The Team House - Special Operations Task Force Commander Andrew Milburn, Ep. 30

Episode Date: February 22, 2020

ANDREW MILBURN was born in Hong Kong and grew up in the United Kingdom. After graduating from law school in London, he enlisted in the US Marine Corps as a private. He was commissioned from the ranks, and as a Marine infantry and special operations officer, has commanded in combat at every grade. As the commanding officer of the Marine Corps’ special operations regiment, he was selected to lead a multi-national task force given the mission of defeating ISIS in Iraq. He retired in 2019 as the Chief of Staff of Special Operations Command, Central (SOCCENT), the headquarters responsible for the conduct of all US special operations throughout the Middle East. Since then he has written articles on topics such as leadership, ethics and culture change, for a number of publications, to include the Atlantic Magazine and War On The Rocks. He and his wife Jessica live in Tampa, Florida with their two children and a coterie of rescued dogs. His book can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations/dp/1526750554 Support the stream on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. One? One. Episode 30. Hey, guys. Welcome to episode 30 of the Team House.

Oh, Jack, are you leaving? No, not yet. Oh, okay. I thought Jack was retiring now and, you know, Jack retires, I have to retire because everybody knows that this is Jack's baby. It's your baby, too. Take ownership for it, Dave. It's our little love baby, John. We're tied together now, Dave.

You're coming down, you're sinking with the ship with me. Nice. I was a Navy diver, so. It's all right. Anyway, with us tonight is Andrew Milburn. a former Marine with an incredible story and you have a book coming out tomorrow

Andrew so one of the things we like to ask on our on our stream because Jack and I are both comic book geeks is your origin story like where do you come from? Yeah I actually get to my origin story but first just to kind of set the scene for the listeners here we are in this abandoned warehouse looking place in Brooklyn

drinking whiskey and and we're coming down here with the Uber driver he kept going, are you sure? He's like, are you sure you want to go here? And there's just over there I mean, we came through Queens on the way and I don't know if you guys are old enough to have seen the movie The Warriors.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. It looked like that. There's dudes running around there, I swear. And yeah, he was getting more and more nervous. And then so eventually he was, we'd stopped and it was almost get out. He's like, are you sure you don't want me to take you back to Manhattan? You're going on Fox, right?

CNN? It's over by. He's like, uh, way you had. Did you do like a ten and ten? I mean, was it like pushing you drop, you know, pushing you out. Yeah, he sped off. Um, origin story. Yeah.

So, um, so I, as you can probably tell from my accent, I am from the UK. And, and that is, that, that, that can be good and bad if you're in the U.S. military because having an accent you stand out, people remember when you do really messed up things. At the same time, I think it has given people the impression that I'm more intelligent and I actually am. I will take that.

Although that's not always a benefit in the Marine Corps. But yeah, so I'm going to keep this, I'm going to keep this short so it's not to bore everyone listening. But I, yeah, I grew up in the UK, but my mother was American, my father was British, So as a dual citizen. And I always wanted to join the British Army, you know, ever since I was a little kid. And so that was my dream.

And then at college, I broke my leg playing rugby. And then the British Army said, you're a 4F. You know, I failed their medical. And so I had a, I was one semester away from getting a philosophy degree. And I had then to look at what kind of jobs, a philosophy degree prepared me for. And not many. So it happens. And actually...

And this is before internet blogging, so there was nothing. There was nothing, yeah. And it also so happens, there aren't that many Marine officers who have a philosophy degree. Really? Yeah, you wouldn't have thought that. No, that's surprised. So I went on to law schools. I thought, okay, that would be my thing.

I would be a barrister. I like the thought of wearing a wig and, you know, doing the shenanigans. And all this was in the UK, correct? All of this was in the UK, yeah. So I had not been to the United States by that point, at that point. Come 19, this is going to date me, guys. It's 1987, all right, like when, I mean, decades before you were born, Jack. I was born, I was like, what, four years old at that point?

Oh, yeah, okay, thank you. Thank you for that, yeah. What about you, Dave? 17. Really? Yeah, yeah. Oh shit, yeah, you're almost up there with me, man. Yeah, I thought you're moving a little slowly at that.

Yeah. So anyway, come 1987, and my girlfriend then moves to Australia, And I think I'm going to go and visit her, and I want to plan a trip going overland as much as possible. Not in 1980, that's tough because, of course, Afghanistan, the Russians are trolling around Afghanistan, and Iran and Iraq are at war. So I figured the lesser of two evils was to cross Iran. I got a transit visa. Very topical now, right?

Got a transit visa for Iran in 1987, which was unusual. And it was only because the Iranian consul in London had been to the same university as me. So I fly out. I don't want to do anything pedestrian like going across Europe. So I figured I'd cheat on the overland part by flying into Istanbul and then catching buses to the Iranian border. And there I sat for three days waiting to go in. And the Iranian border guards, who weren't tremendously nice fellows,

were shooting guys. I mean, they were searching trucks. no, they're just absolutely no kidding. They dragged three Turkish dudes out of one truck and killed them. They claimed they had. Holy shit. Taking heroin, yeah. So that was kind of a wake-up call.

I was in kind of the nomadslam between the two border posts thinking, I can't go back. This is not good. So anyway, I make it to Tehran. I'm taken off the bus in Tehran. We arrived there early hours of the morning by the revolutionary guard. guys and they have a Filipino girl translating me and they take me in and they they don't lay a finger on me but they they interrogate me for a while and at one

point I start laughing I'm just a you know I'm early 20s I'm an idiot and this Filipino girl just looks me and she goes you don't understand they you can they'll take you out back and kill you and they don't care yes no British Embassy here you're done anyway and that that was a sobering thought because she was right yeah Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Fast forward, I get arrested again in a place called Shiraz near the border with Iran, because it's a staging place for the war. I thought it would be cool to go there because I read there was the tomb, the third Caliph that sounded cool and so I wanted to take photos. Evidently, having a British tourist in the middle of the war, taking photographs of one of their tombs was something that it was not cool.

It was not cool, yeah. So I was thrown in a jail. They treated me, okay, for about a day. And then they released me and they said, you need to get out of here. So I headed this garden spot called Zahidan, which is on the border of Pakistan. Now here is a strange part, okay?

We start near Quam, and they've built, and we get out the buses, and the guy I'm with, the Iranian guy tells me, hey, there's a, they've got a kind of monument here too, the Iranian victory of the Americans in 79. It was Desert 1. Yeah. And they dragged wreckage.

Wow. Into including a flight helmet. And it was in the middle of the, yeah, it was bizarre. Middle, middle of the desert there. Anyway. That's fascinating. Yeah. Trust me, guys, I'm getting to the point where I joined the Marikol.

It's coming out. No, no, no. It is. Yeah, it is fascinating. So anyway, I get to Zah, Hidon. Can I say shit hole? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. I mean, it is. We've all been to a lot of shitholes, but when I think of shithole now, yes, Al-Qaim comes to mind, but Zahedan too. And I arrive there in the middle of the night.

I get chased by a crowd who, again, everyone's suspicious about having a British tourist in Iran in 1987 for some reason. And sheltering, ironically, Iranian army gives me a shelter there eventually before going across the border into Pakistan. Trouble in Pakistan, surprisingly. Baluchis and the batons rioting over bus seats of all things killing each other in the streets of Keta

See nothing changes right Right And so anyone who's been to that part of the world Can understand a fight over bus seats It's absolutely rational in that part of the world That is when you are not allowed access to women or alcohol Right seats are a huge deal Yeah and not a fight but blood feud

It's a blood feud Yeah it's like I'm gonna kill you because you you took my bus here. Yeah, yeah. And then, of course, the Pakistani Army, who are not known for their restraint around the streets shooting people, and there's 24-hour curfew. So I spent a week in Kedda, which is, some people say Kueira. Quetta, yeah, Port City. It's not a garden spot either. No? So you do not, your review on TripAdvisor would not be high.

Not a 500-review. No, no. If it's minus. points. Anyway, where I'm getting here, fellas. I get to... I'm waiting for the part where you're like, maybe I should go back to London. Oh, hey, hey, I forgot. One ironic thing in Iran, got to say this, okay?

I was in Isfahan, town in the... Nice rugs. Yeah, very nice town. Very nice rugs. And actually, I bought several, which I no longer had. And Isfahan was hit by Scuds. So there's something called the War of the Civil. cities, right? Iraqis saying that there are five, when you look at the war of the cities, because I had to go back and look at this, there's five separate air raids that the Iraqis

conducted with long-range bombers and Scuds on Iranian cities. And so I happen to be in Esfahan when they hit it with Scots. And I want to tell you dramatic stories about it, but I slept through the whole thing. I was in a hotel. And next morning they were like, we try to wake you up. You wouldn't get up because I was beaten. You know, I was like, who the fuck? So you were, you blissfully slept through it. I slept through it. Yeah. I wondered. I, I wondered. I. I, I, I, I, I, But ironic, right? Yeah. So I was in an Iraqi air raid.

Right. Yeah. When you think about what happens after that. Right, right. So anyway, finally get to Islamabad. And my parents had sent my U.S. passport to Islamabad because they knew that that would not be a good thing to have on me when I was going through Iran. And so I went into the embassy to get my passport. and there's these Marine Security Guards in there.

I start talking to them. These guys live the life of Riley. You know, they're like, yeah, this is really cool. You know, we have parties pretty much every night. Embassy guard has always been like that, that sweet spot, I think, I mean, it's not the norm. It's not, it's not Marine Corps life. But that was my snapshot.

You know, I had seen Sansa v. Uijima, you know, which is a different world, right? Right, right. I didn't particularly want that Marine Corps. Right, right. But these dudes were, you know, I mean, they exuded discipline. They looked good. They had the deltas, you know, the blue trowel, the red stripes.

And so I sat with them in the cafeteria and they're like, they said, hey, come around to the Marine House tonight. We're having a party. And I went around that. It was unbelievable. I mean, it was, you know, it's a fully stocked bar. They had a pool table and pool. And lots and lots of women. Yeah.

And I was an impressionable. man and I was thinking, this is awesome. But we know that you were just appreciating women because you were on your way to see your girlfriend. So, I mean... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was like you appreciate fine art, right? You know, without owning it.

So anyway, so my mind's starting, it's starting to turn here. And I end up in Australia and I worked there for a bit. And I go back, I had to finish off my laurel. exams because I failed one. And so I finished those successfully. I go into the US Embassy this time to read. Every time I go into a US Embassy, something bad happens. So this time I go in to renew my passport. This is in London and I run into another Marine, right? He's in Marine uniforms, same thing, Delta's and everything, but he's not a security guard. He is a recruiter because they had US high schools throughout Europe.

This is the 80s, right? So the Air Force and the Army, they're all over Europe and there are recruiters there trolling on, you know, getting high school, US high school. So, but he's a Brit. It's very confusing. And his story was he had emigrated to the states in the 60s and had a green card, did not get citizenship yet, and then had decided to join the Marines and ended up in Vietnam. And then here he was now as a master sergeant recruiter back in England on his Twilight tour. Yeah. So I started talking to him

and I was thinking, I was, you know, in my mind I was thinking the Marine House and of course the Marine recruiter is like, yeah, it's a great life. You're gonna love it. And I said, okay, well,

she's got to finish law school and he's like, what? I got one set of exams to do next month and then I'll be back. And he's like, I said, hey, do you think I should be an officer? And he went, oh no. So you don't want to be an officer.

No, those guys they haven't seen the ball since kick off. You know, you know, you want to be a grunt. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds cool. Yeah. So anyway, I go back to him after my law degree and everything. And I do my SFA up and all that.

And I drove a hard bargain. Yeah, I mean, guaranteed PFC at a boot camp, guaranteed infantry. I run this dude dry. Yeah, right. Yeah, you're really good. You should write a book just on that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, just on how to get over on a recruiter.

Yeah. I'm sure, you know, he got in trouble. for that. But I had a problem. You know, I still had to get through the fiscal and I had a messed up leg. Hey, if I'm talking too long. No, no, no, no, no. So my leg only bends 90 degrees and all of you guys have done the duck walk and MEPs, right? Some of you who, you know, for whatever reason, have continued to do duck walks and various aspects of your personal life, but I don't need to hear about that now. But anyway. You'll see it after three more days. Can we bring out the gamble? So I can't, you know, I tell the recruiter, hey, look, my legs

jacked up and he takes me to a team US Air Force recruiter in Upper Heafet it's US Air Force Base in England and this guy's you know he wants to get out to his golf game can you do 20 push-ups? Yes you okay yes literally it was like that you know they did a few blood tests and everything but never even looked at my leg awesome I thought at the time

recruiter Maser and Cheshire whose name still remains for me bettered in my mind. You know, I alternate between wishing him well and wanting them to rot in hell over the course of the last 30 years. But, you know, now I think we've achieved a piece. Yeah. Anyway, he, he's a savvy dude. He puts me on a plane and I get to MEPS, New York, here. And, of course, you know, they corral, all the, all the, whatever service you're going in. Yeah. Mep's is the military entrance processing. Yeah. You go to the one in Albany? Ah, no.

Or is there wine? No, it's in the city. Oh, okay. Yeah, back then. I want to say it was in Brooklyn, actually. Okay. And they made us do the dark walk, and they're like right away. You come over here.

What the hell is wrong with your leg? Okay, get over there. You're not physically qualified. And then, I swear this story is true, all right? They cannot figure out how to send me back to the UK. They can't find a funding line to send me back to the UK. If I'd come from the States, it would have been easy. Right.

But I was on a one-way ticket. They can't get hold of, imagine that, they can't get hold of my recruiter. Right. He's in the pub, you know. He's like on his fifth pint. Yeah. He's turning. So eventually, so eventually the chief petty officer is like, fuck it.

All right. Get back in line. So, sorry, back in line. But I'm not, I'm not out of the woods yet because the next stop is, you know, you've got to see a shrink. And they ask you back then. they used to ask you if you like boys and various other things, you know. And I was good on that.

You know, I didn't particularly like boys. But he said, how much do you drink? Do you drink alcohol? I went, oh, yeah. And he goes, how much do you drink? And I said, maybe two, three pints a day. So in England, everything's measured in pints. Right.

He's thinking pints of liquor, right? So now I'm on the yellow bench waiting to see the substance of beer. use counsellor and and the chief comes wondering and he goes what the hell's wrong with you now like I don't know man can you sort this out anyway eventually they saw that it wasn't my first miscommunication with the military and I end up going end up on a bus down to Paras Island which I tell you it's an overrated place Paras Island oh yeah yeah it's like very unpleasant and I couldn't understand a single thing anyone said back then did Did they, like, did they ever, any point, like, think you were fucking with him?

Yeah, all the time. Yeah. So, here's, so at Parris Island, when I arrived, there's a true story again. I know I keep saying that, but I feel, because Jack looks cynical. No. I'm going to, he's going to write a soft rap article about me afterwards, like, you know, some of the ones I read. Not, not, not, oh, the scandalous one. Yeah, it's on its way.

I know, man. Anyway, so I get, I get down there and I'm standing a line. Seriously, I cannot understand a thing, because. The way that draw and structure speak is so strange anyway. Yeah, the frog voice. Yeah, exactly. Even if you understand American. And it's a weird, like, southern accent, too, with the frog boys.

And I keep hearing them yell, where's Milburn at? And I thought, Milburn at. That sounds a little like my name. But you wouldn't end a sentence in a preposition. That's hilarious. That is so fucking hilarious. Eventually, you know, they're going just apeshit. And eventually they, like, well, you,

Milburn? I went, why yes, I am. We've been looking for you everywhere. Well, you should have said. I heard you say

Milburn Act, but that's not my name. Of course, not a music. Not amusing. Yeah. And it was a beginning. It was a beginning

of a very long three months for me. Did you, I mean, did you become their whipping boy? Or did they like you? Or was it a love hate thing? I think it was love hate. Yeah.

So I was, you know, I earned the sobricade boy George. Remember boy George. Sure. You know, it's one of, how could we forget. Yeah. Yeah.

And when they found out how to law degree, I found myself sequestered in like the duty hut doing their... It's like Shawshank Redemption. Yeah, doing the MCIs, what we call Marine Court Institute, correspondence courses for promotion. So I did like 15 MCIs for various drill instructors while I was saying. But the problem is I never learned how to drill. I'm the only Marine to have gone through boot camp who just...

Because every time that platoon was drilling, I was sitting there doing their MCIs. So when they had like final evils and stuff like that, Did you shit out? Well, that was the plan. But I was discovered by the series commander the day before final drill. Oh, no.

And yeah, brought out on the... So you can imagine, I'm like... Oh, yeah. I mean, I knew a little bit. I've been up for a few things, but... But it's an art form. It is an art form, and it's drill. I mean, it's called drill for a reason.

Yeah, no, it's an art form. It receives... You know, and I think it receives a ridiculous amount of attention. Don't get me wrong. I mean, there's enough of me who's a traditionalist who believes that drill is important. But in the Marine Corps back then, we totally overdid it. I mean, think about this, all the hours.

So you spent more time, you spent more time on drill at boot camp than any other single activity. Oh, yeah. To include PT, to include academics, to include field craft, the only thing that you might have spent more time on hour-wise might have been shooting, I think, because the Marine Corps takes that pretty seriously. And Field Day. Yeah, Field Day, right. Yeah, so, yeah, so the two. Most time-consuming activities at boot camp are cleaning. Yeah.

Cleaning and drilling. Yeah. Neither of which really makes you a bad worry. But my, but I started out in the Marine Reserves. I went to MCRD San Diego in 8 and 9. Yeah. So I'm very familiar with the whole. The Marine Corps need for.

Disappilling. For drilling. Well, I mean, you know, they, one, they want, they say that it reinforces rapid reaction to orders, right? Yeah. And to, you know, it's like you have to know how to like move in, like move in combat. So like somehow like drilling, you know. Yeah, so because combat, of course, you know you have to be able to do right flank, left flank. Close quarter.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which it's gone out. You know, I'm making fun of it. There is part of me that thinks that there is intangible, there is intangible benefit in that. There's a huge pride thing there.

That's right. Yeah. There's a huge, huge pro. Very true. Yeah. There's a sense of progression from when you start and everyone is all left feet to when you feel the whole platoon moving as one. So they tell me I never actually experienced it.

It's also tradition. I mean all that stuff goes back to the days of like Alexander the Great when, you know, they had a maneuver of platoons. Very much, yeah. Yeah. Using like whistles and flags and drums and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, tradition is important.

And we can yell and scream about certain aspects of it that make no sense to us. But in retrospect, you know, we understand it. And with the tradition, because you talk about this one a little bit in your book, it is the cohesion that being part of that same tradition builds. You know, and if all Marines across the board can talk about the grinder. Yeah. Right. It's a shed experience.

Yes, a shared experience that everybody can bitch about or the minute, you know, a field day, you know, all that stuff. Yeah. You know, it's something that binds them together and creates that fraternity, you know. It's all important. It's very true. And so when things have gone wrong on the drill field, like I think you probably remember, I do you guys tracking the story in 2016, Paras Island Muslim recruit, the drone structure shop, the Muslim recruit in a dryer. turned it on. Yeah, I remember that.

And then another Muslim recruit, they were hazing, and he killed himself. Oh, no. Yeah, it was pretty shocking story. So when all of that happened, things like that happened periodically in the Marine Corps, and they, in Marine recruit training, and they hit the media, and it garnered as understandably congressional attention. And the subtext is, you need to fix your recruit training or you're going to lose it with a Marine. If the Marine Corps loses its recruit training, there is no Marine Corps. Right.

Because that, as you said, that's what, that's their shared experience. I went through Navy Boot and I went through Army Boot. We're just trying it. They're just trying them all out. Yeah, I just, you know, I'm never satisfied. No, but there's nothing like Marine Boot. There's nothing like Marine Boot. There's nothing like it.

Yeah. You know, in terms of building. Right. In terms of building that identity of a Marine that, you know, when you're drill sergeant, you know, or drill instructor, I'm sorry, when your drill instructor is marking you on graduation dating, because we're going to go in that auditorium and some colonel who doesn't even know you is going to say, I'm proud to be the first one to call you Marines, but that's bullshit because he doesn't know you, I'm, you know, and after, you know what I mean, and it's like,

everybody's like, oh, yeah, you know, I mean, and that, there's something to that. It is a supremely efficient system. Yeah. I, you know, I went back and I worked on the drill for as a series officer. And I can tell you that it is impressive because... Showing your good side has many rewards. Become a donor at Gryphal's Plasma, and your plasma can make life-saving medicines. Millions of people depend on these medicines

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the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. As much as we pound ourselves on the chest about being marine, so I'm, of course, always be proud of being a Marine. But, you know, we don't get the high school football stars and the valedictorian We get Joe Blow, middle of the class, you know, just barely plowing along, doesn't get to date the pretty girls, he's, you know. And we get 20,000 of those dudes a year.

And some of them, a lot of them are fat and a lot of them have never really done much physical exercise. And so taking that from that population, which is the recruiters population, and bringing them in and turning them in and turning. the vast majority of them in 13 weeks into Marines, it's actually pretty impressive. Yeah. You know, because it's not, it's not the Q-course. It's not Mars Sark Assessment Selection. That's, you are mass-producing.

A guy off the street. That's right. A-Marine. You are mass-producing guys into basically trained Marine. And he can't be messed up. You know, I mean, of course we have, we have a good percentage of our guys who get through boot camp and are still messed up.

we have until recently almost 30% attrition among first and first term enlistment guys. That's huge. Yeah. So it isn't, you know, boot camp doesn't work. But I would argue that is a tremendous achievement for the process. Sure. So there's always going to be. Yeah.

Okay. So you graduate Marine Boot Camp. Yeah. We haven't even gotten into your, like, your history, your back, your history with the Marine Corps. So you graduated boot camp and then what happens? Yeah. So I'm an 0351 Dragon Gunner. The Dragon may be before your time.

And then if it is, you need to thank God that it. And you got that job because your AZAP scores and your law degree, right? The Dragon Gunner specifically? No, I got that job because they thought that my knee was jacked up and I wouldn't be able to be a rifleman. But it doesn't make sense because 0351 carries it. Right. Yeah. It's an 03, right.

Yeah, so anyway, so the dragon was a horrible system. MacDonald Douglas, Wyatt, white anti-tank weapon. It's kind of you fired it and then you had to track it all the way to target. So basically you were sitting there. And that thing went rogue more often than it hit the target. I mean, we fired a few live fire and it was a scary experience because they would go off for no apparent reason and you wonder if they were going to turn around and, you know, home in on you.

But anyway, thank God that. We never deploy them or never deployed. And then as a corporal, I applied to be an officer and amazingly was accepted, went to OCS, where I was not physically qualified for my leg again. And then I had to explain to the chief and other chief petty officer, if I really am not physically qualified to be an officer, it must be service related because I've been in the right call now for two and a half years. Yeah. And same response. You know, okay candidate, get over there in that line. And from there joined a, as a lieutenant went through, you know, we've got kind of the stations of the cross, as every service does for their guys, for their infantry officers.

And we go through OCS and we all, every single Marine officer goes through the basic school. So even if you're going to be, whether you're going to be a supply officer or an F-18, dude, you go through the same school and it's six months. And that school teaches you not only to be an officer, but teaches you to be a rightful platoon commander. So it's pretty cool. You know, that is the going in, and that's not a kind of an empty boast from the institution. It's actually true. They do a good job of teaching every single officer to be a rightful platoon commander, regardless of M.O.S. And then from there, if you are, if you do, if you are, if you are, do become an infantry officer and the corps the the the main

and jack you've got to tell me if I'm boring you man but I've got you know the way the way the Marine Corps selects infantry officers kind of strange it's called quality spread and so every third the class is split in thirds and as long and if you're near at the top of any of those thirds you've got a good chance of getting your first choice if you're near the bottom it's the same for Army OCS and yeah West Point and you know the Academy I think I believe it's all the same that they, you know, they're not going to let all the smart guys go to one branch. One MRI.

They're going to split it up. Yeah. But, you know, there's a little bit of, there's a little bit of magic behind the green curtain, too, where they, if someone's really effed up, they tend not to go into the infantry. You know, people wave a, wave a while. Really? Yeah. So, yeah, so I, as a second lieutenant, totally missed the golf hall. Were you in the golf hall?

No. No I was in I watched it on TV when I was seven I was so I was in an Anglico Reserve unit when it started I was not jump qualified

but that's part of I would Ford controller you know yeah yeah uh oh wait 41 anyway anyway um

I was supposed to go to old G focus lens in Korea but that got canceled because of the invasion. I wasn't on any of the FIC teams or whatever going. Yeah, yeah. So I tried to go active Marines.

I wanted to go Forest Recon or something. The Marines would not take me because they considered me prior service. Bustits. Yeah. So I decided that I'd be a coming Navy corpsman and go to war with the Marines as a corpsman

because, you know, corpsmen have sort of this, you know, status amongst Marines. Yeah. So the Marine Reserves released me. I went, that's when I went to Navy boot camp and the war ended before I finished

boot camp. Yes. So then I finished boot camp or not before I finished boot camp but before I finished core school the medic training. So I was a corpsman. I tried to get into the FMF but it was full up on Marines because it would, it had been

flooded. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. Because of the war. Yeah, we formed that fifth marine division. So I had no home and I managed I was kind of in this temporary status at Balboa Hospital and I managed to get the career counselor to rank waiver for dive school. So then I went to...

Okay. Dye school became a dive med tech in the Navy. That's an awesome MOS. You're going to be in the Navy. Oh, it was... There's only a few MLSs that keep you away from rust chipping and buffing the decks. It was an amazing job.

It was so much fun. Yeah, it was amazing. It's got all kinds of funny stories like that when you were in Sade for like one day before you went. Yeah, yeah, I probably have 12 Moress. No, not 12, but I have a lot of Moress. I just bounced around. So the only service you haven't been in is the Air Force?

No, that's not technically true. When I left the Navy, I went into an Air Force Reserve. It was either a reserve or guard pararescue unit out of Motha Field. It doesn't be a cost guy. And I was there for, I don't know, probably six months already. That's enough. A long time waiting to go to start the PGA pipeline. Six months in the airful, so you have like three years of remands.

I haven't even heard this story. You were going into the PJ pipeline? Yeah, yeah. But, and I was there like full time on man days because it was going to be any minute now. You know, it was me and it was another army veterans. veteran John who was former 82nd had been in Grenada. I think Renada. Could be.

Yeah, I think. But anyway, and we were just waiting around, waiting around to, you know, to get like, to start the pipeline and things just weren't moving. And so I waited for like six months making whatever, you know, the daily rate is $20 a day or whatever until finally there was an SF guard unit there. And I was like, dude, I'm going to go do that. So then I went to the SF Guard unit and they had just transferred over from reserves. They didn't get their, you know, have their shit together.

So guys were like waiting a year, two years to get to SFAS. There were a couple former Rangers there and they're like, dude, because I was like, man, because that's when I was going to join the French Foreign Legion. And they're like, and they're like, dude, just go be a ranger. So that's what I did. Anyway, enough of my story. No, that's fascinating. We're here for you.

We're here for you. I would say that. Jack hasn't said anything either. It's going to all be about me. You guys have to. No, no, no, no. We talk about ourselves and not a flow. Yeah, we do flap our gums quite enough, so it's a good thing when you get guests on here and bring some new blood into it. So you're, yes, absolutely.

So you are an infantry officer. You get selected. Yeah. So getting back to the golf hall, his the crazy thing is, you know, this is the paradox that we all have to explain to civilians when they think of blood thirsty killers, right? We want to go to war. Yeah. When we do go to war, it's, you know, it's where ambitland. When we're not there, we miss it.

Right. We're there. We kind of count the days to when we go home. And it's that constant thing. Well, when you've never even been, before you've even been to combat, remember, that's kind of the holy grail, right? Yeah. And you're like, I've done all this training and I'm nothing. And unless I can prove myself.

And so the golf wall, which was, what, four days? about it reminds me of in the Adam Sondler movie Anger Management have you seen the movie with a guy I don't know if that's So there's a scene in that movie where some guys going through you know he's talking to Adam Sondra and he's saying I yeah I have all these nightmares

And I wake up right here I hear the screams and gunshots and And Amson and goes oh you in Vietnam He goes no Grenada And Amson only goes That was like three hours Right right And so you know it's like the golf hall was

Four days right I know there's golf war dudes listening to this and getting really angry. But we thought that was it. Right. We thought that was our chance to go to combat. Remember everyone who went there

in the Marine Corps got a combat action ribbon. You know, even the supply dudes who barely went into Kuwait, everyone. And they were handing out silver stars like for all kinds of shit. You were smiling at me, but it's true. I know, I know it is.

You know, because that was it. It was a big deal. It was like, yeah. Wow. And so, So those of us who watched it on TV, like you and me, it was a low point. Yeah. And my career was just beginning and I was thinking, I'm done, man. Yeah, yeah.

And there was so much patriotism. There was so much patriotism, too, because I think that, I think that, like, a lot of people, especially people who had been around during Vietnam, saw it as their chance to, like, make up for. Yeah, that's right. So, so, so everybody almost overdid it. You know what I mean is, like, we're going to show the troops, you know, like, every bar you went into. They you know, it was not. No, I mean, you're right. It was, so, so it was like, remember right after 9-11, you know, so 9-11, obviously a downpoint in all of our lives, all of our lives changed forever.

Right. On 9-11. But remember the days afterwards, there was almost that groundswell of almost euphoria within the country, right? It was what I would call positive patriotism. And it was the same in the Gulf War. Right, right. It was as though everyone, they wanted a focus, they wanted a positive focus for their belief in the country,

and the military became that. Yeah, that was, you know, that was great. The problem after 9-11 was that a lot of us, many of us had not yet been in combat. We felt, you know, I'm, you know, I'm ascribing general feelings here. But, you know, 9-11 had happened, and I think a lot of us were angry and wanted to hit back, but we none of us had yet.

And we were already having people usher us to the front of line, the line in airports and everything. We didn't quite feel we deserved it. Well, I felt that after the Gulf War because I hadn't been there. Right. And it was like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, I thought that was it for me. And it was my problems were compounded when I joined a battalion that was really comprised of, I would say, say about 87% alcoholics. I mean, it was, but let me, let me explain why in context. So it's the one battalion, one infantry battalion, Marine Corps that had missed down the Gulf War. Instead, they get stuck on Okinawa, which is no, not very affectionately among Marines, it's the Rock. Yeah. And they have no training ammunition. And then on month six, of a six, five of a six month deployment, they get told, hey, by the way, you're going to stay here for a year. And, and, and

the only positive thing about Okinawa is there was very cheap booze so it's just a bad combination right and you can imagine rolling in as a second lieutenant to a battalion with that kind of morale yeah right was the challenge yeah so

so what let me just catch up here but you stuck with the Marine Corps I mean you didn't get out you were even though you weren't at the party with all the girls and you know you still stuck it out you must have found something you like there I did, yeah, I tell you what I loved.

I striked omé sound, I love being around marines. I loved ticking over a platoon. I think anyone who says that they don't feel some sense of trepidation the first time they stand in front of a platoon, you know, you've got 42 dudes just looking at you and they're looking at you in there, and you know what's going, because I was enlisted, so I knew what was going through their minds.

Is this guy a prick? Is he a prick? Is he incompetent? Is he trainable? You know, there's no, like, empathy. There's no, hey, he seems like a good guy. He knew what they were thinking. Hey, they're a brother.

Welcome to the team. Yeah, so that is, yeah, that gives you a sense of, and then, of course, you know, the key players are your squad leaders and your platoon sergeant. I was fortunate. I had an awesome platoon sergeant. Happened to be a teetotelot, which was a big plus. Yeah. Italian, you know. And, and then I just learned that even, even on the bad days, even when

you had dudes doing stupid, stupid stuff as Marines invariably do, I really enjoyed dealing with that. I enjoy solving problems. I enjoy teaching. Yeah. And, and so that's really, despite all the other downside, despite the fact we missed them all, we had a lot of disciplinary problems, that was, that was a huge boost. No, where was this, where was this unit at? In Camp Schwab. in Okinawa. Oh, so you went to Okinawa? Yeah, I joined them there. Yeah, I joined them out there.

Okay. And then, you know, eventually, that deployment came to an end. We came back to the States. The battalion was mostly disbanded and we got re-missioned to go on a Mew, which is a Marine Expeditioning Unit, which is a much more exciting mission. When you say it was disbanded, I mean, what? Well, a lot of the, most of the, so maybe 75% of the enlisted guys had reached there, had reached there, had reached a, had reached a mission. They're EAS, so they'd been, a lot of them had been extended.

What's the term, what's the term, are you stuck? Stop-hast, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can imagine, on top of everything else now. They're pretty better. Yeah, they were pretty better. So it was probably good. You know what's weird though? Over the course of the years, I've run into a number of those dudes in airports,

some places around the world, and I'm not lying to you, I mean, over the States, every single one of them tells me that their four years in the Marine Corps was a high point of their lives. Really? And I can remember a lot of them and say, the opposite. Every single day you were bitching about the call and what you had to do. But I think that's a universal experience because even today,

I was walking down the Bowery of all places and some guy came out to me and said, hey, devil dog. And I started talking to him and he's like, yeah, I got out in 2011. And I said, really? He goes, man, every day I wish I was back in the call. You know, it's like, how long have you been, William the Co? I said four years. And I said, I bet you every day of those four years, you were counting your days to EAS.

It's like high school or something, man. It's like, you know, these guys get out and, you know, in the next thing, the 82nd, Airborne Division hat goes on. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they're all standing proud when they played the Marine Corps him and everything. I think that, you know, it's just like when you're in that situation, you take the camaraderie.

Yeah. Because before that, you were in high school. You've got no frame of reference. Right, right. You know, you were in high school. You had your friends that you hung out with or whatever. But the camaraderie, the identity, the sense of purpose, when you get out in the civilian world and you realize that that stuff generally does not exist in the real world. That's right.

You know, it's like, I feel lost. You know, who am I now? and who, you know, who's with me now and who, like, we're always going to bitch about stuff. But, you know, in the military, we sort of all bitch about the same things, right? That's right. It's a shared sense of humor, right? Yeah. I mean, it's, the cultural thing is so important.

We don't realize when we're in it how strong that culture is. Yeah. And, you know, I've had experience of all the services. So I can tell you that there's not a great difference between, honestly, there are between ranger culture and marine culture. No, no, it's very similar. It's, but it, because it revolves around the same sort of thing. There's a very, there's a, there's a kind of almost black humor, right, acceptance of the way things are, they are.

But you still bitch about them. And then there's that, that, uh, unstated strong bond that you have with the guys around you. Right. That, that, as you mentioned, you just, you can't replicate it. The military is also this thing. It's an institution that is in effect all across the United States. It's like one of the very few things. Like I had someone tell me one time, he pointed out that, you know, back in the old days,

you had like one or two news anchors, you know, you had like Walter Cronkite. You'd go and watch, everyone in America watched him, watched Walter Cronkite to find out what happened that day. And then you'd switch over. The next show was Johnny Carson. And you'd watch Johnny Carson to figure out how you're supposed to feel about what happened that day. It was this shared experience that held everyone together. together. Today, you know, globalization and technology and everything else, everyone is off in their own direction, doing their own thing, but simultaneously they want to belong

to a tribe of some sort. And the military is one of those few institutions that really provides that sort of framework, psychological framework for people. Yeah. Well, it's, I'm drawing a blank right now. Who, why? Who is the author who wrote Tipping Point? Max. Mad, Malcolm. Malcolm. Radwell, right? Because, I mean, he talks, I mean, he talks about the the maximum size of a group yeah and that in order to increase that what has to happen is is stories or yeah legends or or you know the the uh i mean yeah basically stories and and and i think that's what and and you know and the navy has that or the military has that and the Navy has that in the Air Force and the Army, but then the Marines and the Rangers and SF.

And, you know, they, they have that even tighter. You know, they have, they have this shared legacy in these stories. Reference for the OGs. Well, 100%, you know, 100%. Because it's like, I mean, I can't, I, in the Marine Corps, you know, I can't let down chesty polar. I mean, you know, you're looking back on this legacy, like, you know, that you have to live up to.

you can't let down chesty pole. Yeah. You know, I mean, come on. It's very clever, isn't that? I mean, it's not, you know, I mean, the way the system has evolved. Right. If you want to, I mean, not taking a cynical view. No, no, no, right.

You're not saying it's clever like they planned it. It's just that, yeah. It's just that, that cohesion. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's not try. Guys really buy into it. And we all understand why they do.

And it doesn't matter. what age you are, 18 year old buys into it. 18 year old, but I was 55 when I retired and I was still, I still bought into it. But see, but the thing is, is it, that's just humanity. We all buy into everything, and we all buy into things, whether it's, you know, the Marine Corps or Catholicism or being a Republican or a Democrat, we all want to buy into something

because we all want to belong. Every human being wants to belong. And so the thing is, is even in high school, if I'm a member of the chess club, I belong in chess club, and how do I feel like I belong by making fun of the Chequers Club because they're not us, right? I mean, that is the essence.

It's just an analogy from experience, right, Dave? 100%. Actually, the Chess Club never invited me. I... It doesn't matter, you were in every single service and almost the Foreign Legion. Not almost. I can't even claim almost.

I was saving up money to buy a ticket to Paris. I had gotten their materials. wrote them, they sent it. You had to fly to Paris to meet with a recruiter, saving up money. So I'd go to like Barnes and Nobles to read books about the Foreign Legion and every book is they died to the last man. They died to the last man. They died the last man. I'm like, man. Man, I'm going to look for, this actually, I'm going to look for another job. Not to digress, but you, there's actually some great YouTube videos. Some of them are in French on the taking a foreign legional platoon from that initial intake. Oh, really? Yeah. So, so it's

fascinating because think about this, kids from all over the world. So remember I talked about the Maracore? Sure. So now they get kids from all over the world come in. They have no idea what their backgrounds are and they've got to get them. That's why it's even more draconian, right? Because you really got to like break these guys in. And the initial assessment and then how they take them through training and just all in French, right? And they've got to learn final words. I mean, it is fascinating. So, you know, I watched it not from a kind of pure interest of, yeah, let's, you know, watching a lot of guys getting beaten now, but I was fascinated by the process.

How did they, how do they do that? And at the end, they have a pretty good, you know, the Legion has a good reputation, you know, even now. I mean, not only a good reputation, but such a mystique and romantic. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. You know, such a mystique about it. Nowadays, it sounds like they have been really professionalized to above where they.

You're right. Yeah. Yeah. And they also get the pick of their office. So the guys, the officers who pass out top of the French Officer Academy, Sincere, like the top 10 dudes get the first choice and they tend to... Because the officers are actual French military officers. That's right, yeah.

That's right. So, and they tend to choose the Legion because it is very prestigious. Yeah. So, yeah, it's very interesting. I'm sorry. No, no. You're sorry, I'm the one black. That's another episode idea.

Get somebody from the French Foreign Legion on here. I might know a person or two. All right. Yeah, I think that would be a good one. Yeah. Not that I'm a bad choice. You're good, too. You're good, too, Andrew.

Yeah, okay. Sorry, man. So. By the way, we've got to mention Andrew's book. If you look down in the description of this video right now. When the tempest comes. When the tempest gathers. When the tempest gathers.

When the tempest gathers, it releases tomorrow. The link. The link is down in the description. If you go to Amazon right now, it only has the hardback. But Andy thinks that it will be on Kindle. If not tomorrow, very soon. Yeah, my publisher promises me it'll be on Kindle very soon.

And for those of you listening, I know all of us have this ethos, which is a very healthy ethos against self-promotion. And I think, I just, you know, if you... Sell it, Andrew. Now is not the time. Sell it. If you can sequester yourself in the bookstore and just

read pages at random, I think you'll see it's a fairly honest book, and B, I would like to say not so much about myself as about people I served with. And it's... And where it is about myself, I'm brutally honest about all the things I'm messed up. Yeah, it's a very honest book. And, I mean, your background in philosophy, you're probably your background in law,

the fact that you are very well read. And, I mean, you reference quite a bit of literature in the book. It's not only about your experiences, though, which are amazing. And we haven't even gotten to those yet. But it's not only about your experiences, but it's also kind of a treatise on. on leadership in some ways. It is a treatise on ethics and morality, or if not a treatise, at least at least an inspection,

an introspection. You know, I think that, you know, even from the very beginning, you know, you talk about the couple on the airplane that asks you, you know, about why do you want to go to board? Yeah, why are you going, why do you want to go back? Why do you want to go back? And the thing is, is it, I think.

Like most guys, a lot of guys have been asked that, right? Right. Right. Why do you want to go back to Iraq, Afghanistan? Right. You do want to go back. Right. You can't explain it very well, right?

You can't. And even if you know, like, I mean, in Iraq, like, I didn't agree with their strategy in the first place. I thought that the whole, you know, Brummer, I thought, all that stuff was just... It was assinine. It was. It was dumb. Soul-destroy. But...

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Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Man, I'd go back, you know, I would have never said no to going back. You know what I mean? Like, I wanted to go and go and go and go and go.

And so when somebody says, well, how do you balance that? It's like, I don't know how to explain that. Yeah. And unless, you know, just being crass and saying, because I need to get my three, hundredth kill or I've got you know two blank spaces on my ear necklace but those things don't go right right yeah well see I think that's maybe the difference between me and you is you know that I got out of the military with I was in for eight years and I had that I didn't buy into it by the end of it you know by the by the end of that you know that last year when I realized like I don't

even want to get out of bed and go in the work because yeah I had that moment where I felt like I can go in and I can give 110% Or I can not go in at all Just not go to work And it'll have almost the exact same result Which is a tough admission when that's been your idea And as a special operations guy Any sort of elite soldier

You can't do your job like that At that point it's like you have a responsibility To like, okay, like I'm done there But you had the emotional intelligence to recognize it And yeah and I also had Well it's like any of us I mean you're emotionally invested in It's a hard thing to look at them

Sure. So I'll tell you, and I mean, that I don't regret my decision to leave, but, but I miss it every single day. The way I would put it is like I went in, I got to work with some incredible people. You know, we had the best of everything. We had the best helicopters. We had the best guns. We had the best training. We were so lucky, right? Right. What we did. But I also feel like I got out at the right time, you know, because if I had stayed, I would have been that grumpy guy with a coffee in one hand and a cigarette and the other just like yelling at everybody I would have been it would have been horrible that's hard to imagine So so you this point we call that the crusty gunny yeah I would have been there with new balance I was like three I was like three years from so do you miss it? I mean do you miss it?

You know you feel sometimes like you're missing something like you know you're because the war has gone on It's not like in the past where you know everyone was spread I mean it's everywhere now Yeah yeah so it's feel like special operations like you're like you're like you're like you're man, should I be there? That feeling like you abandon your boys, you know? We still have 18-year-olds deploying to Afghanistan. Like, how come I'm here in Brooklyn, chilling, you know, having a scotch and they're out there, you know, sucking it up in Afghanistan and guys are still getting killed? 18-year-olds who weren't even born when the A-O-M-F was authorized by Congress in 2001.

And they're still deploying under the same A-U-M-F. That's what's home. And no one's done any review of what our objective. Right. That's what I find. Now, you're retired, so it's a little bit different because, like, you did your career. You didn't, you didn't, like, leave midwet or anything. But do you find your, what, are there aspects that you find yourself missing?

Yeah, there are. But, you know, his, his, his, his, his strange thing that, Jack, I, I totally understand where you're coming from because, you know, guys, maybe guys who worked for me in the last two years, validate this, but I, I didn't feel the same after the seizure, so did it. And when I turned over the siege of SOTIF and then went to down to... And the SIGJOSTO is Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, which we'll get you eventually. But go ahead.

So, yeah, so I commanded the Commanded the Command Operations Task Force and the counter-icist fight, and then went on to Special Operations Command Central, which I loved. It was an awesome job, but something was missing, and I couldn't put my finger on it, and it was in me. It wasn't in anything.

Oh, really? You had changed. I changed, and I couldn't. Because at that point against ISIS, it was, there was no problem justifying the fight. There was no problem rectifying the... You know what, Dave? I never found that a problem. And remember, I'm a philosophy grad and a law grant.

And I never found that a problem. I think, you know, getting back to the, why do you want to go back? I think it was because there were other dudes going back. Yeah, right. Yeah. And there were other guys going back and they, you know, as I increased in rank, you know, there's a feeling of, hey, I could do some good because at least I can, or not even that. You weren't even rationalizing it.

It was just part of the team. I've got to go. That's, they're going. It doesn't matter that there are incoherent goals. But see, with me, like I could rationalize it. I mean, there were frustrations like shifting policies, you know, go, no go, go, no go. stuff like that, but I didn't break Iraq. You know, our policy makers broke Iraq.

I agree. But when I went to Iraq or when I went to Afghanistan, I felt like I was on the right side. You know, I was doing, I was, if I was working with Iraqis or if I was working with Afghanis or if I were doing these things, I was on the right side. I was helping people try to build a system of self-determination and stop other people that were committing this.

horrific crimes. It's hard to describe the civilians, but like when you're flying in on the helicopters, like it feels to you like you're doing something really, really important. And people back home are like, oh, what? Well, yeah, I mean, that target who's been on your deck for like two months when you're going after him is, yeah. You know, Dave, what you just said is actually quite profound. I think at heart, that's what motivates a lot of guys. There's a paradox here, though. And I agree with you. you that policy makers dropped the ball seriously in Iraq and the CPA, which rightly was termed, can't plan anything, was a disaster.

And CPA order number one was probably the single worst order debathification. Debathification. We created the insurgency. But I think too, frankly, and this is where I think probably some of your listeners would disagree with me, I think at the tactical level we helped create that insurgency. Iraq. I think there was some poor leadership that helped create it. And I saw, well, that's probably true too. I saw some dumb instructions given. I saw a lot of civilians die who didn't need to die. Yeah. And whether you care about that or not,

and I personally do, because I do, I think, I know what I think we, yeah, we represent the good. There's a pragmatic reason not to do that is that we, we helped sow the seeds for that insurgency. Right. And there's a moral reason not do that, too. Like, that's That's why we're not the bad guys. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And there are a lot of dudes having problems now from that period in time. I just got an email from a Marine the other day. And I don't, this is kind of, you've probably, I don't know if you read an article I wrote about leadership and war crimes.

Leadership has an exponential effect in preventing or condoning war crimes. That's not a trite thing to say. There's something we've talked about, especially with the, you know, the recent highlights of war crimes. It is, and that's why, you know, we can get into this, but that's why the Gallicokech case was so important. That is why in Mili, that platoon was not unusual. They were normal dudes. They were from all over the states. Right.

They were from, their average IQ was actually higher than the average IQ in the army. Right. They'd done well in training. But they had a shitty lieutenant. Right. They had Cali. And they had Medina as their company commander. And that turned them into monsters.

Explain that to people, though. How does that work? How come you have these guys who, you know, you have one platoon of Marines that go over there and they are shit hot. They're like Captain America. But then you have another platoon that goes over there and commits war crimes. There's been cases of rapes, murders, all this kind of stuff. And we have them, obviously in the Army and the Navy. They're all grappling with some of this stuff now.

What is that point of departure? Why does one go in one direction and one in the other? So I don't have a conclusive. answer but his just from personal observations but also when you look at the case histories haditha you know i knew that people involved in that personally and then when you read a book called black hearts about the the killing and the rape and killing of an iraqi girl and her family by soldiers from 100 first airborne and that platoon compared to adjacent platoons it all comes down to who was in command right the battalion and haditha not a bad

bad dude, but he was an introvert. He was not a guy who was exerting his authority. Not hands on. When you don't do that, so my point is, so my point is say it's not about you don't even have to have a guy who is bad as a leader. You just need a guy who's two hands off. Turn the other way. Who turns the other way.

Who starts condone little things. Hey, you slap that dude during an interrogation, that's okay. Hey, boss all that, that's fine. Okay, I'm going to gut punch this guy next time. Right. And then it just, it spirals. And you compound that with a sense of justice. If there's been a loss in the platoon.

That's exactly right. That's so true. So, as we talked about, our strength is some camaraderie. We lose one of our guys. And here's the other thing that builds up almost imperceptively. And you guys, I'm sure I've seen this too. When you go roll into a place, you know, I saw it at Mogget issue. and then in Iraq and you see it in Afghanistan,

there's invariably a sense of us and them. Because you roll in with guys who look like you, who talk like you, they share the same culture. You've been with them for a year or more. But the other guys, civilians or not, it's a different culture. They talk a different language. There's something scary going on.

You think they know about it. They condone it. And then one of your guys gets killed and you're pretty sure that all those dudes who pretend to be innocent knew about it or could have stopped it. Right. And so there's all kinds.

So if you've got an 18-year-old mind, your frontal lobe shuts down very quickly, right? Right. I've seen him my son. And fear, grief, the sense of us and them, it all starts to come together. You're tired. You're carrying 70 fricking pounds of equipment.

and you know, every time you leave the fob, you're on a hair trigger because you've seen a couple of dudes get blown up. I mean, it's cumulative, right? Right. So you can be the, you can have been the nicest kid in the world, the kind of guy that, you know, who gives presents to his grandmother on her birthday,

and you can turn it into a monster. Unless there's a guy who is almost physically grabbing you every day, squad leader, you have the two in Saren, and you have the two in commanding going, hey dude, you're going to walk the line, man. Yeah. And leading by example. And you know, the thing is, is it, it's interesting because people, you know, if there's, if there's in a military crime, you know, war crime or a military atrocity, you know,

people look at the military, if there's a bunch of frat guys that do some, people look at frat guys, if there's, the thing is, is that this is a human issue, right? I mean, if you look at the Stanford prison experiment and what those people did during that with that sense of authority, then if there were other tests like where the authority, a person in a lab coat, right, telling people to shock, you know, that there's somebody on the other. And you've got to turn this up. You got to turn this up and shock them how people respond to authority. And we all think every single human being thinks they're immune to that. Everybody does.

And the thing is, is it none of us are. Like, we have to constantly keep ourselves in check. And not just in the military, in any population. That is very true. And so if you are in any position of responsibility, your job is to keep other guys in check. Right. And that's why this whole thing about pardoning dudes

who were in a position of authority when they committed war, not just condone war crimes, but committed them. is for us in the military, most of us, I think, is totally out of the bottom. Well, it's interesting because the counter narrative is like, you're part of the deep state, Andrew. Like, are you a pussy? What's wrong with you? That's right.

Hey, listen, man, these guys go through a lot of shit. We train them to kill and then they kill and you're angry, Andrew? Come on, man. Are you scared of blood? Yeah. Exactly. No, because here's the deal. This is what I used to tell my Marines.

We fight with the values we represent. We don't adopt those of the enemy. Right. That's when all's said and done, and it's about so much more, it's about so much more than straight morality. It's about the mental health of your own guys going ahead. It's looking after their psychological well-being as much it is as anything else. Yeah. We have some people who are super chats, and they pay a little bit of money in order to ask us questions, ask you questions.

Yeah, as long as it's not like about muzzle direction again. I think Jack's solicit. So thank you. Andrew. Andrew says, I just want to point out that the movie's full metal jacket and stripes basically have the same plot. I mean, both of them are phenomenal movies. You know what's funny about it? Yeah, actually they are.

I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, no. No, no. That's a conversation point. So there are certain movies that are excruable, but you have to see them again and again. Full metal jacket, right? That's one.

Heartbreak Ridge. Yeah. You know, whether you're a Marine or not, I mean, I just finished talking to the Canadian soft dudes and they're like, heartbreak rich, yeah, that's an awesome movie. No, it's not. It's a really horrible movie. It's an amazing movie.

But everyone, you know, I've seen it maybe 15 times. It's on. Tomorrow I would watch it just to see Stitch Jones to rock and roll and roll. The Rock and Roller, yeah. The Rock and Roller, yeah. I told the Rockerollet, yeah. Yeah, this is the AKA 47.

It's like a car crash. It makes it the seat to sound when fired. Yeah, yeah. And of course, I mean... They're iconic, right? They are, and, I mean, Full Metal Jacket did do... You know, I saw that after I went through Marine Booth.

I was like, well, like, it captures... It captures Boot pretty well. Or it captures Boot at a certain period of time. That's right. It's like two different movies. So the first half is Leymory. It's like a horror comedy, right? Yeah.

You know, as you watch Pyle just kind of descend into madness and Leemory going through his shenanigans. But the second half is actually a pretty serious, pretty serious movie. Yeah. And the themes running through that. I mean, it's, it really, it's, I suppose it's partly directing, partly acting,

but they are really two different movies. It really is, yeah. By the way, I love it in the second part of the movie where that Marine Colonel, you know, typical Marine Colonel, he's like, you know, ignorant and fat. But he goes to, you remember Joker? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So he goes to Joker. Hey, son, you've got, you wear a peace button and you write born to kill on your own.

The duality of man. Yeah. Well, sir, it's the Jungian thing. The duality of man. And he's, the colonel's like, oh. But stripes, how is stripes the same as full metal jacket? Yeah, I'm not saying that. I'm not seeing that.

I think you should push back on that way. I mean, Stripes is a great move. Say, hey, listen, I appreciate this subscription. Andrew, we need more than that. I mean, I need you to draw the, oh wow, we have quite a few. Andrew said, I need to join the Coast Guard artillery. Nobody will take me now. I mean, I'm past that point.

Like, my youth has been spent. what is the stupidest thing a Marine ever did that you saw? Oh my God. That is like, that's really hard. Yeah. Okay, here's one. Yeah. All right, but it's not necessarily the most stupid because there is, when you start,

when you start beginning stories that way, there's no end to it. No, I mean, we have the same experience. All right, so there was a, this was before the wall. There was a typhoon in Okinawa. and I was with 3rd Battalion 4th Marines and I was the officer of the day and it was really blowing up and it wasn't yet hitting

the high voltage 100 not winds but it was still pretty high and I walked out where this story's true to and there were Marines on poised on top of the barracks with ponchos tied on to their ankles and wrists ready to do the flying squirrels Oh, my God.

Did you... Wait, how does this... Shrunk off their ass. What happened? I mean, obviously, actually one dude jumped. I jumped by the time I was going up the stairs. Yeah. He was amazingly, he lived.

Amazingly. And obviously became a legend after that. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, he, yeah. I mean, so the story's about how far he flew... Sure. Increased. One hundred percent.

That was, okay, that was one. There was another one that's kind of similar. When I was in, when I was a lieutenant. when I was a lieutenant on Liberty in Fouquet Okay, stories never begin well with that line Yeah, this is already

Yeah, stories never begin well with that line No So again, I was ODI You see the trend here By the way, on every 4th of July I was also officer of the day But so we had to As we pulled into Thailand in a mu

You can imagine there are We're coming out of Somalia So we had probably it was half demute so we had probably about a thousand sailors and marines launched ashore not having had anything to drink in four or five months

you can think I mean not good planning right yeah right and anyway very crazy night bad night to be OED and we had in those days guys who were just normal sailors and marines that we would give helmets to and a night stay

and say you're a shore patrol And they would just troll the bars and start whacking on guys and dragging them out. You know, it was, it was, you know, it's something like now you just wouldn't believe, man. Yeah, yeah. Is this the American military you're talking about? Yeah, this is like so much bad stuff going on. We had guys jumping off the Liberty launches going back to the ship, you know, one guy almost drowned. How many guys got married?

Oh, my God. Yeah, probably about a third of the mute. Yeah. We had a guy lose his, one of the ODs lost his pistol when a Marine, pulled him into the water off of the pier. But anyway, getting back to the stupidest thing I ever saw. I saw a Marine jump off and he wasn't trying to kill himself. He thought this is perfectly rational.

He did survive. Otherwise, I wouldn't tell a story. So he's on the four floor of a hotel and there are balconies below him with canopies, right? So he thinks he can just jump and spread eagle himself on these canopies. And that works to move like in a car. The cartoon. Successively.

And he does. And it breaks his fall, and he survived. You know, I mean, it's just, he was luckier than he deserved. So, you know, when you're drunk, you are relaxed. And I think that helped him. And, of course, he became a legend, too. No, that's the thing. Is it, it's the wrong behavior.

If you die, you're dumb, you're stupid. Why the fuck do you do that? If you live, you're a legend. Like, you're made. I mean It's Is that like something you bring up in like your E5 board? Well, I am the guy that

Yeah, right, right. You heard about me? Because they have. Yeah, yeah. Let's see here. DJ, thank you. Same request. Craziest story as a platoon commander.

And actually, you know what, maybe DJ, I hope you don't mind. but, I mean, you go so far beyond the platoon commander. So maybe just the craziest story from the leadership position. Oh, boy. Yeah, that's a really, really tough one. I think, you know, I think the craziest stories from leadership position are not Marines active.

crazy. They are guys at Battalion Commander level and Colonel level acting crazy. I wasn't going to go here guys, but I will... We're with you. Okay. We're on board. So, you know, we can all... You have to... When you're dealing with Marines or

soldiers, right, you have to... You've got to strike a balance between giving them the trust that they deserve, treating them like responsible. You're the lovable dad, but also the disciplinarian. Yeah, exactly, but at the same time, you've got to allow for the lowest common denominator. Right.

You know, you've got to, and that's always tough. Because there's always a bottom 10%. No matter what you do, there's always a bottom 10%. That's right. No, I've had battalion commanders who are just bad shit crazy. Really? Yeah. So I'm glad actually this question came up because when we go through, whether it's NCO training,

or we go through officer training, we become very adept at leading down. You know, I mean, our culture is focused on leading down. Right, right. Looking after the dudes below you. Right. And then what you don't pick up in school, you learn gradually through experience

and you're messing up. What I didn't learn was how to deal upwards, right? And, and... Where you're having to take responsibility of the guy above you. Yeah, exactly. And this is a really good, you know, I would love to write an article about this, but I can't, I'm grappling with how to put it together. I mean, when you say bat shit crazy, like what are we talking about? Okay.

Yeah, so. Yeah, like ex-wife bat shit? Like, this, yeah. Right. So I've worked for, I've worked for guys who would sleep in their, who would sleep in their office, which is not a good thing when you're a battalion command. and have a thing about the air conditioning being on 68. And if it went to 67 or it went above to 69, tear down the hallway, wearing just tidy whiteys and scream at the OD and threaten him with relief.

Same dude relieved all his company commanders on one day and then forgot about it. And then the next day when he asked for a company commanders meeting, and the lieutenant showed up and lost his... his mind and I was that is that I mean that's that's what time I got fired so I took it seriously yeah same guy would have it just insisted on battalion formations every day at 1630 regardless of what time you finished you know even prior to deployment you'd have to bring your guys in to uh for for a battalion formation and it was these were hour long formations and it was like it was almost malist you know it's And, you know, it was just weird.

Do you think that part of that comes from just... And he was not unusual, man. There's many other stories like that. Do you think that part of that comes from... Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting.

Visit child and family resource network.org today. At Bakers, no matter. where you order free pickup, you get the same great deals as you'd get in store. So you can save when you order during band practice or at the dog park or wherever. Start your cart with the Bakers app and save from wherever today. Bakers, fresh for everyone. $35 order minimum restrictions may apply, subject to availability. You can save an extra $10 when you spend 40 or more on a great selection of participating items. Just look for the signs and save at Bakers. Just a, uh, uh, uh, A lack of confidence in what they're doing so they control what they can.

No, you're, you hit the nail on that head. I call them fear biters. Yeah. Okay, so a lot of these guys, and I actually came to know, he became a freestyle general. Of course. Okay. Because you can, I mean, it worked for him. You know, it worked for him.

He was a tightly controlling dude. Yeah. And if you are up above him, looking down, everything looked good. Yeah. Because he produced dental readiness. All that. stance that mattered before the war maintenance we were you know we were striking high morale was down in the right but but no one measures more right right

right how do you do that superficially if they do it all right exactly you know but it's it's an indicator of a good unit but there's no belief and and so not a bad guy but desperately insecure even as a three-star general it's strange isn't it some guys can progress through the ranks and it never really You're the guy who has all the authority over these people. That's right. And you're insecure about it. Yeah.

And so how do you lead a guy like that? If you're under him. Right. And I have never done that well. And I was never taught to do that well. Yeah. And I think we should, we teach, we give all these guys, like in the Rinkl, we learned, JJ did tie buckle, which is a, don't ask me to go through that acronym. But it tells you how to be a leader, right?

You know, justice, initiative, whatever. You're, what are principles of patrol. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, remember that. acronym and you've got to be shit hot but it doesn't tell you it doesn't give you an acronym if your boss is crazy is your boss is crazy I imagine part of that comes from the I don't know or not even crazy all bosses need leading right right right so even a good we've all got flat that's what a good gunny is our first art

that's right that's what that's what that's what they're so we're a good platoon serge you're helping them out yeah yeah so I could tell you easily what my flat spots on I mean I I'm shitty at getting into detail of stuff. I sometimes don't follow through. I mean, there's a whole list, and I'm sure you're going to get guys calling it, hey, I've got another thing he's done.

I've got grievances there. It's the same guy who went after me for muscle. If you have grievances against Colonel Anthony Milver. Do not tweet. A but 99 will get your grievance aired. No, seriously. No, I know I've checked out on a lot of errors. But here's the deal.

You learn how to, you know, you recognize it, and you bring guys in who can cover for those areas. But the other thing is, too, I've been fortunate in that I've had guys who weren't afraid to tell me, hey, sir, you've got to do this, all that. But if you're a good reader, you listen to that. But see, that's the thing is that they're also not afraid to tell you because you have cowed them into that fear.

You know, Jack and I were just talking about this, we were talking about presidents and stuff. but, you know, when it comes to presidents making mistakes, it's like, shit, I make mistakes all the time in my life, but I have no power over anything. So my mistakes don't affect anybody but me. Yeah. Right. Like, as a leader, when you're in a leadership position, as long as you can accept that you're flawed, that you're not perfect because nobody is and allow those people who bring strength to that. But I think that, and when it comes to, like, leading upwards and why people don't teach that, I think maybe it's because.

the institutions, the Army, the Marines, whomever. It's very hierarchical. They don't want to admit that somebody could get to 3-star and be inept. Or in command, anyway, at all. Yeah. So, where it really bit me in the ass, that inability

or or rather just lack of competence in being able to lead up was when I was a colonel as a siege of sort of commander and so much depended on me being able to bridge the gap with a conventional army.

With the brigade above you, right? Yeah, division actually. Oh, division. And the TEA, because you have some good stories in your book about that? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, if you picture this, and it's fairness to me, because

it's most important to be fair to me, the command relationships there were totally messed up. Right. But, you know, I mean, it was soft essentially fighting the war against ISIS, and that's not us as soft beating our chest. We were the only ones who had freedom of mood

to do that. And yet because we had the 101st Airborne, oh, did I say the name of the unit, damn it. I already antagonized some dudes in 1001st Airborne. I didn't mean to because it doesn't matter. It could have been a Marine unit. But it was an Army conventional division above me with 10 generals, right? 10 generals, 800 dudes on their staff.

They outnumbered the siege of soda. The staff itself. Yeah. So that was not a relationship that was built to do well. Right. You know? Right. And so, and I struggled with that because the, you've probably read in the book,

the rules made no sense on basically our rules of engagement. Right. You know, we've always been learned, we've always learned ground force commander. Once ground force commander is in contact, you push every, all assets to him. Right. If you're in a situation where the ground force commander is in contact, and we had a number of these situations, and you have a one-star general back in, you know, some 50 miles away

in a jock saying, no, I still control aviation and fires. Right. That's not right. They were trying to call fire. I mean, for the... Here's a one-star J-Tac. The hubris, one-star J-Tac. The hubris, your J-TACs on the ground,

J-TACs are joint tactical air command, or air controllers. Yeah. You know, these guys are trained And that's their job they trained to call in fire. And the fact that this one-star general would not turn it over to the guys on the ground and let them do their job. Oh, it's criminal. It is.

In one case, I even send my SJA out there. Right. Said I was going to launch an investigation. But I didn't. And I think that was, you know, and look back. I mean, I have a lot of, yeah, I have regrets. I'm open about them in the book. That was one, I think that.

So I could have done, you know, I asked myself over and over again, that was a destructive relationship. it hindered our mission. How could I've handled that better? How could I've handled this, you know, the three-star general, I mean, two-star general, but also the one star that I was dealing with better. You know, I've... I would really like to drill deeper into the whole experience when you were the Siege-Josote of commander over there talking about Iraq and ISIS,

because this is like, this isn't history. This just happened. Actually, actually, let's do a real, like, one of the, you know, a real quick run through through your career, like in like two minutes and then get to this. I'll do it in one minute. You want to time me? Sure, yeah.

Okay. All right. So, right. So right after the, you know, where we left off, I commanded a platoon in the 81's platoon, which were the reprobates of the battalion, but they talked about culture change that became good, to perform very well on Mogad issue to include the first clash with ID's dudes

four months before Task Force Ranger incident, same area. It's like two blocks away from Hotel Olympia. And then subsequently ran into some, again, some culture changed, very strange activities. And MCID, San Diego is a serious commander when I had to turn a company around that was way too abusive. And I almost got relieved with justification. I talk about that, I think, quite honestly.

Company command time in a garden spot of the United States, 29 Palms, and the middle of the desert, loved it. That's right next to Palm Springs. Come on. We never had time to visit Palm Springs. Where I worked for the dude, I just described it, Tidy White, he's running down the hallway. Nevertheless, one of the happiest times of my life. Anyway, company command was just awesome.

And then as a major was on the 7th Marine staff as an ops planner during the invasion of Iraq was a mid team leader during the that's mid mobile training team right also known by like many many other names but it was the mid teams and the pit teams back yeah that's right and that was kind of a reflection of the close action the close action platoons or right been Vietnam the cap platoons yeah yes without this the kind of the those kind of the the cap platoons were almost like a VSO you know if you want to look for an early the Vietnam version of the VASO model it was in the

Catholic tunes I'm good man I've only had one drink here so anyway alright I was an advisor to the Iraqi army during the Battle of Fulia which was like taking Mrs. Moffat's third grade class to a field trip run by Stephen King

yeah it was just a horrific experience I mean imagine this so you know when you're in an infantry tree unit and you're doing house clearing and every fifth house has dudes who are waiting in there medieval dudes waiting in there to kill you. At least you can rotate the point man, right?

You know, so in a squad you've got 13 guys and every, you know you've only got every one every 13th house. And being number one man in the door, is it, it's a terrifying experience. It's not necessarily the most dangerous, but it's the most terrifying. Yeah. So with the Iraqis, it had to be an American going through the door. Right. The math is you had two Americans for an Iraqi company of a hundred dudes.

And those two guys, every house is one of you going in first. And the other had to go in second. And the second guy is equally, you know. So that was the most mentally and physically exhausting two weeks of my life. How many city blocks do you think you guys could? I don't know. I mean, it's hard to say. I will say this, that we were, we couldn't keep pace, you know.

And by the time we reached Prant, which is hard at the city, we were pretty worn out. Yeah. You know, I think it was that part of the book where you talk about fear. And you talk very honestly about, you know, like your fear. Is that the part where, because you said that there are people in combat that feel no fear. And you said, you just feel like they lack imagination. And that's really what it is. Yeah.

I think, yeah, exactly. So I think you can, you know, this is just my experience. So you've got some dudes who just weirdly experienced no fear. I like to think it's like of imagination. It's like of intelligence. Yeah. They can't picture themselves. Yes, exactly.

So there's them. And then you've got the other on spectrum, very small group, but a group of guys who are paralyzed by fear. Right. And they may not, it may not always be apparent, but they're the ones you kind of hang back, you know, when something's happening. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of test it out. Yeah, yeah. How's it going?

And in between, you've got a group of guys who are like, it's a struggle. Yeah. But it's not that much of a struggle because you're more afraid of appearing afraid. Right. And you're more afraid of letting dudes down. Yeah. But nevertheless, there are times when you're like, you know, you're doing the heavy breathing, the elephants on your chest, and you're girding your loins and going.

Yeah. A lot of it is performance for the guy on your left and you're right. Yeah. You know. Yeah. And so, yeah. I mean, I write about a moment there. And, you know, when I had, and again, this talks about leading up.

Yeah. It's just an insane order from a battalion commander, a battalion to whom I was attached, who said, you know, in fairness, he had lost 24 dudes in the first few days of the battle and several hundred wounded. And that's the thing about, we remember about Iraq, right? There was a much higher ratio of wounded to killed. Right. You know, which made, you know, when you just talk numbers have killed, people may go,

well, you know, in the fact, no, right. But with all the medical techniques that we had there, the rapid evacuation, it meant that for every guy killed, we had at least 12 wounded. Yeah. Which are high stats and loved it. Seriously wounded. Yeah. So anyway, he'd had 24 killed, several hundred, a couple of hundred wounded in his battalion already in the first 10 days. So demoralizing.

Yeah. So he was a little scatty anyway. He wasn't wired too tight before that, but he was scatty. and he's, you know, he's describing the book, said, hey, listen, man, you are going to take the Iraqis in the lead tomorrow and you're going to clear this mask. And I'm tired of, you know, your guys are going to be in the barrel. And we'd already lost a number of dudes,

so it wasn't the right thing to say, but it wasn't the right, you know, I'm a junior major and I'm not going to argue with it. It's the whole Marine Corps thing. I'm primed, yes, sir, Roger. And he wants this to clear this mask and he says, you're not getting prep fires. Why, sir, it's a mask. Like, hey sir, we've wasted a lot of, we've destroyed a lot of moss in the city.

Yeah. This is, you know, but for some reason, this mosque, this dude's like, no, you're not going to use prep fires. And I couldn't. But you know what? I didn't have enough moral courage at the time to really question him on it. Now, benefit of hindsight, I have a haser and no, I'm not doing that. You know, but I didn't. It's just like.

When I had the conversation with Scott Ritter on the last episode, he's talking about the Gulf War. Yeah, yeah. And they used, um, his, his, his, his. He was in the Marines also, I think. Yeah, yeah. He had his battalion commander come to him, and they used Saudi intelligence to target Saddam Hussein in the opening days of the Gulf War. And, of course, the Saudi intelligence was bullshit. They just killed a bunch of innocent families.

And he had very much a similar comment to you. He was like, you know, I was a junior guy at the time. I didn't have the courage to look at my commander and say, hey, this intelligence is bullshit. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, you judge yourself in this kind of light. And, you know, people say hindsight is 20-20, but hindsight's also a fucking illusion in a way that, you know, you say you didn't have the moral courage to disagree with them. But had you disagreed with it and relieved of your command, you might be sitting here right now saying. No, I wouldn't be here if I'd be released. Right, right. And you might be sitting in a bar. You might be sitting in a bar going, why did I just keep my mouth shut?

I couldn't have written a book, can I? Because it would have all ended there. Right. You know, so, I mean, you know, hindsight isn't just 20. I mean, it's based on our fantasy of what might have happened. No, you're right. But it was a lesson to me of the fact that when we talk about the men, then the mission, no, the mission then the men. Right. Mission first.

And it becomes a mantra. That's not always black and white, right? Because if your, if the goals become unobtainable or indecipherable, At some point, at some point, your responsibility shifts from the mission to the men. Right. And knowing when that responsibility is and having the moral courage to follow through is the mark of a really good leader. Right. And any dude who tells you, no, it's always, it's always the mission first, has never been in those sort of situations.

Right. Or they want to absolve themselves of all responsibility. Hey, no, hey man, I'm just, I'm being orders. Yeah. You know, so these guys got killed and it was for nothing. I'm sorry, but, you know. So what happened in the mosque? We were very fortunate. It was, it was empty.

But to the point where... There's more to that story, though, too. Yeah. As we were prepping to go in, you know, and I had, it was kind of amusing. I had no, you know, we had the Rocky Company, and we had a light armoured vehicle attachment, and we had assault amphibian vehicle attachment and Marines. And I had a sergeant, junior sergeant with a javelin, you know, it's an anti-tank weapon. And they, you know, before, as we're talking through, we built a little terrain model, you know, as we've been taught, and we're talking through it all.

And these, and both lieutenants and the sergeant were like, hey, sir, 1-8, which is the battalion across street, taking fire from that mosque. We know there are bad dudes in there. Let's just light it up. And this is where I'm, where I really became pig-headed, you know. I was like, hey, no, I've got orders not to. And I even tried calling the battalion commander at one point. And I'm like, hey, sir, when eight says, hey, see bad dudes in there? You know, can we fire out the mosque?

I've got a javelin. He's like, no, you're not going to fire a javelin. Well, right now, yes, again, I would have ignored it. But I'm still like, Roger that. And these guys are incredulous. But the Marines are all in a support role. The guys who have to run across the courtyard, go into the mosque, are me,

Oleski, the other advisor, and our Iraqi dudes. But nevertheless, you know, I still had a responsibility. It gets funnier. So we do this. We pop smoke. The Amtrak's

create a breach in the mosque wall. We run through and it's Oleski and me pounding for the door of the mosque. Yeah, when you say we... Yeah, we get there and we turn back and there's no one, eh? follow me

it's like but you know a long story short the mosque is empty anyway sorry I'm going to keep going one minute you're you're

yeah 23 seconds now okay all right you're asking the guy to summarize like a 30 year career no I know I don't know I don't know I've got that way we can get to ISIS we'll get to ISIS we'll get ISIS so

so then fast forward I go back to I go up to Mosul So here's a deal about flujit. Don't worry, I'll make this quick. No, no, no. So, you know, it's a set piece, epic battle.

Yeah, right? I was in Afghanistan when it happened. We're all talking about it. It's like, you know, everyone's, this is the end of al-Qaeda, we're going to get Sakawi. It was what they call it, Pyrrhic victory. It was a victory, but it was really a defeat. It was a strategic defeat because Al Jazeera or, you know, all the other Arab networks, with justification showed pictures of a rubbled city, told stories of, a lot of them were embellished,

you know, civilian deaths. Sure. And that became a rallying call for our enemies. And so we pushed, we killed estimates varied, but something between 1,500 and 2,500 insurgents. But you guys know, that's not what it's about, right? We've created more recruits. And destroyed the city. We destroyed the city.

And we've pushed a lot of those, the really hardcore guys. Sakawi escapes, all the hardcore guys, just like with ISIS we've seen recently, they're not going to hang around and be marters. The guys who are hanging around to be marters are the dudes who just came in from Yemen or Saudi. They're just trying to get a wife and some money. Exactly. And it's been shown how to, you know, basically out of the magazine. And they're using a cannon fodder, yeah.

So they all escape. And a lot of them head up to Mosul. Because, Jack, you'll remember that, right? So think back to, you know, King David Petraeus and 1001st Airborne had left Mosul. And they'd done a great job there, right? They had in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion. But they left, and I want to say it was late, it was like the fall of 2004. And Mosul went down the tubes right after Fallujah.

We were talking about it. You were there until June 2005. I got there in July 2005. So otherwise we would have met. I know. We could have been pals. No, I was a corporal. I don't think we would have been having beers out of Moresz. How that would have happened. Well, because you were, Saffin not falling in general or number one, he would have been happy to have your beer.

I was in Ranger Battalion. Oh, you were definitely. You were definitely in general, number one. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so, so Moseul is just, it turns into the Wild West overnight. The police evaporate and the bad guy. moving and literally take over at central Mosul.

And I, after flueger, I was assigned to a brigade of Iraqis called the Iraqi Intervention Brigade. And so Petraeus, who then headed up, headed up, it was called Man Stinky, right? It was the, we called it Man Stinky, Nationals. You're talking about MNCI? Yeah, MNSTCI. It was the training component. Okay, okay.

Yeah, and whatever the acronym was, he became known as man stinking. Anyway, if Trey's headed up, he said, hey, listen, we've got to go back on this whole debathification thing. It hasn't worked for us. So he gathered together a brigade, not he, but collectively, a brigade of former Iraqi Republican Guard and Special Operations Guides. And they called it the Iraqi intervention force. And their first mission was to go out to Mosul, take Mosul back. and I was assigned as an advisor with them. And so we had, it's kind of interesting,

we had half Marine advisors, right? And when you talk about advising as a, it's kind of interesting now because we're talking about SFVs coming in. Advising is an exquisite skill. Yeah. Not every good soldier, Marine, makes a good advisor.

Right, absolutely. And that's why. It's his own thing. Yeah, that's partly why they, special forces selection, you know, I mean, you need a guy, aside from all, being extremely competent in his own area, who can cross that cultural divide,

and also has extraordinary persuasive skills to be able to lead when he doesn't have the authority to lead. And you're part of a separate culture. Yeah, that's right. You know, I mean, our predecessors were leading mountain yards who literally came out of the jungle and loincloths. So, I mean, yeah, that's a totally different skill set that, like, an infantryman doesn't necessarily have.

Right. are. And you are removed from the creature comforts of a US farm. Right. Right. So you have a lot of, there has to be an assessment or selection process for advisors. That's one thing. And who were some of the advisors that ended up there with you? So on the Marine side, I had pretty good guys for almost by default. And this isn't me banging the Marine Corps drum.

It's just that the Marine Corps had figured out a pretty, good way of bringing advisors into the fold and training them and everything. What the army had done was they would, they had taken a reserve division and they turned them into advisors. And so on that trip up to Mosul, I had guys, and they weren't even combat arms guys. I had guys who were reservist, MPs. I had a trombone player and now they were being. An army band. An army, yeah. Now they're being told not training. You're going to the shit son. Yeah. Combat advising in Mosul in a really, I mean like taking back the city.

Yeah. So this trombone player earned his CIB though. He was actually, I'll tell you what, the trombone player is the story in my book. He was a really good dude. Yeah, he worked out. He worked out as one of my best advisors. I think we need to clarify for people watching. You don't understand what advising meant in this context is that.

advice and assessor and a company. And a company and generally be number one man or like lead by example a lot of times because a lot of times the forces were not that motivated. Oh yeah, that's kind of an understatement. Yeah. Even the IIF, it was a really hard sell to get them out on the streets. And it's, you know, it's difficult to, it's difficult to imagine now. but that was not so much a counter insurgency as it was almost, I mean, we were trying to break back into the city. It was, in many ways, it was a harder mission than Fallujah, because Fallujah, we had so many assets behind us.

Right. And in Mosul, it was moving into a city that was controlled by the enemy. Right. And trying to establish strong points and then pushing out patrols, but they still controlled the city. and we were very vulnerable. And so we had, you know, I learned some really valuable lessons about human nature and leadership there,

but, you know, one thing was never judged a book by its cover. So the trombone player turned out to be a great, a really strong advisor, brave dude, and very good with the Iraqis. And I had, you know, a couple of Marines who, with all the combat training in the world, who were shaky jakes and you know you just can't

you can't always predict. Right, right. But the we had an army advisor team leader who quit like on our second day in Muzzle and so I took his place. How does somebody in the army quit? Being a parent can be really challenging.

Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. He just, you know, in fairness, he was a reservist. Right.

You just say, this is, this is, you know, I actually understand his argument. And he said, when we signed up for this, we were told we would be training Iraqi soldiers on Taji, like on the ranges and stuff. And now we're being, we just don't have the training. To lead troops into combat. Yeah, exactly. And they didn't. Yeah. You know, some of them, some of them just turned out to be, because they were exceptional guys.

Right. And they, and they picked up stuff, and they were the sort of guy who, you know, when they'd gone to the range, just wanted to know how things worked. And they, you know, they, and they. And it's also on the Army for not adequately preparing those guys before the throwing them. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. So I don't, I don't hold anything against.

I mean, they were essentially sending them in an SF role. Right. Without, without, without, day one of training. And a reservist. Yeah. Some guy was working at Burger King. Yeah. You know. And not only a reservist, but a non-combat armed service.

Some of me would be no training at all outside of basic training. Yeah. You know. And so my team was half army reservists, half Marines. And it was, you know, even now I'm, you know, I think back, I'm extraordinarily proud of how they pulled together. Because it was scary. You know, we lived in a police station in the central, in the middle of Mosul, and it was Fort Apache. You know, it was.

Fort Apache, the Bronx. Yeah. Yeah, it was good to me. Yeah. You know, it was, by no stretch of the imagination, was it even a combat outpost. There was no, you know, one thing that

when we deploy with U.S. forces to Iraq or Afghanistan, we always had that sense of relative safety when we get back through the wire, right? And there was not that feeling of Mosul because we were in a police station and it was getting hit, you know, pretty much. Is this the police station that was like

at the end of route Tampa that was just shot to shit? It may have been. It was called the IPA. It was known. The Iraqis called it, the Iraqi Police Academy. But it was, yeah,

it looked totally devastated. Like it had been like IED every day for a year. Yeah. And there's another place in Iraq that looks like that. I mean, in Mosul that looks like that. I have a picture of called Cop Tampa. Ironically enough,

that was just literally, it was almost as though that place was hit. It must be one of the two that we were talking about. Yeah. I'll show you, yeah. Anyway, so we lived there for, you know, for a while. And it was rough living even without all the crap going on outside. But we had to get ready for the elections, right?

January of 2005. And that was really the clarion call to get everyone moving together. And I write about that in the book. You know, it was getting the advisors together and moving, but also the Iraqis, getting them motivated to do what they needed to do. And there were times where we were all, you know, where I was saying, again, is the mission first, is it worth the risk? If the guys that we're advising don't even want to go out of the streets,

and this is about the future of their country. Right, right. Yeah, is it my right to risk U.S. lives in order to do, you know. Right. I mean, you can't get paralyzed by those thoughts, but they cross your mind, right? 100%. They do. No, 100%.

It's like, what is this for? What is he in order to? Anyway, so that was Mosul. Fast forward. come back as a battalion commander in Anbar province in a very bad place called Karma. And my predecessor there, a guy named Max Gallier, was killed by a suicide bomb three days before our turnover along with one of his company commanders and some of his staff. And it was an area you've heard of the, like, have you heard of the Ambire awakening?

Sure. You know, Marines love talking about that. There was some justification, the turning of the train. tribes. Well, Karma bypassed the Empire Awakening. It was still stuck in darkness. And ironically, Baghdadi was in Karma at the time. He was a comptroller for what was then EQIM. Yeah, he, and then through process of other people being eliminated, he graduated up the ranks. And then, you know, but, uh, so that was, Yeah, that was my Torres Botanic commander. And then,

then fast forward a little episode in Libya. And then during the evacuation of U.S. So for our Patreon subscribers, there's an amazing story from Libya, which Andy will be going over. I have to be a patron, yeah. How much do I have to pay to be a patron? $1 a month.

Is that right? That's it. Who would not be a patron? I'm doing a good publicity thing for you, right? I don't know who would not be a patron for... There's some cool stuff on there. If I do say so myself. And I have to tell you, you have to hear this story about the Neo evacuation in Livia.

I can't wait because I don't know anything. Yeah, Jack doesn't know it. Dave read the book. Yeah, Jack and I switch off books because obviously we, you know, but... I'm reading yours, man. Yeah. I think... What are you right in here?

I think you'll get a kick out of it. Oh, I think I won't. Which leads us to say thank you for joining us for our 30. episode. If you haven't subscribed to the channel, please subscribe. Please hit the bell notification to receive all notifications. And

hook some brothers up. Join our Patreon page. One dollar a month will keep us in LaFroid. And actually help us pay our rent too. We're almost halfway to our rent now. They've raised our rent $200. Yeah. But don't you rent here? I know, right?

The UK, it's not some socialist commie system where they take care of you. Boy, yours come out to play. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, so, yeah, please. And also, our guests, if you are just joining us or kind of skipping through it, is Andrew Milburn. He wrote a book When the Tempest Gathers. The link is in the description.

Check it out. Launching on Amazon tomorrow and then in Hardback and the Amazon or the Kindle will be out very shortly. Yeah. If not, hit me out. I will not hesitate to sell myself. my book came out in paperback this week Murphy's Law

That's out in paperback Came out on the 20th So like two days ago Jack's out of biofrey Which is also a phenomenal book And also check out his Decker's series You know If you like military

Thriller's So it's out So with that We want to talk about Fast wording through Libya Because that's That's a special thing Now we're at Mars song

Now we're at Cesar Yeah so I took a the regiment at Marshaq. Okay, and so what is Marsock and when did that start? And what is that all about? Yes, so Marsok started in 2006. I was a latecomer, so I didn't come in until, you know, I was really an outsider to Marsok.

Because although I'd been doing soft-like stuff outside the organization, I was not part of Marsok. And Marssock stands for a Marine Special Operations Command. Now, what happened to the old idea that all Marines are elite forces, so we don't need elite forces. I think Rumsfeld put a stop to that, didn't. Okay.

You sure did. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was, I mean, for a long time, the Marines outside of the Forest Recom, we still didn't garner like any of the sweet, sweet money from, they weren't a part of SOCOM. Exactly.

But the Marines kind of held steadfast to the idea that the Marine Corps is an elite force, so we are not going to have an elite force. There's always going to be a, just because of the, you know, Maricor ethos, which I love, but there's always going to be a resentment of an elitia. Right. And you look, you know, historically, it was the same for the World War II Raiders. Right.

And when they Marine Corps formed a parachute battalions in the Second World War. And it was the same for several years in the way Mars Sock was viewed. I would say it's changing. very much so now, I would say that by and large the Marine Corps has embraced Marshaq. There is still there's still

a sense, but there is in every service, right? Sure. You know, but I will say this. The Marsok and the Marine Corps for both organizations, it behooves both to remain closely aligned. More so, for instance,

in the Seals and Conventional Navy or Army SF and National Army. Right. You know, there's a lot of reasons. And I think that, I think that by and large has been achieved. I think it's pretty, I think there's a healthy relationship now. Officers within Marsok now move in and out of the community.

So just like an Army SF or the Rangers, right? It's not like a branch into itself. Yeah. So like, you know, Rangers, right. If you can be, you can move out of Marsok and command a different type of unit or or you will hold staff bullets, you know, throughout the Marine Corps and then move back. Is the idea to go into Mara Sock and then take that out to, you know, to take that expertise out to the rest of the Marine Corps? Or is it more just to keep people balanced?

I think both. You know, I think there's, you know, there's a talent management piece about this from Marine Corps perspective that they are all Marine officers. You know, that's the thing that gets drilled into us all the time to include, you know, the soft guys. But, so, you know, I mean, we're in 2020 now. I would say that Marshock has certainly proved that it has owned a place, you know, in sure. You know, honestly, this isn't me talking as a Marshock guy or as a Marine. Here's what Marsok really offers.

And we'll get past all the chest banging because they're Marines, you know? Of course that good. There is no other soft component. that comprises the fine, fix, finish capability at company level in the way that a Marshock unit does. Okay, so what I mean by that is, within a Marssock company, you have tremendous capability for intelligence, signals intelligence.

You know, I'll keep this unclassified, obviously. Right, right. Yeah, we'd refer that right. Yeah, generally. Sagan, yeah. They're knocking on your door. on your door. I'm just a TV guy. I'm a YouTuber now. Yeah, yeah.

No, but I mean, there's like, I mean, signals intelligence to include national links, signals intelligence down at the team level. Right. All source intelligence capability at the team level. And so, you know, plus all the other stuff, EOD, you know, the dogs guys, everything. And those guys are all Marshock guys. They're not all operators, but they're all Marshock guys that all belong to Marshock and they have done workups and then they do repeated deployments together. So you build

to be part of the team and not like an adjunct. Yeah. Exactly. So you build, so you have that so they, you know, the intelligence capability, you've got a very robust logistics capability. And then you've got an extraordinary amount of, um, uh, extraordinary ability to not just use for organic weapons, but also to use fire support and proxy forces, of course, in support whatever you have, you know, you face. Since SF is all door kickers now. What's that? Since Special Forces is all door kickers?

No, no, no, no. No, but I mean, honestly, Special Forces sort of... They want to be. They, in a lot of cases like in Afghanistan, things like that, they did not want to do the fit or things like that. So one thing that you guys... and all you listen to the United and this is not a man-for-man comparison

what I'm saying. I'm talking about capabilities right at the low level. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I don't want Jack to come across the table I may have got to do that. No, no, no, no. Jack, I think his criticism

would be the same that, you know, special forces got on sort of this yeah, a CQB, door kicker bandwagon for a long time. They all want to be in the SIF or they all want to be Delta guys. They didn't want to be the foreign internal defense or UW guys anymore.

You know, they wanted to kick in the doors. And so... Mossuck's a break. the Department of Nation Force. That's the mission they want. Isn't it the UW mission? It is. What they're doing for.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, yeah, absolutely. It is. And UW's a, I mean, it's a really, it's a live wire, right? But yes, the community design, so I'm laughing a little bit. But, you know, that's what we all did collectively as a task force in Iraq. Right.

We're working, so UW doesn't necessarily have to mean working against an established, recognized government. It can be against a proto state like the Islamic Catholic campaign, working with building a resistance among people within the occupied territories. Which actually leads us into the whole ISIS thing. Right, yeah. Tell us about getting spun up for that. I mean, you got to be a task force commander, which is a pretty big deal.

Sent over there. What year was it that you got deployed over there? there. So it was 2016, but we got the word in 2015 and it was an extraordinary sequence of events because you remember from 2014 onwards ISIS was increasingly in the news every day everyone's freaking out and a lot of us who've been in Iraq were on a spectrum between disgruntled and distraught and watching all these cities that we had that we fought so hard for it's so hard for falling into ISIS hands. So when the decision was made to send a siege of SOTIF to Iraq,

and when the decision was made to include Mursok as part of that, I was, yeah, I was very happy because there was a personal aspect of that. And there was some, you know, there's some institutional pushback on allowing Marsok to lead a siege of soda. Sure. Those who said, hey, it's not ready. So there's a good deal of pressure. and the other piece that was, frankly, a challenge was

it was called the Maritime Seedarsodiff and NSW kind of had ownership of the whole concept of the Maritime Seedarsodiff. Real quick, so Seedosotiv is a combined joint special operative task for. Yeah, I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, you're fine. You're fine. Combined means other nations. Yeah, yeah. Joint means other branches of the U.S. military and then, right, and special operations task force.

So NSW is naval special warfare. So we're talking about the seals essentially. Yeah. Okay. And I'm sorry. No, that's good, man. I'm sorry. No, no, no.

Don't worry about it. We all have a tendency to just talk right past some of these things. Yeah. Thanks for that. Thanks for that Rosetta Stone. So. That's what I am, man. No.

So anyway. So, so 2015, I got told us taking command of the siege of the suit of summer of 2015 to deploy in January of 2016. So that's six months. You can think that's plenty of time, plenty of time, right, to raise the seizure soda, train them to go to war. The problem is, a number of things. One was I couldn't take the regiment. And just a little bit, yeah. I'm not a drinker.

I'm saying that for the sake of the listeners. I don't touch alcohol normally, but you guys persuaded me. We don't believe that for a second. I'm forcing it down my throat. Anyway, so you would think six months is enough time. But remember, the number of things. One is, this is a totally different fight against ISIS. And there's only one siege of soda.

This is an Afghanistan or Iraq in the old day where you rolled in on another siege of sodiv, and it was, okay, left seat, right, see it. It was, wow, how do we do this? I mean, it was, and ISIS was a totally different sort of enemy, number one. Number two, I could not take the rome. regiment, there's only one regiment, Hamasat. I couldn't take that regiment or headquarters,

even though we had worked together for two years and trained to do stuff. So you're going to cobble together your own headquarters? I got to cobbled together headquarters, right? And so that becomes a series of messages to units to send guys to join the headquarters. Now units always send their best guys, right? Of course. Yeah, when you get to send out their top performers. Right. Yeah. So it was a struggle. Yeah. And, um, and, um, and, and, um, and, and, and, and, Then I had a requirement to include, it's combined, right? So I needed to bring in Australians, Brits, you know, Italians. There's a security piece of that.

Because we are dreadful at sharing information. I've had been in cases where the Italians have given us Intel. It's gone up to CJTF level being processed and it comes down as freaking no foreign. Right. You know, and I can't give it back to the dudes who gave it to me. Right. You know, and that was... Wow.

Yeah. That's even true when you were dealing with like five eyes and stuff like that? Less so in five eyes, but I got a funny story about that in a moment. But yes, still. It was tough. Anyway, so it's got to be combined, right? It's got to be joint. So I've got to get guys from... The seals have to make up a third... No, third to a half of the task force, most of the subordinate units.

There is definitely a difference between Mars-Sart. culture and seal culture. You know, that's not a, one is wrong, one is right. I'm just saying, it's cultures. Sure. And there's always a feeling that because we're Marsha guys, we're new to the game.

So there's all these things happening. We're getting in dudes from all over the place. And then meanwhile, we're dealing with, it's a holiday season in America, right? The fall, November. No one goes to work, like all of November, most of the same. It's American Ramadan.

So, you know, You know, time is crunching and then trying to get assets. ISR and all of that, it seemed, it was a hard fight. And this isn't me just whining, but it was, you know, it's hard. Yeah, because we had pulled everything out of Iraq. And now you've got to try to get everything back. Yeah, it was, it was a really hard struggle. I'm listening.

No, no, no, no, absolutely. No, I was just, you know, trying to get up to date. So then, yeah, then we deploy up January of 2016. And what was the mission that you guys were given? What was the commander's intent when you deployed over there? Yeah, it was great question. So the mission was, I remember word for word, because it's very illiterative. You like that.

You remember that term from Columbia, right? Dismantle, degrade, and defeat. ISIS. Somebody spent a lot of time thinking that up. You have to give me props. And defeat the 3D3, D-Cube. Yeah. So in my Ranger mind or your marine mind, does that mean kill the motherfuckers?

Yeah. Like, what does that mean? Yeah, yeah. So exactly. So, you know, the limitation, when you get to limitations, everything has to be by with and through. And we have restrictions on our freedom and movement. So initially we're not allowed to accompany Iraqi forces or Pershmur into combat.

So we have to do it. So, you know, we always think we can solve things with technology, right? So we come up with these systems. We come up with this gear. virtual advice and assist cam, Android-based, right? Because you don't need to accompany them, right? Right. Give them a phone.

Give them a damn phone, and they can tell you what they need. It's like calling for a pizza. Well, we started doing that in Syria with the tablets, so they call an airstriks. Well, yeah. So there is some utility in that. But here's where I'm heading on this. I'm making fun of it a little bit. But the problem is that there are tangible and intangible benefits that are exponential

that you build from accompanying guys. That you cannot... There's no way you can replicate it by sitting on a far up saying, hey guys, just call me on your Android when you need help. And it's very hard to explain that. The intangible benefits

that sense of shared danger that we all know that you need in order to build that trust, right? Which is a key component. And commanders like to talk about ground truth. If you want to get ground truth, you got to have a guy on the ground. That is exactly right.

Yeah, there's no, that's number two. There's absolutely no, there's no substitute for being there. The ISHR can't give you the same picture. And the third piece is when it comes to calling in fires, if you have US guys there on the ground, you can do things that you simply cannot do if you're trying to do it remotely. Yeah. And the combination of those things.

So we felt as though we had a grandiose mission, but our hands were tied behind our backs a little bit. Who tied your hands? Like, how'd that happen? It was... Not maybe not who specifically. No, no, yeah. I think it, I mean, it was,

it came from the combined joint task force. I did, there was a lot of, I think there was opposition to the policy in places in Socom and Secom, but at CGATF level. It all comes down to often at quite senior levels there is a misunderstanding of mission and risk. Sure. So they think that we can reduce risk by doing certain things, but in fact you increase risk.

Sure. And you reduce your chance of accomplishment and mission. You can't dismantle or defeat, degrade, whatever, ISIS, if you are not taking some risk. It's just that's the way it is. It's not, you can't, it's, I'm sure it's the same with financial world. You know, you can't, you can't, you can't, you have no hope of gains. So did they, I mean, I remember talking to some of the fifth group guys who were over there around that time and they were mostly involved in doing the, like you were talking about remotely, they were in a fob trying to do the JTAC mission, very frustrated with it. Very frustrating.

And also, actually I have some friends in Italian SF. They had some good stories too. But from your perspective, did those policies start to open up and your guys were allowed to? Yeah, they certainly did. So, you know, in fairness to everyone, we did start to be able to accompany upon a nation force. And that, I think it just became apparent that we weren't going to get there from here unless we could do that. So did you feel like that was a result because people just saw that the effort was inadequate? It was ineffective without that happening?

It became apparent, I think. I put it all down to one particular bridge. And this is a just a great, this is a great vignette of sometimes how conventional forces can misunderstand their partner nation force. So there was, you know, I wish for the life of me, I can't remember the name of this planned battle. It was, it was in the, it was in the, it was in the kind of lower Tigris Valley. It was environs of, uh, environs of, uh, but, but south and and the army division had planned a battle to include a river crossing and everything but they hadn't included Iraqis in the planning and the Iraqis were going to be the ones who

actually executed and so there was this grandiose presentation of the plan to Iraqi the Iraqi leaders we're going to have to execute it and I attended it and you know it's like I mean you know how the conventional army does these things it's huge I mean you know this like beautiful terrain model and the army dudes walk through and explained the Iraqi and then you're going to do this and that and uh the division commander goes to the Iraqis well what do you think I swear this is true and this Iraqi general yells from the back we're all gonna die it's just good I totally but that was such a I mean it's a funny story but But it's just like, yeah.

There was... Exactly. They got colored pins up on the map and everything with a pointer. Do you feel like that there was a tendency amongst, especially conventional leadership? That is when they realize, okay, this isn't going to work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Soft guys, come on. You need to go with them.

Do you feel like there was a tendency amongst, particularly conventional, conventional military leadership, because they, because they're going from the perspective of, you know, from the perspective of I'm a U.S. you know, staff, flight, whatever, awesome. That they treated, no matter what they're right, they treated the indigenous

like their privates. Yeah, there's certainly a sense of condensation. And I think, yeah, absolutely. This is your battle order. And, you know, I heard... Even SF guys have that problem.

Yeah, it is... It's always a balance, right? Because you, you want the, you start to build tremendous affection for the guys you work with. And you wouldn't be human if you didn't. Right. And you want guys who do build that affection,

but at the same time you've got a mission to accomplish. Right. And at the same time, though, absolutely, you've got to avoid that sense of condescending because they pick up on that very quickly. Very quickly. It doesn't matter how close you think. As soon as you start talking down, you've lost them.

Yeah. Especially in a culture that's very shame-based or, you know what I mean? Yeah. Where pride is, you know, very much in effect. And we lose track of a couple of things when we're dealing with, with Iraqis. We lose track number one of the fact, we move in and out. Yep. This is, they, there's no escape for them.

Right. They, like, even at home, when we were, when I was an advisor with the Iraqi army, those guys, even when they're at home, their lives were at threat. Right. And it had been in their way. They'd always lived in a, in a society where, the primary motivation was survival. Not hierarchy of needs beyond that. Not nationalism, not, yeah.

It was simply survival. It was around the same time frame. It was interesting because I was talking to the Iraqi SWAT guys I had trained back in the day. As they got pushed out of Telafar, pushed way down south, a lot of them in the Baghdad. And then they were presumably with your guys or with some other conventional force, monitoring them and they weren't fighting in the Beji oil fields for a long time and then started pushing north eventually into Missoule and then back to their hometown. I mean that's just wild stuff. Yeah, yeah. So the army, so Iraqi Special Operations Forces took horrendous casualties during the whole

counter-hysis campaign and as did the SDF, you know, the Kurds. And and you know, the whole story, I think from the U.S. perspective was a triumph of what soft can accomplish. And that isn't empty drum banging. It really is. Soft accomplished an incredible amount. The buy-with and through. Yes, at a very low cost in U.S. terms of U.S. lives.

But it was a painful process to get there. Yeah. What was that process like? I mean, when you guys went and helped their Iraqis retake Missou. And what does that actually look like? Is it, you know, a seal platoon hanging back towards the rear? Or, I mean, I'm just curious. So, no, I was not in actually, when I left, the Iraqi forces were closing in on Mosul.

So it was my successor who actually, you know, took them actually into Missoule itself. But in answer your question, so the guidance given us was last covenant concealed position when we were doing AAA. And you still hear similar guidance now to the guys in Africa, for instance. One terrain feature back. One three. Yeah, all those terms, right. What does that mean? Yeah, it means for a lot of dudes, ends up meaning,

almost trolling right on the objective. Which brings us to, you know, Greg Walker's stories about being down in Nicaragua back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, one terrain feature back, last covenant concealed position becomes in the eye of the beholder. But, you know, I will say honestly that,

that the guys that I worked with took a responsible attitude to that, because they knew that if they violated that and started taking greater risks, then that would... It would be a step back. Yeah. But then, I mean, at the same time, though, like, what do you think of, you know,

our politicians who would assert that, you know, we didn't have troops, we didn't have combat troops over there, whereas, you know, you had Joshua Wheeler got killed, you had Chief Keating, which seal was killed over there. Yeah, he was killed on my watch. He was one of my guys. Yeah. So, you know, that's a whole different discussion that I think is actually a pretty interesting discussion.

I think one of the downfalls of having an all-volunteer force is that such a small percentage of the population has serves in the military. I'm not about to I'm not about to support the draft But there's That means that The average congressman or senator Has no skin in the game Sure

Right so the constituent base Does not comprise guys Who are affected by foreign policy Right It's a tiny percentage So what it means is they simply It's not worth their time To focus on foreign policy

It's not worth that time To conduct serious oversight of the wars that we're in. Well, veterans aren't even a relevant voting block. And they can use the technology to compensate, and they can, you know, we have these cool soft guys that can sneak in there. I've seen the movies. I know what they do.

Yeah, but then Niger made people concerned about soft guys too. So there's been a reaction, there's been a visceral response, which is, okay, let's co-tale all freedom of movement. because that will decrease risk, except it doesn't. Right. Because you seed ground to the enemy, and al-Shabaab now has greater freedom. Bigger and scary. And we get attacked on Baladogl.

And then we get attacked on Manda Bay and three Americans get killed. And no one's saying, why is this happening? Right. You know, is it because the Afri-Com commander wants to see a con-op three weeks in advance to allow a soft team to leave base? Right. Could it be that? You know, I mean, it's like one of the basic tenets.

we learn as junior infantry guys is you don't hunker down you don't defend by hunkering down in a fixed position. Right, right. You need to get out and probe and you need to conduct the enemy on their heels. That's right. Yeah. But in Africa,

tactically through strategically, we've hunked down. We're still there, so we're providing a presence but we're not really doing much. And paradoxical, risk increases.

Right. It was really interesting. I don't know if you read the article I wrote about Bail Dongle, the guys who got hit out there on the airfield. Yeah, I'll send a TLA. I mean, I read everything you write with like... Except that one. No, I do.

I read a lot of stuff you're right. Oh, thank you. I mean, that's fine. You'll be interested because it's in your wheelhouse. But I may have talked to some of the New Jersey National Guard guys who were out there when they got hit. And it was really interesting. And they were telling me,

told me a lot of different things, but like you said, the Special Operations Task Force that's there cannot leave the FOP. No. They can, but they've got a, it's going to be by Kahnab. It goes to four-star level.

It takes two to three weeks. So there's no, and then nine times that, well, not nine times, but it's frequently turned down. It was interesting also how they were telling me how the El Shababab guys,

they tried to hit their rear gate, which is just adjacent to the airfield. So they came in with a box truck, big S, V-Bid, blew it. But these guys were smart. They had dug like proper fortifications. It's some tank traps and stuff around the fob to stop these three waves of V-bids that came in. But an interesting point about that that I thought was that the al-Shabaab guys are targeting the drones.

And they did the same thing down in Kenya. They went and they tried, they hit the surveillance air. Very interesting, isn't it? Right. So you have these dudes who are like, you know, cruising around with Rusty AK-47s fighting fighting an army from the future essentially. They're going right after the drone. And what are they going after?

They're going after the pocketbook, right? I mean, do- You kill a soldier, it doesn't have that big impact. Yeah, you kill a soldier, whatever. But you take down a drone and people are, you know, now writing how much of a drone. And they're not easily replaced. I mean, you're not going to get a brand new drone in theater overnight. Yeah, some interesting stuff.

Yeah, we, um, it's, it's really, it's concerning. It's, you know, I don't want to seem naive, but it, it is, you know, frankly, it, it comes down to this. You have guys at four star level, at least this is my perception, who are, they're not worried about achieving catastrophic success. They're concerned about avoiding catastrophic things. It's all risk mitigation at this point. If I can hang on, I've got two years in this bullet, and then I can move on to something else. And in my two years, nothing bad is going to happen on my watch.

But the problem, again, is that that represents misunderstanding of mission and risk. Their mission is not, hey, keep their finger on al-Shabaab. You know, I have to dig out the sock-aff. order again, but I think it, you know, Afriqon, but it comes down to defeat our Shabab. Right. Well, how are you going to do that? I mean, look, we saw it, we saw it clear as day

like in Afghanistan when, you know, Air Force brass will not allow close air support, you know, to fly during the day because they don't want to list they don't want to lose a plane on their watch. Yeah. Right? They don't want to lose an asset on their watch. Oh, it's, you know, so the soldiers

on the ground suffer because they can't get that. There's also A bigger point to be made there that every commander is trying to hold everything together with 100 mile an hour tape and 550 cord. Like you said, hold on, hope nothing happens on my watch. And that doesn't just affect operational aspects. That also affects the things we're talking about earlier with morality, ethics. Sure. Yeah, 100%.

All of that. Yeah, it's very interesting. It's all interrelated. And so, you know, the problem is people pointing back to an incident like Nietzsche, but Nietzsche, you know, so many things went wrong. You know, when you read that investigation, so many things went wrong. And it came down to a misunderstanding of mission at risk at every level. And, and I think we probably, I would hope, were all agreed that the response to go off to lower, you know, lower level dudes and that was just ridiculous. That's exactly what I was

going to ask. Do you think that team leader was asked to do things that were inappropriate? Yeah. I mean, you know, and, and, uh, I mean, and, uh, I was going to ask. I was going to ask, and, uh, I think the AOB commander became a scapegoat. And yeah, it's dreadful, really, that nothing happened. So for people who are not familiar with this, what the situation? Well, I mean, you had guys who they were sent out on one mission, what were they sent out to do a KLE, I believe,

and then it got changed mid-mission to go and do an HBT strike. And the team, it was an ODA team leader, rated up said, hey, our guys have been out for like two days. They're tired. We're not equipped for this mission. Well, we shouldn't do it. And he got told, you know, shut up and go do it. And then you saw what had happened. In some ways, it reminds me of what happened with the Pat Tillman incident where he was killed in Afghanistan where you had a Humvee breakdown. The PL of second range, he was a second Ranger battalion. The PL says, hey, this mission we're on. We can't go forward. We lost half our force right now. Right. Shut up. Go forward with it. And then things go catastrophically wrong and who do we blame the PL, the team leader. That's always the other level guys, right? Yeah. And that goes back to the whole, you know, you're questioning sort of your, you know, your moral conviction.

Like, what is a PL do in that case? You know, like, if everything, because in those situations, you're either a hero or a zero, right? If you go, no, we're not going to go and they go, go. and then you go and nothing happens that's like, see, you were, you know, you're just being a coward, you know, you were just... And there's always an element, you know, at least with me, of, I always ask myself, am I being chicken chained?

Yeah. Is this about my personal fear? Yeah. Or is it really, you know? Yeah. I mean, but that brings to another point that, you know, I think you talked about apostas syndrome, right? Yeah.

So I think it's a balance, right? We talked about guys who are really insecure, and they make dreadful leaders, their fearbiders. But I think an element of self-doubt is always healthy. Because I'd never want to. I've worked for dudes who have no self-doubt. And I've, it's... Your psychopath. Psychopath.

Yeah. And I've worked, you know, and you want a guy, he can't be paralyzed by it. I mean, it's, but he's, I think it's always healthy to ask yourself, all right, was that right? Did I treat that guy wrong? Yeah. Let me think about it. You know, did I, was that a bad decision? Was that rash?

Did I just lose my temper needlessly? You know, I mean, if you don't do that, then I don't think you are, well, you're just not being a good leader. But if you do it too much and it paralyzes you, then you become a guy who panders to the whims of others. Yeah. You know, it's tough, man. I mean, it's like, it's a constant battle.

And you, I mean, honestly, you never know what the right decision was until, after the fact anyway. I mean, you know, I mean, a lot of times it's like, I mean, I remember being lead navigator on a lot of, you know, on a lot of ops and,

you know, like going down a route, you know, south of Baghdad that has, you know, four IED strikes every day. And it's like, this guy's kind of low hanging fruit.

Do you really need to do it? And I'm the guy asking this because I'm going to be in the lead vehicle. And then I'm sitting there, you know, and, but normally what you do was you, you tell your junior guy to bring his vehicle in front of you.

Right. That's what I said. What I love to. He's had less training. Yeah. And then you're going down this route and you're going, I hope I just lose my legs. You know, like I. So bargain.

Yeah. Bargain with God. Yeah. I hope I just lose my legs. What I always loved about that with the Army risk assessments was they'll tell you, we can't do a military free fall jump because it maxes out the risk assessment. So just take those Humvees and drive down that road where IEDs go off every single day. It's like that's that's like some sort of a satire or you know Kafka-esque

sort of like how is this real. Yeah. Hopes and choice. I'll tell you what when like I was up in Al-Anbar for a very brief period of time, you know, around Alassad and stuff and Haditha and again lead navigator is like we're not taking any roads. Are you fucking kidding me? Like that's open desert. That's where we're driving. Yeah. Yeah. I am not we're not driving on these roads. And, you know, it would take longer get to the objective because there's, you know, all the agricultural berms and stuff like that that don't show up on, on, you know, the, the imagery and stuff. But I don't care. Yeah. If I'm navigating, we're navigating, you know, you're marching to the beat of my drum, you know. And I bet you didn't get hit out there.

No. No. You know, and, and, and, but the thing is, is that, you know, you'd come back and you get the reports from the Marines, like how many hits they take. I'm like, I'll drive, down those roads, you know, but it's tough because as a commander, you know, and, you know, that's one area where you can do that. But in a lot of areas where you, where the terrain doesn't allow that, and as a commander, when you're telling you have to tell the, these guys have to go patrol, they have to. You can't cede the ground. Yeah.

And you're telling these guys to go out in an environment where. That, no, that's exactly right. And time and again, I've struggled with that. And Mosul was a great example. First time in Mosul, you know, where I was, I was pushing guys who are reluctant to get out of patrols, pushing them out on patrols, to include the Iraqis who are reluctant. Sure. And at very high risk. A high risk than I can think of any other environment than I've been in, you know, with that exaggeration, every single patrol was getting hit with something, you know.

Sure. And that was one time where I seriously questioned myself. And it's like, why? What is he in order to? If even the Iraqis don't want to do this, I'll be really making, are we really even making a dent in this city as far as security is concerned? You know, I mean, those are things that are going through my mind every night.

And I'm not sufficiently marine programmed where I could just do away with all those doubts. They kept me awake every night. Hey, if any of these dudes get killed. I know that I'm responsible and I'm not sure that we've achieved anything. Was that the period of time that you were sharing the room with the Iraqi commander? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he mentioned, that's a funny story because he mentioned, he goes, oh, you're having trouble sleeping. Yeah, what was his...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was like, you know, obviously I couldn't sleep. I mean, I dreadful sleeper anyway, but during that period of time, I was not sleeping. And I had this Iraqi battalion, like, good dude. And, but he would snore loudly on his couch, but I would get up. I was just so rested. I had to get up and walk around. I mean, I was angst, you know, I had just a bore like a knot in my stomach. And it wasn't about, it wasn't about, honestly, it wasn't about me.

It was, you know, just the responsibility. Right, right. And, yeah, I'm one morning of preface. It's like, hey, Andy, you're not sleeping. You must have problems with your family. Right. I was, I wasn't married then, you know. I was like, no.

this is nothing to do with anything back home. This is like, look outside the gates. That's what's worrying me. They're like, inshallah. Exactly. That's exactly. That's what I say. It's like, they're like, you know, it's strange.

That's, it's, there's a lot to admire about Iraqi approach. That's how they retain their Senate. Yeah. And it's a very fatalistic thing. Yeah, very fatalistic. And we find it hard to deal with. But that's how. they deal with all this shit.

As a reporter in 2015, I was with the Pesh Murgan a battle outside of Kirk Cook. And like two seconds before I got up to the front line, Pesh Murga guy had stepped on top of an ISIS IED. Basically got cut in half. And his buddies are showing me the video they put on their cell phone, they made on their cell phone of like, they're trying to pick this guy's corpse up with the front end loader and like his guts are falling everywhere. And they're like, inshallah. Like, what the fuck? Yeah.

This is horrible. So, uh, it's a very different. So, inshallah is a very common term in Arabic and it means God willing. And it basically is kind of a shrug of the shoulders. Like whatever God. Yeah, take the wheels, Jesus.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so, so a lot of time and, and when Andy call says that they're fatalistic, like Islam is a fatalistic religion.

Yeah. And, um, and so inshallah is their response to a lot. So if you tried planning ops with Iraqis, you go, okay, we need you to get, you know, you need to reach this target at 0300 to go, inshallah. You're like, no, not inshallah. At zero three, inshalla. The response may literally look like this when you tell him we need to do something.

Aham do it. Oh, yeah. You're like, whoa, whoa. I don't know if he's going to show up. Yeah. And the inshallah was very much. But, but yeah. So his, you know.

They do not, Iraqi soldiers, with the exception of, you know, their soft guys do not replicate, you know, U.S. war fighting trades. But what they what they have in return, though, is hospitality to a fault. Sure. Like when you're walking around their positions at night, you know, checking on them, they, whatever they have. Like if they're cooking something, they will. We'll make you some chies, sit down with us. Yeah. And share whatever they, and they'll insist.

It's not just... Oh, it's an obligation. Yeah. Just a natural... Yeah, there's... It's an odd just position, sometimes of extreme cruelty and extreme compassion.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and that I think is a reflection of, you know, background. So I grew very fond of, you know, a lot of Iraqi friends. We, you know, one of our problems is that we want to say, this is my guy, whatever,

whatever national idea is. this is my guy. I trust him. He's going to do whatever I want him to do. But that ignores the fact that that guy has a background. He's a human being. He's a human being. He's got, he understands things.

So maybe you don't. And he's had to survive. He's a pragmatist. And the shaded area, the Venn diagram between what he wants isn't, it's not as shaded as you may think. Right. You know, and then you act betrayed when he's like, oh my God. You know, it's like.

Yeah. No, because you wanted him to do things that you wanted him to do. Right, right. You know. There's also, it's interesting because I remember. That's where like the conspiracy theories come in and stuff. Yeah, that's right. If it rained out, they think, you did that.

That's right. Oh, my God, what did I hear the other day from someone? Yeah, go and keep talking. Well, I remember. I remember one night we were gone on operation. It was a big deal. You know, it was a big, you know, a big deal. And, you know, and I was sitting in the back of this vehicle with some Iraqi soldiers.

And, you know, speaking, I was like, hey, you know, everything's going to be okay. Like, we're going to, like, this is going to be an easy night. And they're like, yeah, yes, Mr. Dave, it's all going to be good. I go, you guys are doing a little too hardily here. I go, why do you think it's going to be an easy night? Like, I was just trying to reassure him. And they were like, well, because he's not home. I go, what do you mean he's not home?

And they're like, well, he's out of town. I go, what do you mean he's out of town? Everybody knows he's out of town. Like, everybody knows this guy's out of town. And we're going to hit this. I go, well, well, how come you guys didn't say anything? You didn't ask. Yeah, you didn't ask.

We just assumed you guys knew. If you wanted to know, you'd have asked that specific question. What are you a dumbass? Yeah. Yeah. And it's one of those things where, you know, they just, they had this idea. that everything that we have this mastery of everything. You must have known that.

Yeah. I remember sitting those guys down one time and explaining because there are those conspiracy theories where they're like America was on the side of the Sunni. Now they're on the side of the Shia. And I like sat these dudes down that I worked with at one point. I was like, guys, listen, I hate to break it to you. But Americans, we just think you're a bunch of Arabs and Muslims. We don't know what the fuck is Shia or Sunni is.

We don't know the difference. Yeah, yeah. And I think. I think at a certain point they realized like maybe Jack is being real when he says he's not that smart. You know what I mean? Maybe that's an honest thing.

Yeah, yeah. By the end of it, yeah, they probably, I think they picked up on it. Let me see, we've had some, people are really, let's see here, as she was saying creepy-fully tuned. Do you know what the name of the maximum size of a group is, Dunbar's number,

as an aside Dunbar's number I don't know I'm missing something there do you know Andrew I don't understand do you know what the name of the maximum size of a group is

oh Dunbar's number is the name of a maximum size of a group oh as an aside one of my oh okay this might go back I'm sorry I haven't been in a decision this might go back to our Malcolm Gladwell maximum size of a group

before it loses cohesion and as an aside one of my life aspirations is to have a tie knot named after me. Okay. Well, we'll have to figure one out for you, Andrew. I mean, we'll have to, has anybody done like a half-hitch or something?

I don't know. We'll have three one out. I mean, everyone's going to have a goal in life. Yeah. I feel like, yeah, the Navy probably has a strangle hold on that way. Andrew said, oh, when we were talking about leadership and everything, here's a random fact. Bob Ross did 20 years in the Air Force.

He decided he didn't like himself when he had to yell at people. So when he retired, he vowed to never raise his voice again. Does anybody in the Air Force yell at each other? I didn't know if he was in the Air Force. That's pretty cool. I didn't either, but I didn't know people in the Air Force actually yelled at each other. I thought they just sent memos. Maybe this is an old airport.

You know, the Air Force is an odd just position of they've got, they treat their enlisted guys really well. Yeah. I mean, they seriously do. They've got, I think, you know, if I, any relative mine, I would say, do not join the Marine or join the Air Force. Yeah. But their officers are, you know, I've heard a lot of disgruntlement about talent management and leadership in the Air Force from their own officers.

Is that because it's all about the pilots and if you're not a pilot, you're nothing? I don't think it's as black and white in that. I think it's just about, it's about, there's definitely a caste system in the Air Force where you start getting deep selected and designated as an anointed one early on. You know, they almost, I mean, you know, the joke, we Marines joke, they, you know, you can be deep selected for general out of OCS in the Air Force. You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah, if you're not, if you're not like promoted ahead of zone and all of that. But there's, it's more to that.

I think there's, you know, and you may get Air Force guys saying I'm full of shit here. But there is suddenly a sense of disgruntlement just generally about leadership at higher echelance within the Air Force, just basic leadership, you know. Interesting. they're off. And by the way, same thing in the Navy. In the SWO community. Yeah. Surprisingly enough. Soil is a surface warfare officer, which are the shipborne guys. And I mean, because they become royalty at that point. I mean, they are the masters of their kingdom without fail. Like when you're the captain of a ship, like you are, you are the supreme leader. Which by the way, brings up a great example of mission versus man, right? Bad decisions.

So 2017, two collisions in the Pacific. One was the John S. McCain, the other was involved the Fitzgerald. Is it Fitzgerald? I believe. Yeah. So months apart, right, results in the deaths of 17 sailors. Proximate causes, mistakes made by sailors on both those ships, you know, navigation. Would they collide with rock formations?

Civilian, no, civilian ships. Okay. Okay. But here's where I'm getting to. Fundamental reason why those sailors were killed, the skippers in both cases obeyed orders to put to sea when they knew that their crews and the ships were not ready for the mission. All right? Yeah.

What was the mission? And exercise. Right. So mission versus risk, right? Right. So they didn't have enough. They didn't know when to say, hey, I'm not going to do this. Yeah.

No, we're not ready to do this. Talk about your, was it your thesis, your graduate paper? Or talk, oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so my, my cooperate and graduate paper out of the Marine Corps War College was called Bricking Ranks, Descent and the Military Professional. And it was about, it was about what we've just talked about, right? It was basically saying, you know, if you are a military professional, an officer or senior staff in COO,

yes, loyalty is important. You have an obligation to obey but you have other obligations that trump those obligations. So for instance, oath through the Constitution,

right, Vindman and Code of Ethics, and you can't ignore those. You can't simply default to obedience in every case. Right. And so I wrote that and it elicited a storm approach and cries for my resignation. I'm not being kidding.

Yeah, I'm not kidding. This was like in the war college. 2010, yeah. It's my fricking, it was my, it was my essay. Yeah, so I didn't submit it for publication. I want to say on the record the War College did, and went to JFQ and it was a runner up in the chairman, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, strategic essay competition.

But all hell broke out after that, you know. Tom Riggs wrote about it and foreign policy. The commandant had to ask questions on it and the Hasque, you know, and it's like, is this the sort of thought that you're encouraging? Because people are saying, this is tantamount, this. Sedition. Yeah, sedition. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

And I was like, no, I'm not challenging civilian control of the military. I wasn't holding that out. Oh, are you sure? But he was. I have a little bit, yeah. You know the rules. Yeah, that's good. That's good.

Civilian control, you know, I'm not challenging civilian control of the military. This is about military officers owe more to the nation than certainly obeying orders. Yeah, I mean, that's what came out of, out of World War II and the Holocaust and all that. Well, it did, but the difference with that is I was saying even legal orders. Yeah, even legal orders. You made an interesting point there that I didn't know because I've never been an officer. CPA order number one. CPA, yeah, no, I'm getting to.

CPA order number one was a legal order, right? Right. Disband the Iraqi order, the Iraqi army. they are unemployable. Petraeus ignored it. Justified or not just fine? He knew it was, you know, regardless of the fact that Petraeus

subsequently went rogue and scrogged Paul Abroadwell under his desk and gave his official secrets. That's... Who wouldn't? I mean... No, I'm just... No, I'm just kidding. That's a joke.

That's a joke. I didn't think... There's some great stories when he was DCI also. No, I'm not... Listen, this isn't a blind... You know, a blind support of the trial. I'm just saying that. There's a great example, legal order, right?

Right. And then there's orders say you don't know if they're illegal or not. Enhanced interrogation. Was that legal? Was there illegal? Subsequently, you proved to be illegal. But at the time, it was in the gray area. Right.

Some of the military tribunal stuff and get mo. Right. You know, so my point is you can't simply say, obey legal orders, disobey illegal orders. It's not as simple as that. You have an obligation to figure. get a sound and you have an obligation by the way to your subordinates right and also not to send up false reports to hire and if they tell you something that you can't do say i i can't support it

i can't i'm not capable of doing that right and you're not yeah you're not even saying if it's if it's murky or if it's questionable you're saying it can be a very clear very clear legal order that's right and as an officer because because you mentioned something i didn't know uh that while enlisted, you know, part of our oath is to obey lawfully given orders. Officers do not have that same. That's right. Yeah, we don't.

So because, you know, not just because I started as a private, but because also when you do re-enlistments, you have to, you know, repeat the oath of office. So it's deeply ingrained to me that enlisted guys promise to obey the orders of all those placed over them. Officers don't. We just say,

we will and faithfully discharge the dudes. So implicitly, that places on us the obligation not to ask unless a dude to do something dumb, right? Like put to sea when you're not, when your ships and the crew are not ready to do. Legal order, yes, it was a legal order. Sure. Should you obey it?

No. Right. Absolutely not. Right. You know, why would you obey that when it's going to result in the death of 17, likely to result in the death of sailors? Right. For no reason.

For what? for an exercise. So that's what I don't understand. When guys push back on me, I can break it down. I can give you concrete examples. You know, it's not as though I'm writing academically

about this topic. I've thought about it hard for 31 years. Yeah. And so when you've got guys like Dr. Cohen saying, hey, this dude should be drummed out of the Marine Corps

and, you know, it's like, think about this. Right. You know, put it in context. Do you want a military of automaton's? Right.

Right. Do you think America's well served? by having guys who are somebody going. We saw that with, who was a Sergeant Martland, the Special Forces soldier, who he pushed an Afghan, who was a pedophile, who was abusing a kid, pushed him down to the ground,

and like that went all the way up to the White House. You remember it was on Fox News, and it was on all the news. People were having this big debate because they were going to kick him out of the Army for that. Right, right. Because he had like an Article 15 or something. I'm sorry if I'm not remembering

all the details exactly right, but they were going to chapter him out of the military. over that incident. It's like, don't you want to retain somebody who has this sense of right and wrong? Right. Right. No?

Right. You know. Oh, you're saying pedophilia's wrong? Okay. No, I mean, I just didn't read your ethics before coming here. I mean, well, think about it. I mean, that... No, I agree it's wrong.

Right. Well, I mean, it's just like right now we're in this odd, odd place in American history where it's like, you know, if you stab a detainee on the battlefield and murder her, I'm like, that's just being tough. If you push a pedophile to the ground because you're pissed off that he's raping kids, we're going to kick you out of the army.

It's like, how did we get there? What message are you sending? Do you think our morality has changed over the course of the war on terror, that that has ground on us over the years? Do you think this is just the normal condition of man and of war and of the military? No, I don't think our morality has changed in all.

I think I think I think honestly we have struggled as a country to judge the guys who represent us in combat in in objective terms. So I'll give you an example. So I just came from talking to the Canadian Special Operations Forces. And they were telling me, hey, if we had an incident like Gallagher, the whole, we would have been disbanded. Right, probably, yeah. You know, because the Canadian public support us, but they will not tolerate that sort of behavior.

They're very, they're very rooted in, you're going to represent our principles. For better or for worse, and, you know, I love being here and this is my country, but there is, it's not quite the same. I think there's a sense of implicit guilt in the American population when now we have an all-volunteer. force that such a small percentage of the population goes to war that they are willing to condone

things acts because it makes them feel less guilty about right it it's also tough because um i mean one i think that the military one there are too many veterans not too i mean there are too many veterans out there like i serve so you can't judge me and then and then people get confused about when it's okay to say this is wrong. Am I being unpatriotic? Yeah, that's right. So the patriotic

card gets waived too often for everything. Yeah. For, you know, he's got a war with Iran. But it's not real patriotism because nobody's hounding the VA to shape up. Like there's no great citizen, you know.

Real patriotism is ensuring that if we're going to shed blood, it's in pursuit of a coherent cause, right? Right. Jack and I were, because, you know, you mentioned the outpost in Syria. Yeah, and Jack and I were talking about that. Altanuf? Altanf, yeah.

Yeah. And Jack and I were talking about that earlier with the idea that if you put one U.S. soldier on the ground somewhere, you're not saying that one U.S. soldier can defeat the forces around him. What you're saying is, we have a commitment. And if you spill this, you just soldier's blood. That's right. you know, that there will be repercussions. But we have a long history now, you know, many, many, I mean, decades probably of putting those soldiers on the ground and they're not being repercussions, you know, or of, you know, sort of it's, you know, kind of a bluff, you know, and our bluff's been called so many times. I forgot where I'm going with this, but it relates back to the conversation about, oh, a cohesive policy is that.

Yeah, it's So there are You know Everyone Obviously have a lot of friends in the UK And they always say to me You know We are

We Friends in the military in the UK And they say we're quite envious Of the fact that the US public Supports the military so much And it is true You know It is and it's heartwarming

Or like people clap in the airports For the troops Yeah You're not going to see that in any other country, really. Exactly. And it's well-mened, but it's superficial. Yeah. Because it's not them forcing their congressmen to say,

why are we in Afghanistan, what are our objectives now, why do we have dudes still there 20 years on, are we still covered by the same AOMF? The Taliban, does the Taliban still pose a threat to the United States? No one wants to ask those questions. No one else answers to us. It's almost virtue signaling at this point. I mean, because we don't want to be the people who spit on troops coming back from war.

And so let's, you know, let's make sure that we're not seen that way, you know. But you're right. But there's not real support at the, let's vote people out who stop. Or let's demand that Congress starts really providing serious oversight of the conduct of our wars. You know, everyone. So Senator Keynes' war resolutions bill, it really didn't do. it really didn't try and do anything more than Congress already has both statutory and constitutional powers to do.

But the problem is, there's no collective will to do that. No. You know, so, you know, take, I'm sorry, but... No, no, please go. AUMF1 was against Taliban and al-Qaeda 2001. AUMF2, it was against threat posed by Iraq in 2002, right? Must have been. Yeah.

Those still remain in the books. There's no sunset clause. There's no... Now it's used to justify everything. And there's no provision in there to review, hey, is the Taliban, as I said, is a Taliban still a threat? Why do we have kids deploying under this AOMF who weren't born when it was passed? Right.

look we have gone for what two this is almost three hours let me okay let me see whatever the questions we have i always stay my welcome jack no we could go for another i just don't want to wear you out all right i'm good we're here until you're here no i'm i don't want to bore your listeners saying no plus i need a pee you can get a station right um Andrew said both oh for stripes and full metal both movies start boot camp both movies then have a second act with a war or mission that involved going to rescue old friends from boot camp. There you go. DJ, good call, Dave, great everything.

Man, I'm so sorry. Like, I've been ignoring these. The conversation has been so fascinating. I don't even know what was a good call. I'm glad you guys are entertained, though. Thank you, Luca, for the donation. We really appreciate it. Oh, man.

Oh, man. Like, so many people have been so generous. any of us to know how much you would guess a giraffe cost to buy legally on the free market? Like a realtor? This is a deep cut from a previous episode. It's a B-side. Yeah. Like one you wanted to put in the zoo?

Yeah, no. When you wanted to own. If you had a large plot of land and decided that you wanted... $150,000. No, no, it's not even close to that. How much was it? less. It was like 7,000, I think, for the adults, yeah.

Really? That was on, it was like a that's like bargain basement though because they were liquidating this corrupt doctor's assets. Yeah, no, it's not so much money. You can get a giraffe. I mean, you can get a baby giraffe for even less. You want a baby giraffe? We'll get you a baby giraffe. Alex said, hi guys. What was your favorite? Because you, you spent a lot of time with the indigenous. So what was

your favorite meal overseas? What was your favorite school you learned? and why is Colonel spelled so wired? Oh, so weird. Colonal. Colonial. Yeah.

So, did you have a finger? I don't know. I always spell it, K-E-R-N-E-L. Me too. I like, you know. Favorite food. Yeah, favorite meal.

You know, so I love, so most of the stuff, like the meat you eat overseas, it's really tough. I mean, it's tough to eat. It's greasy and the price. You know what I really like is Iraqi bread. You know, the flat bread.

Yeah, the flat bread. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's fresh out of the oven. Man, you know, I scoffed up so much of that. Even in, like, even the shithole like Mosul, they were making that bread. The fresh bread. Yeah. I love the chicken in Afghanistan.

It was, it didn't have a lot of meat to it because they weren't fat chickens, but it was salted in someone. I don't know. It was just really good. Um, da-da-da-da-j-j-j-j-j-da. Did you have a favorite skill like in Marsock when you're training up? I mean, and all your things. Was there a favorite skill that you learned when you were? I think, no, I kind of, you know, so if I say I love shooting, but I'm, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm just an average shooter, but I love shoot.

I like, I like, I like the fact that it's also a mental sport is much more than it is physical. Do you prefer, I mean, do you have a problem between like long-range shooting or CQB shooting? Is there a type of shooting you like? No, both pistol and rifle. I'm not a gun nut, though. You know, I'm not a guy who has wet dreams about. I mean, I'm the same. I like shooting.

I'm not great. Yeah, I just, it's to me, it, like some other things, it helps clear my mind because you just, front side tip, front side. Yeah. Because it takes so much focus into each shot. So to me, it's, it's. about that, yeah. Oh, and you were saying the flyaway cost of a Reaper drone is approximately 16 million.

Wow. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I think of it. I think of Rieper drones. Yeah. Thank you, Ian.

Thank you, DJ. He says, seriously, keep up the good work. There are some points about talent management in the Air Force in the Ned Stark letters. Yes. Great. Have you read those? No, I'm unfamiliar with them. Oh, man.

Yeah, look at it. War on the Rock's Ned Stark. He was, he's an. Air Force Colonel and he's and he wrote a article for War on the Rocks just lambasting the Air Force. And, and then he, and then he declared, you know, who he was and everything. And so it's pretty good. Yeah, if you look at, look it up. It was, I think it's a year or two again. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I think over that. Um, oh, I understand, uh, remind Milburn, he had a story about five eyes. Yeah. Okay, real quick. So, so. So. So. So.

So this is how absurd our classification process gets. So when I was, when our Siege-Assad of Commander, we had stuff going on in Mosul where we were trying to build a resistance against ISIS. And I would get briefs on that, you know, how it was going. And it was all his what's really interesting. And again, I'm going to keep it on class. But think about this. This is raising and motivating.

resistance by virtual means or by Skype, building that relationship by Skype. You know, so you have guys who are, you know, you talk about having versatile operators. These are guys who can, who are charismatic enough to make that bond via Skype and then talk through, you know, all of this and with all the language barriers and everything. So anyway, we had some success and when you have success, you got to write a storyboard, right? Right. Because otherwise it didn't happen. Right, right, right.

So we made this story of all with some PowerPoint slides, and I send them to General Kraft. And General Craft's like, hey, this is awesome. That's great. And then I got a call from General Rodis, who's the British, he's Kraft's deputy, his British former 2-2 S-A-S-C commander. And he goes, hey, Andy, can you send me those slides?

And I did. I launched Sand. and then I saw they said no foreign on them. No foreign means no foreign. No foreign. So next thing I know, I'm getting a call. There's no bullshit from the SJA at SoJIF saying, hey, your computer or your computer stuff's being suspended.

You're under investigation. And I'm going to send it as SJA out there to. I'm the SGA, so it's embarrassing, right? Right. And I call Rodis. And I'm like, hey, delete those slides. And he's like, what? No, I'm not going to fucking delete them.

You know, these are awesome. Like, hey, sir, you're not supposed to have him. He said, what do you mean not supposed to have him? General Croft told me to read up on this. I'm like, sir, I'm under investigation. He's like, oh man, Andy, that sucks for you. These slides are great. So the SGA comes down and he's talking to me, right?

And, you know, he's a lawyer. You know, he's like, so why did you do this? I just like, because he's, asked me to. So you didn't read the classification. No foreign is not a classification. Interestingly, anyway. So, yeah, I'm like, look, dude, I'm, you know, my life's pretty high. A lot of shit's happening right now, so.

If you could wrap this up. And then he starts going, your accent's not American. Like, don't even go there. I was like, what I said, if you were, if you were to start, like, I'm a sleeper for the Brits, That's a long, fucking painful process, man, because I've been in 30 years. And trust me, MI6 is not gonna send a dude like, oh, hey, listen, we're gonna put you into boot camp.

Yeah, right. 30 years from now, you're gonna send us no foreign slides. So what happened? So how do the... Oh, they try, eventually they, I just got like a slap on the risk. It was like, don't send no front slides to a front. Jesus Christ.

Yeah, he's the deputy of the sojative. CO2SAS. His dudes were in the fight outside of Mosul. You know, it's like... Like, they create this combined force. It's ridiculous classification. It's like, you know, my point was, they should never have been classified, no foreign.

Right. They should never have been that. They should have been five eyes, you know. Right. Or don't create a combined force. What the fuck. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, to wrap this up, Andrew, tell us a little bit about, you know, you know, retiring, transitioning into this civilian world and why you decided to write this book. Tell us what you're doing now. Yeah. So, so I'll begin with why I decided to write the book. So some of, I, I went through a family tragedy before deploying and, I lost my daughter in late 2015. And then I deployed for the deployment that we've, you know, we've just been talking about. It was a tough deployment by, you know, any, whichever way you look at it.

And I was also carrying, you know, the heavy burden of loss, grief throughout it. But because we learned to compartmentalize to a degree, I could do that. When I came back, I could no longer do that. And, you know, things kind of came cascading down. And I found, you know, so I've got to tell you, I wish that I had gone to see someone, I didn't. What I did do is though is I started writing because I found that therapeutic because I found when I was writing I could not think about anything else. I was absorbed totally in the writing and I wanted initially it to be

something that I wrote for my kids that they could read about to understand why I was away so much. So before I knew it I had it 130,000 words and that is when you know I thought this is a lot of writing. Yeah, there's a lot of, yeah. So that's when I went to Bing West and said, Hey, Desson, what do you think? You think I can get this as a manuscript. And so, you know, and this is an important point to me because from the point, from the start, it wasn't,

hey, I'm going to write a book. It became, but once I've written that much, I thought, yeah, you know, yes, I would like it to be a book. And I think for anyone who reads it, we'll see that it's certainly not for any narcissistic reasons. It's really telling a story about, All of us, right? Yeah.

Us, the guys who've worn uniforms in the last 20, 30 years and done things that our country has asked us to do. It's tried, though, that made seem, you know, there's some extraordinary people and extraordinary stories, and that's what I tried. That's the story I tried to tell. The story about me, to your early point, it's a progression, right?

It's kind of a journey with a lot of mistakes along the way. So I didn't want to make it a polemic kind of essay to young lieutenants or junior leaders. But I don't think you can read the story without learning something about leadership or... It was 30 years of experience pattern in there, yeah. So, you know, it's not...

Packers says, hey, lesson number one, too. But there's a lot of it is... But, hey, learn from my harsh experiences or choose not to like it, you know? Right. So that's how I came out of the book. Yeah, I retired in March. I was three years short

my mandatory retirement, I have no regrets. I came to a point as you did, Jack, where I just couldn't have stayed in and given it my all. And I was borderline not giving it my all anyway, frankly. You know, and I loved being in the military, but I was not going to be going to be one of those dudes who hung on with his fingernails in the last minute. And we'll get out and demand to be called Sir and have Colonel before his name. You know, I saw I moved, I retired. The only, here's the thing I miss. I don't miss the responsibility at all.

I really don't. I had five years of command before getting out, and I don't miss that. That's a lot of pressure. I miss the guys. I really do. I miss the sense of going to work every day and having to surround you

and just that sense of humor. Not necessarily in combat, but just like every day, you know, even shitty staff jobs, you have guys who make it fun. say, oh, you know, because of their personality. I miss that tremendously. But now I work for Joint Special Operations University.

And great job, by the way, if anyone's interested. I teach soft dudes overseas. Down in Tampa? Well, it is in Tampa. When I teach, I go overseas to great places like Somalia. I just come back from Somalia two weeks ago. Burkino Faso, I'm going next week. Niger twice, Tunisia twice, you know.

That's awesome. I've got Africa for some reason, which is fine with me. Yeah. Because other dudes want Europe. But for me, it's great because the guys, the officers that I'm dealing with when I go and teach are super motivated, and they're on the fight. What's your subject matter? It's just special operations planning.

But you know what? It's basic MDMP, but you've got to say special operations. Right. Otherwise, you know, it's like, yeah. You've got to put it in the title. Yeah. I'm going to teach you special operations planning. One thing about your book is it like in the successes in the book and everything.

Like you really highlight the people that you work with. You really speak to their strengths and how they fill in your gaps. People that you don't care for don't get meant. I notice that. Don't get named. Don't get named. People who you have issues with don't get named. Yeah.

Not issues, but challenge, leadership challenges or whatever. And I think one of the real strong values in your book isn't just learning from your experience, but identifying with your experience because, you know, we go back to the whole imposter syndrome thing. And, you know, you talk about your fears and you talk about your doubts. And I think that for particularly maybe young leaders or whatever who go, oh, you know, I see these other people and they're so confident or they're so steadfast or they're so straight. And then they read you right, go, oh, this is this is what they're going through. Oh, that is humanizing. Yeah.

This is their, you know. Internal turmoil. This is how, I mean, you know, the Marines that were lost in the training assent and then going around the country and speaking to their families. Because like that, I think that from a list perspective, I think a lot of times, like, we have a tendency to like, they're either a good officer or they're bad officer, you know, they're on the, you know, they're either, you know, they're either somebody who'd fall through the gates of hell or there's something, you know, whatever. And sometimes it's not until like many years later where I talked to an officer who's in charge of me who I realized because he told me so many years later, the things he was doing to protect us. Right. I did not see because he didn't want us to see it at all the time. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, and just the burden, you know, the, I don't want to say a burden, but the responsibility. Yeah. That comes along with that. I mean, how many, you know, people often say, you know, people often look to soldiers and think it's, think about the combat and they're like, I could or couldn't do that or whatever. But how many people in America could possibly put themselves in the position where the decisions they make. are sending young men, young women. Literally in life and depth.

Right. Yeah. And you've always got to say, to what end, right? Right. You have to ask yourself, otherwise you're not. You're not doing your duties and offshore as a human being. I see Jack moving around on the scene. No, I just want, I don't want to...

We don't want to wear you down. I know we're dragging it out. But I make sure that... I mean, Andrew, thanks again so much for coming in the studio to that. Great pleasure. This was... This wasn't like a podcast. This was us three sitting down.

Very much so. Drinking whiskey and having a good charm. No, I hope you had a good time. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Next time you're on, we'll actually talk about your book. Oh. You know?

Well, we've got to give another plug for it. It's coming out tomorrow, guys. Yeah, it's coming out. Again, the link for the book is down the description of this video. So go down there and check it out. Or just look up When the Tempest Gathers on Amazon. on and and come on guys don't be cheapskates it's like 30 bucks but you know order it it's good yeah

it i hate the top 10 military memoirs have all been seal memoirs and we've got it we've got to topple that record i 100% agree with that we got a top of that record so help me out absolutely absolutely and hey there are some amazing stories in this book and if you're a patron subscriber you're going to hear one of those stories but but i get the book you will not be disappointed i promise you Thank you to Andy Milburn. We really appreciate you. We really appreciate you. It has been fun.

And we will see you guys next Friday. Our next guest is a retired CIA operations officer who worked in Southeast Asia. So he's going to have some wild stories. Don't miss that. We'll see you then. All right, everyone. Thanks, guys. Good night.