144: We Lie To Ourselves. An Interview with Col. David Hackworth.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:23 - PBS Interview with Col. David Hackworth. 1:31:01 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:36:24 - How to Stay on the Path / Support. 2:20:12 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 144 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And a few episodes back, I referenced an interview that I had read with Colonel David Hackworth, the author of About Face, my, my favorite book of all time, check. And it was actually on, on podcast number 142. And I referenced this interview and I said I would cover it in the future on a podcast. So here we are, 144. The interview is from PBS.org. They had a show called People's Century. And inside that show, inside that series, there was one part of it.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  I guess maybe it was an episode. It was called Gorilla War. So we're going to take a look at that also on top of that to expand on some of the topics. I'm also going to take a look at a book called Vietnam Primer. And it's, it's a pretty cool book. It's very tactical. And when I say tactical, I'm not talking about, I'm talking actual tactical. Like it shows where you should put your security elements while you're in Vietnam. What's the best way to maneuver through the jungle in Vietnam? It's very, very specific to that kind of jungle fighting. But there are definitely some topics in it that I wanted to pull out. And that is the book in About Face, when Hackworth is talking about working with SLA Marshall,

• 1:30Jocko Willink?

  which we covered his book on 142. He's talking about how he worked with him and they wrote, when they got done with going and interviewing all these people, they wrote the book Vietnam Primer. And so I wanted to at least take a look at that. I probably won't cover it in any great depth on the podcast because it's so tactical. And it's very specific to that time. And maybe I'll cover it someday, but because you never know. Well, anyways, there's definitely some things to get out of it that I want to look at. And we'll pull some of those up today. But the basis is to look at this, this interview with Hackworth.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  And I think you're going to see it, it takes a lot of stuff from About Face and just really puts it in the clear.

• 2:21Jocko Willink?

  In the clear. So.

• 2:24Jocko Willink?

  Here we go, People's Century, Guerrilla Wars. And this is the interview with David Hackworth from PBS.

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  "What do you think the Vietcong learned from Mount Setong?" And Hackworth says, "I think the major thing was how a poor man fights a rich man. How a war can be fought employing ancient rules first developed by Sun Tzu. The need for patience, the need for political motivation, the need to fight a war of economy, and how to employ all the rules of warfare." So, there you go, that's a little way to start this thing off. The need for patience, the need for political motivation. He gets into this, and he talks a lot about the economy, because that's something that you can lose track of as a frontline person. But you need to think about it.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  Uh, next, this is very interesting. "What lessons should the Americans have learned from the French defeat?" So, the French got beaten in Vietnam, and here's what Hackworth says. "Well, I think the major lesson they should have learned was that that war didn't involve the security of France, and the security of the United States wasn't at issue either. On a tactical level, they didn't have an objective." They didn't have an objective on a tactical level. So, clearly, the point is you have to have an objective. He goes on. "The Americans should have studied the lessons of the French very closely and taken something from them. A correspondent once asked General Wes Moreland,

• 4:02Jocko Willink?

  the American commanding general and architect of the war, what he thought of how the French fought the war, and was he studying the lessons of the French? He said, 'Why should I study the lessons of the French? They haven't won a war since Napoleon.'" This was the attitude of American total arrogance. We didn't learn from the past. We didn't learn from our own experience by going back to when we beat Britain in seventeen seventy six. At that time, the British had argued that we didn't fight in formations such as theirs, a big block formation. We didn't meet them in the open and fought like, and we fought like the Indians behind trees, using concealment and cover and so on.

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  And a couple hundred years later, we had the British mentality towards fighting. And we had forgotten the lessons that we had taught the British.

• 5:00Jocko Willink?

  That stings, doesn't it?

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  When that ego gets out of control.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  Can you, I think about the, think about that. That quote from Westmoreland is awful. Why should I study the lessons of French? They hadn't won a war since Napoleon.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's, that's awful to read.

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  That is why. That is why. The, the seals that when I was running training, the seals that would get fired, the leader, the seals that would get fired. For leadership problems or from leadership positions, they would be getting fired because of that attitude right there. They don't listen to anybody. And, and what's interesting about this Hackworth is actually saying. The lose, you should actually even listen to the loser.

• 5:52Jocko Willink?

  Put that ego in check. Next question. Don't you think that the United States tremendous firepower could have won the war?

• 6:03Jocko Willink?

  Hackworth. The war could never have been won in terms of the employment of firepower. The solution to winning the war was to cause reform in the government, to win the hearts and minds of the people, to make the cause justifiable so that the people of the country were willing to give up their lives. This was not done. You could have used all the firepower in the world, all the technical ability that the US had to fight the enemy. And you'd have maybe won a temporary tactical respite.

• 6:35Jocko Willink?

  That's that's important because you know, sometimes you think to yourself, well, if we just, if we put enough bombs on them, we can shut them down. I mean, short of nuking them. But I think that's important. He's saying you could maybe possibly win because I think to myself, yeah, I mean, if you drop enough bombs on people, you know, you can you can shut them down. But he's saying you can you can win a tactical, a temporary tactical respite.

• 7:00Jocko Willink?

  Back to the interview, but we'd never won a war strategically unless we had people, had the people join our side. We'd, I'm gonna read that again. But we'd never have won the war strategically unless we had the people on our side. The war was about the people and winning over their hearts and their minds and their allegiance to the host country. The host country in Vietnam was made up of gangsters.

• 7:27Jocko Willink?

  Next question, but you weren't there as a soldier to win hearts and minds. You were there strictly for military purposes. Hackworth, if you were a student of warfare, if you were a student of warfare as I was, you quickly realized that tactically, we were not going to win the war and we had to win the people. And this is basically the same conclusion. You know, when I got to Iraq the second time and I saw the intel reports and and saw that what we were doing was the capture kill missions and

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  and I saw that they had as many targets. You know, I was in Iraq 2003, 2004. And they had as many targets up on the wall in 2006 when I got back as they had when I left. So that to me said, this is just, when is this, are we, is this ever gonna stop? It didn't look like it to me. We had to do something different. And that's when I read the counter insurgency manual, my second day on deployment or something like that. And and figured out what he was saying right there. You had to you had to take care of the people.

• 8:35Jocko Willink?

  Next question. So were the efforts to resettle whole villages of Vietnamese a good way to fight this war? Hackworth: No. Because the Americans again tried to impose their values on the country of Vietnam without understanding the culture and the religion of Vietnam. It was a country made up of Buddhists who worshipped ancestors. Frequently, listen to this, frequently people who'd been moved from their homes would go through minefields to get back to worship at the graves of their ancestors. We didn't understand that, we didn't understand what the Vietnamese culture was all about.

• 9:12Jocko Willink?

  So imagine that, you think you can just, you think you can just move people around. No, actually you can't do that. That, that ground is holy to them. That ground is where their family is, they have deep rooted ties. And we didn't recognize that. Next question. What do you think was so particularly good about the Viet Cong's guerrilla fighters? What did you, as a military man, respect about them most? Hackworth: I respected their dedication, the fire in their belly, their great, strong belief in freedom.

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  So that's interesting. Because of course, we're looking at them, we're looking at the Vietnamese, thinking they're communist and they're, we, we think we're fighting for, for, for freedom, right? But, and this is other, this is a fairly common opinion about Vietnam is that they just didn't want outsiders. Like they saw any outsiders were, were imposing on their freedom. So even if we were gonna bring glorious democracy, it wasn't their glorious democracy, so they didn't want it.

• 10:24Jocko Willink?

  Back to the interview, theirs was a mission, a complete dedication to winning independence for their country. So there you have it. So I respected them for, for where they were coming from. Maybe it was empathy, my ancestors, two or 300 years ago, had fought for the British, or sorry, had fought the British. What about their strategy and tactics? Hackworth. As fighters, they were very fanatical and very dedicated. They were like my paratroopers, who were extraordinarily fine soldiers. A soldier tends to respect a counterpart that's a heavyweight. And they were indeed heavyweights because of their devotion to the cause.

• 11:06Jocko Willink?

  Next question. A female guerrilla leader said that sometimes when they shot an American soldier, his comrades would come up to get the body and then they'd all burst into tears, which she said was a wonderful opportunity to shoot them or to grab their weapons. Is that a fair comment? Hackworth.

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  It's right on the mark. The problem with Americans fighting that war was that as the war went on, they lost leadership.

• 11:38Jocko Willink?

  They lost their hardcore professional leaders. A professional soldier does not go after wounded. He leaves that to the medics. But soldiers that are not well-trained and not well-disciplined by their leaders tend to become more of a group of fraternity buddies who care very much for their fallen comrade and who want to get him out of the line of fire. In Vietnam, it was known that the standard technique to use was to hit the first guy, then take out anybody going after him. That was how they'd add to their casualty list. I have had my soldiers tell me that a guy might have been hit in the leg in a hot firefight and his opponent, only 10 or 15 feet away,

• 12:21Jocko Willink?

  would be pointing at, pointing his weapon at him, giving him the finger, doing all these things to tease him while he's waiting for someone to come out and pull him away. Then they could blow that guy away too.

• 12:35Jocko Willink?

  Prioritize and execute. You've got to know what the most important problem you've got, and it's not the wounded guy. It's the guy that's trying to kill you.

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  And you've got to be able, you've got to train your guys to be able to overcome that emotional situation that they're going through. Because that's going to be the instinct, that's the human instinct.

• 12:56Jocko Willink?

  Next question. The Vietcong hid in the jungle, but in the Mekong Delta, there really isn't any jungle. So where did the Vietcong hide? I like this answer. Hackworth. Well, they were hidden in the jungle. That was always alongside the waterways, which tended to be very thick and well booby-trapped out in front. They were hidden by the people. They hid in the waterways. They would get underwater and take a reed and put it above the water and breathe through that, then surround themselves with a bit of floating nepa grass. They would dig caves under the waterways and then put a bit of reed up to the top and breathe through that. They were very, very cunning fighters.

• 13:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's...

• 13:41Jocko Willink?

  That's like what you hear about in the movies, right? The little reed.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:47Jocko Willink?

  Breathing through a reed, and they're actually doing that. He goes into that more here.

• 13:52Jocko Willink?

  Next question. Did you have any personal experience of finding Vietcong lurking under the water's surface? Hackworth. Oh, commonly. If we saw a bit of nepa floating down a waterway, a bit of jungle debris, we fired at it and invariably, it would turn red. That meant that below was a Vietcong hanging on to the roots of the debris with a reed going up to get air, and we'd killed one enemy. Once we located them, I always took concertina wire and put it on both sides of the creek so they couldn't float down. They'd run into the wire. I instructed my soldiers to fire at any foliage, and in most cases, there would be a Vietcong hanging on trying to get out. They were simply the most skillful, the most dedicated, the best opponent.

• 14:35Jocko Willink?

  I've struck in almost 50 years of being around soldiers. They're the best.

• 14:42Jocko Willink?

  Question. What other problems were unique in the Mekong Delta? The problem in the Delta was not only the terrible conditions that prevailed there, but it was the impact it had on your soldiers. I'm speaking now as an American. We had terrible casualties from what we called immersion foot. Immersion foot was the problem in World War One called trench foot. After being in the water for a long time, the feet would become very soft and the boot rubbing against the foot would become very abrasive. Suddenly you've had it, you'd have a hole in your foot the size of a bullet hole and suddenly you're a lost soldier.

• 15:19Jocko Willink?

  We had to be, you had to be very wary and take care of the feet. There was no place to sleep, so you were in the water at night. Your soldiers were in the water and you stayed miserable and wet. My rule was that a unit could only stay in the field for five days. After five days, immersion foot set in so badly that a whole battalion of 800 men could be laid up for weeks.

• 15:43Jocko Willink?

  I got immersion foot one time. Yeah, I got legit immersion foot. And so I was doing a training exercise in.

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  It was at, it was, we were doing a, a training exercise, doing a reconnaissance of an airfield that was located around a swamp. So I spent five or six days in this swamp. And it, not the whole five or six days, but a, a good amount of days and plus the days I wasn't in the swamp, there was heavy rain. So just my feet were wet for an extended period of time. And actually, on this particular training exercise, when we were going into the field, it was raining. When we got in the field, it started sleeping, you know, like, like ice. And that turned to snow. And so it was right around, you know, and then in the daytime, it warmed up and it would turn back to rain, but it was a pretty miserable six days.

• 16:39Jocko Willink?

  But when I got out of the field and, and quite frankly, I didn't really understand the threat of immersion foot. And so I just kept my boots on probably almost the whole time. And when I got out, my feet were really jacked up, really jacked up. As a matter of fact, I was looking at some pictures just to see how bad I had it compared to how bad it can get. I just looked at some pictures on. You know, on the interwebs and my feet were jacked up legit.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, obviously, this is, I mean, I've never heard immersion foot, but that's a common.

• 17:10Jocko Willink?

  You've heard of trench foot, right?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So that's common knowledge, right?

• 17:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Cause remember um Forrest Gump, when he said that, when he's like, uh Lieutenant Dan, when he met him, he's like, I'm gonna tell you two things or whatever. And one of them was.

• 17:22Jocko Willink?

  Keep your socks, keep your feet dry.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  No, that's definitely a common thing. And he's, he talks about it a lot. You know, you gotta, you gotta inspect guys' feet, make sure their feet are good to go.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:34Jocko Willink?

  When guys' feet aren't good to go, they're done. You can't walk, you're done. But my feet, from that immersion foot, they were numb. They were numb like dead.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Why? Cause it got cold or?

• 17:46Jocko Willink?

  It was the, it was, I guess it's just the wetness.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:49Jocko Willink?

  When it was cold, it only snowed and it only was below freezing that first night and then it was warmer, but they were wet for a long time.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:58Jocko Willink?

  That was when I was young.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  And then when you take it, take off your shoes, does it like, does the pain set in then or?

• 18:04Jocko Willink?

  No, they were actually, they went, they went, they didn't hurt at, no, they did. But they didn't hurt, they could hurt more when I got out of the field.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:12Jocko Willink?

  That's when they started to hurt.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:13Jocko Willink?

  They, they were actually numb.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause I mean, the way I imagined it is like, you know how, I don't know, you're in the pool or the bath or, you know, when you're a kid, you're in the bath for like super, super long.

• 18:26Jocko Willink?

  Get all uh.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you get the wrinkle.

• 18:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Like prunes or whatever your fingers.

• 18:29Jocko Willink?

  The prunes, pruned up feet. It's like that times five days, six days.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, going like too far kind of, yeah, because they seem kind of sensitive too, when you think about it, you know, like all that kind of sensitive.

• 18:39Jocko Willink?

  Nasty.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  It's like, oh man.

• 18:42Jocko Willink?

  So, next, next question, why were your men in the water? Why didn't they walk along the banks or along pathways between paddy fields? Hackworth, you could expect any dry surface was mined and booby trapped. And sixty percent of all casualties we had in Vietnam came from mines and booby traps laid. I might add, by those local guerrillas who the generals at the top, Westmoreland and assistants didn't count.

• 19:10Jocko Willink?

  So he's saying the local guerrillas, they talk about how the, the, the generals like Wes Moreland would say, oh, you know, there's this many people and they wouldn't count the local populace or these local guerrillas as insurgents.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:25Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, they didn't believe that they were the enemy because their mentality was a world war two mentality. They didn't understand the nature of the war. They were refighting world war two and they thought they could win the war by applying heavy firepower, the outpourings of Detroit and great technological ability. They thought they would steamroll this opponent into defeat. They found that a war could not be won with bulldozers against somebody fighting with great cause.

• 19:59Jocko Willink?

  Next question, but after the Tet Offensive, didn't the heavy bombing raids actually take a very heavy toll on the Vietcong? Hackworth, well, General LeMay said, if I had enough bombs, I could win this war because I'd blast the Vietnamese back to the Stone Age. What he didn't understand was that the Vietnamese were already living in the Stone Age and that firepower wouldn't work under those circumstances. I do think you're correct that at the end of Tet, 1968, February, 1968, we increased the amount of bomb tonnage out of frustration. Vietnam is a country about the size of California

• 20:40Jocko Willink?

  in terms of area. We used three times the amount of bombs in the Vietnam War as we did in all of world war two, both the Allies and the Axis. How's that for just completely insane? We put enough steel on that California-sized target to sink it and it did not cause the opponent to give in. Firepower was not the answer. The answer was to win the hearts and minds of the people. Question, why didn't firepower work? Hackworth, well, what firepower did?

• 21:12Jocko Willink?

  Using pursuit aircraft fighter, aircraft fighter bombers artillery mortar and so on. What it did was it galvanized the opponent. It put steel in their back. They could see themselves being struck by a giant and they had no way, no recourse to strike back. It, as it did historically with the British in World War Two, it put fire in their belly. It was absolutely the worst thing we could do in Vietnam. It gave them a tonic to fight harder. So we've covered that on the podcast about how the Brits, when the Brits got bombed, psychologically it made them tougher. Because there's something happening, like this, this massive attack comes. Well, it seems like a massive attack.

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  It's something you can't control, something you can't fight back. But when you bomb a city of a million people, there's actually a small number that get, that actually get impacted by it. So everyone else goes, hey, we can survive this. And so that's what happened with the Vietnamese. They, you drop these giant bombs on us, guess what? I'm still here. You can't do anything to me. America, big America with your big bombs. I'm still, I'm still right here. What do you got?

• 22:26Jocko Willink?

  Now I'll tell you what, if the recent fighting in, in Iraq against ISIS, there's been a lot of bombing and the bombing has been, let's just say it was very, very productive. Very, very productive and, and they killed a lot, a lot, thousands and tens of thousands of, of ISIS fighters. And even with that being said, there was ground forces that had to move in, but man, they did a lot of devastating, devastating destruction of the enemy with that stuff. So I think in certain situations, you can have a massive impact with firepower.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but isn't that like, like I said, like, isn't that like because of intelligence that they had and stuff like there was more, more to it than just, hey, let's just

• 23:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Hit them with a bunch of bombs.

• 23:16Jocko Willink?

  And, and the ISIS were easier targets and not only, not only easier targets, but. Better weaponry. Cause man, if you look at the number like, I remember reading something about a bridge that they were trying to take out in Vietnam. And they launched mission after mission after mission after mission and drop bomb after bomb after. It's hard. It was hard back then to to actually hit something like a bridge with a bomb.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Gotcha. Okay.

• 23:42Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? We'll have to get, we'll have to get Dave Burke on here.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Good deal, Dave.

• 23:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, good deal, Dave. We'll have to get him on here and and talk about how hard that is to with dumb bombs. Cause you know, everyone says smart bombs now.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:54Jocko Willink?

  Those were dumb bombs. You had to basically.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  You gotta eyeball it.

• 23:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. You're like eyeballing this thing. Can you imagine how hard that is? Like, okay, we get that if you just want to bomb this general, this city. Right? You can just drop bombs on the city. Okay, I get you can hit that, but you're trying to hit a bridge.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:10Jocko Willink?

  Can you imagine how hard that's gotta be?

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. Cause I used to play this game called Mario Kart, right? So it's like a split, split screen and it's a track and you get these weapons, right? And you're playing your friend who's sitting right next to you because it's a split screen. And you can pick up these weapons. So two of the weapons were the turtle shell. There's a red one and a green one. The red one was a smart turtle shell. It like seek the other guy out. But the green one just went in the exact direction that you shot it. So imagine you're on a track, you're taking turns, sway harder with a green shell, you know? So back in Vietnam was the green shell.

• 24:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Nowadays, we got the red shell.

• 24:44Jocko Willink?

  You pretty much fully understand this.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  It's the same thing.

• 24:49Jocko Willink?

  Check. All right. With that, we'll go back to the interview. Next question. When you were active in the Mekong Delta, was it difficult to tell who was Vietcong and who was civilian? Hackworth, I was in the ninth division and our commander was General Julian Ewell, who was called the butcher of the delta. The policy of the division was that it didn't matter if it moved, shoot it and then count it. Theoretically, civilians were supposed to be away from the battle area. They would say this as if, they would say this is a free fire zone, but without realizing the tradition of the people to go back to their homestead. So regardless of the danger, they would go back to where their ancestors were.

• 25:33Jocko Willink?

  And then they were considered Vietcong and fair game. There were an enormous number of casualties who were civilians, but all the civilians, you have to understand, were sympathetic, certainly in my part of the Delta, to the Vietcong effort. Most of the people in the rural areas of Vietnam were sympathetic to the Vietcong cause. They had won the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. They felt that their cause was more just, it had a more nationalistic purpose. Question. You were once flying in a helicopter over the Delta and you saw some people running along and you fought their civilians, their children. Hackworth: Yes, one day we were doing what's called Eagle Flies, which is a platoon of

• 26:14Jocko Willink?

  infantry helicopters, five, six soldiers per helicopter, and I was controlling everything in a command and control helicopter. The pilot in the front seat of my helicopter said, "There are four enemies streaking across the field, request permission to fire." As commander, I would grant that permission. I looked down and I saw four little kids, so I said, "Negative, those are little kids, they're just playing hooky from school or something, leave them alone." And I went ahead and inserted my platoon and let them maneuver through the area. Suddenly, they took fire from those poor little kids, who were probably no more than 12 or 13 years old, and had stashed their AK-47s. So I was wrong. My previous experience had been up in the Highlands.

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  That was one of my first days in the Delta, and I was learning that just about anybody in that battlefield, sadly enough, was a hostile. Question. Were they ever helpful to you? Hackworth: Again, he hits it here, 60% of all casualties, 60% of all US casualties during that war, were from mines and booby traps that were set out by these local people, who had built them and installed them. Ironically enough, the top generals never counted those people as part of the enemy's order of battle, even though they accounted for about 300,000 people. They were conveniently dropped from the rolls.

• 27:41Jocko Willink?

  They were only counted when they were found dead. Going into any battle area, if we picked up a civilian, he became our point man, against the Geneva Convention. The assumption was that if this cat lived here, he knew how to get through this area without losing a leg or a life he could lead our forces through.

• 28:02Jocko Willink?

  So that's again, we've covered this a bunch, but the local populace, there's they're walking through these down these trails every single day and they're not hitting any booby traps. And then you lose a guy today, you lose a guy tomorrow. Eventually you realize that they at a minimum, they know where these booby traps are. And Hackworth saying they're the ones that set them up, made them and set them up.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. So it mentioned against the Geneva Convention.

• 28:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, to grab a civilian.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  So they're they're sort of grabbing them and what forcing them to do it.

• 28:30Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, you're gonna walk.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, like you're kind of like.

• 28:33Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna walk out in front. You're gonna take us through this this trail.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Like a hostage of sorts.

• 28:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, almost like a hostage of sorts. Yeah.

• 28:42Jocko Willink?

  Next question. What was a simple booby trap? Well, the Punji steak was a no brainer. Normally they were set in a position where they would strike your ankle. It would scratch you. You were in filthy water. You'd get an infection. I had a Punji wound and I didn't know it. I must have got it in the morning and it bled a lot. I didn't know until I got out of the water and looked at my boot and it was soaking red from blood. There was a wound that looked very much like as if someone had taken a razor and made about a three inch long slash in my leg. It became infected. That was the problem. It wasn't a long term wound. It was something that put you down for a few days. It had to be cleaned out, debrided, then it would be stitched up and you were fine. The real killer was the coffee can filled with explosives from a dud American round.

• 29:28Jocko Willink?

  Everything they used, we gave them. We threw away our C ration cans. We threw away our used batteries. We threw away our coffee cans. If a 500 bound bomb didn't explode, that provided them with the raw materials for their booby traps. So they set up their booby trap factory. They opened up the mine. They took out the explosives, packed it in a can, wrapped barbed wire and nails and other things around it, got a primer device from a grenade that was left behind, put a tripwire on it and set it on the side of the road. When the first soldier hit it, he would lose his life and maybe three or four people behind him would be down. I've seen what we call number 10 cans, the large cans packed full of C4

• 30:12Jocko Willink?

  and so filled with nails to have a fragment effect that it could take down 10 or 12 people.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  The impact on the soldier was a psychological impact. That every time you put your foot down, you didn't know whether you're going to have a leg, a limb, or a life. And this played over and over for three hundred and sixty-five days of going down trails, going down waterways. It took the fight out of you. I took over the battalion down at the delta, it was called the Hard Luck Battalion, in six months before I took it over. It had six hundred casualties, killed and wounded, all from mines and booby traps. It had never met the enemy. It was all from these insidious little devices put down by these people that the generals didn't count

• 31:04Jocko Willink?

  because they didn't understand the nature of the war. Yeah, and I think, I think the numbers for Iraq was seventy-five percent of the casualties were from IEDs. Seventy-five percent. I'll have to confirm that, but whatever it was, it's a huge number. It's a huge number.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  It must be an odd feeling to find that, you know, like dang, they made that bomb out of our stuff. Like especially at first, when you're used to it, it's different. Like you're, like what if you came across the results of a bomb and it's like dang, I was just using that coffee can, you know, like two days ago or something like that?

• 31:45Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, that's why disciplined soldiers wouldn't leave anything behind ever.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:50Jocko Willink?

  But lack of disciplined soldiers would leave all the stuff behind. Now, sometimes you drop bombs and they don't detonate. That's, so they can't really fault anyone for that, but yeah, coffee cans. And they, they, they, they taught us, when I, when I was going through training, they taught us like we weren't allowed to leave anything behind.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:08Jocko Willink?

  Couldn't leave anything behind because we didn't want the enemy to use it.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:13Jocko Willink?

  It's the way it was. And you know what the, you know what the Iraqis, the Iraqis did the same thing. The insurgents, I should say the insurgents in Iraq, they used old ordinance. Now, some of the old ordinance that they used was actually from the old Iraqi army. A lot of it, but a lot of it was from unexploded ordinance, just like what the Viet, Vietcong used.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, and even. To me, it kinda seems like even if it wasn't stuff to use, like, I mean, man, it's a spectrum. Like, some, you know how like when, you know, on the movie where the criminal, they're chasing the criminal with the dogs and then the criminal left part of his shirt or something? And then the dog sort of smells it. It's like that feeling like your enemy has like something of yours, right? So he, on one side of the spectrum, it's like, okay, they use it to make bombs, right? Which is kinda, just maybe psychologically, just kinda odd. And then just the fact that, for example, like, what if in Iraq, you capture somebody or whatever, and he has like a pair of like, some old army boots or something?

• 33:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, for sure. Well, I'd say, yeah, that's, that's a, I see it hitting you, and I'm trying to figure out why this is kinda shocking to you.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:18Jocko Willink?

  And it must be the first time you've ever thought about this.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So for me, like, for instance, this was horrible. So just think about this. There was an element of snipers that got overrun in Ramadi. And so, think about what the enemy got. Sniper weapons, night vision, that's always like, you're horrified. Night vision goggles and sniper weapons. So that, it takes what you were just talking about and multiplies it times a lot.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:49Jocko Willink?

  Because now the enemy has legitimate equipment that puts them a little bit higher on the tactical level. So, that's definitely scary, and that's why we're so careful about never leaving anything behind.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:06Jocko Willink?

  Next question. What did these sorts of casualties do to the morale of American soldiers? Hackworth just blew it away. Just like a mine blew away a leg. It just played with your mind. Months after I left Vietnam, I found myself walking across an open field, and I suddenly said, "Where am I?", and froze. In my mind, I was in a minefield. It took a few minutes for me to work out that I was not in a minefield. I believe that a lot of this so-called Vietnam stress syndrome that has created so many walking wounded across America today is due to the damage caused long ago by what they saw of their mates going down by mines and booby traps.

• 34:46Jocko Willink?

  Remember of the 60,000 dead and 300,000 Americans wounded in that war, 60% were from mines and booby traps. He driving that point home. The great irony was that the infantry soldiers who went to Vietnam, received a total of five hours of training in mines and booby traps. That was the curriculum used in World War II. We simply didn't learn.

• 35:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I can tell you they turned up, I mean, when I was running training, we went crazy with IEDs. Like our fake IEDs, but yeah, we would get nuts with them. We'd put them all over the place. And just, you had to figure out, you had to be careful. Yeah. But I'll tell you, man, it is hard when someone's good at making those IEDs and camouflaging them.

• 35:38Jocko Willink?

  Scary. Yeah. We'd have to like, brief the training cadre over and over again to make sure the training cadre didn't set off the IEDs that we would be building.

• 35:49Jocko Willink?

  Next, what was the purpose of the Vietcong tunnels? In the sort of coochie area north of Saigon, Hackworth, the purpose of the tunnels is to provide safe areas for supplies, for their headquarters and for their soldiers. A great casualty producer for them was artillery. Air bombing and machine gun strikes from aircraft and helicopters. Most of the tunnels were located in areas that had great limestone formations. It was easy to dig in, but still quite strong and easy to shore up. They could go down two, three, four actual floors. With pumped in air and brought in water, it gave them a secure area that was really behind the American lines. And the Americans never really worked out that they were there. For example, there was a place called the Iron Triangle.

• 36:34Jocko Willink?

  There was a great number of such tunnels, and a general named Williamson took a brigade in there and said the Iron Triangle is no more. That was in 1965 at the beginning of the American involvement in the war. When the North seized the country and when they won the war in 1975, their headquarters was in the Iron Triangle in those very caves.

• 36:57Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's like another situation. You call this area secure and the enemy is actually has their headquarters there. Crazy. Next question, wasn't it possible to block up the tunnels? Or gas them or blow them up? Hackworth, we tried everything possible to destroy the tunnels. Including having small soldiers called tunnel rats go down and try and clear them. But they were so cleverly done. You could never find where the actual end was. There would be a dead end with a hidden door going down to the next level. I'm sure that if enough creativity and effort had gone into it, then yes. They could have been closed up, but. The top generals were not concerned. An anecdote, a cave expert came to me between my tours in Vietnam and my office in the Pentagon.

• 37:41Jocko Willink?

  He said, look, I can help you win the war. I can tell you where the caves are because this is something I've studied my whole life. I took him to my boss, a Vietnam veteran, who was very excited about it. We took him to our general. And he didn't want to know about it. Who wants to waste money sending this guy over there and have him examine tunnels and caves? What's he gonna tell us? Again, it was the mentality that firepower will win the war. These great outpourings of American industrial strength will win this war. This arrogance didn't allow us. To get beyond a blinkered. Military mindset.

• 38:20Jocko Willink?

  Good advice for life and this, this is something that. With Echelon Front, working with a lot of businesses. Sometimes your strategy is wrong. And it was, it was, that's what happened in Iraq with us. Your strategy was not working and it took us some time to figure that out and. Start doing a counter insurgency campaign. But I see this with businesses a lot too. They're using some strategy. And it's not working. But maybe they used it 12 years ago. Maybe they used it two years ago and it worked and, and they were celebrated and, and now they're just gonna do it harder.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:53Jocko Willink?

  Do the same strategy more.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Seems like that's the case with marketing. You know, marketing just changes so much. You know, like when you're marketed to. The new strategies data, it's not as obvious, but the old strategies, you know, like door to door salesman.

• 39:08Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Door to door salesman comes to your house now, bro, you don't wanna hear it, but why did you even come to my house?

• 39:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's like, wouldn't that be considered just a complete waste? Cause you gotta pay some kid, whatever, twelve bucks an hour to go door to door. Whereas you can pay twelve bucks and send out a, I don't know, email or something.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but even emails way, way old. Yeah, that's so.

• 39:27Jocko Willink?

  What's the new deal?

• 39:29Speaker 01

  I don't know, Facebook ads, I don't know, even that's kinda old now, but the, um, no, door to door, there was a time where door to door was dope.

• 39:36Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's funny is I still talk to people that will go out and make stuff happen door to door. So now it's old school again, right? The old school's coming back.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Here's the thing, usually door to door seems like a hard sell. So sure, they'll make things happen, but it's not as efficient. As other ways, like newer ways of marketing.

• 39:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, these people come to my house, door to door people, they wanna sell me stuff.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. How many times have you bought?

• 39:58Jocko Willink?

  Zero.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's the point.

• 40:01Jocko Willink?

  I'm like running through my mind to see if, if that was a solid answer. I'm actually, I'm actually pretty sure that in the last twenty years, I've bought zero from door to door salesman.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Right, but and what, and that's probably common where, I mean, consider the feeling you have when someone comes to your door.

• 40:15Jocko Willink?

  But no, there's, there's some people that make money, obviously.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I'm not saying no one makes money.

• 40:21Jocko Willink?

  I've worked with some companies where they, they do door to door sales. They got some good sales kids, they're selling a good product. And they're like, okay, we're gonna get this out there.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Right, so.

• 40:31Jocko Willink?

  Go and knock on doors.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Hey, I dig it, but there was a time back in the day when door to door was kinda the dope thing. It's like, hey, and when you think about it, it would make sense because door to door, like back, back a long time, remember people used to come over, they just knock on the door? There wasn't cell phone or nothing like that. If, if they were super courteous, they'd call before they came, but if that's your neighbor, your friend or whatever. People would knock on your door all the time. Now people don't just show up at your door.

• 40:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's true. Well, yeah, cause they're lazy also.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:00Jocko Willink?

  I'm just gonna text, Echo, you home?

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So, but back in the day, door to door salesman, they were. Put it this way, they weren't as unwelcome as they are now.

• 41:10Jocko Willink?

  Right, because there was more random people showing up at your house.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, for, there's a bunch of reasons, is what I'm saying, but the, the point is, back in the day, that marketing technique, or that sales technique, or whatever, was, was more effective than it is now. I'm not saying it's a zero effective, not saying it's way more, you know, because things change. So if you're a company and you're like, hey, I think door to door is the, is the, the way to go. Because back in, you know, seventy-five, we were killing, you know, kind of thing.

• 41:37Jocko Willink?

  Well, that was what's interesting. So going back to Iraq and going away from door to door sales here for a moment. The, uh, the, uh, that was what's interesting about the surge. What was, the surge was not just more people, it was new strategy. It was a more counter insurgency focused strategy. And luckily that we shifted that strategy because it wasn't going well up until that point.

• 42:06Jocko Willink?

  Next question. But these tunnels were militarily significant, weren't they? Hackworth, they were a running sore from the beginning to the end, and they were a very powerful ally of the Vietcong. Question, you were in the States at the time it happened, but do you remember hearing about the Tet Offensive in nineteen sixty-eight? Hackworth, when the Tet Offensive occurred in nineteen sixty-eight, I was in the Pentagon. A dear friend of mine was an aide to a very senior general, so he was privy to a lot of information that we Indians didn't have. Meaning the lower ranking guys, as opposed to the chief's Indians. He came and whispered in my ear and he told me about the attack long before, hours before, anyone in the press or public knew anything about it.

• 42:51Jocko Willink?

  I was, quite frankly, shocked and heartbroken. I had been convinced for two years that the Vietcong were going to win the war, that the Americans simply didn't understand the nature of the war. It was very much epitomized when Walter Cronkite asked the American people, what the hell is going on here? I thought we were winning the war.

• 43:10Jocko Willink?

  That was the kind of shock it was to the American people. Everyone had been fed these glowing after action reports by the president Lyndon Johnson, by General Westmoreland, that there was light at the end of the tunnel. That we were prevailing, that it would only be a matter of months. The American public was still oriented towards World War II. They were believing that as long as we grabbed this real estate, we would eventually find the light at the end of the tunnel. But the light at the end of the tunnel was a Vietcong freight train coming on full bore. That's what we discovered in Tet of 1968, and that was the turning point of the war. Question, why was it the turning point?

• 43:52Jocko Willink?

  Hackworth, Tet was a turning point because it destroyed the will of the American people to support the war. Those soldiers who were in the know realized that this was just the beginning of the end. We saw that the American people switched off. If the support of the people is not there, you are going to be cut off at the legs, and that's exactly what happened in Vietnam. And this is, when I was on that show on the History Channel, The Warriors Show, and I talked about how you had to have the will to kill and the will to die, and it's a show about Mark Lee. And that's, that's where that quote that I, that statement that I made

• 44:36Jocko Willink?

  is rooted in what I learned from Hackworth. That is, you have to have this will, you have to have the will. And the people, the nation, has to have the will. It's not just the military has to have the will, it's the people. Because what is, what is the military? The military is the people. Back to the interview, there had been a fair amount of support for the war until Tet of 1968. People thought it would be unpatriotic not to hang in there and wait until we grab Hanoi. When we, when the people saw Vietcong climbing on the top of the American Embassy, they knew that they'd been lied to. And they knew that this war was not winnable. All they had to do was ask their sons. By that time, probably a million Americans had served in Vietnam

• 45:19Jocko Willink?

  and had come back home and told their parents and loved ones the truth about the war. The government couldn't just provide it with a Madison Avenue snow job anymore.

• 45:30Jocko Willink?

  Question: Could the war have been won? Could the Vietcong have been beaten? Hackworth: The war could not have been won unless the host country, the Saigon government, the South Vietnamese changed their very repressive form of government and won the hearts and minds of the people. The northern government had employed this technique, and they'd created the promise of this utopian dream as soon as they kicked out the invader, this repressive South Vietnamese government. The South Vietnamese government never understood that they had to make those changes.

• 46:06Jocko Willink?

  They were led by greedy people who were into making money. They had no contact with the people in the main. They were mainly Catholics, and they were trying to rule a country that was 90% Buddhist.

• 46:21Jocko Willink?

  Question: Why was body count so important? Or was it? Hackworth: McNamara was a number cruncher, and he wanted to have something to crunch: a number. The overall strategy was attrition, to wear out the enemy. By counting bodies, we would know the impact of the war, its success or failure. That became the standard measurement of success. It was the score, and everyone wanted to know the score. What really happened was the body counting completely eroded the honor code of the military, specifically among the officer corps. It taught people to lie. The young, fresh lieutenants out of the military academies were taught to lie. The generals, who were pretty proficient liars anyway, pushed the body count.

• 47:06Jocko Willink?

  A high body count meant great success. So, in every battle, enemy bodies were counted several times. If there were 200 bodies, suddenly the figure became 650, and it became, to quote Wes Moreland, "another great American victory." It corrupted the officer corps and appalled the soldiers, who by that time were mostly draftees. They were scurrying around the jungle, counting bodies, which was a pretty awesome and terrible thing to do. It had a real boomerang effect on the military, because it was like a cancer. It destroyed its soul.

• 47:48Jocko Willink?

  What was the military strategy of the war? Hackworth. Wes Morland's idea was to destroy the enemy's large battle formations as in World War II. When you've worn the enemy down, you've won on the field of battle. That tells you that we simply didn't understand the nature of the war. Because the guerrilla was not going to fight in that way. The guerrilla's manner of fighting was to hit and run, so he could be alive to fight another day. He wasn't into these huge stand-up battles. Big operations required a great number of resources, a great amount of logistics, a great amount of aircraft, and a great amount of artillery fire. Moshe Dianne, who is the chief of staff of the Israeli army, came to Vietnam and I interviewed him

• 48:31Jocko Willink?

  right after he had spent two weeks with an American rifle company of about a hundred men. He said that in one battle, with a North Vietnamese force of a couple hundred men, they fired more artillery, over 25,000 rounds, than he had fired in a whole campaign. That was the American way of fighting a war. It was also terribly expensive. Each round was a hundred dollars. If you fired 10,000 rounds, you've probably gone through a million dollars in one 15-minute fight, and you've killed seven enemy. When you look at it from a cost basis, we were paying an enormous amount to kill the enemy, and we couldn't sustain that kind of momentum and that kind of expenditure for a long time.

• 49:14Jocko Willink?

  It was a failed tactic that never should have been used. We should have used the same rules that Mao was teaching, that Sun Tzu taught before, to break up in small elements and fight fire with fire. Yeah, you think about that economic, you pay a million dollars to kill seven enemy soldiers, that's your...

• 49:39Jocko Willink?

  It's not gonna work out well in the long run.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  No.

• 49:43Jocko Willink?

  Question, had you been in charge, how would you have done things differently? Hackworth, during my second year in Vietnam, I commanded a battalion made up of con scripts down in the delta. It was a battalion with very bad leadership. It had sustained 600 casualties in the six months before I took over. Morale was low. They called themselves the heartbreak battalion. Within 30 days, they turned around. And of course, we've covered this on Steel My Soldiers Hearts, written by Hackworth about this experience. And we also covered it in About Face, which he covers that as well about this experience. So I'm moving a little bit quicker here. We fought like gorillas. We didn't fight in these huge formations. We broke up and fought in small units of five or seven people. We fought at night. We stole the night from the enemy. We ambushed.

• 50:26Jocko Willink?

  We didn't march in large formations and expect to meet an opponent marching in long form, marching in large formations. We fought him using his very tactics, his very skills. We tore a page out of Mao's book. The proof of the pudding was six months later that the battalion had only lost 25 American soldiers. It had killed over 2,600 enemy soldiers and there were no Viet Cong in the area of operation. Those soldiers proudly called themselves the hardcore battalion. And they were hardcore, but they were simply, simple draftees who didn't want to be there.

• 51:02Jocko Willink?

  Question, are you sure that was an accurate body count? Hackworth, yeah, I think that was an accurate body count, considering the inflated body count techniques employed by the US military at the time. Question, wasn't the fight, because it's a little ironic that he talks about how bad the body count is and then he uses it.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:20Jocko Willink?

  So he's kind of getting called out on that a little bit.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 51:23Jocko Willink?

  He should have just stuck to the fact that there was no more Viet Cong operations in that area. There used to be X amount of enemy attacks a day and now there was zero. Sorry, Hack, come on. Don't worry, I got you.

• 51:37Jocko Willink?

  Wasn't the fighting from seventy-two to seventy-five more like a convent- more like conventional warfare? Hackworth, it was conventional warfare. A guerrilla campaign starts with a few people who are dissatisfied. They throw rocks at the enemy, they finally kill an enemy soldier and get a rifle. They get more rifles and they raid an armory and they get more weapons and they build and build up. Phase one of a guerrilla campaign is individual sniping, laying booby traps and low-scale conflict-type fighting. The final go- phase, the final goal in phase four or five is to move in brigades and divisions and corps in a conventional formation and that's the culmination of the war. Which is interesting to think about when

• 52:22Jocko Willink?

  it's like one of those situations where what made you strong, you leave behind, right? It happens with companies all the time, you know, this company starts off, they're small, they're nimble, they can adapt to the market and then over time they get so big they can't change anymore and then some other company that was a startup is now small and nimble and can take advantage of the changes in the market. Same thing happens.

• 52:43Jocko Willink?

  Unless you pay attention, unless you keep yourself mobile, unless you enact decentralized command. You can prevent it, you can keep, if you, if you start to centralize everything, which you have to get somewhat more centralized when you grow like that, like one thing is in the military, you say, "Well, we've got decentralized command." Well, part of that, part of the reason we have that, we can, we can let people have decentralized command is because we have the discipline training up front, right? So, once a company, as a company grows, if you put discipline on them, you can allow them to still have decentralized command and act very quickly. You gotta have trust in your subordinate leadership for sure. To, to be able to employ that.

• 53:24Jocko Willink?

  Next question, "But the actual defeat of the southern government was by the North Vietnamese regular army." That was hardly a Viet Cong victory, was it?

• 53:34Jocko Willink?

  Hackworth, "Oh, I think that the architect of that, General Trey, was a Vietcong, a Southerner. He was the one that planned it. There were a number of Vietcong divisions. For example, the Ninth Vietcong Division in the delta fought in the final battles as a regular unit. Sure, the majority were regular forces from the north, but they fought in hit-and-run type operations. They always fought on the offensive. That is interesting to note is that of 100% of all contacts, when one guy attacks another, 85% were enemy-initiated. That means that throughout the war, the Americans were on the defensive 85% of the time. And the enemy, the Vietcong, and the North Vietnamese was on the offensive.

• 54:19Jocko Willink?

  You can't win a war by being on the defense. You have to have the offensive power. We didn't have the initiative throughout the war. From beginning to end, the initiative rested in the hands of the opponent, the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese. That's like, um, in jujitsu, when someone's just attacking and attacking and attacking, you're defending the whole time, you're going down, I mean eventually. Yeah. You're going down eventually. And that was something that, that we definitely changed up in, for my last deployment when we were in Ramadi, with task unit Bruiser, whenever you're on patrol, you're on defensive, you're on the defensive. But once you set up a little overwatch position and you're waiting for the enemy patrol, well, now you're ambushing them. So now you're on the offense.

• 55:03Jocko Willink?

  So, I mean, we, we weren't on offense 85% of the time, but we were on offense a lot of the time. The, the boys were getting out on offense and surprising the enemy on a regular basis. I mean, probably more than half the time, because we were also doing things where, where definitely we were on the defensive. I mean, it's offensive and defensive at the same time. When you're pushing through a, when you're doing a clearance operation, you're on offense, but you're on defense, because the enemy's waiting for you. Yeah. You know, so there's a little dichotomy in doing that type of mission. But like doing a direct action mission where you're going to go and take down a, a building where you think there's a bad guy. You're offensive when you get to that target. But while you're going to the target.

• 55:46Jocko Willink?

  You're waiting to get ambushed. You're waiting to get ambushed. That's what you're doing. Even though you're scanning, even though you're looking for threats, you're still waiting to get ambushed. You're waiting to roll over an ID. So even though you feel like you're on offense and we train our guys to be on offense.

• 55:59Jocko Willink?

  The reality is. The first shot in those situations is absolutely going to be fired by the enemy. The ID is going to be initiated by the enemy. Once you do the raid, the raid itself. That's us being on offense, right? They're in there sleeping or they're they're not expecting you to come and boom, you blow their door off and you enter their house. You're on offense. But that's like four minutes.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  So you're saying before that.

• 56:21Jocko Willink?

  Before that, while you're going to the target.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  They like protected themselves with whatever measures.

• 56:26Jocko Willink?

  Unrelated. Like, let's say you're going for a bad guy. Bad guy X and he lives in the house. You know you're going to get him. And when you get there, you're going to surprise him and he's not going to be expecting you. But on the way there. Bad guy Z, bad guy M and bad guy F have all set up ambushes on this road. Not maybe completely disconnected with bad guy X. But you are going to have to go through the ambushes that they've set. And and they don't care. They'll set up that ambush tonight. No one comes. Okay, cool. We'll set up tomorrow night. No one comes. We'll set up tomorrow night. You only got to go down that one road one time to get ambushed. So you're on. So when you're going, when you're when you're moving through enemy territory. You are on defense. Again.

• 57:09Jocko Willink?

  That's not the mindset we teach. The mindset is like we're on offense. We're we're gonna go get some. The reality is. The first shot is going to be most likely, most likely. Fired by the enemy. Most likely.

• 57:26Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it is. And you know, we we did. I mean. These big clearance, these big sector clearance that we were doing, the army was doing, the Marine Corps doing. And you're like I said, you're on offense. If it's an offensive push, you're making the initiative. You're taking the initiative and getting in there. On a on a operational level. On a tactical level, most likely. The enemy is going to see you first. They're hidden. They're hiding. They're two rooms deep in a building. They're they're waiting and they've got an ID buried in the road. So.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  So offensive is kind of when you think about it is just like a mindset. Kind of mainly to begin with, cause it's so it's like a it's like a forward leaning mindset.

• 58:04Jocko Willink?

  I think an offense means you offenses you strike first.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:08Jocko Willink?

  It's you have the initiative. That's offense. When you when you have the initiative, that's offense.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:12Jocko Willink?

  When you're reacting, that's defense.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like in your situation that you're like.

• 58:17Jocko Willink?

  So if I punch you, I was on offense. Right?

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:22Jocko Willink?

  If you punch me, I just I was on defense.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  So yours was like a pump. You weren't punching. Hmm. Yeah, it's interesting.

• 58:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's it's it's hard to, I guess, really get the capture the actual how you would explain that. I think the best I could do is what I just said. Operationally, you're on offense.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:40Jocko Willink?

  Meaning we're pushing into your neighborhood.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's essentially like the first blow.

• 58:44Jocko Willink?

  Like this, if you had a a a bar, you were the bouncer at a bar and I had a beef with you.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:50Jocko Willink?

  I showed up at your bar.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 58:52Jocko Willink?

  I'm on offense. But once I get there and get in your face, boom, you crack me. You just went on offense.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:57Jocko Willink?

  Or even better, while I'm going to your bar, one of your boys steps out of the alleyway because he was waiting for me. It cracks me with a bottle in the back of the head.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Right. So I want to be ready for people like you.

• 59:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. So now you got a whole nother thing you got to contend with.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  So there's different orders.

• 59:12Jocko Willink?

  Cause they better kill me.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 59:14Jocko Willink?

  They better they better kill me.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  You went deep into our scenario, bro.

• 59:18Jocko Willink?

  I'm just saying.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Alright, cool. There it is. I better kill you.

• 59:24Jocko Willink?

  Try and be on offense.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:26Jocko Willink?

  That if you if you at least the lesson to be learned there for me, if you're at least think about it.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:32Jocko Willink?

  At least think about that you want to be on offense.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:35Jocko Willink?

  And that was was nice about these, you know, a lot of the missions that that we did in Iraq is like we were surprising the enemy.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:42Jocko Willink?

  And if you can surprise the enemy, you're on offense.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah. So like even like you're you're back to your example, your your missions.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Just the fact that you initiated that capture-kill mission, that's your offensive move.

• 59:56Jocko Willink?

  Offensive movement.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:58Jocko Willink?

  But, just like when I'm coming to the bar, I gotta get to the bar.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:02Jocko Willink?

  And I'm on defense when I'm getting there, because I don't know when I'm gonna get hit.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Right, so it's like throwing a punch with that, with that other hand up.

• 1:00:06Jocko Willink?

  And it's important to note, that we would teach our guys to have an offensive mindset, meaning when we, when you saw one of our patrols, or one of our vehicle patrols, or a foot patrol, you'd see every guy ready to engage the enemy.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:21Jocko Willink?

  Most likely, the first shot's gonna come from, you know. Did that happen all the time? No, there's sometimes, we, you know, on a patrol, guys would engage first, or, that, that could happen, but most likely, that, that's luck.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:00:33Jocko Willink?

  That's luck. Because most likely, the enemy is a little bit smarter, they're hiding in a, you know, when you're walking, think about when you walk down the street, think of how many windows there are, how many doors there are. So now, you just walk down a street, and how many windows can you see? Two hundred, three hundred? Right? I mean, if you're walking down a city street, you can see a hundred windows, let's say. One of those windows could have a bad guy in it, and you can't, you're not gonna see him.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:58Jocko Willink?

  He's gonna see you first.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:01:02Jocko Willink?

  Check. Next question. In April of 1975, during the fall of Saigon, there were some memorable images of American helicopters taking off from the roof of the American Embassy, and dozens of South Vietnamese trying to escape. What were your feelings when you saw those pictures? Hackworth, I was heartbroken when I saw the end come, and the helicopters airlifting people off the embassy. But at the same time, in 1971, when I left Vietnam, I said, "Four years from now, the North Vietnamese will fly a flag over this capital." The reason I said that, and I was dead on to the month, was that I had been like a doctor feeling the pulse of a dying patient, and it was obvious to me that this patient, the South Vietnamese government, was on its way down.

• 1:01:47Jocko Willink?

  Question: Was the April 1975 victory a victory for a people's style of war? Hackworth: I think that the victory in Vietnam introduced a new phase of warfare where low-intensity conflict can eventually win.

• 1:02:02Jocko Willink?

  Question: What was, what does the concept of a people's war mean to you? Hackworth: It's the same thing that my forefathers employed in 1776. We wanted independence and we were willing to pay with our lives. All people want to be free, and if they have that anger inside them and the ability to arm themselves, and somebody comes along and says, "Hey, I'm your leader and I'm gonna show you how to do this," then the one guy who's trying to suppress them is in trouble.

• 1:02:34Jocko Willink?

  Question: What are the key lessons to be learned from the Vietcong's success? And actually, before we go into that question, if you think about, think about this from a leadership perspective, we all wanted independence, we all want to be free, and if somebody comes along and tries to dictate to you how things are gonna be, that person's in trouble, right? So as a leader, if you try and impose your will on people, look, can you get away with it? Yes, yes. Does it work if you're the, you know, if you can fire someone, or, yes, but to be, actually lead someone, you can't just try and impose your will on top of them. Need to get them in the game too. Next question: How important was mass mobilization to the success of the Vietcong?

• 1:03:20Jocko Willink?

  Hackworth: If you're going to fight a war today, you're going to need your whole nation behind you, either as fighters, or supporters, or carriers. It's no longer the act of a few soldiers fighting on a sunny hill, waving swords at one another. Warfare is now the employment of the complete population. The Vietcong took on two superpowers, France and then the United States, and they couldn't have done it on a shoestring. They needed to mobilize everything within their nation, and they needed to get as much outside support as possible. At the end, the war became almost a conventional war. One of the things that bothers me is that the Americans who are now trying to rewrite history of what actually happened, say, "We won all the battles, but we lost the war." But we didn't win all the battles.

• 1:04:04Jocko Willink?

  We lost most of the battles. This is really, this is really critical, and this is a very important thing to think about. The reason they've come up with this very bad rationale is because of the American way of keeping score. In the old American way of conventional warfare, if you're king of the mountain, at the end of the day, you've won the battle.

• 1:04:24Jocko Willink?

  But to the Vietcong, it wasn't who held the ground, it was what kind of punishment you inflicted on your enemy. The Vietcong and North Vietnamese were willing to pay an easier, easy ratio of 10 to 1. If you fought him, and you lost one soldier, and he lost 10, he walked away saying, "I was the winner." There's the mentality that you have to understand. And that's why you have to be willing to kill, and you have to be willing to die if you're gonna go to war. That's why, right there.

• 1:04:55Jocko Willink?

  Question: Can parallels be drawn between Afghanistan and Vietnam? Between the Vietcong war against the Americans and the Muja Hadeen war success against the Soviets? Hackworth: Absolutely. There's no question that the, that there are sharp parallels between the Afghan war and the war in Vietnam. The fighters there were freedom fighters. They were trying to rid themselves of communism. They were supported by an outside country, this time the USA, who poured billions of dollars into that war. They tried to win by using an enormous amount of firepower. Said, "they" being the Russians. The Russians tried to win by using an enormous amount of firepower, conventional tactics

• 1:05:36Jocko Willink?

  against the search-and-destroy operation, a high degree of technology, all the mistakes that the Soviets made in Afghanistan, the Americans made in Vietnam, and the French made in Indochina.

• 1:05:48Jocko Willink?

  No one looked back on the lessons learned.

• 1:05:56Jocko Willink?

  Did the Soviets learn anything from America's experience in Vietnam? Hackworth, from my analysis of the war, I'd say very little. They tried to win the war by using firepower, by bombing them back to the Stone Age through the use of American-provided Stinger missiles, and by mounting machine guns in high mountains and firing down on aircraft, they made the price so heavy for the Soviets in terms of costs that they blinked first and got out.

• 1:06:22Jocko Willink?

  Again, they used an incredible number of mines and booby traps, creating a great number of Soviet casualties. The Soviet units that did well there were special units led by people who understood that form of wealth warfare.

• 1:06:38Jocko Willink?

  But their conventional infantry was exactly the same as the American conventional infantry in Vietnam or the French conventional infantry in Indochina. Question: Why did the Soviets fail to learn from the American and French mistakes? Hackworth: I think it is a military mindset. We don't want to go back and look at the past. We're in such a hurry to get where we're going. There's a certain amount of military arrogance. The older I get, the more I realize how we never study the past and try to learn from it. We just stumble along and make the same mistakes.

• 1:07:15Jocko Willink?

  We're doomed to do that until people wake up.

• 1:07:19Jocko Willink?

  And with the military mind, I'm not sure we'll ever wake up.

• 1:07:26Jocko Willink?

  Gotta keep your ego in check. Gotta learn from the past. Hundred percent correct. Question: Is there anything about guerrilla warfare which is new to this century?

• 1:07:40Jocko Willink?

  Hackworth: Well, a number of things are new. The amount of firepower that the insurgent employs and uses, the use of booby traps and mines, the ability to communicate via electronic communications. One of the problems that's always hampered the guerrilla is getting the word out. In the days of old, it was done by messengers, which took days and hours. Today, a general has very sharp communications. Out in Somalia, General Hadid had little portable radios to talk to his soldiers, very low frequency. The American CIA's intercept devices are all high-frequency. They couldn't listen to what the man was saying. They didn't learn a thing.

• 1:08:19Jocko Willink?

  Question: How frightened was the average American conscript faced with all these obstacles and the skill of the enemy?

• 1:08:28Jocko Willink?

  Hackworth: "The average American soldier going into battle in Vietnam carried a whole pack full of fear, mainly because he wasn't trained properly back in the States. The training base was just off. They were preparing for World War II, not for insurgency warfare, so the lad received sixteen weeks of training, was flung into Vietnam, generally in a unit that was never kept together. But it was always filled up by the individual replacement system. As a result, there was no real strong cohesion, no teamwork in the unit." And this is something that S.L.A. Marshall talked about in "Men Against Fire." "The soldier was like an orphan thrown into a family, but a family that was not solidly put together.

• 1:09:12Jocko Willink?

  As a result, his fear level would be high because of the uncertainty of what he was going into." "The typical kid who went to Vietnam was black. Twenty-one percent of all soldiers were black, and the Hispanics and the whites were from the other side of the railroad tracks. If you went to a good university, like Brown University or something, you didn't find yourself carrying an M16 rifle in Vietnam. You did a Clinton, you got out of the war. It was very unfair. The poor working classes were the ones that carried out the war effort. But they're made of tough stuff, because their whole life required tough stuff. Once they were provided with the leadership, the proper leadership, that raw material

• 1:09:56Jocko Willink?

  did a hell of a job."

• 1:10:00Jocko Willink?

  But it didn't make the fear go away.

• 1:10:04Jocko Willink?

  When you're playing in that kind of a lethal Super Bowl, the possibility of dying and coming home in a rubber bag is always lingering in the back of your head. Regardless of how courageous you are, you will still have fear, but if you have competent leadership, that you have confidence in, and if you're well-trained, you can get the job done. It's my theory that the better trained you are, the more natural courage you have, because you have a belief in yourself."

• 1:10:37Jocko Willink?

  That's all important stuff.

• 1:10:41Jocko Willink?

  The better trained you are, the more natural courage you have. Keep that in mind.

• 1:10:47Jocko Willink?

  Also, the raw material, just give me some good leadership and we'll make something happen.

• 1:10:57Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, "Our soldiers weren't well-trained and in the main, they weren't well-led. But the longer the soldier stayed there, the more experienced he became and the more confident he became. The uncertainty was dispelled. He knew what to expect.

• 1:11:13Jocko Willink?

  But the fear would never go away. You know, you can never go near a battlefield without having those butterflies in your stomach." Question, "What frightened your soldiers most?" Hackworth, "I think it was the uncertainty." Once they got into a unit and knew they were well-led, knew that their commander loved them and cared for them and would not throw them into harm's way unless absolutely necessary, their main fear was just that uncertainty that came from the mines and booby traps."

• 1:11:44Jocko Willink?

  And it's a psychological thing. "I've walked down trails and I've said to myself, 'A sniper has me in his sights.'" You play those mind games with yourself. I've had that kind of experience where I saw a guy, where I saw a guy looking through his rifle, looking at me perfectly at what we call a six o'clock sight picture and he's going to squeeze and you spot yourself going down.

• 1:12:06Jocko Willink?

  Good leadership dispels all those kinds of mind games.

• 1:12:13Jocko Willink?

  Question, "There are all these images of American soldiers walking around, smoking pot, beads around their necks, singing rock songs. Clearly, the morale of the American troops broke down. Hackworth, 'The morale of the American Army disintegrated the longer the war went on.'" We went there with a professional army that was well-led by very fine combat leaders, most of whom were WWII or Korea experienced. I'm talking about senior NCOs and officers. They had a lot of battle experience and were high-quality people. And they were badly used from the beginning. They were traded out. So we lost the non-commissioned officer corps almost straight away, within the first 18 months of the war.

• 1:12:57Jocko Willink?

  After that, there was no unit cohesion. Every 365 days, you had a new unit. You had no institutional memory.

• 1:13:07Jocko Willink?

  I know this might seem obvious, but you've gotta keep people together. When you get a good team, you've gotta keep them together. You've gotta keep them working together.

• 1:13:17Jocko Willink?

  No one remembered what happened last month. And they kept repeating the same mistakes again, and again, and again. The Americans were in Vietnam for eight years, and there were no leaders at the top willing to raise hell and demand that the training be hard, and demand that the standards be high. No one wanted to shake things up in a very, very unpopular war. Now, the finest thing you can do for any young soldier is be mean as hell with him, and whack him in the head when he doesn't do something correctly. Make certain that he knows his job and knows how to do it right. Because if he does it right, he'll do it right on the battlefield. But the whole training and leadership system were asking,

• 1:14:02Jocko Willink?

  "How can we resolve this disintegrating morale problem?" We can resolve it by getting them R&R, delivering cold beer, and Coke, and ice cream at night, and hot food. This is what the generals' mentality was. Instead of kicking them in the ass and making them do things right, screw on their steel pot, carry their weapon, and clean up their ammo, get rid of their love beads, and not smoke dope. When I took over my battalion in a Delta, there was grass all over the place. Before I'd go out with my battalion, I'd shake everybody down. I'd boot people in the butt who even smoked cigarettes because you could smell tobacco a mile away. You could see the light from a cigarette a couple miles away. In my unit, you didn't smoke anything and you certainly didn't smoke grass.

• 1:14:47Jocko Willink?

  It was just a question of discipline. If you had good leadership and provided disciplined, designed not to harass, but to keep people alive, the soldiers would react. So, critical distinction there. Not talking about discipline just designed to harass people and do things for no good reason, but discipline that's actually there to keep people alive. Continuing, if they didn't have that, they would react the other way. What we saw between 1965 and 1973, when the last US forces went out, was a total disintegration. It was an organization that didn't have proper boundaries and didn't have people insisting on those boundaries.

• 1:15:32Jocko Willink?

  They were an army of hippies and they didn't have discipline. Had the war continued for a few more years, we were seeing at the end, by 1973, units refusing to fight. Well, we'd have seen a whole army that refused to fight because it was a most unpopular war and soldiers were saying, "What am I doing here? My politicians want me out, my family wants me out, and there's no purpose in being here. This does not affect my country's security. All I am is a pawn in a stupid war." They were an army of hippies and didn't have discipline.

• 1:16:09Jocko Willink?

  Had the war continued for a few more years, we're seeing at the end, by 1973, units refusing to fight. Well, we'd seen a whole, we'd see, we'd have seen a whole army that refused to fight because it was a most unpopular war and the soldiers were saying, "What am I doing here? My politicians want me out, my family wants me out, and there's no purpose in me being here. This does not affect my country's security. All I am is a pawn in a stupid war."

• 1:16:42Jocko Willink?

  I mean, okay, first of all, obviously, we're not talking about every soldier, every Marine, every servicemember in Vietnam that was acting that way. Clearly, there was people still doing heroic things and serving to the best of their ability. But he's making a broad, general statement that if we saw in 1973 some units that were saying, "Hey, we don't want to fight," then if you would have continued down that trajectory, you eventually been saying, "Hey, wait a second, there'd be a lot more units that would be saying that."

• 1:17:16Jocko Willink?

  Next. "How did your soldiers, particularly your fresh recruits, cope with not knowing who the enemy was?" Hackworth. "When a soldier would arrive in Vietnam, badly trained from the USA, not prepared for the war, my procedure was that each unit form their own training program at division level. The young recruit would go through this training, up to two weeks, in his particular area of operations. For example, looking after your feet in the Mekong Delta, keeping your ammo dry, and things of this nature. After they finished that division-level training, they would come to a unit. Normally, I would talk to my soldiers, welcome them to the unit, assign them to a rifle company.

• 1:17:59Jocko Willink?

  My standard operating procedure was to assign a young recruit to an old soldier in the same foxhole. That soldier would be his buddy. A veteran would get a green recruit, or fresh meat, as they called them, and he would take that new guy and pass his knowledge to him."

• 1:18:17Jocko Willink?

  Question. Were your soldiers ever reluctant to fight? Hackworth. "I had the ability to motivate people. Even though a guy might be a pacifist, in a few days, he was hunting for Charlie. I never had a problem in terms of getting soldiers to fight."

• 1:18:34Jocko Willink?

  Question, were you ever frightened? Can you remember a moment when you were frightened? Hackworth, I spent eight years on battlefields as a soldier and I'm sure that there weren't, that there aren't very many minutes of those eight years that I wasn't frightened. It's something that lives in your stomach. It's just churning all the time. As the bullets start snapping and the intensity of combat increases, that churning increases. But it's always there. As long as you're in a dangerous situation, you've got it and you're carrying it with you on your back. Question, did your soldiers have any compunction about shooting civilians on the chance that they were Viet Cong?

• 1:19:18Jocko Willink?

  Hackworth, I think the average American soldier perceived the enemy as, but for the grace of God, their Goy. And they were reluctant to shoot somebody unless they knew they were the enemy. But if the guy were coming at him at night, if the guy were walking in an area he shouldn't be in and had weapons or something like that, the way I trained my soldiers was to react automatically. Don't get the thinking process going. When you see a right cross come at you, block it with your left hand and go with a right hook. I never had problems with soldiers being reluctant to fight. Of course, this is, this is different than, you know, the SLA marshal report of people not wanting to fight.

• 1:20:04Jocko Willink?

  And it's also, you know, I, I say this and sometimes people freak out about it. When I say, "Don't think," right? Stop thinking. Hey, your alarm clock goes off in the morning. Don't think, you just get up and you do what you're supposed to do. Oh, you, you, you're supposed to work out? Don't think about it. Just go do it. And that's what he's saying for a more important situation. Oh, there's an enemy threat? Don't think about it. Do what you're supposed to do.

• 1:20:36Jocko Willink?

  Would it surprise you to know that the chief concierge at the Continental Hotel, Saigon's top hotel, was in fact, working for the Vietcong? Hackworth, "It wouldn't surprise me." At Tet of 68, the secretary to the commanding general of the US forces in Vietnam, General Wes Morland, was found holding an AK-47. "With the whole Vietnamese apparatus, I never once trusted a Vietnamese. I never trusted a Vietnamese general. I never allowed a Vietnamese inside my camp, my firebase. If I were going to meet a Vietnamese Colonel, I would meet him outside my firebase because I didn't trust him. I assumed everybody was Vietcong."

• 1:21:16Jocko Willink?

  Question, "And these are the people you were meant to be fighting for?" Hackworth, "That's right." And that was my attitude. "The soldiers from the 9th Division hated the South Vietnamese soldiers more than they did the Vietcong."

• 1:21:31Jocko Willink?

  So what he's saying right there is, I'm gonna read that again. "My soldiers from the 9th Division hated the South Vietnamese soldiers more than they did the Vietcong." That's a horrible situation.

• 1:21:42Jocko Willink?

  "They saw them coming and going out, they saw them going out on operations and not beating the enemy, but avoiding the enemy. They called it 'search and avoid,' where it was supposed to be 'search and destroy.' My battalion could go all the way through the same area and come back bloodied and battered. That really got to my guys. I was walking the perimeter one night. I used the British system of 'stand to' in the evening, where everybody was at their post with a weapon, ready to go, just as the sun was going down. One of my snipers said, 'Sir, how's the body count today?' And I said, 'Not so good. We only had eight or nine for the day, for the battalion.' And he said, 'Well, I'll get you two more.' Before I could stop him, he took out his sniper rifle.

• 1:22:24Jocko Willink?

  I looked down at the end of the weapon to see where it was pointed, and it was pointed at two South Vietnamese soldiers guarding a bridge about 40 meters from my perimeter. I knocked the weapon up before he had a chance to scream, squeeze off around."

• 1:22:40Jocko Willink?

  This was the attitude of a lot of soldiers. They didn't like the South Vietnamese because they didn't pull their weight.

• 1:22:48Jocko Willink?

  Question: Why did massacres occur in Vietnam? Hackworth. Well, the big massacre was Me Lai. Lieutenant William Callie and Captain Medina were the principal characters involved in that act. Why did that occur? It occurred for a number of reasons. The soldiers were frustrated. They were mainly frustrated because of mines and booby traps and because they could never find the enemy. They were just tripping through minefields and seeing their mates blown away, never grabbing hold of the enemy and getting into a real fight. Then there's a lot of people in a village and then insanity takes over and they just start blowing human beings away.

• 1:23:31Jocko Willink?

  It's also about bad leadership. Lieutenant Callie had gone through Officer Candidate School. He'd gone through three separate courses, was found wanting in leadership in two of them, and had been recycled instead of being booted out. The military was into a numbers game and didn't want to have a high attrition rate for their officers. They kept recycling someone until they graduated. So here's a guy who never should have been trusted more than an Army PFC ends up a lieutenant. He's with a platoon of soldiers who were extremely frustrated because of mines and booby traps and he doesn't have the leadership ability to control them, to say, "Stop that fire."

• 1:24:16Jocko Willink?

  I think massacres occur when you don't have strong leadership, when you don't have soldiers who are extremely well-trained and well-disciplined and well-controlled by their leaders. That's what happened. All those components fell apart. And I think the book that we covered on the Me Lai massacre actually gave even better details. I mean, obviously it gave better details because it's a full book, but I really was... one of the key things I remember is I remember how the intelligence escalated. It escalated. And I'll tell you something else.

• 1:24:53Jocko Willink?

  He's saying that, you know, that Lieutenant Calley couldn't stop them. Lieutenant Calley led that massacre. He led the massacre. It wasn't him saying, "Oh, I can't get control of the guys." No, he was actually doing the massacre and they were, they were actually following him. And that wraps up that, that wraps up the interview. It was kind of abrupt ending. I don't know why it's so abrupt. I, I looked around to see if there was anything that was missing, but that's, that's how the, that's how the interview ends. But I wanted to go to, from there, I wanted to just grab a couple of sections out of the Vietnam Primer. Again, this is the book that, that Hackworth wrote with S.L.A. Marshall when they got back for, when they got back from this tour in Vietnam.

• 1:25:37Jocko Willink?

  It was a few months long and they went and talked, debriefed all kinds of people. And again, there's all kinds of tactical level lessons in here. I mean, like real tactical, doubling security, contending with the jungle, security on the trail, the company in movement, field intelligence. I mean, there's the defensive perimeter. It's just very, it's also a very short book. It's not even a hundred pages long. Um, and like I said, if you want to get this, if you're in the military, you might be able to use this. If you're leading a, if you're a platoon leader, you probably get some decent lessons learned out of this. But this isn't one of those books that translates directly to business because it's actually not, it's not about leadership. It's about the tactics of

• 1:26:23Jocko Willink?

  an infantry platoon, an infantry company. So, but that being said, of course, there are some, there are some lessons. And what's interesting to me is also as I found these leadership lessons, they're not just leadership lessons. Beyond being leadership lessons, there's a lot of lessons here for

• 1:26:47Jocko Willink?

  you as a person, for me as a person. And you start taking the leadership lessons from Vietnam Primer and applying them to yourself. I think you could see a lot of crossover.

• 1:27:01Jocko Willink?

  Starting from a leadership perspective, though, here we go. Vietnam Primer.

• 1:27:06Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Our mistakes in Vietnam are neither new nor startling. They are not something we can blame on the mysteries of warfare. They are the same problems that have been haunting small unit commanders since before Gideon. In peace or war, these errors spell the difference between professionalism and mediocrity.

• 1:27:27Jocko Willink?

  Many young leaders enchanted by the Hollywood image of war approach combat with the good guy versus the bad guy attitude. But there is no similarity between what John Wayne gets away with on the screen and the hot, hard facts of a firefight.

• 1:27:44Jocko Willink?

  A small unit leader in combat cannot afford to have a film hero's devil may care attitude torn training, discipline, and basic soldiering. In the recipe for battle victory, well-led and disciplined soldiers are the main ingredient. Soldiers who have been conditioned through training to react by habit when confronted with the searing realities of engagement. The habits learned in training, good or bad, are the same habits that move the soldier in combat.

• 1:28:19Jocko Willink?

  A leader then must ensure that each of his soldiers is well-trained and has developed good habits, habits so deeply ingrained through correct teaching and intensive practice that even under the pressure of fear and sudden danger, each soldier automatically will do the right thing.

• 1:28:38Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:28:44Jocko Willink?

  Continuing. There is no magic formula or sweatless solution by which one can achieve this goal.

• 1:28:54Jocko Willink?

  There's no, there's no hack. Leaders may approach training for combat only with intense dedication, accepting as gospel the timeless truth that better trained men live longer on the battlefield.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  No military unit is ever completely trained. There will always be a weak area that requires additional time and effort. The wise commander uses all available time to train his unit. He never says "good enough."

• 1:29:29Jocko Willink?

  Leaders must accept the old but absolute maxim, "The more sweat on the training field, the less blood on the battlefield."

• 1:29:38Jocko Willink?

  Combat is too serious a business to permit easy excuse of even one mistake.

• 1:29:48Jocko Willink?

  Never quit checking. Check everything all the time. Weapons for cleanliness, aid men for supplies, sentries for alertness, and the camp for field sanitation.

• 1:30:04Jocko Willink?

  Another weakness among junior leaders is the inaccurate report of the estimate of the situation.

• 1:30:14Jocko Willink?

  Estimates are many times either so greatly exaggerated or so watered down that they are not meaningful to the next higher commander, who must make critical decisions as to troop employment and allocation of combat power.

• 1:30:29Jocko Willink?

  The confusion and noise of the battlefield are two reasons why faulty estimates are made. Over emotionalism and the sense of the drama are others. These factors coupled with the judgment of an impulsive commander, who feels that he must say something on the radio even if it is wrong, are the crux of the problem.

• 1:30:52Jocko Willink?

  Commanders must report the facts as they see them on the battlefield. If they don't know the situation, they must just say that.

• 1:31:05Jocko Willink?

  And again, those are just a couple little lessons learned out of Vietnam Primer. And

• 1:31:15Jocko Willink?

  you know, I think one of the things, like I said, there's a lot of things that you can take from what Hackworth talks about and he talks about leadership. And you can actually apply it to yourself. You can apply it to your personal life and some of the things that he just said. Think about some of these. Our mistakes are nothing new or startling.

• 1:31:38Jocko Willink?

  Think about that.

• 1:31:41Jocko Willink?

  Most of the time, most of the time, think about this, most of the time when you make a mistake, it's something that you already knew. You actually know you're making the mistake when you're making it.

• 1:31:55Jocko Willink?

  Here's another thing he says. Errors spell the difference between professionalism and mediocrity. It's the little things. It's the little mistakes that you make.

• 1:32:07Jocko Willink?

  Next thing he says, disciplined soldiers are the main ingredient in victory.

• 1:32:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, guess what the main ingredient in victory in your life is?

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  Discipline?

• 1:32:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. All day.

• 1:32:24Jocko Willink?

  He says there's no magic formula or sweatless solution by which one can achieve their goals.

• 1:32:33Jocko Willink?

  I think he just said there's no, there is no shortcut. There is no hack. There's no sweatless solution. You, you're gonna have to work.

• 1:32:45Jocko Willink?

  Then he says this, no military unit is ever completely trained. Guess what? Neither are you. Neither am I. There is always weakness to work on, always. A lot of them.

• 1:33:01Jocko Willink?

  He says this in Vietnam Primer. Combat is too serious a business to permit easy excuse of even one mistake.

• 1:33:11Jocko Willink?

  Now, think about this. Okay. Combat's too serious a business. Why is that? It's because you can die. But guess what?

• 1:33:19Jocko Willink?

  We're all gonna die.

• 1:33:22Jocko Willink?

  We're all gonna die. So, why would we? Why would we allow ourselves to make easy? Easy excuses? Why would you allow that?

• 1:33:32Jocko Willink?

  Combat's life and death. So is life.

• 1:33:39Jocko Willink?

  So you shouldn't allow yourself these easy excuses. And in the last section, that he talks about, that I read, it can absolutely be applied. It can absolutely, absolutely be applied. He says, "Another weakness common among junior leaders is the inaccurate reporting of the estimate of the situation. They are either so exaggerated or so watered down that they are not meaningful."

• 1:34:10Jocko Willink?

  Now, again, if you apply this to yourself, what you realize

• 1:34:17Jocko Willink?

  is that you got these junior leaders that they're lying to their chain of command. I mean, they're exaggerating or they're watering things down, but they're basically lying to their chain of command. And how does that translate to us? We lie to ourselves.

• 1:34:30Jocko Willink?

  That's how it translates to us. We lie to ourselves. We don't tell ourselves the way things really are. And when we do that, then we can't fix our problems. If we can't fix our problems, we're not going to improve. So, we have to be truthful to ourselves.

• 1:34:47Jocko Willink?

  I have to be truthful to myself. You have to be truthful to yourself. You have to stop rationalizing. Stop making excuses. Stop telling yourself little watered-down assessments of where you're really at. Tell yourself the truth.

• 1:35:05Jocko Willink?

  So that you can get where you want to go, you can be who you want to be, you can be who you should be.

• 1:35:14Jocko Willink?

  Who you should be when you do what you know you should do, when you pay attention to the little things, when you implement discipline, true and unflinching and unmitigated discipline in your life. When you stop, when you stop trying to find a sweatless solution.

• 1:35:35Jocko Willink?

  When you look for weaknesses to work on, when you allow no easy excuses. And all that starts when you stop lying to yourself.

• 1:35:48Jocko Willink?

  When you stop lying to yourself, that's when you can become who you know you should be. When you tell yourself the truth about where you are, so you can make sure you are in the right place. And if you're not in the right place, then you can get yourself on the path to get there.

• 1:36:08Jocko Willink?

  The path of discipline, the path of hard work, and the path of truth.

• 1:36:20Jocko Willink?

  And I think

• 1:36:23Jocko Willink?

  that's all I've got for tonight. So.

• 1:36:30Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, speaking of the path.

• 1:36:33Speaker 01

  The path.

• 1:36:33Jocko Willink?

  The path of truth.

• 1:36:37Jocko Willink?

  We're open to any suggestions you may or may not have on how we can get on that path and then go ahead and stay on that path.

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  Stay on the path, yeah. I feel like more and more of us are on the path. That's what I feel like.

• 1:36:53Jocko Willink?

  You know, at the roll call. At the roll call that we just got done, which was an event, if you don't know, for military first responders, law enforcement, paramedics, firefighters. There was a lot of people there that are straight up on the path.

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  Straight up.

• 1:37:09Jocko Willink?

  Legitimately on the path.

• 1:37:11Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, and it's one of those deals where, you know how like when you hear. A certain story and then you're about someone and you're like, oh dang, that's impressive. And then you hear it again and again and then again and then you're like, okay, you know, I'm kinda used to it. I don't feel like I've gotten used to this at all because everyone's story is kinda different, you know? So it kinda exposes this element of like, like, just immense individuality of a person, you know? So it's, it's kinda like, um, I don't know, it's like, I don't know, maybe like your kid's birthday or something that happens over and over again, but never gets old. You know, kinda that kinda situation.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  There was a guy, he was like, and he just told me this while we were listening to you guys do jujitsu. And he was just right in the middle of it, just kinda in my ear, and he's like, dude, I lost seventy pounds.

• 1:38:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  Just because I'm on the path.

• 1:38:03Jocko Willink?

  Geez. Guys were just, guys and girls, females, boys and girls, men and women, were walking up to me and like showing me pictures. Hey, this is what I looked like thirteen months ago. I've lost thirty-eight pounds or whatever. Awesome. I got promoted.

• 1:38:25Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's, it's awesome. So yes, you are correct. There's a lot of people on the path.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  Kids, everything.

• 1:38:32Jocko Willink?

  Kids, oh yeah, oh yeah. People, I, I made little videos for kids.

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:38:36Jocko Willink?

  I was looking at videos, kids, kids doing pull-ups, kids doing jujitsu, little warrior kids.

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  Straight up on the path.

• 1:38:44Jocko Willink?

  Knowing the, knowing the Getty's burger dress. Hey, look at this kid. Look at my son. He knows the Getty's burger dress. He's six.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  No, man.

• 1:38:54Jocko Willink?

  Look at my daughter. That's six pull-ups right there. You know how many she could do last year? Zero.

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:01Jocko Willink?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I do.

• 1:39:04Jocko Willink?

  You think it's gonna get crowded on the path? No.

• 1:39:09Speaker 01

  It'll get wider.

• 1:39:10Jocko Willink?

  Maybe the path gets wider.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  Gets wider.

• 1:39:12Jocko Willink?

  Cause everyone's kinda on their own path. But there's just a unified.

• 1:39:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  Oh, there's, there's common ground on the path.

• 1:39:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's definitely.

• 1:39:19Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, on a fundamental level, actually, there's, there's immense commonality. Down there.

• 1:39:26Jocko Willink?

  But the path is big enough to, to maintain. There's not gonna get, there's not gonna be a traffic jam on the path.

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:39:31Jocko Willink?

  In fact, it's the opposite. It's the opposite, yeah.

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:39:34Jocko Willink?

  The more people have a path, the faster it goes.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, more momentum.

• 1:39:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Shoot, so, alright, well.

• 1:39:40Jocko Willink?

  Isn't that weird how you could take leadership principles and apply them to yourself?

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, so it's almost like.

• 1:39:46Jocko Willink?

  Don't lie to yourself, think about that. Cause you think about the little lies you tell yourself.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:39:50Jocko Willink?

  The little lies you tell yourself.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  Um, so, long time ago, my, my mom was like overweight. I didn't know, I mean, I guess I knew that, I don't know, when you're a little kid, you don't know. You're just used to that's just how, that's just how. And my, and then, so she got on the path back in the day and, and she lost a bunch of weight. And my dad said, hey, you know what I'm gonna get your mom for her birthday? I was like, what? He's like, a mirror. A full-size mirror. Cause she lost a bunch of weight, she looks good, you know, whatever now. And I was like, cool. You know, that's some adult stuff, whatever furniture, was that furniture? Good, you know, whatever, good, good job, dad, whatever, you know, kinda. And then I, I kinda thought about it and I'm thinking about it more now, it's like, man. You know what that, you know what that says? That says that like, you know, she was like overweight and she was upset.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  For my dad to know that, you know, and to take action like that, means that he knew that she was in a way, in one way or another, avoiding the mirror.

• 1:40:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and, well, I would say, yeah, straight up avoiding it, but she just didn't wanna see herself in the mirror. Yeah. I mean, you said the same thing I said, I guess I said it in a little bit of a different way, but she didn't wanna see herself in the mirror.

• 1:40:57Speaker 01

  Right. Like, if, if you have a, and you kinda think about it, sure, you have a mirror in the bathroom and it's sort of it. But like, I don't know, where, where else do we have mirrors, right? Like, I don't know, in the bedroom or something, you know, when girls get ready? I don't know, I'm comparing it to my current situation, so I have no idea.

• 1:41:11Jocko Willink?

  I have like the mirror in the bathroom, medicine cabinet, that's it.

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:15Jocko Willink?

  I guess, I guess my, you know what, you're right, cause both my daughters, my older daughters, had mirrors in their room.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, all up in there, right?

• 1:41:22Jocko Willink?

  So they could get ready.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:23Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:41:24Jocko Willink?

  Get ready.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  Look at the outfit, uh, I'm assuming, I don't know.

• 1:41:27Jocko Willink?

  No mirror.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:29Jocko Willink?

  No, man.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  But for a girl, I don't know. Again, I'm just totally like thinking of my situation. So, and yeah, so I kinda thinking back, I'm like dang, we only had the mirror in the bathroom. Anyway, so for that to be the case, for a mirror to be a good gift, where your dad's gonna tell you like, hey, how this has a cool gift, it kinda indicates that, you know, like.

• 1:41:47Jocko Willink?

  Pretty cool.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  It's like, oh yeah. So anyways, the point is like, yeah, we do kinda lie to ourselves. Even if we don't think we're necessarily lying to ourselves, it's like you don't wanna admit certain things.

• 1:41:56Jocko Willink?

  It's the omission, right?

• 1:41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:58Jocko Willink?

  Omission, lying by omission. Like, I'm not even gonna look at myself, therefore.

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  I don't have to address that one. Yeah, yeah, therefore it's not even a problem. It's not even part of my life or whatever. It's like, yeah, it's like lie by omission. Like if you don't do jujitsu.

• 1:42:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Like, like, no, if you don't do jujitsu, no, if you, one day, if you don't do jujitsu one day, let's say there's, let's say there's, in a month, there's four days that you didn't do jujitsu. Three of those could have been legitimate days, where you legitimately, for whatever reason, couldn't do jujitsu. One of those days might have been predicated on a lie that you told yourself, right?

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:31Jocko Willink?

  Right? Like, I just don't have time today.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:34Jocko Willink?

  When what you really did was you extended some work.

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:37Jocko Willink?

  An extra, cuz that's a, there's a weird time, there's a weird time thing that happens with jujitsu. Like, hey, class starts at, start, class starts at four thirty, or class starts at, like, hey, I'm gonna roll at five thirty. The guys are, everyone's training at six, right? Hey, we're doing nogi at six. Well, if I get caught up in something mysteriously, and all of a sudden it's six oh four at my house, ah, you know what? I won't even get there until six twenty or six fifteen by the time I get changed. You know, the guys will probably be done.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:12Jocko Willink?

  You just told yourself a bunch of lies.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  Well, there, I would say, because there's not, that's not nothing though. This, at my house, it's called the jujitsu window.

• 1:43:21Jocko Willink?

  So, okay.

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  Like, there, cause there is, it's not like the gym.

• 1:43:23Jocko Willink?

  Well, the like, then I should have said this then, the lie came earlier. The lie came earlier, which was like, I should really get this done right now.

• 1:43:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:31Jocko Willink?

  But no, you could get that done when you get home later. But you just, you just extended that window, cause you wanted to shut the jujitsu window on yourself.

• 1:43:37Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 1:43:38Jocko Willink?

  That's what happens.

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  And that window is like, that's a weird psychological area to be in, cause it's, okay, I call it at home, I call it the jujitsu window. That's why, it's kinda like, when, when my wife will be like, hey, can you, can you just go later? I was like, no, you can't go later. There's a window and it's super, super narrow, just like I said, when it's six oh four, and you're supposed to be there at six, is that, cause here's the factors, one, everyone will be either finishing up or late in the rounds.

• 1:44:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:02Speaker 01

  You, you'll get one roll, so kinda the late, the later you show up, the less training you're gonna get. So, and the less training you get, the less worth it it is to, to get dressed and get all your stuff together and go. I'm not saying it's gonna be not worth it, but it becomes less and less worth it, right? So, there's that, and then there's like the social things, like, oh, you're the guy that shows up on the last round when it all started? What are you doing, dude? You know, there's kinda like a stigma with that kinda guy.

• 1:44:26Jocko Willink?

  When some, when somebody says that to me, I'm like, I li, I just got done working, I came here as quickly as I could.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:32Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you what, I'll do thirty-five burpees right now in front of you, and then we can train you.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's, of course, that's not, cause, because that's not always the case, I mean, with you, I can't even really.

• 1:44:43Jocko Willink?

  I've never actually done that before.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that, and just your answer there, kinda indicated like, that's never happened to you, has it, like, kinda thing?

• 1:44:51Jocko Willink?

  No, there's, there's one, you know, Big Eric?

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Big Eric will be like, oh, you're showing up, I'm like, bro.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  He always says that.

• 1:44:58Jocko Willink?

  And he also did like, one round.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  Come on, Eric, what are you doing, bro?

• 1:45:04Jocko Willink?

  Come on, dude.

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 1:45:05Jocko Willink?

  We don't care, I, and another thing he'll say is, if he's done anything else that day, he'll tell you about it, like, like, uh, hey, I went and ran stairs this morning, I'm like, that's cool, I squatted, did sprints, went surfing, and now I'm here to train, what?

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  That's how, that's how, yeah, yeah, but nonetheless, jujitsu window, it's real, you know, cause you'll, you'll, cause you'll miss the opportunity.

• 1:45:31Jocko Willink?

  And I don't mean this, you know, in a hostile way, how come sometimes when the jujitsu class starts, let's say at, let's say we're gonna train at eleven, how come sometimes you show up at, like, eleven forty-eight? Sometimes it seems like your window is way just off alignment sometimes. Seriously, let's call it a Sunday, right? We all know what time we start training, right? And then sometimes you come rolling in, I mean, you want to talk about, you, you're like, hey, you know, you're 15 minutes late, these guys can be done. I'm, I'm an hour and a half into rounds.

• 1:46:05Speaker 01

  Walking.

• 1:46:05Jocko Willink?

  And you're rolling in like bowing up to me.

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  Well, I'm gonna bow regardless.

• 1:46:10Jocko Willink?

  And of course, I'm not gonna be saying, hey, you know, you're showing up late and I'm gonna die. Or no, I'm gonna say, okay, well, you showing up, we'll do what we gotta do.

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, you know what it is. Okay.

• 1:46:18Jocko Willink?

  No, I have no idea. I have no idea how someone could be knowing that all of his training partners that want to train with him are there at 10 o'clock or at 11 o'clock. And that individual decides, hey, I'll just show up at 11:48 and call it good.

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  This is what happened. On Sunday, the normal routine has always been I come at noon for Greg trains, no G training.

• 1:46:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:46:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:46:43Jocko Willink?

  And every time for two, three, four years, you've shown up at that time, see me in a ball of sweat. 12 rounds deep.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, if you, if you remember correctly, there, there are times that I'll come, it'll be me, you and Andy just going around Robin. There will be those times, but here's the thing.

• 1:47:02Jocko Willink?

  The amount of times that Andy and I have done that, it's a very large number.

• 1:47:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, but here, this is why though. So it has to do with like my whole overall life scheduling. See what I'm saying? So noon is the best time and I get to train with Greg and all this stuff. And then you'll text me like the day before saying, hey, we're going to freaking 10.

• 1:47:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's because you got the hardcore crazy schedule. I need to call your assistant to get it put in your calendar.

• 1:47:31Jocko Willink?

  The day before.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:47:33Jocko Willink?

  I'll text Andy and like, and be like, hey, I'm heading to the gym in 15 minutes. He's like, I'm on my way.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  Look, hey, look.

• 1:47:38Jocko Willink?

  What, Tuesday night, Thursday, Sunday morning?

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  Whatever, bro. What if, okay, what if you and Andy had plans to train at 10? And I text you, hey, let's train at 1:30.

• 1:47:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'd say no, be here at ten.

• 1:47:51Speaker 01

  Why not one thirty?

• 1:47:52Jocko Willink?

  Cause, because we're not training then, we're training at, at ten.

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I still don't understand, why not one thirty, hey, you can train.

• 1:47:58Jocko Willink?

  Cause that's what time we train.

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  Well, what about one thirty, what's the difference?

• 1:48:00Jocko Willink?

  One thirty's in the afternoon, we got other things to do.

• 1:48:02Speaker 01

  Oh, there you go, we have other things to do. So I had like obligations as far as scheduling goes.

• 1:48:07Jocko Willink?

  This is a normal, this is not like a, a random thing that happens, this is the steady state for years.

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:14Jocko Willink?

  Eleven forty-eight.

• 1:48:17Jocko Willink?

  You're probably counting yourself as being early for that.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do, I do, I do, eleven forty-eight is early for the noon.

• 1:48:22Jocko Willink?

  When you come in and you see sweat.

• 1:48:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:24Jocko Willink?

  Are you a little bit bummed out?

• 1:48:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:48:26Jocko Willink?

  Why would you not adjust your schedule? Why wouldn't you calendar yourself?

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  Well, because I, I don't know, it's weird, it's like I'm on this, it's on, I'm on this like psychological path like.

• 1:48:34Jocko Willink?

  You're lying to yourself.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:48:37Jocko Willink?

  You're lying to yourself, Hackworth says no.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  Alright, look.

• 1:48:41Jocko Willink?

  You're lying to yourself.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go ahead and assume that I am lying to myself.

• 1:48:44Jocko Willink?

  I am too.

• 1:48:45Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna find it and, and, and admit it to myself. But this is what it feels like.

• 1:48:51Jocko Willink?

  Here comes the lie.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  No, no, no, here, cause this is what it feels like, this is what it feels like, it could be a lie.

• 1:48:54Jocko Willink?

  This could be funny.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  Like all week I do whatever, whatever, whatever, right? And I train at a certain time, blah, blah, blah. So on Sunday, my normal, like habitual kind of routine on Sunday is a noon training. So everything before noon that I do and have to do or whatever, that's just sort of in place, it doesn't take much mental work. But then, if you're like texting me the night before saying, hey, ten, I'm like, oh man. Kinda in my mind, I'm already kinda committed to the noon, to myself though, you know, habitually. See what I'm saying?

• 1:49:32Jocko Willink?

  This isn't just a lie, this is like a whole conspiracy you've run against yourself.

• 1:49:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's ridiculous.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  No, it's not ridiculous. It's not ridiculous because I do have other things to do.

• 1:49:48Jocko Willink?

  You need to check in with Eddie Bravo on your conspiracy theory.

• 1:49:50Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, continue. Or, or, or consider this, like, okay, so let's say I have X, Y, or I have one, two, three, four things I gotta do before noon. And then when I get back, I have like three other things. I don't know. That's the thing, but they, they are time, they are time sensitive in the sense that I do have to do them. So if I plan to do them before training, now I gotta shift all that other stuff for like, you know, and there's other people involved, all this stuff. Anyway, so it's usually the case. But look, if.

• 1:50:16Jocko Willink?

  Bro, no one's gonna follow you down the path of this kind of behavior, man.

• 1:50:19Speaker 01

  You're right. That's the thing. And now that, you know what's real funny, man? And here, this is the truth. This is, this is bad. This is, this is good, actually. At the end of it, it's good. So I'll have a lot of, see this situation that I'm telling you and you're like laughing at me and telling me how I'm lying to myself? That this situation goes on in a lot of ways with me.

• 1:50:38Jocko Willink?

  With everyone, but yeah, but you're gonna confess, right?

• 1:50:41Speaker 01

  I'm confessing this. So when I tell you like out loud stuff and some of the stuff is like, I just start telling you and just the look on your face. I'm like, bro, I know the answer already. I know already. And this is one of those things where before I got into it, I was like for real committed to it. Like this is like true. That's how it is. And this is the reason. And sometimes I'll come train with you guys, you know, when I do all this work to shift it around. But if I were to just shift it around and be like, that's the new schedule, like I could do it.

• 1:51:08Jocko Willink?

  It's a miracle.

• 1:51:13Speaker 01

  All right, bro, see?

• 1:51:14Jocko Willink?

  You know what I just, I just realized is very good, a, a very, a very solid quality. And I've talked about, I always talk about how people like everyone's allergic to criticism. Like everyone hates getting criticized. Like you tell, you tell me to do something different. I'm like, what are you talking about?

• 1:51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:29Jocko Willink?

  You're actually very open to criticism. And I think part of it is because, well, maybe it's because when I criticize you, I'm not telling you like, hey, do what I do. I'm just saying like, hey, you tell me what your reason is and we'll figure out if you're, and you can figure out if you're lying to yourself or not. Over on my side of the table over here, we think, we suspect, we're suspect of, of the, of the statement.

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:51:53Jocko Willink?

  Very suspect.

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  All right, well, there it is.

• 1:51:56Jocko Willink?

  Anyways, what the, the thing is. Maybe we can adjust that. Maybe we can, we can snuff out that lie. We can find out what the truth is. The truth is, you should be training with your training, your normal training partners.

• 1:52:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:07Jocko Willink?

  On the Sunday. Whenever that, whenever that, that, that agreed upon time is out there. Ten o'clock's nice. Eleven o'clock's nice. Ten o'clock's nice.

• 1:52:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:19Jocko Willink?

  You, you know what's nice? A whole gym.

• 1:52:23Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 1:52:23Jocko Willink?

  The whole gym is just empty.

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And you're just curtin' after it.

• 1:52:27Jocko Willink?

  Just getting after it.

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that is. Remember, remember when we, when you first opened this gym up? And you were like, hey, we got new, before the mats were all even in, and you were like, there's new mats downstairs. Remember that?

• 1:52:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:38Speaker 01

  And then there was still some slippery.

• 1:52:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, we wanted to, I wanted to test them out.

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  Test the new mats, yeah. And we were rolling, we were, we were rolling for, like, pretty long as far as two guys rolling them. And then you're like, isn't it just so awesome when you have your own gym? Dang, bro. But it's true. I was like, dang, man, that must be. Cause it's like you just had the whole deal, you know?

• 1:53:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It is very nice. That is a nice thing to have. Speaking of.

• 1:53:04Speaker 01

  The jujitsu. Okay, look, everyone, we're gonna do jujitsu. That's what we're doing. If you're on the path or looking or interested, if, if the path is right for you, kind of situation.

• 1:53:13Jocko Willink?

  If someone's gi curious?

• 1:53:14Speaker 01

  And it is, yeah. Yes. And you're doing jujitsu, you're gonna need a gi. Cause you can't just, just do no gi, as tempting as that might be.

• 1:53:22Jocko Willink?

  It is tempting.

• 1:53:23Speaker 01

  Do some gi.

• 1:53:24Jocko Willink?

  It's tempting until you say, well, do you wanna be so good in one thing and just be lost with something that's so close?

• 1:53:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:32Jocko Willink?

  And they both complement each other.

• 1:53:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:53:34Jocko Willink?

  They really do.

• 1:53:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:36Jocko Willink?

  I did a bunch of rounds of gi. In, at peak MMA. Yeah. It was good. Did some good rounds. Good jujitsu players out there.

• 1:53:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:47Jocko Willink?

  Had some good times. But it was all gi.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:53:50Jocko Willink?

  It was all gi. I, I was like, I told JP, I'm like, hey, I'm not bringing a gi. And. He's like, hey, just bring your belt and and I'll get you gi if you need it just for the class. Then you can roll gi, no gi afterwards. I'm like, okay, cool. Then I put the gi on, I had a gi, one of his gi's, pants were too tight, couldn't move my legs.

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  Was it super ugly?

• 1:54:15Jocko Willink?

  No, it was a, it was a Origin gi.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  Oh, well, there you go.

• 1:54:18Jocko Willink?

  It was one of the warrior gees, the lightweight ones.

• 1:54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:21Jocko Willink?

  Anyways, long story short, got a bunch of good rounds and always fun to roll.

• 1:54:25Speaker 01

  So yeah, you're gonna need a gi if you're on the path and you start jujitsu or you've already started jujitsu, you're gonna need a gi. What kind of gi do you need? That's the question. That's always a question. You get an Origin gi.

• 1:54:34Jocko Willink?

  It's not a question.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  Not anymore?

• 1:54:36Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:54:37Speaker 01

  There it is. Boom. Question answered. Origin gi. Go to originmaine.com. That's where you get your gi. All made in America, all made in America, from beginning to end. There's some rash guards do for no gi, so boom, get them both and get your jujitsu established.

• 1:54:56Jocko Willink?

  Did you say rash guards?

• 1:54:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:54:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you got rash guards and other, what do you call this? Normal clothes?

• 1:55:01Speaker 01

  Normal clothes, that's what I call them.

• 1:55:03Jocko Willink?

  And did I say apparel one day? You like, that's, oh, that's, that's not, not, not the thing to say?

• 1:55:08Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I said apparel to clear it with you. You said, cool. No fashion, no.

• 1:55:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  Even though Pete, he's, he has one pinky in the fashion.

• 1:55:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, he's got more than a pinky. He's got more than a pinky. He's got a whole art thing going on.

• 1:55:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, respect.

• 1:55:24Jocko Willink?

  You know his father-in-law, Joe? What were we doing? Oh, yeah, we were taking a picture at the immersion camp.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:29Jocko Willink?

  And he started like, Pete started getting all, hey, you come over here a little bit. Hey, we need to, and was really taking some artistic control of the situation. I said to Joe, I said, here comes the big artist guy coming out.

• 1:55:42Jocko Willink?

  Joe laughing.

• 1:55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 1:55:43Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, so he's got more than just a pinky in there.

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:46Jocko Willink?

  Both pinkies at a minimum.

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  Well, good, because not everybody's like you and some people, they like that fashion element to what they wear.

• 1:55:53Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna talk to Pete about this, so Pete, he's listening right now. It was actually a very accurate statement when I said, when we had this conversation before, my ultimate.

• 1:56:05Jocko Willink?

  Goal of fashion is to make no impression.

• 1:56:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:11Jocko Willink?

  And I guess that's completely the wrong thing to do.

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, it is.

• 1:56:14Jocko Willink?

  But that's my thing. If you, I want my clothing to look in such a way that when you look at me, you just see, you know what you see?

• 1:56:24Speaker 01

  What? What, really?

• 1:56:26Jocko Willink?

  Normal.

• 1:56:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:56:27Jocko Willink?

  Just a normal, like, just normal clothes. Like, you wouldn't be able to say, I bet that guy. Now, the exception that I have to has I got the Victory MMA t-shirt.

• 1:56:35Speaker 01

  That's your thing.

• 1:56:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the reason I have that is because I have a bunch of them and I just wear the same thing every day.

• 1:56:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:42Jocko Willink?

  So I have that little thing, but if you see me traveling where I'm not wearing a t-shirt, I'm gonna wear something where you, you just think, oh, this is just a normal person.

• 1:56:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:51Jocko Willink?

  A nor- this person has no, nothing, right? No thing.

• 1:56:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, so, if you, uh, we, I don't wanna call this a mistake, but here's the thing that makes that, it almost like an antiquated kinda scenario.

• 1:57:07Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:57:07Speaker 01

  Cause you're like, I'm, my goal is, you said, my goal is to be normal, whatever. If that's your goal, you're, is not to make a statement, right? You know, you're, that's your fashion right there. That's your statement, so by, just by way of your whole discourse, you're doing what you're trying not to do. It's kinda like, um...

• 1:57:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, I guess, I guess, I guess I should have phrased it differently. What I normally would wear is just stuff that looks normal and leaves... Although, I guess, yeah, no, I guess there is, there is, I guess, in this day and age, you have to make some kind of an effort. So I guess, in, in a, in a horrible way, I'm making some kind of a fashion effort.

• 1:57:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, you know, neither who you are, though. This is what it feels like, anyway. I did, however you wanna explain this, what it feels, remember Bruce Lee when he was like, on the boat? He was going to, I don't know which one it was, End of the Dragon, maybe? I don't know. He's on the boat, right? Going over to wherever.

• 1:58:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:04Speaker 01

  And the guy's like, what's your style? And he's like, my style is fighting without fighting. That's your style right there. It's fashion without fashion. But I was looking at old pictures of us.

• 1:58:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  Like, all, like, I don't know, like, oh, nine.

• 1:58:20Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  Ten or something.

• 1:58:21Jocko Willink?

  Dang, that's almost ten years ago.

• 1:58:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And work is, like, me, you, Jade, I think Tim was there. And then, you know, it's like, whatever, you being you. Same you, by the way, same exact, like, draw a cool, normal face. And guess what you're wearing? Victory t-shirt.

• 1:58:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's your whole uniform, righty?

• 1:58:37Jocko Willink?

  Got a lot of them and it's, you know, pretty straightforward.

• 1:58:40Speaker 01

  I dig it.

• 1:58:41Jocko Willink?

  Anyways.

• 1:58:41Speaker 01

  Fashion without fashion, that's jock.

• 1:58:43Jocko Willink?

  Luckily Pete's got your back.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:58:45Jocko Willink?

  And you know what's cool? This is cool. Cause Pete also has a sense of that. Who else is making a black on black sweatshirt, right? There's no, you can't see the origin. I mean, you can see it, but you gotta, you know.

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:57Jocko Willink?

  You're not, you're not drawing attention to yourself.

• 1:58:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:00Jocko Willink?

  I guess that's the thing, right?

• 1:59:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:59:02Jocko Willink?

  Trying to draw attention to yourself.

• 1:59:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:04Jocko Willink?

  Just be a little bit more laid back with that stuff.

• 1:59:06Speaker 01

  I feel it, yeah. They got some cool stuff.

• 1:59:08Jocko Willink?

  My guys used to make fun of me at SEAL Team Two. Cause I, I had, that was when I was competing all the time, jiu-jitsu tournaments. So I had like, and they used to just like, the main thing you'd get from a jiu-jitsu tournament is a little cheesy medal and a t-shirt.

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  And t-shirt, yeah.

• 1:59:19Jocko Willink?

  So I had all these, I had a different t-shirt, I had a different jiu-jitsu t-shirt. So there, guess what I was doing?

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:59:25Jocko Willink?

  Just wearing what I was given, but guess what? It kinda stood out.

• 1:59:28Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:29Jocko Willink?

  Even though these are all just free t-shirts.

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:32Jocko Willink?

  Although I paid for the Hicks and Gracie one. I had a Hicks and Gracie t-shirt, I paid some money for that one.

• 1:59:37Speaker 01

  Hey man, that's cool.

• 1:59:37Jocko Willink?

  Twelve dollars. The old Pico Street Academy. Some old school people remember that right now.

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Remember Best in the West? Best of the West, it was a jiu-jitsu tournament.

• 1:59:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I remember that, but that was a little later. I'm talking old school grappling games, I'm talking Joe Marrera.

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, old school. Yeah, that's before my thing.

• 1:59:57Jocko Willink?

  Gracie, the Gracie, what was that, Gracie Invitational?

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  Hmm, Gracie Nationals.

• 2:00:02Jocko Willink?

  Gracie, I think it's, now it's called the Gracie now. Neutral Grounds, ooh, this is going old school.

• 2:00:09Jocko Willink?

  Old school.

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 2:00:10Jocko Willink?

  The Machados, oh yeah, okay, sorry.

• 2:00:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, hey man, I could go down memory lane with you, um, you know.

• 2:00:14Jocko Willink?

  Let's not do it.

• 2:00:16Speaker 01

  But anyway, yeah, jiu-jitsu gees get, get origin, get all origin stuff for jiu-jitsu. That's the, that's the spot to go, even like the, the joggers and the sweats, sweat, uh, stuff.

• 2:00:26Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  Most comfortable in the world, boom. Also supplements.

• 2:00:30Jocko Willink?

  You can get some supplements. Joint Warfare, getting some rave, Leif Babin. He said he went off Joint Warfare. I think he said four or five days, whatever he's on a trip.

• 2:00:41Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:00:42Jocko Willink?

  And he said his knee started hurting again, came back, went back on the joint warfare. Guess what? Knee healed up. Healed. I mean, I don't know, healed, but it's no, no longer sore.

• 2:00:52Speaker 01

  Better. Yeah. Yeah, man. That's all. You know what? You know what's so funny is like me, I'm all like surprised. When my experience, just like, you know, obviously late surprised enough to tell you about it, you know? And just like me, where it's like, dang, bro.

• 2:01:05Jocko Willink?

  I told him, I told him, we put illegal stuff in joint warfare. Like I told him, I was like, hey, man, don't tell anyone. But we put some little, we put some little, uh, steroidal.

• 2:01:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:13Jocko Willink?

  Things in there. And, and he was all looking at me. He didn't, he did probably believe me for point three seconds because he didn't really believe me that much. But then I was like, no, I'm just kidding, man. But.

• 2:01:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:22Jocko Willink?

  Anyways.

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

  Sketch. But nonetheless, isn't that supposed, isn't that odd though, that we're all surprised, surprised by it's supposed to do that? You know, like it's supposed to do these things.

• 2:01:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but I think the level that it does it to is a little more the what people expect.

• 2:01:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. There you go.

• 2:01:39Jocko Willink?

  Get on the krill oil too.

• 2:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  Now, discipline.

• 2:01:45Jocko Willink?

  Um, we've got some debates going on, on whether Dave, you know, Dave Burke?

• 2:01:51Speaker 01

  Good deal, Dave.

• 2:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Whether he should be the actual representative. Clearly he's the representative of discipline.

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:01:59Jocko Willink?

  But for Molk and the full Molk train, he's looking a little lean.

• 2:02:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's lean.

• 2:02:05Jocko Willink?

  So he is the lean representative Molk.

• 2:02:08Speaker 01

  He's the before picture.

• 2:02:10Jocko Willink?

  That's cold blooded.

• 2:02:11Speaker 01

  Well, I, you know, maybe.

• 2:02:14Jocko Willink?

  No, if there's people that are like, wait, I don't want to get all big. Hey, Dave Burke, he's on the Molk train, fully on the Molk train.

• 2:02:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:22Jocko Willink?

  And he's not huge.

• 2:02:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, well, let's break it down. So to me personally, I don't think Dave Burke should be the poster child for Molk. Shouldn't be.

• 2:02:33Jocko Willink?

  Wait, is he treading on your territory?

• 2:02:37Jocko Willink?

  I didn't know this is a sensitive issue.

• 2:02:39Speaker 01

  That's classified. Anyway.

• 2:02:41Jocko Willink?

  I should have, I should have, I should have read into this more. Sorry, man.

• 2:02:43Speaker 01

  So the idea is.

• 2:02:45Jocko Willink?

  You're the representative of the malt trade.

• 2:02:46Speaker 01

  Technically, he could be. Technically, he could be. So what? Protein, right? Protein, additional protein. Because, look, you work out, you lift, you work out, you do, you know, all this extra hard exercise. Boom, protein is part of the recovery process. A big part of the recovery. I'm calling building blocks for lack of a better term, whatever. And boom, the malt comes in, boom, right? But the malt tastes good, right? So here, and here's the side note, this is why it's important for it to taste good. This may or may not go against your whole thing. Actually, it will. No, it won't, it won't, it won't. Seems like it would, but it tastes good. So let's say I'm like, eh, I'm on the fence about working out. I know, you can't relate to that part, but let's say you are. But then you're like, wait, but when I work out, I can take the malt.

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  So it like fits in, you know, it one, there's one with the other. That's the best scenario.

• 2:03:36Jocko Willink?

  Guys that just thought just the supplements alone would get them.

• 2:03:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. Yes. And that's part of the point.

• 2:03:41Jocko Willink?

  Cause you don't, just so everyone knows, you don't have to work out to have malt. You can have malt without working. But it will taste better if you worked out.

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  Well, if you take malt or any like additional protein for the reason you take protein, I'm saying. And you don't work out, there's no reason to take it.

• 2:03:57Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? Like any excess calories.

• 2:03:59Jocko Willink?

  Except for the fact that malt tastes good. So you could actually just take malt, just like there's no reason to eat ice cream, mint chocolate ice cream, except for it tastes real good.

• 2:04:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's, that's a slippery slope though. That's not the path. So officially, by the way, we established this, this was, I think I was talking to Leif. The opposite of the path is a slippery slope. Okay. You can step off the path for 10 minutes, for one day, for one week. But keep in mind, the more you're, the more time you spend off the path, you're gonna say it's a slippery slope. So boom. Nonetheless, if your whole mindset is to drink malt just because it tastes good, no exercise, no this, no. Bruh, you, you, you, that's the wrong path. You're going in the wrong direction. Full speed, by the way, but wrong direction.

• 2:04:42Jocko Willink?

  A foot on the slippery slope at that point.

• 2:04:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're kind of, you're facing the wrong way. Yeah, that tastes good. Boom, same reason.

• 2:04:49Jocko Willink?

  But you're not, you're, I'm saying you're pizza, you're two feet off.

• 2:04:53Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 2:04:54Jocko Willink?

  Mulk, one foot's on the path. Mulk and working out, you're on the path. Okay, real quick, because we're getting crazy here. Uh, we got mint chocolate chip, we got peanut butter, chocolate, Dave Burke's favorite. Mint chocolate is my favorite. What's your favorite?

• 2:05:06Speaker 01

  Mint chocolate, yeah.

• 2:05:08Jocko Willink?

  But you mix them because you're psycho.

• 2:05:09Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:05:10Jocko Willink?

  And then now, new, two new flavors are out. Vanilla Gorilla, and we got a chocolate which is called The Darkness.

• 2:05:22Jocko Willink?

  When I told Pete Vanilla Gorilla, I was like, hey, uh, no, we need to make it Vanilla Gorilla. And then he wrote, he like paused, we were texting, and he's like, wait, seriously? And I was like, yes. And he made a little crazy looking Vanilla Gorilla, a little white gorilla.

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:05:37Jocko Willink?

  So anyways, Vanilla Gorilla is the name, and the chocolate, of course, is called Darkness. And if you don't know, there are layers to both those comments. If you know about The Darkness, then you know that one. And if you know, if you know Leif, well then you can figure out the Vanilla Gorilla one.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  Anyway, yes, these are all impeccable things, Kenneth. Yeah, impeccable, that might not be the correct word, but they are impeccable things to stand, keep you on the path. Hundred percent.

• 2:06:07Jocko Willink?

  Indeed.

• 2:06:07Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 2:06:08Jocko Willink?

  Indeed.

• 2:06:08Speaker 01

  Also, Jaco's store is called Jaco Store. This is where you can get shirts and hoodies and hats, more rash guards, different feel, different, not physical feel, but different, different.

• 2:06:21Jocko Willink?

  There was, this was pretty cool. At the roll call, when we did jujitsu, there was people in the, I've never done jujitsu before area, they had rash guards.

• 2:06:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:33Jocko Willink?

  They had Jaco Store rash guards. They had Defqor rash guards.

• 2:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:39Jocko Willink?

  And they had Origin rash guards.

• 2:06:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:42Jocko Willink?

  A lot of stu- a lot, that's a lot of, when you just look at that one room, it was filled with a lot of stuff that's made in America.

• 2:06:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:48Jocko Willink?

  Which is a big deal.

• 2:06:49Speaker 01

  It was, and that says a lot for someone who's never done jujitsu, yet they have the rash guard. So that's a kinda like, in a way, I don't wanna say commitment necessarily, cuz

• 2:06:55Jocko Willink?

  It's a little bit of-

• 2:06:56Speaker 01

  quasi-commitment, right?

• 2:06:58Jocko Willink?

  I bet you there was people there that said, "I'm gonna try the jujitsu, and I'm gonna continue down the path."

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:04Jocko Willink?

  Cuz people know you gotta get on the jujitsu path.

• 2:07:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:07Jocko Willink?

  That's just part of the deal.

• 2:07:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we all-

• 2:07:10Jocko Willink?

  I had a guy question me.

• 2:07:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:13Jocko Willink?

  At the roll call. After we got done teaching, he's like, "So is jujitsu the best, you know, thing to start with?"

• 2:07:21Speaker 01

  As opposed to anything else?

• 2:07:25Jocko Willink?

  I was like, "Yeah, man, did you hear everything I just said? Come on, man."

• 2:07:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:31Jocko Willink?

  Do it.

• 2:07:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:32Jocko Willink?

  I said, "What about?" And he said, "What about, what about, like, striking, though?" And I said, "Well, you know, start with boxing, get, get, get to Muay Thai. When you get good at boxing, you can start opening up a little bit." He's like, "Oh, should I start with that?" And I was like, "No, cuz if I grab you, that's not gonna work anymore."

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:07:46Jocko Willink?

  And if some bad guy grabs you, that's not gonna work anymore. So anyways, and I said, "Yeah, cool."

• 2:07:52Speaker 01

  I always try to put myself in, in, like, outside of my own brain, cuz you know when, like, if someone asks me-

• 2:07:58Jocko Willink?

  Detach.

• 2:07:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. If they're like, "Hey, is jujitsu the best martial arm?" Like, not even, the other options don't even enter, you know, it's just like, "Yes, yes, yes," like constant yes thing, but I'm like, "Wait, you know, let me, let me consider this," you know? And would like, try to let go of some of my bias. Anyway, back to Jaco's store. We got some good stuff on there. If you wanna represent the path, discipline equals freedom, straight up, cuz it does.

• 2:08:22Jocko Willink?

  It's the uniform for the path.

• 2:08:24Speaker 01

  It is? Yes, yeah, that's a good way of putting it, I would say.

• 2:08:28Jocko Willink?

  There's the new Discipline Equals Freedom shirt.

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:08:31Jocko Willink?

  Is it different? No. Is it standing out? No. These things are all kinda, you know,

• 2:08:36Speaker 01

  It's just how-

• 2:08:36Jocko Willink?

  These aren't, these aren't fashion items.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:08:39Jocko Willink?

  But they do make a statement.

• 2:08:40Speaker 01

  They do.

• 2:08:42Jocko Willink?

  There's a dichotomy to everything, my friend.

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, there is. Anyway, yeah, if you want to represent, you want to represent in the wild. But there were, there were guys with the shirt that you designed with my head on it.

• 2:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:08:53Speaker 01

  But I don't think I've ever felt more honored in my life.

• 2:08:56Jocko Willink?

  That was pretty good.

• 2:08:57Speaker 01

  It was pretty solid.

• 2:08:58Jocko Willink?

  Multiple people wearing the dang shirt.

• 2:09:01Speaker 01

  That you designed.

• 2:09:02Jocko Willink?

  That I designed.

• 2:09:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:04Jocko Willink?

  Or I guess you called the nag shirt?

• 2:09:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, now you're going deep into the layers. Anyway, if you want to represent, jocko store dot com. Also, if you want to support the message, the word, what do you guys call it? Spreading the word or passing the word?

• 2:09:19Jocko Willink?

  Spread the word, pass the word.

• 2:09:20Speaker 01

  Pass the word, yeah. You want to pass the word, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and Stitcher and wherever. I mean, it seems obvious, but you know, if you haven't subscribed, subscribe.

• 2:09:29Jocko Willink?

  And don't forget about that, don't forget about that Warrior Kid podcast.

• 2:09:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:09:33Jocko Willink?

  Which is, you're, you're going to learn lessons from it for sure. Your kids are going to dig it and it's going to get your kids, are we just going to talk about the path? It's going to get your kids on the path.

• 2:09:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:09:44Jocko Willink?

  As well, which is awesome. Also got the Warrior Kid Soap from iris oaks ranch dot com. That's Aiden. He's a warrior kid. He's got his own business. He's making soap and that's awesome. From goat milk of goats that he raised himself and then he, he, the whole process, he sent me all these pictures of it. What he actually does.

• 2:10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:05Jocko Willink?

  He's got a manufacturing thing going on.

• 2:10:08Speaker 01

  In America.

• 2:10:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in America, yes, by the way. Goats, the, the goats are American goats.

• 2:10:13Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:10:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, also YouTube, we got the YouTube channel and that is where, that is where Echo's legit videos are. And he's putting them up on a pretty regular basis and he's got a plan in place to increase that even more.

• 2:10:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:10:34Jocko Willink?

  And as long as that fits his schedule.

• 2:10:39Jocko Willink?

  And then we got Psychological Warfare. That's an album with tracks of me talking and telling you why you should do something instead of not do something, or why you should not do something instead of do something.

• 2:10:49Speaker 01

  How to stay on the path when the slippery slope calls.

• 2:10:51Jocko Willink?

  There you go. So, get on that.

• 2:10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:55Jocko Willink?

  That's available through all the places you get MP3s.

• 2:10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, what about Psychological Warfare 2?

• 2:11:00Jocko Willink?

  It's coming, we're working it.

• 2:11:01Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 2:11:02Jocko Willink?

  We're working on it.

• 2:11:03Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. Also, OnIt.com slash Jaco, by the way. This is where you can get your other fitness gear. So remember back in the day, we had the, uh, there's actually, back when, when you were, uh, explaining the essentials of home gym.

• 2:11:19Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:11:20Speaker 01

  Right?

• 2:11:20Jocko Willink?

  Number one.

• 2:11:21Speaker 01

  So look, when you're growing, yeah, number one is rings, which I got from OnIt, by the way, which actually my kids enjoy those too.

• 2:11:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're fun for kids.

• 2:11:28Speaker 01

  Nice, nice quality, quality. Nonetheless, when you're expanding your home gym, in the event of you having a home gym, or even if you don't have a home gym, this is where you can get the stuff to sort of begin that. Really good stuff on there. Uh, kettlebells is my, I would say that's my number one, number one thing to have. That would be my recommendation.

• 2:11:46Jocko Willink?

  Above rings?

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  You say rings.

• 2:11:48Jocko Willink?

  You can't do pull-ups on kettlebells, bro.

• 2:11:50Speaker 01

  I know, bro, I know.

• 2:11:51Jocko Willink?

  Wait, do you like pull-ups?

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  I like pull-up, well, I can't really do them now.

• 2:11:55Jocko Willink?

  No, no, but in your game, when you're, when you're, when you're 100%.

• 2:11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, yes, but not like you like pull-ups. Like, it's, you know how you have your, the ones you like? Like, when I started kettlebells, I really liked them. I thought it was super fun, because there's a lot, anyway, they're fun. And I get them from OnIt, and there's a lot of cool, other cool stuff on there, so yeah, go OnIt.com slash Jaco.

• 2:12:16Jocko Willink?

  Also Jaco White Tea. You can get the tea bags, or you can get the can, and when you get the tea bags, or you get the can, either one, it doesn't matter, because what you get with that, you get an 8,000-pound deadlift, 100% guaranteed, although I did have one guy complain at Roll Call. His deadlift's only 7,400, so... Yeah, he's probably, I told him to, you know, to get after it harder. And then got some books also, uh, the tea is available on Amazon.

• 2:12:43Speaker 01

  And the store, and Jaco's store.

• 2:12:44Jocko Willink?

  And Jaco's store, there you go.

• 2:12:46Speaker 01

  I figure ultimately you, we.

• 2:12:49Jocko Willink?

  Will unify.

• 2:12:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I guess the kind of the goal, the short term goal is kind of make it just available. You know, like if you're gonna grab a shirt, rashgar, whatever, and you're like, hey, let me grab T2.

• 2:12:59Jocko Willink?

  Good point. I saw, I saw an Amazon store when we were in Dallas, or not, not an Amazon store. An Amazon, like, obvious shipping facility. This thing was hu- hu- hu- huge. And it was surrounded by trucks that were backed up to it, you know, loading docks. Just, it was crazy. It was totally nuts. And I was like, in there somewhere. There's a little bin of Jaco White Tea getting ready to roll out and increase somebody's deadlift. That made me happy.

• 2:13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:30Jocko Willink?

  They also had books in there. They also had books in there.

• 2:13:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:13:33Jocko Willink?

  Jaco books.

• 2:13:34Speaker 01

  Jaco books, yes.

• 2:13:35Jocko Willink?

  They had Way of the Warrior Kid. You think they had that one? Yes, they did. They absolutely do. They had the field manual. So, The Way of the Warrior Kid and Mark's Mission. I signed so many of those books at roll call. And of like, personal messages to the kids and everything, the kids are getting on the path. This is factual. It's awesome. So, get the books for your kids and get them a pull-up bar and get them a jujitsu class. Cause that's what they're gonna wanna do. And those two things are gonna help them through their entire life.

• 2:14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:12Jocko Willink?

  Through their entire life.

• 2:14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's actually a good heads up, cause like, if you're like, hey, you already got the pull-up bar and like the jujitsu classes scouted out, you know, and then, so you're just ready. You're ready for the request, you know?

• 2:14:23Jocko Willink?

  Cause your kids are gonna be, they're gonna, they're gonna wanna get on the path.

• 2:14:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think it was you I was telling this to, where I was reading the part where he has to fix up his bike. I don't wanna spoiler, spoil anything, but anyway, he needed money, okay? He needed money. So he's like, hey, to get money, you gotta, you gotta get a job. And, you know, it lays out the whole thing, all the layers. I was like, dang, this is pretty good. So, right after I was done with that chapter, my five-year-old daughter, by the way. Um, goes, she kinda sits back, almost disappointed looking. She goes, she goes, I wish I had a job. Oh dang, I don't think I ever felt like that.

• 2:15:01Jocko Willink?

  Can you imagine instilling a work ethic into a kid that's five years old about wanting to work and wanting to earn? Wanting to have a job and wanting to, that's just like legit.

• 2:15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:11Jocko Willink?

  So get those books, Way of the Warrior, Kid, and Mark's Mission. You can also get the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. I signed a ton of those.

• 2:15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:20Jocko Willink?

  Again, there's, there's some people that

• 2:15:25Jocko Willink?

  that book hit them hard.

• 2:15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:27Jocko Willink?

  Hard. And they made some significant changes in their lives. So everyone that came up to me and told me that, thank you. And I appreciate that feedback. And it's awesome to see that book hitting people the way that it hit me when I wrote it.

• 2:15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:44Jocko Willink?

  And it's awesome to see.

• 2:15:45Speaker 01

  In fact, that beginning part is what you're reading today. There is no hack.

• 2:15:51Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:15:52Speaker 01

  There's no sweatless, uh, pursuit.

• 2:15:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, sweatless pursuit, sweatless direction.

• 2:15:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:00Jocko Willink?

  Definitely. And then of course, there's Extreme Ownership, which was written by me and my brother Leif Babin.

• 2:16:09Jocko Willink?

  Combat Leadership for Use in Your Business and Life. Then we also have this week, just released. So this, this is live now at this time. Order it immediately. The Dichotomy of Leadership. A couple of reviews already up there because some people got some advanced copies. Awesome reviews. Everyone is stoked, including, including me and Leif. You know, we, we wrote it and, you know, we'd edit each other. And it'd be like, bro, nice chapter. He'd be like, bro, nice chapter.

• 2:16:39Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, you know, so, yeah. We, we, we critique each other and edit each other. So, uh, the book is, it just takes it to another granular level. That's what it does. Takes it down to another granular level.

• 2:16:55Jocko Willink?

  I think, and some people are saying that they're more, people are going to get more out of that dichotomy of leadership than they did out of Extreme Ownership. They definitely complement each other.

• 2:17:06Jocko Willink?

  But there's a lot to be learned. A lot of the mistakes that people make are going to be corrected through the dichotomy of leadership.

• 2:17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Cause you know, when people make a change in their whatever, you know, they make, it's like, what do you call, actually you're, the first time I heard this.

• 2:17:22Jocko Willink?

  Overcorrect.

• 2:17:23Speaker 01

  Overcorrect. Yes. Yes. People will overcorrect. Yeah.

• 2:17:25Jocko Willink?

  People overcorrect all the time and they, they throw off the balance of the dichotomy of leadership. And so when you read the dichotomy of leadership, you'll become aware of that. You'll see what the signs are and you'll be able to correct them. And this is gonna, this is gonna really help out leaders in, in the world. So dichotomy leadership available now. I haven't been able, think of that. This book's been in the work for a long time and now it's out. It's released. It's in the wild. So get some, get some for your people you work with. We appreciate that support. And then of course, we've got a leadership company, leadership consulting company, Echelon Front. We solve leader, we solve problems through leadership. That's what we do.

• 2:18:06Jocko Willink?

  It's me, it's Leif Babbin, JP Danelle, Dave Burke, Flynn Cochran, Mike Sorelli. We also got Mike Baham on. Did you, were you there for Mike Baham as part of Roll Call?

• 2:18:16Speaker 01

  Main Gun Mike?

• 2:18:17Jocko Willink?

  Main Gun Mike.

• 2:18:20Speaker 01

  I felt like I knew him already.

• 2:18:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So we got another member, Army, uh, retired lieutenant colonel who was with us in the battle of Ramadi, a company commander then. Tanker and badass.

• 2:18:34Jocko Willink?

  If you want, if you need help, leadership at your company, with your team, whatever it may be, go to echelonfront.com. We've also got the muster coming up. Roll call's done. Sorry you missed it. It was awesome. Come next time. In the meantime, muster 006, San Francisco, October 17th and 18th.

• 2:18:54Jocko Willink?

  We're danger close right now. If you, if you hear this podcast and you listen to it on, you know, in September, hopefully maybe, I don't know. Check the website, extremeownership.com. All of them sold out. We're danger close on this one, but check it out. We can sometimes squeeze in a few more seats. And of course we also have EF Overwatch, EFOverwatch.com. This is for businesses, for businesses that want.

• 2:19:20Jocko Willink?

  Leaders, tested, battle-tested, special operations leaders from the special operations community, or from the combat aviation community, you want those people, those leaders, at your business. Go to efoverwatch.com. We are, we have our friends, our colleagues, people we know, our connections inside the special operations and inside the combat aviation community. They're trained, they're ready, and they will come and help your business through solid leadership. Again, that's efoverwatch.com. And if you want to keep communicating

• 2:20:02Jocko Willink?

  with us, then you can do it through the interwebs, through Twitter, perhaps through Instagram, or on the Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to all of you that make this podcast possible. And that's not some big corporate sponsor, no. It's the military personnel around the world that keep our country free. It's all the first responders out there, police, law enforcement, correctional officers, firefighters, border patrol, paramedics, all of you that keep us safe on the home front. Thanks to all of you for what you do. And

• 2:20:46Jocko Willink?

  everyone else that's out there, thank you for listening. Thank you for spreading the word. Thank you for supporting what we do. But most of all, thanks for telling yourself the truth. Thanks for not looking for that sweatless solution, or that easy road, because the sweatless solution and the easy road don't exist. To get on the path, and to stay on the path that gets you to where you want to be, there is going to be sweat, and there's going to be hard work, and there's going to be discipline,

• 2:21:24Jocko Willink?

  and you are going to have to look at yourself and tell yourself the truth. And then, of course, you're gonna have to get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco, out.