Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ AJ Pasciuti - A Marine Sniper’s Message on Service, Sacrifice, and Country

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Interview Only w/ AJ Pasciuti - A Marine Sniper’s Message on Service, Sacrifice, and Country · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you
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  Speaker 1: so use that code all right. So joining me now
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: is actually a fellow podcast host, Ajpursudi's out with a
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: new book.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: That's called Dark Horse.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: He has had an incredibly distinguished career in the Marines,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: and his book is.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: It's interesting.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I signed up to interview Aj based on the description
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: of the book, and I don't say to be dismissive
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: of the description, but the book is a lot better
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: and a lot different than I expected it to be,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: and I enjoyed it quite a bit, and I think
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: it's must reading for anybody that wants to understand modern
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: warfare in the United States in the US military, particularly
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: from the perspective of a marine. And Aja certainly has
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: his stories and an incredible story that I hope we
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: can spend some time talking about a sniper on a
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: sniper event where we took out somebody who was able
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: to take out somebody who had killed quite a few
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: marines over the years in the Second Iraq War. But
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: there's a lot to talk about with AJ, and I'm
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: looking forward to this conversation.
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  Speaker 2: So AJ, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: for having me on the podcast. Big fan of the show.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Happy to be sitting here. Also extremely nervous to be
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: sitting down with someone who I respect and revere as
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: much as yourself. So hopefully I don't trip over myself
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  Speaker 2: too much. That's all right.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I will not live up to your expects, right I will.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: So let me start with.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I remember the first book I read about
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  Speaker 1: Vietnam from the perspective of someone who served, who was there,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: and these books really didn't start hitting the shelves that
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: were really I think, until the early eighties to mid eighties,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: and it really sort of painted a more honest but
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I think we all know now a more honest picture
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  Speaker 1: of what it was like. And what struck me about
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  Speaker 1: your memoirs that this felt like this was This was
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: the perfect timing. And I'm curious, you know, if you
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  Speaker 1: wrote this book ten years ago versus today, how different
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: would it be.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a fantastic I have not been asked that before.
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  Speaker 2: I wouldn't have learned as much. I think it would
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  Speaker 2: have been surface level. I think that you would have
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  Speaker 2: gotten my worldview in you know, at two thousand and sixteen, right.
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  Speaker 2: I did a lot of learning through my career, especially
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: at the end of my career, when you start to
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: have the ability the luxury of looking back on a
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: lifetime and then you solidify a lot of the learning
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: of the lessons. I think that you kind of had
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: to like, you know, smash your way through a wall,
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  Speaker 2: you know, a certain amount of times. I got to
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  Speaker 2: look back on that, so, you know, it's very reflective.
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  Speaker 2: I think that there's a lot of introspection inside of
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  Speaker 2: it that I don't know that I had the maturity,
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  Speaker 2: or I would have had the maturity you know, at
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  Speaker 2: you know, twenty nine, as I would have at thirty
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  Speaker 2: nine when I started writing.
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  Speaker 1: I asked this because I think about this all the
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  Speaker 1: time now with history books versus narrative reporting in real time,
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  Speaker 1: and we're all trying to learn what is happening, what happened,
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  Speaker 1: and sometimes you don't get the full picture for twenty years,
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  Speaker 1: twenty five years, I think these days, and I the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: longer I've gone about this, the more I feel like
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  Speaker 1: somewhere in that fifteen to twenty five year period is
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  Speaker 1: when is when your first hand accounts have exactly what
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: you just described. There's a perspective and a reflective nature
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: that explains the why instead of the what. So my
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  Speaker 1: guess is ten years ago you'd have done a great
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: job telling us what and there's this book does a
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  Speaker 1: great job of telling you what your life was like
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  Speaker 1: at each moment in time when you were different different tours.
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  Speaker 1: But what made your memoir and what made this such
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  Speaker 1: a compelling read is what clearly I think's clear to
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  Speaker 1: me is you were looking at what happened to you
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  Speaker 1: from the perspective of an observer. Is that fair?
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I would say that. Yeah, I would agree. You know,
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  Speaker 2: I think that's to a little bit of your earlier
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: point is why now? In some ways is I think
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  Speaker 2: that leadership, especially right now, is extremely relevant and somehow
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: in short supply so what this is kind of a
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: call to action for readers. It's called Action for Americans.
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  Speaker 2: You know, one of the things I learned in combat
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  Speaker 2: is that you can't survive combat by yourself. You have
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  Speaker 2: to rely on one another. And so through that kind
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  Speaker 2: of journey, I wanted to I wanted to express what
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  Speaker 2: I had learned along the way, the camaraderie, the teamwork,
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  Speaker 2: the bonds that I made through that and realized this
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  Speaker 2: idea of collectivism, you know, to come back and kind
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  Speaker 2: of come back with this, you know, the elixir, if
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: you will, from from a writing standpoint of saying, hey,
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  Speaker 2: we've figured this out. We want to give this back
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  Speaker 2: to the American public. And so it was really fun
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: and reflective to go through that. But you're right, it
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  Speaker 2: would have been a play by play in an account,
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  Speaker 2: but it wouldn't have had the introspection and the reflection
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  Speaker 2: had I not spent some time after retirement to be
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: able to write it.
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  Speaker 1: So you listed seventeen, What do you think your seventeen
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: year old self would have thought of this book?
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  Speaker 2: I thought I thought it would have been work of fiction.
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  Speaker 2: You know, there's this really cool thing. I work with
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  Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of a lot of friends
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  Speaker 2: and mentor people that mentor along the way is I
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  Speaker 2: have this idea of my ten year old self, and
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  Speaker 2: I include a picture of my ten year old self
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  Speaker 2: in the book, and it's from me. The very first
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  Speaker 2: time I meet a marine sniper on the USS Comstock
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  Speaker 2: on fleet week in a Monterey Bay, and I think
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  Speaker 2: this guy's larger than life. I get behind a Barrett
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  Speaker 2: fifty caliber snipe rifle. I never would have dreamed in
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  Speaker 2: a million years that I would have been and had
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  Speaker 2: the career that I did, And so I include that
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  Speaker 2: as a reminder to myself to dream, to continue to
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  Speaker 2: dream even today, to have this idea of a continued
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: you know, don't be afraid of these really outlandish dreams
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  Speaker 2: because you can work towards that. The love that I
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  Speaker 2: found writing this book, Bear with me, forgive me, sir, No,
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  Speaker 2: you're fine. The love that I found in writing this
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  Speaker 2: book was realizing that I didn't get here alone. This
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  Speaker 2: book is a thank you. It's a love letter to
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  Speaker 2: the people that have shaped my life. I came from a,
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  Speaker 2: you know, a not very well to do family, kind
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  Speaker 2: of an immigrant background in northern California. I was very small.
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  Speaker 2: I didn't people wouldn't have looked at me and ever
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  Speaker 2: said Marine Force recon scout sniper for one. But then
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  Speaker 2: also I had my self limiting beliefs of what I
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  Speaker 2: could accomplish in my life, and so people along the
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  Speaker 2: way helped build those scaffoldings. And so this whole book
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  Speaker 2: is a love letter to people, saying or to telling
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  Speaker 2: people that I appreciate them and I've seen them, and
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  Speaker 2: then a call to action for other future leaders to say, hey,
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  Speaker 2: achieve your own success, whatever that is and whatever industry
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  Speaker 2: or whatever life that is. And then the last step
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  Speaker 2: is to turn around and help somebody else out allow
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  Speaker 2: them to see their own potential. And so you know,
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  Speaker 2: my publisher may not like this, but what I tell
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  Speaker 2: people is if you want to know what I've learned
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  Speaker 2: over twenty one years of service, I wrote it in
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  Speaker 2: the last page of the book. It's called letter to
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  Speaker 2: the Leader. If you want to know why I think
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  Speaker 2: the way that I do or how I learned those lessons,
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  Speaker 2: they're in the book itself. My seventeen year old self,
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  Speaker 2: for my ten year old self wouldn't have believed that
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  Speaker 2: this was the story. And so I want to give
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  Speaker 2: permission to young Americans or people of all walks of life,
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  Speaker 2: the permission to believe in theirselves. Well, look, I.
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  Speaker 1: Think that you know, if if my son were thinking
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  Speaker 1: about and listening, I'd want them to read this book first.
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  Speaker 1: If you know, if if I was supportive of the
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: decision and I had a relative who wasn't, I would
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  Speaker 1: want them to read this book, you know, just to
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  Speaker 1: understand the holistic aspect of this. And it feels like
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  Speaker 1: you got out of the Marines what so you know is, look,
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  Speaker 1: there's a lot of negative that comes out with when
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  Speaker 1: you sign up to defend the United States of America.
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  Speaker 1: You got to follow orders, you got to do some
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: things that whether you agree with them or not, you've
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: your hair agreed. That's right, you've agreed to do this.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: But at the same time you seem to also experience
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: the rewards that come with it if you fulfill this
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: public service, and that it is a it is an
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  Speaker 1: incredible way to climb up the ladder in America, is
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  Speaker 1: it not totally?
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  Speaker 2: I think that, you know, I think the United States
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: military is one of the last bastions of the American
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  Speaker 2: dream of where a young kid from nowhere can enter
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: from the lower class, do twenty years of service, gain
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: a whole bunch of skills out within the service and
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: then exit with a you know, a retirement into the
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: middle class. It's a great opportunity. And so at the
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: center of this entire thing, it's so hard to be
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: able to categorize the book. At the center of it
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: for me is service and service to the greater good,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: whatever that may be. And so it's kind of a
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: call to action for that.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: So you were an Eagle Scout, and so what surprises
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: me about you going from Eagle Scouts? You went to
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Eagle Scout en listy. You didn't try to do ROTC
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: and come in as an officer, right?
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  Speaker 2: Explain nine to eleven. Nine to eleven, I was seventeen
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  Speaker 2: years Excuse me. I was sixteen years old and a
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  Speaker 2: senior in high school, and I watched the Twin Towers fall,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: and you know, I watched it in real time with
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  Speaker 2: the rest of my classmates. You know. Having an immigrant background,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: for me, I got a chance to look at the
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: world through what I call in immigrant's eyes. My father
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  Speaker 2: raised me with the profound love of the United States
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  Speaker 2: and what it represented, and so it felt like the
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  Speaker 2: natural next right step to defend those values that I
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  Speaker 2: felt were under attack. You know, I had conversations obviously
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  Speaker 2: with my mom and my anti war you know, immigrant father,
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  Speaker 2: and I said, Dad, this is this is what you
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: raised me to be, right, And he don't want you
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: to do this? No he was. He was not happy. Huh?
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: And you listening at seventeen? You needed their permission, right?
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I did? I did. That was a tough conversation for
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: my marine recruiter. Ill tell you what the heartest job
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: in the Marine Corps for sure.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: I'm curious when did you know you had and how
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: do you How does one identify a skill like being
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: a sniper skill? I mean, is it just is this
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: something you knew from the beginning. You talked about meeting
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: that sniper at ten years old and it sort of
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: drew you to it.
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  Speaker 2: But you know, is this a skill that you had?
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Is this a gift? Or did you learn I have
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: to attribute other people? I have to attribute people along
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: the way I suffered from, you know, incredible amounts of
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  Speaker 2: self doubt, low self efficacy, you know, kind of a
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: poverty mindset. If you will, you know, and I'm not
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: going on this whole you know, being you know the
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: system of the I am responsible for my own destiny.
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  Speaker 2: I understand that, but I had such a low self
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: image of what I could accomplish. And so I remember
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: there was a gentleman by the name of Gunnery Sergeant
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: Ricky Jackson, and this was right after Operation Iraqi Freedom Ion.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: So two thousand and three, I'm now eighteen years old.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: I'm still not shaving my face at this time, and
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: I have a conversation with Gunny Jackson about wanting to
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: become a Scout sniper. And he's the first person who
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: never laughed at me when I told him my dreams.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: And Gunny Jackson, as you know, I'm sure you read
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: in the book, right, is somebody that I want to
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: uplift and hold as this example for other Marines to emulate.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: He came from the depths of pop or. He had
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: to fight his own way out of his own, you know,
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: his own story, to become something. And when he got there,
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: he wasn't a jerk about it. He helped other people, you know,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: as a sniper. I believe in trajectory, and trajectory early
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: has exponential effects down the line. I think that if
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: I were to attribute the one single person who affected
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: my life the most, it's gunnery Sergeant Ricky Jackson. And
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: so Gunnery Sergeant Jackson gave me permission to believe in
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: myself and then he wore me out right. So then
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: he like made me earn it right. So you can't
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: just want things. You can't just wish for things. You
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: have to work for them. And he taught me that.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: And he is a tall Southern gentleman with a you know,
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: traps you know for a neck, right, you know, And
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: he wore my little butt out, you know, to kind
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: of get me ready for it. And he stood up
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: for me when I needed to be there, and he
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: gave me, you know, he carried the load both phys
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: physically and emotionally before I could carry it myself.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: So tell explain what training to be a sniper is like,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: because it's different.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot of running, right, you know, so
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: you have to get into this, you know, this physical shape.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: The difference between us and professional athletes, besides you know,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: gobs of funding and professional you know, other professionals, professionals
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: that make you successful is a lot of grit, and
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: sometimes grit is best earned while doing the hard work.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: And so he taught me that. You know, the marine Corps.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: You know, we didn't promise you a rose guard. You're
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: not going to come. You know, thing's coming easy in
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: the Marine Corps. So there's a lot of pain, there's
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: a lot of misery, and there's a lot of suffering.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: But what he did was he gave me a north star.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: He gave me something to look towards and allowed me
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: to build towards that. And then him and his wife
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: built this model to help get me ready for that.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: And then you take a sniper indoc, right, And an
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: INDOC is like a screening that you have to go
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: through and it's a week long process to basically weed
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: people out. And there's this huge, huge, like physical and
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: mental and big time emotional burden or hurdle that you
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: have to get over. So what are some of the
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: ways that people do get weeded at? Is it? I cite?
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Is it? What is it? Honestly? Attention to detail? So
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: very early on is as a sniper you have to
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: be So they start like inculcating this very very early
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: into us. Remember when I take the sniper and Doc
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: I'm nineteen years old, it's very impressionable, very moldable, and
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: so but also they have to hold us accountable. So
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: physical becoming a physical specimen at some level is a
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: is a is a is a guarantee you have to
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: do that. That's a that's a right of passages. A
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: lot of times you're on your own. You don't have
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: anybody else.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: You know, as you're moving from perch to perch, you're
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: you're you're not you're not getting a lot of cover
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: yourself because you're the ones having You're you're going out
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: on your own to be the cover.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, So you have to have this idea of
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: of like you have to build this idea of self dependency, right,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: this resilience inside of that. You know, we joke that
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: like you know, some places in Camp Penalton, nobody can
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: hear you scream, right, is because you're on your own.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: You're out there by yourself or with generally work at
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: least in a partner pair, and you only have one
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: another rely on for survival. So you learn a lot
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: of trust. And the greatest thing about being a team is,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: you know, whether it be a two man or a
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: four man team, is people think that the team leader
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: is like this, you know this this like this supreme being.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: It's not that way at all. We all carry the
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: weight at different times, and it's recognizing when some people
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: need to be stronger or have better capabilities. The job
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: of the team leader is not to be the smartest
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: or the best all the time. Their job as a
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: team leader is to employ other people and their specific
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: skills so that we can recognize our potential together. So
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: let's talk about Juba and explain the legend. Because you
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: you start your book about it about you know that
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: you you get shown this thumb drive and so this
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: was something I was trying to understand. Explain the thumb
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: drive highlights of this of this menace I guess of
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: US Marines. So snipers have a saying it's killed one
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: terrorize a thousand. So when a sniper is in an
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: area and they're doing their job properly, they don't just
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: attack the physical being, they attack the emotional in the mental.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: When an enemy combatant knows there's a sniper among them,
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: they can never rest easy. So what Juba did is
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: in two thousand and four, we in Ramadi, we had
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: a four man marine sniper team were ambushed and killed.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: And with them when they were ambushed their M forty
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: A one sniper rifle went missing, and right around that timeframe,
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: we had a lot of enemy snipers operating inside of
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: the al Ambar province. Well, Juba, you know, whether it
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: be an individual or a team of.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: I was just going to say, are you still convinced
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: it's an individual or that it's a yeah, okay.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: So it's like Juba itself, right, Like there's a lot
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: more power in having it as a team and people
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: can operate. There's a large battlespace. I'm not naive to that,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: but the name of the person, right, you know, of
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: the of this of this character Juba. What they started
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: to do is hunt Americans. And Americans were quite vulnerable
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: during that timeframe, and so what they did is for
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: two years, they hunted Americans from very close proximity. And
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: what they did is they took it a step further
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: and they videotaped their exploits and they put it on
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: the internet Al Jazeera and Ogreish and you know, all
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: these things, so the world could watch Americans die. But
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: what he did was in his hubris, what he did
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: was he showed us how he operated, how he thought,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: what he did, and what his actions normally looked like.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: We used that against him. Remember to be observant. As
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: a sniper, my job is to observe what we call
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: a disturbance in the baseline. Anything when you get into
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: an area, an area will establish a baseline for you,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: where the birds start chirping again, or there's a natural
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: flow and feel to a specific environment. Snipers are trained
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: to be able to pick up something called a disturbance
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: in the baseline. So, for instance, if you're in a
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: field and a bunch of birds pick up and fly away,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: that's a disturbance in the baseline. It doesn't necessarily mean
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: that there's a bad guy there. It just means I'm
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: paying attention a little bit more. And so what we
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: learned from watching his videos was we learned what his
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: modus operandi was, We learned his operating principles, and so
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: then we were able to start planning our missions and
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: looking for specific what we call template matches that he does,
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: or that a person like that would do, that we
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: would look for, and that eventually led for us, allowed
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: us to be able to create a mission that would
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: entice him to come into an area that we could
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: have him fall into a trap. And when he fell
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: into the trap. We were waiting. Well.
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  Speaker 1: use that code. So this was a planned mission. This
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: isn't you stumbling upon, No, this is Juba.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: So we have yeah, we have like a chance contact,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: right and we have like planned ambushes. Who we were
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: really hunting that day? And the story goes into it
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: a little bit. Who I was really hunting that day
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: was an I d M placer. I knew that I
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: I ed M placers had a much more regimented mo o.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: I knew how to be able to insert myself into
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: their scenario. But what we also thing for him relatively
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: unknowingly right that it was something enticing. What is it?
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Luck is where preparation and opportunity meet, right, And so
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: we had a trap set for an Ied in plaster.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: He stumbled into it and we were able to capture
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: him through that.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Do you know it when it happened at the time
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: or is it later that you realized you had gotten,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: if not Juba himself, one of the important sort of snipers.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, did you know in the moment or was
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: this later on you realized?
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, within within a few minutes right after. I mean,
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: there's the chaos of the shot. So I tell people
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: this is you know, there's a lot of people who
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: like to come and you know, for the global war
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: and terrorism that's happened, a lot of people are arm
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: sharing what happens on the ground. And what I tell
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: people is that clarity is the first casualty in calm
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: that and so the enemy wants to survive just as
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: much as I want to survive, right, And so they don't.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: They don't go out there and you know, holding weapons
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: waiting for us to shoot them. It's not how it works.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: And so there's a lot of confusion, there's a lot
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: of chaos going on. We take the first shots, we
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: eliminate the you know, the target, and then what happens
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: is I have another marine, you know, a marine squad
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: come up to the vehicle where Juba was at and
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: I have them hold up a Sony handicam. What I
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: had first seen was that he was videotaping a marine
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: patrol which falls into the structure IED's or snipers, and
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: I saw sony. I mean, it sounds cliche, but I
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: literally caught a glint off of the lens of a
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Sony handicam and zoomed in on my scope and then
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden recognized that marines are about to
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: die and we need to insert ourselves into this equation
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: as fast as possible. And so when he did that,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: we shot into the car. We were able to eliminate
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: him and his spotter, but I didn't know it was
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: a sniper just yet.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: What's interesting about that is it goes back to look
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: at what caught your eye that would do him in,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: and it was the propaganda part of his mission, right,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: And this is it's sort of like the minute you
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: care more about the propaganda rather than the mission.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: I don't. I'm not.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: You know, it cost himself his own life due to
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: his own focus not on the mission.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Right, right, I think there's a ton of layers of
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: lessons inside of that, right, you know, is marine sniper's
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: you know, really really focused on doing the job. Do
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: the job, don't talk about the job. I didn't claim
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: credit for this for twenty years. I mean, people knew
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: at some level inside of the military, but it just
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: wasn't important to us what was. And again, the credit
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: never felt like mine to claim. I may have pulled
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: the trigger on Juba, but it was the entire team.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: The team. Sure, that's exactly correct. And his hubris, his
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: hubris is what did himIt, And that's not lost on me.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: You said something in the book when you were getting
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: ready to fight in a Rock where you're like, you
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: didn't understand why people would fight for a tyrant like
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein, And it struck me because I think we
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: all feel that way, and we get into these wars
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: and we're, you know, in theory, we believe usually we'd
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: like to think we're the good guys and the other
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: side of the bad guys, and we're on the side
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: of the righteous, and somehow they're not on the side
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: of the righteous. And then we sometimes are shocked that
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: the same loyalty that we expect in our forces to
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: our country, we're shocked when other people have the same
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: loyalty to their country and their forces. Right, And I
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: think sometimes it's I actually blame my industry for this, right,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: because we will, we will, you know, talk up our
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: principles as we should, and our values, but we're we
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: are almost sort of naive that somehow somebody else doesn't
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: have the same devotion to a set of values we
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: may not agree with one hundred percent.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Correct. You know, two thousand and three was a different
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: war than the rest of them. You know, two thousand
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: and three we fought a uniformed military, and they're you know,
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: you're right. I'm writing this and there are letters through
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: the book that are my letters I had written out,
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: and so their little snapshots into my psyche during that timeframe.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: And you're right. I was confused as to the whole
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: world knew Saddam was a tyrant, right, but we were
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: shocked as to why people would want to fight for
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: somebody like that. The war evolved afterwards, and So in
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: two thousand and four, late two thousand and three, two
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: thousand and four and on, we started fighting something called
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: the muja Hadeen, and muja Hadeen means freedom fighter, right
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: and Afghanistan, not in Iraq, right. And then in Afghanistan
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: we fought the Taliban right, and Talib you know, Taliban
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: means student writer, Talid means student of the Quran. Right.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: So I had to be able to again, the most
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: dangerous thing that we can do is not respect to
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: our enemy. I tell people, I've never fought a terrorist.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: I've only fought freedom fighters. They don't see themselves. That's
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: a very important you know. I mean, this is a
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: cliche that's been said over the years, but one person's
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: freedom fighter is another person's terrorist. And it's a matter
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: of perspective. And so when we lost respect or a
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: unit lost respect for the Taliban or a lost respect
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: for the musja Hadeen in Iraq or Isis or whatever
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: it was at that time frame in Iraq, that's when
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: you become, you know, a detriment where it's become dangerous
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: to yourself again, our own level of hubris, you know,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: American exceptionalists, right, if we carried that into combat. You know, politics,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: your political your faith does a seven to sixty two
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: bullet does not care, and we needed to protect that.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Look, I feel like it was you included a letter
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: from General Madis, and this was obviously before he ever
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: served a Secretary of Defense. This is when he was
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: an active marine general, before he retired, and it was
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: a letter that he was Essentially it was the message
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: to your troops before before you were going to go
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: into fight. And embedded in the message was a bit
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: of respect. Embedded in the message was remember you're representing
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the United States.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: We do you know. I think it was basically, think
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: before you shoot, and.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: I'll be honest and I look, I'm not going to
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: If you don't want to be drawn into the current situation,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: say so and I will move on. But I don't
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: feel like we have a commander of the Defense Department
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: that shares those same values that General Mattis shared with
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: you the night, the night before you had to go
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: into war. It's a different message that I feel like
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: our soldiers are getting today.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: Do you see that? So I'll answer this. I've had
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: many conversations with former Secretary Mattis. I respect him, very much.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: I had an opportunity to sit with him at the
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Hoover Institute in Palo Alto and have a very long conversation.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: There are very few men in the world that I
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: respect more than him. What he wrote for us was,
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: he wrote for us a letter. This is at the
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: end of the day. If you can take the values
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: from that letter and you can carry that forward, if
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: you can engage your mind before you engage your weapon,
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: and be as a United States Marine no better friend
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: and no worse enemy. I think that what happens is
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: my personal experience shows me that the love that we
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: have for one of the bond that we have for
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: our fellow service members in combat, in conflict wherever we
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: go throughout the world, that bond to me is sacred,
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: and that bond has to be respected, and it has
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: to be wielded very very carefully. I will be very direct.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: I am not an advocate for war. Ever, However, when
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: there are when when we do send Americans into conflict,
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: it must be for a just cause, it must be
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: for a good purpose. We must be there to preserve
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: American or you know, I would say values right that
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: we hold as Americans, deers.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Human rights in some ways that General Manus was conveying
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: not just American values, it was human right.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: You are completely correct on that we we are the
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: largest military the world has ever known and the most
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: capable military the world's ever ever known. But that with that,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: with that there comes a responsibility. There comes a responsibility
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: to wield that sword very carefully because the bond that
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: I share with my brothers and sisters who I literally
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: bled with, fought with, and some have died for, that
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: has to be respected. And when we don't do that,
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: when we violate our own values of what it means
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: to be an American, an American service member, and we
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: use that and we wield that inappropriately, then I think
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: that we ought we we're giving our enemies and our
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: adversaries unnecessary We're giving unearned victories. If that makes sense, No,
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: it does.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, I look at these briefings we get,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: and General Caine is as responsible as anybody in the
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: uniform I would expect them to be. And he steers
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: clear of politics and all of this stuff. It's the
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: political leadership that I feel like is is is infecting
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: this little bit? Are you worried that sort of the
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: values that. You know, I feel like you came through
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: a military that that cared about these values. I think
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: the military still cares about these values. But there are
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: some people that are advertising a set of values that
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: feel counter to what you wrote about.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Strong question. You know, I write in the letter to
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: the Leader that's an aspirational tone. I want people to
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: assume and to take those values. You know, I think
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: that there's a through line. Secretary Matis wrote, as a
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: general wrote a letter to me that shaped division, that
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: gave us our set of principles of who we are
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: and who he wants to be. Sometimes who we aspire
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: to be is more important than we who we are
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: right now. And I did the same thing in my
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: letter to the leader. It's not just a letter to
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: the future leader. It's a letter to America. It's a
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: letter to our own values of saying we need to
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: establish and hold our own leaders accountable, whatever that may be,
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: to be able to back to these values, these values
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: that allow that when the twin towers fall. You know,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: a seventeen year old kid says, I have to defend
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: these things. There is a specific requirement. You know, the
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: military is a tool of diplomacy and it is a
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: tool of diplomacy that should be wielded very very carefully,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: and at times the last tool.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Inside of that exclusion, there's a pretty good saying out
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: there that says, if you have if you're fighting a war,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: it means you are bad at diplomacy.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: You know, the Marine Corps has one job, right and
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: our one job is to break the back of our
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: enemy to our will, and that should be very well protected.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: I think that what I want to remember, I'll be
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: very blunt to the politicians and policymakers in Washington. War
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: to them is a strategy. You know, it's a budget,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: it's a posture, it's a tweet. But for the people
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: who fight it, their names, they're families, they're faces, and
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: that bond that that that social contract between our government
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: and our military needs to be protected. And we need
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: to make sure that when we send Americans forward into
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: harms way, that we're doing it for a good reason.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: I'm i pine for a set of leaders that have
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: that come with a background in military service, because I
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: think there it is the one place you described it
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: earlier about sort of it's a ticket to the middle class.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: If if if you need a ticket to the middle class.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: But there's a there's an egalitarian aspect to it, right,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: it is you know, look, we are not a colorblind society,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: but the military is better than most.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Right, we are not a.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Classless society, but the military is better than most. And
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: it is not lost on me that that a lot
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: of times when we get executive experience who came after
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: a career in the military, there is a lot of
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: empathy in their in their tone of leadership. And yet
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: I fear today there's a perception that somehow to be
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: a strong military leader. You know, empathy is a weakness,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: and you really this to me seems to be your
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: driving purpose of this book is empathy is supposed to
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: be a strength, not a weakness. And it feels like
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: you're trying to almost counter a changing narrative.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: I appreciate that's what you picked up from the book.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: I work very very hard the thing that as a
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: as a writer, right, I mean, even as a military member,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: I serve for twenty one years, and we have to
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: remain a political while we do that because I serve
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: you know, at the United States Constitution, the same oath
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: that I swear is the same oath the president swears right,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: and so I have a duty to uphold and defend
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And I
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: believe in that, and you're completely right. Well, what I
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: cannot do and what I'm trying not to do with
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: the book. I have a very good friend of mine
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: right now. I was like, I don't want to write
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: a political book, and he says, he's aj, this is
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: a deeply political book. It's non partisan, right, So what
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: happens is it's about values. I am when you get
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: to the Fallujah chapter, I am not kind with my
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: distaste for politicians who some who have called for blood
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: one week and then lost their nerve the next and
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: then misuse to you know, misuse the United States Marines.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: When I look at empathy, I look at empathy as
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: a strength, because what happens is, as a good leader,
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: what you're able to do when you're working with anybody
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: across the world, it's to try to visualize what their
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: life is like or their perspective, and to walk a
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: mile in their shoes. I'm trying to get America politicians,
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: whoever it is to walk a mile in a young
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: seventeen year through thirty nine year old shoes to see
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: what life is like. You know, I say a lot
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: that courage is useless without compassion. It's on the inside
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: flap of the book. And the reason why I say
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: that is a marine does not jump on a hand
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: grenade to save a fellow marine's life out of courage.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: He does it out of compassion because he loves that
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: person's life. He loves his brother, and he honors his
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: brother's life more than his own. That's service, And I
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: want what I would hope is that people take from
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: this book is an idea of service, service over self,
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: service to the greater good. And it doesn't have to
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: be the military. And if you'll forgid me for just
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: a moment, I do in service in the United States.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: And I think that a culture that promotes and rewards
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: service to the greater good is a healthier organization was
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: you know, as you mentioned, I was on a different
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: podcast where I talked at length, you know, for a
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: multitude of topics. You know, there's this idea of buying
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: and what a lot of people want is they want
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: people in America to have skin in the game. I
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: totally understand that I have skin in the game. Right,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: I've fought for this country, but I also think that
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: skin in the game doesn't always have to mean holding
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: a rifle. What if we had a society that held
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: service as high as we do independent wealth. What if
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: we had a society that valued not what you could.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, there was a very pretty famous president right
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: who said it at one point, Right, what if you
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: could give something to your community and to your country
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: and that was held valuable. What if we had a
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: society that said, here's what we're going to do. We're
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: going to pick a number of organizations that provide service,
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: from Peace Corps to the Marine Corps, Civilian Conservation Corps,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: National Park Service. You work in service to the greater
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: good for two years or four years or whatever it is,
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: and then we're going to guarantee you a safe harbor.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: While you're doing it, you pay into the greater good,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: and then we provide you a social service, access to
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: vocational schools, access to a two year or four year
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: college degree. At the back end, what that does is
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: lift people like me from obscurity, from poverty and gives
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: me and it affects my trajectory. I'm a sniper. I
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: care about trajectory, and that takes me from the lower class,
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: gives me buy into the United States, and then I
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: get a chance to exit what we want. What I
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: wanted was not equality in outcome. I want equality an opportunity.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: I have to figure out the rest. And I think
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: that if we can have an organization or a culture
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: or a country that promotes service as much as we
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: do wealth, I think we're going to have a pretty
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: safe and a pretty good country in the futy. Now,
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: I am a.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: You know when you and I don't want this to
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: become a political discussion about Israel, but Israel's mandatory service requirement.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: When you meet in Israeli, their devotion, their citizenship, their
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: devotion to the state is so admirable, and I think
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: it's because of this service requirement, right, and it's a
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: nation that is bonded. The service requirement I think bonds
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: them even more and there is generational bonding now with
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: that service. And I'm with you, it doesn't have to
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: be military service. In fact, there's so many things that
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: we need. There's a politician running around right now that's
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: not only promoting national service, but his idea is not
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: just vocation but a down payment for your first house
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: in exchange for two years of service.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Whatever it is like as you described it is.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. I'm a huge promoter of this.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: I think it would depolarize the country, right. I think
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: the best part of the military is that an urban kid,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: a rural kid, an ex urban kid, an immigrant kid,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: they're all thrown into the same boot camp and they
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: all figure out that they're more the same than different.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: And then suddenly everybody in that platoon has a different
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: worldview simply by meeting their fellow Americans. Right, So it is,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: it is a depolarizer if we lean into it, if
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: this is what we want this country to be. And
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: you know, I throw this out there and I had
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: a couple of younger sort of political type, sort of
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: political you know, historian types, were saying, oh, you old
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: guys always want to promote national service. Nobody, this is
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: not popular. And I'm like, it's not a matter of
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: whether it's popular. Is it the right thing to do?
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you got to take your medicine right, right, But.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: There is but the I mean, you know, yes, it
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: isn't going to be Hey, would you like to do
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: two years of this at exchange.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: You know, you're like, well, you know, school.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: Itself isn't popular to some kids, but we know it's
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: the right thing to do, right, so this feels like
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: something that we you know, and it's funny it gets
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: merged with the draft and you're like, oh, everybody hated
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: the draft, all right, it's because everybody got upset up
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: because there was a war that the draft seemed to
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: feed that not everybody was for. They were mad at
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: the politicians, not necessarily the idea of advocating for service,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: but it feels like something were further away from like
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: it felt like we were getting closer to being open
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: to this kind of more service, more service. And then
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's probably our political divide, right, We're
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: so polarized that that there's fear that if you support
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: something that the other party advocates, you're somehow a trader
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: to your party. And it's like, I don't know how
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: we got this far away that our fellow Americans aren't
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: on our allies.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the the political purity tests is very hard for people.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: But to your point is, you know, combat and I
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: would say service strips away the illusion that we succeed alone.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: You know, you learned very very quickly that all you
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: have is the person to your left and to your right.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: And this applies to families, communities, you know, politics, leadership.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: You know. I'm never an advocate for the draft. I
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: think that there's a ton of second and third order
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: effects that happened from conscripted service. As far as we
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: have a very professional military, and we have worked very
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: hard to have a professionally educated and trained military that
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: a draft doesn't necessarily support. And I don't know that
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: conscripted service, whether that be you know, Peace Marine Corps.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: I think we provide it as an opportunity. I mean,
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: give it. It doesn't have to be requirement for everyone.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: If you come from an affluent background and you can
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: get into college or whatever it is, do run your race, man,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: do That's great. But if but if you don't, and
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: you want a leg up and you would like to,
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: you know, you know, fight out of whatever you know
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: scenario or whatever hand or you know, deck of cards
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: you were dealt, then there's an opportunity for that. You know,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: it's really to me. I think that the thing you
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: know that and I exist in a lot of spaces
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: across the conservative and progressive ideologies, I get a chance
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: to walk out.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: But what I love is usually most guys at your
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: background are not clean in any side of the political
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: aisle that there really is, which is to me, which
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: makes a military veteran a better person to introduce into
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: the political world personally. But because you're not easily categorized.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: I appreciate that you know the I think the thing
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: that most Americans are looking for is, you know, a
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: hand up rather than a handout. I think that giving
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: people the for me, nobody made me a sniper, right.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: They gave me the opportunity. They helped me along the way.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: They carried the load when I couldn't carry it myself.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: But eventually I had to pick up the way. Right
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: when I wanted to become a force recon marine later
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: in my career or become a marine officer later in
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: my career, I had the opportunity for success. People helped
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: me along the way, kind of like bumpers in the
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: little bowling alley, right, But I still had to walk
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: that path, and so you still have to earn it.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: And I think that's what's so wonderful about military service,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: and it's so easy to get trapped into the polarization,
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: you know. And I'll tell you something here is you know,
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: I lost my best friend in Afghanistan. His name was
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: Matt Ingham, staff Sergeant Matthew Ingham. Where's he from? Where'd
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: you grow up? Altuna, Pennsylvania? Amish country in Pennsylvania. And
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: you know what, I never knew what his political party was.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: It just never came up. And so like, could you
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: imagine today living in a world where like I sit
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: on an airplane with someone you're like, oh God, please,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: I don't want to you know, right, You're like, you
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: get through this path where you're like, please, I just
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: hope that we're not a crazy person. We don't have
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: to be that way. I'm a very positive person and
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: that's a choice.
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: I try to be optimistic about the future because I
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: think that we need that hope. As I write in
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: the letter to the Leader, hope is not a form
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: of naivete. Hope is seeing a world that others can't imagine,
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: and work and working towards me.
• 44:21
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  Speaker 1: And yes, I too, am a customer. So you got
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  Speaker 1: involved in trying to I guess you would call update
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: training protocols talk about those challenges.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, I appreciate that. So, you know, so I'm in
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: a PhD program. I'm doing a PhD in leadership studies
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: now at the University of San Diego. And it's so,
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know, it's kind of validating at some point
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: because I'm reading all this like doctoral like you know,
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: ten pound brain research, right, And I was like, holy crap,
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: we were onto something, right. So the idea is that
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: what I wanted to create for young marines and Marine
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: infantry specifically, was that I didn't want people to be
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: successful in spite of their circumstances. I wanted them to
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: be successful because of it, regardless. And this is from
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: a geopolitical you know, militaristic standpoint. For me, the thing
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: that is going to be our competitive advantage in the
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: next war. Wherever that is right is not to me,
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: is not going to be a gizmo. Right, It's not
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: going to be a gadget. It's going to be, as
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Secretary of Mattis said when he was a general, the
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: six inches between our ears, right. The competitive advantage is
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: an American marine who has an ability to think, adapt,
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: and react quicker than his enemy. And so what we
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: needed to do was create an educational program that inculcated
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: a bias for action. Everything that you see, and this
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: is actually interesting back to the draft part portion everything
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: that you recognize in the United States Marine Corps today,
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: the hat scream in boot camps, you know, we had it.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: That all came from the draft because we had to
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: take a conscript military of people who had a choice
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: of going to jail or joining the Marines, and we
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: had to kind of whip them into discipline shape. That
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: wasn't that way in World War Two, it wasn't that
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: way in Korea. Very different Marine corps then. And so
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: what we do is that is very very good right
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: in some aspects, and it has instant and willingness, obedience
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: to orders. It's very good for discipline military, but you
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: know what it doesn't create. It doesn't create freedom of
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: thought and freedom of action. That teaches a person to
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: solve a templated problem. But what happens when our enemy
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: shows up with a problem we've never seen before. The
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: idea of IMC, the Infantry Marine course that we developed
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: was to not create a person to solve a specific problem.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: It was to create problems solvers. I don't know what
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: gizmo well that is seems I'll be honest.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: You are to talk about a culture class with the
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Marines where you know, the stereotype for many of us
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: that didn't serve as is the movie A Few Good
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Men where if you don't follow protocol, people die, right,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: That's always that is the stereotyped mindset of a marine
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: and the training that a marine gets.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: And I totally get where you're saying.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: What you're saying is, hey, and if you look at
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: the result of asymmetrical warfare where great powers have seen
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: themselves not succeed against weak should be weaker enemies because
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: the you know, you know, what is it innovation is
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: you know, is usually born out of necessity, and a
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: weaker foe is going to innovate, which is right here.
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: The only thing the Musja Haden and the Taliban were
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: limited to is their creativity and their resources. And the
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: world watched how to defeat the strongest military in the
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: world for twenty years. No one would ever and I
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: write it in the book, no one would ever face
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: a squad of United States Marines and think they were
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: going to walk away with their lives. So they found
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: a way to fight differently, right, asymmetrical warfare, fourth generation
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: conflict of what we understand now moving into fifth GM
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: conflict where now it's like a drone in first person,
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: whatever is right and sharks with lasers right, whatever the
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: thing is right. War continues to evolve, and what we
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: continued to do as a service at the time was
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: we tried to win what the next war by referencing
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: our past successes. Now, I'm not saying throw history out right,
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: that there is context that matters in a lot of
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: these things, and I needed that. But what we needed
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: to do was take an on us, look at ourselves
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: and say, a bunch of dudes in pajamas and flip flops, right,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: gave us a run for our and we needed to
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: figure out why. Now, I will say that the story
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: doesn't end well, Chuck, it doesn't screwed up. So you
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: read the updode, I get it. I mean change. This
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: is the changing any institution's difficult. Yeah. I was kind
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: of running around like a pariah for a while, you know,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: like an evangelist running around, you know, trying to like
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: these young men and women, excuse me, are smarter than us,
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: are more capable than us. We have to It is
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: the adult in the relationship that has to adapt their
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: teaching style for the younger generation coming through, and a
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: lot of Marines were unwilling to do so. But the
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: saddest part about the Infantry Marine Corpse wasn't that we
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: had to invent new metrics of success because they were
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: so so good. They were better than anything that we
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: had ever created. The saddest part about it was right
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: after I retired, within within eighteen months of my retirement,
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: they reverted back to the way that it was when
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: I went through twenty some odd years ago, an industrial
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: model of education and its stamping right, you know, like
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: I'm I need this production over marines, right, And I
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: and again I love my service, my breath, my blood,
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: but it doesn't mean that I'm blind to it. I
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: think that the Marine Corps needs to adapt. I think
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: that the Marine Corps educational model needs to get better.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: And I wasn't alone in my thinking.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: Well, with modern warfare, I mean, how many different smaller
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: armies essentially either neutralizing or larger armies. I mean, how
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: often do we have to watch this around the world
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: before we realize we've got a We've got to better
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: prepare for asymmetrical warfare. I mean, just look at our
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: own history here. I it's it's it's you know, we're
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: having this debate about Iran right now, and this feels
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: like one where political you know, the military has executed
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: everything they've been asked to do, but the strategy behind
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: this seems to have been terrible.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that what's past is prologue, you know,
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: and sometimes I think that those who fail to study
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: his are dooing to repeat it. You know, our tools
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: for success when we fought the Red Coats for our
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: independence was asymmetrical warfare. Yes, our American roots come from that,
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: and we have forgotten I think in some ways now
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: again I am not. I have to be very cognitzant.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: I am no longer in those spaces. I will never
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: ever talk about a service member or what they're doing,
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: because now I'm an armchair, right, I'm not in the
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: micro security clearances no more, right, you know, And those
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: young men and women are doing some incredible things time
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: now because they've been asked to do it right, and
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: they've been asked to do it well. And we're not
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: going to I'm not here to promote a military that
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: is that is not going to you know, take care
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: of their own when they're put into it, you know,
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: in harm's way.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: If military conflict becomes all drones, what's the unintended consequence of.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: All that dehumanization? The cost? Then civilian casualties will skyrocket, right,
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: because then what happens is now the cost is measured
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: in dollars and cents and not names and faces. I
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: think that some of the things now now again from
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: a militaristic standpoint, yeah, there's a real potential for drones.
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: But you know, there's an interesting number of books and
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: I study a ton of sci fi. I love sci fi,
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: right because sci fi gets a chance to be able
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: to have a real world kind of you're doing a
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: what if. It's a what if by the author, but
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: it's an educated one if. Right, it's not fantasy where
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: there's like dragons and stuff, right like, it's an educated
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: one if what happens when our enemies now that we
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: fight in our adversaries have the same tools and access
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: to resources that we do. What then becomes our competitive advantage?
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: Is it numbers? So then we need a draft. Are
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: we just going to throw fifty eight thousand more people
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: to be able to go die in a jungle somewhere, right,
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: or are we going to be able to say, hey,
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: wait a second, maybe this isn't working. You know. Dark
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: Horse is the name of the book is for a
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: number of reasons. One, it was the name of my
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: battalion that I was in, and I wanted to pay
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: homage to the third Battalion, fifth Marines, the dark Horse Battalion. Second,
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: it's I was a dark Horse. I wasn't supposed to
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: be successful. I wasn't supposed to be where I'm at today.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: Other people made it. But Third War's a chess game.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: Start playing chess, right, Start understanding that our enemy has
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: the same resources and access to those and the same
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: adaptability and the same intelligence level that we do because
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: now we're playing a game on an even playing field,
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: and we got to get better at chess. Yeah. Well,
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: I shoot, I just wish they'd learn how to play checkers. Yeah.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: I think we're still trying to figure that out with
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: this with this crew.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: Have you heard that? Let me jump in. You ever
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: heard the term never played chess with a pigeon because
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: they don't understand the rules. They should all over the board,
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: they knock the pieces off, and they fly away thinking
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: they've won. Never played chess with a pigeon. I love that.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: That's a I hadn't heard that one. I will learn
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: and regurgitate that one. I want to talk about sort
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: of the de sensitization. There's there's dehumanization, but then there's
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: this line that you have to have is a d sensitivization.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: What's that line for you? You write about this one,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: You write about this one time where you where you
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: see this it's there's a lot of dead bodies around you,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: and you notice there's a clean uniform and you hadn't
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: showered in forty days and you saw a guy with
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: a clean paras sox who you knew those paras socks
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: weren't going to be used anymore, and it was you know,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: this is what I when I meant by this was
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: a very honest depiction. This is just and this is
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: life in war. But you portrayed that moment. And I
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: say that because I think there's this fine line right
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: with drones. It is the sphere of dehumanization where you know,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: some some hothead politician gets excited because they can watch
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: this on TV. And then there's the reality of surviving
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: hand to hand combat, which is what you what you
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: were talking about there.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: So how does that happen? Do you remember that?
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: And when you think back on it, you know it's
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: this because you have this incredible empathy. You clearly see
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: a human being on the other side, even if they
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: are the enemy. But if you are, if you don't
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: know how to sort of compartmentalize, you wouldn't be able
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: to get out of your own way.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: How does it happen? How do you do it? Thank
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: you for reading the book. Thank you. I bled on
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: those pages. I tried to tell the story of the
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: men and women I served alongside, and I tried to
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: tell their story honorably and tell a marine story and
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: not mine. When I looked, I was eighteen years old,
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: and I know the scene you're talking about. Right beforehand,
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: I had watched a man's life leave his eyes from
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: my own hand. And what I didn't see in his
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: eyes was anger. I didn't see it in his eyes
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: was hatred. I saw fear. I saw the same fear
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: that I had, and he looked at me with this
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: just absolute uncertainty, this absolute fear, and just the horror
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: in his eyes of he knew he was dying. It's
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: the same thing an animal does when it's looking at
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: They know they're dying, and they don't know what to do,
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: and they're scared. And then I had to very quickly
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: snap out of that. So you have these moments of
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: just raw you didn't somebody might have shot you, right,
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: and then I would be laying there next to him,
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: you know. I mean, I think that I don't like
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: I didn't write this book to glorify war, not as
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: you don't glorify it I would. I want to make
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: that clear to folks. It's not glorified. I appreciate that,
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: you know. I wrote this book to tell the realities
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: of it, the ability that the requirement I should say
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: to literally code switch from watching a man's life leave
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: his eyes and feeling about how terrible this action, this
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: is nothing like g I, Joe, this is awful, and
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: then having to recognize that your own survival counts on
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: your feet are melted away and you need to take
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: a clean parass out of a dead guy's ruck. And
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: that is and then there's the brutality of it, you know,
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: the carnage that we saw in Fallujah. You have to
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: become you have to steal yourself to it. You know.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: I talk about this with my family and I little
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: talk about a little bit in the book. But the
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: three weeks before I would deploy to Iraq specifically, remember
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: I did three tours in Iraq before I was twenty
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: one years old. I had my twenty first birthday. I
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: think it was an Iraq right, And that's a lot
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: for a young man to go through. And all of us,
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: none of us believed that we were going to make
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: it to twenty five because everybody was dying everyway. The
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: conflict just never stopped it, you know, we never thought
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: it was going to stop. But the three weeks before
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: I would deploy, I would turn into an animal. I
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: would slowly start to erode the conversation that you and
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: I have right, empathetic, compassionate talk. That wasn't there. That
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: human had to go away because it came to kill
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: or be killed right same survival. It was animalistic, it
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: was human, it was awe and I had to become
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: that and I had to become calloused to that.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: And we've dealt a lot with that. But the enemy
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: does that too very much. I think that's something we
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: don't fully appreciate.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: The hardest part about coming home was coming home with
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: your soul intact, making sure that you didn't do things
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: overseas that left you lying awake at night. And I,
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: you know, I was put into a lot of situations
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: as a young man that I shouldn't have been. And
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: I will go and I have been, and I will
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: go on record and say that I'm upset with what
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: we were told going into Iraq. I think you were
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: too young, is that what it is? Or you didn't
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: think or the mission itself to be honest with you,
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: we didn't care, right, So this is a hard part. Right,
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: people like to I will have I will throw fists
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: if people ever talk poorly on the United States Military
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: service members, right, because I love them with every fiber
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: of my being. It was so hard. And I look
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: at these young men now and young women that I
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: talked to in the Marines because I live near a
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: base and so I get to talk with them. It's
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: not that they want to go to war. What they
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: want to do is validate their experience. They want to
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: validate that all of their sacrifices and all of their
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: pain and misery and suffering to get to where they're
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: at has been validated by the theater of combat. Right.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: And so you're not going to talk to the United
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: States Marine out of wanting combat. That's who they are.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: But again, that has to be wielded very carefully. And
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: our public leaders at any level who's advocating for war
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: or sending us to war, need to understand that that
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: social contract must be protected. It must be preserved because
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: these young men and women are willing to die. We
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: write a blank check to the United States, payable with
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: our lives, and if that's not protected. The only time
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: that I get upset at people is when people do
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: not honor the commitment that we have made to our country.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: I'm okay, with dying for my country. I'm perfectly okay
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: with it, but it has to be for a just cause.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: And when I find out that it's not that we
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: fought a war of choice and one war of necessity
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: during my time frame, I get upset. You know, you're
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: unusual in.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: That you talk about your experiences. I've got family members,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: some who are no longer with us and some who
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: still are who don't really have no interest in telling
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: you what happened in Vietnam or telling you what happened
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: in World War Two.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: You have kids, I do not.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: You seem comfortable telling your story, and you, I'm sure
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: have come across quite a few veterans who say I couldn't.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: I couldn't write about what you wrote about. Explain that
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: mentality for some What have you learned about that over
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: the years where you've been able to express this and
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: not a lot of people can.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: So there's a couple of things. One, inside of the
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: Marine Corps culture, it is very heavily frowned upon. It's
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: not not an official doctor in mayment, but it's very
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: heavily frowned upon. To do you get grief for this
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: from fellow Marines? Actually, no you know, it's part of
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: our culture not to write, because it's always to the team,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: it's always to the unit. It's always to you know,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: the Marine Corps. And that matters, and that matters, and
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: that is part of our service. What I wanted to
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: do is write to give other people permission to share
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: their story, because a lot and I sit with veterans
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: almost on a daily basis on my show, and I
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: sit and talk with them, and I just asked them
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: what happened out there? And these young men and women
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: sit with me, and they feel seen, they feel heard,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: they feel validated that their sacrifices were for something right,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: that somebody else cares enough to listen and just share
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: their story and have a conversation. It's not through self aggrandizement, right.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: I don't think that I was God's gift to the military.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: I don't at all. And so but what I did
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: was I was smart enough as a sniper and as
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: a tactician to understand that the sniper versus sniper's story
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: was something that that's the hook. That's the hook to
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: talk about whatever I wanted. And so I wanted to
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: get in there and say, Okay, I've got this thing. Now,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: I can tell a story about the sniper thing, and
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: that can go, and we can write the thing and
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: turn it into a movie and make a million land
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: all that stuff. That's right anymore, absolutely, But that's not
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: the reality of my experience. And who would I be.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: How would I be honoring the service and the help
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: that people gave me, the sacrifice that they gave me.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: How would I be honoring that by stepping on a
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: pedestal and telling the world of how great I am.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: What I want to do is use this as a
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: tool to tell other people it's up to us. Nobody's
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: coming to save us. This division that we have whatever,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: and I'm not naive to it. I see it too,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: but God, we got to reach across the aisle and
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: whatever it is. Sit next to the person on the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: airplane watching the cable news that you don't like and
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: be like, hey, man or woman, how's it going today?
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: You're not my enemy. I cannot and will not ever
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: support a person who says that another political party is
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: an enemy of our country. I cannot. I don't care
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: what political party says it, but a Republican or a Democrat,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: A Democrat is not an enemy to the United States.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: We are Americans and we have to get past that.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: And so I write a book that is deeply political,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: but it's not partisan. The goal that I wrote through
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: this is I don't want any person to know what
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: my political affiliation is. I don't want any person to
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: know what my faith is. I'm purposely obscure about it
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: because it shouldn't be about that. It's about service. It's
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: about the brotherhood and the sisterhood that we have. And
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: that is why I understood the gravity of this. You
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: want a sniper story, I give you a sniper story.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: Take six sixty thousand words. I'll get you the coolest
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: snipper story of all time. I didn't want to write
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: a sniper story. I wanted to I wanted to write
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: a story about my friends and my family in America
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: and give us permission to believe something different.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: Well, you should be proud tell me about Combat Story
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: the podcast, which should people expect?
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: If my folks want to go over and listen. That's
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: very kind of you, Chuck. I really do appreciate that.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: Uh is combat story? Is? This? Is it? Man? Like?
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm like a real American, right like? This is
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: my like office in my house, right, you know, like
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: I right, you know, I'm a normal person. I you know,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: I still get yelled at for not putting the dishes away. Right.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: Let's just there's no like, there's no celebrity thing here. Right.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: I bring veterans into my home, right. And I live
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: in Carlsbad, California. Right, And I bring veterans into my
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: home and we sit down veterans of service. It's called
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: combat story, right, But if you were a story of
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: cert doesn't have to be combat. If you're a firefighter,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: if you're a teacher, if you're a you give your
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: life and you dedicate your life to other people. You
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: have a home here, and I want to hear about it.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: And I want to sit with you and I want
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: to talk about that we I have. I have, you know,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: a small following, right, you know, it's it's it's but
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: it's our little corner of the internet. And in our
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: little corner of the Internet, we choose light. I don't
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: choose darkness. I choose light. I want to sit and
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: I want to highlight the good parts about who we are.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: I want to get down to the to the hard
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: conversations that we have. What I tell people is I'm
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: looking for context over content. I don't care what people
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: who they pray to, I don't care who they voted for.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: I'm not trying to sell people a protein shake. I
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: want them to sit down and get to the raw
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: ist form of human emotion, and that's connection. And so
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: we get a chance to do that. And it's been
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: the honor of my lifetime to do that. Second honor
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: of my lifetime was I did have a chance to
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: run for public office and that was one of the
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: tell me about what did you rent for San Jose
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: City Council? And I retired out of the Marines and
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: stars in my eyes right, you know, American flag behind me,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: and I was like, I'm going to you know, serve
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: my community that I came from. And it was the
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: highlight of my life. I got a chance. I'm not
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: a candidate for money. I didn't have any of that
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff. And you know, I've learned a lot.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: Money is it is a resource. It's like a bullet
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: for a machine gun. I didn't have that. So what
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: I chose to do was I chose to use I'm
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: a grunt, so I used my feet. I knocked on doors,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: for seven hours a day, seven days a week, for
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: five months straight, I knocked, personally knocked on thirteen four
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: hundred doors. I didn't care if you were a Democrat.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: I didn't care if you were a Republican. I didn't
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: care if you were an independent. We had a conversation,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: and I gave every single one of those people my
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: phone number, and I got to meet America. I got
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: to meet people of all walks of life who wanted
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: one thing. They wanted their politicians to be accountable, and
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: they wanted people to feel like they had a better
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: opportunity for tomorrow than they have today. That's a politician
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: or a leader's first job is to give people the
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: opportunity for a better tomorrow than they have today. And
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: I loved every minute of it. Well that's a lie.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: It sucked politics rough, right, But I love talking with
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: the people.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: I was unsuccessful, and we're talking about it in the past, tense.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: You're not going to do this again.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: I don't know that our I mentioned political purity and
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: partisan you know purity tests. Our current system does not
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: allow for dialogue. It allows for diatribes, and I am interested.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: I don't come from a background of partisanship. I come
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: from a background of service. If you have a good idea,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: I want to hear it. And unfortunately, you know, in
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: our space, there's just not a lot of a lot
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: of room for that. I won't shut the door on
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: it because I love I love America, right, but like
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: it was brutal. I think, Look, I get it.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't advise anybody to run as a partisan, but
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: we kind of need to sort of. You know, sometimes
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: sometimes in order for a institution to reform itself, it
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: has to be threatened from the outside. It can't be
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: reformed from the inside. And I think our two major
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: parties do not know how to reform themselves, and they
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: have to be threatened from the outside. And so the
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: more the more folks threaten as independents and wedge sort
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: of sort of you know, like anything, it's a free market, right,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: and unfortunately, the way we construct our politics is it's
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: not a free market. It's a duopoly, right, It's not.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: It's that sort of makes it really hard to have
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: this free market discussion, this free market of ideas. But look,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: you're at least in a state that doesn't make you
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: have to be a member of a party to get
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: on a primary ballot, and that's a big step. Most
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: states don't even allow that. So I do think we
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: need more politicians who don't identify.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: With a party.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: If I'm help sort of, I think it would help reimagine,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: allow people to reimagine what elected public service could be,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: because right now it feels as if you have to
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: pick a team if you want to be in public service,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: and that's that's uncomfortable for some people. It's really uncomfortable
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: for me, and I can see it's very uncomfortable for you,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: and then eliminates a whole bunch of people that might
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: be pretty good at this.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: It does you know, there is a there's a barrier
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: to entry, and unfortunately you know, well I don't. I
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: would love to have a very long conversation with you
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: about this. But the barrier to entry right now is
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: money and if and and and it's just a resource,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: right but if if people don't have that like that,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: you just I tried. I tried to outwork money. It
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: didn't work, but I learned, you know, I learned a
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: lot from it, and I want to be able to
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: I think why I'm open about my run is not
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: because I'm advocating. For a second, I want people to
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: know that I all of my resume, you can read
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: the whole thing. It's you know whatever, It's all these accolades,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: and I'm still failing. I'm still losing at things, and
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: that's okay, right, And that's okay. Failure is a part
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: of success, and I think that that really matters for people.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: I think that I get so mad at social media.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: I engage with it at length now, or I would
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: say at a distance now, because I have to in
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: this space social media for these young kids. I couldn't imagine,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: you know. I look at people's it's all highlight reels.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: Nobody shows like a Monday and Tuesday. Nobody has an
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: honest conversation about you know, what it was like to
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: run as a candidate who tried not to be able
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: to do partisan politics. It was isolating is the word
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: I would use. It was alone and you've got to
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: take a giant pill on either side whatever you want.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: And that's very hard for people. And so also I
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: think that the general consensus, you want to know, I
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: fall in the lowest tier of people. If I'm knocking
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: on your door during dinner time, right, like and I'm
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: like hanging out with the collar shirt. Right, you fall
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: in the lowest tier people don't want to be. I
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: think with the common another is not a lot of
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: people trust politicians anymore, and so lots of politicians have
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: given politicians a bad name. Correct, that's well said. Never
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: played chess with a pigeon. And I think that what
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: I wanted to show people was that failures were part
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: of life. And if they find out and I didn't
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: mention any of my political run in the book because
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: it didn't need to be there, and it's okay that
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: people still see that I fell on my face, but
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: I did it with my I kept my honor clean
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: and I ran a good race. And if they could
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: do that in anything that they do in life, not politics,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: whatever it is, and they can do that and anything
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: that they want in life, then they'll be okay. If
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: this book, right, If I poured my heart into this
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: entire book and two years of my life and bleeding
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: on the pages, and we sell four copies, that's okay
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: because I did it with a full heart and a
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: sound mind. And at the end of the day, if
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: you do anything in life and you fail at that
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: that's okay, that's okay.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: Let me, let's get out of here on this this
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: this interview is going to air on Memorial Day, so
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: a lot of people will be listening to it on Monday.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's an off day. How do What do you
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: think about a Memorial Day? Memorial Day is tough for me.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: I want to recognize that Memorial Day is not Veterans Day.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: They are two very distinct holidays. Memorial Day is about
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: those who didn't come home and the families that have
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: been left to deal.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: With the aftershock. I would advocate that any person who
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: calls for war or armed conflict, have a conversation with
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: a gold Star family member, sit across from them and
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: ask them if their sons, or their daughters, or their
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: husbands or their wife's sacrifice was worth it. And a
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: lot of them will actually tell you yes, because they
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: believe in this thing. They believe in this country, and
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: they believe what it stands for. On Memorial Day, I
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: sit and I think of the dozens of friends that
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: I have spent time with and lost, and dark Horse
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: is my tribute to them. I have one paragraph on
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: one page, as I'm moving through a story to tell
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: a mother who survived her son's death how much her
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: son meant to me, To tell a father who lost
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: their son, to tell a brother who lost their sister
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: what they meant to us, and that their sacrifice matter.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: And Memorial Day, what I would look to do is
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: if I were to implore anything on any civilian is
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: to on Memorial Day, find something, find an organization, reach
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: out that has to do with the family members that
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: are left behind, because that is a gap, that is
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: a chasm that will never be filled. Thank them, make
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: their day a little lighter, buy them dinner, just give
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: them a hug at the end of the day. That's
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: all they ever want is to know that their son, daughter,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: husband or wife will not be forgotten and tell them
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: that that was great.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: Thank you and aj I just like I said, I
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: remember the first Vietnam book I read that I felt
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: like truly sort of explained what it was, what just
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: life is like in the military in that period, and
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: that to me was what I got out of this.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: Your story, in many ways, it's a lot. Look, you
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: have some things that are remarkable, but a lot of
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: your story is the story that a lot.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: Of other people have lived and not been able to
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: tell about it.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: So I think it's a I think I worry that
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: we're going to gloss over this generation of veterans.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: For a variety of reasons.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: Part of it is the speed with which we consume information,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: Like what happened five years ago feels like fifty years ago.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: So there's a little bit of that. I'm sort of
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: a you know, I don't think people intentionally want to
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: not live in it right, but you know, it took
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: us a while to get Vietnam right historically, I worry
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: it's still taking us time to get Iraq in Afghanistan right.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: And this feels like the beginning of what could be.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: A period of first hand accounts like yours that we'll
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: be able to pain a more complete picture because time
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: allows for it.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: So anyway, I highly recommend it. Congratulations on the book,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: and thank you for it. Thank you Chuck for spending
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: the time with me, Thank you for reading it. Because
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: you read about my friends, you read about my family members, right,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: these people that just you know, as long as we
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: keep their memory alive, then they will never die. And
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: so things like this, they're sacrifice and the things that
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: they didn't love for each other that matters. Thank you
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: so much for taking the time to sit with us today,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: Thanks for the interview, you know, and thanks for reading
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: the book.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: All right, hopefully i'll see it down the road. I'll
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: look free on the ballots and all right, thanks a Jack,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: Thanks Jack,