Speaker 1: Doing another one of our long form podcasts here. The
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty Show is a radio show heard on
Speaker 1: the West Coast with Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty. But
Speaker 1: we have these guests on all the time where we
Speaker 1: think we'd like to talk to them for a longer
Speaker 1: period of time than you get in commercial radio. So
Speaker 1: let's do it with Mike lyon CBS News Military Analysts
Speaker 1: since February of oh three, What is your current title?
Speaker 1: I'm a retired Army major. I'm a CBS Military analyst, um.
Speaker 1: And I'm actually going to be a fellow at the
Speaker 1: Modern War Institute at West Point this coming so I'm
Speaker 1: really excited about that that hopefully help them with some
Speaker 1: social media and get into the weeds. My son was
Speaker 1: making fun of me, he said, there's no chance you'd
Speaker 1: ever get I'm a retail military analyst, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's really my gig. You know there's guys out there that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, retired four stars at thirty five years in that,
Speaker 1: you know, I just get up every day and and
Speaker 1: and study the military and talk to people and and
Speaker 1: just kind of chip away at and try to help educate.
Speaker 1: And I want to go in your show. I feel
Speaker 1: why my Twitter feed I can I can educate people
Speaker 1: on what's kind of going out there, what they should
Speaker 1: be focused and I think and then and then you know,
Speaker 1: have a debate on something. Anyway, Yeah, I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to working with West Point. Well, for folks who are
Speaker 1: hip to the on air Armstrong and Getty show, you
Speaker 1: know that Mike Clients has been a an esteemed guest,
Speaker 1: a military analyst among other things for years. But whether
Speaker 1: it's the length of our segments or the fact that
Speaker 1: you have other stations you need to jump on or whatever,
Speaker 1: we always have to cut things short and and we
Speaker 1: always feel like we'd love to continue talking to you.
Speaker 1: So this is gonna be fun. That's great, perfect Well,
Speaker 1: and with your permission, we wanted to depart from the
Speaker 1: usual thing, which is talking about geopolitics, especially as it
Speaker 1: pertains to the military. We'll do some of that, but um,
Speaker 1: we just wanted to talk about the realities of the
Speaker 1: American military and American military families for a little while.
Speaker 1: And why don't we start with a very broad question, Uh,
Speaker 1: what do you think is the state of the American
Speaker 1: military family in the year Well, I think the American
Speaker 1: military family is is held together, you know, day to day,
Speaker 1: week to week, months to month, and it's based on
Speaker 1: the deployments of the soldiers that are out there. The
Speaker 1: military family, more than most you know, hangs on what
Speaker 1: a president says, no matter who the president is, because
Speaker 1: of that person is the commander in chief is more
Speaker 1: cognizant of global affairs, recognizes places in the world where
Speaker 1: their loved one can be deployed too. And I think that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it creates a tremendous hardship on the family.
Speaker 1: I used to always say that if we keep this
Speaker 1: pace up that we're going at right now, which we
Speaker 1: have been going up, you're either as a soldier you're
Speaker 1: gonna lose your mind or your family. And unfortunately, there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of families broken up because of the
Speaker 1: stress that's putting on it. And I think that, uh,
Speaker 1: and while the army in particular is trying to do
Speaker 1: what it can, the mission is such that the that
Speaker 1: the soldier is just so stretched out doing so many
Speaker 1: different things. It hasn't broken yet, um, but I think
Speaker 1: in the future we could possibly see, you know, a
Speaker 1: real crisis. Yeah, I wonder about that too. I mean,
Speaker 1: whether it's the v A situation where you know you
Speaker 1: could you could uh have served your country and even
Speaker 1: enjoyed your mill military experience UM, and then you get
Speaker 1: treated bad by the v A and you tell your kids, now,
Speaker 1: don't do it. They lie to you, they don't, they
Speaker 1: don't follow through their promises. Or I wonder about my
Speaker 1: my brothers who was UM. He's been in long enough
Speaker 1: to retire, but he's he's been in all kinds of
Speaker 1: deployments in the Middle East over the years, and his
Speaker 1: kids and UH have not seen him for long periods
Speaker 1: of time. That's what they grew up with. I don't
Speaker 1: know if they're going to think their kids ought to
Speaker 1: get into it. I just wonder if you know we'll
Speaker 1: continue to have generations of military families. I think that
Speaker 1: one of the unfortunate aspects of UM the military, especially
Speaker 1: in the last twenty years and the last generation, let's say,
Speaker 1: has been this, it's become the family business, and that's
Speaker 1: just not necessarily the way to go UM. From a
Speaker 1: nepotistic perspective, I think you know, given the fact that
Speaker 1: you know how it's gonna linger within the families and
Speaker 1: how things will will go, I don't think you get
Speaker 1: the turnover. You don't get others in society contributing to
Speaker 1: the military. You know, the military should reflect the civilian
Speaker 1: society and all ways shapes, forms and sizes, and it's
Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't. The demographics aren't such that it doesn't
Speaker 1: do that there as well. But but in particular, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and during the hardship is something that military
Speaker 1: families have to go through. And um, you know, you
Speaker 1: you do that over time, and you're gonna miss a
Speaker 1: lot of things. You're gonna miss a lot of kids
Speaker 1: baseball games, you're gonna miss You're gonna be away for
Speaker 1: a lot of birthday parties. And you kind of hope
Speaker 1: that it works out. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Well, well,
Speaker 1: let's stay micro for a minute. Then I want to
Speaker 1: talk about the macro issue of the way you know,
Speaker 1: America had chooses and pays and the rest of it.
Speaker 1: It's military. But you talked about wearing soldiers out, Um,
Speaker 1: the multiple deployments, how is that different from generations past?
Speaker 1: What's changed? Just the number alone, um and and the
Speaker 1: duration of these deployments. Uh, you know, you'd go, you know,
Speaker 1: prior to two thousand and three, prior to the situation
Speaker 1: of these endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you could
Speaker 1: go potentially twenty years and not have any deployment at all.
Speaker 1: You look back from you nineteen seventy five through Desert Storm,
Speaker 1: there weren't soldiers deployed all around the world. They were
Speaker 1: stationed in certain places. A hardship tour back then was
Speaker 1: considered a thirteen month tour unaccompanied without your family to
Speaker 1: go to Korea, and that was it. Uh And now
Speaker 1: that that's completely changed, and you can deploy for six
Speaker 1: months in Afghanistan, come home to rest for twelve to
Speaker 1: eighteen months, and rear right back and then in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: So people are doing multiple deployments. Go back to um
Speaker 1: the reserve units even in particular that you know they
Speaker 1: shifted so much of the combat power into reserve units
Speaker 1: after the Vietnam War, given what happened, you know those
Speaker 1: there was a time when you would join a reserve
Speaker 1: unit to go pay for college. There was almost virtually
Speaker 1: no expectation you're going to deploy if you're in a
Speaker 1: reserve unit within the military right now, the Army in particular,
Speaker 1: you're going down range at some point, you're going for
Speaker 1: a long period of time. It's going to take you
Speaker 1: out of your job, it's going to take you away
Speaker 1: from your family well, and put you in in the
Speaker 1: way of serious danger and stress and the rest of it,
Speaker 1: which you know is it is a change, as you're saying,
Speaker 1: And I think what we require these soldiers to do
Speaker 1: nowadays is another impossible mission, and that's flip this switch
Speaker 1: from being a war fighter to a peacekeeper. You know,
Speaker 1: you go to certain areas and in this block, I'm
Speaker 1: a war fighter. I've got a fight and defend what's
Speaker 1: going on. But then the next block, I'm a peacekeeper
Speaker 1: trying to keep two sides within a civilian population from
Speaker 1: killing each other. And I had an argument with a
Speaker 1: former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of all Things that
Speaker 1: a social event wants that I just think it's impossible
Speaker 1: to expect our soldiers, and in particular our marines, who
Speaker 1: are killers. Marines don't join up to be peacekeepers. They're
Speaker 1: not They're not joining up any place to you know,
Speaker 1: hand out flowers and m R. E s two people.
Speaker 1: And I just think it's impossible, no matter how discipline
Speaker 1: that unit is, to flip a switch between being a
Speaker 1: war fighter and a peacekeeper, and I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the other challenges I never had to deal with.
Speaker 1: I was I trained to basically, you know, fight as
Speaker 1: immatry when required, fight artillery, fighting, combat fighting, wars. And
Speaker 1: this whole issue about Phase five peacekeeping is another thing
Speaker 1: that the military has taken on because it needs the
Speaker 1: budget money. But it's really now an important mission. It's
Speaker 1: it's a critical mission. Well, on a similar topic, and
Speaker 1: I say this not to tute our own horns. In fact,
Speaker 1: just the opposite. We've been honored and privileged to uh
Speaker 1: be part of some pretty major fundraising efforts for various
Speaker 1: causes that include uh, you know, soldiers, sailors, marines, military families, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Veterans UM and at some of the gatherings we have
Speaker 1: talked to guys who are recently back from Afghanistan Iraq
Speaker 1: and what they've told us about the rules of engagement
Speaker 1: UM have left me enraged, I mean actually red faced
Speaker 1: and vibrating with anger that they have to wait until
Speaker 1: they are certain they are in mortal danger UM before
Speaker 1: they return fire or before they fire, which in many
Speaker 1: cases ends up with dead marines, dead American boards UM.
Speaker 1: And I wish the public knew a little more about that,
Speaker 1: but that factors directly or that flows directly from what
Speaker 1: you were saying. The idea that they're there to be
Speaker 1: ambassador is of goodwill when they're not killing machines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean because all the rules of engagement and combat
Speaker 1: and warfare are totally been blurred in this age of
Speaker 1: of fighting terrorism. You know, in the old days, the
Speaker 1: enemy were a uniform, they were across a certain border. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it was somewhat of a fight with honor.
Speaker 1: There was you know, rules of war that were well defined.
Speaker 1: At today's look at the green on blue attack. You
Speaker 1: have an Afghanistan. There's just the it's the picture is
Speaker 1: so cloudy that that's called asymmetrical warfare. Three sixty degrees
Speaker 1: all around. We just expect our soldiers, marine sailors, everybody
Speaker 1: to have this three and sixty degree awareness. I mean,
Speaker 1: I try to teach my kids to think six inches
Speaker 1: past their nose, let alone, now to try to think
Speaker 1: three d sixty degrees around them. Uh. In order for
Speaker 1: a threat to come, even in places where you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be safe and secure and go back to those
Speaker 1: rules of engagement, you might not even be able to
Speaker 1: engage once once the shooting starts. So it is a challenge.
Speaker 1: And I again, I just don't think you can flip
Speaker 1: a switch. Human nature comes in and takes over on
Speaker 1: things that that don't always count. And how about switching
Speaker 1: the flipping the switch back off once you come home
Speaker 1: and get out. Uh. You know, we hear a lot
Speaker 1: about homelessness, suicide rates, all that sort of stuff. Is
Speaker 1: it even realistic to expect people to, especially in the
Speaker 1: maybe if you're you know, in your late teens early twenties,
Speaker 1: really forming your your brain and the way your body
Speaker 1: reacts to life. Um, then to go back to to
Speaker 1: to normal life. Is that even get a reasonable expectation? No?
Speaker 1: I agree, And I think from my perspective, I prepared
Speaker 1: my whole adult life to go to combat, and I
Speaker 1: went to the military academy. I studied the history of war,
Speaker 1: I studied the military art. I read you know, books
Speaker 1: about portoon leaders. I read about what men and and
Speaker 1: did uh at Christmas time, for example in Best Stone
Speaker 1: and how they you know, how they held it together.
Speaker 1: And knowing that when I spent Christmas in a combat zone,
Speaker 1: I felt almost privileged, the fact that I had almost
Speaker 1: been there before in some kind of weird way. So
Speaker 1: I think it gets back to preparation. And so I
Speaker 1: felt when I came home it was just, you know,
Speaker 1: there's clearly nothing like a war zone. There's nothing like
Speaker 1: a combat zone in terms of the morality and the
Speaker 1: norms that exist there. But I think we've just sent
Speaker 1: too many people into that area without that pre preparation.
Speaker 1: They sign up for different reasons, you know, they sign
Speaker 1: up to actually go to war. You don't want, actually,
Speaker 1: those kinds of people someway around you. They're gonna get
Speaker 1: everybody killed if they're out there just just to kill anybody.
Speaker 1: You need smart people. We've we've unfortunately dropped some of
Speaker 1: those standards in the past here as well. So it
Speaker 1: all gets back to being prepared to go to war
Speaker 1: before you get there, and then that that will help
Speaker 1: you on the adjustment coming back well. And it seems
Speaker 1: to me that any people with a conscience would understand
Speaker 1: the difficulty of that adjustment coming back and would have
Speaker 1: pretty well developed programs to deal with that. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the fact. Have you had a chance
Speaker 1: to get to read the Sebastian Younger's Fabulous book Tribe
Speaker 1: I've not read that when I've read the other book,
Speaker 1: the one on Kuragall and what took place there. I
Speaker 1: saw that the documentary and I thought, if this is
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, I don't know what is. I mean just
Speaker 1: just I didn't like the lack of discipline in that unit,
Speaker 1: you know, just got all cars on the table. And
Speaker 1: I met him and I talked to him about it,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, because that's not what the military,
Speaker 1: the Army of particular needs and wants. Is this other
Speaker 1: kind of Vietnam situation where it's almost survival of the fittest.
Speaker 1: I didn't like, Um, you know, I don't think the
Speaker 1: officers were treated in a manner that they should have been.
Speaker 1: It was not a very good snapshot. I thought of
Speaker 1: what's what should a unit look like? Right? But the
Speaker 1: book Tribe is all about the way we tend to
Speaker 1: band together as Homo sapiens and the things and and
Speaker 1: how strong that need is. And he talks a great
Speaker 1: deal about folks in the military and coming back home
Speaker 1: and how um, a young man or a woman will
Speaker 1: have an experience where they have a life and death
Speaker 1: trust with a fairly small group of people, and that
Speaker 1: is so incredibly satisfying to the human soul and and
Speaker 1: it's also so necessary in war zone. Um. But then
Speaker 1: one of the aspects of PTSD or or difficulty adjusting back,
Speaker 1: is you get back to the stupid, heavy, slow paced
Speaker 1: real world quote unquote, and that's it's really hard for guys. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, the famous contrast is that at the
Speaker 1: end of w W two it took months for these
Speaker 1: guys to get back home in you know, the in
Speaker 1: country centers, than weeks on a cruise ship, than being
Speaker 1: mustred out, etcetera, etcetera. And now it's it's literally a
Speaker 1: NonStop plane flight and near you are back in Omaha. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, while you've been in combat,
Speaker 1: you've been facetiming with your family and you know, communication
Speaker 1: is instant. In some ways, you've got a lot, you've
Speaker 1: got a lot more exposure to the outside world. And um,
Speaker 1: I do agree that when you do come home, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: the reality of combat is it provides this adrenaline rush
Speaker 1: that it's really pretty hard to to replicate. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm a sports guy, like a lot of sports analogies,
Speaker 1: but it's still nothing close, especially if you're successful. I
Speaker 1: mean our our units were in desert storm, for example,
Speaker 1: we're just so successful. You just it was no match,
Speaker 1: and your level of invincibility just was sent to a
Speaker 1: whole different level that when you do things in the
Speaker 1: future you kind of compare and contrast to that how
Speaker 1: you felt about that. So you're right, it's hard to
Speaker 1: find that feeling again, especially when you run up to
Speaker 1: against civilians were I've run up to civilians in the
Speaker 1: job force that have literally and we're asking about getting
Speaker 1: people in, And I said, why don't we recruit some
Speaker 1: veterans I know, so a couple of guys too, we
Speaker 1: can go after and and and literally I had senior
Speaker 1: people telling me we really want to do that. Those
Speaker 1: guys are real damage. We don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, am I damage? And why how
Speaker 1: do I look? I mean, am I coming off in
Speaker 1: it in a way that's damaged? So UMA investment is
Speaker 1: a challenge and it's there. Yeah. Um, it's just popped
Speaker 1: into my head. How good is our military? I remember
Speaker 1: hearing I think it was John McCain one time he
Speaker 1: was asked the question about how good is our military?
Speaker 1: You know, as Americans, we get a great charge out
Speaker 1: of I know, I have my whole life. If we
Speaker 1: have the best military in the world, right, um, we
Speaker 1: could beat anybody, and we take pride in that. But
Speaker 1: John mckaine talking about it, and they said, have you
Speaker 1: ever faced any soldiers that are are no of any
Speaker 1: soldiers were as good as you know the US And
Speaker 1: he said the North Vietnamese regulars were as good. And
Speaker 1: what's what's your experience with that? Are we better than
Speaker 1: everybody else who out there compares to us? We are
Speaker 1: for a couple of different reasons. Number One, we have
Speaker 1: the best technology that you can imagine, um, and when
Speaker 1: we get into a combat situation and a combat zone,
Speaker 1: all that technology comes to play. I can tell you
Speaker 1: when I was in a combat zone, all things showed
Speaker 1: up that I've never even seen before, and we were
Speaker 1: successful in implementing it quickly to you know, in our
Speaker 1: operations and systems. So that's number one. Number two, we
Speaker 1: have that not only the technology, but the equipment in
Speaker 1: and above itself. Are our equipment, It depends on survivability.
Speaker 1: We we build tanks and a pc s and armored
Speaker 1: personnel carriers and equipment and planes that that survives um
Speaker 1: combat and in order for the soldier to feel confident
Speaker 1: in it. I looked at the Soviet tanks, and I've
Speaker 1: looked at Soviet armored personnel carriers and they're just tin cans,
Speaker 1: They're just f traps. So our protection of the force
Speaker 1: is something that's very important to the soldier. But then
Speaker 1: the third thing is, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: our military is superb because it trains in a combined
Speaker 1: arms way, and we truly fight like the Germans did
Speaker 1: in the Second World War with this you know, we
Speaker 1: call it AirLand battle. Uh. You know, they they were,
Speaker 1: you know, combining tanks and combining airplanes and infantry on
Speaker 1: the ground. Uh in in that in that blitz creeg.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing. Come fighting the way we fight
Speaker 1: when we put all our things together, when we wind
Speaker 1: this big fist up and we take the time and
Speaker 1: wind it all up. Uh, there's no one, there's nothing
Speaker 1: on the planet that can defeat the U. S. Military
Speaker 1: when it decides to put it's it's it's a mind
Speaker 1: is something that's interesting. A great coach doesn't roll around
Speaker 1: pleasuring himself over his team's strengths. He talks about he
Speaker 1: did they go after what the team isn't doing well.
Speaker 1: What's wrong with the U. S. Military? What's week or
Speaker 1: what's wrong with the Pentagon specifically? What could be better?
Speaker 1: The Pentagon is such a bureaucracy that can't adjust to
Speaker 1: the civilians and the political environment. And I think that
Speaker 1: that is the biggest challenge right now. And and while
Speaker 1: it's trying to adjust, you know that the Pentagon has
Speaker 1: got to work off intent so many, so many ways,
Speaker 1: and it moves down you know, the highway I saw,
Speaker 1: you know, so as it's trying to acquire weapons, there's
Speaker 1: people in the Pentagon that are looking twenty thirty years
Speaker 1: down the road on technology that the military has to
Speaker 1: buy right now. And there's there's things that the Pentagon
Speaker 1: is to do now that affect that down the road.
Speaker 1: But politicians are just worried about getting reelected in the
Speaker 1: next two to four years and whether or not those
Speaker 1: projects get funded or not. So the Pentagon, you know,
Speaker 1: has to do ten or fifteen things and and do
Speaker 1: a lot of make work stuff for things that end
Speaker 1: up not happening go sit on a shelf, stum place um.
Speaker 1: Because they can't adjust to the the political environment. Once
Speaker 1: in combat though once once you unleash the Pentagon and
Speaker 1: unleash the power of the military. Again, the resources go
Speaker 1: and tenants followed. Look, there's no other organization aside from
Speaker 1: the military. They can get to e Bowl and and
Speaker 1: fight a pandemic that exists there. I mean, Napoleon would
Speaker 1: never send his army into that kind of environment. The
Speaker 1: military can get to Haiti, the military and get anywherese
Speaker 1: in the world. The Navy, and once it cranks it up,
Speaker 1: it can do it. But um, but sometimes it gets
Speaker 1: caught up in the bureauxcy of politics. And I think
Speaker 1: that's its big That's interesting that the last two questions
Speaker 1: and answers go together. So the Pentagon with its you know,
Speaker 1: having to think here's in the future, and the politics
Speaker 1: hold them back and all this, Yet we still are
Speaker 1: ahead of all these authoritarian countries where they can make
Speaker 1: decisions on a dime, one person can make that decision.
Speaker 1: How do we stay ahead of all these people? It's money.
Speaker 1: I mean, you look at the budget that was just approved,
Speaker 1: over seven hundred billion dollars. We have a budget that's
Speaker 1: you know, ten times the next uh, the next competitor
Speaker 1: that's out there and so and and the military industrial
Speaker 1: complex is a tremendous jobs programming. Let's face it, we
Speaker 1: we we make things that we don't even use in
Speaker 1: some levels. And so I think that you know, you
Speaker 1: bring all all that together, the fact that we invest
Speaker 1: what we invest in military, and you combine that with
Speaker 1: the technology, and it gets back to from now, the
Speaker 1: world is so much shorter, you know, it's smaller. If
Speaker 1: you're our enemy right now, that's the thing. You're enemy
Speaker 1: right now. You're not even gonna try to fight the
Speaker 1: United States conventionally. I mean, h R McMaster said that recently.
Speaker 1: It'd be stupid for you to do something like that.
Speaker 1: The next battle is happening in cyber The next battle
Speaker 1: is happening in that fifth do Main possibly even space.
Speaker 1: I mean, Trump's got it right here with this space force. Um,
Speaker 1: somebody goes and takes out all our satellites, takes out
Speaker 1: a lot of technology and space, we could be blinded.
Speaker 1: That's a real problem. So the next battle is not
Speaker 1: going to happen conventionally on the ground, even though we're
Speaker 1: still preparing for that. A couple more pentagonst questions. I
Speaker 1: keep hearing that we have a shortage of spare parts
Speaker 1: for our aircraft. Is that true? More or less it is,
Speaker 1: But I will tell you this, the Air Force doesn't
Speaker 1: do a great job of managing that. I mean in
Speaker 1: all cards on the table, because the air Force is
Speaker 1: pretty smart. The air Force funds its people programs first.
Speaker 1: It funds its golf courses, and it's housing projects and
Speaker 1: and things and make sure all that happens. And so
Speaker 1: when the Air Force runs out of money, they go
Speaker 1: and claim, look, our spare parts aren't here, and it's
Speaker 1: their way of trying to get money from extra money
Speaker 1: from Congress that didn't budget for other service branches don't
Speaker 1: do that. The Army is so big it has a
Speaker 1: challenge do that. So so they've they've done this before.
Speaker 1: That's what's what that's what their m O is. So
Speaker 1: for them to say that they don't have spare parts,
Speaker 1: that is their fault, their responsibility. And again you're not anti,
Speaker 1: I won't hear it. Yeah, somebody should be fired over that.
Speaker 1: It's a similar The bottom line is this um you know,
Speaker 1: work for General Officer who said if I give you
Speaker 1: all the resources you ask for and say and I
Speaker 1: give you all those things, I expect you to get
Speaker 1: the job done well. The Congress allocates the Air Force
Speaker 1: all the resources it needs to get the job done.
Speaker 1: If they're gonna want to come because they misallocated something
Speaker 1: on their side, that's on them, all right, One more
Speaker 1: question of that sort. I remember Bob Gates, the former
Speaker 1: Secretary Defense, talking about his frustration trying to get the
Speaker 1: the M wraps, the more advanced armored vehicles to the
Speaker 1: guys who are getting killed over and over over again
Speaker 1: by I E. D. S. And that even he is
Speaker 1: the secret Terry Defense, found it incredibly frustrating to deal
Speaker 1: with the bureaucracy of the Pentagon. That troubled me a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think, UM, a lot of that just has
Speaker 1: to do with um. There was no anticipation of that
Speaker 1: as a requirement. It took. It took a lot longer.
Speaker 1: From an acquisition cycle perspective, there was nothing commercially available
Speaker 1: on the shelf that called cots. There's nothing that they
Speaker 1: could have, you know, picked out of a Ford factory
Speaker 1: or or you know a Crisis or a GM factory
Speaker 1: that that could that could have modified it because of
Speaker 1: of kind of the purple squirrel that gets made every
Speaker 1: time you know, a military equipment is is ordered. Um,
Speaker 1: no one kind of thought dot dot dot through. We
Speaker 1: ended up not having, you know, going to war in
Speaker 1: a manner that we had gone in the past. For
Speaker 1: Desert Storm, we waited six months. We we kind of
Speaker 1: wound that big fist up and then when we let
Speaker 1: when we unleashed it, it it was it was pretty pretty
Speaker 1: violent and brutal. This time here, we kind of did
Speaker 1: a just in time war with Rumsfeld, and we didn't
Speaker 1: bring everything to the battle that we needed to bring in.
Speaker 1: And once when we even said to himself, you know,
Speaker 1: you go to war with the equipment you have, so
Speaker 1: we just didn't kind of think it through. Interesting, what
Speaker 1: was that purple squirrel metaphor? Yeah, so the military often
Speaker 1: wants a purple squirrel in order to accomplish a certain mission.
Speaker 1: So you've got to you can't get something commercially available
Speaker 1: off the shelf. That's got to be redesigned from the
Speaker 1: from the ground up. And no one anticipated the level
Speaker 1: of I E. D s, which are nothing more than
Speaker 1: you know, land mines, but no one anticipated that they
Speaker 1: would have to do that. So the military, you know,
Speaker 1: wanted a purple squirrel. There was none. There was none
Speaker 1: available commercially that had to redesign them. So from an
Speaker 1: acquisition perspective, it took them a while they got them
Speaker 1: down range. Interesting. I'll use that the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: So you you've been studying the military whole life. I
Speaker 1: have two is a guy who never served, and I
Speaker 1: just I don't. I always thought i'd joined the military,
Speaker 1: and then I didn't. For some reason, I got into radio.
Speaker 1: But I've read so many books and you know, firsthand
Speaker 1: accounts of being in the in this war, that war,
Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff. I've been fascinated a
Speaker 1: couple of articles in the last year or so about how,
Speaker 1: um one of the reason ways Hitler pulled off the
Speaker 1: whole blitz Creek thing was everybody was messed up. Isn't
Speaker 1: that interesting? Everybody was all hopped up on meth. And
Speaker 1: that's how the Churchill was wondering, how do they do this?
Speaker 1: How do they march that far in that many days?
Speaker 1: How do they pull them off? And they're just using meth?
Speaker 1: I know, when we fight in Somalia, the is a
Speaker 1: is a product. They're called cat that the soldiers on
Speaker 1: the other side of the terrorists and whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call him, the warlord, soldiers whatever, that they're all
Speaker 1: hopped up on that. When when we fought them and
Speaker 1: go back to Mogadishu in in ninety three the battle there,
Speaker 1: I talked to one of the the Delta commander on
Speaker 1: the grounds of classmate of minds, A good friend of
Speaker 1: mine is actually gonna take over Afghanistan, Scottie Miller, and
Speaker 1: I asked him about what it was like to fight
Speaker 1: against those guys, and he says, they're just they just
Speaker 1: keep coming at you because of this drug that they're on,
Speaker 1: this narcotic drug that just gives them no fear, and
Speaker 1: they just they just don't stop. Um doesn't surprise me,
Speaker 1: and and again it contin knows that's how the people
Speaker 1: compete athletically. They do something different to their body, because
Speaker 1: there's no question combat in the military. Can you can
Speaker 1: wear it on your body if you're not if you're
Speaker 1: not careful, that's interesting. One of the reasons I bring
Speaker 1: it up. I don't know if you've ever read Keegan's
Speaker 1: classic Faces of Battle. I think it is where he
Speaker 1: takes on three different battles throughout his three D eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: I think if I remember correctly and just what the
Speaker 1: battles was like. But one thing they all had in
Speaker 1: common was they got boozed up. A lot of them
Speaker 1: got boozed up before they fought. It was just you know,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I feel tougher and more invincible
Speaker 1: when I get a little boozed up. Do do do
Speaker 1: we do that? Or have we done that in the past? Now,
Speaker 1: not in the military I've seen, um, not not in
Speaker 1: my in my time in or experience in the last
Speaker 1: i'd say thirty thirty five years now. Again, I got
Speaker 1: in just after the Vietnam era and when we had
Speaker 1: some challenges for sure with soldiers back um, you know,
Speaker 1: late seventies, you know, early eighties with that, with them
Speaker 1: coming from Vietnam, but from for going into battle. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say we have any anything close to that. Hey,
Speaker 1: speaking of Vietnam, what do you think of the idea
Speaker 1: of a draft and or compulsory service of the Israeli model? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just think it's too hard, um for our country
Speaker 1: to try to pull something like that off. A draft, um,
Speaker 1: I don't think. And the army doesn't want it, I know,
Speaker 1: in particular, because you want people that are gonna volunteer,
Speaker 1: they're gonna wan be there. They don't want this kind
Speaker 1: of turnover. All these countries that have that the compulsory
Speaker 1: military model in some cases is because they have to
Speaker 1: defend their land. Switzerland's got a fourteen year compulsory um model. Um.
Speaker 1: The Israelis get up every day wondering if um, you know,
Speaker 1: if the Arabs of of Math at the border and
Speaker 1: they gotta go defend their country. I mean today compared
Speaker 1: to again twenty thirty years ago, that's probably not gonna
Speaker 1: be a high probability, or the missiles will come from
Speaker 1: Iran or someplace else. But you know, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's great and in sound and I think, but from
Speaker 1: a logistical perspective, it's just too hard to manage, and
Speaker 1: you don't pay attention at who can't get there from here?
Speaker 1: At least people would pay attention to all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I find it hard to believe we'd still be in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan kind of mucking around, not with a clear goal
Speaker 1: after all these years. If if everybody either was on
Speaker 1: the way or their kid was on their way. I know,
Speaker 1: and I look at Afghanistan and it's it's more like
Speaker 1: Vietnam to me. But we we can't lose it because
Speaker 1: we won't have the same level of losses. But there's
Speaker 1: probably an undercurrent the Pentagon that likes the fact that
Speaker 1: we've got troops down range, that we could use it
Speaker 1: as a test bed for laboratory, and it keeps us
Speaker 1: engaged in combat, you know. And and with the with
Speaker 1: the um unspoken word of you know this president, no
Speaker 1: president wants to be the one that gets us out
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan and has this you know visual of the
Speaker 1: helicopter landing on the embassy and we have to get
Speaker 1: out of there. But um, you know, if we wanted
Speaker 1: to get out Afghanistan, we could Look Barack Obama did it.
Speaker 1: We got us out of a rock, just said this
Speaker 1: is what we're doing, you know, put a stake in
Speaker 1: the ground. Twelve thirty one, two thousand eleven. Goodbye, good luck,
Speaker 1: gots be at all travelers. And obviously what happened was
Speaker 1: a lot worse. But if we wanted to get out,
Speaker 1: we could get out. We had a long conversation recently
Speaker 1: with your colleague Lara Logan, and she from her reporting
Speaker 1: and talking to sources and all, it was pretty confident that, look,
Speaker 1: we are there and going to remain there. Number one.
Speaker 1: So Afghanistan doesn't descend into complete lawlessness also as a
Speaker 1: counterbalance to the Pakistani's and the Iranians in the in
Speaker 1: the region, and that we are going to have a
Speaker 1: couple of massive basis and it's it's going to be
Speaker 1: more like a limited occupation than a quote unquote war
Speaker 1: for a very long time. Yeah, and that that doesn't
Speaker 1: surprise me. Like the South Korean model, the biggest thing
Speaker 1: that I felt about leaving Iraq was, Um, we were
Speaker 1: gonna just lose out on that opportunity to have a
Speaker 1: big base there. If you had the first armored division
Speaker 1: in Iraq and if it's stayed in Iraq at the
Speaker 1: end of that conflict, Um, you wouldn't have had ices.
Speaker 1: You would have had a completely different um scenario. Now
Speaker 1: you still might have had, you know, the Shia and
Speaker 1: Sunni um you know, challenges there, but Iran as differently.
Speaker 1: Everything acts differently when you know three four main battle
Speaker 1: tanks can drive due north and in twelve hours being
Speaker 1: either Damascus in Syria or in Tehran and Iran. So
Speaker 1: I'm so we we gave up a big, um, you know,
Speaker 1: a big leg in the game when we gave up
Speaker 1: Iraq and the PENTAGONSA is not gonna let that mistake
Speaker 1: happen again. We're gonna We're gonna build stuff inside of Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: We're going nowhere, and I think we're gonna end up
Speaker 1: having twenty thoud troops there. At some point there will
Speaker 1: be combat troops. So this is a big dumb question,
Speaker 1: but it's intended to get us to something that's not dumb. Um.
Speaker 1: The oft repeated question, are we going to be the
Speaker 1: policeman of the world? Um? You know, to some extent, yes,
Speaker 1: we are, because American presence ensures the free flow of
Speaker 1: commerce and and the preservation of human rights, etcetera, etcetera,
Speaker 1: all over the world in a way that benefits the
Speaker 1: hell out of the American people. Sometimes I wonder if
Speaker 1: the president appreciates that, the current guy. Um. But obviously
Speaker 1: we cannot be in every hell hole where human rights
Speaker 1: are being denied or or or injustice is being done right,
Speaker 1: And we pick our places mostly based on economics. And
Speaker 1: right now we project power mostly with our navy, with
Speaker 1: our you know, eleven air carrier navy that in Pacific
Speaker 1: and Atlantic fleet have can keep them from bumping into
Speaker 1: each other. Um. I think I think that though um where.
Speaker 1: What we've done there in the military is we've built
Speaker 1: this standoff military and our technology with cruise missiles and
Speaker 1: you know, hit something, you know, five hundred miles away.
Speaker 1: That's changed that whole thing about I think policeman because
Speaker 1: in the past we interpreted that world policeman and having
Speaker 1: you know, troops on the ground. I won't say boots
Speaker 1: on the ground because that's insulting, but troops actually there
Speaker 1: again during the hardship, marines, army that are actually doing things.
Speaker 1: Our our answer right now everything is still cruise missiles
Speaker 1: and drones and five two miles away and you know,
Speaker 1: watching on a screen someplace in Missouri and you know,
Speaker 1: taking people down that way. Well, it's interesting how that
Speaker 1: plays politically too, because Barack Obama did many more drone
Speaker 1: strikes than George Bush ever did. For some reason, the
Speaker 1: public is okay with us atomizing people from above, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, with with with no trial and and sometimes
Speaker 1: I don't even hear about it. It just politically it
Speaker 1: works a lot better to be a policeman that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and the ratio is literally something like five eight.
Speaker 1: You know, the Obama administration launched cruise missiles and drone
Speaker 1: strikes versus eight Bush did it wasn't even us so
Speaker 1: and you know there's a lot of whoops, is that
Speaker 1: happened there? We've hit things that we shouldn't have hit. Um,
Speaker 1: it's probably been friendly fire on our side and and so,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's antiseptic. You can kind of go
Speaker 1: to wash your hands, you can. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: that I've never been guy where the and the I
Speaker 1: know Air Force guys can do this. They could literally,
Speaker 1: you know, get in a plane in Germany, fly a
Speaker 1: combat mission over a rock or someplace in the Middle
Speaker 1: East and then go back and have dinner with their
Speaker 1: with their family, you know. So that's but that's what
Speaker 1: we're at right now. There's not a lot of people
Speaker 1: that are that are downrange that are during the hearts
Speaker 1: of accept you know, the Army and the Marines. So uh,
Speaker 1: as long as we're in the Middle East, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little specific geopolitics. Um, what did Barack Obama get
Speaker 1: right and wrong about Syria? And and how has it
Speaker 1: left us where we are now? What did he get
Speaker 1: right on Syria? Let's see, I mean, for instance, just
Speaker 1: if you share this opinion, I often said Barack Obama
Speaker 1: did nothing, and he did it poorly, um, because maybe
Speaker 1: nothing was all that could be done, you know, in
Speaker 1: that mess, right the Barack Obama I think allowed Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton and others to dictate what was going to be
Speaker 1: important Libya for example, and how that became a high
Speaker 1: priority for the administration and look and look what happened there.
Speaker 1: I think by the time Syria comes around, he is
Speaker 1: completely disinterested in what's going on there, um because yeah,
Speaker 1: he he doesn't have any really kind of stake in
Speaker 1: the game, doesn't doesn't have an economic interest, but not
Speaker 1: seeing the geopolitical issue of the Iranians getting involved, not
Speaker 1: recognizing what the impact has been on Iraq, and completely
Speaker 1: oblivious to the Kurds and their plate that they have
Speaker 1: uh with no, with no kind of vision. Barack Obama's
Speaker 1: entire presidency from a foreign policy perspective, was to get
Speaker 1: to his last day in office. And you've got to
Speaker 1: look at good presidents I think that look well over
Speaker 1: the horizons, set things up for things to happen when
Speaker 1: they of office. Barack Obama then focus so much on
Speaker 1: the Iranian um nuclear deal, and all that was about
Speaker 1: was making sure that the Iranians didn't get nukes while
Speaker 1: he was in office because they're gonna have him ten
Speaker 1: years down the road based in that deal. So he
Speaker 1: got a lot wrong the whole. The biggest, the biggest
Speaker 1: mistake he made was allowing the Russians back in, giving
Speaker 1: them the keys to take control of their chemical weapons,
Speaker 1: which obviously was not well defined because um, they might
Speaker 1: have gotten rid of some of their serin gas and
Speaker 1: some of their their persistent nerve agent, but they still
Speaker 1: had a lot of other things to kill civilians with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Ben Rhodes from the Obama administrations written a
Speaker 1: book recently and he talks about during that period of
Speaker 1: time when they're trying to decide what to do with
Speaker 1: Syrian and uh and it it was it was short term,
Speaker 1: you know, on what you just said to trying to
Speaker 1: get to the end of his office. That's really interesting
Speaker 1: because it was, um, maybe a little self centator us centered,
Speaker 1: short term thinking of what will be good for individual
Speaker 1: soldiers or I hate to be so crashed to just
Speaker 1: say politically, but all short term thinking. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it didn't look like getting involved in Libya did any good. Remember,
Speaker 1: we went in because I think Barack Obama made this
Speaker 1: announcement that the word was on the street that Kadafi
Speaker 1: was going to go door to door and starts slaughtering people,
Speaker 1: and we weren't gonna stand by and let that happen. Well,
Speaker 1: we we certainly let that happen a lot in Syria,
Speaker 1: but Barack Obama felt like, whether we get involved or not,
Speaker 1: that's going to happen. So why would we be involved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's you know, nobody to drone. He draw, he
Speaker 1: drew a red line, didn't do anything about it. I
Speaker 1: think that was a real problem as well. Um. And
Speaker 1: and he just wasn't interested, um and not recognizing the
Speaker 1: guys in the Pentagon were though the guy's in the
Speaker 1: Pentagon recognized as the Kurds. We're going to have to
Speaker 1: have a home at some point, and they were looking
Speaker 1: to have that as the as the eastern part of Syria.
Speaker 1: And you look well over the horizon and you say Syria,
Speaker 1: around North Korea, China, Russia. That's a pretty formidable alliance
Speaker 1: of those countries. And if we don't do something to
Speaker 1: disrupt that, we're gonna have a problem in the future. Well,
Speaker 1: Liz Sly, who we also talked to not long ago,
Speaker 1: wrote a great piece. I think it was a year
Speaker 1: and a half two years ago. Ten potential wars that
Speaker 1: could erupt from Syria slash of Rock, and she's just
Speaker 1: nailed it one after the other. Um, the the ugly
Speaker 1: ain't it ain't even begun in that region potentially speaking.
Speaker 1: What's what's the big flash point? You mentioned the Kurds.
Speaker 1: They're obviously gonna be one of them, but what do
Speaker 1: you anticipate. I think that's what it is. A thirty
Speaker 1: million people that consider themselves part of something called Kurdistan,
Speaker 1: that don't have an indigenous country, and yet have all
Speaker 1: the capabilities to have a country, natural resources that exists
Speaker 1: where they live. You carve out a piece of Turkey, Iran, Syria,
Speaker 1: and Iraq, and you can clearly get a country out
Speaker 1: of that that defend itself, that could participate in the
Speaker 1: modern world. And UM, they're gonna likely have to fight
Speaker 1: a war to do it, and UM NATO is gonna
Speaker 1: have to get involved at some point to stop it,
Speaker 1: because the Turks are going to prevent it on some level.
Speaker 1: And we've already seen some of the human suffering has
Speaker 1: taken place. Our country has historically supported this and now
Speaker 1: we're kind of backing down off it. I don't think
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Donald Trump doesn't get it yet. The previous
Speaker 1: you know, George Bush got it and and and maybe
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton got it a little bit. Barack Obama had nothing,
Speaker 1: wanted nothing to do with it. Curds are pretty good fighters, too,
Speaker 1: right they are. And they fight with literally sticks and rocks.
Speaker 1: They fight with weapons from the nineteen forties and fifties.
Speaker 1: But what they They're smarter and they're committed, and it's
Speaker 1: just kind of a classic you know, they've got something
Speaker 1: to fight for. Um, they get up every day and
Speaker 1: realize that if they don't, if they don't defend this area,
Speaker 1: if they don't you know, fight, that they're not going
Speaker 1: to survive. The families not going to survive, So that
Speaker 1: they have it ingrained in their in their culture. Boy,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about all this different stuff. And the
Speaker 1: the original reason we went into Afghanistan obviously was to
Speaker 1: not have another nine eleven. How much of this has
Speaker 1: an effect on terrorism in the United States, which was
Speaker 1: the whole point of all of this at one point, right,
Speaker 1: And I think, but if we don't go into a rock,
Speaker 1: that's where the world changed. The going into Afghanistan was
Speaker 1: for the right reasons, and if we had focused our
Speaker 1: efforts on that and done that in a manner that
Speaker 1: that at least set up the Afghan government move that forward,
Speaker 1: it would have worked. But the Bush administrations they're gonna
Speaker 1: go down in history is making the biggest mistake, and
Speaker 1: obviously in the twenty one century when it comes to
Speaker 1: this selective war going into Iraq and what's what's happened
Speaker 1: since then? That's that's been the tipping point from my perspective.
Speaker 1: Who the world has changed since that? That that what
Speaker 1: March Day when we decided to start bombing inside and
Speaker 1: taking down the Iraqi government. That that that's been the problem.
Speaker 1: We we've up set the apple cart now to the
Speaker 1: point where we can't even predict what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: That that's really interesting. It'll be hard to explain in
Speaker 1: future generations how did how did the United States end
Speaker 1: up in a rock? I mean, it will be it'll
Speaker 1: take some doing. Well, not only that, but then to
Speaker 1: try to explain how that questioned my idea was implemented,
Speaker 1: I mean, the actual implementation of the plans, the decisions made.
Speaker 1: The El Paul Bremer chapter of the thing that dismissing
Speaker 1: the entire Bathist regime, it's just in retrospective, it's just
Speaker 1: nightmarishly mishandled right and taking four hundred thousand troops in
Speaker 1: the Iraqi Army and unemploying automatically and and trying to
Speaker 1: use some model that they thought was from World War
Speaker 1: Two about the Denzification, depathification, whatever they were calling it. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, this is where and frankly the civilian think
Speaker 1: tanks also have some blame. You look at the neo
Speaker 1: cons that are you know, on the Democrats side now,
Speaker 1: because they're all never trumpers, they have much, they have
Speaker 1: a lot of responsibility. They got the fingerprints on this
Speaker 1: as well. So it was a you know, poor strategy
Speaker 1: and even executed poorly when the time came. So here's
Speaker 1: my new thing, Mike, I think we're under emphasizing our
Speaker 1: own hemisphere. Do you spend any time much time thinking
Speaker 1: about Central and South America and the incredibly unstable politics
Speaker 1: and potential violence there. No, I don't. Um. I know
Speaker 1: the Pentagon does, and I know that the Pentagon back
Speaker 1: in the eighties did get involved with a lot of um,
Speaker 1: the drug cartels. But that's all waned away, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't. We don't focus on South America,
Speaker 1: what's going on there and the fact that these drugs
Speaker 1: are coming through the border, and we don't focus on
Speaker 1: what's going on in Mexico for what of a reason? Um,
Speaker 1: I think again, we're still fighting the last war and
Speaker 1: we're concerned about a world war in Europe that could
Speaker 1: possibly take place. But um, you know, there's a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of resources we could focus here. And you know,
Speaker 1: so go back to Barack Obama again. If Barack Obama
Speaker 1: decided to say, you know when, I'm going to focus
Speaker 1: on that right now, I'm going to really focus efforts
Speaker 1: towards Central and South America, that would have been fine.
Speaker 1: But but they didn't. They didn't do anything. They did
Speaker 1: just basically kind of ran the clock out. Um. But
Speaker 1: I know, from a military perspective, Um, we're doing what
Speaker 1: we can on intel collection. But but knowing full well
Speaker 1: that we still have to be careful because we've never
Speaker 1: really sent troops anywhere with within our own hemisphere. We've
Speaker 1: always sent them overseas to fight. Right. Yeah, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: more in terms of foreign policy than military actions specifically.
Speaker 1: But I think we in the United States ought to
Speaker 1: be putting political correctness aside. Good luck with that, and
Speaker 1: studying the hell out of the refugee crisis in Europe
Speaker 1: and the stresses that that's causing. Because if the instability
Speaker 1: grows in Venezuela and else, Salvador and Honduras and the
Speaker 1: rest of them, I mean, we could be looking at
Speaker 1: a hell of a refugee crisis and we already have
Speaker 1: societal strains um based on you know, call it an invasion,
Speaker 1: call it a migration, call it a flood of refugees.
Speaker 1: I one thing we have to our advantage though, is space. Um.
Speaker 1: The refugees in Europe, you know, kind of get there
Speaker 1: in boats, and there's whole you know, kind of businesses
Speaker 1: that are set up there. And you look at what
Speaker 1: happened in Germany, for example, Germany. I went to Germany
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. It's completely different, and and
Speaker 1: they're gonna what you know, Trump said, They're gonna lose
Speaker 1: their culture. You know. I think what he means is
Speaker 1: not only are people coming there, but it's not assimilating.
Speaker 1: It's the challenge I think we have in our country
Speaker 1: too as well. I Mean, we want people to assimilate
Speaker 1: and be the Americans. It's it's okay to come here,
Speaker 1: you gotta come legally, but you have to assimilate. But
Speaker 1: I think it's a lot harder for people in those
Speaker 1: countries in South America still to still get here because
Speaker 1: there's really not a mechanism to to get them here.
Speaker 1: And unless they go by land through you know, what
Speaker 1: are some pretty tough, tough conditions. Yeah, if you've never
Speaker 1: looked at a man, it's easy to forget that Africa
Speaker 1: and Europe are Like how long would it take in
Speaker 1: a decent power boat to get from Libya to Italy?
Speaker 1: I mean, like you're some power boating expert. It not long,
Speaker 1: is the answer. No, not long, right exactly, And that
Speaker 1: people have been doing it since, you know, for for
Speaker 1: five hundred years. I mean, and what goes on there,
Speaker 1: and there's lots of commerce and things that can can
Speaker 1: travel that can it can take people and make them
Speaker 1: get into that spot. And once they get there, then
Speaker 1: they just declare and then from there they can move
Speaker 1: through Europe freely because of the European Union. So how
Speaker 1: about the what the Obama administration was attempting to do
Speaker 1: was shift away from Middle Eastern problems being dominating our
Speaker 1: lives to China as the up and coming is threat
Speaker 1: the right word is China a threat or they just
Speaker 1: going to overtake us as an economy at some point.
Speaker 1: Well they that's supposedly they would in size. But um,
Speaker 1: you know the pivot of the Pacific that never has
Speaker 1: happened again from the administration, that aministration's perspective, and then
Speaker 1: from the military's perspective, a lot of it was based on,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, global warming because we thought some
Speaker 1: of those islands that exist there in the South Pacific,
Speaker 1: we're going to be fifty feet and more underwater. They
Speaker 1: were going to displace billions of people were going to
Speaker 1: have to do. You know, we were pouring all this
Speaker 1: money into again something that just hasn't happened yet. That
Speaker 1: was kind of their vision of it. Um, China. That
Speaker 1: was I was not aware of that. That's what drove
Speaker 1: the pivot to China was global warming and worry about
Speaker 1: the islands going underwater. Yeah, that's right, and what the
Speaker 1: pressure that would do to the navy, that our navy
Speaker 1: would have to they would be rescuing a million um
Speaker 1: people are immigrants, are are a million refugees on a
Speaker 1: yearly basis or more as the shores would rise and
Speaker 1: people would be you know, losing their homes and so again,
Speaker 1: I don't know why we assumed that mission, but that
Speaker 1: was that was the basis of a lot of what
Speaker 1: that Pivots of the Pacific was about. Meanwhile, China has
Speaker 1: taken a generation's long view of things and building those
Speaker 1: little islands that of course they will not militarize till
Speaker 1: the mom want they militarize it ten minutes later. Um,
Speaker 1: how much does that concern you? The idea that China
Speaker 1: maybe uh maneuvering itself into a position where it can
Speaker 1: choke off commercial sea lanes and free navigation. Well, as
Speaker 1: long as we fund our navy and continue to have
Speaker 1: a presence there, I just don't think that will happen.
Speaker 1: Because if they want to have a military um fight there,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be no match because we won't fight it
Speaker 1: on the ground, you know, we don't. We couldn't manufacture
Speaker 1: a billion bullets to kill the Chinese that we'd have
Speaker 1: to kill. Um, it would come from space, it would
Speaker 1: come from c and uh, eventually we would have you know,
Speaker 1: all of the wherewithal in order to to to do
Speaker 1: something there. If they decided to do that, I don't
Speaker 1: think they're they're dumb enough to do that, and they
Speaker 1: do take that long in the tooth approach. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can argue that because of China's population, eventually they
Speaker 1: should be able to win every event in the Olympics,
Speaker 1: you right, you know, the billion people that should find
Speaker 1: everybody that's seventh at tall, like when every basketball game.
Speaker 1: So from a military from military perspective, you look at
Speaker 1: them and say, but they still can't hold and keep
Speaker 1: ground that they want to have. And just like us,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't fight. We wouldn't have that fight. Where where
Speaker 1: would we want to fight China from the army's perspective,
Speaker 1: So it happens in the sea lanes, that will happen
Speaker 1: in cyber I think that's what we've got to be
Speaker 1: concerned about. You know, I always throw this in when
Speaker 1: people are talking about ascendant China. They have amazing demographic
Speaker 1: problems coming down the road, which you know, keep an
Speaker 1: eye on that. It'll be more like Japan now than
Speaker 1: Japan in the eighties, which everybody said was going to
Speaker 1: take over and rule the world, etcetera. Etcetera. I want
Speaker 1: to get to everything before we wear you out and
Speaker 1: you finally hang up on us. But we haven't talked
Speaker 1: to anything about you know, you're talking about various threats
Speaker 1: around the world. Isn't the still the greatest threat out
Speaker 1: there for really for all of mankind. It's amazing nobody
Speaker 1: would have predicted this, that nobody has set off a
Speaker 1: nuke in anger since the forties. At some point that's
Speaker 1: going to happen, isn't it. Well, it it's down to
Speaker 1: accountability of nuclear weapons number one, um and the strict
Speaker 1: you just keep it. Make that you've got to be
Speaker 1: an industrialized nation to have its only eight countries that
Speaker 1: or even have this nuclear capability to enrich it um
Speaker 1: and it can't be shrunk. I was you know, the
Speaker 1: new Mission Impossible movie talks about how they're gonna have
Speaker 1: some suitcase nuclear weapon. It's just just doesn't make That's
Speaker 1: not something that someone can make right now without the
Speaker 1: accountability that that that that goes with having a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 1: But just the fact that there hasn't been an accident. Now,
Speaker 1: there's been a couple of accidents. In fact, there's some
Speaker 1: in the eighties. Some of the guy some guy dropped
Speaker 1: a wrench down a missile silo there and that almost
Speaker 1: blew half of Arkansas away. Um, but there have been challenges.
Speaker 1: But to your point, statistically, you would think something would
Speaker 1: have happened, and when, if, and when it ever does.
Speaker 1: As this nuclear arsenal ages and metal rusts and the
Speaker 1: equipment to maintain it goes offline and floppy disks that
Speaker 1: are no longer used to launch it get changed, there's
Speaker 1: a real possibility that that that could happen. Wow, so
Speaker 1: you're more concerned. Well, I won't speak for you, but
Speaker 1: are you more concerned about decay and the irresponsibility than
Speaker 1: say Pakistan in India getting into a bee for North
Speaker 1: Korea selling their technology to isis that sort of thing? No,
Speaker 1: I'm concerned about North Korea and the proliferation of their
Speaker 1: technology because they're not going to unlearn what they have.
Speaker 1: But but whether or not other countries can get the
Speaker 1: material to do it as another question, and we can
Speaker 1: control that to some degree, so that that is an issue.
Speaker 1: There's no question I think I am concerned about our
Speaker 1: nuclear arsenal because I mean, I hate to talk about
Speaker 1: the Air Force again, but the bottom line is the
Speaker 1: air Force works it, and the Air Force doesn't care
Speaker 1: about it because the Air Force wants to fly off
Speaker 1: sixteens and they want to fly and do all the
Speaker 1: sexy stuff, and the guys that do the nuclear mission
Speaker 1: don't get promoted. They're all disgruntled us to the drug
Speaker 1: problems we've had in a couple of silos, and to me,
Speaker 1: it's a real lack of leadership. And someone better be
Speaker 1: paying attention to make sure that that equipment there is
Speaker 1: not eroding or is still functional, because we still might
Speaker 1: have to use it, God forbid at some point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: back to North Korea, just briefly. I grew up in Chicago, Land,
Speaker 1: and if I was on the West side of Chicago
Speaker 1: right now and I've got a really really good, expensive
Speaker 1: gun and i am absolutely desperate for cash, it's not
Speaker 1: difficult to imagine what I'm going to do. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: North Korea, my God, the idea of them proliferating is
Speaker 1: it's got to be front and center all the time,
Speaker 1: not only their nuclear capability but their missile technology because
Speaker 1: North Korea has a quasi space program, um you know, good,
Speaker 1: not great, And in order to have this i CBM capability,
Speaker 1: you have to really have a space program, which is
Speaker 1: why anytime they've launched these missiles in the past, they
Speaker 1: don't you don't know what they're hitting and they just
Speaker 1: go into the water. You know, for them to say
Speaker 1: they could hit the West Coast remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: But you've got to have in most cases, you do
Speaker 1: have to have this space program in missiles in order
Speaker 1: to ensure that you can hit the other side of it.
Speaker 1: But if North Korea propagates that technology to Iran with
Speaker 1: more of what's going on on the nuclear side, then
Speaker 1: the Iranians come up ten years so now this nuclear power.
Speaker 1: The Israelitis will stand for that for about maybe five
Speaker 1: to ten minutes and then all you know, the f
Speaker 1: A teams get deployed from from there and then that
Speaker 1: war starts because the the Asraelitis are not going to
Speaker 1: put up with the Iranians having any kind of nuclear capability.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just amazing that if you sit around
Speaker 1: and have a conversation with a you know, a smart
Speaker 1: person like you, or maybe it's dumb guys in a
Speaker 1: bar or whatever, and you're discussing, you know, military things,
Speaker 1: what could happen? You always end up back in the
Speaker 1: Middle East. You always end up back in religious arguments
Speaker 1: that are several thousand years old, driving what's going to
Speaker 1: blow up the world. It's just incredible. Speaking of which
Speaker 1: one more geopolitical hotspot, if we may, it's it's a
Speaker 1: pivot point between Europe and Asia, between the Muslim world
Speaker 1: the Christian world. Turkey has got to be you know,
Speaker 1: unless North Korea, the cells, the missiles as you're describing, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Turkey to me is is going to be the center
Speaker 1: of all that is truly dangerous in the next five years.
Speaker 1: And that is a that's a regime that's teetering, it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a fairly powerful military. You've got the
Speaker 1: Curtis thing, they're all tied into Turkey. The second largest
Speaker 1: military after the U S and NATO is Turkey. And
Speaker 1: this regime is not good for the United States and
Speaker 1: the United States in trists and in the past, Turkey
Speaker 1: had been the the way we communicated with the Iranians,
Speaker 1: go back to the eighties and the nineties. Um when
Speaker 1: you know, on the outset it looked like we were
Speaker 1: never doing anything with with Iran Well, we we were
Speaker 1: able to communicate with them through Turkey. So they've they've
Speaker 1: always been a conduit and always been a really close ally.
Speaker 1: But what's going on there now is really scary. And
Speaker 1: again they have nuclear weapons. Are nuclear weapons inside of
Speaker 1: Turkey at Insilic Air based and some of these locations.
Speaker 1: They claim that they're not there. I mean they're not
Speaker 1: I C B M S. But but the bottom line
Speaker 1: is they've got them in their possession. And um, this
Speaker 1: that that leader there is you know, off the wall.
Speaker 1: He's on hinge for for for no question and and
Speaker 1: and I think that from the United States's perspective, we
Speaker 1: need to be watching that a lot closely. And the
Speaker 1: Trump administration putting sanctions on them and we released as
Speaker 1: political prisoners were not off to a good start there
Speaker 1: right now. Did you just say Turkey has the second
Speaker 1: biggest army behind the United States and NATO. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: believe that's what they do in terms of what they
Speaker 1: spent in NATO itself, they're bigger than UK, Canada those
Speaker 1: other ones in terms of what they spend. Absolutely, well,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I didn't know that. So listen, final question
Speaker 1: for me unless I come up with another one. Um,
Speaker 1: a good buddy of mine who is no longer with us,
Speaker 1: God rest the soul. He was a marine. UM. He
Speaker 1: was one of my best childhood friends, and he would
Speaker 1: occasionally refer to me as a silly vilion, which um,
Speaker 1: which I actually appreciated because I like a good insult
Speaker 1: and I loved him. UM. What should or could the
Speaker 1: civilian folks who are listening to this podcast do or
Speaker 1: remember or donate? How do civilians support America's military? How
Speaker 1: should we? I I just say this that anybody is
Speaker 1: in the military came from the civilian world, and there
Speaker 1: were a reflection of the civilian world and their values.
Speaker 1: And if you were you know, squared away and if
Speaker 1: you were smart and you were you know, a good
Speaker 1: citizen and you loved your country before you win the military,
Speaker 1: you did that when you come out of the military.
Speaker 1: The kind of the dirty little secret is. And for eternately,
Speaker 1: there are some people that we're crazy when they got in,
Speaker 1: they got the military let them in, and then they're
Speaker 1: crazy than they're out and they get painted with this
Speaker 1: broad brush. Um as the military made that happen. The
Speaker 1: military caused that to happen. But I just I'm always
Speaker 1: trying to pick that that out before whether or not
Speaker 1: someone was crazy based on whether they you know, they
Speaker 1: were before the military after the most right. But but
Speaker 1: the bottom line is this, most veterans, I would say,
Speaker 1: and just don't necessarily have to be thanked for their service.
Speaker 1: That's something that when I am, I say, ellis and
Speaker 1: I volunteer, and I appreciate and thanks for paying your
Speaker 1: taxes and the whole thing. But most people don't want
Speaker 1: to project that Veterans want to project that value back
Speaker 1: that other people have to do it or insist upon
Speaker 1: doing it. So I think that, um, you know, the
Speaker 1: break that the civilians would want to say is just
Speaker 1: you know, they asked them what what can I and
Speaker 1: they had you to help you kind of assimilar or
Speaker 1: you're doing something right now? What's what's kind of going
Speaker 1: going on? Because just like everybody, we all were all
Speaker 1: carrying a burden to something and um, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're a veteran or not a veteran, you're you're carrying something. Um,
Speaker 1: So to just just be a be a citizen of
Speaker 1: the United States and support and support your government and
Speaker 1: support you know, your your town and your city, and
Speaker 1: and have to make sure they make that contribution. Sometimes
Speaker 1: support them by being critical of them too. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I know you know that, um from my brother
Speaker 1: at various times when he was in a rack for
Speaker 1: the longest period of time, come over and Molway's lawn.
Speaker 1: Uh a, kids were little and his wife was busy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember the sacrifices military families are making. I'd suggest
Speaker 1: to you. Know, We've long believed. I've I've always said that.
Speaker 1: The one thing that bothers me sometimes about maybe even
Speaker 1: a worshipfulness of military folks, is that I believe everybody
Speaker 1: should serve their country. And I say that as a
Speaker 1: small government libertarian type of skeptic of government. From top
Speaker 1: to bottom. Um, our country is us. It's it's the constitution,
Speaker 1: and it's the people, and we all need to be
Speaker 1: serving the country if we wanted to be healthy and strong.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I worry people look to the military and
Speaker 1: tell him, you do it. Me I'm gonna chase money
Speaker 1: and do whatever I want, right. I feel that way sometimes,
Speaker 1: but but then I look at statistics about of the
Speaker 1: youth of America can't even meet the military minimum of
Speaker 1: height weight standards, or they've been popped out on a
Speaker 1: drug test or something like that. You know, if you
Speaker 1: want to If you know you want to be a
Speaker 1: support your country, then then get in shape, support your country,
Speaker 1: go vote. Um. Don't commit crimes, don't take drugs, don't
Speaker 1: contribute to those kinds of things that that are really
Speaker 1: bad for society. That's what's concerned to me. The military
Speaker 1: shouldn't be this, you know, fat farm, shouldn't be this
Speaker 1: place where people get their life straight. You know, the
Speaker 1: judge give you the order between jail or the military.
Speaker 1: Those are kind of the old days because the military
Speaker 1: is a profession that like anything else is, and we
Speaker 1: want people that are highly competent, highly committed. Um, and
Speaker 1: that's what's gonna matter. It's just just as matters in
Speaker 1: the civilian world as well. My clients. Hey, Mike, we
Speaker 1: can't thank you enough for the time. Really really interesting
Speaker 1: and we know the folks love it when you stop
Speaker 1: by some thanks. Thanks guys. It's a privileg is to
Speaker 1: be on with you guys. When I am, I really
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. You're too kind, all right, thanks Mike,
Speaker 1: great to talk. That actually is too kind. We don't
Speaker 1: deserve that. We don't know that. It is not a
Speaker 1: privilege to be on our show. It's just you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's nice for him to say I have
Speaker 1: so much guilt or so many things. Let me roll
Speaker 1: around in that from moments where I am in life.
Speaker 1: On it, I know where I am in life. You know,
Speaker 1: you've talked a little bit about the fact that you
Speaker 1: wanted for a long time in childhood to be in
Speaker 1: the military. I was planning on that cleared through through
Speaker 1: my senior year in high school, military marine recruiters at
Speaker 1: our house. I was filling out paperwork, the whole thing. Wow,
Speaker 1: you got that fallow? Yeah? Yeah? And was it because
Speaker 1: you have to poop out in the open that freak
Speaker 1: you out? Or what? In the Marines? I remember when
Speaker 1: I made reference to a good friend of mine who's
Speaker 1: no longer with us. But when Scott told me that, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what happens, I thought, Oh my god, I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that, which is ridiculous. You know, several
Speaker 1: several of my friends I was riding motorcycles with that,
Speaker 1: you know that uh, summer before senior year, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. I mean, we're riding motorcycles. God all my long, sometimes,
Speaker 1: honest to God, all night long. They'd come honk outside
Speaker 1: my parents house and I'd hear him and I'd go down,
Speaker 1: get get dressed, and run downstairs. Before school's gonna start,
Speaker 1: We'll be riding around motorcycles at three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: Rural Kansas where you could actually I remember one time
Speaker 1: on a hot night, stopping on the highway and we
Speaker 1: took a little nap on the highway, laying down in
Speaker 1: the highway because there's no car in the lanes because
Speaker 1: because of the warmth was still on. The were cold
Speaker 1: and there were still warmth on the highway from the asshole.
Speaker 1: There's no people out, no cars. But anyway, Um, they
Speaker 1: were going in the Marines, and they did go in
Speaker 1: the Marines. And I don't, for the life of me,
Speaker 1: remember why I didn't. I really don't. I became aware
Speaker 1: of the radio program, and you know, the way you
Speaker 1: are when a kid, you're just like this way and
Speaker 1: that way. I think I became aware of this radio program,
Speaker 1: and I just that was the end of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was told that you can't get in if you'd
Speaker 1: ever smoked pot. And I'm afraid I had crossed that line. Um,
Speaker 1: that was just not having This was in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, which um the need for guys was
Speaker 1: a little different than you know, for instance, the Vietnam
Speaker 1: era or the ever never ending Middle East conflict era. UM,
Speaker 1: that could be picky. In the eighties, I didn't have
Speaker 1: that problem, but I I I'm happy with the way
Speaker 1: my life turned off. So you don't want to change
Speaker 1: things if you could go back in a time machine,
Speaker 1: because maybe it wouldn't turn out good. I hear you,
Speaker 1: but I wish i'd done it in some levels, I'd
Speaker 1: like to have seen, you know, because you do that
Speaker 1: sort of thing to see if you could do it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you get to be a marine for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life, yeah, which is very very cool. I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know how much we want to go
Speaker 1: into this, and I know both of us have stuff
Speaker 1: that we really probably shouldn't talk about with our families,
Speaker 1: but we didn't even mention during our chat with my clients. Well,
Speaker 1: you mentioned your brother's active duty Army and minus active
Speaker 1: duty Navy, UM, and that definitely has an influence on
Speaker 1: our perspective. Do you ever talk to your brother about,
Speaker 1: just in a macro way, how he feels about his
Speaker 1: military career. He does not talk much. He does not
Speaker 1: talk much period, which is a product of his uh
Speaker 1: military and war experience and combat experience. He's one of
Speaker 1: those guys that does not talk about he he he
Speaker 1: is a big regular. People don't get it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't talk to them. I can understand the military guy.
Speaker 1: I can understandtand that to the extent that I understand it.
Speaker 1: It's very frustrating, but I can certainly understand it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, my dad, it's funny. He just popped into
Speaker 1: my head. My dad was an officer in the Air
Speaker 1: Force that got the rough side of Mike Lions tongue,
Speaker 1: didn't it the chair Force anyway, No disrespect to Air
Speaker 1: Force guys. That's an old joke anyway. Um, But my
Speaker 1: dad was an Air Force officer and he did not
Speaker 1: encourage me to get into the military. Um. He talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about how some of his commanding officers
Speaker 1: were arbitrary and and and he just felt like there
Speaker 1: was a real lack of justice in it. And it
Speaker 1: felt like a gamble because you'd come across some sort
Speaker 1: of a bit you didn't like you and he put
Speaker 1: a black market and your rector and all it takes
Speaker 1: is one black mark. I'm aware of that. My brothers
Speaker 1: had those experiences definitely. Well, what's funny is I the
Speaker 1: black sheep of the family. The older brother decided that
Speaker 1: wasn't for me. Plus there was a whole pot thing.
Speaker 1: Um uh. But my little brother is going to retire
Speaker 1: after a twenty year plus military career and has done
Speaker 1: great and and somehow avoided the black mark, probably because
Speaker 1: he got the good jeans. I got the rotten jeans. Um.
Speaker 1: But he's had a mostly really positive experience being in
Speaker 1: the military. On the other hand, you know, he's a
Speaker 1: he's a navy guy, he's a submariner, and and that's
Speaker 1: a very very different experience than being an infantry in
Speaker 1: the early century. Um. I remember my brother and my
Speaker 1: dad talking about this one time because my dad, my
Speaker 1: dad asked my brother, he said, could they punch you
Speaker 1: in basic training? My brother said no. He said, when
Speaker 1: I wasn't basic training, they could punch you, but they
Speaker 1: had to ask you first. The dad said, My dad
Speaker 1: said that. He said they had changed that because they
Speaker 1: used to be able to just punch you, so they
Speaker 1: could just is walk up and punch in the face.
Speaker 1: Then there is some sort of changes we got soft
Speaker 1: apparently in the late fifties, early sixties. They had to
Speaker 1: ask you. Of course you had to say yes because you're,
Speaker 1: you know, primate armstrong man. Punch you in the face
Speaker 1: and get punished if you did, sir. You know they
Speaker 1: can't punch you at all, you know. We That's another
Speaker 1: thing we could have talked to Mike about was military discipline,
Speaker 1: how it's changed. He made mention of the fat farm thing, um,
Speaker 1: so obviously it has changed. That's something. Anyway. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed the conversation I did. You're here