TRIGGERnometry - The Truth About War with Combat Veteran Kelsi Sheren

Episode Date: March 3, 2024

Kelsi Sheren is a Canadian military veteran who served as an artillery gunner in Afghanistan when she was just 19 years old. The intensity of her tour ultimately led to the development of PTSD. She is now an advocate for veterans grappling with PTSD and suicide. Kelsi is the author of, ‘Brass & Unity: One Woman's Journey Through the Hell of Afghanistan and Back’ - available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637588917 Kelsi’s website: https://www.kelsisheren.com SPONSOR: https://GETSUPERBEETS.COM Use Promo Code: TRIG to get a free 30-day supply + 15% off your first order SPONSOR: Ekster Smart Wallet. Buy yours today at https://partner.ekster.com/Triggernometry | Use code: TRIGGERNOMETRY for an additional 5% discount. Join our Premium Membership for early access, extended and ad-free content: https://triggernometry.supercast.com OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc  Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We don't know what we are asking people to truly go do. we just tell them to go do it. That's why rich people don't send their kids. And we say, ah, but that was their job. They signed up for it. Most of us don't have a goddamn clue. What does it feel like to pull a trigger on a kid? What does it feel like to watch someone get stoned to death?

What does that smell like when you have to go pick up burning bodies? It's like you're not going to win against cultures like this. They are willing to do what we are not willing to do. We don't know how we're going to react until we're in it. Right? I thought I'd be fine until I wasn't. Kelsey, first question, what makes a 19-year-old girl want to join the military and go and fight abroad? I didn't necessarily want to fight abroad as much as I wanted to join the military because I was a lost 18-year-old kid that came from a small town and I met an incredible lady on a bus.

Yeah, I met a lady on a bus and she changed my world. I was going to the, so you guys here, in the UK called Remembrance Day as well, so I don't have to Americanize it for you. But it was Remembrance Day, and I always go down to the ceremonies. I grew up with a family that was very much supportive of the military, the people who fight for the country. We never had military in the family, but Remembrance Day is a non-negotiable. So I was in college at Algonquin in Ottawa, Ontario, and that being the capital, they do the biggest ceremony. I went down and I came back to the college, and there was a lady on the bus who, God, I was young, so I could have said,

she was older and I wouldn't have guessed how old, but she was quite old. And she was in an Air Force uniform and she's had a rows of medals. And she just looked like she had lived a life worth dying for. And that intrigued to me. So I spoke to her for a little bit. And for whatever reason, I got off the bus that day and I walked into my professor's office and said, I'm quitting. And I went and found the closest office to join. And I joined the military. Wow. Yeah. And then how long did it take you before you were on the front line? Let me do the math here well quick. Less than a year and a half.

Less than a year and a half. Wow. Yeah, it was fast. And what was the training like? Were you given intense training? Were you taught everything that you needed to do? Well, here's the kicker. So I'm an English-speaking Canadian,

even though our country's second language is French. You learned it a little bit in elementary school, but it's not the language of predominance unless you're in French immersion. So I was joining the... the Canadian Army knowing that French is around. I did basic training. I did SQ and DP1, which is like your trade-specific training and all your weapons handling. From that point on, I was then posted to an all-French speaking unit, completely French out of Vacchete, Quebec.

I did not speak fluent French, but I was given the option to go to my posting or go to this posting who was going to be deploying faster. And at the time, they have you playing war games, right? They have you, you know, feeding it down your throat, the media. you know, these bad dudes, these bad dudes, coffins are coming home, flags are draped. You want to go. You want to go use your training. You want to go fight. So I was given the opportunity to switch postings from an English one to a French one. So I did. And I went with an all-French unit. That's where it got a little tricky to be. Really? Yeah. So I was a blonde 19-year-old five-foot, you know, 100-pound female that walked into an all-male platoon that was an all-french

French-speaking platoon. My sergeant to this day, he speaks English now, but when I got there, the only things he mustered was, I don't want you. And I was like, yeah, well, we're here now. So, but anyway, great guys. My sergeant, he's now an officer's, good friend of mine still to this day, but it was just a new experience. And I was, I was open to the new experience. And I didn't have that idea of what I was walking into. You know, we ask people to go do these jobs. And we say, ah, but that was their job. They signed up for it. Most of us don't have a goddamn clue.

But also you, because I've heard another interview of you where you were talking about, you were into taekwondo. You would get to a very good level. And then there was, I think it was your coach sexually abused, one of your friends. Yeah, my training partner for a few years. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll clarify that because there's been some.

So I fought a high level. I was a national champion by 12. and my training partner up until that point, there were multiple years we did not know that he was sexually assaulting her when I wasn't at our morning sessions. If I didn't go, that's when it was happening. They say it was consensual.

I don't know how much a 13-year-old girl and an almost 40-year-old man can be consensual, but we'll leave that up to the courts. So at that point, I stopped fighting right around 13. I stopped that track of where I wanted to go professionally with it, left it, and I then just focused on other sports. And then I got back into fighting again once I joined the military. So I started to fight within the military service.

And my last fight was in Las Vegas at the U.S. Open. And I believe I was 19. It's the last time I fought. Something about getting kicked in the face and having to skip in the sauna to lose weight was just not something I was in for anymore. Yeah. Yeah.

And you mentioned that a lot of people, when they sign up, they don't know what they're signing up for. We had a very interesting interview with the British Colonel, Richard Kemp. And when we asked him why people join the military, he was like, because they want to go and fight. And that's what they want to do. But you signed up because this woman inspired you. Did you anticipate actually then ending up in a conflict done?

For sure. I can't be naive and say I didn't. I walked into the recruiter's office and they were very, very clear. I mean, we were seeing it on the news. We were, coffins were coming home, right? More American for sure. Canada just started to become an ISAF nation within Afghanistan. But in two, I think I don't want to get this wrong,

but I believe 2006, 2007, Nicola Goddard was our first female killed. and she was a foo forward observation officer. And I knew they made it clear, you're going to deploy. We're doing six-month cycles, and you are going to deploy. It's just a matter of when because the trade I had chosen was dagged red, meaning we need people desperately. So I knew I was going to be going. And what was the trade?

Artillery. Artillery. Yeah. So I ran the M-Tri-7-155-millimeter howitzers, which shoot around upwards, max 40 kilometers, about 100 pounds per round. And did you choose to go into the artillery, or was that something that was chosen for you? I wanted to do infantry. They told me I was too small. And then they suggested artillery as the next option. Because something about sitting in a tin can while it drives down the road that's filled with IEDs didn't, you know, wasn't a pretty much to me.

I would have been a great, a great driver because it's small and compact. But I wanted to be more effective on the front lines. All I kept, and the only thing I really knew was I wanted to make sure I was affecting change. and it takes all types. You need the clerks. You need the QM. You need all the people that do the paperwork and get the ammunition

and all of that, but I didn't want to beat one of those people. I've always been the forward leaning and as you can see at lunch, a type personality. Yeah, you're a pretty high energy we were talking about that.

But it makes you fascinating to speak with. And I was wondering if, you know, the time you had with this French-only speaking unit, you're the only one there. You're a five-foot,

small woman, the guide doesn't want you there, how do you get from that to, you know, deploying, you clearly, you know, you're actually doing the job? What was that period like? Was it like a GI Jane? No, God, no, it's the Canadian military. Relax. We're hard people, but my God, no, it's like basic training. By the time I got to him, I already done my training. I was already a trained gunner. I'd already pulled the lanyard. I'd already done the sleep deprivation, the weapons handling, all of the things that make you a quote unquote soldier, right? Once you do your trade-specific training and you graduate through that, then you are considered like that trade specialist.

So I was already a gunner. You don't become a gunner until you pull your first lanyard. You know, that piece of string really matters. So you got to do that. You actually fire the howitzers. Yeah. And so we trained on the 105s, which are smaller. But once you do that, then you graduate from that and then you get to your posting

and you go to your units and things like that. So for me, it was pretty simple. I annoyed the living shit out of them until I understood enough of the language where I didn't have to be like, hey, Sergeant, and I would use him like a translator. I'd be like, question for you.

Quas, clock, en Francais, English. And so he just built up a tolerance, but I think the reason the tolerance was there, in my opinion, at least, was I was willing to do the job, and I loved the job, and I loved the hard work.

the harder, the better, the more volunteer. Like, I'm here for it. And from a physicality standpoint, I was in shape. I could handle the job. I didn't have an issue with the job. So as long as you show up, you normally have to prove yourself a little bit.

Prove yourself. Once you do that, then the respect is there. But you have to go through that first. And so you got deployed to Afghanistan. And what was that like the first time you set foot on Afghan soil? Because that must have been a hell of a culture shock. Hot. Yeah.

Hot, 50 degrees. That was an interesting concept because we did our workup training for Afghanistan in Wainwright, Alberta in the winter. So it made sense. It tracked, right? That tracked, as the military does, that makes total sense.

We did a little bit in Texas. It wasn't super hot, but it was hot enough. But yeah, I mean, I got to the country and just like everyone else, we fly into CAF, at least Canadians, we fly into CAF, which is a spot in Kandahar, which is, you know, there's Tim Horton's there. There's a boardwalk.

There's a ball hockey. I can see your face. There's a subway. It's where officers and your in and outs kind of go. And we were only there for three days. So it was kind of a soft entry into the country, if you will.

Once we got picked up by the Chinook and got taken to the fob, we were with an American fob out in the middle of the Maywan district. That's when things got real, real, real, real, real quick. Because you realized within this tiny base, everybody outside of it wanted to kill you. So these were just Hesco walls filled.

Hesco is like a, like a soft material and you fill it with stone and then you make walls out of it. So you realize really quickly that, you know, you're stepping outside of here, you don't know what you're getting and who wants to shoot you, but most people, for sure. So that was a shock in terms of that. And then our very first fire mission was an interesting one. Tell us about it. Well, I mean, it's the first time you realize that you're not just shooting for target practice.

You're shooting H.E., you know, high explosive rounds down range. What do you think you're landing on? And even then there's a disconnect, right? because you're pulling a lanyard, waiting for the all clear, saying, you know, you hit the target or, you know, adjust, which means, oops. So we adjust. Well, we, we, we, I'm not missed as much because once you drop an artillery round, I mean, it just takes out a lot. So you're not going to miss per se, but it was a disconnect for sure. You hit the wrong thing is what you're implying.

We, it happens. We try not to hit the, listen, we, most of our people, my guys were super accurate. I, every guy I served it, they got to be honest, like, they were switched on. My unit was switched on. I can speak for my guys and not the rest of them, but my guys were switched on. And I got the privilege of my gun troop. My gun troop was, out of all the Canadians that deployed that time,

we were taken to an American fob. Everybody else went to Canadian fobs. So then I got to work with Americans, learn their culture a little bit, which is hilarious when you jump on a radio, and only French-speaking start speaking to Texans. I got to tell you, the comedy was the great.

part about that, yeah. And what's the main difference between the Canadian and the American military? What, what? I think. Really? I mean, we're drastically different in the sense that we don't have Marines, right? So like Americans have, you know, the Marines and the Air Force and the Navy and the Army, and we just have Army Navy Air Force.

And we have special operations as well. But I mean, we have similarities, but we have differences. Language is different. We're weaponry can be a little bit different. They get the Gucci kit. We get what Canada will give you. You know, it's just, it's a different dynamic. And we're part of, you know, we're part of the British, the monarchy.

I mean, Canada falls under, you know, you guys, you guys control everything. So it's just different. Culture's different, right? Drastically different. Because a former guest of ours on the show, he was, he served in Afghanistan. And he said a lot of the times, and I'm not putting words in your mouth, you can push back on this. Americans very much had a policy of fire first, asked questions later. And he said that as a British soldier, particularly as he was a conduit between,

the British and the Afghan tribes, he would be building these bridges and then the next day they would just get burned to the ground because, you know, people would die in Friendly Fire and whatever else. It happens. It's an unfortunate result of war. I personally had never experienced a friendly fire incident. I have a lot of friends that do that live with that for the rest of their life and they'll never be the same from it.

They arguably struggle more from that than they do from anything else in the war. You know, that's never what you want. It's not ideal. It's really hard to win a war against people who don't play by the same rules. That's a really interesting thing, I think, particularly topically speaking, when we talk about Israel, Palestine, for example. I knew that was coming up. Well, I actually, I had no plans to talk about it, but I just, I think you probably have an insight into that conversation that the overwhelming majority of people don't. Do you have anything to say about that, playing by the different set of rules to the enemy?

I think that we're doing the, I think we have the same problem. right. I think it's, I'm not going to, I'm going to be very clear about this. You've never seen me talk about it on Instagram or social media for a reason. I'm, I try really hard ever since I started podcasting on my show about three years ago to really stay in my lane unless I am really, really knowledgeable. What I will say about that involvement is it's really hard to win against an enemy that values death more than they value life. period. You can't, and it's not that we should ever eradicate humans. I don't, here's the thing. Anybody I believe who's ever been to war and seen true violence will never

advocate for war, but we will advocate for strategic insertion because there are bad people that need to die. That is a reality. And I'm not going to pretend that there's not. There are people out there that should not be here. And we do our job to send the seals and the JTF2 and the, you know, the Rangers and the guys that know how to do this without a conventional fighting force on the ground. I'll never advocate for a fighting force on the ground conventionally the way we did in Afghanistan. I think a lot of people died that didn't need to die. That being said, I don't love either side of that war. Look, they're part of the Geneva Convention. I have issues with the way some things are being done.

It's hard to fight a force that has a government, I recognize government that's a terrorist organization. But here's where I get controversial. Where was everyone when the Taliban were cutting hands off kids and blowing them into pieces? Where was everyone's rage when women were being stoned to death and raped? Where was everyone's rage when people were putting teddy bears? and backpacks full of IEDs and setting them in front of schools.

Where were you all over the past 20 years? You didn't say anything then. Innocence were happening then. So why now? Why the outrage now? Because we pick and choose what we have outrage over. I have a hard time with that. I had an actor recently say this to me.

We were doing a thing for Apple and we were chatting after and he said, you know, I'm going to go over there next week. So what do you plan on doing? I want to record the things people aren't talking about. I think Douglas Murray's got that dialed right now, bro. I think we're good. And he goes, I got to go in. They're my people.

And by his people, he meant Jewish. And I was like, okay, I fully hear you. Like, I get that. But you're about to see some things that you're never going to unsee. And I don't know that you're really ready for that. And he goes, well, I have to tell the story. I said, okay, cool, man, cool. And he goes, and this is where it got me.

And my husband was in the room. And he looked at me and he's just like, don't, don't. He goes, it's never been this bad. People have never died like this. This brutality has never been seen before. Okay, bud. Let me tell you some stories. And then I did.

And he still couldn't believe me. And that's the thing that gets me. It's like, we bomb people all the time. We kill innocent people all the time. But why they outrage now? because it's convenient outrage. It's convenient. It's politically better to side with one side or the other right now.

I've never seen anything like I have seen these Hamas protests across the world. I don't know how you guys are feeling about that. I think I know how you guys are feeling about that. I'm just going to go with that. But I've never seen anything like it. That's like us during the Afghanistan war having the Taliban and marching around London and everyone being like, it's cool.

It's cool. It's not cool. None of this is cool. None of this is acceptable. None of this should be okay. Spreading hate for hate's sake. Like, you go out on the streets and ask somebody, what river, what sea?

What's their response? From the river to the sea, of course I've chanted it. Do I think that all Israelis should be pushed out of the country? or Jews or should be treated like this? No. Do you know which river and sea they're talking about, by the way? I don't know the name. The river.

I know the Mediterranean. It would be the sea, but now I wouldn't know that river, I know. Okay. Yeah. Okay, perfect. Thank you. I'm so tired of the social justice warriors who have no clue what they're saying. And when they say, go kill them, go kill them all.

You have no idea. what it's like to watch someone's lights go out. So don't tell me, go kill them all. You have no clue what you are asking another human being to go do. If you think it's so easy, you go do it. Send your kids. Tell me how that works out when they come back. If they come back.

I just, I think we, I think we just start wars. And I think everything that happened on the seventh is not okay. and there has to be repercussions, obviously. I just don't, I don't agree with it. I just don't agree with like on either stuff. Just mass violence. I just, I've seen it and I've seen what it does to both sides of people. And it's the kids that are going to have to live with this.

It's the families. It's not the person that dies. They're gone. They're gone. They don't feel it. They don't experience this. But like we, what that creates, Okay, let's just pull that apart for a second.

What does that create when someone dies? When someone's murdered? Because that's really what this is. This is murder. This is genocide. Both parties. Everyone's just killing everybody. What does that create?

Well, what did it create when the Soviets were in Russia? I don't know. I was being shot at with Soviet weapons. So it creates kids and uncles and brothers and aunts and cousins and family members who are now brought up generation after generation to just continually hate each other. and perpetuate more violence and perpetuate more war. For what? It's that saying, an eye for an eye, makes the world go blind.

So how do we fix it? I'm not the person to ask. Kelsey, do you think part of the problem is that war is one of those things that you just simply can't explain? And everybody that I know who has been to war, I remember my grandfather who was a desert rat and fought in the Battle of Elamain, fought in Italy in the Second World War, he never talked about it.

He talked to me about his training. And being a kid and being an ignorant little kid, and I remember trying to ask him about it, he always never talked about it. But people who have never been have this almost idealized, romanticized image of what war actually is. Hollywood's done a great job of that. Right? Because we'll think about what people are learning.

They're not learning from textbooks the way that we used to learn where you would open the page, like, oh, there's Pompeii, there's the bodies, there's the conversation. Then you go to Pompeii and your jaw drops and you think of all of the damage. We were walking back from lunch and what did I keep saying? It's like, somebody died there. Somebody was shot there. Something bad happened here. Because there was war here. People don't forget. It's not that, sorry, it's not that people don't forget. Places don't forget. It's the people that change within that. And we, you know, the history is written by the victors in every in every sense of the word i think hollywood and other people glorify violence to make a lot of money i think we don't talk about it what it really means what it smells like

because war has a smell what it feels like because it has a feel and i don't think that we articulate it well enough i think that's why we're so quick to just send our kids over we don't have an understanding of what they're about to see and what they're about to do. I mean, there's a few films that have done an incredible job. Fury with Brad Pitt was brilliant, was brilliant, like illustrating the smells and like the textures of what war is. You know, but then you have like glorified Navy, Navy SEAL movies and all of these things, right?

It's like, rah, rah, let's go to America. Let's go fucking kill everybody. It's like, okay, but what does it feel like to pull a trigger on a kid? What's it feel like to watch someone get stoned to death? What does that smell like when you have to go, pick up burning bodies. It's not illustrated in anything. Do you think there's a part of human nature that's a strange thing to us, but enjoys it, that likes it, that, you know, chimps go to war. Humans have gone to war for our entire history. Is there a part of us that is actually into this

shit? I think there's got to be some level baked into humanity. I mean, we're human beings. We live these human experiences. I mean, I'm guessing you would have served with some people who would have had a great time out there. Rock hard during fire fights. Yeah. Some dudes loved it. Some dudes loved it. I can't speak for them.

I didn't love that. It's not that I didn't hate it either, but there's something that happens when you watch someone die that's one of your own. That switch flips. And it's not that you love it anymore, but you're willing to do it on a different

level now. Because you are quote unquote radicalized by the experience? I would think so on a level, yeah. Yeah. Now it's like, well, you killed mine. I come for you. Right? And then that notches up a different level.

However, that changes the mind psychologically in those events. Something happens. I felt it. It's like a light switch. I can't describe. That's the only way I've been able to articulate it to this day. I mean, it's been almost 14 years. I still say it's a light switch where I could feel almost a wall go down.

where everything I was feeling, the rage, the level of anger, the violence was okay to me. It was okay. So you were talking about basically being desensitized? A thousand percent, yeah. And that to me makes complete sense because that's a survival mechanism. Because if you were aware of everything that was happening and you were taking it all in, I mean, that would destroy you psychologically. Oh, it did.

Oh, it did for like a decade. But I think some people it doesn't have that effect. on, which is really, really fascinating too. I mean, I've got guys who, you know, nine, 10, 11, 12 tours. And yeah, they've got some stuff and they work through it. I'm like, damn. Like, damn. Like, you've been, I do not claim to be that person. I don't, I don't know that I could have been that person. I'm not made for that. But I think you desensitized. And I think your job depends on that. And the people to the left and the right of you depend on you to be able to pull a trigger without having an empathy switch turn on.

Like, oh, I'm not sure about this. Like, you know, they do a good job of baking that into you when you're in the service. And tell us more about your time in Afghanistan because most people listen would go, well, look, you're pulling the lanyard on how are you experiencing all of these things? How do you go from that particular situation to having these terrible experiences and everything else that you talk about? I got borrowed. I got borrowed.

So at the time when I was serving, the Canadians allowed women to do combat arms rules, but the British and the Americans did not. And this was new. The United States military started integrating women like 15, 16, into these more combat arms rules. Like, women are around for sure, but I went with the British. And so we got a, I just, listen, I'm not, I wasn't anybody special. I just got told where I was going.

I got voluntold is what I call it. I just got a call, came down to my sergeant. at the Fob and they said she's been picked to go with the third Scots and the Blackwatch people and she's going to go out on operation we're picking her up in two days. And so I got picked up in two days. At the time my sergeant fought it too thin now.

He's like, no way she is going. It's not prepared for that. I'm a gunner. I shoot the howitzers. I don't run and gun and kick doors in. We're trained, obviously. Every soldier is a soldier. You know how to shoot a gun.

You know how to move with a gun. But the only way that I survived that was because I was given extra training because my sergeant had been to war before and understood what that could potentially look like if we had to move those guns and go outside the wire with them. Can I? Yeah. Why were you borrowed in this way? I was a female. This is what I was going to say, because before we started, you were like, the reason I watch your show is you ask questions that everyone has on the tip of their tongue but is afraid to ask. And that seemed to me like the most obvious question to ask.

Yeah, the vagina in the room. Right. That was me. Yeah, I have one. I'm a woman. I'm one of those. So they actually put you in more danger in order to put you so that they could... We abide by the Geneva Convention.

And what is that state? Well, when you are with women who are in burqas and things like that, the men cannot search them, nor can they touch them. But I can. Right. And get all kinds of handsy with you. Right. Right.

And what we were seeing was they were starting to hide radios, money, other things that would indicate that they were working with the Taliban. So my job, we would stack on a house. house, kick the door in. I would go in and take the women and kids, put them all in a separate room. I would put a translator and a Brit at the door, and then I would go in and I would search all the women and kits for anything, really. And so you were also, so you were always a person to do that. Now, that is high risk, because obviously you don't know where you're going into, but there's also the risk as well of suicide bombers. There was a lot of risks. I think there was

one situation, well, there was only one situation where I was concerned, and it was a mom that came at me with these like material cutting shears. But that's an easy handle. It's not, it's not the end of the world. It's more of being in the room when you were alone with a bunch of people and their children, right? So you've got kids that are crying and screaming. You've got a bunch of women that don't, I mean, we kick their door. Okay.

We wait till morning prayers over because at least we did that. And then we kick your door in. I mean, that's imagine, I'm a mother now. So it's like, I can imagine somebody kicking my door in and going, I'm taking, your kid with me. No, no, no, no, no, no, you're not. So I can imagine and I can understand and have empathy now for why the women act the way they acted.

But I was also in super rule areas where, you know, the imam or the person was there, like, that's all they knew. They couldn't read or write. They didn't ever see photos of themselves. And they would chew. And I still don't know what it's called, but it's like this, it acts like a drug, really. And even young girls would chew it. And so sometimes you get them in the room and they're all just doing.

and you got to put them up against the wall in a duck position to kind of put him off guard. And it's just a whole vibe. But the kicker was I wasn't trained to do that job. I did not deploy to do that job. That was not my specialty at all. I got zap straps right before in a pair of gloves and said, good luck. And so, and obviously you had to do the job. Yeah.

There was no, there was no choice. But that seems to me just really bad practice. No, it was. It was not meant for success, man. that's not what I was there for. I was there to, basically all I was told was like, look, like when I deployed,

I was a no hook gunner. So I was in the Army for a year and a half. They dropped me with the Brits, and then the Brits told the Brits, like, if she says stop, everyone stops. Meaning, like, this was my specialty. It's kind of like the bomb dog handler or the medic. Like, there's only a few of us, right?

So we listen when that one speaks. I'm doing here. I'm like, if I find something, I know what I'm looking for. I know what I should be seeing. But ultimately, I was not trained to do that job in the way that I should have been doing it. So maybe I was a little more rough. Maybe I could have been better.

Maybe there was a better way to go about it. But I was given a 30-minute crash course from the RCMP about like my legal rights and what I can to do someone and what I can't. Can't duct tape them, but I can zip tie them. Can't put a bag over their head, but I can cover their eyes. Get what I mean? Small differences. Small differences. If they had things on them,

I had to place them down in front of them and show them that I didn't take it, but it was in their vicinity. And eventually that just became out the door with it because I'm not tolerating it anymore, right? You're in a room with a lot of people. You don't really have time to be like, this is where your necklace is,

with no translator either, which was awesome. And most of the time they thought I was a little boy. So then the men would freak out in the room. Then I'd have to take my house because it's like a little boys going in the room with all these women, and I have to take my helmet off and show that I was a female,

and then we'd have that dance, and it's always fun. And again, politically incorrect, but this is so fascinating. I imagine there is, I imagine kicking someone's door in and invading their home in that way, particularly initially, is a kind of internally very unpleasant experience, even if you're quite low empathy like me. I don't think I would enjoy

doing that? The first time I did it, it was very uncomfortable. Right. But I also imagine that then your own concern for your own security and the security of your teammates kicks in and overrides that and eventually it becomes automated and it's only later that perhaps you start to process. I didn't process anything. For me, it took, it took a little bit. But once we started to lose people and bullets started to fly, I didn't care at all. Frankly, I just only cared about the people in our uniforms. Like that wall that you talked about, I know. Yeah, that's a real wall.

Yeah, it allows you to do a lot of things. And it's also as well because you inevitably see these people, I imagine, as the enemy. You have to. To an extent. Like, look, I for a long time, the women and children, I never really had an issue with. The men, though, yeah, yeah.

That took, even when I got home from Afghanistan, that took me a hot minute to be around a Middle Eastern man without just being shifting, you know, that whole feeling. But yeah, it took a little bit. But I did my best. I did my best to see people as human beings until all of a sudden they weren't. Yeah.

And the moment that they weren't is at the moment that they became a threat or they showed a particular side of themselves. They didn't do anything wrong. Most of the time, the women and kids never did anything wrong. They may have hated you, but they weren't violent with me until they were violent, right? So it's like I judged people just like I judge in life. It's like if you give me a reason to dislike you or have a reason, I'm probably going to feel some type of way.

I'm going to look at why I feel that way and go, is that a projection of something going on with me first off? But when I was over there, no, I, you're outside the way or you were a threat. Is that simple? because they wore the same clothes as everyone else. They made a good job to blend. And that's really hard to win against. Right, because you're not fighting an army.

You're fighting a resistance force. Correct. And that's completely different, like Hamas at the moment. Absolutely. So you get borrowed into this. Your job is to go in with a team that kicks indoors, you search people, et cetera. What happens from then?

Afterwards? Well, you had a whole bunch of experiences in Afghanistan. Tell us about that. Yeah, I was out with the... It sounds short, but we're out there for a week and it was just not a good week. It was a larger conventional fighting force that was kind of attacking things. And I only recently found out last week what we were even doing. So that was interesting.

We were looking for IEDs and caches and things like that. So sorry to interrupt. You were out in Afghanistan in armed combat and you weren't even informed about what you were meant to be doing. It's above my paygrit. Search the women and kids. Shoot. We need to shoot. Move we need to move.

Protect you guys. That's all you need to know. Wow. I mean, dude, I was in the army for like a year and a half. Like, what are they going to tell me? Like, oh, we know where Saddam? They're not going to give me the...

But, you know, I would imagine... Yeah, I would imagine the reason is, look, you need to do this because ultimately, we need to secure this area and blah, blah, blah, blah, in order that this can happen. I wouldn't expect you just to be put in something. where and you literally have no idea. He's a military expert, you know. Yeah, well, you might not have been in Afghanistan around that time, but we were, it was a rough, I mean, you know, seven to 12, whatever you want to say, Canada was involvement.

2009 was a really rough year, really rough fighting summer for a lot of countries. The Brits lost a lot of guys, Americans lost a lot of guys. Canada lost a lot of people. It was a particular aggressive. There was a vote that was going on that year. It was just vicious. and ultimately the summer time is the worst because they're harvesting opium. Well, what do they use to buy weapons?

What is the tell? Like, the summer, they're going to put more of a resistance up. At least that's what we found on my operation. I'm trying not to be blank because I know there's people going to be like, well, I saw what in the winter too. I get it. I get it. We all had our experiences.

I get it. But, yeah, so for me, it was definitely interesting. When I was with the Brits, we end up having an IED death where somebody, their foot hit an IED. That was my first experience of what an IED will do to a human body. And then I was one of the people that, it's always a gross conversation. I was one of the people that was body collection for that individual.

And if you know anything about the Taliban and what they love to do is they love to watch and they love to set off secondary devices once everyone rushes in for help. So as soon as that first IED went off, Things happened. They kicked again. Mortars started coming down, round started coming down range. And then we had to get to there to get him out. I wasn't prepped for that.

I didn't handle it great psychologically. I mean, I did the job really well. Like do big, you know, autopilot, do things, move, run, shoot. When I got back, that's when I started to rub my hands pretty excessively. And I started to struggle. And the medic saw it and noticed it and was like, you're good. It's good. You're fine.

It's all good, bro. I'm like, oh, good. And then we just cracked on 15 minutes later. So that was the first time I had experienced a death in front of me and also listening to the ICOM radio, listening to the Taliban praise that they got one of our guys. So that infuriates and stokes a level of anger that's really hard to articulate.

But then after that, you know, just we were just in countless firefights and we were just dealing with war stuff. You know, every time you move, they shoot. Every time you shoot, they shoot. It's you're just fighting, you're fighting a, a group of people that would rather die and be honored to die, right, than you are anything else. And that's hard to wrap your brain around that people would prefer to die than to live.

But I mean, like, a million songs have written about it. They've told us now, like, they've showed us who they are. I don't know why we're all surprised. People are shocked. It's like, really? And this may sound like a weird question, but does it ever occur to you at this point to go, guys, I signed up to be a gunner? Oh, you don't get to say that.

Right. No, no, I am property of the Canadian Armed Forces, son. You go where you're told, you shut your mouth, you do your job. I was excited to go. I'm not going to pretend I wasn't. I was super stoked. We were in a fob. All we were doing was sending rounds down range.

It gets boring when you're not shooting, right? And for artillery, it's like you're on call. It's not like, oh, we're going to shoot today at this. I mean, it is if the Americans are planning an operation. They're like, we're going to need loom at this time, this many rounds. Otherwise, you wait for a radio, and then you, you, could be out on a run around the fob or you could be working out or in a shower and you you just hear messian set and it's like everyone everyone drops towels whatever and you run to the guns and then you get

ready to go and so it was a very already a heightened state all the time we're like we're gonna when are we going to go we're just waiting and you get bored and then i got favoritism because i got picked right because i was the woman so i got picked up and they they took me away and everyone stayed at the fob and I went to do what everybody wanted to go do, which was go fight and war. Did you get hooked on that adrenaline? Oh, yeah. When I came back from that, I didn't want to go back to the guns. I wanted to stay with the guys.

Because they rotate us, women, right? Yeah. So instead of just keeping a CST, which is called a cultural support team was what they call them now, they would just like rotate us through. And what happens is like when you get back, like a CST gets back, what they do is they don't like go with the guys and like process like you were mentioning and handle it and talk about it. They go see you later and then you go back to wherever you came from.

And then you go back however you are psychologically or whatever it is and you have to cope with that in a group of people who don't understand what you just went through, nor do they believe it, nor were they there, nor will they understand. So you just naturally outcast yourself, which is a really shit situation to be in because you, it doesn't have to be like that. We can do better. We can absolutely do better. We just don't. And you talked about the hand rubbing, and that's obviously OCD and a form of PTSD as well. Oh yeah, I've got all of that. And when did you start to notice that your mind and the way you saw the world was being adversely affected by the experiences that you were being put through?

I got back to CAF and I'm mouthy. I know that. Sorry, CAF is... Caff is the where you fly into when you get into Afghanistan. So I got back to CAF because that's where they would do the operations in and out of. And like I said, I'm mouthy, but I'm not... I know my line in subordination. I know the charge.

I know the deal. But I stopped sleeping. I stopped eating for like days. I would just pace. And then ultimately kind of came to a head when a QM warrant officer told, me that my braid was a mess and that I didn't have any weapon, any, didn't have any ammunition left in my meg. When we walk around Cap, you have to have a full meg on you. I didn't have anything left. And I told the, I think I told the warrant officer, you would know if you left Caff, why I didn't

have any, you know, just like it being nasty. And then ultimately that got brought to the staff. They sent me back out to the fob. And they had medicated me without telling my staff. So I was on 11 different drugs, sleep meds, uppers, downers, you name it. I was on all of these different medications to get me to sleep, to get me to function again, while running a machine gun. And ultimately, I went out onto the tower one day, and I saw something that wasn't there. And instead of, like, I racked around and my guy was like, what are you doing? It was a kid. She was waving, but I thought she was pointing. I didn't do anything. I knew that wasn't right. And I jumped off the tower, and I went and told the radio guys, I was like, I'm not okay.

Something is not okay. They had a conversation about it. There was some yelling and screaming. And then they sent me back to the hospital in CAF to get me checked out by a psychiatrist. And oh, yeah, he sat down with me within like 10 minutes. He's like, okay, you're going to go home soon. And then they sent me home three weeks early with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. And then I was ripped away from my unit and I never saw those guys again.

And then I was medically released in 2011. Wow. Yeah. And how much care was given? Because PTSD, that's a term that gets bandied about. But that is incredibly serious. I mean, I came home and I attacked a Muslim family in a Walmart. So I wasn't good.

Like, it was serious. It was to the point where I wasn't functioning. I wasn't functioning at all. I stopped eating. I stopped sleeping. I got violent. I would say horrible things about anybody who looked. Like, I hated the way I was.

When I look back now, I mean, I was 19. It did damage. It did damage for the majority of my, you know, I mean, I'm 34 now. I kind of started getting myself together around 2016, really psychologically started getting myself together around 1920. 21 is when it got really good. That's when psychedelics came in. So, yeah, I mean, there was no care, right?

That's why I was med-borded out because at the time, Canada didn't, and my sergeant will say this to this day. We didn't know what to do with you. We hadn't encountered what had happened to you yet before, and we did not know how to work with you or how to fix that or how to keep that going or keep you in the service. How's that possible?

I mean, PTSD is pretty common in soldiers, isn't it? Yeah, for sure. But it's normally the soldier will say, is smart enough to say, no, I'm good. But I was being honest because I was like, well, I'm not good. And these aren't good. But what I didn't realize was that would mean

that I would lose my job. So normally the guys would be like, yeah, I'm good. They might go and do crazy shit, but it's more. So you write it off. Absolutely. 100%. How do you think most of the special operations operate? You think that they're always feeling great about their stuff?

No, they have a job to do. You don't want to abandon the guys that you were with. So you say, I'm good. Doctor goes, okay. Check, moves on. I just, because of the operation I was in, it was known what happened. and it was a bigger deal for me to be a part of.

And so they knew what happened. And I couldn't lie my way out of that. And I was a part of something that was nasty. They knew. They knew it wasn't going to be great. And the biggest flag was I got quiet. That's something's wrong if I get quiet. And the support that you got from the military was minimal, I take it.

It was just a lot of meds. But there was no therapy. They tried. They tried. They give you a non-qualified social worker. Non-qualified. Yeah, it was really funny because I just found out this year when I was going through my documents with my psychiatrist who's been treating me since 2011.

And he flipped through and you went, yeah, no wonder you were as bad as you were. Because they gave me people to work with me that were not qualified to handle what had just happened. Because, again, Canada's involvement was much later, right? We weren't in Iraq and all of these. Iraq and all these places. You know, Canada really started to crack on. Was it 06, 07? I mean, I was 09.

So we weren't super, super, super in it yet. You know, we hadn't gone through all of that yet. We started to see it. We started to see people turn around with multiple deployments and have issues. But the guys would just come back and drink, right? Our guys would come back and drink. Like, one of my buddies is a sniper and he was like, yeah, we would just, we would handle it our way. But all we want to do is go back outside the wire.

We just want to keep doing our job. and that's all I wanted to do. But I just made the mistake of saying I wasn't okay. That was my mistake. Well, you're not being serious, though, right? Because now that you've been through all that and you... Oh, now I'm not... No, I am dead serious, though, but at that time, that was my mistake.

Yeah. Now I don't think it was a mistake. Absolutely not. I think it would have been compounding. And I think that's kind of what happens, right? Is we put people in these situations. Everyone says they're good, they're good, they're good. Compound, compound, compound, compound, compound.

medication, medication, alcohol, medication, compound, medication, I'm not good anymore. Yeah, you think? And what you've just described just explains why we have so many problems with veterans when they come back, and they're completely unable to function in society, and it's, well, what did you really expect? If you put people in that situation and they do, and they get exposed to those type of experiences, is going to make reintegration and a normal life in inverted commas

pretty difficult. Well, this goes back to what I stated before. We have no clue what we're asking people to go do. Right? So it doesn't, shouldn't be a surprise that we've gone from 22 a day to 44 a day and climbing. 44 a day suicide?

Mm-hmm. Wow. My TED talk was on that. I did a TEDx a couple weeks ago for an organization called Honor House that I support, and they let me put in some of my information, and the first thing I started with is, what does the number 44 mean to you?

To an audience of 1,800 people who had no clue what that number meant. That's pretty indicative and what's going on in the world. We don't know. When we ask people to go do this, we don't understand what that does to the families and to the children and to all of these people, right? It's, again, we don't know what we are asking people to truly go do. We just tell them to go do it. That's why rich people don't send their kids. because it's just the reality, right? You don't see like, yeah, Harry went. Relax.

That's like one. Where's all the other politicians' kids? They're at the Ivy League schools being smart using their brain, right? And if you're lucky enough and you come back and you can use your brain, you can use your GI Bill to go do awesome things for sure. But there's going to be an adjustment period. And for some people, it's a decade. And it's decades.

And some people don't ever adjust and they take their lives. Some people, they adjust, they get home, and they're crack on and they're totally fine. everybody's different. That's the thing about being humans. We can't, we don't know how we're going to react until we react, until we're in it. I thought I'd be fine until I wasn't, right? Logically, you know what I mean? Yeah.

Yeah. Do we have, we've had Dan Crenshaw on the show. I don't know if you know of him. Yeah, I know. He seems to be one of the guys that is okay despite all of his injuries and the experiences he went through. Mm-hmm. I don't know, Dan, well, yeah, I don't know.

Listen, I, there's something that is. set in the community, it's like nobody hates a successful veteran more than another veteran. I don't know if you've ever heard that saying. No. Talk to enough of us. We're comedians. It's kind of the same. That's my point, though, right? Yeah, I don't really have much to say about Dan.

I don't know him well enough. And I don't know his deal well enough. I mean, like I said, I've got plenty of friends who are special operators, and I'm very, very privileged. And I say that out of the utmost respect, I'm very privileged to be in the circles I am in and to be welcomed into the ones I am. And the special operators that I am around, yeah, man, these guys were 25-year crack on, you know, clapping dudes like it was nothing.

But now they have to come into this life. And I've seen their transition. And they go through just as hard as everyone else does. You know, it's just about your network of support. And if you have one or not, that's the key. I see. That's very interesting. Because in his book, she talks about his girlfriend and family being so super-fiancee,

I think she was at the time super supportive. But anyway, can I ask an even more politically incorrect? question. I mean, it's your show, man. I'm here for you guys. I'm curious how you feel about the fact that women are increasingly encouraged to serve in combat. Yeah, that's a tricky one. That one's hard, right? That one's hard. I'm asking from a place of like, I have no idea, I don't have an opinion about it because I genuinely don't know, but you do. Well, you have some perspective. Yeah, I have a hard time with it.

Look, women have always been doing combat arms rules in Canada as far as I'm aware. I could be wrong, and I'm sure I'll find out after. I'm sure all of my opinions will be well known after this. But what I would say is, look, we can do the job. That being said, should we be doing the job? That's a different question. Yeah. Mike Ritland asked me this when I was on his show, and he goes,

look, I don't think women should be integrated with men's units. there's too much assault. I said, well, let's have the real conversation about how men assault men and no one talks about it. I didn't mean it from that perspective. No, no, no. But I'm saying like normally the conversation is, well, it's an assault issue, right?

That's not what I mean. Okay. So in terms of actually serving in that capacity, if you can do the job effectively, you should be able to do the job. That being said, there are plenty of men, old school thinkers, or even now, who are like, whether we like it or not,

men are going to respond differently when women are around. I.e. like, if she's in danger, there might be more of an inclination to be like, oh, and then that person gets killed, and it's like maybe they wouldn't have reacted if women weren't there. I think there is a need for us, especially when we're fighting up against,

we're going to be Geneva Convention, so we got to follow it. There's going to be women on the battlefield. I mean, we've got to do something. Otherwise, they're just an opportunity. They're an opportunity for them to abuse us in the sense of we, We respect the Geneva Convention, which means we won't search you or touch you.

Well, what do the Taliban start doing for a little while? Burk is on, AK's underneath. So, I mean, you need, I think you do need women on the battlefield. I think it's harder to integrate them. I think it has to be a specific type of female. I think the idea that every woman is going to transition well into that space is naive. Yeah. Yeah.

I guess partly what I'm also asking is, I would imagine, just with my cursor understanding of evolution. This is me talking out of my ass potentially here. Very possible. But is it possible that men evolved to fight more so than women? I think that's a reasonable statement to make. Yeah. And therefore how it impacts us potentially.

No, for sure. I get what you're saying. So what I'm saying is just because you can pull the same land yard that a man can with the same efficiency and you're strong enough to do it and you're good enough at picking the cord and it's where the shell is supposed to land and you're good at taking orders

and you may even be even better, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is maybe the impact on you down the line greater because you just not evolved as much to be able to handle the violence, the brutality, the whatever? I've never been asked that before. I feel like I need to ruminate on that before I answer, but I don't think I have time, so let's go with this. I think there's an aspect of that for sure.

I think human biology dictates that truly. I think there was plenty of, you know, if you go back into generations of different cultures, women fought a lot. So I, you know, there's the bloodline, you know, where does your genetics come from and things like that. I was, I grew up as a fighter.

So I didn't know any different and that didn't cross my mind at all to even think that, okay, maybe there'll be a genetic component that could play into how I would, deal with death and violence. As a mother now, looking at that,

would I ever go do that again unless somebody kicked my door? And hell no, no. So I think, for sure, I think there's a biological component that we do overlook, that, you know, naturally just due to the wokeism of the world, you know,

women could do everything. So I think there's always going to be a bit of that, but I think it's not about having our place. It's about what is most effective on the battlefield, in my opinion. And unfortunately, due to, you know, the culture, politics, whatever you want to say, you're going to have, you know, we can do everything, kind of conversations no matter what. And I think we can. I have some of the

baddest females I know where special warrant officers, special, sorry, female special warrant officers who went down range with the rangers. Some of the baddest females I've ever known. But do we need to be there? Well, as long as we're fighting people where we're going to abide by their Geneva Convention, yes, we need to be there. Unfortunately, yes, we need to be there. until that ends, until we start saying, no, we're just going to do that. Well, I mean, that's why we didn't win the war. I mean, we can't win against things where people aren't playing by the rules. If there's a set of rules and both of you aren't playing by it, what do you think is going to happen long term?

Do you think you're going to outlast you? They've outlasted everyone. I mean, come on. But we have to be politically correct. It's interesting. I think about this all the time, you know, because, I read history a lot. I mean, conflicts are won by the side that is willing to use unmitigated overwhelming force.

And brutality. And brutality. Yes. Every fucking time. Every time. And if you are not prepared to do that, then the other team's going to win. A thousand percent. And we don't, and we, I don't think in the social media world, I said this before, I don't know if the West is ever going to win another war.

It's really troubling. And I hate to say that because that sounds terrible. but... I don't know that it's possible. No, no, because we fall under NATO, which falls over in Geneva, we have the Geneva Convention. Right.

There are things we cannot do, regardless of them being right or wrong. If we need to kill a bad dude, but he's in a compound filled with women and kids, we're not going to hit the compound. Do we need to hit the compound? Probably need to hit the compound. Should we?

Well, it depends who you're asking, because the Taliban will hit that compound, no problem. Better yet, They'll hit the compound, take the women to kids and enslave them into sex slavery. So it's like, okay, here's the thing. Let me get, let me, I don't know if you guys know about this. You might because you're smart individuals, but most people are kind of blind to this. Have you ever heard of, uh, of man love Thursdays?

No. No. Okay. That wasn't where I expected that to go. I'll be honest with you. We don't even know where it's going. Just give it time. Just give it time.

So what happens, you ever heard of Chai Boys? Chai Boys? No. So in Afghanistan, poor families will take the young boys to the Taliban or those people. Ah, yes. Okay. Yeah, but. But tell us anyway.

Yeah, so they'll take them to the boy there. The boys will serve the chai teen and the boys get raped. Okay. Well, what do we do about that? Well, we're not there to fight that. So we let it happen. We let it happen. Well, you see a mother getting buried up to her neck and stoned a death by her husband and children because she looked at a male soldier.

What do we do about that? nothing we can do about that. We're not there to fight that. Right? We're there to fight the Taliban. Yeah, but the Taliban are doing it. Shouldn't you kill the Taliban? Shouldn't you kill the father?

Because it's probably associated. Well, that's just the religion. It's Sharia law. So you can't interfere. We mean I can't interfere. They're about to murder someone in front of me. They didn't shoot you. They don't have a weapon.

You see what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. So it's like we can allow for raping of children and we can allow for open-air sex slavery and for we can allow for, you know, grown elders to come marry off of seven-year-old girls and know they're going to be raped the rest of their lives. But that's fine.

But if you point at me with a gun, then I can take you off the face of the earth. It's like you're not going to win against cultures like this. They are willing to do what we are not willing to do. And that's not about, you know, and I'm going to hear about this for sure. It's not saying that we didn't win. We didn't win. We didn't win. Well, the Taliban's back in charge. So, yeah.

They were always in charge. They were always in charge, whether it was by proxy or what, they were always in charge. How about the billion dollars of weapons that were left? I'm sorry, if I lose a flashlight, I am getting a written charge on my record. I had guys on the ground during the pullout who were being told to do the opposite of what we are trained of. We are told any time you leave something, you destroy it so it can never be used again. You blow up the barrel, you hit the comms, you nothing left. These guys were like, leave it alone.

Don't touch it. Why do you think? Taliban can't use broken equipment? Can they? No. We left everything. It's way above my pay grade, but let's be honest. Like, we abandoned people.

Canada abandoned a lot of people. Nobody wants to talk about that because we've done a snap election and no one could talk about that. Actually, you'll enjoy this conversation. You know how we were chatting about media prior? Okay, so, Afghan pullout happens, right? And we get this, I get this phone call from a buddy my name

Griffey owns a company called Combat Flip Lops. He's a Ranger buddy I was telling you about. And he goes, hey, I got a nine pack of VIP Canadians. I can't get them out of the country. I said, how come? He goes, Canada won't take them. We mean Canada won't take them. I don't know. Something's going on with the IRC. We can't get them in. I need you to try. I'm over here running a jewelry company and a podcast, guys. So I get on social media, we start making connections with people on the ground. And I'm sitting on signal on my phone and I'm trying to, you know, talk, hey, where are these people doing the whole thing? And I get a phone call from the CBC. Love them. And they're like, you know, Kelsey, we'd like to interview. You were interviewing a panel of Afghan veterans.

We want to talk about how you feel about how the pullouts going. So I said, so you want to call in nationally across the board, gaslight a bunch of veterans to make us look angry, violent individuals to justify the way you treat us and, you know, leave us alone. And she goes, well, no, we just want to question you. I was like, cool. All right, cool. The next day, Trudeau calls a snap election. I get a phone call from the CBC.

Kelsey, the interview has been canceled. Why has it been canceled? The Trudeau administration has set a blackout on anything Afghanistan related. So as this is happening, while the Brits are coming over to Afghanistan and the Americans are there on the ground and you've got ex-contractors, dudes just flying in. on their own trying to help, Canada cut the lines of communication, and anybody who had a Canadian visa was not getting out of that country.

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. So we got our family out using Americans and some other people that were willing to do some dicey things on my behalf. But we got them out. They're in America.

They're in Canada. They're doing great. That being said, the amount of people we have abandoned. It's like, number one, Canada had the means to get you. Number two, we're not going to get you. So what does that mean down the road? Do you think anybody who would ever fight against in another country is ever going to trust us? again? No. No chance. Not if they're smart. No, not if they're, you have their head on their shoulders.

Right. Right. Because they'll leave and they'll abandon you. A hundred percent. There's so few of them that got that got out of the country truly and it was heartbreaking to watch and witness. So, yeah, I think we lost. I think we super lost. I think that we not only lost, but we set back anybody who supported us, any women and children, anybody who thought they had a future. The second we left that country, that was over. Those women and kids? unless you're a boy, you're never going to school. You're never going to be educated. You're never going to have literacy.

You're never going to leave. All you're going to do is get married off, just like they started doing again, just like that, into sex slavery that nobody wants to talk about, right? Nobody wants to talk about that, what is it, 10.3 million women and children that are in sex slavery. We don't want to have that conversation. Let's not have the conversation about 46.9 million people by the United Nations that are in sex slavery and just slavery in general across the world. But I thought slavery ended, right?

Right. cool I struggle with these issues because our people who are making the decisions to go to war have their heads so far up their asses they don't understand what they're doing like these colonels these people who sent who we're running Afghanistan not a single one of them has been reprimanded for the fact that we billions on billions of dollars and we lost how many lives and then we abandoned all of the people and then all of the weaponry like that's never we've never abandoned that much weaponry. And I can't even, I can't even think of a time where that would have been acceptable behavior.

So it's like, of course things are the way they are. Of course, of course, these countries are the way they are. Of course we lost the war. Bad leadership. Kelsey, that seems like a crazy decision. Yeah. Bad leadership. Right?

Because that's what it is. Always comes down to that. You have a bad leadership. Things fall. fast. Shit rolls downhill. That's the same, right? Shit rolls downhill. Look at Canada right now. Do you regret joining the army? No. No. I don't regret a thing I've done. Not one thing. Not a single thing. Nope. Made me who I am. That's so interesting. Someone was having that discussion on social media. I think it was Twitter the other day. And I was, I really don't know how I feel about that because I am always the same as you. I don't regret anything I've done. But then I go, uh,

Is that really true? I think it's possible to regret things if you imagine yourself being a different person to the person that you were, but you weren't a different person to the... You were the person that you were. The only way you were going to learn the things you had to learn

is by doing the things you ended up doing. That's why I don't regret it. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you... Do you... the pull out from Afghanistan, atrocious, the war in Afghanistan,

ultimately unproductive, and in fact, counterproductive you might argue. Do you think that is because we never should have gone in the first place? Or do you think that's because the way it was done once we were in? Well, I think we could only do what we can do, again, following the Geneva Convention. I think that was going to end up similar, right? We didn't have a plan for a pullout. We didn't have a plan for succession.

We didn't have a plan. And when you go into things without an end result here, you're going to kind of flounder. I'm guessing if they sat down and tried to plan it, they'd probably decide not to go in because they would have looked at history and they would have gone, this is a bad idea. They call it the graveyard of empires for a reason.

Exactly. But I think we also went into Iraq under false priest census, which then, so I think we should never have gone in. I think we knew from what I'm, and other people can say whatever they want, but from what I was told is like,

we knew we're all those key figure where figures were a long time ago. So it's like, but we needed a justification to go in to war. We needed a justification to send our women and kids to die. You can't just be like, oh, well, we knew where this guy was hiding the whole time. We could have gone them.

Like, you need a justification for everything, right? You need to be able to tell the CNN and the fox of the world why our kids are coming back and bags, or if anything's coming back and not filled with sandbags. Let's be honest with ourselves. Those IEDs don't leave a lot left. So you need to justify why coffin after coffin after coffin is coming home on Hercs.

And women and kids and wives and husbands will not have. their spouses again. You need to justify. You need to have a reason to justify why literally in 44 a day. So if you do the math on that, I mean, took me from October 6th to November 11th to do my speech. And from that time, it was 1,584 deaths by suicide. That's moms and dads and aunts and uncles and cousins. So how many does that represent? Right? How many does that represent if you take one father away. Because I've seen it. I have tons of friends who now are widows. So many widows, so many widows. And to watch them raise their kids and to have to explain to them that daddy couldn't stay around anymore, well, now those kids think they couldn't stay around. I wasn't

good enough to stay. They have to live with that. So how many does one suicide represent? Because it's not just one person, the ripple effect is astronomical. We've now had, I think it's, if I'm not mistaken, it's four times more death since Afghanistan than we did in Afghanistan. So you can't say that any of it was worth it. Yeah, our friends that were there, it's really hard for me to say that because I'd like to think that their lives were for something. And they were. When they were there, we had a mission set and we were doing it.

But I mean, look at the way we left that country. That's just tragic. That's just tragic to abandon it the way we did. and the people we left there and the blood that was spilled in Iraq and Afghanistan? No, none of that was working. You mentioned earlier

that you wouldn't send a conventional force anywhere, really, to fight anyone. Did I hear you? Yeah, like large boots on the ground. Yeah, you wouldn't do that. I mean, you're asking somebody with four years of service

if I would change up what a general would do. I can speak to what I would know. The dudes that show up in all black are a lot better than we are. These guys spend years, years training to go in and take someone out. And they do it effectively for a reason because they're good at it. The Seals, the Rangers, the Delta, the JTF2, there is a reason they are the elite of the elite of the elite.

You need something done. You send them. You don't send a mass group of like 19, 20, 21-year-olds who are just happy to be here. Right? Like, I mean, let's be honest. It's like, who are you going to send to build a rocket? Are you going to go build a rocket guys? Are you two qualified to build rockets? No, we're going to send Elon because we know Elon's got a shit together and we know he understands how to do that. It's no different

than saying like, I'm going to go be a surgeon. Did I go to school for it? Nah. But I'm going to do it anyway. What are we doing here? Because we were in a war, we didn't have time to train people super effectively to do the job. So of course we're going to have casualties. It's what happens. Of course we're going to have psychological casualties. We have more of those and we have physical ones, right? So, no, I really think that we need, there are bad people that do need to be eliminated. That is not for sure. But I think there's a better way to do it than the way we've been doing it. Because if you guys haven't noticed, doesn't seem like we're doing well the way we're doing it. Well, look, I mean, if you look at Israel, Palestine, I mean, I understand why Israel is doing

what is doing. Of course. But I also, I see all these fucking Hamas leaders on TV from their luxury hotel room in Qatar. Billionaires. And I'm like, why don't, why don't they have an accident? Why don't they fall out of the window? Maybe that's the way. Do you see what I mean? Yeah, well, of course I do.

I mean, one of my favorite moves that Douglas Murray has made recently was making sure the address was known, doxing the living hell out of those people. We were waiting for the Uber to pick us up to come here. And a guy with a Palestinian flag rode by, I just wanted to take a stick and just put it into his spokes so bad. Because that's like me walking around with a Taliban flag in Canada and everyone

being like, is it, do you think the look, I'm just trying to devil's advocate. Well, no, not devil's, I'm actually just trying to be fair, because one of the things we started doing on the channel, I don't know if you've had a chance to see, is going out to these protests. I haven't seen

them. I've seen, like, you were doing it, but I haven't watched an eclipse, yeah. So I went to the march against anti-Semitism, I went to a just-stop-war protest. I don't know if you have these people in Canada. Probably not. And I went to a pro-Palestine protest. And there are a lot of people there who, you know,

they just have, they see the pictures. Yeah. And if you are a human being, you see the pictures, and you go, those are terrible pictures. Yeah, they are. And so I feel empathetic for those people. Absolutely. And therefore, that Palestine flag is more like an Afghanistan flag

than it is a Taliban flag. flag. Do you see what I mean? I think for me, because I've seen what London has been the past little bit, and I've seen some of the people walking around, they're not like pro-Palestinian. They're straight Hamas supporters. There are some of them. Yeah, there are some of them. I'm talking about the ones that I saw yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's a stark reality that they are not just like... There's an element of the protests that absolutely, you're 100% correct. But there's also people who go. Of course there are. Like one of my good friends, she's Muslim, and she is from Serbia. And the stuff she's been posting, she's like,

Like, you know, she's the complete opposite, right? Where she's, like, very pro-Palestinian and all of these things. And I get it. When you see innocent people getting slaughtered, you have a right to be upset. It doesn't matter what color their skin or what religion or whatever. Got to remember, these people have been under terrorist occupation for how long? I mean, I feel for them always. Anybody who's under a terrorist government, I feel for, starting to feel it at home.

I'm being honest. I mean, what happened over COVID in Canada was crazy. Well, talk about over COVID, we've got something way worse going on that no one's paying attention to do. That has been really interesting. Well, on that very subject, we got to, you know what? Are you okay for us to wrap up? Yeah, there was actually something that I wanted to say. There's a very famous saying because when I was listening to you talk and it brought up to me this saying that it was prevalent during the First World War, Lions led by donkeys.

And it seems to me that that's actually what you're talking about here. It feels that way a little bit. Because the guys that I fought with, like the Brits, the Americans, the Canadians switched on as it gets, dialed at their job, good at what we do. Shit leadership. Shit leadership is what gets people killed. Bad calls, bad decision-making

because of politics or for whatever reason, one ego's pissed off at this ego so they don't get the equipment they need. That's all it comes down to. That's the fault of the human, right, is we have egos. The fault of humans, in my opinion, isn't that we're different and it isn't that we're not all the same. The fault is that we all have egos and we either lean into them or we learn how to work with them.

Right? That's where like the psychedelic conversation comes on. You don't have to kill your ego. It's not about killing the ego. It's about telling that bitch to take a seat. That's all it is. It's about regaining control about where you come from and why you come out the way you do and the perceptions you have.

Because most of the time, if you don't like somewhere, you're seeing something like that where you're like, well, yeah, that's, that shouldn't be done that way. Most of the time, the world is just a perception of how we view each other. It's not that it actually is that way. The world people would say is, oh, it's falling apart. It's super violent. Some parts are violent. Some parts are kind of falling apart.

Yes, we're seeing signs of communism. Yes, we're seeing signs of tyranny. Yes, we're seeing it. But organically, if you go off the street, most people are quite lovely. The world is quite kind if you choose to see it that way. But if you slow drip the media, the world looks like it's falling apart.

Yeah, for sure. Both can be true at once. Absolutely. And I think they are both true at once. I think the world is in a very chaotic period and one that may continue. frankly. But at the same time, we've built these incredible societies, particularly here in the West, that are stable, that are prosperous, that are comfortable. Yeah, I think both can be true at once.

Yeah. I think both can be true at once. Listen, this has been longer than most of our episodes, because we've enjoyed it so much. So let's do this again sometimes. It's not your apologies. It's been absolutely amazing to talk with you. As you know, the last question, before we head on over to answer our members' questions, what's the one? thing that we're not talking about that we really should be. You hinted at it earlier. Made medical assistance and dying and what Canada is doing to its citizens. Basically encouraging Eastern Asia. Encouraging? Let's try this again. So since 2019, the Canadian government was offering it to veterans instead of PTSD treatment and traumatic brain injury when they were asking

for help. We have audio recordings and all of the lovely things they say we don't have to prove, but we do. As of March of 24, the Canadian government is opening made up to mental health, meaning depression. We can kill you now for depression. Children down to the age of 12 with parent consent, the homeless. You can kill your own kids up to 12. Well, if we have a reason to.

Meaning like, does your child, because here's the kicker, right, with maid. It used to be terminally ill, right? Long-term cancer, you know, real big struggles. Well, how about preventative medicine and better palliative care? Number one. Number two, you've got

people walking into the hospital saying I'm suicidal and the right response is a 48 hour to 72 hour hold for a psyche valve but instead what's happening is you've got them being killed within 24 hours

there is a really amazing daughter I got to know Alicia Duncan her mother was murdered by maid I say murdered because there's some sketchy situations about how made was used there's other individuals who were off using Maid another Canadian citizen

his disability was hearing loss and cognitive disability. Well, by definition, then I qualify for maid. I have hearing loss, and I am 72% considered disabled by the government. So I qualify for maid right now. So it is now going from terminally ill to mentally ill, meaning you can have fibromyalgia, you can have depression, you can be homeless, you can be an addict, and you can, with parent consent down to the age of 12. The Canadian government is taking the vulnerable,

population and straight enacting made on them. And the reason they're doing it is because they've saved over $98.6 million of palliative care by just enacting made on people instead of looking after them to the end of their life. So just eugenics. It's totally fine. Canada is doing some things right now that people aren't aware of and you're not aware of it because Canada's making sure under our iron curtain that you're not seeing it. Canada's full. right now, start paying attention because if Canada is going to start doing this, which they are, and they have been killing people now, I said this on Pierce Morgan and I'll say it again, there has been a stark increase on medical assistance and dying like we have never seen

anywhere else in the world. Canada is on a track to break records for the amount of people we kill. And the document I leaked to the Daily Mail back which came out on July 1st was a slideshow of them offering made and excited to do something. to pensioners who were perfectly healthy. And that was under the Fraser healthcare system in British Columbia. So Maid is being pushed in hospitals. It's being pushed in nursing homes. It's being pushed anywhere they possibly can

because it saves the government a ton of money to kill you than to look after you. And they are targeting veterans and they're targeting the mentally ill and they're targeting children and they are targeting anyone they can so that they don't have to pay for them. So please read more about that and look into it. because we are screaming about it in our country and no one is paying attention. That's pretty fucked up.

Super fucked up, man. Yeah, I like to bring happiness everywhere I go. Yeah, we do like to end the interviews on a positive night. My apologies. We're not ending the interview because we're heading over to answer questions from our supporters. Perfect. Thanks for being here. I haven't had a chance neither of us to read your book,

but really looking forward to reading Brass and Unity. And we'll have another one of these conversations. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me, guys. What is the average Canadian soldier's opinion of Justin Trudeau? Oh, I don't know if I'm allowed to say that. I might not be allowed back in the country. This is behind a paywall.