Navy SEAL Insights On Taliban Takeover w/ Rob O'Neill & Rich Diviney

Like you, I've been STUNNED and HEARTBROKEN over how events in Afghanistan have unfolded during the past several weeks. Our pullout remains an open wound, especially after 13 of our brave service members were killed in a suicide bombing on August 26 outside the Abbey gate of Kabul’s airport. 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈 → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ← ▶︎ INSTAGRAM ▶︎ FACEBOOK ▶︎ LINKEDIN ▶︎ TWITTER ▶︎ WEBSITE Like you, I WANT ANSWERS! So, I asked two men I respect and admire to help us make sense of what happened and what comes next. In a world that sometimes throws the HERO and PATRIOT label around too much, these men have not only earned those distinctions, they’ve also set the standard. I am honored to welcome Robert O’Neill and Rich Diviney to this week’s show. Rob was a Navy SEAL from 1996 to 2012, went on 400 missions (that he can admit to), and is the man who killed Osama bin Laden during Operation Neptune Spear in 2011. Rich is a retired Navy SEAL commander who served more than 20 years, including 13 overseas deployments—including 11 in Iraq and Afghanistan. Without a doubt, both men are UNIQUELY QUALIFIED to talk about current Middle East events. They are not armchair experts. They LIVED it, and they have a lot to SHARE with us. In a sweeping, honest, and often unsettling talk, Rob and Rich PULL NO PUNCHES about their impressions on the current state of affairs in the Middle East and how poorly the evacuation was handled. We also get into our military’s long-term STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP direction over the past 20 years and how past and current decisions have impacted our troops on the ground. You’re going to hear how the CHAIN OF COMMAND works, and you may not be happy with the “why and how” involving our policy decisions. Many of us have also struggled to understand how and why we left behind so much equipment and weapons of war for the Taliban’s benefit. Of all the UNANSWERED QUESTIONS that remain, this could have the most far-reaching and negative implications for the entire world. Rob and Rich offer insights into GLOBAL POLITICS, including how China, Russia, and other actors will redefine their roles as military and economic powers in the near term and why that could impact how next conflicts will be waged in the future. I’ve heard from many of you about your concerns over the potential of increased terrorism threats in the United States with the fall of Afghanistan. Rob and Rich also discuss the role of the Taliban and other terror groups and speculate on what to be to watch for in the coming months and years. This is a FRANK interview by two men who are UNFILTERED in their honesty, insights, and opinions. If you want ANSWERS about what happened in Afghanistan and what comes next in the Middle East and in the United States, this is an hour of your time well spent. Finally, to Rob, Rich, and all the BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN who now serve or who have served our country in the armed forces, THANK YOU FOR YOUR VIGILANCE AND YOUR SERVICE. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:45Ed Mylett?

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• 1:01Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company, for me, of the explosion on our rig.

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  On October 2nd.

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  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

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  This is the Ed Mylett Show.

• 1:44Ed Mylett?

  All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. I'm honored today. Today's special, and I think it's going to be a show that you'll never forget the rest of your life. That's my outcome for today. And I invited two friends of mine, two people that I'm proud to have any association with. And we're going to talk about Afghanistan today. We're going to talk about the Middle East, just in even our role in general in the world with the military. And then we're also going to talk about why you should care. Why does it matter to you, right? With all the things you have going on in your life, it's easy to disregard these things. And I didn't want this to be one of these CNN, Fox News, you know, filtered type stuff. I didn't want one of these generals on here. I wanted real warriors, people that have been on the ground, that have operated, that can give you real feedback. And it's the two people that I've had on my show that I respect the most in my life.

• 2:26Ed Mylett?

  And so I'm honored to have with me today, first, Rob O'Neill. Rob's had over 400 combat missions, his life that we know of. Um, you know, you've all heard Rob on my show before. He was part of the lone survivor rescue, first guy on the boat in Captain Phillips raid. Um, and is probably best known for killing a guy named Osama bin Laden. And when I talked to Rob, I said, Rob, I got a new friend named Rich Devini. He says, that's the finest SEAL I ever served with. So that's pretty high praise. Rich, 20 years, SEAL commander, 13 deployments, 11 of them in Afghanistan and Iraq. And he trained a, he was a trainer for a group that we're not supposed to name that rhymes with SEAL Team Six, it rhymes with that.

• 3:10Ed Mylett?

  And, um, and so he's got some significant experience to share with us too. So gentlemen, thank you for being here today. Honored to have you.

• 3:17Robert O'Neill?

  Hey, Ed, it's great to be with you.

• 3:19Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, great to be here. And, uh, let me just give you a call out because, um, you know, I, Rob and I, you know, we lost contact, we lost touch, and that happens just because, you know, when you, when you leave the military, it's, it's kind of a natural progression. But, uh, but you know, you were the reason that, uh, Rob and I got to finally talk to each other after I think it was five or six years it had been. So.

• 3:39Robert O'Neill?

  Yeah, it's been a long time. And, uh, Ed actually sent me a message saying that he interviewed you and, and I said, I wasn't sure if I, I didn't mention you by name at the time, Rich, but I had quoted you, I think, two or three times when I was on, uh, Ed's podcast first time. And, uh, I, I didn't know if you were either gonna love me or hate me for doing that, like I was stealing your material. But, uh, but I know that a lot of stuff you said to me when we were working together, and we can get into that, uh, has stuck with me, not just in the Navy, not just at SEAL Team Six, but afterwards in the, in the 10, 10, whatever years I've been in the private sector.

• 4:06Rich Diviney?

  Well, I appreciate that. I do. Yeah, it's good to be it's good to be with this group. It really is. So thank you.

• 4:10Ed Mylett?

  It certainly. And thank you both for your service. I didn't say that. So let's start out. How do you both feel about what's happened there? Rob, I'll start with you. So, you know, today I'm reading that, you know, the Taliban's taken over the last province that was remaining as of today, like maybe just within the last hour. We're coming up, we're recording this before, but it'll come out right after. It's the anniversary of nine eleven, twenty year anniversary. Just your overall thoughts of what you've seen take place there the last few weeks. Rob, you first.

• 4:36Robert O'Neill?

  Well, what's what's sad to see is we're pretty much back where we were on September tenth, uh, two thousand one, when when Al Qaeda actually sent operatives up into the Panjers Valley where the where the fighting was the Northern Alliance and is again, and they killed Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was the the the lion of the Panjers who was fighting them. They killed him on nine ten. They attacked on nine eleven. And they were the reason up there why we were able to send some of our brave people in there with their support to fight the Taliban. Uh, they're up there right now. I'm getting, you know, because the Taliban took over, we knew they would cut off the cell towers. We knew they would cut off the internet. So we're getting spotty. Um, information out of there, but what they're they're trying to say right now, they did attack uh and take over the place where Massoud himself was buried.

• 5:17Robert O'Neill?

  They held it for five hours. I just found out that they uh had taken it back, but the Taliban flag was raised for about five hours. Uh, and they're gonna keep fighting up there. That's where the vice president, uh, who's probably the current president of the government that we left behind. He's up there. He's fighting with them. And then that's where we're recommending, if we could find Americans and Afghans who helped us, get them there and then they can get them out to a to a different country. But it's it's it's a big fight. You we we've even seen people, Americans are up in Majerish Reef trying to get out, but that's where they're holding the uh the how many airplanes. And you're gonna hear, you know, the suits in Washington in the Beltway say, well, that, you know, no one's trapped. They're just, you know, on an airplane being held on the ground with people guns. Um, it's it's a complete mess. Uh, they did everything wrong. There there are different

• 6:00Robert O'Neill?

  reasons that we should have done, you know, we're gonna get out of it again, eventually. But if if you if you took some people on the ground and asked them, what's the worst way to do it? You couldn't have come up with the worst way that has been handled so far.

• 6:12Ed Mylett?

  And Rich, I assume you feel likewise?

• 6:15Rich Diviney?

  I do. I mean, you know, it's, so I think, I think it's important for us to, to almost separate the two, there are two facets to this. There's the, there's the decision to leave, that's one, and then the, and then the actual withdrawal, okay. I think, I think the, no one, no one can debate that the, the actual withdrawal has been very, very poorly executed, to say the least, right? I mean, that's, and, and, and Rob's gotten into it a little bit, and, and gosh, I mean, that's just so apparent. You know, in terms of the decision to withdraw, you know, there's, there's, there's arguments to be made on, on, on both fronts. And of course, the decision was, was, oh, it was talked about during the Obama administration, was actually, talked about more, and even signed into action during

• 6:57Rich Diviney?

  the Trump administration, then, and then, of course, ratified by the Biden administration. The, the fact is, we had about 2,500 US troops on the ground, about 7,500 coalition, about 10,000 contractors. There is a, there's an argument that could be made, and, and had been made, that just that, that small presence could have, could have been maintained, you know, and, and could have, could have stayed there as just a presence to kind of hold off the, the resurgence of the Taliban. And so there's an argument to me there that, that we could have stayed. Now, that obviously didn't happen, that's hindsight, the decision was made to, to withdraw. Now, we have to figure out, okay, now that this has happened,

• 7:42Rich Diviney?

  what are the effects going to be on the region holistically, on, on the globe? And then, of course, how do we then reconcile our new position, both, I guess, politically and morally, with, with, with the Taliban, right? Because, because again, even Taliban, and Al Qaeda, and ISIS, they're all different, right? And, and one of the problems, I think, and Rob will probably back me up on this, is going in there at first, we were, we were all very focused on a mission of, of getting bad guys, you know, and, and of course, you know, guys like Rob and I were at the lower end of the decision-making cycle, so we had job to do, and we said, hey, go find the bad guys, we're gonna find, find the bad guys. But, but a lot of the issue, from a larger political standpoint, was because, was, was because

• 8:24Rich Diviney?

  the, the groups were conflated quite a bit. I mean, Taliban was not the same as the Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda's not the same, well ISIS, of course, came later and all that stuff. But these are different groups. Similarities, certainly, but, but I think that's part of the analysis that needs to now be, be considered.

• 8:38Ed Mylett?

  Let's talk about that for a minute. So by the way, you might have been at the lower end of the decision making, but you were the highest end of the execution part of it. And that's the part that I think is the why the two of you are so valuable. So let's talk about these two points first. First, let's talk about the 2,500 that were there. Then we'll talk about the mess. So the 2,500, they're not even heard Rob say, hey, we, we probably did need to get out of there. And even Rob, as I've heard, made the case, you probably should have got out of there like back in oh, four, before all these IUDs started destroying all of our guys, right? Are so many of our, our brave guys over there and women, but I want to go back to that 2,500 thing because you know, people say, well, Obama wanted to do it. Trump wanted to do it. And this has become sort of like a consensus that, hey, we shouldn't be there at all.

• 9:15Ed Mylett?

  And I just want to understand that for me because I look at it, Rob, I'll go to you first because I know you've said this, but there's 2,500 of us over there. We haven't had a death, a combat death in a year and a half. Yeah. Most of the money we've spent that we talk about, wow, it was a fortune to be over there is in the past. That's the rear view mirror. So the expense of being there, the threat of being there for us seemed nominal to me. And it's not like we're not anywhere else in the world. We've got troops in Germany, right? We've got them in Japan. We've got troops in Italy. So we have them in lots of different places around the world. Why is it so important that we leave when it seemed like we were sort of holding it together with what we had?

• 9:51Robert O'Neill?

  Well, it, you mentioned my, my first deployment, I lived actually in downtown Jalalabad, Afghanistan in 2005. It was at a point where we're on the ground thinking that, so the hearts and minds, and I've been told this by Taliban themselves, face to face, eating rice out of the same bowl. That you're not, we're believers and you're not going to get us with, with tea and cookies. Um, you, you, the, the hearts and minds things is we, we were living with the locals. I had Afghans on both sides. We shopped in the bazaars. Uh, I rode a motorcycle around Afghanistan in the daytime, which you couldn't do now. And the airfield wasn't really built up. We could land, we'd land there by driving our motorbikes out there, setting up strobe lights so the C-130 could land. And we had enough people there where we're saying we're protected from the Taliban by the locals because they love that we're pumping up the economy. They love that we're giving stuff to their kids and all this stuff. But, but for some reason,

• 10:35Robert O'Neill?

  people in Washington and a lot of general officers live by the, this is the way we've always done it. So the surge worked. Rich and I were in, in, in Iraq, the surge worked and they decided, hey, let's just surge in Afghanistan. And we were telling them it's a bad idea because here's probably what's going to happen. You're going to build up that airfield. You're going to move us out of our house, onto the airfield, uh, take five shop owners. From out in town where we chop, move them onto the base, then we can only buy from them. They're going to jack their prices up 800%. They're going to get rich. People outside aren't, are going to get poor. What do you think is going to happen? And, and if we, if we just left that small footprint there with a few airfields to do the cross border ops, because we knew damn well that um, Al Qaeda is now in Pakistan. So we sort of did that part of the mission.

• 11:19Robert O'Neill?

  Um, and we can, we can do cross border ops to hit them. So keep Assadabad, keep um, Bagram. You, you, all you gotta do is bomb the convoys. Um, they're afraid of Bagram. And I think everyone, and it's one of those things where it, you know, people, you, you do something long enough, you're going to make mistakes and that's fine. Um, and I, I, I talked to pro football teams and I'll say, look, it doesn't matter why it's second and 15. It just is. What do we do now? Stop warrant, we could talk about that in the debrief. But I think we all were in agreement that whatever we do, do not ever give up Bagram. Because Bagram, Bagram is a spot where it, there's so many layers of, of, of security. It's a huge airfield, like four airstrips, a, a, um, trauma one ho- uh, hospital, barracks that are like hotels.

• 12:04Robert O'Neill?

  There's a prison there and it protects itself. The pilots would be back and I'm not making this up in time for fast food and green bean coffee. We actually would make fun of it on the ground. We would call Bagram the self licking ice cream cone. Because it supports itself and it really is not that, I mean, flying in, you know, you fly from the States, fly to Germany, into Bagram. It's not that bad of a deployment. Yes, it's a combat deployment. Yes, you're there to support yourself and support the, the, the people on the ground, the intel assets. Someone's got to do it, but eventually if you, if you want to keep this place stable, this is it. If, if you're slowly going to let the Afghans take over, you need Bagram. That's it. If you, you take Bagram away, this is going to, this, they're going to fall in 10 days.

• 12:41Ed Mylett?

  So how do you do that, Rob? If everyone's gone? So you're saying everyone shouldn't have been gone? If you're going to protect Bagram, because I've heard you say this before, but, and also how plush it is, the karaoke nights, all this other stuff that went on.

• 12:50Robert O'Neill?

  Seriously, I'm not making that up, I wish I was.

• 12:52Ed Mylett?

  That blows my mind, but how do you do that? Then you've got to have. Boots on the ground.

• 12:56Robert O'Neill?

  Yeah, you do need boots on the ground, but but again, again, we made mistakes with trying to build schools and insert Jeffersonian democracy into a place that doesn't know what time it is. You don't need to do that. We don't Marines were not meant to build schools. They're meant to crush people, put a, you know, finger in their chest and say, no, don't do it again. But this is a result now of the chain of command only working one way. And and subordinates are basically coached to tell their bosses only what they want to hear, lie to them to let the noise going fine. And that slowly goes up to the general officer level. And then they're telling the politicians and the generals are going to tell the politicians what they want because they make, you know, they're a one star, they're going to make two star because Congress approved it. But if you listen to someone on the ground, they don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear the truth.

• 13:39Ed Mylett?

  Right. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but the this idea that, you know, I've been worried I have such respect for anybody who served. But the more I'm looking at, you know, Miley and, you know, I'm wondering where all the accountability is for some of these generals, but these you're telling me that the way it works, this is stuff that the audience would never hear anywhere else that it doesn't come up. So that everyone starts to tell each other what they want to hear. And then these generals, they kind of get in a spot, don't they, Rich, where they're and I don't.

• 14:03Robert O'Neill?

  Can I can I interject for one second before Rich talks?

• 14:05Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Robert O'Neill?

  I want to give an example of Rich Diviney because he was my boss. We were this is a good segue. He and I were doing some mission. We were fighting in Iraq in 2007, which is the busiest summer I've ever been a part of. And we were planning something. I remember looking at it. I said, Hey, what do you think, sir? You're in charge. And he said, Oh, make no mistake, I'm not in charge. I'm just responsible.

• 14:24Ed Mylett?

  Wow. Wow. So that is geez Louise. So Rich, that is true. These these guys get to the I got I want to say this respectfully because what do I know? But it seems to me sometimes these generals almost get to this point where they're playing politics because they're one step away from sitting on Chevron's board someday or something like that, right? So they're not going to rock the boat. Everyone starts sort of telling them, everybody what they want to hear. Is that how you end up having a mess like this that's taking place? Because no one's able to talk to chain of command above them and say, no, this is wrong. Maybe we should protect a few of our helicopters.

• 15:02Robert O'Neill?

  Well, yeah, I mean, it's part of the way. I, you know, and again.

• 15:05Rich Diviney?

  I want to make sure we recognize the fact that there, you know, and Rob and I know this, so there were some very, very outstanding general officers and senior people we worked with. Oh, no doubt about it, yeah. So, yeah, so now, this idea that sometimes the lines are blurred because good news really sometimes needs to be heard is 100% true. Does it happen all the time? No. Is it part of the problem? Certainly. But let me just give you another optic here, because I think we can, you know, it can take a little bit of the pressure off of the military. I think one of the problems that we have faced historically is that terrorism is looked at as a military problem, okay? Terrorism is not a military problem.

• 15:48Rich Diviney?

  Saying terrorism is a military problem is the same thing as saying obesity is a fitness problem, okay? Terrorism is the result of a bunch of different things, and certainly there are military aspects that can help with the raw end of terrorism. But terrorism is ultimately, it's an ideological problem. It's a poverty frustration problem. It's a socioeconomic problem. It's an isolation problem. There's a lot of factors that go into this environment. You know, to give you a quick example, and this is where, gosh, if I could give advice to anybody right now, I'd just say, anybody, whether we think about Afghanistan, we think about the nation right now, is try to practice some empathy, right?

• 16:30Rich Diviney?

  And let me give you an example of this, just in Rob and my world, because I remember us having this conversation, it was Rob and a few of other of us, and I can't remember which country it was in, we were in so many, but it was either Iraq or Afghanistan. And it was one of these times we saw, it was, there was one of the kids out there, he had to be 15 or 16, and he had fired a, or attempted to fire a rocket propelled grenade at one of the convoys, US or whatever, and of course, it didn't go well, okay? He got addressed by the coalition. And it was unfortunate. I remember us sitting and seeing this, and we began a discussion, it was really interesting. We started to think and say to ourselves, you know, just walk that back for a second, you know, think about that kid, okay?

• 17:12Rich Diviney?

  That kid is probably from a family whose dad is gone, okay? It's probably just him and his mom and maybe his sisters. There's no school for this teenager. There's no alcohol. There's no sports. There's no release for all of the testosterone. There's no pathway forward for this kid. And his family is suffering. And one day, the bad guys come and say, hey, we will pay you 100 Dinar to go fire this rocket at this US convoy. And every single one of us, to a man, said we would be that kid. Okay? If we were in that country, we would be that kid. Okay? So this starts to explain some of the ways this starts to bubble up. It's just so much more than a military problem. And I think, you know, one of the things I've talked to now, a couple, you know, certainly

• 17:57Rich Diviney?

  my buddies and some folks who have, we've all lost, but maybe some widows as well. And I've told them in the recent days, I said, we can't ever think that what we did was in vain. We did the job we were asked to do. Listen, we were asked to go plug holes in the ship, okay? That's what I always think of ourselves. You know, there's a bunch of holes in the ship. We go down, we start plugging it. But we can only plug those holes for so long until someone is up topside, taking that ship into port to be fixed, okay? We were asked to go find bad guys. We did our job. We did it well, in some cases, too well, but we did it. And so we should feel proud about that. That it was not buttressed by a larger strategy on how to kind of secure this place.

• 18:40Rich Diviney?

  And this goes for both Iraq and Afghanistan, because both were difficult, because we're not that good at nation building. Is not, well, it's unfortunate, but it's also historically typical. And so, and so when we talk about the military's mistakes, of which we had many, we also have to address the fact that the military was asked to do something that the military isn't supposed to be doing by itself. I mean, you know, and so, and so it was a huge mission. It was a huge mission in two different countries. Oftentimes, the other mistake, and Rob and I, having served in both places, Rob will agree with this, the countries, the strategies were conflated. People thought we could do the same thing in Afghanistan that we could do in Iraq. And you just can't.

• 19:25Rich Diviney?

  Whole different structures. And so, and so I think there's a...

• 19:29Robert O'Neill?

  There was a larger issue going on here in terms of seeing the problem holistically and seeing how many elements of power the US and the coalition and the world really was willing to throw at the problem.

• 19:41Ed Mylett?

  Do you think that, by the way, I really appreciate you sharing that perspective and for all the former and current military listening, because I am getting messages from so many thinking what they did do there was in vain. And I know you guys are too. I mean, that's the prevailing messages that I get from people that served, that they just feel like, gosh, my, what was my time there for? And then Rob says earlier in the conversation, hey, I think we're back to September 10th. And that concerns me listening because, you know, you're discussing these admissions as past tense because those are over. But this feels like, in my own heart, I feel the reason I want to do the show today, I feel like there's an inevitability to what took place after September 10th.

• 20:18Robert O'Neill?

  Yeah.

• 20:19Ed Mylett?

  And what took place after that. Except, Rob, let's talk about this. Except, I want some solutions from you as well. But except when we leave, we leave $90 billion roughly in equipment there. We've lost the base, the prisons have been opened. The unbelievable things that are already happening to women, I read a report today about a pregnant woman, she's a police officer and them executing, the Taliban executing her in front of her family. And I get, I get emotional, I think about this, because it's not just the money that was left there, Rob, but what do we do? Because, you know, these Apaches, these tanks, I have to think China and Russia would like to get a good look at these, you know, some of our tanks.

• 20:56Robert O'Neill?

  Well, of course, of course.

• 20:59Ed Mylett?

  You mentioned Bagram earlier, like, is there a chance ever that China tries to take a base over like that inevitably someday? I'm just curious to your thoughts and what do we do? Because all this crap is still left there and they have it now.

• 21:09Robert O'Neill?

  Well, I mean, the proof's right in the video. They showed one of our helicopters being flown, I think, over Kandahar, and that dude was hanging from it. I don't think that was an execution. I think that was a fighter trying to, trying to fix a situation on a flag or something. But the point is, the helicopter was flying, and there's no way the Taliban learned how to fly it in four or five days. That's someone that was either US-trained, or Russian, or someone from China or Iran. It's in there. But if you notice, the Chinese embassy never closed, and they just said that that's their biggest partner in rebuilding, which means China's going to move for sure and they're trying to get that pathway from because China and Afghanistan actually border through there through Pakistan to get into the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Gulf, so they can get there into their

• 21:50Robert O'Neill?

  with reach into Europe and then you just bringing China that you know the the big picture thing you got to think about Taiwan because China wants Taiwan back I mean you got celebrities like John Cena speaking in Mandarin apologizing to the Chinese people for calling Taiwan a country the issue is now what's going to stop China from taking Taiwan but I wouldn't trust us they got to rely on Australia and Japan our allies over there and granted we do have the most powerful Navy but you know we used to rely on sea power we used to rely on alliance solidarity deterrence forward defense and who's going to trust us it's it's it's a bigger issue with China trying to become the only superpower in the world and and if you think about the problem is we've taken our eye off the ball because this is this is a direct result of political correctness gone wild

• 22:32Robert O'Neill?

  I've had veterans hitting me up today DM on social media saying do you think we're diverse enough as a military to fight China and Russia diversity has nothing I mean diversity is great but no one in the military really cares about it like I you know Don't Ask Don't Tell was huge with the repealing of it when I was getting out I'm in Afghanistan after the bin Laden raid talking to SEALs and I said I said do honestly any of you really care if anyone in this room is gay no absolutely not I don't care if they're gay black white straight whatever if it's it's equal opportunity meaning if you can get to the standards welcome aboard I don't care if you're a woman or a man if you can do it let's all do it together no one cared but the it just is hype for some reason the media likes to hype stuff up because bad news gets great ratings and it's the flavor of the day it's 24 hour news cycle

• 23:18Robert O'Neill?

  we're you know we've got General Milley the chairman of the Joint Chiefs talking about he wants to hear about white rage it's you know what nobody that's not even a thing and they're they're talking about that well well China just got rid of beta male boy bands because they don't want they want to they want to put alpha males out there not not these you know not and hey not that harmonization is great I love dudes that can sing that's cool but the military doesn't need to be concentrating on that that's where we're at and and again it just comes back to telling the truth because right now we're in a time where telling the truth can get you fired

• 23:49Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 23:50Rich Diviney?

  Well, the other part, the other part is it's not just the bad news sells nowadays. The worst part is that hate sells nowadays. It's gone beyond just bad news. It's become so visceral and hateful. I mean, it's targeted, which is tough. But, you know, let me, you know, a quick thing about, you know, just a quick, a quick taste of optimism here, I think, in terms of this equipment. You know, first, first of all, most of the equipment was disabled or destroyed, especially the higher tech stuff. Certainly, there's some leftover. However, I would say not a lot of preventance, PMS, which is preventive maintenance servicing going on over there. So I think, I think a lot of that equipment will, and I might eat my words, of course,

• 24:34Rich Diviney?

  but will be used for a little while and not be used anymore. I don't think China and Russia are necessarily interested in our equipment over there. We do have to be concerned because, like Rob mentioned, you know, there's a vacuum now, and China and Russia are filling that vacuum. But there, I think, what we have to be worried about is the fact that Afghanistan's sitting on quite a bit of resources that China and Russia could get their hands on, or probably have interest in getting their hands on. The other thing, so that's, so I guess the optimism is that I think-

• 25:07Ed Mylett?

  Rich, do you agree with Rob that maybe their hands are on them? For example, the example he gave with the Apache. Like, what I love this is you're not hearing this anywhere else about, you know, CNN's already moved off of this because they want to protect their guy, right? They're on to another story. And if it would be reversed, if this was Trump in, Fox would have moved off of it, and CNN would be covering it agnostically. I get all that. I'm just saying, do you tend to agree with Rob? It sounds to me like you're a little bit more bullish than Rob is, but do you, do you agree that, you know, who was flying that Apache?

• 25:34Rich Diviney?

  Well, yeah, I mean, again, we trained a lot of people over there. I mean, there's a, you know, so who knows? But, you know, again, I think, is it concerning? Sure. Is it, is it keeping me awake at night? No. I mean, it's not, that, that piece is not keeping me awake at night. I think the piece that keeps me awake at night is, is the fact that there's a vacuum there, that we have to, as a nation, figure out how to, how to fill the vacuum as necessary. Okay? We're not going- Going to, at least in the immediate near term, and I say that for five, maybe five, 10 years. We're not the first people who are going to be affected by a destabilized Afghanistan. Okay, that's really going to be people who are more close to the problem. That does not mean we need to, we need not be concerned.

• 26:17Rich Diviney?

  We have to think about the concerns and we have to think about our true, some of our truer competitors. Because again, the other thing that I'll say, and again, Rob, correct me if you disagree. But I think one of the things, one of the side effects of this 20-year war, that is the negative side effect, is we lost our, we lost the bubble. We took our eye off some of our bigger threats, of our near-peer threats. And so, and so coming out of this now, I think it's going to provide us some focus on some near-peer threats that we've lost the, we had to kind of get back in our, in our hands in terms of understanding what they're doing. Because I just don't think, I don't think our next war is going to be one with muscles and guns.

• 27:02Rich Diviney?

  I think it's going to be one with nerds and cyber technology and things like that. And we have to really start, this is where, you know, again, you know, Rob speaks about diversity. And it's why, you know, the military, you know, it's a very diverse institution. It shouldn't be overly focused upon because guess what? Whether you are, wherever you're from, there are certain aspects, certain attributes that you're looking for in the, in military personnel. In some cases, it's the muscles and guns guys. It's guys like, you know, I guess Rob and I, although Rob's a lot stronger than me. But, but you know, the guys who tote the stuff and go fight the wars, or fight the battles and shoot the guns. But, but it's also, we need that, we need the thinkers, we need the intellect, the people who are thinking beyond the, you know, being on the ground.

• 27:45Rich Diviney?

  I mean, the level of ground engagements in this kind of new technological world is only going to get smaller, you know? We're going to, we're going to start seeing wars fought in ways that are different than muscles and guns. And so I think we have to start thinking through a larger-term strategy as a nation. And our military is, as far as I know, and the limited, the limited stuff I hear, we're starting to, we're starting to shift that a little bit and starting to say, how can we actually begin to win again?

• 28:16Ed Mylett?

  But talk about the thinking thing, Rich, I want to ask you that. By the way, I'm so proud of being able to share both of you in not the stereotypical way, you know, that, that, you know, millions of people are going to expose to the... Frankly, the intellect and brilliance of the two of you guys, I know you both are really humble, but I just, I'm really proud the way both of you think through these things and what you can share. And just, this is what should be being talked about on television right now, and it's not. But I, I, the thinking part, you, you seem to have a little bit more confidence, Rich. By the way, it makes me feel good that you have more confidence in some of the decision making, because I've been going through, you know, the last few weeks perplexed. And I want to understand, and let me tell you, I want to, we'll put a bow around Afghanistan in a minute, but I want to understand this. I want the, I want my audience to understand this.

• 29:00Ed Mylett?

  I, by the way, your point of that they have destroyed some of the equipment, I had not heard that. So that's the first time I've heard that some of the equipment has been destroyed. So that's, that's wonderful. If that's accurate, that makes me feel somewhat better. But I just think about a few things. Why was this so abrupt? You know, and I, and I mean, as my little skeptical hat goes off, you know, I go, why was this so abrupt? I know there was a plan, but how would we leave civilians there? How would, how would we, like you mentioned Taiwan earlier, what this looks like to our allies is horrible. To people that are in these other vulnerable places, why did we do this? Why, why, why didn't we destroy all of the equipment, right? Why wasn't everybody out sooner? I just, I, I'm trying to understand, is it because there's a photo op for 9/11?

• 29:41Ed Mylett?

  Is this a diversion because you're trying to stick through a $3 trillion 45th stimulus package? Or was there an ineptitude that took place, just real significant mistakes with, you know, Milley? You know, Biden, I guess he's the ultimate decision maker, Blinken, Austin, all of them. Like, Rob, what, why did this happen the way it did, in your opinion?

• 30:02Robert O'Neill?

  In my opinion, I think it was for the photo op. And again, I want to revert back to what I said about yes men telling them, if someone tells the president, look, the Afghan army has us, they're twice the size of the Taliban, they have all the gear, they have 20 years of training. We can get the 20-year anniversary of 9/11, which in my opinion should just be observed and not celebrated. But I, I, I think that, you know, I'm also, I'm not, I'm not as negative as I may sound. I like to be positive. I, I really don't think anyone there, there being in power, is trying to do the wrong thing. They're trying to do the right thing. They just sometimes get bad advice, or they're, they're doing, they're going about it the wrong way. Taking it for political decisions, that's, you know, that's a bad thing, but I think this was just a really bad advice taken very, very quickly where, I mean, the first, one of the first rules, even my wife said this to me, and she has no military background, said,

• 30:47Robert O'Neill?

  why did they give them a timeline, a date we're going to be gone? And why did we give up Bagram? Just, um, just, just bad decisions made that, that, uh, yeah, I, I, and again, it goes back to the generals. If I was a general that said, uh, don't give up Bagram, and they did, I'd resign. If, if I said, do give up Bagram, I should be fired. Uh, when, when Rich and I were on the ground, if we screwed up that bad, we'd be dead or court martialed. It, it's just the way, the way it should work. I, I just, again, I think it was, um, uh, it was a shiny object, great political, um, photo op, and then the midterms are in a year. It just, they're not, I, you know, I don't, I don't really think President Biden made this decision to try to just destroy us. It's just a really bad, the bad decision making, um, bad advice and, and, um, you know, trying to hurry it. You can't, you can't hurry this.

• 31:32Ed Mylett?

  So situation on the ground there. By the way, just thank you both for being so willing to share. Um, I want to have everyone understand the situation that happens on the ground because you've both been there a lot. How does, you have roughly 300,000 people in the Afghan army, right? I'm, I mean, what do I know? But that's what I've been told. They've been trained for years and years. They've got the better equipment. The Taliban's got 80,000 people and in three days they're toast. So how does that happen, Rich? Is that because these guys never intended to fight for their own freedom, their own country because they've been paid? What's the dynamic on the ground that allows the Taliban, which is a third the size, right, with crappier equipment? In less than a week to basically dominate these guys? How does that happen? And did, did that surprise you?

• 32:17Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, I mean, it, it, uh, well, I guess I surprised everybody that it happened so fast. I think, you know, again, these are, you know, I, I, most of these people are good people and they, and they want to do what's right. And I think what Rob said is true. Um, I think the way it happens is again, it's a failure in decision making, or excuse me, it's a bad, it's bad decision making and that stretches, it starts to stretch, you know, way back beyond, um, beyond any one administration. It's a series of decisions that lead you down a pathway. Um, and so as soon as we began the, uh, the insistence and really kind of the when we signed the documents back in I think it was February 2020 I think is when when the Trump administration signed the documents

• 33:00Rich Diviney?

  to leave Afghanistan okay they you know made the basically made a truce with the Taliban and signed the documents all right that set into motion a series of events that were going to be inevitable which were then carried out in really upsettingly bad fashion right because we had failures all along three big I think failures in the in the in the extraction that happened one was intelligence failure I mean and we you know there's a lot of people saying well it was bad intel we didn't know it was gonna okay it was either bad intel or it was because kind of like Rob said people were not telling people what they wanted to hear okay or or they were hearing stuff they didn't want to hear and they were just ignoring it so there's bad intel there it was a failure of coordination which is actually

• 33:43Rich Diviney?

  one of the most atrocious problems here we fought in Afghanistan with several several other nations and they fought with us and they bled with us and they they they served with us and they spent capital and blood and treasure with us and and the decision to leave was largely unilateral in terms of the US saying hey we're gone right and and a lot of our a lot of our coalition allies were saying hey could you please stay or stay longer and we kind of gave them the the hand and said no we're leaving right so so I think one of the worst kind of marks on us as a as a nation was our kind of the the way we made the decision without coordinating with anybody that lack of coordination and that lack and then the third failure was failure of planning the decisions to move

• 34:28Rich Diviney?

  so rapidly listen when Rob talks about Kabul right you know Kabul being a centerpiece and a stability factor is huge Kabul Airport being one of the primary symbols of that stability right when

• 34:42Rich Diviney?

  When the military begins to extract from Kabul so rapidly, almost overnight, I mean, it doesn't give the forces out in the other regions of Afghanistan, the Afghan forces, a lot of confidence that they're going to be supported as the Taliban rolls through. And you have to understand Afghanistan is a very interesting, very fractured environment country. I mean, mostly tribal, mostly survival. People are going to do for themselves and their family what the best is to do for themselves and their family. And I think ultimately, it was not necessarily a, you know, what people might think, a bunch of people, you know, dropping their guns and running away screaming. These were some decisions made by people who said, listen, I can play with the winning side or I can play with the losing side.

• 35:25Rich Diviney?

  And based on what I see in terms of who's going to be there to have my back at the end of the day, I think I may not want to play with the side that's getting out of here. And so, so some of these decisions, I think, were, were in effect sped up because of a, unfortunately, a sense of, or a loss of trust in us and our ability to have their backs.

• 35:48Ed Mylett?

  So I can hear people going, all right, I got it. So, so now what, you know, what's going to happen there? What do we do? And why does this matter? And it matters because what Rob said when we started the interview. If we truly are back at a September 10th type time, and I don't mean to be an alarmist, it's just, it doesn't feel right to me. What happened there doesn't feel, it does not engender a bunch of confidence from me. And I'm not talking about the president, but I'm not, I'm not, listen, if people say to me all the time, well, you know, Biden's not prepared to be the commander in chief. Well, what background did any of these guys have before Bush's dad, right? I mean, George Bush didn't have a background that'd make you commander in chief or Clinton or Obama or Trump or Biden, right? None of them did. So I think that's sort of a hilarious political statement. Bush's father, he did.

• 36:33Ed Mylett?

  Even Reagan, right? So that's that stuff, you know, whatever. That's that's political stuff, at least in my mind. But um, and by the way, both these guys have called out both parties and both administrations for different things over time. But but I do feel like this is just an absolute show. And I don't feel good about it. And it doesn't engender. So Rob, in your opinion, you got a little crystal ball there. What should we do now? And what's gonna happen? Because you got ISIS-K now. Are they gonna eventually take over the Taliban? There's gonna be there's a civil war. Someone said there's gonna be a civil war. There is a civil war there already. So what's gonna happen? And ultimately, are we going back?

• 37:08Robert O'Neill?

  Well, this is this has happened every time an empire has failed in Afghanistan. The battling tribes, Richard mentioned how tribal they are. The battling tribes are surrounding Kabul. They're gonna take it. They're gonna be infighting. It's happening now with, I mean, yeah, there's the Syrians, there's Saudis in there, foreign fighters, but there's a lot of Afghans there, always been battling with each other. The madrasir takes it over. They're probably gonna they're pretty much hand in glove again without Qaeda. Who are the foreigners? They're the they're generally not from Afghanistan. There will be the camps again. I doubt they're gonna do it the same way. But the problem that we're gonna have now is how easy it is to get into the United States to attack us again. And it's not they never forget. You know, we always say never forget, but our problem

• 37:50Robert O'Neill?

  is we always forget to never forget. They're not gonna try to hijack planes again and jam them into buildings and have another 9/11 like we did 20 years ago. What they're gonna be looking at now, if you noticed on a lot of those C-17 flights out, not a lot of women and children on there, but a whole bunch of fighting age males, lot of lot of military age males. And they're not dumb. They okay, think about 1993. They bombed the World Trade Center. They wanted one tower to fall into the other. It didn't happen. They didn't forget. They came back on 9/11. They have not forgotten about us. They know our borders are wide open. They and they're not this time they're gonna look at something else. These are very creative people. And and who knows? I mean, you know what they did in Russia is they took over an elementary school with suicide bombers. They put all the kids in the basketball court, and they can start executing. Who's to say they wouldn't do

• 38:34Robert O'Neill?

  that? Our borders are wide open because we we make everything political that we can't have a having a solemn or sorry, a protected border is somehow racist. There's a big fight about that. We know damn well it's easy to cross. So, you know, if I I don't want to put an idea in anyone's head, but if I'm looking there, I'm thinking, hey, there's schools in Arizona.

• 38:54Ed Mylett?

  Oh, boy. Yeah. I worry about that, too. The the border part of it. Um, you know, I everyone asks me, what's your politics? I I don't know, because I'm super socially liberal and extremely fiscally conservative, and I really do belong and believe in a a strong military, and I believe in forward deployment. I would rather us be in some of these places than waiting for them all to come here. I just believe that theoretically, you know, not having a military background, but theoretically, that seems to make some sense to me. The border has been an interesting issue for me because I'm, uh, I hate the demonization of the people that have tried to come across here to

• 39:25Robert O'Neill?

  No doubt.

• 39:25Ed Mylett?

  get better lives. I know you do, too. Um, these are I live in California. These have become our friends. They've raised our children. They've picked our crops. They've cleaned our homes. Their sons have died in our military. I hate that demonization thing because I think it's terrible, and it makes me sick to my

• 39:38Robert O'Neill?

  Yes, it is. It is. It is.

• 39:39Ed Mylett?

  And I know you feel that way, too. And and by the way, those people have now done more than that. They now are real estate agents and mortgage brokers and doctors here and are they've elevated their status here. How they got here, we were complicit with them, in my opinion, right? So we're part of that whole equation. We didn't really want them coming. They wouldn't have been coming. So I don't like that conversation. However, my friends that are high up in both parties, and I mean really high up that I work with, worry about exactly what you just said. And I'm talking even the ones who publicly Kevin said they're for a a real border wall. Their worry is exactly what you just described, which is that people we don't know coming here not to get on a social program, but to really do damage to our country, and we probably ought to know who's coming in the country.

• 40:23Ed Mylett?

  And that they're not stupid, that that is a open place to come in, and there are schools in Arizona, and there there are places in Texas, and so that is a worry.

• 40:33Robert O'Neill?

  I agree with you completely, too. I'm I'm the same way, fiscally conservative, socially liberal. And, uh, you know, I mean, and again, it's crossing the border is is sort of like in a in a war zone, ninety nine percent of the people are just trying to get on with their lives, get better lives. People, if I was, if I was in Central America and or I would do the same thing. I'm not blaming these people. I'm just saying you have to have the honest conversation of, you know, about what's going on and and and, uh, the people high up the powers that be are so political, they don't. They don't want to get in the same. This, I mean, this is why we that's get on a different subject. This is why we need more veterans in Congress, because they'll at least get in the same room. Democrat, Republican, independent, we get in the same room and just talk about it. I mean, but you got you got to just be realistic about that.

• 41:12Ed Mylett?

  Rick, you're nodding. You agree.

• 41:15Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, I agree with you. We've done several things. First of all, I would say I wouldn't even be able to classify myself. I classify myself as politically homeless. I'm part of the homeless problem, right? So, and I'm, and I think this is a, by the way, this is a great example of, and there's a lot of things Rob and I agree with. There's a lot of things we disagree on. This is a great example of how people can sit down and have a conversation with each other about things we disagree with. You can have empathy for another human being without agreeing with that person, right? You can feel with it. Rob and I did not agree, and our buddies did not agree with the guy who was shooting the rocket propelled grenade at the US convoy, but we certainly empathized with him, right? So you can, you can have empathy without agreement.

• 41:56Rich Diviney?

  And so I think this is why we are in the state we're in is because we can't have these conversations, right? Why can't I have a conversation about the fact that I do believe that we should be able to own guns? But I also believe we should try to keep the guns out of the hands of idiots. I do believe that we have...

• 42:12Robert O'Neill?

  No doubt about it.

• 42:13Rich Diviney?

  I do believe that we are...

• 42:14Robert O'Neill?

  Rich, I'm the same, I'm the same way. I'm approaching way, but you don't need a flamethrower. Come on.

• 42:17Rich Diviney?

  That's right. You don't. Yeah. And I do believe, you know, we, we were founded, our country's founded on the melting pot, you know, of the, of the United States, but we need to understand and have a process by which we understand who's coming through our borders. When it comes to threats, I think, though, one of the things that's a little bit more scary, I think, is not necessarily the, the people who are physically coming across the border. I think we've seen the terror networks actually proliferates through the internet a little bit, a lot more since, since 9/11. I mean, when we, when we first went out there, we kind of knew where they were and where to get them.

• 42:57Rich Diviney?

  Since then, we've seen this proliferation of online content, the radicalization that, that happens and occurs that goes global very quickly because it goes through the lines of the internet. And this is where I think our, our intelligence agencies have to be more concerned about these lone wolf threats and things like that. The, the, the people are getting radicalized because they're watching things online. There's, there's environmental cues that are... Cueing him into that, and I think that's where our intelligence agencies need to also start focusing. Certainly, we have to have a consolidated effort. I think one of the great things, I say, you know, great is a weird word, but one of the great things that came from 9/11 is that it fused our agencies in ways that had never been fused before.

• 43:41Rich Diviney?

  Even in the military, we started working with the other services like we'd never worked. Our intelligence agencies started to talk to each other and things became a lot more, or a lot less siloed, and I think that was a positive. But I think, you know, we have, let me just go back one thing, because I want to, I do have a little bit of optimism about the Taliban, okay? Because I don't think the Tal, I don't think we're not, I don't think we're necessarily, from a Taliban perspective, in the same position we were on September 10th. Taliban, it seems at this point, are looking for some legitimacy globally, right? And through that, through that search, they're, they're reaching out, they're having conversations. A lot of people don't remember, but even before 9/11, in the late 90s, the Taliban,

• 44:22Rich Diviney?

  after established themselves and taken control of Kabul, began to, and they were recognized as a legitimate government by, I think, UAE and Saudi. They sent delegates to the United States, and they, and they visited the United States and sent delegates. This is before 9/11. So even then, they were trying to establish themselves. Now they have, it seems like they're trying to do the same thing, and there's a little bit more of a stake. They're talking to people, they are facilitating things that previously didn't seem facilitatable. I mean, we are still getting people out through, through, you know, kind of conversations we're having with the Taliban. So that, and again, I'm not saying this is a great place to be, because again, the overarching

• 45:06Rich Diviney?

  ideology and Shia law is kind of antithetical to the, to the United States, our kind of moral system, and it's atrocious, and it's, you know, with great sadness that we're going to see, especially the women of Afghanistan, kind of plunged back in that, in that system. But I think there's a There's a real difference in what we're seeing in terms of the Taliban's overarching goals right now, and they do have to contend with ISIS-K, remnants of al Qaeda, things like that, that are not congruent with their overall strategy. So it will remain to be seen in terms of how that works out. The other actors in the game, China, Russia, Russia

• 45:49Rich Diviney?

  specifically, they're also concerned about extremist behavior too. So it's not just the US that's on the fight.

• 45:56Ed Mylett?

  Can I ask you about that? By the way, both of you, since we're on Zoom, so forgive me for interruptions towards the end of your sentences. In person, that wouldn't happen. But basically, what you're saying to me is that we're in business with the Taliban now, which is just unbelievable to hear you say out loud, and that...

• 46:10Rich Diviney?

  No, no, I didn't just, I didn't say that.

• 46:12Ed Mylett?

  Well, no, I meant by the fact that it seems to me like, maybe what we're saying here is that eventually, when the dust settles here, we have to bet on one team ourselves.

• 46:22Rich Diviney?

  Well, yeah, and we have to remember, I mean, so a couple of things happened in February 2020, when the Trump administration signed the deal with the Taliban. Okay, first thing that happened was the Taliban immediately gained legitimacy. Okay, again, I'm saying this without judging whether it's right or wrong.

• 46:36Ed Mylett?

  Yes, it's true.

• 46:37Rich Diviney?

  Second thing that happened, thousands of prisoners were released upon that signature. Okay, thousands of prisoners that we, that in some cases, Rob and I probably put in jail. Okay, thousands, right? That's the second thing that happened. Third thing that happens, not one American died in Afghanistan. As soon as that pen hit the paper, not one American died. Okay, that shows us that the Taliban has a lot more power than we actually thought it did. And it also shows that they actually are a little bit more serious than we thought they might be. Okay?

• 47:03Ed Mylett?

  Can I interject a question on that?

• 47:05Rich Diviney?

  Please, yeah.

• 47:06Ed Mylett?

  Or does it, or does it suggest that there was a fear of who the commander in chief was, and that fear may not exist now? I'm just asking openly. It's not a political question, but was there a part of it that they knew this? Crazy SOB who was the commander in chief, if anything happened, there were going to be drones raining down on your head real quickly, or is that not an impact at all?

• 47:26Rich Diviney?

  Well, I mean, again, I can't, I can't hypothesize as to what they were thinking. I think if we were to look at the historic of, of, um, of how much rain was hell, uh, how much hell was rained down upon them and our enemies throughout the administrations, I think there was an equilibrium there, because there was a lot of it, right?

• 47:45Ed Mylett?

  From both sides, you're saying?

• 47:46Rich Diviney?

  From both sides, yeah. I mean, we did a lot, um, under both. And again, I didn't serve under the Trump administration. I was basically retired by the time he, he got in, but, uh, but just understanding what I did. Um, so I'm not sure about that. I think, I think, again, Taliban, we have to remember Taliban's focus is Afghanistan. That's what, it's always been their focus is Afghanistan. They actually have never really cared about anything other than Afghanistan. Um, you know, bin Laden came over there because he wanted to help fight with the Russians. And of course, he formed this group al Qaeda, which is more global. I mean, it's kind of like, um, you know, uh, the, the al Qaeda, um, jihad is like, I'm a, you know, it's kind of the, the environmentalist who thinks that, hey, everything, we have to look at everything as a, you know, everything's a problem, right?

• 48:28Rich Diviney?

  You know, that's, that's like the, the al Qaeda view, whereas the Taliban is like, hey, we're focused on Afghanistan. All we want is our country. That's all we want, and maybe a little bit of Pakistan, whatever it is. Um, and so we have to think about those, those two different polarities, because it does, it does, it should at least factor into our, into our thought about the whole issue.

• 48:46Robert O'Neill?

  So, I agree with you there too, with, with, uh, as far as the Taliban goes, they even told us after we invaded that if they thought we were serious, they would have given us bin Laden, because they, they, I don't think the Taliban's a threat to the country. It's the problem is who they let in and how are they going to train there?

• 49:00Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 49:00Robert O'Neill?

  Um, and that, that's with al Qaeda ISIS, who I think are, I think are one and the same, al Qaeda and ISIS, it's the same ideology, based out of Saudi Arabia type, the, the Salafist, uh, brand of Sunni Islam. Um, but the, yeah, the Taliban now, and they're smarter too, and I, there's even been, um, There's even been special operators from different Muslim countries, Qataris or Jordanians that have told a lot of these people, "You can have both." I mean, "Look at Dubai," they would say, "You can have Islam and you can have a good life." And I mean, being optimistic, maybe that'll open their eyes a little bit, but based on what they're doing now, not the case. But I mean, there's so much gonna happen in Afghanistan, and a lot of it too, that no one seems to bring up, is Pakistan. Because Pakistan is the center of the universe over there.

• 49:43Robert O'Neill?

  Pakistan is where the Afghani Network is, that's where we knew Ayman al-Zawahiri is, that's where Bin Laden was. The ISI knew Bin Laden was there. And Pakistan, like I said, is the center of the universe. You know, we're the ones that funneled singer missiles to the Mujahideen through Pakistan to fight the Russians. And then, you know, they're doing the same thing with Al Qaeda to us. So, but yeah, I'm just agreeing with Rich that the Taliban is pretty much only interested in Afghanistan.

• 50:13Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, and again, it remains to be seen. I mean, these types of evolutionary maturation's don't happen in one generation. These are generations' worth of timeframe. I mean, Saudi did not become what it is over the course of just 20 years. Dubai did not become what it is over the course of 20 years. It will be up to, I think, the Taliban, and you know, honestly, you know, one of the key factors is the youth. If the youth is allowed to, right, look at Iran. Iran's a great example. I mean, there are discotheques in Iran that rival Vegas in terms of the youth of Tehran, right? And those young people want nothing to do with the radical ideas of the Ayatollah and things like that. They are the key. They are the key.

• 50:58Rich Diviney?

  Capitalism, in that sense, is the key. This is the problem with Sharia law, right? It doesn't really allow that type of education. This is what we were hoping to help stem and actually like help proliferate throughout Afghanistan was education and getting people to learn this. I think this is a responsibility, at least something we should keep our eye on in terms of empowering.

• 51:18Robert O'Neill?

  No, that's right too. And we've proven now for 20 years, you're really not gonna win the long game with brute force. Bombs and bullets, it is going to be through education. Um, it's everything from it's, you know, it's, it's, it's what's being taught to the young minds on in the madrassas on the border in Pakistan. Again, um, look at like Iran, Iran is Sharia law, but the it's the young liberals that happen to like music. That I, I like Hollywood. I don't have a problem with this dude just because he was born in a different country. And that's it's the edge and that's the, you know, that's, that's the, that's what the hard nut to crack is how to, how do you? We're, I mean, we're gonna, we're gonna, as far as jihad goes, we're gonna make peace with, with Muslims because of Muslims, not because of what we try to force down their throats.

• 51:56Ed Mylett?

  I also, I also, I agree with you on that, but I, I just think sometimes you all don't give yourself enough credit as well. It's, you know, yeah, things there aren't the way we would like them to be. I'm speaking again of Afghanistan. And Iraq didn't go the way that we wanted it to either, but you know what? We don't know what would have happened had you not done what you did. And we don't know that these hearts and minds would have necessarily been transformed if they didn't see some consequence for some of this extreme behavior in some of these countries that you guys put to rest to some extent.

• 52:21Rich Diviney?

  Well, remember, just, just to say, this is why what we did was not in vain. I mean, Bin Laden's goal, okay? Bin Laden's goal in the nine eleven attacks was to create such distress in the Western hearts and minds that we left the Middle East. Okay? The exact opposite happened. We're more, we got more proliferated than he ever thought we would. So, so in many ways he failed that, uh, that, uh, that, uh, that goal. And, and really, I mean, the, the United States military and all of those who went out there and thought we found and got and captured or killed. A lot of bad guys, a lot of bad guys, right? Um, again, though, you can't just plug holes. You can't just plug holes in the ship and, and just expect that to be the solution, right? There had to have been a larger overarching strategy that was supporting and buttressing the effort.

• 53:02Rich Diviney?

  Uh, because what even, even in the conduct of our jobs, that still created a vacuum and those vacuums are always filled, right? And, and if, if there isn't a plan to address the vacuum when it's created. Um, I E. When Saddam gets, gets, uh, removed or, you know, the Taliban gets removed. If there's not a plan, um, and not a overarching long-term strategy that's, that's supported with all elements of power of the United States, not just military. Um, then we're, we're in trouble.

• 53:29Robert O'Neill?

  Yeah. And it comes back to the end game too. A prime example is an invasion of Iraq, uh, but it's bad decision. and no contingencies like well we're gonna do is we're gonna we're gonna take Baghdad and Saddam will be gone and then everyone will rise up and it'll be great and and the question is okay but what if they don't oh they will I get I get it sir but what if they don't oh they will I know but what if they don't

• 53:50Rich Diviney?

  right

• 53:53Rich Diviney?

  and an understanding of the cultural aspects right you go into Iraq and you have the Sunnis the Kurds and the Shia right and you have to consider okay how is this all going to play out and and that wasn't considered okay you go into Afghanistan as now it's the it's the Pashtuns it's the it's the Taliban it's the it's the Al Qaeda folks it's the it you just have all of these little these these facets that make the problem more complex and I think for for those of us in the military I think and maybe maybe even me who was in some cases sometimes sitting in briefings that Rob didn't want to be in

• 54:24Rich Diviney?

  and

• 54:24Robert O'Neill?

  we had the max box to play

• 54:26Rich Diviney?

  and hearing some stuff I I even remember thinking I was like I just don't feel like um like we're appropriately just addressing some of these some of these larger issues and it was that that was not a an admonishment of how we as the military was addressing it felt like to me we weren't um it wasn't being thought of at the at the national levels uh because again the military you know you've heard it before I mean when when when you have it when you're using a hammer just a hammer everything looks like a nail okay the military in in many ways is the hammer right and and for us everything's going to look like a nail we do very well and did very well at nuancing ourselves and doing a lot more than maybe we had planned to or or modifying and adapting that in ways that we hadn't uh perceived but at the same time um it's just one element of of five national elements of power

• 55:10Ed Mylett?

  I'm so glad we talked today because and I've got some more stuff and I won't keep you guys much longer but I I have some stuff I really want to ask you but one of the things that surprised me over time getting to know both of you and other you know real operators real warriors is they're the ones who least want war At least want combat if they don't have to and I'm always surprised by that and it's usually somebody like me that never did any of that that's like well wait a minute and you guys know better than I do but I do feel like it's both and um I do I feel I'm the Mr. Positive guy right that's what my show is supposed to be about but I do just feel like I've seen this movie before we pulled out they've got equipment there still they're gonna fight it out now and I just feel like there's an inevitability we're gonna have to go back we're gonna do something again and there's just this part of there's like it didn't seem that bad to me with the 2500 non-combats there no one's dying wasn't costing

• 55:54Ed Mylett?

  a lot of money I just don't get why we it was almost like you know they have that notion of the elephant with the little rope tied behind it with a stake at any time they probably could have ripped it but we were kind of that little stick with the rope on it it seemed just sort of trying to keep it together and

• 56:09Rich Diviney?

  Well also also yeah really really empowering and and bringing confidence to those 300,000 you know of Afghans who were there too I mean that's that's yeah these can't be understated the just the the small level of support from coalition and the United States can empower to a to a great degree so um but let me just say something real quick because I wanna I wanna you know talk about Rob here and just because I we haven't talked in a while but guys like Rob and and the operators who I was so lucky to serve with I mean um you know people have to understand that yes we do not we are actually pacifists but we understand that you know sometimes bad people have to have to be addressed right um but we were pacifists in the sense we understand that war and the conduct of war has to be taken

• 56:53Rich Diviney?

  into with with high consideration and high thought it can't be rushed into um and these are guys who it was so remarkable for me to work with and see because they were surgeons you know and and this is the other assumption that I think many people make and maybe it's because of some movies and television and maybe some people out there who are talking but um we don't do this with hate in our heart okay surgeons don't cut out cancer because they hate the cancer surgeons look at the cancer as the job they have to do and they cut it out and this is how we did it overseas we went and we did a job we did it with um with um Precision, we did it with the right amount of emotion, the right amount of aggression.

• 57:34Rich Diviney?

  And I've literally seen Rob and I've seen other guys who we served with go from in one moment executing lethal force to the next moment taking care of children, okay? This is the type of surgery that these guys were doing and they did it so well and they did the job. And overall, every single person who served should feel like what they did had value because it did, okay? The cycle of life, the cycle of politics, the cycle of natural human history is what it is, but everybody should hold their heads up high and I'm proud to have served with Rob and every single person I served with.

• 58:11Ed Mylett?

  You made me think where I wanted to go next, Rich. I appreciate you saying that about Rob and you, obviously, and so many others. A couple of things occurred to me as we're talking. I wish this was the conversation that's been had in the country the last three weeks and is ongoing, you know? Some disagreement. We said we were going to elevate the conversation, a real information, real understanding of the dynamics and how things happen and how they work, decisions that are made. And this is how it should be because Rich and Rob don't agree on everything, right? And I don't agree with both of them on everything and I have no basis for half of the things that I believe. That's why I've been asking these guys these questions today. But I, what, Rob, it made me think about, you know, the other thing with you guys that strikes me is the level of humility is so remarkable for the incredible things you've

• 58:54Ed Mylett?

  gone through and protected our country for, protected the world for. And Rob, just for a minute, I don't, you've been on the show, we've covered it before and I won't have to go through the whole story, but I just think this stuff just sounds like a video game to even someone like me, right? These are just like, it's literally a video game. Then there's the real world men and women that are on the ground protecting the world, protecting the country. And I said this many times, Rob, since I've met you and people ask me about you. I said that whatever you were doing the day that Osama bin Laden was killed, whatever you were worried about, whatever was your big problem that day, imagine what O'Neill and his dudes were doing that day, what they would think, the bravery level of you and your...

• 59:36Ed Mylett?

  Your partners there, I just want to take you through them. I want them just to feel this for a minute of what's gone on to give you the freedom to argue whether we should have an open, closed border, to go protest if you want to, to argue over guns, argue over taxes, to vote in an election. These things matter, and I don't think people understand this. This is not promised forever. And there's guys like Rob and people like Rich that ensure the fact that we get to have these arguments where we live in our freedoms. So Rob, just the thing that you said to me about the bin Laden raid, all of it's remarkable. But you said to me, I knew I was dead. I'm already dead. I was tired of thinking about it. I'm just going over here. Let me just die. I want you all to imagine whatever you're worried about today.

• 1:00:21Ed Mylett?

  Whatever you're doing today. So take us just for a minute, if you would, in brief, but just let them feel this for a minute. Everything's lit up. You now know that it's him. You now know you're going to get him and you're on the helicopter leaving Afghanistan coming over. What's going through? This is what has happened to protect us, everybody.

• 1:00:37Robert O'Neill?

  Well, I mean, it's the, it's the, it's the human element because there's, there's humanity involved with everything. I don't care who, who it is that you kill. Someone loved them and, and you, you get to a level where you're questioning, are we killing each other just because we were born in different parts of the world? Had it been different, would we have gotten along? Weird stuff like that. But I even had a conversation with my father right before I'd launched on the bin Laden raid and he, he would always say to me, um, I wish I was going with you when I'd call him prior. And I'd say, yeah, I wish you were too, Dad. But this time he said, I wish I was going with you. And I said, don't worry, Dad. I'm with some really great people. And so I knew I was going there with my, my, uh, my brothers. Um, and we knew that this is what we're here for. This is, this is why we came. This is why we joined.

• 1:01:15Robert O'Neill?

  And the acceptance, once the acceptance of giving your life for the greater good, uh, you kind of lose the, you kind of lose the fear a little bit because the realization that if I could, I could pull myself off this mission anytime, but I'm letting them down. And if I live to be 90 years old, would I give every single day? To have one shot at this. This is why I'm here. I'm here to fight for the men and women that died in the tower. I'm here for the Americans, the first Americans to fight al Qaeda on flight 93. And before they fought al Qaeda, they voted. And that's what, that's, that's what America is. That's what the Western ideology is. That's freedom and and there's there's just so much there it's it's I'm with these guys I I am I'm I I might die but I'm safe I'm good. And just getting there um and this it's kind of like taking everything because these are real people that can barely afford their mortgages.

• 1:02:00Robert O'Neill?

  Now we're in Abbott about Pakistan and I was in the back because of where we ended up and I'm watching guys. Um we could blow up at any second but everyone's doing their jobs like we like we taught each other slowest smooth smoothest fast. But then like Rich said shooting someone but then running across the room to grab a child because I don't want that kid to be more afraid than he needs to be. And just realizing these are the good guys and this is what we're fighting for is better is bigger than this. It's not just us here this is for everyone. And when we got up to the room I just followed a guy that was braver than me up the last set of stairs and he went one way and I went the other. And after I even shot Bin Laden um his two year old son was standing there and I remember as a father. Thinking this poor kid has got nothing to do with this.

• 1:02:41Robert O'Neill?

  So it's this is this is real human emotions and and you know Bin Laden who you know so millions of people loved him. It's all because of different ideologies that's all because of different educations was he an asshole yeah does he deserve to die absolutely do I feel bad me to take him alive no. But you know this is what we're this this is it I mean these are the good guys and but then when you get away from it too. You know this is a really big world but it's a really small world and and and um. You know it's it's it's like uh you know ye- yes we need to meet. Force with force at the point of origin and there needs to be people there willing to do it. Uh but but you know there's a there's a there just there seems to me to be a bigger a bigger picture than that we we mentioned people that have never been there and play the video games.

• 1:03:21Robert O'Neill?

  Whenever I see someone walking down the street with a I like to kick doors and shoot fuckers in the face my reaction is no you don't. Because you've never fucking done it.

• 1:03:29Rich Diviney?

  Yeah and you could and you probably wouldn't be able to um it's funny and let me just add one thing because it's interesting. And I I was a conversation I had with another friend of uh mutual friend of ours um obviously I won't give his name but I remember he and I were. Were uh at one point we came back and we were a little upset because we came back to a nation after you know I don't know what tour it was. Um and it just seemed like everyone was hyper focused on the Kardashians and and American Idol and all of this stuff and. And we're kind of frustrated I remember us having coffee and we're talking about and and and. We came to a realization and the realization was was this and again, Rob will will feel this one. We used to leave for these deployments, usually in the middle of the night because of the way the flights worked. Right. So so we'd have to go muster at like 11pm and then get on the plane like midnight and and fly out.

• 1:04:10Rich Diviney?

  And so so my kids were small. They were always in bed, you know, and I'd always go into their room and just watch them. And you know, every parent probably does this, but I always, you know, watch my, I always used to watch my kids sleep. But especially on the nights that I was leaving, I'd go in and watch them. And I'd wonder what they were dreaming about. And I would hope, I always, I always, I hoped they were dreaming about like Disneyland and and sugarplums and fairy, whatever it is. Right. And I realized and my buddy and I realized that that's why we do it. We do it because we don't want our kids to have to see the stuff we see. We don't want our kids to have to think about the stuff that we think about. We want to preserve a little bit of that blissful ignorance. And and honestly, we do that happily. We do that with, we do that, you know, with great pride.

• 1:04:56Rich Diviney?

  And and that's cool. It really is. And so, and so I'm not mad at the Kardashians anymore.

• 1:05:04Ed Mylett?

  I just, you're, you're both, you're both special men. You just are. And it takes my breath away. I, when you talk, there's a sense of emotion in me. That's not just gratitude. I'm not sure what it is with both of you. Every time I've talked with each of you, I'm curious, I don't think I've ever asked you this, Rob, and maybe you can't share it. Maybe you don't know.

• 1:05:27Ed Mylett?

  How is this, how is this journey of yours, you spent most of your life doing this? Like you were one guy when you were, you're not even sure which group of the military you were joining initially. Right. And then you're another guy sitting there right now, having had experiences that are unconscionable, that almost no human being that's ever walked the earth has had the experiences you've had. Right, I mean you've had a life experience.

• 1:05:51Robert O'Neill?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:52Ed Mylett?

  Situations and environments that, the combination of which you may be the only one, or one of the very few. Do you know how it's affected you? Do you, do you, can you describe it if you are even aware?

• 1:06:04Robert O'Neill?

  Well, I'm just, I'm just lucky because, you know, every day I used to, I was fortunate to go to work with people who were better than me. But I learned being a dude from Montana who joined the Navy basically because the Marine recruiter was in the office. I couldn't swim and I ended up in bin Laden's bedroom as a Navy SEAL. It, it was, it proved to me that it doesn't matter what you look like or where you're from. You can do anything as long as, as long as you keep a positive attitude. One of the things in SEAL training that an instructor said to me, the abridged version, was when you feel like quitting, which you will, do not quit now, quit tomorrow. If you can keep quitting tomorrow, you can do anything, anything you want to do in life. Just wait till tomorrow. I was gonna quit today, but I'll just quit tomorrow and quit tomorrow. And then, as far as, that was the best experience of my life.

• 1:06:46Robert O'Neill?

  I missed a lot of time in the United States. I missed a lot of time away from my daughters. But I was over there and it's, when you get into the, when you're the number two man, number three man going through the door, you're no longer fighting for the political party in charge, you're fighting for the men and women next to you. And, and so it's very important for a lot of these veterans to realize what, what they did was not in vain. Because it comes to a point where someone needs to take a stand and you took the stand. And, and that's it. And there's people that don't have the platforms that, that I do. They, they, they need the recognition, you know, the Marines that were out there walking in a ridiculously hot sun through the minefields with the people next to them who've seen their brothers and sisters killed in action. What they did was not in vain. And the message I would just tell them is, is, you know, a lot of people are going through it. And the important thing is once in a while, don't try to self-medicate, you know, put the bottle down, call someone.

• 1:07:31Robert O'Neill?

  Even if you're, if you're having a bad day, call someone because they might be having a good day. And when you're, you know, when you, or you're having a great day and you get out of the gym and you have the endorphins going, call someone because they might be having a bad day. And we can get through this together, you know, it's, nothing you did was in vain. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't matter who made a bad decision. You made, you made the right decision to be there. And again, we're the good guys.

• 1:07:49Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, I'll, I'll let me, I'll add something because I think this is, well, I lost, well, we lost several friends. I lost one of my friends right before I got out of the Navy, actually. And we were, we were at Dover and we were receiving his, his remains. And it was a bunch of us buddies who, who did that. And, and one of our, one of the guys pulled us all into a room. He said, hey, guys, let's just get in the room here for a second. And he said, hey, we need to tell each other we love each other more often. We need to remember to do that. Okay, we're not doing it enough. And so that's what I would say to everybody out there. Tell the people that you care about that you love them more often. Okay, because because it only does good. It really does. And I know you have a couple. Well, we're not Navy SEALs anymore. We're former Navy SEALs, right? But a couple of former Navy SEALs here.

• 1:08:34Rich Diviney?

  And if we can sit here and tell people to tell them, tell people that you love them more often, do it, right? This is what we need in this country. We need to love each other more. We need to have empathy. It's okay to disagree with each other. What's not okay is if we don't talk to each other. So empathy, love and discourse is what we need.

• 1:08:51Robert O'Neill?

  Oh, my God. Do you see why he was such a great leader? That's another line I'm gonna steal from Rich.

• 1:08:55Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, it's mine, too. I got it, too. So last, by the way, you guys, it goes without saying, thank you. It's I keep getting emotional because I know how special this conversation is. I know that so many people needed it. I kind of feel like, well, you guys need it, too, like all your brothers.

• 1:09:08Robert O'Neill?

  Yeah, no doubt, no doubt.

• 1:09:10Ed Mylett?

  I I hold you both in such high regard that make me feel good about something. And if you can't, you know, I know you'll answer it honestly. But there's this part of me that, as I've got to know both of you. By the way, these are two of the best speakers you'll ever bring into your organizations or your companies either. And they both got books that if you don't have them, most of you bought them earlier on my show. But if you didn't, Google them both, get their books and have them come speak. I've had them come speak. I've had Rob come to speak to multiple different organizations. And Rich just spoke to my RT group and was just absolutely incredible. So if you want more of these two, you can certainly go get them. Go to their Instagram, go to their websites. But, you know, both of you I hold in such high regard. And there's this part of me, as I've learned about you, there's the military. And then there's sort of, there's the special ops. There's the SEALs, there's the Rangers, there's the other guys.

• 1:09:56Ed Mylett?

  And then there's, you know, someone like, you know, both of you that have just done, you're rich in training and Rob and and all of his deployments, too. And then Rob, you know, just had this remarkable career. And I watch sometimes lately, I feel like, is this, are you guys a past generation? That's what I worry about. Is this a generation that doesn't exist anymore? Is maybe the military's become? I'm all for being woke if you want to be woke, but I'm just, you know, some of this other stuff I've seen in the military. Assure me there are other youths that exist that are coming up, or do you worry about that as well? And I mean that with the highest degree of respect for both of you. But I know from being around and knowing Rob a while, I know now from knowing Rich, like I know minus a handful of peoples. The world could be very different.

• 1:10:40Ed Mylett?

  And most of them aren't famous, most of them aren't well-known, and you take this select group of a very small group of people. And this world could look completely different. And I've got kids that are now almost turning 20. I'm gonna have grandkids. I want them to be in a world like I've been blessed enough to live in, and I know it's dudes like you two that afford that opportunity. I know that. Are you guys a past generation, or are there other ones of you that are operating right now and that are coming up behind them?

• 1:11:07Robert O'Neill?

  I'm confident that we're gonna be just fine. One of my favorite quotes, I think it was Babe Ruth, but he said, "The loudest boos come from the cheapest seats." And because so much negativity on social media and such, you can kind of get lulled into that. But a couple of things happened to me. I've got a cousin of mine who joined the army within the past year. And he said, "Yeah, some of this training we're doing is ridiculous, but everyone's positive about what we're doing and they're willing to get in the fight." And the other night, I walked down the street to a playground and I was playing basketball, shooting hoops with my wife. And I got invited by some of these young kids to get into a pickup game. And I just looked around and saw how many young kids were out there, no cell phones, out there playing basketball, dudes on their scooters, running around the park, just doing stuff, you know?

• 1:11:52Robert O'Neill?

  Active stuff. They're not gonna have to hump back because they're staring down at Instagram. I'm very, very positive, just, you know, if you're having a bad day, put the phone down for 24 hours and stay on Twitter. You'll be amazed how great life is. And I'm very, very positive about what's happening.

• 1:12:07Ed Mylett?

  And by the way, if you want to laugh, follow Makuya on Instagram.

• 1:12:12Robert O'Neill?

  Yeah, and keep in mind, most of that's tongue-in-cheek.

• 1:12:14Rich Diviney?

  He was always one of our primary class clowns. I talk about how powerful the class clowns.

• 1:12:20Robert O'Neill?

  Let me interrupt Rich real quick. It was funny when we got done with the Bin Laden raid too. I noticed one question that every SEAL, when they found out Bin Laden was dead, asked the other SEAL, "Well, who got him?" And I heard the common responses, they said, "O'Neal got him." Like, oh shit, we're never gonna hear the end of it.

• 1:12:37Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, that's a, and my Bin Laden story, my Bin Laden story, by the way, is I was staining my deck at the time. And I said to myself, oh, I wonder how those guys are doing. And but I got my deck stained, which is good. Here's my, here's my answer. We, we are a past generation, and that's a good thing. Okay. Because if the, if the folks who were the great ones 100 years ago, we're, we're, we're running the show now, we'd all be screwed. Evolution is a, is a, is a thing. You cannot stop it. And, and I think as we see the youth and the younger generations come up, we are seeing them evolve. We're seeing a change. It's not going to feel necessarily good to us as we get older, because we're, we're products of our generation. Listen, I love the 80s, and I love the 90s. And sometimes

• 1:13:18Rich Diviney?

  the 20, 21s don't feel very as, as comfortable anymore, right? But I see my kids. And they are, they don't do some of the same things I do. Yeah, they might be on their phones and YouTube more than I was, because I didn't have it. But they're watching, they're watching the Mars lander, uh, land, all right? I mean, they're glued to that shit, which is like, oh my, I mean, their, their, their focus is different. So I think we need to, I mean, part of our empathy, part of our open mind is, I think, part of our staying young, I say this to the three old guys that we're, that are talking right now, part of our, our way to stay young is to embrace the youth. And because as soon as we stop, as soon as we become closed minded, as soon as we become unwilling to adapt, we become dinosaurs and

• 1:14:02Rich Diviney?

  we go extinct. And, and we have to be the frog, you know, be the frog, not the dinosaur. And, and the youth guides us, the youth shows us. We can help the youth with some of their, with, with guiding them some as well. But, but I'm optimistic. I think we're going to be, I see some, I see some real goodness in people and in the, in the youth. And I'm, I'm proud to, to, you know, have them take care of me.

• 1:14:24Ed Mylett?

  I'm proud of both of you. I'm proud to call you both friends. And I, since you said to say, I love you both. And I appreciate today very much. This is what I hope we would do today. And then kind of went a notch past it, because we got to discuss the stuff in depth. And then they got to feel what it's like to be the two of you. And, and how you think, I just wish this was the dialogue, and the conversations that were happening more regularly throughout the country. So, thank you both. Real pleasure to be with both of you.

• 1:14:51Robert O'Neill?

  That has been great. Love you guys.

• 1:14:53Rich Diviney?

  Love you both. Thank you too. And yeah, we'll talk soon.