Interview Only w/ AJ Pasciuti - A Marine Sniper’s Message on Service, Sacrifice, and Country - The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you
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so use that code all right. So joining me now
is actually a fellow podcast host, Ajpursudi's out with a
new book.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
That's called Dark Horse.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
He has had an incredibly distinguished career in the Marines,
and his book is.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
It's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
I signed up to interview Aj based on the description
of the book, and I don't say to be dismissive
of the description, but the book is a lot better
and a lot different than I expected it to be,
and I enjoyed it quite a bit, and I think
it's must reading for anybody that wants to understand modern
warfare in the United States in the US military, particularly

(02:18):
from the perspective of a marine. And Aja certainly has
his stories and an incredible story that I hope we
can spend some time talking about a sniper on a
sniper event where we took out somebody who was able
to take out somebody who had killed quite a few
marines over the years in the Second Iraq War. But

(02:40):
there's a lot to talk about with AJ, and I'm
looking forward to this conversation.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
So AJ, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much
for having me on the podcast. Big fan of the show.
Happy to be sitting here. Also extremely nervous to be
sitting down with someone who I respect and revere as
much as yourself. So hopefully I don't trip over myself
too much. That's all right.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
I will not live up to your expects, right I will.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
So let me start with.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
You know, I remember the first book I read about
Vietnam from the perspective of someone who served, who was there,
and these books really didn't start hitting the shelves that
were really I think, until the early eighties to mid eighties,

(03:28):
and it really sort of painted a more honest but
I think we all know now a more honest picture
of what it was like. And what struck me about
your memoirs that this felt like this was This was
the perfect timing. And I'm curious, you know, if you
wrote this book ten years ago versus today, how different
would it be.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Well, that's a fantastic I have not been asked that before.
I wouldn't have learned as much. I think it would
have been surface level. I think that you would have
gotten my worldview in you know, at two thousand and sixteen, right.
I did a lot of learning through my career, especially
at the end of my career, when you start to
have the ability the luxury of looking back on a

(04:10):
lifetime and then you solidify a lot of the learning
of the lessons. I think that you kind of had
to like, you know, smash your way through a wall,
you know, a certain amount of times. I got to
look back on that, so, you know, it's very reflective.
I think that there's a lot of introspection inside of
it that I don't know that I had the maturity,
or I would have had the maturity you know, at
you know, twenty nine, as I would have at thirty

(04:32):
nine when I started writing.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
I asked this because I think about this all the
time now with history books versus narrative reporting in real time,
and we're all trying to learn what is happening, what happened,
and sometimes you don't get the full picture for twenty years,
twenty five years, I think these days, and I the
longer I've gone about this, the more I feel like

(04:56):
somewhere in that fifteen to twenty five year period is
when is when your first hand accounts have exactly what
you just described. There's a perspective and a reflective nature
that explains the why instead of the what. So my
guess is ten years ago you'd have done a great
job telling us what and there's this book does a

(05:17):
great job of telling you what your life was like
at each moment in time when you were different different tours.
But what made your memoir and what made this such
a compelling read is what clearly I think's clear to
me is you were looking at what happened to you
from the perspective of an observer. Is that fair?

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah? I would say that. Yeah, I would agree. You know,
I think that's to a little bit of your earlier
point is why now? In some ways is I think
that leadership, especially right now, is extremely relevant and somehow
in short supply so what this is kind of a
call to action for readers. It's called Action for Americans.

(06:01):
You know, one of the things I learned in combat
is that you can't survive combat by yourself. You have
to rely on one another. And so through that kind
of journey, I wanted to I wanted to express what
I had learned along the way, the camaraderie, the teamwork,
the bonds that I made through that and realized this
idea of collectivism, you know, to come back and kind
of come back with this, you know, the elixir, if

(06:24):
you will, from from a writing standpoint of saying, hey,
we've figured this out. We want to give this back
to the American public. And so it was really fun
and reflective to go through that. But you're right, it
would have been a play by play in an account,
but it wouldn't have had the introspection and the reflection
had I not spent some time after retirement to be
able to write it.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
So you listed seventeen, What do you think your seventeen
year old self would have thought of this book?

Speaker 2 (06:48):
I thought I thought it would have been work of fiction.
You know, there's this really cool thing. I work with
a lot of a lot of a lot of friends
and mentor people that mentor along the way is I
have this idea of my ten year old self, and
I include a picture of my ten year old self
in the book, and it's from me. The very first

(07:08):
time I meet a marine sniper on the USS Comstock
on fleet week in a Monterey Bay, and I think
this guy's larger than life. I get behind a Barrett
fifty caliber snipe rifle. I never would have dreamed in
a million years that I would have been and had
the career that I did, And so I include that
as a reminder to myself to dream, to continue to

(07:30):
dream even today, to have this idea of a continued
you know, don't be afraid of these really outlandish dreams
because you can work towards that. The love that I
found writing this book, Bear with me, forgive me, sir, No,
you're fine. The love that I found in writing this
book was realizing that I didn't get here alone. This

(07:51):
book is a thank you. It's a love letter to
the people that have shaped my life. I came from a,
you know, a not very well to do family, kind
of an immigrant background in northern California. I was very small.
I didn't people wouldn't have looked at me and ever
said Marine Force recon scout sniper for one. But then
also I had my self limiting beliefs of what I

(08:13):
could accomplish in my life, and so people along the
way helped build those scaffoldings. And so this whole book
is a love letter to people, saying or to telling
people that I appreciate them and I've seen them, and
then a call to action for other future leaders to say, hey,
achieve your own success, whatever that is and whatever industry
or whatever life that is. And then the last step

(08:34):
is to turn around and help somebody else out allow
them to see their own potential. And so you know,
my publisher may not like this, but what I tell
people is if you want to know what I've learned
over twenty one years of service, I wrote it in
the last page of the book. It's called letter to
the Leader. If you want to know why I think
the way that I do or how I learned those lessons,

(08:56):
they're in the book itself. My seventeen year old self,
for my ten year old self wouldn't have believed that
this was the story. And so I want to give
permission to young Americans or people of all walks of life,
the permission to believe in theirselves. Well, look, I.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Think that you know, if if my son were thinking
about and listening, I'd want them to read this book first.
If you know, if if I was supportive of the
decision and I had a relative who wasn't, I would
want them to read this book, you know, just to
understand the holistic aspect of this. And it feels like
you got out of the Marines what so you know is, look,

(09:33):
there's a lot of negative that comes out with when
you sign up to defend the United States of America.
You got to follow orders, you got to do some
things that whether you agree with them or not, you've
your hair agreed. That's right, you've agreed to do this.
But at the same time you seem to also experience
the rewards that come with it if you fulfill this
public service, and that it is a it is an

(09:56):
incredible way to climb up the ladder in America, is
it not totally?

Speaker 2 (10:01):
I think that, you know, I think the United States
military is one of the last bastions of the American
dream of where a young kid from nowhere can enter
from the lower class, do twenty years of service, gain
a whole bunch of skills out within the service and
then exit with a you know, a retirement into the
middle class. It's a great opportunity. And so at the

(10:22):
center of this entire thing, it's so hard to be
able to categorize the book. At the center of it
for me is service and service to the greater good,
whatever that may be. And so it's kind of a
call to action for that.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
So you were an Eagle Scout, and so what surprises
me about you going from Eagle Scouts? You went to
Eagle Scout en listy. You didn't try to do ROTC
and come in as an officer, right?

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Explain nine to eleven. Nine to eleven, I was seventeen
years Excuse me. I was sixteen years old and a
senior in high school, and I watched the Twin Towers fall,
and you know, I watched it in real time with
the rest of my classmates. You know. Having an immigrant background,
for me, I got a chance to look at the
world through what I call in immigrant's eyes. My father
raised me with the profound love of the United States

(11:09):
and what it represented, and so it felt like the
natural next right step to defend those values that I
felt were under attack. You know, I had conversations obviously
with my mom and my anti war you know, immigrant father,
and I said, Dad, this is this is what you
raised me to be, right, And he don't want you
to do this? No he was. He was not happy. Huh?
And you listening at seventeen? You needed their permission, right?

(11:32):
I did? I did. That was a tough conversation for
my marine recruiter. Ill tell you what the heartest job
in the Marine Corps for sure.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
I'm curious when did you know you had and how
do you How does one identify a skill like being
a sniper skill? I mean, is it just is this
something you knew from the beginning. You talked about meeting
that sniper at ten years old and it sort of
drew you to it.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
But you know, is this a skill that you had?
Is this a gift? Or did you learn I have
to attribute other people? I have to attribute people along
the way I suffered from, you know, incredible amounts of
self doubt, low self efficacy, you know, kind of a
poverty mindset. If you will, you know, and I'm not
going on this whole you know, being you know the

(12:18):
system of the I am responsible for my own destiny.
I understand that, but I had such a low self
image of what I could accomplish. And so I remember
there was a gentleman by the name of Gunnery Sergeant
Ricky Jackson, and this was right after Operation Iraqi Freedom Ion.
So two thousand and three, I'm now eighteen years old.
I'm still not shaving my face at this time, and

(12:40):
I have a conversation with Gunny Jackson about wanting to
become a Scout sniper. And he's the first person who
never laughed at me when I told him my dreams.
And Gunny Jackson, as you know, I'm sure you read
in the book, right, is somebody that I want to
uplift and hold as this example for other Marines to emulate.
He came from the depths of pop or. He had
to fight his own way out of his own, you know,

(13:03):
his own story, to become something. And when he got there,
he wasn't a jerk about it. He helped other people, you know,
as a sniper. I believe in trajectory, and trajectory early
has exponential effects down the line. I think that if
I were to attribute the one single person who affected
my life the most, it's gunnery Sergeant Ricky Jackson. And
so Gunnery Sergeant Jackson gave me permission to believe in

(13:25):
myself and then he wore me out right. So then
he like made me earn it right. So you can't
just want things. You can't just wish for things. You
have to work for them. And he taught me that.
And he is a tall Southern gentleman with a you know,
traps you know for a neck, right, you know, And
he wore my little butt out, you know, to kind
of get me ready for it. And he stood up
for me when I needed to be there, and he

(13:46):
gave me, you know, he carried the load both phys
physically and emotionally before I could carry it myself.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
So tell explain what training to be a sniper is like,
because it's different.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, it's a lot of running, right, you know, so
you have to get into this, you know, this physical shape.
The difference between us and professional athletes, besides you know,
gobs of funding and professional you know, other professionals, professionals
that make you successful is a lot of grit, and
sometimes grit is best earned while doing the hard work.

(14:19):
And so he taught me that. You know, the marine Corps.
You know, we didn't promise you a rose guard. You're
not going to come. You know, thing's coming easy in
the Marine Corps. So there's a lot of pain, there's
a lot of misery, and there's a lot of suffering.
But what he did was he gave me a north star.
He gave me something to look towards and allowed me
to build towards that. And then him and his wife
built this model to help get me ready for that.
And then you take a sniper indoc, right, And an

(14:41):
INDOC is like a screening that you have to go
through and it's a week long process to basically weed
people out. And there's this huge, huge, like physical and
mental and big time emotional burden or hurdle that you
have to get over. So what are some of the
ways that people do get weeded at? Is it? I cite?
Is it? What is it? Honestly? Attention to detail? So

(15:01):
very early on is as a sniper you have to
be So they start like inculcating this very very early
into us. Remember when I take the sniper and Doc
I'm nineteen years old, it's very impressionable, very moldable, and
so but also they have to hold us accountable. So
physical becoming a physical specimen at some level is a

(15:22):
is a is a is a guarantee you have to
do that. That's a that's a right of passages. A
lot of times you're on your own. You don't have
anybody else.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
You know, as you're moving from perch to perch, you're
you're you're not you're not getting a lot of cover
yourself because you're the ones having You're you're going out
on your own to be the cover.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah, exactly, So you have to have this idea of
of like you have to build this idea of self dependency, right,
this resilience inside of that. You know, we joke that
like you know, some places in Camp Penalton, nobody can
hear you scream, right, is because you're on your own.
You're out there by yourself or with generally work at
least in a partner pair, and you only have one
another rely on for survival. So you learn a lot

(16:02):
of trust. And the greatest thing about being a team is,
you know, whether it be a two man or a
four man team, is people think that the team leader
is like this, you know this this like this supreme being.
It's not that way at all. We all carry the
weight at different times, and it's recognizing when some people
need to be stronger or have better capabilities. The job

(16:22):
of the team leader is not to be the smartest
or the best all the time. Their job as a
team leader is to employ other people and their specific
skills so that we can recognize our potential together. So
let's talk about Juba and explain the legend. Because you
you start your book about it about you know that

(16:42):
you you get shown this thumb drive and so this
was something I was trying to understand. Explain the thumb
drive highlights of this of this menace I guess of
US Marines. So snipers have a saying it's killed one
terrorize a thousand. So when a sniper is in an

(17:03):
area and they're doing their job properly, they don't just
attack the physical being, they attack the emotional in the mental.
When an enemy combatant knows there's a sniper among them,
they can never rest easy. So what Juba did is
in two thousand and four, we in Ramadi, we had
a four man marine sniper team were ambushed and killed.

(17:26):
And with them when they were ambushed their M forty
A one sniper rifle went missing, and right around that timeframe,
we had a lot of enemy snipers operating inside of
the al Ambar province. Well, Juba, you know, whether it
be an individual or a team of.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
I was just going to say, are you still convinced
it's an individual or that it's a yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
So it's like Juba itself, right, Like there's a lot
more power in having it as a team and people
can operate. There's a large battlespace. I'm not naive to that,
but the name of the person, right, you know, of
the of this of this character Juba. What they started
to do is hunt Americans. And Americans were quite vulnerable
during that timeframe, and so what they did is for

(18:07):
two years, they hunted Americans from very close proximity. And
what they did is they took it a step further
and they videotaped their exploits and they put it on
the internet Al Jazeera and Ogreish and you know, all
these things, so the world could watch Americans die. But
what he did was in his hubris, what he did
was he showed us how he operated, how he thought,

(18:29):
what he did, and what his actions normally looked like.
We used that against him. Remember to be observant. As
a sniper, my job is to observe what we call
a disturbance in the baseline. Anything when you get into
an area, an area will establish a baseline for you,
where the birds start chirping again, or there's a natural
flow and feel to a specific environment. Snipers are trained

(18:50):
to be able to pick up something called a disturbance
in the baseline. So, for instance, if you're in a
field and a bunch of birds pick up and fly away,
that's a disturbance in the baseline. It doesn't necessarily mean
that there's a bad guy there. It just means I'm
paying attention a little bit more. And so what we
learned from watching his videos was we learned what his
modus operandi was, We learned his operating principles, and so

(19:12):
then we were able to start planning our missions and
looking for specific what we call template matches that he does,
or that a person like that would do, that we
would look for, and that eventually led for us, allowed
us to be able to create a mission that would
entice him to come into an area that we could
have him fall into a trap. And when he fell

(19:33):
into the trap. We were waiting. Well.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
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use that code. So this was a planned mission. This

(21:24):
isn't you stumbling upon, No, this is Juba.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
So we have yeah, we have like a chance contact,
right and we have like planned ambushes. Who we were
really hunting that day? And the story goes into it
a little bit. Who I was really hunting that day
was an I d M placer. I knew that I
I ed M placers had a much more regimented mo o.
I knew how to be able to insert myself into
their scenario. But what we also thing for him relatively

(21:52):
unknowingly right that it was something enticing. What is it?
Luck is where preparation and opportunity meet, right, And so
we had a trap set for an Ied in plaster.
He stumbled into it and we were able to capture
him through that.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
Do you know it when it happened at the time
or is it later that you realized you had gotten,
if not Juba himself, one of the important sort of snipers.
I mean, did you know in the moment or was
this later on you realized?

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, within within a few minutes right after. I mean,
there's the chaos of the shot. So I tell people
this is you know, there's a lot of people who
like to come and you know, for the global war
and terrorism that's happened, a lot of people are arm
sharing what happens on the ground. And what I tell
people is that clarity is the first casualty in calm
that and so the enemy wants to survive just as

(22:45):
much as I want to survive, right, And so they don't.
They don't go out there and you know, holding weapons
waiting for us to shoot them. It's not how it works.
And so there's a lot of confusion, there's a lot
of chaos going on. We take the first shots, we
eliminate the you know, the target, and then what happens
is I have another marine, you know, a marine squad
come up to the vehicle where Juba was at and

(23:07):
I have them hold up a Sony handicam. What I
had first seen was that he was videotaping a marine
patrol which falls into the structure IED's or snipers, and
I saw sony. I mean, it sounds cliche, but I
literally caught a glint off of the lens of a
Sony handicam and zoomed in on my scope and then

(23:27):
all of a sudden recognized that marines are about to
die and we need to insert ourselves into this equation
as fast as possible. And so when he did that,
we shot into the car. We were able to eliminate
him and his spotter, but I didn't know it was
a sniper just yet.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
What's interesting about that is it goes back to look
at what caught your eye that would do him in,
and it was the propaganda part of his mission, right,
And this is it's sort of like the minute you
care more about the propaganda rather than the mission.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
I don't. I'm not.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
You know, it cost himself his own life due to
his own focus not on the mission.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Right, right, I think there's a ton of layers of
lessons inside of that, right, you know, is marine sniper's
you know, really really focused on doing the job. Do
the job, don't talk about the job. I didn't claim
credit for this for twenty years. I mean, people knew
at some level inside of the military, but it just
wasn't important to us what was. And again, the credit
never felt like mine to claim. I may have pulled

(24:34):
the trigger on Juba, but it was the entire team.
The team. Sure, that's exactly correct. And his hubris, his
hubris is what did himIt, And that's not lost on me.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
You said something in the book when you were getting
ready to fight in a Rock where you're like, you
didn't understand why people would fight for a tyrant like
Saddam Hussein, And it struck me because I think we
all feel that way, and we get into these wars
and we're, you know, in theory, we believe usually we'd
like to think we're the good guys and the other

(25:05):
side of the bad guys, and we're on the side
of the righteous, and somehow they're not on the side
of the righteous. And then we sometimes are shocked that
the same loyalty that we expect in our forces to
our country, we're shocked when other people have the same
loyalty to their country and their forces. Right, And I
think sometimes it's I actually blame my industry for this, right,

(25:28):
because we will, we will, you know, talk up our
principles as we should, and our values, but we're we
are almost sort of naive that somehow somebody else doesn't
have the same devotion to a set of values we
may not agree with one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
Correct. You know, two thousand and three was a different
war than the rest of them. You know, two thousand
and three we fought a uniformed military, and they're you know,
you're right. I'm writing this and there are letters through
the book that are my letters I had written out,
and so their little snapshots into my psyche during that timeframe.
And you're right. I was confused as to the whole

(26:06):
world knew Saddam was a tyrant, right, but we were
shocked as to why people would want to fight for
somebody like that. The war evolved afterwards, and So in
two thousand and four, late two thousand and three, two
thousand and four and on, we started fighting something called
the muja Hadeen, and muja Hadeen means freedom fighter, right
and Afghanistan, not in Iraq, right. And then in Afghanistan

(26:29):
we fought the Taliban right, and Talib you know, Taliban
means student writer, Talid means student of the Quran. Right.
So I had to be able to again, the most
dangerous thing that we can do is not respect to
our enemy. I tell people, I've never fought a terrorist.
I've only fought freedom fighters. They don't see themselves. That's
a very important you know. I mean, this is a

(26:51):
cliche that's been said over the years, but one person's
freedom fighter is another person's terrorist. And it's a matter
of perspective. And so when we lost respect or a
unit lost respect for the Taliban or a lost respect
for the musja Hadeen in Iraq or Isis or whatever
it was at that time frame in Iraq, that's when
you become, you know, a detriment where it's become dangerous

(27:11):
to yourself again, our own level of hubris, you know,
American exceptionalists, right, if we carried that into combat. You know, politics,
your political your faith does a seven to sixty two
bullet does not care, and we needed to protect that.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Look, I feel like it was you included a letter
from General Madis, and this was obviously before he ever
served a Secretary of Defense. This is when he was
an active marine general, before he retired, and it was
a letter that he was Essentially it was the message
to your troops before before you were going to go
into fight. And embedded in the message was a bit

(27:53):
of respect. Embedded in the message was remember you're representing
the United States.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
We do you know. I think it was basically, think
before you shoot, and.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
I'll be honest and I look, I'm not going to
If you don't want to be drawn into the current situation,
say so and I will move on. But I don't
feel like we have a commander of the Defense Department
that shares those same values that General Mattis shared with
you the night, the night before you had to go
into war. It's a different message that I feel like

(28:30):
our soldiers are getting today.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
Do you see that? So I'll answer this. I've had
many conversations with former Secretary Mattis. I respect him, very much.
I had an opportunity to sit with him at the
Hoover Institute in Palo Alto and have a very long conversation.
There are very few men in the world that I
respect more than him. What he wrote for us was,

(28:52):
he wrote for us a letter. This is at the
end of the day. If you can take the values
from that letter and you can carry that forward, if
you can engage your mind before you engage your weapon,
and be as a United States Marine no better friend
and no worse enemy. I think that what happens is
my personal experience shows me that the love that we
have for one of the bond that we have for

(29:14):
our fellow service members in combat, in conflict wherever we
go throughout the world, that bond to me is sacred,
and that bond has to be respected, and it has
to be wielded very very carefully. I will be very direct.
I am not an advocate for war. Ever, However, when
there are when when we do send Americans into conflict,

(29:38):
it must be for a just cause, it must be
for a good purpose. We must be there to preserve
American or you know, I would say values right that
we hold as Americans, deers.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Human rights in some ways that General Manus was conveying
not just American values, it was human right.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
You are completely correct on that we we are the
largest military the world has ever known and the most
capable military the world's ever ever known. But that with that,
with that there comes a responsibility. There comes a responsibility
to wield that sword very carefully because the bond that
I share with my brothers and sisters who I literally
bled with, fought with, and some have died for, that

(30:18):
has to be respected. And when we don't do that,
when we violate our own values of what it means
to be an American, an American service member, and we
use that and we wield that inappropriately, then I think
that we ought we we're giving our enemies and our
adversaries unnecessary We're giving unearned victories. If that makes sense, No,

(30:40):
it does.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
I mean, look, I look at these briefings we get,
and General Caine is as responsible as anybody in the
uniform I would expect them to be. And he steers
clear of politics and all of this stuff. It's the
political leadership that I feel like is is is infecting
this little bit? Are you worried that sort of the

(31:02):
values that. You know, I feel like you came through
a military that that cared about these values. I think
the military still cares about these values. But there are
some people that are advertising a set of values that
feel counter to what you wrote about.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Strong question. You know, I write in the letter to
the Leader that's an aspirational tone. I want people to
assume and to take those values. You know, I think
that there's a through line. Secretary Matis wrote, as a
general wrote a letter to me that shaped division, that
gave us our set of principles of who we are

(31:40):
and who he wants to be. Sometimes who we aspire
to be is more important than we who we are
right now. And I did the same thing in my
letter to the leader. It's not just a letter to
the future leader. It's a letter to America. It's a
letter to our own values of saying we need to
establish and hold our own leaders accountable, whatever that may be,
to be able to back to these values, these values

(32:01):
that allow that when the twin towers fall. You know,
a seventeen year old kid says, I have to defend
these things. There is a specific requirement. You know, the
military is a tool of diplomacy and it is a
tool of diplomacy that should be wielded very very carefully,
and at times the last tool.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Inside of that exclusion, there's a pretty good saying out
there that says, if you have if you're fighting a war,
it means you are bad at diplomacy.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
You know, the Marine Corps has one job, right and
our one job is to break the back of our
enemy to our will, and that should be very well protected.
I think that what I want to remember, I'll be
very blunt to the politicians and policymakers in Washington. War
to them is a strategy. You know, it's a budget,

(32:52):
it's a posture, it's a tweet. But for the people
who fight it, their names, they're families, they're faces, and
that bond that that that social contract between our government
and our military needs to be protected. And we need
to make sure that when we send Americans forward into
harms way, that we're doing it for a good reason.

(33:14):
You know.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
I'm i pine for a set of leaders that have
that come with a background in military service, because I
think there it is the one place you described it
earlier about sort of it's a ticket to the middle class.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
If if if you need a ticket to the middle class.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
But there's a there's an egalitarian aspect to it, right,
it is you know, look, we are not a colorblind society,
but the military is better than most.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Right, we are not a.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
Classless society, but the military is better than most. And
it is not lost on me that that a lot
of times when we get executive experience who came after
a career in the military, there is a lot of
empathy in their in their tone of leadership. And yet
I fear today there's a perception that somehow to be

(34:04):
a strong military leader. You know, empathy is a weakness,
and you really this to me seems to be your
driving purpose of this book is empathy is supposed to
be a strength, not a weakness. And it feels like
you're trying to almost counter a changing narrative.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
I appreciate that's what you picked up from the book.
I work very very hard the thing that as a
as a writer, right, I mean, even as a military member,
I serve for twenty one years, and we have to
remain a political while we do that because I serve
you know, at the United States Constitution, the same oath
that I swear is the same oath the president swears right,
and so I have a duty to uphold and defend

(34:42):
the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And I
believe in that, and you're completely right. Well, what I
cannot do and what I'm trying not to do with
the book. I have a very good friend of mine
right now. I was like, I don't want to write
a political book, and he says, he's aj, this is
a deeply political book. It's non partisan, right, So what
happens is it's about values. I am when you get

(35:04):
to the Fallujah chapter, I am not kind with my
distaste for politicians who some who have called for blood
one week and then lost their nerve the next and
then misuse to you know, misuse the United States Marines.
When I look at empathy, I look at empathy as
a strength, because what happens is, as a good leader,
what you're able to do when you're working with anybody

(35:27):
across the world, it's to try to visualize what their
life is like or their perspective, and to walk a
mile in their shoes. I'm trying to get America politicians,
whoever it is to walk a mile in a young
seventeen year through thirty nine year old shoes to see
what life is like. You know, I say a lot
that courage is useless without compassion. It's on the inside

(35:50):
flap of the book. And the reason why I say
that is a marine does not jump on a hand
grenade to save a fellow marine's life out of courage.
He does it out of compassion because he loves that
person's life. He loves his brother, and he honors his
brother's life more than his own. That's service, And I
want what I would hope is that people take from

(36:11):
this book is an idea of service, service over self,
service to the greater good. And it doesn't have to
be the military. And if you'll forgid me for just
a moment, I do in service in the United States.
And I think that a culture that promotes and rewards
service to the greater good is a healthier organization was

(36:33):
you know, as you mentioned, I was on a different
podcast where I talked at length, you know, for a
multitude of topics. You know, there's this idea of buying
and what a lot of people want is they want
people in America to have skin in the game. I
totally understand that I have skin in the game. Right,
I've fought for this country, but I also think that
skin in the game doesn't always have to mean holding

(36:54):
a rifle. What if we had a society that held
service as high as we do independent wealth. What if
we had a society that valued not what you could.
I mean, there was a very pretty famous president right
who said it at one point, Right, what if you
could give something to your community and to your country
and that was held valuable. What if we had a

(37:15):
society that said, here's what we're going to do. We're
going to pick a number of organizations that provide service,
from Peace Corps to the Marine Corps, Civilian Conservation Corps,
National Park Service. You work in service to the greater
good for two years or four years or whatever it is,
and then we're going to guarantee you a safe harbor.

(37:37):
While you're doing it, you pay into the greater good,
and then we provide you a social service, access to
vocational schools, access to a two year or four year
college degree. At the back end, what that does is
lift people like me from obscurity, from poverty and gives
me and it affects my trajectory. I'm a sniper. I

(37:57):
care about trajectory, and that takes me from the lower class,
gives me buy into the United States, and then I
get a chance to exit what we want. What I
wanted was not equality in outcome. I want equality an opportunity.
I have to figure out the rest. And I think
that if we can have an organization or a culture
or a country that promotes service as much as we

(38:18):
do wealth, I think we're going to have a pretty
safe and a pretty good country in the futy. Now,
I am a.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
You know when you and I don't want this to
become a political discussion about Israel, but Israel's mandatory service requirement.
When you meet in Israeli, their devotion, their citizenship, their
devotion to the state is so admirable, and I think

(38:46):
it's because of this service requirement, right, and it's a
nation that is bonded. The service requirement I think bonds
them even more and there is generational bonding now with
that service. And I'm with you, it doesn't have to
be military service. In fact, there's so many things that
we need. There's a politician running around right now that's

(39:07):
not only promoting national service, but his idea is not
just vocation but a down payment for your first house
in exchange for two years of service.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Whatever it is like as you described it is.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
You know, it's funny. I'm a huge promoter of this.
I think it would depolarize the country, right. I think
the best part of the military is that an urban kid,
a rural kid, an ex urban kid, an immigrant kid,
they're all thrown into the same boot camp and they
all figure out that they're more the same than different.
And then suddenly everybody in that platoon has a different

(39:44):
worldview simply by meeting their fellow Americans. Right, So it is,
it is a depolarizer if we lean into it, if
this is what we want this country to be. And
you know, I throw this out there and I had
a couple of younger sort of political type, sort of
political you know, historian types, were saying, oh, you old

(40:05):
guys always want to promote national service. Nobody, this is
not popular. And I'm like, it's not a matter of
whether it's popular. Is it the right thing to do?

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Sometimes you got to take your medicine right, right, But.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
There is but the I mean, you know, yes, it
isn't going to be Hey, would you like to do
two years of this at exchange.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
You know, you're like, well, you know, school.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
Itself isn't popular to some kids, but we know it's
the right thing to do, right, so this feels like
something that we you know, and it's funny it gets
merged with the draft and you're like, oh, everybody hated
the draft, all right, it's because everybody got upset up
because there was a war that the draft seemed to
feed that not everybody was for. They were mad at

(40:46):
the politicians, not necessarily the idea of advocating for service,
but it feels like something were further away from like
it felt like we were getting closer to being open
to this kind of more service, more service. And then
you know, and it's probably our political divide, right, We're
so polarized that that there's fear that if you support

(41:06):
something that the other party advocates, you're somehow a trader
to your party. And it's like, I don't know how
we got this far away that our fellow Americans aren't
on our allies.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Yeah, the the political purity tests is very hard for people.
But to your point is, you know, combat and I
would say service strips away the illusion that we succeed alone.
You know, you learned very very quickly that all you
have is the person to your left and to your right.
And this applies to families, communities, you know, politics, leadership.

(41:38):
You know. I'm never an advocate for the draft. I
think that there's a ton of second and third order
effects that happened from conscripted service. As far as we
have a very professional military, and we have worked very
hard to have a professionally educated and trained military that
a draft doesn't necessarily support. And I don't know that
conscripted service, whether that be you know, Peace Marine Corps.

(42:00):
I think we provide it as an opportunity. I mean,
give it. It doesn't have to be requirement for everyone.
If you come from an affluent background and you can
get into college or whatever it is, do run your race, man,
do That's great. But if but if you don't, and
you want a leg up and you would like to,
you know, you know, fight out of whatever you know
scenario or whatever hand or you know, deck of cards
you were dealt, then there's an opportunity for that. You know,

(42:21):
it's really to me. I think that the thing you
know that and I exist in a lot of spaces
across the conservative and progressive ideologies, I get a chance
to walk out.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
But what I love is usually most guys at your
background are not clean in any side of the political
aisle that there really is, which is to me, which
makes a military veteran a better person to introduce into
the political world personally. But because you're not easily categorized.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
I appreciate that you know the I think the thing
that most Americans are looking for is, you know, a
hand up rather than a handout. I think that giving
people the for me, nobody made me a sniper, right.
They gave me the opportunity. They helped me along the way.
They carried the load when I couldn't carry it myself.
But eventually I had to pick up the way. Right

(43:07):
when I wanted to become a force recon marine later
in my career or become a marine officer later in
my career, I had the opportunity for success. People helped
me along the way, kind of like bumpers in the
little bowling alley, right, But I still had to walk
that path, and so you still have to earn it.
And I think that's what's so wonderful about military service,
and it's so easy to get trapped into the polarization,

(43:28):
you know. And I'll tell you something here is you know,
I lost my best friend in Afghanistan. His name was
Matt Ingham, staff Sergeant Matthew Ingham. Where's he from? Where'd
you grow up? Altuna, Pennsylvania? Amish country in Pennsylvania. And
you know what, I never knew what his political party was.
It just never came up. And so like, could you

(43:50):
imagine today living in a world where like I sit
on an airplane with someone you're like, oh God, please,
I don't want to you know, right, You're like, you
get through this path where you're like, please, I just
hope that we're not a crazy person. We don't have
to be that way. I'm a very positive person and
that's a choice.

Speaker 3 (44:04):
I try to be optimistic about the future because I
think that we need that hope. As I write in
the letter to the Leader, hope is not a form
of naivete. Hope is seeing a world that others can't imagine,
and work and working towards me.

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involved in trying to I guess you would call update
training protocols talk about those challenges.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
Oh, I appreciate that. So, you know, so I'm in
a PhD program. I'm doing a PhD in leadership studies
now at the University of San Diego. And it's so,
I don't know, it's kind of validating at some point
because I'm reading all this like doctoral like you know,
ten pound brain research, right, And I was like, holy crap,
we were onto something, right. So the idea is that
what I wanted to create for young marines and Marine

(46:28):
infantry specifically, was that I didn't want people to be
successful in spite of their circumstances. I wanted them to
be successful because of it, regardless. And this is from
a geopolitical you know, militaristic standpoint. For me, the thing
that is going to be our competitive advantage in the
next war. Wherever that is right is not to me,

(46:49):
is not going to be a gizmo. Right, It's not
going to be a gadget. It's going to be, as
Secretary of Mattis said when he was a general, the
six inches between our ears, right. The competitive advantage is
an American marine who has an ability to think, adapt,
and react quicker than his enemy. And so what we
needed to do was create an educational program that inculcated

(47:12):
a bias for action. Everything that you see, and this
is actually interesting back to the draft part portion everything
that you recognize in the United States Marine Corps today,
the hat scream in boot camps, you know, we had it.
That all came from the draft because we had to
take a conscript military of people who had a choice
of going to jail or joining the Marines, and we

(47:34):
had to kind of whip them into discipline shape. That
wasn't that way in World War Two, it wasn't that
way in Korea. Very different Marine corps then. And so
what we do is that is very very good right
in some aspects, and it has instant and willingness, obedience
to orders. It's very good for discipline military, but you
know what it doesn't create. It doesn't create freedom of

(47:55):
thought and freedom of action. That teaches a person to
solve a templated problem. But what happens when our enemy
shows up with a problem we've never seen before. The
idea of IMC, the Infantry Marine course that we developed
was to not create a person to solve a specific problem.
It was to create problems solvers. I don't know what

(48:16):
gizmo well that is seems I'll be honest.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
You are to talk about a culture class with the
Marines where you know, the stereotype for many of us
that didn't serve as is the movie A Few Good
Men where if you don't follow protocol, people die, right,
That's always that is the stereotyped mindset of a marine
and the training that a marine gets.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
And I totally get where you're saying.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
What you're saying is, hey, and if you look at
the result of asymmetrical warfare where great powers have seen
themselves not succeed against weak should be weaker enemies because
the you know, you know, what is it innovation is
you know, is usually born out of necessity, and a

(48:57):
weaker foe is going to innovate, which is right here.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
The only thing the Musja Haden and the Taliban were
limited to is their creativity and their resources. And the
world watched how to defeat the strongest military in the
world for twenty years. No one would ever and I
write it in the book, no one would ever face
a squad of United States Marines and think they were
going to walk away with their lives. So they found
a way to fight differently, right, asymmetrical warfare, fourth generation

(49:25):
conflict of what we understand now moving into fifth GM
conflict where now it's like a drone in first person,
whatever is right and sharks with lasers right, whatever the
thing is right. War continues to evolve, and what we
continued to do as a service at the time was
we tried to win what the next war by referencing
our past successes. Now, I'm not saying throw history out right,

(49:48):
that there is context that matters in a lot of
these things, and I needed that. But what we needed
to do was take an on us, look at ourselves
and say, a bunch of dudes in pajamas and flip flops, right,
gave us a run for our and we needed to
figure out why. Now, I will say that the story
doesn't end well, Chuck, it doesn't screwed up. So you

(50:09):
read the updode, I get it. I mean change. This
is the changing any institution's difficult. Yeah. I was kind
of running around like a pariah for a while, you know,
like an evangelist running around, you know, trying to like
these young men and women, excuse me, are smarter than us,
are more capable than us. We have to It is
the adult in the relationship that has to adapt their

(50:29):
teaching style for the younger generation coming through, and a
lot of Marines were unwilling to do so. But the
saddest part about the Infantry Marine Corpse wasn't that we
had to invent new metrics of success because they were
so so good. They were better than anything that we
had ever created. The saddest part about it was right
after I retired, within within eighteen months of my retirement,

(50:52):
they reverted back to the way that it was when
I went through twenty some odd years ago, an industrial
model of education and its stamping right, you know, like
I'm I need this production over marines, right, And I
and again I love my service, my breath, my blood,
but it doesn't mean that I'm blind to it. I
think that the Marine Corps needs to adapt. I think

(51:12):
that the Marine Corps educational model needs to get better.
And I wasn't alone in my thinking.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
Well, with modern warfare, I mean, how many different smaller
armies essentially either neutralizing or larger armies. I mean, how
often do we have to watch this around the world
before we realize we've got a We've got to better
prepare for asymmetrical warfare. I mean, just look at our
own history here. I it's it's it's you know, we're

(51:40):
having this debate about Iran right now, and this feels
like one where political you know, the military has executed
everything they've been asked to do, but the strategy behind
this seems to have been terrible.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Yeah. I think that what's past is prologue, you know,
and sometimes I think that those who fail to study
his are dooing to repeat it. You know, our tools
for success when we fought the Red Coats for our
independence was asymmetrical warfare. Yes, our American roots come from that,
and we have forgotten I think in some ways now
again I am not. I have to be very cognitzant.

(52:15):
I am no longer in those spaces. I will never
ever talk about a service member or what they're doing,
because now I'm an armchair, right, I'm not in the
micro security clearances no more, right, you know, And those
young men and women are doing some incredible things time
now because they've been asked to do it right, and
they've been asked to do it well. And we're not
going to I'm not here to promote a military that

(52:37):
is that is not going to you know, take care
of their own when they're put into it, you know,
in harm's way.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
If military conflict becomes all drones, what's the unintended consequence of.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
All that dehumanization? The cost? Then civilian casualties will skyrocket, right,
because then what happens is now the cost is measured
in dollars and cents and not names and faces. I
think that some of the things now now again from
a militaristic standpoint, yeah, there's a real potential for drones.
But you know, there's an interesting number of books and
I study a ton of sci fi. I love sci fi,

(53:09):
right because sci fi gets a chance to be able
to have a real world kind of you're doing a
what if. It's a what if by the author, but
it's an educated one if. Right, it's not fantasy where
there's like dragons and stuff, right like, it's an educated
one if what happens when our enemies now that we
fight in our adversaries have the same tools and access
to resources that we do. What then becomes our competitive advantage?

(53:32):
Is it numbers? So then we need a draft. Are
we just going to throw fifty eight thousand more people
to be able to go die in a jungle somewhere, right,
or are we going to be able to say, hey,
wait a second, maybe this isn't working. You know. Dark
Horse is the name of the book is for a
number of reasons. One, it was the name of my
battalion that I was in, and I wanted to pay
homage to the third Battalion, fifth Marines, the dark Horse Battalion. Second,

(53:57):
it's I was a dark Horse. I wasn't supposed to
be successful. I wasn't supposed to be where I'm at today.
Other people made it. But Third War's a chess game.
Start playing chess, right, Start understanding that our enemy has
the same resources and access to those and the same
adaptability and the same intelligence level that we do because
now we're playing a game on an even playing field,

(54:19):
and we got to get better at chess. Yeah. Well,
I shoot, I just wish they'd learn how to play checkers. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
I think we're still trying to figure that out with
this with this crew.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
Have you heard that? Let me jump in. You ever
heard the term never played chess with a pigeon because
they don't understand the rules. They should all over the board,
they knock the pieces off, and they fly away thinking
they've won. Never played chess with a pigeon. I love that.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
That's a I hadn't heard that one. I will learn
and regurgitate that one. I want to talk about sort
of the de sensitization. There's there's dehumanization, but then there's
this line that you have to have is a d sensitivization.
What's that line for you? You write about this one,

(55:05):
You write about this one time where you where you
see this it's there's a lot of dead bodies around you,
and you notice there's a clean uniform and you hadn't
showered in forty days and you saw a guy with
a clean paras sox who you knew those paras socks
weren't going to be used anymore, and it was you know,
this is what I when I meant by this was

(55:27):
a very honest depiction. This is just and this is
life in war. But you portrayed that moment. And I
say that because I think there's this fine line right
with drones. It is the sphere of dehumanization where you know,
some some hothead politician gets excited because they can watch

(55:48):
this on TV. And then there's the reality of surviving
hand to hand combat, which is what you what you
were talking about there.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
So how does that happen? Do you remember that?

Speaker 1 (56:02):
And when you think back on it, you know it's
this because you have this incredible empathy. You clearly see
a human being on the other side, even if they
are the enemy. But if you are, if you don't
know how to sort of compartmentalize, you wouldn't be able
to get out of your own way.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
How does it happen? How do you do it? Thank
you for reading the book. Thank you. I bled on
those pages. I tried to tell the story of the
men and women I served alongside, and I tried to
tell their story honorably and tell a marine story and
not mine. When I looked, I was eighteen years old,

(56:45):
and I know the scene you're talking about. Right beforehand,
I had watched a man's life leave his eyes from
my own hand. And what I didn't see in his
eyes was anger. I didn't see it in his eyes
was hatred. I saw fear. I saw the same fear
that I had, and he looked at me with this

(57:05):
just absolute uncertainty, this absolute fear, and just the horror
in his eyes of he knew he was dying. It's
the same thing an animal does when it's looking at
They know they're dying, and they don't know what to do,
and they're scared. And then I had to very quickly
snap out of that. So you have these moments of
just raw you didn't somebody might have shot you, right,

(57:27):
and then I would be laying there next to him,
you know. I mean, I think that I don't like
I didn't write this book to glorify war, not as
you don't glorify it I would. I want to make
that clear to folks. It's not glorified. I appreciate that,
you know. I wrote this book to tell the realities
of it, the ability that the requirement I should say
to literally code switch from watching a man's life leave

(57:49):
his eyes and feeling about how terrible this action, this
is nothing like g I, Joe, this is awful, and
then having to recognize that your own survival counts on
your feet are melted away and you need to take
a clean parass out of a dead guy's ruck. And
that is and then there's the brutality of it, you know,
the carnage that we saw in Fallujah. You have to

(58:11):
become you have to steal yourself to it. You know.
I talk about this with my family and I little
talk about a little bit in the book. But the
three weeks before I would deploy to Iraq specifically, remember
I did three tours in Iraq before I was twenty
one years old. I had my twenty first birthday. I
think it was an Iraq right, And that's a lot
for a young man to go through. And all of us,

(58:32):
none of us believed that we were going to make
it to twenty five because everybody was dying everyway. The
conflict just never stopped it, you know, we never thought
it was going to stop. But the three weeks before
I would deploy, I would turn into an animal. I
would slowly start to erode the conversation that you and
I have right, empathetic, compassionate talk. That wasn't there. That
human had to go away because it came to kill

(58:54):
or be killed right same survival. It was animalistic, it
was human, it was awe and I had to become
that and I had to become calloused to that.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
And we've dealt a lot with that. But the enemy
does that too very much. I think that's something we
don't fully appreciate.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
The hardest part about coming home was coming home with
your soul intact, making sure that you didn't do things
overseas that left you lying awake at night. And I,
you know, I was put into a lot of situations
as a young man that I shouldn't have been. And
I will go and I have been, and I will
go on record and say that I'm upset with what

(59:33):
we were told going into Iraq. I think you were
too young, is that what it is? Or you didn't
think or the mission itself to be honest with you,
we didn't care, right, So this is a hard part. Right,
people like to I will have I will throw fists
if people ever talk poorly on the United States Military
service members, right, because I love them with every fiber

(59:54):
of my being. It was so hard. And I look
at these young men now and young women that I
talked to in the Marines because I live near a
base and so I get to talk with them. It's
not that they want to go to war. What they
want to do is validate their experience. They want to
validate that all of their sacrifices and all of their
pain and misery and suffering to get to where they're
at has been validated by the theater of combat. Right.

(01:00:17):
And so you're not going to talk to the United
States Marine out of wanting combat. That's who they are.
But again, that has to be wielded very carefully. And
our public leaders at any level who's advocating for war
or sending us to war, need to understand that that
social contract must be protected. It must be preserved because
these young men and women are willing to die. We

(01:00:40):
write a blank check to the United States, payable with
our lives, and if that's not protected. The only time
that I get upset at people is when people do
not honor the commitment that we have made to our country.
I'm okay, with dying for my country. I'm perfectly okay
with it, but it has to be for a just cause.
And when I find out that it's not that we
fought a war of choice and one war of necessity

(01:01:03):
during my time frame, I get upset. You know, you're
unusual in.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
That you talk about your experiences. I've got family members,
some who are no longer with us and some who
still are who don't really have no interest in telling
you what happened in Vietnam or telling you what happened
in World War Two.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
You have kids, I do not.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
You seem comfortable telling your story, and you, I'm sure
have come across quite a few veterans who say I couldn't.
I couldn't write about what you wrote about. Explain that
mentality for some What have you learned about that over
the years where you've been able to express this and
not a lot of people can.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
So there's a couple of things. One, inside of the
Marine Corps culture, it is very heavily frowned upon. It's
not not an official doctor in mayment, but it's very
heavily frowned upon. To do you get grief for this
from fellow Marines? Actually, no you know, it's part of
our culture not to write, because it's always to the team,
it's always to the unit. It's always to you know,

(01:02:21):
the Marine Corps. And that matters, and that matters, and
that is part of our service. What I wanted to
do is write to give other people permission to share
their story, because a lot and I sit with veterans
almost on a daily basis on my show, and I
sit and talk with them, and I just asked them
what happened out there? And these young men and women
sit with me, and they feel seen, they feel heard,

(01:02:42):
they feel validated that their sacrifices were for something right,
that somebody else cares enough to listen and just share
their story and have a conversation. It's not through self aggrandizement, right.
I don't think that I was God's gift to the military.
I don't at all. And so but what I did
was I was smart enough as a sniper and as
a tactician to understand that the sniper versus sniper's story

(01:03:06):
was something that that's the hook. That's the hook to
talk about whatever I wanted. And so I wanted to
get in there and say, Okay, I've got this thing. Now,
I can tell a story about the sniper thing, and
that can go, and we can write the thing and
turn it into a movie and make a million land
all that stuff. That's right anymore, absolutely, But that's not
the reality of my experience. And who would I be.
How would I be honoring the service and the help

(01:03:29):
that people gave me, the sacrifice that they gave me.
How would I be honoring that by stepping on a
pedestal and telling the world of how great I am.
What I want to do is use this as a
tool to tell other people it's up to us. Nobody's
coming to save us. This division that we have whatever,
and I'm not naive to it. I see it too,
but God, we got to reach across the aisle and

(01:03:49):
whatever it is. Sit next to the person on the
airplane watching the cable news that you don't like and
be like, hey, man or woman, how's it going today?
You're not my enemy. I cannot and will not ever
support a person who says that another political party is
an enemy of our country. I cannot. I don't care
what political party says it, but a Republican or a Democrat,

(01:04:12):
A Democrat is not an enemy to the United States.
We are Americans and we have to get past that.
And so I write a book that is deeply political,
but it's not partisan. The goal that I wrote through
this is I don't want any person to know what
my political affiliation is. I don't want any person to
know what my faith is. I'm purposely obscure about it

(01:04:34):
because it shouldn't be about that. It's about service. It's
about the brotherhood and the sisterhood that we have. And
that is why I understood the gravity of this. You
want a sniper story, I give you a sniper story.
Take six sixty thousand words. I'll get you the coolest
snipper story of all time. I didn't want to write
a sniper story. I wanted to I wanted to write
a story about my friends and my family in America

(01:04:56):
and give us permission to believe something different.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Well, you should be proud tell me about Combat Story
the podcast, which should people expect?

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
If my folks want to go over and listen. That's
very kind of you, Chuck. I really do appreciate that.
Uh is combat story? Is? This? Is it? Man? Like?
I'm I'm like a real American, right like? This is
my like office in my house, right, you know, like
I right, you know, I'm a normal person. I you know,
I still get yelled at for not putting the dishes away. Right.
Let's just there's no like, there's no celebrity thing here. Right.

(01:05:26):
I bring veterans into my home, right. And I live
in Carlsbad, California. Right, And I bring veterans into my
home and we sit down veterans of service. It's called
combat story, right, But if you were a story of
cert doesn't have to be combat. If you're a firefighter,
if you're a teacher, if you're a you give your
life and you dedicate your life to other people. You

(01:05:46):
have a home here, and I want to hear about it.
And I want to sit with you and I want
to talk about that we I have. I have, you know,
a small following, right, you know, it's it's it's but
it's our little corner of the internet. And in our
little corner of the Internet, we choose light. I don't
choose darkness. I choose light. I want to sit and
I want to highlight the good parts about who we are.

(01:06:06):
I want to get down to the to the hard
conversations that we have. What I tell people is I'm
looking for context over content. I don't care what people
who they pray to, I don't care who they voted for.
I'm not trying to sell people a protein shake. I
want them to sit down and get to the raw
ist form of human emotion, and that's connection. And so

(01:06:27):
we get a chance to do that. And it's been
the honor of my lifetime to do that. Second honor
of my lifetime was I did have a chance to
run for public office and that was one of the
tell me about what did you rent for San Jose
City Council? And I retired out of the Marines and
stars in my eyes right, you know, American flag behind me,

(01:06:48):
and I was like, I'm going to you know, serve
my community that I came from. And it was the
highlight of my life. I got a chance. I'm not
a candidate for money. I didn't have any of that
kind of stuff. And you know, I've learned a lot.
Money is it is a resource. It's like a bullet
for a machine gun. I didn't have that. So what
I chose to do was I chose to use I'm
a grunt, so I used my feet. I knocked on doors,

(01:07:10):
for seven hours a day, seven days a week, for
five months straight, I knocked, personally knocked on thirteen four
hundred doors. I didn't care if you were a Democrat.
I didn't care if you were a Republican. I didn't
care if you were an independent. We had a conversation,
and I gave every single one of those people my
phone number, and I got to meet America. I got

(01:07:31):
to meet people of all walks of life who wanted
one thing. They wanted their politicians to be accountable, and
they wanted people to feel like they had a better
opportunity for tomorrow than they have today. That's a politician
or a leader's first job is to give people the
opportunity for a better tomorrow than they have today. And
I loved every minute of it. Well that's a lie.

(01:07:51):
It sucked politics rough, right, But I love talking with
the people.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
I was unsuccessful, and we're talking about it in the past, tense.
You're not going to do this again.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
I don't know that our I mentioned political purity and
partisan you know purity tests. Our current system does not
allow for dialogue. It allows for diatribes, and I am interested.
I don't come from a background of partisanship. I come
from a background of service. If you have a good idea,

(01:08:26):
I want to hear it. And unfortunately, you know, in
our space, there's just not a lot of a lot
of room for that. I won't shut the door on
it because I love I love America, right, but like
it was brutal. I think, Look, I get it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
I wouldn't advise anybody to run as a partisan, but
we kind of need to sort of. You know, sometimes
sometimes in order for a institution to reform itself, it
has to be threatened from the outside. It can't be
reformed from the inside. And I think our two major

(01:09:04):
parties do not know how to reform themselves, and they
have to be threatened from the outside. And so the
more the more folks threaten as independents and wedge sort
of sort of you know, like anything, it's a free market, right,
and unfortunately, the way we construct our politics is it's

(01:09:24):
not a free market. It's a duopoly, right, It's not.
It's that sort of makes it really hard to have
this free market discussion, this free market of ideas. But look,
you're at least in a state that doesn't make you
have to be a member of a party to get
on a primary ballot, and that's a big step. Most
states don't even allow that. So I do think we

(01:09:48):
need more politicians who don't identify.

Speaker 2 (01:09:50):
With a party.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
If I'm help sort of, I think it would help reimagine,
allow people to reimagine what elected public service could be,
because right now it feels as if you have to
pick a team if you want to be in public service,
and that's that's uncomfortable for some people. It's really uncomfortable
for me, and I can see it's very uncomfortable for you,
and then eliminates a whole bunch of people that might

(01:10:14):
be pretty good at this.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
It does you know, there is a there's a barrier
to entry, and unfortunately you know, well I don't. I
would love to have a very long conversation with you
about this. But the barrier to entry right now is
money and if and and and it's just a resource,
right but if if people don't have that like that,
you just I tried. I tried to outwork money. It

(01:10:39):
didn't work, but I learned, you know, I learned a
lot from it, and I want to be able to
I think why I'm open about my run is not
because I'm advocating. For a second, I want people to
know that I all of my resume, you can read
the whole thing. It's you know whatever, It's all these accolades,
and I'm still failing. I'm still losing at things, and
that's okay, right, And that's okay. Failure is a part

(01:11:02):
of success, and I think that that really matters for people.
I think that I get so mad at social media.
I engage with it at length now, or I would
say at a distance now, because I have to in
this space social media for these young kids. I couldn't imagine,
you know. I look at people's it's all highlight reels.
Nobody shows like a Monday and Tuesday. Nobody has an

(01:11:23):
honest conversation about you know, what it was like to
run as a candidate who tried not to be able
to do partisan politics. It was isolating is the word
I would use. It was alone and you've got to
take a giant pill on either side whatever you want.
And that's very hard for people. And so also I
think that the general consensus, you want to know, I
fall in the lowest tier of people. If I'm knocking

(01:11:45):
on your door during dinner time, right, like and I'm
like hanging out with the collar shirt. Right, you fall
in the lowest tier people don't want to be. I
think with the common another is not a lot of
people trust politicians anymore, and so lots of politicians have
given politicians a bad name. Correct, that's well said. Never
played chess with a pigeon. And I think that what

(01:12:07):
I wanted to show people was that failures were part
of life. And if they find out and I didn't
mention any of my political run in the book because
it didn't need to be there, and it's okay that
people still see that I fell on my face, but
I did it with my I kept my honor clean
and I ran a good race. And if they could
do that in anything that they do in life, not politics,
whatever it is, and they can do that and anything
that they want in life, then they'll be okay. If

(01:12:28):
this book, right, If I poured my heart into this
entire book and two years of my life and bleeding
on the pages, and we sell four copies, that's okay
because I did it with a full heart and a
sound mind. And at the end of the day, if
you do anything in life and you fail at that
that's okay, that's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
Let me, let's get out of here on this this
this interview is going to air on Memorial Day, so
a lot of people will be listening to it on Monday.
Maybe it's an off day. How do What do you
think about a Memorial Day? Memorial Day is tough for me.
I want to recognize that Memorial Day is not Veterans Day.

(01:13:08):
They are two very distinct holidays. Memorial Day is about
those who didn't come home and the families that have
been left to deal.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
With the aftershock. I would advocate that any person who
calls for war or armed conflict, have a conversation with
a gold Star family member, sit across from them and
ask them if their sons, or their daughters, or their
husbands or their wife's sacrifice was worth it. And a

(01:13:38):
lot of them will actually tell you yes, because they
believe in this thing. They believe in this country, and
they believe what it stands for. On Memorial Day, I
sit and I think of the dozens of friends that
I have spent time with and lost, and dark Horse
is my tribute to them. I have one paragraph on
one page, as I'm moving through a story to tell
a mother who survived her son's death how much her

(01:14:01):
son meant to me, To tell a father who lost
their son, to tell a brother who lost their sister
what they meant to us, and that their sacrifice matter.
And Memorial Day, what I would look to do is
if I were to implore anything on any civilian is
to on Memorial Day, find something, find an organization, reach
out that has to do with the family members that

(01:14:24):
are left behind, because that is a gap, that is
a chasm that will never be filled. Thank them, make
their day a little lighter, buy them dinner, just give
them a hug at the end of the day. That's
all they ever want is to know that their son, daughter,
husband or wife will not be forgotten and tell them
that that was great.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
Thank you and aj I just like I said, I
remember the first Vietnam book I read that I felt
like truly sort of explained what it was, what just
life is like in the military in that period, and
that to me was what I got out of this.
Your story, in many ways, it's a lot. Look, you

(01:15:04):
have some things that are remarkable, but a lot of
your story is the story that a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
Of other people have lived and not been able to
tell about it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
So I think it's a I think I worry that
we're going to gloss over this generation of veterans.

Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
For a variety of reasons.

Speaker 1 (01:15:23):
Part of it is the speed with which we consume information,
Like what happened five years ago feels like fifty years ago.
So there's a little bit of that. I'm sort of
a you know, I don't think people intentionally want to
not live in it right, but you know, it took
us a while to get Vietnam right historically, I worry
it's still taking us time to get Iraq in Afghanistan right.

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
And this feels like the beginning of what could be.

Speaker 1 (01:15:47):
A period of first hand accounts like yours that we'll
be able to pain a more complete picture because time
allows for it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:56):
So anyway, I highly recommend it. Congratulations on the book,
and thank you for it. Thank you Chuck for spending
the time with me, Thank you for reading it. Because
you read about my friends, you read about my family members, right,
these people that just you know, as long as we
keep their memory alive, then they will never die. And
so things like this, they're sacrifice and the things that
they didn't love for each other that matters. Thank you

(01:16:19):
so much for taking the time to sit with us today,
Thanks for the interview, you know, and thanks for reading
the book.

Speaker 1 (01:16:25):
All right, hopefully i'll see it down the road. I'll
look free on the ballots and all right, thanks a Jack,
Thanks Jack,

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Interview Only w/ AJ Pasciuti - A Marine Sniper’s Message on Service, Sacrifice, and Country

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Interview Only w/ AJ Pasciuti - A Marine Sniper’s Message on Service, Sacrifice, and Country