Command Post: Hegseth Takes an Axe to Generals, Admirals and Military Education

- Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bullwork. Welcome back to another episode of Command Post on your Bullwork Take Speed. I am joined as always by our very own lieutenant, General Mark Hurtling. General, how are you this morning? - Good morning, Ben. We have all sorts of things across the bevy of topics to talk to this morning or to talk about. I think it'll be an interesting show today if we can get to all of it. - It really, I mean, it feels like every show is a lightning round lately. There's so much news to go through. And you know, maybe one day we'll have a good news story to talk about. - Yeah. - Maybe we do actually at the end. Maybe our very last news story is a good news story. We'll hold on that one. But first, let's get through all the bad stuff. We have to start with this. Secretary of Defense Beat Heggseth is giving his major state of the force address. This is like the Secretary of Defense's equivalent of the State of the Union. He's giving that later today. But already Fox News has previewed one of his major announcements from the speech. He plans to cut the number of general and flag officers across the American military by 20% by a fifth. Now, there are a lot of details to get into here. Part of it is that this seems to be not that they're cutting the number of positions, but the actual number of officers of those ranks. It affects every one of the armed forces, or one of the military forces, I should say. They want this to be complete by January 1st of 2027. So that's pretty fast. And this doubles the previous 10% reduction that they aimed for last year, which was difficult. I think that was a reduction rather than a number of positions. This is a reduction in the number of actual officers. Are they getting that right? Yeah, that's the way I read it. Although we haven't heard what Secretary Heggseth is going to say. But we can talk about what the implications of that are if you're interested in doing that. Absolutely. Yes. All right, I'm going to look at this from two perspectives. One is active army generals, which right now, there are about 272 in the force. That's the number that's considered an end strength today. But across the forces, the Army Navy Air Force Marine Space Force, there are about 850 generals and admirals across the entire force. So if you're talking about 20% of that, that's a proposed reduction of 170 general officers and flag officer positions. And as you said, what he wants to do is not look at managing the positions and not filling them in the future. He literally, from what we understand, once those senior leaders go off by the 1st of January, 2027, that's going to be very difficult. I'm going to go back to the Army real quick, and just talk about the numbers that we're discussing. In the Army, right now, there are 274 general officers. That's a bit over what Congress mandates, but they've received an exception for it. 10 USC, US Code 526, CAPS Army generals at 219. We currently have 272, but that does not include-- it's over and above when you talk about numbers in the joint force. That's difficult to explain. I'll try and explain it in just a second. But if you break it down by specific ranks, at the one-star position, there's 110. At the major general or two-star position, there's 100. At the three-star position, the rank I held, there are currently 52. And at the four-star position, there are currently 12 four-star Army generals in the Army. Now, those are the numbers that were the rank. When I talk about joint positions, those 274 officers aren't all serving within the Army. They are serving in joint billets. What do I mean by that? Well, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, combat and command are positioned. So you might have an Air Force 4 star that's commanding a combat and command, but you've got a couple of Army generals, as well as Navy and Marine Corps generals, in that organization. It's like European command. When I served in Europe, there was an admiral in charge of four-star admiral. And there were a bunch of Air Force Army and Navy folks on his staff at different positions. Was that step that-- Was that-- who was in charge then? It was admiral security, too. It was in charge when I was in Europe, yes. So those are the kinds of positions these guys hold, guys and gals. When we talk about a 20% reduction, which I'm skeptical about, because there doesn't seem to have been an assessment of the different positions, it's mostly just a numerical value of 20% instead of 10% which he announced a couple of months ago. So again, you're talking about 170 senior ranking positions who mostly have 30 years or above worth of experience. Now, you're going to get all kinds of people on the internet saying, well during World War II, we had less generals than that. And that was because we had mostly infantry organizations and Air Force and Navy positions. Today, we have things like cyber command. And we have the space force, which in and of itself has a lot of generals providing capabilities for wars in space and defense in space. We have a whole lot more on a joint staff, which we didn't have during World War II. We have several more combatant commanders like Western Hemisphere command that we did not have during World War II. So you can see how there's been kind of an expansion in the general loss of ranks even though it hasn't really correlated to the number of soldiers we have in the force. So that's kind of an explainer, Ben. And truthfully, I'm not fighting for more generals. And I'm saying it's not a bad idea to check out how many we have because there is a little bit of a bloat. I'm just concerned that what Secretary Heggseth has not done is an analysis or an assessment of where these generals are and what they're doing. So again, I'm an old retired general. I'm not trying to defend general officer numbers in our ranks. I'm just saying the way we're doing this seems to be a little bit slap-dash. So general, explain to me what happens. This is why I started out with the distinction between getting rid of the people and getting rid of the roles or the billets. Like it can happen that you say, hey, this whole organization that we have it's led by a general or an admiral. This doesn't need to exist anymore. So we're getting rid of it. And therefore, there's one less slot for a general to take. But go ahead, yeah, you have something out there. I mean, it's a great point because what we've seen, and I'm going to go back to Elon Musk Doge's actions, we've seen governmental institutions across the board literally slashed with all kinds of people. And there is an attempt to create a more effective bureaucracy, but in cutting some of these positions, then what we're beginning to see-- and I think all of us are noticing it now-- is there have been a lot of slashes in organizations that are really necessary across the board in various institutions? And I'll name one that's happening today-- cyber defense in either the FBI or the CIA or the organization that you and I wrote an article about CISA, the cyber infrastructure security agency, that has almost been completely deluded. And what we're now seeing now is the potential for multiple cyber attacks in government installations. Because these people that sometimes are considered over and above what we need, actually do a pretty important job. I'll say one more thing about the slashing of the generals. In 2010, when I was asked to go command US Army Europe, it was a forced art position. When I was brought in to talk to the chief of staff about what we were doing because we were downsizing Europe, he said to me, he said, Mark, we're going to put you over there as a three-star because we want to decrease the right structure in Europe. And I said, I'm good with that. I'll command the organization as the lieutenant if you want to make me a lieutenant. Well, there was also additional elements of that force that were decreased in rank. As an example, we had a one-star general at Grafinder, our major multinational training site, where other nations come to train as well as the US Army. That was decreased from a one-star to a kernel position. The G4 of Europe, the logistics guy, was reduced from a one-star to a two-star. I had no deputies, as a deputy commander, except one, a one-star that used to be a two-star, and excuse me, a three-star that was reduced to a two-star and a one-star. All of those officers did phenomenally well, but they did not have the experience, the additional credentials to deal with multinational organizations, because they were facing off against Russians and Polish and German four and three-star generals, and they were a one-star. So rank does matter not only from observation, but also from credentials. I was a three-star. It, truthfully, it didn't bother me the whole time I was there. I still had the largest force in Europe, which had 90,000 soldiers at the time. I was at three. star with my counterpart in the Air Force Mark Welsh, who was a four star general, he had about 20,000 airmen under his command. And my Navy counterpart, who had about 10,000 under his command, but he was a four star. You can see where this is, and the Marine Corps was a three star, and he had about, oh, less than 500 people under his command. So you can see where the dynamics of slashing and burning these ranks really sometimes make a difference and there's more devil in the details than just slicing numbers. Yeah, the other thing I wanted to ask about, since they're doing, they're not getting rid of the positions, but they are getting rid of the people. So that just means you're going to have, as you described, lower ranking officers filling these positions. So instead of, we talked a little bit before, and you wrote about in the bulwark just recently, he kind of special, like line items on a resume that a general officer needs to have, not only education, but also you need to have experience working with people in the other services that you don't just have a Navy mindset or an Air Force mindset and an Army mindset. You have a whole military mindset, and you are capable of thinking more broadly, you know, you need to usually have gone to one of the war colleges and studied not just tactics and how to win a battle, but things like national security policy and strategy and, you know, larger scale warfare and things like that. So what happens when you still have all these positions, you still have all these commands, you still have all these responsibilities need to be done, but you have lower ranking officers filling those positions. Well, I'm going to add one thing to what you said, too. You're not only working with other services and other ranked positions, but as you increase through the chain of command and you get to the higher strategic ranks, part of your responsibility is also working with governmental officials. I mean, I work as much with ambassadors and heads of state as I did with soldiers at times as a three-star in Europe. You also are working with our government going back to testify before people and giving them military advice when you testify before Congress. You're working with other U.S. agencies that you're working with on the battlefield and you're actually synchronizing all that different elements of national power into an operational sense. So, you know, there are a lot of people that are saying, oh, these are all just a bunch of political generals. Yes, they are because they have to be. That's part of the job. You know, you have to work within politics and bring your culture to bear with others. But in terms of your question, what does it do? It just, it just lessons the capability and the experiences that these officers would have done was as a three-star commander in a former position, was I stretched, you bet your ass I was. I mean, it was hard catching up to the kinds of things my predecessor, a four-star general, had done because he got in more doors at four-star. He was in more meetings than I could go into as a four-star, both in governmental agencies, but also within the Department of Defense. I mean, Pete Hexeth is not going to pay a whole lot of attention to two in one-star generals as he is to three in four-star generals. So that's kind of another indicator of what we're talking about. Yes. The two more questions on this before we move on to the rest of our litany of bad news, and then our good news at the end. So one of them is also, we've talked before about how, once you become a general officer, especially a three-in-four star, you have a different relationship with Congress, because you're not just appointed by the president, you're confirmed by Congress. And this is where you have to sign a piece of paper that says, I promise to give my best military opinion, if Congress ever asks, I will give you my honest answers. If there are fewer people serving in the military who have been confirmed by the Senate, who have signed that piece of paper, who have that special responsibility to go before Congress as you have done, and testify their best military opinion, what does that do to congressional oversight of the military, which has already been an issue during this Iran War? It makes it a whole lot harder than it. You know, who are you going to question? Because the two stars in below are promoted, I'll use that word specifically, to their ranks by their services. The three stars in above are nominated and selected for specific jobs by, as you just said, the Senate. That is a critical difference because, again, as a three-star and above, you are, as you mentioned, signing a letter that says, I will give you my best military advice. So if you neck down, and I almost said, "Dunk down." If you neck down the people who are in those positions, they are more beholding to their services than they are to their civilian leadership. And somebody is going to say to me, oh, that's not true. They're all beholding to the civilian leadership, which is true. But you don't get the interaction that you would need to really give your best military advice at those lower levels. Yeah. Certainly, it is a concerning thing. Last question also. And this I'm really not sure of. Does it change sort of the delicate balance of power and authority between the services and the change of command of those in uniform and the civilians in the Pentagon to change the officer structure like this? Does that stay basically the same? Does it give the people in the office of the Secretary of Defense, the office of the Secretary of the Army, or whatever? Does it give them more power if there are fewer people wearing stars? Yeah, absolutely. It does. Because the civilian ranks in the Department of Defense all have military equivalencies. So from a protocol perspective, an undersecretary carries the equivalency of a high three-star rank. So literally, the seats around the table are arranged based on the protocol of who has the higher rank. So yeah, it will make a difference for sure. Okay. Well, great. That's our first bit of bad news. We have to talk about something else that Secretary Hegseth is planning to do. And this one falls into this category that we keep coming back to of like, why is he spending his time on this? I want to point people back to when Pete Hegseth was first nominated. I think even before the Trump administration came into office, he wrote an excellent article for the bullwork all about all the different jobs the Secretary of Defense has to do. You have to be a great businessman to deal with the industry. You have to be a political leader to deal with Congress. You have to be a military leader to deal with generals and admirals. You have to be an administrator. You have to be a mentor. You have to be a delegator. You have to be all of these things. And a lot of it just comes down to choosing the right people to delegate to. And it seems like Pete Hegseth is delegating all the wrong things and focusing on all the things you should just say, like, you're capable. Go figure it out. And this latest example is the DOD school system. Now, you told me your kids grew up partially in DOD schools, both in the United States and abroad. If you live on a military base with your family, that's who's probably educating your children. It's the DOD public school system. It is, by some lights, the best public school system in the United States. There are a lot of reasons for that that don't just go down to the quality of the instruction and stuff. It helps to be in a very closely monitored, very stable environment for the most part. But generally, kids from the DOD education activity, as they call it, outperform the general American youth population on test scores and things like that. Buy a lot. Buy a lot. And now Pete Hegseth and his chosen subordinate general Tata want to completely remake the DOD curriculum to follow a classical education model where they study sort of the great canon of Western civilization. We don't have to get into the education policy because I don't think other of us is really an expert in that. We can ask our colleague, Bill Crystal, who does have something about education policy. But what do you make of them deciding in the middle of a war, mind you, that like this is a high priority for the Department of Defense is to change the curriculum at DOD schools? Yeah. Well, just the optics of it, Ben, are a little bit frightening. I'll use that word because there's been pronouncements to all the DOD schools, the DOD education agencies, Odia, as you mentioned. That's what they're called. And I've worked these folks, they're terrific. These are professional edgy creators across the board. They hire teachers that are really kind of fascinating in terms of their culture because these are teachers that want to travel the world and teach young kids that are military service members, dependents. My wife and I moved 24 times in my 38 years of service to the military. So we had a mixed bag of Odia schools and private schools and public schools in the United States. But our kids mostly grew up in Germany. So they were almost exclusively in DOD school. Well, they were exclusively in DOD schools in Germany as part of the force over there. The only other place they had the opportunity to attend was a school in Fort Knox, Kentucky that was a Dodia school on the base. And part of the reason for that was because, and I don't mean to insult anybody, but there was a concern that the school districts around Fort Knox, Kentucky, in the middle of Kentucky, were not as well intentioned and good as the schools on the base. So Dodia said we will plant a high school and a grade school on the base itself. So Our oldest son went to Fort Knox High. I can't remember what their mascot was, but it was kind of a really good school. The fact that these schools repeatedly over the ages should have better test scores, have better graduation rates, have better college entrance rates, have better service mantras, than most public and private schools on the outside is kind of fascinating, and why suddenly the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness is getting into this is questionable. But the more important thing is this all started with some list of books and some, you know, directives to the DOD principles saying, pull these books off the shelves. These are now books that our students can't read. I was looking at some of the books last night and it was interesting. The one that was on the top of the list was Kite Rummer, which is about, it's a great book, by the way. I highly recommend it. - Sorry, that's on the DOD ban. - That is on the DOB ban book list. And there are a couple of others that are also very good books. They give kids cultural dynamics, have an understanding of how different cultures and certainly how journalistic and, you know, writing capabilities are measured. But anyway, there's not only that, but there's a testing mechanism that the USDP and R is trying to drive toward entrance exams at different military academies, the Naval Academy, West Point, Air Force Academy. So instead of taking the SAT and the ACT, they'll take this thing. I think the initials are CLA and I don't know what it stands for. I don't know anything about the test, so I can't critique it. But it just seems funny that they are trying to push these specific educational tools to military schools and to department of defense education schools without any rhyme or reason. I don't know the devil in the details, Ben, and neither do you, I would suspect. Now, it's fascinating. You have to ask the question again, what is this all about? And just like the last topic we were talking about, why 20% of the general law officers, why not do an assessment of physicians and say we're going to do these individually as opposed to making this grand pronouncement at 20%. Why are we rescheduling a re-brokering test for the military academies? Why are we saying to ban books? It all comes back to an attempt to change culture in a way that hasn't received full agreement by the population that's undergoing the changes. You know, I really just, it is starting to become so obvious where the secretary's priorities are. I mean, just think about some of the stories we've talked about just as we started doing this show, just in the last couple of years. We've talked about the department of defense is hounding trans people out of the service. They are now going to, they're changing the fitness standards. They are now going to be perhaps issuing department of defense sponsored hormone treatments for some people, not all people, but some people. They're changing the education requirements. I mean, there are so many other examples. We are in the middle of a war. Like we are still at war with a round. And we're going to talk about this next. We have a big problem with China. We have a big problem with Russia. I mean, we're not even going to talk about this Danish intelligence report that says that Russia is getting ready to not only intensify its sort of hybrid war on America and its allies in terms of hacking and criminality and sabotage or whatnot, but like actually, they're getting ready in the next five years to be ready for a military confrontation with the NATO country, because they think that they can get away with it. We have big problems. And the fact that the Secretary of Defense is focused on, I mean, like censorship of the DOD schools. Let's call it what it is. If someone were banning books, he'd like to even call it censorship, right? And that they're changing the-- I mean, this is not what's important right now. And this is not the job of the Secretary of Defense. I don't know how else to put it. Well, I think it's really good. I mean, there's been a lot of talk about the actions of our media and our journalists in terms of reporting different things and how it's pissing off the president and the Secretary of Defense and everybody else. But this may be what some would consider a minor story. I'm glad we're talking about it today, but it's connected to bigger stories. It's connected to an administration that is not listening to the will of the people that is not doing things in the right way. The administration is doing things that gets us into trouble. I mean, we've already seen actions which has caused a war that seems to be really in bad shape right now. It gives us to how the president deals with and the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State deal with foreign governments and our allies and how that seems to be affected by some of their actions. So all these little stories combine to make one big story and that we are experiencing, in my belief, a certain amount of dysfunction in our government. Oh, well speaking of dysfunction, I, the first time I saw this story, I honestly thought it was fake. I saw the headline. I saw people discussing it and I thought, no, they must have gotten that wrong. I could not believe this, Matt. Can we please play the Purdue clip? Continues to say, hey, we sell arms to other people around the world. Trump is actually asked to have a presidency. Would he like to buy something at one point? But I are surprised. Yes. In case you work as confused as I was, that is former senator now American ambassador to China, Dave Purdue, saying that Trump offered to sell American weapons to China. He offered this to Xi Jinping. That is, I don't even know where to start. First of all, you get that at a time where China just stole almost definitely F-35 parts that they can reverse engineers some of the technology for one of our most advanced fighter jets. China has been stealing American defense technology for decades and basically getting away from it. China is our main military competitor. And Trump is offering to sell them American weapons. We should play before I lose my mind. We should play Trump's response when he was asked about that, Matt, if we could play the next clip, please. 100%. And then on the state visit yesterday on Fox News Sunday Ambassador to China, Purdue said that you suggested to President Xi that the US would sell US military equipment to China. Is that accurate? Did you think such a suggestion? To China? To China. You mean to Taiwan? No, to China. That's what he said. I never heard of that when I got out to ask him. You mean, we're going to sell it? No, they probably like to buy it because we do make better equipment than that. So maybe it's a good idea. But we didn't discuss it. They may have been talking about Taiwan. I think he probably was talking about it. Mr. President, please. So I just want to say, it's difficult to read the President sometimes. The way I read that video is that he is legitimately confused. And maybe someone, at some point, was confusing. The people's Republic of China with Taiwan. And maybe the president is confused about who he was talking to when he offered to sell arms. I'm not certain the president is following the plot here. But I kind of believe Ambassador Purdue, he wouldn't just make that up. General, I mean, please, talk me off the ledge here because I'm losing my mind. I will try and talk you off the ledge, Ben. Here's what I believe likely happened. And it has to do with one of the things we talked about, they teach at the war college. Words are important. Be precise. When you're precise in communication and in your language, you don't have these kinds of issues going on. One of President Xi's main points in coming to the United States, one of his main negotiation points that he wanted to make was asking the United States not to sell arms to China-- I'm sorry, to Taiwan. To Taiwan. I would almost bet that the topic of conversation came up as the president and President Xi were walking down the hall of presidents with Biden on his auto pen. And the conversation started about arms to Taiwan. And the president said, well, we're selling them because we have really good weapons. And if you want something, we can sell it to you too, because we've got much better weapons you do. It could have been something as simple as that. And Ambassador Purdue probably could have heard that and thought he would make a really great comment on Fox News by saying the president even offered to sell arms to China. I think you're right. The president and the Oval Office was confused when he was asked the question, thinking to himself, I didn't do that. What the hell? What are you talking about? I was talking about arms to Taiwan. But again, there is such-- there's a huge difference between selling commercial products to China, what the president is interested, and selling weapons to a country whose military the Pentagon has spent decades preparing to deter and is the number one priority in our security strategy that's been written by Elbridge Colby and the president himself in the national security strategy. So I don't know how this came about, but I believe that-- I kind of believe that Ambassador Perdue heard the president say, we could sell you weapons, too. But that's conjecture. Look, it is possible to confuse countries. We've all accidentally said Iran, and we meant Iraq, or the opposite. We've all-- I guess you could confuse South Korea with North Korea and just say the wrong one. It is possible to-- but that is not what happened here. And if you are the president of the United States and you are meeting the paramount leader of China and you refer to selling arms to the other China, if you have a lapse because you're human, that should be clarified right away. It should be clarified to everyone on the American side and everyone on the PRC side said, everyone is absolutely sure about what we meant. And the US-- I'm screaming, I'm sorry. The US ambassador to China should not be confused more than a day later about which China you meant. And the president of the United States should not be confused even after that. Well, and I want to thank to what you're just saying, because I think it's important. Ambassador Perdue is not a foreign service officer. He is an appointed ambassador, which the president can do. He can appoint ambassadors anywhere he wants, but to appoint someone like that to China, a businessman, who is looking for a soundbite on a news broadcast, on an issue that's as important as this, and which should protect the president. If the president did say that behind closed doors, I would bet that the State Department teaches their foreign service officers to quickly cover it up and make sure the mistake isn't known to the republic and that it can, you know, actually bring the president back on board. So again, you're right. And but it just-- I mean, I think it goes to show, again, I hate to use the word, the dysfunction in our government. It really is dysfunctional. And, you know, the difference I feel in the American position toward China in the past two years, you know, I thought, you know, this is going to be a multi-generation challenge that, you know, this country is really going to have to step up a respond to just like we did during the Cold War. In some ways, China is a much more threatening adversary than the Soviet Union ever was because the Soviet economy wasn't ever near the size of the American economy. And by some measures, China's economy might be bigger, and they've got more than a billion people. I mean, they have their own problems, to be sure. But it is a major problem. Now, I can't tell you how bleak I feel about it, because we've lost our major advantage, which is our close relationship with our allies, and we are just giving them everything they want for free. It is-- Well, you know, if I can add one more thing to your angst about China and what the president said, you know, let's not just look at it from a China-US relationship perspective. Let's include our allies in the region, Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines. The Philippines have been undergoing a whole lot of pressure campaign from the Chinese. And imagine what their governments felt when they heard that. That the president-- even if it was a three-hour lapse between Ambassador Pradoo saying it, and the president reinforcing that he never said that, even if it was that lapse, imagine what the government of the Philippines were thinking at that point. After their coast guard has been harassed by the Chinese Navy that they have had overflights over Japan and South Korea, these are things that matter. And that's why it's important to have your act together when you do these kind of engagements. Well, we don't have our act together. As a sad truth, we do not. And speaking of which, we'll move on to-- I think our last bad topic-- well, do this one quickly. We've been tracking the-- let's say, issues the Department of Defense has had reporting casualties from the Iran War. We've yet another story. This time from NBC, eight Marines were injured in a September 14 attack that was not previously reported. They were all injured. They all returned to service. They are all apparently OK. When they came under a missile attack, they suffered injuries. But it's a smoke inhalation and traumatic brain injury. The NBC report is kind of hard to parse, because they say they weren't seriously injured, but they had traumatic brain injury. And I'm not an expert on TBI, but I think it can take a while to know exactly how serious it is. These are the same injuries that, if you remember, back in Trump's first term, the Iranians launched some missiles on the American base and President Trump called TBI's headaches. Headaches. Headaches. Or maybe they don't know. Yeah. These injuries weren't added to the Defense Department database of casualties until 10 days later. So this is just from the NBC report. The Defense Department did not disclose any September 14 attacks against the US forces in the region. The Iranian attack and details of the eight Marines injuries have not been previously reported. Lady says the casualty reporting system added the eight Marines with a list of injured troops assigned to overseas operations nearly 10 days after the attack on Wednesday. So I kind of feel two ways about this. Let me know if you feel differently. Not unusual during a war for the press, not to be able to report all the action that happens immediately. That's very normal. But this persistent issue with updating the casualty figures, it's 10 days slow, is it fast? It doesn't feel fast, right? It's not fast. And casually reporting is a critical element of any HR system in the military, the so-called personalist. You have to get that in really quick, like the same day. And what I'd say on this ban is this has now become the potential issue du jour for reporting. How fast are we getting these casual reports in? What is the Department of Defense hiding? How come we don't know what's going on with our military personnel? Those are the questions that are being asked on a daily basis, because the Department of Defense has lost trust with the American people based on the way they handled the first set of casualties in covering them up. So if you're in that kind of a press environment, where you know on a daily basis that the media and certain reporters are going to be looking for this every day, if I'm the Secretary of Defense, I would say something to my personnel, my USDP and our guys, that have paying attention to school districts and transit gender issues. I'd say, don't eff this up. Get the casually reporting out and on the net right away. If it's a non-battle injury, post it. If it's a wounded in action, post it. If it's a traumatic brain injury, it better be on the casual fee to report. And they're not doing that. You know, we're way into this problem with casualty reporting, then. And the fact that they're still dicking it up, pardon my language, tells me that there's, somebody asleep at the switch, and they're not getting the right information, especially when it's being monitored on a daily basis by the journalists of the world. Yeah, I mean, I want to ask you one more question about this, because you've talked really interesting and in depth before about what your relationship with the press was like when you were in command. And it's not a loving relationship, I would say. And there are good reasons for that. The military depends on doing a lot of things in secret. And the press depends on finding out other people's secrets in a lot of ways, but this is a way in which I think it makes sense, like the press found out this flaw, and now by monitoring it and reporting on it, pressing the military to do better, and not just to do better by its own rules and centers, but to do better by the families of these people who have been injured. And by the other members of the service who want to know that if something happens to them, it will be reported, it will be recorded, it won't be forgotten, right? So this is actually how the system is supposed to work. And unfortunately, the defensive member just isn't responding to the pressure, right? - I'll give you the words that I would have used in my command. Usually you wait for the press to pull things out of you, but when you keep getting beat up by different reports, you turn from a pull to a push system. Get this information to the reporters. Don't wait for them to ask for it. That's the difference, okay? If you know you're getting beat up by the press, you go on the offensive, and you give them the information, and you're very open with them. But instead, what it appears as happening is we have become, we, the Department of Defense and others have become more close. And it's generated by the so-called fake news mantras, and you guys don't know what you're doing, and you guys are all screwed up, and Caitlin Collins, you're ugly, and don't smile enough. I mean, that's the relationship with the press right now, and it's unfair, not just to the press bin, but to the American people, writ large, and that's what they keep. for getting. Alright, I promise we would get to a good story, but before I do, I just want to remind people that they can see you in person, a pleasure and privilege which I have only ever had once, because you will be at the Bullwork event with Sarah, Tim, JVL, Sam, and others on October 20th in Atlanta, Georgia. I think the other shows are basically sold out, but I think there is still some seeds available for Atlanta. So if you want to see General Hurtling in Atlanta on October 20th, you can sell it by your tickets at thebullwork.com/events. Yeah, it's a Tuesday night. I think that's why the tickets are moving slow. The other two events are on the weekend, but I'm pretty excited about this. I got invited by the team to come share some thoughts with them. I don't know what the topics are going to be. I'm sure there's going to be some audience participation, but I'm there to kind of give the military and the national security perspective as the best I can to a group of really fun people to be with. Tim and Sarah and JVL and all the rest of the game. Yeah, it's going to be great. And the vast majority of the tickets are sold. I don't know the exact number of how many are left, but it's not many. So if you're interested at all, I would say get it now. And now we get to talk to talk about. And by the way, can I add something? Please, they do these events all over, and I'm just going to reinforce something that happened last weekend, and that was the event in Springfield, Ohio. And the bullwork media organization, a company that's trying to provide news raised over $400,000 for the Haitians in Springfield. Is that am I correct on that right now? I don't know the latest data. Yeah, so all of the bullworks profits are going to be donated, but that 400,000 number is even before that. That's just members of the bullwork community. We said, hey, here's a link. Donate if you can. And people raised, I mean, it's closing in on half a million dollars for the Haitians in Springfield. People just out of the goodness of their hearts, out of their kindness. I saw people in the comments saying, I couldn't get a plane ticket to come to the event. So I looked at how much a plane ticket would cost, and I donated that amount. I mean, that kind of generosity is amazing. One person, I think, if I remember correctly, that person gave $10,000. Yeah, that was a much honest person, but it was actually me, man. It wasn't okay. Yeah, no, that's incredible. These bullwork events can give them a wonder really special. Okay, enough of the ads. Our last topic. I think we can't. This is good news. And I'm just going to lay it out here and I want to hear your perspective. The final American forces have left Iraq. We ended our operation associated with the counter-ISIS campaign. Officially, we closed down the last base we had, which is an air bill, and where you used to hang out a lot in the North of Iraq in the Kurdish region. There was a little ceremony. And we now no longer have American forces in Iraq. And they were there from 2003 until 2011, and then there was a little break, and then we went back to fight ISIS. And so on and off for more than for 23 years just about, we've had American forces, including you on two different occasions. Two different, three different occasions. Three different occasions. So what do you make of this story that we now have no forces left in Iraq after this time? Yeah, it's good news, and there's some challenges associated with it. There was a great piece in the New York Times about it. I mean, we had close to 500,000, I think, soldiers serving at one time or another inside of Iraq or throughout those 20 years then. And I personally had two tours during the most recent war, Desert Storm, and then 2003 and 4 in 2007 and 2008. We have two sons. Our oldest sons are four years in Iraq during his relatively early career as a lieutenant, all the way up to a lieutenant colonel. Our youngest son and his wife both spent three tours there. So the Hurtling family has about 12 years worth of service in that country between the four of us that served there. And then of course my wife and other spouses all were back home worrying about as well. We were there. But what's interesting is in the early phases of the war. There were a lot of us who thought it was a bad idea. to invade Iraq as we did. There were a lot of us that fought against it truthfully. And I know this is a surprise to many of the listeners. I was on the joint staff in 2003 when the president decided that he wanted to invade Iraq and because of the threats of weapons of mass destruction which weren't actually there. So it was an interesting dynamic to live through. So not only fighting, not fighting, but trying to persuade people that this wasn't a good idea to the point that right after I finished that tour, I was in Iraq for a 15 month deployment. And then another time and for a 15 month deployment in 2007 in different types of wars. Desert Storm was a conventional fight soldiers against soldiers tanks against tanks. The early stages of 2003 and 2004 was a complex counterinsurgency and a fight against conventional forces. In 2007 and 2008, it was a building, the economy and the government while conducting counterterrorism operations. So each one of the times I spent there as well as other people, it was a different kind of fight. The fights in solution and in and bar province were horrific. The fights in Baghdad where I was assigned in 2003 and 2004 were unbelievably intense. In northern Iraq during a counterterrorism campaign, there was stuff all over the place. So this was a 20 year period where the US military and members of our state department really evolved through a conflict and started off against enemies of the United States. I would say that in my final tour in 7 and 8, we were really partnering with Iraqi security forces and the governments of at least in northern Iraq and in Baghdad, we were partnering with the government. When we left the first time, as you mentioned in 2011, what I would say is I watched it very closely having served there and we saw a corrupt government destroy the army, the visions and the soldiers we had built and the police force we had built by not paying their troops, by replacing loyal leaders with bad leaders, but were ones that believed in what the government thought should happen. Political loyalists instead of real patriots. Are we sounding, is this sounding familiar? And when ISIS invaded that army fell apart and ran away in 2014, understandably so. I mean, if you don't pay the soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division and they don't have faith in their governmental leaders, they're going to fall away too when they're asked to perform. So that's what I would say is been the interesting dynamic of working inside Iraq. There are many Iraqis that hate us as Americans. There I think is just as many who realize what we brought to that government. I'm still friends with several of the strategic leaders of that country, Farham Salah. Well, I don't know the current Prime Minister and President, but I know they're good people that were elected in a good way. So is this a good thing that we're moving out? I don't know. Part of me says yes. And part of me says, well, we're in the middle of the war with Iran. Iraq is still struggling with their PMF groups. They're cheap. So is this going to cause the Iraqi government to have more problems? I don't know. I hope not, but certainly good. Last question I want to ask you. You know, part of the difficulty of assessing the war in Iraq is that the outcomes at different points looked so different. So, you know, 2003 we rolled in. We're almost immediately in Baghdad, honestly. I've all up and so fast. It's like, great. So now I'm done. They put up the mission to accomplish flag, right? We're just going to build a quick democracy and we'll get right out of here real quick before anything bad happens. That obviously didn't happen. In the depths of what became a civil war in which America was kind of. Yeah. I can do with us. It was a sheer civil war. Yeah. It looked like that country is going to be mired in chaos forever. Now, I mean, it's not like in my top 50 countries I would want to live in, but they don't evade their neighbors. The New York Times story mentioned has this great line about how like these that have blast walls in the cities to, you know, contain explosions. Those are coming down. They're building apartments. They're, you know, the country is basically peaceful. They do have a problem with Shia militias, but they don't have as much of an internal terrorism problem. They are not a puppet state of Iran. Iran has a lot of influence, but that's different from being a puppet state. They are one of the more democratic countries in the Arab world in that region. I mean, based on you talk all the time about how military operations need to be linked to a political outcome. And looking at this political outcome right now, obviously it's way, way, way later than everyone wanted by like two decades, right? But I don't know, like does this change at all your opinion on how the war went that like this is the place where we ended for good or bad? Well, it's interesting you asked that question because I'm always asked by soldiers that I served with, you know, was it worth it? And you can't judge if it was worth it or not in the present. You have to look at exactly what you described. What's it going to be like in the future? And Iraq right now hasn't going on. They've got a good society about like their oil infrastructures getting back up. Their entrepreneurial spirit is increasing. I had a really good friend who went to Baghdad about three months ago for a governmental engagement. And he wrote me because I spent 15 months in Baghdad. He said, you wouldn't believe this place. They've got it going on. You can walk the river and you see people dancing in the street. There's a lot of restaurants open. There's no tea walls, glass walls, as you said. And the police seem to be roaming the neighborhoods. So you do have to look at it in the long term. They have a parliament that is not quite as fachious as our current Congress, but it's pretty close. They have governmental leaders who are trusted and they have friendly relationships with most of their neighbors. That was not the case 20 years ago. So I think when we look at long term Iraq, I'm hopeful. And like I said, I had a good friend, a guy named Barham Salah who was the president of Iraq for a while. And he was also the prime minister of Iraq. And he's a curve. And he's still doing wonderful things. He's now serving on the UN as, you know, keep position with the UN. He's a politician and he's just a great human being. But those are the kind of people inside of Iraq who now have given a chance to support their own society. And that's important. They're patriots. Yeah. If I can say one thing, this is interesting. When you see some pictures of me during my tour in 2007 and 2008, I had the American flag on one sleeve and I had the Iraqi fleet of flag on my other sleeve on Velcro. And I had my name tag as an Arabic. The reason I did that is because we weren't trying to win hearts in mind. We were trying to build their nation and we were trying to build trust and confidence with the Iraqi security forces and the people. And I think that's what we mostly try to do toward the end of the conflict. Unfortunately, ISIS really damaged the country and they had to go back to ground zero and start all over again. But I think like you said a minute ago, they're in pretty good shape. Yeah, I was it worth it is a very difficult question to answer. It's also a very difficult question for someone like me who has never served to your answer to someone who's been time there. But I would say that, you know, we didn't get the worst outcome. So that's always good. It's always good when the worst doesn't happen. So we can be grateful for that. And a lot of soldiers gave their lives to make sure Iraq came around. Yeah. And that was not in vain. So yeah. All right, general, hopefully we'll have at least one more goodish news item next week, though I wouldn't hold your breath. And we will be back probably very soon with a special episode of Command Post that I'm just going to tease right now. I won't say what it is, but check back we'll have another one I think tomorrow. Good. And I think we should plan an episode in the coming weeks. It was just nothing but good news. Can we do that? Let's give ourselves some time to gather up some good news stories first. But yeah, that's something good idea. We'll do a special good news episode. All right. That's good. All right. Thanks, general. See you soon.