Jocko Podcast - Human Nature, Leadership, and Atrocities w/ Daniele Bolelli and Darryl Cooper

Episode Date: April 4, 2018

0:00:00 - Opening Intro. 0:04:20 - Daniele Bolelli and Darryl Cooper talk. 1:57:15 - Support:  JockoStore stuff, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare and Discipline Pre-Mission, THE MUSTER 005 in DC.��Origin Brand Apparel and Jocko Gi, with Jocko White Tea,  Onnit Fitness stuff, and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), Way of The Warrior Kid 2: Marc's Mission, The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, and Jocko Soap. 2:31:44 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And tonight's podcast is a little bit different, but I think it has some good information in it. I was asked by two people who have outstanding podcasts of their own to sit down and have a conversation about leadership and specifically leadership in. inside of atrocities and when we recorded it I wasn't really expecting it but we decided that we would all release it on our podcast platforms so the two people that I recorded this with are Danieli Balelli and Daryl Cooper unfortunately

Echo Charles was not present for this recording and Danieli Bilelli First of all, he's a history professor. He's a martial artist. He's an author and yes, he's a podcaster. He has two podcasts that are Great to listen to their great podcast one is called the drunken Taoists and the other one is history on fire They're great podcasts. They're entertaining podcasts. They're educational. They're like I said, they're super informative and the podcast that you're about to listen to is based on a couple of other podcasts the first one being by Daniele from his history on fire podcast number 32 alpha 32 a for civilians out there and the the podcast is about the sand creek massacre which took place in present day Kiowa County Colorado on November 29th 1864 where there were about somewhere between 70 and 170

Cheyenne Arapaho Indians, mostly women and children, who were slaughtered by a 675 man force of the Colorado U.S. volunteer cavalry. Brutal situation, horrible situation. And like I said, Danieli Bellelli talks about that on his history on fire podcast number 32 Alpha, The other podcast this is related to is from Daryl Cooper's podcast his his podcast is called the martyr made podcast and specifically podcast number 10 it's about the mili massacre and that is when about 500 innocent civilians again mostly women and children were murdered and many also raped and mutilated by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam Daryl Cooper is also an incredible podcaster he's a great storyteller and he goes through ridiculous I would say depths to give all perspectives of a story and he his

podcast martyr made is fantastic he doesn't put him out off as often as I wish he would but the podcast are great the one on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that he started his first, I think it's his first six podcasts on Margar Made. That's what it's about, and they're fantastic. And he's a veteran of the U.S. Navy. He's a wrestler. He's a jih Tzu player, and he's really smart, well-read person and great to listen to. And then the last podcast is my own podcast, uh, Jocco podcast number 31, four hours in mili, which is when I did an assessment of a book by that name and talked about that. same massacre in Vietnam. And in this podcast that you're about to listen to, the three of us

discuss how these atrocities come about and what can be done to prevent them in the future. So that's the laydown. And here it is. Danielle E. Jaco, everybody, I'm here, Daryl Cooper, talking to two of my favorite people. We're going to go some dark places today. You've listened to the last two podcasts that Danielle and I have put out and maybe about 60% of the podcast that Jocko has put out. Then you know we're going to dive into some dark places. I want to get it started pretty quick. We've been talking beforehand, so let's just jump right into it.

Danielle and I recently did a series that we cooperated on where he covered the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, some U.S. Army soldiers massacred some Native Americans. Americans in Colorado. I did the Milai Massacre. Similar situation, 104 years later in the jungles of Vietnam. We're fortunate enough to be here with Jocko. If you don't know who Jocko is, I guess we'll go ahead and let you introduce yourself just a little bit. Yeah, my name is Jock Willink. I was in the military for 20 years and retired in 2010. And now I've written a couple books and have a podcast. called Jocko podcast because I don't get really creative with the names of things. Jacko is pretty direct about things. So he's also kind of humble. Jocko is a Navy SEAL commander in Iraq. He led Task Force Bruiser, is that right?

Task unit bruiser into the Battle of Ramadi. If you know anything about the war in Iraq, you know, the Battle of Ramadi and the Battle of Fallujah are probably the two big fights that get mentioned the most. but whereas Fallujah was more of a direct assault on the city after the insurgents captured and tortured and mutilated some U.S. contractors and Bush ordered the Marines to retaliate. The Battle of Ramadi was a little bit different. Jocko's going to talk a little bit about the environment that they went into going into it. And so he's got some military experience not only being on the ground but of leading men in battle in an environment, an insurgent war where you've got, different groups of people, different sex, the Sunni and the Shi in Iraq, who are fighting a bloody battle that we're in the middle of, but who we can't engage with on their level.

You know, these are people who are fighting a very, very dirty and ugly war against one another and against us if they get their hands on us. As Americans, going into a war like that, we've got a different mentality. We try to avoid behaving in ways that dishonor us. And it's something that Jocko takes very seriously. And he had to lead men into combat under those conditions. So we're going to talk about that. It was 2006, April of 2006, when you led your men into Ramadi to begin with. Is that right?

Yes. Yeah, that's what it was. So shortly before that, a couple months before the Golden Dome of the Al-Aascari mosque was blown up by al-Qaeda in Iraq, Zarkawi's people. This is an ancient Shia mosque, one of the most sacred places to Shia Islam. Well, interestingly, Ramadi was primarily soon. In fact, it's almost all Sunni. And interestingly, the majority of the military forces in Iraq, especially the Army, were Shia. And so you had to kind of diffuse that tension on a pretty regular basis to make sure that there weren't, you know, reprisal killings.

And there was definitely some level of mistrust between the Sunnis that lived there in the city and the Shunis that lived there in the city and the Shoe, Shia military, but it's definitely, it's absolutely, it was absolutely clear that the, the Sunnis that lived in Ramadi, the local Sunnis that lived in Ramadi, much preferred the Shia army soldiers to the insurgents that were there, that were being run by Al Qaeda and Iraq, by Zarkali, and the likes. And because what they were doing was just savagery and, you know, everything that you hear about. They were skinning people alive. They were beheading whole families.

They were torturing, raping, and murdering the local populace in to get them to support them as much as they could through pure terror. And so the local populace, even though they might not have been, you know, they're basically going with who's their worst enemy at the time? Their worst enemy at the time was without question, al-Qaeda and Iraq. And so the Shi army that was there to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunnis were generally in support of what the army was doing there. So it was a little bit different than in areas like Sadr City where the Shias in Sadr City were very active. There's an active fight going on against coalition forces.

So, yeah, it's definitely a tricky situation. Yeah. When you roll into a situation like that with American soldiers, where both sides are engaged in just a hurricane of atrocities across the country and where the people who are there, they might be looking to you for safety, or I guess that's a question I would have. They probably, under the circumstances, where the people in the city, I mean, they probably were looking to you to protect them.

Absolutely. And just before we showed up, just to kind of paint this as clear as I can, and I forget the exact numbers, and I apologize for that. But just before we showed up, the insurgents, murdered. It was something like seven, eight, nine, ten of the leading tribal shakes in the area. And the tribal shakes that survived to that left. They left. And so that just put the whole city, you know, under such a grip of fear of the insurgents

that they just basically surrendered as much as you can surrender, which means, hey, if you want to come and stay at my house and you want to sit in my backyard and launch more at the coalition forces we're not going to say anything to you because we're going to we want to live we don't want to get killed and that's what you end up with you end up with passive support and that's what the locals were doing they were passively supporting the insurgents only because they didn't want to have their heads cut off and so as we and this was a brilliant strategy that was spearheaded by the one one AD the the ready first brigade of the first armored division run by a guy named colonel sean McFarlane who ended up being a general and he's a brilliant guy and a great leader but you know his I his attitude which he actually got from HR McMaster which he had employed up in Talafar and and 1 1 AD had actually gone into Talafar and gotten a turnover and understood what they had done up in Talafar and the strategy was called seize clearhold and built which was going to these enemy controlled territories these enemy controlled neighborhoods and stay there and so that's

what that's what the strategy was and that was a lot different than the strategy that had been being used up until this point, not just in Ramadi, but in all of Iraq. Is that a strategy that it almost seems like, reading about Ramadi from the outside as somebody who's never been in combat, it almost seems like the goal was to go in there and establish your dominance over the city,

almost to show the people of the city that you don't have to be afraid of these people because they're afraid of us. And we're going to, we have freedom in this city. We can take our Humvees and patrol these streets, and they're not going to come out and fight us because they're afraid of us. And so you don't have to fear them. It almost seems like that was the goal there.

Yeah, I wouldn't use the word dominance because we weren't trying to dominate the local populace. Right. We were trying to provide security for the local populace. And obviously that's a big difference because when you start having an attitude of we're going to dominate the local populace, that that's just a small step in the wrong direction, right? That's a small step in the wrong direction. Whereas saying, hey, we're here to protect and secure and stabilize the local populace,

that is what we were doing. Yeah, I think it took us maybe a little bit longer than we wish it would have to recognize that before you can do anything, counterinsurgency, you have to provide security to the people. If you're not leaving them a choice, then they're going to provide that passive support, right? And I think that's one of the issues that shows up

with the kind of episodes we did, you know, both the story of Sun Creek and the story of Milai. You have a situation in which suddenly some guys begin to look everybody on the quote-unquote other side as belonging to the same field. Why? Because they are all Cheyenne or they are all Vietnamese. There's no sense that they are not all in the same boat. Some people are your allies. Some people are your enemies. Some people are exactly what you are saying.

Stuck in between where I kind of have to cooperate with your enemies, not because I want to, but because I really have no other choice. And you cannot treat all of them the same way. And so I think the dilemma that you are facing this idea of having to figure out, okay, there are people that were here to protect. Those are not the people who are going after. There are other people that we need to take care of. That seems to be one of the things that was very much missing, you know,

that nuance, that ability to look at people who may look the same way, but they are not the same people, to look at them with different eyes. That seemed to be really what was missing in some of the stories that we treated, where the guys who did what they did is because to them is like, And Indian is an Indian. Vietnamese is Vietnamese, whatever. It's all the same. It doesn't really matter.

And I think it's like, how do you see what leads to that point on one side and vice versa? What is that you guys were doing to make sure that it doesn't go to that point where your guys would not make that switch to that frame of mind and keep their priorities very clear in terms of differentiating in terms of who they are facing? And real quick, can I just add a supplement to that question? because that's kind of what I wanted to ask as well is, how do you train your men and lead your men in such a way that they can pull the trigger when they have to? And when civilians get killed accidentally, that that doesn't destroy them emotionally, right? There's got to be some kind of separation there without having them fully enter over into that mindset that Danielle is talking about, where you're just dehumanizing the enemy altogether.

When you have to lead your men in a situation like that like how did how did you deal with that? Yeah, well, this is leadership Yeah, this is leadership and this is leadership in war and this is this this question that you're asking is the is you know, one of the largest possible questions you could ask about Combat leadership and you know you I appreciate that you guys keep referring to me, but I was I had 35 or 40 seals there depending on the time and there was five thousand six hundred soldiers and Marines that were there that were discriminating targets every single day and that had outstanding leadership that were that were making sure that guys with less training than my guys, guys that were younger than my guys, guys that had a tougher job than my guys in many cases, would still discriminate targets and make sure that they were engaging enemy personnel and not civilians.

Now, I'm certainly not saying that civilians didn't get killed because civilians got killed. and it's an awful thing and one of the things I talk about all the time if you go to war and you're not comfortable with the fact that you're going to kill innocent people then you probably don't have the will to go to war and maybe what you're going to war for isn't doesn't meet the threshold of what warrants a war and and if that's what the conclusion you come to that's fine you know let's hope you come to it before you've before you've beyond before you're on the ground and blood has been spilled but there's so many Little things to That would that would that you know that we'd cover to talk about me. I mean just even the distinction that I just made between like hey, we're going in there to dominate That's a little step. It's one little step and Using that word and then falling it up and and we talked a little bit about this and Daryl I was listening to your podcast about the meal I'm asking her and I did one about it as well

And one of the things that that really that I talked about in pretty great depth because For me, I had incredible correlation between what happened in Milai and what I sometimes saw happen overseas. And that was with the intelligence that you're receiving. And you could see, and I pointed it out in my podcast, and I don't remember like all the exact verbiage. But, you know, at the senior levels of intelligence, the intelligence report was that Pinkville or the area of Pinkville or Milai, whatever you want to call it me lie for that that area the the initial intelligence was you know suspected Vietnamese in the or suspected viet Cong area could be possible you know Viet Cong and then it went down one level in the chain of command and the next

people that briefed it it was you know just a little bit stronger you know it was you know Viet Cong area Viet Cong controlled it And then it went down one more level and it was Viet Cong headquarters area and then it got down to This is all Viet Cong and then they threw in the the fact that You know the the the people going to the market right it's market day You know that started off as hey some people will be at the market on this day and by the time it got to the guys on the ground It was everyone that's good is going to be at the market everyone that's still in the village is going to be They're going to be VC.

And, well, you know what to do with VC. Yeah. What he says is really interesting in terms of just human communication. In that case, before you even go about Americans and Vietnamese, you even discuss war or just the basics of human communication. How sometime starting one degree off, before you know it, if you keep it long enough, that one degree off took you so far off course from the reality they are trying to describe,

that the words, which is kind of like plain telephone, you know, when you whisper something in the other person's here, it doesn't sound that different from what you just heard, but you just tweak it a tiny bit. By the time you are down 20 people, the message has no similarity whatsoever to the original one. And it seems like that as, I think we do it all the time in daily life, but nobody dies as a result of it, whereas in that kind of scenario, people do die. The consequences are so much more dramatic as a result of that. And what's interesting is and Daryl you kind of brought up in your podcast and and you did as well Daniel is how does this happen right how does this happen because if you take a normal human being and you drop them into the middle of that thing They look around and they go what the hell's happening which is which is actually what happened when when Hugh Thompson came in his helicopter he dropped into this situation and said what the hell's going on here this is totally wrong but as you're as you're getting there if you're not on that trip if you're not on that train as it's going off the rails you you don't recognize it and that's why one thing I talk about all the time from a leadership

perspective is the ability to detach from all the chaos and all the mayhem that's happening because if you don't have to if you don't have the ability to detach from that chaos you're in it and if you're in the chaos as a leader you don't see the mayhem that's happening. And so it's so important for a leader in the business world, but certainly in the military to be able, or in any leadership position, to be able to step back and observe what's actually happening from a detached perspective, because otherwise you're in the storm, and that is not a good place to be as a leader. You've got to have rules for how you're going to behave

before, while you're going into it, because if you just, you know, if you're going to react everything on the ground once you arrive. I mean, it's always more expedient to just shoot them. You know, at the time, it's always easier and safer probably to just do the easy thing and be violent or whatever.

So you have to have rules going into it. I guess, yeah, one thing that I want, because the point he brings up is super interesting, but I think essentially what you're saying is that the person in a position of leadership needs to be as an master. You know, they need to be in the middle

of emotions that clearly are affecting everyone around them and they are bombarded with those emotions, they need to be completely detached from this stuff. It makes perfect sense, how do you do it? Because it's a hell of a lot easier said than done, clearly. And how do people even train to get to that place? So, well, for one thing, when I was running the training for the West Coast Hill teams, I would fire up that training to a point that it was very,

There was total temptation for the leaders to get wrapped into the scenarios that I was developing for them. There would be total mayhem. And if they let it happen, they would get wrapped up in these horrible scenarios mentally, emotionally. They'd be mad. They'd be mad at me because I was the guy that was running the training. They'd be mad at the opposing force role players. They'd be mad at their guys. They'd start yelling and screaming.

They'd make bad decisions. And I wanted them to get there because I wanted them to see what happens when you get wrapped up in this stuff emotionally so and then what I would do is teach them that they have certain what I would call red flags certain certain signals that they need to learn how to pick up yeah if you feel yourself start raising your voice well then that probably indicates that you might be getting emotional if you're breathing heavy if your fists are clenched there's all these things that you start to recognize and once you can recognize them and you say okay I'm starting to get emotional right now

Need to step back now. Interestingly, what I would often do and an easy methodology for training these guys was First of all stop looking down the sights of your weapon like you're not allowed to and we'd give we'd give a leader a stick if we had to and take their gun away So that they weren't gonna be shooting they weren't gonna be wrapped up in that tactical situation and Literally put that weapon at high port and step back away from the firing line you know Cali Cali is with his M16 gunning people down he's completely wrapped up in what's happening Medina's yelling and screaming I mean I talk about this with with police forces as well if you want to hear people go go listen to some of the bad shootings that you hear

and police have a incredibly hard job they need way more training but go listen to some of those shootings that take place and listen to the pitch and the tone of the officer if and and what are they doing they're saying get the hell get out get out they're they're they're completely emotional right and that emotion is going to drive bad decision making so you have to learn how to detach the way you do it is in a way I would initially teach guys to do it is by physically putting their weapon at high port stepping back away from the the actual firing line and look moving their head around and looking around you know the story I wrote about an extreme

ownership is you know we I had the the Delta platoon commander who's a great guy smart guy you know Ivy League Naval Academy and just just a brilliant guy great guy and he was we were doing some training and it was in Humvees and we were doing immediate action drills in Humvees you're out in the desert and your shoot targets pop up and you engage the targets it's like it's like being mini tank commanders and you've got five vehicles you got to maneuver them on the battlefield while they're provide cover fire for each other and it's it's a little bit chaotic there's big machine gun shooting and and when I was going with him and I was sitting behind him observing him do

this and every time the shooting would start he would kind of lock up right he'd kind of like lock up there's so much happening that he wasn't processing it quick enough and so I took a sharpie magic marker and I and I wrote down on the window in front of his face I wrote okay here's what I want you to do when when the shooting starts I want you to this one relax to look around three make a call and at that time I hadn't thought through this stuff as much as I have now because I've been doing it for much longer but what I was telling him to do was you know detach from what's happening and and the way you do that is you relax you look around and and then you get on the the radio and you make a call and you

know the next run I watched him and I was sitting behind him and I'm looking over his shoulder and once the shooting starts you can't hear anything So I'm just watching him and I see him the shooting starts. I see him look at the window and I see him take a deep breath and exhale. And I was like, okay, he just relaxed. And I see his head start to turn. And I realize, okay, now he's looking around. And those two simple items were enough to make him detach from all that chaos,

actually assess what is happening and then make a good decision. And so that is one of the most important things that you can train a leader to do. Sounds like coaching a jiu-jitsu wipeout. First thing you tell him, they're on the ground getting beat on. And they kind of, first thing you tell them, breathe. Yeah. Just breathe. Yeah.

Relax. Until you can do that, then nothing's going to work. Yeah. It's one of those things, too. People talk about, like, breathing exercises. And one thing that I would instinctively do, and it's another thing that I would train my guys to do, was, like, you don't panic on the radio. You don't yell on the radio.

You don't scream on the radio. You, no matter what's going on, when you get on the radio, you say you know bruiser one six this is bruiser over I mean that's that's what you do and in order to do that you have to relax you you is so it forces you if you're not going to sound panicked on the radio which which if you sound panicked on the radio and and your team hears it guess what you're going to have panic going on so you have to it's another it's another method to detach so when you hear your voice getting excited when you you know when you read about lieutenant callie yelling

and you hear about Medina yelling. That, you know, Cali started yelling likely because Medina was yelling at it. And now that's what happens. We're just sending that panic through the chain of command, and it's a horrible thing. I think what's fascinating about it

is that the parallels, even though the scenario you're describing, is something that 99% of the people listening, 99% of the human beings will never have to deal with because they're never going to be in combat, which bullets flying all around them and all of that. And yet, it's serious.

easy to forget that the same dynamics are at play in most people's lives in ways that they may be able to recognize with less extreme consequences. But like when you are a parent and you have your kids going wild and suddenly you find yourself, you know, raising your voice and starting to yell at them and not the, because I mean there's a time and the place. Sometimes it's the right thing to do is to kind of cool them on their stuff in harsh ways. But there's a difference between raising your voice with an intent and raising your voice because you're losing it and you're getting overly emotional and you're getting angry and kids realize it and they will hear you they will see how you are losing your stuff they will see how you are less

of a credible presence in their life that they not can count on you that way because you are wrapped in your own emotions and you know they press a little button and you go off sometimes they'll press that button because they enjoy seeing you go off sometimes they'll press the but you know the point is you're not a good leader as a parent at that point and it's the same thing I mean My company now we work with businesses all over the world and it's the same exact thing and I teach the same exact thing If you're starting to get mad at your employee, you're starting to get mad at your subordinates if you're starting to get mad at your boss What should you be doing as a good leader? You should be detaching taking a step back I've told people Hey, if you start feeling that way you stand up from the meeting table just just you know no one's gonna say hey, what are you doing? You just you know stand up stretch out step back away

People are having a heated argument and you start getting involved in it instead of getting involved in it instead of getting involved in it take a step back by the way when you do that you look like a tactical genius because everyone else is starting to lose their temper they're starting to say things that they shouldn't say and you're the one that's a listening I just just covered a book and and just just like a little thing is if if there's if you're talking I'm gonna let you talk because if I let you talk I know twice as much as you I know I know I know everything that you know and I know everything that I know so I'm gonna win that tactical situation I want to come back to what you were just saying, Daniel, about leadership as a parent.

It ties into something he was talking about a few minutes ago with like a police officer who's panicking. We were mentioning this on the car right over here about police shootings, like more often than not. What you see is that they're the result of incompetence. They're the result of a socially inept cop who can't manage the situation. And it's not an easy situation to manage. You've got a potentially dangerous person.

You don't know them. And maybe they're lightly resisting you just verbally. And you've got to take control. that situation. Well, unless you're an exceptionally competent and confident person, maybe the only tool you have to bring that person under control is your baton or whatever it is. And you get the impression in Vietnam, especially once you get up to 68, 69, where, you know, they're starting to just throw junior officers in right out of, you know, ROTC and just throwing them into combat. And you hear stories about, you know, officers getting fragged. You start to hear stories

You know Cali washed out OCS three times. Right. And you get these people now into a situation where you have a military unit that recognizes their incompetent leadership and they're scared. They feel incompetent themselves as a unit. And you get them into a place where, and maybe this is something that you can contrast really well because you dealt, you led primarily seals and Marines, right? Well, seals. Yeah. And you worked a lot with Marines.

We worked a lot with Marines and Army soldiers as well. Okay, yeah. Actually, mostly, there's one battalion of Marines inside Ramadi. Okay. The three eight Marines, awesome. When you're dealing with the American military today, and I know, I mean, this is something that gets lost on a lot of people is that as highly trained and motivated and all those things as our special forces are, you know, they're very specialized.

You guys are, you know, trained for very, very specific, intense missions and stuff, but you go pull an average ranger or Marine or something or infantry, and you put them in combat with good leadership, and that is an unbelievably effective soldier. I mean, American soldiers today are all volunteer force. These are incredibly well-trained and motivated people, if they have the proper leadership. When you get back at a situation like that with Vietnam,

where you get a whole unit in that situation that that cops in, where they're in maybe a village, they don't exactly know how to handle this situation without resorting to lethal force, and they start to feel threatened and everything runs off the rails. You know, it's unrealistic to expect. Just like, you know, you're happily married man and you don't want to cheat on your wife, then when you're off on a business trip, after you've had a few drinks with the coworker

that's on travel with you, it seems innocuous. Maybe it's totally innocent at the time. Don't go upstairs to the hotel to watch a movie. Because if you get to that point, you're just putting yourself in a terrible position. position, right? And in that military context, the idea that all of the built up momentum behind something like Mi Lai, the idea that you're going to get right up to that moment on March 16th, 1968, where the only thing that's stopping it from happening is a few pounds of trigger pull. That's the last bitter, you know, that's your last opportunity to avert this catastrophe.

It's just that few pounds of trigger pull. Good luck with that. You know, that's something that you can't let it get to that point. And that was something that, and then I'll let you guys take it over, but I wanted to talk about something that it was fascinating to me that you picked up on as soon as I said the word established dominance on the streets of Ramadi, you reacted against that. And you're right. That's incredibly important. And it ties into what you were just talking about, about you would make people either back away from the situation or stop looking down the sights of their gun. Because when you're looking at a person down the sights of your gun, it's your framing of the situation and you haven't put down their gun and now it's just a person it's not a target it's

not anything like that uh if you got a bunch of people going into romadi and they're thinking in terms of our job is to go establish dominance on the streets of this city well you're framing that in a way that under the right circumstances could uh you know lead to trouble yeah and so framing it seems like is what you're talking about and and i also want to make it perfectly clear that if the soldiers, Marines, seals that we work with in the Battle of Ramadi, if they didn't dominate the street as we move down it, you know, we would be just be, oh, we'd be killed. So there is, the job is even harder than I made it out to say to be because I don't, I, I wouldn't want to use the word dominate the city of Ramadi, but you're damn right. We're going to dominate the

space that we go into. And we're going to do that by being very, very aggressive and so there is this fine line and by the way you'd go into a you'd kick a kick a door in in Ramadi and there's there's gunfire in the street that you're on you'd kick in a door and there would be a mom and a dad and a couple kids and there'd be a normal household with green grass and a soccer ball and that would happen that that's what the city was filled with and so the the fact that these guys you know were able to flip that switch over and over and over again was was amazing and it's a it's a testament to to the military forces that we have and to the leadership I want to give equal credit to both but to

your point about hey you know me lie these were draftees there was hundreds of thousands of yeah of draftees that went over there and did an incredible job sure they were well led that stood up when people when when the wrong things were happening so this This was a horrible scenario. Danieli, let's follow up on that then. I mean, that's, because that's, what's the difference? Like, what happens? You didn't get all the psychopaths in the Army and round them up into one unit, right?

By all accounts, the guys at Mili talked to, they were the type of people that when the folks back in Kansas heard about what happened, they couldn't believe that little Johnny would ever do anything like that. And same thing at San Creek? Right. Same thing. And so. Because you're right. We were talking about this on the way, too. Something today, it is, we have something like Abu Ghraib happens. It's a terrible situation. A lot of bad things went on there.

The idea, though, that an entire company of American soldiers would go into an Iraqi village and wipe out 500 innocent people, that is inconceivable today. In the sense that so many things would have to go wrong and break down and degrade and degenerate in the American military for that to have happened. that it's just it seems like a completely different moral universe and well You look at what the chain of events that led to me I it was those and and if any of those chain of events Any anywhere along that chain of events could have broken that whole chain Lieutenant Cali could have gotten killed when the minefield and now you could add someone else came in that was a better leader and Didn't have a Napoleon complex and was able to stand up morally to other people there's there's there's so many people things that could have changed on that you know that could have changed that whole

scenario the most the most powerful one being a different leader same thing at Sand Creek different leader that that actually never would have happened right never would have happened yeah in fact you do see that you know you see all the guys under Silas Sol like unanimously they all agree with him whereas all the guys with Chivinton it's like clearly there's a leadership element where the average guy in those units is heavily influenced by who who's set in an example for them. And that is one of the things that interests me about human nature,

that, you know, one of the things, because we're discussing, like, does that mean that human being, you know, one of the things you hear a lot is, are human beings just evil by nature? And it's like, no, they're not evil. The majority of people are not. There are, of course, the exceptions that is that whatever small percentage, but the majority of human beings are not evil. The problem is that the majority of human beings are extremely easily influenced,

like their moral compass can range in so many different directions that and their right leadership, they will be awesome human beings. And the wrong leadership is not that hard for them to start sliding down a really dark direction. So to me, it kind of is a matter of weakness

more than evil. It's not that these guys are a complete psychopath where, you know, you have dinner with them and they are nice people and they help the old lady across the street. And yet the degree, while they may have good intentions, Good intentions don't go too far without crazy discipline, strong willpower,

a lot of the qualities that allow you to keep those good intention real under heavy emotional pressure where it doesn't all fly out the window and it's like, I don't know what happened. I just lost my mind or hey, they told me that this was the thing to do and so I just followed orders. You know, where you have that integrity to stay present in a crazy situation, you're asking human beings to be kind of extraordinary in those circumstances. Because the ordinary human being may go down a bad path. So the antidote in some way seem to be to make yourself extraordinary to be able to withstand that kind of situation.

And that's where a great leader make a huge difference because so many people will be like flags in the wind. If the wind is tilting one way, they will go with it. If the wind is tilting heavily the other way, they'll also go that route. And so that's what interest me is because while a few humans will always choose a pretty messed up evil side, a bunch of humans can go either way. What is that shape the kind of human beings that will be able to be a great leader or even just for themselves? Even if they have nobody under them, just they will make choices that in an ideal scenario most human beings would want to make.

what does separate the guy who, you know, is sitting there on the couch saying, oh, I would be that guy and the guy who actually is that guy. I think one of the difficulties with that is, Jocko, you and Jordan Peterson talked about this and your podcast together. You were talking about the book, Ordinary Men, and how, you know, you've got a couple guys, a group of guys there who are going to, who are being ordered to do something that's grotesque. And it's not simply a matter of, like, you know, that's a real good situation. If let's say you are a person of a strong moral character of just all the things that you would

want him to be, you've got two conflicting moral systems here because you have a duty and obligation to your fellow soldiers who are going to have to go do this one way or another unless you revolt completely and then you're betraying your country. And there's all these other things that are brought into it that, you know, that are moral things. These are, you know, it's moral to not want to abandon your friends and your colleagues to have to go do the hard work that has to be done so that you can go nurture your self-righteous sense of personal morality, or at least that's the type of thinking that might go through a person's

head. Like that, what right do I have to put my own personal idea of what's right ahead of my obligation as a soldier, ahead of what my country is telling me to do, ahead of just being in there with all of my friends and fellow soldiers and leaving it to them? Like, that's a moral thing. That is something that you want people to feel. Right. And I wonder sometimes how much of these situations are filled with people who, you know, maybe 90% of them, the vast majority that aren't those few evil ones, they're all kind of looking at each other. Like maybe inside, they don't necessarily think this is right or they don't want to be doing this, but they don't want to abandon their friends.

And their friends are looking at them thinking the same thing. And you just have this vicious cycle, you know, that ends in one of these things. Yeah. And part of the problem there is. is the human willingness to rationalize and make justifications for oneself. It's like, well, in that, because you know, when you look at the principles that people hold, like what they believe their philosophy

of life is and the way they behave, even in much more ordinary circumstances, I mean, you made the example of the cheating husband, right? How many people seriously believe that monogamy is the right thing and you don't cheat on your spouse? There will be lots and lots and lots of people who say, yeah,

of course I believe in it. How many people actually live up to it. And it's like, come on, man, that's not, nobody's shooting at you. Nobody, there are no, it's a much more mellow situation. And people, in many cases, can't live up to their ideals in very ordinary circumstances, let alone when you start pressing the buttons and when the circumstances are no longer ordinary, but it becomes real panic time and stress and all of that goes up. So to me, it's like you need to have almost a maniacal determination to have this code of condo that you will hold up

no matter what happens. I use it as it's a joke but it's not a joke like I use it for daily life as like to me once I have very few moral rules that are absolutes

but the ones that are there are no exceptions so for me like if you give your word to somebody there are no exception it's like don't give your word unless you are 110%

sure you are going to keep it don't I don't mind you know we can have a regular conversation and you don't your word. But if you do give your word, to me, there is no, oh, sorry, I didn't think in that situation or there was that exception. To me, the only way you apologize is a samurai style. You know, you stick a knife in your belly and you slice back and forth. That's how you say, sorry. There is no exception to that. It's almost as if you have that those rules serve as poll stars when you're

in a situation that's as chaotic as something like combat, where you have to have a few rules that, I mean, maybe they're arbitrary, but you'll die for them. Yeah. Because when you're in the midst of a situation that is completely outside the realm of your normal experience, they give you reference points. You know, they structure the situation a little bit for you. So you're not just lost in chaos. There's some structure to it. And then you can evaluate the rest of the environment relative to those hard and fast rules that you've got.

Because in the situation, you know, when you're in Milai and you're one of the people who's kind of on the fence. But now people are shooting that is not the time to have this argument with yourself No, that's not when you're gonna figure it out yeah sure Well, this might sound really obvious and and it is it's a very simple obvious answer to this really really hard question of you know how do you prevent this thing from happening or who's the kind of person that will stand up and the answer is very is actually quite simple It's training in education It's training and education and And if people understand that these kind of things can happen and they get put in these pressure situations and

They get trained and they get debriefed on mistakes that they made and they saw that they got emotional and You train them correctly well then you've got someone who gets into a me lie situation and and says to themselves wait a second We're not getting shot at right now cease fire and and that was the the most incredible thing about that story is that's all it took Was one leader to say hey stop killing people and they they literally stopped that moment So training people and and putting them in these situations and educating them so that they understand so that they have pattern recognition Training them so that they can learn how to detach training them so that they can control their emotions training them that they can see when horrible things are unfolding Before them and then how that they they can put a stop to them that that is what is important. And as you mentioned, Daryl, as the as the Vietnam War drove on that the training got less and less and the officers were getting sent over quicker and quicker and you're getting on the job training and the person that you're getting on the job training from is a person that's only been doing it for two and a half months longer than you. And that's that's how these things occur. So you have to invest in in people that are going to be in these situations. And it's the same thing. Again, I tell this to businesses all the time. Have you.

done you know on a construction site have you done a drill if you have a mass casualty what do you know what do you know where you're gonna call in casualty evacuation do you know we're getting what the air air flight are a life flight number is does anyone have the life flight number here because if someone gets hurt you need to make that call and do you know what station you're gonna call what helicopter you're gonna call do you know where they're gonna land why would you not run those things and if those things unfold and you're not prepared for them you're gonna fall apart and it's the same thing with these

ethical and moral situations where if you don't understand what they are and you don't understand what can go wrong you're gonna have you can have a bad day and I thought it was brilliant what you brought up a little bit ago when you said there are steps along the way that long before the crisis manifest itself there's that that ability to recognize the tiny little steps that are leading there now when you look at that tiny thing it looks tiny it look like a big deal, that's no crisis, that's not a problem, but it's that first step that's taking you down that path. And it's a lot easier to stop it early than when crisis is on.

And so in that sense, that does become a training, that does become a thing of like, how do you recognize the steps, how do you work on it? And you know, you are saying things like even something is basic, hey, breathe one second, take one second to breathe before you react, then think how you want to react. It's the same thing that apply to everything. It applied to conversant when people are people you care about maybe are getting you angry. Do you really want to respond right away or maybe take three seconds to take a breath then decide how you want to respond, you know? And I think he's like to me is weird as as silly as that is because you know clearly war and parenting are very far universes in so many ways, but to me has been one of the see, well, depending on your kids, I guess.

I got four kids. Right. Get some. But I guess to me has been one of the most. unforgiving mirrors that I ever had put in front of me was seeing how I react under extreme stress when you haven't slept for two days, when somebody's throwing a feat that's completely unjustified when and suddenly it's like yeah you have all the good reasons to be mad but really this is how you respond this is why you react to a four-year-old kid who's just being a four-year-old

kid and you get all emotional in this star yelling and suddenly like 10 seconds into me blow it up I see myself from the outside and I'm like, I'm everything that I despise in this moment. You know, that man right there that's responding their way, as all the reasons, as all the I can see why, it doesn't matter. You still don't do it, you know. And rather than just being like, okay, let's weep myself.

I'm a horrible human being. I discovered that. It's like, okay, what can I do not to get here next time? You got real world training, right? Because now you recognize the situation and now you don't let it happen anymore. Exactly. You know, I had, I was talking to you guys earlier.

I hit my first deployment to Iraq, we went to hit a target. And it sounds almost like, you know, like what you'd imagine in a movie. We'd get handed a map. And on the map, it'd be a city block in Baghdad. And there'd be a red X on one of the buildings. And that's all I needed. Oh, you want me to go hit that Red X? Cool.

We'll go hit that Red X. And one night we went and hit, you know, the building with the Red X on it. And when we hit the target, it was. you know, like the most normal family you could ever imagine. And as we started talking to them, and we had our interpreter get in there and figure out, you know, hey, do you know who this person is? They're like, yeah, he lives two doors down. Oh, okay. And so then I went back and eventually said to myself a question that if I wasn't, if I had more experience, I would have asked this question for the thing.

I said, hey, I got a question who put that red X on that building and why? Right. And as I pulled the string on it, you know, it was one of those things where. They had gotten some Intel which you know I won't talk about where it came from but it was it was Intel that you know put it in that general vicinity and they like pick the the center of the general vicinity there's the center of the general vicinity there will put the X and no follow-up and so I always taught that as something hey guys make sure you know who's giving this intelligence and that's that's the case that happened to me lie where the the person on the no one no one at the platoon level said hey hold on a second Who's who's confirming that this is a hundred percent VC in this village a hundred you're telling me this is a hundred percent VC in this village That's what we're saying right now Who's who's saying that I want to talk to that person and that's another thing I talk about all the time is You don't as a leader you don't want to be surrounded by yes men

You don't want to be surrounded by yes men and you know we're talking about the horrors of Vietnam War and I'm reading another book right now and there's a platoon commander and his guys are going and They're rotating between three locations and two of the locations are not too bad the other locations It's a nightmare. It's it's it's Vietnam war stereotypical. It's booby traps snipers and indirect fire They never see the enemy they just never see the enemy and all they do is they go out there on patrol They get blown up they get shot they get mortared and they never see the enemy and the guy the guys are getting wounded or killed and And as you think about that, I would pray that if I was the company commander or the battalion commander, that that platoon commander would come to me and say, hey, Jocko, this is stupid. Let me tell you how many people we've lost. Let me tell me other the platoons have lost.

And let me tell you what we've gotten out of it. We've gotten nothing out of it. And we need to stop this or we need to find a better way to do it. If you want to send us in there, let us set up a strong point. Let us set up a bunkered position. We'll stay and we'll observe. But us just walking around in there waiting to get blown up makes no sense whatsoever. Please, let's do something else.

And as a leader, you have to have the open mind to say, okay, thank you. I appreciate that feedback. What are your suggestions? You've been in the area of operations? How do you recommend we do it? And whenever I hear these stories of guys that get put in really terrible situations in the military, it sickens my heart because what you need is a culture inside any organization. The military, yes, but any organization of people to raise their hands and say, hey, wait a second,

this is stupid. Hey, wait a second. Do I not see an American flag on that Indian reservation with a white peace flag underneath it? And wait, wait, wait, wait, stop. And that takes moral courage. It takes training. And it takes a culture inside an organization to stop people in question. what they're doing. And it takes that certain level of detachment that you were talking about. It absolutely

takes detachment. You know, it's like you were saying about like dealing with a four-year-old or something, like when you're in the middle of it, it seems normal. It seems like the way to behave. And it's only when you step back and say, you know, one of the things about human beings, our great strength, I suppose, is that we're supremely adaptable creatures. I was talking to a psychologist one time who used to work for the State Department. He worked in Africa for. He worked in Africa for a while. He talked about, he was telling me some of the stuff that he would encounter, whole villages, where every woman had been raped 10 times over the years, where kids in this village had watched their parents kill, just horrifying stuff. And my question to him at the time,

because he was a psychologist, was, I mean, how are these people not just completely blown out with PTSD and everything else? Like, how are they functional at all, given what we know about PTSD and how it does function under circumstances that are far less severe than that. And that's what he said. He said, you'd be surprised. Humans are very, very adaptable. And to them, this is their environment. And that can work the other way, too, though.

You know, that can work in the direction of, in the new Ken Burns Vietnam documentary, which is just, I don't know if you've watched it yet. I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I watched the, probably, I think, the first two episodes. Okay. So one of the ones you're coming up on, the name of it is this is what we do. And it starts out talking about the get new recruit. He shows up to this place. And like the first thing he sees when he gets to the base that he's at,

it's not a massacre or anything like that. But it's just sort of a, you know, a Vietnamese prisoner or captive being led along by, you know, a corporal or something. And he's just being rough with him and kind of push him along and doing stuff that clearly is outside of regulations. And this new guy shows up and he's like, hey, hey, like, are you supposed to be doing that or whatever it is? And the first thing he hears when he gets over there is. kid, this is Vietnam. This is what we do. And he said that the whole rest of the time that he was there when he saw something he didn't like, when he was doing things that he wasn't sure about, he just repeated in his head. This is Vietnam. This is what we do. This is what we do. And after a while, he didn't have to repeat it anymore. After a while, that was his environment. And, you know, it reminds me, I used to have these recurring dreams. I probably shouldn't share this on the air. But I used to have these recurring dreams. I still have them every once in a while. The details and the setting differ, but it'll be something like the dream starts, and I'm in like a helicopter, say, and I'm flying around like a city, like L.A. or wherever, and I'm just shooting people like

Grand Theft Auto. It's just like a video game. And I'm going through and I'm doing this. Sometimes there's people down there I know my friends and stuff, and it's just all, it seems just like I'm in a video game. And then the way the dream goes is at a certain point after a few minutes of this, all of a sudden it hits me what I'm doing. And I look around and I, it's almost as if I wake up in the dream and I'm like, oh my God, like I'm killing all these people. What, what am I doing? But at the time, it was completely normal. It seemed exactly like this is just what I should be doing or anything like that.

And that's something I think that is, well, it's why you told people stop looking down the barrel of your gun. You know, you got to step back and be able to get that distance so you can change your frame. And again, with the proper training. The proper education you will know as a leader that that behavior will escalate That behavior will escalate and if you allow it to happen it will continue to get worse and so it starts off and I've read all kinds of books about about Vietnam Especially about Vietnam where it starts off it starts off with hey the villagers are we we kind of know them everything's cool give them lollipops But then you know one of our guys dies and then what? We're not getting lollipops as a matter of fact we're kicking the kids away and it it only escalates to there and it escalates to

Murder and and it escalates or it I should say this it can escalate It doesn't automatically escalate because all it takes is someone to step in and say hey no that's across the line Like you know what you want to slap a guy? I get it I get it But that's the line anything once you know one thing we used to say and I used to tell my guys Once the cuffs are on somebody so once we get somebody zip tied it's over like you do what you got to do to get a guy under control Once there's zip tied it's done and and now they're they're they're getting taken care of and you you treat them Firm but fair that's it and so those lines you you have to draw them and you have to hold the line as a leader because

Things start to escalate you know it's the thing that you were asked me about earlier about the the the the Cheshion war and the Russians against the Chessians and it's they didn't they didn't they didn't hold Hold the line with the little things and that when you lose that discipline even on the smaller things Well eventually then you don't have the discipline on the bigger things Can you go overboard with that? Yes, you can. I can hold the discipline so hard on the little things that no one listens to me on the big things That's why leadership is hard because there's a dichotomy there that you have to balance you can't be freaked out because you know You didn't you didn't blouse your boots when you were supposed to But at the same time if I start to let too many things slide well, it will escalate.

And it seems like maybe with things like that, a lot of people who are civilians, they laugh when they see in movies or, you know, TV shows or something about how soldiers in combat are still expected to groom themselves, or still expected to take care of themselves and comport themselves in a military way.

And what I tell them a lot of the times is, and maybe you can confirm this because I don't really know what I'm talking about, but is that, you know, my feeling on why that stuff is so important is that you can't have, you know, you can't have Iraq and the sectarian war and all the stuff, the storm that's going on around them. You can't have that become the environment to which they're adapting. The environment to which they need to be well adapted is the U.S.

military. That's their environment. That's what they're focused on following these rules and behaving in this way. And then when that's their environment, they can go into these places and do their jobs. If they get in there and they start reacting to what's going on around them, because, I mean, you, then you can tell a guy. He's talking about going native, right? You can't go native. Yeah. Once, uh, that's, that's apocalypse now, right? You can tell a guy, uh, once the cuffs are on. Uh, but, you know, if, if I was talking to a family yesterday and this is the guy that just cut their heads off, well, I mean, you know, you, you, you can't have, you can't put yourself in a situation because it does make sense to beat the shit out of that guy it does make sense to put a

bullet in his head when the cuffs are on like from a even from a moral standpoint in certain ways like that you can justify that you know um and so that's why you can't be reacting to whatever it is that's going on and it sounds like that's kind of what you're saying yeah and there's actually an interesting dichotomy there as well because you you need to follow the rules right because if I told, if the three of us decided, hey, we're going to go on this village raid, and we're all going to use our morals as our guide. Well, we have three different scenarios. You're, you just admitted that you'd be executing somebody that was already handcuffed. Who knows what you'd be doing? You know, I don't even want to know, right? So, so we, we're all over the map, right? Maybe you're, maybe you're saying you're, you're not even going to, don't even want to handcuff anyone because you think that's too offensive and I'm somewhere in the middle. Whatever the case may be, we're all over the map. So I would always tell the, Guys look you need to do what is legal What's what's legal but then the paradox of that is sometimes what you can get away with the legally Still isn't the right thing to do and that's again that's why there's a dichotomy between those two between do I fall the rules exactly

Or I mean you know look at look at me like look at San Creek that my boss told me to shoot this guy Show told me to shoot this three year old baby My boss told me to do that I'm I'm I'm Should I be following orders? Is there a threat that I don't know about? You know, these days, you know, I've heard a lot of stories now The guys that that took down Mosul, right? The the enemy was sending surrendering children To come and surrender to coalition forces and they would be strapped with IED vests suicide vests and over and over again. It was our US military you know, especially our our explosive ordinance disposal folks and that were going

and disarming these bombs on these kids but yeah how do you feel after you see two or three of those little kids get killed plus two or three EOD guys get killed and now you're going to fight those guys and they want to surrender that's a very challenging thing and if you don't maintain discipline it's a slippery slope and it's funny because we're saying two things at the same time which sound contradictory and yet that's life that on one end you need to have this super strict that you're not going to bend under any circumstances. And on the other hand, you think that you rightly point out to is the fact that real leadership

is also the ability to think on your feet and no two situations are alike. So the rule following approach, while it may save you from some of the worst abuses, is not always necessarily the right thing. And there is also the time when we almost follow the rules, except when we don't, because that's the one time when it's correct. And that ability to make the right call at the right time, that's what make an extraordinary human being. When we're just sort of in debates or popping off at the mouth today, we sort of take for granted that the whole, I was just following orders question was settled at Nuremberg.

It was not settled at all. That's an incredibly complicated question for just the reason you were describing. You know, somebody who worked at a Nazi death camp, you know, they didn't make 10,000 independent decisions to kill somebody. They made one decision that their own personal moral compass was going to get outsourced to the state and that they were going to do their duty and follow their orders. They made that decision once, and now once you've made that decision and you've outsourced your moral compass, which again, under most circumstances, that might be the thing that keeps you from doing the wrong thing. That might be the thing that keeps me from executing that, you know, Al-Qaeda guy. But when the institutions themselves start to get warped, or if you're in even if the institution is, you're in, even if the institution is. an individual unit or something.

You know, it's, I can't remember where I heard it, but there's a, some zoologist or somebody who pointed out to him that, like he had asked why zebras have black and white stripes when the grass is gold colored and yellow and they don't blend into that at all. Clearly tigers can see that. And he pointed out to him that that camouflage isn't to blend into the environment. That camouflage is to blend in with each other. They blend with the herd. And so the tigers have a difficult time.

tracking down and focusing on an individual. And they, oh, they figure that out because they wanted to try to, you know, put ear clips on them or something to track these things around. But they noticed every time they put something identifiable on one of them, the tigers would kill it. It was because now they had something to focus on. And so, and that's, you know, I'm not making a literal evolutionary comparison here, but there's an interesting, like, just sort of analogy, which is this instinct to blend in with the herd. There's just, there's safety there. There's a sense of security there. and there's there's virtue in forfeiting a certain amount of your personal judgment to the group to which you have obligations.

That's a good thing under most circumstances, you know, at least in a lot of circumstances, you know, that's what duty is. That's what, you know, just fulfilling your obligations to your people or you, you know, your unit or something. Who are you, especially if you're an 18-year-old kid who just got out of high school and you're over there and you're in a situation where you've got, you know, like, you know, in Milai. You've got officers. You've got, you know, not just your immediate officer, but it seems to be being reinforced by your captain above, you know, your company commander.

At the time in Mili, there was a, there was a major general in a helicopter observing buzzing around that place. And so, you know, you're in a situation where you say to yourself, like, who am I to say that what's going on here is wrong? It seems wrong to me because of what I learn from my mama or whatever. But what does that mean? Like I've got a captain, I've got a lieutenant, I've got my sergeants, I've got this major general in the air, and, you know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this, you know, I just got here four months ago. This was, this is Charlie Company's first major combat operation. They really hadn't made contact, direct combat with the enemy. And it's the first time, any of them have seen combat for the most part. And I think it's,

there's certainly a certain amount of weakness that's involved like you were talking about, but I also think there's a certain amount of moral confusion that happens. And that's, there can't be that kind of confusion. Like that is where leadership has got to take over. I can add another lay of complexity to this. Okay, so, so first of all, I do think that the, well, Napoleon said, if you execute an order that you know is wrong, and when he was talking about it, he's not talking about something immoral, he's talking about if I do something where

bunch of my men get killed because the general said to do it and I do it I'm culpable So that's that's pretty clear that if your boss tells you to do something that you know is gonna In Napoleon's case it was get a bunch of your guys killed then then you say no and if you do it you're culpable for what happens You could say the same thing if if I get told to do something that's morally or ethically wrong and I do it well guess what then I'm responsible for that What what becomes a little bit complicated to me or adds another layer of complexity is This if I'm going to Sand Creek and I'm with Chivington and he's or Shivington he says Hey, we're gonna go there and we're gonna execute this and we're we're we're gonna kill these guys We're gonna we're gonna conduct a raid and

I don't believe in it. Okay, so I say you know what? I don't believe in it. I don't think it's the right thing to do I think that we've made enough peace with them. We've caused enough problems. That's their land. I'm not going Okay, so now you don't go Because you didn't believe in the mission well now who's out there conducting the mission? Everyone that's going out there to conduct the mission is people that are compliant with what he's saying So you would be You would be morally a better person if you said okay. I'm gonna go ahead and do this Because if I don't I know it's gonna be someone that's totally compliant with

Shivington and I'd rather be there to at least spare some of the people Which we know people did and And so there's there's a little complex you know I talk about this in the business world too people say you know my boss told me to do this and and I I think it's a bad idea and I don't think we should do it. Okay, so are you going to get put off the project? Are you going to get pulled to a different department where you no longer can take care? Because you listen to hard on my people. I refuse to do this. Okay, that's fine. You refuse to do this. I'll put someone in there that won't refuse and you no longer can protect your people and your people in a worse situation. So you know, the whole organization is degraded. A whole organization. So you raise your hand. You make your protest. But sometimes you've got to say, okay, I've made my protest. And I understand that you're still wanting me to do this.

And even though I think it's the wrong thing to do, I'm going to proceed down the path. Because I'd rather me be able to mitigate as much of this problem as I can than have somebody that's just going to do this to the fullest extent that you would want them to do. So there's another additional complexity there that. it gets involved. Absolutely. Because sometimes, as you said, just denying, you're just making yourself feel better,

but the reality is that plan is going to go ahead. You are the only thing that's standing the way of that plan going to the 100 percentile. You can bring it down to 50, you know? It's still going to feel ugly. You're still going to feel part of something you don't want to be part of. But the only thing you do by refusing is patting yourself on the back and say, am I not a moral guy? It's like, yeah, but no.

Because, you know, it's like the thing is, You can use that power in that situation for something that is better than if you just look yourself in the mirror or say, how great you are, by not doing it. And in fact, that's what was pretty incredible about the San Creek story. Silas Sol, you know, he's told right before, if you don't want, stay home. You know, nobody's forcing you. Just stay home, don't be part of it. And Seoul and Kramer and some of those guys said, no, we want to be there. We want to be there to observe, to be able to make the choice on the spot.

and it makes a huge difference right there. My feeling on it, just sort of looking at it all from the outside, is that especially in a counterinsurgency war, that without strict military discipline and strong leadership, that abject savagery is gravity will take you there. That's where things will head on their own, unless you are supremely focused on discipline and leadership and education and those kind of things.

That you don't have to, you don't really have to ask the question, question, how can this kind of thing happen? The real question is, how does this not happen all the time, right? How is it that American soldiers in Iraq and, you know, you go into Iraq and they're seeing maybe husbands and fathers that they spoke to the previous day that they know are innocent and not part of the fighting and they see his wife beheaded and him with a power drill hole on the side of his head, how are American soldiers not going and executing reprisal attacks against these people all the time? How is it not just completely getting out of hand? And like that to me is by far the more interesting question. I don't have to ask myself,

how is it that, you know, somebody went and and shot up, you know, the house of the person who did something like that? That's an easy question to answer. And the much more interesting one is how it doesn't happen all the time. And it seems like it's, it has to be in It can't come down to like, you know, institutional culture, right? Relating it to their sense of personal identity and social identity with the group, that this is not who we are. That if I do this, it's not going to win me any kudos from my teammates or anything like that. They're going to look at that as a betrayal because I'm bringing dishonor upon us because this is not what we're about. And they have to be able to look at it that way.

And if they don't know that, if they don't know that by doing something like that, they're going to, you know, they want to blend in with the group. They want to be accepted by the group. They want to be looked at as somebody that can be relied on. And that has to mean following the rules and doing the right thing. Yeah. Well, Daniel, you pointed this out earlier. You said, well, this seems like it's just the communications aspect is so important. And that's 100% right.

So as we all know the the The strategy in the Vietnam War for America Was to kill more of them than they did of us and drop more bombs on them and eventually they'll just break just a war of attrition And and so the the strategy was get rack up as many kill count as high kill count as you possibly can So that's the messaging That's the messaging so when that's the messaging that's the messaging in in Iraq they were very clear about hey

we're here to we're not an occupying force we're here to liberate these people we're here to secure the populace and make sure that they can have a free country that's the messaging so does that messaging always make it down to the front lines no that's why we do have incidents where you know bad horrible things happen absolutely but it is about the messaging and it is about everyone understanding why they're doing what they're doing what their mission is what is what is right and what is wrong and you can be educated on that

legally hey you're not allowed to do this you can do that but you can't do this and then the other point that you made which is well you said you got to be able to manage people in a time of crisis as a leader but more important and you you actually you actually asked a really complicated question and then answered it yourself and you did that like three times in that one sphere of conversation that you had with yourself. It's a caffeine. Yeah, yeah. Is you said, you know, you've got to be able to manage people in these pressure situations. And then you added that, but what you really need is culture.

And you're right because you're not going to be there. The leader is not, I wasn't with all my elements on the battlefield all the time. They were out there all the time without me, all the time without me. They were the ones that had to understand what they couldn't, what they couldn't do. They were the ones that had to make those hard decisions. They weren't calling my snipers didn't call back to me and say hey jaco I see this with this guy they didn't even ask their platoon commanders that they didn't ask anyone They knew what the rules of engagement were they knew what our strategy was they understood And one of the things that I told them you know speaking of rules of engagement so our rules of engagement was you know several page

Legally's document written by some lawyers in Washington DC or wherever and you know I got kids in my platoon that are 20 21 22 years old you know high school graduate and they came in the seal teams like I did by the way and so they're looking at a legal document like that that doesn't doesn't mean anything to them sure you know my rules of engagement for them was very simple make sure the people you're killing are bad you make sure the people you're killing are bad and why and then I explained to them why that was important and the reason why that was important was because the day that some civilians brought a headless body that it had taken a 300

wind mag round to the head and their head was gone and they said this was our a mom or this was our school teacher or this was our neighborhood doctor and one of your snipers killed them and they would figure out it was us first of all our operations would get shut down so selfishly we don't want to get our operations Shut down but more important than the selfish reason if that happened we would leave all the soldiers and Marines that we were working with on a daily basis that we were providing overwatch for we leave them without the support that we had committed to give them because we weren't allowed to operate anymore because we weren't being discriminatory enough with our fire so the culture is so important people understanding why they're doing what they're doing is so important and if you don't get that messaging into your point Daniele if you don't get the communication, correct, then you're going to end up

in a world to hurt. And the point you just made, make sure the people you kill are bad, is such think about it, there are so few words, right? You say it in like very, very few words, and yet it's so central because you look at not only San Creek or Millie, but look at

even like half of the, you know, when the Nazis invade the Soviet Union and then when the Red Army does the counter and they start invading Germany. Both armies do horrible things to one another civilian. And the idea is, well, the Nazis did it to our people. So we did it to theirs. Well, that ma'am that you are shooting in the head, she had nothing to do with what happened to your people. She's not the Nazi soldier who did it. She's not the bad one. Just because she's from the same nation, are you kidding me? That doesn't make her the bad person. And I think that's part of the

problem with group identity. That's so often, that's why stereotypes are dangerous, because you start grouping individuals into this mental category you may have of like those guys are bad, that individual only share some physical characteristic with the other one. They share, maybe they are even related, but they are not the same person, you know, they haven't made the same choices, they haven't committed the same action. So the fact that you treat all the Cheyenne the same, all you decide you treat all the Vietnamese is the same, all the Germans the same, all the Russians.

That's where everything goes wrong, because you are not making sure that the person you're hurting is the bad one. He's not the one. There's no revenge there. They are not the same people. And yet it happens over and over again where people fall into this idea of group mentalities. Well, I couldn't catch that guy, but is one of their group.

It's like, no, man, there are individuals that are involved. There are not, there's no collective guilt of, it's kind of the same reason why, for example, terrorism strike us as so awful in every possible way, because you're not going against the guy that you have a grievance against. You're going against the guy from the same nation. It's like, that has nothing to do with one another, you know, there. I feel like sometimes group identity, it's one of those double-edged swords, right? Because on one hand, there's the side of it that we mentioned earlier. Maybe your loyalty to your group and not wanting to bring dishonor upon them, if that's the culture, is what keeps you from putting a bullet in the head of the guy you just cuffed. You might be able to appeal to, you know, you can say to people, hey, we're Americans and this is not how we behave.

And you're appealing to their group identity there. You know, and that, it's a double-edged sword. That is a case in which you are using group identities for as the good guys. And granted, yeah, it may not be that every single one from that country really fit that idea, but you're putting a nice ideal and they are encouraging people to live up to it. That's already a difference from while it's similar in dynamics to damn the bad guys and plugging everyone into that group where do you know that that person really fit that stereotype that you have of that group? How did you make clear to your men when you said, you know,

sure the people you're killing are bad that they understood what was meant by that it is well there's first of all there there are specifics in the rules of engagement and one of them is clear hostile intent hostile actor hostile intent which means this person has to be doing something actively that's going to cause it cause a negative impact now you can tell which people are bad you can tell when they're starting to do something that's hostile actor hostile intent you can tell And these guys, you know, my guys would, they knew they would err on the side of like, I'm going to make sure that this person is doing something bad. But, you know, we had some decent arguments about the rules of engagement. I had some decent arguments about the rules of engagement up the chain of command because the rules of engagement were applying to all of Iraq.

And Ramadi was not like the rest of Iraq at this time in 2006. And, you know, if you've got someone that is, for instance, observing a location with binoculars, right? If you're observing, if you're in Baghdad and you're looking at a location with binoculars, you're gathering intelligence, which is, which could be considered,

which is not considered a hostile act. It's, it's the intelligence gathering. You might suspect the person being bad, but there's, there's no way to prove that. In Ramadi, if you saw somebody that was looking with binoculars at friendly force,

They weren't gathering intelligence. They were absolutely coordinating attack and attack and that is a big difference because that is a hostile act and it's damn sure hostile intent and so you know those are the kind of things that I would discuss up the chain of command and we would provide them the resources you know It's I talk a lot about playing the game right like if my boss tells me to do something I'm gonna play the game I'm gonna try and do it and and and occasionally I'll get the question of like well What if you get told to do something that you really don't want to do? What if you got told to do something that you didn't that you were opposed to right? What if you got the order to go to the mili massacre and you got the order? Well, yeah, I'd say no. I'd say no. And first of all, that doesn't happen.

The closest example I have to that happening was for me in Ramadi, we had been told that we had to take a certain number of Iraqi soldiers with us. on every operation we conducted because we were trying to turn the war over to them and so they needed to get out there and do operations And they were telling this they were putting this this this rule all over every American unit in Iraq You need to have an Iraqi face on every operation. So what did the Americans do? What did what did the American units do what they did was they say okay. Yeah, we're gonna take our platoon of 40 guys and we're gonna take two Iraqis with us and there's your Iraqi face Well that doesn't move the the war forward. They were obeying the rules. Sure So the senior leadership figured this out and said no you guys are playing games Here's the new rule for every and I forget what the number was they made a ratio for every seven Americans that you have or for every

One American you have to have you have you have to have seven Iraqis or there was some number some ratio and In Ramadi some of the units of Iraqis that we were working with only had 18 guys or 17 guys and so that would have been me sending my guys in the field with two or three seals only which sending if you've got a if you're gonna go into a bad area and you're gonna who you gonna send because you want to have a radio man you want to have a medic you want to have a guy that can call for fires you want to have a leader and you want to have a couple heavy heavy weapons guys that's that's six or seven guys right there minimum right and so when the chain of command told me hey you got to do this ratio I looked at the ratio and I said hey guys in Ramadi that's that's not a good idea

and here's why I'm not gonna send my guys in the field without a corpsman or Without a radio man or without a J-TAC or without a machine gunner. I'm not I'm not gonna do that and you know what they said They said that makes sense jocco you proceed like if you articulate yourself correctly Then you can get your point across now had they said to me Hey listen no you're only allowed to do this well then I would have objected further up the chain of command and I would not have put my guys at risk To do something that didn't make sense not not gonna do it and and and again Again, that's what I always encourage military people, but not just military people, business people. If you're the CEO of a company and you've given some directive that you don't understand the full depth of the directive that you've given and your front line, somebody in your front lines realizes that's going to have a hugely negative impact on your company, do you want them just to follow orders?

You absolutely don't want them to followers. You want them to raise their hand and say, hey, boss, this doesn't make sense. And the thing that you said about, yeah, you don't want to surround yourself with yes, man, which makes perfect sense. Then again, it's one of the things where you really need to have worked on yourself because the reality is that most people have an ego. Most people don't like to be told, hey, boss, sorry, but that doesn't sound right. It's like, what do you mean?

You know, there's that reaction. It's like stung in their pride, which of course, that's where all bad decision making start going, but it's a very normal reaction, you know what I mean? it is like most people have to one degree or another an ego. And especially if like your guy maybe phrase it, maybe they're right, right? They make a point where they are pointing to something in your plan that doesn't work. But they phrase it in a way that's kind of blunt.

So A, you don't like being reproached. B, you don't like the tone. By that point, even though their content is perfectly correct, you're not hearing it because it's like you have a better, I don't like you. First, you're criticizing me and then you're going about it with that tone. the guy is just saying things plainly how they are. Maybe he doesn't have a bad tone.

It's just not cuddling you in like slowly, gently saying, hey, let's see it this way. And you know what? A guy in that, because I get that kind of question all the time with all the companies we work with. Oh, I got this guy and my boss has a big ego and I can't correct him because he just, he just gets a, well, first of all, when you, just like you said, if you've got a big ego and I tell you that your plan is wrong, I'm attacking a fortified position and you're only going to bolster. your position stronger. Exactly.

And so don't attack that position. Instead of simple technique that you can use is say, hey, boss, I'm really not sure why we're using this approach. Could you explain this to me? Because I want to make sure that I really understand what it is you want me to do. And it seems like if I do this right here, it's going to cause this reaction. And I know you don't want that to happen.

So could you just give me a hand and fully understanding what your plan is? And that way you're kind of massaging their ego a little bit. And it opens their mind. And that's all you have to do is open up their ears. That's the goal is just to open their ears a little bit so that you can start to have a conversation with them and so that they can, going back to the whole topic, so that they can see you as a human being with an idea or an opinion that actually matters, as opposed to seeing you as someone that's attacking their ego. And that ego thing, I mean, if you think about the wars that have been, you know, we always talk about the wars that are caused by religion, but the wars that are caused by ego are also pretty severe. And a lot of these incidents that we talk about these retaliatory incidences, well, who's, you know, who's. going to be the first person to say you attacked my tribe and I'm going to let it slide

but that's that's that's a tough person that's a hard position to be in you're seen as weak you're seen as you you know vulnerable you're seen as someone that can be pushed around so there's that's a very delicate game that you have to play and that causes problems and that that ends up it's a game that's so hard to play in fact that most people or or many people across the span of time have said, no, I'm not going to say that. They drew blood. We're going to draw more blood. Yep.

And it goes to what you were saying a second ago. So your people have to know that you're going to ask those questions of your leadership and that you're doing that work because they've got to trust you. You know, that way when Jocko comes to him and says, hey, guys, I know this is going to sound a little bit weird, but here's what we're doing. And here's who you're bringing with you. And this is what we're doing. they know that if you're telling them to do it, it's got to be done.

That every discussion has been had, that every angle has been looked at, that you've run it up the chain of command and registered your objections if they're there. But they know that Jocko is not going to send us out to do something like this unless it simply has to be done. And I get asked this question a lot. Well, what do I do if one of my subordinates has a question about the way I've planned. something and I don't have a good answer. What do I do then? And I say, well, what you do then is you listen to them. You actually listen to what they're saying because if I've told you to do something and you've then responded with some reason why we shouldn't do that thing and I can't explain away your reason, then probably I'm wrong. And as a leader, this is another thing where our ego plays

a role. As a leader, our ego says, well, if I admit that I'm wrong to the troops, they're going to think I'm up they're gonna think I don't know what I'm doing the opposite is actually true if I was in charge of you two and I presented you with a plan and you guys came back and said hey that plan's not smart and I said shut up and do the way I told you you don't respect me more you respect me less absolutely and if if I came to you two with a plan and said hey guys here's the way we're going to execute this and you say hey that's not a good idea we should do it a different way and I say okay well what do you recommend and we come together with a collaborative plan you don't think less of me as a leader as a matter of fact you think more of me as

leader you think that I'm a humble guy that will listen and take input and by the way bonuses you all now have real true ownership of the plan and we all feel good about it and when you guys go in the field you execute it to the utmost of your ability because it's something that you own it's amazing how everything you're saying is it's as if you took a list of all the traits of lieutenant callie at mili and literally just said do the opposite of all these things he was a guy who couldn't take criticism from his men 100% who asserted uh you know know, who pulled rank anytime, anything like that happened, who was a complete transparent, yes man to his captain above him, who was just never ask any questions. I mean, just right

down the line. And as a result, his men had no trust in him so that when they got into a situation that was chaotic, they felt like they were standing out on the corner by themselves in a country they didn't understand with nobody looking out for them. I don't want to say this in a way that makes it sound like I'm trying to justify anything they did. Of course not. But you put men in a situation where they feel like they're in complete chaos and they happen to have automatic weapons in their hands. Well, if I find myself in a situation where I'm completely overwhelmed by chaos, that automatic weapon's probably going to start to look like the best tool I have for structuring my

environment. Yeah, and obviously this went way beyond that. Years ago, I forget how many years ago, there was a shooting in New York City. I think it was 38 rounds were fired at maybe a homeless person, an honest person. Unarmed person. I forget the situation, but there's a lot of people that just couldn't believe that all these All these police officers shot at this unarmed individual. He's a freaking horrible situation and again, I always I always will say this like whenever I talk about bad police shootings I've been on ride-alongs with cops. I've done hits with cops. It's a freaking hard job and and and and I'm not a guy that like I've done that a couple times here and there

But go out on that beat every day and deal with those scumbags of the world every single day and You're gonna have it's gonna be it's the freest it's one of the hardest jobs in the world That situation people say how the hell did that happen? Well There's there's A lot of tension in a situation the emotions are high people are screaming we're not trained well Everyone is sitting there with their slack out of the trigger and when that first bang happens it's a it's a chain reaction That's one of the situations that that, you know, I would see with my guys that was beautiful in Ramadi,

because they wouldn't do that. If one of the snipers took a pointed shot at someone, they would take the pointed shot, and the others would hold fire, check fire until, you know, the situation either evolved or de-escalated. But the army was always quite impressed with the fact that we would take really surgical shots at bad guys and there wouldn't be, you know, massive amounts of collateral damage. again, sometimes it's unavoidable, but maybe you can talk a little bit about that.

Because I think that's one thing that gets really lost on a lot of people's thing. I think there's a lot of propaganda that helps it get lost. You know, there's no question that there's been an evolution in our values and our relationship to these kind of things over the years. You go back to something like Sand Creek, 1864, there might not have been a whole lot of people shedding too many tears over what happened. You get up to Milai and, you know, there's some controversy and there's some, you know, there's a cover up, all those kind of things. But once it comes out and it's laid bare and the evidence is clear, things had changed from 1864. And that incident and a few, you know, other incidents that were going on that made it out or a few pictures that came out, it turned people against the war. They decided that this is not worth putting our men in a situation where we're going to be doing things like this.

This is not worth it. And you get up to today in the Iraq war, something like Abu Ghraib, which is an unacceptable situation. But we're talking about prisoner abuse that doesn't – that wouldn't cause the people who were working that prison five years before that, the Iraqis who worked for Saddam, that wouldn't even, you know, they wouldn't even make it through their filter, right? So, I mean, what was going on there with the American soldiers? It was it was not okay. But it wasn't walking into a village and massacring 500 people. It wasn't, you know, brutal torture in the same way that we would think of what was going on before we took control of that prison. And yet, our response to that and the military's response to it once it came out was pretty dramatic.

I mean, there's, and it was quick. It didn't, there was not as much of a delay. As soon as it comes out, there's. So there's a clear shift that's going on there. If even primarily from the standpoint of it's just it's a breach in discipline. That's not how you behave. Yeah. And one of the things that I talk about with my guys is because you got to frame this right.

Because, you know, you mentioned earlier that if you had to dealt with this person that had cut the heads off of the three-year-old girl yesterday and now you had him cuffed and knew as him, that guy deserves a bullet, right? Hey, I agree with you. That guy deserves a bullet. The problem is, well, number one, it's a breakdown in discipline, but to me, more important, and what I would tell my guys is, if we behave that way, we have a significant chance of strategically negatively impacting our war effort. So I get that you want to kill these bad guys, but more important than us killing these bad guys is us winning this war. And so if we run around doing dumb things, we're going to have a negative strategic impact. And that was actually always the biggest worry as a leader is you don't want to have something happen where you, you know, you drop a bomb on the wrong area or, you know, and a bunch of civilians get killed or, you know, you don't want to have that thing happen. That's a real.

And the effort and lengths that American forces go to to prevent civilian casualties is incredible. I don't think most people have any idea. No, they don't. They don't. And I think that's one of the cool things about creating a certain mythology that people want to live up to. The first time you say it, it may not be true. It may be a wishful thinking that you are those people and you are not quite there.

But as people keep repeating it and you ran again and again with the fact that your behavior doesn't match your ideals, more and more people will keep working on trying to actually build that thing. They don't want to feel like hypocrites. They actually want to live up to that idea. And that's one of the things where while sometimes people get turned off by when you have this high-minded ideal and this very poor behavior, they're like, ah, look at that hypocrisy. They say these things and they don't mean it. Well, sometimes when you say it long enough, people actually do want to live up to it, and they do change their behavior.

So while the theory may not match the practice when you start, if you keep at it long enough, the practice may try to inch closer to match in that theory. The ideals matter not a bad thing. Yeah. I mean, I, you can take it to a political context, right, when people can point back at the United States, say, before the 1960s and before the Civil War and point to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and these high-minded ideas. And people love to be the cynical one that says, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, but slavery and of course. But this and but that. And yeah, totally, totally true. But the conclusion to draw from that is not that the, the. ideals don't matter or that they're just on paper, the fact that those ideals were there was what allowed the civil rights movement to eventually come into being. That's what gave us the room. In fact, you could even say that the thing, we're talking about the same thing. That gap between ideal and reality. One way to talk about that is hypocrisy. But at the same time, that gap, that opening is, that's the opening where people realize that and say there is a gap between our professed idea. and it makes room for that kind of positive change, right? I mean, you can go back. There was, the Mongols were never, ever going to give up slavery. Of course.

Because their moral system didn't have room for that. And so you could go up to them and say, well, how dare you enslave these people? And they're not going to get defensive. They're going to look at you like you're crazy because there's no room for that, you know, for that gap. That idea doesn't even exist. Right. Right. And so the ideals matter.

And when they're broken, you know, again, I think that there's a motivation on the part of a lot of people who are more cynical than they should be, given the country that they're fortunate enough to live in. This is something that you get from going overseas to a lot of places. It's something certainly that I got from spending so much time in Africa and the Middle East for work is, boy, you come back after the first trip over to those places and you realize you want to kiss the ground when you get. get off that airplane. And you want to go around and just hug everybody you see because you are so fortunate to live in a place where things that we absolutely take for granted over here are miracles. And, you know, I think one of the things I really didn't want to do when I was talking about me lying that episode, I stayed very focused on the incident itself sort of because I

you don't want to be making excuses for something like that. You don't want to make it seem like you're trying to gloss over an atrocity. But you don't want to give fuel to that idea that like this speaks to like a larger problem in our society. Because I just don't believe that. Well, that's why it's a dance, right? You know, if you start pushing the button too much in the direction of making apologies for, well, after all, we are good guys. and there are a few exceptions, but look, we are,

we stand for freedom and democracy. He's like, yeah, maybe, but let's not be so quick about sweeping under the rug, all the bad stuff. Let's look at it. The guys we instead push on the button of, hey, look at all the bad stuff. That means that all these ideals are crap,

and it's not real, and it's all hypocrisy. It's like, whoa, slow down a second. Yeah, you get a couple of points where you're right, but you're also missing the boat. It's like, it's almost like, and that happens in most discussion, like in most situations, you rarely have somebody who is 100% wrong,

is that they take a partial truth and they take it too far and they lose perspective of the other side of the equation. People don't understand. Like American soldiers were killed and maimed in situations that absolutely could have been avoided if we disregarded our rules of engagement. And if we made conscious decisions to put ourselves at risk when we did not have to

because we were trying to be sensitive to the environment and to the people that were there. And I don't think enough people recognize the historical anomaly that that is. I mean, that is just, you can't, for thousands of years of human history, that is just completely unthinkable. You couldn't imagine something like that. And the extent to which we go, I mean, Jocko has talked about this before on his show, the extent to which we go to try to make sure that the people, you know, the targets that we're dealing with are targets. I think if more civilians had had an idea of that, people would feel a lot different about what we do over there. You know, it doesn't mean that when something happens like Abu Ghraib, they're not going to react against that.

But they're going to react against it from a place of, hey, we're a good country. That shit is not going to fly. All right? You're not going to represent us that way. And that's fine. That's a healthy way to respond to something like that. But, you know, again, political situation or whatever else is going on, like, you know, people have more of a knee-jerk reaction of those things that you're talking about. And I think in that sense it goes back to that Duncarlin approach to things, right, that ability to look at things one way.

And just when you're getting comfortable with that conclusions to say, yes, maybe that is the conclusion we take, but it's not that easy. There's also a 20% from the other side. That's not really wrong. And you should include in that. And that keeps you thinking on your toes. you don't become dogmatic, you don't become thinking in purely black and white terms. You always have to have that nuance approach, which, and that's the problem. That's the other paradox is most people take nuance to mean weakness.

Then you can't make up your mind. You are too wishy-washy. You are, it's not black, it's not white, it's somewhere in there. It's like, no, that's also a weakness. It's the ability to look at things both ways and also make a decision. That's where to me it comes in as where it's valuable. And I think it's funny because so many of the things that Joe brings up are so about really the kind of human being that you want to become, you know, about self-perfection, really, because that's what it boils down to, which is then what makes you a great leader, because there's no great leader without somebody who has worked on themselves a lot. And, you know, when you break down to the principles, nothing sounds like it's that hard, right?

It's all like, okay, of course. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, that completely. And yet it's one of the things where, while the theory may not be that. hard, the practice is unrelenting. You have to be at it every single day or it's so easy to sleep. There's a great line in the Dowlerching that I was mentioning to Darrow and we're driving down. There's the line that say, my way is very easy to understand and very easy to practice. But nobody understands it and nobody practice it. And I love it because in theory, yes, it's not that bad. It's fairly straightforward. And yet there are so many steps along the way where it's easy to go the wrong path. That is like, yeah, the theory is easy.

The practice is you need to put in the work. And there's no substitute. Each of those steps matters so much too because, you know, Jocko was talking about escalation in those situations. The book about the Warren Chechnya, you talked about, I think, the line. I hadn't read the book until I heard your podcast on it.

And it's just, it's one of those things that when you hear it, it's so obvious. But if you were to just step back from the context a little bit, it kind of seems ridiculous, which is that the same. savagery started when people stopped shaving, when soldiers stopped shaving. And I think part of the reason for something like that is, uh, once it is it's like a escalation is like a ratchet. Once you stop shaving, well, now you're a unit that doesn't shave anymore. Okay, whatever. Well, what that

means is if you're a unit that lacks discipline, well, now your lack of discipline is not going to manifest is not shaving. You already don't shave. That's normal. That's totally normal. So now your lack of discipline is going to get to the next thing. Now I'm not cleaning my weapons properly. And then pretty soon you're a unit that doesn't shave and doesn't clean your weapons properly. And that doesn't even seem like a lack of discipline anymore. That just seems like daily life. And now your lack of discipline or whatever it is is going to go up to the next spot. And it can happen with, you know, it can happen with just brutality and savagery and things like that as well. Where now this kind of thing is just normal. So if I'm angry, and it's totally normal for us to be able to smack these prisoners in the

face, but now I'm really pissed. Well, I'm not going to smack them in the face. I smack them in the face anyway. You know, so I'm going to show my anger now by stepping it up. And, well, okay, if that slides and the leadership doesn't step in, well, now that's normal. And we're, you know, we don't just smack soldiers. We punch some kick soldiers. Once that's the baseline, it ratchets up to that point.

It's going to escalate from there because, you know, that's kind of where it goes. And that's why catching those things right at the beginning and letting people know that, you know, All of these things matter. I mean, that's probably the life lesson of a lot of the stuff you even talk about is everything matters. It all matters. Yeah. And not it takes some time. Like I didn't realize this when I was a 20 year old seal or a 25 year old seal.

You know, I kind of started getting the indications. And that's why, again, you know, I talk about training and leadership because that's what this stuff is, you know. Putting somebody into a moral dilemma with no training is like putting someone onto the jiu jitzum mat with no training They're just going to get destroyed whatever's going to happen is going to happen and they have no control over it And you know, you got to think about these things you got to think deeply about these things So that you have some sort of an anchor that's grounded that won't get ripped out at the first person that says hey shoot that three-year-old baby You want you need to be grounded and have thought about these things in a deeper way and and and You know what you said about people swaying one way or the other

You're right and people actually Want to be led and they want to be led even more so when there is a pressure situation going on when there's something that that that you're not used to or that people aren't used to some kind of stress or some some kind of stress or pressure If you can step up and lead at that moment people are looking for it they're looking for a leader and Those I remember you were talking about one of the guys in me lie the six foot three guy and he's a natural leader right He's a natural leader that people kind of followed and what he started going sideways And started just getting completely savage and brutal people just kind of okay you know he's a guy You know like okay that guy's step up

up and and and there was no one on the other end of the spectrum to say hey no we're not doing that stop and that's the biggest lesson from that situation actually from both the situations yeah and you know you know people talk about is the how can the leader be responsible if they're not there you know yes the leaders responsible whether they're there the way they train the people the way they educated the way they communicated the culture that they sat with those people they're responsible and certainly these leaders were absolutely responsible in these scenarios.

I guess before we are up, one last thing I want to ask you is these days, you say you work a lot with businesses, you clearly are, you know, you're working primarily on the concept of leadership and how to teach people better tools to handle it. How do you go about it? What's your, what's, is it primarily like a business oriented approach now with major businesses that are? Yeah, we'll go in and do an assessment and figure out where the friction points are, figure out where they're having problems and and then we solve the problems that they're having through leadership and and that's every single problem in every single

organization is a leadership problem all of them whether it's your P&Ls upside down whether it's your processes aren't working correctly whether you got the wrong people in the wrong positions it doesn't matter the problems are going to get solved through leadership and leadership alone and that's why we that's why we're doing well because If you've got a if you've got a P&L that's upside down, you've got leaders that aren't paying attention to their expenditures and their income right If you've got processes that aren't working you've got leaders that are in charge of those processes that are allowing them to Continue to exist without refinement if you've got people that are in positions that shouldn't be in those positions You've got leaders that are allowing them to be in those positions without either being coached and mentored and trained so that they can lead or Remove from those positions and you can go right down the list with any problem that that any organization is having,

there's a leadership solution to that problem. And that's what we do. Seems to me like, it's definitely the thing I'm gonna take away from the most and listen to you talk about this stuff is, one of the things that struck me is I came in with a lot of questions in mind, I wanted to talk to you about, like, that I started out with, right?

You got your guys, you're going into a horrible situation and there's these horrible things going on. How do you restrain your guys from going and retaliating in these terrible ways? And your response and the look on your face and everything to it, it actually like kind of threw me off a little bit. It wasn't what I was expecting because your answer to that really was, dude, if I have gotten to the point where we're there in Iraq and there's a guy with handcuffs and I have to figure

out how to restrain my guys from doing something, I failed a long time ago. Because you took it as almost like, well, you know, you deal with it. That was taking care. How do we stop them? We stopped them in training. We stopped them in boot camp. We stopped them at buds. We stopped them in training all the way up to here.

And I don't want to make that. I don't want to make that I don't want to make light of that because that that is a hard situation and when you lose guys in a unit of 35 guys and you got guys that are wounded and killed There is absolutely There is an absolute Fire that you have to control Because we know who's doing it we we can find them we can and get out there and get after them.

And so we do have to keep ourselves in check. We do, I mean, we had many conversations of, hey, remember why we're here. Remember who we represent. Remember that if we get out a line, we won't even be allowed to do what we do anymore. Oh, so don't take it the wrong way that in any unit, any unit, you lose people. You lose your friends. You lose your brothers. that is an emotional it's an emotional thing and you're in an emotional situation

already and you have access direct access to unleash your emotions if you are allowed to and yeah the you know with the platoon commanders that work for me with I mean those guys you know lay who wrote the book with me I mean he absolutely had to had to sit his guys down and explain to them Hey, let's remember why we're here. Let's remember that We could go to jail if we do the wrong thing and nothing that we do here is worth any of you going to jail for any amount of time So I didn't mean to make light of how hard that is and and how difficult that can be and and it's not just for me Not just for for the seals, but you know the Marines the soldiers that were there who are dealing with like I said

They're dealing with younger kids and and and less with less training and you know those when you come in the seal teams you came in because you wanted to go to combat like every single seal wants to go to combat they want to be there i don't know if you've ever heard my retirement speech it's it's it's on youtube but when like i made a list and said hey if you want to go over to the eastern part of amadi and live in uh in a blown out bunker and get into firefights every day put your name on this list and i walked out of the room i came back 20 minutes later and every single guy in the task unit had their name on the list so we're dealing with guys at every single guy that's what they want to do now do they get tired

do they get combat stress they absolutely do do they get scared yes they do it's it's hard but we have a guy that at least start from the position of I want to do this this is my profession the army you know you you you definitely end up with guys that are coming in the army because they wanted to pay for college or they wanted to get a job or they wanted to get out of whatever hometown they're in and and that's how they ended up in the army again there's also a great number of soldiers that are just as eager for combat and certainly a great number of Marines that are the same attitude so each each one of those people you have your own challenges and it and it is hard and you do have to and what goes back

to what this whole thing has been about as the leader you can't be the one that's getting wrapped up in those emotions you can't be the one when yeah I'll tell you what your heart's gonna be fucking broken when you Guys it's gonna be broken and you're gonna want nothing more than to go out and Rubble cities and salt the earth so everyone is dead and no one will ever live there again But if you let that get a hold of you as the leader Your your your team and your men are going to be in hell. That's where they're gonna end up and So that's why the education the training the understanding the understanding the understand

I mean it's so many people contacted me after I did the the the me lie podcast that You thank you that they they play that me lie podcast for leadership training inside multiple military organizations It's it's awesome I'm so happy that they do that because when I came out with that podcast I had tons of people that said I didn't it didn't know about that People that were in leadership positions didn't understand didn't know what the me lie masker was and it's a it's one of the darkest Stains on our history but you have to talk about it and you talked earlier about hey I don't want to make I didn't really want to go into too much of what led up to it because I didn't want to make excuses man I went into detail of why it happened because I want everyone

to understand all those little things how when you cut those corners how when you play the the telephone game with your intelligence and you let people say things that you don't put them in check and you don't you let them use words that are correct and you have people that don't have a culture to ask why we're doing this and you set those situations up and you let bad leaders into situation or in positions that they shouldn't be in cali failing out of oCS multiple times like that's it that's it you let those things happen and you're going to end up in hell and as a leader that's your job to stop it yeah yeah it's a good place to wrap it up man mili mili didn't necessarily happen on march 16th 1968 it

It happened when Cali failed OCS. It happened when the intelligence failed to get passed down properly. It failed every time somebody was allowed to smack around a Vietnamese and they didn't get called on it. That's when it happened. You know, the actual acute incident was just the result of a long, long process. Awesome. That's great, man. Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me on. Thanks for you guys for what you do. And you guys put out kick-ass podcasts. And I appreciate listening to them. And maybe we'll get to do this again sometime. Thank you as well. I mean, I can tell you from my own personal experience, listen to your podcast as well as a lot of guys I know of all ages,

guys from high school all the way on up into their 50s, one guy that I know is a huge fan. You know, I don't want to, it's just three of us, and it's getting a little sweaty in here already, so I won't get on my knees too much. But it's not an exaggeration to say that you're changing people's lives. So thank you and keep it up. I mean, I appreciate it, man.

Have a great effect on me personally. So thank you. Thanks, brother. Thanks for listening. Thanks, guys. And that wraps up the conversation. And thanks for listening. And thanks to Daryl Cooper and Danielle Bilelli

for organizing that discussion. And I look forward to having some more of those types of conversations in the future about history and about human nature and about leadership. And in the meantime, Echo. Yes Speaking of leadership If people want to

Lead themselves down the right path The path, yes Do you have any Maybe recommendations for them? Sure, of course I do So we're all working out Right? Mm-hmm, pretty much, yeah

Every day Yeah You work out every day Yeah, although I got sick Straight up Got a rest Yeah, flu Flu.

Yeah. You know what that is? Yeah, man, I hear bad things. Yeah, no, it wasn't good. Shot. Yeah, I didn't get that. Hey, man. You know, I hear mixed reviews

about the whole flu deal. Either way, you're obviously better. You seem better. Oh, I'm better. Which is good. Because now you can get back to working out. And when you get back to working out, you still want to maintain your joints.

Sick or not sick? Maintain your joints. That's what I think. I think everyone would agree with me on that one. And the way you maintain your joints is to take. joint supplements like krill oil jocco super krill oil that's the good one jaco supplements that's right also a good supplement called joint warfare take those every single day man every single day no brisk no slack no slack unless you

run out but here's the thing you don't have to run out anymore you subscribe you get the subscription situation every what 30 days 60 days whatever however much you use or whatever you got to estimate and then boom you do your subscription you get one in the mail every month never run out maintain the joints important more important than your power mass gainer 5,000 I think so yeah also you want some cognitive enhancements which you do you do you totally do rather it's like you know cell phone signals and you know pollutions pollutants from cars I say mess up your brain sometimes you need some cognitive enhancement

Jock was another supplement called discipline. It's a pre-mission. Physical enhancement, cognitive enhancement, all in one, boom, and it tastes good, boom. Take it. I would say take that every day. You take it before stuff. So you call it a pre-mission indicates you take it

before you do something where you're gonna use your- before I do a mission. Yeah. That mission could be going to work with a company. Like, hey, I'm gonna need to be on my A game mentally because we're solving problems. We're digging in the leadership situations. We're finding out what's going on a game has got to come also Jiu jitsu yeah, but the people always say well you I thought you didn't take pre workouts and I don't not for a workout

Oh yeah for the workout. I mean I might do that one out of every 10 workouts Maybe even one out 20 where I take some kind of a pre pre work out Yeah it's because when I wake up in the morning. I'm not hungry Yeah, I'm not even third I'm I mean I drink water but I'm not like I don't feel the need for some yeah jack me up during the workout yeah I'm just gonna go get it yeah and you don't really drink coffee so you don't even have that situation yeah no I don't like coffee yeah people why I don't like coffee don't like the taste of it tastes horrible yeah so what that did is it eat like it made you or it didn't allow you to

get into the coffee system because that's really what it is I mean I hate to call it everyone says it's an acquired taste my question is when something's an acquired taste how many times Do you have to drink something that sucks before you're like, okay, I like this now. Before you acquire that thing. Yeah. Yeah, man. And there wasn't, to me, there was no, it wasn't like, hey, if I can get this, if I can start liking this, I'll be, I'll be stronger. No, that wasn't going to happen.

It was like, hey, if I start liking this and I'll spend $4 a day at a coffee store. Yeah. No, not happening. Well, usually, I mean, like beer, right, when you first drink beer, typically for most people. Acquired taste. Yeah, you don't like it. I'm not good with any acquired taste. No, not chocolate milk.

chocolate milk right off the bat everyone loves it right immediately acquired yeah wait till you try the milk that's not acquired taste no it's so good that's ridiculous yeah and that's probably why you make things taste good because you don't you're not down for the whole acquired situation well okay so like beer coffee the same deal because there's a there's a benefit beyond just the taste so beer is like yeah you get drunk or whatever and people like that but it's like dang the beer is kind of this barrier like I wish it tasted better blah blah blah that's why they do jello shots you know if you get in the anyway so after a while you're like you know what I'll endure the taste to get but then eventually you like the taste you end up

liking the taste because you can kind of recognize certain you know it's all kinds of reasons same thing with coffee you kind of start to like the taste because originally initially you want to get the boost the caffeine boost well the good thing is with with the products that we make there's no they're not acquired taste they just taste good direct delicious you can just get after it from the get go yeah and just this discipline pre-mission is no exception taste good it's like a lemon lime is that the official flavor official lemon lime official yeah yeah that's a good one because that's like a real like broad like most people gonna like the

lemon like yeah like it takes a weird oh to not like lemon no you gotta have not that that's a bad thing you gotta have issues yeah you're probably missed But nonetheless it does taste good. I will agree with that and I think it's one of those deals where you can just take it Even if it's not right before some stuff. Yeah, I just drink it sometimes I'm just Straight up want something sweet Just straight up. It's all good for your brain and stuff. Yeah, yeah man. Is that a lack of discipline?

I want something sweet No because unless it's like a bad thing No no no because you think about you want to break it down What makes something a lack of discipline? It's like when you slit when it's like goes beyond your intentions Right if you intend to do something but then it's like oh my immediate No payoff is gonna kind of get in the way or whatever then that's that's why it's okay to be like tomorrow I'm gonna have a mint chocolate chip milkshake? Yeah, it kind of is not today

Tomorrow, but if that deviated from your original whole plan then it's lack of Like if you're like oh I'm really craving a shake I won't have it today, but I'll have it tomorrow even though the plan is doesn't entail you having it tomorrow And it's like a lack of discipline just on a bigger scale. I guess or more long longevity Scale nonetheless Discipline. It's good taste good It's good It won't take discipline to take discipline No, that's what I'm saying

Like because it's gonna taste good. It's gonna make your your so you know what it is when you take it? I was talking to Jade about this. It's like a um you know how like when you're searching for a lot of for a word. You know, when you're trying to explain something and like, let's say, I don't know, your brain is off. You're hungover. Yeah.

Or you didn't get enough sleep. I don't know, whatever. And you're searching, oh, what's that word again? Or you forget someone's name, like your friend or something like this. It's almost like... The discipline is going to connect those dots for you. Yeah. And this is what it feels like, you know, like you ever played the lottery?

Like Powerball or something? Not really. You ever seen, like, on the news, how they get the balls. Yeah, it's like this big round cage that they spin and all the, all the balls fly around in there, and then they just kind of, one randomly comes into the little shoot there. That's what it feels like.

It's like, that's all the words. That's your brain. And that's all the words. And man, that correct words is not coming in there. You know what I mean? But the discipline shoots the right words in there.

Like no, like one speed, boom, boom, boom, boom. You know what I'm saying? That's what it feels like. Take this one win the lottery. Yeah. Yep. Same exact thing.

Nonetheless, it's good. Get that at origin, main. dot com. That's where you can get all this stuff. Origin Labs, they're producing it. You know, by the truckload for us. Also on origin, main.com. There's some good geese on there. Really good geese. Only geese I'm wearing, no, forever, forever, straight up. And they're made in America,

by the way. The cottons made in America. Sown in America. Loom is not a verb. Loven. Woven. Yes. With looms. The wrong word, the wrong word lottery just popped in there. Loomed. Leumed into a verb. Maybe that's proactive.

Yeah. You know what I'm changing? Yeah. It's true. See? Hey, when Shakespeare made up a word, everyone's cool with it. All of a sudden, that came cool. And you can make words.

Yeah. All you need is people to sign up. So you know what? The content is straight up loomed in America. And so, you know, assembled in America, they're made in America straight up. The geese, there's rash guards on there. Compression gear, if you will. Pants and tops

By the way, it's not just cotton, you know That's why it's so different Yeah Because it's it's a hybrid blend Yeah, it's not just cotton So yeah, there's a that's why the material Dries quicker, that's why it's anti-microbial Yeah, it doesn't smell bad

That's why it dries out quick That's why it's lighter because it's it's made From the get-go for Jiu-Jitsu Yeah So yeah and that is a big deal if you If you take Jiu-Jitsu and you even just pay even that much attention to that kind of stuff, it makes a difference. And then try to go back to your Ogi, you're going to be like, bro, why did I even do that? Go to my origin key.

Sticking with it. That's why I'm sticking with it. Also, speaking of Jiu-Zitsu, there's an immersion camp coming up. Or August 26th through September 2nd. There's two sessions, right? Early, late session. I'm going. Jock, are you going?

I am going. Yeah. Going to both sessions. Poor Jock was so mad. He couldn't participate last time. Yeah, it had a hurt rib. Yeah. It was almost like something was there just bothering you the whole time.

Just a little bit. Oh, no, no. A lot. Yeah, yeah. Well, he didn't show it that much, but you could tell. Well, yeah, I wouldn't say I'd let it get to me. Right, right. But it definitely bothered me.

It would show every once in a while. Nonetheless, Jock will be there in full effect this time. And, yeah, I'll be there. And, you know, we can immerse ourselves in Jiu-Jitsu. That's what it is. It's not a boot camp. August 26 through September 2nd. Yeah, it's a good one.

In origin. Yeah, so go to origin, maine.com. You can look at literally all of these things. It's a merchant. It's Jitsu immersion camp. You can only do Jiu-Jitsu. How many hours a day can you do Jiu-Jitsu? What, in real life or in the camp?

In the camp. And in real life. I guess technically in the camp, you can do it for 24 hours, really. Yeah, okay. Technically, if you really want that. Okay, now, realistically, what do you think? Someone does two or three hours in the morning and two or three hours in the afternoon?

Two hours in the morning, two hours in the evening, six hours a day? Yeah. You'll be sore. Yeah, if you're going to get in after it, which you're not obligated to do, but that's the freedom you have and that's how good it is. And that's the thing, man.

So you know how, like, let's say you, for example. Yeah. And you're like, hey, I want to roll two hours in the morning, two hours afternoon, two hours at night. But here's the thing, you can't just decide to roll You gotta roll with somebody. Otherwise, you're just rolling by yourself. So that's a problem in the real world.

Not everyone, you know, but, brad, this camp, oh. There'd be someone else. Yeah, every single time. Plenty people, by the way. All levels. Boom. So, yeah, get some. Even if you've never done jiu-jitsu ever, still, go and learn some jih Tzu.

Get off to a... It's a good way to learn. Immersion. Well, that's the best way to learn. Yeah, fully. So, yeah, origin-main.com. Look at all this stuff, and, you know. Dave Burke's coming, by the way.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that one. Mystery immersion jiu-jitsu. Anytime Dave Burke calls me, I see his name pop on my phone. You know, every once in a while you'll run into that guy who kind of gives you that feeling like, oh, Dave Burke's calling me. Good deal, days. Yeah, good deal, days. It kind of like brightens your day a little bit. I don't know who else is coming.

I don't know if JP's going to come or life. Yeah. Got to check the schedules. Yeah. Got to block the EF team's schedules. Yeah, that'd be good if both of them come. They've been, I've been noticing they've been getting their train on. They're trying to train.

Yeah, man, that's good. Also Speaking of training If you want some good fitness gear Mix up the workout Get more creative with the workout With the movements and equipment Go to on it.com

Slash jaco Get yourself some primal bells I highly recommend By the way someone hit me up Because we had this conversation last time You said that my workouts were boring Yeah And someone kind of sided with me

Just so you know Cool Because I said the workouts can be boring if you're boring Right, yeah, but the thing is we did conclude that. Some people sided with me. Yeah. Just so you know. Well, they're right and straight up you're right.

Because I think we kind of concluded that too. Where, yeah, you know, if you're boring or if you intentionally make it boring, yeah, it's boring. That's how. In fact, the boredom and the boringness of the workout can be part of a certain type of training. You know, it's like a mental endurance training. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's a whole big thing.

And I was irresponsible to accuse you. Do you ever do a workout where you just do one movement? The whole time? No. Oh, yeah. Wait. There is some mental. Not a full work.

There's some sort of like, there's definitely something to do that mentally. Yeah. You know, like all I'm just going to do 500 repetitions of whatever this is. Actually, yes, I have. It was snatch. So, it was. Caterbell snatch? No.

Oh, barbell snatch. Yeah. Okay. It was a CrossFit 500 snatches. No, it was, um, that's no joke. I forget how many. It was a dumb amount, put it that way. Well, at the time, I thought it was anyway.

I forget how much. It was probably like 20. Yeah, 20 is already, though. I think it was 200. You got bored at 15. Oh, yeah. You powered through those last five reps, though. I'm gonna suck it up.

Mental focus. Yeah, yeah, I did it. But that was it. The only thing super sore the next day Yeah, but that's it yeah snatch. It's not just kind of a fun exercise though. It's the thing. Yeah, well Well, yeah, you know what you mean about fun, but the movement is like it's more dynamic than just a You know like the thing with exercise like the snatch if you're not focused This one's real simple, but if you don't focus box jump

Oh yeah if you let your mind wander during a box jump next thing you know you got a eight-inch savage scar on your shit Yeah, yeah, yeah, very true. You ever near miss a box jump and it like wakes you up? You're like, oh man, I wasn't paying attention. I just paid the man on that one. No, you know. I don't do that much box jumps, probably used to. I used to box jump like a savage.

Check. Just for your own perfect. Yeah, no, I'm super stoked that I know that now. Nonetheless, there's some cool workout equipment gear on there. morning workout or not get creative boom look in there a lot of stuff also i was just on there not yesterday the day before good good good good website good info too by the way on it dot com slash jockel good spot good way to support also when you get these books i think i think i think it's old old looking well now there's now there's right we'll be anticipating this for next year while you

Try and get around to it. Yeah, the website was old looking since day one, by the way. So, you know, nonetheless. Anyway, back to the point. When you get any of the books that we review, including Jocko's actual books, Way the Warrior Kid, Extreme Ownership, the Field Manual, all these books,

look, I'm going to list it on the website. And the books are listed by episode in the book section. You just click through there when you get them. Boom, good way to support. It takes to Amazon Prime. One day shipping, boom. It's good. Good way to support too.

But yeah, get them through there. Good way to support. Also, subscribe to the podcast. If you haven't already, it seems obvious, I know. But some people, they haven't subscribed. And they're not obligated to, but if you do want to support your subscribe, it's good way. Also on YouTube. When I say subscribe, I'm talking iTunes, Stitch, or Google, play all that stuff.

And YouTube. So don't exclude YouTube, the video version of this podcast. Which you've been pretty motivated on lately We'll say active, sure I don't count on motivation You know what I'm saying? I try to stick with the discipline I'm trying to lower you in right there

Yep, I see what you did there nonetheless I am disciplined with it But I am motivated too Because you know I understand the value of excerpts now Someone emailed me the other day Hey this excerpt of not joining the military Or something about regretting not join the military This is what he did he had

I think he had like a medical thing Where it's like oh he couldn't pass or whatever But he still could do work for the military in other, like, department. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, he went and did. He became like an electronics technician for the military, even though he wasn't in the military. Yeah.

Still served. Yeah, so you know what I'm saying? So, like, those little excerpts can kind of offer this info, whether it be advice or just spark other questions in people. Maybe they wouldn't have got it. Maybe they missed that episode. Or maybe they just weren't interested in listening to the whole day. Yeah.

Actually, speaking of the episode, somebody pointed out, somebody made a really funny meme that it showed, It didn't show you make an excerpt, but it showed like someone discovering the excerpt and wow, this is awesome. And then it said, oh, no episode number attached to this excerpt. So meaning, hey, glad I got the excerpt.

Now where can I find this? Right. So in the future, we may want to add the episode number in there. Yeah. Yeah. So. Did you know that there was a big meme war? No, it was on the news.

Meem more. I guess, and I can't really follow it 100% because it was all in Reddit. And but I read an article about there was like a legit meme war What's a meme war though? Well meme more is different memes going back and forth at each other But there was a meme more and I've seen a funny somebody asked me one time they had a they had a ball cap you ever seen the ball caps that say you know Vietnam War veteran or you know Afghanistan? Afghanistan Operation Iraqi freedom war veteran or something like that Someone wrote me or sent me a picture and said is this is it offensive for me?

to wear this hat and the hat said you know survivor of the meme ward it looked like it looked like a legit veteran's hat and I kind of was like no man as far as I'm concerned you're good yeah I don't know what you've been through on the meme wars I can I don't know what the mean more is I will I'm gonna look into it yeah there's a meme more on reddit yeah it's apparently it had to do with sequels I can't say the whole I don't understand it well enough but I understand it well enough to laugh yeah and think it's funny I think it's very compelling 100% Mean more those memes are funny man Yeah, they're real funny people are creative

That's good. That's a good thing Nonetheless Excerpts I do put the episode on there by the way Here's the thing when you go to when you go to YouTube oh you got to go to the read more or something You got to click on read more that's the thing so it looks like by the way I was reading YouTube comments the other day

Oh damn it's a bold that's a wacky wild adventure right there Someone wrote why are we even making these comments? I Jocco and Echo don't even read him. Guess what? Jocko reads them. I read them. Dang, there you go. Me more was going on.

I had to do something. Take some kind of action. Let's just read the comment. Actually, that makes sense. Here's the thing about YouTube comments. This isn't new, by the way. So a lot of people know this right. Where YouTube comments seem to be,

maybe there's probably other forms and stuff where they get worse. But YouTube has the most potential for terrible comments. And for no reason, too. Well, isn't it because it's completely unregulated? It can right well you know the words on a Facebook comment or on a Twitter comment Generally it's your purse your you're you're a human being yeah onto on YouTube you're just you're just a yeah you can create an account pretty easy that and they can't really think yeah so it's anonymous you know it's you know close to anonymous so the The key is or the kind of the thing the result is like if you're gonna read YouTube comments on your your your content order you got a got a got to have fixy in in real thick skin because they get it's like they're it's like they

trying to hurt your feelings like they're trying you know it I think they're hilarious they are they can be and that's the thing people are creative and creativity is just is a really broad thing and people when they use creativity to try to like try to get you they can if you don't have fixed in and I've experiences K I you know remember when I used to do the Hanato show yeah right so that's a anytime you're doing like comedy stuff or I don't know like any kind of like creative stuff to me your stuff now is really hard to be like,

that sucks and try to like, you know, so it's kind of easy. I think we kind of have it easy in that way, in that way. Because if someone's like, jock is so stupid or something like that, they make themselves look dumb because it's so obviously not stupid. But when you do like a comedy thing,

to me anyway, I don't know. So when you do like a comedy thing or, you know, something like that, something of the nature of Hinata show or bikini girls, you know, doing lightsaber fights or something like that. that people were gonna tear that stuff apart. And the stuff they say is like,

dang, I didn't even think about that, but now I'm kinda have a complex about my videos now, you know, kind of thing. So that's how I started on YouTube, by the way. So I was like kind of new to YouTube and putting stuff on it when it got an audience. Got shredded, man. And not, and here's the thing too about.

You don't really have thick skin. I would say. And then, that time it was thinner. In the beginning, I don't think you didn't really has thick skin unless they have the heads up going in. So, and here's a weird thing. It's like most people, they like it because they're fans of Hinato or something like that. But then one guy now, after like 50 comments of like, ha ha, this goes hilarious.

Oh, this video is funny or whatever, whatever. One guy says it sucks. You're like, fuck, it sucks. I know it's, you know, it gets to you. It's weird. How that works. Nonetheless, the point is, you reading the YouTube comments is a wacky, wild, bold adventure. And I respect you for going on that adventure.

Nonetheless, Jocco reads them. So boom question answered right was it a question or did he say they don't no He was a statement saying straight up they don't know why we're even writing anything jocco and echo don't even read these comments Meanwhile he wrote that I was borderline like maybe I should just respond for once and say hey What up right here reading yeah in the darkness they came out of the darkness for once Yeah man that's good maybe that's another way to engage right I just figured like YouTube comments Is kind of I don't know it's not as authentic You know yeah well it's random what is you anonymous

Yeah a lot of stuff which is kind of a moment Yeah Nonetheless if you want subscribe to the YouTube channel for the video version and excerpts Which are valuable I've come to know the value of excerpts and You know some enhanced excerpts call them enhanced put some music on there Some text kinetic typography you know what that is that sounds for me Well kinetic I know what that means and typography. I know what that means so yeah I'm Putting it together.

Yeah, man. So, you know, when you put it on a video, it's like, you know, the words kind of get animated on there. That's what it's called. Yeah. You like that stuff. I like it, too. It does.

It becomes kind of captivating. Some people are really good at it, man. They do it. Anyway, nonetheless, cool videos on there. If you want to subscribe, subscribe, good way to support. Also, Jocko has a store. It's called jocco store.com. It's called Jocco store.

The website is jocco store.com. That's what I'm saying. That's where you're. you can get your shirts. Same shirt Jocko wears every day. The Victory MMA shirt, you can get it there. Boom. Also, discipline equals freedom.

Get after it. Some bumper stickers on there. Decals on there. Hoodies on there. Women's stuff on there. Patches. Velcro. Beanie?

I haven't seen any beaniees. We're waiting for winter now. Rashguards are on there. Kashmir blend directly picked from the high mountains of Bulgaria. Sure. Well, the good news about the Beanie is that they're en route. En route, en route, en route.

They're on their way. Straight up, put in the order. We came down to all the stuff and they're on the way, man. Straight up. Good to hear. Well, you know, Christmas is on the way. I'm just saying. Right.

It'll be worth the wait, I think. In my opinion. Unless it's called jocco store.com. you want something get something check out the stuff if you like it get something good way to support also psychological warfare if you don't know what that is it's an album on iTunes and Stitcher and in wherever you can buy MP3s it's an album jaco album with tracks jaco tracks I don't think you can buy mp3s on Stitcher by the way oh yeah then don't go to stitcher then for it go to amazon music or something like that or Google play or you know wherever else you can get them you understand

what I'm saying yeah anyway it's a track with Jocko helping you. Okay, when you go on your path, you have moments of weakness. We all do. All of us do. Even Jocko. I think. But when we, when I have a moment of weakness, you know, if Jock was there to be like,

hey, look, not yell. I want Jocko yelling me. I want anyone yelling, really. Some people do. I get it. I respect. But personally, and a lot of us don't want Jocko yelling at us. No need to yell.

No need, right? Yeah. A yell is not impactful. Yeah. Well, it's a short impact. Yeah, yeah. I'd rather have a long impact. Yeah, and then the yelling is kind of like...

Rather have something pragmatic telling me like, oh, here's an actual reason. Yeah. Why I should not miss this workout. Yep. And that's exactly what it is. Or why I should not eat this donut. Exactly right. That's exactly what it is.

So one of my favorite Twitter things of all time is that little girl from Australia saying, imitating me saying sugar coated lies. Yeah. That was good. 100% good. Yeah. Yes. That's a good one. Yeah. Notice you weren't yelling on that one.

No? She kind of made it. It's funny, the way she heard it was almost like yelling, you know? Like she goes, It should have accrued lies. Yeah, yeah. But she wasn't doing it. Yeah.

Yeah, very good. Unless it's practical. Jocco telling you practically and pragmatically why you shouldn't skip the workout. Why you shouldn't? Or why procrastination? kills you so it's like you'll be like oh it's almost like you gain a deeper understanding of the potential weakness and you can get past it works 100% success rate in my experience check well also you've got if you want you can get some jocco white tea and you know what sure it tastes

good sure it's got antioxidants in it but let's face it there's no other drink that's guaranteeing an 8,000 pound deadlift no other drink not that I know no so do you get some joccal white tea get an 8,000 pound deadlift check next question a lot of people do all kinds of working out they try and but try the triple complex do them come up with these big plants just drink jockey white tea you're there no need no need to even play around check books weigh the warrior kid we talk about staying on the path what's the path a lot of people are looking for the path but what if someone could show you the path well the The fact is the path can be found and it's simply and clearly put forward to you in the way of the warrior kid books of which there are two and they will put kids on the right path is the book

Everyone wishes they had when they were kids everyone everyone that's read it has said to me I wish I had this one I was getting him like yeah me too me too I didn't have it Had to just kind of wander around trying to figure out where the path is but no you don't need to have that happen So a lot of the path is covered in book one, but now book two is coming out way the warrior kid too. It's called Mark's mission more lessons learned Controlling your temper saving money how to get people to stop making fun of you that's important to know as a little kid right? Controlling fear of failure because a lot of kids you don't think of this when you think of fear or failure you think of like an adult that's saying oh You know I don't really if I know if I want to step out man that guy's afraid of failure like that That's for kids even more so kids don't even want to try something because they're gonna afraid they're gonna look bad Yeah, I remember my daughter when she was 13 my oldest daughter

She was 13 years old and I was kind of interested in something I was like oh why don't you you know try it She's like I'm too old to start She's 13 You know what I mean? So how do you get kids to come over that? Well, you you introduce them to these books Building a business That's something that kids don't think about very often. They should be they should be thinking about starting businesses earning money when they're young

learning the value of money when they're young they should absolutely be learning about this book's gonna make every kid better it'll make them a warrior kid so here's what you do you pre-order the book now that's my recommendation Mark's mission pre-order the book now there's a couple reasons why

number one you don't it's happened with the other books that I've come out with if you don't order it pre-order then guess what you go to order and it's not out of stock and then you're mad at me Everyone's who you're supplied band is working really well there jockel. Hey, okay, I'll take ownership of that Guess what order the book and you'd have it How's that that's my recommendation? So if you order it the other thing that's good about it is If you order it spreads the word and more kids will hear about it

Because there's no big advertising. I just got a thing the other day from somebody. It was a Social media. I think it was Twitter. You know you might want to check with your I don't know what your mark team's telling you like hey I don't have a marketing team over here it's me and echo we're kicking it so if you want to help spread the word order the book it's due out April 24th it's way the warrior kid to Mark's mission and if you want to see a an actual warrior kid in action check out Irish Oaks ranch dot com aiden he's a warrior kid he's only 12 years old but has his own business speaking to businesses you can get his soap that he makes from goat milk

Very good soap by the way. Yeah. It's got a good motto too. The motto of the soap is stay clean. Sounds simple. But you know what? There's a lot of layers there. A, don't forget the discipline equals freedom.

Field manual. Eating, thinking, fighting, working out. Life. We're talking about life. Get the manual on how to live your life. The field manual. Discipline equals freedom. For the audio version of that,

you can't find it on Audible because it's not there. There's not there the audio version of discipline equals freedom field manual is on iTunes Amazon music Google play other mp three platforms as an album with tracks Don't you know also extreme ownership combat leadership for business and life and on top of that Laif Babin and I are bringing out the follow-on to extreme ownership It's called the dichotomy of leadership It's got knowledge and And lessons learned from the battlefield and business and life. You can pre-order that book right now.

Did you know that? Can pre-order it now. If you didn't know that, you can pre-order that book now. Comes out September 25th. Again, if you wanna get the book when it comes out, order it now. Otherwise, it'll sell out and you'll be mad at me. Hey, I'm down. You can be mad at me.

That's cool. For even more leadership, we have Ashland Front. That's my leadership and my leadership. my leadership consulting company me Laif Babin J.P. Dinell Dave Burke you want us to come out to work with your team email info at echelonfront.com or you can check out that website and of course there's the muster which is our leadership seminar we're only doing two year two this year Washington DC May 17th and 18th San Francisco October 17th and 18th both are going to sell out they're going to sell out so get registered Now at extreme ownership.com the entire echelon front team is going to be there and no, we're not going to be in the green room. We're not going to be sitting back there drinking warm cups of milk. No. We'll be with you the whole time interacting, answering questions, we'll be eating, we'll be talking, we'll be working out, just basically getting after it, as they say.

So come and get it at the muster. And lastly, new announcement, roll call. Roll call, zero one. September 21st in Dallas, Texas. This is for current military law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, other first responders. One day leadership seminar about leadership in a dynamic environment. So you can also sign up for that at Extreme Ownership.com. We thank you all for your service and want to give you a little bit back. We look forward to seeing you there. And until we see you at the muster or we see you at the roll call,

If you have anything else for us, you can find us on the interwebs on Twitter, on Instagram, and on da feeble hockey. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocka Willink. And thanks to everyone for listening, especially members of the armed forces that put it on the line every day to hold the line. and to the police and law enforcement firefighters EMTs and other first responders thanks for being there when we call on you and to everyone else out there listening don't just listen lead take charge take a stand raise your hand and raise your voice and say I got this then take up your position on whatever battlefield you are on and get after it so until next time this is Echo and Jocko out