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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:53
Let's get into it.
0:54
All right, guys, today we've got a special guest on the podcast.
0:56
His name is Daniel Elkins.
0:57
He is a green beret.
0:58
All you guys that make fun of me for only having seals on the show, there you go.
1:01
I got you a green beret, but he is the co-founder and chief executive director of SOAA, or SOA,
1:06
or Special Operations Association of America.
1:09
So I just wanted to give him a special thank you because he did this while traveling.
1:12
He was doing some spots for Fox News and for Newsmax, and it was just kind of an interesting
1:17
period.
1:18
And the reason why he was on all those different shows and he kind of squeezed us in is because
1:20
we're at the one-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, so we certainly
1:24
talked about that in the podcast.
1:26
We also talked about why he decided to go to the military route to begin with, kind of
1:29
the difference between training and war.
1:30
And this was a guy that I didn't know that until we were doing the interview.
1:33
This guy was basically working as a pastor before he enlisted in the military at the
1:37
age of 28.
1:38
So very, very different route that most people take, but we do spend a lot of time talking
1:42
about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but then we got into some stuff that they do over
1:45
there at SOA in terms of how they advocate and he explained kind of what they do with
1:49
that organization, but specific issues like operator syndrome, which a lot of you guys
1:53
don't know about, but you need to know about, you know, what we're doing with our interpreter
1:56
allies, burn pits.
1:58
We kind of skipped over, you know, eligibility of benefits, but then we talked about rules
2:00
of engagement and how the different definitions of rules of engagement affect our guys when
2:05
they're downrange, trying to protect themselves, protect the local populace and their brothers.
2:08
And so very, very fun interview.
2:10
I hope you guys enjoy it.
2:11
So without further ado, let's get into it.
2:14
Daniel Elkins.
2:15
Welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast.
2:17
Hey, brother.
2:18
Thanks for having me on.
2:19
Well, dude, I already had to go ahead and hit record because we were saying so many cool
2:22
things offline and getting into a lot of different territory.
2:25
So we kind of had to go and spread it in.
2:27
And I'm going to go ahead and say the joke before anyone else says the joke.
2:31
Yes, guys.
2:32
I know he's a ginger to yes, I know he has a red beard.
2:35
No, we're not related.
2:36
Okay.
2:37
It's super racist.
2:38
It's super terrible and bigoted of you to assume that all gingers are related.
2:41
Can you at least cosign with that with me, Daniel?
2:43
Oh, I was going to preface the audience with that too, like just because we look alike
2:48
doesn't mean we're related.
2:49
Come on, guys.
2:50
What is wrong with you guys?
2:51
We are not going to stand for such bigotry on the show, but we need to go ahead and get
2:55
in and get everybody an idea of who you are.
2:57
I talked about a little bit in the intro, but anytime somebody decided to go the military
3:01
route, that's always interesting to me.
3:02
I grew up in law in Fort Sill, so I was around military my entire life, but I went a different
3:06
route, got a, you know, a full ride to go to college.
3:09
So I didn't really go the military route.
3:11
And I kind of regret that to a degree, but you did.
3:13
You decided to go to the army route and then specifically special forces, which is not
3:17
to be confused with special operations, which is the greater community, but special forces.
3:21
Green Berets and different things like that.
3:23
I mean, dude, I used to say it wrong too, and I lament those days, but you know, why go
3:27
the military route and why do you want to be a Green Berets?
3:32
Yeah.
3:33
Well, I mean, at least you know that, you know, I'm not a Navy SEAL.
3:37
So, you know, that's important delineation, you know, when I talk to people more often
3:44
than not, they're like, oh, so is that kind of like a Navy SEAL in the army and more often
3:48
than not?
3:49
I'm like, yes.
3:50
Yeah, fine.
3:51
Just leave me alone.
3:52
So my dad is a patriot.
3:55
He was drafted in Vietnam.
3:56
So I grew up, you know, watching Rambo, playing GI Joe, and I just always wanted to serve.
4:05
And then obviously the events of September 11th galvanized a lot for myself and a whole
4:13
generation that served during the GWOT, but it took me some time, I was kind of a late
4:20
bloomer.
4:21
I did.
4:22
I lived a lot of life before going into the military, so I enlisted at 28.
4:27
So I was kind of older for enlisting, but I was right at that age where most people
4:33
were going to selection.
4:34
So I went to selection when I was 30, and then the rest has been history.
4:40
So I've been in for about 12 years now, and I love it.
4:45
And you're still active duty, right?
4:47
No, so I'm not an active duty under the National Guard.
4:50
So, you know, I, as an M day soldier, it's kind of the acronym, they say, for, you know,
4:56
not on any sort of set of orders, you know, the citizen soldier, and that's what gives
5:01
me the ability to do this, to help promote and advocate on behalf of members of the Special
5:07
Operations Community.
5:08
Okay, so is that the same because we have a mutual friend in Tim Kennedy?
5:11
That's where you and I met in D.C. when I was out there with Tim.
5:14
So is that kind of the same, same thing that he's on?
5:16
He's part of the National Guard, so he's still deployable technically?
5:19
100%.
5:20
Yeah.
5:21
So, you know, a lot of people know National Guard, like one weekend a month, two weeks
5:24
a year.
5:25
Right.
5:26
It's a little bit more intense in Army Special Forces in the Guard.
5:31
So year in and year out, I'm typically away for about 12 weeks, any given year, sometimes
5:37
more, and then like every three years, you know, typically a deployment somewhere.
5:41
So yeah, Tim, he's in the same boat as me, still in a deployable status.
5:48
And I think we'll both hang it up when they force us to, because we both love it.
5:53
Yeah, it makes sense.
5:54
So one thing that I think would be helpful, because you made the seal comment at the beginning,
5:57
and I get crap all the time for having so many seals on the shows.
5:59
It's like, guys, I'll talk to just about anyone that writes a book and apparently only seals
6:03
know how to write.
6:04
It's like, what do you want from me, but I know that a lot of guys, you know, they look
6:08
at seals and green berets and, you know, rangers and marine recon and, you know, all these other
6:14
different groups, they don't know how to delineate them.
6:17
They just know that seals can swim, kind of.
6:19
And so like, if you could kind of help us out and you don't need to go down the list
6:22
of everybody in the SpecOps community necessarily, even though I know you know about them, but
6:26
help most of us civvies understand kind of the differences in terms of where those, you
6:30
know, where those people would go to war versus this group, you know, how they're used, right?
6:36
Absolutely.
6:37
Well, you know, and, you know, for, you know, given a little bit of flack to, you know,
6:43
our fellow seals in the community, you know, I do want to say in a very legitimate way,
6:49
you know, the whole diving thing and being underwater and not breathing, that's a big
6:54
deal.
6:55
Yes, so I am blessed or maybe God hates me, I don't know, but I'm on a dive team.
7:02
You know, I joined the military because I didn't want to be underwater, but the hardest, most
7:08
mentally stressful things, training iterations that I've done in the US military are the
7:17
dive events that people do to train up to go to dive school.
7:22
And there's a mental aspect of being underwater when your body is telling you to go up and
7:29
take a breath, and at that point in time, knowing that you are able to physiologically
7:35
stay underwater the same amount of time that you've already been underwater before you
7:40
actually pass out, and it's all psychological.
7:43
So usually, you know, most people run out of breath at around a minute, a minute 15, you
7:48
know, physiologically, you can stay under for two minutes and 30 seconds before you actually
7:52
pass out.
7:53
So that's all mental.
7:55
And that's something that I think is ingrained into the SEAL community.
8:00
It's just a different set of stress.
8:03
But to answer your question, right, so, you know, there's a different tool in the toolbox
8:08
for different things.
8:09
You know, you have a flathead screwdriver, you have a Phillips, you might have, you know,
8:12
a torque wrench, you might have a level, you know, a wood saw is different than, you know,
8:18
a hacksaw, and kind of, that's how I look at things, right?
8:22
So you have, you know, different elements that primarily are relevant to missions, one
8:30
being water, one being land.
8:33
And then you have kind of direct action, you know, that's what, you know, most people
8:37
think of when they think the military or special operations.
8:41
It's guys looking like they're on a SWAT team, going into a room, you know, doing room clearing,
8:47
and that's, that's called direct action.
8:49
And the SEAL community is really, really good at that in a water or maritime environment.
8:55
And then, you know, we have the Rangers, right?
8:59
You know, and the Rangers are, I would say, are a raid force.
9:02
They're an elite light infantry.
9:04
They don't operate in small teams.
9:06
They still operate in platoon and company-sized elements, but they're really, really good
9:12
at doing that direct action, you know, on the ground.
9:17
And that's all that they train.
9:18
That's all that they do.
9:20
Green Berets are a little different.
9:21
You know, we're more a force multiplication where we learn to shoot, move, and communicate.
9:27
But really what makes us different in the tool that we are and in the American arsenal,
9:34
if you will, is this thing called force multiplication, right?
9:38
It's the ability to go in, identify a group that needs to be trained, and then train them
9:46
to a standard and equip them to fight for themselves are alongside of us, right?
9:53
And our pipeline is a little unique in regards to that because, you know, we learn a second
9:58
language, right?
9:59
So I never thought I could learn a second language.
10:00
I didn't think I was smart enough, but somehow a military managed to teach me French.
10:05
And, you know, I'm grateful for that, right?
10:08
So, you know, that's kind of the slight difference, you know, and then, you know, what does the
10:14
Air Force special operations do?
10:17
No one really knows.
10:18
It's still kind of a mis-tranos kidding.
10:21
So typically, they attach, right?
10:24
So they'll come to CO units, they'll come to SF units, Special Force, Green Berets,
10:32
they'll come to Ranger units as combat controllers, and they handle aircraft, right?
10:38
They speak pilot, and they also speak ground, right?
10:42
And that's a huge capability, you know, close air support and the ability to call for fires.
10:49
The Air Force Special Operations Committee also has the PJs, right?
10:54
And that is a dedicated unit for, you know, aircraft or pilot retrieval are soldiers on
11:02
the battlefield that are in, you know, really behind enemy lines to rescue them, provide
11:10
medical aid, are, you know, set up the ability to collect them up.
11:15
And then, kind of, last, you know, rounding out the list, you've got, you know, Force
11:20
Recon, which kind of matriculated to Marsok, which is now the Raiders, right?
11:26
And, you know, they're very young and nascent, and I still think that they're figuring out
11:30
what their mission set should be.
11:34
They come with a great sniper capacity, as well as surveillance and reconnaissance capacity,
11:42
and can provide, you know, actionable intel for target packages that get created and so
11:48
on and so forth.
11:49
So, that's kind of rounds out the community.
11:50
Well, I appreciate you going into all that detail, because I know for most civilians,
11:53
like, when we hear about things on the news, you know, we don't know why Delta was sent
11:58
in as opposed to the development group, right?
12:00
Or vice versa or something like that.
12:02
And, again, I think it's helpful to look at it, it's like, okay, you have your toolbox,
12:05
but you know, you shouldn't use your hammer as a screwdriver, because that's not what
12:08
it's made to do.
12:09
And so, I think that that's very helpful.
12:11
Now, let's talk just in general about going to war, because in general, I guess, the United
12:15
States has been at war for the last 20 years or so, essentially, since 2001 now, you could
12:20
look at it like, hey, we've had people deployed for decades and decades and decades, that's
12:23
just kind of like old hat.
12:25
But for you, just talk to me about the difference between being in, you know, the Q-course,
12:30
or going through boot camp, or going through a workup, or whatever it is that you're doing,
12:35
and then going to war.
12:36
Because everything that you're doing, supposedly leading up to that moment, is to get you ready
12:41
to be as lethal as possible.
12:42
Again, I've heard a lot of people say it, the US military is meant to kill people and
12:46
break stuff.
12:47
And so, it's like, you're being trained throughout this entire period to go and do that.
12:51
But there's got to be a different ratcheting up, so talk about that a little bit.
12:54
Well, and this is a really great segue into a conversation that I think most families
13:01
in America don't have, right?
13:02
And it's one of the reasons why I wanted to found the Special Operations Association
13:08
of America, you know.
13:09
So, I'll weave in some personal experiences in combat and some of those dilemmas.
13:15
But under the backdrop of this, which is, in America, from a very early age, we are
13:22
taught that violence is not how you solve issues, right?
13:27
And we're taught to de-escalate situations and not use violence to solve our problems.
13:34
And then the military does an excellent job of systematically turning a person that has
13:40
been wired to flight or freeze and getting them to be able to be aggressive, right?
13:51
And that's very, very systematic.
13:54
And then, you know, that gets fine-tuned when you go through any of the Special Operations
13:59
pipelines, you know.
14:01
But the dilemma then that happens in combat, right?
14:03
And, you know, we've had lots of conversations with our members from all tribes within the
14:09
Special Operations community about this dilemma.
14:13
So you go out on your first mission and whether it's close up or it's at distance, right?
14:20
You are violent, you conduct what's violence of action against enemy combatants, right?
14:25
And at first, you're like, "All right, I've done my job.
14:30
Should I feel good about that?
14:31
Should I celebrate that?"
14:33
You know, it's unusual.
14:36
It's not what you've been conditioned, but your training takes over.
14:42
And then you do it a couple more times and then you kind of assimilate to this culture.
14:48
And that's when you're getting back from a mission and you're high-fiving, you know,
14:53
your buddy or you start to take some pride in what you've done.
14:59
But the reality of that is, you know, you've just, you know, killed somebody, right?
15:06
And now you're celebrating and not to celebrate, you know, that it's great to kill someone,
15:12
but you're celebrating that you've done a good job.
15:15
You have been successful fighting an enemy.
15:18
And then all the training, the years of training that you have to do that, add up, and then
15:27
you transition back into society.
15:28
And even if you're on active duty art, you're in the National Guard, you go through a four
15:33
or five day demobilization process and then you're back in general pop, right?
15:39
And I experienced, you know, some transitional issues, right?
15:43
You know, and I'll be the first to say that, you know, I haven't gone on hundreds of missions
15:49
or anything like that.
15:50
You know, I want to be very clear to the audience, right?
15:52
I am a combat vet from Afghanistan, but, you know, it's wars kind of like luck of the
15:59
draw, right?
16:00
And I'm grateful that I've been able to serve my country and go on a few combat operations.
16:05
But I don't have a, you know, 20 years of experience with nine combat deployments.
16:10
But I think the issue really is is the military is really good at turning it on.
16:15
And then we just kind of are left to fend for ourselves when we turn it off.
16:20
And you know, that's a conversation that most people don't want to have simply because it's
16:25
uncomfortable.
16:26
Yeah, it is uncomfortable.
16:28
And also, I think there are a lot of conversations going on around dinner tables right now all
16:32
across the country.
16:33
As you know, and as most people know, across country right now, the US military is having
16:36
a hell of a time trying to hit all their recruitment numbers.
16:40
And I think there are a lot of things that go into that.
16:42
And perhaps we'll be able to get into that here in just a second.
16:44
Well, actually, let's kind of, I want to go back to something that you said, but I do.
16:48
We're going to spend plenty of time on SOA.
16:49
I'm glad you mentioned it, but we'll get into that a little bit later.
16:52
So talk to me a little bit about the aspect of killing and the high-fiving because we've
16:56
had guys on the show before that were in different, you know, special operations units and they
17:01
did some pretty crazy and kinetic stuff overseas.
17:04
But I've talked to some of them specifically that they came into the military with a Judeo
17:09
Christian ethic, right?
17:10
So Bill Rapier is a guy that comes to mind.
17:12
He's an incredibly devout Christian and he went in there and he obviously knows the difference
17:16
between killing and murder.
17:17
And in the Ten Commandments, that's talking about murder, the murder of innocent people
17:21
not killing in war.
17:22
So I guess for you, give me a little bit, you know, we're getting a little personal here
17:25
from the beginning.
17:26
Give me a little bit of what I guess your worldview is or was before you got into the
17:30
military.
17:31
Did you have a Judeo Christian ethic?
17:32
Would you consider yourself a Christian?
17:33
Did you hook your ponytail to a tree and pray to the gods of the roots or whatever
17:37
thing like that?
17:38
And then, you know, talk about how that affected once you got into things because it's weird
17:42
to people seeing guys high-five after they kill a buck, much less a terrorist.
17:46
Right.
17:47
No, no.
17:48
All really, really good questions.
17:49
Big reveal to the audience and, you know, to those listening, Kyle didn't know this prior
17:54
to the conversation, but I had a very, very strong faith still due.
18:00
I actually went to Bible school and was a missionary for a few years and then I was
18:06
a teaching pastor.
18:08
Okay.
18:09
I definitely did not know any of that.
18:10
So there he goes.
18:11
That's why the question sounded so stupid to you, to your ears, but go for it.
18:15
And then I enlisted in the military.
18:18
But you know, everyone doesn't come from the journey that I have had or many of your listeners
18:23
have had.
18:24
But I do think what I have personally seen, and this is anecdotal, right, is that, you
18:30
know, whether it be a, you know, a faith-based set of values or just someone that has actually
18:37
put deliberate thought into their actions, I have found that those who have thought about
18:45
the situation, you know, at nauseum prior to the event actually happening tend to be
18:54
better equipped to adjust to the stressors and the emotional toll that events like that
19:01
can possibly have.
19:02
Now, that might not necessarily be taking another's life in combat.
19:07
That could be losing a teammate, right, you know, which I unfortunately experienced on
19:12
my rotation, you know, and, you know, that can be very difficult unless you have thought
19:20
through the reasons why, and the justification why, you know.
19:23
I remember watching American Sniper prior to being in the military and I'm pretty sure
19:30
it was prior to the military, you know, we'll have to Google that and find out.
19:34
But the opening scene where there's this, I believe it's a little boy who's going to
19:39
pick up a rifle and he's having this kind of self-talk and he's like, don't do it, don't
19:45
do it, right.
19:47
But those types of scenarios are happening and a lot of times people in those situations
19:54
that haven't thought that through do something and then they're dealt with the aftermath
20:01
of that and, you know, that's extremely problematic.
20:04
You know, I'm grateful for the pipeline that I went through in training because it put us
20:09
intentionally in very, very difficult situations.
20:13
But not everyone in the military has afforded that.
20:14
You know, like, I signed up to be, you know, at the tip of the spear, you know, and there's
20:22
others that are further closer to the actual point than I, but, you know, I wanted to do
20:29
those things, but, you know, your average person that joins the military because it's
20:34
a great life opportunity, maybe they want to be a truck driver or something, and they
20:38
get into a situation, one, it's not really, you know, what they signed up to do.
20:43
They may lack some of that training that my community gets, and, more often than not,
20:49
they haven't thought through those things.
20:51
So their transition back into society can be very difficult.
20:54
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It's incredibly rough, and, you know, I've seen that.
21:26
I saw that in Lawton when people were coming back from war.
21:29
You see that if you're in these veteran communities where there are a lot of veterans, you see
21:32
people coming back physically wounded, mentally wounded, their families wounded.
21:36
I mean, how many guys have you heard about?
21:38
They go into deployment and they come home, and their girl's gone, and they took all their
21:40
stuff like, you know, those horror stories are out there.
21:43
But one thing that you were talking about there that I think is I want to cosign, make
21:46
sure that I cosign for people, is like, you have a lot of people out there that are interested
21:49
at least in the concept of the sheepdog that we get from Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman.
21:53
But they've never made the decision that a sheepdog would need to pre-decide before
21:57
going into a kinetic and potentially violent situation.
22:00
And so that's like when people, you know, they want to conceal carry, but they've never
22:04
thought through, am I going to, am I willing to pull this out and kill somebody with it?
22:08
So I think that probably top 10, you know, two most influential books I've had on life
22:17
in the military, on combat and on killing.
22:20
And I think, you know, Grossman takes people through and forces people to think through
22:25
those things, you know, I had the privilege of reading those during basic training.
22:29
And I remember actually like writing out essays of these hypothetical situations that I might
22:34
find myself in.
22:35
And what's my justification?
22:36
Like, how do I wake up at, you know, the next day and feel good about myself for doing
22:41
something that most people would find to be horrific?
22:47
And I think you hit it on the nail, right, like you hit the nail right on the head there
22:52
with that, right, is this mental preparation, you know.
22:56
A lot of people ascribe and want to be a certain thing or do a certain thing without really
23:03
contemplating the second and third order effects and repercussions of that, you know, and I
23:08
just say that that's, that's really what being a powerful person and taking radical ownership
23:13
of your decisions are, right?
23:15
Like, you know, this idea of like, how did I mess this up?
23:20
How can I be responsible versus, oh, it's everyone else's fault, not mine.
23:25
When I think, you know, shout out to Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, I know he's gotten some
23:28
crap over the years like, ah, this guy never even saw a battle.
23:31
What does he know about any of this stuff?
23:32
It's like, well, he didn't choose to serve during the Cold War when we were in the kinetic
23:36
situations.
23:37
Like, are you really going to give him crap for that?
23:38
And also, I don't know that I've ever said this on this podcast, but I'll get right back
23:41
into the interview.
23:42
The first, so I interviewed him like probably three years ago on the show, the audio, the
23:46
only time since 2017 that I've ever done an interview where the audio messed up, essentially,
23:52
we could not retrieve the audio and we did like a two and a half hour long interview.
23:56
So I reach out to him sheepishly like, oh my gosh, I finally got the on combat guy.
24:01
And you know, the audio is gone.
24:03
Like, and so I was reaching out to say, I'm sorry, his response to me could not have been
24:07
more empathetic and more like awesome.
24:10
He said, Kyle, I guess God wasn't satisfied with our first try.
24:14
So let's do it again.
24:15
And so like the next day, we recorded another two and a half hour long podcast and I got
24:19
to say, having been the one of two people on the planet that got to hear both of them,
24:23
I think it was a little bit better better.
24:24
So shout out to Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman.
24:27
So real quick, I know, like, I could just already hear my audience screaming in my ears.
24:31
You should have asked some this.
24:32
So I'm just going to go ahead and ask it.
24:33
So why did you decide to leave the world of being a professional Christian, right, a professional
24:38
moral person and then go and, you know, go into the bottom rung of the US military?
24:43
Well, I think it's a great question.
24:46
I don't think they're mutually exclusive of one another, right?
24:49
Like, I feel like, you know, regardless of what faith you are, I mean, you can, you are
24:54
able to bring that faith into any sort of domain, right?
24:57
I mean, I think that's kind of the point, right?
24:59
I mean, if I'm not mistaken, right, it's like, like, you know, not everyone that's a believer
25:04
is called to be clergy, you know, regardless of what religion you are, you know, we are,
25:09
we live in the world and in society.
25:11
And, you know, so my faith has been very important to me in my own personal journey.
25:18
But it, it, I wouldn't say it is the, the, the motivating factor to serve this nation.
25:26
And the motivating factor to serve this nation is the strength of this nation, you know, this
25:31
republic, this democracy, right?
25:33
I love this country.
25:35
I love to be able to put myself in harm's way, you know, and I, for the right to defend
25:44
people's freedoms, you know, and, and a lot of people, you know, today, you know, I think
25:50
are are very removed from what that was, you know, in culture, say, you know, at the end
25:57
of World War II, or even in the first couple of years of the GWAT, but, you know, I felt
26:04
a deep desire, you know, to serve.
26:08
And yeah, I, you know, was a little late to bloom, but followed that and the rest has
26:13
been history.
26:14
Now, it took you a whole 20 some minutes before you started going all military with your acronym.
26:19
So guys, GWAT is the global war on terror.
26:22
So, you know, don't sneak in a whole bunch of those.
26:24
Okay.
26:25
Because most of us can't follow.
26:26
All right, Daniel, we need you to, you know, we're all dumb over here on this side of the
26:29
camera.
26:30
Look, I'll break it down for you, Barney style.
26:32
No worries.
26:33
I work two redheads talking to each other.
26:35
We got fingers and toes will figure it out.
26:37
But no souls.
26:38
And that's just kind of the, the end of it, you know, that's us on the ginger side.
26:41
So we've got to talk about Afghanistan, because I know that you just did a hit and, you know,
26:46
I said in the intro, obviously, like you, you basically, you know, we're able to squeeze
26:50
this in in between hits on Newsmax because this week is essentially the week.
26:54
I think it was actually August the 15th and we're recording this on August the 16th, August
26:58
the 15th of 2021 was the day that Kabul fell, which essentially was the United States's
27:04
last day in control of the country of Afghanistan.
27:06
And it wasn't until the 30th of August of 2021, where, you know, the last boots were
27:11
no longer on the ground in Afghanistan, as long as I've got my dates correct.
27:14
So I talked to a lot of people during that week after, right, whenever it looked like
27:19
we were going, I knew some people that were on the ground there, Holly McKay shout out
27:23
to her.
27:24
She's a war correspondent.
27:25
She was on the ground as, you know, basically all these small towns in Afghanistan were
27:28
falling.
27:29
It was a very, very sketchy situation.
27:30
And then I talked to some guys after I had a lot of people on my show.
27:33
And these were guys that were, you know, retired military, some gold star widows, but almost
27:38
all these people had a direct connection to Afghanistan either they served there and spilled
27:43
blood there or they lost people there.
27:46
And nobody quite could quite get it.
27:48
And it hasn't gotten better as time has gone on in terms of our understanding of why we
27:52
withdrew or why we withdrew so hastily.
27:55
And I know some people were very, very vehement about getting out of Afghanistan to begin with.
27:59
But then when they saw how the Biden administration handled that and how the military leadership
28:02
handled that, again, I can say that you can't, they were just appalled at the incredible
28:06
lack of leadership, lack of fortitude and lack of planning.
28:10
So you can take this wherever you want to go with it.
28:12
So let's talk about the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
28:14
Let's talk about where we are here a year later.
28:16
Well, you know, a year later, you know, in New York today, Fox Business this morning
28:22
and then Newsmax this afternoon really talking about this issue because it's still very much
28:28
alive in the hearts of, of many within my community and many within the veterans community
28:35
that served over the last 20 years.
28:37
But I want to kind of dial it back as far as the history is concerned, right?
28:43
And, you know, obviously the events of last August were horrific, but the journey didn't
28:48
start there for me, right?
28:50
You know, the journey started in 2016 and 2017 with an interpreter named Johnny who served
28:56
alongside of special operations unit.
29:02
And unfortunately, Johnny got shot and I'll never forget the day that we saved Johnny's
29:08
life.
29:09
I assisted in the field surgery and we saved his life and as he got medevac out, I really
29:17
wondered what would happen to him.
29:20
And then the amazing thing, and I think this really captures the essence of the Afghan
29:25
spirit and how they serve shoulder to shoulder with us, you know, he came back and wanted
29:31
to go out and continue being an interpreter, even though he had a round through his jaw,
29:36
you know, and he had multiple surgeries and he ended up going back out with the teens,
29:41
right?
29:42
So when I saw the events unfold last August, you know, I was mortified, but the association
29:49
had been engaged since January, right?
29:53
Because one of our main important issues was our SIV allies and getting them out of Afghanistan.
29:59
So, you know, we started to hear from, you know, people on the ground, that's our mantra,
30:04
we have the ground truth.
30:05
We bring the ground truth in a way that no one else can simply because of the people
30:10
who are our members, you know, have that actual ground truth.
30:14
And you know, we were averaging, you know, one, two interpreters or members of the community
30:19
reaching out to assistance for their interpreters in January of 2021.
30:24
By June, it was up to like 10 a day and I was, I did a massive press conference.
30:29
We can link to it in the show notes in front of the Capitol, you know, urging the Biden
30:34
administration to prioritize this because we knew that it was going to be a botched withdrawal.
30:41
We knew that this was going to happen and we prepped, you know, so when the fall happened,
30:48
you know, I hit a very, very low point, you know, I remember distinctly having a conversation
30:54
with a few of my buddies who I served with in Afghanistan and some of my family and just
30:59
I was, I was kind of in peril, but we had planned for this and so we immediately, you
31:07
know, stood up a digital effort, you know, and, you know, digital Dunkirk Revolution,
31:13
you know, and, and we had the front page of the Washington Post, you know, our effort
31:19
was not as big or as widely publicized as that of other great organizations like, you
31:24
know, Saver Allies, which Tim Kennedy and Sarah Verado are part of, or even Task Force
31:29
Pineapple, but we did move the needle and we, we helped evacuate nearly 1,500 people out
31:37
of Kabul, but what was really unique about, about us in what we did is we also put a team
31:42
forward on the ground, which I think only one or two other organizations were able to
31:46
do that.
31:47
We didn't make it to the whole airport at the last minute that fell through, but we
31:51
ended up in Doha and we ended up helping immensely there through, you know, conducting
31:56
cross-cultural training to the, the, the junior enlisted that were there that were basically
32:03
on the receiving line, having never gone to Afghanistan and didn't understand the dual
32:09
duality of tribalism and how to navigate that and then we retrograded back to Germany and
32:14
did the same thing there at kind of the, the hub where everyone processed through and we're
32:19
able to bring that back to, you know, DOD State Department, members of Congress of like,
32:25
hey, this is what's going on, you know, like I had members of Congress calling me, you know,
32:30
asking me for assistance when we were on the ground and, and that's one of the advantages,
32:35
I think of being an organization that is compiled of people that have these unique backgrounds
32:42
and, and, and set of experiences.
32:44
So that's really what drove us, you know, last August, but it didn't stop then, right?
32:50
You know, for all of last fall, you know, we ran a network of safe houses.
32:55
We, you know, clothing, housing, feeding, providing medical aid to some of the, you know, most
33:04
persecuted or most wanted people by the Taliban and we partnered with other organizations like
33:11
Argo and chartered five aircraft and, and was able to, you know, evacuate another 5,000
33:19
people.
33:20
So the work is not done, you know, and I'll stop here, I'm wanting a little bit, but,
33:23
you know, we made a promise to our allies, right?
33:26
And, you know, I, over my dead body will, will, will, this organization stop, you know, trying
33:33
to, you know, ensure that those promises are kept, you know, and I think many people in
33:39
the veterans community feel that way, which is why we've worked, you know, 20 hours a
33:44
day, you know, for the last year to do our part.
33:47
So I'll stop there.
33:48
No, I appreciate going into all that detail because I've talked about Afghanistan a lot
33:53
since last August, because you know how it is now, once it's out of the news cycle, it's
33:57
out of mind.
33:58
That's what used to be out of sight out of mind.
34:00
And so there's so many other things to be outraged about, regardless of where you are
34:04
politically or what side of the aisle you like best, or if you like blue ties or red
34:07
ties more, there's always something to be angry about.
34:10
And so we just kind of forget about Afghanistan, but before we move off of Afghanistan, I've
34:14
kind of a more specific question.
34:16
I've heard from some people, well, you know what, it's not nearly as bad as we thought
34:20
it was going to be because the expectation right after, you know, the, the pull the full
34:25
withdrawal of our troops was that they were basically going to be lining up all the dissidents
34:29
in the street and be executing them there, which some of that certainly did happen.
34:33
I heard stories, you know, you and I heard the same stories when we were together in
34:36
DC from people that we will not name about them, the Taliban, literally executing women
34:42
and children in front of US soldiers, trying to get the US soldiers to engage and to leave
34:46
H Kaya in order to do so.
34:48
But there, there is kind of this idea now that, well, I guess Afghanistan is just not
34:52
really that bad.
34:53
We thought there was going to be a wide famine.
34:55
It's more of a minor famine.
34:56
You know, they lost like 90% of their medical facilities, but, you know, not that many people
35:01
died in the earthquake.
35:02
It's not that big a deal.
35:03
Like, I'm wondering where this comes from.
35:05
Is it is it because we don't have to care as much if it doesn't seem as bad?
35:09
What do you think?
35:10
Well, so here's the thing, right?
35:12
The idea that it's not not as bad as we thought, look, 13 American service members lost their
35:19
lives.
35:20
Yeah.
35:21
Period, right?
35:22
That that is that didn't need to happen, right?
35:25
Why didn't that need to happen?
35:26
And why do I feel like the withdrawal was botched by the Biden administration, right?
35:32
And I think it's important, right?
35:33
I want to delineate for the audience, right?
35:36
Like, I don't I don't get into the politics of it per se.
35:42
I think one of the things that we learn in the special operations community is, is this
35:47
mantra of always be improving, but you can't improve anything if you have amnesia about
35:53
what happened and you know, when something bad happens, you know, sidestep it and don't
35:59
address it, right?
36:00
You know, if you're going to take credit, take credit, but also be responsible for when
36:05
you have a misstep and this was a misstep of biblical proportion, right?
36:11
This withdrawal, you know, regardless of whether you had faith in the Doha agreement
36:16
or not.
36:17
And, you know, some people want to argue that, you know, well, Trump put us on this path.
36:21
So four administrations tried to leave Afghanistan and they weren't successful doing it, right?
36:27
But here's the thing, right?
36:29
The withdrawal was coordinated, pre-planned, and eminent, right?
36:37
So for something that is a known action to be conducted by the State Department, right,
36:48
to go that wrong, like I think we need transparency and accountability on that, right?
36:53
We need to, we need to ask the really tough questions to ensure something like this doesn't
36:58
happen again, you know, and then there's the emotional toll that it took on our veteran
37:03
population.
37:04
I mean, just recently we had, you know, one of the service members that lost their lives
37:09
last year, a family member took their own life, right?
37:12
Like, you know, it's-
37:13
Yeah, it's a memorial service.
37:14
Horrible.
37:15
It's absolutely insane to think that this didn't have cascading effect, let alone to
37:22
not get into the national security, you know, aspect of this and what does it signify to
37:28
our allies, right?
37:29
So like, was there this massive purge, you know, no, had amazing Americans who I am proud
37:39
to serve alongside, both in and uniform and out, not stepped up and filled the gap that
37:45
was meant to be filled by the federal government?
37:48
I think we may have had a massive tragedy on our hands, right?
37:51
Way worse than it was.
37:53
And that's not to discount the fact that currently the Taliban regime uses torture and,
37:59
you know, in scare tactics to hold down a population and, you know, they, you know, force
38:08
people to, you know, to model a religion because it's sharia law, you know, these types of
38:16
things I think are, you know, not the bastion of freedom and, you know, and hope.
38:24
And you know, that's where we are a year later.
38:27
So there's a lot of stuff there.
38:29
The thing that I feel like is most important is a lot of folks looked at that situation
38:34
and they were just shocked and appalled.
38:36
And I think it started that conversation I was talking about earlier around the dinner
38:39
table of, you know, patriotic families that maybe don't necessarily want their kids to
38:44
go into the military anymore because they're like, you know, I don't want my kid to die.
38:48
That's number one.
38:49
Number two might be, you know, I don't want them to come back, but then be mentally or
38:52
physically jacked up, or I don't trust the leadership right now of all these generals
38:56
that just continue and kernels that just continue to fail upward.
39:00
And then whenever they finally decide they want to get out of the military, they get
39:02
some sort of cush job at, you know, a military contractor or something like that, and they're
39:06
profiting off of a lot of the decisions that they made that went wrong, you know, two or
39:10
three years prior, but then you also have some of the wokeness in the military stuff.
39:14
I've had people reach out to me directly saying, hey, you know, my unit is telling me I have
39:17
to put my pronouns in my, in my email signature now and they're doing, you know, enforce diversity,
39:23
equity and inclusion training.
39:24
And it's like, wait a minute, are we not supposed to be training on being as lethal as possible?
39:29
Why are we sitting here?
39:30
And then again, we're missing our recruiting goals because all those fly over people that
39:34
nobody on either coast cares about those are the people that loved going in the military
39:38
because of what it stands stood for as, you know, being a patriotic American and serving
39:42
your country.
39:43
But then when they see a commercial of like, okay, here's my two mommies and that's why
39:47
I'm joining the military.
39:48
It's like a lot of those kids, a lot of those corn fed kids don't want to be a part of something
39:52
like that.
39:53
So talk to me a little bit about just overall the state of the military, because to be honest,
39:57
I'm so saddened when I talk to some of my, my favorite guys, some of my good friends,
40:01
some of my heroes that serve this country for 20 years and they're like, bro, if I had
40:06
to enter, you know, go through buds today or go through the Q course today, I wouldn't
40:10
do it because I wouldn't even be in the military.
40:11
I'm not dealing with this crap.
40:13
Yeah.
40:14
So I mean, you, you definitely laid out a, a, a myriad of issues that, and we could, you
40:19
know, spend a lot of time talking about, you know, any one of them, but, but the one that
40:24
sticks out to me the most is this, this, you know, increase in, uh, you know, uh, politicizing
40:32
veterans, uh, for, for individual, our party gang, right?
40:37
And, and that's something that like, you know, we, we as an association, you know, we understand
40:44
that we represent the interest of the special operations community.
40:48
So, you know, sometimes that pushes us left, sometimes that pushes us right, right?
40:53
But we steward is, you know, the ethical, uh, and, and moral weight of doing our due diligence
41:01
to represent the community.
41:03
And the thing that I have seen in recent years, which I think contributes to recruiting, um,
41:09
you know, but it also is more of social commentary on where we are as a society is, you know,
41:14
the, uh, the use of veterans as political bargaining chips, uh, to get elected, right?
41:21
And we saw that recently last week in the two previous weeks with the PAC Act, right?
41:27
This is our generation's agent orange.
41:30
It is the most monumental, uh, you know, piece of veterans legislation that has been passed,
41:36
um, you know, in a long time, right?
41:38
And we saw the bill get passed by the Senate with no issues.
41:44
There was a technicality in the bill and it had to go back to another vote.
41:48
And then we saw, I think it was like 26, um, that flip flop, why the flip flop, right?
41:54
You know, and I'm not here to point fingers at, uh, Republicans, uh, just like I'm not
42:00
here to point fingers at, at Democrats, I'm here to say, look, Biden botched the withdrawal.
42:05
We need to hold people accountable.
42:07
So this doesn't happen again, but we also have examples of, you know, Republicans using
42:12
veterans as a means to an end because they didn't want to give the Democrats a win because
42:17
they're going into an election cycle, right?
42:19
So, you know, I am doing, uh, my part to continue to hold that line, right?
42:26
Like, you know, in the same way that, um, there are, you know, protected classes, I believe
42:32
that the veteran, uh, is, is, is someone that should, uh, should not be used in, uh, as
42:38
a political negotiation, uh, chip, uh, to, uh, to do anything.
42:43
And that's the thing that really [inaudible] me on.
42:45
Well, so that's a great time to go ahead and get into the discussion of SOAA.
42:49
So that special operations association of America, you were the co-founder of that organization.
42:54
So I want to spend some time because you all have a very interesting issues section of
42:58
your website.
42:59
So I want to talk about operator syndrome, our interpreter, allies, burn pits, eligibility
43:04
for benefits and then ROEs or rules of engagement.
43:06
Here I am using acronyms now, but like, I just give us an idea as to where the idea
43:11
for SOAA came from and why you started it and kind of what it's morphed into today.
43:16
Yeah.
43:17
Absolutely.
43:18
So, you know, being in the national guard, I've had a civilian career and that civilian
43:21
career has always been in veteran advocacy.
43:24
So I started with the BFW, you know, work my way up, work for veteran's education success.
43:29
Then I became a legislative director for the enlisted association and then an executive
43:33
director for the veteran's education project.
43:36
And the whole time I kind of was matriculating through the pipeline for SF and kind of started
43:43
to get my grounding as a junior member on a team.
43:49
And I start looking around in DC and I see all these veterans groups that have significant
43:54
amounts of power.
43:55
I mean, we're talking about the BFW and the American Legion every year.
43:59
They get their own hearing every year.
44:02
Their own hearing to present their top five or ten priorities to the full committee, right?
44:08
That is a lot of influence and I'm not saying that it's unwarranted.
44:14
What I am saying is that I recognize that level of influence and then I realize that
44:19
no one was advocating on behalf of, you know, the men and women that are part of the Special
44:25
Operations community.
44:27
And when I really looked at it, you know, we collectively had the preponderance of effort
44:33
since 2014 onward, right, you know.
44:37
And moving forward, it's pretty much just the Special Operations community that is being
44:42
utilized.
44:43
You know, obviously, you know, the 82nd, 101st gets deployed in certain areas, maybe peacekeeping
44:47
missions are, you know, obviously Ukraine is a thing, but when it comes to actual people
44:54
being in combat, you know, it's asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare and
44:58
I just saw this huge gap.
45:00
So I went around to these big associations, the W, the American Legion, the Wounded Warrior
45:05
Project and I met with their leadership and asked if they would start something in their
45:11
association to advocate on behalf of this segment of the community and they all said
45:18
the same thing.
45:19
We've tried.
45:20
It doesn't work.
45:21
I was like, huh, well, why is that?
45:25
And the executive director of American Legion, he said it best, he said, you know, it's all
45:30
about being authentic.
45:31
He's like, Daniel, you know, your combat veteran, you know, from the Special Operations community.
45:37
If an airman from, you know, who had spent his career in My Not North Dakota as like a
45:44
ham radio operator came into your office to try and talk to you about something that
45:49
Kaggard Dev or, you know, you know, 175 did, you know, how would you take that person?
45:55
And I like, I probably would tell them to get out of my office, they don't know what
45:58
they're talking about.
45:59
And he basically was looking exactly and that's why it needs to be started and founded by
46:05
people from the community on behalf of the community.
46:08
So, you know, I kind of took that guidance.
46:10
We ended up meeting with a lot of large nonprofits around the United States, like Seal Foundation,
46:16
Green Barre Foundation, Special Forces Association, you know, Latrell, Chris Kyle, Marsok Foundation.
46:23
And what we realized is all these groups are doing great things for their specific tribes,
46:29
but it's all downstream of the issue.
46:31
It's like benefits, ride-a-thon scholarships, you know, transition, honor the fallen, retreats,
46:39
you know, so on and so forth, but no one was based inside DC.
46:45
No one was going to Capitol Hill to talk about, you know, relevant issues.
46:49
No one was engaging in national security in the way that we are, so that's really where
46:54
SAW was born.
46:55
And, you know, as SAW has kind of grown, you know, there's four legs to the table.
47:00
The first one's advocacy.
47:01
And a lot of people, that's really easy to understand, you know, that's what we do.
47:05
We learn and hear what's going right, what's going wrong, what needs to change, and we
47:09
make recommendations and we advocate on behalf of our members.
47:13
The second thing is a little bit unique to our association, and that is, is national
47:18
security policy, right?
47:20
So we have the unique ability of, you know, possessing security clearances, you know,
47:26
people who have just transitioned out of the military, their clearance is still active,
47:29
they have subject matter expertise in an area, you know, and we can afford them connection
47:34
to actually be able to inform, you know, politicians or stakeholders in the administration, or
47:39
even DOD, to help them make better and informed decisions, right?
47:44
And then another thing that we've been working on, a third leg of the table, is this thing
47:48
called the military civilian divide, right?
47:50
It's really hard for people to understand what, you know, someone in the military does.
47:55
It's even harder for someone to understand what members of the Special Operations Community
47:58
do.
47:59
So, you know, we are continuing to partner with the various Special Operations commands,
48:05
right, to amplify recruiting efforts to highlight great stories of the brave men and women of
48:11
this community on and off the battlefield, in and out of uniform, to showcase the amazing
48:16
skill set that, you know, we bring to the table after the rigorous training and selection
48:21
pipelines that we go through.
48:23
And then the last piece, the last leg of the table is our overseas allies, right?
48:27
You know, we understand that, you know, the idea of America and the warfighters on the
48:33
ground can't do it without overseas allies, right?
48:36
So, you know, Afghanistan is one of those examples, but Ukraine is also another one.
48:43
You know, I spent, you know, April and May in Ukraine, and developed the delivering humanitarian
48:50
aid.
48:51
And, you know, we're in the process now of working with the Ukrainian government to bring
48:55
trainers over to help train their forces to better be equipped to combat, you know, Russian
49:01
aggression, right?
49:02
And we're coordinating with DOD in the State Department, you know, with all of our proper
49:06
certifications.
49:07
You know, I don't know how many non-profits in the United States, you know, have a ITAR
49:13
certification, but, you know, it's a very unique position to be in because we have this
49:17
unique skill set that we can bring to bear.
49:19
So that's kind of, you know, where so it came from and some of the stuff we're involved
49:24
in.
49:25
Excellent.
49:26
Well, let's go and dig into some of the issues.
49:27
And you talked about one of them there with our interpreter allies, so I feel like we've
49:30
covered a little bit of that.
49:31
But there are some other things that most civilians are just simply not aware of.
49:34
And so the guys, this comes directly from the issues section on their website.
49:37
Their website will be in the show notes so you can check that out for yourself.
49:39
But the first one is operator syndrome.
49:41
So give us an idea of what that is and what are you guys are doing in order to kind of
49:44
counteract that.
49:45
Yeah.
49:46
Yeah.
49:47
And this is like what I consider to be our top, one of our top priorities, right?
49:52
So operator syndrome is, you know, the easiest way for, you know, your audience to understand
49:58
is like concussion syndrome, right?
50:00
So I think NFL, you know, the, the, the famous movie that I think, I don't know if it was
50:06
Will Smith.
50:07
Will Smith.
50:08
I think it was called concussion.
50:09
Yeah.
50:10
Question.
50:11
Yeah.
50:12
So I forgot because I've had too many.
50:14
So, so, so not everyone has a TBI, right?
50:20
An acute blast or a concussive, a major concussive event.
50:25
You know, many in the military have those.
50:27
But what operator syndrome is is, is it's these micro blasts or micro concussions that
50:34
happen from just the normal wear and tear of the heads knocking.
50:38
And how does that manifest in the special operations community?
50:41
Well, you know, all the ammunition we shoot, the interior breaching, you know, the explosions,
50:50
the mortars, you know, artillery fire, you know, being on helicopters, you know, the,
50:57
the airborne operations that we do and hitting the ground hard sometimes, you know, combative
51:04
training and all of that kind of cascades, you know, and when you look at a brain scan,
51:10
you can see this, right?
51:12
But what does that do, right?
51:14
And this is where it kind of, I get out of, out of my expertise, so I, I'm not a doctor,
51:20
don't play one on TV.
51:22
So if anyone listening is like, that's wrong.
51:24
It's just because I'm missing, you know, some of the important tidbits because I'm not
51:31
a clinician.
51:32
But, you know, what that does in the human body, what we see is, is below the neck, we
51:38
see endocrine suppression, right?
51:41
So essentially, your hormones get out of whack, right?
51:44
So you have, and what's interesting is, is whether it's actual physical trauma to the
51:49
brain or mental trauma to the brain, it has the same type of effects and it creates a
51:55
inflamed state in the brain.
51:57
And when neural inflammation occurs, the endocrine system becomes dysregulated, right?
52:02
You know, testosterone levels get suppressed, cortisol levels go up, you see deficiencies
52:08
in other areas and you see a neural inflammation biomarkers in the body.
52:14
And what we have seen and what we're actively pursuing is alternative treatments to TBI
52:20
and PTSD, specifically through treating neural inflammation, right?
52:25
Not SSRIs, not a bag of pills, you know, I think the record is like 24.
52:31
There was a seal who we were engaged with that had 24 prescription medications from the VA.
52:36
It really was a bag of pills that he took every day, right?
52:40
And you know, so that hasn't been working clearly because we still have this suicide
52:45
pandemic of 17 to 22 a day, right?
52:49
That's twice as many people every year as died in the world trade centers, right?
52:56
So you know, when you look at them at the current treatments, right, we have to start
53:01
to ask questions, well, what is, what's not working and should we try some alternatives,
53:07
right?
53:08
And this idea of operator syndrome and treating the endocrine system to bring the body into
53:13
a state of homeostasis and reduce neural inflammation, you know, we're seeing great effects.
53:19
So work of the Warrior Angel Foundation, Dr. Gordon and the Millennial Foundation, they
53:24
have an amazing documentary, which I can't remember now, but we'll link to that in the
53:31
show notes, right?
53:33
And we sponsor people and put them through their neural inflammation protocol.
53:37
And we've seen high levels of efficacy for people who have gone through that.
53:43
But the other thing that I think your audience is going to really kind of be blown away
53:48
by it.
53:49
Right?
53:50
Especially those that have a more evangelical traditional background is psychedelics, right?
53:55
Psychedelics, magical mushrooms, right?
53:58
So we are seeing anecdotal evidence because we can't study it in a double blind study
54:04
because of how it's regulated, but we're seeing families be restored.
54:09
We're seeing people who are on the verge of being chapped out of the US military, you
54:15
know, going on trips down south, going to Mexico, going to Peru, and doing one of three
54:21
or four psychedelic treatments, and it's kind of like doing 10 to 15 years of therapy in
54:30
a weekend.
54:31
And it's not done in a party sense.
54:34
You know, there's a doctor or a professional that guides you through what you're experiencing.
54:42
But the preliminary research from other countries shows that it has the ability to unlock certain,
54:48
you know, neuro pathways or increase what's called neuroplasticity, which really helps
54:53
people develop new pathways in their brain around certain trauma, and they come back
54:58
new people.
54:59
So what we're doing on that issue to combat operator syndrome, which is kind of the name,
55:05
is to pursue alternative treatments, right, through the VA and DOD, and kind of bring
55:10
into, you know, the medical literature, the efficacy of these treatments through studying,
55:19
because we believe that, you know, we've tried a lot of different avenues, and we haven't
55:24
seen the needle move, and, you know, we're seeing this work.
55:28
So we want to look into it more.
55:29
Well, I appreciate all the detail on that because, and there's so much more that we can
55:32
get into.
55:33
I mean, we literally could have done the entire podcast today, just an operator syndrome, because
55:37
obviously, you know, one of my good buddies was a preacher, and like, you know, the stuff
55:41
that he was able to do, just in the experimentation phase of trying to figure out how to do certain
55:45
things in certain areas, you're constantly getting those little mini blasts, little mini
55:49
blasts, little mini bat blasts, and that's has a very deleterious effect over time.
55:53
Let's go and talk about burn pits, because that was something that came up over the last
55:55
couple of weeks that some people were maybe hearing about for the first time.
55:59
But, you know, what's the deal with burn pits?
56:01
And what are you guys doing?
56:02
Yeah, absolutely.
56:03
So, you know, burn picks, easy kind of way to explain it is, you know, when we were deployed
56:10
in Afghanistan and Iraq, there wasn't a trash surface, and Americans produce a lot of trash.
56:15
And just throwing it out on the local economy, you know, sometimes equips the enemy, you
56:22
know, with bomb making material, and the ability to use that trash against us later down the
56:30
road, so we started to incinerate that trash by burning it.
56:36
And obviously, that released extreme amounts of particulate matter, carcinogens, you know,
56:44
and other toxins into the air, which people breathe, right?
56:48
And what we started to see over the last several years is an increase in cancer, and specifically
56:56
rare cancer.
56:57
And what's interesting is within the special operations community, the cancer rate is sometimes
57:02
300% higher than the rest of the military or the general population.
57:06
And that's because of all of the places that we go and the toxins that we're exposed to
57:12
are typically at greater levels or more frequent duration than someone who is just, you know,
57:21
someone in the 82nd are someone who's, you know, in an armor unit, right?
57:28
And in the last several years, the collective veteran community has been trying to get these
57:34
conditions, these respiratory issues, these rare diseases that are associated with burn
57:40
pit inhalation as, you know, service connected for VA disability in VA treatment, right?
57:49
So what we saw over the last couple of weeks, several weeks was, you know, a culmination
57:54
of really three or four years of collective effort by many organizations, including SOA,
58:02
the Special Operations Association of America, to get this past across the goal line, you
58:07
know, like, I wake up every day and I have a persistent cough and it really, really sucked
58:14
during COVID, because everyone thought that I had COVID all over the time, you know, I
58:20
always cough, you know, and that's the result of burn pit inhalation and breathing bad air
58:29
in various regions around the world.
58:32
And I've been to the doctors and, you know, lungs are clear right now, but, you know,
58:36
we don't know what's down the road 10, 15, 20 years from now, you know, so we saw this
58:42
massive passage. I think it's a great win for our generation of service members. And
58:48
now we go through the implementation process, which has its own set of issues. So that's
58:53
a little bit of background about burn pits and what we've been up to and how we've been
58:57
engaging.
58:58
Well, I appreciate that. So you talked a little bit about eligibility of benefits. And I feel
59:02
like for the most part, a lot of people are at least somewhat familiar, at least vaguely
59:05
familiar with the eligibility of benefits. But if you talk to anybody that was in a combat
59:10
role at any point over the last couple of decades, R.O.E.'s rules of engagement was
59:15
a major, major issue. And a lot of guys like, it doesn't make sense to a civilian, it's
59:20
like, wait a minute. So you had to wait until you could confirm that you were being shot
59:23
at by an enemy combat before you could do anything. And now that's kind of the main
59:26
example. And that's not always necessarily true, depending upon your situation, certainly.
59:31
But give us a little bit of a better idea of what y'all are trying to do in terms of
59:34
R.O.E.'s because I do know that is a major point of frustration for a lot of, you know,
59:39
people in the special operations community.
59:41
So like, and this is a multifaceted issue, right? And I think restrictive R.O.E.'s come
59:48
down to accountability and oversight of the individual's engaged in combat, right? You
59:54
know, but we're of the mindset that, you know, you've invested millions of dollars into each
1:00:00
individual in a special operations community, right? You entrust them to, you know, stewart,
1:00:07
over $50 million of equipment, you entrust them with national secrets, sometimes at this
1:00:13
strategic level, you know, to negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government, in some cases,
1:00:21
you know, and then you can't trust them to make good decisions in combat, right? And,
1:00:27
you know, that's a very black and white way of discussing the matter. But really what
1:00:33
it came down to is me, when I was deployed in '16 to '17, I had the unique opportunity,
1:00:39
it was my first SF combat deployment, and my only one thus far, where I had the first
1:00:46
three or four months, it was the end of the Obama administration, and the last three to
1:00:52
four months were the beginning of the Trump administration. And I watched the pendulum
1:00:57
swing so vastly that I had to step back and say I get different ways of, you know, the
1:01:07
commander in chief, you know, waging, you know, our counterterrorism strategy. But this,
1:01:15
this literally affected the ability for the team to be safe on the ground, right? It's
1:01:20
not just as cut and dry as, oh, well, you know, we have to be shot at before we can
1:01:27
return fire. You know, it's, it's kind of like identifying hostile intent, right? Like,
1:01:33
so imagine observing, you know, four military-aged males in the middle of the night bearing around
1:01:41
cylindrical objects in the middle of a road in a known, Taliban area, right? And not being
1:01:47
able to do anything about it, even though you have legitimate intel there that you,
1:01:54
possibly, I deed weapons, you know, and, you know, and, and not being able to execute against
1:02:02
that, right? So I think we have to have a conversation, you know, because I think a lot
1:02:07
of our politicians don't know what the ground truth is, right? Another really interesting
1:02:13
example of this is the rules of engagement for named operations. Yeah, you know, noble
1:02:18
eagle and enduring freedom. Yeah, partnered with NATO and partnered with non-NATO forces
1:02:24
in each of those named operations had different force protection requirements. So what does
1:02:30
that mean, right? That means that in one of them, when US forces went out with their Afghan
1:02:37
counterparts and their Afghan counterparts received contact by the enemy, Americans were
1:02:44
allowed to return fire because it, we were one in the same, right? And that builds that
1:02:49
camaraderie and that trust. Then all of a sudden, we go out on a NATO mission with NATO
1:02:56
allies, right? In that changes. So the Taliban is, they're smart, right? They recognize that.
1:03:04
So then they, they send harassing fires or they'll set up an ambush for just the Afghans. And
1:03:09
then that call for help comes, right? From, you know, someone who you possibly had done
1:03:16
a mission the day before with under a different named operation and they're calling for help.
1:03:22
And you sit by and do nothing because you are not allowed to because your ROE restricts
1:03:28
you from doing so. And what does that do to that person? Let's say he watches his brother
1:03:32
die, you know, or he gets wounded. You know, there's a high potential in a situation like
1:03:38
that to, you know, make an enemy combatant of that person right away. And, and, and it's
1:03:44
unfortunate. But in some cases, that's how some, you know, you know, force on force or
1:03:50
a blue on green events have happened, right? And a lot of people don't know that. And that's
1:03:53
one of the reasons why we want to continue to bring the ground truth because, you know,
1:03:59
that doesn't always matriculate down to, you know, the policymakers and the decision makers,
1:04:04
you know, by the US government or by the media. So it's our job to make sure that that happens.
1:04:10
Well, I'm so glad you're covering all the ground that you're doing with Special Operations
1:04:13
Association of America. Like I absolutely love the stuff that you're doing, at least just
1:04:17
from even just researching before we got into this, you know, I knew some of this stuff,
1:04:20
but I didn't know all the details. And so you never want to be the guy that's out there
1:04:23
spout and information that it's not exactly accurate. How can our audience help support
1:04:28
SOA?
1:04:29
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, right now we are fundraising around two main areas, you
1:04:35
know, so go to the website www.soa.org or SOA.org. There's a donate button there, you
1:04:44
know, you know, we take crypto if any of your audience wants to donate crypto, you know,
1:04:51
we very much, you know, appreciate any effort. We're currently trying to fundraise to put
1:04:57
a team into Ukraine to conduct this 30 day training operation. And we're currently fundraising
1:05:02
around the ability to put more people through this neuro inflammation protocol and get them
1:05:07
the help that they need. So, you know, feel free to reach out to us at contact us, you
1:05:13
know, click on our website and, you know, just shoot us an email. And yeah, we appreciate
1:05:18
any effort that our donation you give, it's tax deductible.
1:05:22
Awesome, man. Well, that's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your
1:05:25
chest?
1:05:26
No, man, it's been a pleasure and look forward to doing this again.
1:05:30
Daniel Elkins, thank you for coming on Daunton Life, a man's podcast. There you go, guys.
1:05:35
I hope you enjoyed my interview with Daniel Elkins, but before we let you go, we are going
1:05:38
to do a quick resilience boost at undaunted life. Our mission is equipping men to push
1:05:41
back darkness with content that for just spiritual, mental and physical resilience. So I've got
1:05:45
a link to the SOA website. So that is SOAA.org. I've also got a link to the, it was the thing
1:05:51
he was talking about earlier in the show where it was calling on president Biden to take
1:05:54
immediate action on immigrant visas. So that was a press conference that he did. And you
1:05:58
know, we're still kind of working through some of the stuff. So there may be some more
1:06:01
links in here that I haven't had time to really get through. So they will be listed
1:06:04
there for your pleasure as well. All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to show.
1:06:07
We do appreciate it wherever you're listening to this. Please subscribe, rate and leave us
1:06:10
a positive five star view. If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your
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1:06:28
And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their music
1:06:32
for our content. The music on this podcast is our song cutting the ties, which is off
1:06:35
their 10th anniversary re recording of their album, the leveler. The links are in the description.
1:06:40
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual
1:06:45
mental and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:07:15
.