Tactical Success, Strategic Failure - Week 4 of the Iran War | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

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So you can click it real quick and easy and it helps us keep the lights on. So we appreciate it and we appreciate you guys listening. Thanks a bunch. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Eyes On Geophilics. I'm joined with a full crew today.

Mick Mollroy, Andy Milberg, Jonathan Hackett, Mark Poly, Marapolis and myself. A lot happening at usual. I'm sure everybody who's listening to this has been, you know, monitoring the situation as well.

“Most recent news obviously, well, the first thing I think it happened on Friday about the”

releasing or unsanctioning 140 million barrels of Iranian oil that usually goes to China

and other Asian countries, you know, that's going to be like a win-fall of probably more than 14 billion even if you just, you know, I'm assuming because it'll probably be sold for a little bit more. And yesterday, President Trump issued a 48 hour deadline for Iran to stop blocking the straight-of-horse moves or we will start targeting, you know, assuming mostly oil infrastructure.

So a lot happening, makes no sense. So I'm going to let the experts talk about it and explain to me what the fuck is exactly going on. Make you go first. So to start with, I mean, as I explained last time, I support the military objectives.

This, I think, Iran is a hugely destabilizing force that brought a lot of this on itself.

And I'm always about America winning, regardless of who, you know, obviously the politics

of it, which unfortunately seems not being the case with many people in up. But I would say this is transitioning from a conventional air war of which we're doing well with ballistic missiles, suicide drones, the industrial base, the manufacturers, both of those, the military capabilities of Iran to include decimating their naval force to one that's, because it's asymmetric, is really focused on economics.

And the economics of this is on the side of Iran, let's just be clear. They have gained more economically by closing the streets of our moves than they did by joining the JCPOA by tenfold, tenfold, right? So we're now removing sanctions on their oil, which, because of this closing of the streets, is that when one ten now and I just heard from a friend that follows this, we should

have it on, by the way, that in some places in Asia, it's 165. So they are making a ton of money and so it's rushable, by the way, since we removed sanctions on them. They had gone down to, at the, after we put sanctions on two of the major energy researchers, three dollars were there.

They were selling a big discounts, because they're good in selling anywhere. Now they're making a windfall, which, of course, is going to have to them on their war and Ukraine, and other topics. So what are we going to do about this, promoted, you know, finished military objectives, be straight with, you know, the fact that it's not going to eliminate every weapon that

the Iranians have, it's impossible, it's four times a size of a rock and they're very good at hiding their mobile missile launchers and drone launchers, but we are going to substantially reduce it, take it as a wind, and then figure a way to get back and

resolution.

If not, and we do strike in 48 hours, they're including their nuclear power plant at

“Natalins, I believe, as we talked about, it's clear that Iran's going to strike back”

at our partners, probably their power grid, probably their desalinization plans, and potentially more of the oil and gas capacity they have, like the north to them and the Qatar's gaspids, that's going to drive prices up even more, which is a benefit for Iran now, because they're selling the oil, so I'm not sure what the overall strategy is, it's clear that the force that's on route, and I actually, I can't remember, it's going to get a rock.

I had a friend calculate when both the 11th and 34th mu would get there, so we should find that out when people know, because it's a pivotal point. If that's our plan to open up the street, I will end with this before throwing it over to everybody else, you know, as a guy who used to box and couch box, and this is like a slow motion, right, cross, right, to the Marines coming up, let's see who it should, right?

They have plenty of time to go, "Hey, man, you remember all those 5,000 naval mines we have?" Perhaps we could just go ahead and do it, you know, there's all sorts of things.

They can second wire, carguided, they could do all sorts of things to get ready for this

force to arrive.

“So I think, again, our focus should be rightfully saying what we did, and that this”

needs to, you know, have us strategic pause and look for a path out. If not, all this is going to do is cause a huge economic crisis around the world, and remember, it's not just the oil and gas. It's also a tight helium that comes out at like 30% of the helium, might have the sun a drunk, which is all used to make the high tech ships, right?

The nitrogen that is used for fertilizer, it's going to cause everything to go well. Up, all of our partners in our lives are going to be looking at us for, figure our own away out of this, you started it, didn't ask us an hour, everybody's paying the price. I just think it's going to be because of the economic consequence of this, this could turn into a strategic loss of the United States.

And I'm rooting for the United States. So this isn't just criticism, this is like, we got to figure this out.

“We do have smart people that need to be engaged in this, and I think we can still”

come away with a military success, but not a strategic, strategic one, so on. Yeah, I mean, in the case, indeed to your point, I mean, the threat to destroy, and I want to

begin, actually, because I always begin this way by saying, slowly, I support what Mix says,

that has helped me tremendously in this podcast, but I would like to make the point to yours, the, you know, you're opening, comment that, you know, the threat to destroy, Iranian power plants, if all moves is not reopened, arguably not just escalation, right? It's a shift in the, in the character and the objectives of the campaign, right? It's evolving into a war of mutual economic and infrastructure, attrition, not just the military

campaign, and of course, you know, for the reasons that make laid out, that's, that's supremely dangerous. You know, Iran's responded by saying they're going to hit continue to hit Gulf Energy infrastructure, desalination plants, which, by the way, are a huge deal. Saudi Arabia alone, I know, they all, the countries in the region, dependent on those desalination plants, that, that's a, you know, that's it, and then there is soft target to,

and potentially IT systems, right? And, you know, we haven't even talked about things like the fiber optic key walls and everything, then that, that, that run under the streets of all moves. And in this whole, there's a whole new vista, right, of possible, you don't have to be chicken little to, to see that this is potentially a very bad thing. Who wants John or Mark, you guys can mud wrestle? I'll, I'll jump in on the, uh,

straights issue. So there's more than one straight, and right now we've been focused on the straights of four moves. There's another important straight, the Bob Almondov straight, and we're talking about the economic disaster that comes from closing off the straights of four moves, which is certainly true. Well, there's another economic disaster that's waiting to happen, 12% of global shipping per year passes through the Suez Canal. That's not oil. That's, if you

like she and products, for example, or you like other things that go through the streets of Malakah,

buying things on Amazon, suddenly either the prices are going to go up, or the stocks are not going to

be there, or both. Right. So you're going to start seeing different economic impacts, then just seven dollars a gallon for diesel that we are seeing right now in places like California, for example. Over here, New England, I just saw this over six dollars a gallon for diesel right here. That's just gas. But once this starts spreading to Suez Canal, it's a totally different story, and the reason I'm bringing this up is because if you're thinking through the eyes of the adversary, they're looking at

what other pieces do we have to put in play? Well, the hoothees have been strangely quiet,

“strangely quiet, and I think that's for strategic reasons that's not on the stake. And once the”

hoothees are brought into play, their area of operations is not the streets of Formus. It's the Babel Mundo of Strait. They're preparing for this for a very long time. And the Strait of Formus

is tiny compared to the Babel Mundo of Strait space. You're talking about 2,200 kilometers of

Red Sea. If you've ever been on a cruise down to ports I eat and Egypt, it takes a very long time on a vessel going full speed to get down there. You're exposed for hours if not days all the way down. The coastline of Yemen that's controlled by the hoothees is something like 400 kilometers long, huge amount of coastline that's exposed, and is under no control by anyone else except the hoothees. And that's been that way for a while. The Saudis couldn't defeat them. The Emirates couldn't

defeat them. You go back into the Ottoman period in the 16th century. The Ottomans could not defeat them. This is kind of an undefeated force that's been living in these mountains looking down on you by trajectory for a very long time, like the perfect position to take up to fire a C208 Chinese manufactured ship anti-ship missile, which they have at you. So when we're thinking about this, looking at insurance, for example, companies like Mayersk are not going to be able to

get insured to put vessels in the Red Sea at some point within the next seven days probably. Because even if the threat hasn't materialized, it's enough for an insurance company to say we're not going to be making money on these shipments, so we're not insuring you. So this is a big problem that is going to begin rapidly gaining our attention soon if we do anything in the straits of corn moose. So I just want to put that out there and kind of broaden the lens a little

bit, because sometimes it's easy to get sucked into a specific mention of something like the straits of corn moose when we're not thinking about what are the outer cordon areas look like, and where is our actual rear at in this situation? Because we want our rear to be around the straits of corn moose, but the adversary can shift our rear somewhere else.

“Three points. I think there's a whole bunch of stuff to cover. I think it was, I keep jotting things”

down, so I'll go quickly on this, but there was five points I wanted to make. One is I might have mentioned this in the previous podcast. I had lunch recently. If you, I think you know this individual with Dan Shapiro, who is the former US ambassador in Israel. And we're kind of just lamenting over the notion of, you can overall support the war aims. I'll go over the idea of imminence of the Iranian threat in a second, because I don't think that's true. But you know,

Iran certainly in enemy the United States, an incredibly weak state. So just in kind of theoretical

terms, you can support this, but the problem is you have just this wildly incompetent administration.

On every level, the messaging is awful. You have leadership at the Pentagon and the civilian side, which is comical. And I do think, and you know, this is this is not a ding at any military brethren, but you know, we are getting romance a little bit by positive military math. I mean, Dan came comes down and gives a hell of a press conference. As Mick noted, and Jonathan, everyone, Andy, Jonathan, you know, military objectives can be met. But that all might not matter

because of the kind of the strategic incoherence. And so we're romance by this these, you know,

“sure we have a trip at the Iranian Navy. Okay, but you know, at the end of the day, the key objective”

and all of this, the Iranian nuclear program, I don't think we've touched yet. And you know, everyone was focused the last couple days. CBS News reported it first. We've all talked about it in science hats about potential soft missions. And everyone's got their sources in there. We probably shouldn't talk about exactly what's being planned. But we have not kind of action that key target there. And so there's a huge objective that has not even been touched. So I worry about,

you know, again, really, you know, military objectives may be being met. I also have flashbacks of Afghanistan and Iraq where we've heard the same type of briefings for our military leadership. And some of them, and most of it, it was true. Some of it, in fact, was not. So I actually have a little more of a more of a distrust of anything the government's saying. Maybe I'm turning into a conspiracy there. So there's that number two, I want to raise something

and it's a little personal because it's a former colleague is, you know, Joe Ken's coming out to work. In which, you know, he laid this bombshell and Joe for all of it, you know, the, so he was incredibly well respected in the military, a very good military officer, Mick, I know, you know, or knew him well. Obviously some tragedy is life and then he went pretty extreme to the right with some conspiracy theories, which he's now running around and getting a massive audience.

what he's saying is a little out there, maybe a lot out there, blaming the Israelis. I mean, blaming the Israelis for kind of our intervention in Syria is ridiculous, but that audience matters.

“And so I think you're seeing, you're going to see politically in the United States that this”

have an effect. Joe is not going to go quietly and he's knocked on quietly. It's worth discussing that. Another thing is something I threw out on Twitter this morning or next, whatever you call it, just has to do with the question on intelligence. And it's the idea that we have this incredible man-hunting capability that we all worked on and refined and we're really freaking good at it. But is that, you know, but then there's questions now is, you know, is the Supreme Leader alive,

what are Iranian plans and intentions? And I was talking to a former Israeli, uh, a Mossad, and actually both Mossad and 80, 200, uh, officer, they're civic service. And both of us were chatting this morning about, you know, do we really have an insight on Iranian plans and intentions? There's

what the ACIA has always been great and man-hunting. We're not really good at penetrating

hard targets. And so we do, we actually know what the Iranians are planning and doing, because if we did, some of these insane policies, I don't really understand. The idea of, you know, loosening sanctions on Iran, it's got the Secretary Treasury kind of laid out. They're just politically, it's ridiculous, but I don't even think it's going to work. And so, you know, so where are we, you know, these, some of the decisions that are being

being made on question? Um, job that you mentioned to Houthis, that's huge. I've been, you know, like, you know, when scratching their head on the Iranian asymmetric capabilities, that if the Houthis kind of unleash what their capable of, we're going to be in trouble just in terms of, you know, you know, naval resources on this. And then the last piece has to do with something

“that I think matters during the hearing. We're in Tulsi, Garib, Garib, Garib, kept saying,”

and she's wrong on this, that the president decides on whether Iran is an imminent threat or not. And that's actually just not true. And I think the listeners have to understand actually the intelligence community does this. That is a fundamental nature of what we do. We did it all the time in getting approval for kinetic strikes and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Syria and Yemen other places. We decide the evidence, you present it to the NSC. There's a bit of a kind of a group melt in this.

And then the president ultimately will give approval or not, but doesn't describe the

eminence piece. And so I do not think this war was fought over an imminent threat. You can still make a case for fighting this war and we haven't done that very well. But the eminence is bullshit. And I don't care about this intermediate range missile that was shot at one of our, you know, at a day of Russia. That is not, again, Russia has a hell of a light, Russia has ICBMs. Is Russia an imminent threat to the United States right now? I think it's

“a huge threat. Is an imminent known. So I actually disagree with this idea of eminence. And I think”

these railways as they're now running around screaming, you know, London and Paris are at threat. Really risk going back to alienating just about the rest of America now who Joe Kent is going to ensure hates these railways in perpetuity. And so that's just kind of my thoughts on a Sunday morning in DC where it's going to hit 80 degrees. So there's that. That's there's some good news. John, I could have a question. Why do you think the Houthis have not raised a head about the

parapet yet? Is it, is it fear of strikes? Is it because they want to appease the Saudis? Because you've, you've had a de facto ceasefire there for a period of months. What do you think they're waiting to see what happens? I think the Houthis are not as closely connected to the regime as other proxies are and the Houthis tend to have a little bit of independence of decision making. And it's not until there's an imminent challenge for them

in their home turf that they seek to defend their land. Of course, and the Houthis and United States is the Houthis can recognize an imminent threat accurately. Right. That's true. But I mean, the Houthis have been under IRGC. It specifically could force totalage for a long time. They've been an unconventional warfare partner for a long time. During COVID, I remember the Houthis force commander died of COVID in Yemen, which was a very interesting

development during that time. And the Houthis care about anxiety areas and zidees are what the Houthis actually are. A lot of us call the Houthis that Houthis don't call themselves this. This is actually somebody's last name. They call themselves Ansar Allah, which is soldiers of God.

And they're from the zidey clan, which is existed since the 10th century. I always have to put

the history in there because it's very easy for get like where these people came from and why are they fighting? Why the Houthis are fighting? It's not for Iran. The Houthis are fighting for Houthis identity, zidey identity in Yemen, which is the North Yemenite area. And not until that area is in danger. Do I think that Houthis will take a step to actually fire a shot? They're going to wait until they feel that they are threatened, which at this moment they're not. That's great. That's

all right. Why shouldn't it just bring them to a head war? Oh, sorry, Andy.

which I thought was significant. The, you know, the shift in emphasis of the war from perhaps

military targeting on both sides now to energy infrastructure and all of that and potential dangers and repercussions of the global economy we talked about, you know, that bad, which is a great point with that. That things could easily get worse there escalation. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about the two mues in route, right? Because when I'm reading even positive

“comments about this and giving the president options, I think it's important to make the point”

that even even with two mues and we can get into and talk about it. We've got plenty of mues here.

But the most they can do is open a corridor temporarily, right? They can't make the straight

truly safe. And what they do is is temporary and it's at tremendous risk. I'm not sure that I've seen conversations that really balance that. That's, you know, we all like to think that Marines are sent somewhere and they save the day and it's all over. But in this case, it seems like there's a tremendous amount of risk and the reward is very limited. Been point, and I don't know if you saw, but General Votel, who's like a ball with me at M.E.I,

came out in an interview and said he doesn't see what the purpose would be for Marine Seizing Gark, essentially they would be very vulnerable to counterattack with 20 miles off the coast. And essentially, if we wanted to in their ability to use it, we could simply strike it from the air. Right? If they don't react if they simply go there, well, I guess you, you're parked on our island. What's the purpose? We're just going to withdraw, we're going to withdraw on the fire.

That, again, does not look good. And I don't think anybody would challenge. He's not rain. Of course, but, you know, the former Jay Sock, so com, and said com, commander is, you know, experience

“and integrity is unimpetable. So I think they're about a list. That's what I'm saying. And again,”

I'm sure the Marines can take it. I have great confidence in my fellow Marines, but they have to have a real purpose. And this, and as you just said, Andy, it would be temporary at fast. And it doesn't mean that they still can't. Even if we did everything with the greatest Navy in the world and the greatest Marine Corps, it doesn't mean that there's commercial ships are going to be confident going through those, that's great. It just doesn't. It could simply say,

you know, we don't, we're not insured. The other part you can initiate a company to insured, even with, you know, the, the, my amount of military effort we have there, but, you know, tossed over to the other two, but I didn't want to make a point to back of Markham. The intelligence community absolutely determines threats. That's like the primary purpose of it, right? During this discussion that they were having on the hill, it was in the global threats was annual

briefing in the name, right? And so if you're identifying threats, you're obviously trying to find

out which one's imminent because that's the one you have to act on first. So the idea that we,

the intelligence community, don't identify that is contradicted by the very nature of the briefing that that person was in, the direct, right? So I don't understand that at all. The president, of course, because to determine whether we're going to do a preemptive war based on an imminent threat, if it's, if it's a self-defense, then our forces around the world have the ability to respond without that. And it's clearly, and I don't, I, Joe wasn't, we were insane, you know, I didn't

roll well, but he was right about that. There wasn't an imminent threat. And everybody knows that. And it, it tells us this community is already great that on the hill. And I think we all know that it's going to come out. So, um, my little sense, that they're definitely a threat. We decided to take preemptive action in a war of choice. And that's how I, he's going to, no matter how many times you tweet the opposite, that's how I, he's going to record this. Now the question is of course,

that's in the rearview mirror. How do we come out of this with the United States? Is this success?

“That's what I think we should, our success as we can get. That's what I think we really need to focus on.”

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“Now, I think Andy's dog is back soon, you know.”

He sees Russians outside. Have you not fed? What's your dog's name? Major, you nervous. Dog's name is Richie. Richie. He's from Ukraine. I worked obviously at CIA, not in the military. So, you know, this is not a criticism. I have this discussion with my other former military friends.

I mean, there almost is an instinctive desire on you all to defend the military on this at all costs.

I mean, so the military of Jackson's are being met. God bless them, and women, and the armed forces. I'm for all of that. But can we actually not raise the question of it? Maybe this, maybe military is actually not doing a great job. Not in terms of the men and women who are on the USS Ford or God bless the F-35 pilots, but but actually people at the Pentagon who are making strategy. Because they didn't get, they didn't plan for the straights before moves issue. I mean, Admiral Cooper might be a great guy. I said, come chief, like, did they not

“anticipate these things? I think we can be a little more forward leaning and actually criticizing the leadership”

of the Pentagon, the uniform leadership. Not the men and women are out there in harm's way. God bless them. We all were at the tip of the spear before nothing to do with it except do your job. You know, are we given, are we given the Chairman of Joint Chiefs to break? The heck said, there's a complete and total idiot. It's painful to watch him. Everyone ignores that new focus on Dan Kane. But what if Dan Kane's strategy is awful a little bit? Can I throw that out to you,

guys? Not to be too provocative, but maybe we're given them kind of a pass a little bit. It's a great point, Mark, and we've discussed here. This is not a new plan. This isn't something they created out of whole cloth recently. And as you guys, and obviously we're staying on the right side of the classified here. But we all know that as you go through a plan, you're coming up with contingencies. The streets of Hormuz, you know, having been at Soxen, the bad and the streets of Hormuz,

well always forefront, drain planning, all the plant contingency plants we came up with there.

The economic consequences are huge and it's impossible to separate them from military objectives. And we were always very much aware of that. I'm not trying to pretend to be smarter than the planners involved in this. But it does leave, that does leave me kind of incredulous that no one on the military side didn't say, Hey boss, had you considered these things because best military advice includes a very clear explanation of the risks. And those risks are just operational risks.

They need to be, well, in this case. They have impact on the global economy.

“So I don't know. I can't answer your question, Mark, but I think it's a really,”

it's a valid question. And I don't think, I think we're too quick to give our military leadership a past. And that's sort of all of us are burned in some way by the way that U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan. And there was plenty of blame being heaped on various administrations. But I for one sat in endless number of briefs where I heard military commanders tell both that political leadership and their own leadership within the military that everything was going great. That yes, you know,

a year ago before my unit got here, things were pretty shitty, but look, we've really turned things down and we're on the path to victory. We heard that time and time again at every single level within the military telling the unfinished truth explaining what the risks are, speaking truth to power is all part and parcel of the responsibility of being a forced star leader. We treat them

with great power comes great responsibility. And I'm not sure what happened in this particular case.

“I think we're also seeing this, you know, the subordination of the military and some”

international power to the policy level to politics. You could have the most brilliant strategy on the planet, but if the policy executor policy maker doesn't want to touch your advice, it means nothing. And as Andy's mentioning, we have these contingency plans that exist that are very elaborate with elaborate contingencies that branch off of each other. If you know if this happens, these other three things might happen, we recommend, you know, number one because

that has this outcome. All that can be so beautiful and exquisite until it's presented to the person who's making a decision and they say, "I don't care about that. I want you to do this other

thing instead." And we can keep kicking and streaming, but the problem is you only kick and scream

so much until you're either pushed out, which is a noble thing, or you choose to be silent. And I've seen this happen a lot at the operational level up to the general officer level of recommending things that the, you know, in the country where we'd recommend certain outcomes in the general chooses not to do that because they have their own political reasons to not do that. We had a situation in Afghanistan where there were all these classified maps that were being

printed out and used as bus route maps for large bases like Leatherneck and Kandahar. And we knew we had intelligence that there was Taliban and Pakistan using those maps to plan against the base. Took all the maps down, briefed the general, the two star about it. General Corganis, who's actually later fired about it. He said, "Put the maps up the people need to know how to get around on buses

“on the base." And we said, "These are secret maps. They shouldn't be there. You have third”

country nationals with these maps." He said, "I don't care if the people need to get on buses and get around the base. Two months later the base was attacked. The most highest ranking person killed since Vietnam, the Italian commander was killed in that attack because that general refused to listen to the actual risk recommendations and that's not even outside the military, but that's just at the GO level." Well, I don't know. I'm way in on this. I mean, I do have

somewhat of an ins, being sure the fence is the military. It's like I do my friends, but because they're one in the same, I guess I should say. But it's

important point out. I mean, ultimately, policies made by civilian leadership. That's our system.

And this civilian leadership has decided that anybody that disagrees with them can leave. I mean, that was said specifically, right? So a lot of the war of who would have been there has left. That's just the fact. They were fine. They were totally whatever reason, because they were somehow associated with the last administration, even though military, military uniform military is an associated with any administration or party. That's the point. So I'd start with that. The other

part, we've seen the degradation and I don't know the specifics on what I don't want to overstate it, but they're not using the NSE the way it is historically been used. So policy decisions, especially big strategic ones, go through a process. They start at the fairly low level, high level in general, but off low level when it comes to being at the White House. They argue, there's the DOD state, energy, treasury, all of it. And it goes up. And there's many opportunities to inject

Europe points. And then if everybody agrees that usually stops there, if people don't agree, then it keeps going up until it gets to the top. This, according to the Wall Street Journal,

“I believe there was, was just like the President, Vice President, Secretary of State,”

Defense, and the Chairman. I fully think that General Cain is confident and is listening to his people. And I think he was told this is going to be an air war. It's going to last with this amount of time. And we're going to do these state and military objectives. And then I changed. Right, because there's no reason for mu's now be streaming across. If that was part of the original plan, it's just, I mean, you can't, you can't avoid that one fact. You need, and now the 82nd airport

apparently and correct me if I'm wrong if this is just wrong social media stuff is being given warning orders. And I think it is right. Right. So it's clear that this wasn't part of the plan. So the military is full to do this and now they're told to do that. And I think we're in a situation where it's really a day by day thing. Like we went from the commander and chief saying, this is about over to you have 48 hours. And if you don't do what I tell you to do,

we're going to escalate this substantially. And by the way, even though it's about over, the Marine Corps gets here in 10 days or whatever the time. Right. There's so many inconsistencies that imagine if you were the one trying to orchestrate this, you know, the Chairman. And of course,

Admiral Brad had Admiral Brad Cooper, who's ultimately responsible. I simply don't think they know

is going to run its course, I think they're just adjusting based on different guidance and inputs

are getting daily. Let me ask you guys from your network. Because I mentioned they're kind of the Joe Kent piece and we don't have to get into Joe Kent specifically, but it's just, you know, the message he's putting out there. I mean, I see it and again, what do I know? I'm sitting in DC. I see it

“on social media, but I think it's resonating amongst significant portions of the population.”

He's getting a lot of attention in Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson and Sean Ryan have massive follow-ups. These are tens of millions of people are going to hear this message. Do you think what he had, and my comment earlier was, I think, you know, I don't agree with what he's saying on a lot, specifically some of the kind of the stuff that's more out there. But do you think it

has resonance, not just amongst kind of the, perhaps what would be the President's supporters,

but in the veteran community? Because I think one of the things that, you know, if you watch Fox News, you think, oh, everybody, you know, who's serving the military, who's a giant patriot is going to support this, but that's not what I'm hearing at all. I've done some other podcasts kind of in the same space this shows in, but kind of in the vet pro space, and there's a lot of opposition to this. What do you think Joe Ken's, you know, do you think his message is going to

“resonate, particularly amongst those that you might have thought would be supportive of this war?”

Yes, I do. And like, frankly, let's be honest, like, no one's really going to parse his statement out. Like, they're not going to sit there and be like, oh, yeah, the serious stuff is bullshit, maybe the Iran stuff is kind of true. I mean, he was inside. So no one's going to parse that out. It's going to be brought up as like, I just, you just know it. And like, if there's do it, if they're going to do polls, they should like the level of anti-Semitism that's growing in this

country, it's growing. It's not going down. And he's going to be a mouthpiece to it, even though you can be against this Israel and what they're doing in the Middle East and not be at the cinematic. It's fucking possible. Like, you know, I am one of them. So like, I have Jewish, I live in New York. Like, you know what I mean? Like, they're everywhere. Like, they're friends of mine. I work with them. Like, but I can't, I don't agree with what Israel is doing and how they're going

about everything that's gone on after October 7th. I'm not saying don't whack everybody in our

“minds. Do it. Do what you're good at. But don't, you know, kill 70,000 plus people. And I think that's”

just like, like, since then, it's been a cascade. And like you said, all the influences out there, and most of the people listening are not looking at the nuances whatsoever. So that's, and what, and that's the store of the living. It was a biobalce used to stay when you go to war. You want to bring every friend you have with a guy, right? I think a paraphrasing and a secretary of ours. Who was on PBS with another friend of mine,

ran all day. So two of the things I know. National security and stoicism, the same bundle. So and two be all people like Mark. So depends on what you're talking about when it comes to what Joe is saying. I think, obviously, I'm that threat wasn't there. That's going to be clear. I think that's going to history's going to show that on Israel. I mean, if I was Israel, I want my biggest brother to come fight with me too. So I don't really even know. Like, so you're criticizing

that for they felt it was in their own strategic interests to do this. They wanted the United States to go with them. But we made the decision. So I mean, I don't even, that's not, I don't even view that as a criticism of Israel. We made the decision to go. Nobody tells President Trump what to do. I mean, I think that's a fair line. I mean, you can say what you want, but they don't think they just just do this and he's ever done that. So I don't understand that criticism. But the overall

criticism is we're getting into another war in the Middle East and this is not supposed to be you know, America first and all that. I mean, I think it's going to resonate. Eventually, people are going to go, yeah, wait, this is the opposite. I mean, we just saw a request

for $200 billion. That's one fourth of what the Iraq War caused. It's one fourth of the

annual budget for the defense department. Like, so even if you're totally detached from the military action, something in your head's got to go, I'm about to pay $8 a gallon for gas and I've been a spend as a taxpayer $200 billion to keep this going. I already said where I support on the objectives. But this is all issues that super senior policymakers need to take into account. -This is your network. I mean, you know, you have friends on both sides of the aisle, but it tons of

former veterans. I mean, what are they thinking now? I mean, Joe, again, I think Joe's departure is meaningful in that world. But am I, am I off on that? Are you hearing these things saying,

So as we get further away from the North Florida, Afghanistan and Iraq, that matter, there's a lot of

obviously don't speak for the whole community, but I'll just characterize it. It will. Because it's, it's, it's nonstop. Remember, instead of the people who lost their lives in

“those conflicts, which we should do. But it's also people going, what was that all about?”

Like, when we really, we did all of this for, say Afghanistan, and now it's all back to where it was before we started, and maybe worse. Right? So there's a lot of it will toward that. And then you're, they're seeing, you know, okay, this was a limited military engagement. Maybe it's not. Now we have rain's going, now we have territories that might be going. So I think you're going to see grow a growing crescendo of the vet community, which I think has influence,

questioning what the plan is here. And if we start seeing rains and soldiers get killed because of it's going to turn south really quick. In it should. I mean, this is a broader discussion, but we have all volunteer military. So that separates the population from the actions of the military and the consequences. Right? If this was a draft, but advocating for it, there'd be a lot more outcry going on right now. Right? So I think that kind of, uh, sentiment is going to be exhibited

inside the vet community because they're looking out for their younger brothers here. So I think that

“that's why I think we really need a plan, because again, I'm all about, you know, it states being”

not only military successful, but strategically successful here. We need a plan to, to offer

up this because if the plan is just to keep going up, that never works. Start sending troops into

Iran. This is going to, is going to be a revolt inside, I think, the right side of the political sphere in addition to the left side. And this is not going to go up. And ultimately, we're democracy in that matters. That's the other benefit Iran has. They obviously don't care what the sentiment of their people are. Right? They're killer. They've killed 30,000, just for protesting. So they have an advantage in the sense that they can inflict a lot of pain on their own people

to try to sustain themselves through this because we cannot, because we are, we have a democracy. And they're going to, that democracy is going to rear its head soon, of the midterm. Fingers crossed on that one week. Uh, uh, so I'm being a snarky bitch. I'm sorry. No, I had more. No, Andy. Yeah, my go ahead. I was just, Andy, no, no, tell me. I'm sorry. I just, I thought you muted me. No, you're saying it. Let's start to speak.

“That's what you do. Yeah. So, no, no, I mean, great. I've, I've thought this, you know,”

who cares about the audience. I thought this was a really good conversation talking about, you know, best military advice, um, the way decisions are made, the fact that decisions made in conflict should not be completely opaque. Certainly, you have to pay attention to requirements for, for operational security, but at the same time, and when, when you're waging war as a democracy, you have an obligation to inform the public

her for what your objectives are, where you're going, et cetera, et cetera, and that. And so now, we're at this point where we, we, right, I think here in this group, collectively, if I can sum this up, we, we support certainly limited objectives towards Iran. We've all, we've all dealt with Iran as a bad actor in the region, and enormously destabilizing actor, something needed to be done to use that horrible cliché. But now, we're looking at two areas of

escalation. We talked about the energy piece, energy infrastructure, uh, and, and we're talking about potentially ground troops. And those two, those two narratives seem to be dominating the media right now. And, uh, you know, in the last 10, 15 minutes, I'd like to get back to hear your views

on, you know, now before we were talking about one million, what can two do, two muse do,

what are they likely to do, uh, and, uh, what, I mean, we talk a little bit about the risk, but more detail on that, because there's a lot of un-informed speculation in the media about sending Marines there, and what potentially that's this deployment of the 82nd Airborne means, too. Yeah, one of those notes, uh, on that, too, is, is, can we go over then just a little bit, uh, about, well, first of all, I think we, you know, with the objectives of, uh, of the new,

but just in ground forces overall, are we talking just carguerland, um, uh, the streets of horror moves issue, or we also talking about, you know, how to secure the, the remaining HU, and I know

things? I can't keep track. But, uh, but I think that, you know, that has to be out there, because while the energy thing is dominating now, the original objective of the war was the nuclear file. And so I guess maybe a way to, to pose this question is, you know, uh, assuming there's no diplomatic agreement, um, are there military means in which we can go in, find, secure, and remove, that there, the, you know, uh, or, or, and then, and then prohibit the Iranian ability, you know,

to, to, to continue on with their nuclear program. And what would that entail in an unclassified

session? You know, is it going to be soft? Is it going to be the 80 second? Is it going to be any

“parts of the mu? I mean, I think that's a good discussion to have. Jonathan, what do you think?”

So with the marine underground task force structure that the mu brings to this, which is unique, they have the logistics combat element, which will probably be the key player in, in what might come next. Although they have the battalion landing team that's designed as like the combat arm of it, it's really logistics that matters here, especially if we're talking about removal of highly enriched uranium, because there's going to be that to your one element, or whoever it is,

that actually works on site with the material, but then you have hundreds of kilometers to move it out. No matter what way you do it, you could do it through air with, you know, a runway that's been tactically built. You could use a M2 mat and whatever you need to do to actually get aircraft in there,

or no matting whatsoever in the desert, or the equals wheel, whatever it is, you're going to have

to have a logistics and sustainment component to that. That is the key player that's going to be probably 90% of this operation is in logistics and sustainment, because once that tier one unit is done with whatever it's doing, you've got to exhale safely, and you might have both component

“of the airing ground or whatever you could talk about, planning for that, but that's what that”

marine unit can bring to this fight, and I think Carg Island is kind of a secondary issue when we're talking about the HEU, and the reason I'm kind of thinking that is looking at what Axios put out, I think it was yesterday, about the six things that the U.S. has told Iran that they want to get out of this to end the conflict, and on their top part of it is the nuclear enrichment program. So if that's still top of mind, that's probably also top of mind at a policy level,

filtering down to military planning, which means probably that that's what's going to be looked

at here, not Carg Island as the thing to hold, because as U said Mick, they can land on Carg Island. They're very good at clearing, holding, sustaining on the island, but they're going to be inside the weapons engagement zone of very close range of munitions that are way easier to use and hide, have mobile point of origin sites or pro-sites that they can just move around and trucks all day long, and just harass the island all day long without actually doing anything big,

whereas if you're using the mu for a different option, which is this option we're discussing here, as a logistics player, that's where you really have the mu shine in what could happen in the next 48 hours to a week. The problem here is Trump's threat yesterday about the 48 hour timeline, wasn't strikes on nuclear sites, it was strikes on power plants, and so we've seen so far Israel, the United States, both being very precise in how they're targeting inside of Iran,

where they're hitting very specific military or IRGC or security targets and political targets, not the people. They haven't been flattening buildings, they haven't been making it look like Gaza or southern Lebanon yet. They could do that, and the thing is, the reason probably they're not doing that is to keep the Iranian people who support the West from not supporting the West anymore, and this was a mistake we made exactly 23 years ago now, yesterday in the invasion of Iraq,

in 2003, March 2003, where the people in the beginning were very happy with what was going on, and that rapidly deteriorated because of decisions that we made in the West. And if those decisions now change in that same way where we start hitting power plants and civilian infrastructures, desalination plants, things that touch ordinary Iranians every day, you're going to rapidly see a loss of support on the ground in the country, which will make it very challenging when you

have a regime that's against you and a people that's for you and that transitions to a regime that's against you and a people that's against you. This is what happened in 1980 when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, in the beginning with the revolution, revolutionaries, not all of them support the new regime as soon as Saddam invaded and attack civilians, you had support for the regime. So this is something that right now, the US is kind of at a precipice of do we go left or right,

and if we continue keeping the people safe, by not striking their power plants, by not striking disalemization plants, by not harming their food supply, who keep them on our side, but they could very easily go the other way. Yeah, to be, you know, that's an interesting really interesting point, John, about the logistics support for such an operation, then,

“you know, certainly I think we should maybe finish up talking more about the Iranian and”

Richmond mission, which is very complex and as John, you indicated, there is, you know, it keeps us with the right side of classified of course, but, you know, it's open source information that that it is a potential mission and that there are units, especially trained for that,

requiring access to a secure airfield, a mission that would take at least a thousand guys,

“right, and would last, and the most optimistic estimates, maybe a week, the most optimistic estimates,”

right, how do you, you know, the suit, so getting back to, we'll come back to that, but just saying that alone is an indication of what, what a high-risk mission this is and of course, we all have memories, so if a desert one, so potentially, I'm not saying this is the case, I mean, logistically, you could, you could deploy one, you wait two mues, maybe you're wanting to do simultaneous operations, right, the uranium and Richmond mission, but you also want to hold the

uranium's attention in the streets of Formus, limited objectives, you know, seizing the islands, half a dozen islands there, the John can pronounce the names, John one of the few, you know, few people who can pronounce all their names of those islands, going off the missile sites,

“drone launch sites, mine cache, small boats, you know, things that the aviation campaign can't touch,”

and then 400 miles away, right, second view, potentially taking Carg Island, why not exactly

clear, but to seize for some reason, Iranian oil infrastructure intact, right, they're not simply landing to do a BDA, and maybe all of those things happening simultaneously with this mission, to secure uranium, and potentially that is a role free, second airborne, not doing the actual hands-on piece, but providing a quick reaction force, and perhaps a security court on, I don't know, I'm speculating, but all of these things perhaps in concern, getting back to the fact that

deploying Marines there, it pains me to say so, is absolutely a temporary solution, and it's high risk, you're going to keep, you're not really going to keep the streets of Hormuz, open, you've got key rest, you've got vulnerability during the landing, you've got a fixed target problem right, once you're ashore, you're predictable, you're easy for Iran to target along the whole length of that coastline, the inland threat persists, because Iran can still fight from the mainland, right,

into the streets of Hormuz, and you're dealing with the BDA, the huge risk of mission creed, you know, the requirement to, to extricate the requirement to keep the Marines on the ground longer, as you realize that your objectives can only be achieved by doing so, a limited mission, supposed a limited mission like that can grow very quickly. I also be sucked in by our success. Yeah. A question for, for John and Andy, I know, I jumped out.

“You know, one of the things that we've seen, and I think it's pretty evident, is that there's”

been a brain drain at the civilian side, particularly in the intelligence community, certainly the State Department, I mean, George Kent, former ambassador told me a quarter of the State Department's gone, I mean, that's staggering. Do you see, though, and so, so, as soon as we are now in 2026, has there been that also level of departure and expertise in the U.S. military, both officer and enlisted corps? You know, for a long time, kind of this assumption was,

we have a battle tested battle ready for us, but we are getting a little bit farther away from Iraq and Afghanistan, and so, you know, this is not to say that there are not incredibly motivated Marines on that, you know, on the float now, getting ready, and I'm sure, you know, they're not listening to these kinds of arguments. They're getting ready for the job at hand, but is there a

notion that we'll hold on a second, we actually haven't done stuff like this for some time,

maybe there's elements of the soft world that that had, but even there, too, you know, and so, you know, we are kind of moving farther away from actual, you know, where our forces were in combat, and so has there been that kind of drain of experience personnel, both with the officer and the enlisted elements of the military? Yeah, I would say that that GWAT era of experience, it wasn't because of the administration, it was because of service limitations, I mean, really realistically,

you guys are serving maximum 20 years, some 30 years of their officers, and, you know, service major and things like that, but the ones that were there during the invasion in 2003, for example, if they're still in now, they were privates in Lieutenant's back then, and now they're very, very senior, you know, and I was reading about the operation, Red Wing's recap that you share

the other day, and the Lieutenant Commander that was in charge of that operation, that was his first combat

guys who are at that field grade officer level that this is their first combat deployment. So they may be well-trained, they've done a really good job on that pipeline, and they've worked hard to get where they are, but they have no combat experience, that's not their fault. But now, as the

“key decision maker at the operational level, especially in the soft world, they're the task force”

commander, they're making a combat decision on something they never experienced before. And the guys

below them are looking at them as if that guy knows everything, I mean, that's the way that we're brought up, right, to respect everything that they're saying to us and to follow it, execute it no matter what, because he's the guy. Well, that guy might not have any experience on that thing, he's deciding on, he just has the ability to make decisions quickly, which is an excellent skill, but he hasn't tested that yet, and that's a concern. I mean, you saw that with a maduro array too,

like half the operators and half the Rangers were, there was a first-time in combat. There's a penicious psychological element to this, too, when it comes to military leadership and these sort of situations, and I'm just, you know, and it's unfortunate, but it's just human nature,

right? So, for that very reason, a lot of these guys have come in on the tail end of Afghanistan

and Iraq, and to there, all their careers to date, and their careers have so far been unblemished by combat, but they've had to hear the legacy of those who went before them, right? You know,

“you should have been here back in, I don't know, '06, but you talk about, I mean, they've listened to this,”

for even for for mature commanders, there's this urge to to prove themselves, and I think, you know, this is, undoubtedly, a rest too. We are sitting here, all of us, right? I'm chair now, I'm chair warriors, and we're looking at two muse, sailing towards the golf, and we've talked about the risk versus reward in this rate, and it's very clearly evident to all of us that it's, it's kind of limited reward, huge amount of

risk, who is, who is telling the boss then, right? Who in uniform is saying this, hopefully someone

is, someone is pointing it out. It was kind of like in October, after 9/11, you know, when everyone went to Afghanistan, like right away, a lot of people thought, like, I want to get on that deployment right now, because this is going to be over in a couple of weeks. It lasted for a lot longer than that, but that's the feeling that especially a junior guy who don't want to be so, absolutely, on mist this. Yeah, and they're looking up at their kernels, another of sixes, and they're looking at these

guys who are Vietnam veterans, you know, and like, I missed my shot in the 80s, you know, I joined in the late 90s, this is my only chance, I got to get out the door right now, and I'm sure that guys are thinking that right now. I mean, I would be too, if it was me and I had just choice. For example, with Choppy Fein and Business, and with Knaq, with the checkout with the world for the best conversion. That's right, the checkout with the world for the best conversion.

The legendary checkout from Choppy Fein for just the shop on your website, a bit to social media, and over all of that. That's the music for your time. How do you respond with Choppy Fein? You can get to a real help. Start to don't test no hard to feel. I'm an oil reporter. I'll shop if I point to A, let's record it. I mean, isn't that why the theory of having competence, civilian leadership is what makes sure,

you know, you point the gun where you want it to go if you need it to go with based on really good intelligence. This does feel like kind of like the Iraq war and the buildup in reverse, because the Iraq war, they took a whole year to like tell us about yellow cake and tell us about anthrax and all this stuff and connections to Al Qaeda and to sell the war, right? Because there's a different media environment, different political environment completely. Now it's like we started

the war, and now we're trying to sell it to you guys horrifically, because you see the polls,

“it's 30% approval, and I think that's soft. Especially with the 200 billion gets more and more”

traction, it's going to get, it's going to be even softer than that. So it's just an, you know, it's an interesting, there's an interesting dichotomy there between Iraq and Iran, what's happening now and around. I think what's not commonly understood is civilian control of the leadership at the civilian control of the military is a mainstay of, you know, one of the principles of a liberal democracy, right? And then it's entirely healthy, but what is not

commonly recognized is you, you don't want that to be seamless at that next is you want constant tension on the military side, you want constant explanation of risks and had you thought about this and that and some degree of pushback, not because it's mutiny, but simply because that is the

it becomes annoying and seems to be a hindrance. You don't want both sides of that nexus,

always to be absolutely in agreement because that's just not healthy. Well, look, so let's go back

to Trump, the Trump, one administration, you know, Jim Madison, Secretary of Defense, we didn't would push back to Trump all the time. You know, Bob Woodward wrote in his book that Trump came up with the idea of trying to assassinate the Soviet-Venseurian President Bashar al-Assad and Jim Madison, Gina Asple, CI director said, "No fucking way, that's violates executive order, who can't do that." You don't have that now. So a few heads at the Secretary of Defense is not going

“to say that, but again, I think that we have to take a more critical view, even of the units,”

well, uniform military, Dan Kane was a three-star nominated for the chairman of Joint Chiefs. The most, it was shocking at the time and the worry was, is he going to have the gravity

top to stand up to Trump? And all you hear from Trump is how much he loves raising Kane.

And, you know, and Kane's last job, frankly, was the military adviser to the CI director, which is not a stepping stone to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs. You know, he got a four-star, but he was in a three-star bill at the CI A, which is not seen as something all that, you know, magical for it. And so, you know, but we all look to Kane in these briefings because you look at Hexat and Ukraine, so you look to Kane, like, he had police and one telling me the truth.

And what if Kane is not up to the job of standing up to Trump? You know, and so, you know, so that's, I think that's worth questioning if we start going down the path of some really,

“really risky military deployments like we're talking about now. Could this be a giant faint?”

You know, you send the two mues to send the 82nd. These are just posturing. I don't think so, because history tells us when Trump deploys the military and that type of fashion he actually uses it. You know, the Maduro, up in Venezuela, which cost a gazillion dollars. You know, we all sat here waiting if you'd ever do it. He did it. Same thing with Iran. We deployed half the planet to the Middle East and he ends up going for it. And so, but, you know, if we end up pushing some of these

really risky ops, I think you do have to then go back to, okay, did the Chairman of Joint Chiefs who is that military adviser to President? What he should have as a resignation letter in his desk. Say, this is insane. We're going to lose a lot of people. Now, I know that's not what you are taught. And it's inherently, you know, you want to kind of salute the civilian leadership going forward, but I do think, you know, Kane's legacy is on the line here, too. If stuff really goes south,

you know, you can't only blame this on the civilian side of the U.S. government. It's the senior

leadership, the senior uniform leadership. Just like they deserve blame for what happened and never

received, never received any sanction for what happened in Afghanistan. Yeah, it's a great point, Mark. And I think we've got a, I don't think that's, I think this is an intellectual gap in the military. I really do. And, you know, general photo tell, obviously understand it and explain it very well. You know, his, his way of explaining this and he was talking specifically to us at Soxan, to about the decision to kill those,

“the Russians and Syria. You remember that, right? No. And he talks about the conversations that”

he had at the time with Mattis and the president in the room explaining clearly what the risks were as well as what the advantages were of doing this. So when it came to decision time, they didn't have to go through all of this again. But he was very, the photo, very clearly will say, you absolutely are obligated to explain all risks about military courses of action. It seems to us obvious, but I'm not sure it is because how

many generals have actually resigned because the military advice was not taken because they explained the risks in the last three decades. One guy, right? General Newball, Freestar, Marine, former Marine, new commander, resigned in 2003 over the Iraq War. They didn't become a, you know, hasn't been touted much by the media and Newball subsequently didn't make a big deal of it, but that's why he stepped down and that's the only example we have. It's not, it's not as though

this is, this is really understood. I think a lot of force, I think. Hey, I gave my advice. He didn't take it, so I don't when it didn't did it. Hey, for John and Andy, one last thing before we break, what's it like on the mute right now? You know, for the, for the men and women there, I mean, it's pretty, pretty remarkable what they're sailing into. They probably have some idea, but you both have been in those positions. What do they think in, you know, what's the,

what's the camaraderie like, what's, you know, the resolve, give it, it's for those who have not experienced that, give a sense of that. I would think that they're probably very excited and they're each doing everything. Like within their little component on the ship, they're all doing the

you know, doing drills, if they can do drills, they're doing marksman ship over the bow. Like they're

doing all these like fine tuning things as they're flowing and they're watching the calendar and thinking like more, more, day, one more day, getting steaming ahead, because as the way that we're raised, you know, we were raised to be warriors and to fight, and especially at the low level, like the platoon level, the company level, those guys are not there to question policy. They're they're executed and even all the way up. But I mean, at that lower level, it's, it's execute policy.

“It executed the best way you can as flawlessly as you can, there's little casualty as you can.”

So they're practicing putting on turnicates, they're doing things like that to get ready to go. And they're not looking broader probably. We, why would they, they're on the ship and they're going to war. This is probably how they're thinking about it. Yeah, tremendous aigry, tremendous amount of excitement, full days on the flight decks, doing training. The hardest part for leadership from the tune level, upwards is rumor control and that's

going to be absolutely galloping, you know, the closed, you know, confined space, like on a ship, there's going to be all kinds of rumors about potential missions.

And, and not it never enough information coming in.

Is there, is there, is that to the news, uh, uh, uh, a big in the United States? What, how is that restraint as you get closer or is it, is, you know, the news run in 24/7 on board. It depends. If there's something, if, if there's some reason, they can actually shut off communications and they have a name for that. They'll actually turn it on and nobody can communicate outside. But they'll still be able to watch the news like in the childhood, they'll see TV, they'll see CNN,

they'll see Fox, I don't know if they still see CNN. It used to be that we actually had CNN and Fox

“on at the same time, so you can see both sides, right? And, uh, so that's, that's how they would look”

at the outside world. They have limitations on internet, sometimes not because they, they're not allowed to, but because they don't have data access. So what you do usually do is if you're on, you know,

on the, on the deck in Europe infantrymen, you make friends with an intel guy, because you can go on

the, the computer system and go read the news on the computer, where, you know, you might not have that ability to do that. You know, you know, I remember the intel into Iraq, uh, uh, you know, I was up with Nick, um, uh, in the mountains of Kurdistan, and then I was pulled from that team to going with, uh, with the seals for the, for the, for the HVT hunt. I mean, the amount of excitement we had. And again, this sounds like that was a very junior often extraordinary. Um, again, that's what you train for,

you're there for that. You're not worrying about debate back home, um, you know, you won't feel like you're the tip of the spear, you're the one standing on the ramparts. And when it comes to, frankly, you know, going back to the really original point of our conversation and when it comes to Iran, pretty easy to get motivated. You know, um, uh, again, responsible for the deaths of a significant amount of of U.S. forces, U.S. civilians and others. So, and then, and, and what's interesting, and I,

maybe you guys can both comment, um, in retrospect to decades later, is only when I started thinking about the wisdom of Iraq. Um, uh, and same thing with the Afghan Afghanistan stuff. I mean, there's a time in place where you sit back and you say, was this all worth it? But not right now when you're, when you're, when you're rolling in, uh, you're pretty pumped. Didn't so, so I guess the question for you, too, is have you had the time to reflect and you're, and you're, you're combat, um, uh, uh, uh, uh,

deployments, uh, uh, and, and did that, has that chain, you know, it was that initially you for you, has that changed over time? Yeah, definitely. I mean, when you're on the deployment, you're like, this is it. And you almost don't want other information to come in to challenge the fact that this is it. Until then, time separates you from that moment, then you start to look at the larger geopolitical reason and things you were doing there. There's a great book by, um, uh, blanking on his name right

now, general. But he wrote the book, "War as a Racket." Smelly Butler. And it opens up by saying, "I was a gangster of capitalism because he was using the banana wars." And, uh, it's an excellent book, and every last corporal should read it because that tells you from a general officer level,

“when he, in his moment of clarity, when he looked back and he said, "Wow, that's what I was doing."”

But in that moment, when you're on that island and you're sweating and you've got your gun and the other guy has his gun, you're not thinking about what am I doing here, you're thinking about, how am I going to kill that guy and how do I survive, right? And then everything else behind that that allows that to occur. That's what's your brain at that moment. Yeah, I would agree. You know, even as of the talent commander in Iraq towards the, the end of US involvement there,

when we, we sense that things perhaps at the political level weren't flowing the way they should, you know, and we could sense that even in our bar promise, and there was talk about disbanding the sons of Iraq and all of that. And it's suddenly my battalion had casualties directly from Iranian involvement. Even though all those things were happening, and even though I regarded myself as being educated and informed, I believe then the mission,

Butler by the way, he went to metals of honors and no one can, no one can question his loyalty, right?

“But it's only in retrospect that I look back and, and one of what it was all for.”

Though I, well, you know, on a, getting back to the view and, and flow with information, it's just a, you know, totally random point that I have to bring up. We did know that we were going to land in Somalia because the Salat Turn Brown, which meant that we weren't taking a board anymore, supplies, and that was our indicated and sure. Yeah, guys, this is awesome. Obviously, you know, Morris to come, you know, more to come, we're going to be looking at this very closely as we do.

I like you guys all do me a favor. I want you to check out John's books, Iran shadow weapons, and I can't read it. The theory of a regular war, both those links are in the description. Yeah, cuts off. Oh, bear this. I was trying to cheat and read them completely correct. Mark P, check out his links down in the description. He's got a book to about leadership.

When are you going to write a memoir, by the way, never? You're never getting cleared? Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know why. I mean, I, she's, I'm playing, I, again, I've told you something beginning. I'm toggling between playing pickleball with my wife and then going to the range with my son. That's actually sounds a lot better. Andy Milburn, when the Tempest Gathers, great autobiography, check it out. That link is in the description. Another book coming out, soon, we'll, you know, stay here, stay tuned in to find out when about. I'm writing a book. Yeah,

it's coming out September. There you go. Yeah. It's not an autobiography. No, it's a, it's a

“dystopian novel. Yeah. I think I'll make a great movie, but unfortunately, very close to reality.”

Actually, I actually got an option to. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there you go. Yeah. We'll see how it goes. Hollywood's Hollywood, right? Yeah. It's a bullshit anyway. Wow. Yeah. We'll see. Now, check it out. It's going to come out in September. Most likely. I'm almost done with it. Oh, American Insurgent. All right. Yeah. All right. So thanks. Thanks for bringing it up. I didn't really was

planning on that. But yeah, I'm excited about it. It's going to be good. I hope it really makes some people mad. Honestly, that's probably my, my big goal about it. Make mole Roy, the white fish security summit is happening in a week. Almost a little bit more than a week. Check that out. The link is in the description. And mixed got a new podcast, pop in the porch, applied stoicism, great podcast. Check that out. And teamhouse, uh,

patreon patreon dot com slash the teamhouse. I'll support the show. I'll keep us going.

Guys, it's always an pleasure. Bye. Hey, everyone. I want to tell you about my new novel,

the most dangerous man out in June. It is a novel about a regimental reconnaissance company soldier who gets kidnapped while he's on admission to West Africa. And when he wakes up, he finds that he is now being hunted for sport by a group of tech billionaires through the wilds of West Africa. This book is based on stories that I heard over the years about safari guides taking wealthy clients hunting for poachers on game reserves in Africa. I took that and I took a

century old short story, the most dangerous game and modernized it. And the product is this book,

“which I think will feel contemporary and resonate with audiences today. Thank you and please check it out.”

The legendary check-out of Shopify is actually the shop of its website, this is the social media, and over everything. That's a music for your ears. Video is also based on vendors with Shopify, it can be made to a real help. Let's start with a test today for one of your promonted on shopping.de/recorded. For one of your shop with Shopify and business, and with the check-out with the world

for the best conversion, the right path, the check-out with the world for the best conversion. The legendary check-out of Shopify is actually the shop of its website, this is the social media and over everything. That's a music for your ears. Video is also based on vendors with Shopify, it can be made to a real help. Let's start with a test today for one of your promonted on shopping.de/recorded.

For one of your shop with Shopify and business, and with the check-out with the world for the best conversion,

The legendary check-out of Shopify is actually the shop of its website,

“it's a social media and over everything.”

That's a music for your ears.

Video is also based on vendors with Shopify, it can be made to a real help.

“Let's start with a test today for one of your promonted on shopping.de/recorded.”

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