WEBVTT - Part Tw: Richard Marcinko: The Founder of SEAL Team 6 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:08.160 Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast 0:00:08.280 --> 0:00:11.039 that again I did that year. Listening now a bit anyway, 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:14.360 I'm Robert, you know me. We're talking about Richard, the 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:17.200 Navy Seals guy, you know, and and my guest is 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:18.560 again Andrew T. 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:19.880 Andrew. What are you doing, buddy? 0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:24.200 Ah good? Still here? Still alive. Yeah, it's a little 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:26.079 it's it's warm, but I'm alive. This is great. 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:28.760 It's warm, but you're alive, just like everyone else in 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:32.400 the eternal summer that is increasingly gripping the world. Well, yeah, 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:35.960 let's distract ourselves from our problems by thinking about a 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:40.000 man who lived a charm and mirthful life of constant 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:46.479 war crimes. The Seal Team six guy, Old Dicky marks Richard. 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:51.680 A question, not to be glib. Why is Seal Team 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:54.760 six like, is there I assume one through five? Or 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:56.280 is this like a James Bond situation. 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:58.320 We'll talk about that, don't worry, we'll talk about that. 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:03.520 Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's actually a fun story. But yeah, 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:07.560 at this point, initially there are like two teams, but 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:09.760 each team is like hundreds of guys, right, They're divided 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:10.959 into platoons and stuff. 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:11.680 So it's not. 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:14.240 When you hear like Seal Team six, you might think like, well, 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:16.759 that's like six guys or ten. Now there's like hundreds of. 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:18.080 Guys like Seal Team six. 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:22.400 There's a lot of Team six guys. Okay, okay, yeah, 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:32.880 exactly right. So when we ended last episode, the newly 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:36.560 formed Navy Seals along with newly made Navy Seal Richard Marsenko, 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:39.920 had been shipped to Vietnam and started partnering with the 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:44.320 CIA to carry out Phoenix missions all over the waterfront, right, 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:48.560 And you know these are you're killing informants and are 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:50.960 like informants bringing in for You're killing and capturing guys, 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:54.400 You're having them tortured by the CIA, You're getting more info, 0:01:54.480 --> 0:01:56.880 You're going after other guys. You know, it's this kind 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.920 of self perpetuating loop of targets, right, that's what they 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:04.560 create with with Phoenix, and that's what the Seals are. 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:08.240 They're kind of fighting their own separate war that's occurring 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:11.840 alongside the rest of Vietnam. But it's really just like 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:17.520 the Seals and the CIA murdering a fuck loaded dudes, right, yeah, and. 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.280 Based off of it now that we know also, it's like, yeah, 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:24.160 just mostly because someone told them to yeah, because. 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.520 Some guys said, like, yeah, this guy's definitely a facilitator 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:30.040 for the Viet Cong or whatever, and often for less 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:32.600 reason than that, as we'll discuss right now. Because seals 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:35.560 report to themselves, they can kill for the CIA without 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:38.000 any issues or without abiding by any of the rules 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:40.800 of war. Right Like, there's the Seals are supposed to 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:43.120 abide by the rules of war. They're not supposed to 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:45.440 be any units in the US military that are exempt 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:49.000 from them. But practically the Seals don't have to abide 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:52.200 by the rules of war, right right. These guys are 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:55.040 nearly always to go into battle on dexa dream. They 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:58.480 will avoid sleeping for debt speed. That's just like straight 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:01.240 up old style speed, so they are wired as fuck 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:04.240 on speed. They're usually operating at night, and the fact 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:07.240 that they are both highest tits not sleeping for days. 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:11.119 Killing people at night means they screw up constantly. These 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:15.440 guys kill the wrong people all the fucking time. Phillips ads. 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:18.720 The intel Seals received was often suspect. A farmer might 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:21.720 finger his neighbor over an old grudge. A corrupt official 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:24.240 might turn in someone to whom he owed money. Fishing 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:26.720 boats the seals ambushed because someone said they were used 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:29.040 by viet Cong couriers often turned out to be nothing 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:31.800 but fishing boats. Purported viet Cong bases burned to the 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:34.240 ground were sometimes just poor collections of huts inhabited by 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:35.040 simple peasants. 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:37.680 Cool, so you know. 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:40.440 They're fighting a fun war. That's Richard Marsenko's baptism of 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.880 fire light a lot of huts on fire. In Code 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:46.800 Over Country, Matthew Cole writes that from the Jump, Navy 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:50.080 brass were hesitant to embrace the seals because, among other things, 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:52.040 they're not like working for the Navy a lot of 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:55.080 the time, like the Navy muney have a use for them, 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:57.000 like they did for the Frogment, but the CIA is like, not, 0:03:57.320 --> 0:03:57.720 we got. 0:03:57.560 --> 0:03:58.240 Some of these guys to do. 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:02.040 They actually don't ask. They're going to show up on 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:04.560 board periodically when they need a break, and they're going 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:06.720 to be like, they're gonna have long hair, they're gonna 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:08.360 smell like shit, and they're all going to be doing 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:12.320 illegal drugs on your boat and just don't say anything, right, 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:16.040 you're not allowed to. Maybe brass don't like that all 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:19.359 the time, right, Seals often get a reputation of looking 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:22.760 and acting like insane criminals. Cole quotes a seal captain 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:25.120 at the time who told him we had no status, 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:27.520 no standing in the regular Navy. Some part of the 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:30.120 Navy saw us as a sort of quasi criminal element, 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:32.359 not a respected profession that should only be used in 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:35.160 desperate circumstances, and when you were through using it, you 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:37.000 would stop forever, like it was some sort of a 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:41.200 moral activity. So the Navy kind of treated them like drugs, 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:43.000 like the speed they were on. 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:45.159 Just one less, one less hit, one less hit. 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:47.320 Yeah, one last hit, but then I'm going clean. I'm 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:47.800 going clean. 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:53.120 From special operators, the seals were seen like some sort 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:56.440 of a moral activity because they often did immoral things. 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:00.000 In his book Alpha, David Phillips uses the terms there's different. 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:02.479 This is again there's like a thousand or so seals 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:04.960 in Vietnam, I think at the height so, and there's 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:06.719 factions within them. They're not all the same, and they're 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:08.640 not all doing the same kinds of missions. They're not 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:10.920 all doing Phoenix missions for the CIA. 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:11.120 Right. 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:14.960 Seals do other stuff too, obviously, to to kind of 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:18.440 describe the split between them and his book alpha. David 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:21.560 Phillips uses the terms boy scouts and pirates to divide 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:25.479 kind of the two broad ideological ends of the Navy Seals. 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:28.960 The boy Scouts are more or less the direct descendants 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.200 of the old style of UDT operator. Right, we are 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:36.480 professionals doing a really insanely dangerous job. But the job 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:39.159 is fundamentally there because it is supposed to save lives 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:40.280 in the long run. 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:41.240 Right. 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:44.960 The pirates are cia assassins, right, we'd to kill people. 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:47.000 I don't give a shit, right, right, Like, I'm just 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:49.919 here for fucking blood. Right, That's my only interest in 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:53.280 anything that I'm doing. And the conflict between boy scouts 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:55.920 and pirates is still present today in the Navy Seals. 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:59.200 Right on one end are the quiet professionals, and on 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:02.440 the other end are the fucking maniacs and the you know, 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:05.600 the quiet professionals are always the guys who have been 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:08.880 in charge up until very recently. And Seal branding because 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:10.839 like the Seal Oath, there's a lot in there about 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:13.120 like part of why we train so much so that 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:15.120 we don't shoot civilians. You know, we can we can 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:19.200 target and very you know, discriminatingly only get the bad guys, right, Like, 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:20.919 that's why you send in the seals, is we're the 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:23.760 most discriminating way in order to get your man, and 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:26.560 we won't hit anyone that we don't mean to. And obviously, 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:28.800 like that's the branding. The reality is sometimes they're just 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:31.159 a lot of times they're just killing people, you know, Yeah, 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:34.720 because it's hard to not kill people that you don't 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:39.599 mean to in gun fights. Actually, when you're on speed especially, 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:41.960 it's a lot harder to not kill people like fights 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.039 when you're wired to the gills on speed and haven't 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:44.960 slept in four days. 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:48.320 Yeah, but right, but even if you're one of the 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:52.159 good guys, like, yeah, good. 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:55.200 I'm not again, I'm not trying to make an objective 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:57.520 moral term. I'm talking about how the people within the 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:02.320 unit see themselves and the breakdown the right, Like, you 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:04.159 don't have to think of the boy Scouts as literally 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:07.320 good people. That's dependent upon your own belief about ethics. Right. 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:09.240 The pirates just. 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:11.560 Want to kill people, though, right, and they believe that 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:13.600 that's what the Seals are for. They're there because they're 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:16.160 really good at killing. We have an account by one 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:19.640 member of an early pirate platoon, Michael Beanan and his 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:22.400 platoon was a station in the Mekong Delta, and Beanan 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:25.720 wrote later an anonymous account of his experiences in this 0:07:25.840 --> 0:07:29.400 unit that he published afterwards. This is how Phillips describes 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:32.560 it in the book Alpha. The job mutated from identifying 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:35.200 and killing Vietcong operatives to tasks like sneaking into a 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:37.400 village at night to assassinate a village chief and making 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:39.400 it look like the Vietcong had done it. When the 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:41.880 Intel told them to do it to Vietcong tax collectors, 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:44.360 they would, according to Beanan, rob them of all money 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:46.160 and of course kill them, and then report that all 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:48.560 the money was destroyed in the firefight. The money would 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:51.400 then be used to buy drugs and prostitutes. Beanan also 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:53.960 wrote about the obsession pirates had for close quarters blood 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:57.400 letting or getting wet. Per Beanan, this meant cutting somebody's 0:07:57.400 --> 0:07:59.080 throat with your knife so the blood would go all 0:07:59.120 --> 0:07:59.440 over you. 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:00.560 It was ritual. 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:03.040 His platoon leaders told him to do it to some villagers. 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:08.480 He refused, but said that many others did not. And 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:09.760 this is something I want to get into. I've been 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:13.040 reading a book about prehistoric warfare lately, and it includes 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:16.480 a lot because there was this belief that, particularly by 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:18.840 a lot of like European military historians in the early 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:21.520 part of the twentieth century, that primitive war was basically 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:22.280 playing around. 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:22.720 Right. 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:24.720 You'd have two shides show up and they'd throw some 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:26.680 like weak arrows at each other, and then once a 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:28.640 couple of guys got injured, they'd kind of back off, 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:31.040 and they didn't really usually have the hunger for like 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:34.319 real The reality is the opposite. In fact, nearly everything 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:36.920 that like every basically everything that we see as like 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:40.679 special forces style tactics is all stuff that Europeans stole 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:42.080 from indigenous warriors. 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:42.280 Right. 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:44.520 These are all like kind of rating and ambush tactics 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:48.280 that literally Europeans learned. They called it the skulking method 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:51.319 of war in the Americas, right, because they weren't they 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:53.760 hadn't practiced. That was not the way Europeans fought at 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:55.880 the time at which that was they started coming over 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:58.120 into the Americas. And you'll hear a lot about some 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:02.720 of the different because primitive warrior cultures. Number One, war 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:05.480 was often genocidal, Right, If one tribe is going, you 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:07.440 often wipe out the other side if you beat them 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:09.560 if you can because that's the thing that guarantee you 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:11.840 to the most safety. And there's a lot of trophy 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:13.760 taking all over the world. This is in Europe, this 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:16.120 is in Southeast Asias, in the Americas, and all sorts 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:17.800 of it. You know, you have scalping in some areas, 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:19.720 you have the taking of whole heads. There are some 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:22.079 cultures that would literally and these are multiple parts of 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:24.640 the world, take the entire skin, and in some places 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:26.880 even where the skin of a defeated enemy like a 0:09:26.960 --> 0:09:31.040 costumes sometimes and when you read about this, it's often 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:33.960 pointed as like, wow, the brutality of like ancient warfare. 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:34.880 Now this is just war. 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:37.160 It's still the same. The US military does this. They're 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:39.920 taking heads in World War Two, they're taking ears in 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:43.000 Vietnam and other body parts. Seals are often described as 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:45.680 taking ears. Right, this is something that being In writes 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:46.480 about in his account. 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:46.920 Is then like. 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:50.800 Taking parts of bodies. And again, as a ritual, you're 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:53.040 supposed to cut the throat of a dude who might 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:56.680 is often a civilian. Right, Eddie Gallagher killing that sixteen 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.040 year old kid in Mosul, that was not a break 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:02.920 with tradition, That was long standing tradition within at least 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:06.840 a chunk of the seals according to accounts from Vietnam. 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:07.160 Right. 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:09.680 And so this is when people talk about like, oh, 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:11.800 you know war, you know a lot of these these 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:15.200 these these indigenous cultures have really brutal methods of like warfare. 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:18.200 And now that's just war man. That's everyone who winds 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:20.840 up agreeing to do the kind of warfare where you're 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:23.840 just like ambushing a village at night and murdering everybody, 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:27.080 if that's the shit you're doing, and we do that too, right, 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:28.600 it utilizes. 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:30.240 The men who do it right. 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:32.600 And if you're gonna send men to do that, you 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:35.600 really it's very hard to stop them from taking trophies 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:39.280 and cutting off and becoming very deranged by what they've done. 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:42.160 And throughout time and history, different cultures have built in 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:46.120 ways to try to provide accountability or to even there 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:48.960 were some ritual ways of like cleansing some some indigenous 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:52.120 cultures even had this understanding that like and there was 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:54.760 a ritual way to ensure that we believe the people 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:57.160 who go out to war is in something a different 0:10:57.320 --> 0:10:59.840 person than they are when they're at peace, and there's 0:10:59.840 --> 0:11:03.120 this ritual to kind of transition them back, right, and 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:05.199 don't We never built that into our cultures, so we 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:08.520 just kind of pretend these people are always like acting 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:12.080 like heroes as opposed to cutting off pieces of dead 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:15.040 enemies and murdering civilians in the woods. But they often do. 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:18.600 They often do. Beamed and described the business of the 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:22.880 Navy Seals in Vietnam as terrorism against Vietnamese villagers. Quote 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:25.480 finding a loved one with a green face and stabbed 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:27.720 in the middle of a road was incredible terror. In 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:30.120 other words, the Navy Seals would abduct someone in the night, 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:32.840 paint their face green because they would go intobut it 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:35.160 with green faces, right, and then they would stab them 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:36.880 and leave their corpse in the road for their families 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.320 to find. And after abducting the victim, they would also 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:42.240 often wire the door of their hut to explode, so 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:44.240 when their children opened it to try to like find 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:46.720 their dad, it would blow up, killing or maiming them, 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:52.679 guaranteeing further death and terror. Like that's no less like 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:54.800 like you, that's no less brutal than the shit people 0:11:54.840 --> 0:11:56.840 were doing ten thousand years ago in any way, shape 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:59.160 or form, in any meaningful manner, right. 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:03.680 Arguably because you don't have to and you're like, you 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:06.040 don't believe that they're going to come find you. 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:08.880 Right right, You are not literally in danger of your 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:10.360 culture being exterminated by this. 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:11.600 You have no reason to be there. 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:14.600 You live six thousand miles away, Like, why are you 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:19.760 in Vietnam. Former Seal Lieutenant Bob Carey later wrote about 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:22.680 a nineteen sixty nine raid he led to assassinated target 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:24.880 in a rural village. On the way, they encountered an 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:26.959 elderly man and a woman sleeping in a bedroom with 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:29.640 three little kids. To stop them from warning anyone else, 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:33.000 they killed all five with their knives. Immediately after this, 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:35.040 they fucked up and ran into a dozen women and 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:37.439 children out in the open, and since they lost the 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:39.480 element of surprise, they just gunned them all down with 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:42.480 automatic weapons. And their after action report they claim to 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:47.120 have killed twenty one Viet Cong fighters in a firefight. Yeah, 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:50.559 just women and children, stabbing babies to death in the 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:55.439 their sleep, right, and to be killed in the firefight. 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:56.680 Yeah cool? 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.960 Right now again, the first Seals are hunters and trap 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:02.319 of men, and they grew to worship mastery over the 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:05.199 killing arts. Any personal flaws were forgivable, and a truly 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:08.600 talented killer. One New York Times article noted that at 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:11.560 a seal based down range in Vietnam, operators hung a 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:14.760 sign above the base bar that read, people who kill 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:18.120 for money are professionals. People who kill for fun arsadists. 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:22.200 People who kill for money and fun are seals, right, 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:25.160 and reading that I couldn't have a think of when 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:27.839 I was in Urbill, which is in northern Iraq, it's 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:30.440 the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan during the fighting against ISIS 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:33.440 and Mosel I was sitting up in like a coffeehouse 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:35.160 that was like a couple floors up. It's sort of 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:37.360 this like Grand Bazarre area in the center of the city, 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:40.679 and there's like I noticed, like a couple of big 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:43.480 white dudes like milling around in this market area and 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:47.680 they're like, you know, they're big, muscular, covered in tattoos, bearded, 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:49.640 and one of them has a T shirt on that 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:52.719 just says I'm only here for the violence, which is 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:55.120 like you can find them online commonly. I don't know 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:57.560 if those guys were might have been some form of 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:00.520 fucking media, but there were probably contractors and they not 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:03.480 necessarily combat. Most of those guys were doing like drone work, right, 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:05.840 Like most of the contractors I met were nowhere near, 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:08.439 but you still saw that kind of aesthetic on them 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:09.040 all the time. 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:11.640 Right, I'm only here. It's the same thing. 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:14.520 I'm only here for the violence, right Like that's that's 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:16.960 the same thing that that sign of that base bar says. 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:18.880 Right, I'm here for the fucking violence because it's fun. 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:19.160 You know. 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:23.880 These guys are fine. 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:26.080 Yeah, these guys are doing good. They're doing good. 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:30.800 Richard Marsenko fit in perfectly among this crowd. As Phillips writes, 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:33.360 he quote went by the name Demo Dick and called 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:37.920 his men Marsenko's merry band of murdering marauders. Village by village, 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:40.720 his team destroyed rice supplies, blew up fishing boats, and 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:43.760 burned houses. Demo Dick liked to booby trap the bodies 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:45.680 of those his men had killed before they moved on 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:47.800 from a village. It made me feel good to hear 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:50.600 an explosion after we'd left the area, he later wrote 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:54.480 in his memoir. Over several deployments, Marsenko described his men 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:58.000 getting spookier and dirtier as they began to think more 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:00.680 like gorillas. He loved the free that he and his 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:03.320 unit were given to de vised new tactics and pick targets. 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:06.360 He later wrote this about Vietnam, a war that killed 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:09.240 close to four million people. There's something to be said 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:12.080 about the purity of a small war. For the Seals. 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:15.040 It was instant gratification. You would write up a patrol order, 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:17.280 go out there and shoot the bastard. It was black 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:19.840 and white, no gray, And that's the music. That's the 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:21.440 epitome of life for a warrior. 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:25.120 And like, here's the thing. 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:27.120 The Seals are very kind when I talked about like 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:30.760 ancient prehistoric warriors and also like these kind of going 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:33.720 back to like a lot of these indigenous warrior cultures 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:35.720 that have even been around up into the modern era. 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:39.320 The Seals very consciously pattern themselves a lot after particularly 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:43.000 American Native American warriors. That's like a major thing now 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:46.080 but especially later in Seal culture. And so this idea 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.240 is really common, right that like we're there, like you know, 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:51.680 we're living the warrior's life and it's this perfect this 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:54.480 like cycle of violence where we're just constantly going out 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:55.800 and killing more people is. 0:15:55.760 --> 0:15:59.080 Exactly like that. That's the purity of what we do. 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:01.640 And it doesn't nothing but lose wars as far as 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:04.360 I can tell, Like, if that's the idea epitome of 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:06.440 life is if you say what you want about the 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:09.520 ethics of these ancient warriors and every continent on Earth 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:14.040 who practiced such brutal, often genocidal tactics they had to 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:16.280 and they won or they died. 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:19.400 This is like this is just murder cause play. That's 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:22.920 the thing. It's like, we're the taxpayer, are just like 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:26.400 paying these guys to cosplay as. 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:29.280 We're like footing the bill for these psychos. 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:33.280 And I guess the only yeah, yeah, completely unnecessarily and 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:38.160 it never works. Yeah, Like yeah, they get like our side, 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:40.240 like they have a lot of fun, some of them, 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:42.640 a lot of them get obviously very traumatized. But like 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:44.560 guys like Barsenko have a lot of fun. But it 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:48.280 doesn't work right, right, An Army intelligence analyst later called 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:51.200 the Phoenix program, which killed at least twenty one thousand people, 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:55.040 indiscriminate murder. In nineteen seventy one, the Navy pulled all 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:57.440 seals out of action and made them pass a test 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:00.000 on the rules of war. Right, because there's so many 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:02.640 reports that these guys are just murdering people. After the 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:06.800 Meli massacre. Mini Seals refuse to go to Vietnam entirely because, 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:09.280 as The New York Times reported, they were scared of 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:12.159 being prosecuted for war crimes that they were undeniably committing. 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:13.639 There's this A lot of them are complaining, like, oh, 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:16.240 after me, Lie, I don't even want to go there anymore. Right, 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:18.240 what's even the point if we can't fight the war 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:20.280 the way they'll win it? And like, you guys got 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:23.160 to fight that war for years and it just kept 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:27.240 getting worse. You lost, like they won, Vietnam won. 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:32.720 Like that's the only the only tiny sliver of like again, 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:37.320 fucking like silver lining is like, this really doesn't work. 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:40.560 They like, for all the life great, you know your 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:43.760 comfort needs hard men kind of shit. It's like it 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:45.320 never has once worked. 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:48.800 It doesn't it again, it does when when both sides 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:50.720 are like one hundred guys. If you can kill all 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:52.800 hundred of the other guys, then yeah, sure, like you 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:57.120 actually can end that problem forever. Right, But modern war 0:17:57.240 --> 0:17:59.720 these are nations of millions and millions and millions of people. 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:02.240 It doesn't work that way. All you do is piss 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:06.080 everyone off and raise the level of brutality and anger 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:09.280 and motivate the enemy to fight and to themselves dig 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:12.240 in harder, Right, it does not get you what you want? 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:14.520 Yeah. 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:17.720 Twenty one years later, after you know this period of time, 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:20.760 in nineteen ninety two, Marsenko wrote Rogue Warrior, which gave 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:22.879 him a chance to whitewash his own conduct in that 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:25.320 of the Seals entire. And before I get into that more, 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:27.200 I want to quote from this New York Times review 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:29.479 of books review for an idea of This is how 0:18:29.520 --> 0:18:33.120 they describe his writing style. Mister Marsenko, fifty one years 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:35.600 old comes across as less the genuine warrior than a 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:38.600 comic book superhero who makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like little 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:41.840 Lord Fauntleroy. To planning for his first combat assignment, he writes, 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:44.399 he inhaled deeply and knew instantly I was going to 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:47.879 like Vietnam a whole lot. He revels in the wonderful 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:51.119