Speaker 1: So it's a memorial Day, and obviously on moremorial day
Speaker 1: we take a moment, We take a day to remember
Speaker 1: the fall and to remember the heroes who have paid
Speaker 1: the ultimate sacrifice to defend this nation, defend our country.
Speaker 1: We honor the families who have lost loved ones in
Speaker 1: the pursuit of freedom to protect this great country. But
Speaker 1: beyond taking the time to remember, shouldn't we also reflect?
Speaker 1: And shouldn't we also reflect on mistakes that we've made
Speaker 1: as a country and things we could change moving forward,
Speaker 1: and being more judicious with the lives of our military
Speaker 1: men and women. Shouldn't the people in charge shouldn't their
Speaker 1: sole duty with our military men and women be to
Speaker 1: avoid casualties, avoid sending them to unnecessary wars, so that
Speaker 1: we have less men and women who have to pay
Speaker 1: the ultimate sacrifice in the pursuit of freedom. So that's
Speaker 1: why I wanted to do this Memorial Day. Not only
Speaker 1: honor the fallen and honor their bravery, and honor the
Speaker 1: people who give everything this country that they love and
Speaker 1: that we love, but also take a time to reflect.
Speaker 1: And one of those wars is Afghanistan. You know, it
Speaker 1: was the longest war in American history twenty years. We
Speaker 1: lost so many service members, so many service men and
Speaker 1: women in Afghanistan. So what are the lessons we could
Speaker 1: learn there, What should we take from that and do
Speaker 1: differently moving forward? And who better to talk to than
Speaker 1: Sean Parnell. He is a former US Army airborne ranger
Speaker 1: who served in the legendary tenth Mountain Division for six years,
Speaker 1: retiring as a captain. He received two Bronze Stars, one
Speaker 1: for valor and a Purple Heart as well. He wrote
Speaker 1: the New York Times best selling book Outline Platoon, and
Speaker 1: he also wrote Man of Ward. Outlaw Platoon details his
Speaker 1: sixteen months in combat in Afghanistan. Sixteen months in combat
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. While he was there, his platoon repeatedly was outnumbered,
Speaker 1: repeatedly outgunned, and they displayed such tremendous bravery, to the
Speaker 1: point that over eighty five percent of his platoon received
Speaker 1: Purple Hearts for wounds that they incurred in battle. Sean
Speaker 1: was also injured in battle, day in and day out,
Speaker 1: fighting for freedom in the mountains of Afghanistan. He was
Speaker 1: twenty four at the time. Can you imagine being twenty
Speaker 1: four and leading a platoon in the mountains of Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: day in, day out, outnumbered, outgunn fighting bravely and fearlessly
Speaker 1: next to your brothers in the military and in the Army.
Speaker 1: So we're going to get Sean Parnell's take on what
Speaker 1: lessons we should learn from Afghanistan, what we could be
Speaker 1: doing different moving forward, and how we can truly honor,
Speaker 1: to the best of our abilities, the men and women
Speaker 1: who have paid the ultimate sacrifice and the pursuit of freedom.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy this conversation.
Speaker 1: He's an absolute hero, and he's an absolute badass, Sean Parnell,
Speaker 1: Sean Hearnell, you are such a badass and such an
Speaker 1: American hero. It's an honor just to have you on
Speaker 1: the show. So I really appreciate you taking this time.
Speaker 3: Oh well, thanks, Lisa. I don't know if i'd call
Speaker 3: myself a badass, but I was in the Army for
Speaker 3: a time and I was surrounded by badasses every day,
Speaker 3: so I guess I was pretty lucky.
Speaker 2: I'll call you bad ass. I'll be the one. I'll
Speaker 2: do it because you can be humble. I will take
Speaker 2: the humility out of it for you.
Speaker 1: You know, we're recording this before but this is going
Speaker 1: to air on Memorial Day and obviously a day to
Speaker 1: honor the individuals and so many who have paid the
Speaker 1: ultimate sacrifice and the name of defending freedom, defending this
Speaker 1: great country that we love. But shouldn't we also take
Speaker 1: this time to learn lessons from, you know, wars like Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and also use it as a time to be more
Speaker 1: judicious in sending our military men and.
Speaker 2: Women to war.
Speaker 3: I think so, I mean, and you know, I think
Speaker 3: I think it speaks directly to the importance of you know,
Speaker 3: warriors coming back, you know, American men and women who
Speaker 3: fight our wars coming back and being involved with regards
Speaker 3: to where our country goes and the decisions that we
Speaker 3: make pertaining to the future of America and the wars
Speaker 3: that we get ourselves involved in. You know, after I
Speaker 3: spent time in Afghanistan back in two thousand and six,
Speaker 3: in two thousand and seven, we were there for what
Speaker 3: like twenty years. You know, it's a long long time
Speaker 3: that I think most most of America, America, it's difficult
Speaker 3: to wrap your mind around that length of time, you know,
Speaker 3: And so I feel like you look at what happened
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan and all the blood, the treasure that we
Speaker 3: spent there. Right after twenty years there, you look now
Speaker 3: and it's like, well, what do you have to show
Speaker 3: for it? You know? And look, I tell you this, like,
Speaker 3: I'm proud of my time in Afghanistan. I don't regret
Speaker 3: it for a second. I joined after September eleventh. One
Speaker 3: of the best experiences of my life was serving this country.
Speaker 3: So I am not a victim in any way. I'm
Speaker 3: a volunteer and I would do it all again in
Speaker 3: a heartbeat. And I'm proud of what we did in Afghanistan,
Speaker 3: you know. But I and critics, critics would say, you know,
Speaker 3: when I say, well, what'll we have to show for
Speaker 3: critics would say, well, look, I mean, you know, look
Speaker 3: at what you do, what you built for the Afghans.
Speaker 3: You wells in the villages. You know, little girls know
Speaker 3: how to read, and you know, boys are part of
Speaker 3: the economy now and they understand what what freedom, freedom is,
Speaker 3: even if it was just for a brief time. And
Speaker 3: I would just say that, yes, that is all true,
Speaker 3: but I would rather have my friends alive, you know.
Speaker 3: And you look at what's happening today and the Afghani
Speaker 3: things in Afghanistan just collapsed what like less than a
Speaker 3: year ago, Lisa, right like August twenty twenty one, And
Speaker 3: it seems like you have members of Congress on both
Speaker 3: sides of the Aisle, in the House and in the
Speaker 3: Senate that are clamoring to go right back into the
Speaker 3: fight in Ukraine, which from a geopolitical standpoint is it's
Speaker 3: far more complicated than Afghanistan. Without even taking a breath
Speaker 3: after the Afghan War and saying, wait, is this really
Speaker 3: worth it? Should we take time to hit the reset
Speaker 3: button as a country and figure out if, if this
Speaker 3: fight is worth Americans dying for, Because that's the question
Speaker 3: that American moms and dads need to ask themselves, Lisa,
Speaker 3: is like, is Ukraine so important that you are willing
Speaker 3: to sacrifice your son or daughter for that. If the
Speaker 3: answer to that question is no, then we shouldn't be
Speaker 3: doing anything for Ukraine. And look, Lisa, I feel bad
Speaker 3: for the people there. My heart aches for the civilians
Speaker 3: and children who are caught in the middle. Like this
Speaker 3: is not me saying like we should ignore it completely,
Speaker 3: Like nobody, like a few people in this country understand
Speaker 3: that the humanitarian disaster and people stuck in the middle
Speaker 3: of the flight than me. I get that, But but
Speaker 3: again I would say I would rather have American sons
Speaker 3: and daughters alive. You know, I think we need to
Speaker 3: take care of ourselves here at home a little bit. First.
Speaker 1: We just see politicians, you know, beating the drums of
Speaker 1: war with Ukraine, and Joe Biden said something today about
Speaker 1: Taiwan about you know, you should take military action. But
Speaker 1: you just hear these politicians and it almost there's a
Speaker 1: callousness to it, to be honest, because it doesn't take
Speaker 1: into account that, as you pointed out, it's would they.
Speaker 2: Send their son or daughter?
Speaker 1: You know, it just it doesn't take intoccount Like I
Speaker 1: just lives, American people should be the most important to us.
Speaker 1: That lives, the precious lives our military men and one.
Speaker 1: It should be the most important to us, and it
Speaker 1: just doesn't. It doesn't seem to be the case. And
Speaker 1: it makes me sad.
Speaker 3: Look, you're right, Lisa, I mean, you're right. It's I
Speaker 3: think part of the problem is that you you only
Speaker 3: have zero point four percent of the people in this
Speaker 3: country who served this country during Iraq and Afghanistan, so
Speaker 3: twenty twenty years of war, so longest period of war
Speaker 3: in American history, only point four percent of the country
Speaker 3: actually experienced what it means to protect and defend freedom.
Speaker 3: And so I think as a result, you have, you know,
Speaker 3: most of America, ninety nine percent of America who enjoy
Speaker 3: freedom on a day to day basis in this country,
Speaker 3: and you have less than half of one percent who
Speaker 3: protect it. So there's there's a significant gap between those
Speaker 3: two groups. And I think that's part of the reason why,
Speaker 3: you know, you have politicians who really never served anything
Speaker 3: but themselves for the majority of their lives, talk so
Speaker 3: callously about sending American sons and daughters into the fight
Speaker 3: because the reality is they don't have any real understanding
Speaker 3: of what that means for American families who are actually
Speaker 3: doing the fighting. Like, for example, when I got back
Speaker 3: from Afghanistan, a sixteen month combat deployment, sixteen months, like
Speaker 3: four hundred and eighty five days, It's like if you
Speaker 3: had a kid, it's like, have a good first grade year,
Speaker 3: have a good second grade year. I'll see you on
Speaker 3: your way to third grade. That's crazy, you know. And
Speaker 3: you know, we got back, we hit the reset button.
Speaker 3: You know, most of we weren't even back for a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks, we already had to go right back
Speaker 3: down to Fort Polk, Louisiana. So we got back home,
Speaker 3: hugged our families, went back to do trading down to
Speaker 3: Fort Polk, Louisiana, and prep for another combat deployment to
Speaker 3: Afghanistan that was nine months later. I mean, it's an
Speaker 3: incredibly heavy burden that we that we place on a
Speaker 3: very very small percentage of Americans, and most of the
Speaker 3: time our politicians are unaffected by that. But I guess
Speaker 3: it sounds cool when you're up there at the podium,
Speaker 3: you know, hey, of China invade Taiwan, like We're going
Speaker 3: to get involved militarily, with no real understanding in the
Speaker 3: geopolitical consequences or the all out for the American people
Speaker 3: or how that would affect people who serve. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's it's just irresponsible, especially Lisa, when you consider just
Speaker 3: how much suffering there is here within our own borders
Speaker 3: at home that I think a lot of our attention
Speaker 3: should be focused on.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think President Trump really changed at least
Speaker 1: my thinking on foreign policy because what he was able
Speaker 1: to show us is that you can be strong, you
Speaker 1: can flex muscle, you can deter the bad guys without
Speaker 1: setting troops, without invading, without beating the you know, the
Speaker 1: the drum beat for war, and you can do it
Speaker 1: like he did when he was sitting with President She,
Speaker 1: you know, having chocolate cake, telling him he's sending fifteen
Speaker 1: done Tamahook missiles. This yet it right, it's such a
Speaker 1: fall or remove or striking these peace deals on the
Speaker 1: Abraham Accords. It just changed the way, you know, I
Speaker 1: thought about things because he just showed us a different path.
Speaker 3: He really opened my eyes to you know, there there
Speaker 3: is a different way, you know, and when you're in Washington,
Speaker 3: I mean really, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, there
Speaker 3: there is group think right where everyone sort of thinks
Speaker 3: the same way about a lot of things. And I
Speaker 3: think that's why you hear a lot of people talk
Speaker 3: about the uniparty, you know, where you have you know,
Speaker 3: people like you know, as ideologically different as Adam Kinsinger
Speaker 3: and Ted Cruz both talking about the importance of defending Ukraine,
Speaker 3: to even certain Democrats talking about the importance of defending
Speaker 3: our ally Ukraine even though they're not an ally. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like you see, you see these certain groups of
Speaker 3: people that think alike, Lisa, And what I always admired
Speaker 3: about President Trump is it takes an unbelievable amount of
Speaker 3: mental toughness to resist that type of pressure and group
Speaker 3: think right and and Washington, President Trump was I mean, gosh,
Speaker 3: at any given moment in d C. In the White House,
Speaker 3: both Republicans and Democrats were fired up in anger at
Speaker 3: President Trump for different reasons. And that's what I admired
Speaker 3: about him the most. And that's ultimately why I think
Speaker 3: the American people sent him there, Because there is a
Speaker 3: level of dissatisfaction in this country that if people just
Speaker 3: got outside the Beltway or New York City or LA
Speaker 3: and they took a stroll through you know, Middle America,
Speaker 3: they would feel that sense of discontent about the direction
Speaker 3: of our country. And President Trump tapped into that. And
Speaker 3: you look at what he was able to accomplish in
Speaker 3: four years in the face of I mean, what that
Speaker 3: man faced in the White House was criminal. It was criminal.
Speaker 3: I mean, now we're learning of what Hillary Clinton did,
Speaker 3: it was like maybe legitimately criminal, I don't know. But
Speaker 3: the things that he was able to accomplish in four
Speaker 3: short years I never thought possible. And you know, the
Speaker 3: Abraham accorrors and peace in the Middle East. Never thought
Speaker 3: that was possible, but he did it. And yeah, like
Speaker 3: you said, it really opened my eyes to a new
Speaker 3: way of being and that you know, we don't have
Speaker 3: to deploy and get locked down and like so almost
Speaker 3: become cliche now in these in these forever wars, but
Speaker 3: that's really what they are. I mean, twenty freaking years
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan is a long time. I mean twenty years.
Speaker 3: I mean think about it like this, Like I'm forty
Speaker 3: years old. That's half of my life. We were in Afghanistan,
Speaker 3: like half of my life. The only profession, the only
Speaker 3: thing that I've known is war in Afghanistan. Lost thirty
Speaker 3: five plus friends there. I mean, that's a long time.
Speaker 3: And I think what President Trump showed us was that
Speaker 3: it doesn't have to be that way. We can still
Speaker 3: have peace as long as we're focused on the right
Speaker 3: stuff and focusing on ourselves at home. And unfortunately, a
Speaker 3: year and a half of Joe Biden, he's unraveling that
Speaker 3: pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: I mean, I never thought it could get this bad. This,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just it's really sad.
Speaker 1: But I but I honestly think I think the turning
Speaker 1: point for him was because you know, people thought he
Speaker 1: would restore ordery, do all these things, and obviously people
Speaker 1: like us knew he wasn't going to do and he
Speaker 1: wasn't capable of it. But his ratings really started to
Speaker 1: take a nose dive after Afghanistan. And it was the
Speaker 1: disastrous exit, the abandoning like the Bagroum airfield before getting
Speaker 1: our people out, getting thirteen service members killed, leaving Americans behind,
Speaker 1: And I think that was the turning point.
Speaker 2: And when that all was going down.
Speaker 1: You tweeted out that the afghandabacles on the suits not
Speaker 1: the boots. Talk about that disconnect in the military between
Speaker 1: the suits and the boots and how that played out
Speaker 1: with Afghanistan so disastrously.
Speaker 3: Oh, it was so frustrating to me. And part of
Speaker 3: what I do like coming back home after I got
Speaker 3: back from Afghanistan was there was realizing very quickly that
Speaker 3: a lot there are a lot of men and women
Speaker 3: here who serve this country that needed help. And you know,
Speaker 3: there's a way in which you come back from war,
Speaker 3: and war changes you and some pretty deep and fundamental ways,
Speaker 3: and you could you know, you come back and you
Speaker 3: meet and talk to your family and you feel like
Speaker 3: your family doesn't know you because you've changed, and you
Speaker 3: talk to your best friends. And there was a moment
Speaker 3: for me like where I'm from Pittsburgh and so like
Speaker 3: the first thing I do when I get back from
Speaker 3: Afghanistan is like text my buddies, you know who I
Speaker 3: went to college with and stuff. And like I open
Speaker 3: up my like little flip phone and text them and
Speaker 3: they text me back their address and like look at it.
Speaker 3: Read the address. I'm like, oh my gosh, Like these
Speaker 3: dudes are still living in the same address they've been
Speaker 3: living at for ten years, and I just got back
Speaker 3: from Afghanistan feel like a totally different person show up
Speaker 3: at their I show up at their apartment. I walk
Speaker 3: in and like they're like all sitting in the same
Speaker 3: spots on the couch, like drinking the same Iron City beer,
Speaker 3: talking about the same girl problems. And I'm like Simpson's
Speaker 3: posters on the wall and family Guy magnets on the fridge,
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking to myself, like, oh my god, like
Speaker 3: nothing has changed here at home, but I'm a different
Speaker 3: person in every way. And so if I was feeling
Speaker 3: like that, there are probably millions of Americans feeling like
Speaker 3: that who come home for more and just feel like
Speaker 3: they're different, and maybe they feel like exiles in their
Speaker 3: own country. And so I started doing everything I could
Speaker 3: to make sure that, like the war is really what
Speaker 3: I guess I'm getting to Lisa, is that the war
Speaker 3: for a lot of veterans really starts when you get home.
Speaker 3: And I wanted to just help veterans come home in
Speaker 3: the most productive way possible and not just survive on
Speaker 3: a day to day basis, but but really but thrive,
Speaker 3: you know. And when I tweeted that about Afghanistan, about
Speaker 3: it being on the suits and not the boots, was
Speaker 3: really it was in that spirit, because I knew there
Speaker 3: would be a lot of veterans thinking like, what the
Speaker 3: hell was all this for? You know, why the hell
Speaker 3: did I Why did I lose my best friend in
Speaker 3: this country? Why did I go to this country and
Speaker 3: sacrifice a piece of myself there?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: Why did we do all of this just to have
Speaker 3: some moron in the White House throw it all away?
Speaker 3: Because I mean, quite honestly, he's a bumbling idiot. Leadership matters,
Speaker 3: and he's a commander in chief, so that the term
Speaker 3: commander predisposes chief. His job at first and foremost an
Speaker 3: obligation to our American military, and it was a dereliction
Speaker 3: of duty of the highest order of what he did
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan. And it's not just it's not just leaving
Speaker 3: Americans behind, which is horrific, horrific enough, right, I can't
Speaker 3: even believe I had to say this, but the sacrifice
Speaker 3: that twenty years of Americans bled the ground red in
Speaker 3: Afghanistan just to seed it back to the Taliban in
Speaker 3: a few weeks. I mean, that's a that's a crime.
Speaker 4: It's a crime, and it's it's gonna do unbelievable moral
Speaker 4: damage to people who served there, that the ramstifications of
Speaker 4: which I don't think we fully understand yet.
Speaker 3: And so it's just like unbelievable to have to witness
Speaker 3: the fall of Afghanistan in the speed at which it
Speaker 3: fell here in America after having been there for twenty years.
Speaker 3: And again, never ever, ever, ever would have happened under
Speaker 3: President Trump, or really any American president that could speak
Speaker 3: in coherence sentences without having to read off a sheet
Speaker 3: of paper. I mean, just unbelievable. And you can't help
Speaker 3: but think, you cannot help but think like I used
Speaker 3: to joke around in the campaign trail when I was
Speaker 3: running for the House in the Senate, well mostly when
Speaker 3: I was running for the Senate, but about like just
Speaker 3: to utter incompetence. But I don't think it's incompetence. I
Speaker 3: think it's I think it's intentional. I think that this
Speaker 3: is you can't be this good. I mean, he's Joe
Speaker 3: Biden in his administration, a bunch of Obama appointees two
Speaker 3: point zero right back in the White House, some of
Speaker 3: which are sermon in the same cabinet positions. It's like
Speaker 3: they're unbelievably efficient, ruthlessly efficient at destroying almost every pillar
Speaker 3: in this country, I mean every country. Like it's unbelievable
Speaker 3: that the level of which they're failing. And I think
Speaker 3: Afghanistan was just one of those pillars.
Speaker 1: Well, I think we all just felt such amount of
Speaker 1: shame with the way that we exited, just the loss
Speaker 1: of military men and women, or those thirteen service members
Speaker 1: and just leaving Americans behind. Quick commercial break back with
Speaker 1: Sean Parnell on the other side, talked about sort of
Speaker 1: you know the challenge with coming home when you've been
Speaker 1: at war like that out I'll say one of the
Speaker 1: most rewarding experiences I've ever had in my career was
Speaker 1: doing an honor ear flight for Vietnam war vets from
Speaker 1: Wisconsin for Fox and Friends. And I went on this
Speaker 1: trip with them, and I'll tell you it was just
Speaker 1: such a movie experience talking to these like big strong
Speaker 1: guys who were just brought to tears of just feeling
Speaker 1: the honor of having served because they didn't get the
Speaker 1: welcome they deserved when they came home. And so just
Speaker 1: doing the interviews with them and seeing these you know,
Speaker 1: grown men and you know cry and just it was
Speaker 1: just incredibly moving and I learned a lot from it.
Speaker 1: It was just a really you know, humbling and just
Speaker 1: incredible experience, you know, spending time with them and just
Speaker 1: being able to bless them and being part of this
Speaker 1: with the trip.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Vietnam vets are I mean, we owe them
Speaker 3: so much, and obviously because as you mentioned, they didn't
Speaker 3: have the welcome home that we did. And so much
Speaker 3: of the reason why my generation was welcomed home was
Speaker 3: because after like what these Vietnam what the Vietnam era
Speaker 3: went through, they made themselves a promise and never allow
Speaker 3: another generation to veteran to experience what they did, and
Speaker 3: because of that, like we had by and large, a
Speaker 3: very positive homecoming, you know. And when I talk about
Speaker 3: feeling like an exile in your own country, I should say,
Speaker 3: like almost everybody that you talk to says thank you
Speaker 3: for your service. I am not again, Like, we're lucky
Speaker 3: to live in a country like America and come home
Speaker 3: to people that appreciate you. And that that is because
Speaker 3: of Vietnam veterans who went through hell when they came back,
Speaker 3: went through hell in combat, through hell, and they came
Speaker 3: back and then but didn't give in. And they they
Speaker 3: they made a promise to you know, subsequent generations of
Speaker 3: Americans when they came home from the fight, and that
Speaker 3: promise was to never allow what they went through to
Speaker 3: happen again. And I mean, really, my generation is standing
Speaker 3: on the shoulders of giants with them and World War
Speaker 3: two veterans and Korea veterans before them. So yeah, we're lucky.
Speaker 3: We're lucky to live in this country. But there's still
Speaker 3: a lot of work to do, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine how it doesn't change you.
Speaker 1: I particularly some of this stuff uf that you endured,
Speaker 1: you know, I know you very humbly. You know, didn't
Speaker 1: take me saying that you're, you know, a complete badass
Speaker 1: and a hero.
Speaker 2: But you really are.
Speaker 1: I mean, you retired a highly decorated captain. You're awarded
Speaker 1: two bronze stars, one for valor and a purple Heart.
Speaker 1: You wrote the New York Times best selling book, Outlaw Platoon.
Speaker 1: It's about your time serving as commanding the Army's tenth
Speaker 1: Mountain Division in Afghanistan. As you mentioned, you served in
Speaker 1: combat for sixteen months. You guys were repeatedly out numbered,
Speaker 1: repeatedly outgunn Yeah, your platoon killed over three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty enemy fighters. Why do you think your platoon was
Speaker 1: able to be so effective in the face of so
Speaker 1: much That's a great question.
Speaker 3: I think when you look at the things that the
Speaker 3: American military can bring to the fight, you know, like
Speaker 3: we've got lots of cool and sexy technology, Like we've
Speaker 3: got great guns and weapons, and we've got air superiority
Speaker 3: helicopter and fixed wing aircraft and all that. Believe me
Speaker 3: when I tell you all that really really helps. But
Speaker 3: I think really our secret weapon was the love and
Speaker 3: brotherhood that we shared for one another. You know, we
Speaker 3: We spent a lot of time training leading up to
Speaker 3: our deployment in Afghanistan, and I feel like I was
Speaker 3: very blessed to lead one of the most diverse platoons
Speaker 3: that you can imagine. And it's funny when you hear
Speaker 3: a lot of these politicians talking about diversity in America
Speaker 3: being a strength, and it's like, well, of course, diversity
Speaker 3: is a strength, but not in and of itself. What
Speaker 3: makes America so truly exceptional is that we unify beyond
Speaker 3: like our many differences, right, It's not just diversity for
Speaker 3: diversity's sake. And really, my platoon was a microcosm of
Speaker 3: that strength. Like we had black next to whites, Christians
Speaker 3: next to atheists, Democrats next to Republican, rich next to poor,
Speaker 3: young next to old, or we were like as wildly
Speaker 3: different as you can imagine. Yet there were no real
Speaker 3: hYP There were no hyphenated Americans out there in Afghanistan
Speaker 3: patroling those those mountains. And it was the very fact
Speaker 3: that I think we were able to put aside all
Speaker 3: of our differences and unify beyond them into one cohesive
Speaker 3: fighting force. That that that was what allowed us to
Speaker 3: go through sixteen months of absolute hell sixteen months of
Speaker 3: heavy combat and and make it. You know, you know,
Speaker 3: we made ourselves a promise. I think what drove us
Speaker 3: every day on the battlefield, Lisa, it was was the
Speaker 3: fear of of of not the enemy, but the fear
Speaker 3: of letting each other down. You know. I would have
Speaker 3: soldiers that would get that would get shot in the head.
Speaker 3: A soldier that got shot through his helmet, his helmet
Speaker 3: slowed the round down enough where it penetrated his skin
Speaker 3: but not his skull, and skirted around the side of
Speaker 3: his doll and back out the other end. And that
Speaker 3: guy went back to the base, wrapped his head up,
Speaker 3: and was back out on patrol twenty four hours later. So,
Speaker 3: when you're when you're serving with men or Americans that
Speaker 3: have that much like that, the level of toughness and
Speaker 3: tenacity and dedication to duty that someone that someone like
Speaker 3: that has, how do you fail somebody like that? Like
Speaker 3: if you twist an ank, or you you take some shrapnel,
Speaker 3: or you get maybe a shot, but it's a grazing wound,
Speaker 3: Like how do you how do you how do how
Speaker 3: do you not saddle up when you're surrounded by men
Speaker 3: like I just described? And so it was the fact
Speaker 3: that we were able really to unify beyond our many
Speaker 3: differences in fear of letting each other down. That really
Speaker 3: drove us to accomplish I think, extraordinary things and and
Speaker 3: really I mean it, like my platoon really just accomplish.
Speaker 3: It was just one unbelievable triumph of the human spirit
Speaker 3: after the next. I mean, we were not like Navy
Speaker 3: seals or anything. You know, we were light infantrymen. So
Speaker 3: we were in the tenth Mountain Division and we were
Speaker 3: light infantry. I mean we were real well trained and stuff.
Speaker 3: Don't get me wrong, but you know, we weren't special forces.
Speaker 3: You know, the most of the jobs that a lot
Speaker 3: of these kids had, like prior to carrying a machine
Speaker 3: gun and the mountains of Afghanistan, the job prior to
Speaker 3: the military is like high school shortstop. Yet these kids
Speaker 3: were It's just accomplished unbelievable things. And I think it's
Speaker 3: because we relied on one another, and that's what's what
Speaker 3: allowed us to get through it all.
Speaker 1: And you're twenty four at the beginning right of this standing.
Speaker 2: I mean, how do you do that.
Speaker 1: At twenty four and be responsible for all these brave
Speaker 1: men that you just talked about. I mean, what an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of responsibility. I was an idiot when I
Speaker 1: was so so God did you do that?
Speaker 2: But how do you know?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know. You just you know.
Speaker 3: I had a conversation with my mom, uh when I
Speaker 3: got back from Afghanistan and maybe a couple of years after,
Speaker 3: and my youngest brother, I'm the oldest of four, and
Speaker 3: so my youngest brother was like like helping my middle
Speaker 3: brother move down to Texas or something like that or
Speaker 3: and my mom was like, Oh, I'm nervous that your
Speaker 3: younger brother, Andy's gonna have to drive drive, you know,
Speaker 3: his brother's car all the way down to Texas. And
Speaker 3: I'm like thinking, like, ma, Andy's twenty three years old.
Speaker 3: Like I think he'll be all right. I was leading
Speaker 3: people in Afghanistan at twenty three years old, you know,
Speaker 3: So I don't I don't know, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was just like it was just something that we
Speaker 3: were laughing about it, you know, I don't after So
Speaker 3: I think part of that, Lisa is like I was
Speaker 3: a sophomore in college when nine to eleven happened, and
Speaker 3: that that hit me that like like it did millions
Speaker 3: of other Americans. You know, and I think if you
Speaker 3: live through nine to eleven, you can probably tell me
Speaker 3: exactly where you were and what you were doing and
Speaker 3: what you had plans to do that day. And the
Speaker 3: only thing like I was kind of like a I
Speaker 3: was kind of a screw up as a kid, Like
Speaker 3: my grades were okay, but I didn't really know what
Speaker 3: I wanted to do as an elementary education major. But again,
Speaker 3: as a sophomore in college, I must have changed my
Speaker 3: major a few times. Like, but when nine to eleven happened,
Speaker 3: I knew that I wanted to join the army, go
Speaker 3: in the infantry, go to airborne school, go to ranger school,
Speaker 3: like be on the front lines of our collective response.
Speaker 3: And you know, I just knew. I knew it in
Speaker 3: my heart of hearts that that was that was the
Speaker 3: path that God intended me to walk at that specific
Speaker 3: moment in my life. And that's I think. I think
Speaker 3: this is my faith in God and that that was
Speaker 3: my purpose. I think that that's how I was able
Speaker 3: to do it. And you know, twenty three, twenty four
Speaker 3: years old, when you when I just feel like when
Speaker 3: you know what path you're meant to walk, and you
Speaker 3: know that like no matter how bad things get, this
Speaker 3: is where you're supposed to be. I've got no regrets.
Speaker 3: I just think it gives you a sense of clarity,
Speaker 3: you know, about what you're supposed to do. And and
Speaker 3: in my case, it was lead troops in Afghanistan at
Speaker 3: twenty three, twenty four years old, you know, and as
Speaker 3: horrible as that combat was, I mean, seriously, like we
Speaker 3: we like anythink back to two thousand and six. You don't,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you were doing stuff at Fox
Speaker 3: back then. I sure as hell wasn't that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was like a staff.
Speaker 3: I can't.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think twenty four.
Speaker 1: I think it was like working on Capitol Hill doing
Speaker 1: you know, like nothing of nothing like you were doing.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a note. I'll tell you how much you know.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, we're probably we're probably the
Speaker 3: same age, you know, I am, so I'm a little
Speaker 3: older than you.
Speaker 2: I'll take those couple of years, but you know.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I feel like it was the path
Speaker 3: I was I was meant to walk, you know, and
Speaker 3: you know, get back and you see I was able
Speaker 3: to take a company command and then did a Battalian
Speaker 3: attachment command, and so at the age of twenty eight
Speaker 3: years old, I ended up being in charge of like
Speaker 3: eighteen or nineteen hundred like people, where I was in
Speaker 3: charge of training young soldiers to go to war and
Speaker 3: taking care of the wounded when they came home, and
Speaker 3: then looking after the families who were left back at home,
Speaker 3: and then ultimately doing the casualty notification, which was ten
Speaker 3: times worse than combat. So I've seen both sides of
Speaker 3: the fight. I've seen I've seen combat up close and personal,
Speaker 3: and I've seen the fallout here at home. And what
Speaker 3: I was saying earlier is that, like no one expected
Speaker 3: michaeltoon or are, experience in Afghanistan leads to be like
Speaker 3: what it was like. If you think back to two
Speaker 3: thousand and six, and if you're a congressional staffer working
Speaker 3: on the hill or something like that back then, then
Speaker 3: you know the talk back then was the Iraq War
Speaker 3: and whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction
Speaker 3: there or should we should George W. Bush send more
Speaker 3: troops to the surge in Iraq or not, should we
Speaker 3: even be there or not? So at the time, Afghanistan
Speaker 3: was just a stability and support operation. We had no
Speaker 3: idea what we were getting ourselves into. And man, like
Speaker 3: we just got thrown into the meat grind. Or we
Speaker 3: were an eastern Afghanistan about five clicks five kilometers from
Speaker 3: the Pakistan border. Our mission was like about as simple
Speaker 3: as you can. You can get find Asama bin Laden,
Speaker 3: close with and destroy the enemy, that's it. And man,
Speaker 3: we just got attacked every single day. We were outnumbered
Speaker 3: every single day. I mean my base, my base probably
Speaker 3: we took four thousand rockets in four hundred and eighty
Speaker 3: five days, four thousand, you know, hundreds of direct fire engagements.
Speaker 3: We just sort of just like got thrown in there.
Speaker 3: You know, so much of the focus of this nation
Speaker 3: was on Iraq that we couldn't even get up armored
Speaker 3: hum best because all it was going to Iraq. Like
Speaker 3: we were supposed to come home after a year, we
Speaker 3: got extended for four more months, sixteen months. Why because
Speaker 3: the soldiers that were supposed to replace us in Afghanistan
Speaker 3: got sent to Iraq and supported the surge. So we were
Speaker 3: sort of like an afterthought and we went through absolute hell.
Speaker 3: And ultimately, Lisa that that's why I wrote the book,
Speaker 3: because I thought to myself, like, oh my God, like
Speaker 3: nobody knows in this country, and nobody knew how bad
Speaker 3: Afghanistan was way back in two thousand and six, nobody.
Speaker 3: And I just felt like it was my job as
Speaker 3: the leader of that platoon to make sure that the
Speaker 3: legacy of my soldiers that was kept alive. And you know,
Speaker 3: even if Outlaw Platune ended up being a word document
Speaker 3: on my computer that I emailed all of my troops
Speaker 3: that like maybe once every ten years we read through
Speaker 3: and drank beers or whatever like that would be that's
Speaker 3: worth it. At least their experiences on the page preserved forever.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that. I didn't know that it would
Speaker 3: take off and become a bestseller in its first week,
Speaker 3: and I was I feel like I was also lucky.
Speaker 3: It was also maybe it was a state when out
Speaker 3: Laul Patune came out. Do you remember that story way
Speaker 3: back in the day where soldiers at Bagram'm got in
Speaker 3: trouble for like burning a Koran or something like that,
Speaker 3: and that was like all over the news. It was
Speaker 3: like headline news for like a week. Well, outlawl Butatoon
Speaker 3: came out at that exact time, and I was like
Speaker 3: the young kid with an Afghania with a new Afghanistan
Speaker 3: book and you know how that goes on Fox News
Speaker 3: stuff like that. Like I was a duke guy with
Speaker 3: the books, so I was able to go on there
Speaker 3: and promote it and the rest is history. I was just,
Speaker 3: it was just it was just a blessing to be
Speaker 3: able to have that opportunity own tell tell the story
Speaker 3: of my troops.
Speaker 2: You had talked about.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously we had superior you know, equipment, being
Speaker 1: the US, but you're on their terrain and you're in
Speaker 1: the mountains. How difficult is it to try to navigate
Speaker 1: that when you know you're you're on their home base, right,
Speaker 1: you're in their mountains.
Speaker 3: That is That's another great question.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 3: It was ridiculous. I mean, it's another thing about Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: Like if you want to go back to a time
Speaker 3: where Jesus Christ walk the earth, had the AK forty seven,
Speaker 3: like the icon walkie talkie type radio and a pickup truck,
Speaker 3: and you've got Afghanistan there. When we were there, there
Speaker 3: was like one paved road in the entire country, no
Speaker 3: running water, no electricity, no economy. All all fighting age
Speaker 3: males would do. All the men in the villages that
Speaker 3: we were around would cut down wood all summer and
Speaker 3: prep for the winter and that was it. That's all
Speaker 3: like there was nothing, nothing, and it's just all tribal.
Speaker 3: And so when we were where we were in Burmel,
Speaker 3: like Burmel District, was that we were in the valley,
Speaker 3: our base was in the valley, but fighting up in
Speaker 3: the mountains. I mean we're probably at fourteen fifteen thousand
Speaker 3: feet there, you know, in the Hindu Kush mountains. And
Speaker 3: so if you if you're like a football fan, that's
Speaker 3: like playing a football game at Mayahai Stadium times three.
Speaker 3: And the enemy that we faced over there again, like
Speaker 3: you hear the media talk about and you certainly saw
Speaker 3: this during the collapse of Afghanistan, but the media talks
Speaker 3: about the Taliban as if they're a monolithic force, and
Speaker 3: they are not. I mean, you have so many different
Speaker 3: enemy factions that you face over there on a day
Speaker 3: to day basis, whether it's the Heikkani Network or Hekmatia
Speaker 3: or al Qaeda or Taliban or just crimes that happened
Speaker 3: on a day to day basis like any other country.
Speaker 3: That like any other country in the world. And as
Speaker 3: a young leader, you've got to like navigate all that
Speaker 3: somehow be almost like you know, an ambassador, an American
Speaker 3: ambassador with a gun, you know, ready on a moment's
Speaker 3: notice to either you know, fire your weapon in defense
Speaker 3: of your troops or cradle a baby in a village
Speaker 3: where you're doing a humanitarian distribution. I mean, it was
Speaker 3: one of the most complex, rugged environments that I certainly
Speaker 3: have ever been in. And you know, you add to
Speaker 3: that the fact that all of those enemy factions that
Speaker 3: I just told you about, like most of those most
Speaker 3: of the enemy that we faced in Afghanistan cut their
Speaker 3: teeth against the Russians in the eighties and then fought
Speaker 3: in the Afghan Civil War in the nineties, and then
Speaker 3: against us in a post nine to eleven era. And
Speaker 3: you know, the average Afghan that we were fighting had
Speaker 3: ten years combat experience on an eighteen year old American private.
Speaker 3: You know, this was not a group of farmers with
Speaker 3: pitchforks or some sort of ragtag insurgency that they just
Speaker 3: mustered up at the last second. Now, the people that
Speaker 3: we fought there, the level of tactical acumen that they
Speaker 3: displayed on the battlefield on a day to day basis
Speaker 3: was just as good, if not better than us, And
Speaker 3: they weren't weighed down with one hundred pounds of gear
Speaker 3: like we were, and they knew the terrain better than
Speaker 3: we did, at least initially, because what you know, as obviously,
Speaker 3: being in Afghanistan for sixteen months sucked something fierce. It
Speaker 3: was horrible. But what was interesting is this, I don't
Speaker 3: mean to sound crass, but we killed so many of
Speaker 3: them over there that we were getting intel in May
Speaker 3: of two thousand and seven that Pakistan families were sick
Speaker 3: and tired of sending their sons into the fight. They
Speaker 3: were no longer going to commit male fighters to the
Speaker 3: war in Afghanistan. And what we saw is that a
Speaker 3: lot of the new fighters that had replaced the older
Speaker 3: ones that we had killed didn't know the terrain as
Speaker 3: good as us. So it was a real odd dynamic
Speaker 3: where at first they were better than us, they were
Speaker 3: faster than us, they knew the terrain, but slowly over time,
Speaker 3: because we never broke contact, we never surrendered, We always
Speaker 3: pressed the enemy. We would never give them that moral
Speaker 3: victory on the battlefield. We just slowly whittled away at
Speaker 3: their force and killed them one by one to the
Speaker 3: point where at the end of sixteen months we knew
Speaker 3: the terrain better than they did. And all of this
Speaker 3: culminated in an attack probably in January. It was early
Speaker 3: January of two thousand and seven. We had built my
Speaker 3: PLATOONA had built or my company had built, the first
Speaker 3: combat outpost. And I'm sure you've seen, like you know,
Speaker 3: can't remember some of the movies' names that the movie
Speaker 3: where you see in Afghanistan a combat outpost getting overrun.
Speaker 3: Probably every year after I was in Afghanistan, a combat
Speaker 3: outpost had been overrun, Lisa, and and like I was
Speaker 3: highly critical of that strategy because like all they would
Speaker 3: be manned with almost no combat power, with like a
Speaker 3: squad and all they would they would just be simply
Speaker 3: relegated to a defensive position. There and all along the
Speaker 3: border of Afghanistan, you had like a main base with
Speaker 3: what they call cops, like combat outposts, and it almost
Speaker 3: looked like a modern day version of the magine O line,
Speaker 3: thinking like, well, if we have all these bases along
Speaker 3: the border, there's no way the enemy will be able
Speaker 3: to get bias and that's complete bs. So anyway, like
Speaker 3: they tried to attack this base that we had built
Speaker 3: and we ended up kill killing I think like two
Speaker 3: hundred plus fighters just in that one engagement decisively because
Speaker 3: we caught them just prior to them kicking off the attack.
Speaker 3: And I mean, I would wager to say that from
Speaker 3: a strategic and tactical standpoint back in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and seven, we had we had decisively
Speaker 3: won the fight Afghanistan. And then we shifted from a
Speaker 3: counter terror mission, which the basic premise of a counter
Speaker 3: terror mission is going after and killing the enemy, and
Speaker 3: through killing the enemy you secure the people, to a
Speaker 3: counterinsurgency mission, like after the surge in Iraq. And you know,
Speaker 3: I think there are the strategists that would say that
Speaker 3: surge in Iraq was successful. I think I would tend
Speaker 3: to agree at least that in the moment back then,
Speaker 3: it was pretty successful. Well, they tried to implement that
Speaker 3: exact same strategy in Afghanistan, which is an entirely different country,
Speaker 3: and once we shifted to counterinsurgency, we lost the initiative
Speaker 3: and Afghanistan went slowly downhill from there.
Speaker 2: We've got more of a Memorial Day episode, But first.
Speaker 1: Take us back to you know, June tenth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and six your platoon was outnumbered by almost ten to one,
Speaker 1: ended up leaving you with injuries.
Speaker 2: You know, talk about that day and what happened.
Speaker 3: So June tenth, we had been tasked, we were tasked
Speaker 3: with finding a high value target, and we had been
Speaker 3: out for a week up until that point. And we
Speaker 3: sat up and what we call an observation post, and
Speaker 3: we were just watching infiltration routes from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: And we knew that this al Qaeda leader was using
Speaker 3: a cave complex to navigate from Pakistan into Afghanistan, which
Speaker 3: is how he was avoiding like our intelligence and reconnaissance
Speaker 3: and surveillance drones. So we perched up on this hill,
Speaker 3: we laid our sites in on this cave site which
Speaker 3: which he thought he was using, and set in for
Speaker 3: the night. Woke up the next morning and all throughout
Speaker 3: the night I applotted target reference points and confirmed them
Speaker 3: with our base. That got target reference point is like
Speaker 3: when you've got artillery at your base, you want to
Speaker 3: be able to Artillery is basically like big guns, and
Speaker 3: you want to be able to get those guns into
Speaker 3: the fight as fast as humany possible. Should you make
Speaker 3: contact with the enemy. And the best way to do
Speaker 3: that is not like trying to plot it in the
Speaker 3: middle of a fight, right, I think is the best
Speaker 3: military commanders would look at a map and pick key
Speaker 3: terrain and say, okay, this hilltop here is key terrain.
Speaker 3: If the enemy takes this hilltop, they'll be able to attack.
Speaker 4: Us here easily.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna plot this hill it's target reference point one.
Speaker 3: And then you can coordinate with the with the guns
Speaker 3: and say, look, this is my target reference point one.
Speaker 3: When I say fire TRP one, this is what I mean,
Speaker 3: and you just you set in target reference point one
Speaker 3: through ten prior to even leaving. And so I had
Speaker 3: been I'd studied those throughout the night. The sun crested
Speaker 3: the hill the next morning, and I remember walking out
Speaker 3: and looking at some mountaintops to directly to our east
Speaker 3: that were a lot higher than the one that we
Speaker 3: were on, and I just thought to myself, that's not
Speaker 3: a good tactical position to be in. And so I
Speaker 3: don't have the man power to occupy those hills with troops.
Speaker 3: In a perfect world, you would just occupy terrain that
Speaker 3: was higher than yours would boots, but I didn't have that.
Speaker 3: I just had one platoon, so I figured I'd occupy
Speaker 3: those hilltops by fire and if enemy was watching us,
Speaker 3: they would think twice about setting in there, because I
Speaker 3: know that I have those positions diled in, and so
Speaker 3: I fired those target reference points with my forward observer,
Speaker 3: watched those watch the rounds land on point and on target.
Speaker 3: I remember walking back to my truck and it's just
Speaker 3: like somebody threw a veil over my entire world, and
Speaker 3: I remember I don't remember much, but I do remember
Speaker 3: waking up in a smoldering hole about twenty feet from
Speaker 3: where I had been standing, laying flat on my back,
Speaker 3: and I couldn't see, I couldn't really hear, but I
Speaker 3: could feel this stinging on my face and it just
Speaker 3: felt like like like someone was slapping me. And as
Speaker 3: I blinked my eyes open, I see one of my
Speaker 3: team leaders, Tim Stalter, slap me and trying to get
Speaker 3: me to wake up, and I finally I wake up,
Speaker 3: opened my eyes. I look at him. He's got this
Speaker 3: big smile on his face. I'm like, what do you
Speaker 3: smile at? What's going on? And he goes, sir, He's like,
Speaker 3: you got blown the f up, and he started laughing
Speaker 3: like what the hell is he laughing at? And I
Speaker 3: remember just like looking beyond him at these trees, because
Speaker 3: we had these big, huge trees up on the hilltop
Speaker 3: with us that a lot of my men were taking
Speaker 3: cover behind, and the tops of these trees that looked
Speaker 3: like they hadn't been touched since the prehistoric era, they
Speaker 3: were just getting blown to smithereens like this crazy. And
Speaker 3: I remember looking to my left hand, which was shaking,
Speaker 3: and it just like kind of laying in the Afghan dust,
Speaker 3: and I could see rounds landing between my fingers, like
Speaker 3: like the level of fire that we were being hit
Speaker 3: with was like nothing I've ever seen before or felt
Speaker 3: before like it like I felt like there on the
Speaker 3: ground with one of my soldiers on top, like if
Speaker 3: I moved even one centimeter to the left of the right,
Speaker 3: I'd get shot. And that's how heavy the fire was.
Speaker 3: And I remember looking to my left and I see
Speaker 3: my platoon sergeant Greg Greeson, and his back is like
Speaker 3: covered in blood and he's pointing to himself like saying
Speaker 3: that he's hit. And all around my perimeter, I had
Speaker 3: five gun trucks on the hilltop that day, and I
Speaker 3: had twenty four soldiers on the ground, along with one interpreter,
Speaker 3: but all along the perimeter. At every one of my trucks,
Speaker 3: almost everybody was hit. Like my platoon sergeant was hit.
Speaker 3: He's my number two and chain of command. Squadlier Phil
Speaker 3: Baldwin was shot in the leg. He wasn't really trying
Speaker 3: to deal with that injury, but he was trying to
Speaker 3: furiously stop the bleeding of his team leader, Bennett Garvin,
Speaker 3: who was shot in the arm. I watched Mike Emrick
Speaker 3: up on the up on his fifty caliber machine gun
Speaker 3: up on a truck. He got shot in the head,
Speaker 3: fell in the truck, popped back up without a salmon on.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was all hell was breaking. Within sixty
Speaker 3: seconds of getting attacked that day, almost every key meter
Speaker 3: in my patune had been hit, including myself. And as
Speaker 3: I sat up, like the stalter of the kid that
Speaker 3: had brought me back sat me up straight, and I
Speaker 3: remember feeling this like clear liquid leaking out of my
Speaker 3: nose and my ears. And I didn't know it at
Speaker 3: the time, but it ended up being like serebral spinal fluid.
Speaker 3: I had fractured my skull very slightly after getting blown up,
Speaker 3: and I just remember thinking, well, okay, I'm not bleeding,
Speaker 3: it must be something else, and got up and got
Speaker 3: back into the fight. And I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 3: at this point, like how many people were injured, how
Speaker 3: many of my trucks can drive, what weapons systems are
Speaker 3: up versus down? How many rounds of ammunition that we
Speaker 3: have left, Like I've got to get the artillery at
Speaker 3: the base firing back on these guys. I should be
Speaker 3: calling for air support. I got to get back to
Speaker 3: my truck to do it all. Looking at those hilltops
Speaker 3: that I had called for fire on, Lisa, the enemy
Speaker 3: had emplaced three machine gun nests on each hilltop that
Speaker 3: I called for fire on, So they had six machine
Speaker 3: guns dialed in on our position, and they were firing
Speaker 3: in what was like an X, like if you had
Speaker 3: to draw an X over my hilltop. My hilltop was
Speaker 3: right where that where the X intersected, So they had
Speaker 3: us in a wicked crossfire. They were at an elevated position,
Speaker 3: so they were hitting us with what's called plunging fire,
Speaker 3: so they were arcing the rounds down on top of us.
Speaker 3: The reason why people do that is because if you're
Speaker 3: like taking cover behind a rock, or something. You want
Speaker 3: to be able to like drop the round in on
Speaker 3: top of them. So it just minimizes minimizes your an
Speaker 3: enemy's ability to take cover. And I'm watching them hit
Speaker 3: us with plunging fire and thinking like, holy hell, like
Speaker 3: how the hell do they know how to do that,
Speaker 3: you know? And I'm watching the guns, the support by
Speaker 3: fire positions that they had, the two separate ones. They
Speaker 3: weren't just firing all of the same time. One gun
Speaker 3: would fire and stop, the next gun would fire and stop,
Speaker 3: the next one, you know, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 3: And the reason why they did that is because if
Speaker 3: they fired those guns on like a cyclic rate, their
Speaker 3: barrels would melt. So they were firing and letting their
Speaker 3: barrels cool like all the way up and down the line. Again,
Speaker 3: never fought like that's what we do, Lisa, that that's
Speaker 3: how we fight. And so the enemy had hit my
Speaker 3: position with airburst mortars to keep the head keep our
Speaker 3: heads down, while they simultaneously in placed two separate support
Speaker 3: by fire positions. And the next step is I'm trying
Speaker 3: to like unpack everything that's happening and really, like when
Speaker 3: you're in a moment like that, it's like you remember,
Speaker 3: like you ever look through like a kaleidoscope when you're
Speaker 3: a kid, and you turn the kaleidoscope and you see
Speaker 3: all those colors move around like that. It's all sort
Speaker 3: of happening at once. That's like that. It's like being
Speaker 3: like that. It's like combat is like that, a million
Speaker 3: different things happening all around you all at once. And
Speaker 3: I'm trying to figure out what they're going to do,
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking, oh my god, like I vower them,
Speaker 3: I'd attack, and no sooner did I did. I think
Speaker 3: that they did from both of those hilltops, two platoon
Speaker 3: size elements, like forty men plus so rushing down those
Speaker 3: hilltops and up to our position. But it wasn't just
Speaker 3: like a human wave attack. Again. They were one fire
Speaker 3: team moving, the other one shooting, and they were bounding
Speaker 3: and with squad leader like giving fire team commands. It
Speaker 3: was the craziest thing I'd ever seen. So I ended
Speaker 3: up getting to my truck and calling for fire. I
Speaker 3: called for fire danger close on our position, which essentially
Speaker 3: means like right on top of us ourselves. The whole
Speaker 3: intent of that is to just try to keep them
Speaker 3: off of us and give give my men some time
Speaker 3: to react, reload, consolidate, reorganize, and fight back. And I'm
Speaker 3: watching these rounds land with ruthless efficiency and like vaporize,
Speaker 3: like these guys as they as they they out towards us.
Speaker 3: And it didn't matter how many rounds landed, they had
Speaker 3: people to replace them. It's just it was just an
Speaker 3: unrelenting assault in our position. And they got so close
Speaker 3: to us that that we had to blow clay More minds.
Speaker 3: Like we put Claymore minds in around our positions just
Speaker 3: in case, like we're about to be overrun. So we're
Speaker 3: like blowing clay More minds. Like people all my squad
Speaker 3: leaders are saying they're going black on ammunition. Every member
Speaker 3: of my platoon is hurt. I've got all these casualties
Speaker 3: out there stranded, you know. I'm watching my medic try
Speaker 3: to carry one of my one of my squad leaders
Speaker 3: back to the casualty collection point. He lifts up this guy.
Speaker 3: I watch him get shot in the face. He falls down.
Speaker 3: I think my medic is dead. He's just Jose Pantoha.
Speaker 3: He's this kid from Mexico. He came to America because
Speaker 3: he loved he loved the country and wanted to serve
Speaker 3: the country. And I remember he got shot in the face.
Speaker 3: Was even a citizen of the country who's supposed to
Speaker 3: get his citizenship July fourth, a month later. I'm like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, he just got shot before he can
Speaker 3: become a US citizen. But he got back up. The
Speaker 3: entire left side of his face was completely destroyed, but
Speaker 3: he got one of my squad leaders to the casualty
Speaker 3: collection point. That was the kind of day it was, Lisa,
Speaker 3: and we That fight took probably eight at least eight hours.
Speaker 3: We dropped probably eleven two thousand pound bombs and at
Speaker 3: the end had to bring in a B one Strategic Lancer,
Speaker 3: a B one bomber to drop like probably ten more.
Speaker 3: And what it ended up happening, Lisa, was that I
Speaker 3: called for fire on those target reference points earlier, but
Speaker 3: it looked what we had come to learn is that
Speaker 3: the enemy at night had planned to attack us, and
Speaker 3: I had hit him just before they were going to attack,
Speaker 3: and so it was like hitting a hornet's nest with
Speaker 3: a baseball bat or something. They were already in position
Speaker 3: ready to attack us. I just hit him before they
Speaker 3: hit us, which I guess hindsight being twenty twenty, I'm
Speaker 3: glad that I did, because it would have probably not
Speaker 3: gone as good for us as it did. As even
Speaker 3: though it wasn't I mean, all things considered, it wasn't good,
Speaker 3: but I would have I was glad that we attacked first,
Speaker 3: you know, and every one of my trucks was was destroyed.
Speaker 3: They had to be towed off the hill top and
Speaker 3: got back to the base that day after like that long,
Speaker 3: long firefight, and I think like every member of my
Speaker 3: platoons got treated. We took another platoons trucks and went
Speaker 3: right back out after the enemy after we got back,
Speaker 3: went right back out after them to hunt them down.
Speaker 3: And we said in that night, and we did. We
Speaker 3: hunted them all down, and we got them. We killed probably,
Speaker 3: oh man, we probably killed probably killed like one hundred
Speaker 3: people that day, like bad guys tried to attack us.
Speaker 3: And so but that's the kind of deployment that we
Speaker 3: the kind of employment that we had. It was absolutely hell.
Speaker 3: I look back on it, You're like, you asked me,
Speaker 3: how did you do it? And the answer is, I
Speaker 3: have no freaking clue. I can't believe I lived through it.
Speaker 3: I can't believe I made it through all that, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Seana, as we recount this and as you look
Speaker 1: back and you know, talk about those times, and you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about Ukraine going on now, you know, Taiwan.
Speaker 1: What should our lessons? What lessons should we learn from
Speaker 1: Afghanistan as a society. What do you hope that politicians learn?
Speaker 1: What do you hope the country learns from our time
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan?
Speaker 3: Just be more careful with America's sons and daughters. You know,
Speaker 3: I I know, I know that freedom is worth fighting for,
Speaker 3: freedom is worth dying for America. My god, if we
Speaker 3: were attacked, I'd be the first in line, ready to
Speaker 3: ready to fight back. But we should not be getting
Speaker 3: ourselves locked down in these fights that take twenty thirty
Speaker 3: forty years, costs tens of thousands of American lives or
Speaker 3: wounded Americans, people whose lives are changed forever. You know,
Speaker 3: if you lose a love one in Afghanistan, the ripple
Speaker 3: effect from that is profound. You have family members, moms, dads, sisters, brothers,
Speaker 3: spouses that will never see that person again. And the
Speaker 3: whole that that leaves in people's hearts, the void that
Speaker 3: it leaves in their lives, is something that it lasts forever,
Speaker 3: like every second of every day. And again, please don't
Speaker 3: misunderstand me. This is not like a poor me thing. Again,
Speaker 3: I would do this again in a second, but every
Speaker 3: second of every day the war in Afghanistan is with me.
Speaker 3: Doesn't mean that I'm broken, has nothing. You know, I'm fine.
Speaker 3: I can handle it. I do it all again. But
Speaker 3: it's it's like spywear on your computer. It runs without
Speaker 3: you even knowing, you know, like my troops that I
Speaker 3: lost in Afghanistan. First thing I think about when I
Speaker 3: wake up and the last thing I think about when
Speaker 3: I go to sleep. And over twenty years in that fight,
Speaker 3: lost so many people in that country that I wish
Speaker 3: we're still here. And I think, what's even more tragic
Speaker 3: than that is that in however many combat deployments that
Speaker 3: my men went on, and they there are some of
Speaker 3: my soldiers even went on combat deployments after the one
Speaker 3: that I took them on. I mean, we probably we've
Speaker 3: lost in my small unit, we've lost more people to
Speaker 3: suicide than we have to combat. What does that tell
Speaker 3: you about the way in which we take care of
Speaker 3: our soldiers, or are our men and women who serve
Speaker 3: this country here at home. Not that the VA isn't amazing,
Speaker 3: Like I'm grateful and glad that we have the VA,
Speaker 3: but the problems that we face here are far greater
Speaker 3: than you know, maybe going to see a doctor or
Speaker 3: you know, being given some drugs in a paper bag
Speaker 3: and hey, send on your way, you know, on behalf
Speaker 3: of a great nation. The problems that veterans face here
Speaker 3: at home are largely existential problems, cultural problems that I
Speaker 3: think America as a country needs to face. And so
Speaker 3: what I'd like I'd like to see is that I'd
Speaker 3: like to see our politicians be more careful with America's
Speaker 3: sons and daughters. Number One, I'd also like to see
Speaker 3: America like our country as a whole. And that means
Speaker 3: like these little communities that we all live in, like
Speaker 3: do everything that we can to recognize our men and
Speaker 3: women and serve and that, and I think it needs
Speaker 3: to We need to go beyond like thank you for
Speaker 3: your service, Like I think we need to to bring
Speaker 3: these people like into a high school gymnasium and have
Speaker 3: them tell their story if they're willing, in front of
Speaker 3: a bunch of high school students, so that those kids
Speaker 3: not only learn about what it means to defend freedom,
Speaker 3: the legacy of that soldier and the people that that
Speaker 3: person lost lives on in the and and the people
Speaker 3: that hear that story. Like as I just think as
Speaker 3: a society, we need to do more with regards of
Speaker 3: bringing our our men and women home and so yeah,
Speaker 3: be more careful with America's sons and daughters in American
Speaker 3: society getting in the fight from a cultural standpoint, to
Speaker 3: to appreciate and love our vets.
Speaker 1: Well, that's why we really wanted to have this conversation
Speaker 1: with you, you know one not only to just you know, obviously, uh,
Speaker 1: to honor that you know, those who have served and
Speaker 1: have lost their lives serving this country and defending this country,
Speaker 1: but really just sort of bringing awareness to what it
Speaker 1: takes and what you guys go through and and why
Speaker 1: we should be judicious and why we should be careful
Speaker 1: with our people's lives. And I think are you know
Speaker 1: our lives are the most or military men and women
Speaker 1: or our own people like their lives, that's the most
Speaker 1: important thing, right, That's a most cherished asset. Like we
Speaker 1: left a bunch of weapons, what are behind in Afghanistan?
Speaker 1: Obviously that's a challenge, but it's the lives, it's our
Speaker 1: people that we should cherish and be careful with. And
Speaker 1: so you know, that's why I really wanted to have
Speaker 1: this conversation with you about that.
Speaker 2: And again, your ir Platum was sober.
Speaker 1: Over eighty five percent receive purple hearts for wounds they
Speaker 1: incurred in battle, and I wanted to get you on
Speaker 1: this real quick before we go. You talked about sort
Speaker 1: of that that brotherhood that brought you guys together day
Speaker 1: in and day out, didn't matter what you're facing.
Speaker 2: You know, you looked beyond. It wasn't about.
Speaker 1: Looking at you know, race or religion or any of
Speaker 1: these other things. You just saw them as you know,
Speaker 1: your brother more or less. Right, And now it's like
Speaker 1: we're sort of injecting all these things in the military,
Speaker 1: whether it's critical race theory, whether it's things like you know,
Speaker 1: gender pronouns.
Speaker 2: And what kind of impact does that have on our military.
Speaker 3: It's it's devastating. It's devastating because again, it's not like
Speaker 3: the military is not about diversity, Okay, like it, I'm
Speaker 3: grateful to have intellectual diversity in my platoon or in
Speaker 3: my units that I commanded, I'm grateful to have racial
Speaker 3: diversity or people from a lot of different backgrounds, like
Speaker 3: that makes us better. But the problem with a lot
Speaker 3: like critical race theory being injected into the military or
Speaker 3: some of these others, like I got these people with
Speaker 3: their pronouns and their bios and stuff and all this
Speaker 3: other stuff, and like, hey, do what you want to do.
Speaker 3: But the military is about unifying beyond those differences, not
Speaker 3: celebrating them. So anytime, like the whole point of going
Speaker 3: through basic training, right, the whole point of it, Lisa,
Speaker 3: is you go in there an individual. You know that
Speaker 3: you come out a member of a collective team. The
Speaker 3: whole point, the reason why you have drill sergeants screaming
Speaker 3: in your face and yelling at you the whole time
Speaker 3: is to whittle down, break down your sense of individual
Speaker 3: self and teach you in a very like rubber meets
Speaker 3: the road kind of way that the individual doesn't matter
Speaker 3: here anymore. What matters is the collective. And you're only
Speaker 3: as fast as your slowest person.
Speaker 4: And going to.
Speaker 3: Afghanistan the way that we did and experiencing the things
Speaker 3: that we did, if that if our dedication to our
Speaker 3: team and our unit wasn't first and foremost, we would
Speaker 3: have not survived. One hundred percent guarantee you we would
Speaker 3: have not survived. And so this focus on oh, like, oh,
Speaker 3: look how diverse we are, because this is is a strength.
Speaker 3: Yeah it is, but it's only a strength in a
Speaker 3: military if you unify beyond it. That's where the strength is.
Speaker 3: And so I think it's I think it's dangerous. I
Speaker 3: think it's real dangerous.
Speaker 2: Is there anything else you want to leave us with
Speaker 2: before we go?
Speaker 3: A lot of people You're going to see a lot
Speaker 3: of people on Memorial Day talk about like, well, this
Speaker 3: isn't for barbecueing, you know, And I would just say, like,
Speaker 3: you celebrate Memorial Day the way that you want, because
Speaker 3: you know, I feel like my soldiers who haven't been
Speaker 3: a who you know, who didn't make it back, they
Speaker 3: don't get to celebrate at all, you know. And I
Speaker 3: think it's incumbent upon all of us. I think it's
Speaker 3: really our duty and responsibility to live freely and enjoy
Speaker 3: the freedom that they sacrifice themselves to protect. I mean,
Speaker 3: of course, you know, if you get them in it,
Speaker 3: like you know, if you're drinking a beer or walking
Speaker 3: on the beach or reading the book or just sitting
Speaker 3: on your deck or watching your kids play, like just
Speaker 3: say a sign in prayer, and just for the men
Speaker 3: and women who didn't come home. But you celebrate the
Speaker 3: way that you want in America because that's what the
Speaker 3: men and women who sign up and volunteer to serve
Speaker 3: this country, that's what they gave their lives to do.
Speaker 3: So just just don't forget, never forget them, and have
Speaker 3: a good Memorial Day.
Speaker 2: Sean, it's an honor to have you on the show.
Speaker 1: You are a hero, and I thank you so much
Speaker 1: for your service or and just sharing you know, what
Speaker 1: you went through in Afghanistan and the bravery of your
Speaker 1: platoon with my audience and me, and thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on the show.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for having me, Lisa,