Kitbag Conversations - Episode 35: SOFt Operations

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

In this episode we sit down with Aaron, a former civil affairs operator in Afghanistan and the Philippines, then a Military Intelligence officer. Aaron offers a different perspective on SOF and the GWOT.

As planned, the emergency population control will take effective reside on the first of the year. Inter-citizens are already lining up in sterilization centres, which will be open around the clock to aid in the transition to what the president termed, this is my old friend, Aaron, from the MI School. We met there. We used to drink in the hotel and show up to PT drug. Hell yeah, I did. And forever. And but I wanted to bring you on just because you have a different army career. You were enlisted civil affairs, turned Intel officer, and then you medically retired, which we were talking about. And we don't have to go down that road too heavy. But I wanted to bring you on, like I said earlier, to talk about civil

affairs, Intel, the softer side of the army that gets things. And I think the Marine Corps does it too. They used to have. They do, but they're terrible. Yeah. And like this isn't this isn't just like as much as I don't get me wrong, as much as I absolutely love shitting on the men's department of the Navy. I I have worked with Marine Corps civil affairs before.

And that was while I was on a special operations task force on Operation Balikaton in the Philippines Granted, I think that was maybe like the second year that the Marine Corps had. Yeah, we got those in like 17 or 18 or something like that like Yeah, I must have I'm Yeah, and like it's I know why it's because the the team leader and the team sergeant who Was a gunny and he allowed me to call him gunny said he would not allow his Marines to call him gunny But I could call him gunny like me and the other dude playing our team

Yeah, he liked us But yeah, he they they had eight Marines on their team. And the reason why they were such garbage is because they were not trained on how to do anything. The Marine Corps was just like, Hey, you need to find Marines for this job. And they just looked at it like a detail So they were like, okay What are the Marines that we can remove from service that will have the least significant impact on us? And it's like Dude when I went through Civil Affairs Assessment and collection or in selection we like we started with 110 and we graduated with 46 Like we started with 110 and we graduated with 46 That shit is not easy and they just chose a bunch of literal like generator mechanics Mm-hmm, and they were like, you know

Congratulations, yeah, I was civil affairs. I was deployed and got like the entire Marine Corps got a mass email It was like would you like to try out this new MOS? Yeah, so I got to work with those guys and they were so bad. They were just not good. And like, for as awesome as Gunny and the captain were, like those guys knew what they were doing, but they were frustrated because they kept trying

to leverage their Marines, you know, as good leader should, and they weren't able to because they were like ASVAB waivers, or like, you know, like single digit ASVAB score kind of people. And it's like, yo, that is not that is not who you need for this job that like requires at least in the army requires you to be in special operations and go through schoolhouse and everything like that. So that's at least that's my experience with Marine Corps Civil Affairs. I haven't had anything outside of that. But their team leader said he would trade every single one of his Marines for just one of us, either me or like this other specialist who was on my team.

He was like, like eight of my guys for one of yours and it would be totally worth it And my captain was like fuck no I need these guys I was gonna say we were talking about this one time and I've talked about it with a couple guys cuz like Marsock They just gave the new commander of special operations for the Marines. They just gave him his Marsock fucking badge He didn't go through anything and so like I remember talking to you When civil affairs was like a fart in the wind idea and then all of a sudden They just found a couple guys gave them the civil affairs designator and they had never been through selection or the schoolhouse so your leadership was

Guys who'd never been trained in civil affairs never went through the schoolhouse. So your leadership was guys who'd never been trained in civil affairs, never went through the selection process. No, so to control, no, soft anything. They were just given the title. And then guys like you had to go through all this schoolhouse and then you're put under their command and you're like, why are you so stupid? And it's like, well, he has no clue. There is no schoolhouse for him. And so it's like, you know, you're trying to find your feet on that. Yeah. And it's it, I feel like at least the army has a has a better grasp on that now. Because I mean, if like, there, there's been a lot of analysis as to like why Afghanistan ended the way that it did, right? As though the people on ground haven't literally been telling them exactly how it was going to end for 20 years.

You know, after the fact, now they're like, whoa, what could we have done? And Go Figure actually, actually using all of your soft elements, not just special forces, because they're cool. Like, don't get me wrong, training up foreign commandos is cool and necessary, but that's not that's that that isn't the only way that you build a nation. Having a nation in name only with a really strong army go figure doesn't like turn out well when you leave. They need to have an infrastructure. They need to have governance and need to have rule of law and that is where civil affairs and you know in a significantly less

important capacity psychological operations also comes in and for any Siop listeners out there, of course, I'm CA. Yes, I'm going to shit on you It's all in good fun. Mostly. Um, Um, To that effect, uh, that that is something that we talk about on this podcast pretty heavy was like how, you know, I speak a lot to my experience on how, you know, we were literally just counting the kills. I mean, Ranger alone over my nine month deployment killed somewhere around 9,000 to 12,000 dude. HVTs, I don't know how many, how are there this many guys that are not- They were high value because they got in my sights. Yeah. They were high value to me. Exactly.

But we talk about that. We talk about like, holy shit, like, soft hasn't ever, like if you look at it, soft hasn't ever won a war and like since their inception. And so like what you're saying to that effect is like, do you think that that play that that plays a key role in it? Isn't that they don't, we forgot the conventional side of things, but we forgot how to offer the oak leaf. Yeah, I think that plays a huge role in it. And I think the fact that we need to stop having combatant commanders be focused on like like the metrics that help people who own battle space The metrics that help them and get promoted are

Not what we need to win wars and that that Honestly, like if I'm being as reductive as possible is why soft or not Is why the war ended and or at least went the direction That it did because we didn't Incentivize our commanders for success. We said that we did but then you have guys like Ranger Regiment who where it's like Hey success is making dead Taliban. Is this guy Taliban? I don't fucking know, but he's dead. So we're going to say he is kind of thing. So and then like, not to say that they go out and kill people, you know, that don't deserve it. But like,

they didn't they didn't line up their, their methods with what actually needed to win the war to what actually needed to happen in order to build a nation. So you're saying that there was no definition of victory from the beginning? Correct. I mean, there was no definition of victory, which is like essential to a mission statement, right? That that is like, and like, I don't know, if you had asked me at the time,

and I would still say that like victory could have looked like Afghanistan has a functional government that can operate completely independent of foreign influence and at the very least, successfully combat the Taliban at four, you know, governance, infrastructure and rule of law of the people within the geographic confines of Afghanistan. That's what the goal was. And the biggest issue that we had with that was not just that our troops weren't well enough equipped for it, but like Like dude, have you met anyone from Afghanistan? Like that's not a feasible mission man

That's not a feasible mission That they don't they don't see things in the way that we do if they're like hey Americans are here I mean shit the Americans were here before and they left and like, Hey, Americans are here. I mean, shit, the Americans were here before and they left. And then, you know, the Russians were here before and they left and fucking Genghis Khan's forces were here before and they left and Alexander the Great's forces were here and they left like fucking, they don't, they know that any foreign presence is temporary. And so they're just, they're going to play along. They'll do what we can do so that way they can you know

They can put some extra change in their pocket And then they'll just go right back to how things work and that's Cody now We're talking about this yeah on the last episode about how when the Americans show up They don't actually have like a subject matter expert to actually sit down and understand the local culture Because like going to Afghanistan which which is in the stone age essentially like culturally in the same shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're gonna have we're gonna let women vote and yeah Taliban are like you just fuck Like just coming in and trying to make a place America like you can't you can't go in with

imperialistic goals and not have imperialistic means. Like if you're going to force your culture on someone, you got like, there are only a handful of places where that has succeeded well, and it wasn't done with a gentle touch. So like, that's not, that's not something that American foreign policy does anymore has done. And I don't know, I'd say the past hundred Durso years ish, depending on how you want to polarize the Spanish-American war. But we, yeah, they don't have a subject matter expert, they just kind of go in and they're like, well, the defense contractors are happy

and the senators are getting reelected. So I don't know, figure it out. Well, Cody and I have also talked about it. And I feel like that's kind of what it was. Yeah. Cody and I have also talked about how there's traditionally two ways of going about where there's hard power, which is punching down as hard as humanly possible until they stop moving or the soft power.

Yeah. You're like, hey, Soviets, you ever heard of Pizza Hut? Yeah, it works. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah, man. I mean, like. And that's exactly it, bro.

Like I, I choose to believe that the McDonald's franchise was brought to Vietnam by someone in a civil affairs to be like, Hey, we actually won that one. You know, I won. someone in civil affairs to be like, hey, we actually won that one. Yeah, I won. Is it like 60 years late? Yeah, but we still got them. Damn it. We still got capitalism to Vietnam. What was the timeline of a McDonald's propping up in Moscow, the wall, like they come coming in.

It was something like six months. It was we were joking about that, the discord. We were like, well, I don't know about you, but there is a fucking McDonald's in Ho Chi Minh City. And then we looked it up and it's like, there's one like every other block. And it's like, holy shit, they love burgers. Yes, dude.

Yes, dude. Cheap fucking delicious and just awful for you food. That like that is the pathway to democracy. You brought your stomach to like, I can't really go with one right now. Like, that's a... Honestly, like... Hey, guess where I went for a watch? Hey!

Get the sick. For real though, like, that's what it is. And I feel like, I mean, as much of a joke as it is to us in this conversation offering places that we want to develop actual commodities Right like McDonald's Or standing up a hotel or something like that and like maybe trying to bring tourism like actually bringing in businesses because if you look at the countries that we have Successfully done nation building in, right, i.e. Germany or Japan or South Korea, what we did was not entirely militaristic. First of all,

all of those countries had at least a semblance of a government that everybody respected and followed, and they had a rule of law before we got involved. So that's step number one. Step number two was we got all of these business investors and we brought them over here and we were like, hey, like US businesses, do you wanna expand your market? Put your shit here, right? And that's why Japan is the technology giant that it is, same thing with South Korea.

That's why Germany still makes Volvo and Volkswagen and all of those other things, like all of those car companies because they were like, hey, look, you guys made like Messerschmitts and like all these other cool ass airplanes. Maybe go back to making cars and, hey, we're going to use Gerald Ford to like, you know, help you with that process. And now they're doing it. So because we gave them something for their economy to thrive on using American like manufacturing

practices, and we brought our experts over to help them with that process, that is what made successful nation building. None of this like, I'm just gonna like kick in and up doors until like all of a sudden the only people left alive love freedom like that's not really how that works man. It's essentially creating a colony within the country. You gotta give American investors a palpable area. So going about it in like a broad sense, you have to have the hard power to come in

and eliminate any kind of threat in the neighborhood. And then you prop up like a McDonald's and then have the people buy into it. Like it's it sounds super simple on paper, but it's incredibly complex because something like Afghanistan or like the entire continent of Africa it's just like an misunderstood in geopolitical space where they complete like Americans or the Westerners completely disregard local coastal cultural norms, religious practices, something like, hey, women are not allowed to be out in public by themselves. And then you show up and you're like, if you eat McDonald's, you can vote. Like, I don't think that's the super easy way of going about it. Yeah, no, that's that's not it at all. You have to I mean, like, and it's and it's a process, right? Like, generations

have to evolve. And ideals have to evolve. And these things have to be organic. We can't, we can't force it. And like, yeah, we can stand up whatever puppet governments and whatever we want. But like, man, I used to go to a jerka like a like a municipal meeting in Afghanistan every single week. And occasionally, the dude who was actually in charge would show up and just shit on everybody and then walk out, including my team leader. Because the dude that we were talking to who was like elected and you know chosen by the the US to like be in this position. He's like, yeah, look, I know this guy is like an asshole, but he's the one who like actually does stuff.

So I don't like if you watch Wall Street, you know, never sleeps. And he's like, I'm going to do that. That's the way to do it. Yeah. Like, yeah, like, you can't just like grab someone off the street and be like, this is the guy he's in charge of your shit now. And like, even he's going to look at them and be like, this is the guy, he's in charge of your shit now. And like, even he's gonna look at them and be like, guys, I don't fuck it now, like, whatever, I'm just here, we'll wait till they leave. And then we can go back to doing whatever we were doing.

And that's, yeah, man, that's what happens. But I mean, democracy is achievable. Capitalism is achievable, is achievable and spreadable, very contagious through the use of commodities and not killing people. I need to double check just making sure. Okay, his name is Rory Stewart. He's written books. He was a teacher to the princes as well. He was a former inventory officer turned political scientist and stuff like that. He's British. Great guy. You need to listen to him. But he actually started a masonry works in Kabul. And it was the, dude,

he was talking about it. And I literally wanted to just spread brain matter all over the wall because he said, he's like, I'm the only non-profit for profit Afghan for profit Afghans to learn to use like their old Mason works, like how they make bowls and how they make like the lapis lupus jewelry and stuff like that. He's like, we're teaching them how to do it. And then we're working with exporters to get their crafts out of Afghanistan. He's like, so we are a school dedicated to bringing them jobs. And he's like, we're the only one that does that. And I was like, well, then let me just put

this bad boy in the old mouth and just like, because you realize real quick, it's like, wait a minute, he's the, and I mean, you watch War Machine as well. I don't know if you've seen the movie where he's like, why are they growing heroin? And he's like, well, the farmers back in America have like basically told Congress that they can't grow anything that competes with US agriculture. And so that's literally everything but heroin. And he's like, what? And like, they're the number one exporter of heroin in the world, minus like Malaysia. And it's like, guys, whatever.

And so everything you're saying it's like yeah, well what say something like he was Agricultural focus you have something like like Haiti back in the night There was latency issues So I just turn the camera off to like clear that up back in the back in the 90s I think it was something like Haiti create like it was the cheapest place in the world to make rice and it was Haiti create like it was the cheapest place in the world to make rice. And it was bankrupting the American rice farmers. And so Bill Clinton showed up. He's like, I got an idea.

How about you like nationalize everything? We work together and then we could work in the same field. And then the US industry just destroyed Haiti. And so if we apply that to like many, many countries where everyone today kind of argues that, you know, Ukraine should be a native, but you're like, don't they have the most fertile soil on the planet? They can make whatever food they want super cheap. Also, there's riots for the farmers in the Netherlands, Germany, now Austria,

all campaigning for like, fucking don't let them in. But that's just a side change. That's something I've been looking into about how weaponizing food for a common goal is. You can say at the end of the day like it is capitalism it is because of money but also entire livelihoods of the host nation countries are going to get imploded and then you're gonna have you know. Issues on our hands are like hey we have heroin dealers and child smokers in Afghanistan that's the only way they can make money. dealers and child smugglers in Afghanistan. That's the only way they can make money. Yeah, kind of is. Yeah. And like, I feel like I feel like anything, anything that comes with prosperity of a nation that doesn't already have it, like, I mean, the whole reason the Pakistan

like hat like created the Taliban, the whole reason the ISI made the Taliban was to destabilize Afghanistan because they're like wait if these guys get their shit together they they could do they could be a powerhouse of a nation um and so they created the Taliban specifically to make sure that doesn't happen because they already have India on one side, right? If they had Afghanistan at its fullest potential on the other side, Pakistan becomes irrelevant. One of the US assessments for modernizing Afghanistan, I think it was something like 2010, the bunch of analysts came in, they're like, it's going to take 100 years to get them out of the came in there like it's going to take a hundred years to get them out of the Bronze Age.

Like it's going to take a long time and a lot of money to bring these people to like, to get porn hub in their country. It's going to take a long time. I had it in our country. That's for damn sure. Yeah. No, that was back before Tumblr, uh, you know, did their version of the burning of life, uh, the library of Alexandria and, you know did their version of the burning of life the library of Alexandria And you know they still had porn man. Those were the days

I blame Aaron because I told him when I was in Afghanistan I was like bro. There's like a complete ban on porn. They're trying to crack down on VPNs and everything He's like tumblr. Yeah, I'm blur and I He's like Tumblr Tumblr. And I was like, what? And so I went there. I was like, my man. Yeah, dude. My man. There's everything here.

Yeah. And and I mean like whenever I remember because I was I was in Turkey for the second time I was deployed to Turkey. Yeah. In 2018, when Tumblr went down and they had a pain, a ban on porn as well. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, dude, I was like, man, that was like the time in my life when I did not need to lose access to porn. But yeah, so I was there and I had to find another place and it turns out Reddit is now that place. So Reddit's like always had porn.

I didn't realize to what extent. When they say that there's a subreddit for everything, I mean everything, dude. Like, you got to be careful, man. but yeah, so I ended up going to Reddit So like there's there's there's ways there's ways around all of that But yeah a hundred years to get Afghanistan out of the Bronze Age I I mean I would say that that's a realistic if not a conservative estimate But it's also going to require the cooperation of the nations

around it. And like Iran doesn't have an interest in Afghanistan becoming an economic powerhouse. You know, Pakistan sure as hell doesn't. Northern alliance might. It was something like it's like a year and a half ago that it was like a historic achievement for all of the Arab or Muslim world that Iran, Turkey, like Kazakhstan, or, yeah, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia came together and they're like, hey, we need to contain the Taliban. Like they all got on the same page. Whoa. Yeah, they all came together. They're like, we need to contain these guys because as soon as the Taliban took control, they started shooting at like everyone's bores.

Like they started bores. Yeah, they started bum rushing like Iran and who is it? Tajikistan? The one that borders? Yeah. So they went up north because there were like a lot of our guys fled here. We're going after you. And so it's like a regional, regional effort to contain these guys. And that's just a sidebar. But I guess for the average listener, doesn't really have any experience with your job field. It's almost like the public perception of what you guys do is the Air Force comes in, levels of neighborhood Marines come in and kill everybody, and then you show up with a piece of paper in a lollipop like,

Hey, you know, we can work together. Hey, guys. What's up, kids? You want some candy? Yeah, no, it's pretty much. And I mean, there are there are elements we have, we have what's called a CMock or a civil military operation center. And they are a company level organization that consists of probably like, I don't know, like eight people or something like that, if you're fully staffed. And they And one of their functions is to host clinics where when the Marine or just whatever person runs over a kid or a goat or blows up the wrong

house or maybe even kills somebody that they meant to kill like they shoot some Taliban in the face. But they do it inside the guy's house in front of the guy's wife. And now she doesn't have a source of income. So what do you do for everybody that you make? You give them a little voucher where it's like, hey, man, turn this into the base and like around this time and we'll give you some money. So we're so sorry. We're so sorry. Pretty much.

But we do it with money and the thing is it's negotiable. So if the person that we killed was someone who made a lot of money, guess what, dude, you can you can get a lot of money from it. If we accidentally killed your firstborn son, that's gonna be like five grand, man. But if it's just like, which is like a lot of money. You're saying it's so cash, so I'm putting it in whatever, like, yeah. Right?

Yeah, dude, five that, but I mean, if it's like your fourth daughter and she was like seven, like shit, nobody care. You don't need to care. Like, all right, you'll get like you'll get like 200 bucks like sorry Pocket full chains and makes $5 you're like here you go. It might be Yeah, yeah, but like Exactly right here here here's a here's a rip it and packet smokes man like be on your way

but um, yeah, no, that's, that's what they would do. They would set up clinics and they, like anytime civilian casualties happen or anytime just think, like military operations took place. Something got broken, somebody died. There was a voucher handed out or there should have been and the, the CMOC, that operation center, is the place that would receive those vouchers and dole out the money. So there are a lot of people that look at the civil affairs and CyOp patch and they're like, oh, those are the guys with the money. Because yeah, that's one of the things that you do.

But if you're cool and not in the CMock and you're on an actual team like I always was then you don't have to worry about that. She was cool. Yeah, I was cool. She was cool. Absolutely. That was awesome. I'm just saying like, yeah, if you're like good at your job and you're on a team, then

yeah, then you're the person who goes out and you try to find things that need to be we call them sources of instability in the in the schoolhouse right you look for a source of instability and you try to fix it and a classic example of that is like black we got don't know. Like, we got to fix this. Yeah, right. Now, it's like maybe the first time crack showed up. Yes. Now, removing crack from a neighborhood doing that would be more of a source of instability

because there's people's livelihoods on there. And I listen to Anup Tupac to know that they will kill you if you fuck with that shit, man. So. to know that they will kill you if you fuck with that shit, man. So, but a source of instability in a warfare environment could be like, hey, the Taliban used to not fuck with this mountain village. And their main export is like, I don't know, marijuana and goats or something like that. Well, now the Taliban came in and they're like, no, dude, fuck you. You're not selling your marijuana anymore.

You're giving it to us. And that's going to fuck with a lot of stuff. They can still make some money, but not a lot of money. And you do like whatever. So you go in and you're like, all right, what if we like build you a road to this village that they're not going to be able to plant IDs in so you can can trade and then also, she tells us for the Taliban is we'll fucking kill them so you can trade freely, right? Like

that would be resolving a source of instability and that road project would be a civil affairs mission. And that's that's what the teams do is identifying what that project would be, like coming up with resolutions to the sources of instability. And then actually doing those missions, not building the roads themselves, but we would be responsible for creating the bid process and having a blind bidding going on, getting word out to the contractors through the local governance. And then once a contractor has been found, like doing the negotiating with the contractors, I have pictures of like me with Afghan, like construction workers and shit. And man, they will fucking scam you. But when you get them to do their job, yeah, man, they'll work just like everybody wants to make money. Yeah. When it comes to scaling, how often how often would you say like a random villager walks up?

You're like, oh, six months ago, you guys did an operation and I lost two thirds of my house. And he just points at an abandoned building. Fucking every every single day, every like every like third interaction with an Afghan. They're just trying to get there. I mean, because they're like, they they're like, this guy could be smart. He might not be smart, man. They fucking they shoot for the moon and hope to land in the stars. So it's like they they they come up to you and they're like, hey, dude,

like that's an awesome truck that you have. You should give that truck to me. And I'm like, this is a 40 ton M rap. I'm not going to give this to you. OK, or or someone's like that, like, man, that helmet is awesome. You should let me have that helmet. And I'm like, I will beat you to death with this helmet if you don't lead me the fuck alone.

But yeah, they'll they'll ask for everything. They'll take the fucking shirt off your back. But what's fucking crazy is like if you ask them for something like the kids for whatever reason, all the kids wanted a pen every fuck. It's like the same 15 Afghan kids in every fucking village. I swear to God. But they're around. They're all dirty.

Every single one of them is like their own little like pig pen from Charlie Brown with the cloud and everything. And they they want pens. They want pens and they'll be like like Kalaam Kalaam Sarra, which means pen and Boshtu. And yeah, dude, if you throw them a pen, they will fucking bite each other for it. They will beat the shit out of people like each other for it. So it's the one fat that dominates the whole cul-de-sac, starting around, going house to house, breaking legs.

Absolutely, dude. Absolutely. Although typically they're not that fat because, you know, they're Afghan. So they're skinny. Not a lot of food, but but yeah, no, they they would do that. But the thing is, if you ask them for a pen, they'll give you a fucking pen. Like, if you turn it around, like, I thought it was weird as shit when I'm like, you know what, dude? Why don't you give me a celem?

I've handed out so many fucking celebs to you kids. Like, nah, dude, you give me a pen. And like, one of them just like disappeared and came back with a fucking pen and like, threw it up to me in my turret and I was like, oh shit. So I don't know if it's just cultural or what, but they will ask for everything. But on that note, if you ask them for something,

they'll give it to you too. So yeah, man, they're just trying to get theirs. They're just trying to get by. They don't see things culturally speaking, right? Not like talking from a race perspective, but more of like a cultural perspective. From the... I think that's a huge issue that most people

don't disassociate the two. They don't like actually separate. They're like Arabs, ragged, you know, they just go right to the stereotypes. She's like, oh, these guys are dumb. But you're like, ohged you know they just go right to the stereo yeah these guys are dumb but you're like oh no actually like this tribe right here thought that you were the Russians when we showed up like they're a little touch with a lot of things you can't really put them all in safe basket exactly and even then it's like I you know I met an intel officer

once in like the Florida National Guard I I think, who was 100% poshtune. She born in America, her parents were immigrants from Afghanistan from like the 80s or some shit like that, but she's 100% poshtune. A fucking US citizen and an officer in the United States Army or she was however many years ago. And yeah, she's a person like anybody else. And an American like anybody else got a fucking temper on her. But, you know, she's like, like it, the race has nothing to do with it. It's all about the culture. So whenever I use generalizations, like, you know, they don't understand. I'm talking about the people who like culturally live within Afghanistan, not whatever ethnicity. But yeah.

So when I was there, everything you're saying, it tracks, it's like, it's a warrior culture. And it's weird. It's weird to the point, like what you're saying, because like what they're doing is they're pushing buttons and seeing what they can get like big man Cut like it's like gang is con shit, right? Like it's like like you give me pen and then it's like well you give him the pen You're basically like holding that inmates pocket like yes daddy like and so it's like, you know You give me pen you give me helmet you give me truck you give me gun you give me did and it adds up and so it's like They they're just testing you to see what they can get.

But at the end of the day, when you're sitting in a turret with a 240, looking at a kid going, give me a fucking pen. And he goes, yes, sir, I give you a pen. Like he, right? Like, so like, I mean, like when I was there, like we were talking about it, like the Lithuanians in the polls, like they told me, don't bring my rifle in. And I was like, what do you mean? Don't because I was the I had a rifle.

They didn't have a handgun. Yeah, of course. They said, no, don't don't don't bring a rifle in front of these guys. Bring a handgun, put it on your hip and stand up straight and walk tall with us. Yeah. And it wasn't till later that like people explained to me, it's like, no, no, no. When you carry a rifle, it means you're a fighter. When you carry a handgun, it means you're in charge and you do the executions because the handgun means one thing.

You're getting on your knees and I'm shooting you in the back of the head with this because these guys listen. Damn straight. And so it's like, it's weird things like that too. You're like, what do you mean a handgun's more important than a rifle? And it's like, well, you're the man. You're briefing, you're up there, you got the little you know the stick the little the field Marshall stick You got the handgun that says like I don't shoot. I I execute and it's like yeah, oh like okay, and I mean even like dudes would carry machetes all the time and Iraq and Afghanistan and they didn't know that like the Republican Guard that's like that's a huge deal to bring a Machete around in Iraq. But that's yeah, you know, no, because that's your Republican guard.

You're going to your sedan. Like you're going to cut hands. You're going to cut feet, whatever. You're like, yeah, machete is a sign of discipline. It's not like, you know, this is my CQB fucking dagger. And it's like, oh, bro, everyone's scared to shit from you because they think you're Republican. That dude's just like really in an anime and brought his katana.

He just got that cartoon characters like sorry, he's not a hard ass. Yeah, he's probably feeling the heat after Tomler went down. He's over here just like, yeah, damn it. I mean, we all were. That was your nine. More. Yeah. More like the burning of the library of Valentine's Day is really. But, um, yeah.

All right. Honestly, God. But, the board! Yeah, right. Honestly. Oh, God. But, yeah, no, cultural, like culture matters. And understanding culture like that really matters whenever you're trying to conduct any kind of operations in a situation like that. And it's a huge deal. And like one of the things that people didn't understand whenever I went on mission with them.

Is when we were dismantled which fucking hate by the way we build roads we have trucks fucking use them but now I get attached to light infantry and go figure we walk everywhere. Who was over ten years ago I'm still better than anyway. Yeah my feet hurt but but people didn't understand that, like, regardless of whether or not I had my interpreter with me, the Afghans surrounded me, and it's because I interacted with them. And I knew how to interact with them, right? Like, if if, you know, some some little shit happens, right? Like, kids are going to follow me everywhere.

Like I don't know what it what maybe it's like they they notice that, you know, their size. Yeah, I'm the same height as them exactly. Right. Like I don't fucking know what the baby face, right? Like whenever my face is shaped clean, like I looked really young and I was 22 at the time. So I was really young. But because I, you know'd put on a smiling face, I would take off my glove whenever I'd shake their hands. I would know that if I'm waving to somebody

to put my hand over my heart when I do it and not to them, because all of those things that might not mean a whole lot to your typical American are cultural norms to them. And they're like, oh, this dude gets it. This dude knows how to say hello like, knows how to say hello. Or knows how to say hello. He knows how to shake people's hands. And so they're like, Oh, fuck, he's, he's interesting. We want to hang out with him. We want to see what he's about. And it's, it's knowing those

things, but also knowing to keep a level head and just if something happens reacting the way that an Afghan would. So like at one point in time I was on a dismounted patrol and like a kid was trying to unclip my pistol from like the little lanyard that I had it on. I just felt it like jingle a little bit because they were fucking Surrounding me right like there's no personal space in that culture. So I'm like in like a sea of little kids probably like 20 of them and I feel something jingle behind me and

Reflexively, you know, I was wearing like that the Kevlar plated knuckles like the Oakley gloves and all that shit because I was an operator but And I Like full force just swung with my backhand and fucking landed A hit on some kid. I don't know who's probably like eight or something like that. A full force backhand to the face, knocked him completely on his ass. It like he like flew back. And I was like, I pointed at my M nine and I was like, no touching. My guns stay with me. Don't touch my guns. And everybody was like, Okay, and

that kid got up and like ran the fuck away because he thought I was about to kill him, probably because I was. Right. I might have. But but then people were like, Okay, we don't touch his guns. And then they continue to interact with me. Like, but but like most Americans would not think, hey, I should fucking punch this eight year old. Right. That's not that's not going to be your typical American response. But like that is how an Afghan would respond. It doesn't matter if you're a grown man, if you're an adult, you have the authority to hit any kid because you're an adult.

That's just that's just what you do. And the fact that they saw that I was not afraid to adhere to their customs. They're like, oh, OK, this guy, this guy knows what's going on. And then go figure all the people, all the kids that I didn't fucking deck in the face. They were like, OK, well, I'm not going to touch your gun. So yeah, I want to see what you're all about. And, and then it's like, okay, cool. And people didn't get it. All the, all the infantry men or the MPs or whoever the fuck I was with, they were like, dude, why do you

always have a crowd around you? I'm like, because I talked to them, bro. Like, but you don't have a turp. I'm like, it doesn't fucking matter. Like, I could just be like saying, Hey, man, what's up? Your hat looks weird. Ha ha. But just the fact that you're like saying anything, they're like, this guy, this guy's cool. And I am cool. So fuck you, man.

Let's look. What about when it comes to you guys or I guess like your job field? What's that? What's the welcome aboard like brief like you guys actually have to sit down and go through the full rigmaroo of customs and curses. Cause when I was in Somalia, it was like 10 minutes. And we're like, uh, do this, don't go over there. And it's pretty clean cut. So like getting into Afghanistan or just like in general,

I guess in general, it's like a template that everyone has to sit down like a one day course or something. No, not really. Because typically, like you, being civil affairs, you are expected to be the subject matter expert. It doesn't matter how long you've been on ground. You are the cultural subject matter expert. It doesn't matter how long you've been on ground. You are the cultural subject matter expert. And so the expectation is that you're going to show up on day one

and be able to brief some guys who have been on the ground for like six fucking months and still know more than them. Because that is what the job of civil affairs is that is, um, you know, they they assign one team of four operators to a battalion size element. And like that captain, that team leader is a member of that battalion commander staff. So in he's the cultural subject matter expert. But realistically, that captain probably won't know everything. He'll know some stuff, but he's going to rely on his Joe's. So it's a lot of me. Yeah. On your own time watching like fights documentaries from 2010, like trying

to figure out what's exactly reading. Lots of fucking reading, man. I got I got so fucking like knowledgeable and just so smart on agriculture because I knew that we were going to Kandahar. I looked up like, hey, what's what's the GDP of Kandahar like? Where does it come from? Most of it comes from agriculture. And a lot of it was from marijuana. Marijuana and pop like poppy obviously is the big one. But marijuana and grapes. And then everything else was just kind of like whatever a little bit of this a little of that. But yeah, dude, marijuana fields as far as the eye can see, I remember being up in my turret and just like the stocks, the marijuana stocks were like seven, eight feet tall.

And just seeing them like just above eye level like, like, yeah. And like, I've still never smoked pot because I have a security clearance, but like, holy shit, dude, there was, I've never seen so much pop before in my life. And like, I've watched Narcos Mexico, that shit doesn't have anything on what Candahar does. But I learned about it beforehand, and I got smart on how to grow pot, and I got smart on things that I could bring up in conversation with an illiterate Afghan farmer so that we could talk to him about his crops. And like, those are the kinds of things that like your combat and command or your battalion commanders and battle space owners aren't going to know and aren't going to know how to do so that way when you're on the ground interacting with indigenous people, you have something to contribute and like

you need to learn from them and you have to interact with them in order to continue to contribute. So I studied whenever I found out I was going to Afghanistan, I'd say I probably had like a nine month heads up like a eight or nine month like warning of like no shit. This is the battle roster that you're on and you're you're fucking going. Would you say that the those cultural country handbooks that the DIA used to write and like Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan were were good good or were they like a wave, wave top to jump in, read that and go forward on like, yeah, I would say it was definitely wave tops just because I mean, especially in our places, diverse as Afghanistan, like you could, you know, being in in in RC South or like being in in

Kandahar like I was is going to be completely different from being in in the Hindu Kush mountains in the East is gonna be completely different from the area bordering Uzbekistan or Tajikistan or anything like that all of those places are completely different. And like, you know, the tribes are going to be different, right? So like the postures in the mountains are going to be different from the postures in the deserts. And that's what it is, you know, like, and those, all of those guys are still going to be different from the Hazarans who were nomads, whenever you interact with them.

So those DIA pamphlets and stuff like that, yeah, just way top information and it's good to ingest it, especially if they have like little key phrases of like things that you can say. But I would say definitely get with like a translator or someone on ground the first opportunity that you can if you have information like that Like if you're going to Africa or if you're going to to anywhere and you have one of those booklets Find like the first like shopkeeper that you can build a rapport with and be like hey, man Is this if I say this what does that mean to you and like try to validate it? I have a story for it.

Because this like outside of like your own experience, my buddy calls me and he was in Kurdistan for a moment and he would just go to the Khabib. He would just go to the Khabib stands like periodically once two, three times a week. And so after he was like nice as this shopkeeper, the guy came forward one day is like, I have information for you. He's like, what? And he just started telling him about the whereabouts of ISIS local insurgents who the drug runners are.

And he was like, I tipped him $2 for a $4 cabal. And he just gave me everything I wanted. Yeah, dude. So it reminds me of like the meme from the Sopranos, where it shows like Christopher or whatever. And he's like, they call it human tone. It's where 35 mics pay people the lie to them. Which is what human intelligence does. But but whenever you just like build a rapport with someone and then they offer information to that to you like that really, that's a gift.

Is that a like how easy is that like slippery slope? Because like in your job field, you start to build a rapport with a local person at that point, do you like build a source with them? And you kind of like transition out of that job field into more like source handling and validation. Like, cause I'm pretty sure it's a very easy thing to like slide into. It is an easy thing to slide into.

Civil affairs and psychological operations for that matter. We don't't we don't run sources like that, not in the same way that human intelligence or counterintelligence does. But we are what's called passive intelligence collectors, right? Kind of kind of like the same thing of like every soldier is a sensor will like, okay, yes. But also, they, like your S2 cells will understand that your soft guys are probably gonna have more to contribute than your average rifleman. And we did.

But we did that because they were like, hey, you're gonna have access to indigenous people in a way that no one else in the battalion is going to. So use that and ask open-ended questions. I can't, I can't walk up to someone and be like, hey man, have you, do you know where Johnny Bombmaker is? I think he lives on this street. Could you all, you know, I'd be willing to pay you some shit. Like, that's all, that's all human stuff and that's active intelligence collection, right? if you're asking about some shit But if you walk up to someone and you're like, hey, man, is there has there been any trouble going on?

Most dudes will be like no no trouble. I'm just I'm just here selling my watermelon or whatever it is that I'm doing But every so often some guy will will be like, yeah, actually, my fucking neighbor who is an asshole is in the Taliban, so you should kill him. And obviously, is his neighbor actually in the Taliban? I'd give it a 50-50 because maybe his neighbor is and he's finally like, all right, dude, I'm going to tell the Americans to fucking kill him. Or maybe he just has beef with his neighbor and he wants his neighbor to get shot by Americans. So yeah, speaking from like the the S2 point of that, like the soft guys,

the best way I can describe this is picture a chicken on a flat grill top, like a like a fucking flat grill at McDonald's. You've got like the heaters, right? And so you've got SF and Rangers who can poke the chicken, you know, that high-value Taliban commander, and you can poke the chicken, force him to go over here by killing one of his lieutenants or whatever. And what civil affairs and PSYops does is, let's say out of the eight fucking burners you have You have a couple saw psyops and CA teams You can turn the grill hot or cold in certain areas to move that chicken

And so like you can turn this area up and make it more for and this is like the best way I've ever heard it explained is like there's a light side to civil affairs and there's a dark side of civil affairs Oh, yeah, we can send guys out there to go build roads and help Habibi over there or number one G chief or we can, and it'll piss off the other guy who will then bring Taliban over there and we're already watching him with sensors and we're like, he's going to call his Taliban commander. He's going to tell him to blow up our Habibi. Here it comes.

But Aaron, he kind of knows. Like I'm helping this guy and he's going to probably die in the middle of the night or we're just only we don't even like this motherfucker. We're just helping him to piss off number two. And so we're moving the chicken. We're playing cat and mouse and that's how the targeting works out. And so you're just like prodding your poking for your eyes or guys who drop drop bombs. Essentially, it's like a splash.

Like you just you don't drop it at first, not every time, but you drop the bomb where he's not at to scare him out of a building, and then you go after him. So you flush him out. Yeah. And the problem comes is when you have an S2 and an S3 because the S3 gets the turn on the burners. I get to tell the S3 where the chicken might be. And so we're playing this game and what happens is people get pissed and, you know, I want to skewer the chicken. No, I want to skewer the chicken. No, you know, and then there's Navy Seals and DevGuru and CIA in the background and they've got a sniper rifle and they're going to kill the chicken anyway. And so everybody's arguing over who actually gets to kill the chicken. And then the CIA and the PsyOps

teams are like, Oh, we're going to do over here. We're going to, and, you know, in the fucking kazoo is playing in the background and everybody's dick measuring. And then the S3 tells the S2 fuck off. We've missed the chicken three times. You don't know what you're talking about. Then the chicken kills one of the, the Rangers. And then it's like, and then the chicken hops off the grill, shits everywhere, and we leave.

I mean, that's basically 20 years consolidated into that. Consolidated. What a kind of cross pollination. So I mean, like Intel is the most underappreciated MOS in the entire military. It's like, if everything goes good, no one thinks, if everything goes bad, it's your fault, it's never the operators. Yep. And so I've got a hunch that your job field is even more narrow in that because you're like,

dude, we get to fucking everything. Yeah. Hell yeah, bro. Yeah. Yeah. Civil affairs. We like we can like make or break nations, honestly, if we're given the opportunity. But the hard part is just like making sure that you have Like it's like the stars need to fucking align

Honestly is because you need to you need to have like a really good tea, right? which means either like everyone on your team has to be good or at least your team sergeant if not your team leader typically you're gonna have a team sergeant, if not your team leader, typically you're gonna have a team sergeant, which is an E7 slot by the way. So like Sergeant First Class or Gunnarine, the mass sergeant, like that's who the team sergeant's gonna be, but one of them, at least one of them, really has to have their head screwed on tight and know how to run civil military operations. They have to really understand civil affairs and how to do it. And if you have that, that team that is high functioning,

you know, hopefully needs to be assigned to a ground commander, like a battle space owner, who knows how to leverage them? Because you could have the best team in the world and they're like, hey, sir, and they're like, they're explaining everything to their commander and they're like, hey, sir, look, this is what we can do for you. We can make the infrastructure so that way people aren't looking to the Taliban for jobs, right? It's like if people, if nobody's, if people have a way to make legitimate income

They aren't going to be searching for ways to make illegitimate income And you can sit down and try to explain that to you know your Westpoint grad of like 93 years some shit like that Who's like whatever I don't give a shit what you say I'm here to kill bad guys because that's going to help me get my full bird kernel. But it's that shock and awe doctor that classic American move of just killing everything in sight. And I'm sure you're like that scene of Jonah Hill and war dogs kicking the wall. You're like, dude, yeah, it's not how you do this.

Yeah, like like there's no determination for victory. We never illustrate that. So it's like, like Intel guys are always in the know. They're like, we know what the problem is. We know how to fix it. No one ever like, you know, gives up any credo or anything. No one ever pays attention. I mean, you were saying beforehand, you're like,

yeah, man, Intel guys are manic, manic depressants, like through and through it. Like, like, but I mean, yeah, when it comes to like the classic American shock and all, just like annihilate everything. Like, how many times do you come out of a brief and you're like, why the fuck are we doing this? Like, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah.

And it's, I mean, everybody wants to be cool, right? Like infantry, like the army exists for the warfighter, right? Or the government or like the military exists for the warfighter, right? Or the military exists for the warfighter. It's about that. At the end of the day, it comes down to that infantryman on the ground. And like, sure, that's what a fully functional military should do if it is a militaristic mission.

But I think what really needs to be stressed is that whenever you're trying to build a nation, like you can't like it's that's I think I read in a civil affairs book somewhere that it was like trying to hold a pork underwater by using a sledgehammer. Like it doesn't matter how hard you hit it and it doesn't matter how good your sledgehammer is. You could have the best sledgehammer in the world, but it doesn't matter how many times you hit it or for how long you hit it or like anything like that. It's not like it's a cork. It's gonna rise to the top of the water. And like that's what United States military is. We're a really, we are the best sledgehammer that the world has ever seen, ever.

But you can't use a sledgehammer to like drill a well or, you know, build a house or something like that. Yeah. I was about to say, I've told the story on the podcast before, but I don't think I, I think I told you when we were going through the exercise, but we were doing mesocell stuff and one of the psyops and CA guys, they came up with a meme. And I was like, that's a good meme because we've just blown up an ISIS target in Iraq and they were like, hey, we want to distribute this meme in the area.

And it wasn't ISIS, it was hashtag was was. And they were like, you know, Solahu adding whatever it was, it's dead. Congrats on your new, you know, congrats on promotion to like whoever, whoever, to the new ISIS commander, hashtag was was. And the battalion commander is this like combats diver, you know, C.I.B. wearing green beret and he goes, what's was was I don't was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

There's like, dude, I just remember. I was like, was was that's funny. Who they chewed us out. And I walked outside to go like get lunch. And like there was the E seven, the fucking the team sergeant of the C.A. team smoking a cigarette. He's like, I haven't smoked in eight years. He's like, what the fuck was that, bro?

And I was like, exactly like you said, all these guys come the best fucking sledgehammer wielder. You have no idea. I'm like lumberjack, you know, all these guys, like I'm the best fucking sledgehammer wielder. You have no idea. I'm like Lumberjack, you know, games champion 2020, 2020. Exactly. And he's just like sitting there and it's mind blowing. And I mean, we can talk about, you know,

a ton of things and why you do this and like how good you are with like, I always speak about like, you're the most dangerous man around women because like all these guys sit there and they're like, I got the most tattoos and the biggest pics and it's like you're what five six little five five and a half five five and a half little Mexican man with a beard who's just like all personality and like you said man. That's all you guys. It does. But it's just like, you're just that soft touch and you just know, and you are, you're a little pin that knows how to put that cork onto the bottom of the water.

And we've talked about it numerous times, we don't have to go down it. It's just like you're that sneak it in. Yeah, it's like everyone, yeah. Applauds James Bond, you're like, I want to be like that. You're like, just talk to people. That's kind of how it works. Yeah. Like literally, yeah. And like I've gotten, I've gotten that commentary my whole life

in a whole bunch of different situations. And like a lot of times people will ask me because yeah, for our listeners, I am, yeah, I'm like five foot five. I am like, I'm moderately muscular. I kind of have a beer gut now especially. And like, whatever, I have a couple tattoos, but I'm not going to, I'm not gonna be worried about like a bunch of dudes who are over six foot

and you know, take, you know, trend it like up the ass for breakfast because all they do is lift. I mean, if that's what you do, that's cool, man. But I just, I have success romantically because I just talk to women. I just talk to women and sometimes those women like you. And then you do like them back.

Women for the enemy, you're like, I know how to win. I know, yeah, dude, I've seen it in action, it's hilarious. Yeah, actually it's, yeah, and like that's what it like. Honestly, like the pinkers. Honestly, you're like, I'm putting myself in Kandahar right now. I'm looking at her, she's the HVI. I'm gonna flex, I'm gonna get a shot and I know exactly what to do.

I know all my peace and quiet. I've understood, I understand the landscape. That's really funny. You should get like YouTube dating advice or something. You're like, bro vets, shut up. Bro vets, shut up. Honestly, yeah. Honestly, and like that's what,

and like the number one thing because like I have a girlfriend now we've been dating for over a year. It's awesome. And like it's it's interesting because for for as many accolades as I have in the military, you know, I'm a retired captain. I'm a former soft NCO, like all of this other shit. But like she doesn't give a shit about my military career. She doesn't care. She even whenever I was in because we were dating before I retired,

she says that it was the her least favorite thing about me was the fact that I was in the army. So it's not about like yet,, can a captain just like go out and flex his rank and get laid? Absolutely. Absolutely. But like having been that specialist or that corporal or that sergeant, who's hit on the same women and they like look at your rank and they're like, nah, not like, nah, get the fuck out of here here. I don't I don't want to mess with any of this junior NCO. You got to be at least E7 to get in these pants. And I'm like, all right, first of all, you're a private first class.

So shut the fuck up. Second one. But like, yeah, like I can imagine on your fridge, you have like a diamond requires frishing to be polished, like, like nailed to the wall. And you're like, I know what to do. It's, I guess, it's not even, yeah. I guess like the bigger picture. In the bigger picture, it's

like you were talking about the sledgehammer. It's everyone comes in with the same mindset. And so it's important to come in with like an alternative. Like, hey, this hasn't been working or hey, they know what we're going to do. Let's try something different. And I'm not saying like food women or anything, but for when it comes to like understanding a culture, I guess you could say that. But you're like, I guess when it comes to understanding a culture, you're like,

they're expecting me to come in and blow up their firstborn son and get $5,000. What if I help them build the river? That's a little different, right? Yeah, exactly. And like, I think it just a lot of people, especially the military, right? Whenever they get put into an area of operations, they're like, all right, I'm an infantry commander. And I'm going to show up and I'm going to do the best infantry things ever. And I'm going to do the most of them and we're going to kill the most bad guys.

And that is how we measure success, because that's what I do. Right. But instead of saying like, hey, this is what I do. So this is what I'm going to do when I get there. You have to be like, OK, what what are we trying to do? What is the Goal trying to win bro. Come on. You know the rules. Yeah. Well, yeah, like we're trying to we're trying to win but like, you know what Is it that there are a ton of bad guys here or is it that these people live in the in the fucking Stone Age and That they don't understand the like even the concept of

nationalism nevermind have a national identity To get them to stand behind the notion of a government they've never had a functioning government like that. I mean, we joke about it. We joke about it. Yeah. The discord on the podcast a lot that for someone like the Middle East or Africa, it's they have that tribalistic or like local customs ingrained into them. Like, like you said, they have no idea what like a country is one day.

They were just told that they were Afghani or Iraqi or something. But exactly. But then when you have like like we joke about like Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi came in there like this is a problem That requires like a solution and so they just showed up there like you're Iraqi I don't care what fucking tribe you're from you're Iraqi now like we all have to come together and do this and You can say arguably it was the best time period for those countries because they Forcefully set aside those customs and courtesies. As long as you're not Kurdish, yeah.

Yeah, I mean. Oh, yeah, I mean. Yeah, yeah. But something like. They didn't want to get with the program. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's. They're the scapegoat.

Like the Aryans prospered under Hitler, you know? So as long as you're not, as long as you're part of the chosen crowd, like, yeah, dude, you're going to have a good time. So I guess like what I'm trying to ask is the chosen crowd like yeah, dude, you're gonna have a good time So I guess like what I'm trying to ask is in the bigger picture. How do you relate to someone like a Local Afghan you're like hey, you are I get it. You're from this this little town I get your whole family's from here But also you're in Afghanistan the country like you are in Afghani by international order like this is who you are

How do you at the smallest level kind of change that? Because it doesn't seem like you do a good job at that. No, we don't. We don't. The easiest way is not so much to try not to put titles on it because you can you can sit here and look an Afghan in the face and be like, bro, you're an Afghan. And he'll be like, whatever, man, like whatever you fucking say, I don't give a shit. I'm posthun actually. So you might

say that I'm Afghan. And I guess, according to you, like, sure, this is what this lane is called. But like, I'm posthun. This is the tribe that I'm from. I'm Muslim, right? I'm a Shia Muslim. And the tribe that I belong to is posthun. So you can tell me that I'm Muslim, right? I'm a Shia Muslim and the tribe that I belong to is Pashtun. So you can tell me that I'm this thing, but like, all right, like fucking whatever, man. The easiest way to kind of convey that isn't so much because like the concept of a national identity much because like the concept of a national identity is a means to an end so that way they can all kind of like work together and contribute. So if you just start with that end where it's like, Hey, man, you are whatever you say you are, you're a she Muslim, and you're poshtune, and you live in Kandahar like fucking great. We can agree on that. I call you Afghan because you live in Afghanistan.

You don't give a shit because that word means nothing to you. Putting all of that aside, why don't we work together and it will require you to cooperate with some other people who live in the area. So you make it like a community thing where it's like, hey, if everybody who lives in this area gets together and is like, if we work on this water infrastructure together, then maybe people won't be sick as much. And they're like, okay, yeah, like I can get behind that.

You know, so, so like, and that was that was one of the projects. If you remember, Cody, that was one of the projects that my team did. Whenever I was downrange, they had all of these different potable water points for random ass citizens in the city of Kandahar because like I was I wasn't just in Kandahar province. I was in the city of Kandahar. And there were all of these water points everywhere but and they had wells with potable water but they had no way of getting the water from the wells to the water points. So my civil affairs team purchased a truck and then we, or no, we were given a truck by the mayor of Kandahar City. He was like, I have this truck, but it's not equipped. Right? It was just a flatbed truck or whatever, like a, I don't know, like, like a jingle truck, but there was no nothing on the back.

So we had a contract and we outfitted it. I say we, we put out a contract and had a, an Afghan contractor outfit it with a water tank and a pump and everything that it needed in order to function as a water distribution truck. And then we gifted it, you know, under contract to the Afghan government saying like, hey, you're gonna be responsible for all the gas and all the maintenance and da da da da da da da. And they were like, yep, yep, okay. So then, you know, we made that and then we filled that gap in infrastructure and then go figure over a span of like two months,

the infant mortality rate and elderly mortality rate in Kandoher City fucking plummeted because they weren't drinking canal water that was, you know, that that the dude like half a mile upstream just used to wash his motorcycle and his herd of sheep. You know, now that they had places to get water from, they could do that. So like, yeah, it's just getting them to buy into the sense of, hey, if we all work together, if you agree to get water from this place, you're going to be better off for it. And if we can convince you as the mayor of Kandahar that like, hey man, this is going to be good for everybody. Like national identity shit, man. You can, that's high level shit. You just, you're going to talk to an Afghan and you're like a normal person on the ground and you're going to be like,

hey dude, I just want you to work with the people around you. Is that cool? It's one of the things that we did when we talked about MISO cells and we did work on that area because what we were doing was exactly what you said, that's not your lane, was we were trying to find things, do things for sourcing and then create intelligence networks and shit like that. You got to know what you're dealing with. America is national identity and we had a war over this. It's national identity and then you're a state know what you're dealing with. America is national identity, and we had a war over this. It's national identity. And then you're a state, then you're a county, then you're...

And so, Afghans, it's family name tribe, then the region, then the state. The state comes last in their mind. I would say religion comes first. Oh, you want to put, OK. Yeah, religion, then family name. So they're like, first, they're like, I'm a Muslim, OK? Like, first off, I'm a Muslim and I'm a Shia Muslim, OK? Or Wahabi or whatever.

Yeah. You know? Well, what's funny is they get all goofy about it. When we were doing Afghans, we were like, those motherfuckers can't read. They shake back and forth because they're keeping a musical rhythm. They're just goofy about it. Well, we were doing Afghans. We were like those motherfuckers can't read they shake back and forth because they're keeping a musical rhythm They're just singing a song And so I mean the the team sergeant I I had

He's like, you know, like let's say you're going to a bar the team sergeant who was in the CA. He's like if you're going to a bar He's like, let's say you're going to a bar in Santa Fe he's like, let's say you're going to a bar in Santa Fe. He's like, and you go there. He's like, and he's like, this is what would happen. A green beret and a ranger, he's like, they would go and they would wear their best college shirt real tight around the arms, fucking muscles, tattoos. If you don't remember me, bray, so it's sweet cut hair.

He's like, they'd look clean and fresh. He's like, they'd be a big fucking dude. He's like, but that's the thing. He's like, you'd see an infantry guy like like they'd be a big fucking dude. He's like but that's the thing He's like you'd see an infantry guy like that. You'd see a ranger like that. You see it You know they came I came to fuck and I came to fuck hard. Yep. He's like Scyops doesn't show up. They're too busy, you know Scroll in Tinder and he's like civil affairs. He's like here's what's gonna happen. He's like I'm showing up in Flat he's like flat vans. I'm wearing some

good jeans, maybe some like, you know, some like little style on that. And he's like, because I'm insane a fay, he's like, I'm gonna bear where my best Selena shirt. And I'm gonna get a fucking like really good Margarita. And I'm just gonna chill in there. And he's like, and I'm getting tacos, I'm getting food, I'm getting tacos. And he's like, and he's like, women are gonna come. He's like, he's got, he's got food, he's got good alcohol, and he's got some personality on that shirt. And he's like, and that's what civil affairs does, is we bring the party.

He's like, if people wanna talk and they wanna do things with us, he's like, those other guys, he's like, if you wanna fuck, you can go fuck. He's like, but you know, I'm here for other things. I got other things I gotta do. Like, you know, I was like- It's exactly it, man.

We are, as they told me in the school in the schoolhouse at Swig, we, we civil affairs is the face of humanity for the United States Army. Like we, we put a human face on the military because yes, we are this giant fucking war machine and we are the greatest standing army that the world has ever seen. And that's cool. But like, if if we're an army assigned to a diplomatic mission like nation building, you got you got to have somebody who isn't socially just stupid, which every infantry officer is. And I'm friends with so many of them. But yeah, not to say that all of them are,

but like most of them are. And that's where civil affairs comes in is we, you know, like between civil affairs and psyops, we win the hearts and the minds. That's a phrase that's thrown around a lot is like, oh, winning the hearts and the minds. That's a phrase that's thrown around a lot is like, oh, winning the hearts and the minds. And that's what we do. Civil affairs wins the hearts and psyop wins the minds. I actually, like, I don't know, personally, I have a problem with the fact that they call it psychological operations.

I feel like they should call it logical operations because that's what they're doing. Is they're using logic to be like, hey, you want to know what's not cool or beneficial for you or your family getting killed? Want to know what is cool? Farming. getting killed, want to know what is cool? Farming. So if you decide to not be Taliban and instead be a farmer, like put down your weapons and pick up like, you know, some farming equipment, like that is a good

thing and your family will appreciate it. And like that is an example of a Psyop campaign that my attach Psyop team was doing. And it's like, that isn't, you're not like, fucking with people, my, you know, that's not like a Taylor Swift level operation. That's, that is just logic of like, yeah, dude, you can't earn money for your family if you're fucking dead. your family if you're fucking dead. So don't fight in the war and instead just be a farmer. And we saw like a decrease in the number of Taliban like foot soldiers because of that campaign because they're like, Hey, you know what? I can't provide for my family if I get killed by the Americans or the Taliban for that matter.

I can just be a farmer instead. So and to me, that's not like, yeah, that's not like a psychological operation. To me, that's a logical operation. Just explaining shit. Yeah, that's literally all it is. You're just, yeah, you're just explaining like normal things. It's not like you have to trick anybody. You're just like normal things. It's not like you have to trick anybody. You're just like saying things.

I mean, that was the whole point of the was was. As all we were updating was like, we killed this guy and this guy's the new commander. And it was just like a logical app. Or like, oh, shit, the commander's dead. Like, yeah, exactly. And especially, like, I can understand the logic behind that Scyop campaign because it's like, hey, if they're seeing that that billboard

change like every fucking week or some or however often it changes, they're like, wow, dude, people in charge of the Taliban here don't live very long. Like that's and like, I don't know. I think, you know, hashtag was was this fucking hilarious. But like that personally, but yeah, like I I get it. And that's that's how it's supposed to work is because like, you know, your your civil affairs team is going to talk to the Afghans about community and about working together. We're going to help try to fix those sources of instability and provide them water, provide them

an infrastructure, try to make their government do their job and not embezzle all of the money. Your psychological operation teams are going to get in there and put out these logical messages. Just just explaining shit like, hey, like, here's this poster of the bad guy commander. They die a lot. So maybe don't work for these guys kind of thing. You know, they're sitting there winning over the mind saying like, hey, you don't even have to be pro America or pro you know, gyroa or pro whatever. Just like don't, don't be bad. So yeah, it's not like, you know, if we're campaigning to get people to drink, you know, Dr. Pib or Mr. Pib, he hasn't been

in medical school, sorry. But Mr. Pib. And we're like, hey, we don't really want people to drink Mr. Pib. We just don't want them to drink like orange juice. OK, like that's and that's that's what Siop does. They just like get people not to drink orange juice. And then, you know, our SF teams train up like Mr, Mr. Pibb commandos that go and kill anybody who does. So, and like, that's, that's, it's supposed to work in a trifecta like that.

It's supposed to be a pyramid of hearts, minds, like, and dicks. You know? Like, yeah. Yeah. It is. All three. So, I guess the, yeah, like. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, no, go ahead.

Go ahead. I know I got. All right. So you were talking about the truck earlier and like spark like spark to memory because when I was in Somalia, the local trash company, there was one and then the strict American rules were like, hey, guys, no drugs, no taking photos of stuff. They hired a guy came in first thing high on cot sort of taking photos of everything. They're like, like, hey guys, no drugs, no taking photos of stuff. And they hired a guy who came in first thing, high on cot, sort of taking photos of everything.

They're like, like, fucking dude, why did, no. So, you know, of course they fired him. But if, say there's like a, the way America does things, I guess for the listeners is you can't work with a company or a local entity that is linked to say, like an insertion group or the Taliban or Al-Shabaab or something like that, because it could be compromised.

You can't bring them on the base. Would civil affairs train an army of truck drivers? Would you guys actually teach them how to do that or actually like find the tools to do it so they could? Yeah, we would find the tools to do it so that way they could. It wouldn't be our job to train the truck drivers, right? It was part of the contract that we made to be like, hey, also you're going to staff this.

So like you are going to be responsible for finding someone who knows how to drive a truck and stuff like that. So like all of that would be written into the contract. But to your point of like, hey, if we need people to do this, usually we would have to spell it out because everything has to be very explicitly spelled out Of like hey, this is this is what you need to do in order to make this work And if it requires like this amount of personnel working in this way on this schedule Or on this kind of schedule, then like this is

what it is. And the idea is to put as much of the onus as possible back on the host nation so that way they take ownership of it, so that way the whole concept of civil affairs is to work ourselves out of a job, right? We don't want to be there spending taxpayers dollars, which by the way is like what paid for the truck, right? Like we bought the tank and we paid for the contract and all that. Those are all US tax dollars. So we don't want to spend that if we don't have to. And we will tell them how to do it because even at 22 as a fucking corporal, I understood how a government worked because I had to. That's part of the job description. And whenever I looked at a dysfunctional government or a malfunctioning government, I have to be able to be like,

hey, this isn't working how it should. These are the things that we need to tweak in order to make that happen. And you want the host nation to do as much of the legwork as possible so that way when you're gone, they can keep running with it. So like, does Kandahar City still have potable water? I don't know. But if they do, I like I'd be willing to bet that the truck that my team did, if it hasn't gotten blown up yet, is probably a part of it. So yeah, it's the the idea is to give it to them.

So that way they do it. We wouldn't actually do it. I don't actually know how to like weld anything. I don't know how to put a tank on a truck. I don't know what is a part of that, but we have systems that are like, hey, we're doing a water truck contract and we can look up every single civil affairs contract that has ever been. And we just type in the keyword water truck and then we can look at all of the other contracts that have been done where like, hey, this one does what we need it to do. So then we pull it up and it'll have like technical

specifications in there of like, okay, this is the kind of truck that we have. Here's what it is. We will hand it over to actual experts who like know how to do things on, on Faw Basab where I was at and Camp Nathan Smith. We had CBs who who are fucking awesome. By the way, I love CBs. I would take them over Army Corps of Engineer 10 times out of 10. So yeah, we had CBs and we were like, hey, like, we explained the project and we were like, hey, this is what we need to do to, you know, we did that, we explained that

to senior chief. And she was like, okay, I'll get my people on it. And they vetted everything, they made sure that everything was good, we handed it over to like a cat three translator, some shit like that, who was able to make sure that it was legible, not that it fucking mattered because they're all literate anyway, but we had it translated. And then we handed it over to the contractor and we were like, here you go, dude, here all the specifications that you need, we're gonna make this happen. And then they do it. So the idea is Most of the time when if you get like really really granular into it The the only thing that is lacking is initiative and money

Most of the time that initiative is lacking because people don't know what to do, right like Or if they do know what to do then money he's like, yeah, dude We have this truck to move water on but we don't have any money in our budget to equip it with a water tank and a pump. So then we're like okay we'll spend 3,000 us dollars or however much it cost it was probably way less than that. To equip this this water truck so that way the city of Kandahar has potable water. And we manage the contract but after that it's like completely hands on and then you know as part of the contract we had our CVs come in and QA it so that way it's like everything was good to go

like yeah it's all very yeah it's all very, but we would not do any of the things ourselves. We were more like project managers, as what it is. So I mean, like, Cody, like your wife is a project manager. I doubt she knows very little about the actual like how to do the things of the things that she is managing. But she's like, okay, well, here's what needs to be done in order to get done. And she goes from there. And that's something that we've talked about here. And I mean, it's one of those things like, what's real leadership outside the army? Like once you take the stripes off and the rank off, it's like everything you're talking about, that's a project manager. That's somebody who makes 100

K a year. It's not about like needing to know it. You're right. I'm just repeating it, but it's just exactly what she does. I know I need XYZ, and then they get it, and then the conus is on them. And then if it fails, it's like they can't be like, Oh, Mr. Ellen, you've fucked me. And it's like, No, you fucked you. I know you fucked you. You fuck you. Exactly. So no, and they try, but like, you know, that's why you just make sure that your contracts are tight. Just like any project manager does, and like I've looked into project management, I think I'd be good at it.

Lord knows I have enough experience with it, but yeah, that's really what it is. And like, that's how, um, whenever I was deployed to the Philippines, that's how it was treated. Um, and because, and that was my title is like, I was a project manager for the construction of a schoolhouse in like this third world, you know, like village in the Philippines that had more students than it had room. So I don't know shit about construction, man. I'm like, yes, I'm Mexican, but like, I don't know.

You know, I'm more of the fruit picking kind, less of the construction. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, like, I don't know shit about construction, man. I don't know. I don't know how to slap stucco on a wall. But but the people who were there, like the construction workers did. So I talked to their foreman and was like, hey, what do you need? Like, oh, we need four more bags of cement because rain came in and fucked up some. And I'm like, OK, four bags of cement. Right. And then we have like, like, we're the money guys, but we have like our acquisition,

dude, where it's like, hey, man, I need you to get me this and then tell me how much it is. And then it comes back with the receipt and we're like, all right, here's your money. And then we get them the fucking bags of cement, right? So we don't, you don't have to be the technical expert of anything. You just have to be like linked in with the dude who is and make sure that they have all the resources that they need to get the project done. And that's what I did in the Philippines.

That's what we did in Afghanistan. And like that's how you do civil affairs. When you have an engineering project or an end cap and engineering capabilities, where you're like building something or drilling a well or whatever. When you have one of those, yeah, you need to have that point of contact that technical expert who's like your lead contractor or some shit. He's going to know what's going shit, he's gonna know what's

going on. You don't know what's going on though. So you need to have your QA people that you trust. You know, I had CBs, thank God for them. And yeah, like it, it worked out. So you don't have to do anything. You just manage the project itself, you make sure that it gets done and you hold the contractors accountable because they just like contractors here, man, they will screw you out of every cent that they can because they're trying to get above two. So, but yeah. All right, man. I mean, I we've been here for an hour and a half and I think this is yeah.

No, but I'm grateful you came. I'm grateful. I mean, because most people don't know like you can win a war this way. You said you take a country down or you can I'm grateful. Yeah. I mean, because most people don't know, like, you can win a war this way. You said, you take a country down or you can build it up. Yeah. So, that's nice to meet you, man. And if I could leave... It's a small...

Yeah, nice to meet you too. If I could just leave one parting word about civil affairs. Yeah. Spell it in the back. Just about, like, C. Dude, I... Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, C.A. Yeah, we're not gay. We're just CA

no, it's Like I said, it is civil affairs is part of the special operations Try to like it's it's like a pyramid. It's a triangle I guess where you need to have your hard military power, which is special forces Or international drill sergeants as I call them you have your hard military power, which is special forces or international drill sergeants, as I call them, you have your psychological operations. So your information warfare, which is necessary so that people know what's going on. And then you have your infrastructure and like compassionate component to like interface with people. And it's like, Hey, we're like,

yeah, I'm, I understand that I have guns coming out of every orifice, but like, I'm here to help you. And you need the trifecta of special operations. If you want to leave a place better than when you came, you know, if you're if you're a commander and you want to leave a battle space better than what you came, you need all three. Killing shit doesn't make things better. Funny enough, it can make them not worse, but it doesn't make but it doesn't make them better.

You need all three to make them better. So. All right. Thank you for having me. Yeah, well, bye. Happy to be here.