#157: War Is Failure - Former Special Operator John McPhee

Serving in Special Forces isn’t supposed to be easy. In fact, becoming a Green Beret is rewarding because it’s supposed to be hard. If it was easy, anyone could do it; but not everyone can, or should, be considered elite. John McPhee https://sobtactical.com/ is one of America’s former Special Operators, having served in the Infantry, Special Forces and briefly in Delta Force. The self proclaimed Sheriff of Baghdad tells it like it is and leaves nothing up to interpretation. The Jedburgh Podcast, the Jedburgh Media Channel and the Green Beret Foundation are proud to announce our partnership with the University of Health and Performance https://university-hp.com/ outside of Bentonville, Arkansas. UHP is dedicated to building the world’s most elite fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs out of our Veterans. John and Host Fran Racioppi https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisracioppijr/climbed into the back of an armored Humvee to reminisce about the impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, what America did right, what we did wrong, and why the counter-terrorism battle is far from over. John also shares his thoughts on the Army today, how to fix recruiting, the Israeli pager war, and why we must never forget that a Special Operator’s job is to close with and destroy the enemy. Watch, listen or read our conversation from a vehicle many of us spent too much time in. Don’t miss our full Veterans Day coverage from UHP. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast https://www.instagram.com/jedburghpodcast/ and the Green Beret Foundation https://www.instagram.com/greenberetfoundation/ on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform https://pod.link/1558608802, read on our website https://greenberetfoundation.org/the-jedburgh-podcast/, and watch the full video version on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@jedburghpodcast as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge. HIGHLIGHTS 0:00 Introduction1:50 Welcome to UHP2:39 Rangers to Green Beret4:00 Special Forces in the 90s5:57 How 9/11 changed Special Forces10:16 Legacy of Afghanistan13:12 Sheriff of Baghdad15:35 Disbanding the Iraqi government18:20 The difference in Syria19:42 Israel-Iran Pager War25:30 Army Recruiting Challenges27:05 Is the Army woke?29:55 Next generation of NCOs32:35 The PTSD debate37:18 Wear yourself out everyday QUOTES "We had no bullets. No money to go train. The Army didn’t have a budget. The 90s Special Forces sucked.”“This is where nations go to die. What did we think was going to happen?”“You can’t do that. You can’t just get rid of the whole army like that.”“We had enough money to buy where Saddam was without ever firing a shot.”“Syria can never be tamed and it will always be a problem for us.”“War is only a failure of politicians and politics.”“We didn’t have an Army before WWII. We fielded 6 million men quick. When America gets pissed off, you’re done.”“The Army needs to do two things only. Kill the bad guys and break their shit.” “I would tell anybody to try to be the smartest guy in the room because generally the smartest guy in the room is going to be the best Commando.”“I personally don’t believe in PTSD. You get stuck in the same chapter of your book.”“Every human being should be taking an hour to two hours a day on themselves.” The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are an official program of The Green Beret Foundation https://greenberetfoundation.org/. The opinions presented on the The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are the opinions of my guests and myself. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Green Beret Foundation and the Green Beret Foundation assumes no liability for their accuracy, nor does Green Beret Foundation endorse any political candidate or any political party.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Fran Racioppi?

  Welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast. I'm the creator and host, Fran Rychowi. Each episode, I speak with transformative leaders, visionaries, drivers of change, and those dedicated to winning no matter the challenge. The Jedburgh Podcast is founded in a lineage of the special operations Jedburgh teams of the past and is an official program of the Green Beret Foundation, supporting our nation's US Army Special Forces and their families. Serving in Special Forces isn't supposed to be easy. In fact, becoming a Green Beret is rewarding because it's supposed to be hard. If it was easy, anyone could do it. John McPhee is self-proclaimed Sheriff of Baghdad. John tells it like it is and leaves nothing up to interpretation. The Jedburgh Podcast, the Jedburgh Media Channel, and the Green Beret Foundation are proud to announce our partnership with the University of Health and Performance outside of Bentonville, Arkansas.

• 0:48Fran Racioppi?

  UHB is dedicated to building the world's most elite fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs out of our veterans. To kick off our partnership, John and I climbed into the back of an armored Humvee to reminisce about the impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, what America did right, what we did wrong, and why the counterterrorism battle's far from over. John also shares his thoughts on the Army today, how to fix recruiting, and why we must never forget that a special operator's job is to close with and destroy the enemy. Watch, listen, or read our conversation from a vehicle many of us spend way too much time in. Don't miss our full Veterans Day coverage from UHB. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, or watch the full video version on YouTube as we show you why America must continue to lead from the front no matter the challenge.

• 1:37Fran Racioppi?

  Well, John, it's an honor to have you on the show, and it's awesome to be here with you in such a cool spot. I mean, University of Health and Performance, Matt Hesse and his crew here have done some absolutely amazing work out here, really in the middle of nowhere, 500-acre farm, and they're working to provide fitness certifications as certified personal trainers and everything that goes into building a business around physical fitness for our veterans. And on this Veterans Day, we get to be part of this, one small part of this big event that they're having.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Awesome. Yeah, awesome.

• 2:09Fran Racioppi?

  I want to talk for a bit about you and your career and kind of the evolution of that, and I don't know, I think about where to start. And I mean, you are the Sheriff of Baghdad.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. Uh, yeah, I started in the Rangers, 175, right? I was in CCO and then, um... Somewhere around five years in the army, our sergeant major back then was like, you gotta go give your experience to the big army, right? And then a guy in my platoon ended up on fucking orders to Korea. And I was like, what in the fuck? I don't even want to go to Korea. You know, all I heard was it was cold. You know what I mean? So anyway, I was like, yo, I can't be having that. I need to be in control of my own destiny, right? And another guy in my company just got back from selection, right? And I asked him, I was like, yo, what was it like? You know, special forces selection? And he was like, man, honestly, it was kind of nothing you couldn't do every day. And I'm like, huh, I like doing stuff I can do every day, right?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  So I went to the Q course. I was in seventh group for, I don't know, less than a year and then

• 3:12Fran Racioppi?

  So you're on vacation?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Uh, no, I did deploy. I did some mid nineties SF stuff, but that shit sucked.

• 3:20Fran Racioppi?

  What was mid nineties? And we've talked so much and we've had been really fortunate on this show to have all the senior leadership at USAC, the first SFC. And we just sat down before this with General Diedrich, who was the first special forces command commander and actually commanded special operations command Korea before he went on to some other roles. But we always talk about what happened almost nine 11 and then after. But what were the nineties like?

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, the nineties were a lot like now. It was fucked up. No bullets, no training, you know, like because there was no war and we had been fighting Vietnam for so long, even in Q course, it was still about Vietnam, right?

• 4:01Fran Racioppi?

  All the tactics, all the training

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything was about Vietnam, you know, is a war behind. We weren't training for new shit. We were training for shit. The guys knew what the fuck to do, but that situation's kind of over. You know what I mean? So we had no bullets, no fucking money to go train, like the, the army didn't have a budget, like the nineties special forces fucking sucked, in my opinion. Maybe there's guys out there that disagree, right? Bring them here. I'll tell them they're smoking fucking crack because it sucked. We had no fucking bullets. We didn't train. We started to do a ton of paperwork in the nineties. This is when the army went from like triplicate Carbon copy to digital, but as soon as we went to digital word documents, shit like that, the paperwork ramped up.

• 4:45Fran Racioppi?

  Well, now it didn't take up space and it was in the files are in the computer.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Right. They're in the computer and then like, so now like range control used to be like, go make coordinations with them. Now it's like 13 page document, a fucking risk assessment. Oh, well, CQB is high risk. It always has been and we were doing it before now, but now we can't do it because we didn't get a signature.

• 5:06Fran Racioppi?

  But what did your warrant officers do when, before there was risk assessments that had to be written?

• 5:10Speaker 01

  I'm not even sure. I'm not even sure what they did. Maybe, man, I don't know.

• 5:14Fran Racioppi?

  Now all the warrants will hate me and they'll send me hate mail.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Fuck them. Should have stayed enlisted, dudes. You know what I'm saying? Like it ain't, wouldn't have had to do the paperwork. Your fault. I don't feel for you. You know what I mean? Chose your path and your retirement was better too. So last joke's on you. You get better retirement.

• 5:31Fran Racioppi?

  So you go through the nineties, you come into SF and then you've got like this cataclysmic change on nine 11.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:38Fran Racioppi?

  Talk about that. I mean, being there, where were you and how did that change? And I'm going to, I want to bring it up here because I'm going to ask you about Afghanistan.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. Nine 11, I was upping my jump numbers to go to the tandem bundle course. Uh, you know, we were doing that. Now everybody does it, but we were doing that like way before people kind of knew what it was. And I was getting my jump numbers up. So I went out to the Rayford jump team. And the past few days, like what I would do is I would jump with the black golden knights. I jumped the, uh, with the canopy accuracy teams. They go up to like 1500, 1800 feet. They get out, they land. I just needed jump numbers. So we were doing hop and pops with those guys. Plus it gets you pretty accurate and land in a canopy, you know?

• 6:20Fran Racioppi?

  Those guys are impressive, huh? We had the golden knights on the commander, the sergeant major at D day. And their episode as, as of this recording hasn't come out yet. It's going to come out in a couple of weeks. But I mean, I'll tell you like, when they talk about the precision on those things, that's insane.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's legit. They're legit, right? So, uh, I was doing hop and pops and then like, we're getting ready to load the plane. And it was like stand down and that's like, hey, we're shut down, you know, might as well go to the team room. So we go in the team room to just chill instead of like just being. Hot outside and I fucking like a plane crashed into the twin towers. The first one crashed and it was like huh, look, some idiot crashed some little plane into the twin towers. Cause that's what it looked like on the TV, the first one. And then the second one hit and then the planes were shut down. I had to go back to Bragg that day later. My squadron was already deployed overseas and later that day I had to do a VTC as I was the senior representative for my squadron, you know what I mean?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  They're like, where's a squadron stand on this, you know what I mean? And like luckily, uh, I think it was another squadron was on like alert. So that commander went first and he's like, sir, we are, men are packed and ready to conduct combat operations anywhere in the world within the spectrum of one hour. You know what I mean? Like he gives this straight out of the Q course manual. Fucking, I'm just like, you're gonna go next? Like I'm fucking, I'm just eighty seven, you know, I was just trying to get some jumps. And you know what I mean? Like I'm about to go to Arizona and then like, so I said everything he said. And then, but my squadron was like deployed somewhere else, like closer to where we were going. So I'm like, my guys are already deployed. I added that part in there and he just got like mad dogged me later.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? I listened to you and I, I went up to you, you know what I'm saying? But, uh, yeah, I had a report and, uh, who was it then? At the time Rumsfeld and I forget who the JCS was, but they're like, hey, don't do anything. We're trying to, you know, kind of stand down. We're trying to figure this out, but like post would take 16 hours. When they closed post, it would take 16 hours to like get on post and people would leave their cars and just fucking walk to work. And then a guy would show up at like two o'clock tomorrow, like where you been all day? You're, it's two o'clock, you're late. And he's like, I walked from the gate, like, whoa, that's like 18 miles for you. That's why it's two o'clock and I just made it like, you know what I mean? So guys had to walk on, they locked post down.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  I think the B squadron guys got on gun trucks and were cruising around the compound. Like there's a ghost plane out there that's gonna hit us next. I don't know. It's kind of crazy times and I don't know. I've never been the guy to like get caught in the spin. I'm a we're waiting till I'm gonna I'll spin when this is real until then like let's not do anything stupid today. And like those guys did a ton of stupid shit and I just figured, man, you know, and I figured it will happen when it happens. But those first few days were just so different than anything else I experienced. You know what I mean?

• 9:17Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, I mean, there were the the unknown when we think back to that, but I want to kind of fast forward to today. And when we look at Afghanistan and we look at what's transpired, you know, somewhere around the tune of three trillion dollar, two trillion dollars has been spent there. We've got, you know, we lost almost 2,500 servicemen and women. We had 20,000 wounded SOF, all components of SOF, but really primarily, you know, our Green Berets and our Army Special Forces carried a lot of the load for those 20 years and then we left. When you think about that investment that we made and the fact that we're gone, what do you think?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  I think anybody who's pissed about that didn't read the fine print when we went in. This is where fucking nations go to die. What the fuck did we think was gonna happen? We're better than that? That's not gonna happen to us? It was in the fine print and we all knew it. The day I went in, my first boot on the ground in Afghanistan, I knew this is gonna be fucked up later. I'm not shocked at all.

• 10:23Fran Racioppi?

  And there's a lot of people who are so upset.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, hey, they didn't read the fine print. You should have looked at the original contract because, you know, Alexander the Great was the only one to hang on to it for as long as he did, and he was way more brutal than we could ever be.

• 10:36Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. When you think about what's Special Forces mission, right? Special Forces mission, we're gonna go to foreign nations, often under adversarial conditions. We're going to identify portions of their military, whatever it might be, resistance forces, you know, whatever the situation calls for. We're gonna arm them, we're gonna equip them, we're gonna train them, and we're gonna put them in combat operations, either beside us or on our behalf. That requires trust.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:02Fran Racioppi?

  An incredible amount of trust that's developed over a long period of time. Now, if we think about when we first went into Afghanistan and we linked up with organizations like the Northern Alliance, you know, we had had some level of trust with them from fighting the Russians when we provide them with stingers and, you know, other ammunition and weapons that helped them to repel and hold off the Soviets. But now we fast forward to today and we think about, you know, the reports that come out, you know, is Al Qaeda and the Taliban now reconstituted in Afghanistan? Are they working together? We presume so. We know. Uh, you know, we're funding millions and millions of dollars a week as the US over to Afghanistan while they continue to train to have their ultimate goal of revenge on

• 11:47Fran Racioppi?

  the United States. If we gotta go back, what happens?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  We're gonna fucking whoop that ass? Them motherfuckers can't even do jumping jacks. You know what I mean? They had six Blackhawks, they're down to fucking one because Ahmed fucking crashed the other five thinking he could fly. Look, it's a waste of our fucking time. It was a waste of our manpower, right? But the reality is, is like, we're gonna go back and fight them and they're gonna have our equipment because our politicians generally don't know what the fuck they're doing and won't listen to DOD going, "We can't leave $60 trillion worth of shit in a fucking savage country." You just can't do that. You know what I mean? If, and if they did leave all that shit, they should have just fucking EOD'd it or fucking air bombed it all into just fucking dust. My two cents.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  The only thing I would have left the Afghans if I pulled this fucking country out of that, I'd have left them fucking gravel. The gravel we stood on, you can have that.

• 12:41Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see, you know, what happens if these, if the reports that we see are true, you know, if the America's next fight is with a terrorist organization that comes out of Afghanistan, which presumably it may.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  It'll never end.

• 12:56Fran Racioppi?

  Let's talk about Iraq for a second. Why were you the sheriff of Baghdad?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Oh, um, yeah, man. I was always in Baghdad, first off, and then, um, a buddy of mine, he was a State Department guy, and he was like the, he ran like the crisis action center in the State Department. And he made these shirts on the front is Baghdad embassy logo on the back. It said Sheriff of Baghdad, serving strategic policy, one citizen at a time. Right? And no one in the State Department thought it was funny. So he ended up with a ton of these T shirts he made as a joke. Right? So later this guy quit working for the State Department, came to work for me. Right? And he was like, Hey, Sergeant Major, what size are you? I'm like, I don't know, double, triple X? What do you got? And he's like, I got a ton of T shirts. You want them?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  And I was like, yeah, dude, just give them to me. I'll wear, you know, cause we wear civvies for, you know, I wear it for jujitsu. I wear it for working out. Like we don't wear uniforms. Right? So I just started wearing these Sheriff of Baghdad shirts everywhere, sniper comps, pistol comps, three guns, anything I was doing, you know what I mean? And then a buddy of mine was like, one day was like, someone asked like, where's that Sheriff of Baghdad guy? You with, you always with, right? And then kind of came to be a joke amongst a group of friends of ours. And then one of them is a business guy and he's like, when I retired, right? Like, if you're gonna do this, you gotta be a business. And as he's giving me this business talk, I have no idea what he's talking about because I'm an army guy. Right? He was like, and if I was gonna name a business, he's like, you'd be missing a big opportunity. If you didn't use that Sheriff of Baghdad.

• 14:27Fran Racioppi?

  That's, that's the branding, branding piece you don't think about when you're in the army.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was like, I was like, so what are you saying? And he was like, if you open a business, name it the Sheriff of Baghdad. I was like, okay. And that's what I did.

• 14:37Fran Racioppi?

  And that's your overnight success.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Boom. Yeah.

• 14:41Fran Racioppi?

  We talked about Iraq in a, in a number of different, the episodes that we've had over the years. You know, I went to Iraq three times. You know, you probably went three times that, but yes. We look back at that conflict, you know, and you said about Afghanistan, what did we expect? When we set forth there and what that makes me think about our, the Iraq piece. You know, we went into that country and we disbanded all of their legitimate forces.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  We did.

• 15:10Fran Racioppi?

  What's your take on the decisions that were made early on in that conflict about disbanding the army, the police and every organization and then creating some semblance of chaos?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, yeah, we fucked that up big time. Like you can't do that. You can't just get rid of the fucking whole army like that. You know what I mean? I mean, okay, Saddam was very meticulous, right? He might have been a fucking devil. His kids were definitely fucking demons and evil. That's for sure. Right? However, Saddam had a good grip on the Middle East in general. He had a good grip on Iran. He had fucking Iran in check, right? He had the Middle East in check, right? So what Saddam did is a super clever guy is he put like different, you know, you got Sunni, you got Shia, you got Kurds. You know what I mean? He put the Shia in charge of the Sunni battalions. He put the, so he mixed it up to where

• 16:06Speaker 01

  these units were as powerful they could be and he separated them by religion. And, you know, we put all the Shia by the Sunnis so the Sunni won't fuck with them and vice versa, right? So he was very clever and in picking these military commanders and placing them very good at this, right? And I think he was winning the war against Iran also would be my opinion all those years, like no matter how many people they lost, he was actually keeping Iran in check, you know? So I think overall, the biggest mistake we could have been is just fucking scatter those guys to the forewind because we're too lazy to fucking pay for it, but yet we're not paying anyway.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  And then I would tell you this is like, look, in general, I would say this, we had enough money to buy where the fuck Saddam was without ever firing a shot. Why the fuck didn't we just spend that money? Because I would have rather gave someone a trillion dollars and gone got them than have the fight for 20 years, all those fucking needless deaths of all the fucking sons of this country. You know what I'm saying? So, uh, Saddam had a great hold over Iraq and we fucking blew that.

• 17:16Fran Racioppi?

  Why'd we go?

• 17:17Speaker 01

  To Iraq? Fucking WMDs, baby, WMDs.

• 17:22Fran Racioppi?

  We never found him.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, they found tons of shit. All them chemical weapons in Syria. Them came from Iraq. You know what I mean? Like, the smoking gun is out there. We've seen evidence of it. It's just no one wants to admit it. You know what I mean? The nuke program, he had all the precursors. He had everything we thought he had. You know what I mean? That the smoking gun was found. It just, the news never put it out. You know, but all them chemical weapons went right to fucking Syria.

• 17:47Fran Racioppi?

  I know, yeah, I know there's a lot of reports, I mean, even in the open source reporting about, you know, the convoys leaving in the early days of the war as we were coming up from the south and, you know, getting out of there, going into Syria. You know, now we've been in Syria for quite a long time. You know, continuing to, to fight ISIS and you had, were by and large, pretty successful there. What was the difference there than in Iraq?

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Oh, man, honestly, like, I would say the difference is Syria can never be tamed. And it'll always be a problem for us. So, we have to work with the fucking people that are there, right? And this is a British concept, and this is what the British government does that we don't do, right? And a lot of times, uh, the SAS guys wouldn't come with us is, we'll go kill that motherfucker, but we'll create the power vacuum. And a lot of governments won't do that. They don't create the power vacuum. What they do is they play all sides, and when you play all sides, you end up being the ones needed. And this is a British strategy, right, for the wars, right?

• 18:50Speaker 01

  So, what ends up happening in Syria is we play all sides, we're super needed. In Iraq, we didn't play all sides. We get rid of the army, we try to create our own. Look what happens with Afghanistan army. Can't even do fucking jumping jacks. Like, those videos, they're fucking terrible, you know what I mean? But, that's what's gonna happen when you try to create your own army. You know what I mean?

• 19:10Fran Racioppi?

  You talked about Iran. You know, certainly Iran's front and center in the news. I mean, now, every day, as we've seen the escalation in the Middle East, you know, they're, you know, now, we can't even call it a proxy war anymore with Israel, because they're directly bombing each other at this point.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's the proxy part. Take that away. This is war.

• 19:28Fran Racioppi?

  Where does this go?

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Fuck, I don't know, but I'm gonna tell you this. Thank God, as a nation, we don't have the balls to stuck, fucking stop by Israel early. Cause what happens is every time the Palestinians kickoff, We tell Israel, stop it. But did the problem get solved? You know what I mean? Under the situation of doing things right, this problem's gonna have to get solved. How does the problem get solved? Well, I would say the people that want everyone dead have to get killed. That's how you win a war, right? And then everyone says like, you know, especially in America, like I have guys like, oh, we just need to kill everybody. Hmm, Nazis tried that. That doesn't work either. We can't kill everybody.

• 20:10Fran Racioppi?

  Is there a diplomatic solution?

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Probably, yeah. But we'll never see that. I mean, that means two grown men gotta fucking eat crow as the head of their countries and fucking sit at a table and be like, okay, booby, you do this, I'll do that. And then both of them are gonna be like, no, they're drawing lines in the sand. Everything's negotiable. War is only a failure of fucking politicians and politics. And I'd tell you this, like, I had a fucking, uh, real high level terrorist tell me one time, this war never was about religion. It's about money and power. It's all those guys want. It's not about fucking ideology. It's not about any of it. But isn't that what I politicians want here? Money and power? So that's the way I've always seen the war on terror.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  This is a fucking, this is for money and power. That's it.

• 21:02Fran Racioppi?

  When you look across the Middle East and the conflict that's going on now, and yeah, I don't disagree with you that, you know, money power is a big part of that. What keeps Iran in check?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Nothing. What keeps them in check? I'll tell you, what's kept them in check after Soleimani died is they don't have the networking to pull off any big moves, right? Because that one guy has all the network. And as soon as that guy's gone, you gotta rebuild a network. But that network has been dismantled so many times over by now that how potent is this network even though it has new leadership? And it takes time for these to gain potency. You know what I mean?

• 21:44Fran Racioppi?

  Transitioning out of the military is about more than polishing a resume or attending a LinkedIn workshop. It's about rediscovering your purpose and forging a new path that's worthy of your service. At the University of Health and Performance, veterans are offered transformative GI Bill-approved programming designed to help take them to the next level with confidence. Nestled in the heart of the Ozarks, their 800-acre, all-inclusive campus features world-class training facilities, modern living spaces, and miles of trails for reflection and growth. Here, veterans find a structured, immersive environment where they can explore their strengths, develop new skills, and build a life that not only honors their past, but prepares the future. What did you think about the pager? Pager incident?

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Fucking loved it. Uh, uh, uh, like I wish it was my idea. Blowing dicks off from 3,000 miles away, boof. I thought it was great. I did. I'm not gonna lie. Am I not supposed to think that?

• 22:40Fran Racioppi?

  No, I think there's a lot of us who felt that way. I think that it was a, I mean, you've been around covert clandestine operations your career, you know, we all have here. And you think about the amount of planning that has to go into something like that. And, and the planning is one thing, right? The technology to be able to do it, you know, that's all one component. When I look at it, you know, I look at just the balls to make the decision to execute that mission.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Yo, let's go. There's a million people with those balls here, and every day we got told no to clever shit. Let's go, more, America, more clever shit in war, you know what I mean? Like, we're the smartest motherfuckers out there. We're the unconventional warfare guys of the fucking century, you know? They should have got that from us 20 years ago. No, we all know Israelis are pretty good at a lot of stuff, you know what I mean? But, look, this should be our playback, you know? We should be fucking, and then you always wonder how the, I always wonder, like, you ever wonder, like, how does Israel get all their intel on these guys? Like, how do they know this shit? Because I'm gonna tell you this, like, when we went into Iraq or Afghanistan, there was fucking no intel.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Our agency was fucking worthless, in my opinion, right? Like, we're doing operations to gain intel. I think for years, how are these guys? Get all their into how do they know all this? This is how embedded they are. And really like them motherfuckers was AT&T that shit the whole time like they had all the messages. They didn't have to do the pagers. The fucking, you know, pagers, iPads, phones. I fucking love every minute of this like, you know what I mean? And then they blow up later and like, oh, this page is a little warm in my pocket. Ah, guy falls sideways. I fucking, I loved it, man. And I, I think the future should be filled with a ton more of this shit. And I'd also tell America, hey, we need to start doing assassinations again. You know what I mean?

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Because no one respects us in the fucking world. Hey, okay, we're bad neighbors and we proved ourselves to be bad neighbors. And I'm not going to fucking lie about that. But the reality is, is like, we're bad neighbors that'll come fuck you up. You know what I mean? That makes good neighbors. You know what I'm saying?

• 24:46Fran Racioppi?

  There's a big change right now in the culture of the military. We see it in the news. We see it all, all over the place, you know? And we, where it really manifests itself is in the recruiting numbers. One of the things that we know, that you certainly know, is that it takes a certain person, certain psyche, certain set of character traits, mental capability, to be able to do the job of a special operator. Not only, you know, a special operator who may wear the Green Beret or Ranger tab, but also to go to an organization like Delta, you know, and the SEALs, we'll include the SEALs in that conversation.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  You could take that back. You could do, we don't have to include the SEAL.

• 25:28Fran Racioppi?

  I didn't say they were on parody. I just said, you know.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  I'm excluding the SEALs. I want, I want everyone to know, I want to exclude you guys. He's nicer than I am.

• 25:38Fran Racioppi?

  But it takes, it does take a certain type of person to go and do those things. And what we've seen over the last couple of years, which we could credit, you know, down probably to about a decade ago, is a significant reduction in the recruiting capability of the, specifically the army, but the broader military. What do you think's attributing to that reduction?

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Man, uh, I don't know what would be contributing to it, but I would say this, we didn't have an army before World War II. We fielded six million men fucking quick, you know what I'm saying? And when America gets pissed off, you're fucking, you're done. You know what I mean? So, you know, we see this drawdown army. This happens every time. There's no conflict. And as soon as some shit sparks up, you know, a new generation of kids is gonna be like, yo, I wanna in on this shit. You know what I mean? So I don't worry about it at all. And I don't think, I think the recruiting is always gonna be an ebb and flow and Americans only wanna be patriotic when it comes time to be patriotic. You know what I'm saying? So I don't think there's a lack in recruiting. I just think this is always like the tide. It's an ebb and flow.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Sometimes the army's got more people than they need. Sometimes, you know what I mean? They're giving out fucking a lot of money to get scrubs, whatever the fuck they get. You know what I'm saying? So, I think it's just how time, how nature, the, the nature of things, history, how it works.

• 26:59Fran Racioppi?

  So I'm gonna put some viewer feedback into the conversation too. Over the last couple of months, as we've done kind of our tour of all the senior leadership within SOF, we also had Sergeant Major Wymer on.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Mikey was my, one of my new guys and I lived next to Mikey for like 15, 20 years. I just, Mikey moved. The only reason I live next to him now is he moved. You know what I mean?

• 27:19Fran Racioppi?

  He was great. I mean, great interview with him, his perspective on, I think they got the right man in the job right there at the, you know, as a Sergeant Major of the Army. But a topic that comes up a lot from viewer feedback is the army's woke.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, fuck yeah. It's the fucking Pentagon and all them fucked up officers, right? 2009, in World War II, there was 12 officers, right? For like every hundred men. In 2009, it was 72 fucking two. Think about that. Where the fuck are these 72 officers at? They're not in your company, cuz you only got one captain. Where the fuck are, you know, made a major in an SF company and he's only got so many guys. That ain't a big lot of guys, right? Where the fuck are these officers? And that would be my fucking thing is yeah, the ruling class of the military has always been fucking liberals.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Always. And it goes back to the Civil War. And if you read pre-Civil War books, people thought as a nation, we were too big to fail then also. You know what I mean? So it the wokeness comes from these officers and these schools ingraining them to be woke. But the reality is, is the army needs to do two things only kill the bad guys and break their shit. The rest is fucking bullshit, in my opinion.

• 28:36Fran Racioppi?

  How do you reinstitute that culture?

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you get rid of the fucking pussies up top and you stop layering, leveling the truth and you start just saying it like it is. That's how it starts. A culture of honesty. You know what I mean? And look, I was a troop sergeant major in Iraq. I had 56 guys under me every night, man. I had all races, all colors, all, it didn't fucking matter. Do your job, pull your weight. And the guys did, you know, normally flawlessly, but none of that shit mattered. And then, and look, I gotta come back from fucking war to an America that's more racially divided than ever, when like, I didn't have any racial problems my whole fucking life, including my whole 20 years in the army. It's fucking, it's made up problems. You know what I mean? I never had any problems like that with any

• 29:22Speaker 01

  of the guys, man. We did our job, you know, you do your job. I do my job. Let's go. It doesn't matter to the guys, you know, never mattered to me.

• 29:29Fran Racioppi?

  Fitting that we have the national anthem playing in the background. Chase Rice back there.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  I know.

• 29:34Fran Racioppi?

  Been able to talk to a lot of the senior officers, you know, we've had on the show. And it's funny because people ask me all the time, you know, they say, well, you get to talk to all these, the senior officers. And we've really started bringing in a lot of the sergeant majors. And we've even talked to a number of the senior warrant officers to start getting their perspective. And I'll tell you that the episodes and interviews we do with the sergeant majors do better than the ones we do with the officers. And what I ask a lot of the officers is, you know, talk about the relationship with that, with your NCOs. Talk about the importance of the NCO corps. But I want to kind of ask you that same question is, when we talk about building a professional army, when we look

• 30:15Fran Racioppi?

  at what it takes to do the things that you're talking about and change that culture, it's going to rest on the NCOs. So what do we need from that next generation of NCOs to stand up and prepare for this next way?

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Every time we got new guys, I would always, when, uh, one time it was, I got the first pick of new guys. So my boss was like, hey, what guy do you want? How, you know? And then like, am I gonna pick the best shooter? Am I gonna pick the fastest, the strongest, the best PT guy? Who am I gonna pick? I get to pick the first one. And I said, walk them through my team room. I want the guy that says this place is dirty. And here's why. That's the fucking smart guy. He's clean. He's fucking smart. I'll train him to shoot. I can train him to free fall. I can train him to do anything. But if this guy's the smartest guy out of the fucking group, that's exactly who I want. So I tell any kids joining, be fucking smart. You don't have to be strong.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  You can learn strength. I learned strength. I wasn't prepared. I never, I didn't even know what RIP was when I was fucking ripping it. You know what I mean? Like, so my point is, is I would tell anybody, try to be the smartest guy in the room because generally the smartest guy in the room is gonna be the best commando.

• 31:32Fran Racioppi?

  As you go through your evolution through your career, especially now, we talk a lot about PTSD experiences that people have right now and bring it up at this point because we've got a large portion of the GWOT generation of operator is retiring. Okay, they're either out, you know, but I mean, it's, it's a timeline thing, you know, more than anything else. 2001 was, you know, 23 years ago. So everyone who's hit 20 is coming out and then, you know, those few who are now sergeant majors or, you know, colonels and above are the ones who are gonna advance. Everybody else is capping out and they're gonna be gone. So in the next, you know, four, five years, you can, those numbers are gonna continue to degrade in terms of the GWOT generation.

• 32:14Fran Racioppi?

  So you have a lot of folks coming out and what we don't have is, because we're not in a conflict, is we don't have the military in the news every day. And what we saw through GWOT was that it was easy to run a nonprofit for veterans because, you know, you just had to say, I'm a nonprofit of veterans. We need money and people just threw you money. Well, that dries up when you're not in the news every day. And then we have, you know, other situations around, around the country in terms of economic policy and all that, that have obviously changed some winds. But now, almost more than ever, we have this large percentage of folks who have all sorts of physical and mental ailments who are now coming into the veteran community. Number one, how do we handle that? Number two, what's your perspective on this conversation

• 32:59Fran Racioppi?

  around PTSD and how do we actually go about treating it?

• 33:02Speaker 01

  First off, I don't think it's a veteran thing. I think it's a human condition. You're fucking five years old, your family gets run over by a train in front of you, tell me that's not PTSD, right? So I think PTSD is a human condition in general. I don't think it's exclusive to soldiers. So I personally do not believe in PTSD. I don't believe in the symptoms and I believe PTSD is a, you get stuck in the same chapter in your book. And no book has one chapter, right? And there's fucking shit that's gonna happen in your life that could be great. We don't even know it yet, but unless we turn that page, we're not gonna get there. I believe in TBI. I believe in a lot of other stuff, but I think

• 33:45Speaker 01

  PTSD is one of those things that like, there's a lot of stuff to overcome, right? And you know, I've had every symptom. I've been driving home, be forgetful, cognitive function, right? Eat some fucking avocados. You know what I'm saying? So what I'm telling you is, I thought I had PTSD and then over time, diet, exercise, I turned out that I had several other problems that I had to fix first, right? And then when I talk to guys that, you know, my buddies who, you know, are feeling the PTSD crunch from time to time, right? That's normal for guys. My first question's always, you know, well, you know, you're angry every day. Oh, I get it, right? Yeah. How many bottles of booze did you drink last night? Two? Cut it

• 34:30Speaker 01

  down to one tonight. I'm not gonna tell you not to drink. I wouldn't do that. I love the booze. However, what I would tell you is, don't drink two fucking bottles. You're hungover. That's why you're an asshole every day. You're hungover. So a lot of times, guys will try to fix it, not knowing what's going on, and they make it worse for themselves, right? And I would tell everybody, man, look- Cognitive functions, your brain, like if you're in the fog, this is brain shit. You can go in oxygen chambers. I do it all the time. Avocados, MCT oils, there's tons of ways to fix cognitive function. And what I'm telling you is you start breaking this stuff down, you'll see that this is a little bit fixable, more so than the last chapter where like, you know, my buddies are just like, woe is me, and I have to go over there and smack them in the face.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  No, no, let's go, like, let's keep going, right? So I'm not a big, uh, look, I'm not gonna coddle anybody. I'm gonna fucking shoot it to you straight. But at the same time, like, uh, I think PTSD is curable. I think it's something where you just learn strategies of how to cope with what happens, right? Look, a lot of soldiers lack cognitive functions because of fucking several reasons. Horrible diet, right? Look, electrolytes, you could be severely dehydrated. Most of what I find is food and diet would fix a lot of this for guys, but you can't get them to do that until they understand that that would actually work for them.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  And I think people don't say that because the VA, just like me, they just want you to take your fucking Percocets. Take your fucking OxyContin's. Take your, what did they give me? Fucking Dilaudid's. They give me Dilaudid's. That's what I get. And I'm just like, after a couple of years of getting fat of fucking taking all these pills, I'm like, I'm done with these fucking pills. I'm done with being broke. I'm done with being told I'm fucking broke and I'm figuring this shit out and here I am. So if anybody, you know, takes it hard that I don't believe in PTSD, yo, I cured myself. You know what I'm saying? Like, you can cure yourself too. Anybody can. And really, it's just about turning the page, man. You know, I didn't think I'd be here at 50. Yeah. Me neither. Fucking welcome to the club, buddy. We're all gonna die. Don't let it ruin your day.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Can we move on, you know? And let's have a good time, by the way, if we can, you know? Um, I think people lose those simple kind of insights, right? So I'm not a big PTSD guy. I do believe I've had it. Uh, the VA says I have zero of it technically. Um, but the reality is, is I think it's, most guys, it's several different little things that they can start to chip away at to be, start getting better right fucking now. You know what I mean?

• 37:11Fran Racioppi?

  So a couple of things you're doing today, shooting and jujitsu.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:15Fran Racioppi?

  So why are they important in your daily routine? And why is something like jujitsu important? We talked about that a couple of times on this show with a couple of guests and we talk about like, you know, my son asked me the other, I had a tooth pulled, the wisdom tooth had to come out last weekend. And I was on Saturday, on Sunday, I was, I was working out at my house and my son, he's four years old. He looks at me and says, Dad, I don't, I don't understand. You had a tooth pulled yesterday, but you're working out today. And I looked at him and I said, Adrian, because I'm strong, you're strong in life, then it makes everything else easier. And I truly believe that and jujitsu is one of those things.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  I agree. Um, okay. Jujitsu. First off, if I don't just fucking wear myself out every day, like fucking smoke myself, there's a good chance at some point today, I will be a fucking asshole. You know what I mean? If I just get wore the fuck out today, there's a good chance I'm just gonna be giggling the rest of the day because I'm too tired to give a fuck. So I wear myself out every day. One. Uh, I think the next thing with jujitsu is a couple of things for old guys, right? Is I go to this doctor and he like puts the blood pressure cuff on me and I'm like, he's like, holy cow, your resting heart rate's like 60. You just walked in the room like, how's your blood pressure so good? I'm like, yeah, I don't know. You know what I mean? He was like, what have you been doing lately?

• 38:30Speaker 01

  And I told him, I do forced joint manipulation. And he was like, oh, I've heard of this. This is really good. Jujitsu. If I told him I was doing jujitsu, the fucking guy would tell me quit immediately, right? But I'm like, I do forced joint manipulation. He's like, oh, you look more mobile. You look healthier than ever. Right? So as an old guy, I use jujitsu as cardio. I use it as weight training. I use it as conditioning. And then, you know, believe it or not, fuckers janking on my limbs has really helped my mobility. You know what I mean? My flexibleness, my, and then all of that leads to I'm stronger, I'm more flexible. I can do more than ever. You know, I mean, fuck, I started, you know, with the lot, I couldn't even teach, literally.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  I think my first year of classes was like six classes for a year. And I do like a hundred or 200 now, easy, you know, and I do jujitsu, right? So it's my sanity and I would tell anybody. Everybody, every human being should be taking an hour to two hours a day on themselves as some type, whether you fucking meditate, whether you don't meditate, whether you think about crazy shit, call it meditation, I don't fucking know, but whether you work out, whether you do jujitsu, people gotta do this, right? And then it's almost like, have you ever been around working dogs? Like, the fucking, them Malinois need about four to five hours of fucking work a day, or they're biting someone in the team room, you know what I mean?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  I feel the same way, and I don't think it's a, I don't think I'm animalistic in any way, I think it's just a human thing, like, man, when we're wore out, we're fit, we're happy, we're healthy, like, I'm a little tired, I'm as nice as you be, man, you know, I ain't got jits in a couple days, what the fuck you want, you know what I mean? Yeah, I'm focused, you know, I stay focused, I stay sharp. I look, I look at it this way, I try to learn something every day, and I always want to learn new skills, always, I don't care what they're.

• 40:25Fran Racioppi?

  When faced with a challenge, Green Berets adapt, overcome, and keep moving forward. Now's your chance to stand with them. Join the 1952 Society with a monthly gift of just nineteen dollars and fifty-two cents to provide critical medical devices for wounded, ill, and injured Green Berets. Your support fuels their recovery, helping them return to duty or continue serving their communities. A Green Beret's mission never stops. Neither should our support. Join the 1952 Society today and stand with those who stand for us.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  I think that's critical. Well, here's what they tell you, John, because I was an officer, and they tell you, if you want to know the truth, go sit down with the Sergeant Major. So, appreciate you, appreciate you sitting down with me, hopping in the back of this Humvee, kicking it back and telling it like it is.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  I was kinda, uh, I don't know, when we sat in the Humvee at first, it was like a little cramped, I was like, I was a little, I don't know, and then, uh, but yeah, uh, hey, I'm glad Matt invited me out here, Health and Human, University of Health and Human Performance, right? I'm just glad to be here, and I'm, look, I'm glad to share my story because I was the fucking fat guy on pills, you know what I mean? And I was a hundred percent disabled veteran, and I believed it, and as soon as I fucking stopped believing that shit, I figured out, I just chipping away at it to get better, man, and that's why I'm here.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Our service ends. We got a lot more to do, man.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, amen. Hey, your book ain't one chapter. You know what I mean? Like, look, you get out of the service, your book may not even be a halfway done. Fucking turn the page, move on. There's great shit that's gonna happen, but you ain't gonna get there till you turn that page.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 42:07Fran Racioppi?

  American Jedbergs went on to form the foundation of the United States Special Forces and the Special Activities Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thanks for listening to the Jedburgh Podcast, an official program of the Green Beret Foundation. I'm your creator and host, Fran Rychovick. Join us next week for a new episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out on YouTube for full episodes, highlights, and other long and short form content. If you like what you heard, give us a like and leave a review. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, extra threads. Send your comments and inquiries to [email protected]. As former members of Special Operations Forces, the Jedburgh Media Channel, and the Green Beret Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations of US Army Special Forces and their families.

• 42:51Fran Racioppi?

  Thanks for joining us on this episode. How you prepare today determines success tomorrow.