Jocko Podcast - 544: How Good Men Lose Their Moral Compass

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

>Join Jocko Underground: Full Episodes< Drawing from hard lessons learned during wartime, Jocko and Echo explore the psychological traps that cause individuals and organizations to drift from their values. A deep discussion on ethics, responsibility, leadership, and the warning signs that trouble is ahead.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 544 with Echo Charles and me. Jocko Willink. Good evening. Good evening. Now, the last podcast we discussed, we're kind of discussing how people learn. And it was focused on sort of individual people learning skills. But while I was reading some background information about that, I found an interesting article about organizational learning that not only had some interesting information about learning, but being a learning. organization but also it gave some really good knowledge about some of the

psychological and emotional challenges that a military unit and thereby any team maybe at a less extreme level can face in stressful environments and also you know morally ambiguous environments so when you get into this this is a article called real which is italicized real lessons learned for leaders after years of war. And it's written by Lieutenant Colonel Joe Doddy or Doty, who's a PhD, U.S. Army, retired, and Master Sergeant Jeffrey E. Fenlason or Fenlason, U.S. Army.

So a couple guys put this together, and they say this. The past 10 years plus of war have provided numerous opportunities for the Army to capture lessons learned for future leader development, for both officers and for both officers and NCOs, how many and which of these lessons the Army will translate into actual content, curriculum, pedagogy in the Army, schools, or leader development programs is unknown. So we've gathered all this information. How much of it is actually going to make it into the curriculum that's getting put out?

This article examines the Army as a learning organization. It recommends the Army include studies on the human dimension in leader development schools and programs. I couldn't agree more. We've said it since day one on this podcast. This is about human nature. Leadership is about human nature. Life is about human nature.

So they go into a little bit of how we learn. Because the Army is a learning organization is imperative that it learned from its history, both the good and the bat. Such common reflective practices as after action reviews, AERs, talk about those all the time, leader feedback, coaching,

and performance counseling, all speak to a learning organization. Top down and bottom-up forums that disseminate and share information from the army to the army, things like company command.com, platoon leader.com, and I used to frequent those things. I haven't looked at them in a while. I'm going to check them out again.

Are forums that share lessons learned to best practices at the grassroots and junior officer levels. All of these forums empower users to share insights and lessons learned, but that information may or may not become institutionalized in formal, instructional, educational, or training material. So you can have people talking to, about stuff, but if you don't capture it and turn it into some kind of curriculum or doctrine that people can then follow, you can make the same mistakes.

So we've got to be careful of that. And you've got to be careful of that inside your organization. You've got people talking about what they could done or will they make some change, but they don't capture it. It's a problem. In his seminal work on the subject, the fifth discipline, Peter Seng or Senge, one of the leading teachers and proponents of learning organizations defines a learning organization as one quote, where people continually expand their capacity,

create results that they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. He adds that learning organizations are possible because, and he is a quote, not only is it in our nature to learn, but we love to learn. Most of us at one time or another have been part of a great team,

group of people who functioned together an extraordinary way, who trusted one another, who complimented one another's strengths and compensated for one another's limitations, who had common goals that were larger than individual goals, who produced extraordinary results. The team became great. The team that became great didn't start off great. It learned how to produce extraordinary results. Sange proposes that learning organizations be grounded in, quote, developing three core learning capabilities, fostering aspiration, developing reflective conversation, and understanding complexity.

Okay. So he goes into a section here where he's talking about, you know, some of these developments of doctrines. And there's another guy he brings up, David Kolb talks about his learning style, style models. So there's some, there's some scholarly type information. I am going to skip over. But it's good, it's good information. But I'm going to skip through it.

If you want it, you can read the entire article yourself. I'm going to get to some of the meat here. Completing the mission is only one part of a soldier's requirements in the operational environment. Thinking back about what happened and using that information and knowledge to influence subsequent actions for the better is another important requirement. And this equates to learning for performance. The very simple habit-forming attitude. Thinking back and acting forward. That's kind of a theme in this article.

Thinking back and acting forward. Foster's aspiration develops reflective conversations and helps us understand complexity. Army stories and vignettes often capitalize on this powerful learning technique. If we make an effort to deliberately habitually reflect as we act, real learning world occur. So this is why at Eshlawn Front we're so, we encourage using a debrief. so much. That's what all this stuff is, is doing a debrief. And you may have heard me say this lately, the idea of being intentional. What does that mean? It doesn't just mean I'm living my life intentionally. Like, it doesn't just mean that, right? It means plan, execute debrief. That's what it

means. Plan, execute debrief. You come up with a plan. You go execute and then you debrief. If you don't debrief, you don't know what you did wrong. You're not going to learn from it. You're not going to get better. So we have to plan, execute debrief. And that's what this is encouraging. as well. Donald Shone's work on reflective practices further supports the notion of thinking back and acting forward. It discusses organizations that focus on reflecting and journaling about experiences to improve performance. The common denominator is systemic reflection at the individual and team level, a habitual team or individual after-action review in which soldiers and leaders make a conscientious effort to learn so that they will not repeat mistakes of the past. Again, this is a debrief.

But isn't it interesting how little this happens? We work with companies all the time and we say, oh, did you do a debrief for this $80 million project that you did? No debrief. Did you do a debrief for this extreme failure, tactical failure that happened? Did you do a debrief? No, not really. Did you you had a big market win? Did you do a debrief? No, we didn't do a debrief. You had a big market failure. Did you do a debrief?

No, we didn't do a debrief. We hired someone in their outstanding. Did you do a debrief on what you looked for? No, we didn't. You see what I'm going with this, right? So we don't debrief. And you know what? This can be a little bit tricky.

But debriefing your kids or having them debrief you. This is something that more people need to do because kids are like, you know, just, you know, goldfish, goldfish brain. Goldfish memory. Next play. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. They're just on to the next thing.

So they're not learning. You need to think and think about what happened. So debrief. That's what we're talking about. And the idea of journaling to debrief yourself what happened and what went wrong and what went right and what can be done better. That's a powerful thing. I have not done that. I have not sat down for, you know, oh, this thing and journaled out.

But what I have done is when I'm debriefing the team, oh, here's, I write down my five bullet points, my seven bullet points, my three bullet points, makes you so much better. There's a few of those things that you've kind of brought up that, that aren't standard or whatever, but it's like, dang, when you think about it if you do these things they help so much so much but they're not like you know what another one was how you guys like you compared seal training with uh i think might have been like professional sports and then also like compared it to like the what it called like i think might have been like the police academies or something like this where for an operation or for a deployment you guys do this work up in this training like so much training right for this thing and a football team for example they got a game on saturday

Not to mention the whole fall camp, they just train, train, train, train, train. So even if you go week to week, it's, let's say, five days of training in one game. So that's a five to one ratio training to performance, right? But we'll say in the private sector, there's not that much training, you know? Of course. If you don't reframe things and make everything training, which you can, I won't say easily do, but you can absolutely do that. You can do it.

So, yes, you need to reframe things so that there is training taking place. Otherwise, and yeah, law enforcement is the classic example. Law enforcement, you know, they work their hours and they, where does the hedgehead want them when they're working? They want them on the streets patrolling. But that means they have no room to train. And I can guarantee you, I think it should be 20%.

I think 20% of the police time should be spent training. So you work for four days on the street and then you get one day where you're training You know it doesn't need to be broken down like that but 20% of time and I promise you I promise you who do you want to come and help you when things are going sideways The person that's trained all a whole bunch of time or the person that's just been You know beat down by Patrol Patrol Patrol patrol patrol and deal with us and look they're learning when they're dealing with stuff Especially hopefully because they're doing debriefs but if you don't even have time to deal with debrief. Like you and I go on a call. You're my partner. We go on a call. Something goes sideways. We have to handle it. We get done. And then what do we do? We go back on, we go back to our next call. We go to our next call. We didn't even debrief. Not even on the Friday. We worked for four days straight. We can't even say, hey, remember on Wednesday when this happened? You're like, yeah, dude. I felt like I could have done this better. Yeah, it would have helped me a lot. But I also dropped the ball here. But thank you for doing this. Oh, I didn't even notice that. You noticed that. Yeah. It really helped out. Yeah. So boom. If we're not doing that at all, that's a real problem. Yeah.

Yeah, I remember, and I forget if you said this or I just thought this where we're kind of crunching the numbers where you're like 20% should be training, right? For the police department, we'll say. And you said, what would you rather, would you rather, if a, you know, scenario with like a bunch of police that are required, do you want eight trained guys, like highly trained guys or 10 not so trained guys, you know? And yeah, that makes sense. And you're right. So 20% of training, training, training, so that's real intentional, right? like training. And then when you're working, that's training too, technically, but especially if you do

that part intentionally. But here's the thing with the working part, because if you compare it to Jiu-Jitsu, right, where let's say the competition, the competition is kind of like training. Like you're learning a lot in competition, you know, especially if you treat it as a training opportunity. So yeah, you can do it. But in, let's say the police force, some days is like super like training. You know, some days you're not really getting that much.

activity will say you know what I'm saying and it's less like controllable but yeah if you treat it intentionally you can learn everything you possibly can even from those light days you see I'm saying so yeah that made sense yeah and uh you and I go to a call something goes sideways or it doesn't go smooth if we spend five minutes debriefing or 10 minutes debriefing but we learn exponentially amount an exponential amount compared to if we just go to an extra call yeah and that By the way, that can all be included in the 20%. You know what I mean? Maybe it's, maybe it's you still work a normal schedule,

but at the end of the day, you have an hour and a half to train. Yeah, yeah. Like that's all good. That totally makes sense because in football, it's like we'll watch tape of the game. So it's kind of that same thing, you know. Debrief 100%. Yeah.

That's like an analytical deep. Check. All right. Fast forward a little bit. Lessons learn for commanders and leaders. Operation Iraqi Freedom, OIF and Operation Enduring Freedom, OEF have provided count. Stories from which to learn Robert Miller our staff sergeant Robert Miller

Salvatore Gunta private first class Ross McGinnis to play displayed selfless service Loyalty and personal courage as of countless others and the by the way those are Medal of Honor recipients countless other soldiers and leaders named and unnamed Who set the example taking the initiative performed courageously and chosen the harder right rather than the easier wrong so he's setting up like hey that we do a lot of good stuff lots of great examples out there but then he goes on to say however as is often the case with human nature much learning and development comes because of failures or negative psychological and emotional events without question the vast majority of soldiers in combat have done and are doing the right thing under difficult circumstances but we also know that bad things are going

to happen they always do and our adversary adversaries will use the media the internet social network to cleverly exploit the slightest misstep by U.S. forces for their own strategic and tactical purposes, right? That's what they're going to do. You can do 100 things right. You do one thing wrong. By the way, if you have a company and you have all these great Yelp reviews and then you throw, you know, one customer gets wild or doesn't get treated right, they're going to get all kinds of views when they write their crappy Yelp review. So you need to keep that in mind.

analysis of the unfortunate and tragic U.S. incidents that have occurred in OIF and OEF provided common themes, insights, and lessons learned that leaders should be aware of and look for both in themselves and their soldiers. Now, this is a very good thing to remember because it's kind of talking about the debrief here. The purpose here is not to dwell on or highlight the bad stuff. That's not the purpose. It's not like, oh, we're going to rehash a bunch of bad stuff for no reason. Or we're not going to dwell on it. It's not to second-guess decisions. It's not to criticize with the benefit of hindsight.

That's a real easy one, right? It's not to discuss the personalities involved in the events. So now we're going on a little witch hunt activity. And it's not to rehash or retail stories. Our purpose is to help army leaders learn, really learn. We want to capture and articulate what can and arguably should be put in leaders' kitbacks. In this case, there are hearts and brains. in terms of the human dimension of war to better equip them to look out for and not make the same mistakes made in the past.

We also want to raise awareness of common themes that have occurred in combat over the years and will continue to come for years as well. What follows our brief summaries of some high profile cases from OEF and OIF? So now it rattles off again the high profile negative cases. We talked about Medal of Honor recipients. This is the other end of the spectrum. The kill team. A small group of soldiers in the second infantry division allegedly formed a kill team in late 2009 or early 2010. Some of the team members allegedly killed two or three unarmed, non-threatening Afghans, then staged the scenes to make it look as if the deaths were combat related.

They also allegedly committed other violations of regulations and law, such as collecting war trophies and photographing team members, dead bodies. The Haditha killings. In November 2005, in Haditha, Iraq, 24 Iraqis were allegedly killed by U.S. Marines as part of a retribution attack after a convoy from Third Battalion First Marines was hit by an improvised explosive device that killed Lance Corporal Miguel Tarazis and severely wounded another Marine. At least three officers were officially reprimanded for failing to properly report and investigate the killings. All criminal charges against six Marines were dropped and one

Marine was prosecuted and found not guilty. The squad leader was recently given a plea deal and found guilty of negligent dereliction of duty. And I've talked about that one before because this is November 2005 when this happened. And by the way, as it pointed out, these Marines were cleared. Like they looked into it. But there was such a spotlight on civilian casualties. So when we arrived in the spring of 2006 and Ramadi, this spotlight was strong. Next one, the canal killings. Three non-commissioned officers from the 172nd Brigade Combat Team were found guilty of executing four Iraqi detainees on or around April 2007.

These, quote, canal killings were allegedly a response to detainees being released after having been detained only a few days and immediately returning to the fight. The next one, the Samara murders. Four soldiers from the 101st Air Force Air Assault were found guilty of killing three detainees in May of 2006 during Operation Iron Triangle near Samara Iraq. Allegedly, the soldiers released the detainees and then shot them to make it look like an escape attempt. Tigris River Bridge incident. In January of 2004, soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division allegedly forced two Iraqis off a bridge over the Tigris River. One of the Iraqis died.

An officer and NCO were found guilty of crimes related to this incident. During the investigation, it was alleged that the battalion commander wanted to cover up the bridge incident. You can't cover stuff up. I'm going to tell you that right now. It doesn't work. If you think you're going to be able to cover something up, you're wrong. The only people that don't talk about what happened is dead or dead. If they're alive, they're going to tell somebody.

So you can't do a cover up. It doesn't work. And you need to tell your people that. Mumadilla murders and rape in March 2006 near Mummedia, Iraq, four soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division Air Assault killed four Iraqi noncombatants and raped one of them before killing her. All first soldiers were found guilty of rape and murder. Abu Ghraib, 11 soldiers were found guilty of detainee abuse and other crimes in connection with this well-publicized case in Abu Ghrae Prison. And then Bagram detainee abuse in the spring and summer of 2002. at Boggham Air Base, Afghanistan,

soldiers were allegedly involved in detainee abuse cases to which were featured on a CNN documentary taxi to the dark side. At least 15 personnel were charged with crimes and five were convicted. So those are, again, the high profile cases. And, you know, again, they mentioned this already. The vast majority of the soldiers, sailors, air, Marines are out there trying to do the right thing. but they're in tough environments. They're going to talk about how this stuff can occur.

And it also, to me, it's, it kind of shows you how much scrutiny there is on our troops. That these incidents, they don't happen very often, and when they do, they get rolled up, even when they try and cover them up. Back to the document. The eight incidences briefly described above, along with others from all conflicts,

most notably Mili incident in Vietnam, 1968, which we covered on this podcast, highlights what can happen in war. Clearly, the incidents are not a reflection of our army, our professional ethic, or the seven army values. In addition, they may not be examples of leadership failures.

They do indicate, I disagree with that. Like, if this stuff happens, there's a leadership failure. If you got people raping and murder, murdering civilian populace, there's a leadership problem. I'm not sure what they mean by that. They do not indicate a need for increased leader education about the,

oh, sorry, they do indicate a need for increased leader education about indicators of ethics abdication. So this is when what shows you signs that maybe people are forgetting about their ethics? Again, that was so weak. That's one of the most horrible things about the Mili Masker. These dudes were just regular dudes from all different backgrounds. But a lot of guys from really good, normal backgrounds. But they lost their minds.

They lost their moral code. They lost their direction, their moral compass. Additionally, we must face the reality that the military is a reflection of society. And one of the incidences, the rape and murder at Mummedea, Iraq, was likely, in part, a result of criminal elements within the ranks. Okay, so you can have some just straight up criminals. And by the way, you got to watch out for that. And remember when we had Jordan Peterson on here?

And I said, hey, if you're in charge of a platoon, there's going to be a sociopath in there. Because I had said, I'd actually said this to a group of army soldiers. Actually, a group of army officers. And they all kind of looked at me like I was, like, I was like, no, no. And then I so when I had Dr. Jordan Peterson on and I said, hey, is this, do you think this is accurate? And he said, so I said like, he goes, how big is a platoon? I guess it's four or 50 guys.

And he said, oh yeah. Like one sociopath in there for sure, especially what he said was there's a whole bunch of people that will not be sociopaths and therefore would not join the military. there's like a bunch of hippies and, you know, whatever, hippies and flower children that they're not going to be sociopaths. And they're not, that half of the group or whatever, quarter of the group, they're not even in the group. So when you get down to just 40 people that are open to the,

they're at least at a minimum, they're open to the idea of killing the enemy. Right? If you're an infantry platoon, you're at least open to that idea. So anyone that's not open to that idea is, in my professional psychological opinion, not going to be a sociopath if they're not open to it. So now you take all of a sudden you take 40 people

because he said the normal numbers to like one in a hundred. So yeah, probably even bigger than that. So you may have just criminal people in the ranks. That's going to happen. What you're going to watch out for is that if that person starts, you know, swaying the opinions of other people. So going back to the documentary,

most important from a learning perspective is the fact that the incidents were the result of some, if not all of nine psychological and emotional constructs that can be a consequence of stressful, complex, uncertain, and highly volatile combat environment. So here we're going to get to these things that can lead to this happening, these types of things happening. The nine constructs are, and by the way, it's really interesting how you can find, like, we're talking about war crime activity, but these are also just sort of how people

negotiate with themselves or convince themselves that they're doing the right thing. It doesn't necessarily have to be a war crime. It can be like, I don't need to change the ink and the copy machine. That's not on me. Like, you know what I'm saying? Even these little things. So number one, authorization. Authorization is the perception that the chain of command sanctions, approves, or directs

a particular behavior. I was just following orders or this is what my leader expects me to do. And by the way, what you gotta watch out for is, if you have a behavior as a leader, that's pretty much authorization. So if you show up late, other people are gonna show up late. You forget gear, other people are gonna forget gear. You use bad language, other people are gonna use bad language.

By the way, this includes your kids. Think you're gonna swear around your kids and they're not gonna swear? No, no, no, they're gonna swear. So you've gotta remember that your behavior authorizes it within your team. Next one. Transfer of responsibility.

Transfer of responsibility is the perception that some other person bears the responsibility for an unethical act, i.e. someone else is responsible. Hey, this is not me. Next one. Routinization. Routinization occurs when soldiers gradually acculturate to unethical actions or abuses. Unethical behavior simply becomes routine. It's just what we do.

an athlete who has taken performance-enhancing drugs for years or teenagers paying for one movie and watching two or three in the Cineplex are civilian examples. The routine and daily execution of the final solution by Nazi Germany during World War II is history's most horrendous example of routineization. This is where you just make these little things and you just kind of let them slide. And this is what's tough as a leader because you can't harp on little things that don't matter. but you also can't just let little things that don't matter turn into big things. Yeah. You know, if I let you get away with, you know, at the end of the night, we're, uh, we're, we're cleaning the, the kitchen and we're putting away the, the steaks that we didn't cook.

And, you know, you grab like one of the small steaks. Yeah. And you're going to take it home and eat it. But you didn't pay for it. And, you know, I could be like, look, man, we sold 280 steaks. Echo's been working here all day. You know, eh. Kind of let it slide.

Yeah. Then you do it again. Then you do it again. Then you do it again. At a certain point, you start taking two or three stakes. Got the family to feed. So you see what I'm saying? Yep.

So you have to be careful that you don't let little, little ethical, little ethical transgressions, little tiny ethical transgressions become routine. Yeah. You can, I would imagine. anyway, that you can slide into criminality in real life real quick like that. Actually, I have an example of that when I was young. Maybe an 11th grade scenario.

He slid into criminality. Okay. Me, my friend. Okay. All right. And he would shoplift. And I started with like something super small. It was like candy or something like this.

And he, you know, he was like, I'll just put it in his pocket or whatever. And okay, so, me usually, like my friends that I hung out with, they're not criminals at all. They're not bad kids at all. So to me or to us, when he took that little piece of candy that first time, I was like kind of surprised.

And one of the things I was surprised with is that he got away with it. For some reason, I mean, it kind of brought it to light where I guess I was under the impression that like, I don't know,

there's freaking like Fort Knox cameras everywhere in the freaking 7-Eleven or like, you know. But he got away with it and I was like, right, is it that easy? Like you just, go you know you just go in an aisle that no one's in there and you just take whatever you want

and in a sly way and just walk out or whatever so I was like kind of surprised but whatever and then slowly but surely he would start taking like more stuff and here's another part of it too where he got to the point where he was like kind of like hey you want to come see it like he was like almost like a performance and he would like and he'd be like laughing and stuff and I was like bra this is and I kept being like more and more surprised like bro it's like that easy you just That's how you know you just do it Of course in hindsight I'm like okay People don't just start shoplifting you know because it's like everyone knows like brother that's a rule

It's you know almost like the honor system is also in play Yeah along with the real law you know isn't it weird when like I remember cases where like these rich real Super rich like Hollywood people Would get busted for shoplifting. Oh yeah Winona writer did yeah I think I think there might be another example but I think that is the one did she go out with Johnny Depp? I don't know. But she, who could clearly afford, like, pretty much anything is in there just shoplifting.

That's such a weird thrill you're looking for. But it's something to pay attention to. It's something to pay attention to, you know, when you let little transgressions go, they will start to grow. And, again, as a leader, you have to find the balance because, you know, you're going to have your platoons or your team, they're going to do some things that you're like, you know what, I get it, you know, uh, I'm trying to think about just a, some little thing that people will get away with, you know, they're going to get away with some little thing. And you go,

like, I can't harp on this little thing. It doesn't really matter that much. Yeah, but you've got to figure out where that line is and you've got to make it very clear. You know, you can't, you, you, you've got to make it very, very clear what the line is. And it's got to be, hey, if you do this, you, I will not support you. And in fact, I'll go out of my way to crush you. You have to do that. And, you know, it's, Leif and I have talked about this on this podcast. As a matter of fact, you know, I got your back, right? Oh, Echo, I got your back. You should know I got your back. Like no, I got your back almost no matter what you do. But if you do something that's, illegal or immoral or unethical, I don't got your back.

And you need to know that. Yeah. You need to know that. You know like, oh, okay. Like I don't got your back. If you do something that's illegal, immoral, or unethical, you better know that I don't got your back. Now you make an honest mistake.

I got your back all day. Yeah. You want to push the envelope. Cool. You cross the line though. We got a problem. And by the way, sometimes you got some things, you know, there's rules that we have to go. I, the spirit of the rule is not good.

And therefore, you know, um, um, we, um, we, um, We had interpreters in Ramadi and interpreters aren't supposed to carry weapons. And our interpreters carry weapons. Because putting an interpreter in Ramadi without a weapon was wrong. It was morally wrong. Like it was morally wrong. You asking a guy wearing an American uniform in Ramadi to go out there where, where look, he, you know, he gets separated from people, whatever.

There's a million things that can happen. He just needs to maneuver across the street where you like, you need a gun. Yeah. And it was like, mm, yep, go ahead. And if I would have, you know, something would have happened where I would have been held accountable to that, I would have, they would have said, well, do you let your, did you let your interpreters carry weapons? I would have said, yes. And they would have said, that's against the rules. And I would have said, well, I should have gone about it better.

But I could not, in good conscience, send another person that's on our team into Ramadi without a weapon. And some of them were American. Some of them were foreign nationals. But they were on our team. And they were risking their lives to help us. So, yeah, the idea that. And you know what? It was kind of okay, by even my boss.

You know, I don't know that I went through. I can't remember if I ever like discussed it with him. But he definitely saw pictures and knew like, knew that the guys were carrying weapons. So he probably felt the same way. And by the way, all the, you know, battalion commanders that are out in the street, like everyone saw, wasn't like, oh, you know,

we're trying to hide it. Doing a deal. Yeah. So there's things like that that are gonna happen. You have to make a judgment call. And really it is like, would you be able to stand in front of whoever and say this is why I made this decision. And most of the time, you know, it should be pretty aligned.

Now, are there things that, yeah, and you should be able to tell the difference between, hey, I'm doing this, I'm making this decision right now. And I think it is completely justifiable. And if you start feeling like, I don't know if this is justifiable, then you guess what? You're probably wrong. Yeah. You're probably wrong. So we have to pay attention to that.

to make sure that things aren't becoming these little, these, and you got to explain that to the troops too. You can't just have little violations of the rules and act like it's not there. You know, you gotta say like, hey,

our turps are carrying weapons. Yeah. Like, boom, like that's what we're doing. Yeah, that makes sense. I know it's the letter of the law.

We can't do that, but I'm not sending these guys who are risking their lives to go out there and help us. I'm not putting them in Ramadi in American uniform without a weapon. That's not happening. So and there's and again,

you're always going to run into things like that. And then you look up if you're not careful, if you don't draw that line, you look up and things have gone completely sideways and you've got someone that's doing things that's immoral, illegal, or unethical. So we've got to pay attention. Yeah, the, the, those small violations,

like, you know how like, okay, there's a rule, right? And then let's say someone breaks the rule. but just not in a big way, just in a teeny tiny way. It's like the whole being on time thing where, and I violated this like when I used to work at the nightclub. I'd come like one minute, two minutes late, right? And then if my supervisor was kind of my friend too, if you would say anything, I'd be, I would kind of like gaslight him a little bit and be like, bro, it's like two minutes and you're

making a big deal out of it. You're saying? But, and which I kind of got away with too. But he was actually right because it's like, hey, the violation or the rule isn't, hey, you have to come within two minutes of this time or whatever. It's like, no, you start at this time. And, you know, if you're late, you have violated the rule.

So what I'm saying? Just like shoplifting. What if he shoplifted a jolly rancher for two cents? It's like, is he going to jail for that? Yep, maybe because he shoplifted. That's the rule. So I'm saying? And so that's like a way.

that big transgressions can happen because it starts just small. And then after a certain amount of time, it's like, where do you draw the line? Is you what I got a, I told you this. I got in trouble for taking money at the front door as a bouncer. But like I walk up to come to the bar, hand you a 20 and you let me in. Right. You get in trouble for that? Yeah.

So, well, it depends how you do it. It depends on the club. But how we had it. Our club was kind of strict. And, you know, what I ended up, I even forget actually what I did. the report came back that I took money, but I still made them pay the cover charge, but I let them skip the line. So I took money to let them skip the line, which seems good, right? But our place was super strict. And it seems even, it seemed even worse because the people

that did that, that I hooked up like that were your friends. No, no, they're secret shoppers. You know what that is? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're like hired. They're, they're the service that come in and give you like a, like a, what do you call a candid evaluation of your, the service that you're giving. And so yeah, I got rolled up on that, me and another guy. So, and the thing is, not that big a deal, right? The club got their money. You know, I made money on the side, but it had no bearing, you know, whatever, but it was a violation of the system, so I got in trouble. But here's the thing, though, side note. We actually fought back, not like fought back against the owner or whatever, but we brought it to his attention. It's like, hey, like, we, the club got their

money. You know, like this shouldn't be that big of a deal technically on a technical level, you know, just like forget about this. Oh, we're strict here thing. Just think about it from our perspectives. You know what I'm saying? And he was like, bro, you kind of have a point. And then he allowed us to come up with a system to get money for people skipping the line. What is the system? They just pay double. As long as the club got their money, we can run the line however we want as long it doesn't create chaos. So do you have like a left line and a right line? Yep, exactly right. And they just had the straight up 40 bucks to get in here, 80 bucks to get in here.

Yep, exactly right. But it wasn't a sign or nothing like that. There's one long line and then there's one teeny tiny short line. And, you know, people come up and everyone knows like here's a line to get in, right? There's a little cover charge right here. And then people always ask, well, what's this line? And we say that's either the guest or the express line is for people on the list or if they want to pay the express cover, which is blah, blah, blah.

Damn, express cover. Go to Charles. Pocket in the game. Yeah, but then we came up with a good system and we took and the owner was like, yeah, that's, yeah, fine with me as long as you guys don't start manipulating the line. You know, like some people, they'll be like, hey, they'll slow roll the line. So, you know, he's like, don't you dare pull that kind of stuff. I think it would be an interesting. I should have done this, but to just sit down and think of all the rules, like rules that I either bent or broke and then what was the line between, you know, hey, nope, you can't do that.

Right. Like you can do this, but you can't do that. Right. Because it'd be interesting to figure out what that is. Because I know, like, you know, one of the things is like the one, when I was just talking like, no cover up, like, that's a thing that I would literally say. Like, we are not, there's nothing getting covered up. Yeah. If something happens, we're reporting it.

That's what we're doing. Yeah. And that's one of those things where guys now, they're not going to come to me and say like, hey, this happened. Can we know? Right. They already know that. Which, by the way, keeps me. people in check.

Yeah. Because if they know they do something, it's going to be reported. So you have to, it keeps people more in check. If they think, you know, well, you know, Jocko covered up the whatever over here. So I think we'll be good. No. No. Nope.

That's not the way it works. That's not the way it works. But it'd be good to figure out, you know, just rules. Some of those like that, that thing with the Terps is a good one, you know, that I can remember. It's a very clear, hey, here was the rule. and here's what I did and here's why I did it

So did you do that Did you ask for you know how they say Ask for either you ask for permission Or say sorry or what you know that whole day Yeah yeah yeah so quite frankly The Terps were just carrying weapons When I got there And I was like okay so you guys are carrying weapons

They're like yeah And I'm like understood Continue you know it was one of those things I mean I knew the rules The rules There was a precedent of the rules not being followed for that particular thing. And so I checked with the precedents. I let them know that I was aware because I think that's important too.

Let who know. Everyone like, hey guys, I know that this is, it's not like I'm, I'm unaware. So you let your guys know. Yeah, because otherwise they go, he's not really going to find out or if he doesn't know, like that type of thing. Right. I know. Yeah, yeah. That's cool.

I know. So I know. and I'm okay with it and here's why. Did you have to answer for it or anything? No, I never did. I think it was, and look, it might be a bad example because it was so common. Like I saw, like, most of the terms carried weapons. Yeah.

I shouldn't say that. Well, ours definitely did. Right. Actually, in a way, it's kind of a good example of how, like, how easily these, you can cross over to these things because like, kind of how you said, where it's like, bro, to you and obviously not you, not just you, but it was justified. But it was still a rule. So you'm saying?

So once you kind of get on that side of the whole rules thing, on the fence of it with the rules, it's kind of like, well, what else is there? Yeah. But that's why you, if you don't address the rule, the rule that you're breaking and why you're breaking it. And you just break the rule without any explanation. That leaves room for interpretation to people go, oh, well, you know, we don't, if we do that, we don't have to do this. If we don't do that, we don't do that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Like even like the shoplifting thing, because that goes kind of deep two K. Have you ever heard of? like I knew this girl and she was in a purse store and you know clothing so I don't know Macy's or something like this and she's like oh my gosh and you know how like you try on stuff right so she had this like she had this handbag or whatever and she was like oh my gosh this looks nice on me or whatever and then then she goes and checks out this shirt or that thing and she accidentally left this purse on her shoulder just like not thinking about it you know as she's shopping and whatever like for a long time too like can you literally put it on your shoulder and forget about it which I understand like think of like if you have a scarf or something you know or you say it's like you forget you have it on. And well, she legitimately did. Well, you know, that was her story, but she's not that kind.

You're going to be there to understand. But so she's shopping for like a long as time and then she walks out with the purse on accident. She got rolled up and she's like crying. She's like, oh my gosh, this, whatever. But it got me thinking, wait a second. That can happen all the time and like you'll forget about it or like, you know, like you do a, let's say you're at the grocery store or something. and you leave like something at the bottom of the freaking, you know, like some batteries or something

that get smashed on anything, you know, whatever. And you walk out and you realize, oh, wait, I didn't pay for that. But you're already like halfway home or something like this. Or you're across the parking lot. It's like, all right, man, I'm going to pay this like $3. I got to walk back in, go whatever. It's like, and you just, you already technically got away with it. Yeah.

Right. So you roll with it. Yeah, you roll with it. This phase, like how many times would you estimate, let's say, just in any town, USA, a person would just continue to go home fully, fully innocent, fully forgot, legitimately forgot. Three dollar value? Yep.

Say $3 value. $3.00. I think of most people are like carrying on. Yep. Carrying on, right? Yep. What about? So you see the, by the way, I left, I was, I went and got groceries the other day.

And I left. The opposite happened. I like, they were bagging my stuff up and I left a bag of groceries. there. Oh, yeah. And I got home and I was like, huh. And my wife later went to the store and she was like, your husband left the stuff here and gave credit.

She got, they gave her credit because they had it. They said, well, we had to put it back, but this is what it was. And so she's like, they told him to go get it. Sweet. So shout out to Jensen's. Yeah. Jensen's supermarket. Let's go.

Some good service. Yeah. And it was a couple days had gone by and they gave me the credit. Oh, that's a good little community right there. They remember you guys. But the $3 value. They got gold. They got,

they got Mok there as well. Oh, hell yeah. So they're in the game. They're in the game. Okay. Full understanding unknown. What, where's the line drawn?

And actually, I might argue that what if it was like a $50 value? Yeah. So that's where I think people start, you know, people would have, people would have various levels of what, where they go,

that's 50 bucks. I, you know, I need to get back in there. and pay for it or that's 50 bucks I just got away with not having to pay 50 bucks and they got away with legitimately too like now you have to like expend energy to adhere to some moral code code that doesn't matter by the way except for with you within you see what I'm saying so when no one's looking is kind of like and I'm not

saying hey look you're a bad person you're a good price it's not about that it's about it's about where is this line drawn yeah no okay so let's say if it's a three something right three dollar value right you don't go in you're like my time's worth more than that you know whatever and then let's say it happens again a year later by the way there should be some kind of an equivalency here let's say you overpaid three bucks and you realize how do you go back to the store for it yeah then what if it's $20 and you overpay yeah do you go back or like you get your bill and you got you got you got undercharged or you got overcharged if you got undercharged by 30 Oh, they missed the steak that I ordered.

Hey, guys, I missed the steak. Or, hey, you double charged me a steak. Those should be somewhere around the same number in my opinion, right? Yeah. Because that's for me, it's not even a matter of the money. It's like, bro, like it has to be a pretty, whether either one of those things for me to go back in there. Hey, I think here's my credit card, redo this stuff. I just want to go home.

You know what I mean? Yeah. So my, my, my, uh, problem with the scenario isn't so much like winning to lose. It's just like inconvenienced. Right. Yes, yes. So, but think of the person. And there's a lot of people in there not bad.

It doesn't mean you're a bad person. But there are people who would be like, okay, let's say it. My wife is going back in there like, hey, you, you know, I owe you $3. My wife's doing that. Oh, right. Oh, right. Oh, right. Oh, like, 100% of the time.

I'll do that. Especially now that I'm, I think older. Like I actually feel better about myself. If I'm like, oh, wait, they didn't charge for this or. You know what happened? Like you put like, I don't know if you get like, there's a lower part of the grocery. Yeah, we get like club soda.

So we put it down there or whatever. And then like sometimes, you know, we'll forget it. And I'll just, I won't feel bad because I'm like, who's getting hurt? But if I go and say, hey, I forgot the paper, I actually just feel better about myself. Like, I'm such a good season. Do you ever think that they're, uh, you're being taped? Like you're being video? When I was young.

Yeah. I'm like, bro, this is a test. This is a straight up test. Like people are trying to get me. Yeah. You know? I'm looking over my shoulder like, oh, they got,

they think they're going to get me, but no, I'm going to roll back in there a bit because you, it is bad when you think about what you just did, if you're like, okay,

if I just did something where I'd be embarrassed if people saw it, I figure someone's taping it. As a matter of fact, I used to say this in Ramadi, I think, hey, you have to assume

when you're out there, you have to assume that Al Jazeera is videoing you as you're carrying out whatever you're doing. Yeah. And by the way, that was accurate a lot of times.

Yeah, there was video, like people were video stuff. So you have to have that in your mind that whatever I'm about to do right now could be on the 24-hour news, you know, headline story for the next three weeks. You do something stupid. It could be there. That's a good protocol right there.

Yeah. So where did you, where, or you could see this line being blurred. Okay. The soda water on the bottom of the shopping cart cashier didn't see it, right? Real quick. I made that, I gave that explanation one time to some young officers in the military. What explanation? It's like, hey, assume that what you're about to do

is going to be on the front page of, what do you call like the headline story on headline news? Because the front page, no one cares about the front page of the newspaper anymore. But when you're, you know, when you click on the home page of the news website and you immediately see the video. And it's going to be you doing that thing. And one of the kids was like, you know, well, that doesn't make something right or wrong, you know, like, and I was, I said, well, no, you're right.

but it should give you a feeling. If you're a little bit, hmm, what should I do here? Well, take a moment and picture that this thing is going to, it could still be, you know, you could do something that you might be embarrassed, which technically is right. Yeah.

Meaning you could technically get away with it, but you're still kind of holding your head in shame when everyone knows that's what you did. Right, right. You know, so it's still a good test. Hey, if everyone is going to watch me do this, if millions of people on the news are going to watch me do this thing tomorrow,

you know, what's the deal? Yeah. Do I feel good about it? So if the answer is I'm not going to feel good about it, it should give you some, some hesitation on executing that action. That's a very useful guideline for sure. Yeah.

And you know when people get, when people get rolled up, or when people get recorded doing stuff? Yeah. Yeah, that's a bummer. Remember that whole thing with the couple that got busted at the cold play concert. You know what I mean?

That's like the premier example, probably of history. Yeah, yeah. Of, hey, I just got rolled. I just got busted, videoed, doing something that I shouldn't have been doing. Yeah. And if they would have had that thought in their mind, they wouldn't have been doing that.

Yeah. And by the way, when you're in a public place, that was crazy. Sorry, I cut you off about three minutes ago. What were you going to say? Well, now I'm going to add to, to where you're saying that,

that if you imagine that someone's videotaping you, you really mind your piece and cues, even more so than you might think, think because then we've talked about this where, you know, when you're following through doing something like on the DL or whatever, there's a legitimate part of your mind that's like that miscalculates how bad you look.

It miscalculates it for whatever. And there's all this context in your mind and whatever and all this stuff or whatever. But when you see it on a videotape or, or read the transcript or whatever, you know, when you see it displayed from a detached perspective

and you see yourself doing this, you're like, bro, I didn't realize I looked like that for stealing all this candy or whatever. You see what I'm saying? So it's like, bro, it's heavy. You know, if you have that, those guidelines in your head, bro,

that's going to be probably more helpful than you think, if you can remember. Yeah, and to the point of this kid that, you know, said, well, that doesn't make something right or wrong. It's like, mm, but it's an indicator. Yeah. And also, this is another.

thing you know getting into the legality of things and this is something that when Laif was teaching the JOTI class people I would be talking about ethics and I'd say guys you have to do what is legal because a lot of times you know you can justify something if you say hey hey echo you just make sure you do the right thing now if I say that to you what's the right thing that's a that's a whole damn you know area gray area Yeah, yeah. Because what, by the way, what you think is the right thing might not be what I think is the right thing. Now, so that's why you have to make sure you're doing the legal thing.

Because if you're doing something illegal, we know it's wrong. Now, can you say, can you override what's legal in some cases? Yeah, because sometimes the spirit of the law of what we're trying to make happen doesn't make sense in certain scenarios. And so you as a leader have to be able to decide that sometimes. But your baseline, your baseline has to be what's legal. That's where you start from. And then if you start saying, well, this is the legal thing to do right now. But here's these nine extenuating circumstances that actually make doing the legal thing, the wrong thing to do.

So sometimes doing the illegal thing is the wrong thing to do. And by the way, when we teach these types of classes, we will come up with examples where, you're going to have to make a decision that is against the rules but is the right thing to do. So this is what happens. This is what makes leadership hard. Oh yeah.

Yeah, oh, what I was saying when you said that as a human, how easy you can slip down that little slippery slope and the whole soda water on the bottom of the shopping cart that checkout can be a slippery slope. But you do have to cross the threshold

but crossing that threshold of from moral to, Immoral can be very smooth transition sometimes. So let's say one instance, you forget the thing on the soda water, we'll call it, on the bottom of the shopping cart. You forget it, right? Cashier doesn't notice. And you get away with it. You get to your car and you're like, oh, damn.

And you're in the mindset, which is very common to be like, oh, wait, I kind of got away with it, right? Like no one noticed it, no harm, no foul, you know? Who cares? Chalk it up to a score. that day, you know, a little what do you come up? You see what I'm saying? And then maybe the next time, right, you go through same soda water underneath there. You forget it, but right at the

last minute, you, like after you paid, right? You already paid and you're about to like push the card out with all the bags and you realize, oh wait, you didn't ring that up, but they didn't notice. You see what I'm saying? Got away with it last time. That was a cool little score that day. Then you just continue on. And you made it, right? You could have like you already paid you got away with it But all it was a few more steps See what I'm saying? And you see how that can progress

Then before you know it you're like Purposely putting this underneath there Maybe even putting some With the paper towels above it Or a newspaper or something like that Just a cover to make sure they don't see it And I got plausible deniability oh shit I forgot you know what I'm saying

I'm sitting here trying to figure out why I hate stealing so much And I'm coming okay first of all First of all when I was a kid there was these little trend of these little trucks these little tiny they were like this a little bit slightly larger than a matchbox but they had they had the rubber wheels that had like a monster truck dumpers is that what they were called so i was in fourth grade and mine got stolen brutal mine got stolen yeah and because of the way they were they were all kind of a little bit different and the kid that stole it he got busted like the teacher you know I went to the teacher

crying or whatever somebody stole my little thing and she did whatever kind of freaking search and seizure on the class and dude this kid got busted and it was like shame it's weird I wasn't mad I was I was like I felt ashamed for him and he felt ashamed like you could see it he was he was he was A real pale, like, highly looking guy. And his face, like, was bright red and tears in the whole nine yards. And I thought, man, that was not worth it. Like, I didn't even feel mad. Like I said, like, I was sad.

But then when I saw him, I was like, dude, that sucks. Yeah. That's number one. Number two, in the teams, if you stole shit, bro, it was like, like there was a guy at Team one that stole something. And they pulled his bird that day. Oh, shit. And then one last story.

I was on a ship and I had a knife a cool badass knife and I had it in my gear and somebody stole it and I was like I was it was like violation

you know and that's why stealing bro that shit's yeah it does have a weird deep violation violating like freaking quality to it

and I think got my bike stolen one time too and I was a grown man yeah oh yeah I will I I was going to pick up my kids on my bike. I walked into a house. I walked into a house.

You know, hey, what's up, blah, blah, blah. Walk back outside, my bike's gone. Yeah, and that was a badass bike too. How much was it?

Probably a thousand bucks. Yeah, yeah. I got my moped. It was old at that point, but it was probably 10 years old. Brother, that makes it worse.

Yeah, that's like part of you. It's like a, you get, you know, like people say it, I feel like, I feel like I was personally violated,

especially, you know, if people come home to their house being, you know, broken into or something like this. I got my mopeds stolen is real common in Hawaii. There's a lot of mopeds, you know,

by the university, whatever, and people will just steal them. I got mine stolen. I felt the same thing, bro. It's like, right? It goes deeper than just, oh, shit,

I don't have my moped anymore. It's like, because all of a sudden, nothing is safe, right? Yeah. It's like, all of a sudden, the whole world is gone. Yeah,

man. Everyone's lost their minds. Yeah, like, that's the game we're playing. Like, your stuff can just disappear and now someone else owns it. It's like, brother, it's weird.

The, also to, it feels like most people don't just casually just steal stuff from the guy next to him, like on the deal like that. You see what I'm saying? Like I, a part of me kind of understands these professional outfits

that, you know, go and rob the truck or something like this. It's kind of like, oh, that feels a little bit different, even though it's not. But you, we had a guy, bra,

on our football team. He stole a whole, like, video game console from a guy's dorm room, like through a few doors down. Yeah, that's straight. It's the kind of where, bro, PlayStation 2 or whatever and we'd go to his room from you know on the weekends or

whatever and then one day he came home and it was it was gone he was like what thought like that doesn't make sense or whatever so he's kind of look at eyes hey did anyone like borrow it or whatever it's like I don't know what you're talking about whatever and it was just gone come to find out it was one of our teammates who lived in that dorm is like a few doors down came in because not everyone leaves their door like locked all the time and he just goes in take steals it and like hides it under the bed you know because like summertime was coming to whatever and they're like what the hell and

And everyone was kind of confused. Like how would the, it doesn't make sense. Like, why would it like, like, I'm going to come and, like, go in your bag and, like, steal some. It just doesn't make sense. But they go in his room. I don't know how they suspected him. But they go in his room and they lift up all the cushions from his bed, you know, like beds in the college dorm room.

They have cushions and, like, a little storage thing. And it's, like, way in the back, tucked in the back, real deliberately hidden. Yes, intentionally hidden. And my friend, the guy's name is Davey, the guy who owned the, on the video game console. He said, like, he went in there. When he saw it, he felt like, he was like, bro, it was like I was like sexually assaulted. Seeing my stuff like just stowed away like freaking all covertly like that. I was like, bro, he was like, bro, my heart started bidding all fast.

I was like, dang, bro. I was like, I can imagine. Because it's like it's a weird slimy violation that just steal from, especially like from your like. Yeah. That's a huge part of it. A huge part of it is like you're stealing from a person as opposed to like. A company, right? Yeah, yeah.

You know. All right. I'm going to bring this back into the fall there. Next one. And again, just in case you forgot, these are the indicators that there might be some ethical slide happening. Next one is dehumanization and disqualification.

These occur when soldiers lose respect for others or think that others are below them. Soldiers may feel like they are being forced to protect or help people who are not like them. and who they do not like during the Vietnam War, use of the derogatory terms, gooks or slopes indicated that some soldiers had dehumanized to the local people.

And there's a derogatory dehumanizing name in every war for every enemy that we have. And you got to be careful with that. And it's one of those things where you have to dehumanize the enemy a little bit. And as you may have heard me say for us, the enemy dehumanized themselves through their behavior. When you're murdering and torturing the local populace,

it's they dehumanize themselves. But as a leader, you've got to make sure that doesn't carry on and go to a point where, you know, you get a Mili Massacre type scenario. Next one, moral disengagement. Moral disengagement occurs when soldiers are so physically, mentally, psychologically, and emotionally stressed and exhausted that they cognitively disengaged from moral and ethical reasoning

or simply do not think about it. This usually takes the form of some kind of self-deception lying to themselves rationalization the ends justify the mean or even mindlessness or mind-numbing. It often results in routinization of unethical behaviors. In some cases, a soldier may simply not think

in terms of right and wrong or may not be thinking at all just acting without thinking. Just going through the motions is what we're doing. This is an interesting one. Bracketed morality refers to a soldier assigning a different set of values or beliefs in one context For example, while deployed as opposed to another while back in the world Or put another way what happens in theater stays in theater right what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?

Bracketed morality those is this doesn't count right now Miss placed loyalty this refers to a soldier placing his loyalty to other soldiers battle buddies or the small unit higher than the organization's values, the seven army values. A soldier committing an unethical act to take care or cover for a squad mate is an example. Again, this is one,

this is one of a very slippery slope. You got my back, right? Yes, I do. 100%? 99.9.9%. Because if you do something that is illegally, immoral, and ethical, I don't got your back anymore.

You need to know that. And if I don't, make that clear, it's a problem. And if I, on top of that, give indications, like small transgressions that I let fly and those, they'll test the waters too. The boys or their troops are going to test the waters. They're going to see what up.

Your kids are going to test the waters. What can I get away with? So you can't be surprised when you've let them slide and let them slide and let them slide when they slide right out from under reality. Peer pressure, peer pressure is the influence of the group or unit that can override a soldier's ability to act Think individually, obviously.

Group think is similar to peer pressure when the weight of the group's ideas overrides a soldier's ability to think and act alone. There's a lack of moral courage. It's a tough one. That's a tough one. You're going to be the guy that stands up. And, you know, again, in the Milai massacre,

what's interesting about that is it was Hugh Thompson that flew in his helicopter, saw what was happening and stopped it. One guy, as soon as he went back to base and said, hey, they're killing people. And base called out and said, stopped killing people, they stopped. They just needed someone to snap out of it.

Which means that entire company, it snapped in. No one snapped out. And that's the list. Some of the constructs above can act alone on a soldier's thinking and emotional well-being, although they normally work in combination. When several of these constructs in combination influence a soldier, bad things may happen. Arguably, all nine of them influenced soldier and leader actions at Milai and Abu Ghraib.

Some are all played a significant role in the other incidents. Although there are volumes of academic research on these constructs, they really are not complicated for Army leaders to understand or identify. Army commanders and leaders, both officers and NCOs, are intelligence, educated, intelligent, educated, and well-meaning professionals. You know, this is like one of those things where it reminds me when we did the machete season about, about the Rwanda massacre, they start talking about like the language that they use

to describe the enemy, you know, and how that just became so common. It's like what they did in Nazi Germany, you know, you described the Jews as the vermin and the cockroaches and stuff like that, and that just slowly just seeps in, it just seeps in. So that's what happens, these little indicators. Oh, that's just a little indicator.

You know, oh, oh, there's some dehumanization happening. Right? The Tutsis are getting called the cockroaches. Oh, okay. That's what's going down, you know? And you just, so what they're saying here is you got to pay attention to that as a leader. Okay. And it gets into it a little bit in a minute here.

That doesn't mean like, oh, you know, Echo said this. That means he's lost his mind. No, it's an indicator. It's a symptom, right? It doesn't necessarily mean Echo's lost his mind. he's going to freaking start murdering people, it means I got to pay attention. Make sure he's okay. Make sure, you know, I bring him back a little bit.

Their awareness of what can happen may be all it takes to help mitigate these threats. So there you go. More important from the leader development perspective is that these psychological and emotional threats should be known and understood by commanders and leaders. They should discuss them at the command staff meetings during after, during after action reviews and integrate them into their pre-deployment training. Even more dogmatically, they, They could be checklist items for leaders to carry with them.

I totally agree. Like, are you making sure what is goal? You know, is there dehumanization happening? Is there a transfer of responsibility? Is there authorization? Like, what? You got to make sure. The nine constructs are human issues.

The Army is in the business of leading human beings, individual, emotive, thoughtful, distinct people. No two are the same. You cannot produce the exact same model of them on an assembly line year after year. No rigid scientific method will influence people to a, accomplish the mission, training soldiers and developing them into leaders is the work of thoughtful craftsmen, not the process of thousands of parts that come together to complete the organization. Because individual free will exists, friction, uncertainty, psychological interaction, and chance will also exist. Combat leaders must understand the complex nature of human beings.

And not just combat leaders. If you're in a leadership position and you are, you're better understand some human nature because you've got to deal with individual free will, friction, uncertainty, psychological, not to mention ego, not to mention emotion, not to mention agenda. The statements below taken from investigations and discussions of the incidents above and others are examples of what leaders should listen for as signs that a soldier may be suffering from some of these threats. He displayed pure hatred for the enemy and often referred to them as savages. Are we going to protect the population or kill insurgents?

When the world you thought was made of concrete turns out to be smoke and mirrors, the results can be devastating. I'm just going quote after quote. These are just so much quotes. I don't care if I die. We are undermanned and no one gives a damn. Certain people are not to come back alive. The army has great leaders and morally bankrupt leaders. I challenge you to imagine the frustration felt after being engaged in firefights for several hours with the enemy and then capturing them only to have them released two days later because you're told the holding area needs more information on them.

The climate in the unit was toxic. We repletably found ourselves fighting the same enemy again and again. Kill all military aged males on the objective. We need more kills. So you can see these things are indicators. And it says, of course, these quotes must be taken in context. As standalone quotes, they may have a negative or threatening meaning. While in context, they may not mean a problem exists at all.

Context matters. But if a leader hears remarks like the ones above, his radar screen should blip with a cautionary note. And it should start asking probing questions. in addition, leaders should look out for soldiers who behave erratically or antisocially. For example, a soldier torturing or killing dogs and cats

would be an obvious warning sign. So, yeah, I never saw anyone kill dogs and cats. Did I hear dehumanization? Yes. Did I... What's some other things on here? Hey, did I hear people say,

we're under man and no one gives a damn? Sure. Did I hear... The military of the army or the Navy has great leaders and more like yeah you're judging that this is good and bad So I've heard all these kind of things Calling them savages. Yeah, 100% Myself included get some But in context like pure hatred for the enemy

That's a little different than name calling and if you can't it but all these things should be a little indicator A little indicator Well, the guy doesn't like the enemy. Of course, he doesn't like the enemy. He killed our friends. Guy hates the enemy, sure. Hates the enemy. They killed our friends.

Guy hates the enemy and starts to hate everyone that looks like the enemy. Now we might have an issue. So you got to pay attention. Interestingly and coincidentally, after the Mili incident, Lieutenant General William Peers, investigation found nine factors that influenced the tragic event. Lack of proper training. attitude toward the local people, which is a lack of cultural sensitivity,

permissive attitude, we're just going to let things slide, psychological factors, obviously, organizational factors, nature of the enemy, plans, orders, and commander's intent, attitude of government officials,

and leadership. Leadership, leadership, leadership. And yeah, you know, we covered the Mila Masker on the podcast, but, you know, there was the, I think one of the biggest problems was the inflation of the intelligence,

you know, going from like the division level like there may be VC in this area and then the brigade level is like they're suspected VC in the area and then the battalion level there's VC in the area at the company level they're VC and that little you know that little game of not game but the little effort to make the person take something seriously which was expanded each time at each level down. And that's one of the major contributors. Not to mention William Cali was a bad officer

who'd failed OCS a bunch of times. So you had a bunch of issues there. The same psychological constructs that were proximate cause of Mili are still a threat to our soldiers and leaders and always will be. From a learning perspective, the nine constructs previously discussed

are a subset of the nine factors found at the Mili. The attitude toward the local, psychological factors, the nature of the enemy, plans and orders leadership. This dates back to 1968 and highlights the need to learn, really learn from the past. Of course, atrocities by U.S. soldiers have occurred throughout U.S. wars to include World War II with the killing of German prisoners at Dachau. Also, the killing of German and Italian prisoners at Biscari.

These historical examples are powerful reminders of how the dark side of warfare can influence soldiers and leaders' thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Yeah, it's the amount of war that America has fought and the amount of atrocities is like Staggeringly small we generally I remember I got I was getting interviewed and and I got asked about like Almost like put on the spot about I think it was about Abu Ghraib And I kind of said hey If you want to put me on the spot let's talk about Sand Creek massacre. Let's talk about the mili masker those are like a whole

horrific. But, you know, if you, you want to put me on the spot in Abu Ghraib, you could do better, but you have to go back. You have to go back to, like, you know, Vietnam. You have to go back 50, 60, 70 years.

If you want to get, you know, those. Now look, we brought up a bunch of examples that, but they were much smaller on scale. Other recommendations. Other curriculum additions we propose and involve contextual and environmental challenges. that soldiers and leaders might experience while deployed. Teaching and discussing these and other challenges will better prepare future combat leaders for some of the challenges they could face.

The list, while not certainly complete, winning tactically but losing operational leaders strategically. This is something we teach at the muster very specifically. Winning tactically but losing strategically. You go out and you kill a enemy target, but you also kill four civilians. you might win tactically, but you're going to lose strategically. Even if you just destroy a bunch of infrastructure, you might win because you were able to take out a bad guy, but you now have the local populace going, bro,

we can't turn on our lights anymore. Reporting of events, truthful or otherwise, corruption and bribes. These are just things that, you know, is it good to say reporting of events? Explain what that means to you? Like, my guys knew. If something happened, it was getting reported.

You know, that's what we're doing. Corruption and bribes, how do you handle those? Contractors in the battle space. That's a real thing. Lack of resources, unrealistic expectations, commanders out of touch it with reality at lower levels. It's good to talk about these things. Soldiers stretch too thin, good to talk about these things.

It's good to present these things and people and say, this is what it's going to be like. This is what we're going to be facing. I was talking to one of the guys from Tasking to Bruezer the other, and we was talking about the corruption in the Iraqi army, soldiers that we were working with. And it was like, you know, he was actually saying that he came to me and said, hey man, this is what's going on.

And I was like, do you want, are you gonna, do you want to handle it? Do you want me to handle it? He was like, oh, I got it boss. You know what I mean? Like it was kind of a good story of just, you know, me saying, look, dude, do you need me? He's like, no, I'm letting you know,

but if you want me to handle it, I'll handle it. But it was corruption. It was soldier, Iraqi, soldiers not getting paid. Part of it was because it was corrupt. Part of it's because their culture. Like their culture is, hey, you know, the boss gets a cut. That's how we do it.

Like the mob, right? Some challenges on this list are clearly outside the average private or staff sergeant thought process and influence. In fact, squad leaders and even platoon sergeants and platoon leaders may have very little influence over most of these things. But leaders at all levels should be aware of them. Because listen, you might not be able to influence the fact of like, why are we here? Why are we doing this thing?

But you still have to make sure you frame those things correctly and you understand them and you can explain them and you can look out for how your troops are taking them. Because the last thing you want your troops to be is like, what the hell are we here? I don't care anymore. Other challenges leaders will have to be cognizant of and likely address include decisions regarding escalation of force. Oh yeah. Dropping or planting weapons. No. No, do not do this.

By the way, if you refer back to those earlier examples, one of those examples is you shoot someone and you drop a weapon on them and make it seem as if it was, that's why you did it. This is not a good move. I'm going to tell you right now, this is not a good move, especially because the way the ROE is written, someone doesn't have to be armed to be to be engaged. if they have to be doing something hostile

but what is hostile even hostile intent like it looked like they were going to do this or that when you when you plant a weapon on them even if you go hey dude I got scared

and I pulled the trigger and I shouldn't have you'll get in trouble but if you plant a weapon on them you're going to jail you see what I'm saying that's a huge difference it's a huge difference

war trophies you may know my thoughts on war trophies we should be allowed to take war trophies sure they should have to go through some kind of unauthorization but I brought home nothing from Iraq and I want something you know and I would only want that much

but I would have liked a little something you know what I'm saying yeah it feels like that would be as an outsider feels like that would be a slippery slope scenario so they might have just been like hey you're right you're 100% right but there should be a process

you should be able to say hey I found a nickel-plated AK-47 you can demilitarize it so it won't fire anymore but I want that above my fireplace or whatever

and quite honestly I'm not even that into it I just it seems like it seems like other dudes would want maybe I would have something if we didn't have that rule maybe I'd have a nickel-plated AK above my fireplace.

Yeah. Because God knows, we took a lot of AKs, man. Yeah. Confiscated some AKs from these people. An understated maybe way to put it is like, bro, so many of those things and from that time and all those experiences, like they have sentimental value, you know. So all the way down to the point where, like, if there was a, let's say a knife that was dropped on D-Day by somebody just dropped and buried under the sand and all the action,

whatever someone found it that would like you could auction that off for like you see what I'm saying and that's just because of like secondhand sentimental value you see I'm saying and then for yeah for the guys to be in it and happen to come across something that was part of like a huge event that they participated in it makes sense yeah no I I get why they do it but there should be a protocol and by the way there is a protocol but it's like at a very senior level like if your unit wants to bring back something that they captured, then you can do that. But you have to, there is a, there is a protocol for it. But it's only for like the very senior people that could actually pull it off.

Because they have time. The freaking privates are out there in the streets keeping it real. They don't have time to fill out a bunch of paperwork. You know, I know, I wasn't thinking about filling up paperwork. But, yeah, they don't let it happen. There was that movie called Three Kings. You ever watched that one? Yeah, I didn't watch it, but I remember they found gold or something.

Yeah, well, yeah. So it, to me, that's like, obviously it's a movie, but it's like how that slippery slope could turn out. Because it's like, all right, they're in there and, you know, things are slowing down or whatever. This is in a nutshell. Things are slowing down. And then they get word that there's gold like in a town that's like Saddam's gold.

And so, you know, basically it's like no one's really going to claim it. You know, it's kind of up for grabs kind of a thing. And the war is like, it was I think he was, Desert Stormer, I think. So it was like, they weren't doing anything. So they had time and, you know, the capability. So it's like, and then they got, and then it, of course, it's a movie. So then, you know, he gets, uh, gets he gets hectic, we'll say.

Yeah. That's why they have that rule. But they should make it a little bit more flexible as all. I'm saying. Revenge motives, clearly got to watch out for those. The need to control their own soldiers emotions. Sorry, the need to control their own and their soldiers. emotions and the attitude if no one talks no one will find out i'm going to take it right now

that ain't that is that is not a good move um these are the kind of things that a squad leader platoon sergeant or platoon leader can directly control they are individual they are individual leader challenges but also commander issues and influenced by command climate the leader has to recognize when soldiers feel threatened and determined when he needs to resort to an escalation of force The leader chooses or allows subordinates to choose to carry a spare weapon on a patrol to drop next to a shooting victim to make it appear the patrol is fired upon. Bad move. Leaders create a reality that justifies their actions when deployed. Leaders allow soldiers to give in to lesser instincts and succumb to bloodlust.

These are just mistakes, man. Leaders allow for killing for revenge. Clearly the army does not condone these things, nor does it equivocate that. that they might be permitted in some circumstances. Nope, they're not. These are first and foremost individual choices and must be seen that way. But strong, educated, and knowledgeable leaders

and leadership can influence individual choices. Leaders must be able to recognize a non-combatant, understand the risks to and treatment of non-combatants, recognize and know the risks to legally protected sites, provide a clear commander's intent, identify questionable command climate, know when to intervene, to stop wrongdoing of others and that's everybody's responsibility and you should be i was talking to

some troops the other day and if something every if something goes above your level you should be a little bit embarrassed you know if the the new guy see something that shouldn't be going on he should stop it if his boss has to stop it he should be like damn i dropped the ball now if that guy like the squad leader didn't stop it and now the now the platoon leader needs to stop it the squad leader should be a little bit embarrassed if the platoon leader didn't stop it and now the troop leader needs to stop it

that platoon leader should be damn so you should handle it at the lowest level but that takes moral courage by the way and it also takes detachment because you're all wrapped up in the situation right we're all wrapped up in the situation we're all emotional so we're letting something slide Nope. You got to stay detached and you got to say hey if this gets out

How's that gonna feel? How's that gonna look? Can you say oh well that's what happened? It wasn't good but here's what happened it was combat shit got crazy But if you're gonna be saying uh See what I'm saying um um yeah All of these things should be addressed by the institution and the command. These are leader issues. Contextually, they all begin with command climate and are all about leaders being able to control their own soldiers. Their own and their own soldiers' emotions.

First, the leader must master self-awareness and self-management and then look at things in a political and emotional context. Only when he has mastered that can he set the tone that will address other items. So the goal of the sessions should be real learning, not protection of reputations. Students could reflect on and discuss insights and lessons learned from their knowledge, experiences, and understanding of the cases. This is if you do vignettes. It's recommending that you analyze and discuss real vignettes. And then look for those nine constructs inside those vignettes.

Integrating similar vignettes into pre-deployment scenarios and training would also be effective technique of learning. Real learning via real learning via self-awareness and self-management. Learning, growing, and developing are lifelong choices that individuals and organizations make. They just don't happen. Being a lifelong learner is a conscious choice that requires a high level of self-awareness and self-management. Leaders need to be self-aware enough to know both what they do know and what they do not know and when and where and what. what they need to learn. For example, lifelong learners must be self-aware enough

to know that they lack knowledge in some areas and then take steps to learn or improve in those areas. That's self-management. The leaders who think they know it all or have nothing else to learn are setting themselves, their units, and their missions for failure or worse. We've introduced some specific topics we feel leaders need to know in a combat environment.

So that is important. Real leader development begins with one's self. The more knowledge of human behavior and the human dimension leaders have, the more they will understand and potentially influence it. Firm knowledge of the physiological and emotional constructs and reoccurring themes we have recommended can be a starting point. For example, leaders' thoughts and emotions may drive them to seek some kind of irrational revenge if the tragic loss of some of their soldiers to an immoral

adversary. How and if leaders regulate this revenge motive, both cognitively and emotionally, will affect their decision cycle, their ethical reasoning, and ultimately their behavior. So to sum all this up, in combat, leaders must be aware of the many negative psychological and emotional effects that the stresses and violence of combat may have on their soldiers. The nine constructs we have discussed sound and sound planned training throughout our army can educate, train and develop our leaders to recognize threatening signs in their soldiers, recognize threatening signs in themselves, ethically reason, and recognize an ethical situation that may not be self-evidence. And I'll close it out with this. Self-aware leaders should habitually ask themselves and their trusted subordinates if there are any unhealthy signs or indicators in their unit. Self-aware commanders should also habitually ask their subordinates what ethical challenges their units are facing or may face in the future.

If this ability or knowledge requires a checklist, so be it. the material for the checklist and the curriculum is based on years of lessons learned from our army of learning organization so there you go um real real lessons there those are real lessons and those should be focused on extensively extensively because if you're not ready for them man they will creep up and you'll end up with group think and you'll end up with peer pressure and you'll end up in these morally ambiguous situations

and making bad decisions so know your team that's what we're doing also in order to be mentally and emotionally fit guess what

you gotta be physically fit too so we're getting after it dude we're getting after it we're lifting We're running. We're boxing. We're doing jiu-jitsu. We need fuel. We recommend jaco fuel.

Get some protein. Proteins. Protein's kind of what you need. Kind of across the board. You need protein. We got protein. We got ready to drink protein. We got powdered protein.

It tastes delicious like dessert. So check that. We also have energy. We have time war. We have joint warfare. I met another person who told me their, their mom put their mom on joint warfare. She's feeling good.

She was like arthritic. You know what I'm saying? And then one more individual that I talked to. Mom is drinking goes and feeling like sharp. You know, like a step up, a little, you know, little cognitively fading because getting old, put down that go, getting the game on.

So if you need fuel, which you do, check out joccofuel.com. Or just go to your store. we're in so many stores across America right now you can get the good clean fuel and jaco fuel is there a new flavor out from oak yes raspberry gelato yeah yeah yeah that's a good one obviously it's very delicious I don't know that that cereal

yeah fruity cereal is very difficult to eat the chocolate's delicious vanilla's delicious you know like it's so good yeah I've been tried dessert which one haven't you tried that new one the gelato yeah yeah always tasty always tasty it's good yeah we're kind of you know we're getting better yeah taking us less iterations to make something taste good in our testing process yeah you know it's just refined yeah so check that out joccofield dot com also check out origin usa.com we make clothes we make clothes here in america with freedom yes they're built by freedom there's no communism there there's no slavery There's just freedom.

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Also, don't forget Jocco store. Discipline equals freedom. We got some shirts and hats and hoodies on there. Some cool merch, a little bit more than merch. It's beyond merch.

So, you know, quality stuff. Also, shirt locker, new design every month. If you didn't already know, people seem to like that. Subscription scenario, by the way. Speaking of Freedom, Independence Day, it's coming up. Did you release a shirt for Independence Day already? No, not yet. Okay.

But if you want to get the jump on it, because sometimes they sell out quick, sometimes it takes a few days. They usually are pretty dope. Yeah. If I might say so. This one is solid. This year's one is solid. Anyway, if you want to get the jump on it, you want to get the heads up,

when it goes live where you can get it. Just sign up for the email list there for the thing. I don't spam. No spam. I'm anti-spam in that way. So don't worry about that. It's all useful information for that if you want to get the jump on it. But yes, so this year, 26 Independence Day shirt, it will be available very soon.

I don't know exactly when, but very soon. Anyway, it's all on jocco store.com. Right on. Also check out echelonfront.com. We teach leadership. and we have our next event, next big event. We do events all the time, but we have a next big event is the muster

in San Diego, California, July 8 through the 10th. If you want to learn about leadership, bring some team members, bring them down there, let them learn. Extreme Ownership.com. We teach the skills of leadership online as well. We got books about leadership. I've written a bunch of them.

Dave Birx wrote one called Need to Lead. Rob Jones wrote one called Put Your Legs on. I've written a bunch of kids books too. You can check those out. If you need steak, you can go to primalbeef.com or Coloradocraftbeef.com and you can get the best steak. Don't settle for the crappy steak. Get the good steak. That's what you want.

Primalbeef.com, Colorado craftbeef.com. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. And it helps out our teammates. and our military and first responders so much. She's just amazing.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also check out Heroes and Horses.org. Micah Fink up there, saving souls in the mountains. Jimmy May's got the organization Beyond the Brotherhood.org. Check out the swim happening in August.

I think it's selling very, very quickly. It might be sold out by now. But go check it out. Beyond the Brotherhood. dot org and then warriors and need dot org and stronghold rescue dot org those are all great people running great organizations if you want to connect with us check out jocco dot com and then on social media i'm at jocco willink echoes out echo charles just be careful because there is a a mind monster in there echo and i were about to hit record and i'm sitting there and i got i was checking

something on social media and then three minutes of my life was going to Gone. Gone. Gone. Can't get it back. And I had to shut that thing down and say, Echo Charles. You see what happened there? You see what happened? And bro, I told you right away, I go, I was enjoying that. You know what I mean? It put me right in the comfort zone. I was seeing a bunch of things. Oh, little jiu-jitsu, little surfing. Somebody's ripping on guitar. Oh, let's see what this next. And it was just serving them up, serving them up, serving them up. Just like a drug dealer serves up heroin. That's what's happening. Pull that needle out of your arm. Shut that damn phone off and go out and do something productive in the world. Now, also right now is we're sitting here comfortably, there are uniformed men and women around the world holding the line and protecting America and our way of life. And we are grateful to all of them. We're also grateful to our police law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all of other first responders thank you for holding the line here at home and everyone else out there

you got to pay attention you got to pay attention what's going on you got to pay attention these little these little signs you got to recognize the signs in your people you got to recognize the signs in yourself in order to do that you have to be detached but also we have to all the time as often as we can look back we have to look back we have to do that debrief You have to do that after actions review not to dwell not to highlight the bad not to second-guess decisions and not to criticize from that from that hindsight being 20-20 but we have to look back in order to move forward we have to look back and learn in order to get better And that is what we are doing that's all we've got for tonight and until next time

This is ECHO and Jocko out