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January 6, 2024 16 mins
Amber Smith is a former Pentagon official and U.S. Army Kiowa Warrior helicopter pilot and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. She is the author of the book Danger Close.

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Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure
you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everybody, Welcome to the
Buck Brief. On this episode, our friend Amber Smith joins us.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
She is a.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Former senior Pentagon official, a former combat helicopter pilot and author.
And we're talking about a whole range of things. Amber,
going to see you, my friend, how.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
You been great? To see you good. It's good to
be on with you.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
So let's start with this one.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
I saw you pop up on Fox and Friends. You're
talking about something called the Declaration of Military Accountability.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
What is that?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
So it is the brainchild of Navy Commander Rob Green.
He wrote this letter and sort of rallied the two
hundred and thirty one of us who signed it. And
it is a declaration of wanting accountability from senior military
leaders who unjustly kicked out over eight thousand, you know,

(01:17):
able bodied, willing to serve, wanting to serve service members.
The only thing they didn't want to do was taken unproven,
un approved COVID vaccine. And so the Pentagon doubled down
and forced them all out in doing so destroyed a

(01:38):
lot of their lives. They had a lot of them
lost their pensions, they lost their livelihoods, they lost bonuses,
and they really lost trust in the institution of the
military as a whole. And so everybody stood up and said,
enough is enough. We're going to tell the truth about

(01:59):
a government institution, which in this case happens to be
the Pentagon abusing their power. And so we band together
to say that, you know, we take an oath to
follow lawful orders of the commanders above us, not unlawful orders.
And I think that that was sort of a wake

(02:20):
up call for a lot of officers in the military
when that COVID order came down, was that they sort
of just mini commanders just blindly decided to follow that
order without knowing the facts and why it was an
unlawful order.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
It's amazing, I think, and really shocking to people to
think that a lot of career military folks lost their
jobs in their careers for refusal to take a shot
that we now know there was no reasonable basis to
make them take. I mean, this goes beyond No one
believes now. No one believes now that the vaccine stops

(02:58):
infection and very few people honestly believe that the vaccine
or the mRNA shot does very much at all to
combat COVID in the first place, actually for healthy people,
and that the risks, especially of mylecarditists, were more substantial
than we were led to believe.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
This is now all a matter of record.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Why isn't the military writing this wrong on its own
amber It seems like it's so straightforward. Why why aren't
people being restored to their former rank, including all back pay,
and put on schedule for promotion as though this had
never happened.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Because what we see in today's military is pretty much
anybody O six and above is a politician, and they
are you know, like look at Secretary Austin, he is
just pushing a political agenda, President Biden. He's not doing
what's best for the troops, doing wespress for the military,

(03:56):
or doing what's best for the American people and the country.
And it all comes down to our letter, the Declaration
of Military Accountability, is the military today has become a
culture of no accountability. If you look back history, if
you look back at World War two, generals got fired,
they were given a few months if they couldn't hack
it if they had poor decision making, poor leadership, poor performance,

(04:20):
they got fired and somebody else came in who could
do the job. Fast forward Vietnam, you started to see
generals not really getting fired much anymore, and that's because
there was a drastic shift in leadership at the Pentagon
where they saw an individual general getting fired as a
black eye on the military institution as a whole, and

(04:40):
it was a pr nightmare to them. So what did
they do. They circled the wagons and you rarely rarely
see a military general get fired today for performance, maybe
for conduct, but not for performance. And that's exactly the
military that we see today. No one has been held
accountable for Afghanistan or the withdrawal, No one has been

(05:02):
held accountable for the unlawful implementation of the COVID nineteen vaccine.
They're not even held accountable for, you know, the hundred
of billions into trillions of dollars that's unaccountable in these
audits that they can't pass. So you cannot have an
effective military without accountability. And that's exactly why we are
seeing the military the Pentagon in a downworld spiral right now.

(05:26):
The double standards, the two tier justice system, and in
this case lawlessness. What happens when you get away with lawlessness,
you're likely allowed to are you? You're likely to push
the boundaries again? So what's next? What's next? There's no
accountability for their actions they now think they can get

(05:47):
away with.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
When we come back amber in a second, I just
want to I want you to answer this question, but
hold off on it.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
For a moment.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
But the question I want to post to you is
what is the single most important thing in your mind
that the military could do to improve things? So let's
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what can be done to put it this way? Actually

(07:02):
kind of a redo of the question, similar question. If
you get a Republican probably Trump probably, If you got
a republic who wins in twenty twenty four, what should
that Republican do to fix the military?

Speaker 3 (07:17):
They need to recall some generals who have retired and
show the military, like the generals who are currently serving,
you're not going to get away with lawlessness. We are
a nation of laws, and if you break those laws
and you're going to get brought back on the service

(07:38):
and you're going to face a court martial and all
the consequences that come with that, that will send a
very strong message to the military. And what's sort of
ironic is that during the Trump administration you saw people
including General Millie get up on a soapbox non stop
and talk about how the oath that a service member

(08:01):
takes is not to the president of the United States,
it's to the Constitution. Where were all of those generals
who were talking about that when this COVID vaccine mandate
came down. Their point was they didn't like the president
of the United States at the time, and what they were,
you know, the agenda that of a certain president. So

(08:22):
I and I'm specifically pointing to General Milli here and
some of his comments and going back to that two
tiered justice system and double standards. General Milly got away
with conspiring with Nancy Pelosi about how to take nuclear
strike authority away from an elected president of the United States.
He called his counterparts in China twice saying he would

(08:46):
give him notice of a military strike ahead of time.
Once again, where's that accountability? Where's the accountability for General
mill Milly. The next president, like you said, likely President
Trump coming into office, he wants to make the military
great again. He is fine with he likes to fire
people who aren't performing. He needs to make fix seeing

(09:10):
the Department of Defense and these rogue generals a priority
because the way it is right now. The military is
just it is at a loss right now when it
comes to leadership, and it is drastically needed. And like
I said, you can't have an effective military without strong
generals that are not politicians. And that's not what we

(09:34):
have right now. We have political generals every single day.
You know, we in closer to World War three, and
now is the time when we need the strongest, most best,
elite military leaders in the world, and instead we have
Washington DC politicians in the uniform.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
It's very troubling, that's for sure. How how much is
the issue of wokeness in the military and the social
engineering from the left? Is it exaggerated in your mind
a little bit in conservative media? Is it as much
of a problem as everyone's telling us all the time on.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
The right that it is. How do you see it?
How does it manifest?

Speaker 3 (10:14):
No, it's it's it's not exaggerated. I have done extensive
research on this. I've got a book coming out on
this called Unfit to Fight. It is that goes over
DEI CRT critical race theory h and how it has
infiltrated the military West points, all the military academies, these
new young lieutenants coming in to service who are leading

(10:38):
troops on the battlefield. Instead of studying military history and strategy,
they're focusing on how they can be more inclusive of
their service members. And the I tell you what, the
military has got to get back to being a meritocracy
and focusing on pushing forward the best people for the
job instead of you know, match, instead of looking to

(11:02):
meet dei quotas and what's making people feel good. The
military is not college. The military is not a place
where people go to find themselves. The military is a
very specific job. You were there to serve your country
and go to war if necessary. You want the best
people to your left and your right, regardless of your gender,

(11:25):
regardless of your color, regardless of what your political beliefs are.
You got to know that that person's gonna you know,
has those American values that they care about America, and
instead they're being taught in not only public schools in America,
but these military academies as well that Hey, maybe America
is the problem, Maybe America is an oppressor. Maybe you're

(11:48):
not getting a fair shot because you live in America.
Which anybody that's older than you know or should know
above twenty five years old, twenty That is the exact opposite.
You have every opportunity in the world, which is why
you see everybody trying to come to our country, so
it is not inflated in terms of the woke problems

(12:09):
in the mility, Harry, there are the problems. It's a
very very long list, you know. Focusing on transgender inclusiveness
and building new bathrooms and non binary studies. That is
not what the military needs to be focusing on. That's
not what they need to be spending their budget on.

(12:32):
But also we need to look at Congress and how
about some budget accountability when it comes to what they're
allowing the Department of Defense to get away with with
their massive, massive budgets.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Hamber, I have a very different kind of question, a
fun question to close with you here in just a
second to stay with us, and I know you've got
to go in a minute to go on, probably do
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(13:05):
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(13:50):
others wanting to protect you, your family and your livelihood.
All right, last one for you, Amber, And you know
she's a mom also, she's a wife.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
She's a mom.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
And she's got an English bulldog, which always gets me
so excited. I have an adorable Australian labordodle. She's a
little puppy. It's amazing. She's why I have scratches for people.
You can see I have score. It's all from the
labradoodle playing and you know all the.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
Rest of it. She's very cute though.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
But I've told my wife I want to get an
English bulldog to keep the labradoodle company. What do you
think of this idea as an English bulldog owner?

Speaker 3 (14:23):
So I was gonna say, because I know you like Frenchies,
So what was the Why did you go with the
labradoodle over the frenchie? Was it the snoring? Because that
I get it. If that was it?

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Because I'm married and that's what my wife wanted.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Okay, but are you familiar with this thing in marriage
where the wife gets what she wants amber because I
think I.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Wanted an English bulldog.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yes, look at that.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
So I would say, of course, your labradoodle needs a
best friend, and no better best friend than an English
bulldog as long as, uh, like, if the labradoodle sleeps
in the same room as you, I would just say,
I don't think that's gonna fly with the English bulldog,
Like if you like sleep they sing?

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Is a snoring that bad?

Speaker 3 (15:12):
The snoring is that bad? It is? It's like house shaking.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Yeah, it's rare the labradoodle.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
She slept, She slept, the snub nosed, she slept up.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Against my shoulder last night, like a little bunny rabbit
or something. And she quiet as a mouse. So you're saying,
I can't have that with an English bulldog.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
I mean, cuddle all day long. But like the sleeping thing.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Wow, snoring thing.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
I mean unless like the snoring super bothers me. So
if it doesn't bother you, then you'll be fine. But
they it's like sleep apnea for bulldogs.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yes, we can't have that.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
All right, Well, Amber, when's your book coming out?

Speaker 3 (15:55):
My book will be out in April, so we still
have a little bit.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
We're gonna come. We're gonna have a whole thing here.
We'll talk about your book. Last book was great, Danger Close.
This one's gonna be fantastic. Amber Smith, everybody, Amber, thank
you so much.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
Great to see you back.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Thanks, take care,

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