Remember and Forgive

Welcome to the first episode of my new segment "Vets Talk Tough". My guest is a retired National Guardsman and Iraq War Vet Paul Miller. We're going to hear about his experience serving over seas, his motive for joining the army, and how his experience, service, and what he witnessed in war shaped his life. "Vets Talk Tough" is an open space for vets and service members to tell their stories and let listeners know about heroism, patriotism, the reality of war, and the toll it takes on you right to the very end. Chatterbox is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and YouTube at @Chatterbox-94. Don't forget to check me out on IG @atkmedia_ and you can find Paul on Facebook at Uncivilized Rebirth. #nationalguard #veterans #thankyouforyourservice #chatterbox #podcasts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Hey folks, how y'all doing? I'm Al Tess here. Welcome to another episode of Chatterbox. Starting off today is a new segment for this called Vets Talk Tough. And joining me today is retired Army National Guardsman Staff Sergeant Paul Miller. Paul, thank you for your service. Great to have you on the show. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity. No problem. So obviously, like things have been very challenging. I guess that's the word to say, in regards to uh surrounding the essence of patriotism, respect for the armed services, with all of the commotion uh that's been going on uh this past year and stuff. And really, I think it's we need to, at this point, we need to look past all of that and really just kind of reflect on the sacrifice uh that men and women like you have made for defense of our country and uh like where it truly comes from. Kind of it's time to really, we need, even though politics really make things look hard and stuff like that, uh, we need to focus on humanity because that's who we are at the end of the day as people. They say warriors aren't meant to retire, but at the same time, warriors uh like yourself are still human. Am I correct? I would agree with you 100%. So let us hear a little let's start by hearing your backstory behind uh service.

SPEAKER_04 1:50

It started when I was about seven years old. I remember hearing my parents watching the first Gulf Storm, I think that's the name of it, that war on the television. And I was walking downstairs and I was crying because I was afraid that my older brother was gonna get drafted. And and in my heart, it just scared me that my brother might have to go to war. So I made up my mind in my heart that I was gonna join the military so my brother wouldn't have to. I was a little kid. So I get older, and it's a story you'll hear a lot with veterans. Um, I came from a broken home, like the military was my escape, and I just couldn't wait to go. And so it changed from my drive of wanting to join so my brother wouldn't have to to an escape. But then also, as for a kid, like they're gonna pay me to shoot guns and run around the woods and stuff. Like, that's cool, and wear camouflage clothes. So um, I had to lie to my mom to get my birth certificate and my social security card to go take the ASVAB and go and talk to my recruiter so he could get all my stuff in order. Because my mom was like a very controlling woman. Um eighteen years of my life, she controlled every aspect of it. Even I was homeschooled, so I couldn't do anything. So I got in the military. Um, I joined, she was pretty pissed, but I was like, I'm escaping you, woman. Don't you understand? And so I joined two weeks before 9-11, and I was working at Office Depot, I was living with my dad at the time, and I was 18, yeah. And I remember going into work to pick up a paycheck, which this was like freak, over 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

25 years ago comes September. So that really sets the tone for even me, and I'm only 31 years old, how much time flies by.

SPEAKER_04 4:16

Yeah, and it it seems like yesterday, because I was looking at TV and my boss was like, Are you still glad you joined like an a-hole? And I look at the TV, and like you see a plane crash into the towers. And this is when they were box TVs way up high, you know, like things are different.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:38

And and I look at it, I'm like, Yeah, I am. Like, I was absolutely glad. Like, I joined also because it was war. Like, I wanted to do some war. Um, so I ship off to basic training like a month or two later, and this place called 30th AG at Fort Benning, Georgia, it's this battalion reception battalion where it's like all the troops coming in get stored here until we send you off to start your basic training. So we're sitting there waiting, and like every night there's just busloads and busloads of recruits coming in for the fact that 9-11 was an amazing tool for recruitment. It like tons of dudes started showing up, and this messed up their placement of soldiers to get started in basic because of such an overload of troops. They weren't used to this. And magnetic. When I started, we got like halfway through, we had this thing called Christmas Exodus. We come back from Christmas Exodus, and they move us to a different battalion, and we had to start over from day one.

unknown 5:58

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 5:59

That was disappointing. We'd already knocked out two months, started over, and then something that really hit home for me was there was a dude in my platoon who worked across the street from one of the towers, and he was off that day. And he joined because of that. And like, and his I don't know if he was lying or being honest, but he seemed sincere. And I was like, holy crap, this dude is here because like he had an off day and then he chose to fight. Like, whoa. So graduate basic training, and I do like six to eight months next um homeland defense. They activated a lot of the national guard because everybody was in freak out mode. Yeah, like I have my own theories on 9-11 from doing a lot of research after I got out. I was like, I got old enough to start thinking and analyzing. So I have my own theories there. Um but we do uh rotation doing homeland security, guarding bases in Alabama, Alabama National Guard. After that, they had started the war in Iraq, which piggybacked not really off of the war in Afghanistan, but it's just like we want another war. We I want to finish my daddy's war. You know, like I don't know what like I and I was a kid, I didn't really care. So they asked for volunteers to go to Iraq, and I was like, boom, I'll go. So a few months later, I'm packing my bags, going to Iraq. Go to Fort Carson, Colorado for a couple of weeks, or maybe a month or two, and then we go to Iraq. Um so the first tour was a liaison. Uh we were a group of nine soldiers. There's like three officers, three NCOs, and three fours. I was just promoted, so I was literally had no idea what was going on about anything. All I knew was to get dressed and do what I was told. Um, so we get attached to the division main of 4th Infantry Brigade. Fourth Infantry Division. We deploy and we end up getting positioned or stationed, I guess you'd call it, put in this fob that was uh to Saddam Hussein's old palace complex into crit. So literally, we're like living right by a palace, like massive. Like one was a bombed out. Um so we ended up shifting from doing the officers, did the liaison work, which made no sense. Why would you bring in officers from the Alabama National Guard to the 4th Infantry Division to be a liaison between their division level and their battalion level when you have a division of soldiers? I never could understand that. And I so I had no job. So for like a couple for a hot minute, like I had nothing to do except just exist. And then there was this colonel that worked with civil affairs, and he needed some dudes to go with him because he just did all kinds of crazy stuff all the time. So we're like, we'll go, we were bored. So we became his personal security detachment, just going on all these crazy little adventures all the time. Same as Colonel Jackson. He eventually went ro native. And when I say went native, like there was this local Sheikh's son who started helping us, and he would help us find these cachets and the dudes that were attacking where we lived. And said and IEDs just started, but we were seeing more firefights, RPGs, but this was when not IEDs were evolving. Like you'd see an ammo can stuffed with some C4 with a deck cord, and like we had soft-shelled Humvees, so people were getting torn up, but it wasn't as much so in 2005. 2005 was horror, basically. It was like Fuckville. And so we were working this dude that worked for Colonel Jackson. We had met him, he spoke English, and he was helping us all the time. We saw him nearly daily. Like he had access to our compound, they'd let him drive on, um, and then he gets killed one day. He got ambushed because he was helping us. And so as a kid, like I was 19, or I just turned 20, like that was my first experience of like seeing somebody dead that I knew, and I was like, uh. Like, and I compartmentalize it, like I felt nothing. And but I kept accepting him to like pop up and like make a joke and be like, haha, I got you. And it was like, F, that's a real person that I knew laying there. And it's not funny, I'm just wrapping this in a little bit of laugh. So um now I'm laughing at myself for doing that even it's serious business. But so Colonel Jackson, he kind of went native, he started shifting his perspective on the war. He disappeared. Like within a couple of days, he was gone. Um, and that's the only word I got was that he went native and he got replaced by this um dude that had been a Navy SEAL, but then he started working with civil affairs in the army, and we started rolling around with him all the time. Dude didn't give a F. He carried an AK-47. Um he was cool because I remember my boots were so small, I was busting out of them after six months. My feet hurt, and he's like, he's like, we're gonna take care of that. And he was the first person that actually took care of me in that manner. So we went to this other compound, we went over to where the PX was. It's an area for soldiers to buy stuff, little like a business. And we go to the connexes behind it, and he starts cutting locks, and he's and he finds a connex full of boots, and he just starts digging through it. Like he's straight stealing, but he doesn't give an F. He's like, What size do you wear? And he digs around and he finds me the right pair of boots that fit. And oh my gracious, that changed my life because my feet felt good after like seven months and then like miserable. That was awesome. And then one day he used us as bait, like right outside of our compound. There's in Takrit, like there was this little town where there was this big um soccer field, and they we had reports that they were RPGs fired from there. And so we go out there one day and we're just driving around circles in that area, and he's like 500, 600 meters away in a little truck, a pickup truck, because we stole pickup trucks and up armor BMWs and like all and stopped driving our Humvees and we started driving just trucks. We shouldn't have stole, but he Colonel Jackson said there were blue tags from the government and the civilians weren't supposed to have them, so it's okay for us to take them. Um so this new Colonel he was driving a pickup truck and we were in the back of a high top Hum V soft shell, just driving around, and after a couple hours I realized we're bait. Like it's us by ourselves driving around, riding around where that RPG hit was. I was like, that sucks. I didn't like that. Um so that tour ended pretty uneventfully. There was a lot of other cool stories in it. Get back home, and because I was at division level, I wasn't allowed to get a combat infantry badge, which is like the cream of the crop for an infantryman, besides a EIB or a ranger tab, and I didn't have any of that. I never went to any cool guy schools or anything. So I was like, I need to go back to get my combat infantry badge to be in combat. And we were like in like these teeny tiny little skirmishes, but nothing that qualified as combat. So 2005 rolls around, I volunteer again, and we deployed this place called Eusophia. It's the triangle of death. It's Eusophia, Ludafia, Mammedia, and anybody watching, you can go um Google it or search it. It was like the deadliest place on earth at that point in time. And it was the gateway to Fallujah. And so within like a week or so, we started taking IEDs like crazy. Like it's like they waited and they held off, and then they started hammering us. Our my squad leader was um injured, his arm was injured, um, the driver, his eye was jacked up, so they med backed them, and it's like, well, there goes our squad leader, he's gone. And uh this dude, Staff Sergeant Lindsay, stepped up from being the team leader to being the squad leader, and let me tell you what, anybody out there, remember the name Michael Lindsay or Slim, that dude was badass. Like he was a leader, in my opinion. I loved him because he talked to me like a human. He was just a person talking to other people. He didn't have much of an ego. And we were like in a combat zone now in New Sophia. We were taking small arms fire, ambushes, IEDs, V-beds, which are vehicle-borne IEDs. We had complex attacks on our compound. We lived in a old potato factory with Iraqi army. Um, and it was nothing more than that. It was a potato factory, and you could not trust trust the Iraqi army. They were I don't know, they just don't have the I don't know, they're not trustworthy. And so one night that stuck out the most with Lindsay was that we started driving at night with our nods instead of traveling at day at all, at daytime, because we would go to these little outposts we had to go swap out dudes, and we'd rotate out like a squad every week or so, and these were like strategic positions in our area. And we one night we were going out there in the dark because we're like, you know, we're not getting hit in the daytime, so we're doing it nighttime, and he took us on an entirely new route through an area that we had never been, but every little while he'd stop, get out the map, look at it, and it took several hours, but he got us there safely in like one of the peak times that we were getting hit. And that night I was just like, this dude is badass, like he just navigated us with a map. Like he wasn't using a GPS or anything, he had a fucking map, and he's just like following the routes in a freaking war zone, and he freaking did it. I was like, that is awesome. Navigating land nav in itself is not the funnest. But so yeah, that um that tour was pretty rough. Like there were days when they were body bags laying out there in the um in the heat, they'd be laying out there for a couple of days. Um we were getting Humvees hit literally every day, medvax every couple of days, which is like a chopper coming in to take the dude and carry him out because they're wounded. These IEDs were massive. They were leaving holes the size of hot dub hot tubs in the road. Jesus Christ. Cutting up armored Humvees, like the front end would be cut off. Just and there was only one person in our chalk, their trick gun truck that didn't get hit the whole time. Wow. They were nervous by the end because you're just waiting for your turn. Like I don't remember the tally, the complete number. I remember Sergeant Ray or Lieutenant Edwards had said it was somewhere between like eighty and a hundred IEDs we took in the course of like six months, which is stupid ridiculous. Damn. And so we finally got hit, and thankfully it was just like a small one on the back left corner panel, but it was enough to knock me out for a second, and it was just like this massive overpressure blast that just freaking rattled. Like I had like a mild TBI from it. I could barely hear. But once I got that over, I was like, okay, dude, like the stress of waiting was insane, and some dudes really didn't handle that stress very well, you know, of waiting for the next attack or the next firefight or the next ID. We got mortared at least two to three times a week easily. And that's and you can't do anything with mortars, you know, you're just like getting mortared. And these these guys got smart. They would have this little stand that was welded to a T that's like standing up on the ground with a tube welded to it with a kitchen timer attached to wires and set the timer and go. And that's how they would attack our fob or a little base. And like they attacked us one time with they had body armor, they had RPKs, they had mortar rounds, V-bids, um, and uh RPGs. They had a complex attack on our compound. Um that was that was pretty intense. It was like a free-for-all for a little while. Um then in our first sergeant, he got taken out. They used the word eviscerated. Um there was nights where a Humphrey would come in and it's like the inside of it just had chunks on the inside of it, and it's like dripping blood and chunks. And I remember we were out there and the captain he that was in charge of us, he was a tanker captain. He was super cool. Like he was there for the men, and he let us infantry dudes do our thing. And I remember he looked in it, he's like, get this gone tonight. I don't want anybody seeing it. And like that stuff was like it sticks with you, like it it really does. Um and then Cooper, he caught some shrapnel to his calf, and they sent him home. Um and then after so I want Brian Shaver and um Johnson to be remembered if anybody's watching this, because um Johnson later died of cancer, and um Shaver uh checked out from the world on his own after that tour. Um so that I remember going to his funeral, and then I was late going to a beach trip with my family, and I show up down there, and they didn't give a f. I was like, Yeah, I was at a friend's funeral. They didn't ask me about it, they didn't care. Like But these civilians did not care at all. And I was like, Y'all are some cold people. Like so anyway. Um that tour wrapped up with some really cool stories also. Get home. And I started really dealing with PTSD real hard. Like I I was not doing too good. I was still in combat mode, carrying guns everywhere, just freaking amped up and just unhappy. Missing it. Um then I was like, I'll go back for another tour. Maybe something will happen and it'll end everything. Because I was like, I just peaked in life. I can never do anything that will be more amazing than this tour. So it's time to check out. Life will never be this amazing. So I go back, and um this was my third tour. Like I'd started dating a girl before my first one, and we stayed together, but like I kept leaving and kept leaving. So it's like I was emotionally gone. Like I in her heart, it felt like I had abandoned her. In my heart, it's like I'm serving my country. But I had no ability to put myself in her shoes and see that I abandoned her. So on my third tour, that ended our marriage. It ended. Um and my third tour is it was just like I was working in a in a tactical operations center for a captain, um, helping gun trucks that were escorting logistics up into Iraq. And we did some I went up and direct some on that tour, but mostly I was Kuwait on that tour. Um come back after that, and life just pretty much collapsed, and I started drinking heavy, like drinking, popping pills. Like I never went to the doctor to get pills, but I was always asking people for pain pills, and if they had it, I would pop it. And I learned that there were some pills you could take that you wouldn't feel the effects of alcohol, so you could hammer down even way, way more alcohol. So I was like, cool, like I'm discovering, I'm a scientist discovering these chemical like interactions. And I had a ranger buddy who introduced me to the clean canteen, it was like 40 ounces, and he's like, I have this because you can keep beer in it and it won't leave the flavor behind. So I was drinking all day. I had a canteen full of beer. I would go somewhere, I was stopping, grabbing a tall boy, filling up my clean canteen, trashing the can because I wasn't gonna have an open container, and I was smart about it. Like, if you're disciplined, you can go a long time drinking into popping pills. Like, you have to be very disciplined, but it catches up to you, like it did for me. And so I was drinking all the time wine, alcohol, beer, pills, and I sharded I sharded, oh my gosh, I started working at a shooting school, which was kind of my salvation because um these were guys that were rotating in and out all the time from overseas, and they were always amped up, and they were always working contracts and stuff like Blackwater and all that. Yeah, so I felt at home. I'm at a shooting school, these guys are amped up, and I feel the palpable feeling of war that they're always being ready for war, and I liked being that environment, so I fit in. Trying to be in civilian world didn't fit in, but being here it fit in perfectly. I was like, yes. So I was able to drink even more. I I showed up, I would show up to duty hammered, doing doing my work, and they didn't say anything, they're just like, How you doing? And I was like, I'd rather be in Iraq or Afghanistan. And uh this dude, he was like, I don't know about that. And I was like, I do. Um but it was nice being there because these dudes were like rotating in and out of it, and I felt at home there. But that eventually had to come to an end. Um and I eventually reclassed to Combat Medic, so that was cool. Uh and I really loved that. It was awesome. And I got to help do some really cool stuff, got to help save a life once, and then um I reclassed to infantry, or not reclassed, but I went back to infantry battalion because I was in an airborne slot with my combat medic job, but I could never run fast enough with all my training. Like I trained and trained and trained, so I finally told first sergeant, I was like, hey, like, Deke, I I need to transfer out because I'm holding up somebody else's airborne slot, and there's a lot of people that could go. So I I reclass, not reclass, dang it, I transferred out, and shortly after that I was in training and I got sick. Like I got a rare disease called transverse myitis, and like I lost the ability to walk, and I had it left me with spinal cord damage from C1 to C5. There was swelling which jacked up like swelling inside my spinal cord. And the last day I wore my uniform officially, I was being wheeled into a Forest General Hospital in Mississippi. Wow. That that was a heartbreaker. I had to say bye to the uniform. So that's kind of my 16 years in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Do you believe it's true what they say? I saw I had watched a phenomenal documentary about the Iraq War. It was short, but it's great. It's called The Army We Had. And one of the uh one of the vets in it, he said that uh with war you become old, old young men. What would you have to say about that, that statement? Like the idea that you just you grow up so quickly at a young age when you're still vulnerable and aren't even aware of it.

SPEAKER_04 28:37

It's like sending a boy to war and then maturing in ways you can't imagine, but still being incredibly childish. So it's like you're this old man with this psyche of a kid. I I would say you gain experience. It changes your perception on the world, and you see a lot of things that age you. You're just like you just have to sit with it for years. And it's like an old man on a porch, you know, on a farm. He's seen a lot of stuff over eight years. But take a dude and as young and compress that into like a year or five or six years and compress just tons of traumatic events. And yeah, I g I guess I could see how that would age you. Um but I guess the big thing is like not having a way to process that or how to integrate that at all. And so it's like these different parts of you, one's super mature, one super immature, still a kid, and then one part's a broken heart, you know, like what what do you do with this?

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah. When I I so my backstory, I uh I do not have any veteran status, though I do come from uh a family of multiple service members. I was medically rejected from joining the armed forces, uh, even though I qualified for 12 different positions within the United States Coast Guard. Uh and when I was a contract, a civilian contract for the U.S. Navy, they with the amount of knowledge and stuff I had, they said this guy has got like military material written all over him. But of course, we all know that medicine medical uh conditions are the biggest red flag that really kind of push you away and stuff. Uh so I found myself stuck in the civilian sector versus getting to see some real action. Um but one thing that I I kind of gotta say I got a bit of a thrill out of it is that I would go upstairs to maps to kind of take care of like the um like the medic med docs and all their paperwork and stuff like that. And I'll never forget it. I remember because this is like everything you just said about like compartmentalizing and like an old man with a kid's persona. There was this one guy, he was like uh he just signed his contract to uh be infantry for the marines, I think he's think it was. And I basically, this is when I would put kids to the test to find out how truly mature you really are. And I said to him, you know, there's not always gonna be a paper target at the end of that gun. And he's like, Yeah, I know that. I'm like, so what are you gonna do when that day comes? And he's like, Well, I'm gonna follow orders from the chain of command. And I'm like, what are you gonna do if it's a child? I'm like, you're doing overwatch and a rooftop in southern Syria. You see a kid who's probably about eight years old walking towards you, who's got um what you can identify as an RKG Russian grenade. He's eight years old. You really think he has the capacity to process that on his head? What are you gonna do? And he just was completely speechless. Then I'm like, and then after everything is said and done, after you've done your like 16 for you or 20 years, like a lot of people aim for, you gotta get back to the regular world. All you know how to do is how to shoot, kill, and be this disciplined kind of machine, I guess is the word to use. How do you take all of that and transition it back into the real world, into the civilian civilian world? And he said to me, You've spoken to me better than any recruiter I've ever spoken with. I will never forget that any circumstances, because yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:39

That's a big question. Yeah. How do you integrate that afterwards? Like, what do you do with that? Yeah. Um I don't think a recruiter would uh want to ask somebody that because then they get to thinking.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

It's like you need to get them while they're young. I had to give them basically it was kind of this thing. I was allowed to give them a reality check only after they had signed their contract. This kid's already signed his paperwork. He's locked in. He's just about to be sworn into the Marine Corps, so uh he's got no turning back.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

I was only allowed to do it after they'd signed the paperwork. And what is it? So I know that uh there were some people who didn't totally love it, but the people who did respect it per se was uh the Marines and the Navy. Primarily if I was talking with guys who were interested in becoming like recon Marines and SEALs and stuff like that, because they themselves said they would give them the reality check um when the time was right and stuff. So I wasn't like forbidden from doing it, but people didn't always love it. So they were like, if you're gonna give them a reality check, you gotta wait until they've signed their contract. We don't want them stepping away.

SPEAKER_04 34:03

Yeah. You wouldn't want to save them from a life of heartache.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

No, no. I I just want for me, it's this I wanted like I mean, I was in my mid-20s and stuff when I when I was doing that and stuff. So I already I knew enough. And like I grew up during Iraq and Afghanistan, and so I mean, when you're seven years old and you watch 9-11 happen, you don't really understand too much, but you know that this is a terrible, terrible thing. Uh a day we will never forget under any circumstances. And like you said, it was a big, it was a big boom. It was a big um uh I guess the the way I like to look at it, it's when terror strikes America that patriotism ignites itself once again, that we truly come together. Like the country has to freeze as a whole in order for us to unite. Like I what's your perception on that? Because part of me feels that's rather devastating knowing that that's the uh the price that has to be paid.

SPEAKER_04 35:16

It just shows that we don't have a unifying vision in this land, in this group of people. Um and then it takes a huge event like that to mobilize people. But it was like a fulcrum to get the war machine going because there was so much advancement in the last 20 years in the military technology because the funding was just opened up. So there was all these companies that made massive amounts of money. You had all these troopies coming in to deploy, you know, they're like a God and country, or just country. And it's sad you don't see that without such a terri uh a terrifying event. And then our our country needs a unifying vision, it needs unity, it doesn't need an event to mobilize people to go to war and start the war machine all over, but it looks like it's happening again, which is not funny, it's just I sad. I've I know what the Vietnam vets felt like when they saw people going to Iraq. Because I heard stuff like this. Now I see it happening to in my generation. It's like, oh, I'm the Vietnam vet now, and I'm watching another war, and it's like, damn it. We don't need that. We should have this is just Paul Miller's opinion. We should have a unified vision for healing and unity in this nation. Or let me say group of people, or I'll say that. We need people to see each other as souls and to stand up and be like, hey, let's start healing this group of people and get unified and not get unified off of the idea of war or being attacked. Um and I'll just add this little piece. After I was discharged, I had a lot of time to think. And I started researching 9-11, researching the facts behind it, watched a lot of documentaries, and it left me disillusioned. It left me just feeling empty. And I did research on why we went to Iraq, the events leading up to it, what the basis was. Was there really a basis? That left me hollow and disillusioned and angry, and I was like, this is what the Vietnam vets felt like. Did all that for nothing. But but I believe that everything happens for a reason, and that we have this massive amount of people in this nation, or this group of people now that are veterans that actually care about people. And I'm thinking to myself, hmm. That's for a reason. We are all here for a reason, and there's a big shi shift in the narrative now between being disgruntled Vietnam vets, you know, growing their hair out, going hippie, you know, which I understand why they did that to if you take a look at it, you see all these veteran groups springing up for healing to heal the vets. And then I just went down the rabbit trail of like, wait a second. What if we got to the point where we were done healing ourselves and we're like, how can we unify this nation or this group of people without civil war, without voting, but go after, you know, healing from trauma, you know, healing from like not being able to emotionally validate yourself, connect with other people and on a human level. And what if we could do that? You know, it's like what it would have been for it wouldn't have been for nothing. And that would be the biggest middle finger to the system of like, look what we did. We did what nobody else could. We didn't collapse and break. We took a step back and we're like, how do we heal? Oh, some people use ABBA game, some people use THC, some people use meditation, um, some people use the inner work. There's always different modalities that they're like, wait a second, like we're gonna do it different now. And so that gives me so much hope. So much hope.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Because that is a big problem, is that they prepare for war, but they don't prepare for healing. And I was watching an interview with Jocko Willink, and he described it perfectly in a nutshell. If we turn back the clock to like our grandparents' generation, the guys from World War II, how did they heal? When they came home, they were on a ship home. So you're traveling from like the South China Sea to uh Manhattan. You got a lot of time together to think, to decompress, to get it out of your system. And even if you're not on that boat with guys who are in your unit or your platoon, you're in guys who you're with guys who are in the same area, who'd seen the same shit. So you have all that time to tell each other's stories, get it out of your system, and just ventilate, debrief, etc. And better yet, when those guys came home, we've seen the footage, we've seen the photos. They were welcome like heroes. It was kind of like, I don't know, as if the Avengers had won the Battle of New York. Yeah. But with the Vietnam War, and this is where I feel everything kind of really went downhill in regards to the um the the veteran respect and healing. I feel that Vietnam was kind of what pushed it downhill. One minute you're in the bush, six miles away from the Cambodian borderline with your battle buddy, out of nowhere, you see like his helmet and his brains fly fly clean off via sniper. Next thing you know, Charlie's shooting at you from every other angle. You get helicopter lifted out of the area, you hear a loud boom, and you turn your head and you see Agent Orange burning the entire jungle to the ground. When all then you get back to base and they're like, hey pal, you're going home. 48 hours later, you're sitting at a bar in South Philly smoking a cigarette, drinking Guinness, and you have not gotten an ounce of it out of your system. And because of like everything that unraveled with the Pentagon Papers and Nixon and Kissinger, etc., you're not even getting an ounce of respect. You've had no time to get it out of your system. You don't have people who are high-fiving you, instead, they're spitting on you, and look at where we are today.

SPEAKER_02 42:01

That's a tough thing to deal with. I couldn't imagine it. Yeah. And I wouldn't want to imagine it or be in that situation.

SPEAKER_04 42:08

No.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

That's I I yeah, I Vietnam vets uh put it best. He said Americans suffer political amnesia. Like we it's almost like we willingly allow ourselves to just relive what we've already been through. Like what you had said, you felt how the way the Vietnam uh guys did and stuff like that. Uh what do you have to say? Is it true that we do honestly suffer political amnesia?

SPEAKER_04 42:40

Not the people that went through it. Some people remember it very clearly, but the masses don't know it because they are brainwashed, basically. They're like, do this, believe this, be mad at this person, eat this, go here for eight to nine hours a day, you know, and be an automaton. But yeah, so the masses they're easily swayed. They're easily forgetting what happened. And now the attention span is like a goldfish. And so they're even easier to sway. So but there is that core group that's like, I know, I remember, and and I've had Vietnam vets share me share with me their stories of how they were spit on coming home and knocked a dude out. You know, it's like I it's like the division was horrible. And and that's like such a uh there was such such a diversion there of humanity where there was this huge portion of civilians that were waking up before the Civil War uh Civil War, the Vietnam War, and during it, you had the hippies and they were labeled that to make them look less than But they were waking up to the systems. They were waking up to their autonomy. They were having spiritual wakings awakenings by the masses and it got shut down hard. But then they saw this war and they're like, oh, let's protest it, you know. But if you broke that down analytically, it's like these are still humans that were betrayed. You need to love them coming back. Because if you're spiritually connected now, you don't need to be mad at the ego. Because these young men were drafted. And women, it's like, you gotta go. No choice. Um so they come back. You need to they should have come back to hearts and love. If you're a hippie, and that's not to um demean that group of people that had their spiritual awakenings because that's an amazing event. They just weren't aligned with their hearts and understanding that they need to be loved back into the fold and they need healing. And so it was like a a low-level awakening for humanity. And then I think we're in another one now with like the spiritual quest, the awakenings, and people like understanding there's a deeper level to our humanity than just our ego and running through this these systems, you know, and being a performing monkey basically.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

I I absolutely agree. I mean, I've what is it? One of my I have a per diem job at a uh a hospital, and I get no I'd have to say a handful of like Vietnam vets. One of the first things I say to them actually is uh welcome home, uh, because I know for a fact, of course, that they didn't get that uh level of love and respect. And I actually had one uh when I said that, he he started crying. He was like he was moved to tears. The fact that this this young guy has the kindness and generosity to just thank me, even though like what I went through, I'm sure he can't perfectly process it. I mean, I wasn't alive back then, that's for sure. Uh and but uh it's important. It's because you have to look at them as a human being. Like, I get it, like you you can't let the the political propaganda machine really dictate your thoughts and opinions. You have to let humanity dictate uh the reality of what people like yourself and other men and women had put themselves through, and now they're coming home and stuff. Like you just you can't I I feel we it's very healthy for us to look at each other as humans on a deeper, deeper level, especially now.

SPEAKER_04 46:57

To get a little bit into the spiritual, like we're multidimensional beings, we have a soul, um, we have a body, we have a mind, so we're operating in different realities. We may not be aware of what's on the other side of the veil, basically, but we're here having to navigate this, and we have souls, and everybody else has a soul. So when we get trapped in the dogma of they believe this, they believe that, we must hate them, I don't like the way they're wearing their pants, you know, that divides us, and we're divided at to the lowest, tiniest thing, you know, it's ridiculous. And so I think it's generational programming wearing off. The programming is no longer working, and there's a large group of people waking up, like we're more than just this body, we're more than the clothes we wear, and we connect, and like to what you're saying is like we need to connect on a deeper, deeper level, and we can. Yeah, and when we do that, we unify, and it's like the control mechanisms don't want us unified, that's for sure. That's their that's the biggest fear. Um, but that's my biggest hope is seeing unity. I would love to see a Baptist pastor who's a straight a-hole and a trans person who has purple hair and where it dresses super crazy, sit down and have a conversation and be friends and ignore all their stupid beliefs and look at each other as a soul. And and that's not to offend anybody, it's just belief systems separate us. It's like when are are we gonna have to wait for aliens to invade to get unified on a bigger level? Or is the government gonna have a hoax and trick everybody into believing there's an alien invasion so it can be like, oh, let's unify for even bigger space war.

SPEAKER_00 49:01

That will truly be Independence Day, dun dun dun. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:06

Yes. I would need proof though. I would need proof of the aliens. Let me go talk to them, make sure they're bad, and then I'll join up.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Yeah. I don't know. Maybe ask Steven Spielberg for advice. He created the most lovable alien that people have ever known. E.T.

SPEAKER_04 49:23

Well, I may I throw this out there. What about was it Groku on the uh Mandalorian? True. True. People love Groku. I don't meet this is no offense, but I think he's a little cuter than E.T., but E.T. was still pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

Yes. Yeah, of course he was. Um and speaking of like uh belief, this is uh one of the uh only questions that I really ask uh that's because it is kind of healthy in regards to unraveling the truth. With everything you've been through and everything you've seen, do you believe that the war in Iraq was worth the price it was paid?

SPEAKER_04 50:06

No, not at all. In my research, there was no foundation for the war in Iraq. Within six to eight months, it was rebranded to Operation Iraqi Freedom. First, we're going to get WMDs. Guess what? There were none found. If there were, that would have been all over the news. See, we told you so, we found them, but they weren't there, what could they do? Like, alright, go home, everybody. They weren't here. No so it was pointless. Like they created a war with no basis. One of the interviews I saw, and this is over ten years ago, some of the research I did, there was nine intelligence companies that were delivering intel from on the ground in Iraq to the White House. And they're coming in, they're like saying, We're seeing no proof of this. Like, we're not getting anything. And they went in and they changed the information on those reports to say there was stuff to create a war. And thus there was a war in Iraq that lasted twenty, I guess Iraq war lasted twenty-something years or less. Um then we left big time in 2011, and I remember sitting on the couch, like shortly after I got married, I was visiting me and my wife were I'm not married now, but we were visiting in-laws or her parents in Mobile, Alabama, where I live now. And I was watching the news crying because I was watching ISIS go through and just demolish these towns that I'd been in. Like I know they'd spent a lot of time in Kurdistan, trashing it, and just these were monsters. And I was sitting there, it's like I had a little baby that was just born, I have a wife, another kid on the way. Um, I wasn't medically retired yet. I was still in service, but I was just dying on the inside because I wanted to go fight. Because this is what really tears me up. We went in there and trashed that nation. We did a lot of stuff that was not necessary. Then we left a power vacuum and we fucking left. And there was all these people that get killed because of us, and they were mutilated and tortured and kidnapped and decimated, and that was our fault. Nobody else. And that sucks so horribly that they one of my life missions now, and I don't know how the fuck I'm gonna do this, is I'm going back to Iraq, and I'm gonna go find the family of our interpreter who was killed, and I'm gonna personally apologize to him because he wouldn't have died if he hadn't helped us. And that power vacuum went left if we hadn't have gone over there. And what sucks is even though there was tons of troops that went over there, for a long time I played a role in it, and they deserve an apology from me. And that is something that I hope and all with all my heart that I get to do. I don't care if I I don't know how I'm gonna do it because financially I don't have the funds, and I have kids now, but I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna find that place, and I'm gonna apologize to them before I die. Yeah, they deserve that.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

100%, absolutely. I totally agree. Me, one actually career uh course I had considered was I wanted to be a war correspondent, and I told my friends, like uh, and I it was still I was this is cooking in my brain back when I was a contractor and stuff like that. I told them I'd like to go to Iraq, I'd like to go to Libya, and they're like, why the heck would you want to go there? And for me, it was this. I'm like, I want to go there to tell the truth. I want to meet the people of Iraq. I want to kneel down and be like, I'm here to tell your story. Like, let me know the truth, not what the American media is feeding me. Hear it from the voices of the people. It's their homeland, not ours. And people have said that we kind of, I guess, we force fed them a system that doesn't work under any circumstances. And I I guess I'd have to agree with that, that that is part of the damage we did. Um, but I'm like, I want to go there because their story, and when I say there, I mean the people who lived it, the people who witnessed the atrocities, everything, their story deserves to be heard on a much broader and bigger scope.

SPEAKER_02 55:18

I agree with you.

SPEAKER_04 55:19

There was days that we'd be riding around and I couldn't understand why these people were looking at me the way they did with just contempt. Just some of the women looked at me with just absolute just contempt, and the men and I got to thinking about that because it really bugged me. I was like, shouldn't they be glad I'm here? And I had this shift of realizing that I'm not supposed to be here. But this is their home. These are people just living in nine to five, and we've brought war to them. Like, because I changed my thought process once I got out, after a couple of years, I got to thinking, what if Russia invaded? Bringing us peace, taking care of our WMDs, and then I wake up one night and there's a squad of dudes will come into my backyard and kick my door in and trash my house and put my family at gunpoint and ransack looking for stuff, then leave. And maybe accidentally shoot somebody. And then they leave, and my life is trashed in just a moment of them, you know, just going on a hunch. It's like yeah. I would I would pick up arms and and I totally rationalize and understood the position of the people that did fight us over there. Granted, they put it brought in fighters from other countries, they would bring in snipers and stuff like that. But it makes sense when a young man's home is invaded that he's like, you know what, I'm gonna do my part to fight for my homeland. And what war leaves you it left me with a broken heart and a broken spirit a little bit. And then it spent I spent ten to fifteen years working through that and coming to terms, like I had to go through phases, anger, regret, the alcoholism, and I had to come to peace with everything. I had to find my inner peace because like it's a transformative experience and it can easily ruin somebody's life, you know, and they can go down a dark path. And I've finding that inner peace has been amazing. Like that's the best part of it. And I don't think I would have ever found this type of peace without war. So I don't know. Everything does happen for a reason.

SPEAKER_00 58:09

Yes, yeah. I I absolutely agree. I mean, I I remember one one of the most interesting experiences I've ever had in life that really made me wake up and have a better understanding of the US's presence in Iraq was when I actually met a young woman. This was when I was in community college, who was Iraqi and she had survived the war. And I was at like the human resources office, and she was explaining uh like everything to uh this flustered person who worked there, being like the she's like, I am the only person in my family who speaks English. Uh, none of them they speak the native Iraqi language. Uh we are here, and she said, like, our home was blown up during the war. And in that moment, I started thinking to myself, wait a second, who blew up their home? And I'm like, was it uh the members of Zarkawi's army? Uh for those of you who have been living under a rock uh all your life and have never read a history book under any circumstances, Zarkawi was the Al-Qaeda general uh in Iraq. Basically, he is the founding father of ISIS. He was carried by killed by US uh forces during an airstrike in 2006, I believe it was, uh, but that did not stop ISIS from growing. So uh yeah, that's where that comes from. And but I also thought to myself, wait, maybe it was us.

SPEAKER_02 59:45

And that opened my eyes even wider and made me realize, holy crap, we weren't meant to be there.

SPEAKER_00 59:58

I feel that once you meet the people who lived it and stuff, and actually take the time to not look at things from Western American eyes, but look through the eyes of an Iraqi or a Syrian or an Afghan, your whole perspective is gonna change.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:19

I remember coming back after spending so much time in the desert and seeing Americans going going to Walmart and just the change is like this culture is totally different. Like so many of those people were happy in a hut with a couple of little pots and pans. Not all that and that was like further out in the outskirts in some areas. But yeah, there is just this huge disconnect, I guess. Just they have no idea what it's like to be in a war-torn country and to endure that. Um then I don't know, and I was while you were talking, I was thinking, I don't know which is more difficult having your country invaded and trashed and living through that and having to become a refugee potentially, or going there, being lied to, being used, and having a huge part of your heart like covered up, and then you have to heal for many, many years. And then go through the whole process of I was used, we shouldn't have been there, and um now I gotta deal with what I got. And I don't know which side of the coin is more painful, but I think there is peace to find on the other side because you can't you don't really know what it is to crave peace until you've been in absolute chaos, I believe. And then you're just like, Oh, I want peace. Otherwise, like a lot of people in this society probably just go through the turmoil of everyday life and deal with it, and they aren't pushed so much so far to extreme to just to desperately seek peace and find out what that means and how to um internalize it so they can navigate the world.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:21

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's um it's definitely uh I don't know, sometimes in order to learn the most important lessons in life, you need to endure the hardest ones. I think that's the best way to look at it per se. Especially uh especially with with war and what you've been through, but also those who who were on the opposite side of the equation, the ones who had the guns aimed at their heads, uh when reality they were, I guess, in many and and I'd have to say majority of the time, not even a threat under any circumstances.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:56

Now I will say this. There are some men in groups over there that are just savages, and they are horrible. Like they are at a very low level of humanity, but they might get along with our politicians. Because I believe because our politicians are very bankruptly bankrupt people internally. Um but they committed atrocities to their own people also. So they aren't they are to say to say for somebody to say that everybody was innocent completely is not by any stretch of the means or any stretch true because they were, like I said, just there was a lot of horrible people that did need to be taken out, but were we the ones to do it? You know, we're not the police of the world. Yes. Was that movie Team America? We're like America, if yeah, out to say the motherfucker. There was like we're the police of the world. And I say, no, we're not. We should take care of our own herd because we are in pain and suffering and stopped with the war machine. Yes, there's lots of money to be made, but that's not the best way to use our money and our tax dollars. No.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:24

No, not under any circumstances, that's for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:29

And it would be different if we were being invaded. If we saw the invasion fleet and the planes and everything, and we're like, all right, let's defend our families versus the other and let's go mess with their soup and totally mess their soup up for years. And then just start another war. Yeah. Like it's I'm laughing at the absurdity of it watching it in real time. It's like, oh, there's another war. You got it, like and the sad what I thought about the other day, it sucks. It's like there's a bunch of young men over there and women that are excited about it. They are all about country and they're serving and they're joining up. I'm gonna go fight our inn. And then there's a whole demographic in America that's all about like hating Islam, you know, and they're like, they're God hating people, you know, and they're and that's like I'm gonna say the demographic of like sixties to eighties year old white men who are like Republican Christians, you're like, yeah, go war, nuke them all, turn it into a glass uh parking lot. Like you're you're speaking from a position of ignorance, good sir. Like you are locked into dogma. You don't understand that we don't need to keep doing war.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:52

That's a little bit of a This is why like people need to understand that Jack Nicholson was one hundred percent on. Honest in the movie A Few Good Men. You can't handle the truth. Is it one of the most iconic m lines in the history of cinema? Absolutely. But is it also one of the most honest lines in the history of cinema? More honest in the world we live in today than you could possibly imagine.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:17

And it's a different type of it. You know, it's not there, he was like justifying the killing of a Marine of being so strict and regimented. We're here, it's like they need to see the truth that war is not the answer. It may and the s what sucks is in the movies, it's glorified. It's made to look cool, you know. And my dad he would be like, Man, you need to watch this war movie, it's a good one. You need to watch it. And I was just like, What's good about it? You know, like I I don't really watch war movies anymore. Like, and that's the thing, like I realized he was coming from a place of just absolute ignorance. I had no idea what he was talking about. And so I was like, all right, let you be ignorant, but don't push for war. That's not the best thing, unless it's protecting our backyards. I think that's important.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:22

Yes, yeah. And currently the only thing that's invading my backyard is a uh skunk. We call him Mr. Stinky. I I I hate him so much, especially when he decides to uh blow a bomb and our entire apartment smells like his ass. And I'm like, by god, I gotta get myself a BB with that's shaped like an AK and just go to town on an He's just hungry.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:43

He's checking out what the humans are throwing out, the best snacks ever, and he's just leaving you a little love bomb.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:50

Oh, yeah, I know, but that's the closest thing to a terrorist my wife and I have to deal with is an evil little skunk who comes out and oh my god. Yeah, yes, yeah. First world problems. Yes, yeah, first world problems, definitely. And if you want to support this podcast, this is a shout out to all you media junkies out there. You want to have a chance to be a guest on the show, you can follow me on Instagram at ATK Media or check me out uh on YouTube at chatterbox-94. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave your thoughts and comments in the section below. You can DM me via Instagram. Uh, you can listen into me on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, wherever it is you get your podcasts from. For all you vets out there who are listening in on this one, for starters, thank you for your service. And if you want to be a guest on Vets Talk Tough, feel free to DM me. I'm here not to talk politics, not to talk uh social commotion, not to talk about the propaganda machine. I'm here to tell your story. Because for those of you out there who don't know what war is and you can't handle the truth, well, listen in and hear the truth.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:07

Do you mind if I throw a shameless plug in? Not under any circumstances. I don't mind at all. So, um in my journey of healing, I've created a program and I'm in the grassroots phase. It's called Uncivilized Rebirth. And right now, um I have uh a structure to go through and learn it, and I'm I can coach people through it, veterans specifically, and it's on the school platform, Uncivilized Rebirth. And if you're a veteran out there and you're interested in another modality of inner work that may just fit you, check it out. It's we'll get on a Zoom call, we'll see if it fits for you. And I would love to um help other veterans to navigate the inner world.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:59

Yes, because it's not everyone needs help right now. Everyone. We do need to find a way to heal, and we need to find a way to be united once again. What is I believe uh Jimmy Carter, he he talked about he said in like 79 or something that we we are dealing with a crisis of confidence. And I feel that that's ringing very true now uh in in America. Maybe not exactly a full there is a crisis of confidence, but also a crisis of confidence in regards to confident that we as a country can come together and be peaceful and harmonious because that's something that I guess one might say really makes things feel cold and kind of hollow.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:52

We need a unifying vision, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:56

Yes, very much so. Paul, it was great having you on the show. Thank you very much for your service. So until next time, folks, stay high in life. Out.