thinking. Dave? I'm with you. I was thinking of a story as you said that. I don't even remember why I was in the Pentagon, but I was in the Pentagon for something. And it was maybe like I was just taking over this F-35 job and I had to go meet somebody in the Pentagon.

Whatever. Dave came up to the Pentagon to talk to some general. I'm literally walking through the halls of the Pentagon and I run into who was an old battalion commander that I work with, who is now what happened to be a one star, just literally walked into him. in a waiting room of some office somewhere waiting for some meeting, and we bumped into each other.

And he was there with a couple people from a company in industry, so civilians in the industry. And he was there to show the technology of a helmet that they had designed to stop a 762 caliber sniper rifle. A helmet, light enough but strong enough, to stop a sniper rifle. And for those of you who are listening to don't know the story of, and I've talked in general terms about

my radio operator, Chris Leon, who was on my team, the first Anglico Marine killed, my radio operator was killed in Ramadi. The first Anglico Marine killed in Iraq was my radio operator, was shot and killed by a sniper that pierced his helmet, went right through the temple of his helmet, and killed him. Was I on board with this company making profit, making money off the American taxpayer to design a helmet that would somehow have prevented what happened or at least can prevent what might happen in future, yes, I'm on board of that plan. I'm on board with that plan and I support that plan and I want that plan to not only make them money, but make enough money to continue to build even better technology, grow their company and be a positive force for whatever

may happen. So I am totally on board with that idea and this idea of alignment. And while where I struggled especially towards the end listening to him talk, you reading his words was, I think a trap that is so easy to fall into is that we describe it as the government or industry or the military. One of the things that I've learned in our current job is that these are actually people. They're people. The military is just people. And generals and admirals are regular people.

And you know what? There are some really good ones. And there are some not so good ones. And people in the government, I know. Oh, classmates in mine that work in the government. And you know what they try to do most of the time every day? The right thing. They try to do the right thing.

Do they always do the right thing? No. Are there forces at play that make it difficult? Of course. But when you fall into this trap of like, oh, it's the government. It's really easy to create a narrative by which their only goal is to somehow, whether it's lie in their pockets or whatever that might be is we lose sight of the fact that most of the mechanics that are going on inside industry, these companies we work with, are regular people trying to do the right thing.

Even for the most part of my experience, at the highest levels, we work with CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies. And what you get to know is that for the most part, for the most part, they're people trying to do the right thing. Are they trying to make money? Yes. Because for a whole host of good reasons, they want to pay their bills, they want to pay their people, they want to grow, they want to expand, they want to build brighter products that are

safer, they can reach more people, all these things. And I'm not naive. And I don't want people to think the exact opposite. It's like everybody's just altruistic in it for the, for the big, no, that that's not the case. But there's a trap that we can fall into, which was there's this, this thing, the industry. Well, if it's just the industry, then yeah, it's easy to paint them as, this, this thing. That's not a real thing. It's not a person. It's not a human being. And what this thing wants is to just soak up dollar bills or waste human life to get to their end state. And with no regard for that. And that is a trap that I think it's easy to fall into.

And you can hear his words like, hey, hang on a second. Just hang on. Who is this company? Who are these industries or governments or whatever these things we're talking about? Most of the time most of the time there are people trying to do the right thing That's what they are most of the time. Yeah, you know what survivor biases? Yes Yeah, do you know what it is? I think so it's like if you go out and you talk to 10 people that started companies And you say you know hey how hard was it to start your company? They're all like yeah, it's pretty easy man. You know I got it going

You're not talking to the 90 other people that failed so you get this survivor bias we had Eschelon front probably have a little bit of Eschelon front buy which is we move the companies that we work with they've read extreme ownership they're in the game they listen to the podcast like these these are companies that have a a good sort of fundamental value system so we we kind of have a little bit of that bias because you're right the amount of companies that we've worked with where I've said wow this guy is going to put this product out there that's harmful or this guy or this woman is making a decision that that's gonna cause their employees to suffer.

It doesn't happen. Now, are the companies like that? Yes, there are. And, but I would tell you, same thing. Even though, even with you take into account the EF bias, the Escalon Front bias, which is that most people that we work with have a good value system, even with that accounted for, most companies these days,

you have to have a good value system. You have to be doing the right thing because there's just too much information out there. and a damn Yelp review. I mean, on the, like, the base level, hey, if you run a restaurant and you treat your employees or your customers bad, a Yelp review. Now, you go big and you run into,

you know, the Wall Street Journal is doing an expose on what you did to maximize profits while you hurt your, you know, your employees or your clients or whatever. So the, even in cases where you have people that might not be the most altruistic, people yeah the reality of modern technology keeps a keeps the vast majority of them in check yes so that's true the other thing is look there's going to be these two these two things they create a nice

positive natural tension that's what we want we want to have someone saying like hey yeah if you guys go to war we want you have the best gear that's good and the other the the business should be saying hey if we want you to go to war we want you to have the best gear and the general should be saying yeah we don't want to go to war but if we do we want the best gear totally There's a little tension. These guys might want to go to war more. These guys might not, but there should be a natural tension. And I think what we have to watch out for is when there's no,

when people lose, when there's no tension, when there's no one saying, hey, hey, you know, you know, I just want you to think about something. If we go to war, it's Johnny over here that's going to get killed. That's going to lose his legs, whatever the case may be. That's what we never, that's what we need to make sure people think about. And you know, this goes back to one of the, actually, I think it might have been the first, like,

Ever thing that I got recorded saying was when we did the the warfighters thing for the history channel about Mark Lee and I've repeated this on a bunch of occasions. How do you know when it's time to go to war and it's time when you are willing, when you are willing, you have the will. But it's the will to die and it's the will to kill. And that's what's going to happen to go to war. So you need to put that overlay on this. Yeah, and if you ever forget about that overlay that you think, well, you know, this is worth it because it's going to be beneficial. Okay, cool. It's going to be beneficial to the people there. Do you know that we're going to kill some of the people there?

Not just the enemy, but some of the people that are there are going to die because of us. And we're going to have our own people killed. That's what we need to think about. We can never lose that tension. And I think that that tension does get lost. I think that the people that hold up their hand say, hold on, wait a second. But what are we doing here? And part of the reason is because what is it?

There's a saying, old men want to go to war and young men do too. I mean, you know, that's the thing. You survey freaking 19 year old kids that are in the Marine Corps. You ask them how many people, how many you want to go to war? There's a big percentage that's coming through in the affirmative. And that's the coolest part about the comment about that tension, which is, I mean, that's actually the tension that you want is I want, I actually want Marines that I want to go to war.

That's what I want. I want more reason. I want to go to war. And do I love the idea of world peace? Yes. I love that idea. I love that idea. That idea is not going to happen today or tomorrow.

It's not going to happen. And as much as I love the fantasy of this, the simple things we need to do to achieve that, the tension is, you know, with that reality too, is that, hey, not only is that not likely, there are people that actively do not want that, actively do not want that. And, you know, he was talking about, you know, the next step is we're going to see war with chemicals. And he was sort of foreshadowing what the, and he was correct. Obviously, you know, we know that there was, you know, some of those things he saw that at World War II, the chemical warfare. And he was foreshadowing this ever-growing capacity for people to wage war against each other in these awful, awful ways.

Well, you know, you could get rid of all the weapons in the world. And there's people waging war with computers now. So this, this, this persistence of the reality, even with some of the nefarious things and the profiteers that might be out there, there's a reality out there that we also need to accept and face. And I want to be around people that, that want to do that. I want to be around those people. And I want Marines, I want Marines that have that exact same feeling.

And yes, do you want to manage that and temper that and guide that and shape that? Yes, all those things. But I want to be around those people. And I think that that tension that you talked about, that natural tension, because those two things exist in the world. And to pretend like they don't is is not a good plan. Yeah, I don't know what the percentage of people, let's say you did what they said. If you take the young men that are going to have to go to war and they get to vote, I almost feel, I almost don't feel super comfortable with that because I think a lot of them would be like, oh, yeah, it's on. Here's my chance.

Yeah, it's on. But I'm not sure. That's also my own warped. That's sort of the jaco bias, which is I think everyone kind of thinks like me, which I know is not true. There's also a chance that I'm wrong. And a bunch of people would say, no matter what was happening in the world, they'd be like, no, we're not going to war. You know what I mean? So you've got to have somebody with a detached perspective.

Yeah. That's actually saying, you know what? Now is not the time to go to war or a detached perspective and say, hey, we're looking at this whole thing. We see Nazis. We see them running rough shot all over. We need to do something about this. And you described it again. I, I, you know, whether you call it the tension or, or this idea, hey, when you've got some skin in the game, when it's not Johnny, it's your Johnny when you're talking about who's going to war.

Yeah, I love that idea of, oh, you're talking about me now? Okay, hang on it. Let me, let me put some thought into it. Because in the end, the answer actually might still be, yeah, I'm going to send my son off to war. But I'm certainly going to think about it a lot harder, the closer it is to me. And I mean, that's been the challenge in society forever, which was, do we want to insulate our people from war? Yeah, we do. I want to insulate America from war.

And you could look at, we talked about Afghanistan. Are there some good things that have come out of that? Yeah, absolutely. And if you insulate them so much, if you remove them so much that they don't even understand what really is happening, those decisions actually aren't the best decisions because what do they care, right? Yeah, it's a great idea. Go, go to war. doesn't affect me at all. I don't want a society that has no impact on that either.

And even inside that, you talk about that tension of, I want to keep, I want to separate us from that as much as possible, but not so much if they don't understand what it actually, what that really means to send somebody off to war. We were just talking an hour ago when these people went to World War I did they even know what they were doing. They even know what it meant to send someone to war.

And there's just no way. Yeah, there's some great things with technology. And if you're doing it, something for the wrong reason, it's pretty, it's, it's much harder to hide that now than it ever used to be. If your industrial plan or your company plan is really nefarious, you're, you're running the risk of getting found out. There's just too much information that's free out there. It's really hard to keep those secrets anymore. But sending somebody off to World War I, do you think anybody really knew what that meant? No. And do I, do you think they should know a little

bit? Yeah, I see his point. It's your kid going. You might think twice before you send him. But just like you said, too, there are actually times. So you're going to say, yeah, Yeah, because the alternative, that's not acceptable. Well, definitely, I think the lesson here is keep your minds open and listen and try and understand these various perspectives that are out there because I bet there's a bunch of people that hear this and they go, what, that guy was a traitor or whatever they're going to say. Yeah. Or say, hell yeah. It's just, that's what makes it so interesting because you can't call a guy that did what he did in his life a traitor. And what we should actually do is listen.

That's what we should do. With an open mind. With an open mind. Goes a long way. With that, echo Charles. Yes, sir. So we're trying to keep our minds open, but we're also trying to keep our mind sharp.

Yes, sir. Keep sharp minds. Got to keep the vessel that the mind is contained in. Got to keep that kind of up and running. Sure. Concur? The brain? Well, yeah.

No, the brain. The brain is in the body. Sure. The skull, more specifically, I guess. More specifically, yep, see, look at you. I'm trying. Accretive to my comments. There was a part in there where he was kind of going hard, you know, exposing all these profits and all this stuff.

And it makes sense, man. And you can kind of get a taste of his emotional state. Right. It makes sense. But also you got to say, hey, man, if I was having to fight the freaking Nazis, how happy am I that I had? have some American steel manufacturer that is staying awake 24 hours a day you ever seen that that when they used to build those Liberty ships you know what I'm talking about Dave there's these big Liberty ships that were used to transport stuff back

and cross back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean yeah they were making them in a day a freaking whole ship bro this is impossible and America was doing it in a day now if I was over there on the front lines and I needed some more ammunition I would be so damn happy and I would be more than happy that people are making a bunch of money Now, did the profits get a little bit extreme? Maybe they got a little extreme. Yeah. So, and that's kind of the point there where you can kind of, he goes hard in like both directions.

And you're like, oh, man, I see. I especially when he's talking about the waste, you know, like the ships that don't even run. And it's like, no, we're still paying the bill. And it's like, and then meanwhile, you know, from his perspective, he sees all the all the downside of war, right, hardcore. And then he kind of see. And he looks and he sees all these numbers, all these dollar signs that go to other people, whatever, who are making shitty ships and all this stuff. Oh, man, I get it.

But he went a little bit too hard in a bunch, even in these little subtle ways. Too extreme. Extreme. And it makes you shut them out. About a little bit, yes. And I was trying to stay like with you guys were like, okay, get it. No, no, no, no. Maybe not.

But there was a part he was talking about the boots, right? He was like, oh, they made all these boots and like all this stuff or whatever. And I'm so I'm thinking, wait, that's the, we kind of need those boots. But we only had four million soldiers and we bought 25 million boots. Yes. Okay. And then that part, it's like, okay, yes. As far as the waste goes, 100%, that's going to apply across the board.

And then he went on to even add like, oh, those were good boots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, yeah, we need those boots. Yeah, but we don't need the waste. Of course, of course, we don't need the waste. That's true. Same thing with the ships and all that stuff. But so you could tell, like, all you got to just kind of detach from like that very

specific perspective, just a little bit. And you're like, okay, this guy might not be getting it, you know, in certain ways. Well, I don't think that's a great example because you can also. say hey he gets it these are boots we need boots they're good boots they're probably lasting for a long time we didn't need 25 million pairs you know bro yeah so he he's getting it where he loses it is just saying that that's the only reason that they're doing anything right and that's what I mean where and because that's it seemed like it put it this way it seemed like he was going hard in that direction it's like

that's what he kind of wanted you to think yeah it's it also shows you that the you know you have a government organization that's running things And it's not your money. Yeah, yeah. You're going to get fraud, waste, and abuse in a big way. That's why it's usually better to have a little bit less government control over things. Yeah, that's so true. Keep things as decentralized as possible.

And I know I covered a little bit of Thomas Sol's book. I don't even know if I even got to it. I don't think you were on the podcast. It was with Jordan Peterson. But he got this little section where he just talks about how freaking hard it is to like control price. You just you can't you can't do it You can't control price He has to do with the pelts of some animal only there's worth a certain amount And then he goes through how hard it is to control the price and then he says and by the way there's

Whatever 1.2 billion Products or line items that you need to control the price of it's impossible You got to let the free market work a little bit and that's where you run into problems where you have the free market brush up against the government the government checkbook yeah and they're like yeah we can make you probably need 25 million yeah boots how many soldiers you got four million they need yeah sign here so yeah that's true huh because you know like you would you get what the old thing the irresponsible person with the crew when they first get a credit card kind of feels like oh my money right so then they overspan they can't pay that kind

stuff so it's like a like it makes sense that phenomenon does make sense people will spend their other people's money like crazy yeah they do it all time that's what the government does yeah the government spends other people's money all the time you know do we need to spend some money yeah yeah but if you looked at it from like a household perspective if this if this either this state we're in california or this country if you looked at it from that standpoint of hey our budget you know we make You know, hey, look, here's, here's, hey, you know, hey, darling wife, we make $5,000 a month. That's how much income we bring in. We're going to buy a car that's going to cost us $2,000 a month and we're going to rent a, an apartment that's going to cost us $4,000 a month.

And then we're going to go out to eat every night. That total is going to be $7,000 a month. You can figure out real quick, like, oh, I'm in the hole. This is the credit card problem. Yeah. So, but if it's not our money, We're kind of like, hey, we're going to dead a little bit. It's all good.

We'll wash out in the end. Yeah, I've got to be careful with this stuff. Yeah. All right. What do we got? Speaking of being careful. I like it. We've got to be careful with what we put in our bodies, especially on this path.

The path is hard. Dave Burke. I'm saying it's hard. It's not always easy. It's fun. It can be fun from time to time. Especially when you're collecting those long-term gains. See what I'm saying?

Capability. Cognitive enhancement. smarts, all that stuff. Better decision making, too. Either way, when we're on this path, we want to stay healthy, stay ahead of the game, health-wise. Dave, I notice you're drinking the mango discipline.

Good choice. You could have drank the orange. Could have. Have a little bit of love-hate relationship with the mango. I understand fully. So discipline, go. That's what this is. That's what we're talking about here.

It's a healthy, healthy energy drink. Yep. It's a big deal. Most times the energy drink, as we know them, or as we knew them. You know where I'm going to go with this. right now.

Where are you going? Well, we were talking earlier about the fact that, hey, most companies are out there trying to do the right thing. And guess what we have? We have some companies that are out there saying, oh, you know what? If I can cut the cost of my product by a little bit, add some chemicals to it that are a little bit cheaper, give people an addictive thing called sugar, and they'll just buy more of it. Cool.

So we got our example now. We got some nefarious companies out there making poison and people. and feeding it to people. It's kind of a spectrum. And consider I'm not just saying necessarily energy drinks or whatever, but like in general, especially when it comes to stuff

that you eat or putting your body, whatever, because you're dealing with two different forces there. Yeah, you know what bothers me about that though? Is this like, is the attitude of like, yeah,

but that's what people want. Right, that's what I'm saying. There's two different forces. And that's not a good, that's what people want. That doesn't mean you can't just make adjustments to give them what they want

and not give them poison. Some people want. crack. Some people want straight up. Some people want vodka straight up mainstream. Some people want vodka. Is vodka good? Is vodka good? No. Kind of hard to make that argument on, you know, on many, many levels. Either way, I dig what you're saying. But guess what? We don't have to worry about that

kind of stuff anymore. We are not a nefarious company. Negative. We are making the clean, the clean energy drink. Both win-win. Upside short term, upside long term. In many ways, too, by the way. There's electrolytes in this one. Yeah. Imagine just being saying, oh, yeah. you want to try something all upside all how often do you get that in life yeah here's something all upside yeah and as far as like the mango flavor it's like really upside yeah especially okay okay like it's compared to other flavors which is just normal upside which i understand

of course either way if you want if you want to take part in this energy drink rather than the poisonous now starting to go down the path now we're now we're now we're start talking about nefarious companies i'm going straight to the clothing manufacturers next that are out there cut in the And saying, oh, we'll just get this made in China. We got slave labor over there. Yeah. We got the Uyghurs over there in actual slave labor camps making your, making your shorts. Yeah.

How does that feel? Don't feel good. No. I don't feel good about it. I don't feel good about it. I don't feel good about it. That's why, you know what? I don't get shorts that are made in China.

Yeah. Yeah, I dig it, man. I dig it. But back to the energy drinks. Okay. You want to stick with those for mental and physical enhancements. Check Enhance your capability

Also You can get stuff To take you out of Any kind of roadblocks Or speed bumps in recovery We got protein We got stuff for your joints We got stuff for immunity

We also got Protein but you could actually Just call it dessert Yes another one of those Upside I don't have an emergency The other day I thought I ran out of peanut butter

Wait peanut butter Flavored malt Peanut butter flavor milk Yeah But then it was in the back Of this But I was like Speaking of crack

Yeah I look like a crack Crack cocaine addict Right And through Yeah yeah Yeah Yeah

I was one of my daughters Just like went ham On the peanut butter Yeah Makes sense Yeah And it was like down to I got a half a scoop

Which is not Gonna get you through The moment Right You mentioned your daughter And they're older Your kids are older, kind of young, where I play tricks on them.

They're not tricks. It's a strategy. You see what I'm saying? So I don't give them milk when they want it. I mean, one, it's like a reward. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? He creates that demand.

See what I'm saying? So when they hit it, boom, that's the standard of the standard payoff of the desert. See what I'm saying? Meanwhile, they're getting the tail end of benefits. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea. I'm out of peanut butter, by the way. Bittles on the case.

Look at you with a long war going on. I'm over trying. That's for sure. All right. So we got a bunch of stuff. Where do we get this stuff? Jock Fuel.com. Also, okay, the energy drinks you can get at Wabwee.

You can get it at Vitamin Shop. You can get at joccofuel. com. The rest of stuff, mostly joccofuel. com and vitamin shop. Yeah. Hey, just real quick, if you want it delivered, if you don't want to run on a peanut butter milk or whatever else,

if you don't want to run out, if you subscribe to it, shipping's free. So that's our way of competing with some other large corporations that may not be as benevolent. there's jaco fuel yeah it's a good move right there subscribe 100% also origin USA this is where you can get American made stuff

you said it you mentioned it yeah like sometimes hey some places some of the clothes that some of the people wear it's made with slave labor straight up and varying levels of slave slave labor too you can go deep in that rabbit hole and find out some stuff

that you're not gonna lie you can go on whatever those other YouTube channels are that you were talking about you can watch you know little kids getting beaten because they didn't produce enough freaking pairs of shorts yeah yeah you can go deep for sure but without depressing anybody or like the factories where they got nets around them for so when the people try and kill themselves they hit the net and then they drag them back in and put them back in front of the sewing machine you know what I'm saying yeah that was

really scary I didn't know that that was real yeah the but that's a scary thing to consider like that's how common it is that they have a straight up SOP like a little protocol in the place. Oh yeah, yeah, this is just just to prevent the people from from actually dying when they try to commit suicide. That way we can get another day and a half of leave out of them. We need that labor. See what I'm saying for this for clothes? So we're what we're not down with that. Oh, we're not that down with that. So all this stuff is A made in America, B made in America by people who want to make this this stuff. They're so fired up. Like Brett, just grab one person from there. Okay, so you can

and you can see this on their YouTube channel by the way. But you see the people making it their They'll explain the whole thing to you. They'll be like, oh, yeah, this one is this and this and that. In fact, I saw one where they're saying, hey, I'm making this for this very specific person. I was like, damn, that's where I want to get my stuff from. For sure. Shoot. Origin USA.com.

It's true. Made in America. Yep. Jiu-it-to stuff. Grown in America. Yeah, the seeds. J-Jitsu stuff. Boots.

By the way, we have we made, we sold the government 24 million pairs of boots. We haven't yet. But even if we did, we wouldn't sell them 24 million. Not necessarily. Not if they don't need 24 million. Especially because these boots are going to last. Yeah. And you're going to look good, too.

Let's face it. Let's face it. If Echo ever goes into combat, he's going to be. That's key component in the 17 alpha. Well, that's something that does have some value, you'm saying? Because I think a lot of people we care about, at the very least a little bit about what it looks like.

See what I'm saying? I put on the Delta 68. It's not like I didn't look in the mirror. I was like, It's not like I was like sure they fit and then just kind of walked out. Interesting. I looked in the mirror a little bit. And in fact, I remember when I redshirted in football and we're warming up for the game,

you know, you can suit up for the game when you're red shirt for football. And the coach said, he was like, dang, echo looks good in his uniform. He's not ready to play, but he looks good in his uniform. Well, that could be also a foreshadowing of your tactical, your tactical missions in life. You might not be ready to operate. but you will look good. Yeah, that's what I felt when I put in the Delta 68. Yeah, I'm not ready for, you know, the Mekong Delta,

but I'm ready to wear this stuff for sure 100%. Nonetheless, get it all at origin USA. It's good stuff, guilt-free stuff and superior stuff. Yeah. Another win-win on that one. Also, Jocco's a store called Jocco Store. So you go to jocco store.com. That's where you can represent hardcore on the path.

Discipline equals freedom. Good. It's a good way to look at things. things good you watch that video yeah that'll help a lot of us through some some stuff man unless you want to represent that's where you can that's some other stuff on there some shorts some hats some hoodies women's stuff you heard me say that's good thing for the first time we're like oh this is good yeah I did you like knew at the moment well if you remember how that video all came about or whatever if you even

want to call it coming about I had my camera in the corner and when I was reading the notes like you know I'll just go over the notes or whatever I was like oh That one's going to be a good one. So I didn't even take out the camera and set it up, if you notice, if you remember. Yeah, I kind of brought it out of the corner. And if you watch that video, if you look close, you can see, like, there's like my computer monitor kind of obstructing. It wasn't set up. It was just like I just sort of started running it because I thought, oh, yeah, that's looked good in the notes.

Check you out, dude. So I just put some freaking music on that mother. Send it out. Nonetheless, you want to represent, like I said, jococcal. com. Go there. If you like something, get something. And also we have a subscription thing too.

Free shipping on this one as well. It's a new, maybe more creative designs on that one. Good feedback on that one. Check. Yeah. Yeah. The shirt that says check. Yep, it's true.

Check. Also, you know, there's a, we have an homage to the sea wolves on there. We've got an homage to another group that we have grown very fond of. That's all I'm going to say. Let me inspect that thing before you're rolling out. That's all. You better let me inspect that thing before you're rolling out. Yeah, please.

Cause I gotta. Oh, you gotta have to be ominous, dominous. Okay. Just to confirm. All right. There have been errors made in the past.

I think we don't need to bring them up right now, but there have been things that have been created without approval and they were not correct. All right. Well, you know, that's the risk we all run. But yes, you're correct. And occasionally,

occasionally, you know, look, I'm, I'm prone to run the things a little bit too decentralized. That's kind of what I do. Yes. But occasionally,

let's do a little inspection to make sure we aren't making mistakes that we don't want to make what do we call a QA quality insurance on the before you print the shirt and send it to people you should do that yeah I think you might be right about that actually okay I understand what you're saying now yes I remember I remember Dave Burke in the house actually day Burke was a big part of that rectification okay yeah yeah when I say a big part I mean the part so let's let's just do a review this is what we'll call it a review hey I subscribe to this podcast wherever you subscribe to podcast we also have Jocko unraveling we have

the grounded podcast we're the Warrior Kid podcast we also have Jocko Underground where we are talking about, let's see, closely related topics. We're answering Q&A, so there's a special way you can send your questions in, and so we're answering Q&A on there, and it is also our place to go in the event of problems. Problems. If we get banned or whatever. Or they put advertisements on stuff or whatever. Yeah.

You always like gloss over the, oh, just do Q&A or whatever. And a lot of those questions are like, that's like advice. Like if you want life advice from Jocko, it's sort of the that's essentially it's column, I guess. It is, bro, it is. And Jock-Wilink life coach. Jocko-underground.com. Hell yeah. Yeah, it sounds funny when you say like that, but conceptually.

You know what's weird? I said that for the first time, a long time, like before I even got out of the Navy because guys would come to me and be like, hey, this is going on. I'd be like, Jago Willing, life coach. you know and I'd say here's what you need to do bro. Amen. It's effective. I'm telling you.

Sometimes like they'll ask these questions and I'll be like, oh yeah, I'll read the question or whatever. You think you know what I'm going to say? Well, a lot of times I do know what you're going to say in general. But here's the thing. Here's what happens sometimes where someone, I'll read the question and I'll be like, oh yeah, that's a unique question for that person. You know, it doesn't really apply to me. So it'd be interesting to hear Jocco's answer, which I may or may not know the answer

you know, as far as the one he's going to give. But then you expand on this answer. It's like, wait a second. I can kind of use that right there. You see what I'm saying? So it kind of like, it kind of affects your life, even though the question's not like necessarily just yours. If you got questions, you want them answered. Do you want to hear what we talk about on that underground podcast?

Go to jocco underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. That's how you're supporting that whole thing. If you can't afford it, it's cool. We still want you in the game. Email assistance at jaco underground. We have a YouTube channel. You can subscribe to that.

Also, Origin USA has a cool YouTube channel where they're shown behind the scenes what's going on. Psychological Warfare is an album that Echo made. I talked on it. We made. So we made as a little collaborative effort. I came up with the things.

I wrote it. Then I did the words and then I said them in a proper way. And Echo collaborated by pressing record, which was cool. Yeah. I do it. So if you want to get the psychological warfare,

you need a little help getting through some moment of weakness. We got you. Jocko Life Coach. Okay. We got you. If you want something to hang on your walls, go to flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Meyer.

Speaking of Medal of Honor. Dakota Meyer, without question, earned that thing. And he's got a cool company made in America, Flipsidecanvus.com making stuff to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books. Final spin coming out soon. We don't even know. What is it a book? Is it a novel? Is it a poem? What do you call it? Dave? You've read it.

Literature. It's all those things, I guess. I know what it says in the cover. Yeah. What is it on the cover? Final spin? Oh, it says a novel. Yeah, that's right. They have to call it something. It's more than that. I know that for sure. Yeah. Check. Then we have leadership strategy and tactics. Field manual. That's going to answer all your questions about leadership. The code of the evaluation of protocols. You got a You got to have a code. You got to evaluate yourself. You got to follow some protocols in life. There you go.

We wrote them for you. Me and Dave Burke. Disciplinary Freedom Field Manual. Way the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, and four. Mikey and the Dragons. About Face by Hackworth. I wrote the forward to it. Extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership that I wrote with my brother, Lafe Babin.

Eschalonfront. We have a leadership consultancy. And what we do is we solve problems through leadership. Go to eschelonfront.com if you want to have us engage with your company, your business, or your team. Go to Eshalantfront.com. That's also where you can find out about the live events that we do. We do the muster, big leadership learning session two days long.

Next one up is in Vegas, Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. We also do field training exercise where you run around and do tactical missions and utilize the principles of leadership. We do EF Battlefield, Tour, Gettysburg, primarily. We don't make you march there. But we do walk around there and learn those lessons. We have an online training course because we want to get this information to as many people as possible. How do you do that? How do you scale that?

I can't be everywhere. Dave can't be anywhere. Laif Babin can't be everywhere. JP can't be everywhere. We can't just be everywhere. So what we did is we consolidated information onto the Extreme Ownership Academy. It's leadership courses. We do live sessions on there all the time.

If you have a question, you come there and ask me. Go to Extreme Ownership.com for that. If you want to help service members active and retired, their families, gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Lee, she's got a charity organization that does all kinds of great stuff for our military members and our veterans. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you want more of my prolonged proclamations, or you need more of Echo's derelict decrees. You can find us on the interwebs.

on Twitter, on the gram, on Facebook. Echoes at Echo Charles. I am at Jocka Willink. Where are you at, Dave? David R. Burke. David R. Burke. I escaped the, uh, the ridicule. The ridicule.

It's nice. What ridicule? You know what? Derelict decrees. Oh, right, right. If you're not getting ridiculed, it means people don't like you. There it is. And many thanks to all the men and women in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines.

You are the ones that. carry out the will of our country. And you are also the ones who pay the price. And we are forever indebted to you for your sacrifice. And to police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders,

you step up and you protect us here on the home front. And we are indebted to your service as well. And everyone else out there, This might seem obvious, but think about what you're doing. Weigh the risks and the benefits, the strategic benefits, the reward and the consequences. And make sure that you are doing the right things for the right reasons. And until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jocko.