Latest / Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories / The Mission Nobody Claimed with Lt. Col. Eric W. Hommel | Ship's Log #53

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The Mission Nobody Claimed with Lt. Col. Eric W. Hommel | Ship's Log #53 · Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories

• 0:00
  Eric: All the people who were in charging Iraq and Afghanistan who were wearing scars on their uniform, the majority of them are now multi-millionaires.
• 0:08
  Eric: They're sitting on corporate force.
• 0:10
  Eric: And by definition, they are losers.
• 0:13
  Eric: They lost.
• 0:14
  Eric: They were in charge, they're losers.
• 0:16
  Eric: I am a loser.
• 0:18
  Eric: How do you become a multimillionaire by being a loser?
• 0:21
  Eric: Unless the system is designed for them to win a loser.
• 0:44
  Jeanne: Welcome to Project Candor, where ordinary people share unextraordinary stories.
• 0:48
  Jeanne: I'm your host, Jeanne Andersen.
• 0:50
  Jeanne: Today's guest has lived several lives inside a uniform, a Cold War submariner, a combat commander, a Pentagon insider, and now the man walking you through Arlington.
• 1:02
  Jeanne: Let's dive in.
• 1:04
  Jeanne: And no pun intended there for the submariner.
• 1:09
  Jeanne: Eric Hommel, actually, Lieutenant Colonel Eric W.
• 1:13
  Jeanne: Hommel, started his military life as an enlisted Navy submariner during the Cold War, then spent decades in the Air Force commanding troops on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
• 1:25
  Jeanne: He led a provincial reconstruction team in Afghanistan's Panjshir province, spent a decade at the Pentagon and trained government officials for combat deployment long after he retired.
• 1:36
  Jeanne: His memoir, The Losing Game, is the only first person account that takes ownership of America's failed mission in Afghanistan and challenges the leaders who never did.
• 1:47
  Jeanne: Today he walks Arlington National Cemetery telling the stories of those who served.
• 1:52
  Jeanne: Eric, Lieutenant Colonel, welcome to Project Candor.
• 1:56
  Jeanne: I'm glad you're here.
• 1:57
  Jeanne: I'm glad you're here.
• 1:59
  Eric: Yeah, no need for the Lieutenant Colonel.
• 2:01
  Eric: That is way in the past.
• 2:03
  Jeanne: I should salute.
• 2:04
  Jeanne: Oh boy.
• 2:05
  Jeanne: All right, all behind us, but still, that's a quite an achievement.
• 2:09
  Jeanne: I mean, nobody gets up to the, not everybody gets up to those ranks and maintains it.
• 2:16
  Jeanne: So I I'm proud of you, and thank you for your service to the country.
• 2:21
  Eric: Thank you, Jeanne.
• 2:22
  Eric: Thank you for yours.
• 2:23
  Jeanne: Oh, thank you.
• 2:24
  Jeanne: Um, so let's go.
• 2:26
  Jeanne: The way the show goes is we're going to ask you some questions first before we dive into your fun uh two truths and a lie.
• 2:32
  Jeanne: So I'm my first question is you commanded a provincial reconstruction team in Panjshir province.
• 2:39
  Jeanne: You were there to build, not just to fight.
• 2:41
  Jeanne: There's a story about realizing mid-project that your team was violating the Afghan constitution by not compensating property owners.
• 2:50
  Jeanne: What happened in that moment and what did it crack open for you about what it actually takes to win a conflict like that?
• 2:58
  Eric: Yeah, so so first of all, use the word win, and that that's that's an interesting term, right, in the bigger scheme of things, because I would argue, of course, we did not win in Afghanistan.
• 3:10
  Eric: So uh just for the benefit of your audience, I have to explain a little bit what a um PRT is, provincial reconstruction team.
• 3:20
  Eric: And in my particular case, I was also the ground battle space commander.
• 3:23
  Eric: I know that sounds a little weird to most people listening to this as an Air Force guy.
• 3:27
  Eric: What is an Air Force guy doing in what sounds like a very army-centric position?
• 3:33
  Eric: All right, so first in that regard, um, the Army did not want the provincial reconstruction teams, right?
• 3:40
  Eric: And the Air Force and the Navy wanted to help out.
• 3:44
  Eric: So the Army said, you can have the PRTs.
• 3:46
  Eric: The responsibility of the PRT.
• 3:49
  Eric: We come in during the last three phases of warfare.
• 3:52
  Eric: That would be hold, build, and transition.
• 3:55
  Eric: The first two being shape and clear.
• 3:58
  Eric: All right, shaping is what's kind of sort of what's going on in Iran right now, using military, economic uh information and diplomacy to try to figure that out.
• 4:08
  Eric: What if that fails, then you go into clear, and that's the killing people, breaking their things, boots on the ground.
• 4:14
  Eric: Okay, so the PRT comes in during hold, build, and transition.
• 4:18
  Eric: All right.
• 4:18
  Eric: Again, in my particular case, I was also the ground battle space commander.
• 4:23
  Eric: So um I own the forward operating base.
• 4:26
  Eric: I actually signed for the forward operating base.
• 4:29
  Eric: That's how it works, and so I'm responsible for everything there.
• 4:32
  Eric: And I report directly to the army.
• 4:35
  Eric: And so I think that's really important to kind of set that the groundwork before I answer your question about this whole notion that we're violating the Afghan constitution.
• 4:45
  Eric: So the big three responsibilities of a provincial reconstruction team is reconstruction, or in a place like Afghanistan, it's typically construction, right?
• 4:54
  Eric: Because there's not a lot to reconstruct, um, governance and security.
• 5:00
  Eric: So what we're basically doing is we're trying to build a functional um socio uh or society, and in addition to that, build a functional foundation of security so the Afghans can take care of themselves.
• 5:14
  Eric: So the big focus should really be on governance because the Afghans are in charge, they're responsible for their own situation, whether it's security, governance, rule of law, uh, the economy, and so on.
• 5:27
  Eric: And so what I realized is that my main responsibility was to mentor the people who are in charge, for them to actually do their job, because that's how we successfully get through a place like Afghanistan.
• 5:44
  Eric: Okay, so define win.
• 5:45
  Eric: Win is having a situation where the Afghans can actually take care of themselves as allies with the United States, right?
• 5:55
  Eric: So that's what winning looks like.
• 5:57
  Eric: Well, one of the big ways that we were, in quotes, winning from an American perspective in places like Afghanistan and Iraq is through what we call metrics.
• 6:06
  Eric: So we love numbers in government, especially when we have dollars to numbers.
• 6:13
  Eric: If we can spend X-Men dollars and get particular metrics out of it, and in this particular case, we're talking about roads, so it's dollars to kilometers.
• 6:23
  Eric: Well, that shows success.
• 6:24
  Eric: Right?
• 6:25
  Eric: So we're spending and we're getting.
• 6:27
  Eric: And roads are good because it allows access, allows access to markets, allows access to education, allows government access to the people, and so on.
• 6:38
  Eric: So this was kind of the big project in Afghanistan when I was there 2009 into 2010.
• 6:44
  Eric: Well, where I was stationed in Panjshir Province, it's in the Hindu Kush Mountains.
• 6:49
  Eric: And uh, if anybody's been to the mountains, they obviously know that space is very limited, right?
• 6:55
  Eric: You're limited by that by the terrain.
• 6:58
  Eric: So the existing road that was through the Hindu Kush Mountains in Panjshir was basically a three-meter-wide dirt jeep trail in most places.
• 7:07
  Eric: It's very tiny because the people have to live somewhere, so they're gonna build their lands on, or excuse me, their homes on flat land, and then of course they have to plant gardens, farms, and that's gonna be the flat land as well, or terraced.
• 7:19
  Eric: So we come in with an American mindset, and we say, okay, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take the existing three-meter-wide dirt jeep trail and we're gonna expand it to 10 meters.
• 7:30
  Eric: Very American.
• 7:32
  Eric: Seven meters of asphalt and a meter and a half of soft shoulder on either side.
• 7:37
  Eric: When you go from three to ten, now you have to take property on either side.
• 7:42
  Eric: Um, we call that eminent domain, when government takes property.
• 7:47
  Eric: Now, with eminent domain, you have to compensate the people for the taking of their property.
• 7:52
  Eric: Well, what I realized pretty quickly is that we weren't compensating Afghans for the taking of their property.
• 8:00
  Eric: Okay, so that's a problem.
• 8:04
  Eric: It's a problem on numerous levels because, first of all, it's a violation of the law.
• 8:08
  Eric: Right in the Afghan constitution, it says that property is immune from invasion or seizure or whatever without proper compensation.
• 8:15
  Eric: Oh, who helped write the Afghan constitution?
• 8:18
  Eric: Guys like me.
• 8:20
  Eric: Americans.
• 8:22
  Eric: All right.
• 8:23
  Eric: So we're in violation there.
• 8:26
  Eric: All right.
• 8:26
  Eric: Now, another problem is you're taking people's property, you're not compensating them.
• 8:32
  Eric: Um, well, put yourself in their shoes.
• 8:34
  Eric: Are they gonna be a little angry?
• 8:37
  Eric: Would you be angry?
• 8:39
  Jeanne: Definitely, right?
• 8:41
  Eric: Okay, and and where would you project your anger?
• 8:45
  Eric: You're in Florida, correct?
• 8:47
  Eric: Yes.
• 8:47
  Eric: Okay, so I would imagine you would project your anger towards you know, the local government, state government, and so on.
• 8:56
  Eric: Okay.
• 8:57
  Jeanne: Anybody oh sorry, but it's different.
• 9:00
  Jeanne: It's like, okay, so this is time of conflict or time of war, I guess.
• 9:05
  Jeanne: We're actually taking we're we're in Afghanistan, becoming like a military arm.
• 9:11
  Jeanne: So aren't all the rules thrown out?
• 9:15
  Jeanne: I mean, No, no.
• 9:18
  Jeanne: Um, so obviously, being in the military, you have a set of rules that you have to follow when you go to war, right?
• 9:25
  Jeanne: Laws of armed conflict.
• 9:27
  Jeanne: So there are rules.
• 9:29
  Jeanne: Okay, even if you're going after certain bad guys, there are rules.
• 9:33
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 9:33
  Jeanne: Please understand that in my situation, I was in the counter-insurgency business, not the counter-terrorism business.
• 9:40
  Jeanne: And there are two uh parallel missions going on in Afghanistan in order to create a safe and secure Afghanistan that could stand on its own as an ally to the United States.
• 9:52
  Jeanne: If you look at Germany and Japan post-World War II, all right, there were still factions that wanted to fight.
• 10:00
  Jeanne: Okay, but what did we do?
• 10:02
  Jeanne: We controlled the space, we held the space third phase of warfare in order to build.
• 10:08
  Jeanne: When I say build, it's primarily the institutions.
• 10:12
  Jeanne: All right, you're building the government, you're building the economy.
• 10:15
  Jeanne: And then again, transition back to the rightful owners.
• 10:19
  Jeanne: So, no, there are rules.
• 10:21
  Jeanne: Okay, and one of our one of our lines of effort in Afghanistan is rule of law.
• 10:26
  Jeanne: And so we are violating rule of law.
• 10:31
  Jeanne: And so when I realized that, I stopped work on the six phases of the road that we were working on.
• 10:40
  Jeanne: We had six contractors, I stopped work because we needed to get these people compensated.
• 10:46
  Jeanne: So you're not going in there and asking them, okay, so we here's our plan.
• 10:51
  Jeanne: We want to build a road because we need to be driving through here um this area, you know, while we're here and occupying.
• 11:00
  Jeanne: I know it's not called occupying, but you know, you're not you didn't go and ask them, are you agreeing with these?
• 11:06
  Jeanne: Because when we go, this will this will be your road.
• 11:09
  Jeanne: Do you want this road?
• 11:10
  Jeanne: You're not doing that.
• 11:11
  Jeanne: And that's part of what was um violating their
• 11:17
  Eric: Yeah, a big part of this again.
• 11:19
  Eric: We the Afghan people are not our enemy.
• 11:22
  Eric: Right?
• 11:23
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 11:24
  Eric: It's the tower, it's not the people who are our enemy.
• 11:26
  Eric: Right?
• 11:27
  Eric: It's okay.
• 11:28
  Eric: And we've we've helped set up a new government in Afghanistan called the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Jaroa.
• 11:38
  Eric: We have people working on the national level in Kabul, working with um the president of Afghanistan, uh Hamid Kazai and Ashraf Ghani.
• 11:50
  Eric: And we have guys like me who are working on the provincial level or the state level.
• 11:54
  Eric: So my counterpart in Panjshir is the governor, just like a state governor.
• 11:59
  Jeanne: Oh, okay.
• 12:00
  Eric: I met with him just about every day.
• 12:02
  Eric: All right.
• 12:03
  Eric: And so again, the people aren't the enemy.
• 12:05
  Eric: We're not building this road so we can get through, we're building this road so they can have success.
• 12:11
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 12:12
  Eric: Right?
• 12:12
  Jeanne: All right.
• 12:12
  Jeanne: Good point.
• 12:14
  Jeanne: We're partners, and so for us to violate the very law that that we help create doesn't set a good example.
• 12:21
  Jeanne: And that's exactly what we were doing.
• 12:24
  Jeanne: And so when I stopped work to work on getting the it turned out, 541 families compensated for the taking of their property, uh, I can tell you that my American chain of command wasn't very happy because I was slowing down progress, I was slowing down those matrix, those metrics, I should say.
• 12:47
  Jeanne: And that doesn't look good.
• 12:49
  Jeanne: Which is always about get in and get out.
• 12:53
  Eric: Exactly.
• 12:53
  Eric: Exactly.
• 12:54
  Eric: If you you listen to the way that we talk about warfare now, especially in a place like like Iran, oh, it should be over in out three days.
• 13:03
  Eric: War should be over in three days.
• 13:05
  Eric: Uh Jeanne, we are still in Germany, we are still in Japan, we are still in South Korea.
• 13:14
  Jeanne: We have Navy um bases in Italy.
• 13:18
  Eric: That's absolutely right.
• 13:19
  Eric: Okay.
• 13:20
  Eric: And so, I mean, how do how do we not consider our own history and our own current reality?
• 13:30
  Eric: And we say three days.
• 13:32
  Eric: And by the way, whoever's saying three days, you shouldn't listen to that.
• 13:37
  Eric: Okay, because they don't know what they're talking about.
• 13:40
  Eric: This isn't how warfare works, especially in a place like Afghanistan.
• 13:45
  Eric: It's generational.
• 13:46
  Eric: If you're lucky, it's generational.
• 13:48
  Eric: A place like Afghanistan, it's gonna take if we had done it right from day one, it was gonna take 30 years.
• 13:54
  Eric: Okay, because you have to keep in mind the people who made it terrible for everybody, whether it was the Taliban, the warlords, other uh terrorist organizations like Hezbi Islami and so on, they're all vying for power.
• 14:11
  Eric: They don't want to lose their power.
• 14:13
  Eric: Okay, and so they have to go away.
• 14:17
  Eric: Typically, they and their followers have to go away.
• 14:21
  Eric: Typically, again, it's about one generation.
• 14:24
  Eric: Right?
• 14:26
  Eric: That's if you're doing it right.
• 14:27
  Eric: If the Afghans say, you know what, I want a different way.
• 14:31
  Eric: I don't want these guys ruling over me.
• 14:33
  Eric: And so when we come in and we say, hey, we have a we have a different way, it's called democracy, and we have this thing called rule of law, we have this thing called good governance and all that.
• 14:44
  Eric: Well, we have to set the example.
• 14:46
  Eric: We just can't tell them shut up and color.
• 14:49
  Eric: Okay.
• 14:51
  Eric: And you have to also keep in mind, these are not stupid people.
• 14:55
  Eric: They beat a superpower, they beat the Soviet Union, okay?
• 15:00
  Eric: And so um they also have a history of warfare.
• 15:06
  Eric: Right, they've been fighting for most of their lives.
• 15:09
  Eric: And so for us to go in with hubris and think that we can outsmart them and also out warfare them, well, we've seen the outcome.
• 15:19
  Eric: We lost.
• 15:23
  Jeanne: Well, let me go back to this group that you were managing for the um the reconstruction team.
• 15:30
  Jeanne: Um you said you worked basically for the army, but your Air Force.
• 15:36
  Jeanne: Were there any Navy CBs in there as well?
• 15:39
  Jeanne: Because it it's does every military branch have a construction team that goes in um in times of conflict, you know, to kind of help guide or rebuild in a country.
• 15:54
  Eric: Yeah, so you brought up the CBs.
• 15:56
  Eric: Uh, so the Army has engineers and the Air Force's engineers, of course, the Marines being part of the Navy, they use the CBs for construction time.
• 16:04
  Eric: It's interesting that you mentioned CBs.
• 16:05
  Eric: I was actually CB for a while in the Navy Reserve after my submarine time.
• 16:10
  unknown: Yeah.
• 16:11
  Jeanne: I know you would know the Navy, that's why I asked.
• 16:13
  Jeanne: Because I'm thinking you got three branches all working together if you got all of them in there.
• 16:18
  Eric: So I'll let you keep keep going.
• 16:19
  Eric: So I got I got to play with the CBs.
• 16:22
  Eric: Um good group of guys, love them.
• 16:25
  Eric: Um, but when you talk about military uh engineering outfits like the CBs and the Air Force version and the Army version, they're mostly there to build for the mission.
• 16:39
  Eric: So to build for the services to accomplish whatever the particular military mission is.
• 16:44
  Eric: Uh provincial reconstruction teams are different.
• 16:47
  Eric: Yes, I had engineers on my team, Air Force engineers.
• 16:50
  Eric: And again, their job was to train, mentor, and assist their Afghan counterparts.
• 16:58
  Eric: So, as an example, we had a line ministry of public works in the province, right?
• 17:05
  Eric: Just like any other state would have public works.
• 17:08
  Eric: My engineers worked with the people in public works.
• 17:11
  Eric: Then also in the Ministry for Education and Ministry of Public Health, we had building responsibilities there as well.
• 17:19
  Eric: My engineers would work with them.
• 17:21
  Eric: But again, their job is not to build, their job is to train, mentor, and assist the Afghans to do it.
• 17:29
  Eric: Okay, now oftentimes, what we would do, like as I mentioned earlier, we would do their homework for them because it looks good if we get a project done.
• 17:39
  Eric: Again, it's a metric, it looks good, and and that's what leadership was coming back to Congress with and to the White House and to the public, saying, look, we're winning because the numbers look good, don't they?
• 17:53
  Eric: But we're not winning because the rightful owners aren't being trained to take it on themselves.
• 18:02
  Eric: Right?
• 18:04
  Jeanne: Well, I got two questions here.
• 18:05
  Jeanne: Just see if my definition is right, and from what you're you know, you know, saying here.
• 18:10
  Jeanne: Basically, I always understood, and I'm going back to the CBs, um, they would come in only to support the Navy if they had an onshore presence like barracks building barracks and building um like galleys or whatever you had to do if you were going to have a group of naval people there.
• 18:31
  Jeanne: So that's their construction piece.
• 18:33
  Jeanne: So you're alluding to that there's another group, which I didn't know about until you, uh, that goes in during these times um and helps reconstruct.
• 18:41
  Jeanne: So that's a totally different mission, then, correct?
• 18:44
  Eric: It is, and and what I'm describing is ad hoc.
• 18:48
  Eric: It's not formalized.
• 18:50
  Eric: The PRT was basically formulated um when needed, and so there is no space.
• 18:59
  Eric: Uh, and I actually make this argument in a couple of my writings.
• 19:02
  Eric: There is no space between the military and diplomacy, where people actually function and work.
• 19:11
  Eric: That is all ad hoc in between.
• 19:13
  Eric: So you can say the military, again, they're in the business of killing people and breaking their things.
• 19:17
  Eric: State Department is in the business of diplomacy, whatever that is.
• 19:22
  Eric: Okay, so the space in between is really um the stability operations piece, is what we call it.
• 19:31
  Eric: All right.
• 19:31
  Eric: So when you're done killing people and breaking their things, and now you're looking at governance and bilateral relations and all that good diplomacy, this diplomacy stuff.
• 19:41
  Eric: Where's the bridge that gets you from here to there?
• 19:45
  Eric: Where's that bridge?
• 19:47
  Eric: And I make an argument that we need a standing stability operations force.
• 19:52
  Eric: We need a formalized PRT structure.
• 19:56
  Eric: Okay, now you can make the argument that, well, that was what U.S.
• 19:59
  Eric: Agency for International Development was supposed to do, USAID.
• 20:03
  Eric: Now, of course, that's gone.
• 20:04
  Eric: Um, USAID was largely a contracting business.
• 20:09
  Eric: So USAID would contract with implementers to do projects in particular countries.
• 20:16
  Eric: Now, if you're in the international development and aid business, if you solve a problem, then you're out of business.
• 20:25
  Eric: Does that make sense?
• 20:28
  Jeanne: That's very true.
• 20:29
  Eric: If you solve a problem, you're out of business.
• 20:30
  Eric: And what I'm saying, with a standing stability operations force in the middle, the whole objective is to put yourself out of business.
• 20:38
  Eric: That's how success is measured.
• 20:41
  Eric: Okay, and so what we've what we've created, again, I argue this in the book, right?
• 20:46
  Eric: So we've created a system of what I call perverse incentives.
• 20:49
  Eric: Right?
• 20:50
  Eric: And so I don't actually have to do my job really well because if I do my job, then I'm out of business.
• 20:57
  Eric: I want it to perpetuate.
• 21:00
  Eric: All right, there's an another situation that uh I illustrate in the book where when I took over command in Afghanistan, I had a responsibility to train over 600 Afghan national police.
• 21:14
  Eric: Okay, that's the Security Foundation.
• 21:17
  Eric: Now I took over that responsibility from a government contractor called Dyn Corp.
• 21:23
  Eric: It's a big government contractor.
• 21:26
  Eric: They had that responsibility for three years before I took it over.
• 21:31
  Eric: Okay, we switched it from government contract to actual military.
• 21:36
  Eric: And I had a squad of Army MPs, uh, a couple of American law enforcement professionals, civilians, and a couple of local national attorneys from Afghanistan.
• 21:47
  Eric: Now, my father was a New York City police sergeant for 33 years.
• 21:52
  Eric: He was on the force.
• 21:53
  Eric: And I can tell you in New York City, the police academy is about six months.
• 21:58
  Eric: We had Dyn Corps training Afghan national police for three years.
• 22:04
  Eric: They should be awesome, right?
• 22:08
  Eric: They've been trained for three years.
• 22:11
  Eric: Interesting.
• 22:13
  Eric: Um, they didn't know the basics of policing or law enforcement.
• 22:19
  Eric: Right?
• 22:19
  Jeanne: And I is that because that's not part of their um in the country itself?
• 22:26
  Jeanne: I mean, they don't grow up like kids here, you know, workshop.
• 22:30
  Jeanne: Oh, I think I want to be a policeman when I grow up, or you know, how you you gravitate to certain jobs, but they didn't see that.
• 22:37
  Jeanne: They couldn't model it.
• 22:39
  Eric: Well, they could.
• 22:40
  Eric: They understand the importance of security, right?
• 22:44
  Eric: And they understand the importance of taking care of their society, they understand the importance of rule of law.
• 22:51
  Eric: What they couldn't understand is the law itself, right?
• 22:55
  Eric: Because again, things are very tribal, but there's a bigger issue here, and that's literacy.
• 23:00
  Eric: Um, and a lot of people may ask, you know, why are the Afghans so illiterate?
• 23:07
  Eric: Well, education is a luxury, and it's important for Americans to understand that.
• 23:13
  Eric: Education is a luxury.
• 23:15
  Eric: When you are born and raised in a situation where you're at most of the times constant conflict, Afghans have been fighting for decades.
• 23:26
  Eric: Okay, that luxury of education goes away because you're focusing on survival.
• 23:30
  Eric: So they're not stupid.
• 23:32
  Eric: All right.
• 23:34
  Eric: Um, they're actually pretty sophisticated when it comes to other things like reading you.
• 23:39
  Eric: They can read you really well.
• 23:41
  Eric: Okay.
• 23:41
  Eric: But with the police, with the police force, eventually that I wound up training, um they were largely illiterate, so they didn't understand the very law that they were charged to enforce.
• 23:55
  Eric: That's a problem.
• 23:58
  Eric: Imagine encountering a police officer who doesn't understand the law.
• 24:04
  Eric: So what I figured out was that um I was building better thugs because they loved the tactics and procedures, right?
• 24:12
  Eric: They were great at that, and the army loved teaching that.
• 24:15
  Eric: Okay, but why weren't they trained for those three years before I took over the responsibility?
• 24:21
  Eric: Well, I would argue that if Dyn Corps actually trained them, then that puts them out of business, right?
• 24:28
  Eric: So you have to keep it going.
• 24:30
  Eric: This is a money-making operation.
• 24:33
  Eric: War.
• 24:34
  Eric: Here's one of my favorites.
• 24:36
  Eric: Jeanne, you ready?
• 24:37
  Eric: Yes.
• 24:38
  Eric: War is a racket.
• 24:39
  Eric: Written by two-time Medal of Honor recipient, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler.
• 24:48
  Eric: What a great name.
• 24:49
  Eric: Marine Corps.
• 24:50
  Eric: All right.
• 24:51
  Eric: It's a money-making business.
• 24:55
  Eric: All right, President.
• 24:56
  Jeanne: Well, it's true.
• 24:56
  Jeanne: I mean, even in in the United States, in corporate world or wherever you're having a job, they're like, slow down, slow down, don't do this too fast.
• 25:06
  Jeanne: You'll work yourself out of a job.
• 25:08
  Jeanne: You know, you're just like they called me a machine all the time.
• 25:14
  Jeanne: And it was, they thought they were insulting me.
• 25:16
  Jeanne: I didn't really care.
• 25:17
  Jeanne: But um, it's because my productivity was so high, and they were like, You're you're nuts.
• 25:23
  Jeanne: You're working too much.
• 25:25
  Eric: Where were you working?
• 25:26
  Jeanne: Oh, just in corporate environments and banking, um, multiple banking uh jobs and roles and project project management um and consulting and different things.
• 25:38
  Jeanne: But it's just yeah, that was my that I think it's been multiple businesses calling me a machine, and it's because why stop?
• 25:47
  Jeanne: Why slow down?
• 25:50
  Eric: I mean, especially when you're making money, right?
• 25:54
  Jeanne: Yeah, well, I wasn't making any money, I was just doing my job, but uh, I mean, not any excess money, but um it you know working myself out of a job was never my concern, but I but I get what you're saying.
• 26:07
  Eric: And and that's what the stability operations force, again, that is that that force that I I believe needs to be established again, specifically to work themselves out of a job.
• 26:19
  Eric: But of course, it'll never happen because we have so many different types of contractors, both in the development world, both in the military world, and others, that are making so much money off of instability that to actually work on stability, how dare you! You're taking money out of my pocket.
• 26:40
  Eric: We have to keep the instability going.
• 26:42
  Eric: Just as a reminder, when uh President Eisenhower was leaving office in 1961, right?
• 26:49
  Eric: Obviously, five-star general and two-term president, he gets on TV, his farewell address to the nation gets on TV and he warns us about this thing he termed the military-industrial complex.
• 27:01
  Eric: What is Eisenhower saying?
• 27:07
  Eric: He's saying there's money to be made, and the money to be made um comes with conflict or threat of conflict.
• 27:19
  Eric: And if and if you look at what happened in Vietnam, you look at what the Pentagon Papers revealed, this collection of classified documents that were released in the early 1970s, it revealed that we were lying about winning.
• 27:35
  Eric: But a lot of people got very wealthy off of that war as well.
• 27:39
  Eric: And also, um, just help me figure this one out.
• 27:45
  Eric: If you know the answer to this, that'd be awesome.
• 27:47
  Eric: Um, all the people who were in charge in Iraq and Afghanistan who were wearing stars on their uniform, majority of them are now multi-millionaires.
• 27:59
  Jeanne: Yeah, I don't get a lot of that.
• 28:01
  Jeanne: I don't know where the money came from.
• 28:03
  Eric: Okay, they're sitting on corporate boards.
• 28:05
  Eric: And and look, and by definition, they are losers.
• 28:09
  Eric: They lost.
• 28:10
  Eric: They were in charge, they're losers.
• 28:12
  Eric: I am a loser.
• 28:14
  Eric: How do you become a multimillionaire by being a loser?
• 28:19
  Eric: Unless the system is designed for them to win by losing.
• 28:30
  Jeanne: Yeah, that's hard to wrap your head around.
• 28:32
  Jeanne: But you're right.
• 28:33
  Jeanne: I mean, uh everybody comes back and they get well, even politics, and I don't like to talk about politics on the show, but um, even in politics, you see people get fired, um, you know, leave their roles early, whatever, but then the next thing you know is they're um broadcasters on a news show and making a lot of money.
• 28:57
  Eric: Or lobbyists, yeah.
• 28:59
  Eric: Yeah, I don't know much about lobbyists.
• 29:00
  Eric: I don't like talking politics, but again, I just think it's uh maybe important uh for your listeners and viewers here.
• 29:08
  Eric: Um I spent three years up on Capitol Hill as a legislative liaison, and so each branch of the military has a small group of people physically working up on Capitol Hill, and we are kind of like the connective tissue between Congress and the Pentagon to make sure like nobody gets super stupid.
• 29:25
  Eric: So I worked on the house side, 2006-2009, and um you get to see how the sausage is made, and you get to see the people and the personalities.
• 29:36
  Eric: I I traveled with Congress quite a bit, uh actually all around the world, all seven continents and war zones and so on.
• 29:44
  Eric: Um, and so you kind of get to peek behind the curtain a little bit, you see what matters most.
• 29:50
  Eric: And uh it was eye-opening, of course, 10 years in the Pentagon, pretty eye-opening.
• 29:56
  Eric: Um, and again, for the benefit of your listeners and viewers, uh, I showed up to the Pentagon July 2001.
• 30:03
  Eric: Okay, so I got to see uh the global war on terror from the from day one.
• 30:11
  Eric: So uh and I know we won't talk politics, but I just want to just make sure everybody knows that I have a little bit of a a peek into politics.
• 30:21
  Jeanne: Right.
• 30:21
  Jeanne: I guess I just don't like to go down into names and and uh talking about current events uh b just because it it's pretty volatile these days.
• 30:31
  Jeanne: And anyway, but I but I'm happy for you to talk about this, honestly.
• 30:36
  Jeanne: It's a very interesting.
• 30:37
  Jeanne: And the thing that it strikes me the most is like um you say all these things are happening or happened when you're in Afghanistan, but for the people on this side of the world or in the United States, we don't know these things.
• 30:52
  Jeanne: We don't know what's going on.
• 30:53
  Jeanne: We're hearing news accounts of what's happening, probably not even correctly reported.
• 30:59
  Jeanne: And then we're hearing a lot of fights in the you know, government sides, uh Congress and Senate and presidents.
• 31:08
  Jeanne: Um, and then but we don't really know the reality of anything, do we?
• 31:13
  Eric: No, no, and I would say it's largely by design.
• 31:17
  Eric: Uh I mentioned a few stories in the book where um I tell the reader what the media reported and cite sources, but then I also go back to the reality of what's taking place.
• 31:30
  Eric: And so, no, we are we are fed scripted information to promote particular agendas.
• 31:39
  Eric: And uh again, that's another reason why I wrote this book was to kind of peel that back.
• 31:45
  Eric: And uh and again, just to finish up on the not talking about politics real quick.
• 31:51
  Eric: Um, I just wanted to be clear that what I figured out working in Congress for three years is that there's only one political party, it's the party of me.
• 32:04
  Eric: I matter more than everybody else, than my constituents, and all that.
• 32:11
  Eric: Okay, there's no Democrat, there's no Republican, it's me.
• 32:14
  Eric: All right, and if you understand that, if you understand that the politicians out for themselves first and foremost, then everything else becomes a little bit more easier.
• 32:24
  Eric: Yeah, I don't know.
• 32:26
  Eric: And and also the whole media thing, also realize that they are in a business.
• 32:33
  Eric: They want you to watch, they want you to be angered.
• 32:37
  Eric: Okay.
• 32:38
  Eric: They're not going to report the good stuff or the meat of the things unless it benefits them.
• 32:46
  Eric: Now, I'll also say this one of the reasons why I wrote this book is because um I read a book called the Afghanistan Papers.
• 32:55
  Eric: It's published in December 2019 by Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock.
• 33:00
  Eric: And what Craig Whitlock basically outlined in his book, keep in mind, December 2019, said that senior leadership um knew that we were losing in Afghanistan and they misled the public and uh misled the press and misled um the government as well.
• 33:21
  Eric: Uh Craig Whitlock's quote is that senior leaders were at war with the truth.
• 33:26
  Eric: Well, when you get senior leadership not telling the truth to those institutions that are supposed to um govern and hold the military in check, right?
• 33:39
  Eric: Because we're a civilian-led military.
• 33:41
  Eric: And um when we're lying to the public as well, then we have a we have an overarching problem.
• 33:48
  Eric: Right?
• 33:48
  Eric: And that's where you need the independent media to go in and sniff it out.
• 33:53
  Eric: Craig Craig Whitlock did.
• 33:55
  Eric: Now, um what he wrote didn't make me angry because I knew we were lying and losing.
• 34:02
  Eric: I'd been in the training business after I retired in 2011, training government officials primarily to go to Afghanistan.
• 34:09
  Eric: I'd been in training business since 2011, and this is now 2019.
• 34:13
  Eric: So that didn't surprise me nor did it anger me because I knew it to be accurate.
• 34:17
  Eric: What angered me was the amount of officers in particular write editorials to the Washington Post saying, I knew, but not my fault.
• 34:28
  Eric: Okay, wait, hold on, you're an officer.
• 34:32
  Eric: If you knew, you didn't do anything, then it is your fault.
• 34:35
  Eric: That's what I was always told.
• 34:37
  Eric: Um but the worst part was that senior leadership said nothing, they just wanted to go away.
• 34:45
  Eric: And the best thing happened a little thing called COVID.
• 34:49
  Eric: When COVID sprung up shortly thereafter, the whole Afghanistan thing went away.
• 34:55
  Eric: Right?
• 34:56
  Eric: And I started writing an editorial of my own, basically saying that you knew, everybody knew, and um you need to take responsibility, I need to take responsibility, and my editorial turned into a book because I in order to explain one thing, I had to back up and explain another thing, right?
• 35:14
  Eric: Because how does an Air Force lieutenant colonel end up in this situation?
• 35:18
  Eric: And how does he know anything?
• 35:20
  Eric: Right?
• 35:21
  Eric: And so I have to back it up a little bit and kind of you know give the reader a little bit of background.
• 35:26
  Eric: And and I my hope is that especially the vet will see a little bit of themselves in my book as well.
• 35:33
  Jeanne: Yeah, we're talking about your book, but I'm gonna bring it up here.
• 35:36
  Jeanne: Um so we didn't mention it really yet.
• 35:41
  Jeanne: I had questions coming up, but it's the losing game, how to lose a war and fail veterans.
• 35:46
  Jeanne: And it's quite good, actually.
• 35:49
  Jeanne: So I wanna make sure that I haven't gone through everything, but I read a lot of it.
• 35:55
  Eric: So um did you laugh?
• 35:58
  Eric: Did you cry?
• 36:00
  Jeanne: I was just surprised.
• 36:02
  Jeanne: I don't know that I I still I didn't feel everything that you guys felt, but I I was just like, this is not what I thought it was.
• 36:14
  Jeanne: Even if I had been there, you know, I I don't know that I wouldn't have grasped what you're saying at all.
• 36:22
  Jeanne: I would have been on the outskirts of everything.
• 36:26
  Jeanne: Um perhaps.
• 36:28
  Jeanne: I mean, but I I wasn't a career person, so I was I I probably wouldn't have been there.
• 36:33
  Eric: But um Jean Jeanne, I let me let me interrupt real quick because you would have understood.
• 36:38
  Eric: Okay, or at least my intent would to make you understand.
• 36:43
  Eric: All right, because from from what I gather, you're respectful, you're empathetic, you're humble, and you're accountable.
• 36:52
  Eric: Those are the traits that I needed for people on my team to win this war.
• 36:58
  Eric: Respect, empathy, humility, and accountability.
• 37:01
  Eric: Right, and as long as you understood the mission, and again, our mission was counter insurgency.
• 37:08
  Eric: So we are countering uh the organizations that want to be in control.
• 37:13
  Eric: They're the insurgents, they want to be in control.
• 37:15
  Eric: We're supporting the quote in quotes legitimate government of Afghanistan.
• 37:19
  Eric: As long as you understood the mission, the mission is to build a safe, secure, stable Afghanistan, able stand on its own, right?
• 37:28
  Eric: Then you would be fine.
• 37:31
  Eric: You would be fine, totally.
• 37:33
  Eric: Okay.
• 37:34
  Eric: So it's not too difficult to understand.
• 37:36
  Eric: What I need is I need you to build relationships with our Afghan counterparts.
• 37:42
  Eric: I need you to engage with Afghan women, because I can't, right?
• 37:48
  Eric: And I'll be honest with you, my the ladies on my team, led by an E5, right, we'll call a staff sergeant in the Air Force medic.
• 37:56
  Eric: They were phenomenal.
• 37:58
  Eric: Okay, because they could interact with 100% of the population.
• 38:02
  Eric: I can only interact with 50% of the population.
• 38:04
  Eric: Right.
• 38:05
  Eric: And they got more information from interacting with the women, actionable intelligence, actually, from interacting with the women than I ever did from my relationships with you know the governor and the subgovernors and the line ministers and all that.
• 38:22
  Jeanne: So yeah, but you gotta say, yeah, I might have been good, and I appreciate your compliments, but uh the thing is only if I got an officer like you.
• 38:32
  Jeanne: So it depends on your command and who's your leader.
• 38:36
  Jeanne: So all the leaders you're talking about that were shirking their responsibility and shutting up about what was going on in reality, I could have been there and I would have not known the truth.
• 38:47
  Eric: So um what I realized is that um the majority of officers, especially my position.
• 38:54
  Eric: So I'm when you're in a command position in wartime, if you have a successful command, chances are you will be promoted.
• 39:03
  Eric: Right.
• 39:04
  Eric: And so a lot of my uh counterparts, my peers, um, successful command, they're gonna put on 06.
• 39:12
  Eric: They're gonna be you know called colonel or captain in the Navy, right?
• 39:16
  Eric: Um for some, that was their mission, plain and simple.
• 39:21
  Eric: And I know this to be fact because when I was doing the training, and I wound up First Army, actually hired me and my guys to do the PRT training, the final exercise.
• 39:34
  Eric: And we do live immersive interactive theaters, right?
• 39:37
  Eric: So we are immersing them in Afghanistan with role players and everything else, and it's pretty real.
• 39:42
  Eric: And I remember uh the outbrief from this one incoming PRT commander, so an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, uh, Intel guy, academy graduate, so smartest guy in the room, who, in his words, doesn't suffer fools.
• 39:58
  Eric: And um, in his outbrief to an ambassador, real ambassador, um, you know, he's very sure of himself and all that.
• 40:07
  Eric: And I asked him one question, and I said, because it wasn't evident to me.
• 40:11
  Eric: I said, uh, Lieutenant Colonel, what is your mission?
• 40:14
  Eric: What is your mission in Afghanistan?
• 40:17
  Eric: And he says uh very succinctly, he says, to go with 68 and come home with 68.
• 40:24
  Eric: Hmm, okay.
• 40:27
  Eric: Um Lieutenant Colonel, what if you come home with 67?
• 40:31
  Eric: Have you failed in your mission?
• 40:33
  Eric: No.
• 40:34
  Eric: Well, dude, you just said uh your mission is to go with 68 and come home with 68.
• 40:39
  Eric: Okay, what if you lose one?
• 40:41
  Eric: Because it's possible.
• 40:42
  Eric: Look, my uh my predecessor was killed a month before I showed up and took command with three members of his team.
• 40:50
  Eric: It's possible.
• 40:52
  Eric: All right, but yet somehow you can have it both ways.
• 40:55
  Eric: And oh, by the way, that's not your mission.
• 40:58
  Eric: Okay, your mission is to win the war.
• 41:02
  Eric: How do you win the war?
• 41:04
  Eric: You counter an insurgency, you build the foundation of security, you build good governance, you could build good rule of law, you bid you build good socioeconomic development, you create a strong, stable, secure Afghanistan.
• 41:17
  Eric: But what he's telling me is his mission is to get promoted to colonel.
• 41:22
  Eric: Okay.
• 41:24
  Eric: And so, yeah, so they were definitely out there.
• 41:27
  Eric: And if you had that commander, then good luck even getting outside the wire.
• 41:34
  Jeanne: Well, I agree with you there.
• 41:35
  Jeanne: That's what I'm saying.
• 41:36
  Jeanne: You know, I don't know what I would have known if I'd been over there.
• 41:39
  Jeanne: I have friends that were over there and they've talked to me about it.
• 41:42
  Jeanne: In fact, one of them works at um Veterans Affairs and is liaison to the White House for trying to get um benefits for veterans suffering with PTSD and other ailments, but from Afghanistan.
• 41:59
  Jeanne: However, um I I don't know that they really understood what was going on either.
• 42:07
  Jeanne: Or some in just talking with them.
• 42:10
  Jeanne: It depended on who their command was.
• 42:13
  Eric: And and so that's another reason why I wrote the book is to explain what was going on.
• 42:19
  Eric: Because again, our leadership, in quotes, uh these losers, um, where are they?
• 42:28
  Eric: How come they aren't explaining the mission?
• 42:30
  Eric: Right?
• 42:32
  Eric: We have a lot of troops who are suffering from post-traumatic stress.
• 42:36
  Eric: And one of the big reasons is because they never understood the mission.
• 42:39
  Eric: They knew their jobs, they didn't know the mission.
• 42:42
  Eric: They knew their bosses were there to come home with 68 to get promoted, okay, and you start looking out for yourself.
• 42:50
  Eric: So again, where's everybody else?
• 42:52
  Eric: How come they are not?
• 42:54
  Eric: And I'm not going to name names, okay, but you just have to look around at the guys wearing stars.
• 42:59
  Eric: How come they aren't the ones on your podcast right now trying to explain the mission and taking responsibility?
• 43:08
  Eric: Our troops need to hear it from the guys in charge.
• 43:12
  Jeanne: But you did you see uh so your reconstruction team, so did you see a lot of combat?
• 43:17
  Jeanne: Did a lot of um did you I mean, you weren't there to break things, as you said earlier.
• 43:24
  Jeanne: Right.
• 43:25
  Jeanne: Um did you see a lot?
• 43:27
  Jeanne: I mean, did are you just talking in general everyone that was in Afghanistan is suffering?
• 43:34
  Eric: So, okay, so there's a couple of questions there.
• 43:37
  Eric: So, as far as direct combat, okay, as far as a provincial reconstruction team, you go through three months of combat training.
• 43:45
  Eric: Okay, Air Force, Navy, um, along with Army as well.
• 43:51
  Eric: Um, and so you're prepared for that.
• 43:54
  Eric: And and that's really important because that's how the army knows how to train you.
• 43:59
  Eric: They know how to train you for combat, so you become good soldiers.
• 44:04
  Eric: Okay, you don't become good PRT personnel.
• 44:10
  Eric: They don't train you on governance and reconstruction and socioeconomic development and rule of law.
• 44:18
  Eric: Right?
• 44:18
  Eric: They don't train you on that.
• 44:20
  Eric: And so we learned how to be good soldiers.
• 44:24
  Eric: Now, uh, where we were in Panjshir, we were very fortunate.
• 44:28
  Eric: We didn't have a lot going on up there.
• 44:30
  Eric: Um, my team got attacked once.
• 44:32
  Eric: We we were driving around, by the way, in uh Toyotas.
• 44:35
  Eric: Right, so off-sided vehicles, no, no Humvees or anything like that.
• 44:40
  Jeanne: Toyota little cars or Toyota SUVs
• 44:44
  Eric: Primarily, yeah.
• 44:45
  Eric: So these are in third world countries, they call them technicals.
• 44:49
  Eric: You put your 50 cal on the back and all that guy.
• 44:52
  Eric: So we were driving around mostly in that type of situation.
• 44:55
  Eric: Um, we had an agreement.
• 44:57
  Eric: We had an agreement with the Afghans that they would provide our security.
• 45:02
  Eric: All right, it worked out fairly well.
• 45:04
  Eric: I mentioned my predecessor was killed with three members of his team.
• 45:08
  Eric: Um, they were killed while transiting from Panjshir to Bagram in a place called uh Mahmud Raqi in Kapisa province.
• 45:18
  Eric: Now, um, so yeah, it's it's Afghanistan.
• 45:22
  Eric: Anything can happen.
• 45:23
  Eric: And um, and so we had uh terrorist activity in in the province as well.
• 45:30
  Eric: Uh I mentioned a story in the book where I got to meet the man who wanted to kill me, but I need to read the book to figure that one out, right?
• 45:39
  Eric: So there's a lot going on.
• 45:40
  Eric: So there's a lot going on.
• 45:42
  Eric: It's very mob-like, right?
• 45:44
  Eric: A lot of kind of like mafia style of uh activity.
• 45:48
  Jeanne: Did you ever sleep at all?
• 45:50
  Eric: Um, I actually slept rather well.
• 45:52
  Eric: Okay, because um so much of success in Afghanistan, relative success in Afghanistan, it's based on the foundation of relationships.
• 46:05
  Eric: If you can build real relationships, because it is what we call high context society, um, where if they know you and they know that you're trying to do good things and that you're not there to try to take from them, chances are they will look out for you.
• 46:23
  Eric: Okay, and that's a big part of your survival, is those relationships.
• 46:28
  Eric: It's another something that we're not very good at as Americans.
• 46:32
  Eric: Right.
• 46:34
  Eric: Um I heard it termed one way, I can't take credit for this.
• 46:38
  Eric: Nobody cares what you know until they know that you care.
• 46:41
  Eric: Especially in a place like Afghanistan.
• 46:46
  Eric: And so if you're able to build good relationships, people look out for you.
• 46:52
  Eric: Right.
• 46:54
  Eric: And so, um, yeah, so question about direct combat, no.
• 47:00
  Eric: You know, little things here and there, mostly kind of lawlessness and corruption type things like that.
• 47:07
  Eric: Okay, but we're prepared for that.
• 47:10
  Jeanne: Well, you argued that standard PTSD, and you mentioned this a minute ago, a little bit of it.
• 47:14
  Jeanne: That's why I was kind of clarifying that standard PTSD treatment fails a lot of veterans because it treats symptoms without ever giving them context or meaning.
• 47:24
  Jeanne: But you have um a chance you champion immersive prolonged exposure, which puts veterans back inside a recreation of what happened or recreation.
• 47:37
  Jeanne: I don't know why I said recreation.
• 47:38
  Jeanne: Um, what does going back in uh work when moving forward hasn't?
• 47:44
  Jeanne: How does that work?
• 47:45
  Eric: Yeah, so um again, I did 10 years of training government officials to go to Afghanistan, Iraq, uh primarily to work in their ministries of defense, ministry of interior, that's the police, and other ministries again to build a strong, stable, secure government and um in Afghanistan.
• 48:07
  Eric: What we were doing in our training, we were doing live immersive interactive theater.
• 48:13
  Eric: So we've recreated Iraq and Afghanistan and a little training location called Muscatatuk Urban Training Center.
• 48:20
  Eric: It's in the backwoods of Indiana.
• 48:22
  Eric: And um what I found was that former soldiers who are now Department of Defense officials and are deploying to places like Afghanistan, who are going through the training and have war-related post-traumatic stress, when they come out the other side of the training, they were feeling better.
• 48:45
  Eric: So I wasn't doing therapy, I was doing training.
• 48:48
  Eric: And in the book in particular, I mentioned uh a gentleman by the name of Tyler Kurth.
• 48:53
  Eric: Tyler Kurth was an army captain, he's with the 10th Mountain Division, and I won't get too deep into Tyler's story.
• 49:00
  Eric: Uh, other say that um he wound up getting shot by an Afghan national policeman, and that Afghan national policeman killed two of his guys.
• 49:10
  Eric: All right, and um Tyler was actually nominated for the Medal of Honor.
• 49:15
  Eric: Didn't receive it, okay, but he was nominated.
• 49:18
  Eric: And so Tyler had some serious post-traumatic stress issues, and he went through all the protocols, the cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure, traditional prolonged exposure therapy, all the meds and all that.
• 49:29
  Eric: And so, seven years after that situation, he's now going back to Afghanistan to work in their Ministry of Defense.
• 49:37
  Eric: And okay, you're a brave guy.
• 49:39
  Eric: And he's coming through my training, and I'm his mentor.
• 49:41
  Eric: And the last thing I want to do is exacerbate his post-traumatic stress.
• 49:47
  Eric: And the first scenario that we're gonna put him in is one where he's gonna have to deal with the Afghan National Police.
• 49:54
  Eric: Okay, face to face.
• 49:57
  Eric: And this training is real, these are real Afghans who held these positions.
• 50:03
  Eric: So if they're meeting with the chief of police, Chaz Azar, the guy was a district chief of police, right?
• 50:09
  Eric: Operations officer, so on and so forth.
• 50:11
  Eric: And the setup is real.
• 50:13
  Eric: We have a real police station, we have real jails.
• 50:16
  Eric: And um, I got with Tyler the night before his um vignette the next day, the scenario.
• 50:27
  Eric: And I said, Look, Tyler, I'm not gonna give away the entire scenario.
• 50:31
  Eric: I said, but it has the potential to get a little active, right?
• 50:37
  Eric: And I know your background and I know everything, and I want to make sure that you're gonna be okay.
• 50:42
  Eric: And he said, Um, yeah, I've been thinking about it.
• 50:44
  Eric: I says, I want to take the lead on this.
• 50:47
  Eric: Okay, he's gonna lead six people.
• 50:49
  Eric: I'm like, okay, and so we mission plan and all that don't give away much of anything.
• 50:55
  Eric: And um the next day he's in the thick of things.
• 50:59
  Eric: The Afghan National Police Operations Officer who's suffering from PTSD himself.
• 51:05
  Eric: You have to keep in mind that the Afghan National Police Force lost over 65,000 people while we were there.
• 51:12
  Eric: They were the ones taking it on the chin, right?
• 51:15
  Eric: Um at one point he picks up an AK-47, real AK-47, and starts shaking it in front of Tyler's face, basically saying, You expect us to beat the Taliban with this?
• 51:27
  Eric: You know, basically, we need heavy weapons and so on.
• 51:30
  Eric: And I'm looking at Tyler and I'm like, please, please, please be okay.
• 51:35
  Eric: And Tyler was cool.
• 51:38
  Eric: Tyler says, I understand.
• 51:41
  Eric: I understand completely.
• 51:44
  Eric: I've been where you are.
• 51:45
  Eric: And so if you could just put the weapon down, sit down, we'll talk about this.
• 51:50
  Eric: And he calmed the guy down, right?
• 51:53
  Eric: Anyway, it's just one example.
• 51:56
  Eric: You know, we go visit the the prison itself.
• 51:59
  Eric: There's a prisoner being beaten, you can't have that.
• 52:02
  Eric: That's a gross violation of human rights.
• 52:04
  Eric: It's against, you know, our code in Afghanistan and so on.
• 52:08
  Eric: Anyway, it's one conundrum after the next.
• 52:11
  Eric: And Tyler does phenomenal, the best I've ever seen.
• 52:15
  Eric: And at the end of the training, and keep in mind we've been shooting at them, blowing them up, and everything else as well.
• 52:20
  Eric: They drive around on Humvees on Black Hawk, Black Hawk helicopters, and all that.
• 52:24
  Eric: The last thing we do is an Afghan dinner, traditional on the floor, man dancing, if you're into that.
• 52:32
  Eric: And um, and I'm watching Tyler, and he is talking to the Afghans, right?
• 52:38
  Eric: And he's hugging it out.
• 52:39
  Eric: They're in their traditional garb, some are still in their uniforms, they're Afghan National Police uniforms.
• 52:44
  Eric: And and he's laughing.
• 52:46
  Eric: And I come up to him later and I said, Tyler, tell me about your experience.
• 52:50
  Eric: And he said to me, He goes, you know, I've had nightmares just about every night for the past seven years.
• 52:55
  Eric: He says, Being out here, I no longer have nightmares.
• 53:00
  Eric: Okay, it's like, what do you mean?
• 53:03
  Eric: It should be just the opposite after what we just did to you, right?
• 53:06
  Eric: And and I said, Okay, explain this to me, Tyler, because I'm confused.
• 53:10
  Eric: I said, Look, you know, you're living on a forward operating base, you're basically back with the military, right?
• 53:16
  Eric: Because we have military guys, you know, supporting all this, driving on these helicopters, you're getting shot at, blown up, you have to deal with crazy Afghan national policemen, all this other stuff.
• 53:26
  Eric: And you don't have nightmares?
• 53:28
  Eric: He goes, Yeah, because I now understand the mission.
• 53:33
  Jeanne: Wow.
• 53:34
  Eric: Okay.
• 53:34
  Eric: Tyler, he's a captain, he's not stupid.
• 53:37
  Eric: He understood his job in Afghanistan, train Afghan national police.
• 53:42
  Eric: He didn't understand the bigger why.
• 53:44
  Eric: And so for all these years, he's been trying to logic theological in his brain, saying, why did this happen?
• 53:53
  Eric: I did exactly what I was supposed to do.
• 53:55
  Eric: But he didn't know the why.
• 53:59
  Eric: Going through training, he understood the why.
• 54:03
  Eric: And it allowed him to now put everything in its place.
• 54:06
  Eric: He confronted uh the beast, he controlled it, and he conquered it.
• 54:12
  Eric: He got a do-over with mentorship, and guys telling him that I failed you, okay, me failed you.
• 54:20
  Eric: Um and he did great.
• 54:23
  Eric: He deployed to Afghanistan, did great, came home, still doing great.
• 54:26
  Eric: Okay, again, I'm not doing therapy, but that training was therapeutic.
• 54:32
  Eric: Right.
• 54:33
  Eric: And I tried to work with the VA.
• 54:35
  Eric: Yeah, go ahead.
• 54:36
  Jeanne: Oh, I was just gonna ask you.
• 54:37
  Jeanne: Uh, you had some trouble continuing it or getting it funded, so uh, I was gonna ask you, where are you now with that?
• 54:45
  Eric: Yeah, I spent two years trying to formalize that, and actually, I just wanted to get uh officials from the VA to come out to see government training.
• 54:54
  Eric: This was government training, and tell me if I'm full of crap.
• 54:58
  Eric: You know, I wrote a white paper, had it reviewed by numerous psychiatrists and psychologists who specifically focus on war-related post-traumatic stress.
• 55:05
  Eric: And so when I presented it to the VA and I knew people at the highest levels of the VA, okay, that's one thing between my time in the Pentagon and in Congress and other things, and living in you know the DC area for as long as I've lived here, um, I had access to power.
• 55:21
  Eric: And that's the reason why I blame myself for the for the loss, because you know, I could tell the story, and I tried to tell the story, but I failed.
• 55:29
  Eric: And I could not convince anybody from the VA to come out to take a look.
• 55:33
  Eric: I had to go back to Congress through Senator Patty Murray's office from Washington to get um some um uh clinical researchers from Washington State University to actually come out.
• 55:45
  Eric: Anyway, long story, it's outlined in the book, of course.
• 55:49
  Eric: But uh, we failed to get the the funds to do this.
• 55:52
  Eric: And spent two years working on this, and what I saw was um a VA who didn't care or didn't want to do any work.
• 56:05
  Eric: Um now, of course, what I'm saying is anecdotal.
• 56:10
  Eric: Um some people have phenomenal uh interactions with the VA and God bless them, but um I saw an organization that um I don't know, just didn't seem to really give a crap.
• 56:27
  Eric: And uh it was really disheartening.
• 56:30
  Eric: And uh we got to the point again with COVID where the training shut down, so there was no way to illustrate this potential for um what I termed immersive prolonged exposure.
• 56:41
  Eric: And my my real argument was it's because prolonged exposure is evidence-based treatment for post-traumatic stress, and it's it's designed to get uh the soldier back to a situation where um they're re-exposed to the trauma so they can confront it, control it, and conquer it.
• 57:02
  Eric: But it's done in a clinical setting, right?
• 57:05
  Eric: So in a psychiatrist, psychologist's office.
• 57:08
  Eric: My argument is let's move the clinical setting to Iraq and Afghanistan.
• 57:14
  Eric: Okay, let's move it out to this training location, and basically it's the next logical step.
• 57:22
  Eric: All right, let's put them back on mission, let's give them a do-over.
• 57:26
  Eric: That's all.
• 57:27
  Eric: Um, so with COVID, that shut down that training.
• 57:30
  Eric: When that training shut down, there was no way to illustrate um the concept, and I gave up.
• 57:38
  Eric: I was so tired and just so beat up from that journey.
• 57:46
  Eric: Uh again, I never wanted to go down that path, but it fell into my lap a few times.
• 57:52
  Eric: Tyler wasn't the only one.
• 57:53
  Eric: And when it keeps falling into your lap, I felt an obligation to pursue it.
• 58:00
  Jeanne: Yeah, it's uh when you explained it to me before when we talked, I was just like fascinated by it.
• 58:04
  Jeanne: And I think it's just such a needed um program, but I can understand.
• 58:11
  Jeanne: Nobody wants to innovate or nobody wants to take on something new.
• 58:14
  Jeanne: Let's just stick with the norm.
• 58:16
  Jeanne: Let's say we're improving the norm, even though it's like baby staffs.
• 58:22
  Jeanne: Maybe they they give people 10 more days of some PTSD training or funding, uh, but not take on anything new.
• 58:31
  Jeanne: That's just too is too much.
• 58:33
  Eric: I have I've haven't seen any changes in the stats, right?
• 58:37
  Eric: So, you know, it's around 22 veterans a day take their lives.
• 58:42
  Jeanne: That's sick.
• 58:44
  Eric: And so, yeah, but you know, look, when they take their lives, that problem goes away.
• 58:49
  Eric: All right, awesome.
• 58:51
  Eric: You know, and again, everything that I'm telling you at this point is now anecdotal, but I interacted with a lot of vets, and many of them said the same thing, and that was I feel the VA wants me to do one of two things go away or die.
• 59:07
  Eric: Again, anecdotal.
• 59:09
  Eric: But if you feel that way, then you know, it might push you in that direction.
• 59:18
  Eric: So, yeah, so that's the that's the uh failing veterans part of the book.
• 59:22
  Eric: Not exactly, not exactly uh a happy few chapters there, but I wanted to illustrate.
• 59:29
  Jeanne: But very um intriguing to know that you've identified something that could help, but then it's also sad that we just you just can't push it through.
• 59:37
  Jeanne: I don't know, private funding had did you try that route, or was it all government funding?
• 59:43
  Eric: So the private funding that was through Washington State University.
• 59:46
  Eric: Uh the way the VA works as far as um looking at uh innovative treatments, uh they Congress appropriates money for them back when I was doing this uh in the uh 2019, 2017 through 19 timeframe.
• 1:00:03
  Eric: Um the VA had close to a billion dollars in research money for things like this.
• 1:00:11
  Eric: The way that the VA operates is that they have what they call intramural research partners.
• 1:00:16
  Eric: So the VA is partnered with research institutions like uh Emory University in uh Georgia, and um that's where they're gonna funnel most of their research projects through.
• 1:00:29
  Eric: Washington State University is not a VA intramural partner.
• 1:00:34
  Eric: And so when the good folks from Washington State came out to Indiana to Muscatatuk to actually see what we were doing, and they said, you know, wow, you really have something here, and they were skeptics.
• 1:00:46
  Eric: They came out to Indiana reluctantly.
• 1:00:49
  Eric: The only reason they came out to Indiana was because the senator's office, Senator Patty Murray, told them to go out.
• 1:00:55
  Eric: Okay.
• 1:00:55
  Eric: And so I had people who were reluctant, and by the way, the the lead researcher's name is Dr.
• 1:01:02
  Eric: Roll, phenomenal guy.
• 1:01:04
  Eric: But and he was honest with me.
• 1:01:06
  Eric: He said, Eric, he said, we came out here and we were like, this is gonna be a waste of time.
• 1:01:10
  Eric: And after the first scenario, the first vignette, he turned to his colleague and he said, Wow, they have something here.
• 1:01:18
  Eric: And again, we're not doing we're not doing therapy, we're doing training, right?
• 1:01:23
  Jeanne: But is that really private funding?
• 1:01:25
  Jeanne: Because it's going from the VA to the partner.
• 1:01:29
  Jeanne: That's still VA money going to the partner.
• 1:01:32
  Eric: Yeah, let's go.
• 1:01:33
  Eric: Talking about corporate people.
• 1:01:35
  Eric: So the VA research money, that's public, right?
• 1:01:39
  Jeanne: Right.
• 1:01:40
  Eric: So because it's again, it's Congress that appropriates that money to go to the VA to then partner with the research institution, intramural research institution.
• 1:01:49
  Eric: Washington state doesn't have that funding stream.
• 1:01:52
  Eric: So they have to go private, all right.
• 1:01:56
  Eric: And so they have to get grant money.
• 1:01:58
  Eric: And Dr.
• 1:01:58
  Eric: Roll left Indiana saying, I'm gonna get you the grant money.
• 1:02:02
  Eric: Okay.
• 1:02:03
  Eric: Phenomenal.
• 1:02:04
  Eric: I don't have to screw with the VA.
• 1:02:05
  Eric: That's awesome.
• 1:02:06
  Jeanne: Okay, I didn't get that connection between the Washington.
• 1:02:09
  Jeanne: I know you did state that now that you said it again.
• 1:02:12
  Eric: Yeah, but then they're not affiliated with the VA.
• 1:02:14
  Eric: And so they're gonna get the money to fund this.
• 1:02:17
  Eric: All right, and so Dr.
• 1:02:18
  Eric: Roll tried hard, and he came back a few months later and said, Eric, um, any type of grant issuing institution, they want to see kind of proof of concept.
• 1:02:30
  Eric: They want to see two rounds of this before they give I don't know where this is coming from, and uh they they want to see two rounds of the um immersive prolonged exposure, and then they'll consider funding.
• 1:02:46
  Eric: Well, you have to keep in mind that what I'm doing again is live interactive immersive theater.
• 1:02:53
  Eric: I have actors.
• 1:02:54
  Jeanne: That's expensive.
• 1:02:56
  Eric: That's exactly right.
• 1:02:56
  Eric: I have actors, I have transportation, I have to get my actors to Indiana, I have to feed people, I have to house people, right?
• 1:03:06
  Eric: I have to pay the National Guard for their resources, the use of their military equipment and their soldiers, and so on.
• 1:03:14
  Eric: Right.
• 1:03:15
  Eric: We're talking about a production.
• 1:03:16
  Eric: So for one iteration, uh looking at about $350,000, that's what I estimated.
• 1:03:24
  Eric: So um I had to come up with $700,000 pretty much out of my own pocket to then hope to get a grant for this.
• 1:03:32
  Eric: So I don't have that type of money.
• 1:03:34
  Eric: Um, and so I couldn't do that.
• 1:03:38
  Eric: Now, you you you'd probably thinking, well, $350,000 to you know work on you know basically um 18 vets at a time, right?
• 1:03:49
  Eric: Because that's what I estimated we can handle about 18 vets at a time.
• 1:03:52
  Eric: That's a lot of money, right?
• 1:03:55
  Eric: But if you look at the overall healthcare costs of a vet with post-traumatic stress over the course of their life, it goes well beyond that $350,000.
• 1:04:09
  Eric: And oh, by the way, we might even save a life or two, or 18 right and so it's a cost-saving measure, and it's also a fraction of what the VA just got allocated for that year to do research.
• 1:04:30
  Eric: The money was there.
• 1:04:32
  Eric: Money was there, all you had to do, VA, was say, let's give it a shot.
• 1:04:40
  Eric: But they wouldn't even come out to Indiana.
• 1:04:43
  Eric: Okay, and so again, it's it's things like that that just are so disheartening.
• 1:04:54
  Eric: Right?
• 1:04:55
  Eric: There is
• 1:04:56
  Jeanne: But I was thinking while you're talking, I'm like, is there another way, uh you know, AI, an AI simulation?
• 1:05:02
  Jeanne: I'm ready for the holodic, I'm sorry.
• 1:05:04
  Jeanne: So you know I keep thinking about that.
• 1:05:07
  Eric: So a number of people have mentioned that even years ago when I was in this, like virtual reality and all that.
• 1:05:14
  Eric: Okay, sure.
• 1:05:15
  Eric: You can recreate Iraq and Afghanistan, you can put guys back in home Vs, virtual reality.
• 1:05:21
  Eric: It's so much different when you're sitting face to face with people speaking in that language.
• 1:05:28
  Eric: All right, that language that you never understood the entire time that you were there, and you have an interpreter sitting next to you interpreting.
• 1:05:36
  Eric: It's different when you can smell each other.
• 1:05:39
  Eric: Right, I get I get that when you feel the heat, when you wake up in the morning tired because you're living out in a fob and a crappy rack, and you're eating you know government food and you're traveling in a Humvee for real.
• 1:05:52
  Eric: Right?
• 1:05:53
  Eric: Yeah, I get it.
• 1:05:55
  Eric: So sure, you can go you can go VR, you can go AI, that's awesome.
• 1:05:59
  Eric: Matter of fact, um immersive troll on exposure, it's open for anybody.
• 1:06:06
  Eric: If you if you want it, take it.
• 1:06:09
  Eric: Because I'm done.
• 1:06:11
  Eric: Okay.
• 1:06:13
  Eric: Take it.
• 1:06:13
  Eric: Run with it.
• 1:06:14
  Eric: I'll give you my white paper.
• 1:06:16
  Eric: Okay.
• 1:06:17
  Eric: If you want to do it VR, if you want to do it AI, if you want to do it like I suggested we do it in real life, awesome. Right.
• 1:06:26
  Jeanne: I hope somebody's out there listening that could do it.
• 1:06:28
  Jeanne: I don't have the knowledge you have.
• 1:06:30
  Jeanne: I just have your book.
• 1:06:32
  Eric: I'm too old and too tired.
• 1:06:34
  Eric: And I've I've been down that road long enough.
• 1:06:37
  Eric: And I just don't I do not want to deal with the people that occupy government offices anymore.
• 1:06:44
  Jeanne: Understood.
• 1:06:46
  Jeanne: Well, let's get moving on.
• 1:06:48
  Jeanne: I I have one more question, then we have to transition to your uh two truths and a lie.
• 1:06:53
  Jeanne: So um well, actually, I had two more, but I do want to say something.
• 1:06:59
  Jeanne: Uh I know you spend your days walking Arlington National Cemetery with small groups telling the stories of the people buried there.
• 1:07:05
  Jeanne: And your book asked um whether America kept its promises to the veterans who came home, not just the ones from Afghanistan, but to all of them that are there.
• 1:07:15
  Jeanne: So, how did these two missions, you know, honoring the dead and fighting for the living become connected for you?
• 1:07:23
  Eric: Uh, well, uh frankly, it depends on my guests.
• 1:07:27
  Eric: And so the reason why I started my tour business of giving tours to Arlington.
• 1:07:31
  Eric: Um, one of my jobs in the Air Force, I was officer in charge for Air Force ceremonies.
• 1:07:36
  Eric: Way back when so I had a responsibility of like writer, producer, director for uh the Air Force bands, the honor guard, chaplaincy, and so on.
• 1:07:45
  Eric: I was responsible for high-level funerals up at Arlington, general officers, repatriations, and astronauts.
• 1:07:53
  Eric: And that's when I fell in love with the cemetery.
• 1:07:55
  Eric: So having worked up there and um having friends interred there as well, uh, that place means a lot to me.
• 1:08:03
  Eric: I love Arlington and I love sharing it with my guests.
• 1:08:06
  Eric: Now my guests come from all different walk walks of life.
• 1:08:10
  Eric: And um some of my guests I have to start at the beginning.
• 1:08:14
  Eric: I have to start uh, you know, what what is the Civil War as an example, because Arlington was founded during the Civil War in 1864, and I actually have to explain the Civil War.
• 1:08:25
  Eric: All right.
• 1:08:26
  Eric: So I know with those guests I can't get too deep in what's going on.
• 1:08:30
  Eric: Okay, I'm going to try to give them a good overview, try to give them a good history lesson, and obviously talk about those people who sacrificed for our country.
• 1:08:39
  Eric: Right.
• 1:08:40
  Eric: Even point out things like Gold Star Mothers.
• 1:08:42
  Eric: Right.
• 1:08:44
  Jeanne: Right.
• 1:08:44
  Jeanne: Um and so are these people that don't know the Civil War are very young or they from other countries?
• 1:08:51
  Eric: Mostly.
• 1:08:52
  Eric: And some are even college graduates.
• 1:08:54
  Eric: Okay, and I'm not I'm not fibbing when I'm saying they haven't ever learned history, okay.
• 1:08:58
  Eric: I'm I'm I'm serious, yeah.
• 1:09:00
  Eric: And so um and so there are individuals in the cemetery that I'll pick out, some I know personally, and others whose stories are so amazing that I have to share them with my guests.
• 1:09:12
  Eric: Uh on the rare occasion that I have the time, and if I have the particular guest, then we will go wherever they want to go in the cemetery.
• 1:09:23
  Eric: And over Memorial Day, I had a beautiful family of nine, three vets within the family.
• 1:09:30
  Eric: And uh this one uh all army vets and this one lady, vet, she worked mortuary affairs in Iraq during second four and so um we went to section sixty and we just went down the road together.
• 1:09:50
  Eric: And she was like, I took care of him, I took care of him, I took care of her, I took care of him, right?
• 1:09:59
  Eric: That meant the most to me, right?
• 1:10:04
  Eric: And that's what I opened myself up to with these tours.
• 1:10:08
  Eric: If you want to go off the beaten path, if you're a vet, you come with me, we'll go off the beaten path.
• 1:10:15
  Eric: Right?
• 1:10:16
  Eric: And you can ask me anything about anything.
• 1:10:19
  Eric: If you want to talk military decision making, if you want to talk commission, if you want to talk politics, I am wide open.
• 1:10:26
  Eric: So this is now my way of interacting with vets.
• 1:10:31
  Eric: Come take a walk with me around the cemetery.
• 1:10:35
  Eric: We'll go visit friends, we'll go visit loved ones, right?
• 1:10:39
  Eric: And you'll get hopefully get a better understanding of your own service by doing so.
• 1:10:46
  Jeanne: Wow.
• 1:10:46
  Jeanne: That's a beautiful sentiment.
• 1:10:49
  Jeanne: And I know it on your website it says um is it a two-hour, three-hour tour, or a I advertise three plus.
• 1:10:59
  Eric: I average four.
• 1:11:01
  Eric: Okay.
• 1:11:02
  Eric: I've done six hours.
• 1:11:05
  Eric: So put on your walking shoes and bring a bottle of water.
• 1:11:08
  Jeanne: And I I know I thought about you a lot this uh recent Memorial Day, because I was like, I'm sure he's there.
• 1:11:15
  Jeanne: They were having the ceremony of the tomb of the unknown soldier, and I was just like, uh, I wonder if he's in the background somewhere.
• 1:11:23
  Eric: Can can I show you something real quick?
• 1:11:25
  Jeanne: Sure.
• 1:11:26
  Eric: So Memorial Day, again down in section 60, where the majority of the Iraq and Afghan vets are interred.
• 1:11:33
  Eric: And you'll see scenes like that.
• 1:11:35
  Eric: I don't know if you can make that out very well.
• 1:11:38
  Jeanne: Yeah, I can see it.
• 1:11:39
  Eric: You see the flowers, yeah, and everything.
• 1:11:42
  Eric: And what I love here is on top of this grave marker, there's a jar of olives, which tells me that this gentleman enjoyed a nice martini.
• 1:11:55
  Eric: Oh okay, again, you're not supposed to do that in Arlington, but you know what?
• 1:12:02
  Eric: Who cares?
• 1:12:03
  Jeanne: Yeah, I didn't know that.
• 1:12:05
  Jeanne: I I wouldn't have guessed the olives were a martini, but that's because I'm a very drinker.
• 1:12:10
  Eric: Yeah, it's uh Chief Warrant Officer 3 in the Army.
• 1:12:13
  Eric: Oh, things like that that um that I that's what I live for nowadays.
• 1:12:19
  Eric: You know, the the book is really again written for the vet so that they have a little understanding of their service in both Iraq and Afghanistan, because I write about my time in in Iraq as well.
• 1:12:32
  Eric: But um I want the vet to understand that they matter.
• 1:12:36
  Eric: Uh they mattered when they were in uniform, they matter now.
• 1:12:41
  Eric: Um and it's it goes beyond thank you for your service, it's thank you for your sacrifice.
• 1:12:48
  Eric: Right, and I want to make that clear to all vets that you sacrificed and you continue to sacrifice right.
• 1:12:56
  Eric: And there are guys out there that know what you have sacrificed, right?
• 1:13:01
  Eric: Hopefully I'm one of that.
• 1:13:03
  Eric: And guys like me, guys who were in charge and had access to power, we also need to be honest with you and say, we failed you.
• 1:13:11
  Eric: I failed you.
• 1:13:13
  Eric: Right?
• 1:13:15
  Eric: And I want you to have a great life.
• 1:13:18
  Eric: You deserve it, you've earned it, you worked for it.
• 1:13:24
  Jeanne: Well wonderful.
• 1:13:25
  Jeanne: I know it's it's almost like at a down point here.
• 1:13:29
  Jeanne: And now I'm gonna twist it and let's go to our next part of the show, which is uh our 2 Truth and a Lie uh segment.
• 1:13:38
  Jeanne: So we can all stop, start wiping our tears away.
• 1:13:43
  Jeanne: All right, so for everybody watching uh and those listening, the way we play this game is uh the guest has provided us with three headlines of things that have happened in his life, unexpected stories.
• 1:13:58
  Jeanne: And we're gonna go through them.
• 1:14:00
  Jeanne: I'll read off all the headlines, and then uh our guest will take us through each one.
• 1:14:04
  Jeanne: Uh actually, I'm gonna guess and which one is the lie, but then he'll take us through each of them and not reveal the lie till the very end.
• 1:14:11
  Jeanne: So let's get going.
• 1:14:14
  Jeanne: This episode is sponsored by Rebel 180, the home of brave pivots and fresh starts.
• 1:14:20
  Jeanne: Rebel 180 is all about helping you rediscover what's possible when you stop settling and start listening to that little tug inside that says, Life can be different.
• 1:14:31
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• 1:14:45
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• 1:15:24
  Jeanne: So the number one story is Eric qualified as a ship's diver while serving on board a fast attack submarine, the USS Sunfish.
• 1:15:35
  Jeanne: Uh and it says SSN 649 for those in the military that wouldn't know what that means.
• 1:15:41
  Jeanne: Um so, and for those that don't, it's a number on the number on the sub.
• 1:15:47
  Jeanne: Okay, so the next one is Eric qualified as a USMC expert, gunner on the 60 millimeter mortar mortar system in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
• 1:15:59
  Jeanne: And I'm familiar with that base.
• 1:16:02
  Jeanne: Um, and number three, Eric was awarded gold spurs and indoctrinated into the order of the combat spur that the what is the one slash one two twenty-first armored cavalry recon U.S.
• 1:16:15
  Jeanne: Army?
• 1:16:15
  Jeanne: I don't I don't know the numbering.
• 1:16:18
  Eric: That's the unit just like the SSN 649 is the whole number of the submarine.
• 1:16:22
  Eric: Yeah, the the CAV unit is the uh the unit that uh awarded me my gold spurs.
• 1:16:29
  Jeanne: Oh, okay.
• 1:16:30
  Jeanne: All right.
• 1:16:30
  Jeanne: I've never seen one slash.
• 1:16:32
  Jeanne: That's like are you one and two twenty-first?
• 1:16:35
  Jeanne: I don't know.
• 1:16:35
  Jeanne: It's like a fraction, it's a very small number.
• 1:16:39
  Eric: Yeah.
• 1:16:40
  Jeanne: Okay, let's see.
• 1:16:41
  Jeanne: Uh well, I know your name.
• 1:16:44
  Jeanne: I'm gonna sketch, I'm gonna guess number two's wrong, but I probably am wrong, but because they all sound very believable.
• 1:16:50
  Jeanne: So take us through each of those.
• 1:16:52
  Jeanne: Uh number one, tell us about being a ship's diver.
• 1:16:56
  Eric: Yeah, so uh so do you want me to tell you which one's the lie?
• 1:17:00
  Jeanne: Not yet, not until the end.
• 1:17:01
  Jeanne: Not till the end.
• 1:17:02
  Jeanne: Tell us the story.
• 1:17:04
  Eric: So so every every submarine has three ship's divers on board, and that is to make sure that if you're in a situation where there's potential hull damage or anything concerning the prop or whatever, um, that they have somebody qualified on board the boat to basically get in the water and figure out what's going on in and around the boat.
• 1:17:28
  Eric: In addition to that, if we're doing any type of swimmer operations, like with SEALs or Army Special Forces, uh, the ship's diver is always part of that.
• 1:17:38
  Eric: So you're in the lockout chamber, right?
• 1:17:42
  Eric: So you're responsible for the pressurization of the chamber and all that.
• 1:17:46
  Eric: So when you do undo the the hatch that opens up to the ocean, you don't have the ocean flooding in, you're equalizing pressure and all that.
• 1:17:55
  Eric: So you're responsible for that.
• 1:17:57
  Eric: Um so do you want any more information on that?
• 1:18:02
  Eric: Or are you good with that?
• 1:18:04
  Jeanne: Um well no, you qualify as a ship diver, but I can't remember what a fast attack is.
• 1:18:12
  Jeanne: So there are two basics all going through the water, kind of I thought they were all right.
• 1:18:16
  Eric: Yeah, so there's two basic types of submarines.
• 1:18:18
  Eric: There's there's a fast attack and there's a boomer or ballistic missile submarine.
• 1:18:24
  Eric: So okay.
• 1:18:25
  Eric: And fast attack boat basic job is to hunt Soviet ballistic when back in the day, Soviet ballistic missile submarines.
• 1:18:32
  Eric: Right?
• 1:18:33
  Eric: So you've seen The Hunt for Red October?
• 1:18:35
  Jeanne: Yes.
• 1:18:35
  Eric: Yeah, so Red October is a ballistic missile submarine.
• 1:18:38
  Eric: The um the Los Angeles class submarine that was uh looking, you know, to hunt the Red October, that's a fast attack boat.
• 1:18:47
  Eric: Right.
• 1:18:48
  Eric: Okay.
• 1:18:48
  Eric: All right.
• 1:18:50
  Jeanne: Does it carry nuclear?
• 1:18:51
  Eric: This is a non-nuclear sub uh it has the capability to carry nuclear weapons, okay, but not intercontinental ballistic.
• 1:19:01
  Eric: Oh, okay.
• 1:19:01
  Jeanne: Yeah, all right.
• 1:19:02
  Eric: More like tactical nukes.
• 1:19:04
  Eric: Yeah.
• 1:19:05
  Eric: I can neither confirm nor deny.
• 1:19:09
  Jeanne: Well, yeah, I know.
• 1:19:11
  Jeanne: They would never tell me what was going on in the naval weapon station when I was stationed there.
• 1:19:15
  Jeanne: I knew things were coming in and going out.
• 1:19:18
  Jeanne: Um, all right, number two, tell us about that one.
• 1:19:22
  Eric: Uh qualified as a USMC expert gunner, 60 millim water system, cap plus.
• 1:19:28
  Eric: So I briefly mentioned I was a CB.
• 1:19:31
  Eric: Right?
• 1:19:32
  Jeanne: Oh, you did say that.
• 1:19:33
  Eric: Oh, I might have got this one right.
• 1:19:35
  Eric: There are no there are no submarines.
• 1:19:38
  Eric: Right?
• 1:19:39
  Eric: And so uh they had to do something with me.
• 1:19:43
  Eric: And so um wound up joining a CB unit uh out of Jacksonville, Florida, our in MCB 14 at Jacksonville.
• 1:19:55
  Jeanne: Oh, my neck of the woods, okay.
• 1:19:58
  Eric: And um, this is when I was drilling out of Savannah, and for one uh active duty for training or two weeks when you go active duty, went up to Camp Lejeune, and I went through marine 60 millimeter mortar school and qualified as an expert gunner on the mortar system.
• 1:20:19
  Eric: Hmm.
• 1:20:21
  Jeanne: Wow.
• 1:20:22
  Jeanne: So what I said at the beginning of this was you were uh multi-lives in one uniform.
• 1:20:31
  Eric: Well, a couple uniforms, yeah.
• 1:20:33
  Jeanne: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:20:34
  Jeanne: All right, so what about number three?
• 1:20:37
  Eric: Uh number three, Eric was awarded gold spurs, indoctrinated to the order of the combat spur.
• 1:20:42
  Eric: So um sounds like a cowboy.
• 1:20:46
  Jeanne: But you said armored cavalry.
• 1:20:48
  Eric: Yeah, so um in the army, if you're in a cavalry unit, we still have cavalry units, used to be horses, right?
• 1:20:58
  Eric: I was big.
• 1:20:59
  Eric: That was, you know, they were able to maneuver.
• 1:21:01
  Eric: Um, and so you have different types of cavalry units in the army.
• 1:21:06
  Eric: And so when I was in Afghanistan, uh we did mounted missions.
• 1:21:10
  Eric: We did missions on horseback.
• 1:21:12
  Eric: And since we're in a combat environment and being on a horse right in a combat environment, the good folks at the first of the 221st, I believe that's how you pronounce it, uh, awarded me and a number of my guys on my team gold spurs.
• 1:21:34
  Eric: So I get to wear gold spurs on my Air Force uniform with submarine dolphins.
• 1:21:42
  Jeanne: That is pretty wild.
• 1:21:44
  Jeanne: Oh.
• 1:21:44
  Jeanne: Well, I do think there's horses in Afghanistan.
• 1:21:48
  Jeanne: You said Afghanistan, right?
• 1:21:49
  Jeanne: This happened there.
• 1:21:51
  Eric: Yeah.
• 1:21:52
  Jeanne: Yeah, I know there's horses there because they don't have a lot of super transportation.
• 1:21:56
  Jeanne: Uh but I I and you were working with the army.
• 1:22:01
  Jeanne: I don't know.
• 1:22:01
  Jeanne: Which one's the lie?
• 1:22:03
  Eric: Well, you gotta guess, right?
• 1:22:04
  Jeanne: I already guessed who was it?
• 1:22:08
  Eric: Right.
• 1:22:08
  Eric: That's right.
• 1:22:09
  Jeanne: Yeah, I didn't think you were like a marine thing getting thrown in with the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy.
• 1:22:15
  Eric: I thought it seemed out of place.
• 1:22:17
  Eric: Uh it's actually the first one is the lie.
• 1:22:20
  Jeanne: Really?
• 1:22:21
  Eric: Yep.
• 1:22:21
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 1:22:22
  Eric: So no.
• 1:22:23
  Eric: Never went to dive.
• 1:22:24
  Jeanne: You weren't the ship's diver.
• 1:22:26
  Eric: Never went to dive school.
• 1:22:27
  Eric: And we do carry divers on board, right?
• 1:22:29
  Eric: That's an extra duty.
• 1:22:30
  Eric: Yeah.
• 1:22:30
  Eric: But the other two are accurate.
• 1:22:33
  Jeanne: Oh, wow.
• 1:22:34
  Jeanne: Very good.
• 1:22:35
  Jeanne: That's interesting.
• 1:22:36
  Eric: And and the third one, you could have figured out by the book, because that's me on the pony right there.
• 1:22:41
  Jeanne: Oh, yeah.
• 1:22:43
  Jeanne: We got a matching one.
• 1:22:46
  Eric: Yeah.
• 1:22:48
  Jeanne: Yeah, that's pretty cool.
• 1:22:49
  Eric: Yeah.
• 1:22:50
  Jeanne: Well, that's interesting.
• 1:22:51
  Jeanne: I bought that ship's diver thing.
• 1:22:53
  Jeanne: I don't know why.
• 1:22:55
  Eric: It makes sense.
• 1:22:56
  Eric: I was on a submarine.
• 1:22:57
  Eric: You know that.
• 1:22:58
  Eric: There you go.
• 1:22:59
  Jeanne: Well, those of you listening, I know this has been such an interesting conversation.
• 1:23:03
  Jeanne: I know you're going to want to get in touch with Eric.
• 1:23:05
  Jeanne: So um, I want to let you know how you can do that.
• 1:23:08
  Jeanne: And he mentioned earlier a quote, and this is what I put on your slide.
• 1:23:16
  Jeanne: Um, that's a quote that means something to you, uh, special to you, and you said that earlier.
• 1:23:22
  Jeanne: Nobody cares what you know until they know you care.
• 1:23:25
  Jeanne: Anything else to say about that?
• 1:23:29
  Eric: No, I I think you know, I mentioned how in Afghanistan they're a high context society and they can read you like a book, even though they may not know how to read.
• 1:23:39
  Eric: Um, but I think it's true just across the board.
• 1:23:42
  Eric: We're living in a time where there are so many words out there and so much hyperbole, so much kind of constructed in order to achieve uh you know some type of personal uh objective and uh maybe at the sacrifice of others.
• 1:23:58
  Eric: So um one of my big thing in the book is um is how to figure out how to a leader, a leader who cares, how to figure out if they care.
• 1:24:13
  Eric: And um can I say a bad word on your podcast?
• 1:24:18
  Jeanne: Hey, I don't know.
• 1:24:18
  Jeanne: Go ahead.
• 1:24:20
  Eric: Okay, I won't say it.
• 1:24:21
  Jeanne: I'll I'll I was in the Navy, right?
• 1:24:22
  Jeanne: I heard a lot of them.
• 1:24:23
  Eric: Um I'm gonna say just give a crap.
• 1:24:27
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 1:24:28
  Eric: Okay.
• 1:24:28
  Eric: Because you're true.
• 1:24:31
  Jeanne: Somebody said on the show the other day when I was recording uh something about don't give two S S words.
• 1:24:39
  Jeanne: And I was like, what it's a second S word, and he's like a couple of then he said it.
• 1:24:45
  Jeanne: I'm sorry.
• 1:24:46
  Jeanne: It made me laugh when you said what can I say a bad word?
• 1:24:49
  Jeanne: I think you were gonna say the same thing.
• 1:24:52
  Eric: I'm gonna just give a crap.
• 1:24:54
  Eric: Give a crap.
• 1:24:56
  Eric: Because your troops know if you don't, right?
• 1:24:59
  Eric: And so again, I could be the smartest guy in the room.
• 1:25:03
  Eric: That's great.
• 1:25:05
  Eric: Congratulations, okay?
• 1:25:07
  Eric: But if I don't care, then nobody's gonna listen to me.
• 1:25:11
  Eric: So again, that that quote really um paid dividends in Afghanistan.
• 1:25:18
  Eric: Nobody cares what you know until they know that you care.
• 1:25:20
  Eric: But I think it also pays dividends in life.
• 1:25:23
  Eric: That's true, I think.
• 1:25:28
  Jeanne: So there's other links here, and um, you guys can reach Eric at his LinkedIn address here.
• 1:25:34
  Jeanne: Um, there's a website that you should go out and look for his book.
• 1:25:37
  Jeanne: Um, and his publishing site is the same, but I wanted to mark them as different, you know, just so you know.
• 1:25:43
  Jeanne: Um you need to go there.
• 1:25:46
  Jeanne: And so Eric's call to action is um asking you to visit vigilanttours.com where he provides personalized tools of tours of Arlington National Cemetery and also checking out his book.
• 1:25:59
  Jeanne: Um, it's a really good book.
• 1:26:01
  Jeanne: I I'm still working on it.
• 1:26:03
  Jeanne: It's very, very intense and very good, though.
• 1:26:07
  Jeanne: I mean, it does show that you care.
• 1:26:09
  Jeanne: It really does.
• 1:26:10
  Jeanne: And Eric, um, I really appreciate you being on the show today and spending time with us.
• 1:26:16
  Jeanne: I I think this has been an excellent episode.
• 1:26:19
  Jeanne: And I for those listening, I hope you will tune in again next week for another great guest.
• 1:26:25
  Jeanne: And until then, this is Jeanne, your Admiral of the Unexpected.
• 1:26:29
  Jeanne: Hey, don't say anything, Lieutenant Colonel.
• 1:26:31
  Jeanne: I'm a pirate also, so I can promote myself.
• 1:26:34
  Jeanne: I'm the Admiral of the Unexpected, and I wish you all smooth sailing.
• 1:26:38
  Jeanne: Thank you very much, Eric.
• 1:26:40
  Jeanne: Goodbye.
• 1:26:41
  Eric: It's my pleasure.
• 1:26:42
  Eric: Thank you.
• 1:26:44
  Jeanne: Thanks for joining me on Project Candor, where the doors are open, the stories are unexpected, and the treasure is always real.
• 1:26:51
  Jeanne: If today's episode made you laugh or think, follow the show and share it with your crew.
• 1:26:57
  Jeanne: Otherwise, I might just make you swab the deck.
• 1:27:00
  Jeanne: I'm Jeanne Andersen, your Admiral of the Unexpected.
• 1:27:04
  Jeanne: See you on the next voyage.