what do you do where you know an order is bad but if you don’t fall in line the punishment will be terrible Jaakko you talked about this when you were reading the Maxim’s Napoleon and I think the quote was something like every general-in-chief who in consequence of orders from his appears gives battle with a certainty of defeat of his armies ruin is culpable and I think that’s exactly true and what that really it means is extremely worship you own it regardless and so you know in a military you’ve got to the Uniform Code of Military Justice which is the the legal framework that the military falls underneath our laws our military justice system and you’re you’re obligated to not follow a a illegal order so if someone gives you an order to go execute prisoners or do something that you shouldn’t do you actually are legally obligated to not follow that and and that following orders like you know whether you’re and it didn’t work in Nuremberg right for the SS guards who sent people to their deaths they all was just following orders it’s not that is not a defense so you have to it’s on you it’s it’s your responsibility and it’s certainly under our own UCMJ it’s it’s it’s on you and I think in those kind of situations you you have to own that if it’s truly bad if it’s truly catastrophic you have to be willing to take the punishment you want to punish me for that okay cool you want to fire me why I’m not gonna do that because I’m gonna sleep better at night knowing that I made the right decision I’m not gonna go down this path it leads to you know the destruction of our team that puts people in harm’s way that puts you know that causes people to do something that’s unsafe and puts them in jeopardy and and you got to be able to stare yourself in the mirror and that’s most important oh you want to fire me for that okay cool I’ll take that now some people you have to understand that you got to prioritize and there are those people that are like over the top everything is like you’re telling me to do this and I don’t agree with it and it’s really not that big of a deal and one example I thought of people are shocked to hear about what it’s like going to war in today’s world the administer native requirements that are on you the massive amount of paperwork that we had to do just to get approval for an operation all the things that we had to do better required on us and we’re in the middle of a war and guess what we bitch tried to buy that all the time no one more than me and Jackie was probably sick and tired of hearing me about that and one of things he sent right away was hey guess what all these admin requirements they’re putting on us even though we’re in the middle of a training right now and they’re asking us for this paperwork we’re gonna do we’re gonna do them all all of them yeah and one of the reasons that I did that was because I did not want higher headquarters to have anything to hold over me at all and furthermore guess what I was doing I was building up myself a little relationship with the boss man cuz oh you want admin stuff done no problem don’t even worry about it we’re gonna build it up that’s what we’re gonna do hmm and then there were times where the paperwork did cross the line and one of those situations that we ran into was not really a paperwork situation but they had they wanted us to work with Iraqi soldiers and we’ve talked about this before it’s in the book the Iraqi soldiers are very unreliable unmotivated can be disloyal don’t have good training don’t speak the same language as us don’t have good equipment I mean it’s just a laundry list of reasons why you don’t want to put your guys lives in their hands hmm well in Ramadi the fighting was horrible in 2006 in other areas of Iraq the fighting had actually settled down well the command above us wanted us to work with Iraqi soldiers they wanted all the special operations people to work with Iraqi soldiers so they actually and and the all of the special operations people mostly were resistant to this and so everyone would kind of skate by and figure out how to not do it I’m gonna take I’m gonna take a 25 man element of us special operators and we’ll take three Iraqis with us soon just to kind of shake them up right and you could see why they were doing this you know why because it’s safer it’s it’s a way there okay we’re doing what you said and they were actually using the term Iraqi face we’re gonna put an Iraqi face on this mission which to them literally meant one face in subcases so we get told this as well and if you you know if you read the book he will talk we talked about the fact that yeah we were definitely not Pro taking Iraqis but we realized that if we didn’t do that if we didn’t get the Iraqis out there fighting they were never gonna learn how to fight and we would never yell be able to leave Iraq so we knew that something we had to do but then they went one step further and they set up a ratio and I know this sounds crazy they set up a ratio and they said I think it was for every one American soldier you have to have five Iraqi soldiers with you it was some ratio like that some number and if you were out in some part of central Iraq outside of a small town and you were doing some kind of a simple mission you could get away with that all day long mm-hmm in Ramadi wasn’t happen that would have meant I would have been sending three or four seals out with 20-something Iraqis and that means if there’s a firefight you got three guys that are reliable if one SEAL gets hit who else is gonna handle things it’s a nightmare and so this order came down and I just ran up the chain of command and said we can’t do that hmm and we’re not gonna do that here’s what we’re taking we’ll take as many Iraqis as appropriate but this is the minimum force we’re gonna have every operation that we go on and so we set that standard and of course and this is something I talk about a lot as well it was a sensible argument it made sense there was obviously casualties on a regular basis in Ramadi there were firefights every single day the platoon out in Corregidor their first 24 missions in a row they got in a firefight 24 missions in a row they got in a firefight then they had one day where they didn’t and then the next day they did again for another one however many missions so there were firefights happening on every mission so for us to be like okay yeah we’ll just bring three seals and fifteen Iraqi soldiers it’s a nightmare we’re all gonna get killed if we do that but one of the reasons that that we were able to do that that jakka was able to get approval for that is because all the little stuff that all you know other people would like oh we don’t want to do this paperwork or that’s too much and they complain we had done that we had done those little things yeah it’s a pain for us yet do I want to do that not I’d rather betray and do another stuff well we’re gonna do it and so because Jocko had set that standard and we made it happen then when we really push back for the stuff that really mattered which is what I was talking about you gotta prioritize it execute prioritize the stuff that really matters we were able to get that approving guess what they didn’t want us to go out and get killed so is what we explained it up the chain of like listen if we do that we’re gonna we’re gonna get a lot of guys killed by doing that and I talked about this often is the fact that leadership is aligned to the front troops and if not then there’s something drastically wrong but of course my bosses wanted me to keep my guys safe and kill bad guys and win the war of course they did it in businesses of course the boss wants you to be profitable and keep your troops happy but be profitable be ethical right that those are standard things and those are gonna be aligned so if you send up an idea up the chain of command or you get told to do something and you don’t do it because it’s not gonna help you be profitable why would your boss disagree with that mmm it’s not gonna happen so you have to have the the wherewithal to actually know when to say no and on the moral and ethical things that llave talked about those are clear-cut those are clear-cut if you’re getting told to do something that’s illegal or immoral then it is your duty and responsibility to disobey that order and and that’s the way it is
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