As an Infantryman with two combat tours, I can unequivocally say that you can teach a man to kill, but not everyone can kill a man when given the chance. The NCOs in my platoon in OP. Just Cause we’re about 60/40 on freezing up and not performing. These were great garrison soldiers, but terrible combat soldiers. They were terrified to die, so much so that they stopped leading soldiers and caused lower enlisted to take over. They abandoned their posts and men. In Op Desert Storm, our LT. got my platoon together, told us he was scared and would be behind us during the assault. Cowardice trumped his training, Oath and responsibility to his soldiers. You can teach killing, but you only find out who has the will to kill when it’s time to return fire. My humble opinion.
Thanks for the insight, it's very interesting to hear. Apparently in ww1 the British high command were horrified to discover that 9 out of 10 soldiers did not shoot to kill or even aim at their target. Killing a human being is actually not very natural. In the hunter gatherer societies conflicts would cause death but rarely immediately, death would come from infection after the conflict with sides disengaging from the conflict because real casualties started. The Romans were extremely war like but even they understood that battle was extremely stressful because to kill you are putting yourself in danger of death, even if your adversary is unarmed there is always a chance that they may be able to kill you as well so it makes sense that many simply would choose to not kill given the chance. Also societal bonds are very important to humans so killing each other has been very taboo for a very long time which factors into this behaviour.
@@BlacksmithBets same in vietnam war , the young guys would not shoot at the enemy. It's a problem but once you see your guys getting hit left and right generally that mentality change for MOST of them.
While the LT would be mid Platoon during a patrol, he is supposed to lead from the front. Meaning figuratively, instead, he tells us he’s scared and will hide in back of us. Unacceptable.
This conversation reminds of a quote by GK Chesterton who said, “A true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” The greatest ethic is indeed love. Gentlemen, thank you all for your service to this great nation of ours and may God bless you and your families!
Without a respect for the leadership or the reasons why based on history, logic, and critical thinking, not sure why anyone would want to be facing the howls of war or special ops position for some ghoul like Brandon or that mtf "man" pretending to be a woman with huge man hands and ferocious eyes Pelosi? Why, why, imo, that's not courage or bravery, that's just sheep like reaction. Let the misleader earn respect based on open fair elections, not third world vote stuffing and mail in rigged counts, seeming irregularities in "computer software" and leaders promoting Austrian School of economics and Lockean freedom and strict Constitutional principles. Otherwise, why would anyone go into combat for beady eye Marxist tyrant, Constitutional trampling Brandon and the botox lizard man mtf Pelosi. Play Call of Duty instead as a video game or Ghost recon, but Brandon objectively only merits the Fighter Pilot salute, the proverbial middle finger for trampling the Constitution.
Without a respect for the leadership or the reasons why based on history, logic, and critical thinking, not sure why anyone would want to be facing the howls of war or special ops position for some ghoul like Brandon or that mtf "man" pretending to be a woman with huge man hands and ferocious eyes Pelosi? Why, why, imo, that's not courage or bravery, that's just sheep-like reaction. Let the misleader earn respect based on open fair elections, not third-world vote stuffing and mail-in rigged counts, seeming irregularities in "computer software" and leaders promoting Austrian School of economics and Lockean freedom and strict Constitutional principles. Otherwise, why would anyone go into combat for beady eye Marxist tyrant, Constitutional trampling Brandon and the botox lizard man mtf Pelosi. Play Call of Duty instead as a video game or Ghost recon, but Brandon objectively only merits the Fighter Pilot salute, the proverbial middle finger for trampling the Constitution.
The volunteer soldier is essential to the American way of war. To give up the expectation of one's life to achieve a greater, ostensibly humanitarian, objective. A conscript is forced to risk their life, they are hostages and captives of their ruler. Americans idealy do not have rulers and never ought to, they grant figures of the public and volunteer military positions of authority to carry out American ideals at home and abroad. The American soldier does not require a will to kill, nor the stocism to die, only do what is rightmost given the knowledge and resources at hand. When an American soldier fights, their goal is not to kill, but disable the enemy's capacity to fight, they put their lives and honor on the line to stop an enemy force and its soldiers from continuing the fight. A soldier is a weapons platform and guidance system encoded, programmed, with a fighting ethic. US soldiers, the most successful, and I rate success not by medals, or ranks, or victories on paper passed across a desk, those who are successful in our eyes are the ones that most exemplify the Moral Fighting Ethic. Death happens as a necessary consequence of war and breakdown of politics that leads to armed conflict. But we do not seek out Death as a desirable end, Life is what we seek in war, for ourselves and our enemies, even as we hurl death at each other across that abyssal gulf of the killing field. Our bullets are labelled, "To Whom it May Concern, My Condolences".
I was just a low level Infantry soldier that hardly saw any action, but I had no worries about killing or death. It was all about protecting the guy next to me. Sure, I didn't want no part of either, but I had no fear of stepping up to the task if necessary.
That's the mentality that all of us troops should have. I always tell ppl the ultimate God complex is having the control over someone's life and death at the 10lb trigger squeeze. But, we do it for the right reasons instead of the wrong ones.
@@joshua4625 What? No, this is terrible. If you're in the orange all the time you'll be dead by 45. You need to learn to flip that switch on and off whenever it's necessary.
I’m so proud of my service. You hit the nail on the head when you said we protected children. To tell you the truth the things I can’t shake involve what those monsters did to kids.
The volunteer soldier is essential to the American way of war. To give up the expectation of one's life to achieve a greater, ostensibly humanitarian, objective. A conscript is forced to risk their life, they are hostages and captives of their ruler. Americans idealy do not have rulers and never ought to, they grant figures of the public and volunteer military positions of authority to carry out American ideals at home and abroad. The American soldier does not require a will to kill, nor the stocism to die, only do what is rightmost given the knowledge and resources at hand. When an American soldier fights, their goal is not to kill, but disable the enemy's capacity to fight, they put their lives and honor on the line to stop an enemy force and its soldiers from continuing the fight. A soldier is a weapons platform and guidance system encoded, programmed, with a fighting ethic. US soldiers, the most successful, and I rate success not by medals, or ranks, or victories on paper passed across a desk, those who are successful in our eyes are the ones that most exemplify the Moral Fighting Ethic. Death happens as a necessary consequence of war and breakdown of politics that leads to armed conflict. But we do not seek out Death as a desirable end, Life is what we seek in war, for ourselves and our enemies, even as we hurl death at each other across that abyssal gulf of the killing field. Our bullets are labelled, "To Whom it May Concern, My Condolences".
@Cole i think the LE apparatus is in criminal breach of the laws and our rights, but I don't hate cops and thinblueliners even though I think they're evil by way of delinquency- he doesn't like the shitboxes our soldiers get tossed into for the sake of less-than-American geopolitics, as do i I mean, yeah, they do good, they do Amazing, with the situation we, as the People, have put them in, that doesn't make the situation good tho.
As a combat veteran during active duty my job was to kill enemies. And we trained proficiently on the tools given to us and we are always ready to die, get hurt or live in every firefight. There is no philosophy except Soldiers Creed, Infantrymans creed and bring the fight and to the kill the enemy.
@@danielpickrell8311 so long as you keep the Oath, you can color the idealism how you like, I won't dictate how you keep the faith and promise of the Republic, only that you keep it.
Wasn't there an observation during WW1 that soldiers mostly shot next to people to avoid hitting them? I thought that right after most military facilities decided to train away the threshold to kill.
One thing to remember about ww1 is though is the draft. There were thousands of people who didnt want to be there. Now we not drafting its a total volunteer military so the mindset is different too.
It was after that study that the military began using man shaped targets instead of round "sporting" targets. And really began focusing on the psychological reasons why soldiers were intentionally missing their targets or just not firing at all. I could be wrong but, I think it was also after this that they began the "battle buddy" stuff to get the soldiers to bond more effectively prior to engaging the enemy. We all know that the guys you bleed with become as close, sometimes closer than family, who wouldn't kill for their family. People always are throwing out that tired line "I would die for my kids!", Ok Karen, but would you kill for them? If they were starving and the only way to get to food is through another human, could you do it. When you are out into life or death situations ALONE you will behave one way. But when you have someone that you value wether that's your child, or your team mate, with you you behave differently. That same study showed that heavy machine gun teams, I think 3 guys to a team. They would engage the enemy more often than the individual soldier did. Just my take on it.
Id love to come on your podcast and give a ‘civilian’ perspective. Been a cop for 27 years and SWAT for 23 of the 27 years. Fantastic job as always. We just talked about this topic (killing, etc) the other day. At training. Keep up the god work
I could listen to that man say because I'm highly trained daily. The conviction in his voice I love it. I love that type of confidence!!! 1:11 your welcome
The book On Killing from David Grossman go's into great depth about the mindset and why so few people actually kill/able to kill or even shoot people in general going back to the musket times. If i remember correctly this book is also required reading at Westpoint and some other military places.
Without a respect for the leadership or the reasons why based on history, logic, and critical thinking, not sure why anyone would want to be facing the howls of war or special ops position for some ghoul-like Brandon or that mtf "man" pretending to be a woman with huge man hands and ferocious eyes Pelosi? Why, why, imo, that's not courage or bravery, that's just sheep-like reaction. Let the misleader earn respect based on open fair elections, not third-world vote stuffing and mail-in rigged counts, seeming irregularities in "computer software" and leaders promoting Austrian School of economics and Lockean freedom and strict Constitutional principles. Otherwise, why would anyone go into combat for beady eye Marxist tyrant, Constitutional trampling Brandon and the botox lizard man mtf Pelosi. Play Call of Duty instead as a video game or Ghost recon, but Brandon objectively only merits the Fighter Pilot salute, the proverbial middle finger for trampling the Constitution.
I cannot imagine seeing men strapped with explosives using children as shields. Makes my stomach touch my ears just to think about seeing it. Thank you for your service. 😔🙏🏼🇺🇸
One of the greatest and deepest conversations that's ever been had on this podcast and people miss it completely bc of a joke. As Kennedy said: different side of humanity.
Pretty interesting thing I read from the first few chapters of On Killing by Grossman was how so many soldiers (throughout several wars not just US wars) intentionally shot over others’ heads to NOT kill the other soldiers. It’s hard, or WAS hard with older style training, how to train people to kill other people.
It's always hard. That didn't change. What did change is that we've become desensitized due to the enormous amount of violence in movies and even on TV. War is the worst any human can do to another. There's never a good reason for war.
I heard that same thing. Also during the civil war they found muskets that the barrel was completely filled with wading and musket balls because they were fakeing shooting. They also started making targets in human form instead of round to instill shooting at humans. It's really not hard to understand,a person is told not to kill and killing is wrong their whole life ,for 18 years they are told this then they get 8 weeks of training to try to break that out of their consciousness.
Echo Is a way for jocko to see different points of views from a civilian perspective that he may not think of and I think we should all respect that for the reason he is trying to find a perspective that everyone can understand at least a lil bit and hopefully find common ground on
Seems like they are the new generation of spartan soldiers when it comes to their hard trainings and experiences in war. Damn they are great! You are lucky to have those kind of guys in your country.
People may hate on us for what we do in places outside our own. But the narrative has shifted How we do things outside our own country Makes the difference It's warriors like these men here That inspire that change
Lt. Col Dave Grossman's books "On Combat" and "On Killing" are excellent references on the methods that are used to break down that humanity in service to be able to kill the "enemy", and the ramifications of those methodologies beimg used here at home :( Amazing books.
But those training methods don't break down your humanity, it creates an interruptor switch that taps the fight/flight reflex and allows a soldier to react to a threat faster. You're letting the limbic system respond with a greater degree of flexibility to a fighting environment. Same thing happens in martial arts, the mind might strategize about the fight or take high-order planning between sets of strikes, but a trained fighter is letting their body do most of the heavy lifting while in the thick of it. Practicing murder and rapine is how you break down humanity and make a combatant willing to kill. That's what other forces do. ED: Grossman's major complaint about video games is that they utilize this interruptor switch training without the context of military discipline. The brain is conditioned for kill-seeking behavior and point-getting with no ethical or heirarchical framework underpinning it.
Jocko trained Echo in BBJ and earned his black belt from Jocko. Tim is a black belt in BBJ UFC fighter and a Green Beret Sniper so I would say Tim is more highly trained person not taking anything away from Echo but pump your breaks.
All you need is the right motivation. I was teaching an edged weapons self-defense class. A woman was invited but said "I could never stab someone". I asked her if she had a knife in her hand and someone was trying to rape her daughter would she use the knife to stop the attack. She realized at that moment she could stab someone. I think that touches on Mr. Kennedy's point about needing to know beauty to understand ugly.
I’m a FMF Corpsman. Stuck in a hotel room on a dive trip in the Philippines. I saw a documentary on Aquino and his death at the airport. One of the politicians interviewed stated that the military surrounded him. He stated “ Remember that soldiers are all trained to kill ! “ I was gobsmacked by that comment. Though FMF HM’s don’t go to SOI , but the Corps teaches us restrained bloodlust. The operative word , restraint.
Without a respect for the leadership or the reasons why based on history, logic, and critical thinking, not sure why anyone would want to be facing the howls of war or special ops position for some ghoul like Brandon or that mtf "man" pretending to be a woman with huge man hands and ferocious eyes Pelosi? Why, why, imo, that's not courage or bravery, that's just sheep like reaction. Let the misleader earn respect based on open fair elections, not third world vote stuffing and mail in rigged counts, seeming irregularities in "computer software" and leaders promoting Austrian School of economics and Lockean freedom and strict Constitutional principles. Otherwise, why would anyone go into combat for beady eye Marxist tyrant, Constitutional trampling Brandon and the botox lizard man mtf Pelosi. Play Call of Duty instead as a video game or Ghost recon, but Brandon objectively only merits the Fighter Pilot salute, the proverbial middle finger for trampling the Constitution.
Without a respect for the leadership or the reasons why based on history, logic, and critical thinking, not sure why anyone would want to be facing the howls of war or special ops position for some ghoul like Brandon or that mtf "man" pretending to be a woman with huge man hands and ferocious eyes Pelosi? Why, why, imo, that's not courage or bravery, that's just sheep like reaction. Let the misleader earn respect based on open fair elections, not third world vote stuffing and mail in rigged counts, seeming irregularities in "computer software" and leaders promoting Austrian School of economics and Lockean freedom and strict Constitutional principles. Otherwise, why would anyone go into combat for beady eye Marxist tyrant, Constitutional trampling Brandon and the botox lizard man mtf Pelosi. Play Call of Duty instead as a video game or Ghost recon, but Brandon objectively only merits the Fighter Pilot salute, the proverbial middle finger for trampling the Constitution.
Want to say thank you. I was a tech but I understand to a point what you guys talk about. the comments i see from people are miss informed . i appericate the podcast.
Hey Jocko, anyway you could do a reaction to the “first Medal of Honor captured on video”? And go through in your words what was happening during the video? Just a thought. Keep up the good work.
Jocko wouldn’t do that because the seals and Air Force had a big fight about that one. The seals tried to block John Chapman’s medals of honor. Brit slabinski basically lied straight up about what happened. Anyways yeah jocko isn’t going to touch tht one.
The only disagreement I have with Tim’s assessment is the idea that enemy combatants are “not the same humans”. Like it or lump it enemies are just as human as we are. Careful not to dehumanize your enemies as that is how atrocities occur. Warfare is not all killing and dying. Not all enemies will die and not all enemies will stay enemies. To his earlier point though, there is a relation to your enemy as a human being that must be put in broader perspective. Life is not all war nor all peace. It’s not completely good and it’s not completely evil, and because of this universal reality, in order to maintain that balance, evil must be addressed aggressively and as a result people parish. In the law we like to use the “But-for Rule”, meaning that but-for the existence of X, Y would not have occurred. When in the execution of war, unfortunate circumstances will occur, whether there were mistakes made or not, however it’s best to look at the X, and understand that but-for whatever the cause may have been, these things wouldn’t have happened, because you can be a man of war and still respect human life.
He's speaking specifically about the people that will hide behind their own children or put a bomb on their child and send them to enemy lines and detonate the bomb, not all enemy combatants. He didn't say they weren't human, only that they weren't the same type of human. Some might argue that the acceptance of tactics such as using children as living bombs is an atrocity. I think that they are talking about exactly what you are saying, they are men of war who respect human life and love people. That's why they do what they do.
Yes. Echo is highly trained. And I love Echo. My boss always made fun of me when I went to martial arts training. He said “I bet you can’t stop my bullet”. No. I cannot.
I believe whenever you join the military (any branch) you have to accept the facts that you can die and that you will see and do some crazy shit that the majority of people will never do in their lives. I know what helped me get through the fear of dying was I accepting the following outcomes. 1.) Death is a natural part of life. 2.) If you die as a civilian nobody will know or care for your existence but if you die in the military you will be remembered forever. 3.) If I die I want my life to mean something. (Fight for a cause greater than myself.) That helped me. On the killing side well any animal will fight for its life if pinned up in a corner or if its life is threatened. My mind overall in the military (U.S Navy) was I’m going to do whatever it takes to survive and get home safely no matter the cost. Luckily I don’t have to do it anymore but I do have a greater appreciation for life and my views of the world are different because of it.
Without a respect for the leadership or the reasons why based on history, logic, and critical thinking, not sure why anyone would want to be facing the howls of war or special ops position for some ghoul like Brandon or that mtf "man" pretending to be a woman with huge man hands and ferocious eyes Pelosi? Why, why, imo, that's not courage or bravery, that's just sheep like reaction. Let the misleader earn respect based on open fair elections, not third world vote stuffing and mail in rigged counts, seeming irregularities in "computer software" and leaders promoting Austrian School of economics and Lockean freedom and strict Constitutional principles. Otherwise, why would anyone go into combat for beady eye Marxist tyrant, Constitutional trampling Brandon and the botox lizard man mtf Pelosi. Play Call of Duty instead as a video game or Ghost recon, but Brandon objectively only merits the Fighter Pilot salute, the proverbial middle finger for trampling the Constitution.
People dont consider the effects things like these have on the officers. Like he said, "This isnt Afghanistan, i live just a few miles away". This isnt combat, combat can already be very traumatic to some people, but even for seasoned veterans, home isnt warfare... its not black and white. I encountered combat seasoned veterans when i was working search and rescue/recovery operations in my home town after one of the worst natural disasters in US history, and those veterans struggled just as much as i did. 10 years and its still unresolved for me, and i know some of those veterans i worked with still struggle as i do with the images burned in our minds of the families and children we were too late to save... granted, a natural disaster and having to take a life are two very different things. But if ive seen soldiers struggle with what i struggled with, it has to be so much more severe when youre the person forced to take the life. We all probably say the same "if its me or him, im taking them out in defense", which is rightfully protective, but there will be an emotional toll on the survivors, including our family members if we ever have to protect them. That's why I love this channel, similar to Joe Rogan, you show life isnt black and white, and that nuance is of tantamount importance.
Except for preplanned direct action targets; engagement is autonomous. Direct options are autonomous after initiation. Initiation is autonomous as one knows you are saving lived. I humbly offer. With respect
It's not about the will to kill or die. It's about the will to do what has to be done, and to bear the cost of doing so, whatever that may be. You just pray that you can keep your humanity, and look St Peter in the eye with a clean conscience when your time comes.
My once a Marine, always a Marine, always enjoys your podcasts. I'm a 'combat veteran' myself, from Desert Storm, back in the day, and my answer is 'go Navy'. But, any vet will tell you that war is hell, plain and simple. I tell all of my fellow vets 'welcome home and welcome back', even if it's been such a long time.
