Jocko Podcast - 34: Leif Babin – Ambushed Cops, Benghazi, Tempers, SEAL Combatives

Episode Date: August 3, 2016

0:00:00 - Opening 0:10:27 - Is Darkness Taking Hold? 0:24:18 - When to fire someone. 0:37:32 - How Leif and Jocko met 0:58:08 - Thoughts on Bengazi 1:04:16 - Best BBQ in Texas? 1:06:52 - Having Hard Conversations 1:11:55 - SEAL Combatives and MMA 1:19:06 - Dealing with Tempers. 1:28:18 - Thoughts on Cops being ambushed. 1:52:20 - Metallica or Pantera? 1:54:05 - Thoughts on the deaths of BUD/s Students 2:07:34 - Dealing w/ rules of engagement. 2:12:36 - How often did you guys get shot in the body armor or helmet? 2:15:38 - Would Leif/Jocko consider politics? 2:19:32 - Muster 2016 Info 2:23:06 - Remembering Marc Lee, Aug 2nd 2:37:30 - ClosingSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 34 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And tonight we have a guest on the podcast back for a second time. My brother Leif Babin. Good evening, Leif. Good evening. Good to be back with you.

And if you don't know who Laif Babin is, real easy thing to do is go back to Jocko podcast number of and listen to that, I give him a long introduction and tell you about who he is. Guy that I served in the SEAL teams with, and, like I said, go back to 11. I think you guys wrote a book, yeah. We wrote a little book called Extreme Ownership. I'm sure we'll talk about that tonight. Laif was one of the platoon commanders that worked for me in the Battle of Ramadi

when we deployed in 2006, and just one of my brothers. So thanks for coming on the podcast. What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything? I've thought about it a good deal, but he wasn't nothing compared to what was coming down the pike. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. I don't know what them eyes was windows too, and I guess I'd as soon not. No. But there is another view of the world out there and other eyes to see it. And that's where this is going.

It has done brought me to a place in my life. I would not have thought I'd have come to. Somewhere out there is a true and living profit of destruction. And I don't want to confront him. I know he's real. I've seen his work. I walk. I walk. walked in front of those eyes once I won't do it again I won't push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him it ain't just being older I wish that it was I can't say that it's even what you are willing to do because I always knew that you had to be willing to die to even do this job that was always true not to sound glorious about or nothing but you do and if you ain't they'll know it they'll see it in a heartbeat i think it is more like what

you are willing to become and i think a man would have to put his soul at hazard and i won't do that i think now that maybe i never would now that's the opening from the book no country for old men, which is written by Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote my favorite non-military memoir book, the book Blood Meridian, which is just an outstanding book. And no country for old men was actually made into an outstanding movie as well, which almost follows the book word for word. It's an awesome movie.

And in the movie and in the book, there's a guy, and that's who's talking in that opening. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. and he's explaining that he's seen evil in the world, the living profit of destruction, and he's seen his work and walked in front of those eyes. And ultimately, and that's kind of what the book is about, Sheriff Bell is explaining that he doesn't really want to face this evil. He doesn't want to put his soul at hazard.

So ultimately he doesn't really want to be a sheriff anymore. He can't face that kind of evil, so he leaves the police and he retires and stays in his own little world and that's that's the basis of it and there's way more to it than that then you should definitely read the book the book which is it's set i think it's set in about the 1980s early early 1980s and the evil that he's speaking of that he's having to now deal with as a as a sheriff is the drug cartels coming out of mexico the border of texas they've escalated from you know petty little drug dealers back in the day and now it's a ruthless organized crime syndicates that murder with no mercy and like I said it's just too much for Sheriff Bell and he ends up walking away now meanwhile in 2016 the evil that we deal with now is even more pervasive and stronger and completely without mercy and it's everywhere.

And we can try and ignore it. And we can try and act like it doesn't happen. But there's some things that you cannot ignore. And in this case, it's something that we cannot walk away from. In late July of 2016, Father Jacques Hamel, an 86-year-old Catholic priest, was doing what he did every Sunday conducting mass for his parish in Normandy, France.

Obviously, the site of D-Day, where one of the most impactful operations in history in terms of protecting freedom and liberty took place. And there, in Normandy, France, in this church, two young men, and I use that term loosely, burst into the mass, brandishing fake guns, fake explosives, but real knives.

And the fake guns and the fake bombs apparently allowed them to get control of the people in the church, including Father Hamill. They forced him to his knees in front of his parishioners, and they slit his throat. And in fact, they slit his throat with such force that the reports came back and said that they beheaded him. And one of the survivors who was a nun said that the attackers who claimed loyalty to the Islamic State smiled and appeared to be happy as they slit the priest's throat. And then these two savages attempted to use some of the nuns from the church as human shields to try and escape. And when they did try and escape, fortunately, there were some French police. snipers that shot and killed but obviously the damage was already done one priest slaughtered one of the nuns was wounded and obviously peace and serenity

destroyed and that is pure evil and that's the same evil that's slaughtered 89 innocent people at the Batta Klan theater in Paris the same evil that murdered 12 cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo. The same evil that led an Islamic extremist to murder 49 people at a nightclub in Florida. The same

evil that brought down the Twin Towers and hit the Pentagon and has caused death and mayhem and destruction all over the world. And unlike Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in the book No Country for Old Men,

we can't just walk away from this evil because this evil is everywhere and I regret to tell you that it's growing and it's going to continue to grow unless we we the civilized people of the world do something to stop and of course with Laif and I background you know both of us spent a lot of time in the SEAL teams deployed multiple times overseas to confront this evil enemy and of course we get a lot of questions about our take on this

and to open up the questions for tonight first question is here is the darkness taking hold or do you and Laif see the way out of another war what can we do to prevent lone wolf attacks from happening in Europe and America. Leif, thanks for coming on.

I know this is obviously something both of us think a lot about, and I know a lot of people are wanting to hear what we think about it. So is the darkness taking hold, my brother? There's no doubt that there is some serious darkness in the world, and I think that darkness, we've seen it grow. We've seen it grow. We've seen the number of jihadi, terrorist attacks across the world grows substantially over the years.

Statistically, that's just the fact. And I think it's something that I think people need to understand, you know, across America, across the world, people need to understand just how evil this enemy is. We talk about darkness. We talk about evil. And, you know, I think that, no country from old men, in summary, that intro really captures it in a way. Certainly we've seen that with drug cartels, some of the horrific things we're going on in northern Mexico or even across the border in the United States.

But this Islamic enemy in particular is, in my opinion, as evil an enemy as the U.S. military has ever faced in our long history. And I'm very well aware of the horrific evils of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan. And I think this threat is every bit or even more evil than that. it is something that we're seeing, as you just described from that one attack, that's one example of hundreds, of hundreds that you could use over the last year or two alone. Yeah, and a good point on that is we hear about the attacks that take place in the Western world, right? That's what we hear about. If you start diving into the butchery and the slaughter and the torture and the rape that happens in their world, in the Islamic world, in the Middle East, and again, you and I that have been,

been there, we know for a fact that the majority of people do not want to live under that reign of terror. No doubt. They want to have normal lives. And I say this all the time. I know you say this all the time. They want to have normal lives. And they're being brought down and driven by this, this, I mean, evil is, it's a,

I want a stronger word. I don't know what stronger word there is, but this is like, this is a personification of Satan. That's what this is. So, and I know that's one of the things that struck me, and as we were talking, that made me think of no country for old men,

because when he says, I know he's real. I've seen his work, and I know both of us have, we know he's real. And anybody that's deployed overseas, sees, and seeing what these people can do

is it knows that this is real. Now, the other part of this question, Leif, was, what can we do to prevent these lone wolf attacks? So what's your thoughts on lone wolf attacks? Well, I think, first of all, the lone wolf attack is a myth. It's an absolute myth. And, you know, this idea that there is, these people are just randomly, you know,

we also use the term, along with lone wolf, they use the term self radicalization. You hear that all the time. He's self-radicalized. You know, he was a normal kid. Everything was great. And all of a sudden, he followed a Twitter feed from ISIS and decided to go out and kill people.

And in no case, are we seeing that? We're seeing that to be true. And I think we're discounting that this is an ideology. It comes out of the radical Islamic jihadi movement. And there's a Sunni component of that. Shiite component of that but there is there are a lot of followers of this and there are folks that you know when we're the Orlando shooter is a great example we have uh someone with like oh he self radicalized and the reality was I mean you could go back and and track the guy's father

and see that his he had pro-Taliban posts on his YouTube channel and and he's he's anti-American pro jihadi he learned this in his home and the fact that the Orlando shooter also happened to go to the very same mosque where the only known American-born suicide bomber

attended and went to the same mosque as well a guy who traveled to Syria joined up with ISIS and blew himself up an American citizen and they both went to the same mosque in Fort Pierce, Florida. So where is this coming from? It's coming from ideology and we have to we have to recognize that that's a fact you know so many

people want to bury their head in the sand and say you know Islam's a religion of peace this has nothing to do with Islam it has everything to do with Islam obviously and as you said of course most of the Islamic world doesn't want to live under this brutal reign of terror and we're abandoning those people to to the likes of the Islamic State and that that reign of terror if we don't stand up we don't do anything and so we have to recognize that threat it is it is an ideology that pushes that threat and it is not lone wolf. They're connected by that ideology across the world and that inspires people to

join up. And I think, you know, back to the, that ties us back to the first question about is the darkness spreading? There's always darkness in the world. There's always been evil in the world. What keeps that darkness a day? You can go back to the Pax Romana and talk about peace in the ancient world and how it was imposed through strong military might. And it's no different today. We have enjoyed the relative peace of post-World War II because we had the strongest, most dominant military in the world. And so we keep that darkness at bay. That wouldn't have been the case if the United States and our allies had not won World War II.

The darkness would have taken over the world or much of the world. So only through military power, peace through strength, can we ensure that there's light in the world, that the darkness does not take over, that we keep that in check? And I think people need to understand that this is an enemy that can be defeated. That this darkness is spreading only because we are allowing it to spread. Only because it is metastasized only because we have not gone and rooted it out. And so so many Americans, I know they asked you just like they asked me, you know, years ago when we saw ISIS taking over parts of Syria, then coming back into Iraq and establishing a foothold there, taking over huge cities like Mosul,

and Fallujah and then Ramadi before they were they were pushed out. People ask, well, why do we really care about that? Why does it matter? And I think now as we're starting to see the kind of horrific attacks that are inspired by their so-called caliphate, that that real estate absolutely matters. It matters to us. And it inspires that they can inspire attacks here among us. And we always try to connect it back.

People always say, well, we don't know if it was related to ISIS. and if Abu Bakr, Baghdadi, the, you know, the Islamic, head of the Islamic state had given them direction, that doesn't matter. None of that matters. The fact is that they're able to inspire attacks where people here amongst us in America and Western Europe and across the world go out and kill innocent people and declare their allegiance. And so we have to go there and we have to destroy them. And it is worth the effort for us. And we have a military that is eager and is ready to do that. And they are itching to make it happen.

because they understand the nature of this evil, just like me and you, they've faced it, they've seen it. And, you know, as we talk to our buddies who spent time there are there now, they're frustrated. And they want to close with and destroy this enemy. And yet there's a lot of political strings holding them back from doing so. And I think that's something that it simply requires leaders who understand the nature of this threat and understand that there is a military solution to this. and we have to lead that fight. America has to lead that fight. And I think we can absolutely do that.

And we can have tremendous impact on the world and make sure that people don't want to join the losing team because the Islamic State is getting hammered and people are dying in large numbers and they don't want to go over there and be a part of that. They don't want to join up with a losing side. We've got to make sure that that's clear to everybody in the world that if they want to be on the side of the radical Islamic jihadis,

they're going to die a bloody and nasty death. One of the things that you mentioned real quick, and we were kind of going off, was the fact that these people are normal people, one of the things that you and I heard. So for those that you don't know, Laif and I fought with the First Brigade, First Armored Division in the Battle of Ramadi

in the summer 2006, where the city of Ramadi was taken back from insurgents. And when we did that, it was a very tough fight, very fierce fight, and we were able to get that city turned around and turned back over to the city in Sarmadi. And it turned into a flourishing city. It was very peaceful for seven years. And when ISIS then took it over, took it back, they, and again, this is what Laif and I were told by people that we knew that were on the ground over there.

ISIS came in and murdered. They had a list of about 500 families, and they went in and murdered. every person in the family. This was a list of families of whom someone in the family had worked with the coalition forces, worked with the Iraqi government, been against this form of radical Islam. So ISIS came in and murdered 500 families, which to me, it should tell everybody out there that this is an enemy that we must address, we must face. And we must destroy.

I think what people don't understand either is that those same people who were on that list that ISIS brought in, they were screaming and begging for our help. They wanted American troops on the ground to help them. They don't want to live under that brutal reign of terror. They want us there. They want us to be able to push that enemy back and give them the chance to live their lives in relative freedom and peace and security. Yeah, there's a great video on Vice News that shows prior to ISIS, is coming back in Ramadi it's it's it's very difficult for me to watch it'd be difficult for you to

watch too because it's exactly showing exactly what you're saying they're going around they're interviewing people and a guy that's doing the interviews is some kind of an i think he's an iraqi american because he speaks arabic and he's conversing with people and they're showing subtitles but everybody he's talking to he's saying well what are you what are you going to do it looks like is coming and they're said we want the americans back we want them to come here we want them to help us. Then they got the governor of Ramadi and they're they show him on the phone and he's talking to his his, his, whoever his superiors and he's saying, we need the Americans out here. They're getting too close. The ISIS is getting too close. We need American support. We need them. And that's,

that's the thing that so many people miss in America is the fact that the normal people in these countries, they do not want to live under this kind of regime. And they, but they are, it's hard for them to defend themselves against it. And so that's where America, the benevolent nation that we are can provide this sort of peace and stability there and it's going to be hard and I say this all the time right if you're going to go to war

people are going to die Americans are going to die innocent civilians are going to die but look at what the alternative is the alternative is you have this disgusting despicable ideology getting a foothold in the world

and it is absolutely disgusting and it should not be stood for And I think people need understand too, when we're talking about destroying the Islamic caliphate as they call themselves and how that real estate alone, them owning that real estate inspires those attacks, it doesn't take giant ground invasions with hundreds of thousands of troops in order to defeat this enemy. It takes a few thousand American troops to go and generate momentum to beat them back. Partner with folks on the ground like Anbari Sheikhs that we were. worked with back in the day and U.S. forces worked with for the Anbar Way King and they're asking for our help. We need to partner with folks like the president of Egypt and the king of Jordan who have talked about how this is a civil war within Islam and they don't want to subscribe to that or live

under that kind of brutal rain. They want to lead the fight against it. We got to help them. We got to support them. We need to team up with folks like that. We must do it. And if we don't do it, you're going to see the darkness continue to spread until we actually do something about it. So many people want to say, well, let's let others over there lead the fight. That's kind of like Winston Churchill saying, you know what, the Nazis are in Czechoslovakia and France. That's their problem. Where are they coming next? Exactly.

All right. That's the Islamic State for you, folks. Move on to the next question here. Jocko and Leif, how do you know if you terminated too early? I wanted to remove the toxicity before it damaged the team. When do you know it's time to fire someone? So we'll get into a little changing pace here, going from the darkness of the Islamic State

into something a lot more positive, which is people running businesses. It's good you clarify that because terminated has a different context in our previous topic. Check. So this is a good question. And it's something we hear a lot. We've got a ton of questions when I put this out.

So when do you know it's time to fire somebody? We get this question all the time, as you just said. And it's, this is always the most difficult thing. It is incredibly difficult. Even for, you know, people who feel like they're super, super tough leaders or strong leaders in the SEAL teams who've been through all our training and have proven themselves on the battlefield, it's hard to fight. fire people. It's always difficult to fire people. It's hard to have those tough conversations with folks. And so,

uh, we talk about this that the right time to fire somebody is when you don't feel bad about it. And what I mean by that? I don't mean just because you're co-blooded, but that you actually, uh, but that you actually have taken every step to mentor and train and provide resources and and, uh,

help that person, achieve the performance that you need them to achieve in order to accomplish the mission. And you've given them every chance to succeed. And once you, you should feel absolutely confident that you, you have exhausted all options. And then you're not going to feel bad about it because you've taken so much time and effort. And they shouldn't even, they're not even going to be upset about it. Not that they may necessarily love you or thank you for firing them, but so often you see people that are literally relieved.

When we work with companies and we see this happen, we see people that are relieved. because they're in a position where they're just, they're overwhelmed, there's massive pressure on them, and they knew it was beyond their capability, and they just didn't want to say, I can't do this. And so when they got either fired or just transitioned to a different role, they were relieved. And they said, thank you. And it really was, that was really eating at me that I didn't feel capable and I didn't feel, I knew I was letting the team down. And that's almost always the case.

Every once in a while you get the torture genius who just can't take direction or won't listen, who's never going to see, never going to see that I'd have, but that's okay. Yeah, it's okay. Yeah, the only other thing I'd say is laying out the real crystal clear expectations of where you need to be. Hey, if this is where you need to be, and if you don't get there, this is what's going to happen.

And that's why you said it shouldn't be a surprise. It should be, hey, I knew exactly what the expectations were. I knew exactly what was required to me, and I knew exactly what was going to happen if I didn't meet those expectations requirements. So that's how you know and the only other thing is we sometimes and it's totally normal We build a relationship with our people and so sometimes that relationship gets strong to the point where you might value that Relationship more than you value the performance of the team and that is not a good situation because you have to look out for the whole team and if I say oh this guy's not doing his job but he's my bro so I'm gonna keep

him on I'm letting down the whole team so that's just another little element that you have to pay attention to if you truly care about the person mentor them coach them put them into a position where they can succeed sometimes people aren't good at something and you got to move them to a spot where they can you can take advantage of their strengths instead of putting them a spot where their weaknesses are going to be totally exposed that's how you take care of someone so that's what you got to do before you fire somebody one thing too that I learned from you in in the Navy during our time was

when you have those tough conversations you got to write it down you have to write it down and that's something that I thought was very powerful because so often even in the SEAL teams you'd see leaders who would say well this leader screwed up this platoon commander or this chiefs

got an issue and we need to he's causing the you know he's dangerous or he's making bad decisions or he's unprofessional or he's you know he's he's not getting his unit where where they need to be and and we need to call him in and tighten him up. And you'd have that conversation

behind closed doors when the person isn't present and you're like, right on, let's call him in, let's tighten them up. You come in, they sit down, and here you are face-to-face

with that person, and you just had that closed-door conversation about how terrible they were and how they really needed, you know, we're going to square them away, and now face-to-face

the conversation goes like this. Well, you're doing, you're doing a pretty good job. You're doing a pretty good job overall. There's a couple things we need to work on here there, but, you know, maybe not here.

And I think that's, that doesn't help anyway. That's the false cheerleading is a disaster. And it's something that we talk about all the time in our business. I'm sure you've mentioned that on the podcast, you know, many times before. But when you write it down, you have it in front of you. So you have to have that tough conversation. And you give them a copy. So they have it with them as well.

And then they can take that and understand where they need to be and when they need to be there. And that forces you to have those tough conversations. It's absolutely a game changer. and makes you address that. And again, the false cheerleading is a disaster. People, then when you have to fire someone and they're like, wait, you just said I was doing a good job. So obviously, you failed as a leader.

Another good thing you can do to soften the blow of this stuff when you're delivering the heavy news is you're saying, listen, I wrote this down, I'm putting this in front of you. Why am I doing that? Because I think you can do it. I want you to do it. I'm investing in you. This is not my way to make you feel bad.

This is my way to make you get better. I want you to do better. So here's what you've got to do for me. Here it is. In plain English. Do you understand this bullet point? Do you understand this bullet point? Do you understand this bullet point?

That's the best possible thing you can do. And you've got to make them understand that. Because otherwise, they'll walk out of the room saying, oh, he's picking on me. He doesn't like me. No, no, no, no. The opposite is true. If I didn't like you, I would just fire you. I want you to perform.

I'm mentoring you. I'm coaching you because I want you to do better. I'm giving you this list so you know exactly what you. you have to do to win. So don't take it the wrong way. My brother, just get in the game and get this stuff done. Hey, do you think, because I remember you saying this. Good evening, Echo.

Good evening. I remember you saying this to Jade. Remember you were like when you don't feel bad. I don't know if you put in those exact words, but that's basically the message. Exactly. That they said, you don't feel bad about it. You guys both know. Yep.

You know? Do you think that there's a difference between like the SEAL teams, for example, because you can't just, or I'm assuming, you can't just replace the guy. So it's like it's worth it to invest as much as you possibly can. The civilian world and the SEAL teams, I thought this would be different. They're not different.

They're the same. So in the civilian world, every company we go work with, doesn't matter what the company is. There's no immediate replacement for somebody that knows a skill set for a software engineer. Is there a great guy waiting to come in the door? No.

Is there a great welder waiting to come in the door? No. Is there just no matter what these things are? There's not a perfect replacement coming for it. It's the same thing in the SEAL teams. You don't have a ready replacement ready to come in. So, of course, you've got a person. You've gone through the agony of finding them.

You've gone through the agony of recruiting them. You've gone through the agony of bringing them on board, issuing them their gear, getting them their computer, letting them understand the culture of the company. You've already invested so much. You don't want to just fire the person. You want them to work out. And so that's why it's important on either military and civilian.

You've made those investments. The best outcome is to have them succeed. That's always the best outcome. And so that's why you've got to be a great mentor, a great coach, a great leader. And I've talked about this before. I'm not going to go into it right now, but some people are allergic to the words mentor, and some people are allergic to the word coach. You get someone with an ego problem.

And I go, hey, Leif, welcome to the platoon. I'm going to go ahead and mentor you. You know what I mean? I don't need you mentor. So there's a lot of people that they think, you know, that offends them. Because that implies, I've said this before, that implies that I know more than you do and you know less than me. And I'm the big guy that's going to help you, little guy. So sometimes that direct kind of coaching is not the right answer.

But clearly when you're getting to a point where somebody's getting fired, you need to do some direct coaching. So that's why we're right now getting it done correctly. One more point on that, which is a great question. But that's the easiest I think fallback. And we see that with a lot of leaders. We saw it in the military and we see it throughout companies and organizations that we work with now. Oftentimes, it's people that, well, this person isn't good enough. I need to fire them and get someone else.

And most of the time, that's not the case. Most of the time it's they just need to be led. They need to be led. They need to have the mission better explain to them. They need to have the training. They need to have better resources. They need to have mentorship, just as Jock was talking about. And so that's an easy fallback.

But it's an excuse. And it's the opposite of extreme ownership. And really only the case of that torture genius, right, that we wrote about the person that just cannot take any direction, no matter how valid or are positive and needed. They can't take any criticism. They won't accept any responsibility that they have it all figured out. The world just can't see the genius and what they do. You know, that's kind of how they look at things. That's the only time that you really have to fire those folks generally.

Yeah. And the thing you didn't say, you hit like four points. One of the best places to start if someone's not doing what they're supposed to be doing is explain to them why they're doing it. This is why I want you to do this because then they can absorb it. They understand what the deep mission is. They understand kind of the commander's intent. So whenever someone's not doing this, and I, you know what, I'm just going to go ahead and break out a story right now. Good to do it.

So I got a seven-year-old daughter. She can't ride her bike yet. Right? That's not good. You should be riding a bike at four, right? In my family, it's four. So she can't ride a bike yet. We're not two.

So, and she's, and it's become a thing. It's become an issue, right? So the other day, and we're going on a big camping trip, and it's going to be necessity to be able to ride the bike. So the other day, I started telling, okay, we got to go work on your bike riding. So I'm going to come, get your shoes on, get ready to, bro. And she immediately goes defensive. I don't want to ride a bike.

I can't ride a bike. I'm not good at right. And I started getting right, you know, no, listen, get your shoes on. I went that route, like an idiot. And luckily I didn't go too far down that road. And I just stopped myself after two direct orders with no explanation of why. And I said, hey, sweetie, we're going to go work on your bike ride. Let me tell you why.

Because when we go camping, almost everywhere we're going to be going is going to be on the bike, especially when it's time to bike ride to go get ice cream. We're going to have to ride bikes to get ice cream. And so all I want to make sure is that you're able to come with us when we go to get ice cream. I mean, I don't want to have to bring it back for you. I want you to come with us. And you could see, you know, I just completely changed attack and she said, you know, okay, let me get my shoes on. And literally, that's an example with a seven-year-old, right?

And first of all, the first note there is that I, Mr. Big Leadership expert, completely went down the wrong road and was like, listen to me because I'm the father and I know you do what I tell you. It's the wrong approach. 100% of that time, even with a seven-year-old. And as soon as I went back and said, hey, here's why I went you. And, you know, I told a bunch of other things. You know, it's really good. This is how we're going to do get around. This is how you can get around the beach.

All these things. And it changed her attitude. It literally changed your attitude in a minute. I wish I would have videotape the whole thing because we could have posted it. Yep. Yeah, that would have been a good little case study. Yeah. Flying through with the ice cream money.

Would you say back to the hiring and people, you know, you don't have just someone waiting in the wings to get hired to fill that position, remember? That kind of is the case, huh, most of the time where if, you, you know, if, you're, you don't have. If you fire someone, it's like, oh, we'll just replace them. Right. All that work and stuff, you've got to rehire somebody. Then that, you're wasting time and resources to do that. Absolutely. You could just be investing more than that kind.

You always want your team to succeed. And sometimes people take that too far. You get someone that just wants the team to succeed because they're not going to fire somebody. So there's always a balance. There's always a dichotomy there. But yes, that is true. So do you make the exception if, let's say, hey, I hired this. I don't know.

You weigh it. You weigh the pros and cons. So if you do have a guy kind of waiting in the wings, I don't know, my neighbor. Yeah, of course. Hey, he's winning and win. So you're going to invest less in this guy because we got this guy ready to go. Well, no, you won't invest less. You're not going to invest anything.

If you've got someone that's going to come in and do the job and this person can't make it happen and has failed. Right. Currently. Get rid of them. Yeah. Check. There you go. Good times.

Yeah. All right. Here we go. Jock and Leif. Explain how you first met. and work together. And then the second part is how do you stay so disciplined every day? So Leif, meeting Jocko, good times.

How is that? We touched on this a little bit in podcast 11, but it was a good time. I checked in a SEAL Team 3 back in the spring of 2005, and I was taking over as the Patoon commander for Charlie Batoon, and I see the name of the board, Jocko, and I already kind of heard his name around. People kind of knew who he was. But I didn't know much about Jocko. I was like, but our chief, Tony, who we've also talked about, who was just a complete, badass, amazing warrior, incredible combat leader. And he said, hey, Jocco's good to go.

It's like, Jocko's who you want. It's like, right on. I'm looking forward to meet Jock. And this time, Jocko was the after. So I think you were you were still busy kind of run around and trying to turn over those duties there A very busy job difficult job But but an important job certainly and So when jaco finally showed up the team the first time I remember seeing was it was it we had a

Morning formation so we all we all go to you know our morning meeting and then we stand in formation out back of the team and Everyone musters up and and I just remember looking at Jock and he had zero smile on his face and I just remember looking at Jock on hit zero smile on his face just a scowl no smile whatsoever in fact I don't think you smile for the first two months yeah I have two months

two month moratorium when I meet people for smiling and so he just came up to us and he just looked at us and said I'm jaco and just staring through us like you wanted to murder us and you know shaking her hand it was me and then our other the Delta Patoon commander the Delta Patoon

and Delta Patoon and we knew each other well me and the Delta Patoon commander and you know we were we were like looking at each other and he's like he looks at me he's like chaco hates me i can already tell it yeah

jaco hates everybody but what i didn't realize later until after we worked together he gave me a copy of the book about face which we've talked about many you've talked about many times on the podcast um and is a tremendously influential book i know on you certainly on me and on our entire generation about face by uh colonel david hackworth

uh i realized that that's what he did when he checked in and took over his unit which he renamed the hard and actually he said I didn't smile at anybody for six weeks or something like the first first a couple once he was there I like to be a little bit harder than Hackworth so I go two months wait did you get it from Hackworth or was that was your thing I don't remember I probably did I ripped off so much stuff from Hackworth I definitely ripped off like we we renamed the task unit which was called Bravo we renamed it Bruiser that complete rip off from Hackworth so but but I but I know what it worked yeah I always have have have I mean I mean I When you meet me, I'm going to be standoffish. I'm not a big, you know, I don't open. I'm just not generally like that. I was going to say you did me like that.

Yeah. Real cool. He probably didn't smile for the first two years that he knew you. Yeah. Yeah, the tough thing is, though, is when you take over a position like that in the SEAL teams, and, Leif, you know this. You don't know who you're getting. You don't know anything about them.

You have guys that you are going to have to put trust and faith in to lead guys in combat and it's it's a very that's the way I saw it and I knew that with you guys you guys were the platoon commanders you guys are going to be all in the battlefield every day you guys are going to be leading guys in combat the most there's going to be so much pressure on you guys there was going to be violence there was going to be war and so I wanted to and there was a chance you were going to get fired you know I didn't want to be friends with you yet I wanted to make sure you made it through certain wickets. And then obviously, the more I got to know you.

And actually, there was, at this time, you know, I wasn't, I guess the word is, I wasn't as mature as I am right now. So I was talking to one of the senior officers at the team. And they were thinking about maybe switching guys around or moving the platoons around. And now at this point, you guys had, I had to know you guys, you and the Delta Patoon commander, and realized that you guys were exactly who I wanted to be with me in combat, exactly the type of guys that I knew would never back down, would go forward, and would kick ass. And I knew that.

But this guy says to me, he says, hey, you know, we're thinking about maybe moving some of the platoon commanders, or blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, no, the two guys I got are the two guys I'm keeping. And they're like, well, you know, do they have the qualities that you want, you know, for a... And I said, they have the two qualities. He said the qualities. I said, I only need two qualities.

They need to be able to listen, which means they're humble, and they need to be tough. And that's what those guys are. Because I dished out all kinds of crap on these guys. And they always just took it. We wouldn't have lasted long because we were all training jujitsu at 0500 every morning. That's how we roll. And we had an awesome task in it. And, you know, Giacco mentored and trained us.

And I'm sure he was frustrated with our performance initially because he had a lot more experience than me or Delta Platoon Commander. And yet he spent the time to train and mentor us and get us to where we needed to be. And by the time we deployed, you know, to the battlefield in Ramadi, he unleashed us on the battlefield to lead our platoons. And even, you know, underneath us within the platoon, our assistant platoon commanders and our platoon, chief and our leading petty officer. I mean, our senior leaders, whether that, they were out leading their own moments on the battlefield.

And so he had to have tremendous faith and trust in those guys. And we certainly built that. And it was all certainly due to Jocko's leadership, T.U. Bruser, thanks to Colonel David Hackworth. Yeah, and, you know, everybody should know that it's, Laif and I are the mouthpieces right now for a bunch of badass guys that all stepped up and when we were going through training,

crushing it, when overseas crushed it. We're two, two people from a big unit and all those guys, you know, we're just getting after it. And we put them all.

You know, we were just talking about firing people. We fired people from task unit bruiser that didn't make the cut. And we tried, we did the things we were supposed to do, we mentored them, we helped them along.

And at the end of the day, they weren't ready. And so we got rid of them. So when we went overseas, we were ready to rock. We knew we could counter everybody, no doubt. And I think that's something that people miss, and we talk about that all the time,

that what makes a team, the biggest lesson we brought back from Vermont was that leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield. Leaders at every level. And so why we had an extraordinary task in it was because we had those leaders at every level that stepped up.

Not just me, not just Jock, our squad leaders in charge of eight guys, our fire team leaders in charge of four guys, to four guys, the two-man shooter pair, down to the front-line trooper who just stepped up, owned his piece of the mission, and led and got after it. Yeah. And

when you think about, actually, as I'm sitting here thinking about, because I really haven't thought about this too much, about the process of going from, I don't know these two guys, I don't trust these two guys, that's the main piece of it, right? I don't trust these two guys

because I don't know them. And so how do you build that trust? And somebody asked me that the other day, and it's a really good point of how do you build trust with people? And the best way I think to build trust is to give trust. So I said, you know, I'd look at Laif and say, hey, you run this operation. You run this training operation. I trust that you can do it.

Now, when I give him that trust, he's looking at me, thinking to himself, hey, this guy trusts me. So we're building the trust. Whereas if I say, Leif, I'll run this, you just follow me. You just get in the backseat. You just step aside. I that's where you were not building trust and if we went on deploy if I had acted like that whole appointment we got on employment I wouldn't have had built any trust and I'll tell you one

more thing as I was sitting here thinking we did everything together I mean no to eat dinner we worked out we did jiu jitzu this is you me that the other platoon command the other Delta platoon commander we did everything together I mean you guys live together and and we all lived in the same neighborhood we surfed together we lifted together, everything was together, we debriefed together, and that is how you get this bond and this massive amount of trust where I look at you and know, I don't have to say a word. You know the deal, I know the deal, and we go forward. One thing I was just thinking about too is this is something that I think you brought to the

table. I mean, as you were training us and mentoring us and spending time with us and building that trust as we were going through all this training and get ready for combat deployment, You know, if you come in and say, you talked about before, like, I'm going to coach you. I'm going to mentor you. Obviously, that makes people like, when you actually say, you know, when you said to me, like, Laif, you got this or like, hey, run this. And then I'm putting a situation where I know Jacko's got a bunch of experience in this,

you know, this particular direct action, you know, raids. You just come back from Iraq and had a bunch of experience. I didn't have any experience in that. I'd let a few sniper operations, you know, but that was it. And I didn't done any, you know, direct action raids like that. So here we are getting. getting I'm getting thrust into it I'm in charge I got to make some calls it's humbling so what does that make me do it makes me like hey jocco what do you think about this hey what you know here's kind of

what I'm thinking here what do you think so it opens up the conversation of like hey I'm looking for mentorship I'm looking for training rather than I got it all figured out so even had I thought that initially you know at that point when you don't have experience you don't even know what you don't know so when you put people in a situation that there it's beyond their comfort zone it's outside you know, they're real knowledge-based, then they look, often they're looking to you for help. They're looking to you for guidance. That's a good point.

And actually somebody, somebody point, we were working with a company the other day on the East Coast and we were going through something. And we were, you were describing me, quote-unquote, mentoring you.

And again, I hate to use that word. But, but when you described it, you said, hey, Jocco asked me this. And then he asked me this. And then he asked me this.

And what I was doing was saying, Hey, Leif, why are you doing that right there? and Laif said, well, this is what I thought? And I said, okay, well, what would you do then if this happened? And Leif said, oh, that's a good point. And so instead of me saying, Leif, don't do that, you do this right here. I didn't do that.

I was asking him questions and letting him find the answer. And also, the other point of this, for real, is I wasn't just asking him the question, like, so that I could guide him down the perfect path. I'm legitimately asking him, like, why are you doing that right there? Because maybe he's got an idea in his head that could be positive. I can talk through that example because that was in the killhouse. Yeah. We're working to the kill house. And for those that don't know who to kill houses, you've got rooms and hallways in a building.

And oftentimes it's ballistic walls so we can shoot live fire in there. Same thing SWAT teams use or any military in the world. But it's you work on your close quarter combat skills or CQC where you enter doorways. And you're working together as a team clearing these hall. halls and rooms and moving through a target building in a training environment. And often they can change them and move the hallways around or change doorways. So it mixes it up every time you can't really get used to doing it one way or the other. And so I've been told as an officer, my job was to stand in the back and just take the report.

So that's what I did. And the report being how many people have been shot, how many hostages have been captured, how many seals have been wounded? That's the report. I've got the little quarterback sleeve on my arm with a grease pencil, and I'm just standing in the back doing that. And the question Jocko asked me was, hey, Leif, he literally asked, it wasn't condescending. It was, you know, the tone really mattered. And he said, why are you in the back?

And he was very curious about why I was in the back? What was my tactical reasoning for that? And I looked at him, I was like, that's what I was told to do. And someone who had told me that didn't really have any real experience on, on. on a real battlefield and say, well, you're an officer, you just stand in the back. And so I thought I'm going to aggressively do that. That's what I'm going to do.

And that's where I was. Aggressively stand in the back. And I'm a pretty default, I'm a pretty default aggressive leader. And I was like, hey, if my job is to stand in the back and take this report, I'm going to do it better than anybody. Watch this. And when Jocko asked me that, he's like, well, why are you in the back? And I was like, because that's where I thought I was supposed to be.

And then he asked me another question. It was, well, do you know what's going on up in the front of the train right now? You know, I've got, I've got 15 guys spread out through the building, they're in different rooms and stuff. And I was like, I have no idea what's going on in the train up front. And so then the follow-on question for him was like, well, how can you lead this team? How can you be the command of control for your team if you don't know what's going on up front?

I was like, I mean, it was just light bulb moment go off. Like, I have to, I have to be in a position where I know where, you know, where I need to be. And that was, it showed me that I was, not only was I wrong in where I was, but I was failing as a leader and failing my team if I couldn't actually lead them and know what's going on. So the proper position for me was forward, somewhere in the middle generally, and I could move around. I didn't want to get so far forward that I'm getting sucked into every room clearance or getting in a gunfighting, you know, in the hallway, because I've got to be able to stand back and see, see what's going on, but not so far in the back that I don't know what's going on up front. So that, he never needed to tell me that again.

It was, I knew where I needed to be. I understood that it made sense to me. And I think if you want to, that's a great example of being able to successfully mentor your people so they understand, you know, to ask them those questions in a way that's meaningful. It's not condescending. It's not, you know, I know everything. Why are you doing that? But don't do this. But actually asking me the questions and I didn't have a legitimate answer.

Live bulb goes off. Nobody ever needs to tell me that again. Yeah, I feel like that's like such a critical component. tone how you can say the same exact question but you say it in all these different tone so like like what were you you you know how you like you always say this like what were you thinking there on that thing or that when that went down as opposed to what were you thinking you know like that kind of thing that's common well you thinking like you're so dumb and i think the factor is there is that i recognize i truly recognize that i could be learning something and there might be something

i don't see i and i'll tell you what lave talked about this earlier man combat is humbling and you and i've been in situations combat where I did not have control. Yeah. And I did not do good. And I look at those

situations and I don't know if that's going to happen again in whatever situation. So my mind is not sitting there saying, I know everything. Because I know I don't.

Yeah. So when I'm asking those questions, I am legitimately asking you the question, hey, Echo, what were you thinking when you, when you splice this thing together?

What were you thinking when you, when you posted this thing on that video? What's the purpose of that, you know, and I actually want to know. So that's why I'm not saying, echo, why the hell did you post that? You know what I mean?

I genuinely am not overconfident and don't think I know everything. And that was one of the biggest lessons are, you know, in addition to this leadership's the most important thing on the battlefield. One of the other big lessons learned was humility. And that's, you know, at that time, I had deployed to Iraq before. So I was a one platoon wonder, you know, cruise wonder. Exactly. One pump, jump. It's, and you really feel that happens.

When you have, I've deployed or I've been overseas and I've done a few combat operations, you get that on your belt, and yet you don't even realize what it feels like to be overwhelmed, to have things that are out of your control, to have the enemy flank you or do something that you hadn't foreseen. And I think those just sustained combat operations for almost seven months in Ramadi, just day in and day out of intense gun battles was something that it was. was humbling and I think that was one of the biggest lessons aren't we were able to come back and pass on to others was just wow if you think you got it figured out you haven't really done anything real yeah and the other thing that happens and this is this is actually to exactly to

your point somebody goes overseas and they they do some combat operations and they don't get challenged they don't get tested truly and it actually falsely increases their confidence and we see this in the business world too like you have a you have a company that came out of the gate and that they just timed things right, they were ahead of the curve, and all of a sudden they're doing fantastic, and they think they can make no mistakes, and they're not humble. So their success, their success actually makes them get arrogant. And I mean, it's real obvious. I mean, look at Ronda Rousey, right?

Rhonda Rousey, she thought, hey, I'm good to go. I'm going to beat all these people, and that, that arrogance will bite you. And so I think we saw that in the SEAL teams where guys would go overseas. do a quote unquote combat deployment, they'd get some experience, but it wasn't like hardcore sustained combat operations. And so that actually, it would be a negative.

It'd almost be better not to have any experience. Almost. It's probably better to have some experience. But you definitely, so my point is whether you're in combat, whether you're going into combat, whether you've been in combat, whether you're in a sport,

just because you've had some success, don't start cutting corners, don't let don't get arrogant I mean this is common sense stuff but we still see it all the time yeah when you're in the mix you're just you're just compelled to do it like I'm winning

yeah I don't need to train any harder I don't need to train any harder I'm good to go it's like that guy running the mile you know the guy who's running the mile right he's beating everyone he's winning but then you got the guy who's had some adversity through the four laps

and at the end he's turning it on and the guy who ran the mile he's like oh I'm cruising and the guy passes him Same thing. I think that's why it's always easy to be the underdog. Because it's, it's, you can just take advantage of, uh, of, of, of overconfidence, of arrogance, of someone who just doesn't think. Yeah.

It's like what you were saying, like I'd gone to Iraq. We'd done, we'd done a bunch of operations. But I'll tell you, in my mind, I didn't feel like I had been tested. I knew a lot. I felt like, hey, we still got to be, that's why we always thought, worst case scenario. What's the worst thing that's going to happen? What's how bad can this get? That's what I was always looking at.

And still look at. And when we were running train, when I was running train, when I was running training, when you were running training, we were always looking at that. What, we want,

I want the training to be harder than combat, you know, so keep your ego and check people. And we, we talk to leaders about that all the time. I just had a conversation with the leader, uh, not too long ago about,

uh, how he's telling me everything's going good. You know, he's implemented the stuff we talked about. He's, he's rock and roll with these principles. His team's going great. I'm like,

okay, well, we're going to go bad. Where can it go bad? You know, what, What did you miss? What risk did you, are you not taking the proper steps?

What's the worst case scenario that can happen? I think good leaders are going to be doing that all the time. Never going to be satisfied. Always thinking, what did I miss? There's always those little butterflies there. And I think when you're, when you're out of an op-thinking, I got it all figured out, what bad could possibly happen. We're going to crush the enemy.

Watch out. It's going to go bad for you. All right. Moving on to the next question. I'll tell you, though, what's easy about being the underdog? is that not much is expected out of you. So even if you fail it, everyone's like, whatever, it doesn't throw up any kind of red flag,

doesn't move the needle. But when you do good, it moves the needle because no one expects much out of you. Yep, being the underdog is the easier position. Less pressure. Yeah, it can be seen that way, yeah. For sure. Next question.

Here we go. Jock and Leif. Once the crisis started in Ben, Nagazi was a QRF practical. You know, this is something that there's been so much discussion, obviously, with the heated political debate, you know, of election season. And a lot's been said about Benghazi. And I think what bothers me so much about that is the answer is yes. Of course, a QRF is practical.

And a QRF should have been set up and ready to go in the event that this happened. And so the issue with this is, you know, with Benghazi and why it's a big deal and why it's important is particularly for those of us in the military is because when U.S. military personnel or employees of the U.S. government anyway are out in harm's way and they're calling for help. leaders, real leaders are going to step up and get that help to them and make it happen. And I think, you know, whether or not a QRF, which is a quick reaction force, we're talking about sending in a force, maybe it's Marines, maybe it's soldiers, maybe it's Special Operations Force. Maybe it's just air support. Maybe it's air support, close air support, which could have gotten there certainly, you know, in a matter of hours. those things would probably have made a huge difference on that battlefield. Would you have saved the lives of Ty Woods, who was our teammate and Glenn Doherty, another teammate,

and the two State Department officials lost their lives, including the ambassador, Chris Stevens. I don't know. I don't know that it would have saved their lives, and no one could say that. But that's not what leaders are asking themselves. They don't know the outcome. I think a true good leader is going to, when bad things are happening, is going to say, how can we resolve this? How can we help those guys?

And I think the hard thing when you look at this scenario is from everything that we've seen and understand about what happened in the wake of Benghazi is when the call came in, that U.S. forces are under attack, the immediate response was, how can we twist this? How can we make this better for us politically? Spin it. How can we spend it? Yeah, exactly. So how can we do that?

Well, Libya had to be, because that was the party line at the time. Libya had to be a big win. We liberated Libya. You know, U.S. forces went in air power. Liberated Libya from the, you know, evil dictator, Moormar Gaddafi. That has to be a victory force. We can't say that al-Qaeda or terrorist groups have taken over, that the threat levels there. So we have to put a spin on this.

So let's, we can't say that there's a threat. let's come up with a story about the video and how the video inflamed, you know, hatred against Americans and, and blame that. And so that was the crisis response. And no one ever said, send every asset we have to help those guys. And, you know, there's all this, you know, the paperwork and the permissions that are required to enter another country's airspace. Let me tell you something. if someone, if the president at the very top says get U.S. aircraft there now, they're going to get there now. And what is what is Libya going to do for us?

I mean, particularly when they're a nation that's not a, I mean, they've got kind of a pseudo government at that point post, you know, post-revolution. So it was, it's a travesty. And I think it's a real stain on American honor that when U.S. troops were in harm's way, calling for help, America did not send help. so a couple things from my perspective number one and you kind of touched on this the preparation was awful there's all kinds of documents

showing that these guys felt the threat analyzed a threat knew the threat was real and did not get the support that they wanted down there that's just step number one so from the beginning

never mind once this once once what was it was a question once the crisis started the crisis shouldn't have started you should be proactive You should be aggressive in your contingency planning. You should be aggressive in your security measures. You should be aggressive against a known and quantifiable threat all the time.

So there's number one. There's the first failure. Then the second failure. You already said it. I'm going to tell you what. You got American troops in harm way. Harm's way. We are going to do everything possible to get there now.

And you know what? How long is that crisis going to last? You don't know. You don't know how long a crisis is going to last. So if the crisis starts and I know what's going on, I'm sending help. And I'm sending the first help I can get out that I'm sending there. And as soon as I can establish more help, I'm going to send them too. And if the crisis is over and the embassy is overrun in 20 minutes and we're too late, okay, we did our best.

If the crisis lasts six hours and the patriotic heroes that stood the line and fought held those guys for five hours or seven hours long enough to get support there, then guess what? We win. Everyone's alive and we did our job. So it was just a disaster across the board. And like you said, a real, not only a stain on American presence in the world to have an ambassador, a sitting ambassador murdered. But our reaction to it was completely, it was a travesty. And not to mention, of course, the loss of some real heroes that stood up. and held the line even without the support that they needed from their country at that time,

which is hard for me to even say. I'll back us down a little bit, take a little breath, throw you a little softball from the troopers out there. And this is actually something. Might be a softball life, but I know you're passionate about this. What's the best barbecue in Texas? Those are fighting words right there Because people have their favorites That's for sure

You know what today We're going to talk about you know politics We're going to talk about religion We're going to talk about life They're asking about barbecue I don't know man Touchy subject We might not want to get there man

I don't want to get a bunch of Twitter haters Say the wrong barbecue I don't know Any true Texans is going to take their barbecue very seriously There's no doubt about that I It's certainly a passion down there in Texas and it's a big deal But I got to go with I got to go with Cooper's Pit Barbecue

Where's that? I know it's in Atlanta, Texas The original they've had it they've had a couple of ones that've opened up in Austin area now But it is it's awesome You walk in that place, you get to just a big plastic tray And there's just giant smokers around And you go up and you just like I want that piece of brisket I want those ribs I want that stuff

And you just take it and you weigh it and then you just get after it Jocko you probably wouldn't like I mean I know that now that you've gone vegan You probably yeah. Yeah, yeah Jocco is not a vegan eater for those out there that are listening He is very very much a carnivore Awesome, wait, what's the spot again? It's Cooper's pit barbecue in Lano, Texas All right, next question Is there a way to practice is back to leadership? Is it? Is it? there a way to practice the hard conversations, I'm not known for my delicate finesse. Well, I'm glad you're not known if you're delicate finesse because neither am I, generally.

I'm a pretty direct guy, and I'm a default aggressive leader, I think, by nature. But that's something that, you know, I learned from Jocko, really, is, you know, you always, you always use Jiu-Jitsu as an analogy and, you know, how the direct approach. And particularly, you know, as a white boat wonder myself, When you're training jiu-sitsu, it's like you're going for the three moves that you know. People know it's coming, and it's very easy to defend. Right? So if you can set up like, I'm going for this, but then I'm going for something else.

And it's that indirect approach generally is more successful. You just talked about that with the ice cream, ride the bicycle with your daughter. So, I mean, I think that's, there's so many examples of that where we see. And often that direct approach, hey, my way, do it this way, just doesn't get the job done. I think is there a way to practice the hard conversation? 100% there is. And so many people think they're above rehearsals, role play.

Those are things that are critical to seal performance in the battle. I think a lot of people don't realize that we actually, we do rehearsals and walkthroughs before every single operation. And we try to mimic that. Maybe it's, you know, we're out training in the desert. We might even have like, you know,

we might lay out rocks. are put tape on the ground so it mimics if we if we if there's not actual buildings to use for training facilities or are uh and we have everyone stand together in their sticks and we know who's getting on the helicopter here and and these guys are going to be on the second helicopter there those are the kind of things that allow people in the dark of night when it's crazy and it's chaotic to go to the right place do what they're supposed to do everything is simple as unloading from a vehicle just we we would practice that we you know we had this uh we had this giant

truck that we use. When the IED threat started getting really bad in Iraq, initially, steel assaulters were riding in the back on benches in the back of a Humvee, kind of an open bed, like a truck, truck-type back. And then the IED thread, the roadside bomb threat started getting so dangerous that we had to put guys inside armor.

And so that means that Humvees can only care five guys if you don't have guys in the back. So we had to take this giant, we call it the man truck. I think we nicknamed it Big Zev. was our truck and it was a big five-ton truck and you know a flatbed truck and they I don't know if

previous seals or if the army had done it or Marines but we had welded these a quarter inch steel plates around it and then we had then we had sandbags in the bottom of it so that was like our that was our protection and most of the sandbags were like torn up because of boots going in and out and so it was

you're just sitting on sand so if you got blown up it would not have provided a whole whole lot of protection from you. But you'd be blown up in sandy. Getting out of the truck is substantial. When you got 20 guys sitting in the back of that truck and they're, you know, with some of our guys, Iraqi soldiers that were with us, our jundies. And you've got to swing open this giant, heavy, you know, quarter inch steel doors

in the back. And then you've got to put a ladder out and everyone's got to climb down that ladder. That takes some time. And guess what? That can turn into three stooges real quick. No doubt. Just this picture that. People can get injured.

We've had guys fall off at trucks like that and dislocate their shoulders and literally have to get sent home. But more important, if it takes three minutes or four minutes to do something like that, that's three or four minutes that you don't have guns pointed in every direction. And it's critical. So we had to practice that and practice that and practice that until we could do it in less than 30 seconds. And then if we have two different assault forces, we got to make sure assault ones line up on the left side of the road, assault two's line up on the right side of the road. I mean, those things that we have to practice that over and over and over again. And it seems really juvenile. It seems very elementary.

But if you took the time to practice that performance, your performance is so much better when you actually get out in the dark or night, the chaos of being in an unknown area and worried about bad guys and where they are and all those things happening and making sure people went to the place they need to go. So having those conversations, practicing it, sitting down with someone who understands how that person might respond for a tough conversation, role play. Maybe, you know, they try different scenarios where they're,

It's a softball or easy scenario. It's a difficult scenario. It's the worst case scenario? The worst case scenario. So the more you do that, the better it is. And this is something that Jock and I have done quite a bit with companies we work with is role play. You've got to counsel a guy. And it's easy just to say, well, you screwed up.

We're firing you. But if this is a good guy, he messed up, you've got to try to get him on board to use this plan. Or you have to talk him down from doing this out on, you know, he did something out in town that is making the company look back. Whatever it is. and you have to talk to them and that role play is critical and it makes you better and enables you to perform better

and so yes you have to do that rehearse yeah three or four iterations with someone dealing with in a role play scenario they get better you can literally see them get better

it's pretty cool we got pretty good getting in and out of big Zev nice all right next question there was recent news about combatives

in the SEAL team what was the evolution towards MMA? So the SEAL teams has gone through a whole plethora of various kind of hand-to-hand combat type of things. When I first came in, there was something called Scars, and it stood for scientific something, something, something, something, something. But it was, it sort of looked like a... Kung Fu? Yeah, it was very... actually I think it was based on on Sansu right

which is a martial art anyways so that was kind of when I showed up there then we kind of morphed towards something a little bit more modern and then we morphed towards something else and so we were constantly kind of looking and searching for something that was efficient we ended up going with this one

this one contractor for several years and you know so use this this one contractor for several years and then eventually, especially once the war started, and we had guys on a regular basis doing hand-to-hand combat against the enemy. And for those you that don't understand when that would happen, if we go into a building and there's people in there that don't have weapons, well, you can't just gun them all

down. You have to get control of them. If they're military-age males, you've probably got to cuff them. You've got to get them down to the ground. You've got to control them. Now there's a whole variety of things that can happen. The guy can be unarmed, but literally combative. You know, he can square up and say, okay, it's on.

We've seen that. And people might be surprised to hear that people actually do that. You know, you've got a gang of big, tough seals there that are going to put you down. We've had multiple people like, not comply. Oh, you're not going to put me down. And it doesn't usually go too well for them. So that's one on the spectrum. Then you go down the spectrum where it's someone that just is scared and they're frozen with fear.

But you're yelling at them to get down in Arabic, which is, you know, your Arabic's not great. You're yelling at them. They're scared. They freeze. So now what are you going to do? You can't just stand there and keep yelling at them. You've got to get them to the ground, get them in control, so you continue the clearance.

Then there's people that are going to... So you've got... And then you, all the way down to someone that just, you know, they see you, they put their hands up, they lay down. That's great. That's easy. So as we started getting into these scenarios on a regular basis, we realize that the system that had been taught was ineffective. And that's... And also, luckily, we had a bunch of guys and SEAL teams that were into...

Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai and wrestling and MMA in general. And so that kind of came in and people started saying, hey, why don't you just do this? And this will actually get a person under control. And actually, you told a good story to me today when we were talking about Jiu-Jitsu about that. Tell that. That's a good little explanation of where we were and where we got to. In my first platoon, we went through that training.

And that was our prisoner handling training. So that's what we did. and that's what we practice handling prisoners and searching them and putting them on the ground, all that stuff handling them. And so, you know, we're told this is the way to do it. This is, you know, well, when we start going against role players, I remember one in particular, we're going against, we're in the killhouse, and we're moving through. And, of course, this isn't live fire.

You're going against role players. They're shooting back at you with submunition, which is a paint round through our actual weapons. It's great training because then you have, then you have to deal with people. You have to actually wrestle with people. You actually have to engage targets or they're shooting back at you. Outstanding training. And we've talked about that before. But it is one of the things that really stood out to me was I remember one particular guy.

One of the role players was a pretty large guy. I mean, he was probably 6'4, 6'5, like 250-pound guy, big guy. And me and... And this guy wasn't a seal. He wasn't a seal. I think he was a gunner's maid or something. He was just volunteering to come up and be a role player. Great, you know, helps us with training.

and so, you know, a smaller role player, you're able to get them down on the ground, hold them, and, you know, get a search on them. And me and another one of our guys, who was a big guy. I mean, this guy, arms, big around my legs, the seal was a large, large man, very strong guy. And we grabbed this guy. We're trying to get him to the ground, and he's not being compliant. He's being, he's resisting us, and it's hard. I mean, this is difficult for me and this other guy.

We're not small guys. I mean, we're strong guys. We're getting this guy to the ground, but he's not cooperating, and we're having a hard time keeping him down. Another one of our guys, who was actually a lot smaller than us. He was probably 180-pound guy. I'm 200 pounds, and the other seal I was describing it's probably 230-pound guy. And he's, so this other seal comes up, and he's like a 180-pound guy.

He's trained jiu-jitsu. He's got a little bit of that. He spent a little time at the Grace Academy and had was one of the, One of the first guys I knew who was pretty skilled in Jiu-Jitsu, and he gets this big guy, you know, the role players wrestling around that Gunner's made and not cooperating. We're wrestling around with him. He comes up there, gets a guy, gets a knee on him, goes like knee on stomach, and the guy can't do anything.

And, you know, here's this 180-pound guy completely controlling this large guy that two of us couldn't do before. And I was like, I need to start training some J-J-J-J-J-J-J-July. Jitsu because that stuff works. And it was just a reality of like body control. I can control this guy. I mean, knee on stomach, get his arms, got him zip tied, done. I mean, he's, and he actually, when we debrief with him, you know, he comes, now he's out of his role player element.

He's like, hey, that was pretty cool. And then I think he actually probably started training some jihitsu because he, he realized, like, just how effective it was for a guy who really understood body control to be able to just get a knee on him, hold him down, you know, and be able to control him, even though he was half the size of this did. Interestingly, that's why most of us start. Because it happens to you, and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That was like, you're like, how's this guy who's, you know, he looks so much smaller than me

and he's just crushing me, how's that possible? So that was, you know, and that case that you just described happened, like, you know, every day in the SEAL team, somebody else that knew some Jiu-Jitsu, you know, would have that scenario happened and eventually the the correct answer rises up and people say hey look this is working this is not working and so that's how we ended up with with more of an m.m.A. based approach because it's not just pure jiu jitsu it's everything it's moitai it's boxing it's it's you know weapons retention pieces to it it's hitting people learning how to hit people with your gun what we call a muzzle strike which is again this is one of those things where

we kind of would be told that the like the muzzle strike would just kill people yeah will kill people or it's going to definitely incapacity instantly and knock people out and the fact of the matter is and I know I know Laif and I have seen I don't even know how many people I've seen muzzle strikes over and over and over again and it just the amount I don't even think I ever saw an actual knockout

I mean you see some damage it hurts and it cuts the person's face open and it makes them bleed everywhere, and it's a complete nightmare, and you have to take them to medical, and it's just a bad thing. Whereas somebody that knows a little bit of MMA can go in and get control of these people and take them down, and it's no factor.

So that's what ended up taking over, and it's definitely a good thing and a positive thing, and it's been cool to talk to the guys that are now carrying on with the program. Next question. How do you deal with anger and flared tempers in yourself or your team? Laif, I'm going to go ahead and turn that one over to you.

I got a lot of experience with this one. Leif's way more experienced than me. Yeah, and losing your temper. I've got a lot of experience in this one. And I talked about being a direct guy, being a default aggressive guy, and that's good. There's a lot of good in that. There's also some bad when you lose your temper, when you lose your cool.

One, you know, when you get emotional about things and react to stuff, you don't make good decisions. And so, you know, we always taught our guys that the most important quality they could have as a combat leader is to remain calm and make good decisions under chaos and pressure. So that doesn't happen when you lose your temper. So, you know, when I look back on that, the other thing about it, too, is when you do lose your temper about stuff. And it's, I can give you a number of scenarios where it happened where, you know, if guys had, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it. People always think like seals are always focused all the time, you know, and it's life and death for you guys out there. When we talk about businesses, they say that all the time, like, it's life and death for you guys.

You know, so it's not really life and death for my guys, but how do I get them to stay focused? Guess what? People lose discipline, right? People lose discipline if there's not leaders that are holding those standards and pushing hard. And I remember one time in particular, there was we were patrolling back to our combat outposts, and we've been on a long operation. It was a foot patrol into a dangerous area. And we captured a bunch of prisoners, and we had to walk them back on foot because there were so many IED threats in that area. I think we finally met up with some Bradley fighting vehicles, a smaller tank from the Army that came down.

We loaded them up in that, and they took them back from there. So we're walking back, patrolling back, and we're almost, you know, we're still a few hundred yards back away from this combat outpost, but we're in enemy territory. And I could see that some of the guys are starting to not be as focused, like looking down their weapons and dropping. and security and those things and I was infuriated by that. I was totally infuriated by that. And it was because I knew what was at stake that, look, if we're not disciplined all the way back until we're inside that wire of the friendly combat outpost, we could take fire at any moment.

And if we're not watching, you know, at that very second we get shot at people might get killed. You know, it decreases our probability of winning that firefight of bringing everybody back. So it was a big deal. But I definitely lost my cool on that. When I came back, I was chewing ass and, like, fired up at people and, like, this is why this is important. And looking back on that, I'm like, that's not the best way to do that, right?

The best way to do that is to say, I mean, force guys to keep security, remind them to keep security certainly while it's happening. But getting back and saying, guys, here's why we got to keep security. I know we're only, you know, a couple of yards from the combat outposts, but recognize there are enemy fighters out here. And they're going to hit us when we least expect it. just because it hasn't happened to us before, even though we've done this a dozen times, does not mean that it won't happen to us the next time. And we can't, you know, this is important.

Think about how you would feel if somebody got killed when you were supposed to be holding security as they were crossing the street and you weren't paying attention. You know, it's interesting to use that example. I almost feel that you showing legit anger at that point was a positive thing. Like, you want to make it perfectly clear to everybody. And the way you get their attention

because it's not like you lose your temper all the time. is by, you know, getting angry and people go, oh, you know, he's, he doesn't lose the temper very often. Here he is super fired up. Well, I don't think it's a problem. It's not a problem to get angry. I got really, really angry. Okay. So it's one of those things where it would have been more effective for me to be stern and not back down from that in the least and not treat it lightly in the league.

I'm not saying that at all. But I think just to, to yell and scream and those things, it's just never the best way to get the best. You're right. That is true. If you completely lose it and you're yelling and screaming, it's, it's not a good thing. And even though you're absolutely right, it was important. And I wanted that addressed. It was like, it just wasn't the best way to dress that. Looking back on the now, one time in particular, too, was I can think when you wanted to make some changes to our operation. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. I can't remember if we talked about that the last podcast or not, but we, we, we, I was ready to cancel the job. came in and was like, well, what about this? You know, maybe, did we look at it from this direction?

Why don't you guys maybe patrol in on this route and not go across this bridge where there's a choke point and they might bury IDs in the road? And I was like, we've been looking this for hours. It's like, now he's changing it 10 minutes prior. I'm like, cancel the op. And Jock, he could have got, he could have lost his cool with me because I just lost my cool. And, you know, I've been, we've been hours at this and I was frustrated. I was ready to get this op lawn. and all the paperwork requirements and the levels of approvals that we need and running around trying to fix all these things.

And he actually just looked at me and was like, we don't need to cancel the op. It's fine. It's going to be fine. And then you actually, again, ask me some questions like, does what I'm saying make sense? And I wanted to be like, no. I can't, you know, but it was like, yes. It totally makes sense. It totally makes sense.

You're like, okay, how long is it going to take to change it? you're like, I was like, two minutes. Like, well, we have eight minutes off, so no problem. Let's get it done. We don't need to cancel the operation. I was like, no, we don't. Yeah, yeah. And like you said, it's important to maintain your cool.

And the way I do that is by being detached, talk about it all the time. In that situation, when you got all fired up at me, I was like, like, okay, you know, Laf's getting fired up. And I didn't think Lace getting fired up because he's immature or because he's, he doesn't, can't control himself. I thought to myself, hey, you know what? He's been working on this all day. He's got a lot of pressure on him. There's a lot of frustration when you're doing these plans and doing all this paperwork.

I understand where he's coming from. Let me give him some space. Let him vent a little bit. And then let's re-approach this thing. That's how I'm coming at the situation. So how you handle it, though, is perfect because had you blown back up at me? Of course. The natural human reaction is, right?

then I get mad, we're yelling at each, even though we have a tremendously close relationship. We would have canceled the option. Yeah, it would have been a big deal. Or even if you end up saying, like, you know, as so many leaders would do, like, you're going to do it this way. And then I'm mad at you and I'm all pissed off. You know, you came in and trumped me. Oh, yeah. By the way, what happens when something goes wrong on the operation?

And I'm like, Jaco told us to do it. You told us to do this. And then you have those frictions. But the best thing that you did in that situation was you actually just smiled and laughed at me. You're like, just take it. Just to make that clear. I didn't laugh at him like he was a little kid. I was like, hey, man.

You know, and he knows me. And he knows exactly where I was coming from. Like, hey, I know what's going. It was the perfect way to de-escalate the situation, which made me de-escalate. Exactly. And made me realize, like, yeah, it makes total sense. And then when we executed it, it was no problem.

Yeah. That's how you deal with. That's how you deal with. So when someone gets mad at you, de-escalate. When you feel yourself getting spun up, detached. When have you got spun up and lost your cool? I've said this before on the podcast.

Printers and copy machines they don't like me. And I don't like them. Are we talking straight up office space style? Office space style. I don't like printers and copy machines. They don't ever do what I want them to do. And so I get

angry at them. So I'll lose my mind a little bit. But no, I don't lose my temper very often. You know, it doesn't doesn't do me a lot of good. And it usually doesn't help the situation. It doesn't help you solve the problem. And my mind is always, how do I get this thing solved?

It never helps you solve the problem. That's for sure. Nope. So if you're like me and you lose your cool, you've got to practice it. You've got to rehearse that. You've got to make sure that you're detaching and not losing your cool

so that you can get the job done and win. That's what it's all about. And the Delta Patoon commander, you know, he'd go into a little bit of rage from time to time. And, you know, one day the Delta platoon commander is going to be out of the military, and he's coming right on this podcast, and he knows it, he's fired up. But, you know, he's my other brother, and that's going to be a good time. But, you know, he would get some rage going, and I'd have to back him down a little bit and say,

bro, it's me. The reason to get fired up right now. We're here to win. And I'm here to help you. And you go, I know, but damn. Awesome. All right. Next one, and this is a pretty heavy subject, actually.

Jock and Leif, thoughts on cops being ambushed. What should police departments be doing to prepare, especially with no command support for training? ISIS is an American law enforcement role in battling this terrorism. We've been training active shooter a lot. This is actually a conglomeration of a few questions, but the basic question is thoughts on the cops being ambushed, what should police departments be doing to train for that and prepare for it?

And then how do civilians fit into that picture, and what can civilians do to help? The horrible shooting that took place in Texas. horrific stuff and certainly we lift up the families

and those lost in our prayers and the entire the entire police force there in Dallas in Baton Rouge and across the country where they've

lost lost their brothers I think first of all we have tremendous respect for law enforcement for the boys in blue and what were

there's police departments you know sheriff's deputies federal law enforcement you know they protect the home front. And we have to have that. We have to have that. We have to be a nation of loss. And, and without that, we've got complete lawlessness. And so, uh, I think Americans need to show

appreciation for their police departments and for their law enforcement officers. Uh, we can't do that enough. We got to thank those, those folks. I think, uh, as far as there, you know, this is just another example. You know, when we're talking about these, the police ambush, this is another example, just as we talked about in that first question, darkness, right? The evil that's in the world. There are some evil people that celebrate this evil, like it's a great thing. And I think, you know, there's just no justification for the kind of horrific stuff that we've seen, you know, these ambushes on police officers.

And so I think police need to start, you're already seeing, you're already seeing police that are getting, they're getting long guns for the forces that didn't have them. A lot of them had them. but maybe they didn't have access to them or couldn't get to them quickly, they're going to need to have those long guns. Where if someone's targeting you with a rifle and all you have is a pistol, it's not good for you. That's not a good scenario.

For those of these that don't know anything about guns like Echo, the difference between having a rifle and a pistol is night and day. I mean, let's just break it down. A pistol, if you're a good shot with a pistol, maybe. If you're a great shot with a pistol, maybe you're getting out, what, what, 50 yards? you're a good shot with a rifle and you're out to 800 yards pretty easily now on top of that you've got a pistol you can a pistol round will stop when it hits something you know it's sometimes pistol rounds stop when they hit regular windows on cars a high power rifle is

going to rip through the doors of cars no problem it's going to be so there is a there is a massive massive difference between being out in the street with a pistol and being out in the street with a rifle. So luckily there's, well, not luckily, but they are starting to arm the police for these scenarios that you're going to get in. I remember the first time, first patrol I went on in Iraq,

in Humvees, and we hit, we hit a steel hedgehog, right, the little obstacles that Americans put out, I don't know if they left them there, it'd been some problem, so I'm driving along, all of a sudden, boom, we hit one. It was my vehicle, and I thought to myself, I just hit an I-ed-a-d, I'm about to die. but our vehicle gets jacked up.

We're, like, propped up, and everyone poured out in the street and, like, took up security. But everyone's out there with a little M-4s. And you feel, even, you know, because we wanted machine guns. And we never went out again without, you know, two heavy machine guns per Humvee, because we wanted to be ready to rock and roll. So that's the same feeling you're going to get rolling out with just a pistol. So that's number one. Number two, the police departments, they got to start looking at,

tactics at urban combat tactics and how to handle these situations, how to cover and move, primarily, how to cover and move. It always is shocking to me when I see the, when I see people not using the use of cover, when there's gunfight or potential gunfight or even if there's not, that's one thing in Ramadi, like when you're walking down the street in Ramadi, you don't walk down the street, you're moving from cover to cover. And if you're a police officer, let's at least be near cover. shooting starts that you can get in cover.

When I see arrests happening, actual arrest happening, they're trying to get someone to stop and the police officers are standing out in the open to try and tell someone to stop. Don't stand out in the open, stand behind cover. Now there's a complexity there because you want the person that you're trying to stop

to be able to clearly identify that you're a police officer, right? But let's make the error on the side of being behind cover. So if that person does draw a gun, you can be able to react them from a place of cover. Because if you're, the difference between standing behind cover

and standing out in the open, if someone starts shooting at you, if you've got cover, you're good to go. That's literally you're good to go. They have to do, they have to hit a tiny, tiny little target of whatever's exposed to you, you know, part of your head.

Whereas if you're standing in the open, they're going to hit you. So I think those tactics need to start be looking at, they need to start looking at the individual tactics of doing arrests, and then they need to start looking at the larger group tactics when you have either one, you know, you've got your partner out there,

how do you operate together, how do you cover and move together, what's the best way to react to these scenarios? And then, furthermore, when another group, when other police show up, how do you then quickly organize into elements that can operate together like a military unit? And I know that's going to make some people scared, but like, they shouldn't be scared of that. When you're in a gunfight, you need to use tactics,

gunfighting tactics, and those come from the military. So they should be able to operate in pairs. They should be able to operate in elements and grow until you get to a point where you can handle these situations. And that's going to take a lot of training and that's going to take money and that's going to cost. And I was talking to some of my friends that are police officers. And a matter of fact, one guy just met, really good guy, really fired up, jihitsu player, of course. And he said the amount of training that they get is very, very minimal. So, for example, a regular police officer,

They actually don't. Oftentimes, they don't have designated times for training. They don't have times to say, okay, you're going to work 40 hours this week. Four of those hours are going to be training. And that's completely wrong. You should have mandatory, real good training, force-on-force training, and that's what Lafeyf talked about earlier, where you're shooting live or simunition rounds or paintball rounds at each other.

so you're getting used to those stressful situations. So, because I'll tell you what, you square off with a guy, you square off of the guy one time and he's got simulation, and you stand out in the open and don't get cover, and he pulls out that gun and shoots you three times in the face with simulation, and then the next time you go again, you're going to be on some cover. It's going to happen. And that's what we want people to do.

You know what's interesting about that is, you know, there was a real emphasis on live fire when I first came into the SEAL teams, and a lot of the instructors that were putting us through training had not had any real experience yet, any real combat experience. And so we still had those folks that were saying, well, we're going to focus on live fire because that's more important and that's better training. And the reality is it's not.

It's actually worse training because you're dealing with paper targets. And it's simple. It's like either they're armed, there's a weapon in their hand or they're not, shoot them, don't shoot them. Did you hit the target? Did you not? So while it's important to be able to operate with live fire and that's great, so much better to operate against a role player.

Now you go into a room, you're like, The guy's moving. You can't see him. He's trying. You know, is he shooting you? Is he not shooting it? Is he, maybe he isn't armed. But if he's bum rushing you, uh, and, you know, and, and for us, you know,

if a guy's yelling at Allah Akbar and, uh, running at you, he's probably a high suicide bomber threat. So, uh, he's getting smoked. He's getting smoked. So it's, uh, so I, I think police, police forces have absolutely got to make time for training, but they got to put those realistic scenarios in there, too. And, and, you know, our, our police officers are, and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, our police officers are And as Jocco said, we've got many, many friends are in law enforcement.

Some of them former SEALs that we worked with that have gone that route now. They're in very difficult scenarios all the time. It's one of the hard things about close quarters combat is our instructors always tell us like, don't game it. Don't game it. Meaning, and I talked about with a kill house, how you can change the walls and maneuver around. When you're thinking in your mind, I know what I'm going to see when I enter this room. That's what you generally see. and so it's a difficult thing.

You've got to make you, it's easy to get really amped up. Your heart rate's going and you're like, like, you know, you, because there's pressure on, you've got instructors there and you want to make sure you make your shots and make good decisions. And particularly as a new guy when you haven't done that before and you're going to it for the first time. And so it's, if you're gaming it and you're already envisioning what you're going to see, that's how you react to it. And you end up, I mean, I remember I shot a target and the star was like, Bab, and look at that target. And there's no, it's a, it's a, there's nothing.

in the guy's hand. There's no, and I, I, I thought I saw a weapon on the target, and I saw, I, I, I hammered the target, you know, with rounds, and, uh, I'm looking at the holes in the, you know, the chest, the target. You vaporized a hotel. Did you engage hostels? I vaporized hostels. The quote, the movie, Navy SEALs.

But that's, that kind of thing can really get to you. So, um, and only, you only learn that when you, you only realize how easily that can happen when it happens to you in training. And when they change those things around, uh, so that you go in, you go in, there and it's a hallways different and you're moving a different direction and there's you know it causes those kind of issues so what what you're talking about is you want to train for the unexpected that's what you want to have happen and the things that you see in combat are crazy the things that cops deal with go watch youtube i said this last time we talked about the subject go watch youtube

and watch see the crazy things that people do out in the world and you got to be prepared for all those things and how do you prepare you've got to learn to think and you got to learn to think quickly I was talking to one of our guys from Tasking to Bruges the other day, and it's a, I'm not going to say his name, obviously, but he's one of one of my favorite guys who did that deployment with us, came back, and I think it was either his next deployment of the deployment after went to Afghanistan, and did a lot of incredible stuff in Afghanistan. And again, I put him through training for that. So I was running training, and he was just a great guy, stepped up. and I said, hey man, what was it? Because I didn't fight in Afghanistan. I said, what was the difference between, you know, your deployment to Afghanistan

where you got in a bunch of gun fights and got after it compared to what it was like in Ramadi? And he said, you know, the biggest difference was in Afghanistan, when things are happening, they're usually at a distance. You know, you're looking across a valley. You're looking down a ridge line. You're looking, you know, you can observe and you can got some time to think. you can get some cover and think, okay, I think this is where they are. Let me take another look.

You can pop your head out. You can assess. And he just looked at me and he said, in Ramadi, you had to make a decision now. And I started laughing because that, you know, you don't, there's no distance. The person is across the street. The person is two buildings away. And you as a leader, or even not as a leader, as a shooter, you got to make a decision right now. As a matter of fact, the leader's not going to tell you what to do.

You get engaged from across the street. You're not going to wait for the leader to tell you what to do. You got to know what to do. You've got to act. And that intensity of urban combat, and again, you know, this is like when we talk about the Chesh and war and what those guys, that's what was so stressful. And those lessons learned where they said, hey, in the urban combat environment,

these guys need to be cycled out of the urban combat environment because the ID threat, because the sniper threat, because the immense pressure of having to make decisions now, they should be cycled out like, I think it was every two months. And here we were. I'm putting you guys out in the field for six straight months into an urban combat. Apologize, Leif. apologize to you bruiser guys damn hard we loved it but so so that and that's go back and that's what these cops are dealing with that's these police officers dealing with is they got to get practice

and rehearse making these decisions now because that's what they have to do so now what can you do to buy yourself an extra quarter second an extra half a second well don't stand out in the open create some distance why are you approaching the person to ask yourself why I mean if where's this guy is going to run for me if he's runs what's going to happen is you going to More of a threat, less of a threat, so you can make those decisions. Another piece of this. Citizens of America. I think we actually need to teach in high school, in ninth grade freshman classes.

I think there needs to be a class called how to get arrested by the police. And they tell you what you should do when you get pulled over by the police or you get told to get down by the police or you get told to get away from the wall by the police. You know what you do? You do it. You do it. That's what you do. You show them your hands. You get your hands out of your pockets.

You put your hands in the air. And you know what part of that class should be is the students that are going through the class get to be the cop. And get to use sim munition. Get to feel what it's like to know, to not know, actually. To not know when you pull this guy over, is he, what's he going to do to you? And I watched a video the other day. They did a great job. Somebody suckered me in on the internet on YouTube.

it was watch another horrible police brutality. There's some kind of title like that. And I'm watching it. And this guy that's in the car. So it's traffic stop. And the guy that's in the car is being totally compliant. And I'm like, oh, God, I can't believe this cop is going to do anything to this guy. Look at this guy.

He's getting his license like he was asked to. I'm like, oh, I could barely watch it because it's like another shooting. That was the title. Another shooting, another death. because I always think those things are horrible to watch. I'm watching. I'm waiting for this cop just to pull out his gun or see a quick movement and pull out his gun

and shoot the guy. And the guy's just being compliant and nice and reaches in to grab something, grab his wallet or whatever, pulls out a gun and shoots the gut shots the cop. Gut shoots the cop, bus out of car and runs. Totally caught me by surprise. So when you are getting arrested

and we need to educate the citizens of America on how to get arrested. And I think that would be very helpful. Instead of protesting the cops for shooting people, they should say, okay, what can we do? We should take some ownership for this. What can we do as citizens to do a better job of getting arrested? You know, be compliant.

Show your hands. That is, and again, I think it's important to understand the pressure that police are under. And hey, just so everybody knows, some of those videos that I watch, I know for it's horrible. And the police have taken shots that have made me, made my stomach turn because they've been a nightmare. I already described one of these on the podcast, but that one where I saw the guy with the headphones on and a hoodie on, couldn't hear what the cop was saying, reached into his pocket to turn off his iPhone and the cop drilled him. You know, where was the cop standing? He was standing out in the wide open, in the wide open of a 7-11. parking lot. So he has no cover, no concealment. He's yelling at this guy. The guy turns around,

wants to shut off his iPhone, where he's listening to music so he can hear what the cop is saying, cop drills him. And the call was, you know, a guy with a gun. So I understand the anger at police when police make bad shots. But let's figure out not, let's, let's, let's, let's, we just talked about this. Let's not be temperamental about it. Let's not use rage. Let's, that's not going to solve the problem. What is going to solve the problem is take a step back. Let's analyze what we can do as citizens to de-escalate all these situations. Yeah, man, that's a good idea right there about let the, you know, in your example's high school, but let the citizen know how it feels to be the cop. Because really, that's all you see, because the cop has all this power, you know, and all this stuff.

But they don't know. I think when they see that kind of stuff, they don't know because of the emotions that get invoked when they see it. So if they understand, that's like a two-way street to facilitate that learning process. So let's say that was a common thing. That was one of like a normal thing, one of the normal things. What was a common thing? For people to go through this training. And that was just kind of part of our culture, you know, where as a citizen, we know we're well aware of what cops go through and all this stuff because we've been through it and we understand.

We just totally understand. that would make the whole landscape of cop versus citizens or cops working alongside with citizens it would stick out like a sore thumb when someone was suspicious otherwise people would be just yeah i know exactly what to do it'd be like clockwork routine and and myself i've done vehicle interdiction over an iraq and i know what it's like to walk up those cars and see what those people are looking like and and so when i when i get pulled over by the cops which hasn't happened me a lot but you know speed i've gotten busted for speeding i'm sorry since america but You know, I've got pulled over.

I'm, you know, totally. Discipline equals freedom. Yeah. Totally, you know, just hands, very slow movements. I don't, you know, I want to make their job as easy as possible. As easy as possible because I know they're stressed. You know, hey, officer, how you doing? Sorry, it's going a little fast.

You know, what do you want for me? Yeah. I'm here to comply. On that note, too, I mean, of course, they're going to be, they're going to be police that don't make good decisions and maybe go over the top. Or maybe they're, you know, they're, they lost their, for some other issue or they or they got a call i mean often and this is kind of where it's going i was talking about this earlier was if they get a call like i saw an armed guy or you fit the description of someone you're looking for they're already seeing you as a threat so having that you know if you

feel like you're not getting and believe me this is this is always the kind of myth in our culture as well uh i'm about as a white boys you can get as you know a blonde-headed uh pale skin guy uh i've been mistreated by the police that's for sure and When that was happening, when I got shoved on the ground, a little short-billed shotgun jammed into my skull, even when I was being compliant, I didn't lose my cool because what does that gain me? I'm not going to resist the rest. I'm just going to, I'm going to suck that up. Then I can, you know, if you are, I'm going to complain about my rights later, I can do that, you know. Look, I was being a knucklehead as a young, you know, as a young guy back in the day, and I probably deserved to be roughed up.

But it was one of those things we're like, now it's not the time to complain about it. You cooperate with the police. You want to file a complaint later? You can do that. Yeah, and that typically ends up to be, well, I mean, I guess, you know, it's debatable, I guess. But that typically becomes the best discourse.

Because at the time, if a cop or whoever, whoever, I used to be a bouncer. So it's on a way lower level. It's kind of the same thing. I remember those days, Echo. I think you had to bounce me out of the bar a few times. Yeah. Yeah, probably.

But if you start taking it right then and there where you're losing your temper or something like that, making the job difficult, like just like you said, you're not going to recapture your rights at that time. Like if you think your rights are being violated, you're not going to get your rights back at that time, the ones that are being violated. Let me say something worse than that. You have a rookie cop that doesn't know what he's doing that well, and he, for whatever reason, decides he's going to take that shock on off safe,

or he decides he's going to put the finger on the trigger, and now you start jerking around and moving, and all of a sudden you got an accidental discharge into your head. Right. So that's not real beneficial. It's not beneficial for life. Even before it gets to that, think about just the person who's going to make the decision to either resist or put up a fight about their rights or this officer being a power trip,

having a power trip or whatever. Just think about that person's, decision making, right? Rather, as opposed to, we're going to let this happen. I'm going to cooperate fully regardless of your power trade, regardless of the rights that you violated or whatever, and then if I believe that my rights are violated to pursue it later. Like how you're saying, because if you choose to pursue it right then and there, it's not going to work out. And you know, actually now I'm sitting here to think about this. It doesn't need to be like a high school education thing. That'd be great. But like, what could we do in the immediate? The government, the police should get together and start making videos of saying,

Hey, here's what's going on. Here's what the cops feeling. Here's what the cops thinking. Watch this live. You know, there's plenty of body cams. Now you can say, here's what the cops thinking. Here's what, like, they just had a shooting of a white guy up in Northern California a little bit ago. And he, you know, they showed him reaching for his reaching behind him after he was being competitive and walking towards people.

So it would be cool to just freeze that frame and say, this is what a police officer is thinking right now when you're doing this. He's thinking, does this guy have a gun? here's the report that I got here's the situation I'm in think about what you're doing and do the right thing if you're getting told to get down get down if you're getting told to show your hands

show your hands and I think we've got to start educating we're going to start training our police better they deserve it we owe that to them so that they know how to work as an individual to use cover as pairs to use cover move as elements to use cover and move and then we need to put them

in the stressful realistic environments that are changing all the time that they have to learn how to think now. And then on the civilian side, our civilians need to be educated as well on how to get arrested, how to comply what it feels like to be on the other side. Yeah. Yeah, man. And like I said, I think that does create this kind of this overall understanding of the process. Like I remember I used to be a bouncer and, you know, it's like check IDs, right?

check IDs and when someone has a fake ID, usually you can tell in their behavior. And I'm not saying I can tell a guy's underage or whatever if their behavior. I'm not saying that, but if there's some suspicion or whatever, his behavior is going to tell more of the tail, you know, but there is this kind of standard operating kind of way when you present your ID. You show your ID, you be quiet and you just kind of stand there so they can look at your face, the bouncer. I'm just saying that's typically what people do automatically.

but when people do other things, it sticks out. So like I said, I think, like how you were saying, if there is this understanding, like I know how it is to be the cop, I know how to get arrested, they'll do that and they'll create this pattern, like I said, where when they are acting suspicious, it won't be Hughes just kind of generally suspicious.

It'll stick out way more. Exactly. That's a good idea, man. I don't think I ever heard that before. Leif. Next question. Metallica or Pantera? This is opening up a big can of worms because we used to have quite a big debate about this in T.U.

Bruser back in the day. And Jocko gave me a hard time because I grew up in the Metallica Black album era, which Jocko didn't even consider real Metallica. He was going old school. Ride the lightning. Kill them all. But, yeah, for me, it was... You know what's funny? I used to think about Vietnam, the Vietnam War, and these guys...

guys are going to the Vietnam War and they're listening to Crosby Stills and Nash, right? They're listening to the Grateful Dead. I mean, a large portion of the population was, we're going to war, listening to Metallica, kill them all. So a little mindset shut there. That's pretty good. I got to say, though, I think Pantera crush is Metallica. And I got to say that Cowboys from Hell is probably the greatest. song of all time.

Roger that. I actually really like the early Metallica and then I thought that Pantera got better after that album and moved towards Vulgar Display of Power when they stepped up and went harder.

Hold your mouth to war. As opposed to Metallica who got softer. So, dig them both. And when I got to Seal Team 1, there was a big stereo system in the gym and it had a glass case in front of it

and they'd welded like a rod into the case where you couldn't open it you couldn't open the case and it was locked shut in the first five you remember the old days they had the CD disc changers there was you know this was a five disc CD changer the first five Metallica albums were in there

and they could not be removed if you went in the gym that's what you were listening to back in the day team one style good times all right I'd like to hear what you both think regarding the deaths of Buds trainees in the past few months

yeah look this is something that's been all over the news our Buds is basic underwater demolition seal training and that is that is the basic seal training program that's the pipeline that we all go through that we graduate from it's about a 27 week program or so

it's got a 70% attrition rate it's widely consider some of the toughest military training in the world. It's tough training and it needs to be tough training because we expect SEALs to be able to perform at a very high level on very dangerous battlefields across the globe and a lot of highly dynamic and high pressure situations. So we got to keep those standards high. One thing that's misleading is there was, you know, they're saying, well, three, three deaths happened in a short period of time, you know, a few months back at Buds. And that's actually not true. It wasn't,

Two of the three deaths actually didn't happen in training. And so people need to understand that. So what were the three deaths? So there was a one death actually happened in training. There was a death of a student that drowned in the pool while going to an evolution. And the instructors were there. They tried to resuscitate him, got him to the hospital, but they couldn't bring him back. He was gone.

So that is a training death. That's the one training death. The two others that happened was a student that quit training. He dropped on requests, as we call it, which is, again, most of the students that go there, this ends up happening. Most people quit. Most people quit. The 70, 80% attrition rate means most of those folks are walking away. So they're ringing the bell and dropping on request, which is, you know, quit in the program.

So a horrible situation, but this individual, the student, Apparently that was weighed heavily on him, that he quit his dream, to go to Buds. And on Liberty, meaning, meaning he quit, and then he went out, wasn't under supervision anymore, went into downtown San Diego, went to a hotel, jumped off the 22nd floor, killed himself. Which is horrible. Which is horrible. But that was not a training death, even though he was attached to the command at the time.

And there's certainly, I'm sure they're taking some substantial steps to maybe try to monitor guys. a little bit more, but you can't put you can't, while horrible and tragic, and they're going to try to do everything they can to prevent that, you can't put guys in jail for six weeks after they quit. I mean, you can't be with them 24-7, so I think it's hard to hold, you know,

the center responsible, our training center responsible for that death. And the other one that happened was another guy who had quit training, a student who had quit training while on Liberty, got drunk and crashed his car and was killed in a car accident. motorcycle was it a car i think it was a car yeah well you know what i think you just kind of explain these things you know well one of his training death training deaths shouldn't happen

it's horrible when it happens a lot of times there's been other drownings in the past oftentimes there's some kind of a some kind of a medical issue that the person had i don't know what the results of this guy's autopsy are but the guy that killed himself this was one thing that i found interesting i was talking to one of that guys one of my buddies that that works over there still and i saw that I saw a picture of the guy that killed himself. And dude looked like a stud, you know? They had a couple pictures of him.

It almost looked like a, almost like a professional photography of a guy. You know, he was like a rugby player, and he was kind of, it looked like a stud. And I mentioned this to my buddy. That's an instructor over there. I said, hey, man, that guy looked like a stud. What's going on? And my buddy said, hey, Jock, they're all studs. so when I went through training

no one knew about the SEAL teams there wasn't this big giant you know we didn't have this huge publicity that we have now and so if you want to go to the SEAL teams you kind of had to search it out wasn't just going to the SEAL teams weren't going to just land on your doorstep you had to figure it out

and go for it and so there's there wasn't a lot of there was all kinds of knuckleheads going through training and he said he said when you look down the line and you look at you talk to these kids they're the captain of the team They're the class president of the high school.

They're studs. And so it's no different with this kid. The kid was a stud. And I think, and actually in reading some of the articles about him, this was his lifelong dream. He had told everybody, I'm going to be a seal, I'm going to be a seal, I'm going to be a seal. And I think he quit on Wednesday. I want to say a Wednesday. I don't know.

I don't know when he quit. But he quit in a week. And since he told everybody that's what he's going to do, you know, that was. The stress was too much to bear to go back to everybody and say, yeah, I didn't make it. I want to be clear. I mean, these are horrible. It's horrible. Absolutely.

To lose young, you know, good young men who aspire to be seals and whether they're killed in an auto accident, you know, drinking and driving or not or, you know, a suicide, this is horrible. And we want to try to prevent that. I'm sure I know that our training center is doing everything they can to try to prevent that. But again, you can't lock these guys up. You can't be. At some point, they have to be released to be on liberty. we can't be with them 24-7. So, you know, you can counsel guys.

You can talk to folks. And what's a shame about, you know, the suicide is, I mean, some of the best guys we serve with, guys like Mark Lee and Mike Monsour both had quit buds, rang out, got some maturity, went to the fleet, you know, worked hard to get ready and come back, came back, knocked that training out of the park, and we're outstanding team guys. So that's just, that's a horrible tragedy, definitely. But I think what's important for people understand is, you know, for the actual training death, this stuff is there's a lot of protocols in place. It's very, it's very, when I was an instructor there.

Because you were an instructor there. Yes. For those of you don't know, Laif was an instructor at Buds. I was never an instructor at Buds. But Laf worked there. You worked hell weeks. I did. And so what you don't realize when you're going through as a student, it just seems like mayhem.

These guys are, you know, putting you all these difficult things. Well, it's very controlled. It's very controlled. And there's, you know, there's, um, there's a lot. of supervision and there's a lot of different safety checks and medical checks and all those things that are happening all the time that are going on behind the scenes that the students don't even realize. So, you know, it doesn't mean every instructor always behaves the way they should, but most of

guys are outstanding professionals. There are levels of leadership that are there to ensure that they perform well and do what they should do. And in almost every case, that's the case. Those instructors are doing an outstanding job. I think the important thing here, too, is to understand that. Those standards have got to be high. And there are people, a lot of people outside the SEAL teams, we've had a lot of pressure on us right now,

particularly with the push to open up all the special operations and infantry units to women. This is a new push under the administration. And our secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabas, has been all over this and pushing that and wants to see women graduate from the SEAL teams. I think that's pretty, he's pretty open about that. And so I think the danger here and the concern I have is that they'll use something like this. The politicians who don't know what makes a good seal. They like to think they do, but they don't. They have no idea what makes a good seal.

And they don't understand how difficult combat is. People ask us sometimes, Jack, when I get questions, like, tell us a good bud story. We don't talk about buds because everybody's been through buds in the SEAL teams. And listen, Buds is the kick in the nuts. It's a good training program. There's some stuff that's hard. Certainly. There's some stuff that wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be or should have been.

But a lot of it's quite challenging and difficult. But it's a screening process. And to weed out the guys that we don't believe have the characteristics that are going to enable them to succeed on the battle. A lot of that is just the will to succeed and persevere through some really difficult challenges. So it is critical that those standards remain high because combat is so much hard. harder, physically harder than training. Yeah, that's what I was about to say. You said, hey, it's important that we find that they have the will.

There's also a level of physical toughness that you have to have. There just is. And when I say physical toughness, I'm talking about the actual ability for your body to withstand wear and tear. And that's one keep, you know, with the 80% attrition rate, not all those people are people that quit. It's people that can't stand the cold. They physically can't handle the cold. It's people that physically can't handle the stress on your shoulders, on your neck, on your back, on your knees, on your ankles. It is very hardcore.

You know, there's a great article that was written by two female Marines that were in Afghanistan that kind of put out at an outpost where they were, for all practical purposes, alongside the male Marines in a field environment. And they both wrote and said, women should not be doing this. And by the way, they were both really awesome Marines who had been like some kind of collegiate athletes. They were studs. And they just said, look, we didn't have, our bodies didn't hold up. And that's one of the many things, you know, you just said it. When you're in combat, it's not, it's not a sport. You don't get the, you don't go to the training room afterwards and get an ice bath and a massage.

You don't, and if something happens, they don't blow the whistle and come out on the field and let the trainer work on you and then pull you off and put a substitute in. That doesn't happen on the battlefield. And there aren't weight classes either. Yeah, there's no weight classes for sure. So, yeah, they need to maintain the standards. And they need to maintain the standards. And I think we cannot allow that to slip. And I think those instructors are doing their utmost to make sure that that happens.

The other thing people need to understand, too, is when you're a student going through this, for me, this is my dream. And guess what? When every time I'm going to med a medical check during our hell week, which they do, you know, every day, you're getting checked every morning and they're taking your temperature and they're, you know, they're taking your SPO2 and making sure that you don't have pneumonia or you don't have some other, you know, dangerous physical medical condition. You're sweating it out. You're sweating it out because you know, you know, I'm not going to quit this training, but what if something that I can't control happens? What if I get pneumonia? I get fluid in my lungs?

What if I get sick or something happens? Or I get some infection in my leg or I break my ankle or I mean these things happen to guys And so then you end up you can get rolled out of training maybe it's just compounds into an issue So you're doing your utmost to make it through those medical checks and people need to understand that the The students are trying to get under the radar and make it happen and will often push through injuries A mutual friend of ours made it all the way through his hell week with a broken ankle You know running on it? He just wasn't going to stop just be tough was it going to stop he was being tough So, you know, so that's the kind of people that we want on the SEAL teams, you know, but on the other hand, instructor staff has a difficult job because they have to make sure that those guys aren't hurting themselves.

And I've actually talked to, I've talked to some folks who wanted to go into the SEAL teams and had some medical condition that they, you know, they weren't getting, they were failing their Navy physical. It's a very difficult physical exam. You have to take, you know, medical exam and said, you know what, I just need a waiver for this. and, you know, they just give me this. And I had to, I've explained this to multiple people when they told me that to say, listen, those waivers are there to protect you. They're there to protect you to make sure that you don't get killed in training or, and they protect the team that, you know, when people are relying on you and you're carrying

some critical piece of gear and we're covering moving that you don't go down. So. Because you're covering up some injury. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's not about you. It's about the mission. And so, you know, unfortunately, this is, when you're talking about these units, It's just not everybody can participate in that.

Listen, I would have, I played high school football as a linebacker and fullback. I'm 5, 10, 200 pounds. I would have loved to play in the NFL. I'm not big enough or strong enough or fast enough to play in the NFL. So the NFL teams are not going to benefit if I'm playing lineback or a fullback on their teams. They're going to be weaker. They're not going to be as good. So that's just the reality of it, right?

We've got to keep those standards high. And, you know, political pressure, I think, is a very dangerous thing. And all it takes is for, you know, we're lucky we have some great leaders that are leading that training that are going to keep those standards eye and understand how important that is. Unfortunately, it takes one week leader, you know, to go in there and fold to the political pressure and standards drop. And the world is, that darkness continues to spread. particularly with that conversation that we open this with as darkness spreads throughout the world

we need our seal teams and special operators and infantry units to perform at the highest levels possible to go and be able to close with and destroy that enemy indeed speaking of destroying the enemy next question is how do you deal with rules of engagement

are they necessary did they inhibit you this is a question we get all the time and people want to talk about rules of engagement, you know, everyone, there's always complaints. Guys, you come back from the battlefield, like the rules of engagement are so stringent. And these are different wars for fighting. These are counterinsurgency wars. And oftentimes people use the term civilian casualties in a way of that it, that's, you know,

they're talking about innocent civilians. But what they don't realize is that everyone were fighting is a civilian. None of them are uniformed members of an opposing military. They blend into the populace. They act like they're normal people. They hide amongst the people, sometimes use them as human shields, and then they're shooting at you and shooting RPGs or machine guns at you and they maneuver. So it's a very challenging environment. But the rules of engagement really don't change.

Rules of engagement are pretty clear. And you observe a hostile act, bad guys shooting at you or shooting at friendlies, or you observe hostile intent. meaning that and that's where it becomes a little more gray area to say okay was this was that person acting in a manner that had a reasonable certainty of hostile intent and so it's a judgment call up to up to the troops on the battlefield and those rules of the games don't change they're always the same I think what changes is leaders leaders change and there's some leaders that are willing to delegate that down to the lowest level troopers trust in their guys train them make it make them understand just how important it is to make sure that they're operating within that rules of engagement, that they are not accidentally engaging some innocent

person and causing collateral damage that they didn't mean to. And there's some leaders that won't delegate that and keep it tight and want to really scrutinize guys for making the call. I think the best way for us this was incredibly important. People need understand how

our troops are put in a tough position because we know than anything we do in today's world with social media with news you know news cycles could be absolute front page headline news uh in a heartbeat and uh and those can have massive catastrophic effect on on the entire you know strategy yeah the strategic uh mission so this is uh this is something that we have to deal with regularly and uh and if a guy thought um you know he thought he saw someone digging in the road and there were an iED layer and and he decided to to pull the trigger on someone

that he thought was an ID layer and it turns out it's not we get investigated for that we it becomes a big deal and and that shooter our US servicemen who or woman who engaged is potentially looking at

going to prison for you know for something like that so it's a big deal if they violated the rules of engagement one of the ways that Jocko did an amazing job of this and you know one of our four principles our laws of combat that we talk about is simple

and one of the ways that he did this for us was you know all this lawyer speak of reasonable certainty of hostile intent and all these things he would stand up before we ruled out the gate every time every single operation and say if you have to pull the trigger

you better make sure the guy you're killing is bad simple everyone understood that and it we had total faith and trust in our guys to do that. And I'm so proud that they were able to execute with tremendous discipline and minimize collateral damage in a way that other units couldn't, you know, in the way we did that. So I think rules of engagement are necessary.

People have to understand them. And it's really whether or not it's delegated down is entirely up to a leader. Yeah, and you could see the situation that led up to Mili, which we did a couple podcasts ago, the rules of engagement were the way that they were briefed. It wasn't, hey, make sure the people that you're killing are bad. It was everyone in this area is hostile. Everyone has been warned to leave.

So everyone you see is either Viet Cong or Viet Cong sympathizer. Kill them. And there's some scrutiny about whether they said kill them or not, because that was a pretty simple, clear message. but you know the difference in that the way that the rules of engagement were briefed were definitely a a cause one of the causes for the mili massacre happening it's it's an awful situation rules of engagement next question is probably pretty quick but how often would guys take shots in their body armor or helmet all the time this happened all the time. And when we were in that urban combat, sustained combat day after day

after day, both for us in Charlie Platoon and in our sister platoon, Delta Platoon that was operating on the other side of the city, it was just, this happened regularly. I mean, we had guys on patrol with a camelback, you know, and the camelback's got is a water bladder on the back. You wear the backpack. It's got the little hose tube that you can drink water on on the move. Guys, no water is backpack. Realized later, round went through it.

I mean, you're talking inches away from his back. We had multiple guys shot in the plates, front plate, back plate. And one of our guys peeking up over the rooftop, turning a big gunfight, bam, it takes, all of a sudden he felt like somebody punched him in the face and kind of falls back down below the roof and kind of gets up, wondering what's happening, and takes off his helmet, looks at his helmet, realizes he's been shot in his night vision mount, which meant that that round came in directly, you know, at his face, hit his night vision

man and ricocheted up had it hit just, you know, a millimeters lower. It would have taken his head off. So that happened all the time. And I'm sure, Jock, you remember this many times, I would, we'd come back from a op, park our humbys, I'd walk in the door. I was going to check him with Jock, let him know, you know, what happened out there, what's going on, you know, what's happening, you know. Now, you know, are there other ops we need to get reloaded for things to think about?

walking in his office and first thing I would generally say it was God is a frog man. God's a frogman. He's looking out for us. I don't know how we made it out of that without losing guys. This was so many close calls. And it was just a constant thing all the time. Wear your body armor. Wear your helmet.

Yeah, we always said guys on our, and you've talked about this in the podcast before, but my first appointment, we would have guys that would wear body armor that was like, like, Six inches by six inches. Minimalistic body armor. Tiny little body armor. Nobody. And in Ramadi, getting in those kind of gun fights, everyone was like, hey, can we get a little bigger place? Some guys wanted to cut their helmets into half shells before we got there.

After we got there, it was like, nope, I'm not doing it. I'm not good my helmet. Some of the army guys, too. Some of the army guys, they would have the full, they look like almost like knights. The crotch protector. Yeah, the cross protector, the collars, the arm sleeves, the side-sappy plates, they were a cover. off good on them because they were taking real risks out there. So yeah, but

you know, Jody Middick and I when he was on here, we had a little conversation about body armor, they did not op and expected to be in a certain spot. They weren't there, they didn't have body armor helmets on. And he, you know, he's sitting here saying I wish I would have had him. So, wear your body armor, wear your helmet. All the time.

Next one. Leif. We truly appreciate your father's work here in Texas. Would you ever consider a career in politics. Well, I appreciate that. There's just to everybody understands, my dad

is a U.S. Congressman now. He's a freshman U.S. Congressman from Texas, District 36 in Southeast Texas, and I'm very proud of him. He retired after a career as a small town dentist, you know, business

self-employed business. Former Army and Air Force. Army and Air Force veteran. And he was fed up with Washington. and didn't like the options that he saw, that he knew we were going to be running for that seat. And he said, you know what, I'm throwing my hat in the ring. I'm going to go up there. I'm trying to make a difference.

And we need more people like that in Washington. My dad is there to make a difference and only to make a deal. He doesn't care about a career. He doesn't care about being there for decades and decades and decades. You know, he's retired and he'd rather be fishing, hanging out with his grandkids and hunting. But he would, but he cares about the country. He cares about the country.

And he is sacrificing to be there. and to lead and I'm damn proud of the job that he's doing and stepping up. Would I consider a career in politics? I can't imagine anything to be more miserable than that. You know what? On the other hand, when I look at our nation, just as my dad has felt called to do that, to step up to lead, if we don't do it, who's going to do it? So somebody has got to step up, somebody's got to lead.

And I think when you look at the direction of our country right now in the political climate and all that's going on in this electoral cycle, would I do that? Maybe. I just might be able to be talked into it. We shall see. What about you, Jocko? Get some. I mean, we got the bumper stickers. Jock 2016.

You know, I could see if that go, Charles. I think I would be running as, if I was to run for political office. I would run as dictator and supreme ruler of America. And that's what I would do. We could bring back some of the Roman rule of triumvirate. So me, you, and Echo, we could just take over it. I don't know if I have the stomach for politics. I really don't like the political arena too much.

And I'm not sure it's something I would ever have the desire to do. you know, I guess that's my, that's where I sit. Maybe when I was 70 years old. Yeah. People, people have asked me to, you know, like, hey, if you were president, what would you do, you know, about the situation with Iran, you know, and their development of nuclear weapons or China getting, you know, making big moves in the South China Sea or Russia pushing the envelope and, and kind of thumbing their noses at us. And often I've told them that if I were president, I would immediately not. dominate jocco willick as secretary of defense we would change secretary of defense to the previous

title of secretary of war and uh and i think those problems would would disappear immediately um i think if if i was president it'd be very my policy would be pretty simple my policy would be kick ass that's what we would do economic what we can do what's your economic plan jaco kick ass but what's your what would you do with this situation over here in the uh middle east Oh, there? Oh, yeah. What we're going to do there is we're going to kick ass. What about the drug problem that we got coming in through the borders?

Oh, the drug cartel? Yeah, we're going to kick ass on that. So that's my policy. So this is why I probably wouldn't be the best politician in the world. That kind of like BTF, big thing, right? Yeah, yeah. All right, next question. Can you give us details of the muster?

So for those that you don't know, we're doing an event, in San Diego, California, Laif Babin and I. And you know what? Echo Charles is going to be there. Maybe. Going to be there in the sidelines. He's going to be signing T-shirts and cutting videos.

We're doing an event, October 20th and 21st. And what it is, it is a deep dive into combat leadership. What combat leadership is all about? How to apply combat leadership to your business, to your life, how to get out there, lead, and win. The reason we're doing this is, as you know, Laif and I've been doing this gig for the past five years, working with a bunch of different companies.

We wrote the book, Extreme Ownership. It's very popular, and we get a lot of requests. And we've, you know, we've, honestly, we're in a lot of demand. And people want us to come and work with a bunch of different companies. We can't always do it. We've actually had to raise our prices so that we could kind of slow down a little bit, slow down the demand. But when we're doing that, that means we're cutting a lot of people out, you know, and I'm a man of the people.

And I don't want to support the working, man, so how can we get something where regular people can come? Maybe they don't have, maybe their company doesn't support bringing us out or it's too expensive for us to come out. Well, how about you send two or three of the critical leaders out there? We spend a day and a half, get deep, working, working through the things that we've learned, going face-to-face with people and explain things to them how to deal with it. This is not one of the things this is not going to be this is not going to be a Feel Good seminar this is going to be hey we're here to pump you up and that that's not what we're doing We're here to educate we're here to talk about leadership we're going to learn to

It's going to be great to have a bunch of people in leadership positions that we can talk to that we can communicate that we can learn from situations that they've been in You know we get when I put out that you were coming back on the podcast We get hundreds and hundreds of questions I get thousands of questions I have on the podcast on the podcast on the podcast questions Bank, it's 82 pages long. 82 pages worth of questions is what I have right now. I'm answering five or six questions of podcast. So let's get people that want to come out, want to get face to face with Laif and I and learn about leadership, learn what we've learned and how to apply in business life.

That's what we're doing with the muster. It's important to say to this, this is not a tour. We're not going to take this from city to city to city. This is, we're going to have one muster. This is an annual event. You know, maybe at some point we'll expand one West Coast, one East Coast. That's a maybe. You know, right now we're going to do one, one muster annual event.

And this is for leaders, whether you're a leader, follower, anyone who wants to better themselves to dive deep into these issues of leadership, of teamwork, of extreme ownership, of the laws of combat and how to apply them, this is for you. You know, come to San Diego, join us. We're looking forward to diving deep into those issues, helping you solve some challenges to lead and win. Boom. Come out to the muster. There's a website for it, and we'll tweet it out. Go to eschalonfront.com.

You can find it on there. That's our company. So you can go check that out. We're looking forward to the people that want to come out, come to get some. Now, the reason that Laif was out here with me here in San Diego was for a series of events to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of August 2nd, 2006, which is the day that Mark Allen Lee, who was the first seal killed in Iraq, was killed in Ramadi, and also the day where Ryan Job otherwise known as Biggles

was gravely wounded shot in the face and the wounds that ultimately led to his death as well this particular events were focused on Mark in an event

to support a charity organization that his mom runs called America's mighty Warriors and at one of those events I was honored to give a speech from my perspective and here it is years is a long time a decade and in many ways it seems so far in the past in some ways it doesn't seem so far away at all it isn't hard to remember being deployed in Ramadi Iraq in the summer of 2006 and yes sometimes that seems like a

distant place a long time ago and yet sometimes it feels like we were just there yesterday the sweltering heat the dust the danger the crystal clear focus on our mission when we had but one purpose in our lives to close with and to An evil enemy bent on destroying us and our way of life and it doesn't take much For the mind to return there to regain that mindset To get into the combat mode and remember Remember the operations out in the city Remember the tracer rounds in the night sky

Explosions shaking the earth the weight of body armor and and weapons and gear on our shoulders. Remember the stress and the violence and the sweat and the blood. And remember the evil, the pure evil. That infected the city and committed savage, vile, and disgusting acts of mortal sin. Murder, rape, and torture. And inside that dark world, a world really, ripped apart by war, a world where sometimes humanity seemed all but lost.

That is where we got to see and experience the polar opposite, the counter to all that darkness. Against that backdrop of evil, we young men, we band of brothers, we got to witness light and life and love so strong that it makes the darkness fade and makes the evil cower and hide its wretched face. Evil bows down when it sees the bond we developed with the soldiers and Marines we fought alongside. Evil cannot contest the bond we formed with our brother seals, with whom we had become so close that there is no stronger force in the world, nothing more powerful, nothing more meaningful than knowing that these men, these frogmen, that we would do anything for each other.

We saw powerful acts of heroism and courage on an almost daily basis, which reassured us solemnly that good would triumph over evil. And amongst all that glory, there were a few men, the true heroes, the ones that rose above the rest of us to symbolize and personify, courage and faith and selflessness in love. Mark Allen Lee was one of those rare men, one of those heroes, one of the few men in my life that I literally describe as a saint. That is who Mark was. A mighty warrior whose ferocity in combat was perfectly balanced by faith and humor and compassion. A man that left his mark on everyone that he met.

A mark of happiness and positivity and of humility and of joy. A man whose love for his family and friends was so unbounded and so limitless. that you could actually feel it emanating from his heart. And now he has left his mark on the world. Mark Lee. Mark Allen Lee. When faced with fear, who else could bring a smile? When faced with sadness, who else could bring laughter?

When faced with hate. And when faced with death. Who else could stand and say, take me, Lord, not my. brothers I will be their shield now from death take me and let them live on and that is what mark did full of youth and energy and courage and humor and full of love he stood against evil and he stood against death and he gave his life for his brothers and for our freedom on August 2nd, 2006,

in Aramadi, Iraq, 10 years ago, years ago. And in those 10 years, think of all that has happened in our lives. Big events like marriages, children born, birthdays, new houses,

new jobs, new careers, and small events. A morning, Surf session. Lunch with your buddies. A weekend in the mountains. A cold iced tea on a hot summer's day. Smile.

A laugh. Life. Joy. And every moment of that happiness is a gift. A gift given to us by Mark. Who sacrificed everything for us. who gave up his own precious smile so we could all have ours.

Now I can tell you, without a shred of doubt, that on this day, today, Mark would not want tears. He would not want sadness. He would not want sorrow. He would want smiles and laughter and joy

because that was his gift to us. Every smile. every laugh every ounce of life and love is all a gift from a warrior a friend a son a brother

a hero and what do we owe for Mark each and every one of us must relish the gift that he gave to us and cherish each and every day while remembering the incredible man that gave us this gift of life. And to the seals that are listening.

The frogman. You owe Mark what we owe all our fallen brothers. The grave commitment to carry the fire. To hold the torch and hold it high. to take the fight to the enemy every chance you get without mercy and without remorse until they are vanquished and there is peace thank you mark we will never forget you god bless mark's family god bless the teams god bless america and god bless mark alan lee when i think that's all we've got for tonight and i want to thank everybody

that's out there that's listening thank you for remembering one of the things that we do here remember I thank lay for coming on we've been we've been tied into so many things and you were pointing that out to me the other day life we've been tied into so many different things and so many far-reaching stories that we've been a part of And I thank you for coming on here and helping to share some of these stories with me for everyone to hear. Thanks for having me. Everyone can remember. Those of you that are out there and you want to keep listening and you want to keep remembering, Echo.

Can they support this? Help me out here. Red cluster. Red Star Cluster. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Thanks for that. May I go. We didn't talk much about working out or, you know, that kind of stuff.

But if you're into supplements, even if you're not into supplements, my opinion, go to onit.com slash jaco, get on it supplements. That'll help you out a lot and 10% off. So we said a bunch of times, but I kind of can't say it enough, really, as far as benefits, it'll put your head for sure. So, yeah, get 10% off that. If you want to support with the Amazon situation, the one where you go to the website, click on the Amazon link before you do your shopping, that's a good way to do it.

If you have our time remembering, we have the Trooper Tool, which is good. Brady. Yeah, Brady, Ball. Came through on that one. It's a thing. There's a link on the website. It's called the Trooper Tool. You click on it.

It takes you to the page. You click on it. You say yes. That's it. puts a little thing so it automatically directs you to the Amazon it adds the affiliate link so you support the podcast you don't have to go through the websites anymore

so that's a good one yeah and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes that's a good on huh and where there's other places to subscribe to it yeah sure YouTube Google Google Play by the way yeah and Stitcher too you're into that iTunes I think is the main one But hey man, Stitcher's dope as well. Google Play, too.

It's on there. So, yeah, and go to the YouTube channel. I was going to release a video today. It was like an outtake or whatever. But what? You're protesting? I was too fired out. Yeah, man.

I was too fired out with other stuff. I'll post it tonight. It would be good. So what is it? Outtake video? Yeah, it's like, one was the... Now, you see what makes me nervous about this? is I believe in decentralized command.

All right. They can attest to that, right? For sure. I totally believe in decentralized command. But now I'm starting to deal with a possible trust scenario. It requires trust and confidence, that's for sure. Yeah. What if my brother echo Charles?

I haven't seen it. So this is the unauthorized outtakes. Yeah. So here, and we're going to ease into this whole thing. So there's one, and this is just off the top of my head, where I was telling you about my children's book idea. Okay, yeah. You're going to make, okay?

It's a good idea. Okay. That was the fish in the water. I actually remember right now. It just hit me, right? I'm okay with it. I was just, I was a little concerned that he might have,

you know, a rendition of me and you singing, we are the world. Yes, yes. Luckily, I don't think we hit record yet. We don't want that. We don't want that out of the internet. I have it on my iPhone.

When Laif and I were put the headphones on and the mics in front of us and we were standing here, look at each other, and it felt very much like if you were alive during the 80s, they did the We Are the World video, and for some reason that just hit us both at the same time, we busted out.

We just busted out, and we are the world. Mark Lee would have been proud. That's what you're in a good deed. I was proud, for sure. And yeah, so the YouTube videos, I told you guys last time, Echo needs motivation. He's just a laid-back guy. And so we need to motivate him.

But his excuse was, well, you know, about not many subscribers on YouTube no big deal that doesn't sound like extreme ownership why should you watch that I never said that that's the thing all right so cool

not to get too technical it's not I don't need motivation I need incentive oh they're just they're different okay I don't want to get into a big thing yeah yeah I don't want to either awesome

so that's it thank you yeah or the jacco store is a good one you know get a shirt if you like those and a bumper sticker off knock whatever if you If you like those. I forgot about the T-shirts in the store, the Jocco store.

Yeah, that's a little bit of them, man. But, yeah. If you like them. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm seeing a lot of those on Twitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Awesome. Cranking pictures. We do dig that. But I'll tell you, should we just say stop asking us for like a donation page? No. We shouldn't say that. Okay. But and.

Don't ask for Patreon. Patreon. Yeah, Patreon. We're not going to do it. Yeah, probably not going to do it. You want to donate, you can donate through PayPal? Yeah, if you can, that's good. And that's cool.

It is cool to see those because it's like 434, you know? Yeah, because it's cool. That's what the cool kids do. They donate $4.34 a month to keep them up and engaged in up before the enemy. Yeah, that is cool. Yeah, by the way, sleep deprivation, I'm on it right now because Laif and I were out late last night and we were up very early this morning to work out and then go surfing. That's right.

We were all, we were work and play on this. discipline you know what I have to say about that good exactly awesome awesome but yeah those are the ways okay good and then uh also if you want you know believe it or not this guy sitting here with me leif babin yeah I know he and I might not look like the smartest people in the world and we might actually not be the smartest people in the world but we did write a book

people people look at me and probably think I can't spell my name or read much less write a book but uh We did write a book. The books continue to do really well. And, you know, if you're interested in, if you're interested in the book, if you're interested in the concepts that Jocko talks about, the stuff that we just talked about, and we talked about in episode 11 of the Jock podcast, get the book and dive into that stuff deep, talk about extreme ownership, talk about the laws of combat and how they apply.

We use the combat scenarios. We talk about the principle, and we talk about how it apply to different businesses and organizations that we work with over the years. It's something that, for us, our mission. was to write a book that could be useful for leaders as a reference. A good read that people can get into and have some exciting stores that are applicable, but also is a useful reference for leaders to highlight, underline, tab, refer to regularly, you know, dog ear pages.

And as we've received that kind of feedback, and people post messages on social media of their books and the dog ear pages and the tabs or the highlights, And the feedback we've received has been tremendous. And if we've done that and accomplish that for those leaders as that useful reference that has helped them be better leaders, better followers, better team members, accomplish their mission to win, than we've succeeded in our mission. I'll tell you what fires me up, too. I love seeing that. I love seeing when people are like they're showing a big. Because I post pictures of the books that I do on the podcast, and they're all notes and all that stuff because I'm getting ready.

I dive deep. And so people do that to Arbuck. And like you said, that's awesome. And we love signing books that have massive, the other cool thing, there's two other cool things. They're kind of related. One of them is when people

send a picture of a stack of books and they're like issuing these to my teams today. We're going to get it on. That's awesome. And there's something else that happens. That's a little bit, it might be more awesome. It might be the same awesome,

but it's definitely awesome. And that's when they're giving the book to their boss. Right? And somebody hit us up the other day and like, you know, how do I give this book to my boss? And I think Leif wrote, you know, something along the lines of, hey, it's a great, it's a great thing to give to your boss. And when you do it, say, hey, man, I learn, you know, you don't want to say, you need this. The thing you don't want to do is say, you need to get some extreme ownership.

So I'm giving this to you as a hint. No, what you want to say is, I got so much out of this book and I'm going to turn, you know, I look forward to applying what I've. learned I just want, if you see a change in attitude, I want you to know where it's coming from. Do something like that. Be tactical. Well, interestingly enough, ironically, looking at someone and saying you need extreme ownership is not extreme ownership, right? Because extreme ownership is about you.

And you got to control that relationship. You got to build that relationship. So if you feel like the boss needs a little extreme ownership, then you got to own that. Yeah. And you got to lead up the Cheney Command, which is one of the chapters you wrote about. And it's cool, too, you know, we're out here, obviously, this weekend. We saw a lot of our seal buddies, and it's interesting. I was having a conversation with, I think there's three or four of us standing in a circle,

but they were talking about the book. And, you know, it's guys that were junior to us at the time. And now they're saying, hey, you know, this is awesome. I'm getting a lot out of it. And then guys that are senior to us with the, I wish I would have had this book. And you know what I say? I do too. I do too.

I wish I would have this book. I mean, it's just like a little step up to just know and be able to read. It just gives you that insight. And so it's awesome. We appreciate that. Appreciate everyone giving us the solid feedback. Killer. And you got anything else, Leif?

That's all I got. Thanks for having me on. Good to be on with you guys again. Always. Looking forward to the next time. Echo Charles closing comments. Plinco. No, Plinco.

Leif does something. like Batman. That's all. The Texas Batman. Texas Batman. Life Babin. I actually never heard that. I never heard that until the audiobook.

You never heard of Texas Batman? Jocco and actually, we read the audiobook. James Earl Jones wasn't available, so we read it ourselves. I would have given it up for if James Earl Jones had done that. But we'd read it ourselves, and that's the first time I started hearing that, people were like, you sound like Texas Batman or Southern Batman. I was like, what are you talking about? I don't even like comic books.

And then you press play and you said, oh, dang, I like that, man. You know what? One too many immediate action drills over the years, I guess. Screaming out some commands or maybe it was when I lost my cool we talked about. I should have done less of that. Blew your voice out. Awesome. Well, as always, if anybody out there wants to continue this conversation,

we're all up on the inner webs. Twitter, the Facebookie. Instagram. Echo is at Echo Charles. Lafe is at Laif Babin, and I am at Jocko Willink. And to all those folks out there in uniform. Those in the military on the front lines in the war against evil. Those police on the thin blue line.

fighting criminals and terror here at home and the firefighters that run towards the danger to protect us in our homes thanks to you all for everything that you do and the rest of the troopers out there in the world moving forward stepping up taking charge in business

in education and health care buying, selling, building, creating, making the most of this gift. Thanks for listening. Thanks for spreading the word. And thanks for grabbing life by the horns. Going out there aggressively every day and getting after it. So until next time, this is Laif, Echo, and Jocko.