Latest / Unleashing Intuition Secrets / Military Combat Veteran & Paratrooper Dr. Chase Spears on Progressive Ideological Destruction of the U.S. Military, COVID Mandates & Psychological Warfare
Transcript
- 0:00Hello, everyone.
- 0:01It's Michael Jaco with Unleashing Intuition Secrets.
- 0:04We have Chase Spears with us today, a combat veteran like myself, and
- 0:08it's been-- it's an honor to have a combat veteran on to talk about, very
- 0:13insightful information that we all need.
- 0:15We're gonna give you his bio, and then we're gonna t- jump into some very
- 0:18interesting topics after we talk about a little, we kick a- kick it back and
- 0:22forth, some of our experience overseas.
- 0:24Chase Spears is a public intellectual, writer, and host of the "Finding
- 0:28Your Spine," which is great.
- 0:31I looked that over, Chase.
- 0:32That's good job over there.
- 0:33Podcast at the Herzog Foundation.
- 0:36A combat veteran and paratrooper, he served 20 years as a US Army public
- 0:41affairs officer before turning down promotion to lieutenant colonel
- 0:46as major promotable, believing he could do-- he could be- he could
- 0:50better defend the nation freed from the cultural restrictions
- 0:53placed on military communications.
- 0:56I agree with that completely.
- 0:57So his career spanned enlisted service through elite roles at the 55th Combat
- 1:03Camera Company, 4th Brigade Airborne, 25th Infantry Division, US Army Alaska
- 1:09headquarters, and Fort Leavenworth's Mission Command Training Program.
- 1:13Deployments included Kuwait, a combat tour in Afghanistan, and multinational
- 1:18training exercises in Canada, Mongolia, Jordan, and Australia.
- 1:24Passionate about military constitutional accountability, he's widely published
- 1:28in The American Mind Real Clear Defense, The Washington Post, and
- 1:33Red State, and has provided expert commentary to News Nation, The Gateway
- 1:38Pundit, and American Family News.
- 1:42Chase is married to his college sweetheart, Laurie, and they reside in
- 1:46Lansing, Kansas, with their five children.
- 1:50Dr. Chase Spears, thanks for coming on.
- 1:52Thank you for your service and thank you for your continued service.
- 1:55Mike, it's great to be with you, and I'm really excited about the chance to
- 1:58actually get to talk through these things with a, another combat vet so we'll
- 2:01know exactly where we're coming from.
- 2:03That's awesome.
- 2:04Yeah that's true.
- 2:06Now you're let's go over your experience.
- 2:08You came in as enlisted, that's pretty impressive, and made it
- 2:10all the way up to major, were ready to be a lieutenant colonel.
- 2:13Wow.
- 2:13And you gave that up to come out and talk about all the issues and problems.
- 2:17That's fantastic.
- 2:19Yeah, the plan was never to actually commission as an officer.
- 2:21The plan was initially to come in, do one four-year enlistment.
- 2:26And I came in, enlisted, actually very nearly completed on my master's degree.
- 2:30Wow.
- 2:31And so I had a lot of friends and family members who were
- 2:33like, "You're insane, dude.
- 2:34Why wouldn't you commission?" And it was a very simple purpose.
- 2:37I wanted to be in public affairs.
- 2:39I wanted to be a military communicator.
- 2:42And in the Army, you can't commission into that.
- 2:45You have to enlist into it, and then if you want to transition
- 2:48into it later as an officer, you have to do that later in career.
- 2:52And I, so I knew if I commissioned, I'm needed the Army, they could
- 2:55put me anywhere that they want.
- 2:58And pretty much anywhere that they want was probably not what I was
- 3:02looking to do at that point in time.
- 3:03So I thought I was gonna do one four-year tour as an enlisted public
- 3:07affairs guy, because as, when, as when you enlist, you choose your job.
- 3:11That's in your contract.
- 3:12It's not needs of the service.
- 3:13It's this is what I signed up for.
- 3:16And my very first deployment in Kuwait, I'll never forget, my brigade commander
- 3:20caught me in line at the dining facility.
- 3:23Did, have you ever been on Camp Arifjan in Kuwait?
- 3:25I don't think, no not that one.
- 3:27Okay.
- 3:28So I was there on Camp Arifjan.
- 3:29It's a big base.
- 3:30And we're standing in line, they got the hand wash stations right outside the
- 3:34front door of all the dining halls in that- Yep ... that part of the world.
- 3:38And my brigade c- I'm over there this particular day by myself.
- 3:42Just work schedule worked out where the, I didn't have a battle buddy to go
- 3:46with, so I'm just over there by myself.
- 3:47My brigade commander spots me, and he says, "Spears, who are you sitting
- 3:50with?" I said, "By myself, sir. No one." He said, "You're sitting with
- 3:54me." And I'm like, "Yes, sir." E4 to O6.
- 3:58And he proceeded over the course of that lunch to make it abundantly clear to me
- 4:04that he expected to receive an application for Officer Candidate School from me.
- 4:08Nice.
- 4:08And so he got it, and the rest is history.
- 4:11What, what planned, what was planned as a four-year enlisted adventure
- 4:15turned into a 20-year career.
- 4:18Wow, that's beautiful.
- 4:20And I was kinda like that.
- 4:21I didn't have a career path that I just wanted to come in and play and, explore
- 4:25the world be a Navy SEAL and have fun.
- 4:27But throughout my whole career, all the way up until the end, I
- 4:30was always approached that you should, you need to be an officer.
- 4:33And in fact, there, there's one time it's "You're going to go to the Naval Academy,"
- 4:36and I was like no, sir." So I was like I want to experience in that," so it was
- 4:42that's a lot of, that's a lot of work to become an officer, I can tell you.
- 4:45It was easy being an enlisted guy.
- 4:47But once you go in to become an officer you take on a lot of responsibility.
- 4:52Now I started to get that as a senior enlisted, but the
- 4:54officer corps is fantastic.
- 4:56So I really salute you for doing that.
- 4:58Ha- and having that kind of as your goal and you reached your goal
- 5:01and you I love that So you had a little combat action in Afghanistan.
- 5:05What part of Afghanistan?
- 5:07I was in Khost Province our regional command east from 2011 through 2012.
- 5:13I was personally stationed on Forward Operating Base Salerno
- 5:16which is in Khost Province, sits up on a hill overlooking Khost.
- 5:20Yeah.
- 5:20Spelled K-H-O-S-T for anyone who may be less familiar with that area.
- 5:25And and very close to Pakistan.
- 5:27As a matter of fact, during the winter months when the air, when it was cold,
- 5:30and that's a nor- northern latitude, so it gets cold out there wintertime and the
- 5:34air doesn't hold as much moisture you can actually see the mountains of Pakistan,
- 5:39the snow caps not too far in the distance.
- 5:42So we were in a reasonably kinetic area.
- 5:44Yeah ... there, as a matter of fact, Forward Operating Base Salerno,
- 5:47its nickname was Rocket City.
- 5:49Yeah.
- 5:50A well-earned distinction.
- 5:52And as a matter of fact, when I was getting out of the Army and going to see
- 5:56some of the medical providers who just evaluate your physical condition on the
- 6:00way out, comparing it to when you came in one of the medical providers that
- 6:04I met with, he was looking at my file.
- 6:07I remember sitting there in his office, and I can tell he's a veteran
- 6:10'cause he's got some he's got a lot of Navy stuff actually on his wall.
- 6:13And I was like this is cool.
- 6:14I've never expected I'd be able to, just be in an office with a veteran
- 6:18who's now a civilian medical provider."
- 6:19So I just thought it was cool.
- 6:21And he's look- he's sitting there behind his desk flipping through my
- 6:24file, and he says, "Salerno, huh?" I'm like, "Yeah, you know of it?" 'Cause
- 6:29I'm looking at Navy stuff on the wall.
- 6:30He's "Oh, I know Salerno well." And yeah.
- 6:33Oh, nice.
- 6:33His stories matched mine.
- 6:36Fantastic.
- 6:38And Khost, that was we, when I was working in Pakistan for the CIA we had
- 6:41a lot of people that were coming over, giving us intel and so forth that were
- 6:45former and still may be terrorists.
- 6:48And they talked about, a lot about Khost.
- 6:50And the doctor that we started talking to that eventually led us
- 6:54to Osama bin Laden he worked on people that came out from Khost.
- 6:58So that was a very hot area.
- 7:00So good for you to be in that area and survive it,
- 7:03yeah.
- 7:03We were fortunate.
- 7:04We lost a total of nine members of our brigade on that tour.
- 7:08Oh.
- 7:08Yeah ... and I was the public affairs officer, so I had
- 7:10to write the death releases.
- 7:12Oh.
- 7:12And so you just, that, those were the worst days.
- 7:15Those were- I bet ... the absolute worst days.
- 7:17But but with that said a brigade of roughly 3,500, every life lost is a
- 7:22tragedy, but man I think how fortunate we were at the same time- Yeah
- 7:27... because, 'cause it was a hot area.
- 7:29And and I really I said on the record to The New York Times while
- 7:33we were there, I said, I don't take for granted the power of prayer."
- 7:36And they put that in the story, and I was like, "Oh yeah I'm sure
- 7:38someone's gonna think I'm some, whack-a-doodle." I didn't care 'cause
- 7:41I believed it then, I believe it now.
- 7:43Yeah.
- 7:45It's a tough life.
- 7:46And I lost some friends in Iraq and and Benghazi.
- 7:50We- Yeah
- 7:50we continue on, and honor those that have fallen.
- 7:54And another thing that we do, we continue on and bring information
- 7:57to everyone out there so they can see that it's not all, perfect.
- 8:03Just we're talking, everybody's like probably, "Hoo Yah, great for you guys.
- 8:07Ooh-ah." And that's great.
- 8:08We love that.
- 8:09We love the appreciation.
- 8:11That's not why we served.
- 8:12Why we served is for our country, for God, our families, and our country.
- 8:16There, there's definitely some issues, and that's why you got
- 8:19out to talk about some of those.
- 8:20Now, I looked over your s- your your stuff, and my God you're just
- 8:24crushing the narrative on this.
- 8:26I just love it.
- 8:27One of the things that interview topics that, that I'm looking at is military
- 8:30institutional capture and reform.
- 8:33And one of the first sentences is, "Progressive ideology's
- 8:37capture of the US military under the Obama-Biden administrations,
- 8:41including DEI policies that erode readiness and traditional values."
- 8:47So you, you were seeing this firsthand, as I was.
- 8:50Even when I was out, worked for the CIA, I saw a lot of this stuff coming
- 8:53in what are your thoughts on that?
- 8:57The military, like every other institution, naturally tries to
- 9:01drift left just because it's made up of human beings, and that's just
- 9:04the way that all institutions are.
- 9:06And those who stay grounded, those that stay rooted, they do so because
- 9:10there are strong leaders and strong stakeholders who refuse to give up
- 9:16the lines, and they're always pulling, and they're always re-hammering.
- 9:18They're always pulling, they're always re-hammering, they're always re-grounding.
- 9:22And the military has been one of those honor institutions.
- 9:26And we have this tradition, this progressive tradition for the last
- 9:29century called the progressive march through the institutions.
- 9:33And what that means is what you cannot accomplish by the ballot box, what
- 9:38you cannot accomplish legislatively you spread through the institutions:
- 9:44corporate institutions, religious institutions, governmental institutions.
- 9:49And that's the way progressives have worked to try to capture the US.
- 9:54A- And make no mistake about it, prog- the same progressive spirit that made
- 9:59the old Russia into the USSR, that made the old China into the CCP the,
- 10:05at, that same spirit that overthrows governments and bloody revolutions and
- 10:10brings in totalitarian regimes, those same actors, they want to do the same
- 10:14thing with the United States of America.
- 10:16But they knew we're a differ- different people of different
- 10:19spirit, of different thought, of different culture, of religious
- 10:22grounding, and a very open society, and so they went at the progressive
- 10:28march through the institutions.
- 10:30And one by one, they have fallen in the United States.
- 10:34But the military was one of those last few that stood-
- 10:39That would push back and that would hold to a basic conservative reference point,
- 10:44not because of domestic politics, but because in order to protect something,
- 10:52you have to have a desire to conserve it, to defend it, to perpetuate it.
- 10:59No man dies for a lie.
- 11:01No man or woman dies for something they do not believe in.
- 11:05And so thus the military w- was staffed by people who primarily believed in
- 11:10the founding values of the nation.
- 11:12And so the military was very good at, ev- at holding off against a lot of the
- 11:17progressive moves to try to flip it.
- 11:19And it's not to say it held off perfectly.
- 11:22There were a lot of intrusions.
- 11:23Even when I joined in '03, I could see some things.
- 11:26I'm sure you did as well during your career.
- 11:29But in large part, it was still a place where you could hold to basic traditional
- 11:35worldview and not be scandalized for it, because it was understood that
- 11:39worldview is what we're defending Because that is absolutely congruent
- 11:43with the founding and perpetuation of the United States of America.
- 11:46And Barack Obama recognized that the military was something that
- 11:49was going to have to be flipped.
- 11:51And he worked aggressively to push progressive doctrines
- 11:55and ideologies into the ranks.
- 11:57He understood that personnel is policy, and he moved out the last
- 12:03bastion of senior officers who were willing to stand against progressive
- 12:07moves, progressive revolutionary moves, and made it abundantly clear
- 12:12to the Force, "If you want promotion, this is the way we're going.
- 12:15Get on board or retire.
- 12:17Those are your two options." And those who would not get on board retired quietly.
- 12:22Those who wanted to continue getting promoted, they stayed in and they adopted
- 12:26those canons, and now we're 20 years later a- and we're getting the fruits of that.
- 12:31And the real watershed moment was 2010 with the overturn of
- 12:34the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.
- 12:36And again, that had nothing to do with readiness.
- 12:38That had nothing to do with fairness.
- 12:39That had nothing to do with just letting patriots serve.
- 12:43That had everything d- to do with kicking down a major wall within the institution-
- 12:49... That, that held, that helped to hold the institution in place.
- 12:53Because when that wall fell, all of a sudden we were told openly, "You can't
- 12:58openly say that a family is just a man and a woman in a union before God.
- 13:04A family can be whatever the progressives tell you the family is." When you
- 13:09in- introduce that into the military and you're told, "Get on board with
- 13:13this or get out," what does that do?
- 13:15It affected esprit de corps.
- 13:16A lot of the great people got out.
- 13:18A lot of the good people who stayed in got quiet because
- 13:20they didn't wanna be persecuted.
- 13:22I felt a lot of that pressure as well, and that was really the big turning point.
- 13:27Of course, then the Biden administration really accelerated it to the point
- 13:31that when I got out in 2023, I was surveying the landscape, looking
- 13:36around, and I did not recognize the Force that I had joined 20 years later.
- 13:42It looked nothing like what I joined.
- 13:45It felt nothing like what I joined.
- 13:47And it was disturbing because I want to support it.
- 13:51I want to be a cheerleader for it.
- 13:52I was a spokesman for many years.
- 13:55But at the same time, I'm- that's amazing, the the historical perspective,
- 13:58I love that, of how humanity naturally moves to progressive ideals.
- 14:04Why is that?
- 14:06It's a sin nature problem.
- 14:08It's just the way it is.
- 14:09Hu- human beings inevitably, we as individuals even Christians you know-
- 14:15we are always struggling with our sin.
- 14:17And lo- look in Genesis, back to the Tower of Babel.
- 14:21Anytime you get large groups of people together, they tend to begin
- 14:26believing that they are the reason that there is strength, they are the
- 14:30reason there is unity, they are the reason that anything can be done.
- 14:33And Albert Mohler ma- a wonderful theologian and cultural commentator,
- 14:38says it this way "The closer you get to a coast a city or a university, the
- 14:43farther you get away from the land, and therefore the more, more progressive
- 14:46you tend to be." And and so anytime you get a large grouping of people
- 14:51together, inevitably the winds will try to pull those people to the left.
- 14:56That's just the sea in which we swim.
- 15:00And one person well-grounded in scripture can hold, rooted in a strong church
- 15:05can hold pretty well to the truth.
- 15:08But you get a body, a collective of people together around any kind of mission that's
- 15:16not just holding to the truth, and just gravity naturally pulls them that way.
- 15:20And we see it in all institutions.
- 15:22I'm not Baptist, but even look at the Southern Baptist Convention right now
- 15:25they are very much in a tug of war.
- 15:27Which direction is that institution going to go?
- 15:32There is a natural drift to the left, and there are- Wow ... there's
- 15:36an army of conservatives fighting.
- 15:38They're it's a ship in a storm, and they're fighting to trim the sails
- 15:42and to keep it on course but the winds are blowing another direction.
- 15:45A- and so will they be able to hold off?
- 15:47I don't know.
- 15:47And so we just se- we see this historically and I just happened
- 15:51to live through watching that kind of major turning point in the Army.
- 15:55Brilliant, Dr. Chase.
- 15:56You've definitely earned your PhD in leadership communication back in 2024.
- 16:01So wow very impressive.
- 16:03Now, warning signs.
- 16:05Warning signs are there.
- 16:06I had noticed them before I got out, and then while I was out and working
- 16:09with some of the guys, while I was in the CIA, 'cause we were working to
- 16:12basically take down Osama bin Laden.
- 16:15And warning signs of a captured military turning into an instrument of tyranny.
- 16:22Now, we kinda saw a little bit of that actually a lot of that during Biden's
- 16:26administration- ... 'cause they couldn't get enough people, or at least they
- 16:29said they couldn't get enough people.
- 16:31There wasn't enough qualified people to enlist in the Army anymore.
- 16:34So I was like, "Ah," or the military.
- 16:36I was like, "I don't think that's the reason.
- 16:39I think the people are like- Shying away from going into the military
- 16:42after all the craziness with the COVID vaccination scam and all that stuff.
- 16:46So what are your thing, what are your comments on that?
- 16:50The tyranny.
- 16:51Have we-- do you think that we're starting to turn that back around now?
- 16:56I do think there are a lot of strong moves being made to turn
- 16:59it back, and the temperature has definitely been taken down.
- 17:02And I give a lot of credit to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and some of the
- 17:06folks that he has brought in on that.
- 17:07I think they've done yeoman's work on that.
- 17:11Let's rewind the tape a little bit.
- 17:12The Biden administration flat out made war on America's patriots-
- 17:16Yeah ... in every avenue they could.
- 17:17They did it in the military.
- 17:18They did it in the civic realm.
- 17:19They were arresting nuns.
- 17:21They were-- if you sat peacefully in front of a pro-life clinic,
- 17:24they were throwing you in jail.
- 17:25It was just-- And we saw the Justice Department release a report just
- 17:29in the last few days on this very topic, demonstrating in writing,
- 17:34in black and white, here are the receipts of how the J- of how the old
- 17:38Justice Department was weaponized.
- 17:40So things that, people like us were assured were just rumors.
- 17:44Here are the receipts.
- 17:45And it kinda goes back to the old saying of what's conspiracy theory
- 17:49difference between that and reality.
- 17:51Fi- In these days it's about five minutes.
- 17:53And so the-- we felt that very much in the military.
- 17:57We really had kinda three major things going against us in the
- 18:00military under the Biden regime.
- 18:02The very first was his choice of Secretary of Defense, which was Lloyd Austin.
- 18:08And for those who may be less familiar with who he was, Lloyd Austin was a
- 18:13Black man, is a Black man, I should say, rose to the rank of four-star
- 18:18general, which is the highest rank you can achieve in the U.S. military today.
- 18:24He he retired as the commander of U.S. Central Command, which is the combatant
- 18:29command responsible for all warfare happening across the Middle East.
- 18:33And in terms of pecking order, it's really the senior combatant command
- 18:38in the U.S. now Department of War.
- 18:41And so it is no small perch.
- 18:44One does not get to be the commander-in-chief of U.S.
- 18:47Central Command by being discriminated against by being downtrodden.
- 18:53One gets there because they have been advanced, and they have been
- 18:56able-- they've been pushed to the top of the spire, if you will.
- 19:00And that's where Lloyd Austin retired from as a four-star general.
- 19:04But then when he was brought back as a civilian to be the Secretary of
- 19:07Defense, his first action was to say the military is an extremist organization,
- 19:13it is full of extremists, and we need this long-term extremism stand down.
- 19:18And imagine what that was like for morale To be told you're-- we believe we're
- 19:24serving in an honor-bound institution, and to have your secretary of defense,
- 19:28a retired four-star general, come in and say, "Oh, it's an extremist
- 19:33organization." Apparently it wasn't extremist enough to stop him from- Agreed
- 19:38becoming a four-star and being given command of the senior US
- 19:42combatant command, one of the most powerful or- instruments of military
- 19:47power on the planet, arguably.
- 19:50And that-- we had that one thing from the get-go.
- 19:53It was just known that our secretary of defense was on board with the
- 19:57Biden administration's war on the patriots in the military.
- 20:01And that was really a front for trying to make things uncomfortable
- 20:05for conservatives so we would self-select our way on out.
- 20:09The second thing you had was the COVID mandate, which was illegal,
- 20:14immoral, unconstitutional.
- 20:16I cannot say enough bad things about it.
- 20:18It hurt- Thank you.
- 20:19I agree.
- 20:19Yeah
- 20:20... it hurt people.
- 20:21It put people- Yeah ... in impossible positions.
- 20:23People literally died.
- 20:25There are many with li- with vaccine injury, vaccine.
- 20:28It's not a vaccine.
- 20:29But I it's just these terms are what they are.
- 20:33With injuries- Yeah ... there are people with injuries from this thing
- 20:36who are military members who will never be physically whole, ever again.
- 20:40So that was the second thing.
- 20:41The
- 20:42third thing was the- So on, on those lines, Senator Johnson did a special
- 20:45report on that, and the numbers were staggering after- ... the vaccination,
- 20:50what happened to the military members, and they had a long list of everything.
- 20:54Even women, having all issues, losing their babies and all kind of crazy stuff.
- 20:59What did the military do?
- 21:01They didn't do, "Oh, thank you for letting us know that." They went in
- 21:04and shut all that down So all that information they just stopped that
- 21:08information from coming out after that.
- 21:10Wow.
- 21:10Unbelievable
- 21:11They didn't wanna talk about it.
- 21:12And I'll tell you, Michael I remember back before the the, c- I'm going to call it
- 21:18the shot because it was not a vaccine.
- 21:20Before the shot was an actual requirement, when it was allegedly voluntary-
- 21:24... I could see the, which way the wind was blowing on this, and I knew they were
- 21:28going to make it ma- mandatory because it was a politically directed thing.
- 21:32We all could see it clear as day.
- 21:35And so I went over to the hospital on Fort Leavenworth and went upstairs to talk to
- 21:39one of the nurses and just ask, "Hey, I don't know how I feel about this thing.
- 21:43I have a lot of questions.
- 21:45I'm not a medical scientist, but I am a doctoral candidate, so I know
- 21:48how to read research and I know how this stuff, the basic mechanics
- 21:53of how-" ... "this stuff works.
- 21:55And and I have some concerns, and I'd just like to figure out that if
- 21:59my concerns rise to the point that when this is mandatory that I want
- 22:03to request an exemption, what do you think that process will look like,
- 22:07just so I can walk in knowledgeably?"
- 22:09And she was pissed at me.
- 22:10She said, "Oh, there will be no exemptions.
- 22:13Eh, everyone's going to-" oh ... "take this." And a- it was just like I
- 22:16was, like how dare I come up and ask a medical professional a, a
- 22:22question about a medicinal topic.
- 22:25It was very clear that, that- ... this isn't up for discussion.
- 22:28I knew people who, again, when this was voluntary who were told,
- 22:33"If you don't take this, you have to show up and get a memorandum of
- 22:37counseling written to document-" Yeah
- 22:40"your objection to it." And again, that was to pressure people.
- 22:43It was to single people out- Wow ... while this is allegedly voluntary.
- 22:47And so one thing I want to drive home to your listeners, and I say it to
- 22:50everyone who will listen, this wasn't just any regular shot requirement.
- 22:55We have many shot requirements, like every year you gotta get the flu shot.
- 22:57Now under Hegseth you don't have to get the flu shot anymore.
- 23:00But up un- Oh my
- 23:01God, good man.
- 23:02Wow ... up un-
- 23:03up un- yeah, up until just a few weeks ago you had the annual flu shot, which
- 23:06my last year I was like, "I'm done with shots and you people, so come and get
- 23:10me if you want it," and they didn't.
- 23:12But we're used to there being regular recurring shot requirements, and we
- 23:15don't even think anything about it.
- 23:16It's just built into us.
- 23:17We go and get this.
- 23:18Yeah.
- 23:19But never once had I experienced or had I seen any other military member being
- 23:25chased down by the hounds of hell for missing a shot or being late on a shot.
- 23:29At worst case, it was a you came up due on your, what we called med pros in the Army.
- 23:35It's the online medical tracking system that tracks when you had
- 23:37your vaccinations to remember you're due for your next update.
- 23:42At worst I've seen your commander say, "Hey, knucklehead, don't
- 23:45forget to go get your shot."
- 23:46I'd never I think this was 17 years in at this point in time,
- 23:5018 years in at this point in time.
- 23:52I'd never seen someone punished over missing a shot.
- 23:55Never.
- 23:56Never.
- 23:56I'd never seen someone briefed to a general over missing a shot, ever.
- 24:01This thing was different.
- 24:03Yeah.
- 24:04This thing was not about trying to maintain some sort of medical readiness.
- 24:09This was about who will kiss the ring.
- 24:15And it was tracked like nothing I have ever seen tracked before or since.
- 24:21It was different.
- 24:24Yeah, and you talk about the the myth of a apolitical military.
- 24:27So it sounds that during that timeframe it was definitely political.
- 24:31So it's very frustrating.
- 24:33I remember saying, "There's no way that the, the military is gonna allow
- 24:37this to happen." And boy, they did.
- 24:39They pushed it hard.
- 24:40I was very surprised.
- 24:42It was amazing to me the number of generals and colonels and, and- ... and
- 24:47on down the line who just got on board with this narrative of safe and effective,
- 24:51will cure COVID, will will save America.
- 24:53Th- these were theological statements that were made about it.
- 24:57Yeah.
- 24:57Th- think about, I don't know how much television you watch.
- 25:00My wife and I don't watch a lot, but we have a guilty pleasure of
- 25:03we watch an episode of Star Trek every night before bed, whether
- 25:06it be like... we're just old- Nice
- 25:08we're Trekkies, right?
- 25:09It kinda helps us wind down.
- 25:11So we'll watch it on Paramount, and we're going through Next Generation
- 25:14now, which we do every three years, and- Good ... it'll be Deep Space Nine next.
- 25:18We're geeks like that.
- 25:19But the- there are always commercials, even on the streaming services,
- 25:22and f- and pharma is one of the biggest purchasers- of television
- 25:27and streaming advertising writ large.
- 25:29Oh.
- 25:29And and every single f- drug commercial I've ever seen in my life, e- even
- 25:34treatments for acne, like two-thirds of the commercial space is, "Here are all
- 25:40the side effects," because they're legally required to put all that boilerplate in.
- 25:44"Here are all the side effects."
- 25:44And the side effects all seem to always go up to including death, right?
- 25:49And by the time they get to the end I'm like, "I ain't taking
- 25:52that drug." And somebody's
- 25:52speaking fast when they're saying
- 25:55Yeah, exactly.
- 25:56Including death.
- 25:58And it's funny.
- 25:59Do you remember, Michael, the during, like from 2020 to 2022,
- 26:02all the COVID shot advertisements?
- 26:05No disclaimer.
- 26:06No disclaimer.
- 26:08No side effects.
- 26:10Nope.
- 26:10No death.
- 26:11No blah, blah, blah, blah.
- 26:12It was, safe and effective, will cure COVID, blah, blah, blah.
- 26:15And all the generals got on board with it.
- 26:17I remember General Ted Martin was the commander of Fort Leavenworth
- 26:20at that point in time, and that, that dude was a real clown.
- 26:23Just an absolute clown.
- 26:25Yeah.
- 26:25And he had this- that, that was the work
- 26:27of Bi- of, Obama and Biden.
- 26:28They just took out all the good guys and, But- ... replaced them
- 26:32They did.
- 26:32This dude was a classic, was a class A jerk and person in the building,
- 26:36but he portrayed himself on X like this kind of funny grandpa, and he
- 26:40was always posting about his dog.
- 26:42And he would do these stupid videos about, "Oh we got the straw, so we can cure
- 26:46COVID and we can fix all this." And I'm like that's amazing, sir, 'cause you're
- 26:49a tank officer, not a medical provider.
- 26:52So it's amazing that you, and literally reading one sheet of paper,
- 26:56have got your MD now in infectious diseases and respiratory disease."
- 27:00Yeah.
- 27:00"Whereas I've actually read a lot of the research on this topic." Wow.
- 27:04And they just, they repeated these things.
- 27:06It was a faith statement.
- 27:07It was a faith statement.
- 27:09And I know how narratives work because I was a PAO.
- 27:11I helped to craft them.
- 27:12I helped to design them.
- 27:13And now- Sure ... I always worked to make sure that mine were accurate and
- 27:17truthful, and I always, I resisted doing the propaganda move at every opportunity.
- 27:21Sometimes I had to clo- get close to dabbling in the dark arts, but
- 27:25I never did anything that couldn't get, I couldn't sleep on at night.
- 27:28I couldn't look myself in the mirror, and I couldn't talk about
- 27:31openly t- to a, another Christian brother and not be embarrassed.
- 27:34I held myself to that standard.
- 27:36But I'm watching these guys just embrace these narratives and I
- 27:39can recognize they, they don't know what they're talking about.
- 27:41This is what they've been told to say.
- 27:43This is the script.
- 27:45Yeah.
- 27:46And it's not funny because people's lives are being hurt.
- 27:51Yeah.
- 27:51A lot of lives were lost because of that.
- 27:54Yeah.
- 27:54And ruined, people that are, medically incapacitated in a lot of cases.
- 27:58And I remember this one woman that was going, I think she was going
- 28:02for maybe airborne or something, but she had to pass a, the physical test
- 28:06of course, and she couldn't do it because she'd gotten the vaccination.
- 28:10She was, like, in excellent shape up to that point, and then she started
- 28:13having all these problems, and she couldn't do the Pass or test.
- 28:17It was like horrible.
- 28:19People's dreams, and all their aspirations, ruined.
- 28:23It affected so many lives in so many ways.
- 28:26It was the primary catalyst for why I concluded my career when I did.
- 28:30Oh,
- 28:31okay.
- 28:31We had planned on a 30-year career.
- 28:33I... And of course, none of us know the future, but I am very certain that
- 28:36I had a path to colonel, which is the- Yeah, absolutely ... it's as high as you
- 28:40ge- can go as a public affairs officer.
- 28:42We don't get turned into generals.
- 28:44One, one, one guy or gal every 10 years, they let them through, but
- 28:47that's, you can't count on that.
- 28:50Colonel is our ceiling and we were convinced that I had a path to it.
- 28:53I had good report cards.
- 28:54I had all the right schools.
- 28:56I worked really hard.
- 28:58But that was the beginning of the end for me, of looking around and saying,
- 29:02there... I liken it to the Book of Daniel.
- 29:06God calls Christians to serve in often uncomfortable places.
- 29:11Daniel served as a courtier in Nebuchadnezzar's palace.
- 29:16Yeah.
- 29:17And that was an evil man, and that had to be an uncomfortable
- 29:19thing to do, but God had placed him there for a specific reason.
- 29:23And so we are called to, to abide until Christ returns and to
- 29:28steward well where He's planted us.
- 29:30But I couldn't see anywhere, and I still can't see anywhere in scripture
- 29:33where we are to be the public apologists and the missionaries for Baal.
- 29:38And I, my job as a public affairs officer was to be the public apologist, to be the
- 29:42spokesman, to be the communication planner in defense of the institution's policies,
- 29:49and it was just in 2020, 2021, when I saw the way they were abusing people.
- 29:55They were throwing people out en masse.
- 29:58They were suddenly looking at people who had sacrificed many years of their lives,
- 30:04who had missed watching much of their children's youth, who had missed many
- 30:10anniversaries, who had missed so much of life to serve, whether it be overseas
- 30:16or in training for deployments or other military tr- travel And they were all
- 30:22of a sudden overnight because they had a question, a legitimate question that
- 30:25any citizen should be able to ask, and they were cast aside as if treasonous.
- 30:31And I realized- ... I cannot publicly defend, represent, or speak for
- 30:35an institution that would do that.
- 30:37They were doing it to me.
- 30:38I was I was asking questions, reasonable questions based on of things that I could
- 30:44see with my own eyes, and being told that I didn't know what I was talking about
- 30:49and I need to stop listening to these other influences and safe and effective.
- 30:55Yeah, I get the script, guys.
- 30:56I know how this works.
- 30:59And that was it for me.
- 31:00That was when I realized we, we've got to begin making our exit plans from the
- 31:04institution because the, this is evil.
- 31:07This is evil.
- 31:08And then of course the third leg of the Biden's attack on the
- 31:11military was an attack specifically against Christians in the ranks.
- 31:16And that was by, by- Oh, god ... forcing the whole the
- 31:18whole transgender movement into the military and Christians being- Yep.
- 31:22Gonna ask you about that ... Christians being told, "If you don't like it,
- 31:25shut up." That's- Wow ... that's, it's not for you to speak about it.
- 31:30And I've got a personal story I can tell you about that if we have time,
- 31:34but I felt that very personally being told, "Shut up, this is the way it
- 31:38is, and if you have a problem with it, you're the one who has the problem,
- 31:42and we'll deal with you accordingly."
- 31:44Yeah, and this is l- like one of the notes here.
- 31:46It says, "Institutional culture suppression of conservative voices and
- 31:51broader accountability failures." So there are, they have these generals
- 31:56and, admirals and so forth that are pushing these agendas that the
- 31:59political system is pushing down.
- 32:02It's no longer, advanced by merit.
- 32:04It's advanced through, "Oh, you're transgender? We need to advance
- 32:07transgenders." And we saw that.
- 32:09From the outside looking in, what was that like on the inside?
- 32:14Oh it was horrible on the inside.
- 32:16Wow.
- 32:17Again, because you join in ins- you join the military believing that
- 32:20it's a place that if you work- Yeah
- 32:23you can be rewarded for your work.
- 32:25And ag- now again, we, no institution is perfect.
- 32:28It wasn't perfect when I joined in '03.
- 32:30It was very clear that there were still some early indicators of DEI influence.
- 32:35We knew there was very much an affirmative action flavor to
- 32:38how some people were promoted.
- 32:40A- and it was not secret.
- 32:42It was known.
- 32:43I remember as a lieutenant, my battalion commander came back.
- 32:46He had just finished sitting on a promotion board for majors, and he
- 32:50gave us a, an presentation based on here's what I learned sitting on the
- 32:54board, and here's how the boards work.
- 32:56And he told us during that presentation that after the board meets and goes
- 33:00through the files and decides who's going to get promoted Then there's a post-board
- 33:05scrub where the results are laid out and they count how many men, how many women,
- 33:12how many Blacks, how many whites, how many Asians, how many Hispanic, they do the
- 33:16full intersectional breakdown, and then they compare that to a spreadsheet that
- 33:21says there are this many men in America and this many women, this many Black."
- 33:24And then, and if the numbers from the pr- promotion board don't match up to the
- 33:29percentages that they want to see, that they will then reshuffle the deck and
- 33:34names will get pulled off of the board and names added in that did not make it.
- 33:39That was openly known.
- 33:40That, that was briefed to me in a presentation back in
- 33:422000... I think it was 2008.
- 33:45'07 or '08, one of those two.
- 33:49And so we knew these things, but during the last few years it was so accelerated.
- 33:54There were special groups made- Wow ... specifically to give additional
- 33:57mentorship to women in the ranks.
- 34:00Not men, additional groups for women.
- 34:02There was an online movement called MilTwitter that was there
- 34:05to curate hardcore left-wing community among military members.
- 34:11And of course then you had the LGBTQ+ IA addendum, mafia in the military.
- 34:18And it was very clear to us that there were people who were being set
- 34:22on certain public pedestals because they fit the political narrative and
- 34:26the image of the military that the administration wanted the public to see.
- 34:31Joe Biden had this saying that he wanted his administration, his cabinet, to look
- 34:36like America, which means he wanted it to be urban and homosexual essentially.
- 34:42And that was carried through on the military.
- 34:45W- the Secretary of the Army, Christine Wormuth, talked about this a lot.
- 34:49"We need the Army to look like America."
- 34:51And by that, she was open about that it needs to look less Southern.
- 34:56It needs to look less like families that continue to serve intergenerationally.
- 35:02It needs to look more like the coast.
- 35:04It needs to look more like urban centers.
- 35:06It needs to look more like blue states.
- 35:10That's not the purpose of a military, is to fit your intersectional goal chart.
- 35:14The purpose of the military is to bring together the people who
- 35:18are capable of doing the violence necessary to defend against threats.
- 35:25That's what the military is there to do, is to defend the nation, if necessary,
- 35:31using overwhelming violence to do
- 35:34said.
- 35:34You need
- 35:34the people to do that.
- 35:36And they didn't care about that, because to them, the military, to the
- 35:40Biden administration, the military was not there for the national defense.
- 35:44It was there as another influencer in the social revolution they were s-
- 35:49attempting to sow in the United States.
- 35:52And the military's still infested with a lot of that.
- 35:56Much of it's in hiding right now, but make no mistake- ... it is still there,
- 35:59and it is still- ... a very present threat to our national survival.
- 36:04Wow.
- 36:04Ver- God, that's so well said, Dr. Chasin.
- 36:07From the outside looking in, having been on the inside, I was like, "They
- 36:12are purposefully tearing down the military," 'cause they know that's
- 36:15the last bastion of America- ... to keep us safe Americans not from
- 36:19overseas conflict, but here in America.
- 36:21So the enemy basically was within, and they were infiltrating everywhere.
- 36:26I saw that in the CIA when I was in.
- 36:29We had those of us that were conservative, I guess you could say, and were like
- 36:34you s- like you said so eloquently we could produce violence if needed.
- 36:39And then we started to see other people come in from the CIA.
- 36:44So instead of like in a, in the beginning, I was, like, in charge of a lot of these
- 36:47groups, and then they started to put in people that were yes men, for the CIA.
- 36:53That's one of the reasons why I left the CIA, because that was
- 36:55starting to happen to the CIA.
- 36:57We were losing our capabilities.
- 36:59And we saw Benghazi where s- one of our compounds got hit pretty
- 37:04hard and some of my buddies died.
- 37:06And I was- ... looking at that, and I went there afterwards helped recover
- 37:09some of the stuff that was there.
- 37:11And I was dumbfounded 'cause I started talking to guys, and they're
- 37:14like, "Yeah they wouldn't let us do this, they wouldn't let us do that."
- 37:17I was like, "Wow." And so I just started to see those people that had been put
- 37:21in positions that were yes men or yes women, and they were compromising us.
- 37:28We weren't gonna, we weren't gonna win with these people.
- 37:30We're gonna start to digress in a lot of cases.
- 37:33And that's what I've been seeing, around the world.
- 37:35I feel very happy that President Trump and Pete Hegseth are there.
- 37:39They started the Department of War.
- 37:42So they got the right verbiage, they got the right ideas, but that huge
- 37:46group of admirals and generals that Trump spoke to, I, I'm just curious
- 37:52how many of those people agree with him and are sitting, like you're talking
- 37:55about, very silent, waiting for the point where they can come back and
- 37:59start to, destroy America some more.
- 38:03Yeah.
- 38:03What's the percentage?
- 38:04I don't know.
- 38:05I can tell you whatever it is it's way too big.
- 38:08If it's a single one, it's too many.
- 38:10Yeah.
- 38:10I can tell you it's well more than one, a- and that concerns me greatly.
- 38:15And this goes into my criticism of Secretary Hegseth, and I praise him in
- 38:20a lot of ways but it's fair to point out things that aren't being done as well.
- 38:24And the biggest failure on his part right now is failing to act on the
- 38:29reality that personnel is policy.
- 38:32The military is still full of left-wing ideologues, and much of
- 38:36this has been pointed out, and the answer is what do you want us to do?
- 38:40Fire them all?
- 38:41Then who do we replace them with?
- 38:42Who do we make generals overnight?" And my answer is the military has
- 38:46excelled in picking winners who can handle those ranks without having been
- 38:50groomed for those ranks over decades.
- 38:51We've done that throughout our history.
- 38:53We've done it very well.
- 38:54Ulysses S. Grant had been a captain before Lincoln brought
- 38:59him on and made him a general.
- 39:01Wow.
- 39:01Talent was recognized.
- 39:03I'm looking right now, I've got on my wall a print of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of
- 39:08the bayonet charge down Little Round Top.
- 39:12He was a college professor who wanted to enlist.
- 39:14They made him lieutenant colonel, put him in charge of an infantry regiment.
- 39:17He very quickly, before the Civil War was out, which lasted four years, before
- 39:21that was out he was a general officer.
- 39:23The Army excels in picking winners like that.
- 39:26You don't need 20, 30, 35 years to build a general.
- 39:31That's just a bunch of careerist nonsense that we created
- 39:35after the Second World War.
- 39:36We need to-- There ne- still needs to be a mass purging of antagonists in the force.
- 39:43We need to assume, we just need to assume that every flag officer, and by flag
- 39:49officer, one-star general or admiral and up, we just need to assume they are all
- 39:53morally compromised and act accordingly.
- 39:56And then, and we need to, and then we need to assume it's likely that
- 39:59the colonels, the O-6s, the captains in the Navy probably are as well.
- 40:04And so that, that's my biggest frustration.
- 40:06I see there's been a lot of movement from the Pentagon recently to
- 40:10get after breaking relationships with some of the Ivy League
- 40:13universities, which I completely wholeheartedly endorse and support.
- 40:18But again, that's not enough.
- 40:20Look at West Point.
- 40:21It's full of left-wing faculty.
- 40:23Look at the war colleges.
- 40:24It's full of left-wing faculty.
- 40:27And yet there are con- there are conservative, patriotic,
- 40:30constitutionally-minded scholars around the nation who are not
- 40:34getting an invitation to teach at any of these military academies.
- 40:37They're not even getting invitations to come speak- ... military academies.
- 40:40I'm one of them, right?
- 40:42Wow.
- 40:42And so if you're going, if you're trying to turn the military around but you think
- 40:45you're going to do it by holding onto the en- enemy, you're missing the point.
- 40:50And if those people are allowed to stay in, they're going to be able to
- 40:54undo every single innovation that Mr.
- 40:57Hegseth has done the day he leaves office.
- 41:00Wow.
- 41:01So on your point, I l- I looked this up 'cause I've heard this, and here it is.
- 41:05US military had just seven four-star generals and admirals, and four five-star
- 41:10generals during the peak of World War II.
- 41:13That's when we had 12 million, ... under arms.
- 41:17Now today, we have 40 to 45 across Army, Navy, Air Force, four-star
- 41:24generals, and only 1,000,300 personnel.
- 41:27So I completely agree with you.
- 41:29We could definitely downsize, and we could sh- we should start right now.
- 41:32And ev- and every one of those generals is another layer of bureaucracy
- 41:36because it's not just that- Oh, yeah
- 41:37it's not just that officer.
- 41:38Every one of those officers has a staff and has a headquarters.
- 41:42And every one of those headquarters is there to create another layer that
- 41:48a piece of paper has to go through.
- 41:51Excellent point.
- 41:52Yeah.
- 41:52They're, they're-- we-- think of, think about we used to turn out, how
- 41:55fast we were churning out battleships during the Second World War.
- 41:58Again, it was an efficient military.
- 42:01How quickly we were churning planes out for the Army Air Corps.
- 42:04I live in Kansas, three hours from Wichita, where the B-29s were built.
- 42:09And yet now i- it's a multi-decade process to get a single one of those things done.
- 42:13Why?
- 42:14A lot of it's because of the military bureaucracy.
- 42:17We, we need to pare, we need to pare the administration down at
- 42:21least to the World War II level.
- 42:23That would be one of the greatest services that could be done to America, is to- But
- 42:27even looking at that, you had 12 million-
- 42:30Yeah
- 42:30... for that many generals.
- 42:32Like it's just a fraction of what we have now.
- 42:34And they won.
- 42:35And they won.
- 42:36And they won.
- 42:37And they had incredible leaders.
- 42:38So- Yeah ... yeah, that's what we need again.
- 42:40We need to downsize the headshed and start to focus on, getting the job done a lot
- 42:45more efficient than we have in the past.
- 42:47'Cause man, I tell you when I was in the CIA, we were like...
- 42:52And we're-- I'm talking to my my SEAL buddies on the other side,
- 42:55SEAL Team Six guys, tier one guys, and I'm like, "What?" is going on.
- 42:59It's like, why are we still doing this?
- 43:02We should've been done in the first... you look at the horse soldiers, they just
- 43:06basically won, Afghanistan by themselves.
- 43:10Of course, with the jets and, bombing and so forth, drove
- 43:13them across the whole country.
- 43:14Same thing happened in Iraq on, in the northern side, where you had
- 43:18Special Forces guys come in and call in airstrikes just drove Saddam Hussein's
- 43:23army away and just destroyed it.
- 43:24So we can do this, but we can't with that kind of, And I remember when we were in
- 43:30in Iraq I was talking to the guys there, and they're like, "Yeah, the generals,
- 43:35the generals came in and they started kicking us out after we'd done all the
- 43:39work and, kicked ass, and then we had these guys from the States, these pencil
- 43:44pushers come in and start to, 'You can't go this fast over the speed bumps.'"
- 43:47And it's what the heck?
- 43:48So those guys got out.
- 43:50But that's what happens.
- 43:51You have a lot of these guys that are, behind the scenes, and then they come
- 43:55in and take advantage of you're, I'm a combat veteran," 'cause you show up after
- 43:59the war's done, and you co- you, you're in a combat zone, so you claim you're a
- 44:03combat veteran, then you get promoted.
- 44:05So this is one of the things, that I think we need to really look at, and
- 44:09you're bringing excellent light to this.
- 44:11Wow, fantastic.
- 44:12And let me add one thing to that.
- 44:13You mentioned the issue that we have with leaders right now.
- 44:16Look around.
- 44:17W- tell me if you see a Patton or an Eisenhower or a Grant or a Marshall
- 44:24among us today, and I don't wanna speak for you, but I doubt you do.
- 44:28No.
- 44:28I don't.
- 44:30The system that we have now weeds those guys out.
- 44:33Oh, yeah.
- 44:33Yeah.
- 44:34Because
- 44:35the purpose of the system now is to beat men and women into submission, and it
- 44:40is when they are in full submission that they can at least be considered for those
- 44:46higher level ranks because, again, you're not getting looked at for general officer
- 44:50until you're well past the 20-year mark.
- 44:52We're talking 25-plus years here before you're pinning your first star.
- 44:57Whereas i- in the past, the real leaders were the ones who rose
- 45:01up in spite of the institution.
- 45:03Dwight Eisenhower was not tracking to be a senior officer before the
- 45:09war as a matter of fact, he got sent here to Fort Leavenworth to attend
- 45:13the Command and General Staff College because he had a leader who believed
- 45:16in him b- when the Army did not, and the Army did not assign him here.
- 45:20And so he had a leader who pulled some strings and got him assigned
- 45:23here to take on a adjutant's role.
- 45:25And then later on, because he was here they were able to get him
- 45:28to the Command and General Staff College later on, and thank God.
- 45:30We needed Eisenhower qualified and, a- and able to be promoted quickly.
- 45:36But the system that we put in place after the Second World
- 45:39War, it chases those guys out.
- 45:42It chases the innovators out.
- 45:43It chases the people who will say the hard things out.
- 45:47Yeah.
- 45:47It chases the people who are not polished politicians.
- 45:51It chases them out.
- 45:52It discourages them, and it's by design.
- 45:55And again think about that.
- 45:57If we should ever be in another major land-based war or against a near or
- 46:03near peer adversary, w- how do we handle that when we don't have those kind of
- 46:09leaders today because the institution has chased them out and discouraged them
- 46:13and made them decide my future is better outside of the military than in it?
- 46:18Yeah, good point.
- 46:20How do you fix it?
- 46:21What's your thoughts on before we finish up, how do we fix this?
- 46:25Oh, man.
- 46:27That's a, that's... Yeah, that's a loaded question.
- 46:29If I had a perfect answer for that I could probably be a wealthier man than I am.
- 46:34Some things are going- I, one of the
- 46:36things that we just talked about is we downsized the corrupt,
- 46:39generals and admirals out of there.
- 46:40Yeah.
- 46:41Yeah.
- 46:41The f-
- 46:41They're out of control.
- 46:42I agree.
- 46:43There's- I saw it when I was
- 46:44in, and I know you saw it.
- 46:45I was like we would work around them.
- 46:47They were like, they tell us something to do and, 'cause
- 46:49that's the way Special Forces are.
- 46:51Yeah we have to do this because of that, and we can't really follow
- 46:54those directions and so that kind of worked a little bit, not always.
- 46:59But we had really good leaders we had- ... that would protect us,
- 47:02and that's one of the key things.
- 47:04I don't see that these days.
- 47:06Yeah.
- 47:06Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address to Congress, he referenced the
- 47:10military industrial complex, and what a lot of people don't realize is that
- 47:15was a, an edited version of his speech.
- 47:18His initial draft, which he pared down before he delivered to
- 47:23Congress, called it the Congressional military industrial complex, and
- 47:28that's a much more befitting title.
- 47:31I think he he deliberately took congressional out of it because I
- 47:34think he didn't want to turn off the ears of those who were listening
- 47:38to him there as a strategic move.
- 47:41But the- ... the first version is much more appropriate.
- 47:44You, we need to trim the force, but here's the problem.
- 47:47Congress gets a vote.
- 47:49And I say that's a problem and it's not constitutionally because
- 47:52Congress controls the purse and shares responsibility for the military
- 47:57with the president constitutionally.
- 47:58But the problem is every single congressional dis- district is in
- 48:03some way touched by military spending.
- 48:05Every single one of them in one way or another is touched by military
- 48:09spending, and it's by design that way.
- 48:11It has become that way by design.
- 48:13And so let's say we were to slash 80% of the flag officer commands, every
- 48:22district, House and Senate district that those commands are in, those
- 48:28representatives, Republican and Democrat, are going to rise up with flaming
- 48:32pitchforks and say, "How dare you?
- 48:35You can't do this.
- 48:36President's going to take spending from my district." So we need Congress
- 48:40to get on board with this, which goes back to why Americans need
- 48:45to pay attention to these things.
- 48:47Because
- 48:47Americans are tuned out.
- 48:49Remember after 9/11, George w- George W. Bush said, I'm getting asked what
- 48:54should America do now that we've been attacked by the Taliban, and the Twin
- 48:57Towers have fell, and now that we're at war, what should Americans do?"
- 49:00And he said, "Americans should go to the mall." Great.
- 49:03A- and that's what America did.
- 49:05Guys like you and me went to war.
- 49:06Americans went to the mall.
- 49:07It was never a truly national effort.
- 49:10No one was ever... We weren't bought in at national level.
- 49:13We need Americans to get bought in on national level and drive their
- 49:17congressmen to support downsizing moves in the military first.
- 49:21Second off, there needs to be a major legislation introduced to
- 49:26de-stratify how the military currently selects and promotes senior leaders.
- 49:33The current system that we have was created legislatively after World War
- 49:37II when all the military branches were bought, brought together under this
- 49:41joint force construct that was then later on turned into the Department
- 49:45of Defense, now Department of War.
- 49:47And Congress put the legislation into effect that said in order to reach this
- 49:51rank, you have to be joint qualified and means you have to serve this many
- 49:55years, and you have to do this and that, and this and that, and this and that."
- 49:57Congress actually formed those rules.
- 50:00Now, the military informed how those rules were made.
- 50:02The military informs how all military legislation is made.
- 50:05They have officers that help to draft what they want.
- 50:08But we need to have serious con- legislative reform that decentralizes
- 50:14how those promotions are handled.
- 50:15And now that is not a perfect thing.
- 50:17The counterpoint to that and a reasonable objection to that is then it just
- 50:21becomes a good old boy system, and anyone can promote whoever they want.
- 50:25My answer to that is they're still doing that just within the current system.
- 50:29Evil always finds- Absolutely ... a way around, but the current system
- 50:33is chasing all the good people out.
- 50:35Yeah I remember that when I was in.
- 50:36We were like we'd love certain, we'd love certain officers, and they wouldn't
- 50:40select up and then they had to leave.
- 50:43It's very frustrating.
- 50:44Maybe, you get a little bit more insight from the enlisted men
- 50:47that they lead at some point.
- 50:49That would be helpful.
- 50:50But, some guys have to rule hard.
- 50:53I-- there were times where, as a senior listed guy, had to be the hammer.
- 50:58And so you don't make friends, you get respect- ... which I think is ultimately
- 51:02what you deserve and what you want.
- 51:04But why not, allow a little bit of how do you guys see this guy?
- 51:08'Cause we get evaluated by our seniors, and why don't we
- 51:12let the juniors evaluate too?
- 51:13That'd be interesting.
- 51:14It probably would never happen, but I think that's another thing
- 51:18to throw in there, who knows?
- 51:20And the Army experimented with something like that, and then
- 51:24they completely messed it up.
- 51:25If you, if you- Oh, yeah?
- 51:26Wow.
- 51:26If you wanna, if you want something to be done poorly in terms of administrative
- 51:31actions, give it to the Army.
- 51:32If we really wanted to cure the drug epidemic in America, we'd just put
- 51:37the Army in charge of it, and they'd make it, they'd make getting high so
- 51:41unfun that no one would do it anymore.
- 51:43Really?
- 51:44It's just, oh, it's just the way it is.
- 51:46But the Army came up with a system a few years ago called BCAP, Battalion
- 51:51and Brigade Command Oh, I'm forgetting what it, the acronym stood for.
- 51:56But basically when you were selected for battalion or brigade command, I don't know
- 51:59how that translates in the Navy, but it's the 05 and 06 level commands, that rather
- 52:05than just going through what they called a centralized board, which is where a
- 52:08group of people meet in a windowless room in the Pentagon or some other nondescript
- 52:13location, and they look at files and they just rack and stack files based on paper.
- 52:18They said, "We're gonna get away from that 'cause we wanna be more holistic," and
- 52:20they created this program called BCAP.
- 52:22Battalion Commander Assessment Program, that's what it stood for.
- 52:25Yeah.
- 52:25And part of it was you took surveys from people who had
- 52:29served under these officers.
- 52:31That was a really good thing, and unfortunately the Army screwed up
- 52:36BCAP and basically manipulated it to still get to the results that they
- 52:41wanted at the end of the day, so Secretary Hegseth canceled the program.
- 52:45That was one of the good things of BCAP was it did that.
- 52:48It surveyed people who had served under these people before.
- 52:51I appreciated receiving surveys being asked, "Hey how was it working under this
- 52:57officer?" I thought that was a good thing.
- 52:59Very good.
- 53:00So Hegseth has fired quite a few people.
- 53:04Do you think he's just getting warmed up or is that just a anomaly
- 53:07or what do you think's happening?
- 53:10I don't know.
- 53:10I, I- Yeah ... I would like to say he's just getting warmed up and there's a lot
- 53:13more to come, but from people that I've- I hope so, yeah ... people that I've talked
- 53:16to inside the building I don't currently get that sense, and I would love to be- Oh
- 53:20I would love to be proven wrong.
- 53:21I really would love to be proven wrong.
- 53:24I get the sense- Yeah, it's true ... that there, there are
- 53:25strategic things that when someone's conduct rises to a certain level of
- 53:30egregiousness he's willing to do it.
- 53:32And so I, I appreciate that something is better than nothing.
- 53:35Yeah.
- 53:35And he has fired more generals than I think have been fired in my career
- 53:39timeline post Obama administration.
- 53:43But still not nearly enough.
- 53:45We need to go back to the days of George Marshall where he fired senior officers
- 53:50by the hundreds because they- Really?
- 53:52... yeah.
- 53:52It was very clear they weren't pulling their weight.
- 53:54Yeah so when you see The New York Times panicking that Hegseth is
- 53:58purging the military yeah, 'cause he hired, fired what, like six
- 54:01officers in a force of millions.
- 54:03Get over yourselves.
- 54:04G- Geo- George Marshall did that before breakfast.
- 54:07Wow.
- 54:08So i- it's not unpr- it's not unprecedented.
- 54:11It's not.
- 54:12It can be done.
- 54:12Very good.
- 54:13It should be done.
- 54:14You have an excellent grasp of history, so I think that's definitely in your favor.
- 54:18I would love to see you on board in the future, as a consultant or
- 54:22something to help fix this problem.
- 54:25Now you brought up some really good points about the congressional
- 54:27side putting the brakes on, getting rid of some of these people.
- 54:30That's where our audience, American people could get proactive.
- 54:35What are your thou- what are your thoughts?
- 54:36How could they do that?
- 54:37The first thing you need to do is just start paying attention
- 54:40to- Yeah ... the military.
- 54:41I live just down the road from Fort Leavenworth.
- 54:43I'm near Kansas City, Missouri, and most Kansas Citians have no idea that there's
- 54:47a military base here, and it's been here since 1824, and they have no idea.
- 54:52The public needs to pay attention.
- 54:54N- number one, just pay attention to the fact you have a military
- 54:56and start looking into military affairs and educating yourself,
- 55:00being parts of these conversations.
- 55:02A- and it frustrates me no matter what level I'm at, whether it be just talking
- 55:06to, regular Joe on the street or at a senior kind of academic conference of
- 55:11conservative thinkers, and I try to talk about military issues, and these are
- 55:14people who have forgot more about Plato than I'll ever know, but they're dumb as
- 55:18can be when it comes to military affairs and I just want, I just wanna shake them,
- 55:21be like this has so much more application on your life and freedom right now.
- 55:25Give it 10 minutes.
- 55:26I promise you it'll be worth it."
- 55:28Yeah.
- 55:28We need them to pay attention and then to get involved with their
- 55:31congressional leaders about it, because congressmen pay attention to two things
- 55:35who bugs them and who funds them.
- 55:37A- and they're funded well, and the defense industrial base funds them well.
- 55:41The only thing that's going to potentially compete with that is enough
- 55:45constituent noise to say no joke, we need to pare the military down.
- 55:48No joke, we need to stop allowing the military to abuse our fellow citizens
- 55:52in uniform through unconstitutional mandates and religious discrimination
- 55:55and sending them to, to combat zones that have absolutely nothing to do
- 56:00with US national security interests."
- 56:03And ultimately, my dream, a- and this is something that I think is just it's a
- 56:08wild, audacious dream that I think is so big it'll never happen in my lifetime but
- 56:12a boy can dream, is we need to get back to what does a constitutional military
- 56:17framework looks like- ... look like.
- 56:19It doesn't look like this mass standing behemoth that we have right now.
- 56:26Our ancestors well knew that an standing army will always find an excuse to be
- 56:33at war, and thus we have really made war the top US export in our lifetimes.
- 56:38We just have.
- 56:39Yeah.
- 56:39And we're always at war somewhere, and look around and say, "Is this connected to
- 56:44US national security?" And I think the war with Iran is probably the first war in my
- 56:49lifetime that I can say there's an actual connection to US national security there.
- 56:53I think it's probably the first one.
- 56:54Some can make s- make examples of others, but I think that's the clearest one.
- 56:59Most other things that we've done have just been foreign adventurism or in
- 57:02terms of some sort of other policy end that was not truly to, to the interest
- 57:08of our security as much as it was just trying to reshape how the world worked.
- 57:12And so we need to get away from that.
- 57:14We need to get back to a system where it's really a citizen soldier construct.
- 57:18The militia system is what the founders had in mind, and states were
- 57:23responsible to keep a well-trained, well-armed militia that could be called
- 57:26upon and federalized if necessary to support national war efforts if the
- 57:31nation were ever truly at threat.
- 57:34And thus the local populace had a stake in it because it was their own people
- 57:41who were being pulled away from the shops, homes, hospitals, churches to
- 57:44go to war, versus this all-volunteer invisible force that's always at war
- 57:49and no one knows about and no one cares.
- 57:51Dr. Chase Spears fantastic presentation great insights.
- 57:55I think everybody in America should listen to this.
- 57:57Finding Your Spine podcast you can find that at chasespears.com, guys.
- 58:02Any other places where you'd like people to look at your work, Dr. Chase?
- 58:06Oh thanks so much.
- 58:07The website's the first place if people are just interested in my
- 58:10other writings and my other video appearances and musings, that's where I
- 58:13put all of my thought and my research.
- 58:15And if any of your listeners are active on social, such as X, LinkedIn,
- 58:19YouTube, Instagram, or Substack, I am active on those five channels.
- 58:24The handle is @drchasespears at all of them.
- 58:28So if what I said resonates and you'd like to join me in this conversation
- 58:32I'd love to link arms with you.
- 58:35Wow.
- 58:35Yeah, definitely.
- 58:36So yeah, we appreciate your work and like I said, everybody should listen,
- 58:39especially the politicians . And, I'm glad ... start to help us get rid of the, the
- 58:44fluff that's in the military right now.
- 58:45Wow, is it fluffed up bad.
- 58:47It's really bad.
- 58:49All right.
- 58:49Look forward to maybe in the future we'll have some more conversations.
- 58:52You got so much more to share.
- 58:54Thanks so much for coming on.
- 58:55I welcome it, Michael.
- 58:56Thanks so much for having me.
- 58:57I appreciate you, sir.
- 58:58Thank you.