295: When Things Change, Don't Get Caught Back On Your Heels. With General Don Bolduc.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:04:00 - General Don Bolduc 3:27:54 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:53:32 - 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.

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 295 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. On November 14th, 2001, the troops of General Fahin Khan rolled into Kabul and liberated the city from five years of despotic rule by the Taliban.

• 0:23Jocko Willink?

  To win over the Pashtuns in the south and begin operations against the Taliban, the coalition planned to insert two ODAs near the city of Kandahar.

• 0:33Jocko Willink?

  Major Donald Bolduc was a member of Special Operations Command and Control Element 52, which had tactical control of the two ODAs. Bolduc explained the mission, quote, "Basically from November 2001 until complete, we were able to provide C2 and conduct unconventional warfare in order to advise and assist Hamid Karzai and Ghul Sherzai in organizing anti-Taliban forces, which was what they were called at the time, and to conduct combat operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces," end quote.

• 1:14Jocko Willink?

  Bolduc further described the key tasks that the ODA had to accomplish with their Afghan partners, quote, "We were to secure Kandahar city, develop a plan to stabilize Kandahar city, and operate from a secure base, and then concentrically improve that security from Kandahar city, which was considered the cultural and religious center of gravity, out to other provinces in the south, and then on order, exfiltrate the operational area."

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  Coalition leaders also understood that they could not simply leave the area once Kandahar was out of the Taliban grip, but had to set conditions for the next phase of the campaign.

• 1:59Jocko Willink?

  Major Bolduc asserted that the end state for the ODAs was the creation of a, quote, "stable, safe, and secure Kandahar city, ready to transition to more formalized humanitarian assistance and nation-building operations."

• 2:21Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is a excerpt from a document that was written by the Combat Studies Institute Press out of the US Army School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the document is called "A Different Kind of War: The United States Army in Operation Enduring Freedom From October 2001 to September 2005." And when you think about that, that segment that I opened up with, that's 14 November, that's just over two months after September 11th, 2001.

• 3:02Jocko Willink?

  60 days, and in that minimal amount of time, America went from peace and relative tranquility to war and to chaos. And men in the military who had been planning another standard day at work, or preparing for another training exercise, or maybe planning to take a billet where they could go get some more time with their family, suddenly, these men were at war.

• 3:42Jocko Willink?

  The opening piece I read mentioned Major Don Bolduc. He was obviously one of those men that shipped off to Afghanistan to begin trying to sort that place out, and that first deployment in 2001 was just the beginning for him. Over the following years, he would deploy to Afghanistan over and over and over again, and also to Iraq and other parts of the world that were under threat, and that major would finish out his career as a brigadier general. And it's an honor to have him here tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned.

• 4:25Jocko Willink?

  General Bolduc, thank you for joining us.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Well, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here.

• 4:30Jocko Willink?

  You know, as I was reading that and just saw that date of November 14th, 2001, and I was in the military at that time, but to think of the radical transformation that was about to take place and how quickly we went from this sort of peacetime military to a wartime military and all that that entailed. That's a, that's a heavy situation. Let's do this. Let's rewind a little bit and learn a little bit about you, where you came from, how you grew up, and sort of how you ended up in the situation that you're in right now.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  So where, so let's start at the beginning.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  So, the beginning, I was born in Laconia, New Hampshire. Been a resident of the state of New Hampshire for 59 years, and I'm 59 years old. I learned my work ethic on our family farm in Guilford, New Hampshire. We had a dairy farm, we had a vegetable farm, maple syrup. The farm has been in existence since 1779. Our family is the second owner of that farm. My grandfather bought it in 18, my great-grandfather bought it in 1899, coming down from Canada.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  And my, my grandfather had 13 children, and my dad was seven of the 13. And what us Bolduc did was we worked farm. That's how we learned, right? We planted gardens, chopped wood. You know, back in the day, we'd, in the, in the deep snow, my brother and I, like, we had our harnesses, and we would pull the sleds, and we would dump the maple syrup into the, into the container. Now it's all done by, by gravity through, through plastic pipes, right into the sap house.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Before, it was done by good old-fashioned grandchildren, right?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  You know, and so I wouldn't trade that for anything. It got me tough in the winter, tough in the summer, tough in the fall. I built more stone walls than I needed to do, so moving rocks from point A to point B was never a problem. I went to Catholic school and got my butt kicked by nuns on a regular basis. And so when I went to basic training in 1981 after high school, what are they gonna do to me? Wake me up early? Yell at me? I don't know how many times my dad told me I was about as useful as a snowball in hell, you know what I mean? But he, you know, he loved me, right? He was just trying to prepare me for the world, you know? It's not gonna be easy out there. You gotta use your head, right? What made you enlist in the Army?

• 7:28Speaker 01

  My grandfather, on the Baltic side, had a policy that all Baltic males will serve their country. And he didn't care if it was the National Guard, Reserves, Active Duty, or what service it was, but you will serve, and if you don't serve, you're not welcome. And he never served because when he got here, he was too old. He was too old for World War I. But he, nonetheless, I had uncles that served World War II, Korea, Vietnam, every conflict the Baltics have been in since World War II, right? And we

• 8:05Speaker 01

  didn't get here until 1899, and so my grandfather had to establish some children and some grandchildren before he could start populating the US military. But when I went into the, I went into my recruiter in the 11th grade, because I knew I had to do it. So I went in in 11th grade, and at that time, they had the delayed entry program, where if you joined early, you got credit for that service, plus you went in as a mosquito wing private, you know, instead of just a slick-sleeve private, right? Which was like, you know, five dollars more a month, right? And back then it was- Double your basic pay. That's right. Back then it was $200 a month, so I was pretty happy, right?

• 8:50Speaker 01

  So it was good. And-

• 8:54Speaker 01

  And, you know, before that, though, in high school, I joined the, uh, police cadet program in, um, Laconia, New Hampshire. And it's a funny story how that started, right? I, uh, I was, um, in 10th grade and we were walking over from high school. Um, it was af- after school, but before we had to leave for a football game. And it was an away game and I was walking over with a group of the guys over to the, to the little store to pick up some, some chow for the bus, right? Whoop. And, and I, uh, there was this Coke can set up perfectly, right on the curb of the road.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  And I thought, "Man, I'm gonna go kick that." So, I started talking about, you know, uh, "Five seconds left in the game, blah, blah, blah." You know, and I kicked that ball. I kicked that can and it hit the side of a police cruiser parked at the light. And so, I know him now, Sergeant B. and I was, uh, jumps out of that car and he is pissed off and, "Everybody get on the ground." So, we're all laying on the ground and he's like, "Who did it?" So, I raised my hand, I go, "I did it, sir." And he puts me in the back of the cruiser and, he's yelling at the other kids and, you

• 10:21Speaker 01

  know, my friends and they ran off and I'm sitting in the cruiser and he goes, "So, what'd you do that for?" And I explained to him that, what I was doing and he said, "All right, sounds like an accident to me." Uh, he goes, "You ever heard of the police cadet program?" I go, "No, sir." He goes, "Well, I think you'd be a good kid for that program, right? Cause you had enough balls to own up to it, you know?" And I said, "All right." So, I did it and I got selected and I, and I started out and I really loved it. So...

• 10:54Speaker 01

  In nineteen eighty, year before I graduated from high school, I, I had the opportunity to go through the, the part-time police academy program. And so I did it, and I ended up getting qualified as a police officer. So when I went into my senior year at eighteen years old, I was a qualified police officer working for La Conia Police Department. And I did that for a year before I went into, into the army and, uh, went into the army from eighty-one to eighty-four and, um...

• 11:31Jocko Willink?

  Were, and were you active duty?

• 11:33Speaker 01

  I was, active duty, yeah.

• 11:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay. It's basically a, a little bit like a break for you because you're not out on the dairy farm.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  That's right. It, it's a huge break. Well, it's a huge break because it's not, um, you know, you can imagine being a police officer while you're in your, uh, senior year of high school.

• 11:50Jocko Willink?

  Mr. Popular?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  That's right, Mr. Popular. Every, every party that got busted up was my fault. You know, I, I always, I obviously had inside information that I passed on to the police. And it doesn't work that way, right? I mean, we don't care about parties, but your neighbors do, particularly when it gets too loud, right? So they call. And I just couldn't get that point across. But nonetheless, um, you know, after serving as a police officer and, you know, I mean, you know, my, my dad was a, a taskmaster, right? I mean, he was a, a strong, good man, uh, who is no longer with us, but nonetheless, um, served thirty-five years as a, uh, as a, uh, city councilman and mayor for our city,

• 12:34Speaker 01

  uh, school board, uh, just a great pillar of the community in addition to being a, um, you know, a guy that would, uh, that would do anything for anybody. And so anyways, I, I learned all that stuff, but working on the dairy farm, you know, hay-ing, hay-ing's the worst thing you can do in the world, right? I mean, I hated hay-ing season. When July rolled around, I prayed for rain because we could, we didn't, you couldn't, you can't hay in the rain.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  But it didn't happen, right?

• 13:04Jocko Willink?

  I had a guy who was a new guy, came to work for me when I was at SEAL Team Seven. And he was a hard-working kid, up, ready to move sandbags, fill sandbags, move steel around, dump ammo, pick up ammo, whatever I need him to do. Finally, after a couple of weeks, and I'm not too impressed, you have to be a really hard worker to impress me. And after a few weeks, I said to him, I said, "Hey, Ben, you're..." Because he had, he had kind of just shown up in my platoon. He didn't go through our workup or anything. He was a new guy, just showed up in Iraq, showed up in Iraq, and he's working his ass off. And I look at him one day and I said, "Hey, you're, you're a hard worker. Where are you from?" And he said, "I grew up in a dairy farm in Minnesota."

• 13:48Jocko Willink?

  And I said, "Well, I appreciate your hard work." He said, "Sir, I'll do whatever you want me to do, as long as it doesn't have anything to do with cows." And he told me his schedule, and he was up at four o'clock in the morning every day to milk cows, get, get home in the afternoon, after wrestling practice, milk cows. And it was, I don't know what he had, but 300 or 400 cows he had to milk. So, the dairy farm seems to breed some hard work.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, after, uh, practice, whether it was baseball or football, or whatever it happened to be, my dad said, "I'll see you at the farm." And so, I would jog from the high school, uh, up, up Moral Street to the farm, you know, uh, and, uh, and did whatever he asked me to do up on the farm, right? And so, when I got to basic training and met Sergeant Mules, my, uh, my basic training, um, drill instructor, um, "Oh, you want me to make my bed? You want me to do this? You want me to do that?" Yeah, you, you know, I was up before he threw the trash can down the aisle, right? Uh, because that's just the way it was. And, um, and he, you know, he would say to me, "Baldock, you don't sleep."

• 14:57Speaker 01

  And I'd go, and I'd say, "Well, uh, Drill Sergeant, I, I do sleep, but I don't require much, right?" And, uh, you know, so, yeah, that kind of hard work did it. And then the discipline that the nuns instilled in me, I mean, come on, right? It's just Sister Lucille, right? I mean...

• 15:16Jocko Willink?

  She sounds scary.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  She is scary. She was a flaming red-headed nun that just scared the hell out of me, and, um... And she got her pound of flesh out of me, uh, but.

• 15:27Jocko Willink?

  Were you an athlete in high school?

• 15:29Speaker 01

  I was, yeah.

• 15:29Jocko Willink?

  What sports did you play?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I played, uh, football, baseball, and basketball. And I was told, uh, you're too small to play football, but. By my sophomore year, I was, I was starting on the varsity team. Too short to play basketball, but I was a starting guard on the basketball team. Uh, I was, they told me I couldn't pitch. But I ended up being a pitcher because my arms were too short and, and I wasn't tall enough and I couldn't get a good stretch off the mound, but. You know, so, uh.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  I think the farmer in me, uh, you know, don't tell me I can't do something kind of thing, right? Cause, um, uh, I'm gonna try and prove you wrong. So anyways, you know.

• 16:14Jocko Willink?

  When you enlisted in the army, did you do it? Did you plan on, was it a career? Was it reserves or was it active?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  No, it actually, uh, it was active duty.

• 16:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  But my plan was to, um, you know, pursue law enforcement. So when I was coming out of the army in nineteen eighty-four, I was a sergeant. And I was going to ROTC, um, Green to Gold Program. Uh, not to go on active duty, but it was through the National Guard. And they were gonna pay for my education and I was gonna get my commission through ROTC. The beauty part about prior service is you don't have to do the first two years of ROTC. Because you've got basic training in AIT under your belt. So you start at your junior and senior years, right? And I didn't, uh, I didn't anticipate making it a career at all. Um, I wanted to be, uh, be in law enforcement, but.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  I got called down in my company commander's office and my first sergeant was there, first sergeant Kingston. And, and, uh, Captain Jeffrey L. Ames, uh, was there and he. I reported to him position of attention and he said, Sergeant Baltic, I know you're getting out.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  But I wanna talk to you about that, cuz I think you should stay in. I think you should re-enlist, and I... You just came down on drill sarden orders, and you should go be a drill sarden. He goes, "What are your plans?" And I... So I just explained to him what I explained to you, and he said, "Yeah, I... I just don't see you being successful as an officer." He said, "You're enlisted material. You're a sarden major in the making, you know." He said, "I think you should stay in, and you should follow that track, cuz you're gonna have the most success with that." And again, this little light in the back of my head, "Did he just tell me I can't do something?" Right, kinda thing, and, uh... And my... You know, I took his advice, and I said, "Thank you, sir, very much," but I followed a different path. Well, Sergeant... First Sergeant Kingston calls me out into his office.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  He puts me in a front leaning rest position, and he says, "You count loud to fifty." And he gets down real close to my ear, and he goes, "Hey, listen," he goes, "You take, and you go to ROTC, and then, when you get commissioned, you find wherever this captain is in the United States Army, and you take those bars, and you put it somewhere the sun doesn't shine." That's what he says to me. And I go, "Yes, First Sergeant." As I'm, you know, "Twenty-two, First Sergeant, twenty-three," and, you know, he's... So he's like... He's like, "Get up." So I get up, and he dismisses me, and... "I am a First Lieutenant in Special Forces Training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina,

• 18:54Speaker 01

  and who's the Command Sergeant Major of the Sixteenth Military Police Brigade? Sergeant... Command Sergeant Major Kingston." So, here I am, a First Lieutenant in SF Training, and I called his office, and I told him who I was, and I asked if I could come over and have a meeting with him. So they did that, and I went over and I met with him. And he was so happy to see me, right? He goes, "Have you found Captain Ames?" And I go, "No," and he goes, "You know, he's a Lieutenant Colonel now." And I go, "No, I didn't know it. I didn't... I haven't tracked his career." But anyways, he, uh... He goes, "Ah, yeah, I remember that day. That was hilarious." And he goes, "I'm glad you're doing well. You're in Special Forces Training." He goes, "That's really great," right?

• 19:37Speaker 01

  And so we, you know, um, it's just, uh...

• 19:42Speaker 01

  I didn't plan on going back on active duty, but I did well in ROTC and I qualified for an active, you know, regular army commission. And I said, you know what? This is 1988 and it is not looking good for jobs out there, right? So I said, ah, I'll just go in the army and we'll see how that goes. And I really didn't anticipate staying too long as an officer, you know, fulfill my requirement, you know, and, you know, perhaps get out. But as time went on and I went into special forces and I-

• 20:16Jocko Willink?

  Were you, uh, so what was your job as an officer? Were you an infantry officer?

• 20:20Speaker 01

  I was, I got commissioned into the chemical corps.

• 20:23Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Which was another thing, I was like, what the heck? You know, I graduated number one from Northeastern University Liberty Battalion. I was number one. And the, the explanation I got is, well, you know, equality's gotta be spread out across the army and it's based on needs of the army. So I was like, okay, sounds like a good explanation to me.

• 20:44Jocko Willink?

  So what was it, chemical officer?

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Chemical officer. Nuclear, biological and chemical officer. But you know what? When I was looking to get out after my requirement, wow.

• 20:53Jocko Willink?

  You had some good opportunities.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Big bucks, great opportunities. I was like, wow. The good Lord was smiling on me. Because, you know, I, and I went to Ranger School and I did all those things that you're supposed to do. So when I showed up at the combat arms units, right, I had the, you know, I wasn't just a support guy, right? You know, okay, this guy, prior enlisted Ranger School graduate, you know, airborne school, you know, the whole nine yards.

• 21:22Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  And so it just gave you more credibility. And as an enlisted guy, I served in the 4th ID in the 2nd Airborne. So I had that in my background. And so it was all good, but, um, but, you know, yeah, chemical corps, you get put on the battalion staff and you have to do the, you know, you get, you get all the- You know, nobody's really interested in doing nuclear, biological, and chemical training.

• 21:45Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  So you get, you know, you get all the, um, you know, the interesting assignments. And I did those with a smile on my face and the best of my ability and then, you know, I was the first chemical officer to make it through special forces selection and training.

• 22:01Jocko Willink?

  So did you, at what point did you learn about special forces?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Well, I learned about special forces in 1968 when I watched the Green Beret movie with my grandfather. And, um, and so I was like, oh, wow, John Wayne, the Green Berets, you know, so it was always something in the back of my mind and then I was in Korea on my first lieutenant assignment and, um, the Green Beret recruiters showed up and I went and I said, I'm gonna do that, right? And so that's what I did.

• 22:32Jocko Willink?

  Where were you when the first Gulf War happened?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Uh, I was in 10th Special Forces Group.

• 22:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Um, and, um, so we did that there and then we rotated over to provide comfort, the humanitarian assistance thing up in northern Iraq, which was a great experience with the Kurds. Um, and, um, yeah, so, I mean, God just kept opening up these little doors for me to like, you know, scoot through and, um, before I knew it, it was, um, you know, I was a major on my way to Commander General Staff College and halfway to retirement, you know, 20 years. And I had a few extra years because of enlisted time, so I was like, you know, hey, if I make it to Lieutenant Colonel, I'm gonna be doing pretty damn good. So I was pretty happy about that.

• 23:24Jocko Willink?

  So the, so you went through special forces in what year through, through the selection?

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Uh, I went through selection in 1992, February of 1992.

• 23:35Jocko Willink?

  Was, how was that? Was it challenging for you? Did you enjoy it? Was it what you expected it to be?

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I expected a smoke show and that's what I got, right? And I really liked the, the special forces selection process because...

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Nobody said anything to you, right? All your instructions were written up on a board. And you had to be conscientious enough to check that board frequently because they would do things like change it, right? And then try and catch you, right? Not paying attention. Um, and it was athletic events, you know, um, that you had to do. It was like right up my alley, right? So it was like, uh, yeah, good quality smoke show. Nobody yelled at you. They sleep deprived you and they gave you really good. I called it, um, I called it building Barney rubble machines, right? Because it was like, oh, here's a trailer with only one tire. And here's some straps and here's some poles.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  And, you know, you gotta move it 10 kilometers. And, you know, they would set up these tasks and you had to build like, so it was like on the farm, like our farm was like an OSHA nightmare. Um, you know, we really didn't believe in OSHA. Yeah, it was a huge safety hazard, right? And so, you know, uh, you know, coming up with a fix for, for the tractor or for the, for the, uh, the hay baler when it went down or something like that was, you know, it was always right there, right? And, you know, my dad's like, hey, we don't have, we don't have time and we don't have the money to go pay for this machine. So let's, you know, use some nylons and some straps and, and figure this out, right? And so that's what SF training was about, you know?

• 25:16Speaker 01

  It was like, hey, you know, here's a bunch of pieces of equipment, figure out how to get it 10 kilometers and good luck, right? And work as a team, uh, and support each other. So, you know, that's what farming's all about. And not one person makes that farm run. It's a collective team. That's why my grandfather had 13 kids. That's why he has over, you know, 500 grandchildren, you know, to make it work. You bring everybody together and you just make it work. So, um, that's what I liked about, you know, special forces, uh, training. Uh, and I like the idea. But not everybody could make it, right? That there was this huge attrition rate.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Uh, and so, I thought that was cool too, because, um, it was this, it was this special thing, right? Not everybody can get through, and only, only a certain type of person can get through it. Doesn't make you any better than anybody else, it just makes you different, right? And that's what America's about.

• 26:16Jocko Willink?

  Was there anything that was hard for you? Or especially hard for you?

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, anything that required height.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Cause I'm short, at five foot seven, so, you know, these things that required height, and then keeping up with guys with long legs on the ruck march. I would, it was a ruck jog for me, uh, to keep up, because these guys had just this incredibly long, uh, stride, and it was like, God, bless America, I gotta, you know, come on, cut that stride in half, you know? But, you know, they, they move at their pace, and they can't, they can't be slacking, cause, you know, then the instructor sees they're slacking. For me, nah, I'll pick up a jog, right? So, that's the way we did it.

• 27:01Jocko Willink?

  And you're married when you were going through special forces training, right?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, yeah, I got married, uh, as a second lieutenant, and I met, I met my wife Sharon in, in, uh, college. We were both in the ROTC program together. Uh, she was studying nursing, and she was, she joined the army at seventeen years old, had to get her mom's permission. She went into the medical field, right? And down to Fort Sam Houston, did her training, and, uh, she's a, she's, she's as hard as woodpecker lips, and I always like, I always like to say, um, you know, source of pride for me is that, uh, you know, I married a woman that wore combat boots.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  So that was always, that was always, uh, a cool thing, but yeah, she, she was great, and, um, you know.

• 27:48Jocko Willink?

  And she understood the army and understood what you were going through?

• 27:53Speaker 01

  And I always asked her, right? I said, hey, I wanna do this, right? You know, can I get your support? You know, I mean, it's not gonna be easy for the family. And that's why... You know, leading up to 2001, when we had 9/11, we were gone a lot. Because during the Clinton years, where he downsized the conventional forces, a lot of the engagement and stuff fell to special ops. We had to go deploy on all kinds of different things out there. So we were gone a lot. And so when we were gone a lot after 2001, my wife just took it in stride, right? And so when she started hearing people say, "Well, you know, they're never home anymore",

• 28:36Speaker 01

  and she would be able to use her experience to explain, "Hey, you know, this is what it's all about", and so she was very, very good inside the family readiness groups and, you know, very, very supportive, particularly during deployments and, you know, when we had casualties. She had that frame of reference, you know. And she was always there. We've been married for over 32 years now, and I have never... She's never, ever faltered. Even when I wasn't a very good version of myself because of post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury

• 29:16Speaker 01

  and, you know, pain management issues, you know. I mean, that negatively affected my personal and professional life, too. You know.

• 29:27Jocko Willink?

  Before we get into that, when you are talking about the 90s, so now what special forces unit did you check into when you got done with special forces school?

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Fifth special forces group, Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

• 29:41Jocko Willink?

  And then you were doing lots of J-sets, heading overseas, building these relationships, filling some of the gaps that were left by the downsizing of conventional forces. And what was your... Did you do platoon command? Did you do A-team? Did you do a company command? Like, what was your billets there?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  So I was a detachment commander, ODA 582 and 3rd Battalion, 5th Group.

• 30:03Jocko Willink?

  And were you guys doing like regular deployments? Would you go on deployment? So in the 90s when I was in the SEAL Teams, we would go on a six-month deployment. Maybe we'd go to Asia, maybe we'd go to Southwest Asia, maybe we'd go on a ship. But you were doing a workup and you were going on a long deployment. Were you guys on a schedule like that?

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Exactly like that, exactly like that. But with 5th Group, I went to one of two places. It was either Eastern Africa, normally Kenya, or it was in the Middle East, you know? And we had Kuwait, UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, you know, those places.

• 30:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. We must have crossed paths at some point along the 90s.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  We had to, we had to.

• 30:55Jocko Willink?

  Along the dry years. I did a bunch of shipboard deployments in the 90s and one where I wasn't on board a ship. But yeah, we were constantly pulling into all those places and doing whatever kind of exercises. Just always, always over there.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  One of the, one of the interesting deployments that we went on that I thought was, was really, really good to work on your tradecraft was JTF Bravo, the drug interdiction missions that we did on the southern border. And we would, we would deploy for 120 days to the southern border. And we worked from the Texas border to the New Mexico border, Arizona and California. And we culminated in California in the Cleveland National Forest, searching for marijuana fields. And, and getting scared to death by booby traps, right? Because they, they were everywhere.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  And, and we would track somebody and then we'd find out they're actually tracking us, you know? So it was like, holy crap, right? In America, you know what I mean? And so, but we would get into our spider holes and we would, you know, we would, you know, I mean, we would practice. I remember giving my battalion commander a briefing and I was saying, hey.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  We're gonna, we're gonna be in these holes, guys are gonna be in the holes for seventy-two hours, and then we're gonna, under the cover of darkness, rotate them out, get them back to the, um, to our, you know, mission support site, get a debrief, and then we're gonna send them back to Phoenix to recover in a hotel, right? Clean all their kit, and we, we had this whole process. And, we're gonna be, we, we made our spider holes and all our camouflage out of PVC pipes and all that stuff, right? And we'd break it all down, you put it in your pack, and then you'd set it all up, and you'd dig your, your hole, and that's what you're gonna be in, right? And we, we even came up with, you know, different exercises in the spy, because they couldn't

• 33:03Speaker 01

  get out of spider holes, right? And so he goes, "So what are you gonna do with the, with the, uh, um, human waste?" And I go, "Well, we're gonna carry it out with us." And he goes, "Oh, you're gonna carry it out with you?" And I said, "Yeah, we're gonna carry it out with us, sir." And he goes, "I'd like to see that." So, I delivered to him a hefty bag, full of Extrament P, and I put it right on his desk, and I said, "There it is, sir." And I'll never forget the look on his face. The Sergeant Major, Command Sergeant Major, pulled me aside, and he said, "That was either the most brilliant thing that you ever did as a detachment commander, or the dumbest thing. Time will tell."

• 33:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Oh, that's good. As soon as you said, "I'd like to see that," I said, "Oh, he didn't. Oh, yes, he did."

• 33:56Speaker 01

  He did see it, yeah.

• 33:58Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, yeah, those were interesting. I never did those missions, but I remember platoons getting sent out to do them, and it's basically doing reconnaissance of drug transport routes coming across the border, all across the southern border.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  We would wait, we would radio it in to the police, and they would do the interdiction. And it was just, uh, it was just, it was just a great mission, because we knew we were doing something for our country. And then we knew we were also, uh, training the hell out of ourselves with, with these, these, you know, special reconnaissance techniques that, um, hey, if they see ya, they compromise ya, you're done. So, I mean, it was, it was good. It was real good.

• 34:38Jocko Willink?

  So where were you when September eleventh happened?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Oh, I was the operations officer for third battalion, or second battalion, fifth special forces group. And we were getting ready to go to Jordan for what was the largest SOC sent, you know, special operations command sent com, joint chiefs of staff missions. They basically took about five joint chiefs of staff missions and combined them all. We were going to be headquartered in Jordan and include Egypt, Oman, UAE, Kuwait. And it was all over that geographical area and we're going to be doing all kinds of decentralized

• 35:26Speaker 01

  missions and stuff in these countries. And airborne operations and we had a ranger company with us and it was awesome, right? We put this all together. First time they were ever going to do something like that. And I really liked it because it was a regional approach to solving problems, right? Instead of a country by country focus. So it was really great. And I'm a big believer in this, you know, regional thing. I think it works out better when people get together and try and help each other, solve each other's problems as opposed to just focusing the one country at a time. But anyways, I don't want to digress. So we were getting ready to go over for that mission. I'm sitting in my office the day before we're getting ready to deploy and nine eleven hits, right?

• 36:11Speaker 01

  And I go down the hallway to my boss's office and I put on the television and I go, "Sir, check this out." By the time I turn it on, the second plane hit, you know, and I said, "Sir, I think we're under attack." And I said, "It looks like they're going to hit every single one of our national elements of power." And, you know, then Pentagon gets hit, you know, and then the plane goes down in Pennsylvania, obviously headed probably towards the Capitol or wherever that was heading. So they, you know, they hit the economic, they just hit the military, they're on their way to the political, you know, I mean, holy crap. President of the United States canceled every single exercise except for the Jordan exercise.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Because it was so important to the King of Jordan to have this thing, to have this exercise, because it was, he was the hub country, right? And so, we deployed and we did it. And it was shortened from forty-five days to thirty days. And that's, you know, we went directly from Jordan to Uzbekistan for mission planning and then, and then into, into Taran Count, Afghanistan.

• 37:27Jocko Willink?

  So, so you complete this training operation in Jordan?

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:32Jocko Willink?

  Which must have been strange doing this freaking training operation when you know that the world is like a ticking time bomb.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Right, it was, it was. We're watching the news all the time and, you know, we're, I'm actually getting messages from higher headquarters, get ready, you're gonna go, you're gonna leave. So, we got the log guys and ops guys and everybody planning to move us from Jordan to Uzbekistan, but at the same time, we have five-hundred-and-sixty-thousand moving parts for this five-country operation and people doing airborne operations, live fires, you know, CQB, you know, I mean, just all kinds of high-adventure training, right? And, you know, we're doing joint and combined airborne operations.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  So, you got, picture this, you got Americans, Jordanians, and Egyptians on the same plane, getting ready to jump out. Yee-haw, right? Because, you know, as far as I'm concerned, that's a, you know, I mean, we trained them, but they're not necessarily following our training, you know? And the way some of them exited the aircraft, it was like, holy crap, are you kidding me? So, it was like... You know, I know a lot of the sergeants are looking at me going, "You're killing me, sir." You know, I'm like, "Okay."

• 38:52Jocko Willink?

  I hope not.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're not, that's not the intent, right? But I'm like, "Hey, we gotta do this," right? I mean, that's what it is. And they would, they would make sure it was great. And it went off without a hitch, but...

• 39:05Jocko Willink?

  So then from there, you go to Uzbekistan?

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Uzbekistan.

• 39:08Jocko Willink?

  And, and now, are you guys getting, you guys got the tasking, "Okay, you're going to Afghanistan." Go to Uzbekistan to start planning?

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Right, because that's...

• 39:16Jocko Willink?

  How many guys?

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Uh, it was, it was, let me see, fifteen of us.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  And Colonel Fox had to pick them. So he picked them, fifteen of us went off. And then he turned, turned over the battalion to the XO. And the XO stayed in place in, in Jordan. And then, slow but surely, he would rotate the teams into Uzbekistan as space opened up.

• 39:44Jocko Willink?

  So when you get to Uzbekistan, I mean, what's the damn, uh, what's the atmosphere with the team? How much do you guys know about Afghanistan prior to this?

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Nothing. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

• 39:57Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you learn a language as a special forces officer?

• 40:00Speaker 01

  I did, I learned Egyptian Arabic.

• 40:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Now, I passed the language test.

• 40:07Jocko Willink?

  But we're not putting you on an Egyptian quiz show or anything?

• 40:10Speaker 01

  With the lowest score of, um, that you could get on the Defense Language Aptitude Battery Test. Apparently, God didn't give me the ability to learn foreign languages. And I did, I struggled through, what, Spanish in high school and college? But I struggled through it, I got through it anyways. But nonetheless, um, so the lowest score qualifies me for a romantic language, like French and Spanish and Italian. And what do they send me to? Fifth Special Forces Group with a language is Egyptian Arabic, category four language. And I'm like, "Really? You want me to fail, is that it?" Uh, but, you know, like anything else, test scores, you know, they mean something,

• 40:53Speaker 01

  but they don't test, um, they don't test your will to do your best, right? So, I, I ended up graduating with a two plus, two plus, and, and got language pay at seventy-five dollars a month. Woo-hoo. Uh, and, um... And I was just, you know, I call two plus two plus just being dangerous enough to, you know, use a foreign language, you know, it's like, it's like being a first level black belt in martial arts, right? You're just dangerous enough to get yourself hurt.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  But it looks cool, right? Uh, but nonetheless, it is what it is and I, um, I, uh, yeah, I,

• 41:34Speaker 01

  I did that, but Egyptian Arabic does you absolutely no good in Afghanistan with Pashto and Urdu and, you know, Tajik and Uzbek and, you know.

• 41:46Jocko Willink?

  So you're in Uzbekistan, you're coming up with a plan and, and who's giving you direction at this point? What are you guys getting for a mission tasking? Are you getting clear directives or is it more, hey, go, go start to put something together?

• 42:03Speaker 01

  So to the credit of our seniors, everything was moving so fast and everything was coming out of the Pentagon and the National Command Authority so quickly, so rapidly, uh, that, you know, we weren't getting anything, right? And so, um, basically, we had two teams and then a command and control element, um, that had to be led by a lieutenant colonel and that came directly from the Secretary of Defense. So my, so it's not even the standard way that we would deploy into a theater of operations. So you got two teams with a battalion commander and a very small staff that were C2ing. Now, 3rd Battalion had the north, 2nd

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Battalion had the, um, south and 1st Battalion had, you know, the, um, the Kabul Bagram area. Um, and...

• 43:01Speaker 01

  So, when we got there, it was like, alright, you got the south, you gotta go link up with Hamid Karzai, you got these two teams, one's gonna come from the south, one's gonna come from the north, you can't figure it out. So, we did. And I was happy to figure it out, because it was good.

• 43:14Jocko Willink?

  How'd you guys get in?

• 43:16Speaker 01

  So, we went MH1, uh, excuse me, MC130s, uh, to Jacobabad, Pakistan. And this, this is really, it's really funny, because we were told, okay, you're gonna get there, and you're gonna go find the special ops air force unit. And they're the ones that are gonna fly you in to Taran Kaut, Afghanistan, where you'll link up with a group of Afghans, and then they'll take you to Hamid Karzai.

• 43:47Jocko Willink?

  So, that, so that was the plan?

• 43:49Speaker 01

  That was the plan. That was the plan. And where did I find the air force guys? In the mess hall. Cause I looked all around Jacobabad farm, right? And my boss is like, I go, sir, let's go to the mess hall.

• 44:01Jocko Willink?

  Good call.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  And so, there they were. They were in the mess hall. And so, uh, you know...

• 44:06Jocko Willink?

  And what'd they bring you up in? Like pavlos or something?

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, that's exactly it, MH53s. We went right in. We took fire going in. Uh, one of them was hit, they still brought us in. We did a, what I like to call a controlled crash landing. I mean, it was a hard landing, we all fell all over the place inside the damn thing. We jump out, the one advantage we had was nice night vision goggles. We didn't know where they were, or who they were. But I had worked on, I had worked on one poshtune sentence. Please take us to Hamid Karzai. I worked on that over and over and over again.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  And we land, we hit the ground, dust everywhere, takes a few minutes for the dust to settle. We get into a V formation, and the plan that we had was...

• 45:02Speaker 01

  I go, Colonel Fox, I go, sir, we'll move forward. Once we see him, we'll set in security. I'll walk forward with my rehearsed sentence. And, you know, we'll go from there. You guys point your weapons. I'm not going to point my weapon at him, but I'm going to have it at the ready, just in case I need it. And I can see them. They're all, all these Afghans, there's about ten Afghans there, and they're all pointing their weapons at me. And I'm walking up and I look at them, and I got these AK-47s right in my face. And all I could come out with was, "Harmatt Karzai." That's the only thing I could say. That well rehearsed sentence, gone, gone.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  And they, you know, gave me the, you know, good to go. And, you know, I called up the guys. We came up, they put us in trucks. And 20 minutes later, we were meeting Harmatt Karzai in a mud hut. And then we started doing mud hut diplomacy.

• 46:01Jocko Willink?

  So what's mud hut diplomacy look like?

• 46:03Speaker 01

  It looks like a bunch of Afghans sitting on the ground with us in front of a map. And we're telling them, you know, what we're seeing from our aircraft in the sky. And are they bad guys? Are they good guys? And then we're coming up with intermediate places on the ground to go to. And our first convoy that we did this was a disaster. Little did we know that, that they would all huddle around Karzai's vehicle because they didn't want anything to happen to them. And we had Karzai in the wrong spot. So we had motorcycles and Toyota Corollas and pickup trucks.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  We'd lost complete control of this convoy, and then we stopped to pray.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Right in the middle of the operation, right? Is this a really safe place to stop and pray? But it didn't matter. It's time to pray, we're gonna pray. So we did that. So what we did was, we figured out, on the next one, that we would put our guys up front for security. And we'd put Karzai back there, and nobody would pass Karzai's vehicle. So we maintained control. Now, if you turned around and looked at that gaggle back there, it was like...

• 47:22Jocko Willink?

  Mad Max.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, Mad Max. Uh, yeah, really, that's a great way to, uh, to explain it. And, uh, but it worked. And so that's what we did. Uh, and as we moved forward, we got more and more village elders and tribal elders into the meetings, and then, of course, you know, people were talking about security concern, you know, what if someone comes in and just opens up and sprays the place? And I said, "Well, it's a chance we have to take." I mean, it's just part of the, part of, part of the operational environment.

• 47:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you can't mitigate all risk.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  You can't, you're right.

• 47:53Jocko Willink?

  You do your best, but there's gonna be some risks that you're gonna have to take to achieve your mission.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  And they weren't in the mood for us to disarm them. They weren't in the mood for us to search them. They weren't in the mood for any of that, right? We had to prove ourselves to them, and then they had to get comfortable with us. And we just had to trust, you know, Karzai. Uh, and trust me, the CIA guys that were there with Karzai were just as nervous as we were, and just as concerned as we were. Because the last thing we wanted was, was Karzai to, uh, to get hurt, because he's on the phone with, um, all of the news outlets, right? In the middle of a briefing, we'd get a call, "Hey, uh, you know, uh, you know, uh, whatever his name is, Dan Rather, or whomever, wanted to talk to him." Right?

• 48:43Speaker 01

  And so he would take an interview, right there. And then you had the bond committee, um, that was meeting to figure out, you know, the government, and who's gonna be the interim prime minister, and of course, Karzai's at the top of the list. They wanna talk to him. So in the middle of that, they call up, and they wanna talk to him about stuff, and, you know, you just, and just sit there and listen to it. He was really good. He was really good in those days.

• 49:06Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  He did a really, really good job. And I had a lot of hope, right?

• 49:14Speaker 01

  But, you know, things get politicized and things happen and, you know, the longer things, you know, go on. He, he just, he just, you know, eh. I really thought he did a great job.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Particularly at the beginning there and, you know, the way he managed risk and the way he made decisions and the way he handled and the respect that he got. He was the right guy at the time, right? And, um, and so, uh, it was, it was just, uh, very, very interesting to see that. And of course, in subsequent deployments, I had a personal relationship with Karzai. So I could leverage that, uh, pretty easily, uh, as a result of that very first rotation. To explain something that had looked like, in Kabul, had gone wrong.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  But there was a lot of things in between where it happened and what was being told and what was being put out by the Taliban that weren't true. And I was able to get communications to him to be able to say, hey,

• 50:25Speaker 01

  that's not the way it went down, sir. Please, please understand that my heart's in the right place. And he would.

• 50:31Jocko Willink?

  Now, now, speaking of things going wrong, um, weren't you involved in a, um, in a fratricide incident where a bomb was dropped on your, on your location?

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:44Jocko Willink?

  Can you debrief us on that one?

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I blame myself for that. What a day. So, we were at, um, Shaw Wally Court.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Twenty kilometers north of Kandahar, which was our, our operational objective. We had to take Kandahar from the Taliban. The religious center of gravity. It was more important to take Kandahar than it really was to own Kabul, or Harat, or MES, you know, Majer and Sharif, because of the significance of it. And we had one presidential mission, and that was to determine whether the cloak of Muhammad in the mosque in Kandahar was still there, because it was a huge concern in the, in the Muslim community, all, you know, all the way back to Mecca, right, with Saudi Arabia. I mean, this was a big deal.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  And so, you know, we, we were doing combat operations for three days north of here. I mean, we had to go through a pass, and this pass had high ground, was a bridge, it was a, it was a orchard in front, and it was very well defended by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. And they weren't giving this ground up very easily. And we were doing combat operations, leading patrols, trying to disrupt them. We were, we were engaging them with, you know, you know, F-15s and so on and so forth. And it was going pretty, you know, it was going real well, and we were getting people

• 52:24Speaker 01

  that were switching sides, you know, Afghans that would come and switch sides. And they were giving us great intel and stuff.

• 52:30Jocko Willink?

  Which is always shocking for Americans to hear about people switching sides. And it's very common, especially in, in the Arab culture, and I know that there's a, I want to say this is an Osama bin Laden quote, that, you know, the, the people are going to bet on the winning horse. So, basically, if you're strong and you're winning, people are like, okay, that's who we're putting our money on. And so, this is what you were seeing on the ground, was as the coalition grew, and as Qadsi got more people, people are looking around going, he's got more people, and they, it's almost like a mob mentality of joining, joining that team.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And, and it, you know, required flexibility and adaptability on our part, and I know, I know Colonel Fox was just never real comfortable with it. "All right, Don, where did all these people come from?" And I said, "Well, sir, they came, they came from overnight, and they came from over there." And he goes, These guys were fighting us? And I go, "Oh, yeah, they were fighting us." And now they're with us. And we got the, um, we, you know, they're all vouched for. Because, you know, "Oh, this is my cousin, this is my brother, this is my..." you know. And so, "Hey, alright." And, you know, we got the Sarden Major telling us, you know, "It's okay." And then we got, you know, Elvis going, "Thank you very much, thank you very much." You know, so he, you know. And he goes, "And we're gonna arm him and give him bullets and everything." And I said, "Well, yes, sir, we are."

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Uh, and, uh, and he goes, "Ah, Jesus." So he was never really quite comfortable with it. And he goes, "You, you, you're good with this?" And I said, "Hey, sir, I don't know if we have a choice, number one, but, yeah, I'm good with it." You know, "I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire, and I can see the same thing happening there." You know? Um, people sitting on the fence, you know, historically, we've seen that, you know? Where the passive people start joining the people that are winning and, you know? Before that, they're passive, now they're active, and, you know, vice versa, so... Yeah, I think, I think we'll be okay, right?

• 54:33Speaker 01

  And, uh, "Yes, alright, I'm coming for you, though, if you're wrong." And I said, "Alright, now, uh, that's fair, that's fair." So anyways, we, um, we're doing this, and it's about 8:30 in the morning, and we get some good intel, and, you know, we get with Karzai, and we get a good decision from him, and we start, um, we start our operations up. Well, we had a very, very good process for clearing our fires. We had a great STS, uh, guy on the ground, and we had absolutely no errors. And we, we needed to build up our force structure going into Af- going into Kandahar.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  So, we took this point, we took this point in time to bring in some additional augmentees, right? And it was about 24 hours before this had happened. So what we did was, we, um...

• 55:37Speaker 01

  We did a good transition with everybody. We had a Tac P come in and he did good transition with the STS and learned all the SOPs and everything like that and our STS guy and the Tac P had changed over.

• 55:51Jocko Willink?

  So, just so everyone knows, these are the guys that call for fire from the air. That's who we're talking about.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 55:59Jocko Willink?

  The Tac P and the STS, these are individuals that are trained, that's what they do. It's, I mean, obviously it's a really hard job. One mistake can be deadly and that's what they're focused on and it's great to have those guys because that's what they do for a living.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:13Jocko Willink?

  And so you had a transition taking place where you're going from one guy that had been with you, now your force is growing, you've got some extra guys that are going to be able to help out, but they're just showing up, so they're not quite up to speed yet.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  That's correct. That's correct. And so, they did their transition. We had got mail in for the first time. So guys were, you know, guys that weren't directly involved in doing anything were opening up their mail and, you know. I had done a walk around our defensive area, which was an old Soviet mortar pit, right, up in the high ground. And I'd walked around and I'd gone down the hill, just got to the bottom of the hill, and this big explosion,

• 57:06Speaker 01

  right, out of nowhere. And I don't know how much time had passed, to be honest with you, but I picked myself up off the ground. I had pieces of body parts, stuff all over me, blood all over me. I'm doing a quick assessment of myself. I got a real bad injury with my leg. And, you know, days looking around and it is utter mayhem.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  We got Afghans down, we got Americans down, we got rounds cooking off, we got RPGs cooking off, it's going all over the place. I start walking around, I start grabbing our guys. We go down to where Karzai was and we made sure he was okay, and he was with his CIA guys and they had secured him. And the guys that were with him, securing him, I asked them if they would go out and reconnoitre a place to bring in helicopters, because I knew we were gonna have to casevac here. And out 200 meters, we had casualties, right? It was, it was a mess.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  All 20 of the US guys on the ground were injured some way or another, some more than others. And we had, I designated a casualty control point, and I got with my comms guys and we had to find some, we had to kinda like, take comms equipment from, you know, cannibalize it from other stuff to make, to reestablish communications with higher headquarters. I found Colonel Fox, and he was, he was dazed and confused, just to the point where he was

• 59:09Speaker 01

  just not coherent about what was going on, so made sure that he was taken care of, and went up on the hill and we started pulling bodies off, right, with all these rounds cooking off and everything, like getting, getting guys off the top of the hill, getting them down. And we knew we had, to get complete accountability of everybody. And we did that and I was missing one, right? And went back up on the hill to where his position was, and that was ground zero with the impact of the 2,000 pound bomb from a B-52 up 35,000 feet.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  And I searched everywhere, and I found his hat. And I took his hat and I started picking up...

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Bits and pieces, and I put it inside the hat, and I put the hat inside a bag, and I parked it, and that's how he was identified. But there was nothing to send home, absolutely nothing to send home. And another one of our guys that was killed was completely torn in half. I found him under a vehicle. His chest was still heaving, his legs were over here, his chest, his body was separated from it. And I start doing CPR on him. And someone finally grabs me on the shoulder and goes, "Sir, no, that's not gonna work. He's torn in half."

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  So anyways, we get him in a body bag, and we get him off there, and then we had one guy that was not gonna make it, but was still alive, and we kept him alive, and we got him evac'd. When we had coordinated the evac, we got a B Team, Special Forces Company, and an ODA to come in to backfill. That came in from higher headquarters. We got all the guys out, and then we started doing the after-action and regrouping, because we still had, this was five December, we still had to go and take Kandahar.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  So me, my assistant S3, the battalion commander, and a commo guy, despite our injuries, we stayed on the ground in order to be able to coordinate the push to Kandahar. So we did that. We regrouped, we got as many Afghans out as we possibly could that were injured. That wasn't something that... Hire wanted to do, but we talked him into doing it because it was the right thing to do. So we got our Afghan partners evac'd out. We helped with the casualties for them as well in the village and everybody came out and helped from the different areas around the village.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  And we just said, screw it, we're gonna, we're gonna hit that, we're gonna hit that bridge, we're gonna hit that pass and we're gonna knock them out of there. And we went through, nobody was there. Right? This was eight December and we went right into Kandahar and we took Kandahar and the after action on that though, and I blame myself to this day. Transition between the STS and the TacP was really good, but the TacP had to change batteries.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  And, and those old soft lamps that we used to target designate, when you do that, the grid resets to your position. So before you send anything or confirm anything with the aircraft, you've got to make sure that you have your grid system squared away. And that was the mistake that was made. And as I go over this in my mind over and over and over again, even to this day, I think to myself, I should have been there to make sure that, that I should have got an in-person

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  briefing from the TacP that he knew all those procedures. I should have got that and I didn't get that. And because I didn't get it, because of we were in combat and because of all the things that you talked about earlier, you know, a mistake was made. And I, I was in charge of those operations on behalf of Colonel Fox. That was my job and I didn't do my job, in my opinion, to the best of my ability and we had that event occur. And, you know.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  Well, I learned a big lesson, and I'm sure a lot of people learned a big lesson. But at the end of the day, it, you know, there's a, and I think you talk about it, you know, in your, in your book there, Extreme Ownership, The Fog of War, right? And Clausewitz and his explanation of the fog of war, and, I mean, it's all there, right? And you do what you can do, in some cases, you can only do so much, there's a lot of things going on, but in retrospect, it becomes clearer. And as you say, you gotta take extreme ownership, right? Not only on those things that go well, but most importantly, on those things that don't go well.

• 1:05:02Jocko Willink?

  At what point did you realize it was a friendly bomb?

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't until, um, I was talking to the TAC P, who was seriously injured, and he was apologizing. And he said, "Sir, I made a mistake. I don't think that I, I cleared that grid like I was supposed to do." And I said, "Hey, listen, mistakes happen. These things happen. Please, you need, you need to focus on keeping yourself," I mean, he was seriously injured,

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  "you need to focus on keeping yourself alive so you can get home to your family. These things happen. Don't blame yourself." Now, I know to this day, because I've spoken to him quite a bit, you know, the burden that he carries, but, um, at the end of the day, um, you know...

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Fog of war, mistakes happen, it's a leadership responsibility. But it wasn't until then that I realized, oh crap, we got a friendly fire incident here. And, so, when the investigation team came down to investigate, we were already in Kandahar. We were already set up, but we had already written our statements and, you know, I had a pretty good packet form, knowing, anticipating what was going on. And I think you talk about that in your book as well, you know, when the friendly fire incident hit, okay, let's, we know a whole bunch of shit's gonna come raining down on us, so let's get ahead of the power curve and let's make sure that we find out what

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  went on and we tell the truth and we get the accurate assessment of what went on. And when we came down and it was Brigadier General Burford, he was the Deputy Commander for US Special Operations Command. He's the one that came down and led the investigation. And we sat down with his team, we said, this is what we got. We got him out to the spot so we could see it, and, you know, we gave him, we gave him a, you know, a good briefing on that and what we were doing and how we were doing it. We had taken that soft lamb and we had isolated it. It had been damaged, but nonetheless, wasn't being used anymore.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  And so we had everything for him and a nice package. And I go, hey, listen, this is a combat environment, you know, we don't want to have them come down here and have to expose themselves to danger here while they're doing their investigation. But at the same time, we want to make sure they get to where they need to go to do a thorough investigation. And the most important thing is lessons learned, so this never, ever happens again. Right. And I tell you what, nine more rotations. Never happened to me again. Never happened in the unit that I served in again. Because we made sure that, you know, those kind of lessons were applied and over and over and over again.

• 1:08:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. When I took over the training for the west coast SEAL teams, like the tactical pre-deployment training, I would put those guys in positions all the time. And they would, every single group, every single platoon, every single troop, every single task unit, they'd get a blue on blue. And I'd sit down and say, I want this to happen here. So you realize how it happened, so it doesn't happen overseas like it did to me. So that's the best thing you can do is take those lessons learned and, and spread the word. So it doesn't happen again.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  And I, I can tell you that there's still, there's still guys on that O D A. There's, there's all three of the guys that we lost. Still blame us, still blame the chain of command for that. Right? And that's okay. I take that responsibility fully. I accept it and I understand where they're coming from. And that's just, that's, hopefully it has made me a better leader. Right? As a result. I mean, what else am I gonna do, right? Except acknowledge it and, you know, move forward.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  Because my responsibilities in leading didn't end as a result of that.

• 1:09:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, even to those, those guys that were lost and God rest their souls, but at least they're, the lessons that were learned from that, horrible as they may be, at least there's, you know, as you said, no operation that you oversaw after that ever had another incident. So their sacrifice saved lives and I know that's horrible in one way, but it's the truth. It's also the truth.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  It's also the truth and, yeah, I didn't ever had another. Blue on blue incident in the, as battalion commander, as a siege sort of a commander and as a general officer level commander in Afghanistan in combat, never ever had another one. And, you know, we attribute that to, of course, the experience of the guys as we go through. But most importantly, you know, leadership and learning, they're indispensable, right? And so you gotta, you gotta move forward, and that's what we did, so.

• 1:10:40Jocko Willink?

  So you guys roll into Kandahar and it's pretty much no factor? There's like, what was the resistance level rolling into Kandahar?

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  The resistance level was minimal. We got ambushed going in, and, you know, we took care of that, and we kept going. We get to the Mullah Omar's compound, and it is, uh, um, there are vehicles everywhere covered with mud, because that's what they did to try and hide from our aerial observations, right? They covered their vehicles with mud.

• 1:11:27Jocko Willink?

  They saw a predator.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  Right. So we, we, we said, and that was a way for us to identify if they were, if they were bad guys or good guys, because the bad guys were covering their cars with mud. But here it is again. I looked at, I looked at Colonel Fox and I said, "Hey, sir, look, a parking lot full of bad guys." And now they're on our side, right? And he goes, "I don't get this, this is unbelievable." And then we went to the jail and we brought John Mohammed. John Mohammed was a very, very close friend of Karzai, and he had been imprisoned by the Taliban and tortured for a very, very long time. And he became the governor of Urzgah. And he got up there and he met with Karzai and...

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  And this is a guy that I developed very good friendship with over the years. No matter what job I had going back into Afghanistan, in his mind, I was the commander of all special forces. I just was not. And I would tell him, I'd go, "Hey, listen, I'm just the battalion commander here. I just got these guys." He goes, "Oh, no, no, no. You are the commander of all special forces." And he would tell people that, and it would get in the news, right? And I'd get a phone call, and I go, "I didn't tell him that." He probably knew he was getting in trouble. He's like, "Ah, commander of all special forces." Well, he was, he was a wild man. Always had been a wild man.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  If there's one guy that you wanted in, because Orsgan Province was, you know, I mean, it was full of Taliban, it was full of Al Qaeda, and we needed a guy like that to go up there and, you know, clean house. But the way he was cleaning house and the way that, you know, it was acceptable in the international community was two different things. And so, we had to keep a very close eye on that. But nonetheless, he gets there, and he goes, "All right, I'm gonna need some furniture." So he starts going in the rooms, and he starts going, "I want that, I want that, I want that." And he goes into Mullah Omar's office. And I wasn't with him, but one of the guys was in there, and he comes running over to

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  me, and he goes, "Sir, you gotta get over here." He goes, "The guy that we just let out of jail, he's going to the bathroom on top of Mullah Omar's desk." And I go, "What?" And I go in there, and he left a mess on top of that desk. And that was his... Just what he felt he needed to do. And then he told Karzai, "I'm on my way to Ors gun province. When I get to Tarancat, I'll let you go, I'll let you know and we'll start clearing that place out." And, you know, Karzai put governors in Ors gun province, Zabul province, Farah province,

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Nimruz province, Helmand province. Helmand was the one that we got the largest number of Taliban, Al Qaeda and operational Russian equipment out of. And we had to negotiate that, right? We had to negotiate that with the Taliban leader there that, you know, he wouldn't, you know, he'd be free to go off and do whatever he wanted to do. And, you know, Karzai said, "Yeah, I don't care." And Sharzai was the governor of Kandahar. Now, the governor of Kandahar is the senior governor in the south. That's just how it works out. Wields a lot of power, even though you have governors in all the other provinces.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  So, he pretty much laid down the law and, you know, organized things and, slow but surely, you know, we started seeing security in southern Afghanistan just, you know, shape up and then...

• 1:15:16Jocko Willink?

  And how long did you stay in Afghanistan for?

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Uh, for that first rotation? From November to March and then, uh, the...

• 1:15:28Jocko Willink?

  So you left in March of 2002?

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:15:31Jocko Willink?

  Had the governors been put in position yet?

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, they were all put in position in December, yeah.

• 1:15:35Jocko Willink?

  So at that point, there's a pretty good, it looks, it's looking pretty good at this point?

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  It looks real good. It looks real good. They're doing it the Afghan way. Um, and, uh, and the airfield in Kandahar was something that we wanted to secure, uh, so that we could, you know, use it to bring in and bring out, you know, supplies and stuff like that, so...

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  General Mattis, one-star general at the time, the Marines got that mission. And so their operational area was really confined to Kandahar Airfield. And then we had the Siege Sotif North up in Uzbekistan. And then Commodore Harwood came in to do Siege Sotif South, Kandahar. And he worked side-by-side with General Mattis.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  And we were in Kandahar and our sole advise and assist responsibilities centered around Shirzai at this time because Karzai had gone up to be the interim prime minister up in Kabul. And so, everything that we did, we did through, with and by Karzai, or Shirzai, in coordination with Siege Sotif North, who was C2-ing us. And then Commodore Harwood, who was C2-ing a separate direct action unit out of the Kandahar Airfield.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  And we got this task list from SIFLIC, right? The Combined Forces, anyways, it was a three-star headquarters, right? And so, it was about 180 different places they wanted to go to. And that was our tasking, to go do that. We had to get that done, so.

• 1:17:49Jocko Willink?

  When you say "go to," what do you mean "go to"?

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Like, they thought it was places that had intel or had bad guys in it. And all 180 of them were dry holes.

• 1:17:59Jocko Willink?

  Like towns or villages or like actual target packages?

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  Targets, right. Without the target packages. It was just a location and we think there's something there. But the places that...

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  All 180 of them were dry holes, but the places that we got all the computers and all the stuff that Osama bin Laden was working on and Muammar was working on were given to us by the Afghans that were on the ground. Hey, they worked out of that one. They worked out of that one. They worked out of this one. And we would get a call saying, hey, we got Al Qaeda there. See, that's where it became tricky because Taliban were Afghans. So you get them and they either switched sides or they didn't switch sides, right? And if they didn't switch sides, well, you know, the Afghans would deal with them through Afghan law, right, and custom, whatever. Al Qaeda, different story.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  They were Arabs and we had to be very, very careful because there was only one fate for them if they got in the hands of the Afghans who had been, families had been killed and tortured and so on and so forth. And I didn't have any real love for them, right? So that was a, whenever we got a report in saying, there's Al Qaeda, suspected Al Qaeda guy, we would go, boom. And we would take, we would take them into what I would call protective custody, right? And then we would move them by our own means to be interrogated and by, you know, coalition

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  side of the house, right? And so, I mean, that's, that's the kind of difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda at the time, there on the ground and how they were just, you know, dealt with differently. We didn't really worry about the Afghans because they always switched sides, but it was the, it was the Al Qaeda because they were from Oman, they were from Saudi Arabia, they were from Pakistan, they were from some other place, right? Not welcome. No, they were not welcome. And, you know, one of the worst places to go when we first got there was the soccer field because that's where all the hangings, the beheadings and the stoning of women took

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  place. I mean, stoning women and the killing of children for flying a kite.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  We handed out thousands of kites when we got down there. Cause they're huge kite flying folks. They have competitions, you know, where they attack each other with the kites, you know? It's just like this huge thing. Anyways, um, they loved it, right? We got them their music. We got them things to play with their music. We established businesses. One of the, one of the first businesses that we established was a woman's laundry. And then we used it to clean our own stuff because by the time we got to...

• 1:20:59Jocko Willink?

  Strategic thinking right there.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  By the time we got to Kandahar, we stunk, right? I mean, it was pretty bad. So anyways, we, we did that, but I'll never forget. I was on, it was four, four o'clock in the morning. I was up on the Kandahar Governor's Mansion and I was doing my, had my night vision goggles. And I got my Afghan partner with me. And to keep them awake, all you had to do was give them the goggles, cause it was like, cause it was amazing to them, right? It was amazing to them to see that technology and they could see, cause they'd go, and then they'd go back down, right? And I know you can't see me on the radio, but I mean, it, it, you know, it's just, is what it is. But I'm up there and I see the bakery that we had established, you know?

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  And the guy goes in for work and he gets in there and he starts opening up. And that's where we got our bread every morning and that naan bread, that football shaped bread. It was warm, it was delicious. By that time, we were getting peanut butter and jelly sent to us. My wife sent me a tub of marshmallow because I'm from New Hampshire. Fluff and Nutters are really good, right? Peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches. So I was looking forward to it, but I'm watching this guy and I go, oh, there he is, you know, um, doing his thing. Well, he, he starts, you know, he gets the dough all done and he gets in the bowl with his feet and starts kneading it.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  And I'm like, no, I did not just see that, right?

• 1:22:30Jocko Willink?

  You can't unsee it now.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  And I'm like, and I know what his feet look like, right? And I'm thinking to myself, it's done. I, I can't eat bread again, right? And we go get the bread and I'm sitting down and battalion commander's sitting there and I'm watching the guys. And I go, alright guys, I gotta tell you.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  I gotta tell you, this is what I saw today. I gotta share this with you. I hope I don't ruin it for anybody.

• 1:22:58Jocko Willink?

  You're morally obligated to share this with your guys.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  I gotta share it with them, and I did. And they looked at me and they go, "I don't give a f-"

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  I'm eating this bread. And he goes, "The brick oven burned it all off." And I go, "I can't get there. I can't get there." Right? So it kinda ruined it for me, but anyways, it's good.

• 1:23:21Jocko Willink?

  So by the time you leave for the first time in March, you know, it looked like things are going pretty, as good as you could want them to go. 2002, when do you get back there again?

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  So, you know, it was interesting. I get selected to be the 5th Special Forces Group S3. So I get bumped up from the battalion, go up to the group level. And we're now, of course, sustaining operations. Well, it had gone to a different group, so we didn't have to worry about Afghanistan anymore at 5th Group, because we didn't have anybody there. Because it was 3rd Group. But then we got the warning order for Iraq. So we start planning Iraq. And then I get called into my group commander's office. He says, "Hey, you just got by name requested to go do an interview to be the Secretary of the Army's aide."

• 1:24:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh, joy.

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  I go, "Sir, I just got the job that I've always wanted. Group S3." I mean, it doesn't get any better than that in a Special Forces Group, right? In my mind, anyways. And I was like, "Sir, I don't want to do that." And he goes, "Well, you don't have a choice." And he goes, "And you better not blow it. Because we need an SF guy at that level. It's never happened before. So we need you there, right? We need you there. So you go there and you do the best you can. If you don't get picked, don't worry about it. But don't sabotage it."

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  So I go there and Tom White is the secretary and I do my interview and

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  I'm sitting at home and I get a call. It's Tom White. Don,

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  you're gonna be my aide. You got two weeks to get here.

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  And I go, holy crap. So I call my boss and I tell him and he goes, yeah, congratulations. It's great. It's gonna be great for the SF community, blah, blah, blah. It's funny because the entire time I was the aide there, I never got a call from the SF community, not once. But I did what I was told to do and I went there and I was the aide for Tom White and what a great experience that was.

• 1:25:38Jocko Willink?

  How long did you do it for?

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  What a great, one year. That's all you get, right? And then you move on and then, so that's...

• 1:25:46Jocko Willink?

  What year was that that you were the aide?

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  2000, June of 2002 to June of 2003.

• 1:25:52Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  Right? And then

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  I went...

• 1:25:57Jocko Willink?

  What did you, before you jump into where you went next, what did you, you know, you said it was a great experience. I was fortunate enough,

• 1:26:05Jocko Willink?

  you know, as fortunate as you can get when you become an aide. I was fortunate enough to be the aide for, for the SEAL Admiral, Admiral McGuire and definitely was...

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  I loved him.

• 1:26:14Jocko Willink?

  He's a great guy, great guy. But I was very lucky that I was able to do that job because I got to see a lot and got to understand what was happening and understand how these high-level decisions were made and see a little bit into the future. What was it from, from your experience, what did you see that, what did you learn that was important?

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  Well, all of what you just learned. But more importantly, I learned how all the, you know, how these decisions are made inside the, the political level, right? From the top. And all these things that are done. So when I got back to the tactical level, I could explain to the guys what's going on at the strategic level. And although... Although they may not like it, at least I had a familiarity and an understanding and be able to explain to them what's going on in the whole process and why we're sitting here, you know, waiting to be ordered to go do something or what have you. But I learned how the Army worked. They didn't know how the Army worked, right?

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  And a lot of us go through hell. There's a lot of guys that get promoted to general officer and they don't even know how the Army works, right? Because they've never been in a job that taught them how the Army works. It's just a matter of... So, you know, there I am, you know, I'm the, you know, battle buddy of the Secretary of the Army, you know? And he depends on me for everything, right? And it was just a phenomenal opportunity to learn how the Army works and how the Army fits into the larger service and how the Joint Chiefs of Staff works and, you know, how all these things go.

• 1:27:52Speaker 01

  And so, you know, I did not want to leave the Group S3 job at all. I just, you know, I didn't want to. And when I got asked the question by Secretary White, you know, "Do you want to be the aide? Do you want this job?" And my answer was, "Sir, I'll be honored to serve as an aide, but I'd rather be the Fifth Special Forces Group S3." Jack. And I was told later that's why I got the job, because everybody else they interviewed wanted to be the aide. And I didn't. So they gave it to the guy that didn't want it. Yeah. And I went there and I gave them 110%, like I would do any job.

• 1:28:37Speaker 01

  If they made me the floor sweeper, I'd be the best damn sweat floor in Army, right? That's just the way it goes, right? You just go do whatever job they give you and do it to the best of your ability and then, you know, good things will happen. And so... I did that and then I went over to, I got picked up for lieutenant colonel and I got picked up for battalion command, first battalion, third group, and I had to do some joint time. So, I went over and I worked for, I was the executive officer for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low intensity conflict. So then I got to see how the OSD worked, right? And how all of that went. And I always like to say how it works and doesn't work, right?

• 1:29:21Speaker 01

  Cause there's both sides of the coin, right? But it is good. Excellent experience and I met some really great people there that I have relationships with to this day. But, that was three, June of 2003, and then I went and took command of fifth special forces group, first battalion, third special forces group, the Desert Eagles. And we did two back-to-back tours to Afghanistan there. And, that was, that was awesome.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  One of the only battalions that ever did back-to-back tours, it's just the way it worked out. So we went there for nine months, came back for six, went back for another nine months. And then I went up to USASOC headquarters.

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  The, the amount of continuity, you know, it's one thing that when you compare, let's say, world war two with either the end of Korean war or the Vietnam war, where you have guys coming on tour, they're gonna do a year and then they're gonna leave. And that's, that's that. That's almost a continuity, when you do nine months there, six months home, and then nine months back there, you start to get some real continuity. What, what did you see in that deployment, or those two deployments? You get to see like a bigger arc of the story.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:30:47Jocko Willink?

  With, with a better thread through it.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  So we really saw the, the reemergence and the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in 2005 when we got there. May of 2005 is when we got there.

• 1:31:02Jocko Willink?

  Now, now, obviously 2003, I think I might've cut you off when you were about to say this before, but 2003, things are looking...

• 1:31:11Jocko Willink?

  About as good as we could hope in Afghanistan, the war kicks off in Iraq. That means people are, you know, American soldiers, resources are now pouring into Iraq. That sort of becomes the focus. And, and that allows over in Afghanistan where we had had a big presence. Now all of a sudden that's drawn down. Now all of a sudden the, you know, Al Qaeda and the Taliban start to see opportunities.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:31:37Jocko Willink?

  And so when you roll back in, it's now 2005.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:31:41Jocko Willink?

  And now they've taken advantage of some of these opportunities.

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  They have taken advantage of the opportunities, yeah. And I'll never forget September 11th, 2005.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  I was on a hilltop with Charlie Company Commander. And in the Kandahar Province. And there were 1,500 wave after wave of Taliban fighters coming at us.

• 1:32:22Speaker 01

  It was unbelievable. September 11th, 2005, that was, that was.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  I'd been, you know, I mean, 2011.

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  I mean, September 11th, 2001, wasn't that long ago, right? And you're right. I mean, we had, it looked good in 2002, 2003 and 4. We didn't have the resources that we needed, but we were still doing nation building. We were still building an army. We were still building the police. We were putting together their justice system. We were putting together their constitution, so on and so forth. All that was working, but there wasn't anybody to keep the pressure on them, right? And so they were surged. And so we saw the brunt of that in Kandahar Province in, in 2000, 2005, September 11th. Operation Medusa.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  And, you know, it was a big operation.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  And it was just unbelievable what was going on during that timeframe in terms of, you know, enemy capability, capacity, strength, numbers. And it wasn't just southern Afghanistan, which is where my battalion was. It was in the north, it was in the east. You know, predominantly at that time in the east, we were on the border, right? Wow, that was just incredible, right? So it's going on all over the place.

• 1:33:55Jocko Willink?

  Right. You know, when you talked earlier, you mentioned that, you know, we were helping them. We were writing their constitution. We were setting up their government. And there's a, you know, when I talk about leadership a lot, which I do, I talk about what happens when you try and impose your plan onto your subordinates, onto your team. You impose your plan onto them. Look, you can kind of get away with it sometimes, depending on the authority that you have, depending on the amount of leadership capital that you have, depending on how much oversight you're allowed to kind of sit there. And if you're going to impose their plan, a plan on them, and then you have the tenacity and the, and the ability to sort of continue to put the

• 1:34:36Jocko Willink?

  pressure on them, then maybe, maybe you can pull it off. But it's much better from a leadership perspective to say, hey, Don, you know, here's this mission. How do you want to do it? And kind of let you come up with a plan. It seems like America has a tendency to want to impose, you know, our way onto countries, whether it's Vietnam, the Vietnam thing, the way that unfolded, and the way we tried to sort of impose what we wanted it to look like. And the Vietnamese don't like that. They, they've fought against that forever. And they've never been beaten. And so they weren't going to be beaten. And, and it wasn't that they didn't like what we

• 1:35:21Jocko Willink?

  were saying. It's just that they wanted to say what they wanted to say. So, so, you know, here we are with the Afghans doing a little bit, doing some imposition on them.

• 1:35:32Jocko Willink?

  And, and the way that turns out, it's sort of like from a leadership perspective, if you don't have the, the constant pressure to say, nope, nope, this is exactly what I want you to do, and I have the, the tenacity and the leadership capital and the resources to kind of make you do it, which again, this isn't ideal.

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35:48Jocko Willink?

  How do you think we find ourselves in a situation where we, we seem to make that, that seems to be our tendency to want to impose our, our way, our plan onto other, onto other people?

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  Well, to your point, I mean, it just, it doesn't work out well, right? And, and the way we had set it up there was the US was doing the military, the Germans were doing the police, the Italians were doing the justice system. And then there was this collective body that was writing the constitution. And we factored out one of the most important things that goes in a constitution or a, or a document, whatever they choose to call it, that establishes their, their government and how their government is going to govern in a Muslim country, and that is, they don't separate church and state, right? And that was one of the big mistakes of that document, right?

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  And then we named the government for them as well, which, you know, they didn't like either. So, on, once they got it turned over to them, they made, you know, Karzai went in, they made, they made the changes, right? And we were building a top-down Western government, police and military force, which isn't culturally the way they do things, right?

• 1:37:08Jocko Willink?

  It's very decentralized.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  Very decentralized.

• 1:37:11Jocko Willink?

  And we're trying to centralize it.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  And we're trying to centralize it from Kabul down, and they don't do that either. You know, their political system is very democratic to begin with. It's, it's shuras and jurgas, and it's local, and it's consent among the tribal elders and the village elders, which are, which are different, right? Because you have the tribal elders, and they may not be the elected village elders, right? But they still work together and they understand. And then they have a pecking order of... The tribes. And so when stuff goes, when stuff is available, the tribes get their fair share. Based off of where they sit in the pecking order. And they're okay with this. But we don't like that a lot of times, right?

• 1:37:54Speaker 01

  Because we want the minority one to get the stuff. But they're okay with the stuff they get because it's good enough, right? So, we went in and we mucked all that up, right? Because we just aren't familiar with the tribes.

• 1:38:10Jocko Willink?

  It's almost like we're too idealistic about the way we think things are gonna be. I remember a very similar example. We had these young Iraqi soldiers. And the officers were skimming their paychecks. And, you know, my guys come to me, they're, you gotta, they're skimming the paychecks of these young enlisted guys. So I start talking to my interpreters. And I go, hey, what's going on? Can you help us? You know, I want to understand what's happening. He's like, of course they are. The soldiers know that. That's their boss. And he's gonna take a little piece. That's the way it works. That's fine. So, us going in and trying to impose what we have this ideal of the way things should be, doesn't always match up culturally and it turns into a problem.

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  Yes. And that's exactly what, you know, I mean, the same thing happened in Afghanistan, right? And we were obligated to fix it, which puts us in a position we don't have any real authority to fix, right? They're not gonna listen to us. They're still gonna skim it. They're still gonna do their thing. They'll just figure out a different way to do it. And although we see that as bad, I'm not saying it's good. I'm saying it's just the way it is, right? And over time, these things will change, like we saw in Afghanistan. Right now, the ambassador to the United States in Afghanistan is a woman. Never would have been that way in 2001, or 5, or 10. But in 20, it's a woman. That's great. That's progress.

• 1:39:36Speaker 01

  They'll figure it out, right? They have a great university system that they figured out. And it's one of the things we really didn't get involved in.

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  And it works, right? And I don't mean that, that everything we did was terrible, because obviously it wasn't. But when you start getting involved in a country's institutions, and you start getting involved in their culture and their society, and you're an outsider, it's never gonna be received well, and you're probably gonna, you know, trample over something that you should just, you know, just stay away from. But the good things will happen as they, you know, continue to move forward. And another thing, that a lot of people in the villages, they didn't want to go from the 7th century to the 21st century, right? They didn't want to. They were very happy being in the 7th century.

• 1:40:30Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, one of the things that I would always tell folks that would, would come to, you know, to do humanitarian work in Afghanistan, I say, "Don't give them coats, don't give them shoes. They don't want that. All they're gonna do, they're gonna smile at you, they're gonna say, 'Thank you so much.'" They'll even have kids running around with this stuff on. But as soon as you leave, the kids are taking it off, putting on their sandals, you know. They wear sandals, you know, even in the wintertime, right? They're not gonna put on winter boots, they're just not gonna do it. But they're gonna take those winter boots, and they're gonna put them on trucks, and they're gonna go to Pakistan, and they're gonna sell them, and then they're gonna come back home. Because they don't have any use for them. What they have use for is paper, pencils, and school products, and things along those

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  lines, that they, that they will use, and they won't go sell, because they want their kids to be able to draw, they want their kids to be able to write, they want them to be able to, you know, so, stop giving them Converse sneakers. You know, it's, they're not gonna, you know, they're not gonna wear them, you're not gonna see basketball courts break out, you know. They want soccer balls, and they'll play soccer barefoot. And they'll outrun us, right? In their bare feet. So, let's just, you know, I think it's, you know, to your point, right? I mean, it- You know, it kinda is, it's kinda is what it is. And, and, uh, our guys would see it, because our guys would stay there, and, you know,

• 1:41:57Speaker 01

  all the boots and the shoes and the jackets and, you know, they don't wear hooded sweatshirts, you know, give them blankets, right? They're not gonna sport a hooded jacket with a hood on it in the middle of, uh, the Afghan villages. They stick out like a sore thumb, it's not what they wear, right? So, you know, they like cooking equipment, you give them cooking equipment, they make, they make a great stew, um, you know, um, you might pay for it, for a few days, if, if you eat it on our stomach, right? And the other thing that we were doing was, we were introducing medical supplies that

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  were causing more harm than good, because we needed the medical supplies, because the way we grew up and live in America, our immune system is much different than what they look. And I used to tell stories, I used to tell a doctor, we'd get an Afghan in with a head injury, right, and a bullet wound through the head, right? And the guy, uh, he's expectant, and I go, "Oh, no, I wouldn't be so sure, please don't call him expectant, this is an Afghan, they have incredible healing, um, they're just the way it is." I get a call from the doctor the next day, "Hey, Don, you're never gonna believe this, the guy's sitting up, spouting all kinds of things in, in, you know, Pashto." And I go, "Well, of course he is, he's an Afghan."

• 1:43:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that might have put down an American soldier, but not an Afghan, that's just the way they are, so please, you know, I would, I used to go over when our, when our Afghan partners would come in and I would make sure, I'd say, "Please," and I'd have my medics there and I'd say, "Just watch this guy, because they're gonna say expectant." And we know that he might not be, sometimes, yes, most of the time, no. Uh, and, you know... They just have a different constitution because of the way they have to, you know, operate and if we bring in all of our amenities, we weaken them and we make them more susceptible to getting sick and dying.

• 1:44:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's not their way of life.

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  It's not their way of life and they don't want it, right? You know, they do have their idea of medical care, so don't exceed it, right? Just come up to it, bring it back, bring the doctor back, bring the nurse back, bring those skills back that the Taliban had attrited down to nothing and that's what they need.

• 1:44:29Jocko Willink?

  So those two deployments back to back, that's 2000, was it 2006, 2007?

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  So it was 2005 to 6 and 6 to 7, yeah.

• 1:44:41Jocko Willink?

  And those, so what type of operations were your guys doing? Cause now you were the battalion, first battalion commander of 3rd Special Force. What operations were you guys, were your guys doing?

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  So we were doing, we were assisting the Afghan National Army at the time with, you know, shaping and clearing operations, right? And then we'd wanna put, we'd wanna hold that area in a way that we hadn't been holding it before, so we introduced kind of the hold, cause it used to be shape it, go clear it and then leave and then they'd come back in. So let's hold it, let's figure out a way to hold it. And that's where the first ideas about bottom up security came into play in 2005, 6 and 7.

• 1:45:31Jocko Willink?

  So you're, so you're setting up, was it Afghan police, was it local police?

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  The idea of Afghan local police, right, came in there. And at that time, we were just calling them the Arbikai, right? And we had the support of the-

• 1:45:45Jocko Willink?

  And Arbikai means like, security, local security?

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it means their local security, so like, back in the day when they were fighting Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan and the Brits and the Russians.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  The Kabul, the king of Afghanistan, wouldn't send down national troops to deal with the problem. He would organize local, al-baqais. And the village elders and the tribal elders, they'd go and they'd get their weapons out of their, you know, out of their huts, and they, mud huts, and they would come and they would report. And they would defend Afghanistan.

• 1:46:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  And that's how they would do it.

• 1:46:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's so many similarities, you know, from, from my experience in Iraq and, and in 2006 in, in the city of Ramadi. The, when the, the army came in, look, the army worked hard. They, when the Iraqi army came in, they worked hard, they, they sacrificed greatly, they fought hard. They were a bunch of Shia, going into a Sunni city. And that right there, you're already starting off on the wrong foot. I mean, and that's not even putting, that's putting it extremely mildly. To say you're starting off on the wrong foot. You, you deal with people that have a history of killing each other. And so you've got the strong Shia army coming into the Sunni city. And look,

• 1:47:12Jocko Willink?

  the Sunnis inside Ramadi realized, look, they're after al-Qaeda, they're after these insurgents, they're after these foreign fighters. So we were able to, to get through it. But it wasn't until the, the, the sons of Iraq and the Iraqi police, the local, the local Sunni tribesmen, tribal leaders, the sheik said, you know what? We want to defend our own city, let us put our tribe, let us put our tribesmen in the police force. That's what we did. And then it was a game changer. Because now you had the local tribal leader had his tribesmen with police uniforms on, authorized by him, saying, yep, we're, we don't want bad guys here.

• 1:47:53Jocko Willink?

  And the local populace is going, yep, that's, that's our tribe. And there's several tribes there, multiple tribes, but they all agreed that that's what needed to happen. So this idea of, you know, decentralized command, but also this idea of, hey, the people that are on the ground that are from there, they know who's good and who's bad. And the local populace is going to support the neighborhood kids that are now neighborhood police. And that's just, it's, we were lucky enough to kind of watch that unfold. I was lucky enough to watch that unfold and, and see those, the, what they called the sons of Iraq. And it was interesting too, because... In Iraq, there had been, there had been, out in Al-Qa'im, the Marine Corps had pushed through Al-Qa'im.

• 1:48:36Jocko Willink?

  And when they did it, there was a bunch of locals going, "Hey, there's bad guys in that building over there." And so the Marines said, "Hey, you know what? Let's organize these guys." And they made this, this thing called Desert Protector, which was, "Hey, if you're a local and you want to help us out, cool, you can join this program called Desert Protector." And they started this and it was working pretty well. Well, when Maliki got elected, all of a sudden, he looks out at Al-Anbar Province, and they got all these Desert Protectors out there, and he goes, "Wait a second. Now I got a bunch of random rogue, uh, security forces running around. I can't have that. I can't, I can't have that." So he shut it down. Which, which was not a great move.

• 1:49:18Jocko Willink?

  But you can see from his perspective, he doesn't want a bunch of rogue, paramilitary units running around. But we were able to convince the, the sheikhs in Ramadi, because they were asking, "We want to do Desert Protector. We want to do that." We were able to say, "Look, we, we can't do Desert Protectors, not around anymore, but you can be Iraqi policemen. You can be local, and we'll help you train." And that's what we did. So what you're talking about is very similar, very similar.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, well, you know, I mean, as you pointed out, the, the cultures are, you know, very similar, uh, in the way they approach things. And there's the principles that really work and apply from one place to the other. The techniques and the tactics and the approach might require adjustment. But nonetheless, the standard principles remain the same, and that, and that's what you're talking about. And I think that one of the biggest things that we saw in 2005 to 2007 was that this bottom-up approach has merit over a top-down approach, right? Although there are aspects of the top-down approach that you still need to apply.

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  But really, if you're talking about security and safeguarding a population, and making that area, an area that the enemy can't operate in.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  That's gonna be the way that you need to go. And from 2007, five to seven, we learned that. But the other thing that we learned was during this timeframe, you know, the US, you know, transitioned the mission to NATO. And that's when it became a full-fledged NATO operation. And a very good friend of mine, Dave Fraser, who's written a book about Afghanistan and about his time there during this time, took over. That's when they went from O6s, Colonels, and in some cases Navy Captains, commanding the regional commands, you know, north, south, east and west, in Afghanistan, to general officer-level headquarters.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  And Dave came in, he was a Canadian special ops guy, who I had had a relationship with, a really, really good guy. And when we got into Afghanistan, he said, hey, I need you to come over here, I need to talk to you about, you know, what we're gonna do and how we're gonna do this, because we got a problem. And Warren, we came in here to do peacekeeping operations. And although it's not a popular thing to say, my assessment is, is that we're fighting an insurgency, and a deadly one. And he knew that that was our assessment as well. Our intel guys and everybody had the same assessment, going in there from 1st Battalion, 3rd Group,

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  and our group headquarters up north. So anyways, he called me in and we said, well, I think we can come up with an operation using the Afghan National Security Forces to come up into this district, Panjowei, and take over this stronghold of insurgents. Right. And so, we went back, we did some planning. We came back and briefed him. And so what Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, got the mission. And it was a...

• 1:52:50Speaker 01

  Instead of coming at them from, you know, Kandahar Province, you know, directly, or Helmand Province where they expect you to come, we went all the way down south into the Regg Desert, which is the Red Desert. Now, when you fly in southern Afghanistan and you're flying, you know, east to west or west to east, there's the Regg Desert that heads all the way down into Pakistan and it's nothing but desert. And then there's a distinct line that goes into the built-up areas and the green areas and so on and so forth. And it's just so blatant. Nobody goes down there. Only Bedouins go down there.

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  So, we did our infiltration in the Panjowai District that way. It took three days. We did. Vehicle recovery operation, I mean, it was ugly, right? But we got there. And completely surprised the Taliban in Panjowai. And it was a huge victory. So we routed them up and then, um, my guys were up for over ninety-six hours straight. Me and my command sergeant major went in. Once we took, um, Panjowai District, and this is where I told you earlier, we got up on top of the hill and saw, saw all the Taliban coming. It was unbelievable.

• 1:54:14Speaker 01

  Well, anyways, once we got control of that situation, our guys, my, those guys hadn't slept for ninety-six hours and I called my headquarters and I said, "Hey, I'm gonna stay, Sergeant Major and I are gonna stay here overnight, so cancel the CH-47 coming to get us." And so we did that. And I knew if I had told my guys that the sergeant major and I were gonna pull the entire night shift so they could sleep, I would've got a bunch of pushback, right? "No, sir, you're not gonna be pulling guard." Yeah, yeah. So I just kept my mouth shut. And I said, "Hey, I'll take first watch." And they go, "Oh, you don't have to do that." And I go, "No, I'll take first watch." Well, these guys went down hard. And the sergeant major and I just stayed up all night.

• 1:54:57Speaker 01

  Well, about two o'clock in the morning, my company commander, Jared Hill, comes out. He goes, "Sir, what the hell's going on? It's two o'clock in the morning, I was supposed to have shift, you know, I, I slept through it, I'm sorry." I go, "No, no, no. We got this. Go back to bed. We're good." And he didn't argue with me. He went back to bed. Uh, and, um, uh...

• 1:55:20Speaker 01

  None of them had to pull shift. It was just me and the Sard major. And we did radio watch and did the whole thing and we called in all the, all the times, right? And, and that was that. And, uh, these guys got up. Not only did I have that, but I also had the helicopter come in with hot chow. Right? Hot breakfast. Right? And so, I said, "You guys, get your hot breakfast and the Sard major and I will hand it back over to you and, you know, you got it." Right? And, um, you know, it was just amazing what these guys had done.

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  General Fraser in his book writes today about our guys and he says, "They saved the NATO mission because if we didn't have these special ops guys to do this, we would have been routed by the Taliban and it would have been a huge political nightmare for NATO." First Battalion, Third Group, my guys, got awarded, for the first time, the, um, equivalent of the Canadian Presidential Unit Citation. The only foreign military in the history of the Canadian military to get that award.

• 1:56:44Speaker 01

  And they got that award and it sits in the battalion headquarters at Fort Bragg proudly. And, you know, they sent down their, their equivalent to their Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Fort Bragg and all the guys got, got it pinned on him. It took him, uh, four years to get it approved, but he didn't quit and he finally got it approved. And I was, I was just getting out of the War College at that time. It was 2009 when the, when they, when they did the award. And I was just so proud to see these guys get the award and do, do their thing. But, um, yeah, it was, I mean, and, and that, that's really what...

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  What kinda got us thinking and you know who got thinking? General McChrystal. And when he came in in 2010 to take over. He was all about bottom up, all about it. And then when General Petraeus came in to take over for him, oh, he loved village stability operations and Afghan local police and.

• 1:57:49Jocko Willink?

  So when you, before we get into that, so you get done with your battalion commander tour, 2007, something like that?

• 1:57:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, July of 2007.

• 1:58:00Jocko Willink?

  And you change command and then you go to war college?

• 1:58:02Speaker 01

  Uh, yep, I go up to USASOC headquarters for, uh, from, from basically August to, uh, May of 2008 and I get selected for the war college and I go off to the war college. But another great opportunity, when I went to our three-star headquarters, which is a place nobody wants to go, but you know, you go there, I got put in the, to be the deputy G8 and the deputy, what the G8 does in that headquarters is, they do, they do all the combat developments and the resources and the budget and, you know, all that stuff. And so I learned that.

• 1:58:46Speaker 01

  And then I learned how USASOC not only fits into SOCOM and how we compete for resources there, but also how we compete for resources in the army and how our tier one guys, how they get all their resources and how the Rangers get all their resources and everybody, and so that was huge, right? And so I was right in the middle of that process because we were right in the middle of, of doing all of that, uh, for the next five years. And I got put in charge of, um, of the movement of 7th Group from Fort Bragg to Destin, Florida

• 1:59:29Speaker 01

  for their new headquarters and setting that up and what that would look like. And although not perfect. We really, really did create an optimal special forces group headquarters with all the ranges and all the things associated with it, so they could do all the levels of training right there. And what you learn about working with communities and briefing communities, because there's noise things and noise studies and this, that, and housing issues, and, you know, is there going to be enough housing, you know, how's this all gonna, I mean, it was just unbelievable, right? So that was another part, you know, like I told you before with the Secretary of the

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Army and then working at ASD and then the Joint Staff and all that, all coming together, really gave me tremendous insight on, on how USASOC, you know, United States Army Special Operations Command works. And again, we got a lot of guys that make very senior ranks and don't have any idea how that works because they don't get the opportunity to go there. And that was because I come out of battalion command, I get selected for the War College, and it's like, oh, now what the hell are we gonna do with them, right? They had no place for me, right? And they said, "Report to USASOC headquarters and they'll have a job." And I originally was gonna be in the G3, but then I got stuck, I got moved over to the

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  G8 because an old boss of mine was the, was the USASOC G8, Jeffrey Putz, and he goes, "Oh, no, no. I want him." Right? "He's a farm boy, he gonna work his ass off for me, right? And, uh, and he may not like it, but he's gonna do it." And so, boom, so I went there and, yeah, it was great, great, really great experience, uh, learning how that works.

• 2:01:18Jocko Willink?

  And then what'd you study at War College?

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  So I went to the War College and I just studied that, you know, their curriculum, and you get a master's degree in Strategic Studies. So I was like, "Oh, this is great," right? So I, I've, I've worked at the strategic level, right, in three different assignments, uh, and I've worked at the operational level, and now I'm gonna go and I'm gonna get an education, uh, in the, uh, in, in Strategic Studies. And so it really, it, it brought together the job experience and then an education and kinda meshed that together for me. Uh, I got a business degree when I went to...

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  Command and General Staff College. Because I, I'm like, you know what? When I take over a unit, it, it can shoot, move and communicate like nobody's business. Right? But god, do we suck at admin, budget. You know, all that stuff that nobody likes to do and they're not comfortable doing it. So I ended up, you know, I got a business degree. Cause I thought that, that's what officers do, right? And so, learning how to run a business? I said, you know, that's gonna help me out. And it did, right? So I had the business thing going for me and then I had the, got, you know, got to the war college.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  Um, Carlisle and, and that was just a great experience there as well. And, um, uh, but I learned one thing at the war college. It's not necessarily the war college and what you learn there. It's winning the Jim Thorpe Sports Event. Where all the war colleges come to the Army War College and you compete, right? In a variety of different sporting events. And

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  the Army has only lost it twice. Who'd they lose it to? In the history of, they usually lose it to the Navy War College. Huh. The What are the events? The National War College, their teams are so small, right? Cause the school is so small, they get their butts kicked all the time. But the Army War College and, you know, you got the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, uh, the Coast Guard Academy. You know, you got all those guys that come down, uh, and it's a, it's three days of feats of strength. Right? And I, I loved it. Uh, and, and you, you play all these sports, right? During the war college.

• 2:03:54Speaker 01

  Only so that the coaches of the different teams in the Jim Thorpe Sports Competition can draft their athletes.

• 2:04:05Speaker 01

  And then you start training in January after the first of the year. You get put on a team and then you train all the way up to uh uh May when they have the event.

• 2:04:21Jocko Willink?

  What what what event did you do?

• 2:04:23Speaker 01

  I I was in the uh eight hundred meter relay and the five mile run. And um we won both those events. Um we had a ringer. We had a uh.

• 2:04:39Jocko Willink?

  Some guy with a three fifty seven mile or something.

• 2:04:42Speaker 01

  We had a a guy on on our team. He was a Marine on our relay team. Who was a um you know, division one uh relay national champion. Uh on a team, right?

• 2:04:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's not fair.

• 2:04:59Speaker 01

  And and our coach was in the nineteen seventy two Olympics as an eight hundred meter relay guy. And so the coach, you know, so he taught us, you know, how to run, you know, and and how to pace yourself and how to do it. Yeah, it was a blowout. Uh it was pretty cool. Uh but I had the um. What leg did I have? I had the first leg. Yeah, that's right. I had the first leg. He even knew how to set up people for the what legs and you know, and he stood right right at the place and he said, turn it on. So as I ran by, he goes, turn it on. And it was you had so much left in you, right?

• 2:05:41Speaker 01

  Even though I was last, I picked everybody off, right? And that was the whole idea of it because people don't get trained in how to run it. They just go, you know, in two laps. Around a track, you know, you're gonna start feeling it, you know?

• 2:05:55Jocko Willink?

  No, I I the eight hundred, which I never did, but I was reading an article about it somewhere along the way. And the eight hundred, they say is like the most painful event. Because, you know, you're running a hundred yards, it's over.

• 2:06:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:08Jocko Willink?

  You, you run, you run a, a mile or a sixteen, or even a marathon. It's at a lower level of intensity.

• 2:06:16Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:06:17Jocko Willink?

  He, and this, this article that I think I read, I think it was an article I read, but it pointed out the fact that there's zero recreational eight hundred meter runners. They don't exist. There's marathon, there's people run marathons, there's people that do little sprint triathlons. There's no one that just guts through eight hundred meters, like for fun. Doesn't happen. Alright, so we wrap with the, uh, Jim Thorpe championship.

• 2:06:42Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:06:43Jocko Willink?

  And it's time for you to go back to work. And your next, your next thing is you go back, do you go back to Afghanistan again?

• 2:06:49Speaker 01

  I do. I go back for Afghanistan again, what proved to be twenty-two months.

• 2:06:54Jocko Willink?

  And this is what, two thousand ten, two thousand eleven?

• 2:06:56Speaker 01

  Two thousand ten. Um, and I go back to Afghanistan as an advisor to the RC South Commander. And at the time, it was a Dutch commander by the name of, uh, of Major General de Kruif. He was a Dutch guy. And we were having some, uh, General McChrystal was concerned about the problems with soft coordination. So, he said, hey, you're gonna take command of Siege Sotaf A, so...

• 2:07:27Jocko Willink?

  So the Siege Sotaf A, that's the, that's a Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan. This is the person that's gonna be in charge of all special operations in Afghanistan?

• 2:07:37Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 2:07:38Jocko Willink?

  And, and you get, you get tasked with that?

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  Outside of the, the tier one guys.

• 2:07:43Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:07:44Speaker 01

  Yep. Uh, tier one guys not included.

• 2:07:46Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:07:47Speaker 01

  So, um, uh, anyways, we, uh, I'm gonna take command of that. That's gonna be my brigade level command opportunity, uh, and I couldn't have been more excited. I have Admiral Olson, uh...

• 2:08:03Speaker 01

  And General Kearney to thank for that.

• 2:08:07Speaker 01

  They're the ones that picked me, so I was, um, had a great relationship with Admiral Olson and General Kearney. General Kearney was then the deputy, the deputy of SOCOM, but before that and during my time as a battalion commander, he was the SOC, Special Operations Command Central Commander as a two-star. So that's how I built that relationship with him. And General Olson, or, excuse me, Admiral Olson, I developed a good relationship with him, and so they picked me for that command. But, there was some time there. So I went to, uh, I said, "Hey, I'll, I'll just go early, right? And I'll, you know, um, do

• 2:08:50Speaker 01

  whatever you need me to do. I'll work on a staff, I'll do whatever, you know, pick staples out of the rugs, I don't care, just, you know, just get in there early and get myself, you know, ready for, uh, you know, the, uh, the command." And they said, "Hey, General McChrystal wants you to go down south and be the Special Operations Liaison, um, to General Decroix, who was not, uh, very happy about the coordination with his headquarters in RC South and the SOF guys." So I went down there and I got myself established and did that. Well, the interesting thing

• 2:09:32Speaker 01

  is General Decroix went to the Army War College. And there's twenty seminars in the Army War College, and you get assigned a seminar. Uh, and there's a twenty-first one, and that's for all the guys deploying out of the War College, whose families stay, right? So my wife was in Seminar Twenty-One when I left. She stayed right there, which was great continuity for her and the kids, because they were there.

• 2:10:03Speaker 01

  My kids wrestled, so one of them wrestled for the high school, so they were. It was just good continuity. And we thought it was only gonna be for a year, uh, but it ended up being for twenty-two months. So, they ended up staying there almost three years, which was really good for them. But, General Decroiff went to the War College, and he was in Seminar Eight. And I was in Seminar Eight, and we called ourselves the Eight Balls. And so, when I went in to introduce myself, and he said, "Where you coming from?" And I said, "The Army War College." He goes, "Oh, I went to the Army War College, too." And I go, "Really? That's great, sir. I mean, I loved it." And he goes, "Oh, I loved it, too. I was in Seminar Eight." And I go, "Well, so was I." And he goes, "No way."

• 2:10:46Speaker 01

  And, and we had the same instructors, the same guys there, so we were able to share that. We were able to share stories about being an Eight Ball, right? And it was automatic, you know, relationship establishment, rapport and everything. And so, all I did was go to his morning meetings, be available for him whenever he needed. Whenever there was operations coming up, I made it sure that they were de-conflicted. And I end up traveling with him everywhere he went in Afghanistan, uh, on his plane. Everywhere he went in the South, that's what he wanted me to do.

• 2:11:24Speaker 01

  And it was, it was like, simple, and General McChrystal was happy 'cause he was not getting any more complaints from the RC South Commander. And, you know, and, and they were valid complaints, I might say, right? I mean, you know how that goes. There's just so much going on, right? And everybody's trying to do the right thing, and they're trying to, they're trying to get it done. And, you know, things slipped, so, nah, they got O-six now, you know, a Colonel there to make sure that doesn't happen. And if it does happen, he got one guy to blame: me.

• 2:11:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:57Speaker 01

  Nobody else. So, it was good. Uh, and, you know, we just tightened that up. And, you know, it wasn't just SOF. You know, it was conventional aside, it was all kinds of, you know, everything's going on. The State Department and what they're doing, and then the, you know, other things going on. So, hey, it just worked.

• 2:12:16Jocko Willink?

  And how long did you do that for?

• 2:12:17Speaker 01

  I did that for, uh, six months.

• 2:12:21Speaker 01

  Uh, let's see, from June to, yeah, June to December, six months.

• 2:12:27Jocko Willink?

  And then after that, you took over the CJ Sodaf?

• 2:12:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went home for two weeks, uh, for a break.

• 2:12:33Jocko Willink?

  Taking a nice vacation.

• 2:12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, two weeks. Went home for two weeks, came back, took command and stayed in command of, um, of the special operations there, uh, you know, the CJ Sodaf A until, um, May of 2011.

• 2:12:51Jocko Willink?

  And this is when, and this is when you started, or at what, at what point did the, did the VSO, the Village Stability Operations, start at, was it at this time?

• 2:13:01Speaker 01

  Yes, so.

• 2:13:02Jocko Willink?

  Cause I remember I was getting ready to, well, I retired in 2010 and I was, I was running training and as I was running training, we were starting to have guys do training missions based on VSO, based on going out and doing tribal engagement and key personnel engagement and going to meet people in villages and having them, how they're gonna set security and all that stuff. We started doing that in 2010, so I, I don't know exactly when it came, came to fruition, but from what, when did it?

• 2:13:34Speaker 01

  So it would have been about April of 2010.

• 2:13:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:13:39Speaker 01

  Um, that it all started coming to fruition because I got there in 2009, I did that, then I took command. Yeah, June of 2009, and then I didn't leave until May of 2011, right? Uh, so it was, it was about that timeframe, um, and, um, you know, it was a, it was a collection of people that were, you know, putting this together, but I happened to be the commander that did the bulk of operationalizing it, which is the hardest thing to do, right? The first guy in the breach, right? Um, you know, it's, it's hard because you got people pushing back against it and you got people that are all for it and,

• 2:14:22Speaker 01

  you know, even though General McChrystal wants it to happen, you know, there's, there's many people there with him that don't want it to happen. And you got the international community and, and even my own community, right? Uh, they were skeptical of it because.

• 2:14:39Speaker 01

  They saw it as a special forces mission, so bringing in Marsoc and bringing in the SEALs to do this kind of mission. They were like, "Hey, that's not their mission, and this is a bad precedent, and this, that, and the other thing." And I'm like, "Hey, but, you know, okay, so give me more ODAs," right? I mean, you know, I came up with a term in the Joint Staff, because everyone was using the word "fungible," right? And I happened to be giving somebody a brief, right? And it was about using special ops, and, you know, we're better when we work together, right? Because we have just, we just are, right? So anyways, I said, and you know, special ops puts the "fun" in "fungible."

• 2:15:20Speaker 01

  You know, because that was the big strategic word at the time, right? And so the more you could show you were fungible, the better off you were. So we're fungible as hell, right? And that's what, that's what we do. So, so anyways, we, yeah, we, we just, you know, came together and did it, and every single, whether it was Marsoc, whether it was, whether it was, you know, their teams or the Navy SEAL teams or the special forces teams, these platforms did really, really well.

• 2:15:58Jocko Willink?

  And just give us a quick brief on the idea of, of the VSOs, of the Village Stability Operations. What was, so if I was an ODA team leader, I was a SEAL platoon leader, what was, what was my mission, what was it going to look like?

• 2:16:10Speaker 01

  So your mission is to go, is to go into, say it's, you know, Kandahar Province, and it's District X, and you're going to go in there and you're going to figure out what is the best village to start a village stability platform, which consists of your team and additional augmentation of intel guys and other things that you're going to need in order to be able to operate there. You're going to go in, you're going to talk to the village elders and the tribal elders, and you're going to figure out where you need to be. Now, they're going to tell you where you need to be, and you're going to go with it. And if it's the wrong place, don't worry about it. We can change it.

• 2:16:51Speaker 01

  So just, just go with the flow, just go in there, they're in charge, they're the guys that are gonna tell us where to go, and over time, you'll figure out if it's the right place or not. And then, working with them, if you gotta change the place, you don't wanna, because what's gonna happen is, they're of this top-down mindset, okay, the US is coming in, and they're gonna come in with a whole bunch of good stuff, and we're gonna be able to take advantage of it. Well, they're gonna realize over time, that we're not coming in there with jack.

• 2:17:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just go talk to the ODAs, and the SEALs, the dudes that are out there in the middle of nowhere.

• 2:17:26Speaker 01

  That's right. And so...

• 2:17:28Jocko Willink?

  Some HESCO barriers, and a freaking sack comment, and a, "Have fun, boys."

• 2:17:32Speaker 01

  Right, and we're not coming in with a, with a big bag of money, and a whole bunch of things, that they're gonna be able to, you know, take advantage of. And then they're gonna realize, wow, holy crap, right? And, but what we are gonna do, is we're gonna come in with the ability to be able to prove to them that they can secure themselves. And we'll develop this Afghan local police program, and they're in charge of nominating the people for this program, so we, we get their fingerprint, their thumbprint, on that guy. And so if that guy does something, it discredits the village elder and the tribal elder. So you're not gonna really get back at it. Now, did we have some problems? Yes, we did, but the problems were minute.

• 2:18:11Speaker 01

  And we started, we started clearing these, you know, clearing and holding these areas, and, with the Afghan local police program, and...

• 2:18:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's based more on relationships that you form with the locals, more than it's based on imposing your will on the locals, which, you can only do that if you've got the strength and the consistency, and to, to do that all the time. Which is, it's impossible.

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  It's impossible.

• 2:18:43Jocko Willink?

  It's impossible.

• 2:18:44Speaker 01

  It's impossible. And so some of the challenges that I was presented with was, hey, you're putting these guys in, in harm's way, they're gonna all get killed, one night... The Taliban is just gonna overrun them. And I said, "Well, I don't think so. Our guys are smarter than that. They're not gonna allow themselves to be overrun. They're gonna keep their finger on the pulse on the intel. We're gonna use the relationships that they have and the Pashtun-Wali code." And people kinda laughed when I said Pashtun-Wali code. Yeah, Pashtun. But it is strong, you know? And it consists of, you know, supporting strangers. It consists of revenge, right? And that's what they basically operate off of.

• 2:19:25Speaker 01

  And they accepted us in and we became their responsibility. And as a result of becoming their responsibility, they didn't let anything happen to our guys. Now, did we get guys injured and did guys get killed? Yeah, but that was in combat operations. And they died right along with us, right? It's just combat operations are combat operations. But did we ever get overrun? No. And this was in the middle of the time where you saw conventional outposts being overrun, right? And, you know, all over Afghanistan.

• 2:20:04Speaker 01

  And this is conventional units that put themselves in valleys and in places that they shouldn't have put themselves because they were operating independently of the Afghan culture's protection, right? And so, ended up, by 2011, when I left, we had ninety locations. And none of them ever got run over. None of them ever got attacked. The Afghans were all over. I mean, they knew. They never lost a fight against the Taliban. They, they were protecting their families and they took it seriously.

• 2:20:47Speaker 01

  And when they saw the progress they were making and this big, bad Taliban guy was defeatable.

• 2:20:55Speaker 01

  And they saw, they were like, whoa, then they got the will to fight and they had the mission and they realized that that their freedom and their destiny to live life the way they wanted to live was in their hands and that they didn't need the American military or international forces to secure their freedom for it. They could do it themselves, but we need your help a little bit, right? We need your help a little bit, but when we got it, we got it. And that's where the transition piece came in.

• 2:21:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, I was saying that not only can we as Americans impose our will on every village in the country, guess who else can't do that? The Taliban.

• 2:21:36Speaker 01

  The Taliban, that's right.

• 2:21:37Jocko Willink?

  So, so if you got it, you got to make those connections. It's decentralized command. It's building relationships and had a pretty positive, I mean, a very positive impact on what was happening in Afghanistan. Two thousand, what was that, two thousand ten, two thousand eleven into two thousand twelve and thirteen, things are moving.

• 2:21:54Speaker 01

  In the right.

• 2:21:55Jocko Willink?

  In the right direction.

• 2:21:56Speaker 01

  Right. And, you know, like I said, General McChrystal put it in place. He was replaced by General Petraeus and General Petraeus became a huge, huge advocate of this. And one of the things that General Petraeus did was he said, Don, what do you need to expand this? And I said, well, we're kind of limited, sir, with just our special operation forces. But if we could get augmentation from the conventional forces, then we could expand, right? And we could, we could use the conventional forces to augment and not as guards for our

• 2:22:39Speaker 01

  bases, because we don't need those. We got the Afghans to do that. But just as additional people, and we can train them on, on how to do it, but, and then we can expand ourselves because we have, we have a little bit more people, but not too big because we can't get too big because then that, that gets out of it. So he went to the army and got us a battalion, right? And we used that battalion to, um...

• 2:23:05Speaker 01

  To augment, not every team, but certain teams in certain areas. And it allowed us to expand faster. And one of the, one of the areas that we needed to do this was Konar, right? And we brought in a guy by the name of Jim Gant, who had relationships with the tribal elders out there, both in Pakistan and in, and in Afghanistan. And we gave him the village stability operation mission. Now, Gant worked for me when I was battalion commander. He wrote a paper that General Olson, or Admiral Olson really loved, and so did Petraeus, and so did others.

• 2:23:46Speaker 01

  And they asked Scott Miller, who was my boss, one star, then two star, Major General Miller, who was my boss during this whole time, and who I worked through in order to get, you know, village stability operations and Afghan local police started. And he was pretty brilliant in, in, you know, how he got that approved through Karzai and so on and so forth. Because everybody was, in the international community, was very concerned about, oh, you're gonna arm all these guys and then they're gonna create all kinds of humanitarian violations, they're gonna kill people, and, you know, Karzai was worried that they would get too strong and take over the government. You know, when you go down there at that level, they didn't have those, they didn't have those aspirations.

• 2:24:31Jocko Willink?

  They just wanted to control their village.

• 2:24:32Speaker 01

  That's it. They just wanted to live, control their village, have their family, get their family educated, bring their crops to market, and live, right? And not have anybody bother them. They had, they had no design to take over Afghanistan. Because they saw Kabul as a, as, as big a problem as anything else, right? So...

• 2:24:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, people, there's people that live in Montana and Wyoming that don't really care what's going on in Washington DC. And they certainly don't want to move there, they don't want to move to New York, they don't want to move to LA. They, they just want to live their lives.

• 2:25:12Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And so, same principle applies. And so, you know, they...

• 2:25:18Speaker 01

  You know, we, uh, you know, we, we took advantage of that and it cost us one-eighth the amount of money that it costs to make an Afghan police officer or military officer, or Afghan police officer or army. And you didn't need big garrisons, right? And they walked to work. So, there's no infrastructure, right?

• 2:25:42Jocko Willink?

  It's the ultimate decentralized command, really.

• 2:25:45Speaker 01

  Right, it, it really is. And, and, and it, you know, it was working and they could sustain it, you see? It wasn't anything they couldn't sustain in the long run. So, um, and every place was different, you know? If you saw one village stability operation and one Afghan local police, uh, in a village, well, you only saw one, right? Because they're all different, right? And they're different because, you know, different people are, are making it work, right? Uh, and the tribes are different and the ideas are different. You go up north to-

• 2:26:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the terrain's different.

• 2:26:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, terrain's-

• 2:26:26Jocko Willink?

  The way they're making a living is different.

• 2:26:27Speaker 01

  Yes, everything's different. So, you've seen one, you've seen one. So, there, there's, there, there isn't this, there isn't this like, uh, you know, magic formula where you, you know, you got one and you take that one and you impose it over here. No, all different, right? And what I really liked was, we carved this up into MARSOQ territory, into Naval Special Warfare territory, into Special Forces territory, and I, I would get the same guys back all the time, right? They would, they would come in for their six months, they would out, rotate out in their six months. And we got that kind of continuity, right? And we weren't reinventing the wheel where, you know, Special Forces are coming in.

• 2:27:10Speaker 01

  It happened every once in a while, um, and I remember, uh, when I took command to Siege Sotafay, um, we were coming up, let's see, this was April, I said, "Hey, listen." I walk into this headquarters and I see all these lickies and chewies and all this, all these condiments and ice cream and all this other stuff. And I go, "Hey, if our guys on the ground can't have this, we're not having it." And that's just the way it is, right? And let's talk about Thanksgiving. And let's talk about Thanksgiving right now, it's April. If they don't get turkey, we don't get turkey. Right?

• 2:27:48Speaker 01

  And we had the technology, we had refrigeration units we could put out there, not tax anything. We had stuff that would run off of, um, off of, uh, what are those panels? Solar panels? Solar panels, and we had all kinds of stuff. Uh, and we could, you know, uh, there was all kinds of innovative ways that we could get turkey out to them. Now, some guys got the frozen butterballs, they put them in the freezers and they were good to go. But what about those that we couldn't get that stuff out to? Well, I had this. I looked at Ron Reagan, my, my, uh, log guy, and I said, "Hey, you gotta make this happen." And he goes, "All right, well, we're gonna happen."

• 2:28:29Speaker 01

  So Julia Furman, a, uh, at the time, a young lieutenant, uh, log officer, comes up with this plan. And she goes, "Sir, we got it. I think we're gonna be able to meet your intent for Thanksgiving." And I go, "All right, well, let's, let's get it." Operation Turkey Drop. And our, um, our guys figured out how to drop live turkeys in.

• 2:29:01Speaker 01

  And I said, "Okay, is this gonna be cost prohibitive or what?" And they go, "Oh, no, it's, it's, it's great. We, we do it with the normal runs, but we just, you know, we have got our own chutes, we pack our own stuff. We've done, uh, several rehearsals, we haven't had any misfires, so..." So, "I'm not gonna get in trouble with PETA by dropping in a turkey and the turkey, you know, the parachute doesn't..." You know, and I was just kidding, of course. Uh, and, and, uh, so we did it. We did Operation Turkey Drop. We got them out there in September, all the turkeys, because we had to drop grain and feed and, you know, we had to tell them how to take care of the turkeys, and so they did it. And on Thanksgiving Day, I got all kinds of storyboards, right?

• 2:29:43Speaker 01

  Of these guys eating their turkeys, everyone's happy, our guys are happy because they get turkey. And all the fixins went out there with it, right? I mean, boxes of, um, of stove top stuff and, and, you know, all that good stuff, right? And so these guys are eating that stuff. Well, come January, I happened to roll out to our, uh, one of my other marine detachments out there. And at the time, the young captain there was the son of the Commandant of the Marine Corps. And I was going out to see him and I land on the ground and dust settles and the next thing I know, I got these two humongous turkeys on each side of us. And I go, "What the heck are these guys doing out here?" And he goes, "Oh, those are, those are our turkeys, you know."

• 2:30:27Speaker 01

  I go, "These the same turkeys that we dropped to you?" And he goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And he wants to get off the subject as fast as he possibly can. But these turkeys are snuggling up right next to me and he told me what their names were.

• 2:30:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, domesticated turkeys.

• 2:30:44Speaker 01

  And I, we continue to walk and we, closer we get to the reins, the turkeys break off and they go into this tent that's got, and I walk over to the, and they go, "No, no, no, sir, it's this way." And I go, "No, I'm going to see what the turkeys are doing." The farmer in me is now very interested. So I go over to see these turkeys and they got this like, they got, they're hooked up. They got hay and, you know, a place to eat and drink and tables that they jump up on and all these things. And I go, "What's going on?" He goes, he goes, "Oh, sir." And he's looking down at his feet. He goes, "The guys, they got the turkeys out here, they named them. The guys just fell in love with them and they couldn't kill them."

• 2:31:27Speaker 01

  And I go, "You steely eyed marine special operators couldn't take, take two turkeys down for Thanksgiving. We couldn't do it." And I go, "All right, this is great." And I said, "Hey, I don't blame you, you know, I, I get it." And, but he goes, you know, "The Afghans are waiting for the day." They're waiting for the day, our cooks, right? And so, a special forces ODA, which I was getting, my point is, we didn't always have the flexibility of replacing Marines with Marines and so on and so forth. But SFODA gets out there.

• 2:32:08Speaker 01

  And that next Sunday, I got a storyboard and they're eating the two turkeys. They didn't have the same connection with those turkeys as the Marines did. And the Afghans, the cooks, they're all smiling, you know, they got their, you know, they're all happy, but anyways.

• 2:32:28Jocko Willink?

  Then, uh, so you were in that tour, um, for 22 months, you're over there in Afghanistan. And then what, what, what happens when you get done with that?

• 2:32:36Speaker 01

  So I get done with that, uh, and they say, hey, you're gonna go to the Joint Staff and you're gonna be the deputy, uh, deputy special operations, uh, guy in the Joint Staff. And I'll be working for, uh, General Nagata.

• 2:32:53Jocko Willink?

  Now, the, the, the, the VSO idea seemed to have faded and, and lost some of its, uh, steam, not so much from what was happening in the field, but it seemed like we went in a different direction.

• 2:33:08Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 2:33:09Jocko Willink?

  What, what caused that?

• 2:33:10Speaker 01

  Well, when I got back, so I went to the Joint Staff, uh, reported there in June of 2011, worked on the staff, and, um, there was emphasis taken off of village stability operations, uh, and Afghan local police from 2011 to 12. But, um, I got told, hey, uh, you know, General, Admiral McRaven was now the, um, SOCOM commander and, uh, General Allen was the commander in Afghanistan, and they wanted more emphasis placed on VSO.

• 2:33:49Speaker 01

  So I got told that I would be going back in June of 2012 to June of, uh, 2003, it's gonna be a year anyways. And they said, hey, uh, and, and Tony Thomas was gonna be the commander there, two-star commander, and I was gonna be the one-star, SIF-SOC-A commander with the portfolio for VSO ALP. And, um, uh, I'll think of his name as we go, but Air Force One-Star. I was still a Colonel, I hadn't, I hadn't come out on the 07 list yet. But the one star was gonna work as a deputy for General Thomas and he was gonna

• 2:34:33Speaker 01

  do all the direct action stuff. So, two portfolios, one commander, bringing SOF under one command. And, you know, Tony Thomas got that. And so, we went in there under that construct and, and I was told, get this back online, get it expanded, get it... So, we did that. And by the, by June of 2013, ninety percent of the, ninety percent of the rural area was in the control of the Afghan government. And it was due to village stability operations Afghan local police.

• 2:35:18Speaker 01

  And we started doing transitions. So, we were transitioning to the Afghans. They had put a, General Ahmadzai became my battle buddy. And he was in charge of the Afghan local police for the Minister of Interior. And, and so, he was my battle buddy and I worked with him to ensure that he could, he understood and could implement this mission, everything from, you know, making sure they got the training, make sure they got the weapons, make sure they got the oversight, make sure they got, you know, they're doing everything they possibly can. And it was integrated into the Afghan government, fully and one hundred percent.

• 2:36:03Speaker 01

  And we're out. And we had this on a timeline that took us out about, you know, 2015, maybe 2016. And we would've had completely transitioned it. And by that time, nearly a hundred percent of Afghanistan would've been fully under the control of the, of the Afghan government. The Taliban at the time were saying, we're done. Al Qaeda... They were completely ineffective.

• 2:36:29Jocko Willink?

  Again, same thing I was talking about earlier, they don't have the, they don't have the resources to be in every single village and get down to some local village with 280 people in it and, and put the resources against it to get control of it, impose their will on it. And meanwhile, the locals, obviously, they live there, they're not going anywhere.

• 2:36:51Speaker 01

  And there's more of them than there are of the Taliban capability to be able to do it, so it was, you know, it was just...

• 2:36:58Jocko Willink?

  It was heading in a good, in a good direction.

• 2:37:00Speaker 01

  It was heading in a very, very, very good direction. And so, you know, by, by the middle of, by the middle of 2013, and, and everything was, you know, falling into place to where the Afghans, and, and none of the things that they said, you know, it wasn't a perfect, perfect program, but what program is perfect? It was good enough, right? And it was working. And a lot of the things that people really had a problem with just didn't happen, right? The humanitarian, you know, incidents didn't occur to the extent that people said they

• 2:37:41Speaker 01

  were going to occur, and, and the, you know, Karzai was not concerned that the Afghan local police were going to form, you know, a huge militia and assault Kabul, right? It just wasn't going to happen, right? All these things that they, at the political level, they were really nervous about, just didn't happen. And, so, I mean, I mean, it was good, right? And, and then, you know, it's, it's, it's 2013, and people are wondering, hey, when, you know, when are we going to get out of there? So, you know, the political stuff started, you know, filtering into Afghanistan and, you know, the ideas of pulling out and so on and so forth by 2014, and transitioning

• 2:38:22Speaker 01

  to non-combat operations, coming out of the villages and stuff like that. And, so, we tried to influence that the best we could with, you know, RAND studies and showing them that, hey, if we just keep this for a couple more years, you know...

• 2:38:43Speaker 01

  It's gonna be solid and the chance for resurgence will be way low and I mean, I mean, look what we've done in terms of the dropping of casualties, you know, lowering of casualties, record lows, um, record highs in security. Uh, the Taliban are pretty much slapping the table on defeat. Al Qaeda is like, hey, we can't operate here anymore. And that had a lot to do with the top-down stuff going on too, because you needed that, right? So, you know, the tier-one guys weren't involved in, in the village stability operations, Afghan local police, but what they were doing to take out the senior guys was obviously complimentary, complimentary, right? Right. So, this was good. This was a good balance and it was, SOF was in a good place where

• 2:39:27Speaker 01

  we were all working together and we were doing a variety of different missions along our very broad mission continuum. Uh, and it was way less expensive than sending over a division or a brigade to do it, right? Uh, you know, did it keep SOF busy? Yeah, it kept SOF busy, but, uh, you know, I mean, in a productive way. And the guys saw it, right? I mean, not everybody, you know, even our guys weren't in love with the mission at first, you know? I mean, you talk about it in your book, you know, about having to explain to guys that it's gonna have to be an Iraqi solution to this, right? And we're gonna have, you know, and it was the same challenge as I had, right? No guys, we're

• 2:40:10Speaker 01

  not gonna be kicking in doors, um, the Afghans are gonna kick in doors probably, but you're not gonna kick in any doors. And if you do, well, uh, that's an extreme, right? Uh, but you gotta work through with and by these guys. They're the ones that have to own it at the end of the day. And so, we went through the same thought process, but the guys realized that this was still a combat mission, that this was not a man-bee-pam-bee kinda hand-wringing humanitarian thing. It was a combat mission. And, uh, and so...

• 2:40:43Speaker 01

  You know, they got it. I mean, they, they, they really, they really made it work. Without them, no way. Wouldn't have happened.

• 2:40:53Speaker 01

  And so, yeah. So you start hearing this, and we're getting concerned, and...

• 2:41:00Jocko Willink?

  And the concern is about a drawdown coming?

• 2:41:02Speaker 01

  Drawdown coming, right. Changing from combat operations to non-combat operations. Coming out of the villages too early. Handing this program lock, stock and barrel over to the Afghans at the senior level too early. And, you know, we gave them the warnings. We said, hey, likely the security situation will reverse. Likely, the, there'll be a resurgence. And Al Qaeda will come back, right? Well,

• 2:41:39Speaker 01

  nobody thought that ISIS would come back. But by 2016, we had a complete reversal. Because we did. They made the decision. They slapped the table. We came out of the villages. We went strictly top-down. We put all our emphasis on the Afghan National Army and police to fight and gain security. We didn't support the Afghan local police program anymore. And it fell, you know, it fell apart. And

• 2:42:09Speaker 01

  I think it could have been avoidable. I think a lot of other people who have done assessments on it thought it could have been avoidable. But nonetheless, you know, our guys on the ground, regardless of what mission you give them, still do it with honor, integrity, and they get done what you want them to get done. But at the end of the day,

• 2:42:35Speaker 01

  we saw ISIS come back. We saw Al Qaeda reemerge. We saw, emerged, we saw Taliban come back in full force. The security situation was reversed. And we had an all-time high in casualties in 2019.

• 2:42:55Speaker 01

  So, here we are in 2021, and, you know, President Trump, I think, had the right idea. Let's figure out how we can come out of Afghanistan. Well, nobody gave him a plan, right? When he asked for two years in new administration, just didn't have a plan to come out. So, you know, hey, the political situation, you know, overcomes everything, right? Going into a presidential election year, a big year for the Congress, you know.

• 2:43:29Jocko Willink?

  And that starts driving decision making.

• 2:43:30Speaker 01

  Starts driving decision making, and really.

• 2:43:33Jocko Willink?

  Instead of the guys on the ground.

• 2:43:34Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. And so, here we go, and, you know, the president was responsible, the current president, who's got to make a decision, right? I mean, it is what it is, but he was also in charge of, when he was vice president, you know, coming out of Iraq in 2011 and going to zero, and, you know, he, he just used, I think, what he learned there, in the experience he had there, and applied it to Afghanistan, and boom, you know, we're out lock, stock, and barrel. And we, although I am an advocate of, you know, figuring out how to come out of there,

• 2:44:18Speaker 01

  I'm more of an advocate of coming out of there the right way. And there's a lot to lose there, particularly, I mean, I'm signing a lot of letters today from 20 years of working with people there in Afghanistan, interpreters and workers, barbers, you know, guys, you know, gardeners, guys that really put their life on the line to, to support us and to help us, them and their families, and now they're left there. And so, I think I got 45 letters signed right now, and I send everything I do to Congressman Crenshaw and Tom Cotton, because they're, you know, they're putting together some sort of process to expedite getting these guys out of there.

• 2:45:02Speaker 01

  But, you know, it, yeah, it's a...

• 2:45:10Speaker 01

  Everything's political, right? And, and, you know, we just, we're, you know, we're at a point in time now where, you know, strategy and policy and security inside our country and outside our country is, is, you know, I mean, I think it's an issue. I think a lot of Americans see it as an issue, right?

• 2:45:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, especially when we see other, you know, nation states that are making moves, big moves, and playing long, playing the long strategic game, and we're looking to the next election. That's our long strategic game sometimes.

• 2:45:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, right now, 2022 is our long strategic game, right? I mean, how are we gonna change the House? And how are we gonna change the Senate? And how are we gonna get the majority there? Not so much in how we're gonna deal with China, and how we're gonna deal with a potential invasion of Taiwan, and how we're gonna deal with Russia and their encroachment on the Crimea, and Europe, and, and their pipeline issues, and Iran, and, and, you know, their proxy war, and what they're gonna do against Israel, and then North Korea's gonna follow China everywhere it goes, and now it's working more on its nuclear program than it ever has been, and we got, you know, no visibility on that, and, and those are some, those are

• 2:46:28Speaker 01

  some existential threats that we really gotta pay attention to.

• 2:46:32Jocko Willink?

  And they're real. They're happening.

• 2:46:34Speaker 01

  And we got Africa, right? Twenty-eight countries in Africa that are just getting eaten alive by China and Russia. They're getting eaten alive by terrorist organizations that are taking advantage of the ungoverned spaces, and that's dangerous for Europe. You know, the French, and the British, and the, and the Dutch, and the Germans, and the Italians, the front line for the, for the war against violent extremist organizations is in Africa for them. You know, it's Mali, it's Libya, it's Tunisia, and it's, it's Kenya, and it's Somalia, and it's Nigeria, and it's Senegal, and Mauritania, and Morocco, you know? It's all these different places, right?

• 2:47:17Speaker 01

  And, you know, I mean, I spent four years in, in US Africom, and two years, twenty-six months of that was commanding special operations command in Africa, and we had twenty-eight countries, over two thousand special ops troops on the ground, advising, assisting, training, and conducting operations through, with, and by our partners. To get after Al-Shabaab, right? ISIS Somalia, right? Out in the east there. Central Africa, the large resistance army, and now ISIS is there. And Nigeria with Boko Haram and ISIS West Africa.

• 2:47:54Speaker 01

  And Chad, and Cameroon, and Burkina Faso, and Mauritania, and Senegal, and all of the affiliates of Al Qaeda that are out there reaping havoc, right? The French have over 4,000 troops on the ground, you know, from Mali to Nigeria because it's their war on, it's their front line, right? And you have a huge coalition of, you know, of European partners there. I mean, I dealt more with our European partners than Special Operations Command Europe did. Because they're fighting in Africa, right? And so, I was always, you know, coordinating with Mark Schwartz. Hey, Mark, I'm going to Denmark, I'm going here, I'm going there.

• 2:48:39Speaker 01

  You know, I went to France five times, right? To talk to the highest levels of their government about, you know, what was going on there. And, you know, so what was going on in Africa is something that America has taken its eye off of. And 1.4 billion people, by 2050, it'll be 2.4 billion people.

• 2:49:03Jocko Willink?

  Incredible amount of resources there. Incredible amount of resources.

• 2:49:07Speaker 01

  Huge. And what goes through South America into the United States? You know, South America is not very far from the African West Coast. And you've got all those traditional lines of illicit trafficking that go through Europe. Iranians have multiple, have been able to establish multiple places where they have infiltrated Africa, all over Africa, to move men, weapons, and resources at a drop of a hat, if they need to.

• 2:49:37Speaker 01

  So, I mean, we've got other problems out there that we, you know, we have to keep our eye on. In Afghanistan, we shouldn't be tied to one country, but we got tied to that country. There was a good way to go out, but moving to a regional perspective with everything going on in that region is a whole heck of a lot smarter. And, you know, we just need to start considering that, but we, I still think we have some responsibilities to Afghanistan that we kind of overlooked in our, in our, in our exit there, you know?

• 2:50:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, looking at the global perspective and the global issues, clearly, that's, that's all stuff we have to think about. But I know that there's one more issue that you've dealt with personally, and you've tried to help out our troops with it, and that's what's going on, what happens to our troops, and what's happened to our troops, well, I guess as long as we've been around, but we've definitely noticed it for sure since these wars kicked off, the war on terror kicked off, and that's post-traumatic stress and, and then the, the traumatic brain injuries. What was your, how, how, how did you address that? How did you experience that? What was that like for you? And I know we've been talking for a while, but I wanted to cover this because, I mean, this is something that a lot of people

• 2:50:57Jocko Willink?

  are, are dealing with.

• 2:50:58Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, I think it's the number one health issue that we have in the United States military today, and I believe it's the same when you look at our veterans, and it's leading to the significant amount of suicides in, in both, on active duty, in the reserves, National Guard, and, and again, in our veteran community, right? And I think it's all has to do with this mental injury issue, and physical injury, and spiritual injury, and it's that triad that I think is hugely important, that we have to work on strengthening all the time in the military, because you know as well as I do, if you're physically hurting,

• 2:51:42Speaker 01

  you need that taken care of. And mental injuries, right, you need that taken care of. And we know by studying, all the way back to...

• 2:51:54Speaker 01

  To Sparta, right? That traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress was something that they looked at. They didn't call it that, right? But they knew that a conk on the head created problems, right? And they manifested themselves inside their units, their military units. And they realized that they had an obligation, right? In ancient Sparta, there's only two people that get their name on a headstone. A mother who dies in childbirth and a warrior that dies on the battlefield. Everybody else is buried in Sparta with no name, no nothing. But the birth of a child and the sacrifice on the battlefield, the ultimate sacrifice

• 2:52:37Speaker 01

  on the battlefield are recognized in that warrior culture. So when we look back and we see everything that we've done and what we've called it throughout the years, and I was one that didn't have an appreciation for it either, right? I thought it was a sign of weakness, right? There's no way, right? I mean, you know, you think about Patton and you think about, you know, the way our society has shaped us, and I thought it was weakness as well. Until it happened to me. Until I saw it happen in others. Until I realized it was a problem. And you know who educated me on this? My wife. She's a nurse. She started studying it. She started seeing it.

• 2:53:21Speaker 01

  She started seeing how I changed every time I came back. And when you get more comfortable being away from your family and deployed in a combat zone than you do at home with your family, you got a problem. And that was me. And it was affecting my relationships with, you know, my family. It was affecting relationships in the military. I was always...

• 2:53:48Speaker 01

  You know, wired for sound, go high and right really quick, and lose my temper, and not want to listen to people. It just negatively affected everything, right? And she started noticing around 2008, and she was talking to me about getting help. Well, there was no getting, going for help in 2008 in the military, I can tell you that right now. In 2010, you started seeing programs, and they were starting to deal with traumatic brain injury, but I'm telling you, we have all these programs, but what I learned was our approach is wrong, right? Our approach is punitive. We're going to take you off your team, we're going to take you away from the people that you love, the people that you want to be with every single day, and we're going to put you over here, and we're going to say, okay, you're not going to do your duty, you're not going to

• 2:54:32Speaker 01

  do your job, and, oh, by the way, we're going to take your clearance away, or suspend it, whatever, and if you don't get better in a year, we're going to process you out of the Army. I mean, that's a TOD policy, right? And I thought that was insane. Well, by 2013, I'd just been promoted to brigadier general, I'd just got to US Africa, US Africom, just started my job as the operations officer there, and guess what? My wife came to me and she said, "We can't handle it anymore. I can't handle it, the kids can't handle

• 2:55:11Speaker 01

  it, your dog can't handle it," you know, Klondike, our husky at the time. She goes, "You've got to do something. I've got to draw a line here." She goes, and I said, "You're right. You're right."

• 2:55:27Jocko Willink?

  And she's talking about losing your temper, not being around?

• 2:55:31Speaker 01

  Socially isolating myself, staying at work till ungodly hours, just avoiding, avoiding social events, you know, my biggest fear was having to go to a social event, right? And...

• 2:55:47Speaker 01

  I would look for every single excuse. Under the sun. Yep, I'm going, I'm going, I'm going, until I call her and say, hey, something came up at work, I need to stay at work.

• 2:55:59Speaker 01

  Check. And I would go home right after the event was done.

• 2:56:05Speaker 01

  So, and she's not dumb, she knows exactly what I was doing, right? And, um, but she knew it was delicate, right? And, and, you know, I wasn't a screamer at home, I would just not involve myself in anything, right? Just come home and mind my own damn business, not get involved, and that was that. And, uh, you know, um, if something came up, I would exit stage right and avoid dealing with it, you know? Uh, and then I would look for every opportunity I could to go deploy somewhere, right? Well, when I went to US Africom, that ability to deploy went away.

• 2:56:49Speaker 01

  Cause as the operations officer of US Africom, the only place I was deployed to was my office, right? That was it. Yeah. So, 2013, she got me to go, but I had heard about this nurse, Sarah McNary, who had, uh, was up at Launchstool, and she was really innovative. And so I went up and I had a meeting with her and I said, listen, you know, I gotta do this under the radar, right? I mean, this is not something that would be accepted by the chain of command if I'm going for PTS help.

• 2:57:23Speaker 01

  So, she understood, and she, um, put me on a program, I went up, and it was easy for me to get away, right? We had Africom units up at Launchstool, uh, and, you know, Ramstein near Launchstool, and I could, I could always find a, a way to get up there if I needed to go for an appointment or what have you. So it wasn't a big, wasn't a big stretch, and it didn't put a lot of light on what I was doing. But I went up there in three days.

• 2:57:55Speaker 01

  Got evaluative post-traumatic stress, TBI, sleep disorder, pain management issues, neurotoxicity, and it was all positive, right? I mean, all the malaria medications and the vaccines and all these things that we've done all our career, all our life, it was my kidneys, my, you know, other organs, the way your brain thinks, so on and so forth, all that positive, PTS positive. More importantly, I got put on therapy programs, right? And so, I took advantage of this, and I did it religiously.

• 2:58:35Speaker 01

  From 2013 through 2015, I managed to go through this. And then, I looked at myself in the mirror.

• 2:58:45Jocko Willink?

  What do the therapy programs consist of?

• 2:58:47Speaker 01

  So...

• 2:58:48Jocko Willink?

  Is this like, sitting down, talking with someone? Is this...

• 2:58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they give you a bunch of tests for PTS, right? And they figure out exactly what's, you know, what's wrong with your, you know, with your brain and, you know, with your thinking and how social isolation is impacting you and, you know, and they put you with a therapist and they work on those, those things. You, you talk about it, you come up with strategies to overcome it, you, you... My wife came with me, that was hugely important, because, you know, she's got, there's a quote

• 2:59:30Speaker 01

  above my doctor's, on my doctor's office there in Launch Tool, because my wife was with me and he asked me a question and I told him my answer, and she goes, "That's a bunch of bullshit." Because she knows, right? So he goes, "Oh yeah? What's the real deal?" Right? And so, I realized the utility in that, because sometimes we're embarrassed by our actions, right? And we don't want to fully disclose them. Well, if you don't fully disclose, then people aren't gonna really understand how to help you, and...

• 3:00:07Speaker 01

  And when I had to travel and I had an appointment, I did it by Skype.

• 3:00:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:00:11Speaker 01

  And so I s- the TBI had serious balance issues. I- my eyes were out of focus and there's a machine that they test that on and a machine that they fix it on. So my eyes got back into balance and my balance got- they put you on a balance machine and, you know, you feel like an idiot. Uh, and, and I did all my balance, uh, exercises. My balance got good. You know, there was- I'd go for a walk when my wife, we'd hold hands and I would, you know, veer off to the right. And she's like, "Hey, you're killing me." Right? And she'd push me back over and so on, so forth. And so they just have all these strategies to fix your- now, think about it. You got traumatic brain injury as a special operator and your balance is off and your eye focus is off.

• 3:00:55Speaker 01

  And you gotta do a, uh, you know, high-risk, uh, CH, uh, MH47 infiltration into a village and, and then, and then, you know, fast rope onto a building and then use a ladder to cross from one building to the other and your balance sucks, right? These are things we need to fix, but we're not gonna be able to fix them if we're not aware of them. Uh, and so I started thinking about what a fricking coward I am, doing this under the radar and not leading the way and so on, so forth. So I went back and I talked to my boss about it, uh, as the operations officer in Africa. And I said, "Hey, this is what I've been doing and I am a different man.

• 3:01:39Speaker 01

  My wife sees it, my kids see it, my dog sees it. Uh, I am different. I'm not perfect, but I'm a better version of myself." And he goes, "Yeah, I've noticed you've been showing up to our, uh, to our social events on Fridays here in Africa." And I go, "Oh, yeah." He goes, "Before, you wouldn't come near them." I go, "No, no, I wouldn't come near them. No, no, no, no." And he goes, "He goes, "That's good." He goes, "All right." He goes, "I get it." And I said, "I'm gonna open it up to guys in the, in the, in the J3." And I did and I got them all together and I talked to them and I laid it all out and I told them what I was doing and I said, "I'm a fricking coward, but I tell you what I'll do right now is you won't get taken out of your job, you won't get taken, you won't lose your clearance, I will back you up 100%.

• 3:02:24Speaker 01

  I don't care if it is DOD policy. They- I don't care. It's not the right approach. So I got you back. We did it." And I'm telling you, a lot of guys in Africa- I carried that over when I took command of Special Operations Command in Africa on twenty-four April. And I got with them. Unbelievable. Twenty-six months at DATA. What I thought were indiscipline issues with alcohol and drugs was self-medication. Mm-hmm. Those guys trying to figure out how they're gonna be able to alleviate their pain, deal with their issues, and still be able to do their mission at the best of their ability, right?

• 3:03:07Speaker 01

  And in SOC Africa, we put, even the deploying troops that came over, we put them through the program. And it was huge. Navy SEALs, Marine Special Operators, SF, Air Force guys. We got testimonies from wives and marriages that were saved. We decentralized the program. Like, I remember I was in Niger, which, we were up in Arlet, which is in the middle of nowhere. It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from there, you know what I mean? And I did my Skype, you know, meeting with my therapist, right? I mean, I still see a therapist, right?

• 3:03:52Speaker 01

  It's just something that I decided to continue. But I'm a very high-functioning person, and that was my point. These guys are still high-functioning, and they're even more high-functioning if we give them the treatment they need. It's just a mental injury. Fifty-two people we diagnosed with PTS, four-hundred-and-seventy-one with traumatic brain injury, four-hundred-and-seventy-one. And there's only one guy, and you wouldn't believe how many people with pain management issues, right? I mean, and sleep issues? We're the definition of a sleep. You know, sleep problems, right? Yes, we are. And, and so we got them the machines or the mouth thing, whatever they wanted.

• 3:04:36Speaker 01

  Uh, and it was unbelievable. You know, if you, if you get less than five hours of sleep, your brain operates like it's got point one zero percent alcohol in it. Legal limit of, uh, driving under the influence. So for, I don't know, 25 years or so, I was shitfaced at work without, without taking a drop of alcohol, you know? And, and think about your decision making and stuff like that. And so, the New York Times came into the unit and said, "Hey, uh, we're gonna do an article on Africa." And then she started talking to people and they said, "That's not the story. The story is how we're dealing with post-traumatic stress and TBI and getting resilience and readiness back in the unit. That's the story.

• 3:05:21Speaker 01

  You should get asked them about that." So she asked me about it and I told her, and that became the story. That wasn't a popular story with the chain of command. Not a popular story at all. And I was told to stop talking about it. Um, the more you talk about it, the more problems we have. I said, "Well, I don't agree with that. I think the more we talk about it, the more we understand it and the least problems we have. Uh, and we get guys into therapy and we can do it without degrading the mission." I didn't, I had 96, 96 missions in Special Operations Command and 846 associated tasks and I had zero, zero detriment in mission. Uh, and guys got better.

• 3:06:06Speaker 01

  I mean, drug and alcohol abuse, you know, incidents went way down. I went to zero in misappro, uh, you know, misbehavior in the, uh, in the workplace. Zero, right? They sent a team from DOD to investigate what we were doing, right? And I said, "Hey, it's just a matter of taking care of mental, physical injuries and spiritual." Uh, you know, SOCOM had a great program that they brought in with, that integrated, uh, families and we had that and we'd located it in our headquarters and that was something that I had nothing to do with because, uh, the rules are that nothing gets reported to the chain of command. And I'm okay with that, right? I don't need to know, right? Guys there with their families, working out problems. Ah.

• 3:06:52Speaker 01

  It was really unbelievable, after twenty-six months of, you know, of this. And, um, uh, yeah, uh, you know, it was, for me, it was a whole process of, of leadership and learning and understanding and then being able to say, "You're strong, not weak, if you ask for help," right? And I had three suicides in my units. I, I'll never forget Sergeant First Class in Kenya. Six-month rotation to Kenya. Combat operations with the Kenyan Special Ops Rangers against Al, against Al-Shabaab

• 3:07:37Speaker 01

  and ISIS Somalia, just great work. Packed up all his gear, cleaned his quarters that he was staying in, put a note. Day before he was redeployed, went out to the range, sat in a chair and shot himself in the head. It was more painful him, for him to go home at that point in time in his life and his decision-making process than, um, so he took his life. I tell you what, man, I took a knee on that one. You know what I mean? I mean, a big knee, right?

• 3:08:18Speaker 01

  And, uh, so I said, "We can't, we can't allow that to happen." You know, it's bad enough to lose somebody in your unit in combat, but suicide? And of course, we missed all kinds of warning signals. Everybody missed warning signals. You know who knew? The family knew, but the family was afraid to talk because they were afraid that if they say anything, then it's gonna hurt their hu, their husband's career. And so, we need to be better at making sure it doesn't hurt their career, make sure they get the help, because we can do it. We got a lot of white space on the calendar when guys come back.

• 3:09:02Speaker 01

  We can make it work. And taking these health assessments is gonna work, right? You gotta have, take these programs and you at the top. I'm telling you, Rich Puglisi, who was my senior enlisted advisor, Navy SEAL, great guy. Love Rich.

• 3:09:18Jocko Willink?

  I know Rich.

• 3:09:19Speaker 01

  Rich and I had the same issues. And we would get in front of the unit and we would talk. And we would share our personal experiences. And we had everyone's back. The only person that didn't, that got taken off, was the Sergeant Major of our, our, um, SIF team. You know, our direct action teams. And that's because, he took, after we talked to him, he took all forty-five of his guys the next day over to Launch Tool. Ran them through the program. And when he was getting his MRI, to see if he had any traumatic brain injury. They found a tumor, about the size of an eraser, on his brain. He got medevac to, um, to Walter Reed. They took the tumor off and they said, hey.

• 3:10:06Speaker 01

  You know, if this had gone another year, you would have been figuring out an end-of-life plan.

• 3:10:12Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 3:10:13Speaker 01

  Um, and they replaced his left hip that he had been, uh, you know, dealing with for years. Um, and he was a new man, right? Um, and an advocate of this whole program. And, you know, after he left the team, he went off to our training. Um, and has been an advocate for this and, you know, promoting it ever since. And this is what you get. You get guys with a better understanding from the bottom up. But they gotta have that top-down cover. And I'm afraid it's still not there. It needs to be there. We gotta put it there. And, um, and, you know, I went through the, you know, what everyone else goes through.

• 3:10:58Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm weak. Something wrong with me. Uh, I'm less of a man. Um, and that's, none of that's true, right?

• 3:11:11Jocko Willink?

  So that's, that was your last tour, was, was at SOC Africom, right?

• 3:11:16Speaker 01

  That was it. Um, you know, it was funny. I joined the Army twenty-nine June nineteen eighty-one, and I gave up command and had my retirement ceremony on twenty-nine June twenty-seventeen. I didn't retire officially until two August twenty-seventeen, but, you know, I came home and went on terminal leave and started helping veterans, put together a business called Truth to Power, um, which, um, which I was doing really well with. Um, I'd have about four speaking events a month, which was good, just bringing in the money that I needed.

• 3:12:00Speaker 01

  Then I got hired to be an associate professor at New England College, and I just got laid off, and I was trying to find a job. I got laid off in May trying to find a job, so I ended up, uh, applying to Hampton Police Department, and I am now a, at fifty-nine years old, a police recruit in the New Hampshire Police Academy. I'm the platoon leader, and, uh, my, the youngest guy in the class is nineteen years old, and I'm like, holy crap, right? And so, uh, I'll graduate in November, uh, November nineteenth, um, and, uh, it was funny because in nineteen eighty, I was in class number four, because remember I

• 3:12:41Speaker 01

  told you about being a police officer, and I am now in class two-hundred-and-eighty-one. And so, uh, yeah, I'll start working, uh, working at Hampton Police Department, which is the town right next to Stratum where I live now in New Hampshire. It's, uh, it's on the seacoast, so it's right there on the beach, and a majority of the, the work there is patrolling the, the Hampton Beach area, right, which is, which is gonna be cool, and, uh, you know, it's gonna be, uh, high adventure, right?

• 3:13:15Jocko Willink?

  New Hampshire Baywatch.

• 3:13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right, that's right, and, uh, you know, I mean, I've always looked at where I can contribute, uh, and I gotta tell you, at fifty-nine years old, when I...

• 3:13:28Speaker 01

  And it's quite a process, too, because I applied and I got my test date of 3 May and I went in, took my test with 27 other young guys, right? And that was the standardized test, right? So, I hadn't taken a standardized test in over 40 years, so I was nervous about that, right? And I took the test and I passed, much to my dismay and surprise, and I got set up for my oral interview, and I had the lieutenant, sergeant, and a patrolman. And they go, "All right, we know who you are. We all voted for you, right, in the last election. We know who you are, and we know what you've done for our country.

• 3:14:12Speaker 01

  Why in the hell do you want to do this?" And I said, "Hey, just looking for a way to contribute." And, you know, there's no more to it than that. And he goes, "Okay." And the sergeant starts asking me questions, and he gets to the patrolman, he goes, "I don't have any experience to ask you any questions." And I said, "Yeah, you do. You're a police officer, so bring it on." But nonetheless, you know, you do the polygraph, and you do the physical fitness test, and you do the, you do the psychological test, and it was like going through Special Ops again, right? You know, all those things that lead up to you getting in. You've got to qualify physically, mentally, you know, you've got to pass the full physical

• 3:14:57Speaker 01

  test. And I have two prosthetic hips and three prosthetic discs because of combat injuries, and that was the thing that we're worried about the most, right? And I said, "Listen, I've jumped out of airplanes with these things. I can certainly handle patrol with these things." They go, "Okay, that's okay. I guess you can," right? And, uh, and so, my wife thought I was nuts.

• 3:15:24Jocko Willink?

  So, that might seem like nuts, and then what seems like even more nuts to me is you entering the political arena.

• 3:15:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:15:32Jocko Willink?

  What brought that about?

• 3:15:33Speaker 01

  I was asked. I was asked by, I got a lot of emails, texts, and, um, uh, letters, phone calls, from people in all ten counties in New Hampshire, all fifty states, to include across the military, asking me to run for office. And, um, I thought, "Well, if people think I can help them, I don't have all the answers." Uh, certainly, uh, not a politician, um, and I think there are many people in the military would attest to the, my, my lack of political acumen. (laughing) Because it's just not there, uh, too straightforward, blah, blah, blah.

• 3:16:15Speaker 01

  But nonetheless, um, if you think I can help you, I'm gonna try. And so that's my why for running. Uh, and, and so, um, you know, I, I just wanna help our country, our economy, help us become more fiscally responsible, and help us be able to improve the safety and security of Americans, so that we can all live the American dream. That's all I wanna do, right? The oath I took in the military is still valid. I still believe in, in, in the American dream, and, and the greatness of this country, and,

• 3:16:55Speaker 01

  and I have a tremendous amount of, of exposure to, um, what other people in other places across the world think and feel about America and the promise of America. And, um, I think that regardless of your political beliefs or spectrum that you fall on, you know, God, family, community, and country, has got to appeal to everybody. And that's my platform, and that's what I'm doing.

• 3:17:24Jocko Willink?

  And that's what you're doing right now. So what is it you're running for right now, just so everybody knows?

• 3:17:28Speaker 01

  United States Senate.

• 3:17:29Jocko Willink?

  In New Hampshire, obviously.

• 3:17:30Speaker 01

  In New Hampshire.

• 3:17:31Jocko Willink?

  Where, where you've lived for fifty-nine out of fifty-nine, or where you've been a resident of fifty-nine out of fifty-nine years.

• 3:17:35Speaker 01

  That's right. Um, and I've been a Republican in that, uh, state for forty-two years. I'm eighteen years old. Uh, first president I voted for was, um, was Ronald Reagan.

• 3:17:50Speaker 01

  So.

• 3:17:51Jocko Willink?

  What's the, when's that election timeline?

• 3:17:54Speaker 01

  So, the primary in New Hampshire, so if I get another Republican that run is gonna run against me, which there isn't one yet, um, the primary election is in September of 2022, and the, um, the general election, if I win the primary against Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, um, who's been our Senator for one term now, uh, will be for November 2022. Um, I don't have a political machine behind me. Um, I gotta get my name recognition

• 3:18:33Speaker 01

  up. Um, fundraising is huge, so gotta start earlier than those that are already established politicians, right? Uh, and so I'm out now campaigning, uh, we're raising money, we're getting our message out there, it's being very well received. I've, in the last poll, you know, four months ago when they did a poll, I was at 30%. I'm now up at 45%, right? So, uh, we're moving in the right direction.

• 3:19:09Jocko Willink?

  So if people want to help out, where do they, where do they find you, where do they go to help you out?

• 3:19:13Speaker 01

  So, my website is www.donbaldock.com, and, you know, you can go there and you can either, you know, if you, if you want to help the campaign out, uh, if you're in New Hampshire, that's easy to do. Um, you just sign up, you know, everything is right there on the website, my positions are there on the website, so if you're interested in how I feel on the Second Amendment, or whatever, uh, it's there. Um, and, uh, um, if you want to donate, it's there. Um, you know, I start pretty low. Um, I ask folks to donate $20.22,

• 3:19:57Speaker 01

  2022, to my campaign, and if I get a lot of people to do that, I get a lot of money. Um, and it's, you know, anything helps, $5, $10.

• 3:20:12Speaker 01

  Twenty dollars and twenty-two cents. Two thousand, two hundred, twenty-two dollars. Yeah, that helps too. Uh, but, everything helps. Uh, and, um, and I'm just gonna go there to serve... There's 1.3 million people in New Hampshire. Uh, and I'm going there to serve every single one of them.

• 3:20:33Speaker 01

  Not just the Republican Party, but you gotta serve everybody once you get in that office. Right? You gotta declare an office, and, you know, my, my political beliefs line up as a Republican, but, that doesn't mean that I don't, I won't work for and work hard for everybody in New Hampshire, regardless of whether they're an independent, Democrat, or Libertarian. Right? Um, and I think that's what we've lost in this country, with the political divisiveness. We can't come together on three very important things. Our economy, fiscal responsibility, and the safety and security of Americans. We used to be able to do that, you know? I'm a big fan of JFK, you know? I mean, big fan of him, you know? And, uh, he would not even be recognizable today, right?

• 3:21:18Speaker 01

  As a matter of fact, he'd be more of a Republican than a Democrat today. So, we got to come together, and we need people that, I think, have had, uh, the experiences in life that realizes that we're stronger if we work together than we, than we are apart. And are we gonna have our differences? Yes, but, today, our differences are just too much, too much around what's really important. God, family, and community.

• 3:21:51Jocko Willink?

  Also, you got social media too, right?

• 3:21:53Speaker 01

  Do, yeah, we're, yes, sir. We're, we're on social media, uh, everything. Um, I would be remiss, though, if I didn't, didn't, um, didn't mention the fact that everybody that found out I was coming here to talk on your show was, like, out of their mind. And it was across the political spectrum, by the way, which is, which is, uh, which is really neat, and... No, no one more excited than my son Zachary, who serves in the New Hampshire National Guard. Uh, he was speechless. I mean, it was like, Jaco, oh, yeah, he just couldn't speak, right? And he goes, why didn't you tell me? And I go, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I just, you know, uh, but, um.

• 3:22:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, we have, I, I worked with the, with the National Guard extensively in my, uh, deployment to Ramadi. They were there when we first showed up and they were just complete warriors and professionals. And, uh, it was an honor to serve with those guys. So I, nothing, nothing but love for the National Guard, that's for sure.

• 3:22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. He's coming up on his six years and he's going to, uh, become a veteran. He's already made that decision, but nonetheless, I am proud that he served his country. And my youngest boy, Matt, is a senior at Purdue and he just finished his, uh, his lieutenant training, uh, so.

• 3:23:10Jocko Willink?

  So they're upholding the tradition.

• 3:23:11Speaker 01

  He'll be a second lieutenant on active duty. Uh, look out, another Baltic's coming, fellas, so.

• 3:23:18Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. That's probably, probably a good place to stop. Echo, you got anything?

• 3:23:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Real quick, going back to the marijuana fields.

• 3:23:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, geez, going deep.

• 3:23:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:23:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:23:27Speaker 02

  And you mentioned booby traps.

• 3:23:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:23:29Speaker 02

  Like what kind of booby traps are in a?

• 3:23:30Jocko Willink?

  The, no, the, the, the marijuana growers back in the day would put booby traps around their marijuana fields. So people wouldn't sneak in and steal their, their grow.

• 3:23:39Speaker 02

  Like what kind of booby traps?

• 3:23:40Speaker 01

  So you would get the booby trap where you came across it and it would be just a, it would, it would kick off like, um, like a, uh, a ditch of, uh, like napalm. Fire would come up.

• 3:23:53Speaker 02

  Also like violent booby traps?

• 3:23:55Speaker 01

  Bombs, the old ones with, um, like you, like the, you know, uh, you know, Vietnam era stuff where.

• 3:24:06Jocko Willink?

  Like punchy sticks and stuff?

• 3:24:07Speaker 01

  Punchy sticks and, and they, they would, they were spring loaded kind of things and they would come and they would just hit you in the thigh or the leg or what have you, upper body, those, those kinds of things. Yeah.

• 3:24:17Speaker 02

  Dang, that sucks.

• 3:24:18Speaker 01

  They were, they were serious.

• 3:24:19Jocko Willink?

  Scary stuff back in the day.

• 3:24:21Speaker 02

  Well, cause I'm quiet and, and this is back in the day too, when, when it was illegal, but, uh, they'd have booby traps, but it would be, they wouldn't be violent booby traps. They'd just be like alarm type, like, you know, like I've, I heard one where they had. Just like cases and cases of uh mousetraps. So like if you if you stepped on it or you nudged it, it would go and it was like like you know, like a bunch of birds taking off or whatever, but louder. It'd be something like that, like that kind of stuff.

• 3:24:48Speaker 01

  Early, early warning devices.

• 3:24:51Speaker 01

  And but they also had the closer you got.

• 3:24:55Speaker 01

  The worse off it was for you and and that's why the the um. The the forest rangers were always, you know, they were very appreciative of us going in there because we'd take it very slow and. You know, our guys were trained, very trained very well and we had, you know, we had some technology to help us out as well, so. But yeah, it was there. It was ugly. And we're lucky that we didn't set any of them off, that we were able to either go around them or, you know, um. Neutralize them, different way with, you know, old fashioned way with uh with the um. The rope and the.

• 3:25:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh grappling huh?

• 3:25:38Speaker 01

  Pull them out and watch what happens.

• 3:25:42Speaker 01

  Wow, that was a good show. Glad we weren't around that.

• 3:25:47Jocko Willink?

  Right on. General, any closing thoughts?

• 3:25:51Speaker 01

  Well, I think the only closing thought that I would have, and since this is, you know, you focus on leadership a lot is um. I'd just like to let everybody know that um.

• 3:26:04Speaker 01

  Throughout all this, I realized that I was a imperfect leader. And that as long as I remembered really three things, and that is to remain humble, thankful and grateful. And that I never let my ego get in the way and I was always self-aware of my weaknesses. And worked on those and let my strengths be what they are.

• 3:26:29Speaker 01

  It was better off for me and everybody else around me. And um these type of shows and the things that you do and what this show does for anyone who listens to it. Uh is is uh is hugely important um for America because right now. What we need more than anything else.

• 3:26:50Speaker 01

  Is effective leadership. It is, it is a huge, huge issue. And, and something that I think my experiences, teaching in college and being around my own kids and being around others, is they're thriving for, for, you know, leadership. And these examples that we have seen in the past. And, and you represent that here with the show. And I just want to thank you for this opportunity. I'm, I'm humbled and grateful for it. And, and so, thank you for what you do. And thanks for letting me tell my story.

• 3:27:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, thanks for coming on. Thanks for joining us. More important, thank you for your leadership, your service to our great nation, your sacrifices overseas. It's been a long war for America. You were there for most of it. And that's saying a lot. And you are still continuing to fight for America. We appreciate it. Thank you.

• 3:27:47Speaker 01

  God bless you. Thank you very much.

• 3:27:50Jocko Willink?

  And with that, General Don Bolduc has left the building. Definitely, uh, seen a lot.

• 3:28:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:28:04Jocko Willink?

  Always looking to improve. I think that's something we can definitely take away. Maybe we can all look to improve. Maybe that's a good idea. Echo Charles.

• 3:28:14Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 3:28:18Jocko Willink?

  Any suggestions on where we can start to improve ourselves?

• 3:28:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:28:22Jocko Willink?

  What do you got?

• 3:28:23Speaker 02

  Well, he did mention how he's, he didn't say he was the oldest one cadet in the police.

• 3:28:31Jocko Willink?

  I think it's safe to assume he's the oldest one.

• 3:28:33Speaker 02

  I assume that too, yes. Yeah. Um, but he did imply that, you know, but the fact, the, the point is, he's out there staying capable, talking about jumping out of planes with hips a certain way, to the extent where they're like, oh yeah, you pass. Just, you can do, you can still do this kind of stuff? You are this capable?

• 3:28:52Speaker 02

  You're in.

• 3:28:52Jocko Willink?

  Meaning the hips passed muster.

• 3:28:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly right.

• 3:28:55Jocko Willink?

  They're good to go.

• 3:28:56Speaker 02

  Remember they're they're like, um, oh, you you know, they're concerned about his hips or whatever. And he was like, hey, I jump out of planes with these hips and they're like, oh, yeah, then you can patrol.

• 3:29:04Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 3:29:06Speaker 02

  Point is very capable, high levels of capability. Fifty nine, twenty nine, nineteen years old, whatever. We're maintaining it.

• 3:29:16Speaker 02

  The clock is ticking.

• 3:29:17Jocko Willink?

  Clock is ticking.

• 3:29:18Speaker 02

  I heard that today.

• 3:29:19Jocko Willink?

  Pay attention to that one.

• 3:29:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we want to keep ourselves capable mentally, physically, of course. Right? Through this path of capable capability chasing, we're chasing capability, of course. Through this path, we're gonna take some beatings, hundred percent, take it from me.

• 3:29:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:29:36Speaker 02

  You do some jujitsu, take beating sometimes.

• 3:29:39Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes that neck gets squeezed, doesn't it?

• 3:29:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:29:41Jocko Willink?

  And that gonna get squeezed on that one.

• 3:29:43Speaker 02

  So you you know how like I said, hey, after I rolled with you that one day and I was like, man, I like, I feel like I got hit by a truck and you're like, oh, yeah. Full body doms, right?

• 3:29:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:29:53Speaker 02

  It's way more than full body doms.

• 3:29:55Jocko Willink?

  Psychological.

• 3:29:58Speaker 02

  Got some emotional doms as well.

• 3:29:59Jocko Willink?

  Emotional doms.

• 3:30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, and that's that's real. You know, these are, that's just one of the many examples of the beatings you're gonna take on this path. No problem, though. Sometimes you you need some supplementation to help you through those beatings. In fact, you get through these beatings, that's when the capability starts to emerge. See what I'm saying? Additional levels of capability. Anyway, got some supplements for you. Can help you, help us. So first supplement I want to talk about is a new era of energy drinks, straight up. Like the the old.

• 3:30:30Jocko Willink?

  New category.

• 3:30:32Speaker 02

  New category.

• 3:30:32Jocko Willink?

  Real category.

• 3:30:33Speaker 02

  New paradigm.

• 3:30:34Jocko Willink?

  Paradigm shift.

• 3:30:35Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:30:36Jocko Willink?

  One, two, three, you owe me a.

• 3:30:38Speaker 02

  Discipline, go.

• 3:30:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:30:41Speaker 02

  So no sugar, it's a healthy energy drink, straight up. That actually tastes good.

• 3:30:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I saw someone someone wrote, hey, I thought Jaco didn't drink energy drinks. I heard him say he didn't drink them unless he really needed them. Well, why is that? That's true. That's a fact. It's a fact before this came out, because you weren't gonna wanna drink one of the other. The energy you are gonna you don't want to drink those unless you had to.

• 3:31:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:31:06Jocko Willink?

  Like hey, I've got a nineteen hour drive. I'm fourteen hours into it. I'm fading. I need something to boost me up for the next three hours. Okay, cool. Overdosed with caffeine, get your jitters on, but you get there.

• 3:31:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:31:19Jocko Willink?

  So that's what I used to do, for sure. Now all of a sudden it's like, oh, I've got something that I can drink. It's actually healthy for me and it gives me the benefits of energy.

• 3:31:32Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:31:32Jocko Willink?

  Right? It's a no brainer.

• 3:31:34Speaker 02

  Yep, it's true.

• 3:31:35Jocko Willink?

  So do do I drink traditional, old school, poisonous? Energy drinks? The answer is no, I don't.

• 3:31:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:31:44Jocko Willink?

  I used to occasionally if I needed to. Now, don't never need to do that again. Because we have an alternative that's functional.

• 3:31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:31:53Jocko Willink?

  And works. So there you go.

• 3:31:55Speaker 02

  And tastes good. Do you drink kombucha?

• 3:31:57Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:31:58Speaker 02

  Have you ever? Have you ever tasted it?

• 3:31:59Jocko Willink?

  I've probably, it might have almost touched my lips, but I can just smell stuff and I don't like it.

• 3:32:05Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. Oh, kombucha is no exception in that regard, but it tastes junk. It tastes bad.

• 3:32:11Jocko Willink?

  I know people, including people that I'm related to, that are so down with kombucha.

• 3:32:15Speaker 02

  I get, I get, I get it.

• 3:32:17Jocko Willink?

  Do more females like kombucha than males?

• 3:32:18Speaker 02

  I don't have those numbers.

• 3:32:20Jocko Willink?

  In my family, that's what I'm going off. My family, females are drinking kombucha.

• 3:32:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:32:25Jocko Willink?

  Kombucha, what is it?

• 3:32:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, kombucha, kombucha.

• 3:32:27Jocko Willink?

  They're drinking it. Females, males not drinking it.

• 3:32:30Speaker 02

  My father in law straight up makes it, straight up. It's like a process, it's a thing.

• 3:32:34Jocko Willink?

  And then I assume he drinks it.

• 3:32:36Speaker 02

  Yes, sir, he does. But in my experience, yeah, more females are into kombucha than males. But that's not the point. The point is, if you ever tasted it, you're like, cool, kombucha is so healthy. You know, it's detox and whatever they say about kombucha, I don't know. I don't know the deal.

• 3:32:52Jocko Willink?

  Ain't worth it.

• 3:32:53Speaker 02

  It's healthy, we'll just say, bro, it tasted, you're like, alright, I'll endure that taste for the health benefits. You see what I'm saying?

• 3:32:59Jocko Willink?

  But there's no reason to do that, really.

• 3:33:00Speaker 02

  No, there's not. That's the thing. So this one, especially the mango flavor.

• 3:33:05Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 3:33:05Speaker 02

  You drink that one, you're like, wait a second, tastes good and healthy and gives me energy. No, no lose situation right there.

• 3:33:12Jocko Willink?

  Okay, just so everybody knows that the. The mango flavor, there's no difference other than the flavor.

• 3:33:19Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:33:19Jocko Willink?

  You can't put it over here on a pedestal of whatever.

• 3:33:23Speaker 02

  It tastes the best, so.

• 3:33:24Jocko Willink?

  In your opinion?

• 3:33:25Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, I think, and you know, the consensus is still getting being formulated because new, which is another kind of novel thing, new, new flavor. So you know, you want to look at that one?

• 3:33:36Jocko Willink?

  I always go back to Old Faithful, Jaco Palmer.

• 3:33:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can't, I can't argue with that.

• 3:33:41Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 3:33:41Speaker 02

  Yep, it's legitimate. Yes, sir.

• 3:33:43Jocko Willink?

  JP Danelle pointed out that Jaco Palmer tastes good, whether it's like room temperature or whether it's cold.

• 3:33:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:33:49Jocko Willink?

  You're, you're good to go.

• 3:33:50Speaker 02

  Orange is like that too, for sure. So yeah, get your, oh, it's called Jaco Discipline Go if you didn't know already, which, you know, most of us do know, but we, I do want to kind of reiterate these things about it.

• 3:34:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. By the way, it's available in Wawa right now and we're working on a bunch of other convenience stores. You'll be seeing it, but everyone that's been going out to Wawa and just clearing shelves, thank you. Because that makes the other, you're actually helping everyone in the, in the nation.

• 3:34:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:34:18Jocko Willink?

  You're helping everyone in the nation because other convenience stores look at Wawa and think, oh, how's it doing? They go, oh, how's it doing there? Whoa, yeah. You're selling a lot of that stuff. So that means other convenience stores go, all right, we want it too. And they're saying that. So we appreciate East Coast troopers out there clearing shelves.

• 3:34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:34:37Jocko Willink?

  In Wawa.

• 3:34:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it does make sense, right? If you're a, let's say a convenience store owner.

• 3:34:42Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:34:42Speaker 02

  Right? A guy who makes the decisions, whatever. And he's going to be like, wait, healthy energy drink. He's going to be thinking kombucha or something like this, where it's like, cool, it's new, might not taste that good, whatever. But Wawa's over here demonstrating that, hey, brother, this thing tastes good too, you know? So they're like, oh, I get it now. You know, they're kind of connecting the dots a little bit.

• 3:34:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, there's all this data that they collect and it's been great. So again, sincere appreciation to everyone that's been rolling out to, to Wawa and just getting it.

• 3:35:09Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:35:09Jocko Willink?

  Appreciate it. That's awesome. And you're helping America because now the rest of other convenience stores are getting on board. And then other people will have access to this wonderful nutritious, as, as Travis Mills said, nutritious and delicious.

• 3:35:25Speaker 02

  Nutritious and delicious. Oh, yeah. Fully. Also other items that can, that do help us on the path is we've got some joint stuff, joint warfare, super krill oil.

• 3:35:37Speaker 02

  Another good thing for your joints.

• 3:35:39Jocko Willink?

  Definitely.

• 3:35:39Speaker 02

  And the thing is, it's a big deal. And this is like, we always say, this is one of those things where this really pays for itself in a way that's like invisible, because you're not worried about your joints.

• 3:35:51Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 3:35:52Speaker 02

  You'll feel the difference when you don't have it.

• 3:35:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, here's, here's what's interesting. We have a massive amount of subscriptions to those two.

• 3:36:02Jocko Willink?

  So people, yes, send it to me every month because they want to not miss out on that goodness.

• 3:36:09Speaker 02

  Yep. And then we're just worried, they don't want to worry about that.

• 3:36:11Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to subscribe to it, you get free shipping, by the way, which is cool. We don't have to pay for shipping. You can also not pay for shipping. If you go to a vitamin shop, you can get all the stuff at vitamin shop. They've also been supportive. And everyone has been supportive rolling in the vitamin shop, buying stuff. So very cool. We appreciate it. We'll keep making mulk. We'll keep making things that taste good and are good for you.

• 3:36:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:36:35Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. Jacofuel.com.

• 3:36:37Speaker 02

  Yep. Also,

• 3:36:40Speaker 02

  OriginUSA.com. This is where you can get American-made denim shoe or boots, some other, all the cool new stuff that Pete thinks up, working pants, got some jujitsu stuff on there as well. So if you're joining jujitsu, you don't have a gi yet, or maybe if you do have a gi, Origin and they're always coming out with some new keys.

• 3:37:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. I said that in kind of a, but let's face it. The gees at, at Origin, like I put up, I have the first, like one of the first Rift gees. I have, I was wearing it yesterday. Where were you yesterday?

• 3:37:13Speaker 02

  I was at, you know, somewhere.

• 3:37:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay. While I was training on the mats of justice.

• 3:37:18Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:37:18Jocko Willink?

  I was wearing the first edition.

• 3:37:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:37:21Jocko Willink?

  White Rift gi. These things are freaking unbelievable. It's like a whole new. Thing.

• 3:37:28Speaker 02

  Era?

• 3:37:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. A paradigm shift.

• 3:37:31Speaker 02

  Paradigm shift.

• 3:37:31Jocko Willink?

  Since you said that earlier.

• 3:37:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they're, yeah, they're, they're the best. The, the only downside is that you will potentially be spoiled in that way.

• 3:37:39Jocko Willink?

  You will throw away your other gees.

• 3:37:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, or at least marginalize them. I had, I put on one to see, oh yeah, does it still fit? And, you know, feel the fit and you feel it and you're like, bro, I would never wear this. I mean, cool, respect.

• 3:37:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you put on one of the old ones?

• 3:37:50Speaker 02

  The old ones, yeah. And it's, it just simply went out of the rotation.

• 3:37:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and plus you know it has bad karma.

• 3:37:57Speaker 02

  Why?

• 3:37:58Jocko Willink?

  Because it was made by slave labor in China.

• 3:38:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, what's cool too is, and we can, you can see this on the Origin YouTube channel. It's like, it's the opposite of slave labor. It's like, it's one thing to be like, okay, you have slave labor, okay. They don't want to be there. They're kind of in a way like obligated or forced in one, some way to be there and they gotta make this stuff. Okay, that's terrible, obviously. But then you have like maybe the quote unquote standard where it's like, hey, that's the job. They're gonna go and they're gonna do it. Then you get Origin, you go there, bro, those, they're, every single one, you see them all, man, they care.

• 3:38:29Jocko Willink?

  Down for the cause.

• 3:38:29Speaker 02

  They care about that stitch. You see what I'm saying? They care about like the whole deal. Then they make that gi, then you get to wear it? That's day, that's the.

• 3:38:37Jocko Willink?

  Then you get positive karma. Good karma with that gi.

• 3:38:40Speaker 02

  All around, all around.

• 3:38:41Jocko Willink?

  Karma with those jeans, the working pants.

• 3:38:44Speaker 02

  Supporting American economy as well. It's a big part of the whole gig.

• 3:38:49Jocko Willink?

  Amazing.

• 3:38:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. So win, win, wins across the board, originusa.com. Cool stuff on there. Very cool. Also, speaking of cool stuff, Jaco has a store.

• 3:39:00Speaker 02

  It's called Jaco Store. So yeah, it's Discipline Equals Freedom shirts, hats, some rash guards on there, hoodies on there, shorts on there. You want a shirt that says good?

• 3:39:13Speaker 02

  With or without Jaco's face? You got the option though. Anyway, some good stuff on there. Check the, if you look at that stuff, you like something, get something. We do have a subscription situation on there as well called the Shirt Locker. Cool designs.

• 3:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Depending on your opinion.

• 3:39:26Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:39:27Jocko Willink?

  We think they're cool.

• 3:39:28Speaker 02

  General consensus, they're cool designed, they're fun, you know, a little bit different. So we'll say creative, I don't know, I've heard the word creative thrown around. Nonetheless, you can check that out as well, it's all at Jaco's store.

• 3:39:40Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe, subscribe to this podcast, wherever you subscribe to podcasts. You can also subscribe to unraveling Jaco unraveling with Daryl Cooper. We've been making some of those lately, we have the grounded podcast, which we haven't made lately. Does it need to be revived from the ashes?

• 3:39:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's possible.

• 3:39:58Jocko Willink?

  Warrior kid podcast is another one. I got a, I got a letter from a little kid. They had one question for Uncle Jake. When's the next warrior podcast, kid podcast coming out? Cause I've only made, I think thirty seven of them or something like that.

• 3:40:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:40:16Jocko Willink?

  But they're there, if you've got a kid warrior kid podcast, we also have Jaco underground.com. We have a, that's a little, um, little sovereign area of the interwebs that we built to make sure that we can remain free out here. And because look, these people doing are all kind of weird stuff with these platforms that we're on. So far, everything's been cool, it's cool, we appreciate it. But contingency wise, you can't just, you can't build your house on someone else's land. Cause they might come around and, and kick you off, right? So we made our own land. It's called Jaco underground.com. If you want to help us support that land, if you want to, if you want maybe a little room on that land, maybe you want a little plot? We can get you one.

• 3:41:02Jocko Willink?

  It costs eight dollars and eighteen cents a month. If, look, and if you, if you need to come onto the land, the sovereign land of the Jaco underground and you can't afford it, it's okay, we want you there, as long as you're in the game, you can just email assistance at Jaco underground.com. That's, we appreciate it again, for real. If something goes sideways on these platforms, we're going to be there. And, and as a, as a appreciation, we do another little podcast. It's usually about an hour. We talk about some other subjects, we answer Q and A, questions that have been sent directly to the underground. Then we can tell you what's up. So that's that, we also have a YouTube channel. And a lot of people correctly identified on the latest release of the mayhem.

• 3:41:45Jocko Willink?

  Movie that Echo Charles made. A lot of people recognize that there was some powerful assistant directing going on in there.

• 3:41:54Jocko Willink?

  I'm serious, I saw it in the comments.

• 3:41:55Speaker 02

  Strong AD presence.

• 3:41:57Jocko Willink?

  The AD presence, I'm the assistant director.

• 3:41:59Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:42:00Jocko Willink?

  And, and also, you know, kinda, I had a supporting role in that. Yeah, what'd you say?

• 3:42:05Speaker 02

  Think so, actually, you might have been the lead on that one.

• 3:42:07Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, I had zero lines.

• 3:42:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:42:09Jocko Willink?

  Which is.

• 3:42:10Speaker 02

  Hey, they were powerful, though, that's the thing, your zero lines. Your whole performance is powerful.

• 3:42:15Jocko Willink?

  Cause big shocker, Echo made a movie and he's the star of it. That's kinda the feeling that most people got.

• 3:42:23Speaker 02

  Red Tie, Main Tie, just sent me, like, it was a clip of us talking about it, or whatever, and,

• 3:42:31Speaker 02

  how like, you know, the time you're clicking on the can or whatever, in that, in that video, or whatever, I guess me, I guess at the end of the day, I was giving you props for that, or whatever.

• 3:42:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:42:40Speaker 02

  And I feel like everyone, including Main Tie, is kinda just sorta recognizing you, straight up, you're the AD, assistant director.

• 3:42:49Jocko Willink?

  See?

• 3:42:50Speaker 02

  So, alright, I'm signed on.

• 3:42:51Jocko Willink?

  But I still feel like I'm in the shadow of the star.

• 3:42:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:42:54Jocko Willink?

  The person with all the lines.

• 3:42:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:42:57Jocko Willink?

  And the most camera time.

• 3:42:59Speaker 02

  Yes. You are, you are.

• 3:43:01Jocko Willink?

  No, that's you, dude.

• 3:43:03Speaker 02

  In your, eh, yes, our YouTube channel, we do have, eh, eh, on top of Jocko being the assistant director, we do have a video version of all this stuff.

• 3:43:12Jocko Willink?

  If you wanna see what General Don Bolduc looks like, you can come on here.

• 3:43:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and YouTube.

• 3:43:17Jocko Willink?

  Check out the YouTube channel.

• 3:43:18Speaker 02

  YouTube is, you know, one of those things now, it's not just a video thing anymore. It's like, some people, it's their preferred method to like, watch TV, listen to podcasts or whatever, so I dig it, and we got you, that's why we got this whole thing.

• 3:43:30Jocko Willink?

  I think I'm one of those people.

• 3:43:32Speaker 02

  Yeah?

• 3:43:33Jocko Willink?

  I mean, does anyone watch TV, like, actual TV, like a show?

• 3:43:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:43:38Jocko Willink?

  Is that happening?

• 3:43:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:43:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:43:41Speaker 02

  Some DVR action.

• 3:43:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:43:43Speaker 02

  I don't know if people still watch it live.

• 3:43:44Jocko Willink?

  Like, live?

• 3:43:45Speaker 02

  Nah, I don't think so, that might be very low numbers on that one.

• 3:43:49Jocko Willink?

  Subjected to commercials and stuff. So, commercials.

• 3:43:54Jocko Willink?

  Or a kind of a nonstarter for me at this juncture in my life.

• 3:43:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, it's weird and my kid's kind of the same way is like I like I like commercials, not all of them. But well, fast forward to them. But if I see one that I'm like, oh, wait, let me see that commercial like it's kind of.

• 3:44:08Jocko Willink?

  There's no commercial.

• 3:44:09Speaker 02

  There's like a cause some commercials, there's a little story within the commercial. It's kind of good. I feel that way. Little less. So yeah, anyway, yeah, the point is we have a YouTube channel boom.

• 3:44:21Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe to it.

• 3:44:22Speaker 02

  Subscribe to it if you want. It's a good one. So yeah, there you go. Also, psychological warfare. If you don't know what that is, an album, a Jaco album with Jaco tracks on there. Telling us how to get past our moments of weakness when we have them. And I have them from time to time. But you don't got to worry about that kind of stuff because Jaco will tell you why you should get over them. Hundred percent uh, success on that one. Hundred percent.

• 3:44:46Jocko Willink?

  If you want to hang something cool on your wall. Why not make it something from flipsidecanvas.com that my brother Dakota Meyer made owns? He is the, I want to make fun of, how do we make fun of him? He's the creative artistic director of that.

• 3:45:02Speaker 02

  Hell yeah, hell yeah.

• 3:45:04Jocko Willink?

  There you go Dakota, creative artistic director. I think that's the title he's always wanted.

• 3:45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't doubt it. It's a good title.

• 3:45:10Jocko Willink?

  That's Dakota, one of my heroes. And if you want to get some stuff to hang on your wall, flipsidecanvas.com. Got a bunch of books. I've written a bunch of books. The one that's coming out next is called Final Spin. We don't know if it's a novel. We don't know if it's a poem. We don't know if it's a manuscript. We don't know what it is, but it tells a story. Story with some lessons.

• 3:45:36Jocko Willink?

  I let my oldest daughter read the book Final Spin. And she got done reading it and she came out the kitchen and like I could see that she just got done reading it. And I go, oh, well, you know, what'd you think? And she started explaining to me what she liked and what she didn't like. And she started crying. While she was explaining it. And that's when I said to myself, okay, looks like I found it. It's like, we got it. We got what we wanted.

• 3:46:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's funny.

• 3:46:09Jocko Willink?

  Which is to have some kind of an impact, right? That's what we want.

• 3:46:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:46:12Jocko Willink?

  Want that thing to leave a mark a little bit.

• 3:46:14Speaker 02

  You ever think about that? Like, why do we? You ever cried during a movie?

• 3:46:18Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:46:19Speaker 02

  Come on, bro.

• 3:46:20Jocko Willink?

  Zero.

• 3:46:20Speaker 02

  When you're young, you never cried during a movie.

• 3:46:22Jocko Willink?

  You didn't say when I was young.

• 3:46:24Speaker 02

  Ever.

• 3:46:25Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no.

• 3:46:25Speaker 02

  When you were young, yeah, whatever.

• 3:46:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:46:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. What movie?

• 3:46:28Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I'm pretty sure E.T.

• 3:46:31Speaker 02

  No shit, E.T. huh?

• 3:46:32Jocko Willink?

  You know what sucks is I watched E.T. with my daughter, who's, she was 11 when I watched it with her. This was just like this year. Have you seen E.T. lately?

• 3:46:39Speaker 02

  No, not lately.

• 3:46:40Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Steven Spielberg, no offense, that movie did not stand the test of time. Hey, I went to the theater when I was a kid and saw that movie. And I was with a friend of mine and we were kind of, you know, little tough guys. We were probably 10, something like that, little tough guys, you know? And we were bawling.

• 3:47:00Jocko Willink?

  And I watched this movie.

• 3:47:01Speaker 02

  What part?

• 3:47:02Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, the end of it or something? I don't know, he goes home. I mean, eventually, right? That's like what it's supposed to be the. So I watch it with my daughter and I'm sort of bracing for her and I'm thinking, oh, this is gonna be. She, she just, it was bad. It didn't stand the test of time. Now, look, Jaws, as you know, I mean, Jaws, one of my favorite movies. Steven Spielberg, good job, credit. That stands the test of time and then some. Now, could we go back, maybe CGI, some shark activity? We probably could. I guess I don't really want him to. Do you want him to?

• 3:47:33Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:47:33Jocko Willink?

  No, you like it old school. So, keep it the way it is, bro. But you're not gonna beat Quinn and Chief Brody, right? It's not happening. I mean, who's gonna do better? Quinn, let's face it. So, Steven Spielberg, Jaws, stood the test of time, good to go, credit. However, E.T., bro.

• 3:47:50Speaker 02

  Wait, why? Cause the story or just cause the special effects?

• 3:47:53Jocko Willink?

  The whole thing, the whole thing, the whole thing. It was like an okay movie, but I don't like okay movies. You know, that doesn't do it for me.

• 3:48:02Speaker 02

  They gotta blow you away.

• 3:48:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I wanna get, I wanna get something. It takes an hour and a half to watch a movie, maybe two hours sometimes. I'm not. And at this juncture in my life, if something's not good to go, I'm done.

• 3:48:13Speaker 02

  No time.

• 3:48:14Jocko Willink?

  We're not watching it.

• 3:48:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:48:15Jocko Willink?

  I will leave a theater. I will leave.

• 3:48:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:48:19Jocko Willink?

  I'm not watching this stupid, or you know what I'll actually do? Sleep.

• 3:48:22Speaker 02

  Dang, straight up get some rest.

• 3:48:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. If I'm with my wife or my kids and there's a bad movie, we once saw, okay, have you ever heard of a horror movie? That's called It.

• 3:48:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, It. Yeah, yeah.

• 3:48:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So the first one came out, my kids really liked that horror movie. My wife doesn't even watch one millisecond of a horror movie.

• 3:48:42Speaker 02

  The first, when you say the first, the first of the new ones, because It is old school.

• 3:48:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay, no, the first of the new ones. The dude with the clown face and the whatever.

• 3:48:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's all Pennywise. Yeah, that's always the story.

• 3:48:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so I watched the one of them.

• 3:48:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:48:55Jocko Willink?

  And it was okay, but then my kids were all amped. And so we actually went to the theater to go see it, the second version or whatever.

• 3:49:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, chapter two.

• 3:49:03Jocko Willink?

  Chapter two, Los Dos, whatever. We roll in there, it is so bad. I just was like, I, I, I watched maybe seven to 12 minutes of it, maybe, maybe. And I was out, sleeping.

• 3:49:16Speaker 02

  Caught up on some sleep.

• 3:49:17Jocko Willink?

  Caught up on some sleep. They woke me up. I saw the last, the last seven minutes of it.

• 3:49:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:49:23Jocko Willink?

  It was so bad. And we all walked out of there. My kids thought it was bad, too.

• 3:49:28Speaker 02

  Oh, for real thing. Okay, that makes sense. You ever, okay, this is, okay, now we're kind of deviating, but I don't care. Talk about it, it's cool. I've never seen the new ones. I saw the old ones, like they're super long, too. And cool, I get what they're doing and they're good. But It, the new, not chapter two, like the first one of the new ones. So the thing, I didn't see any of them, but they, they have a trailer for that. Oh, man. It's a really good trailer. They have a few of them, but it's the one where it's like, hey, um, there's Georgie and then the older brother. I forget the older brother's name.

• 3:50:01Jocko Willink?

  I was sleeping.

• 3:50:03Speaker 02

  And he's like, hey, you'll float too. Like, hey, if you come down here, or everything floats down here is what the ghost kid says, right? Everything floats down there. I think that's what the clown said first, I guess. Anyway, so he's like, if you come down here, you'll float too. And then like this beat, this horror kind of beat, like starts speaking up and he goes, you'll float too. You'll float. It's really, really well done trailer on that one. Yeah.

• 3:50:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, it must have been better than the movie.

• 3:50:28Speaker 02

  I think so. And remember a long time when we were talking, you're like, oh, why did you start video or whatever? And the whole phenomenon that some, some movies, actually a lot of movies, I mean, I could name a lot of movies that the trailer is better than the movie. Like watching the trailer provides a better like experience than watching the movie.

• 3:50:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's totally true.

• 3:50:46Speaker 02

  So that phenomenon is kind of what made me like, want to do videos or whatever.

• 3:50:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:50:51Speaker 02

  It. That's one of them.

• 3:50:53Jocko Willink?

  You have to say the T distinctly.

• 3:50:54Speaker 02

  Alright, it. Yes.

• 3:50:56Jocko Willink?

  So, final spin, we don't really know what it is, but it will withdraw some emotions, some lessons learned, some thought provoking material.

• 3:51:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:51:06Jocko Willink?

  Final spin.

• 3:51:08Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 3:51:09Jocko Willink?

  You can preorder it now. That way you can get the first edition. It's gonna be kind of rad to have the first edition of that. I think it's gonna be extra cool. So check that out. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. The answer to all your questions is actually in that book. Leadership questions, the answers are there. The code, the evaluation, the protocols, discipline equals freedom field manual. Way the Warrior Kid 1, 2, 3, and 4, Mikey and the Dragons, About Face by Hackworth, which I wrote the foreword to. Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership. I got Echelon Front, which is a leadership consultancy and what we do is solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. This is where you can find details for our live events. We have the muster, we have field training exercise, we have EF Battlefield. The next muster is in Las Vegas.

• 3:51:55Jocko Willink?

  October 28th and 29th. The next FTX is in September, September 20th and 21st, and it's actually sold out. So. Yeah, we sell things out. If you want to come, then go to Echelonfront.com and click on events and you can find all this stuff. We also have online training, the Extreme Ownership Academy. Leadership is a skill that you need to practice. It's a perishable skill. You don't, you don't take one Jiu-Jitsu class, now you can kick people's asses. You don't take one leadership book, read it, and now you're good to go. No, you actually have to train. That's why we made Extreme Ownership Academy. Online leadership courses,

• 3:52:36Jocko Willink?

  it's a leadership gym for you to go through. We have live sessions, I'm on out there all the time answering questions. Go to ExtremeOwnership.com for that.

• 3:52:48Jocko Willink?

  Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization.

• 3:52:59Jocko Willink?

  Go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org if you want to donate or you want to get involved. And if you want more of my anticlimactic anecdotes, or you need more of Echo's yattering yarns,

• 3:53:15Jocko Willink?

  you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the Gram, and on Facebook. Echo's at EchoCharles, I am at Jocko Willink, and again, General Don Bolduc can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @Gen, G E N, Don, D O N, Bolduc, B O L D U C.

• 3:53:39Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to check out what he's up to, or you want to support his campaign, you can also go to DonBolduc.com, D O N, B O L D U C, dot com. And thanks once again to General Bolduc for joining us today, and for being out there from the beginning, holding the line to protect our way of life. And the same goes to the rest of our servicemen and women out there right now, also holding the line to protect our way of life. And the same goes to the police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders. Thank you for holding the line here at home to keep us safe. And everyone else out there.

• 3:54:25Jocko Willink?

  On September 10th, 2001, we were at peace.

• 3:54:31Jocko Willink?

  And the next day, September 11th, 2001, we were at war. In one day, everything changed.

• 3:54:40Jocko Willink?

  And that's the way life can be too.

• 3:54:44Jocko Willink?

  Things change, things happen, people get sick, people get hurt, we lose our jobs, we lose our loved ones. Anything and everything can change in one day, and when it does,

• 3:54:57Jocko Willink?

  don't get caught back on your heels.

• 3:55:01Jocko Willink?

  Instead, go forward, go on the attack, and continue to fight

• 3:55:09Jocko Willink?

  until there's peace again.

• 3:55:12Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, Zeko and Jaco, out.