LT. COL MANN FORMER GREEN BERET SHARES HIS STORY

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stories of Special Forces Operators Podcast. Listen to
some of the bravest and toughest people on the planet
share their stories, Sit back and enjoy.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hey, welcome back everybody. Today we have a great guest,
Lieutenant Colonel Scott Man. He's a former Green Beret. He's
also a retired actually serving in the Army. Scott travel
throughout the world. Some of his deployments included Iraq, Afghanistan, Columbia, Panama, Peru,
and Ecuador. After retiring from the Army, Scott founded The
Hero's Journey, a nonprofit organization that helps warriors and their

(00:52):
families find their voice and tell their stories they come
home from military service. Today, we're going to be talking
with Lieutenant Colonel Man about his new book out in
a few weeks called Operation Pineapple Express, the incredible story
of a group of Americans who undertook one last mission
and honored to promise in Afghanistan. But before we get
started with that, you know what to do. Make sure

(01:12):
to share, subscribe, hit that I like button. You know
we like it, and that's not waste any more time
with them the show. Lieutenant Colonel Scott Man, Welcome.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Sir, Hey, Carlos, thank you for having me on.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Thank you very much, and for the listeners out there,
Lieutenant Colonel has giving permission to call him Scott, So yeah,
I want to make sure that on disrespect and we're
getting a bunch of emails all of a sudden, Well,
thank you so much, and first and foremost, I want
to thank you for your service as well well.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Thank you. And by the way, you gave me permission
to say Carlos too, so I'm taking the same approach
because immense respect for you and what you do. So
thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Absolutely, it's an honor. Now, before we get started on
the book and a little bit about that. I always
like to find out what motivated individual to become a
Green Beret. It's not the easiest thing in the world
to do, yea close. Yeah, was it movies? It was
John Wayne's green Beret. It was a Rambo. What was
it for you?

Speaker 3 (02:07):
It was a you know, it was a It was
a Green Beret who came into our soda shop and
the little town of Mount Out of Arkansas when I
was fourteen years old. Uh, he walked in, Carlos. His
name was Mark and he was, you know, in a
uniform that looked as stiff as cardboard, and he had
this funny looking green hat on his head, and these
really shiny jump boots with the big toes and and

(02:29):
like ribbons that were as a kid, it looked like
a fruit salad. And he was but he was young,
and there was just something about him. As soon as
I saw him, that's what I knew I wanted to
be and he can't. You know. I went up to
him and I just and I was a runt. I
was probably one hundred and five pounds, soaking wet, you know,
pretty pretty severely bullied as a kid. And when I

(02:53):
went up to this this guy, like everybody was kind
of snickering and laughing, and I just asked him. He
was like, who are you? What do you do? And
you know what was so cool about him, Carlos is
he was really like the first adult other than my
parents that he just saw me, like he looked at
me and he saw me and he said, you know what,
get us a table. I'm going to get some milkshakes,

(03:13):
and I'll just tell you what I do. And he
sat down with me and explained what special forces the
Green Berets were, and how they work with indigenous tribes
and build relationships or like modern day Lawrence of Arabia.
And I just was mesmerized. And so that was it.
At fourteen, I knew, I mean there was that. You know,
there were movies and books and you know, John Rambo

(03:34):
and everything else, but those just reinforced a decision that
that man helped me make just by taking the time
to talk to me.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
And I know we're going to talk a little bit
about that, laters. I know we talked before about Rambo,
and yeah, people always seem to forget that last ten
minutes because he looks like such a robot type of
killer with no emotion, but then at the end he
really breaks down.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Absolutely there's a level of humanity, not just the movie
but also the book. And yeah, that movie influenced the
whole generation of Green Berets, not just me, but yeah,
it was a combination of things, but that was the
catalyst moment for sure.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
It's interesting because every time I splaked to Green Beret,
it's always been and everyone has slightly nuanced versions of
their stories and how to happen, but most of them
were impacted in some degree at least by Rambo. The
older generation doing it. See John Wayne's Green Beret movie.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Uh huh, yeah. Yeah. There was also a National Geographic
article that came out in I want to say, like
nineteen sixty five. But my dad, you know, he kept
these old National Geographic articles up in his attic, and
I was cleaning out the attic and I found that article.
This was after I'd already met Mark. And if you've
ever read that, I'll try to send you the link

(04:50):
to it. But it was basically the montag Yard Uprising
that happened in the Central Highlands in nineteen sixty five,
and it just so happened that a National g author
was with the team where the uprising happened. And it was,
in my opinion, probably the most quintessential reporting of what

(05:12):
green Bereats do in these indigenous places. And to this
day I still I included it in the play I wrote.
I talk about it when I'm speaking, But it was
it was these twelve men who somehow I believe saved
the Vietnam War in nineteen sixty five from turning because

(05:32):
of their ability to leverage relationships.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
And you said, just found I think part of it.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Special special forces in Vietnam National Geographic nineteen sixty five.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
There it is. I think it's one of them.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
You gotta read it. I would encourage anybody to read
that article because it's not just about like what green
bereats do will it will really open your eyes to
what they do. So like, if you're a young person
thinking about special forces, or you know someone who is
where they can't decide between green berets and seals, share
that article. If you just want to see what relationships

(06:08):
can do in the darkest of times, read that article
because it's it is a universal benefit I think to
read that thing.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
That's fascinating. And by the way, books we just google
National Geographic and Green Breys nineteen sixty five to get
start getting a lot of different magazines that pop up
for National Geographic on green Bereys. So it's interesting that
must have done several little episodes or some articles on it.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yep, yep. And the title though is special Forces and Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Special Forces in Vietnam.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
That's right, yep. It's interesting to narrow your search.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
I know I was speaking to I've been reviewed a
couple of Macve songs, as you told you before, and
it's fascinating because those guys, man, they were like twenty
two to twenty one year years of age going into combat,
and combat was not I mean it's intense combat, yeah, man,
a getting tossing in the middle of a jungle out of nowhere.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah. And the Green you know that, the regiment of
Special Forces guys during that era, I think a lot
of them are my mentors, and I really just look
at them with reverence because there was a group of
them who did like the mat V SAG thing where
they were going in there and and you know, cross
border work and really direct action surgical strike, recon like

(07:19):
recon beyond recon. But then there were also the Green
Berets that were living out in the Central Highlands and
they were they were immersed with the Montagnard tribes and
the Nungs, and they were or or advising the Afghan
excuse me, the Vietnamese Special Forces. And that also is
a very very in my opinion, actually probably the most

(07:42):
fundamental special Forces mission is working by with and through
indigenous people, because that is what Green Berets. We actually
started that Carlos in World War Two. Our origins come
from the OSS Office of Strategic Services, the Jedburg teams
that jumped into Nazi occupied Europe in three person teams

(08:03):
and stayed the entire war. And they worked with the
French Partisans, the Partisans in other countries and helped them
fight back against the Nazis. And that's where we draw
our roots from.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
But yeah, so you guys are kind of like a
cousin of the CIA.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
Then OSS, well said, And what happened was the OSS split.
The intelligence apparatus went to the CIA and the operational
apparatus went to special Forces. So those OSS leaders literally
went in two different directions.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
That's fascinating. They didn't know about that part. They didn't
know about the split. A little bit of history. I
love it, very nice. That's something people don't know about
the Green Rays either. A lot of times they just
rambo again and they're movies. They don't realize how much
really is about training indigenous people and learning about the
environment and getting intel and getting what would you say,

(08:56):
I can't think of the word for it, but indigenous
people that can help them understand the enemy and the
territory and all that.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Is so nuanced. It's so nuanced, Carlos, and your ability
to work locally to appreciate context and complexity, relationship management,
and of course being you know, lethal. I tell people
that a Green Beret, being a green Beret is a
combination of John Wick, Lawrence of Arabia and the Verizon

(09:24):
guy or the Sprint guy or whatever he's called. You're
you're like a relationship based connector. But you have to
have a baseline of surgical lethality and you have to
be able to toggle between all those things and you
never know what cocktail it's going to be. And that
was what I what I loved about it really was
that everything we did was an indigenous approach, but yet

(09:45):
you you sat on this baseline of lethality that you
could unleash if you needed. But really it was that
front end human connection stuff that created the strategic payload.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
How many languages do you know?

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Well, I so before nine to eleven, my my my
my primary language was Spanish because I worked in seventh
group and we were apportioned to Central and South America.
So before nine to eleven, before nine to eleven, what
they did? You know, green Berets are regionally oriented and
so we are we are we are really focused on
language and culture. And so if you were going to go,
for example, to tenth group, you would be focused on,

(10:20):
you know, Eastern Europe. If you were going to go
to third group Sub Saharan Africa, so you would learn
the languages relevant to your area of responsibility. But after
nine eleven, all that went out the window and we
were focused on because there's only six thousand, five hundred
green berets on active beauty, so we were focused on
You were either focused on Iraq or you were focused
on Afghanistan. Now you still had to do your other theaters,

(10:42):
but that was your that was your theater of war,
and so we had to learn some version. I was
focused on Afghanistan, so I speak a little bit of Dari,
a little bit of Pashto. But honestly, I was so
great late in my career Carlos, that I relied much
heavier on interpreters because I just didn't have the proficiency
that I really should have had working at that local

(11:04):
cultural level.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Interesting, it's so funny is the more you talk about
the operations and how they how they work. It's funny
because there's so much resemblance to the CIA. Again, I
remember interviewing the CIA recruters and how they're regionally assigned
to the languages that they know, and how they're supposed
to connect with individuals too. It's just so funny they overlap.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, and you know, I will say this and they'll
probably be some of your listeners who are you know,
have have traces to the agency legacy or whatever, and
they may disagree with this, But my personal observation was
that as as we looked at the evolution of the CIA,
and then you looked at the evolution of the Special Forces,
Sorry boat going by here, but the they split and

(11:49):
and and when you started seeing this rise in terrorism
and you started seeing the more prolific emergence of Jaysok,
of the Delta, the other special mission units that were
really focused on walking down terror terror groups and you know,

(12:09):
manhunting and that kind of thing. In my assessment, the
agency really moved in that direction along with Jaysok, and
you did not see the same kind of like historical
connection between special Forces and the Agency anymore. I mean,
it's there, but it's not what it used to be
pre nine to eleven. And I think nine to eleven

(12:30):
really changed that dynamic, and I think there's a much
more habitual relationship between the Agency and Jaysock in my assessment.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Interesting point. I can't talk. It's an interesting point. Yeah,
it is. Really it's interesting how to see green Berets now.
And I've spoken to some individuals who have worked at
the CIA. I think you either came from Green Berets
or Delta Force and they've gone to the work of TAG.
I guess it's called I. I'm sure if it's still
CAG or not. So that's always interesting. Back to you

(13:00):
green beret now, So let's say you're an army. Was
it surprising to you how long it might take you
to become a Green Beret. I don't know how long
it took you to become what you had to do.

Speaker 3 (13:09):
It was surprising how many times I failed and and
had to you know, had to like keep going that
you know, I was that that runt that I was.
It was hard, you know, whether it was going through
ranger school, jump Master school, or Special Forces Qualification course.
I did all of them multiple times, and I, you know,

(13:31):
for various reasons, didn't didn't make the cut, got recycled,
and then had to make a decision, Okay, do I
keep going or do I go do something else? And
and for me, even though I didn't make it the
first time, I was so just it was it was
everything to me. Being a Green Beret and being a
Green Beret team leader was my life. And I knew

(13:51):
that if I was going to be in the Army,
that's what I was going to do. So I just
kept recycling. And it took a couple of times in
each one of those you know, progressive steps before I
made it. So the surprise to me, I mean, I
knew what it was going to take. I just was
maybe surprised at how long it took me, as you know,

(14:11):
as opposed to my peers who seemed to kind of
move on through. But I'll be honest, everybody's different. But
I look back on my career and particularly my time
in combat and high stakes moments. It was dealing with
those failures, those recycles and having to have hard talks
with myself and my looking at my identity and finding
ways to move through that vulnerability and just keep going.

(14:35):
That really prepared me in many ways for some hard
moments that would come in combat. And so yes, it
was surprising, but you know what, It's just it took
what it took.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
That's one of the things that's amazing, whether the Green
Berets that I've learned they have. We talked a little
bit about this before the show before too, is the
mindset of a Green Beret or the mindset of a
soft guy period. It's a very unique mindset that I've learned,
especially the cognitive flexibility, the ability to look at situations
from different angles and perspectives, and also reframing and never

(15:09):
giving up. It's never about I failed. It's always about Okay,
I know what didn't work. Now I got to find
out how do I get to that end? And you
keep looking for ways to get to the end. Never
I'm going to sit for me, I'm out of here right,
which is kind of fascinating.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
It is. And you know, as you and I were
talking about that, I was thinking about it after we
were done, and I think there's kind of two levels
to think about the elite performer and special ops. And
you know, one is just like there's a baseline high
performance attitude that has to be present in special operators,
whether you're a seal, an Air Force PJ, A ranger,

(15:46):
a Marine, Special Ops, green beret, whatever, it is like
that there's just this baseline kind of like what I
was saying with the whole kind of John Wick mindset,
like there has to be that there has to be
this drive for high performance that is self generated. It
comes from you, like no one has to You don't

(16:07):
need a lot of attention like you, You are driven
to a certain standard. And then uniquely, I think for
green Berets is there is also this almost insatiable desire
for ambiguity. You know, we green Berets, I think more

(16:29):
than most. You know, every elite unit has its it's
it's unique ability. And I think the kind of the
unique ability of green Berets is to go into an ambiguous,
low trust, high stakes environment with twelve people and come
out with twelve hundred. And in order to do that,
by definition, you have to walk into a crap show,
like you just you know that you're walking into a

(16:53):
really really dynamic, distrustful fronment. And and so if you
don't know that, going like and I think we're drawn
to that. I just think the way they recruit, the
way they assess the psychological profiles is, you know, we
look for not just problem solvers, but we look for

(17:13):
for for individuals who solve problems by making human connections
and you know, creating relationships around thorny issues. Uh. And
and there's just something to that, and and and then
and then just thriving in that ambiguity until you tame
that problem enough to present a strategic solution. And and
although so it's almost like Carlo's this propensity for working

(17:35):
at a local level, so like just loving to get
local and and and living and immersing in that environment.
But yet by doing that looking for strategic outcomes. And
I think that in its essence is what makes special
Forces uh a very useful asset to the special ops inventory.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
And we're going to cover some different territory today, folks,
And again we're talking to the tenant, Colonel Scott Man
M A n N. The book is called Operation Pineapple Express.
You can pre order. It's the incredible story of a
group of Americans want to took one last mission and
honor to promise in Afghanistan if you remember that withdraw
last year. But you can go ahead. We'll get into
that a little bit, but go ahead and pre order

(18:16):
that book, folks. I highly recommend it. But I'm going
to switch gears now. Is not only switch gears, but
I know what the audience somewhat likes and they always
want to hear some war story, so maybe we can
approach that. And then I've also want to taking into
the realm of trauma.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
I was.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
I know, we talked a little bit about that. Yeah,
and you have that great program with the theater, which
I think is really cool. So for a lot of
the military guys out there who are listening, this might
be a great opportunity for you to learn something, or
if you haven't heard of it, I think it's a
great thing if you know somebody who is in the military.
Before we get to that, I always I'm really give
you guys as much space as you want on this

(18:52):
because I know I know how it is. Sometimes people
will always want to know what, Well, when did you
get into combat? What is the most scary life I'll
let you choose whatever you want. If it's an intense scene,
if it's a funny scene, if it's a sad whatever
you want to choose. If you can share a story
with us during your days in Green Beret, because you
had an interesting deployment because you went to South and

(19:12):
Central America quite a bit. That's a very different territory.

Speaker 3 (19:15):
There yeah, well, I was a lot of moments come
to mind, and I you know what I will say,
first of all, is that my time in combat I did.
I did three tours in Afghanistan, and then I did
several like what we call short tours or short trips
over there that were TDY trips, you know, for thirty days,
a couple of months. And I don't I don't know

(19:36):
what my total time was over there. It's certainly a
lot less than a lot of career special operators and
combat arms folks. But it was enough, you know, it
was enough to find myself immersed in several challenging situations.
I would say the one I look back on is
a moment was in two thousand and five, I was

(19:59):
the mission command for an operation called Nam Dong and
it was named after the battle that occurred in Vietnam
where Special Forces ODA seven to six, led by then
Captain Roger Donolin and his team and indigenous force repelled
a massive North Vietnamese Army assault and he won the

(20:21):
Medal of Honor and several other members on the team
won levels of valor that were just unbelievable. And I
was on that team as a captain and then as
the mission commander, that team was one of the primary
teams that we were launching with, so we named the
Operation nam Dong. But what I would say is the
reason that that mission sticks out in my mind is

(20:42):
that it was the first time in the Afghan War
that the Afghan National Army didn't exist. It didn't exist
before two three. There was no army when we went in.
The Taliban controlled the country, so the army had long
since been disbanded, and we stood this thing up from scratch.

(21:02):
And so this army of fourteen fifteen year old kids
who had only been allowed to like basic training and
that was it was going into combat as a maneuver brigade.
And so we were going into just the heart of
darkness in Uruzgan Province against a very, very heavily fortified
Taliban sanctuary. And we had probably about three hundred and

(21:25):
fifty untested Afghan National Army soldiers and maybe maybe fifty
Green Berets spread across them as advisors on you know,
seven helicopters going in and we were landing in seven
different landing zones. And the idea was the conventional US

(21:45):
unit was going to be ripping out of there, and
we were going to come in under the cover of darkness,
and there was no US battalion coming behind them. So
this was the first opportunity to put the Afghan Army
on the battlefield holding ground. You know, we're splying in
with these guys and they'd never even ridden on a helicopter,
and you know, so their eyes are wide and and

(22:06):
there's only a handful of us with each Afghan maneuver unit.
We're dressed in their uniforms, and you know that was
I remember riding in on that chopper and at that point,
I was pretty senior in my career. I was, I
was a major, and everything. My stomach was just in knots,
you know, and I just remember thinking to myself, like,
what the hell am I doing? You know, I've designed

(22:28):
a plan here that is likely going to get a
lot of these young Afghans killed. My green berets are
you know, they're they're they're what we're asking them to
do is being stretched to the max. And I just
all that resistance in my head started coming up as
we're getting closer and closer on the X on the
infill and we're riding in, you know, pretty much darkness.
And then the pilots Carlos, were calling out phase lines

(22:52):
along the way phase line, Carolina, phase line, Oregon. And
I'm checking those phase lines on the map and every
phase line that we crossed, like I'm getting I'm thinking
more and more. I'm gonna throw up, Like I'm just
gonna throw up because like, I'm not the guy to
lead this mission. This is a mistake. We are taking
on more than we should. And and and then all
of a sudden, we got to the phase line that's

(23:12):
called the md L, the mission decision line, and it's
it's the it's the line that when you cross it
on a mission, there's no turning back, like it is
you you are going. If one chopper goes down when
you're past the NDL, uh, you're going to keep going.
If you lose a portion of your force, you're gonna
keep going, you know. And so the mission decision line

(23:33):
is that point of no return, right, It's the point
that when you cross it, it's on. And as soon
as they called the n d L, I felt better.
I felt better. I felt like like a weight had
been lefted off me. I'm like, am I losing my
damn mind? Like, why why am I feeling better? Like
we're going like we're But then I looked around the chopper,
you know, and I could see my guys they were

(23:55):
on headsets too, and they were all just grinned and
high five in each other. Because up in until that point,
we had had cancelation after cancelation, frustration after frustration. Is
the mission going to go? Is it not going to go?
And at that point, like every you know, every operator
in that chopper was just fully dialed in and we
knew there were no options, like it was one plan

(24:16):
and whatever waited for us up in those mountains, we
were going together. And it I'll never forget it. I'll
never forget looking at those n c o s, who,
in my opinion, are just the most amazing men in
the world, those Special Forces n c os and just
the look and the big toothy grins that they were
that they were showing when that NDL was called, And

(24:37):
you know, for me, and then what happened on the ground,
you know, fourteen days of just NonStop combat, we lost
some amazing people. There was a lot of a lot
of heroism on that battlefield, and and the A and A,
the Afghan Army. They planted the flag after that, and
they remained in that location until the country collapsed, you know,

(24:58):
And so it was a in my mind, what those
NCOs did was very historic to be the first to
put to advise, to combat advise the Afghan Army at
that level in that contentious of a province, and it
came at great cost. But what I'll always remember, you know,

(25:18):
is the look on those guys' faces when they knew
we were going and we weren't turning back. And that
taught me, you know that in life like that, MDL Man,
you've got to have it and when you cross it,
you've got to go. And I'll always be grateful for
that memory.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
That's incredible.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Well there's your story, folks, if you wanted it one
that's in sense. I guess now we head over to
go to segue into the mental aspect of it, because
when you're a Green Beret and you can correct me
if I'm wrong, of course, you're going in one hundred
miles an hour. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff happening.

(25:56):
As you said, you got these complicated environments and then
you hit civilian life and I don't know, maybe maybe
you had still a fast paced life when you got out.
I don't know, I haven't heard one yet from anybody,
But how did you adapt when you when you end
up being a green brewer? You retired terribly?

Speaker 3 (26:15):
Mm hmm terribly. Uh, you know, I think I sent
it to you. It's not all we send it. But
I did a TED talk on this called the Generosity
of Scars, and uh, it was a talk I never
really wanted to give, honestly, because it was the scar
that I talk about in that talk was a mental

(26:36):
health episode that I had in my life following my
transition from the army. That is, and it's still embarrassing
to talk about, you know. But but but the reality is,
I think we have to we have to have these
conversations around mental health and and and the stigma of
trauma and all that goes with combat and that and
it's a corrosive environment. I mean, combat is by its

(26:58):
very nature, is not what you see in the movies,
It's not what you read in the books. It is
it is a horrible, caustic, corrosive environment that really, no
matter how tough you are, over a sustained period of time,
it erodes your resilience, and you know, you have to
do all of these different things to stay in the game,

(27:18):
and some are more resilient than others. But I know,
for me personally, when I got out of the Army
and I retired on what I thought was my terms, Carlos,
I had you know, I had a good run. I
still had things I wanted to do. My family was intact,
my kids were still in high school, middle school, you know.
Still I still had a lot of things in front
of me. And I had a job, you know that

(27:39):
was really high paying in the contracting world. But I
will tell you after I don't know, man, like a
couple of days, things really shifted for me in a
bad way. I felt like I had just changed planets.
I felt like I was like drifting, like eight feet
off the earth, just untethered. Everywhere I went. There was
no sense of purpose. There was no sense of myself.

(28:02):
You know, the identity that I had carved out for
myself for decades was in my mind gone, and it
was very difficult for me to just find any substantive
purpose or meaning in my existence. And even though things
around me looked great, they felt great, there was material gain.

(28:23):
It didn't matter because the absence of purpose was so profound.
And I didn't know any of this, like I wasn't
like conscious of it. I just felt lost. I just
felt untethered and and all and then and then in
that moment, all of the stuff that I had pushed
down because I had not dealt with my trauma, my
survivor's guilt, my anxiety in a healthy way anyway, all

(28:47):
of it just came and just came flooding it and
it really hit me hard, and so by and I
just kept pretending that it didn't. And then about eighteen
months after transition, I found myself just behind me here
we're on video, but just behind me, standing in my
bedroom closet, you know, holding a forty five caliber pistol

(29:10):
and no intention of coming out of there. And had
one of my sons not come home from school unexpectedly
when he did, I can guarantee you I wouldn't have
been here. I wouldn't be and you know that was
I came out of that closet and I and I
and I put the pistol away, embarrassed and but I
felt like at that moment, I was, I was I

(29:31):
couldn't live and I couldn't die, you know, That's what
it felt. It felt like purgatory, and the transition just
became it became an It was a nightmare, and and
my mood swings the way I navigated the world. Uh,
and I'm not gonna lie like it lasted a while
and I just kind of bumbled around. And it wasn't
until I knew I needed I knew I had. My

(29:52):
voice was gone. I lost my voice, my point of view,
my ability to speak into the world and achieve strategic
things like I knew that in my past life, that's
what I was good at. I was a storyteller. I
was an influencer. I was an advisor. And I felt
like if I could get back to some semblance of
that in the civilian world, if I could you be
on the stage and take the lessons that I'd learned

(30:14):
in human relationships and share them with people that needed it,
There's just some connection to that and bridge that that
I'd be okay. And I happened to find a storyteller,
professional storyteller at a conference named Boison, a former NFL
football player turned actor and playwright and speaker and man.

(30:34):
When I watched him on the stage. I was like that,
it was just like watching Mark in the Soda shop.
It was it just clicked for me. I was like,
that's what I need to be doing. I need to
be a storyteller. I need to take this T and
T that's inside of me and I need to repurpose
and into narrative juice and put it out in the
world in a positive way. And I went up to
Bow after his after his talk, and probably scared the

(30:56):
hell out of him, and he but he agreed to
work with me, and he mentored me two years oh wow,
and yeah and I and I really poured myself into
being a storyteller and it has changed my life, saved
my life, really, And that's why we created the Hero's
Journey nonprofit to help other warriors find their voice and
tell their story, because I think it's what warriors have

(31:17):
been doing for thousands of years. I'd lost my identity,
I'd lost my purpose, but most of all, I'd lost
my narrative. I had lost my own story. And it
was when I found that again and got that alignment.
It it put me on the path I needed to
be on again.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
It's an amazing story, amazing testament to use resilience because
it is. It's difficult when your identity is wrapped up
into something like that.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, and it's all.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Of it, as you it was the Green Beret and
all of a sudden that ends. We see it a
lot with law enforcement. We see it a lot with military.
Of course. It's amazing. Actually, tell you always reminds me
of a conversation I have with you Ember Larry Holmes.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Yeah, I interviewed with Larry Holmes a couple of years ago.
It was really blessed for that interview, and he always
he said something that always threw me off because I
didn't expect the interview to go that way. When we
were talking, I said, Larry, he allowed me to call him.
Larry said, Larry, what did you What did it feel like?
What did you miss the most after boxing ended for

(32:20):
you when you're retired? And I remember he said the
first things that came out of his mouth said, nobody
cares anymore.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
I said, what do you mean? And he goes, there's
no more calls, there's no more walking to the ring,
there was no more fights, there's no more commercials, there's
no more or anything. It was just it was a really
booby away because I didn't expect that out of him.
But he had wrapped a lot of his identity. And
I'm sure a lot of boxers do too. Baseball Players

(32:48):
I've interviewed and interesting just to hear when they retire. Now,
there are some baseball players that I've interviewed that changed
a little bit and they were actually looking to get
the heck out of Dodge.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
Sure, yeah, but even those that are, you know, And
I was, I mean, I was ready to get off
grid and be away from the military. I didn't like
where the military was going. I felt like careerism had
become rampant. I felt like, certainly the strategy in Afghanistan
was wrongheaded, and that was the big reason I hung
it up. So I was ready to move away. So

(33:21):
it wasn't like I felt like, you know, cheated, or
I mean I made the decision to leave. I had
already been selected for a battalion command and turned it
down three times, the last time with prejudice because I
just didn't want to continue. So, I mean, to your point,
even I think I wanted to leave, I mean I
felt like I had had my run, I'd made my contribution.

(33:42):
It was a good run and it was time to
move on to something else. But what I didn't recognize
and I didn't take the time to do the deep
work on before I transitioned, was to get clear on
who I was as a person, you know, before I
came the military. I tell people who are transitioning from

(34:03):
anything where your identity is wrapped up in what you
do is to like imagine a situation where it's twenty
years from now, fifteen years from now, and you're holding
your granddaughter on your knee and she asks you what
it was like to serve, What was it like, what
were those people like, what were those moments like? And
to write that down, what would you tell her, you know,

(34:25):
and those things that you share with her about what
it felt like to you and why you get it.
Like the Army, the Marine Corps, the Navy, the Air Force,
they don't get to keep that. Law enforcement doesn't get
to keep that. That's yours, that's not issued to you. Right.
They give you the context and the parameters to hone that,

(34:46):
to refine that. But you went into those environments with
that it was just undeveloped, right, And so getting clear
on who you are as a person, what you stand for,
you won't stand for what lights you up and really
taking the time because no one will tell you that

(35:06):
in transition. They'll just tell you where you need to
go for this briefing and this payment retirement briefing seminar.
But we don't talk about the residue right that is
within us that if we don't address it, it will
harden and it will take us out right. And there's
a paper called Residue that I'll send that to you

(35:28):
as well. It's written by former e MT. It's fantastic,
you got homework, doc. But but the but if you're
if your listeners want to want to check it out,
it's called Residue. I think it's searchable. But the whole
premise of the paper is that just because we serve,
we're not condemned to a life of suffering. But yet

(35:50):
somehow we think we are, We feel like we are,
like we're supposed to suffer because we served, And I
just I don't subscribe to that.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
That's good, Yeah, it's you know, it's interesting. This might
be a good seguey now to talk about the theater
program that you created. I think it was you who
did it right, Yeah, I was a little bit about
that because I think this helps. Actually one more thing
I was thinking about. I couldn't get it out of
my head. But it reminds me a little bit too
of college students sometimes. I think, when when you get
to grad school and you've gone straight out of high

(36:19):
school into college, right into grad school, your whole life
has really been pretty much a student. Yeah, and it's
amazing how many times I've seen when they graduate, it's like, oh,
a part of me is gone. I've been ideed as
a student for so long. Now I'm in the world.
I'm not a student anymore. And yeah, again, you made

(36:41):
that point about wrapping yourself in an identity. It's interesting
to see those transitions in life because you don't expect
it and then all of a sudden it hits you
right over the head, especially those long term goals.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
It really does. And you know, maybe maybe it helps it.
You know, again, I'm bringing out the story muscle here,
but maybe it helps to think about it through a
narrative lens. Is that you know humans, our brain you
know this better than me. Is is a metaphorical pattern
matching organ right, So it uses metaphor to make sense
of the world. And you know, storytelling is at it's

(37:12):
at it's at the core of our existence, Like everything
we do is around story and even how we navigate
the world, right is is there's there's there's narrative at
the heart of that. And the brain is you know,
we are the protagonist in our own ongoing uh mini series,
right and and and and the protagonist in a story.

(37:34):
The one thing that makes the story work what the
protagonist has to change, like that you wouldn't watch Rocky
or you wouldn't watch Star Wars if the protagonists didn't
go through massive change. And the reality is for us,
we because our brain is making sense of the world
through story, we are changing as the protagonist, like our
archetype is changing all the time. And and what you

(37:56):
just described is a perfect example of that from using
a narrative lens is like when you go from you know,
a bachelor of science journey through the master's program and
then all of a sudden, you're no longer a student, right,
You're the protagonist in your own story has changed and
so and just recognizing that that protagonists change, it's it's

(38:19):
a biological necessity, Like there's no way around it. The
difference is whether we embrace it or not, and then
whether we just lean into it. And that's why I
think it's so clear or so important that we get
that clarity of who we are at a deeper level.
Because the protagonist is going to change, like our identity
is going to change, there's no way that it won't.

(38:40):
But who are we at that one level below that,
and really pursuing that all the time and reminding ourselves
through self narrative that's who we are, Like for me,
for example, like it's it's super important to me that
I am a voice for veterans who have no voice.
Like that will never change for me, whether I'm a soldier,
whether I'm a storyteller or just a grumpy old man.

(39:03):
That's always going to be who I am one of
my attributes, and I know that, and so I can
continue to play to that regardless of my identity changes.
So probably a longer rebuttal or not rebuttal but build
on what you said. But I do think thinking of
ourselves as the protagonist in an ongoing story makes it
a little easier to deal with the identity change as

(39:25):
it happens.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
That's a great, great example and now again folks were
talking to Lieutenant Colonel Scott Man, former Green Beret Operation
Pineapple expresses the book coming on in a couple of weeks,
I think August twenty second, August thirtieth, August thirty, August thirtieth,
and the incredible story of a group of Americans when
it took one last mission and honor to promise. And
I can stand we're going to be heading over to
that in just a second. No, you make some great points, Scott.

(39:49):
And it's interesting too because the theory aspect, what I
enjoyed about is one of the things we know about
trauma is talk therapy has a problem with that. It
doesn't work as well depending on where you're at at
the stage. It seems to do better later when they're
able to separate the emotional events from the present, and

(40:10):
they can do that a lot of times either through
body therapy, which is usually having your body communicate what
is your body saying, and they can do with emdr
which is another one they've done it with. Well, your aspect,
which is similar to metaphor therapy, where you have a
distant you have some distance created between you and that
salient event that happened that led to the trauma, and

(40:33):
to be able to separate that and allows the more
safe environment for people to process that and to again
recognize that it's not happening right now, because physiologically it
experiences it like it's happening right now. And when you're
able to separate that temporarily, I think it makes a
huge difference.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
Man, we need to package what you just said and
like send that to the veteran and first responder. That
was so good.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
Couldn't even say it again. I don't think it was.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Really pro I mean, it was really tight. And so
all I would offer is perhaps I can maybe illuminate
some ways that we do what you're talking about. But
it's spot what you just said a spot on And
you know, I found the storytelling, Carlos, through whatever you
want to call it, you know, the universe God, but

(41:22):
it was gifted to me and I was just blessed
to have some mentors who had healed themselves using storytelling.
But here's the deal, and I maybe perhaps take an
anthropological approach to this, is that humans have been telling
stories for seventy thousand years. We've only had coded and
written language for ten thousand years, so I mean like
it predates language. You know, we've been telling stories as

(41:46):
a way of making sense of the world live, I
mean seventy thousand years, maybe longer. And it's in our DNA,
it's we're coded as story animals. So it only makes
sense that war You know, societies around the world have
always used storytelling as a way for the community, the society,

(42:09):
civil society to bring warriors home. You won't find a
society on the planet that does not utilize storytelling as
a reassimilation mechanism or a reintegration mechanism. And it's it's
just it's just always how we've done it. But yet
in the United States, for a host of reasons, we

(42:30):
have evolved away from that. You know, whether it you know,
there's short form, the use of short form communications and
social media, whatever, but we just don't. We don't are
our warrior class. They don't think they should talk about it.
They're the quote unquote quiet professionals and the civilians. There
was a recent poll as recent as November of twenty

(42:50):
twenty one that said over eighty percent of Americans don't
interact with soldiers or warriors. So like there is no
mechanism by which we assimilate through narrative, and so that
really resonated with me, and we founded The Hero's Journey,
which was all about helping warriors and family members and
first responders find their voice and tell their story and

(43:12):
using narrative as a transition tool to heal, to bridge
the civil military gap, at work, whatever. But what we
found was when we would create these venues of storytelling,
the audience was so into it, and the audience would
be civilians and military and gold stars. So I started
working on a play. My mentor, who had written a

(43:32):
play about his time in the NFL to heal himself
and to help others, understood what his journey had been.
One person show and then it went off Broadway and
he said, you know, you could do the same. And
I had no experience as a playwright. And then to
complete my midlife I decided to learn how to act
at age fifty, and we put together a veteran cast
and I started. I was the protagonist, Master Sergeant Danny Patten,

(43:56):
and we performed the play in sixteen cities around the country.
We did over two hundred and fifty PTS interventions with
our counselors and the lobby using a lot of the
things you just talked about that would find themselves needed
in those moments following the performance. It would bring up
the opportunities for those kinds of interventions. We performed it

(44:18):
for seventy five gold Star families, and then most recently
when COVID shut us down, we turned it into a
film with the same cast that's on Amazon Prime, Google TV,
Apple TV, and Voodoo and it's called Last Out Elegy
of a Green Beret. And it was for me super cathartic,
But I think more importantly, like you're talking about, it

(44:41):
gave this safe space to bring the community together and
inform civilians who had never been around combat on the
impact of modern war on both the warrior and his family,
her family, but also to let veterans in the audience
watch their own life unfold in the safety of the theater.

(45:02):
And then, of course we had counselors in the room
that were standing by, and then we would do a
talk back after every performance and we would hear from
the people in the audience that we would just sit
on the stage with them, and we would hear from
GoldStar family members and Vietnam veterans and Korean War veterans
and post nine to eleven veterans and civilians that owned
the drug store who had no idea this was going on,

(45:23):
and you're watching what is, frankly the ancient ritual of
storytelling with the community, and everybody would be like, wow,
this is so edgy, and I'm thinking, this is not edgy.
This is what we were wired to do. But yeah,
and that's uh, we're getting ready to I've got some
pretty exciting announcements about this. But what I will say
for now is the play is going to be back

(45:45):
on its feet and touring in twenty twenty three.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Tell us where to give more information about that? Where
can people sign up to get information?

Speaker 3 (45:51):
Absolutely if you go to Last outplay dot com. Last
outplay dot com. It's a cool website. It's got all
kinds of information on how you can watch the streaming version.
And even if you watch the streaming version, you still
got to come see it live because there's no substitute
for seeing it live. But watching it streaming is really
cool too. Uh. There's a documentary there on behind the

(46:11):
scenes tour where we went to those sixteen cities. That's
really emotional. It's like thirty minutes. Super cool. You can
get to that. But just go to Last Outplay dot
com because that's where we'll be posting all of our
information on the upcoming tour stops. And but we've got
a partnership with an individual that we haven't announced yet,
but everybody on here knows who it is. And when
I announced it, I think it's going to be really

(46:32):
it's going to really level up the impact of the play,
particularly on the heels of the Afghan collapse. So we're
bringing the play back as a way to heal and
connect around the hard subject of war in the wake
of the Afghan collapse and abandonment.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
That's a perfect segue.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
I I just saw I know your gifted. That was
pure accident, my friend.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
I'll take it though, well, last ten minutes. It's a
great opportunity now that it's going to the book Operation
Pineapple Express, I can't wait. This is going to be
a fascinating rigas this is such a tragic decision. Tell
us something about what motivated you to write the book and
what's it about.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Well, it all started with the involvement, my involvement about
this time last year in the Afghanistan collapse. I had
been retired for almost a decade. But a friend of
mine named Nazam in Afghan, a thirty one year old
Afghan commando, Afghan Special Forces NCO and Afghan US trained

(47:31):
green beret who I had, you know, combat advised in
twenty ten and we had stayed in touch, started reaching
out to me early summer because his special immigrant visa
that he had applied for after a year has still
not come through. And the Taliban we're sending text to
his phone saying we know where you are. We're going
to take you down. And he was hiding in his

(47:51):
uncle's house in cobble like Anne Frank, you know, with
nowhere to go, and as the country was collapsing around him.
So on August fifteenth, the entry fell and he said
to me, he said, Sir, I'm not afraid to die.
I just don't want to die alone. Everybody's gone, you know.
And I reached out to a couple of buddy of
mine on active duty. I didn't know what to do.

(48:12):
I didn't want to get involved in Afghanistan again. Had
we had the film coming out, my Rooftop Leadership Leadership
Company was kicking butt like this was the last thing
I wanted to get involved in that crap show that
was the Afghan campaign. But you know, he was a
friend and there was no other option. So I called
a couple of buddies, a Washington insider, Congressman Mike Waltz,

(48:33):
the Green Beret in Congress, loaned me someone from his
staff to help out. We called it Team Nazam, and
we started working to get him out, and it ended
up that we did. We found a way to get
him out, and it culminated with him giving the call
signed Pineapple to a couple of guards, and that's how

(48:54):
we became Task Force Pineapple. And like many of the
other there were so many groups that were volunteer veterans
who stepped into the fray when the government pulled back
and didn't answer the phone, these different volunteer groups, and
ours was one of them, and we ended up over
several days. I don't know how many got out, We
think somewhere between five hundred and seven hundred with our

(49:15):
volunteers to safety. Nowhere near enough, but it was. It
was one of those experiences that after the bomb went
off on the twenty sixth of August, that it really
affected all of us and we decided to stay with it.
And my commitment to it was I was going to

(49:38):
tell the story. I'm a storyteller, and I was approached
by Simon and Schuster if I would be willing to
tell the story. I decided to write the book in
third person, not first person. So it's not like this
one time at band campus is how Scott saved his
Afghan partner. Like, it's not that book. It is very
much a third I'm the storyteller. I was there, but

(49:59):
I take through the lens of for example, Hassinasafi, the
Minister of Women's Affairs, who was the most wanted woman
in Afghanistan, and her guide, Ambassador Kelly Curry, thousands of
miles away on her cell phone, you know, helping Hassina
move through a sewage canal. And Hassina has a terrible
fear of soldiers from when she was her dad was
hunted by the Soviets when they were refugees, and she's

(50:23):
having to overcome this fear of soldiers and go up
to the eighty second airborne contact that we've established on
the pine Apple Express and be pulled through a four
foot hole in the fence with her family in the middlewild,
and so it's that kind of it's that kind of story.
It reads very much like if you've seen the movie Dunkirk,
you know it reads that way. It's fast, it's hard hitting,

(50:44):
it's hard like. It's the story you haven't heard about
the Afghan collapse from the people who either risked everything
for safety or the Americans who honored the promise and
stood at their shoulder. And it's a much I just
think it's so important because it it's the story that
hasn't been told about this whole thing. It addresses accountability,

(51:04):
it addresses the moral injury, and it addresses what's best
in all of us. So I know that was a
long description, but that's why I wrote it. I wanted
to tell the story that had not been told and
still hasn't really.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
Now it's been pretty much ignored. Yeah, so I'm really
glad you wrote the book. Me too, Yeah, because it
really does. I mean, I know some other individuals I
don't know if you know Ryan Hendrickson, another Green Beret.
He's got great Yeah, he's been heading out there as well,
doing a lot of stuff in Ukraine.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
And I have complained about the media for several years.
It's just the way it works because out of sight,
out of mind in today's world the least, Yeah, and
it's out of mind now in Ukraine's pretty much gone
in most of the news cycles.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
That's how we operate. We're such a distracted society. But
I have to say that our institutional leaders contribute to that.
Our politicians contributes to all, our corporate leaders contribute to that,
and our media contributes to that. But we also allow it,
you know, we also allow ourselves to be distracted. And
there's no reason that as a society we can't demand

(52:14):
accountability and transparency on what happened in Afghanistan, that we
can't demand public hearings by Congress. I mean, we're coming
into a midterm election, for god's sake. This is not
a Republican or a Democrat issue, like this is an
American issue, and so far there isn't a political group
in Congress, Carlos that really wants to see transparency on this.

(52:34):
Nothing else, like what did we learn, you know, so
that our kids don't go through this again, and we don't.
We're getting a really bad reputation of how we treat
our partners, whether it's Vietnam with the Montagnards, Syria with
the Kurds, Afghanistan with our partner forces, like it's becoming

(52:55):
a systemic problem with how we deal with partners in
the world. And I think it's probably safe to say
that we're not going to face the Soviets or China
or even Al Qaeda unilateral. We're gonna work with partners.
And right now, all a partner has to do when
we walk in the office and say how do you
like me so far or in the embassy is to
just raise an eyebrow and go Afghanistan, and everybody knows

(53:20):
what they're talking about, and everybody knows there's no way
in hell they're sticking their jugular out for anything we
ask them to do.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
That's the funny thing we talked about this Scott before
this interview. It's amazing how how much is going on
in Afghanistan because just because it's out of the mind
of the media, there's it's just there's so many implications
for that country. I mean, now, we saw Talaban obviously
growing that we were working with al Kaito over there.

(53:49):
It was somebody who made the comments Zara here he's
just sitting in a tea tea sports store. If it
was you were now, I don't think it was somebody
who said, so here, he's just sitting with it.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
It was a you yeah, standing on the porch, like
he's on the porch drinking too, And everybody's like, all right,
we've got Zawehari. And I'm thinking, okay, great, but what
is he doing standing unmolested on the porch in the
affluent area of Cobble. And this is what when we
as a society, Man, I get fired up on this one.

(54:17):
When we as a society say that we have no
business being in Afghanistan and we have no interest in Afghanistan.
What we are doing is seeding strategic sanctuary to global
terror groups who use that country to rest, refit, plan
and project terror against the United States and the West.

(54:40):
We are seeding ground to them. And we absolutely yes,
the over the horizon strike capability is one way to
deal with it, but it is not anywhere near enough,
as we saw when the ten incent people were killed
prior to that strike in Cobble, and nine to eleven
happened when we were doing over the horizon strike and

(55:00):
we did not get bin Laden. We did not get Zawehiri,
who was a mastermind of this thing. And now in
Afghanistan we have not just al Qaeda, but also isis
K with even more global aspiration. So Carlos, we cannot
seed Afghanistan. It will either it will it will come
back to haunt us, and I fear the way it's

(55:22):
going to do it is in a cataclysmic attack that
is on par or worse than what we saw on
nine eleven.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
And I don't know unless you're familiar with with al Qaeda,
if you're familiar with that world, they don't a lot
of people don't realize how patient they are.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
They're very patient.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
I mean they're talking about eight years to set up
nine to eleven.

Speaker 3 (55:38):
They're very patient, and they're very patient. And they will
they will, they will, they will plan this thing, they
will rehearse this thing, and we are giving them the
sanctuary to do it. And the real crime and this
is what I talk about in the the book. What's
what's to me criminal about this is that we we
took the findings of the nine to eleven Commission that

(56:00):
we did not have a ground network, a ground presence,
a partner network, and so we took those findings, and
our brothers and sisters bled and sacrificed for twenty years
to build an intelligence apparatus, a network, a partner apparatus
of Afghan special Forces and n MRG and KKA that
we're capable of keeping these folks on their heels with

(56:23):
just minimal oversight. And in one twenty four hour period,
we just turned the page and gave it all the way.
And there's been no public hearings on this. There's been
no recourse on this, no accountability. And I don't see
how as a society we can allow that when we
live in the kind of times that we do, and
what's it going to be like when we have another
catastrophic attack that we walk back to that very place

(56:46):
because of this kind of negligence. It's like, that's what
the book really hits hard. And I think that we
as citizens have got to dial.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Into I just hope we never get a bite and
the ass from this one. I don't know how we don't.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
But I don't know how we don't. I really don't.
I don't know how we don't. You know, we already
are just on how people see us as a potential partner,
you know in a granted that's not as kinetic, but
it could be right if we let me ask you this,
like if we acted toward Afghanistan to toward our friends,
our circle of friends, the way we have acted toward

(57:20):
the Syrian Kurds, the Afghan Special Operators, the Vietnam Montagnards.
In other words, whenever things get hard, we're like, yeah, sorry, pal,
I'm out, I can't be here for this, and we
abandoned our friends, like we would be completely isolated, we
wouldn't have anyone having our back. Well, it's no different
and nation states the same way, and we are we are.

(57:41):
We are digging a hole where we're not gonna We're
going to be so isolated that no one's going to
be willing to partner with us when it gets really bad.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
That's interesting you mentioned that because I have noticed COVID
changed the got too much on a tangent, but co
COVID didfinitely definitely starting to change the way the world's operating.
And it's fascinating to watch because we had this huge
push for several two decades where we had this huge
push of globalization and working with other countries and interdependence economically,

(58:13):
and ever since COVID, even a little bit before COVID,
I think it was about four or five years prior
to COVID, it started waning where people started realizing, I
don't know if we want this much of ourselves exposed,
because the more interdependent we become, the more vulnerable we become.
And this is something that really just got exacerbated with COVID.
With and then the rush of Ukraine, we're also exacerbated it.

(58:36):
People started realizing, crap, if we're started getting this interdependent
with everybody else, that's going to be a problem when
we have security threats economic threats, which were both intertwined.
And it's interesting you mentioned that because the isolation component,
it's almost like every country is slowly trying to go
that way in one way or another, right, trying to

(58:56):
become energy and dependent in their own way, trying to
become more like China. We know has blocked out almost
every social media, so has North Korea. You can't get Twitter, Facebook,
nobody can get on in China. They're not going to
get access to that. And it's interesting and now that
you know some other countries now have been in Africa
and South America. They're knocking out Twitter. They don't want

(59:18):
Twitter around during election times. And it's just interesting to
see this. Okay, Kumbayau didn't work out the way we
wanted to a globalization aspect, we have to separate everybody
a little bit more. It's fascinating. I don't know. I
don't know how that's going to play out.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
Yeah, I don't know. I do think that some of
the things you said, like, I'm actually I'm in that camp.
I mean, I think becoming energy independent and the ability
to have agency and autonomy and how we navigate the
world as a nation state. I mean, clearly you know
that that kind of codependency can be extremely dangerous. And
I get it, like and even you know the argument

(59:54):
that we shouldn't have been in Vietnam at a certain point,
but the difference is Vietnam didn't follow us home, right,
These these asymmetric threats, these global terror groups, they have
a mandate, a long living mandate, to visit a level
of destruction on the West that we just can't comprehend.
And then when you add to the mix these emerging powers,

(01:00:14):
these near peer threats like China, North Korea, Russia, I
don't think we have the luxury of just sticking our
head in the sand and saying, you know, we're just
going to isolate and we're going to we're not gonna
deal with this because those are not going away. And
that's almost like a Neville Chamberlain Peace in our Time

(01:00:34):
kind of, you know, just blissful ignorance that's gonna bite us.
And I do think it's even not the kumba Ya.
It's like putting green berets in rough places like Afghanistan
where they can advise commandos to stand up on their own.
It's not one hundred and fifty eighteen year old kids
riding around in armored vehicles in that case. I think
it's a handful of operators in the right places. But

(01:00:57):
right now, Carlos, we've surrendered all of that, like we
are not We are not projecting the level of influence
in these rough places that we should be. And I
think that the potential partners that we have look at
us with a jaundiced eye right now. They don't look
at us with a level of trust and that level

(01:01:19):
of isolation, it seems to me, in a world where
there are so many threats, including the threats from within
in our own country, our division, our lack of trust.
It's not a good play. You know, Isolation in that
sense seems to go too far. And you know better
than me what when you over index on isolation, what
that can do?

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
You know, I'm gonna from my end, I'll wrap up
on this. Of course, we have any for our words,
and we're welcome to share those, But my end, I'm
going to say, just folks, if you're going to get information,
don't get it from the mainstream media. Honestly, it's going
to be slanted one way or another. It doesn't matter
which way, it doesn't matter which media you use. I
recommend you use multiple sources, qualified sources, boots on the

(01:01:58):
ground type of information, very helpful, as well as commanders,
hopefully none affiliated with any of the administrations, because anytime
you do that, that changes the ballgame as well. So
you want to get people who are retired again, just
be really selective on who you read, and read both
sides to get a more comprehensive book, because it's I'll
tell you it's it's much more complicated and it's being presented.

(01:02:20):
It's not so simple as we shouldn't be there, we
should be there, or we should do this, or we
shouldn't do that. It's I mean, it's all interconnected in
a huge way geopolitically. Pakistan gets involved, I mean it
just and then if you piss off Pakistan, you're gonna
have issues with India, and India and China they're going
to have Oh well, we'll team up with Pakistan. If
you're gone, you're pissed off with us, and it becomes

(01:02:41):
this huge cascade of issues and a big spider web
and mess.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
We talked a lot, a lot of stuff today. I'll
let you wrap up the final words.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
Look, I do want to just add one thing to
what you said, and then I'll just go ahead and
pivot into a into a close because I know absolutely
we need to we need to move on. But I
would just say there's a there's a wonderful book by
Sebastian Younger called Tribe and it's it's subtitle is on
Homecoming and Belonging, and it really it talks about the
effects of war on community. It talks about what we

(01:03:12):
talked about earlier, how communities come together in hard times,
and it talks about what's happening in our country at
a communal level. And one of the things that that
Younger says is that you know, veterans really as the
kind of the moral compass of our nation. They really
struggle to come home. And the reason that they struggle

(01:03:33):
to come home from war is because it's hard to
know how to live in a society that's tearing itself apart.
You know, dying through your country is one thing, but
living for it is a completely different thing when everyone
around you that you fought for is bashing each other
over the head with an axe handle, over masks or
no masks, vaccines, this party versus that party. It's so

(01:03:58):
tribal and so primal. It's very thing that we fought
to keep away from our civil society because we know
how it ends. We've seen how it ends in these
rough places. And one of the things that Younger cautions
us about is that we are speaking of our neighbor
with the same levels of contempt that we normally reserve
for our enemies, and that you know, any conversations that

(01:04:22):
involve contempt, you're not going to be with that person
very long. Like it's going to end bad. And so
I just I throw it out there to kind of
reinforce what you said, is that really doing the things
you just suggested and staying away from that rigid ideological thinking,
because it's the fastest way to find yourself in a
fear based trance where you are in that primal state

(01:04:47):
of in and out group behavior, and it takes us
down the wrong road. And what I believe with Pineapple
was that we saw in that fleeting moment when everything
fell apart and upswing in behavior where veterans and other
volunteers saw that nobody else was coming, they stepped into
the breach and they said, I'll lead, I'll do it,

(01:05:08):
even though they knew it was an Uncle Sam problem
size problem that they were trying to solve with their checkbook.
But the point is that they stepped in and they led,
and they worried less about the issue and more about
how they treated each other around that issue. And I
just think as a nation, if we could get back
to that is we could just tone it down a
little bit on the issue and just focus on how

(01:05:30):
we're treating each other as we discussed the issue, because
that's what's going to take us out. So it's just
been a real honor to be on with you, Carlos.
I love what you do and how you pull this
stuff apart. Thank you for honoring our special ops and
first responder community. And it's just it's very humbling to
be on here with you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Thank you very much. Scott likewise, his feelings the same,
and we could be here four hours easily.

Speaker 3 (01:05:53):
Yeah. Same.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
It's amazing. We really did hit it off, and I
really appreciate you again your commitment to Green Deray Is
and what you're doing for those individuals who are coming back.

Speaker 3 (01:06:02):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
I've talked to countries, other countries and sometimes I'm appalled
about how will they do? Yeah, so I'm honored at
we at least have that we do.

Speaker 3 (01:06:13):
We have a lot. Actually we have a lot, and
I think if you can just step back and take
a breath, we have a lot. There's a lot worth
fighting for, and we have a lot more in common
than we do a part. I just we need leaders
without titles to point that out at a community level.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
Operation Pineapple Express Everybody the incredible story of a group
of Americans who undertook one last mission and honored a
promise in Afghanistan. Prior your book. Now, by the way,
go to last one play.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
Last outplay dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Last outplay dot com. Thank you Last outplay dot Com.
Check that out as well. If you know any friends
are in the military or fear yourself from the military,
this might be a great podcast to share with them. Hey,
you can't even get a book Operation Pineapple Express for
them as well. Thank you Scott, Thank you everyone for listening. Hey,
you know what to do. Make sure to share, subscribe,
hit that I like, but go get Operation Pineapple Express.