438: How We Can Learn From People We Don't Like or Agree With.

Jocko Willink

This is Jocko, podcast number 438 with Echo, Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. David Hackworth, Colonel, US army, retired, the most decorated american veteran of the Vietnam War, writing in Newsweek, April 24, 1995, quoted a fellow veteran as saying when he first heard of the book, he, quote, felt a sense of rage beginning to well up deep inside me, a rage I have worked hard to suppress over the last 25 years, end quote. But Hackworth ended his article with these words.

McNamara's book is an important step toward understanding what happened, and it may help some of the walking wounded to move further along the healing path of forgiveness, and that's good for America's collective soul. So that right there, that's a quote from, what is it called, the new forward, the additional, the updated forward, for a book that is called in Retrospect, which is written by Robert S. McNamara. So the original book came out in 1991, and that book was reviewed clearly by David Hackworth. And then in this new version of the book, which came out in 1995, McNamara quotes what Hackworth had said.

Now, as you may know, I'm not a fan of McNamara, who was John F. Kennedy's and then Lennon B. Johnson's secretary of defense. And there's a whole slew of reasons why I've never liked him and in fact, why I have always pretty much despised him. There's a bunch of reasons.

He always seemed arrogant. He seemed like a know it all. And more important than any of that, he sent tens of thousands of men, including mentally disabled men, which we covered on podcast 315 talking about project 100,000, where they lowered the standards in a physical and mental areas to allow more people to go into the military, including people that were mentally disabled. And McNamara had a huge part in that. And he sent thousands of these, tens of thousands of these men to their deaths in the Vietnam War.

And he is the secretary of defense. And so he's responsible for how the war is being fought, how it was escalated. And that's hand in hand with Lyndon Johnson, who I also dislike immensely for a bunch of reasons, primarily based on his leadership of the war in Vietnam, also based on who he was as a person. So I'm not a big fan of Johnson, not a big fan of McNamara. But in talking with Robert F.

Kennedy Junior a few weeks ago, maybe a month, month and a half ago, he actually knew McNamara. And Robert F. Kennedy Junior is a very critical person. And he knew McNamara and saw him carry out his duties as Secdef and RFK Junior.

He painted a better picture of McNamara than I ever had. So I've had his book for a long time. In retrospect, I've read chunks of it in the past, but I realized I have a very closed mind and I needed to open my mind up and try and figure out what I can learn from McNamara. And that quote from Hackworth in the beginning always intrigued me a bit because if you've got Hackworth, and we all know Hackworth's attitude, if he's saying, hey, there's lessons to be learned and maybe it can prevent us from making mistakes, then I thought it was at least exploring what those lessons are. And as I went through the book, in the end of the book, it actually goes through these eleven lessons to be learned.

And I found that many of them are very applicable not just to government, not just a war policy, but to life in general. So I'm gonna not cover this whole book, I'm not gonna cover the whole war. I'm not gonna cover the intricacies of the war and every single failure of the administration. But I do want to cover some of the highlights of the war, of the escalation of the war. And I'm gonna use, there's a lot of this book, not a lot, but there's a decent amount of this book is actually quotes from people and quotes from documentation inside the administration just to give us a feel for how this unfolded so that when we get to the eleven lessons that he addresses at the end of the book, which we'll go through, we can relate them not only to the Vietnam War, but also we can see how they fit into the context of everything that we do.

So before I do jump into the book, just to give you some background on McNamara, Robert S. McNamara, his middle name is Strange, by the way, which is interesting, I guess it's a family name. Robert S. McNamara, middle name is Strange. Born in 1916 in San Francisco, California, went to Berkeley, went to Harvard.

He ends up in the Army Air Force during World War Two, but he ends up as an individual that's teaching analytics to officers. He's not, he's not a combat soldier, he's not a combat airman, but he does his job. He does what the nation wanted to do, which was help them with their analytics. That's where they needed help and that's what he did. So salute.

After the war he went to Ford, Ford Motor Company, and there he made a name for himself, the whiz kids. This group of smart individuals. They used data and statistics and analytics to help Ford, which had been in a slump financially help them become profitable again. You know, it reminds me nowadays, you know, you get all the data mining that's happening with, with, on the Internet, with social media and Google and all these things. It's all about data, data, data.

And he, you know, these guys were the first people to start looking at the data and making decisions based on the data. And this is one of those things which I've talked about before. That's good. But you cannot just rely solely on the data. And those are one of the many mistakes made in Vietnam was a guy that is always making decisions based on data, and by the way, has been very successful making decisions based on data.

And now all of a sudden you're trying to make decisions in a war where you have to put other variables into the calculus, not just the data. So he's doing that at Ford. He actually becomes president of Ford. And then after he's president of Ford for a short period of time, Kennedy pulls him away to be sec deaf. We end up with a bay of pigs.

We end up with a cuban missile crisis. And of course, then we end up in Vietnam. We know about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which is detailed in the book. The book, actually, quite frankly, is a very good book. It's always interesting to hear what was happening from a leadership dynamic inside an administration.

And this book absolutely does that. And it does talks about the Gulf of Tonkin. It talks about the escalation of the war. It talks about the Bay of Pigs and the cuban missile crisis, talks about those things. But it talks about the escalation.

It talks about the doubt and the instability. It talks about the corruption of the south vietnamese government and the south vietnamese military. And we know about those things. We know about the micromanagement from our, from our military and civilian leadership that was happening. We've all heard about Washington, DC, picking the targets that they're going to bomb in Vietnam, however many miles away, 7000 miles away or whatever.

Oh yeah, here's the target we want you to hit tonight because we know better than you. So we know these things. We know these things. And look, at some point, I'm sure I will go into detail, but every one of those topics that I just talked about is probably two or three four hour podcasts. So what I wanted to get to is some of these lessons learned.

I'm not going to cover everything, but I do want to give you, like I said, the quotes of quotes, things that were actually written, things that were actually said, things that were actually discussed and documented at the highest level of our country, of the administration about the Vietnam War. And then we'll get to the lessons learned. But to set the stage, we will kick it off here. And again, a lot of these are just quotes of things that are being said. March 26, 1964.

So Kennedy's already dead. We got LBJ in charge. The. And this is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, William Fulbright. He says this.

It seems clear that only two realistic options are open to us in the immediate future. The expansion of the conflict in one way or another, or a renewed effort to bolster the capacity of the South Vietnamese to prosecute the war successfully on its present scale. The matter calls for thorough examination by responsible officials in the executive branch. And until they have had an opportunity to evaluate the contingencies and feasibility of the options open to us, it seems that we have no choice but to support the south vietnamese government and army by the most effective means available. Whatever specific policy decisions are made, it should be clear to all concerned that the United States will continue to meet its obligations and fulfill its commitments with respect to Vietnam.

So from the beginning, we see that this is going to be complex. We see that there's multiple different options, and we also kind of out of the gate are saying, look, we got to do something. We got to be there for them. So out of the gate there's questions and more questions. And this thing escalated quickly, and this very quickly became a topic.

And April 24, 1964, a Pentagon news conference. And there's a reporter. Here's the exchange that happens between McNamara and a reporter. Reporter says, mister Secretary, Senator Morse has been calling this McNamara's war. What is your response to this?

And his response is, this is a war of the United States government. I am following the president's policy and obviously acting in close cooperation with the secretary of state, which is Dean Rusk. At this time. I must say, I don't object to it being called McNamara's war. I think it is a very important war, and I am pleased to be identified with it and do whatever I can to win it.

So out of the gate, he's kind of grabbed onto this thing. You could see him avoiding it a little bit at first, right? This is the war of the United States government and it's the president's policy. But then in the end, he probably recognized, hey, I need to take ownership of this thing. So, hey, I think this is an important war.

I don't object. Without being called McNamara's war. He does say in this book, he says, what I was attempting to say was that I felt a responsibility to do everything I possibly could to protect the nation's interests in what had become a significant conflict. And by the way, 64, it really hadn't become a significant conflict yet. It was significant, but it wasn't escalated to the point where it very quickly escalated to fast forward a little bit.

And now. Now we start getting into the real obvious issues. On May 15, 1964, the CIA submitted an assessment on Vietnam to the president. And here we go. This is 1964.

The overall situation in South Vietnam remains extremely fragile. Although there has been some improvement in South Vietnam's military performance, sustained Viet Cong pressure continues to erode the government's authority throughout the country, undercut us and vietnamese programs, and depress south vietnamese morale. We do not see any signs that these trends are yet bottoming out. If the tide of deterioration has not been arrested by the end of the year, the anti communist position in South Vietnam is likely to become untenable.

That's 1964, and the CIA is already saying, like, hey, the situation is bad. And it. We haven't seen the bottom yet. It hasn't bottomed out. And he's got that in quotes.

So I'm sure there's people saying, look, this will bottom out. These are just some pushback. We'll get through this. No, actually, we won't. And he says, if it doesn't change the anti communist position, which was our position, by the way, in South Vietnam, is going to be untenable, we're not gonna be able to.

It's not gonna work. This is 1964. This is being reported.

Now there's. Fast forward a little bit. December 1, 1964. There's a working group. They're called the working group, and some of the people in it are assistant secretary of State William Bundy, Vice Admiral Lloyd M.

Austin, senior operation officer of the Joint Chiefs Harold Ford, senior China AsiA officer at CIA John McNaughton, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. So this is a. These are heavy hitters, and they put together this report, and they say this again, this is 1964. End of 1964. We cannot guarantee to maintain a non communist South Vietnam short of committing ourselves to whatever degree of military action would be required to defeat North Vietnam, Vietnam, and probably communist China militarily.

Do you hear what I'm saying? We need to commit ourselves to whatever degree. This is a total unknown. Whatever it would take from a military perspective, not only to defeat North Vietnam, but probably China as well, it continues on. Such a commitment would involve high risks of a major conflict in Asia which could not be confined to air and naval action, but would almost inevitably involve a korean scale ground action and possibly even the use of nuclear weapons at some point.

This is 1964, so this is like, you know, you're. You're gonna go into a. Into a haunted house, and they're like, hey, there's people with chainsaws in there. For real. You're not gonna get out of this unscathed.

And by the way, if you make it past the chainsaws, there's people with machine guns. Like, this is gonna be bad. And by the way, you might have to go against all this. A whole other neighborhood of haunted houses. That's how bad this is gonna be.

So these are the kind of. This is the kind of information that was making it to the White House. And it's so weird. You know, we talk about. Talk about decision making, and one of the things that I talk about at the muster is when you.

I go through that extreme ownership leadership loop, and part of it is like, okay, what. How much is this, my emotions? What are my emotions playing into this? How much is my ego playing into this? And then on top of that, when we talk about the Ooda loop, we talk about, what are the sources of information that I'm receiving and how accurate are those sources of information, and then what are my biases and what are my natural instincts?

Because we have to go and fight our biases and fight our natural instincts because they're there. And if you don't watch out for them, if you've got a. If you've got a natural instinct for war, everything looks like we should go to war. If you've got a natural instinct for peace, well, we shouldn't do anything. So you got to understand what your own natural instinct is, and then you've got to lean in the other direction to make sure you're getting a balanced approach.

But these are, when you have this strong statements, these strong types of statements that are coming in, they've got. You've got to weigh those things heavily. But. And this is the thing I talk about at the muster. We get information, and we just deny it.

Yeah, that's how you fail. You fail. When you deny the feedback loop, when you deny a feedback loop and you don't pay attention to feedback, that's when you. That's when you get crushed because you're getting feedback, you're getting information, you're getting data, and you go, yeah, that data is not right. Oh, wait a second.

The people that are on the ground, the CIA that's there intermingled with the South Vietnamese that are gathering intelligence, that have spies. They're telling me this stuff, and I'm like, you know, I don't think it'll be that bad.

We have to be careful for that. Careful of that. All right, fast forward a little bit. Now we're going. A few months later, early January 1965, Max Taylor, he's a Vietnam advisor.

These guys are in Vietnam and coming back and placing reports. So these guys have been on the ground.

He says this. We are faced here with a seriously deteriorating situation characterized by continual political turmoil, irresponsibility and division within the armed forces, lethargy in the pacification program, and some anti us feeling which could grow signs of mounting terrorism by VC directly at us personnel, and deepening discouragement and loss of morale throughout the South Vietnam. Unless these conditions are somehow changed, we are likely soon to face installation of a hostile government, which will ask us to leave while it seeks accommodation with the national Liberation Front, which is the Viet Cong's political win wing, and Hanoi. There is a comparatively short time fuse in this situation.

It's really difficult to paint a worse picture than these statements that I'm reading. That's one of the reasons I wanted to read them. Cause when you read the book, you're like, how, you know when you're watching a horror movie and the person's. They hear noise and screams down in the cellar, the dark cellar, and the lights aren't working, but luckily there's a candle nearby. So they pick up the candle and they're walking into the cellar and there's chainsaws down there and people are screaming and they're just light the candle and walk on down.

That's what you get the feeling of here. That's how bad the signs are.

He refers a lot to a national security advisor. Guy named McGeorge Bundy. Calls him Mackie. So Robert McNamara and Mac, which is. Which is McGeorge Bundy.

That's his first name again. He's the national security advisor. And they write another extensive report to the president, says, we told LBJ that both of us are now pretty well convinced that our current policy can only lead to disastrous defeat. This is 1965. January 27, 1965.

Disastrous defeat.

Fast forward a little bit. The underlying difficulties in Saigon arise from the spreading conviction that the future is without hope for anti communists. So people on the ground are telling you, like, look, we see that you're here, but we don't think there's hope for the, for the anti communists. We don't think it's. We think they're too strong.

And he goes on to say, both of us understand the very grave question presented by any decision of this sort. We both recognize that the ultimate responsibility is not ours. Both of us had fully, have fully supported your unwillingness in earlier months to move out of the middle course. We both agree that every effort should still be made to improve our operations on the ground and to prop up authorities in South Vietnam as best we can. But we are both convinced that none of this is enough and that the time has come for harder choices.

And some of these harder choices be leaving negotiating a bunch of other options. You should know that Dean Rusk does not agree with us. He's secretary of state. He does not quarrel with our assertion that things are going very badly and the situation is unraveling.

He does not assert that this deterioration can be stopped. What he does say is that the consequences of both escalation and withdrawal are so bad that we simply must find a way of making our present policy work. This would be good if it was possible, Bob, and I do not think it is. Stark warnings, stark warnings, and these are written reports to LBJ. We don't think this is gonna work.

In fact, we think it's gonna be disastrous. And by the way, the two ways that we can go, either escalation or withdrawal, both of those are bad, which those are kind of the two opposing ends of the spectrum. Like, if we escalate, it's gonna get really gnarly. If we leave, it's gonna get really gnarly. So then what do you do?

Well, then you break down. You look at that decision, okay, what's good for America? Right? Cause at some point you have to ask that question.

So then we roll in this decision to escalate. This is January 28 through July 28, 1965. And there's, again, the book gives some really great detail. I'm hitting some of the highlights. June 7, 1965.

This is Westy William Westmoreland. He sends this.

The conflict in Southeast Asia is in the process of moving to a higher level. Some north vietnamese forces have entered South Vietnam and more may well be on the way. So far, the VC have not employed their full capabilities in this campaign. The south vietnamese army forces, on the other hand, are already experiencing difficulty in coping with this increased VC capability. Desertion rates are inordinately high.

Battle losses have been higher than expected. As a result, Arvin troops are beginning to show signs of reluctance to assume the offensive. And in some cases, their steadfastness under fire is coming into doubt. The force ratios continue to change. In favor of the VC.

The government of Vietnam cannot stand up successfully to this kind of pressure without reinforcement. I see no course of action open to us except to reinforce our efforts in south Vietnam with additional us or third country forces as rapidly as is practical during the critical weeks ahead. The basic purpose of the additional deployments recommended is to give us a substantial and hard hitting offensive capability on the ground to convince the VC that they cannot win.

Yeah. And it says in the book here, Westy said that he needed 41,000 more combat troops now and another 52,000 later. This would increase the total us strength from 82,000 to 175 75,000. The last paragraph of his cable read, studies must continue and plans developed to deploy even greater forces if and when required.

His request meant a dramatic and open ended expansion of a military, of american military involvement.

So this is one of those moments where you can, you've got to check your bias, because if you have a positive outlook, like, well, you know, once we get there and we'll get on the ground and the Vietn, the VC will see our extraordinary strength and capability and they'll, they'll, they'll, what does he say? Convince them that they can't win. Like, that's one attitude you can have, or you can have a little bit more pessimistic, probably a little more realistic attitude, which is, oh, they've been, they live there. Right. They live there.

There's nowhere for them to go. That's where they live. So they're not going anywhere. Yeah. We very seldom put that into the calculus, which is a bad move.

Echo Charles

Yeah. And is that a situation where they, straight up just don't consider that? Because it seems like something that you would consider. Well, I mean, in this particular case, you've got the South Vietnamese and they also can't leave. Right.

Jocko Willink

That's their home as well. So we'll back the people that believe more in line with what we believe. But how do you convince someone to believe something different? That's not an easy thing to do. You can't do it very quickly, and it's very difficult, as you hear me talk about all the time, to impose your beliefs on someone else.

Yeah, it's very difficult. Some cases it's impossible. Yeah. Now here's where we get into some politics. President Johnson read polls the next afternoon that showed a public prepared for further action.

65% approved his handling of the war. 47% favored sending more troops. This was double those, quote, not sure, which was 23%. Two and a half times those wishing to, quote, keep the present number, which was 19% and more than quadruple those wanting to take troops out, which was 11%. So according to the polls, 65% say he's doing a good job.

47% said send more. Only 11% were saying take the troops out. So you got Johnson. He's hearing what the polls are saying. The thing you gotta remember about polls are they don't have all this other information.

They don't have these CIA reports. They don't have these, these deep, deeply studied pieces of information from people on the ground. What do they say? They say on tv, yeah, hey, communists are trying to take over Vietnam. Let's go fight them.

He did say this on June 21. I think that in time, this is, this is LBJ talking, the president. I think that in time it's going to be difficult for us to very long prosecute effectively a war that far away from home with the divisions that we have here and particularly the potential divisions. So this is 65, right. So he's already talking about divisions in America and it's back to the book and it's really had me concerned for a month and I'm very depressed about it because I see no program from either defense or state that gives me much hope of doing anything except just praying and grasping to hold on during the monsoon season and hope they'll quit.

And I don't believe they're going to quit. And I don't see that we have any plan for victory militarily or diplomatically. Russell. And that's Russell. Richard B.

Russell Johnson's old senate mentor and powerful chairman of the Senate Arms services Committee. Russell thinks we ought to take one of these regime changes to get out of there. I do not think we can get out of there with our treaty like it is and with what all we've said. And I think it would just lose us face in the world and I just shudder to think what all of them would say.

So in 1965, he doesn't think they're going to quit. He doesn't see a way to win militarily or diplomatically, and yet he doesn't want to lose face and he doesn't want America to lose face. So we have an ego. We have ego, national ego and individual ego driving decision making process which we know is not going to be good.

Um, here's, here's another. This is the other side. So not everyone's got the same idea of like, hey, this is a disaster. Uh, Dean Rusk says the integrity of the US commitment is the principal pillar of peace throughout the world, if that commitment comes, becomes unreliable. The communist world would draw conclusions that would lead to our ruin and almost certainly to a catastrophic war.

So long as the South Vietnamese are prepared to fight for themselves, we cannot abandon them without disaster to peace and to our interest throughout the world.

So this is catastrophizing, right? Like he's saying, if we don't back up the Vietnam, the South Vietnamese, that shows the whole world that we're weak and communism could spread. And that's what they were thinking at the time. But I wanted to give you the other side, which is that attitude. Look, if we bail out of Vietnam, communism is going to take over.

And by the way, then they're going to go into these other areas of the world. So we need to hold the line here. Also, when people have what they want to happen, they explain things a certain way. Right? Yeah.

And that's why it's important to be unbiased. It's important to be unbiased from your decision making process, because otherwise, if you're, if you think, yeah, the communists are going to take over everywhere. As soon as someone gives you a little piece of information, you have to like, we're going to fight them. Yeah. Terrible.

Fast forward a little bit. July 17, 1965. And this is something that McNamara presents. These are my conclusions, but I would like you to prove me wrong. The VC and North Vietnam can recruit a lot more people than they currently have.

We should be prepared to increase our strength accordingly. It has not taken, number two, it has not taken many supplies to support the VC in the past. It doesn't take many supplies now, and I don't think it's going to take many in the future. So what that's talking about is you got this. The VC army, they're guerrillas.

You know what kind of logistics they need? Do you know? No, no, they don't need any logistics. Yeah, they figure it out. They're in the jungle.

They grew up in the jungle. They'll, they'll be fine in the jungle. You don't need to get them mres shipped in. No, they're eating rice, they're eating mangoes. They're eating whatever jungle food out there.

They know how to survive. Their weapons. What do they need for weapons? They have an ak 47. They got 30 rounds.

They got some improvised explosives. There's not this big logistics train that the Nazis needed or that the Japanese needed. Oh, the Japanese are on an island. The Imperial Japanese are on an island. Cool.

We'll cut off the supplies. They're not going to survive, they're going to run out of ammunition. You can't do that to the Vietnamese because they don't need any supplies. They're going to be fine. And he's making note of that.

And then, number three, because it takes so few supplies, aerial attacks are not going to cut into the VC logistics to a damaging degree. I'm not saying that we should stop our aerial attacks. However, I do say that we are going to need a lot more men in the south to effectively counter this on the ground.

So then he goes to Saigon, and when he comes back a few days later, on July 21, I returned to Washington. And here's his assessment. 1965. The situation in south Vietnam is worse than a year ago, when it was worse a year before that. A few months of stalemate.

After a few months of stalemate, the tempo of the war has quickened. A hard VC push is now on to dismember the nation and to maul the army without further outside help. The ARVN is faced with successive tactical reverses. Loss of key communication and population centers, particularly in the highlands, piecemeal destruction of Arvin units and loss of civilian confidence. There are no signs that we have throttled the inflow of supply for the VC or can throttle the flow while their material needs are as low as they are.

Nor have our air attacks in North Vietnam produced tangible evidence of the willingness on the part of Hanoi to come to the conference table in a reasonable mood. The Democratic Republic of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong seem to believe that South Vietnam is on the run and near collapse. They show no signs of settling for less than a complete takeover.

That's, that's about as dire of a, of a message that you could send. And that's what he, that's what he reports after he gets back from Vietnam, he goes, gets on the ground, talks to all the people. They all brief him what's going on. And by the way, look, these, these generals and stuff, they give shiny reports, right? Everyone's mister positive.

Oh, how's the war going? It's going great. We've, we might have taken a couple hits there and there, but we're gonna, we're back, coming back. Everyone's got the good news story to tell. So when he come back from a trip and he gets bad news and gives a bad news story, that's not a good sign.

And this is interesting. Fast forward a little bit. Anti war protests had been sporadic and limited up to this time and had not compelled attention. Then came the afternoon of November 2, 1965, at twilight that day, a young Quaker named Norman R. Morrison, father of three and an officer of the stony run friends meeting in Baltimore, burned himself to death within 40ft of my Pentagon window.

He doused himself with fuel from a gallon jug. When he set himself on fire, he was holding his one year old daughter in his arms. Bystanders screamed, saved the child, and he flung her out of his arms. She survived without injury. After Morrison's death, his wife issued a statement.

Norman Morrison gave his life to express his concern over the great loss of life and human suffering caused by the war in Vietnam. He was protesting our government's deep military involvement in this war. He felt that all citizens must speak their convictions about our country's action.

So this is 1965 and you've got an american that's setting himself on fire outside of your window with his daughter. So listen, you can say, oh, that guy's crazy. You can say he's obviously got mental issues or maybe he's really passionate, but one thing you have to do is say, okay, this needs to go into the calculus of my decision making. We've got people that are willing to set themselves on fire and kill their daughter because they don't like what's happening. Hey, if that guy is mentally unstable, okay, but guess what?

He did set himself on fire. So that means. That means people are taking notice and some of them are clearly not happy.

Fast forward a little bit. December 3, 1965. There's a story that comes out in the Washington Star, written by Mary McGrory, who's a syndicated columnist. And so she's got an interview going with, or she's writing a story about McNamara. And the topic comes up of, you know, this nation has a tradition of protecting our free speech and the right to dissent.

Our policies become stronger as the result of the debate. And it says, the secretary is an admirer of Norman Thomas, the venerable socialist leader who is the most effective orator in last Saturday's demonstration here. But he takes issue with Thomas's contention that he would, quote, would rather see America save her soul than her face in Southeast Asia. And McNamara is quoted as saying, how do you save your soul? Do you save your soul by pulling out of a situation, or do you save it by fulfilling your commitments, end quote.

Obviously, his thought is, you fulfill your commitments. But what commitments did we make and why did we make them? November 29, 1965. This is McNamara talking again, talking to the press. And this is when he comes back from Saigon from another trip.

He says, we have stopped losing the war, but despite that fact, we've had that success. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese have more than offset the very heavy losses which they have suffered. The level of infiltration has increased and I think this represents a clear decision on the part of Hanoi to raise the level of the conflict. The decision by the Viet Cong and North vietnamese army to stand and fight at the recent battle of a Drang, recognizing the level of force we can bring to bear against them, expresses their determination to carry on on the conflict. That can only lead to one conclusion.

It will be a long war.

1965. He's saying that December 17, 1965, talking to the president.

McNamara a military solution to the problem is not certain. One out of three or one out of two. Ultimately, we must find a diplomatic solution. So imagine that you're going to go to war and you got a one in three chance of winning. There's something wrong, one in two chance of winning if there's not an existential threat, meaning we are going to lose our country and be enslaved.

You're not rolling in just going to a war with a one in three chance of winning. What are you doing? The president says then no matter what we do in the military field, there is no sure victory. MCNamara that's right. We've been too optimistic.

RUsk I'm more optimistic, but I can't prove it. McNamara I'm saying we may not find a military solution. We need to explore other means. Our military action approaches unacceptable way to a successful conclusion. This seems a contradiction.

I come to you for a huge increase in Vietnam, 400,000 men. But at the same time it may lead to escalation and undesirable results. I suggest we now look at other alternatives. Hey, can you give me 400,000 men to go and send into combat? And I'm not sure we're going to win.

Now we get in 1966. January 1966. He gives another somber assessment. Even though the communists will continue to suffer heavily from our ground and air action, we expect them, upon learning of any us intentions, to augment forces, to boost their own commitment and to test us capabilities and will to preserve at a higher level of conflict and casualty and casualties. The US killed in action with the recommended deployments can be expected to reach 1000 a month.

It follows, therefore, that the odds are about even. That even with the recommended deployments, we will be faced in early 1967 with a military standoff at a much higher level, with pacification hardly underway and with the requirement for the deployment of still more us forces.

Not good. And what are they doing this whole time? Escalating, just continuing to escalate. June 23, 1966. He tells the president in a lengthy report, 1966, enemy morale has not broken.

He apparently has adjusted to our stopping his drive for military victory and has adopted a strategy of keeping us busy and waiting us out, a strategy of attriting our national will. 100% right. It's 100% accurate. He knows that we have not been, and he believes we probably will not be able to translate our military successes into the end products. Broken enemy morale and political achievement, achievements by the government of South Vietnam.

So they're actually accurate. The one thing demonstrably going for us in Vietnam over the past year has been the large number of enemy killed in action resulting from the big military operations. Allowing for possible exaggeration in reports, the enemy must be taking losses at the rate of more than 60,000 a year. The info, and this is where the whole body count thing comes from when this guy's a statistics guy, and I've talked about this many times, that battle, the Idrang valley, that increased the thought that, oh, we can kill 20 of them for every one they kill of us. And therefore we get involved in a war of attrition, they won't be able to take it anymore.

That was the thought, but, and you can see it backed up here. Hey, listen, the good news is we're killing a lot of them, 60,000 a year. How long can they sustain that for? Well, there's a huge. This is where we, this is where we make a huge mistake.

We think that they think how we think. And for us, every american soldier, sailor, marine, airman that's killed, it's a travesty. For them, that's part of life and death. So these 60,000, that's part of them preserving their country? It's their home.

Yeah, continuing on the infiltration routes would seem to be one way trails to death for the North Vietnamese. Yet there is no sign of an impending break in enemy morale. And it appears that he can more than replace his losses by infiltration from North Vietnam and recruitment in South Vietnam. Pacification has, if anything, gone backward as compared with two, four, two or four years ago. Enemy full time regional forces and part time guerrilla forces are larger.

Attacks, terrorism and sabotage have increased in scope and intensity. We control little, if any more of the population. The VC political infrastructure thrives in most of the country, continuing to give the enemy his enormous intelligence advantage. Full security exists nowhere, not even behind the US Marines lines. And in Saigon, in the countryside, the enemy almost completely controls the night.

Nor has the rolling thunder program of bombing the north either. Significantly affected infiltration or cracked the morale of Hanoi. There is agreement in the intelligence community on these facts. In essence, we find ourselves from the point of view of the important war, for the hearts and minds of the people know better. And if anything worse off.

This important war must be fought and won by the Vietnamese themselves. We have known this from the beginning, but the discouraging truth is that, as was in the case in 1961 and 1963 and 1965, we have not found the formula, the catalyst for training and inspiring them into effective action. So who is, where is this coming from? This report? McNamara writes it for the president.

Echo Charles

Okay. He's telling the president what's going on and this is what he's doing. He's writing these memos and he's trying to be very straightforward in these memos. Here's another 1 May 19, 1967. This memo here, this memorandum is written at a time when there appears to be no attractive course of action.

Jocko Willink

The probabilities are that Hanoi has decided not to negotiate until the american electorate has been heard in November 1968. Continuation of our present moderate policy while avoiding a larger war will not change Hanoi's mind, so is not enough to satisfy the american people. Increased force levels and actions against the north are likewise unlikely to change Hanoi's mind and are on and are likely to get us even deeper in Southeast Asia into a serious confrontation, if not war, with China and Russia. And we are not willing to yield. So we must choose among imperfect alternatives.

The Vietnam war is unpopular in this country. This is 1967, so now we have like, we're full on into it. The Vietnam War is unpopular in this country. It is becoming increasingly unpopular as it escalates, causing more american casualties, more fear of its growing into a wider war, more privation of the domestic sector, and more distress at the amount of suffering being visited on the non combatants in Vietnam, south and north. Most Americans do not know how we got where we are and most, without knowing why, but taking advantage of hindsight, are convinced that somehow we should not have gotten in this deeply.

All want the war ended and expect their president to end it successfully, or else. This state of mind in the US generates impatience in the political structure of the United States. It unfortunately also generates patience in Hanoi. It is commonly supposed that Hanoi will not give anything away pending the trial of the US elections in November 1968.

He goes on the other war against the VC is still not going well. Corruption is widespread. Real government control is confined to enclaves. There is rot in the fabric. The population remains apathetic.

The army of South Vietnam is tired passive and accommodation prone, and is moving too slowly, if at all, into pacification work. Hanoi's attitude toward negotiations has never been soft nor open minded. They seem uninterested in political settlement and determined to match us military expansion of the conflict. There continues to be no sign that the bombing has reduced Hanoi's will to resist or her ability to ship the necessary supplies. South Hanoi shows no signs of ending the large war and advising the VC to melt into the jungles.

The North Vietnamese believe they are right. They consider the key regime to be puppets. They believe the world is with them and that the american public will not have the staying power against them. Thus, although they may have factions in the regime favoring different approaches, they believe that in the long run they are stronger than we are for the purpose.

Continuing on, there may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring a thousand non combatants a week while trying to pound a tiny, backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed is not a pretty one. It could conceivably produce costly distortion in the american national conscience and in the world image of the United States, especially if the damage to North Vietnam is complete enough to be, quote, successful.

How does that look? Oh, you're going to smash this little country, killing thousands of noncombatants, wounding thousands of noncombatants, and if, and if we really do enough damage to where we're, quote, successful, that means it looks like a holocaust, like everyone's dead. And so how's that going to make us look? And it's, you're, this is McNamara, this is guy talking to the president, telling this stuff.

Now here's a report from CIA director Richard Helms, September 1967. And here we go. Any honest and dispassionate analysis must conclude that if the US accepts failure in Vietnam, it will pay some price in the form of new risks which success there would preclude. So, look, if you fail there, there's going to be some problems. The frustration of a world power, once it has committed vast resources and much prestige to a military enterprise, must be in some degree damaging to the general security system it upholds.

In the case of Vietnam, there does not seem to be a common denominator which permits such eventual risks to be measured reliably against the obvious and immediate costs of continuing the war. So he's saying, like, look, there could be problems, we get it. It might look as bad on a national level, but we can't even know what that is compared to the immediate cost of continuing the war. It's like, hey, echo, if you don't do this, something really bad could happen. You're like, yeah, but right now I'm bleeding.

Yeah, you know, echo, if you. If you don't, you don't make a move right now, you're going to bleed all over the carpet. You're like, yeah, but I got to stop the bleeding right now.

If the analysis here advances the discussion at all, it is in the direction of suggesting that the risks are probably more limited and controllable than most previous argument had indicated. So you're saying, look, we get it. The communism is, it could spread and it's going to make us look weak. And maybe he's saying, yep, I get all that. Compared to what's going on right now in Vietnam, it's not worth it.

Echo Charles

The CIA guy. CIA, yep. CIA director, by the way, Richard Helms.

Jocko Willink

November 2, 1967. This is McNamara to LBJ to the president. Nothing can be expected to break this will, other than the conviction that they cannot succeed. This conviction will not be created unless and until they come to the conclusion that the US is prepared to remain in Vietnam for whatever period of time is necessary to assure the independent choice of the south vietnamese people. The enemy cannot be expected to arrive at that conclusion in advance of the american public.

So how are the North Vietnam going to think that we're going to stay if we can't even convince the Americans that we're going to stay or that we're going to win? And the american public, frustrated by the slow rate of progress, fearing continued escalation and doubting that all approaches to peace have been sincerely probed, does not give the appearance of having the will to persist. As the months go by, there will be both increasing pressure for widening the war and continued loss of support, support for american participation in the struggle. So both those things are happening at the same time. Pressure to widen the war and support to get out of there.

There will be increasing calls for american withdrawal. There is, in my opinion, a very real question whether under these circumstances it will be possible to maintain our efforts in South Vietnam for the time necessary to accomplish our objectives there.

So that's what's happening. And I'm going to read. This isn't a quote inside the book. This is actually just the book itself. So I'm going to read this section.

So you have a. Well, you won't have a clear idea because you'll see from this opening sentence, not even McNamara has a clear idea. He says this I do not know to this day whether I quit or was fired. Maybe it was both. I had long been interested in developing countries.

In a highly controversial speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Montreal May 18, 1966, I spoke on that subject. I said, quote, there is among us a tendency to think of our security problem as being exclusively a military problem. I disagree. A nation can reach a point at which it does not buy more security for itself by boring buying more military hardware. And we are at that point.

I believe the relationship between defense expenditures and security takes the shape of a curve in which, up to a point, security increases as defense expenditures increase, then the curve flattens out and may even decline. I judge the United States to be on the flat of that curve in 1966. I believe we're on it today. Rather than increase military spending, I told the editors we should assist those developing countries which genuinely need and request our help and which, as an essential precondition, are willing and able to help themselves. I noted that the already dangerous gap between rich and poor nations was widening and that poverty within nations produced social and political tensions that often spilled over into conflict between nations.

In sum, I believe that we would achieve greater security by transferring marginal dollar expenditures from defense to foreign aid. One did not expect to hear such a speech from a defense secretary in a time of war. Led to harsh criticism. So he makes this speech. People are saying, wait a second, you're running this war and you're saying, we shouldn't be spending any money on war.

We should be doing aid. So he's speaking his mind makes sense, but from that position, not supported. So it goes into there's this. The World bank, the president of the World Bank, a guy named George woods, he's ending his five year term and basically asks McNamara, would you like the job? McNamara starts thinking about it.

He also gets offered jobs in Wall street, making a bunch of money. And he actually tells the president about it, like, hey, I got some options. I'm just letting you know. Like, people are approaching me. And then fast forward a little bit.

On November 27, the London Financial Times printed a rumor of my nomination. That's a nomination for this position as the president of World bank. Two days later, George and five World bank directors came to my office and offered me the post. I accepted. The next day, President Johnson announced I would be leaving the Pentagon to go to the World bank.

One of the great ironies is that I do not know whether the president himself knew exactly how and why my departure came about. He knew I was loyal to the presidency and to him. That's a really interesting statement. Loyalty to the presidency and to him, that's very important. And it's, in my opinion, it's a positive thing.

So, you know, obviously, you've got the man and then you've got the position. And I was, when I was the admiral's aide. It's like you. You are doing a job. You're supporting the guy, and you're supporting the position.

Like, the guy's in charge of all the seals. He. We need to make sure that he has what he needs to do his job, that everything's professional, that everything's on time. Like, that's part of it. So for me, like, I had this responsibility, because if my admiral that represents all seals, goes and is giving a briefing to the four star general and his slides aren't right or his uniform is messed up, or he shows up late, like, all those things are bad, and they're all bad for all seals.

And so we can't let that happen. That's a loyalty to the position. And then also, you have this loyalty to, like, you know, you've met Admiral McGuire. Great guy, takes care of the troops, cares about people. Like, so you have both those loyalties, and that's what he's talking about here.

He knew I was, because you could be loyal to the person and not the position, and you can be loyal to the position and not to the president. So he says he knew I was loyal to the presidency and to him. And as I've said, I sensed his, his equally strong feelings towards me. Despite our deep differences over Vietnam, he must have assumed I had thought of resigning, and I believe he felt relieved that I had not. Why, then, did I leave?

It was not because I was ill. Although newspaper reported such stories, and the president told his aides he was worried I might commit suicide, as Truman's first defense secretary, James Forstall, had done. It has since become a common assumption that I was near emotional and physical collapse. I was not. I was indeed feeling stress.

I was at loggerheads with the president of the United States because, by the way, all these things that I've read, Johnson's basically not listened to, which is bad. I was not getting answers to my questions, and I was tense as hell, but I was not under medical care, not taking drugs except for an occasional sleeping pill, and never contemplated suicide. The fact is, I had come to the conclusion and had told him point blank that we could not achieve our objective in Vietnam through any reasonable military means, and we therefore should seek a lesser political objective through negotiations. President Johnson was not ready to accept that. It was becoming clear to both of us that I would not change my judgment, nor would he change his.

Something had to give. Many friends then and since, have told me I was wrong not to have resigned in protest over the president's policy. Let me explain why I did not. The president, with the exception of the vice president, is the only elected official of the executive branch. He appoints each cabinet officer who should have no.

No loyalty other than him. That is how cabinet officers are kept accountable to the people. A cabinet officer's authority and legitimacy derives from the president. It is also true, however, that because of their frequent public exposure, some cabinet officers develop power independent of the president. To a degree, I held such power, and some said I should have used it by resigning, challenging the president's Vietnam policy and leading those who sought to force a change.

I believe that would have been a violation of my responsibility to the president and my oath to uphold the constitution. It's a weird dynamic, right? So, hey, you appoint me, and since you got elected and I didn't, you got elected because of what you. Because of your policies. I'm here to support your policies.

That's basically what he's saying. So if I don't believe in your policies, it's not my job to, like, resign. It's my job to support your policies. If you hire me as a cook and you want hot dogs, I cook you hot dogs. You want hamburgers, I cook you hamburgers.

You want salmon, I cook you salmon. You want steak? I don't say, well, actually, I think you. No, I don't get to do that. You hired me.

I cook what you want me to cook, and I don't. When you want steak, I go, I protest. I don't think you should. You know, I don't think you should have steak. I don't protest about that.

That's not my job. My job is to cook the steak.

So, like you said, I believe that would have been a violation of my responsibility to the president and my oath to uphold the constitution, because what the constitution says, the president is the executive. I will never forget what Dean Acheson told me. Dean said that when he had served as under secretary of the treasury in the early 1930s under Franklin Roosevelt, he had found himself unable to accept the president's monetary policy. So he had resigned silently. Roosevelt had told him that he was the only official he had ever known to resign as the constitution intended.

I never forgot that lesson. Simply put, despite my deep differences with Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam, I was loyal to the presidency and loyal to him, and I sensed his equally strong feelings towards me. Moreover, until the day I left, I believed I could influence his decisions. I therefore felt I had a responsibility to stay at my post. Now, that's something we've debated many times, right?

Hackworth ends up speaking out against the army and the leadership in the army, and he ends up getting drummed out of the army. He could have been a division commander. He could have been a brigade commander, division commander, whatever. He could have had way more influence inside the navy than he did with that one report. Now, that's questionable.

That report did. When he got. When that report went to the press, a lot of people saw it and maybe shifted their minds. We could. We could argue that.

So that's a very tough decision to make. If you don't like what someone is doing, do you stay there and try and influence them, or do you just retire or resign and protest? We saw what Mattis did with Trump. Mattis didn't like what he was doing. He resigned in protest.

How long did we hear about that? Did Mattis lose the influence that he had over the president? You know, those are things that we could discuss, debate. I don't know the answer. But it's weird, because McNamara doesn't even think that that's a thing you do.

He's like, if you're gonna. If you want to resign because you don't want to support it, you do it quietly. You don't make a spectacle. You just, you know, whatever. I'm moving on back to the book.

Between November 29 and when I left the Pentagon three months later, crisis piled on top of crisis. North vietnamese troops led a siege to the marine base at Que San in the far northwestern corner of South Vietnam. North Korea seized the US intelligence ship Pueblo in international waters off the korean peninsula on January 23, 1968. A week later, the Viet Cong blasted their way into the american embassy compound in Saigon, launching the bloody Tet offensive. In my last official act on Vietnam, on February 27, 1968, I opposed Westies renewed appeal for 200,000 troops on economic, political, and moral grounds.

My successor, Clark Clifford, adopted this, later adopted the same position. As the day of my departure neared, I wrote this letter to LBJ. February 23, 1968. Dear Mister President, I cannot find words to express to you the feelings that lie in my heart. 51 months ago, you asked me to serve in your cabinet.

No other period in my life has brought so much struggle or so much satisfaction. The struggle would have been infinitely greater. And the satisfaction. Satisfaction immeasurably less. If I had not received your full support every step of the way, no man could fail to be proud of service in administration, which has recorded the progress yours has in the fields of civil rights, health and education.

And look, yeah, LBJ was running front on the civil rights movement and pushing those things through back. 100 years of neglect cannot be overcome overnight. But you have pushed, dragged and cajoled the nation into basic reforms from which my children and my children's children will benefit for decades to come. I know the price you have paid, both personally and politically. Every citizen of our land is in your debt.

I will not say goodbye. You know you have but to call and I will respond. Sincerely, Bob. So that's it. That's it.

It's over right there.

But it's not over because that was 1967, and we have troops in Vietnam until 1974. Until 19 or 1973, I guess. 1973. So six more years. When the prediction was in 1965, the prediction was pretty clear.

So I wanted to lay that groundwork so we could get into some of these lessons learned. And he says here it is sometimes said that the post cold war world will be so different from the world of the past that the lessons of Vietnam will be in applicable or of no relevance to the 21st century. I disagree. That said, if we are to learn from our experience in Vietnam, we must first pinpoint our failures. There were eleven major causes for our disaster in Vietnam.

So, you know, even that. That statement right there is a very 100% statement. There's eleven major causes for a disaster in Vietnam. I would. If I was to say that, I'd say something like, from what I saw, here's eleven things that I would think about from my perspective.

He's like, no, there's eleven lessons. Yeah, straight up. He's straight up like, he's. He's definitely thought he knew a lot. He's definitely an arrogant guy.

And that arrogance, even after the humility of his judgment here, still kind of shines through a little bit. Am I being a little bit harsh? Yes, I am. I'm judging.

So here we go. One, we misjudged then, as we have since the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries, in this case North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, supported by China and the Soviet Union. And we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions. So misjudgment. Misjudgment of your competition, misjudgment of the people that you work with, like, just misjudging their intentions.

This is obviously still going on today. What are the intentions? What are the intentions of Putin, for instance? Oh, Putin wants to take over all of Europe? No, Putin just.

He doesn't care. He just wants to secure his own border. So who's right?

That's something that could easily be misjudged.

So we need to really think through the actions that people are taking and we can't. My judgment would be like, hey, look, you know what my answer to that is? Is Putin trying to take over Europe or is he just trying to secure his borders? You know what my answer is? I don't know.

I don't know. So I don't make plans based on he's trying to take over Europe and I don't make plans based on he's just trying to secure his border. I make plans that are flexible and adaptable, and I can make adjustments, and I'm gonna make plans that don't trigger him to do one thing but don't allow him to do something else. We tend to make extreme plans, so we gotta watch out for that. That's number one.

Number two, we viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam's in terms of our own experience. We saw in them a thirst for and a determination to fight for freedom and democracy. We totally misjudged the political forces within the country. So this is. This is another mistake that we make all the time.

And, look, I'm not just talking about political. I'm talking about, like, us humans, we see in someone else what we feel like. I can't believe echoes not showing up early to come and go through this new sales program with me. Echo doesn't care. Echo doesn't want.

He's good with making his. Paying his rent and paying his car payment. He's got enough money to go out to eat on Fridays. He's good to go. He doesn't care.

Echo Charles

That's the it's a good dream meme, essentially. Oh, yeah, you're one. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jocko Willink

Why are you skill, why are you yelling? Because it's a good dream. Yeah, that. Believe me, that one gets recycled quite a bit in my family. Yes.

Because if you think I didn't have a pull up bar in my son's room, I mounted. There's a pull up bar on the wall. Yeah. Yeah. There was mats at my house.

I built a whole freaking outdoor arena at my house. Yeah. So. So the kids could fulfill their dream so they can. Yes.

Yes. How else are you gonna become champion? It's a good dream. It's true. It's true.

But that's what we do. Yeah. We see them in terms of our own experience. We saw them a thirst for. In a determination for freedom in democracy.

We imposed our thought process into their head. It didn't, it wasn't there when you. Most of the time now it's like, you know what? You know what Vietnam wanted? People in Vietnam wanted to be vietnamese people.

Echo Charles

Hmm. That's what they wanted to be Vietnamese. Like, they're Vietnamese. That was their thing. They wanted to be Vietnamese.

Jocko Willink

They didn't want to be american. They didn't want to be communist. They didn't want to be Chinese. They want to be Vietnamese. They don't want to be French.

They already fought the French. They didn't want to be french. They want to be american. They didn't want to be Chinese. They wanted to be Vietnamese.

This is what, this is who we are. This is what we are. We're not doing. And so when we come in and start looking like, well, we can be american, okay, then some people like, wait a second, we're not gonna be american. So who can help us?

Oh, the Chinese. Cool. You help with the communists. Cool, you help us.

We imposed our thoughts into them. Same thing in Iraq. Like, oh, we want you to be a certain way. Well, it's gonna take generations. If we're gonna make that happen, it's gonna take generations.

And, you know, interesting thing about Iraq is you can see, like, there's a, there's areas of Iraq that were very westernized. Sometimes in Baghdad, you'd be driving into Baghdad, and you like driving down the street. You think you're on the I five north in California. Like, it's a big highway. There's stores.

Like, there's people, and there's westernized people there. So you could maybe make a stronger case for that, that they're gonna be rooting for that. But you can't expect it to be universal in a short period of time. I've always suspected that when people have a taste of freedom, it tastes good, and they'll start to bring that into their diet, and eventually that other people will get to try it and eventually say, oh, yeah, we're not gonna go without this stuff. But that doesn't happen overnight.

It takes generations for that to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Cause no situation is perfect. So, you know, when you get used to certain things, and then you lose those things that you get used to, it's kind of like, oh, and then other things might not be as clear to them or even be other things might not be straight up embraced.

Yeah. And also when it's death. So, like, oh, you can either have freedom or you can have death. Look, not everyone has that. Give me liberty or give me death.

Some people, no, no, no. Give me life. I'll take it. I'm not gonna die 100%. When you.

So when you have a tyrannical leader or you have ISIS rolls through, it's like, no, no, no, you're gonna do what we say, or we're gonna kill you. You know what? A lot of people say, cool, I'll do what you say. I want to live. You know what's a real, like, day to day version of that is it sounds like a joke, but it's not.

Echo Charles

Where, you know, when you ask your wife or your friends or whatever, like, hey, where do you want to eat? And they say, oh, no, wherever. Up to you. It kind of feels like you're giving them, oh, of course you'd want any choice you want. Literally choose wherever you want.

That's a good thing. Right? But a lot of. Some people, they're like, well, more so than I want to choose wherever I want. I don't want to be burdened with the decision.

You know, it's like that. It's like you kind of got it backwards. I see what you're saying there, and I don't think that's wrong. I think there's certainly people that are. Can become accustomed to a more tyrannical lifestyle.

Jocko Willink

And we did see that in Iraq. Like, some people that are like, oh, the government's telling us to do something. That's what we're doing. Cause we've been gassed, we've been tortured. Like, we're on board for whatever you're gonna say.

Like, we get it. We're not looking to protest. But what I'm saying is, when you have freedom as an option, it's. It's. Yeah, it tastes good.

Oh, I like this. I get accustomed to it. But when someone else comes in and says, no, actually, you're gonna do what I say, or I'm gonna kill you and your whole family. A lot of people go, no. A lot of people say, okay, cool, I'm on board with whatever you're saying.

That's what. That's why, like, the american revolution, where people said, we'll kill you, and they said, no, we'll fight you. Let's go. Yeah, it's a big deal, especially because in the american revolution, a lot of those revolutionaries were prominent people that had a lot to lose. It's a lot easier when you're in a country where you don't have anything, oh, we'll fight.

Anybody got nothing to lose. What do you take away from me? Nothing. So I'll fight you. And I might win.

And when I win, I can go take your car and your house and your land. So I'll fight you. Let's go. Because I. Right now, I don't have anything.

So I'll fight you for something. So the american revolutionaries that had farms and properties and businesses, and they were like, oh, we'll sacrifice that if we have to because we want freedom. That's rare. That's not normal. That's not normal.

But what we think is everybody just wants freedom. And you know what? When you're like, this is the Afghanistan scenario and the Vietnam scenario is like, dude, I live on a farm. I just. I just have my farm out here.

I want to keep growing rice. That's what I'm doing. Right? So why are you here? Who.

Who are you Americans? Like, I don't know what you are, but you're in my rice patty, and I'm not happy about it. Yeah, I don't care what the government. What are you talking about? We don't.

The government is. I have my family. We have this, you know, this rice production that we're doing, and that's what we're doing. So why are you here? Yeah, so you're not giving me freedom.

I have. I do what I want to do every day. Right? What are you trying to. What are you talking about?

Echo Charles

Yeah, and that's kind of the point where regardless of how it plays itself out, it's like, there. It's like this. This miscommunication, for lack of better term, of where you think this is the obvious choice. It's so much better. This decision or this thing that I'm offering or whatever, and it is to you, it's, like, factually better, objectively, but since they literally are coming from a different perspective, it's like, brad's not factually.

In fact, I'm kind of cool with woke I'm doing here. In fact, never mind. Kind of. I'm very cool. My family's been here for generations.

Jocko Willink

This is what we do. We work the land. We raise our food, we raise our kids. This is what we do. What are you talking about?

And, in fact, we're talking about freedom. I have total freedom. Yeah. Like, I'm free to till my land all day, do my work. That's what I do.

That's what my kids. That's what's happening? What's wrong? What are you talking about? And in fact, the stuff that you're saying kind of sounds kind of hard.

What do you mean, go to work? I mean go to a city. What are you talking about? We don't want to do that. Exactly.

Echo Charles

Right. And. Yeah, but a lot of it's just a matter of perspective, but, yeah, that, that mistake. Right. That you assume.

Oh, yeah, I know, I know. What's better for you than you do. And actually, not just you. Kind of. Everybody.

Yeah, everybody here. Yeah. Very similar. Number three, we underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people, in this case, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, to fight and die for their beliefs and values, and we continue to do so today in many parts of the world. Yep.

Jocko Willink

Nationalism. These people, like I said, and this is a common theme when I read about the Vietnamese in the Vietnam war. They're like, we're Vietnamese. That's who we are. And so all this other stuff that you're talking about, we're not doing it.

America, communism, like, that's not happening. We're doing what we're doing.

Number four, our misjudgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of people in the area and the personalities and habits of their leaders. We might have made similar misjudgments regarding the Soviets during our frequent confrontations over Berlin, Cuba, and Middle east. For example, had we not had the advice of Tommy Thompson, Chip Bolin, George Kennan. These senior diplomats had spent decades studying the Soviet Union and its people and its leaders, why they behaved as they did, and how they would react to our actions. Their advice proved invaluable in shaping our judgments and decision.

No southeast asian counterparts existed for senior officials to consult when making decisions on Vietnam. So you've got to understand what, you know, who the people are, what their culture is, what's going on with them, what they're thinking, how they're going to react to it. You know, a good example in Iraq, if we needed to do, we were going to go do an operation with the iraqi forces and say, if we said, hey, can you bring 30 guys for this mission tonight? The iraqi platoon commander would say, yep. And you'd be like, awesome.

You show up there 2 hours later for the brief, and there's like nine of them, and you say, hey, I thought you're bringing 30. Well, they're, they're trying to please you. They're trying to. You're, you're asking for something, and they want to take care of you. That's their culture is like, oh, yeah, we can do it.

We'll make it happen. They're very, um, you know, what's the word? Polite. Right? Like, you ask for something.

Yeah, we'll give it to you. What they don't want to say is, no, I can't do that. So even if they kind of can't. Yeah, even if they kind of can't. Right.

But they. But in their mind, also in shalah. Right. Which is, like, God willing. So it's like, can you bring 30 people tonight in July?

Echo Charles

Yeah. So, God willing, I'll have 30 people here. Yeah. God doesn't always will. 30 people to show up for a dangerous operation.

Jocko Willink

So. So what we ended up having to do is ask questions, like, how many people can you bring tonight? So we got to figure out their culture so it matches what we're trying to understand about the scenario. If you don't understand that culture, you're making all kinds of mistakes. And I've told this story many times before, but the same thing with the officers that were skimming money off the soldiers paychecks.

Echo Charles

Yeah. It's like, my. One of my guys was freaking out. Like, they're skimming money. They're taking money from the soldiers.

Jocko Willink

And I was like, damn, you know, that's ridiculous. And then you talk to the interpreters who are talking to the soldiers. They're like, well, of course, that. Of course the boss takes a cut. Yeah, that's.

He's the boss. Yeah. And we were, like, gonna try and get people arrested. Like, I'm exaggerating. We were definitely concerned that it was a problem with morale.

Echo Charles

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we were, okay, how do we fix this? How do we explain to these officers, like, that's illegal. You can't do that. And even the e dogs.

Jocko Willink

Look, some of the. Some of the enlisted guys, like, yeah, they take our money. We're like, oh, my gosh. They're like, well, yeah, of course they take our money. They're the officer.

They're gonna get their cut. So we had this real extreme view when, for them, that was just kind of the way of life. Right? It's just, uh. You can't call it.

You don't. You don't even call it, like, corruption. Right? You just call it the way things are. Yeah.

Like, you ever been in a situation where that's just the way it is, even though you look at it from a distance, you're like, wait a second. Yeah, fully. You know, like, when you were a bot, when you were a bar bouncer. Bouncer. Right.

I used to go to this bar in San Diego. Which one? I forget the name. I would walk up to the guy each time, and he would recognize me. I'd give him a 20.

Echo Charles

Yeah. Like, the door guy. I'd cut the whole line, walk up, give him a 20, which was a big deal back in the day. He would shake my hand, there'd be a 20 in my hand, and he'd let me and my buddies in. Yep.

Jocko Willink

Right. Boom. Done. Sure. That's corruption, right?

Echo Charles

Well, depends. You see what I'm saying? But it's the way that's happening. Yeah. So it's the culture.

Jocko Willink

It's like, hey, this guy, I'm gonna take care of him. He's gonna take care of me. Boom, we're done. We're good. Yeah.

Now, someone in the back of the line could be like, hey, what are you doing letting that guy in? Right. And he'd be like, hey, that's my buddy. You know? You stay back there.

Matter of fact, you're not coming in. Yeah. So there's. There's things that. The culture is the way the culture is.

It's another thing with unwritten rules in, like, sports. Unwritten rules in sports. There's. There's a whole slew of unwritten rules in professional sports. Yeah.

Where, hey, if you're up by this many points, you don't, like, dunk, you don't run up the score. Like, there's all these unwritten rules in hockey. In. In. You know, in hockey, it's like, you don't.

The star player, you don't freaking hurt that guy. He's the star. If you hurt him, you're gonna get jacked. Yeah. Yeah.

So there's unwritten rules in there? Is there any unwritten rules in NFL football? Yeah. Like. Well, actually, oddly, finally, that's the first thing I thought of, where it was an unwritten rule, and then it became an actual written rule that was like roughing the quarterback.

Echo Charles

So. Yeah, you smash the quarterback. It's like, oh, Brad, that's kind of, you know. But now there's rule roughing, you know? Yeah, but, yeah.

Like, you know, like, in mma or boxing, you know, when they, like, the last round or whatever, whichever round, they kind of do their own handshake, and then they start fighting. Right. But the round is technically live, so, you know, the guys who act like they're gonna do the handshake or fist bump, and then they, you know, they false them or whatever, it's like that, you know, kind of a thing. Yeah. It's not cool, but as far as.

The difference in culture. But you get that, like, from top to bottom. So you get, like. Like, hawaiian time. Right.

We're also known. Or there's also brazilian time. Same thing, by the way. It's called late. Yeah, it's late.

I'm telling you. And then you have the opposite, the inverse, which is like, military guys. Guys who have, like, military careers. And the more deep into the military, like, culture, brother. Gonna come 15, 2030 minutes early, bro.

Jocko Willink

You and I will be recording with someone that's military. Yeah. And we're gonna start recording at whatever time. Yeah. And I know that we have to get there, like, literally an hour before they show up because they're gonna be here in half an hour before we show up.

Exactly before we're supposed to start. Yeah. Now, you get somebody that's just a normal person, they're gonna be here at, whatever, ten minutes after, three minutes before, seven minutes after. It's all. It's all a big mystery.

Yeah, but a military. Military dude's showing up early. 15 minutes early, minimum. Yeah. Even.

Echo Charles

Even you saying the word, it's a big mystery. That's like, your military background saying that. Because hawaiian time. It's not a mystery. I know that it's gonna be roughly here.

And we, you know, we all kind of have. We have, like, the. Roughly this or roughly that in our lives, you know? Like, do you count every single calorie. You're a health conscious guy.

No, roughly here. Roughly that. You know, that's how so, you know, in Hawaii, that's how we regard time, you know, for the most part. I mean, there's certain things where. Yeah, you gotta be on time for sure, 100%.

But just part of the culture. If you don't, no one's gonna start tripping because it's not like this has to happen before this. Before it's not that serious in most scenarios in Hawaii. So. Yeah, man.

So I get it. But I do understand the military culture part of it, but. So it is interesting how consistent and reliable that is. Like, especially the old school military guys, brother, half an hour. Super patient, too.

Yeah, yeah. I'm here, like, 45 minutes early. I could be doing a bunch of other stuff, but I'm here early because it means a lot. You know, it's like. It's pretty deep in the culture.

Yeah, I dig it, man. But you run into miscommunications there, though. The clash of cultures. Oh, yeah. That's where that's exactly what we're talking about.

Jocko Willink

Exactly what we're talking about. Like I said, the iraqi leadership, they don't want to let you down. They want to be able to please, and so, inshallah, we'll be there with 30 guys. Yeah, they show up with nine. That's.

That's what's happening. So you have to reframe your end. Same thing with the money. Like, you have to reframe the way you look at them and look at them as they look at them and realize that your culture is not correct. Your culture is your culture.

Their culture is their culture. All right, number five, we failed then, as we have since, to recognize the limitations of modern high technology, military equipment, forces and doctrine confronting unconventional, highly motivated people's movements. We failed as well, to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts of and minds of the people from a totally different culture. So, clearly, this is a. Something that we continue to fall into.

Right? You. You can't. Your. Your technology is not the master.

And, look, it's getting better. It's definitely getting better, but it. It's not a permanent presence. It doesn't interact with other human beings. And so that's a mistake.

And then focusing on, you know, like he did, focusing on the body count, like, oh, just kills. Kill more of them than they do of us, and eventually they'll give up. It's like, no, you have to secure the populace, take care of the populace. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to get them on your side. They're going to turn against you, they're going to fight against you, and things get worse.

Number six, we failed to draw Congress and the american people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of large scale us military involvement in Southeast Asia. Before we initiated the action. Before we initiated the action. So all these conversations that were happening about how difficult it was going to be, no one was getting up and briefing this or talking through this. And what sucks is we could actually pull this off now.

Like, how would you do that in 1964? There was no freaking cable tv. I guess you could put hours of them debating, but you can't record it. You can't make it readily accessible to everyone. Cause everyone's at work all day.

So Congress is in there debating, you know, what the hell they said. Whereas nowadays, we could actually do a really incredible job of getting people informed about what's happening. Having these frank discussions, letting people understand the pros and cons, and that's very important. But right now, another thing that we do is we kind of all have the mindset of black and white, yes or no, conservative, liberal, republican, Democrat. And that's it.

It's just everything's binary. There's absolutely no way to believe two things at the same time that seem somewhat opposing, but they're both true. Like, you just can't do it. And so we've reduced our debate into black and white, yes or no, right on down the line. And those things aren't binary.

Things aren't black and white, especially when you get into global politics, there's huge areas of gray, and if we can't operate in those areas of gray, and when you operate in the areas of gray, you learn and you adjust and you make other decisions. So, because I know it sounds, oh, what's the expression? If you stand in the middle of the road, you'll get hit. Right? You ever heard of that expression?

Echo Charles

Yes, it's from karate kid. Okay, so if you stand in the middle of the road, you get hit. So people say, well, oh, you need to take a stance one way or the other. It's like, well, actually, I'm not sure. So I'd like to make a small step and then see what we learn, and then I can take another step, either continue in that direction or going to.

Jocko Willink

These are things that we don't do. We just go completely binary. Black, white, left, right, conservative Republic or conservative liberal Democrat, republican rural city. Like we're, it's just, that's what we're doing. Yeah.

Echo Charles

Yeah. Well, the karate kid one is. Do karate. Yes. Do karate.

No. Do karate. Yes. It's like one side of the road. Mm hmm.

I don't know exact quote, but it's like, do karate. Yes. Do karate. No. Do karate.

Guess so. Squish. Just like a grape. That's what he says. There you go.

But yes, true. And even if you want to even go one level bigger, it's kind of like some things are like that. Some things are either go full speed or don't go at all. Otherwise, if you half step it, you'll get jammed up. Yeah.

Jocko Willink

Like what? You gotta put me on the spot. I don't know. Snowboarding. What about it?

Echo Charles

So, okay, so snowboarding, you gotta have a forward lean. Okay. So it's either forward lean, then you have the most control. You go if you start, like, going down a hill, which is a forward trajectory, but you lean back, that's half stepping. You don't know what happens.

You have no control. What if you're in papa, you crash. Crash. What if you're in powder, lean back. A little bit and the crashes.

Oh, yeah, a little bit. But you still have to have like a Ford leap before control. You're trying to turn, you can't turn. Leaning back seem saying, so you're going downhill, leaning back. That's half stepping.

We, we cannot, that was a really bad example, but, well, you know, give. Me, give me a better example if you're half stepping. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I feel like in a fight, you know, if you half step, like any attack, I feel like that's where you're most vulnerable for sure.

If you're, you know, like if you're a counter puncher, that makes sense. If you're just like aggressive, anything that's. That'S a little bit larger in scale because I agree, you know, you get to some very kind of small tactical things and it's like, yeah, if you, if you don't go hard, you don't go all in. Well, then it's going to be like a shooting a takedown. Like if you shoot a takedown half assed, you're not getting the takedown.

Jocko Willink

Chances are you're not getting it. Yeah. You have to shoot that takedown with 100% commitment to make it happen. Yeah, I get that. But as soon as you start talking about larger scale things where there's economies and global countries involved, oftentimes we try and make it all in or all out, but it's not.

And it's, to me, in many cases, it's a fool's move to go all in or all out. It's better to assess and make. This is what the iterative decision making process is all about. It's like, oh, I'm going to make it. I'm going to make this move and we'll see how it works and we'll judge the feedback, and once we get feedback, we'll make another move.

And then once we make that move, we'll judge the feedback and see if we should go for it. We just keep doing that. Unfortunately, right now we're just, we're either all in or all out on so many different subjects that we, you know, we end up doing. Now, this is a good point, either all in or all out. So guess what?

We do nothing because we can't decide which one. Whether we should go on or whether we should go all out. So we do like half now we do half measures or we don't do anything. Yeah. Yeah.

Echo Charles

It does seem like the more complex things get and the more the more complex things get, the more the whole iterative decision making is more. It's what it seems like, because you. Don'T know everything exactly right. There's so much to know, and it's almost like most of the time, it kind of seems like you can't know everything, so you got to kind of do the right thing as you go along kind of with kind of a scenario. So, yeah, you're right.

Yeah. And in a general way of looking at it, that's. That's. Yeah. And look, I'm sure we could sit here and think about some things that are large and complex that you do need to make a more bold and binary decision on.

Jocko Willink

But off the top of my head, I can't think of one. So there's that. Gotcha. I understand. Next one.

After the action got underway and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course, we failed to retain popular support, in part because we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did.

We had not prepared the public to understand the complex events we face and how to react constructively to the need for changes in the course. In course. As the nation confronted uncharted seas in an alien environment, a nation's deepest strength lies not in its military prowess, but rather in the unity of its people. We failed to maintain it. This is.

This is great for leadership in any situation. Why isn't the team on board? Because they don't know why you're doing what you're doing. Another reason that the team's not on board is because when you presented the team, the plan, you presented it like this. Hey, guys, here's what we're going to do, and this is going to be the outcome.

How do you know what the outcome is going to be? You don't know what the outcome is going to be. Hey, listen, echo, we're going to move into this market here. We're going to invest this money, and here's what our RoI is going to be. And you're like, oh, that sounds awesome.

We look up and doesn't go that way. You. All of a sudden, you're questioning me as. As a leader and my decision make process, but I say, hey, echo, here's the numbers that we're looking at. Here's the statistics that we've got.

Here's the move that I think is going to benefit us, but I'm not sure. So we're going to take a step in this direction and we'll see where it lands. Hopefully, I'm right. That means more income for us. And if I'm wrong, these are some adjustments we can make.

Boom. Also, in your mind's open, you understand why we're doing what we're doing. You understand that I don't think I'm 100% right. When some contingencies come up that we didn't think of, you're okay with it because I already told you that I wasn't 100% right.

So these are very important. And just, again, explaining why you're doing something to the team, to the country, to your family, explain to them why you are doing what you're doing, what you're doing and why you're doing it. Absolutely critical. Next one.

We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders were omniscient. Where our own security is not directly at stake, our judgment of what is in another people's or country's best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God given right to shape every nation in our own image or as we choose. So this is very important. Our people and our leaders don't know everything.

They don't know everything. They're not God. They're going to make mistakes. They're not going to see everything. They're not going to understand everything.

And we, as a country, don't know everything. We don't understand everything. We don't see everything. So if you think that we as a country, know everything, see everything, understand everything, you're wrong. If you think that our leaders know everything, see everything, understand everything, you're wrong.

We don't. They don't. If you think that as the boss of your company, you know everything, see everything, understand if you're wrong. If you think that the. As the leader of your family, you know everything, see everything, understand it's not true.

If you think as the leader of your family that you can impose your will and shape every person in your family how you want, you're wrong. If you think you can shape every person in your company, you're wrong. Going back to the dream. It's a good dream. No.

It's your dream, not theirs.

So recognize that. We have to recognize that we failed to do that. We. Look, should we be proud to be american? Sure.

Have we done some good things? Yes. Do we have a lot of power? Yes. Have we made mistakes?

Yep. Do we have infinite power? Nope.

Is our way of living better than someone else's way of living? We might think so, but they might not. So we have to keep that in mind. As we move forward. Number nine, we did not hold to the principle that us military action, other than in response to direct threats to our own security, should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational national forces, supported fully and not merely cosmetically by the international community.

Check.

You know what that's about? It's about relationships. And this is why, when I talk about that, that extreme ownership leadership loop, the most heavily weighted thing in my calculus is, how's this going to affect my relationship when I'm making a decision? How's it going to affect my relationships with my team, with my boss, with my peer? And can you always make that work?

Nope. You can't always make it work. Sometimes I got to go to Echo and say, hey, echo, I'm cutting your marketing budget for your department by this much. We don't have any choice. Here's what's going on.

We're not going to survive if we don't make some cutbacks. Yep, I got to do that sometimes. But if I'm like, well, you know, Echo, do you really need to spend that money on that thing? And you're like, yo, I've been working on this project for this long. It's going to be great.

It's going to be the idea, well, you know what? I'm not going to do it. I got to weigh. How much is that going to negatively impact our relationship? It's the heaviest weight that I have.

So it's the same thing with the international community that should weigh so heavily on our decision making process, because once we break those relationships that we have with people, it causes long term problems. Again, does this mean that every single time you get to make the decision that's unified and everyone's on board? Nope, it doesn't mean that, but it means you should absolutely weigh those relationships the heaviest of every part of your decision. Oh, I got to do something. Oh, I got to do this.

Sometimes you do have to take leadership, spend leadership capital to do something. Sometimes that happens. Avoid it as much as you can, and then just don't make it cosmetic. Right. There's a lot of that stuff that happens.

Yeah. We're on board with America. America. You go. You go.

Send all your troops and fight and die. We'll be over here clapping like that. Bar fight. That happens. You know what I mean?

With a little guy that's like, yo, if you keep running your mouth, my buddy's gonna fight you.

So be careful. That number ten, we failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, it's the only time he mentions that these things apply. There may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions. For one whose life has been dedicated to the belief and practice of problem solving, this is particularly hard to admit. I think he's talking to himself.

Right. For one whose life has been dedicated to the belief and practice of problem solving, this is particularly hard to admit. But at times we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world. There's not always a solution, and there's certainly not always an academic solution. Doesn't work that way.

Oftentimes there's the way things are is the way things are, and you're going to be able to influence it maybe a little bit in one way or the other, but it's not going to look pretty. And by the way, if you're going to put yourself in a position, it's real obvious. I know hindsight's 2020, I get it. But it's real obvious that you were going to a party where there was gonna be problems, right? Yeah.

Like you roll up and you see what's going on and you're like, there's people walking around with freaking knives, there's people walking around with chains, there's people drunk, there's people on drugs, and you see all this mayhem and you're like, hey, let's go and check it out. Looks fun. That's not a good move. You know that there's all kinds of problems you're gonna get yourself into. And if you didn't hear these reports that I read, it didn't see that we were facing some significant problems, it's.

How does that happen? Well, you let your biases get ahead of you. You let your ego get ahead of you.

Number eleven. Underlying many, and this is the last one, underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues involving the great risks and costs, including, above all else, loss of life, associated with the application of military force under substantial constraints over a long period of time. Such organizational weakness would have been costly had this been the only task confronting the president and his advisors. So, yeah, if this was the only thing going on, that would have been way much. It, of course, was not.

It coexisted with a wide array of other domestic and international problems confronting us. We thus failed to analyze and debate our actions in Southeast Asia, our objectives, the risks and costs of alternative ways of dealing with them, and the necessity of changing course when failure was clear. With the intensity and thoroughness that characterized the debates of the executive committee during the cuban missile crisis.

So they weren't even having the kind of discussions that they needed to have to suss out what they should do. And this is this idea of going to war. If you're going to go to war and people go to war, people are going to die, Americans are going to die, and enemy are going to die, and civilians are going to die. That's what's happening. And anybody that thinks, oh, well, we'll be able to go to war, the casualties will be minimal on Americans.

Okay, what if that's your kid? And by the way, you think there's gonna be low casualties? You think in Vietnam they thought there's gonna be 58,000 cas. They didn't think that. They didn't think that at all.

These things escalate. It's escalate, escalate, escalate. That's the way these things happen. At Gettys, at Gettysburg, I talked about the Vietnam War memorial, and it's a. It's this, the wall, right?

And it starts off small. It's a few inches, maybe a few inches tall, maybe a half a foot tall or maybe a foot tall when it starts off. And so you don't really. It's not overwhelming. Right.

You're, like, looking at the names and you're feeling the solemn respect for the people that died. And as you continue to walk towards the center of the wall, towards the center of the apex of this v that it forms by the time you're in the middle, that thing. It's tall. It's very tall, and it's overwhelming. And that, to me, is a metaphor of how that war, how we got into that war.

It's like, a little bit. A little bit at a time. A little bit more. A little bit more. Oh, a little bit more.

And the next thing you know, you look up and you're surrounded by this. So the idea that you're gonna get engaged in war, it's. It's like, I'm trying to think of a good explanation of something that when you start it, you don't have control over it anymore. Like, it doesn't matter what you think. When you let that thing go, when you put that dog.

Like, if you go to a dog park with your dog, once you let that dog off the leash, it's out of control. Like, it doesn't matter how well trained it is, because it's gonna. Other dogs, all these things are gonna. Coming up factors, and someone's gonna have a treat, and someone else gonna have a frisbee and someone else gonna have a really aggressive dog, and someone's gonna have a really hot dog, and there's gonna be all these things going on, and you take that thing off the leash. Doesn't matter how well trained your dog is, doesn't matter what's going on.

It's now not under your control anymore.

It's the same thing with war. Once that initiates. Doesn't matter what you thought, doesn't matter your plan, doesn't matter your intention, doesn't matter how well trained your troops are, doesn't matter how what you think of your assessment of the enemy, all these things that you think that you know, that you think you know, you don't. So when you let that dog off the leash, stand by because you're about to be having to pay for a dog, another dog that got bit, your dog got bit, your dog got pregnant, your dog impregnated another dog, your dog broke a frisbee. Your dog jumped over and caused a car crash from jumping over the fence.

Like all these things are gonna happen or can happen. And sure, you go in there, you're like, oh, well, every other time I've gone in, it's been pretty mellow. Doesn't matter. There's elements that are beyond your control and beyond our control. That's what war is.

And for some reason, we're able to convince ourselves over and over again that this time it's going to be different. This time it's going to be different. And sometimes we get that reinforced because we go to the Gulf war one where it's over and 72 hours and there's limited casualties, and we were able to just kind of crush the enemy and achieve our goals very quickly. And it's like high five.

That's rare. It's not the way it works. The way it works is Korea. The way it works is Vietnam. The way it works is Afghanistan.

The way it works is Iraq. That's the way it works. You let that dog off and it's going to be mayhem. And all your little predictions are wrong. And the worst part is when the, when this happens, you don't make any changes.

You don't make any adjustments. You keep trying to do the same thing over and over and over again. Exactly what they did here and exactly what he says. We didn't change our course of action when it was very clear that we should, when it's very clear that the outcome was not going to be good. They're saying, hey, either way this goes, it's going to be bad.

Do you still want to play the game? Yes. Hey, either way it goes, this dog is going to get. There's going to be chaos. Do you still want to go?

Yeah, I'll let him off the leash. Let's go.

That's what happens.

Those are the lessons learned from McNamara. And I'm going to close out the book with this. He says, I want to add a final word on Vietnam. Let me be simple and direct. I want to be clearly understood.

The United States of America fought in Vietnam for eight years for what it believed to be good and honest reasons. By such action, administrations of both parties sought to protect our security, prevent the spread of totalitarian communism, and promote individual freedom and political democracy. The Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations made their decisions, and by those decisions, demanded sacrifice, sacrifices, and, yes, inflicted terrible suffering in light of those goals and values.

Just on that note, there's an idea of ownership, or taking ownership, and the lightest version of that is in the SEAL teams. Somebody messes something up and they're like, hey, what happened? And someone goes, hey, that's on me at my bust. And they expect, like, oh, just because you said, it's on me, it's my bust. Everyone goes, okay, cool, then we forgive you.

No, actually, if you do something stupid and it. And it's your fault, you take ownership, you still have to pay for it. There still is. There still is punishment that's going to happen. And that's.

I get a little bit of that vibe from this. Like, hey, they made their decisions with the best intentions and sacrifice. Sacrifices were demanded and terrible suffering wasn't was inflicted. But we had it. We had the right idea in mind.

It's like, mmm hmm, bro, it's a day late and a dollar short. Continue on. Their hindsight was better than their foresight. The adage echoes down the corridors of time, applying to many individuals in many situations, in many ages. People are human.

They are fallible. I concede with painful candor and a heavy heart that. That the adage applies to me and to my generation of american leadership regarding Vietnam, although we sought to do the right thing and believe we were doing the right thing, in my judgment, hindsight proves us wrong. We both overestimated the effect of South Vietnam's loss on the security of the west and failed. So they overestimated.

Look, if South Vietnam goes by, everything is going to fall apart. Guess what? South Vietnam did go down. Everything didn't fall apart and failed to adhere to the fundamental principle that in the final analysis, if the South Vietnamese were to be saved, they had to win the war for themselves. And again, that's a test of wills.

You've heard me say that war is a test of wills. We got to test the people's wills that actually are going to have to fight it. And if they don't want to step up and fight it, then you're not going to be able to win over the long run.

Straying from the central truth, we built a progressively more massive effort on an inherently unstable foundation. External military force cannot substitute for the political order and stability that must be forged by a people for themselves.

And then he says this. In the end, we must confront the fate of those Americans who served in Vietnam and never returned. Does the unwisdom of our intervention nullify their effort and their loss? I think not. They did not make the decisions.

They answered the nation's call to service. They went in harm's way on its behalf, and they gave their lives for their country and its ideals. That our effort in Vietnam proved unwise does not make their sacrifices less noble. It endures for all to see. Let us learn from their sacrifice and by doing so, validate and honor it.

And clearly, I agree with that. The men and women that stepped up and fought with honor to do their job, as the nation called them to do, is the highest of nobility. But we need to make sure that we learn from these lessons. And, and although I don't like McNamara still, I think that we should learn from him. And, and his applause and his lessons.

Yes, they apply to the way we interact with other human beings. They also apply to us as people. They apply to us as a country. These are, these are lessons that we really, in many cases, we still haven't learned them. Obviously.

Don't hear some of his lessons. Don't be extreme with your assessment. Right. Don't. When you hear an assessment, don't take it 100% fact.

Don't take it 0% fact. Put it into the calculus of your decision making. Make sure you understand other people's perspectives. These are things that you hear me talk about all the time. Understand other people's perspectives.

Listen, don't be arrogant.

And that's a huge part of, you know, that's my, my initial case with McNamara. Just the arrogance. And this is the way he presented himself, by the way, too. Like you watch him speak in this time period. Very self assured.

Overly self assured.

Don't underestimate your opponent's will. Don't overestimate your own will. People are going to die. If you're going to war, people are going to die, the enemy's going to die, civilians are going to die, and our own people are going to die. That's what war is and that is the test of will.

Technology doesn't solve all problems. Fact. Technology isn't the one coming home in a flag draped coffin. It's people.

Full and frank discussions. You have to have full and frank discussions. And just FYI, that means you should be listening to the other side. That's what a full and frank discussion is. A full and frank discussion.

I know there's some people listening right now. Cool. I'm going to go tell everyone what I think. No, actually, full and frank discussion means you shut your mouth and you listen to what other people say.

Like LBJ could have shut his mouth and listened to all this information that he was receiving, well written documents that explain the predicament that he setting himself up for.

So listen and put your ego in check. Explain why you're doing what you're doing. You have to do that. If you don't explain why, they're gonna make up their own and it's not gonna be good. No one's perfect.

It's okay. That's a lesson. A lesson is no one's perfect. Up, down, or across the chain of command.

Relationships are paramount. Yeah, prioritize the relationships. If you prioritize the relationships, everything else is going to go better.

And of course, change the course when things are not working. Very difficult to do. Everyone gets their ego all wrapped up in the plan that they came up with. But your plan is dumb and it's not working. So move on to a different one.

And that brings me to another topic that I didn't get to. I sort of brushed up against it, but. So one of McNamara's strategies in this war was something that he called graduated pressure. Graduated pressure. So we're going to increase the, increase the attacks that we're making, increase the bombing that we're doing, increase the troops that we're sending, increase the ships that we're sending over there.

These little steps we're going to take. These little steps. This kind of falls into what you were talking about. Echo, Charles. So little half measures, right?

And you've heard me over here promoting the idea, and I've written about the idea of iterative decision making. So, wait, jaco, you're for iterative decision making, which is taking small steps, and yet you're against this idea of graduated pressure. Why is that? Explain this to me. Well, it's very.

It's a very obvious reason. When you do iterative decision making, what you do is you make a small step, and then you listen to the feedback.

You assess whether that decision was good or not, what impact it had, whether it was working, and then you make adjustments based on the fact, based on the feedback that you get. Well, this idea that graduated pressure, all they did was take iterative steps slowly over time, but they didn't change anything. That, oh, we just. More bombs, more bombs, more troops, more troops. They just kept going in the same direction and just increasing in that direction.

It would. You. Can you. You heard the feedback. The feedback is, hey, the north.

The North Vietnamese are not going to. It doesn't matter how much you bomb. They don't need supplies. And what do we do? Bomb more.

Bomb more, bomb more. And by the way, every time you're bombing, guess what you're doing? You're killing some civilians. You're turning the hearts and minds against the coalition forces, against the Americans, against the South Vietnamese. Some of those bombs killed some south vietnamese relatives.

What happens now? Now they're on the other side. So we graduated pressure. We made small steps. We never adjusted what we were doing, and that's why it's problematic.

So iterative decision making is not the same as graduated pressure, because iterative decision making, you make adjustments to what you're doing.

So that's that. Obviously, lots of lessons learned. And for me, opening my mind to learn lessons from someone that I don't like and I don't respect, but I'm. I want to learn from everybody. If we don't do that, we fail.

So keep an open mind and keep learning. And that's what I got. Echo. Charles. Yep.

Echo Charles

Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. That's a special. When you're.

You can successfully justify your rejection of another person's ideas for, like, to yourself. You know, like, you know, the old memes about, I subscribe to the Jim bro memes, and they always, like, hate on cardio. Oh, okay. But cardio is important, so you keep an open mind. Even though you might send me some memes, some anti cardio memes, you still.

Support it in the background. We're supporting cardio. Same thing. For example. Yeah.

I keep thinking about the clash of cultures, and it's like, yeah, so obvious. You should be on time or whatever. And then even the bouncer example that you brought. And I'm like, so what's the solution there, aside from obviously keeping an open mind? But still, you can still have the clash, because some things are unexpected, but maybe, like, in a collaborative effort or a collaborative situation, maybe more.

Establish the unwritten rules into written rules or at least explain them. So when people talk to me about the culture piece, I say, okay, so we've got to merge two cultures, my culture and your culture. I'm going to subordinate my culture to yours as much as possible. So, hey, this is what we did in Ramadi. We're working with the army.

Jocko Willink

We're working with the Marine Corps. The way they program their radios is different than the way we program our radios. Did we roll in there and be like, no, you got a program? No. How do you guys do it?

We'll do it your way. Oh, what's your near and far recognition symbol? We'll do the same thing. Oh. How are you approaching these scenarios?

We'll approach them the same way. What do you set up your. What, what. How are you mapping out the city? What are you calling the various districts?

Yep, we'll use that, too. And so we adopted their culture, and then guess what it did to their mind. Open their mind to us. Yeah. So the battle maps that we used when we got there, the way that they were doing it in the battle space was basically each block of buildings had a number.

So each block of buildings would be like, j one, j two, J three, J four. And in the SeaL teams, the way. I was a radio man and I made a lot of battle maps in my day, it's important to not just have the block, but what building? And so I talked to some of the leadership and said, hey, you know, when we do this, this is after we were clearly adopting some of their culture. I said, hey, when we do these types of things, we like to actually number each individual building.

And they kind of looked at me a little bit crazy, because imagine that you're looking at the city of Ramadi. There's thousands of buildings. Wait a second. You mean you think we should number each individual building in each individual block? Well, it would make communication a lot easier, because instead of now, hey, we've got enemy fighters.

Block J two building, north side, six buildings down, has a round window towards the aft. You know, you see I'm saying, yep. Now it's like enemy building j, block j ten, building six. Everybody knows right where that is in an instant. And so they actually did that.

And I actually was. Was. I had talked to the. One of the commanders about it, and then I showed up there 2 hours later, and I saw a couple of the. The intel guys just sitting there putting numbers, and I could see, they were a little bit annoyed by it.

Echo Charles

Yeah. But I knew it was gonna be helpful, and that's. That took over the whole city. Yeah. So in order to get there, I didn't roll in there and say, hey, the way we do this.

Jocko Willink

No, I was like, wait, what's your near and far recognition? How do you guys program your radios? What. What are you guys using for marking? What's your night marking?

What's your day marking like? We want to adopt your culture. Oh, what, by the way, what uniforms are you wearing? Oh, you're wearing for Seth guys, you're wearing AC use. Cool.

Guess what? They're gonna wear ACU, same as you. That's what we're doing. We're gonna adopt their culture. Yeah.

Echo Charles

So that's why you don't come 20 minutes early. You come eight minutes early now. Yeah, yeah. And I try to make it on time. Yeah, I can.

Jocko Willink

Yeah. You're usually only four to seven minutes behind me when I show up here. There you go. I'm adapting some of the culture. Yep.

Echo Charles

There you go. Is that why you did tricep extension today? Yeah. Okay. All right.

Jocko Willink

So you notice that? How could I not? You know, I have doms in a kind of a big way. What, in your triceps? No, no, no.

I have doms in my body. Sure. And probably one of the few places I did not have doms right now was in my tries. So I did a little bit. I did a little bit of movement, but then I was like, you know what?

That easy curl bar is looking lonely, so let's get in there. And I. And by the way, I also did tricep pull downs. Yeah, both rope and like that bars called. It was in the game.

Echo Charles

Right. Good. Trying to work. Best tries. I could not be more.

Jocko Willink

Yeah, I know. You were fired up. I forgot to tag you. I'm sorry. Apologize.

Echo Charles

It's okay. It. I'm always tagged with that kind of stuff, so, boom, Jocko's doing it. Yeah. He's in the game, expanding his culture.

Jocko Willink

Mm hmm. You know, we're all trained. That's why I do deep, deep squats. Yeah, you got in the game. Yeah, I was always down for squats.

Echo Charles

You know, I took it. I took a year, maybe two off squats, but they were parallel squats. I'm saying now I'm back in squats. Been there for years. Deep squats.

Thank you, Jocko. Anyway, the point there being we're all on the path in our own way, keeping an open mind. For sure. One thing that I think is pretty established is that we're working out, keeping our buddies strong. You know how you do that?

Boom. That part is up to you. You see what I'm saying? A bunch of different ways to success in that regard. Nonetheless, if you're on the path, you're on the path.

You're gonna need fuel. Mm hmm. It's true. I actually recommend jockofuel Jacob fuel.com. Y'all, check it out.

Jocko Willink

We got drinks, we got protein. What's the deal on protein? What's our 30? Okay, so I just got done lifting. When do I need to drink my milk?

Echo Charles

Right after. Yep. And so it's like, one depends how big you are, but, you know, one if you want to go to cool. But the more you start to drink these faster digesting proteins, the more you drink them at once, the more diminishing returns it elicits. You see what I'm saying?

So you hit that one perfect. Then go eat your high protein meal. Perfect. That's the protocol. 100%.

Jocko Willink

That's what we're doing. So jacofuel.com. Get yourself some more. Get yourself some. Go get yourself some.

Hydrate very soon. Yeah. What's your assessment of hydrate? So 100%. Yeah.

Echo Charles

Better than okay. Especially, like, okay, so if you choose the ones with sugar, I don't even know, really, what you're doing there. That's a different thing. You know? Like, you might as well drink soda, I guess, in a way, you know.

Jocko Willink

Crack open a coke. Yeah, yeah. You know, but most of us, we're not doing that. And if you're doing that, cool. Do you.

Echo Charles

But that's not what we're doing. So the fact that there's no sugar and all, like, good. Like, the perfect formula and everything, you'd think, oh, yeah, it's gonna sacrifice. I get it. I'll sacrifice the taste for that good formula, but there is no sacrifice and taste.

And, in fact, it tastes better than most other hydrate beverages, even the ones with sugar, so, yeah. Surprising. Yeah. It's funny. Cause, like, you know, every once in a while, we'll encounter our peers, and they're like, ingredients people, you know, when they have, like, expertise.

So first thing, they go, they, boom. They look at the ingredients, and they're always, yeah, it's funny. I'll look at your face when they go to look for the ingredients. Yeah. I was like, that's right.

Jocko Willink

Yeah, I like me now for you. You're like, oh, yeah, can't wait. But, yeah, good. Yeah, yeah. The combination of taste and ingredients is.

Echo Charles

Yeah, it's kind of nice. Yeah. So this is. I really haven't talked about this. This is a ready to drink hydrate that's out.

Jocko Willink

It's awesome. So check it out. Jockofuel.com. Get your. Get your joint warfare, get your super krill.

Just get after it. And if you want to go to a store, Wawa has the protein vitamin shop, GNC, military commissaries, a fees. Hannaford dash stores, wakefern shoprite. Meyer, did I say Heb? He did just now.

Heb, get in there. Meyer, get in there. Wegmans, Harris Teeter, lifetime. Lifetime fitness. That is lifetime fitness.

Got. They resisted getting mulk protein in there. They've, they've had go in there. Goes. Been doing great.

But they're kind of like, well, protein does not really do as well here. And we're like, okay, well, can we try it? And they said, sure. Now they're just ordering it, ordering it. So same thing.

People know. I just got done working out. Guess what I need. Protein, 30 grams. Right.

Delivered to the system. So lifetime fitness shields, by the way, you ever been to a shields before? Dude, they are like 200, 300,000. Just gear. Just outdoor gear, hunting gear, bows, just everything.

They have a, they have a Ferris wheel in them. That's how big they are. Where is that? Like Colorado? Like those, like the western states.

There's not a ton of them, but they're epic. If you ever get a chance to go to shields, and if you go to shields, you can get Jacob Fueler. So that's awesome. And small gyms, basically just getting after it. Jared Jackson and Chaz, they're just out there just going into crossfit, going into jiu jitsu, going into whatever, powerlifting gyms and setting people up.

So if you're in one of those gyms and you want to have jockofueller, email jfsalesachofuel.com. That's what we got going on. What else? Origin USA. Look, we're doing the jiu jitsu.

Echo Charles

You know, you're gonna need a ghee, you need a rash guard. You're gonna need a uniform. You want to pay? Look, you have the right. This is America.

You choose whichever one you want. Junk if you want. Yeah, totally. Yeah, you can, you know, but it's one of those things where if you get the best one, you're gonna be happy you did this, so. And not to mention, these are all made in USA.

Hundred percent. Even the cotton that they've grown to turn into the fabric, to turn into the ghee and everything else on originusa.com, by the way. All good. Yeah, all good. Get the good one.

You'll be glad you did on many levels. Also, I mentioned other, the quote unquote other stuff. That includes jeans. Best jeans there is, by the way. Even the factory jeans.

You think that that was the first one, right? The factory jeans. So you'd think, oh, yeah, that's just the fundamental. Whatever. But they're, in my opinion, because I put them on.

I know this because it's fresh in my head. I put them on the other DaY or used them the other day, and they still hold up right next to the delta 68. Oh, yeah. Well, the, just so everyone knows, the factory, the original ones were heavier. So they're lIke, if you're from Maine, if you're from MOntana, if you're from MinneSOTa, you might want to get a pair of those for THe OcTober to maybe march timeframe.

Jocko Willink

And then you go deltas all day, unless you're out there working in the field. Yeah, then you got it. You might want to keep those factory ones on. Yeah, but, yeah, we got you covered. Originusa.com.

Also, we have a jiu jitsu camp, and this year we're after Jujitsu camp. That one's sold OuT. The JujitSu camp sold out. But we have a law EnforcemenT JUjitsu training. So that's August 27 through the 31st up in Maine.

Come and train. Come and train. So you're ready for whatever you might face. Origin USA.com, check it out. Also, Jocks has a store called Jocko store.

Echo Charles

Discipline equals freedom apparel. We got shirts and hoodies, hats. We got shorts on there, too, by the way. You know, I just realized right now I haven't released the socks yet. Hmm.

It's interesting. We have. Discipline goes. Freedom of socks. Yeah, that's NC.

Even you kind of like that with that. We'll call it an attitude is really in this. It's kind of an explanation why I keep forgetting to announce this, because if you don't have discipline equals freedom socks, there's no hole in your life. You know, it's not like you're like, dang, where's my. You know?

But if you don't have the shirt, you're like, bro, you know, that's the kind of fundamental way to represent, I think, in many ways. I mean, there's other other ways for sure. Hats and stuff, which we have, by the way. But you don't think that with socks is what I'm saying. Color the socks black with red.

Yeah, all day, bro. I'm here to tell you. I'll make an announcement. It'll be all good. Everyone will be taken care of.

Jocko Willink

Also, are they available on the website right now? Yeah, chocolate store. But you just haven't told anybody about it. Yeah. Let me double check the socks.

Echo Charles

Put it this way, by the time this comes out, look, it's available. In all intents and purposes, they live. Also have the shirt locker. That's a subscription scenario. Different design every month.

Jocko Willink

Lies, lies. Sugar coated lies, lies. Yeah, that's good that you're still thinking about that one. It's a few months ago, but hey, man, it has staying power. We like that.

Echo Charles

Nonetheless, like I said, new design every month. People seem to like it. Check it out. You just click on the shirt locker and you can see there's some examples of some of the past designs and stuff and which you can get, by. The way, if you're a member.

If you're a member, you can get any fast design you want. It's good. It's a good deal, I think, anyway. But yeah, people seem to like that. Check it out.

It's all, all on chocolatestore.com. Right on. Also check out coloradocraftbeef.com and primalbeef.com because you need steak in your life. It's true. Get good steak.

Jocko Willink

Get american steak that's grown on local farms in the Shenandoah Valley for primal beef and in Colorado for Colorado craft beef. Check it out. Go get your steaks. Taste good, feel good, are good. Also subscribe to the podcast.

Also jocko underground.com dot. Also YouTube. Check that out. Also, psychological warfare. Somebody just posted that today I saw on the interwebs.

Yeah, getting after it. Flipsidecanvas.com dot Dakota Meyer. Got cool stuff to hang on your wall. Written a bunch of books. Check them out.

You know what they're about. Hey, and look, you're listening right now, but your kid's not listening to this. But they could be getting on the path. If you get in the way of the warrior kid books. Check them out.

1234 and five. Got a movie coming. Directed by Mick G. Chris Pratt's gonna be Uncle Jake. Come on, let's get in the game.

That's what we're doing, Mikey. And the dragons for the littler kids. Best little kids book ever. That's what the the polls say. Yeah, 100%, all of them.

And echelon front, we have leadership consultancy, so check that out. If you want to come to one of our live events, the next big one is the Dallas muster 16 through 18, October. Also we have council number four sold out. Number five is, we think we still have a few seats right now. June 26 through the 29th, up in the mouth mountains of Washington, totally detached from the world, riding horses, hiking, and talking about leadership.

Come and check it out. Also, women's assembly, eleven through 13 in San Antonio, Texas. If you can't make it to one of those, that's okay. We got online training, extreme ownership.com. Come and check that out if you want to learn how to lead in every aspect of your life, extreme ownership.com.

And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, want to help gold Star family, check out mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. I'm on the board of it now, by the way. Okay. Honored to be on the board of America's mighty warriors.org.

The amazing organization has helped so many of people that I know personally, I've seen what it, what that organization, what Mama Lee does to take care of veterans, take care of their families, gold star families. She's just an amazing human, and she's carrying on the spirit of Mark Lee. So America's mighty warriors.org, if you want to donate or you want to get involved, also, heroes and horses.org up there in the mountains of Montana, Micah Fink, just helping veterans move through life, move through struggle, and come out the other side stronger in spirit and mind and body. And also, Jimmy May has got an organization beyond the brotherhood.org. Check that out.

If you want to help with trip, with military, getting out, moving to the civilian sector, he's doing a great job with that. If you want to connect with us, I'm at jocko.com. I'm on social media echoes on social media echoes that echo. Charles. I'm at jocko.

Just be careful because the algorithm will grab you. It'll hold you underwater until you, you aren't here anymore. Thanks to all of our uniform personnel out there on the front lines, especially our Vietnam veterans that stepped up for all of us in that rough war. They did their duty. So thanks to all of you for protecting our way of life when the nation called.

Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, emts, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for your service and sacrifice to keep us safe here at home and everyone else out there. You can always learn. You can always learn from anyone. But you have to have an open mind.

You have to listen. You have to make adjustments. When you're wrong, when you make a decision and it seems to be going a way you did not expect, you have to adjust. You have to be humble enough to say, I was wrong. We're going to move in a different direction and that's what you do.

If you're going down the wrong path, stop and get on the right path. And that's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.

438: How We Can Learn From People We Don't Like or Agree With.

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: McNamara's Legacy

3: Lessons from McNamara

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Companies

Books

Guest Name(s):

Content Warnings:

Transcript