Making Sense - Sam Harris - #26 — The Logic of Violence

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

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00:00:39.120 today i'll be speaking with jocko willink jocko is a former navy seal he was a navy seal for 20 years

00:00:53.560 and commanded a unit of seals in the battle of ramadi which is often acknowledged to be the

00:00:59.260 toughest battle in our war in iraq and the unit he commanded became the most decorated special

00:01:04.420 operations unit in that war jocko is also a black belt in brazilian jiu-jitsu and really is just a

00:01:10.900 rare authority on violence its application in the world the practical reality of it the ethical

00:01:18.400 imperative of it in certain circumstances so it was a great privilege to speak to jocko i found our

00:01:24.460 two hours together extremely useful and i hope you feel the same way i now give you jocko willink

00:01:31.560 so i'm here with jocko willink jocko thanks for coming on the podcast thank you for having me on

00:01:42.840 first of all congratulations on everything you are exploding your your book has exploded your podcast

00:01:48.800 the jocko podcast has exploded all in a very quick succession so the world has decided it needs more

00:01:54.260 jocko that's awesome i'm very happy for you it's interesting to watch unfold like most people i first

00:02:02.180 heard of you on the uh the tim ferris podcast and then he very shortly after that did one with joe rogan

00:02:08.760 and i would just say to our listeners if you haven't heard those interviews those are actually

00:02:14.020 five hours of interviews i think two with tim and three with joe i recommend that you do that because

00:02:19.400 you i'm going to make an a serious effort here not to duplicate those interviews and those interviews

00:02:25.680 were just awesome so you know jocko and i will wait for you go off and listen to five hours of tim and

00:02:31.800 joe and we'll be right here so your book which also we're not going to talk about much but which i

00:02:37.680 love i'm about two-thirds the way through it is called extreme ownership and this is now part of

00:02:44.440 a really a wave of navy seal books i've read a few of the other ones american sniper and lone survivor

00:02:50.540 i think a couple of others and but what's unique about your book is that you this is not just a

00:02:56.220 battlefield memoir you are very explicitly relating the lessons learned as a commander of navy seals to

00:03:03.960 business and leadership in general and so that's a very unique angle and i recommend that people again

00:03:08.960 read that book and this conversation will be no substitute for reading that book one question on

00:03:14.300 that is there has been traditionally a taboo around seals writing books and even talking about their

00:03:19.580 careers has the taboo been lifted or did you have to be very careful in how you approached writing

00:03:24.560 the book and have some of these other books not been so careful and what's happening with publishing

00:03:29.020 and navy seals well they're the way i was raised in the seal teams was that you didn't talk about your

00:03:36.360 job and you didn't you definitely didn't go out and write books and you just were the the the term

00:03:42.680 that they fed us which i ate and enjoyed and believed was you you are a quiet professional that was the

00:03:51.200 the ethos of how we carried ourselves so this idea of the quiet professional you know you do your job

00:03:58.180 you do you're supposed to do obviously doesn't entail writing books about what you do now starting in

00:04:04.340 the 90s a guy named richard marcinko dick marcinko wrote a book called rogue warrior and this was after

00:04:10.740 he had had a little bit of a rough exit from the navy and had gotten in some trouble and that book was

00:04:16.440 huge but and it definitely was i would say looked down upon by people within the community within the

00:04:24.360 seal teams that you know this guy you shouldn't go write a book and so that's what i grew up with

00:04:28.960 now since the 9-11 and the the war on terror has happened obviously there's been more books

00:04:35.520 by seals by special operations guys across the board by military people so i think that there's just

00:04:42.900 people want to know what we do and how we do it when i say we i mean people in the military and

00:04:48.900 i think that's why there's been some more books published on this subject for leif and i leif is

00:04:55.260 the person that i wrote the book with he's another seal we worked together on our last on my last

00:05:00.620 deployment to iraq and we both ended up in positions where we were teaching leadership inside the seal

00:05:06.700 teams he was teaching it to the junior officers that were coming out of the basic seal pipeline and i was

00:05:12.260 teaching it to the more advanced seals that were actually in platoons getting ready to deploy to iraq and

00:05:17.940 afghanistan so we had crystallized this knowledge from deployment and we doctrinalized it really not

00:05:24.040 to the full extent that we probably should have but guys were always asking us hey do you have

00:05:28.080 these lessons learned written down anywhere and eventually we did put them down but then when we

00:05:32.040 got out we we both left the military we both started working with we formed a company we were

00:05:37.020 working with various businesses and the businesses that we were helping with their leadership started

00:05:42.420 asking the same question do you have this written down is there any documentation on this and

00:05:46.800 eventually we said okay we got to write this stuff down and that's what we did and that's what ended

00:05:51.120 up being the book well again it's a fascinating book and a fusion of a a war memoir with just the

00:05:59.140 principles of leadership and just a straight-up business book so i recommend you guys check it out

00:06:04.080 but we're not going to talk about any of that i want to talk about violence i want to talk about

00:06:08.000 violence really at every scale from war to personal self-defense i think we'll probably focus on war

00:06:14.540 mostly but you really strike me as someone who's in a unique position to give a very informed opinion

00:06:22.260 on violence at every scale and although you're probably not an authority now if you ever were

00:06:29.520 one on what it's like to feel vulnerable as a a man in our society i mean you're not the a prime

00:06:35.180 candidate for a mugging unless it's going to be uh hicks and gracie and his his five friends mugging you

00:06:40.100 in the parking lot so um you may be out of touch with um certain realities that people confront in

00:06:46.800 their lives but for everything from just you know being a jujitsu black belt to being a navy seal who

00:06:53.220 saw serious combat there's there's just violence at every scale and even between those two extremes

00:06:57.820 there's law enforcement which you know i heard you describe i think it was in your book or in one of

00:07:02.500 those interviews maybe both that part of your deployment to iraq had the character of baghdad swat

00:07:07.340 right so it was less war making and more just sort of order making and that comes with its own

00:07:12.540 constraints ethical and tactical and so let's just fill in a little bit of your background for people

00:07:19.240 who did not take the assignment and go listen to five hours of you with joe and tim when did you join

00:07:24.700 the military and did you actually know you wanted to be a seal going in or was that a later development

00:07:29.460 yes i knew i wanted to join the seal teams i wanted to be some kind of a commando my whole life

00:07:34.920 since i was a little kid since i can remember wanting to do anything significant i wanted to

00:07:39.880 be some kind of a commando some kind of a soldier and as i researched and i could research is a strong

00:07:46.860 word as i found more out about the military eventually i found out about the seal teams and

00:07:54.100 it was allegedly the hardest and the most difficult and so that's what i went into i think people know

00:08:00.760 a fair amount about the seals at this point again because of all the books and and the related films

00:08:06.100 but just give me the lay of the land here so is it in fact the single most elite force in the military

00:08:12.780 or are there analogous special ops forces in the other branches that are every bit as rigorous or is

00:08:20.260 there some actual hierarchy that's acknowledged even by non-seals that seal training is for whatever

00:08:25.660 reason pushing people to the highest standard of training you know every branch of the military

00:08:31.240 has some form of special operations i've worked with all of them they're all tough guys they're

00:08:34.940 all great guys and i think everyone has a mutual respect for each other and for the different training

00:08:40.040 that we all go through and it's all relatively similar i would say if there's anything that that

00:08:45.360 separates again this doesn't make it better or worse but one thing that the the seal teams does

00:08:49.700 into the basic seal training has is water and a lot of water work and actually if you hear tim ferris

00:08:57.080 talking about doing some of this water training that he's done it's it's a real challenge for some

00:09:01.800 people and and no doubt working in the water definitely makes you better at things because if

00:09:07.420 you and i were going to go take down a building i could train you to do that in a pretty short period

00:09:11.540 of time and you already know how to shoot so we'd go over some basic tactics and it's not that hard

00:09:16.220 if i said okay before we go to take down this building we're going to go in a boat and we're

00:09:20.700 going to swim across the beach in big waves we're going to get to dry land we're going to make our

00:09:25.560 guns work again we're going to make sure our radios are still waterproof then we're going to patrol in

00:09:29.020 wet and cold and then we're going to take down the building it's a lot harder that's all there is to

00:09:33.260 it so the water is definitely a it's it provides a level of challenge that is very distinct to the

00:09:42.320 SEAL teams now you guys haven't been seeing a lot of water though lately no i mean it seems like

00:09:46.760 the water training has been wasted in our recent engagement it absolutely has been i would say it

00:09:52.360 hasn't been wasted though because when you have to perform something in the water all the time when

00:09:58.100 you do it on dry land it's it's a lot easier right so the training wasn't wasted it was taken

00:10:02.420 advantage of but to your question all the different military branches the marine corps the army the air

00:10:08.280 force they all have their special operations unit they all train hard they're all great guys

00:10:12.200 they all have a little bit of a specific mission but they're all you know in my mind all pretty

00:10:16.980 much the same type of guys so what is the one you mean specific is it something like delta force is

00:10:21.060 more focused on hostage rescue is that right and i think the best example is the special forces the

00:10:28.100 green berets they're more focused on going and working with counterinsurgency situations with local

00:10:34.960 forces and they're very advanced in languages so and the SEAL teams were really bad at languages

00:10:40.580 in terms of the number of guys we have that speak other languages and in the green berets they have

00:10:45.480 a lot more people that speak more languages so that's that's a mission that they're going to

00:10:50.140 excel at whereas we were more of a direct action force or special reconnaissance force is there any

00:10:56.280 military skill that is focused to a greater degree in one special ops community more than another i mean

00:11:05.060 for instance like you know sniping is is there a brand of sniper that is acknowledged to be

00:11:10.240 more trained than any other or snipers across each of those disciplines get more or less interchangeable

00:11:16.240 there this is like asking a yankees fan who's better the yankees or the or the red sox or is this well i can

00:11:23.180 tell you that the the snipers that i've worked with from the seal teams are outstanding and the the seal

00:11:29.380 sniper trading course is an unbelievably hard course an unbelievably hard course that actually has a

00:11:35.400 pretty significant attrition rate um and it's just it's just a great course the seal snipers are great

00:11:39.800 everyone the army the marine corps we're always all focusing we go to each other's schools right so i

00:11:45.660 believe that they all produce good people really solid people and yes i'm being i'm being um politically

00:11:51.700 sensitive to my answers to this question yeah and i've just noticed that you've been in describing

00:11:56.560 working with other ordinary soldiers and even reservists you've been incredibly respectful

00:12:02.780 and grateful and i mean it just you you have made no secret of how indispensable their bravery was in

00:12:09.640 the battle of ramadi and and in the other engagements you fought in and it was really

00:12:14.200 great to hear in those other interviews well that one i would not hold back on at all the bravery

00:12:18.960 and the professionalism of our american soldiers that i work with and marines was just

00:12:24.540 phenomenal and humbling to be around them and again when you deal with special operations guys

00:12:30.640 this is what we want to do this is this is what we love to do it's what we want to do just you can

00:12:36.200 ask any seal they'll tell you the same thing they want to do since they were a little kid etc etc etc

00:12:40.640 a regular soldier now some of them are professional soldiers and that's what they always wanted to do

00:12:44.300 but a lot of them are just people that that's a phase of their life that they're in

00:12:48.360 and so to ask these people going through a phase of their life that they're expecting to go out of

00:12:54.020 in a year or two years to ask them to do these extraordinarily risky things that take an immense

00:13:00.300 amount of courage and bravery and to watch them step up and do this over and over and over again despite

00:13:07.200 casualties and losses and pressure it's very humbling and amazing to watch and that's why i would never

00:13:13.260 hold back when talking about the american servicemen and women that i worked with bravery is this maybe

00:13:20.980 unique emotion in that you can't fake it because faking it is actually bravery if you're terrified

00:13:30.120 and you're merely acting brave and going through the motions and putting yourself in harm's way

00:13:35.260 that is what bravery is right i mean the other emotions where where the counterfeit version of it is in

00:13:40.720 fact a counterfeit but it's the real thing if you're terrified and you're then doing the thing

00:13:45.120 that you you're terrified to do yes yes to to fake bravery is in fact to be brave and they used to tell

00:13:51.340 us false motivation is better than no motivation in other words it's better to be yes i'm excited to

00:13:56.320 do this even though you're not i don't know if i believe that or not but i kind of do i kind of do

00:14:00.340 and i and i would see people's motivation turn as they falsified their motivation for whatever reason

00:14:06.600 and then they become you know what let's let's do this let's get this done well you talk

00:14:10.640 about that in the book and uh elsewhere even on your own podcast you talk about in the face of

00:14:15.640 being told the most deplorable thing about what is about to happen or likely to happen on a patrol you

00:14:20.760 habitually say good or or is another good day or what what's the actual phrase you were using well

00:14:25.780 the one that i just talked about on on a recent podcast was good yeah you know and and this was one

00:14:31.720 of my subordinate leaders one of my brothers actually one of my good friends and he pointed out to me that

00:14:37.980 whenever something was going bad for instance he'd say oh we got this intel that on this target we're

00:14:42.480 going on to there's going to be all kinds of ieds and they're saying there's going to be dozens of

00:14:47.280 enemy fighters and i'd say good you know that that means we have an opportunity to get after it and

00:14:53.120 yeah so you definitely get in that mindset where you look at the the challenges as being a good thing

00:15:00.200 so um actually i was going to ask you this later but it seems it seems relevant here and uh again i'm

00:15:05.780 kind of creeping up on what i consider our main topic here but what explains the lack of this

00:15:12.220 attitude and the lack of success that we've seen among the troops that we've trained the afghans and

00:15:18.820 the iraqis you you fought in the battle of ramadi and ramadi as most people know was then lost to the

00:15:24.900 islamic state and now it's just recaptured like yesterday i think we have like or the iraqi army

00:15:29.260 has like 80 percent of it under control but there were descriptions of i think this might have been

00:15:35.100 in mosul but you know 18 000 iraqi troops melting away in the face of 400 isis fighters and there have

00:15:42.740 been similar things with the afghan troops with the taliban now presumably this is the same population

00:15:48.060 of people except for perhaps some percentage of foreign recruits to the side of the isis and the

00:15:55.040 taliban we're talking about afghans and iraqis in both cases but the troops that we have trained

00:16:01.060 often just show such low morale or such an unwillingness to engage the insurgencies in those

00:16:08.100 countries can you say something about that because it's from a civilian side it begins to look a little

00:16:12.880 mysterious what's happening there but you fought alongside iraqis and you have you've put your

00:16:18.320 life in the hands of iraqis you've fought you've you've risked your life for iraqis and i i know you

00:16:23.880 don't want to cast aspersions upon iraqis in or and iraqi troops in general but what explains this

00:16:30.360 i mean again 400 isis troops and 18 000 iraqi soldiers disappearing can you explain that to me yes i can

00:16:37.900 war is a test of will

00:16:42.800 and that's it and when you have

00:16:47.780 10 000 or 18 000 or 100 000 troops that do not have the will and there's two pieces to this will

00:16:55.060 and and i've said this before so i i don't mean to rehash but it's it is the answer you have to have

00:17:01.520 the will to kill people that is what war is and you are going to kill the enemy that is what your

00:17:07.600 goal is is to kill them and when you kill the enemy because the nature of war is confusing

00:17:14.260 and there's the fog of war and it's an imperfect situation you are going to kill innocent people

00:17:20.140 this is another part of war that is horrible and ugly and it is factual this is what is going to

00:17:26.940 happen so when you engage in war you must have the will to kill you're going to focus as much as you

00:17:33.020 can obviously on the enemy but there will be innocent bystanders there will be women there

00:17:38.780 will be children that are going to die because this decision has been made that a war has to be

00:17:43.960 fought on top of that will to kill you also have to have the will to die that means on an individual

00:17:52.900 level that means your friends the people you're with that means that you have to have that will

00:17:58.960 and so what happens when you have these isis fighters that through their mental state that

00:18:08.760 they're in they have clearly demonstrated that they have the will to kill everyone innocent civilian

00:18:16.120 women children they have that will because of their belief in martyrdom they obviously have the

00:18:23.300 will to die now you take the iraqi soldiers and well they don't have those strong beliefs and part of

00:18:32.660 it is because they don't have yet maybe they'll never will maybe they've had flashes of it but they

00:18:39.760 don't have this unified feeling of of unity around the nation of iraq where they consider themselves

00:18:48.100 an iraqi first whereas you know they consider themselves you know their religious sect their

00:18:53.500 their tribe their family there's a lot of other things in there besides being iraqi so when this

00:18:59.780 fight is a will it's the will of isis and what their beliefs are against not so strong of a will of iraq

00:19:07.420 this is what happens you bring up a good point about the the just the role that religious sectarianism

00:19:13.180 plays there because you have a sunni shia problem in particular in iraq uh which certainly erodes

00:19:19.500 almost all the sunni will to fight against isis because they perceive themselves to be the mercy of the

00:19:25.560 predominantly shia government so and by the way you gave me a nice out on on this question and said you

00:19:32.960 know i don't i don't want you to sit here and disparage the iraqi soldiers and i have not even the

00:19:39.280 remotest close level of respect that i have for the american soldiers i mean the iraqi soldiers

00:19:46.240 we saw them do all kinds of horrible things they had we had companies of iraqi soldiers quit we had

00:19:51.900 battalions of iraqi this is when i was there battalions of iraqi soldiers you know five or six

00:19:58.220 hundred soldiers say we're not fighting anymore yeah so that did not i have no problem saying that

00:20:03.760 this is these are facts yeah yeah no in your book you describe one raid where you literally had to

00:20:09.580 physically push and drag iraqi soldiers with you through the door to in in the middle of a hostage

00:20:15.560 rescue this is the core of what i want to talk about i perceive in my audience and certainly in

00:20:22.100 joe rogan's audience and in in our political environment in general and it is disproportionately a

00:20:28.600 problem among liberals of whom i count myself among just pervasive doubts about the legitimacy

00:20:35.100 of violence in any context it's like you know is war ever necessary and i think people there are many

00:20:42.060 people who have a default answer to that question which is no that that it's it's always a an ethical

00:20:48.140 failure on some level and it strikes me that that when you have the most civilized people

00:20:54.080 disproportionately doubting that war is ever necessary that you have a problem defending

00:20:59.580 civilization at a certain point against its genuine enemies and um these doubts are not

00:21:05.680 they're understandable on some level so for instance i heard you talk on your podcast you expressed

00:21:10.400 great uh admiration which i share for um dan carlin's podcast in particular his series on world war

00:21:17.320 one countdown to armageddon and um listeners if you have not heard dan carlin on world war one

00:21:23.920 your other assignment which will now take you 20 hours is to go listen to that i've uh repeatedly

00:21:29.020 called that a masterpiece and it really is but so you so you have in a war like world war one

00:21:34.340 which any way you look at it looks like the most pointless sacrifice of human life and wealth i mean

00:21:43.720 just so you had a generation of young men in europe just fed into a meat grinder for no apparent

00:21:48.940 purpose you have them fighting for months on end to capture another hundred yards of farmland you know

00:21:56.780 to move their trenches forward and even more horribly this whole escapade was engaged from the point of just

00:22:06.900 this delusional idealism about war you just had these this romantic idea about how glorious it was going

00:22:13.920 to be to go to war and then they get there and they're just pulverized and people i think draw

00:22:19.980 the wrong lesson from this and people draw the lesson that basically this is what war always is right

00:22:26.760 it's it's always this pointless it's always this unnecessary there's always a kind of moral equivalence

00:22:32.320 to both sides where it's just sort of the needless sacrifice of human life on both sides and there are

00:22:37.280 no bad guys really so there are two moments in your podcast with with rogan that i just want to revisit

00:22:44.000 and i think we're gonna have to make a few passes on this but before i'm satisfied that we have

00:22:49.080 performed an exorcism on on the ghost of pacifism and and cynicism but at one point you talked about

00:22:57.580 fighting for our freedom over there and what i detect in joe's audience is just a a tsunami of cynicism

00:23:07.040 on that point like what the fuck are you talking about you're not fighting for our freedom or

00:23:12.060 anyone's freedom over there you this was a misbegotten war it was born of our lust for oil

00:23:17.340 you know the carlisle group pulled the strings and you know you went over there and you killed people

00:23:23.460 for no reason and this was just the the prosecution of at best selfish national interests where we harm

00:23:31.520 innocent people and and you just spoke about the unavoidability of collateral damage and that is

00:23:36.180 an excruciating fact of war at this point and it's only becoming more excruciating in fact it's

00:23:41.900 so excruciating we're so we're so aware of the costs of war even though we conceal them from

00:23:47.280 ourselves that one wonders whether we are up to fighting certain necessary wars given those costs

00:23:53.720 could we bomb dresden now i mean i you know i think you could argue the bombing of dresden was not

00:23:58.680 necessary to win world war ii but we did things in fighting that necessary war which now we would

00:24:04.300 we would find totally indefensible because we have so much more information so fighting for our

00:24:09.240 freedom is one concept that i want to talk about and there was another moment in rogan's podcast where

00:24:15.300 you where you talked about this uh shibboleth of uh liberal anti-war speak which is that you can't

00:24:22.840 bomb an idea right and you said well no actually you you can bomb an idea so let's talk about that for a

00:24:29.200 moment i think this notion of of you and our military fighting for freedom in iraq can be

00:24:36.860 defended even if you think the war in iraq was on balance absolutely unwise right that it was the

00:24:44.320 wrong war to fight and i think i think a case can be made that it was the wrong war to fight i i would

00:24:48.300 like to know what you think about that but i think that even if you were going to bracket the conversation

00:24:52.180 by saying listen we should never have gone into iraq given the outcome or given the misinformation

00:24:57.540 or lies about wmd even in that context you can argue that you were fighting for freedom and that on

00:25:05.760 the ground in iraq you were trying to make life better for iraqis who didn't want to live in this

00:25:11.380 internecine hell realm of uh civil war so i just want to get your take on both these concepts of fighting

00:25:18.140 for freedom perhaps even in a war that in hindsight doesn't look ideal and this notion of

00:25:24.960 you just can't bomb an idea you know war is not the answer to isis or fascism or anything else that

00:25:32.260 ails us as i talked about on on joe rogan being on the ground in iraq with iraqi people

00:25:39.780 they wanted us to be there they wanted us to help them and to provide them with security

00:25:50.360 and they want to live in peace and stability and there is no doubt in my mind about that

00:25:57.420 and that is what we were doing there on the ground fighting to help these people and in the beginning

00:26:06.260 it was obviously to get rid of saddam hussein and that regime but by the time 2006 rolled around

00:26:13.920 now there was an insurgency and it was isis and they wanted to take control of ramadi and they

00:26:21.880 actually had control of ramadi but they were enslaving the people brutalizing them raping them

00:26:27.760 murdering them torturing them that is what was happening and we went in and stopped that from

00:26:33.920 happening and gave them back their freedom we didn't impose any government on them we didn't

00:26:39.200 take any oil from them we gave them the opportunity for peace and stability in their in that city and

00:26:47.620 and in iraq so that is what we did yeah one thing i would point out here is that even if you think

00:26:53.300 that we shouldn't have gone into iraq i'm on record here as as being neither for nor against the war i've

00:27:01.140 always said that i didn't know what i thought about the war in iraq except for the fact that it looked

00:27:05.920 like a dangerous distraction from the war in afghanistan that we looked like we could very well

00:27:11.120 botch and that in retrospect it looks like a disaster given the rise of isis and given the way we left

00:27:18.780 but even if you're going to say that if you're going to say with the benefit of hindsight we should

00:27:25.440 not have gone into iraq you are obliged to admit ethically how depressing a claim that is because

00:27:32.700 what you're claiming is we had this hostage situation where saddam hussein is keeping a nation

00:27:38.240 of 30 million people hostage to just a horrific totalitarian government and what you're saying is

00:27:47.180 that iraqi society was so fractured along religious lines that it required a dictator of this barbarity

00:27:54.900 to keep the lid on the sectarian civil war that then exploded when we took the lid off and left

00:28:01.780 and that's a very depressing claim about the the state of religious sectarianism and it certainly

00:28:08.560 doesn't make the the influence of religious certainty on the ground there look good one thing to interject

00:28:14.000 on that is yeah when you talk about the people of iraq and how this sectarian violence was waiting to

00:28:20.800 explode and and you see that on tv sometimes it's the equivalent of seeing a riot in america and

00:28:30.680 thinking well that's what america is because we'd go do operations in baghdad and and there's normal

00:28:37.420 life happening that not everyone is bent on this this you know religious violence they're not they're

00:28:44.780 normal they're they're i shouldn't say normal but there's people that their focus in their life is not

00:28:49.380 their religion their focus in life is selling more cars or making more bottles or doing whatever it

00:28:56.740 is they're doing raising their kids and getting to school and that's what their focus is that's what a

00:29:00.740 majority of iraq is and it's very easy to lose sight of that when what we see on the news is sectarian

00:29:06.780 violence is one side of shia and one side of sunni and how they're clashing that is what that is not

00:29:12.620 what the normal average sunni person is doing the average sunni person in ramadi is cleaning their store

00:29:21.400 and putting new product up on the shelves and fixing one of the cars that they're working on

00:29:27.140 that is what is happening in iraq and we so often lose sight of that that iraq is not the very small

00:29:35.580 percentage of people that are fully engaged in this sort of political or religious strife the vast

00:29:42.000 majority of people are people like in america where if you go down main street usa what are they

00:29:47.720 doing they're living their life they're trying to pursue happiness that's that's what that's what

00:29:52.500 iraq is and unfortunately what we see and it gives us the impression that that's what all of iraq is what

00:29:58.840 we see is a bunch of people bent on violence and that is not what iraq is i'm glad you said that

00:30:04.880 because that even makes this this admission even more excruciating and it's worth pointing out so you have

00:30:10.720 people totally normal people who really do just want to live free and self-actualized lives they're

00:30:18.060 not looking to stone people to death for adultery and they're not looking to wage jihad against

00:30:25.320 apostates within their own society or export their jihad to the rest of the world and so you're talking

00:30:31.940 about people just like you and me who by dint of just sheer bad luck they've been born into a society

00:30:39.160 where their intellectual interests and their desire for freedom are just smashed at every turn by

00:30:46.460 one the dictator who's keeping a lid on sectarian violence and two the sectarian violence that is

00:30:53.040 ready to rise up and destroy everything so then you're saying that we whether we as america or we

00:30:58.680 as the rest of the civilized world can't go in there and offer any help to these people and that

00:31:04.660 that in retrospect it looks like the wrong thing to have attempted it so that is i if you're going

00:31:10.000 to be critical of the war in iraq you have to just own the fact that yes you're saying that these are

00:31:15.580 hostage crises for which we don't have a remedy and some people are unlucky you're unlucky to be a girl

00:31:22.340 born in afghanistan but i as a peacenik am in principle against anyone trying to come in and rescue you

00:31:30.060 because of the cost because of collateral damage and i think it i mean you know collateral damage is

00:31:36.020 such an ugly fact on every level it's just it's it's ugly that it's impossible to wage war in such

00:31:42.880 a way so as to not kill innocent people and it's totally understandable that it produces more enemies

00:31:49.200 for us on some level you know i don't know what the rates of that conversion are but it wouldn't be a

00:31:55.500 surprise if you know you are an ordinary iraqi or an ordinary pakistani and you just had half your

00:32:02.580 family blown up by in a drone strike that that would make you in some basic sense irretrievably

00:32:09.780 at odds with the people who did that to you whether or not you had any sympathy for jihadism

00:32:15.860 so talk a little bit more about collateral damage and i mean how you think about it in terms of the

00:32:21.580 legitimacy of trying to do good with force in the world given that it's you really can't

00:32:28.660 avoid collateral damage you can't completely avoid collateral damage but i'll tell you what

00:32:33.740 america goes through extreme lengths to absolutely minimize collateral damage the amount of risk that

00:32:43.300 gets taken by american forces to avoid collateral damage is immense and they avoid it on a regular

00:32:49.960 basis i mean we don't carpet bombing we don't do dresden anymore we don't do that to get bombs dropped

00:32:55.700 in the city of ramadi was an extremely difficult task to get done because of the the threat of

00:33:01.540 collateral damage despite being fired on from a building you know where this these enemy are and

00:33:07.760 they're they're inflicting damage and killing people but yet there's unknown areas around it so

00:33:12.940 therefore we're not going to drop a bomb on it we do that all the time we are very very judicious in the

00:33:18.680 way we execute operations now that being said because war is imperfect there are situations where

00:33:26.060 innocent people die yes that that does happen and it's awful and it's horrible and you know this idea

00:33:33.220 that now we've created even more terrorists i think is um i i don't think that's i think that's a

00:33:41.720 it's it's it's it's a case that could be made but it's not the 100 and you don't for every innocent

00:33:48.940 person that dies that you go and you you know we we actually approach those families and we go and

00:33:55.060 explain to them what happened and we give them money and we try and help them rebuild whatever went wrong

00:34:00.940 that is what america does when we make these mistakes so so i think we just kill these people and

00:34:04.920 they're and and that's it no we go in and try and repair the damage as much as we can of course we can't bring back

00:34:10.240 loved ones but we try to make this up and explain the situation and so not there's not a 100 conversion rate

00:34:17.620 of you killed my brother by accident while we were being you know terrorized by isis and and in the crossfire

00:34:27.540 my brother got killed and and i think it came from america and now therefore i'm going to wage jihad against america

00:34:33.320 that that's not a that's not a 100 conversion rate in fact i would tell you that it's probably a

00:34:38.000 a much lower conversion rate than you would think these people are at war they've been at war they

00:34:43.120 understand what war is they know that war is imperfect but isis doesn't even come back and

00:34:48.580 make those apologies they don't come back and say we're sorry they don't come back and say let us

00:34:53.040 rebuild your house let us give you some financial support for the son that you lost who is providing

00:34:58.060 this income to your family that's fine let us take care of you isis doesn't do that isis causes

00:35:02.760 collateral damage all over the place and so i think it's a little bit of a of a stretch to think

00:35:08.340 that there's this 100 conversion rate and and i think that the conversion rate is actually small

00:35:13.480 enough that it makes it it's it's hard to say it's worth it but we take calculated risks with collateral

00:35:19.600 damage and we have to otherwise we can't do anything you you cannot you cannot execute a war

00:35:25.660 with zero risk of collateral damage it cannot happen i would love for it to happen but it cannot happen

00:35:31.820 so therefore you have to mitigate the risk as much as possible and go forward that's the way it works

00:35:36.880 yeah and it just seems to me that we when you're talking about situations of moral emergency of this

00:35:42.980 sort so you have isis raping women by the tens of thousands and crucifying children and burying people

00:35:50.820 alive and this goes to the issue of moral equivalence or the lack thereof i mean people imagine

00:35:57.060 that we are no better than our enemies in this case even in this case i mean and in some sense

00:36:04.280 people you know i confront people who think we're worse than our enemies because we made them right

00:36:08.460 we created isis because we went into iraq we used to fund al-qaeda against the soviets right so that

00:36:14.660 somehow this causes them to lose sight of the very different human projects we have advertised here

00:36:21.960 and again this comes down to human intentions like what kind of world do you want to build is if i gave

00:36:26.840 you a magic wand and you could just create the world as you saw fit i have no doubt that you would

00:36:34.480 create a just abundance everywhere for everybody right so there'd be you know there'd be a starbucks

00:36:39.880 on every corner and there'd be a jujitsu school on every corner and people would just be able to live

00:36:44.140 out their dreams and i would do that and the people who got us into these various wars uh many of whom

00:36:52.040 have been demonized to an extraordinary degree and many of whom who i i share you know very few

00:36:57.460 political principles with you know someone like dick cheney right i think if you gave him a magic wand

00:37:02.740 he would not create a hell realm for people in the middle east he would make the middle east more or less

00:37:08.620 like nebraska or florida and you ask yourself what would abu bakar al-bagdadi do with a magic wand

00:37:14.800 he is telling us what he would do with every fucking video right they're making no secret of the vision

00:37:22.120 of life that they are aspiring to and again it's important to point this out that there is no moral

00:37:28.400 equivalence here the kinds of just rapacious evil you see in an isis video is not an accident it's not

00:37:36.480 an aberration of their program it's not their version of the me lie massacre it's not the thing

00:37:41.840 that they have to go back and apologize to their society for and say i don't know how we did this

00:37:46.980 but we were pushed into extremis and there's a lot of soul searching necessary no no every journalist

00:37:52.420 put in an orange jumpsuit and murdered is a absolutely fine point on a vision of life that they are not

00:38:01.040 keeping secret in fact this is part of their recruitment material this is pr for them this is

00:38:07.300 what they think and in fact no will successfully bring like-minded people to their shores to fight

00:38:13.940 alongside them and again this is a minority of the muslim community worldwide this is not synonymous with

00:38:20.400 islam but this is a global jihadist insurgency that we're confronting in many places so i just i guess i

00:38:27.660 want to just linger for for a moment on again this is a quote from your interview with joe this notion

00:38:34.060 of you can't bomb an idea so like if you can't bomb this idea out of them by definition force is not

00:38:41.160 the appropriate response to isis because isis is an idea what do you have to say to that good luck

00:38:46.680 set up a series of debates with isis and try and use our logic to defeat them is that the other

00:38:55.920 proposal but what is that what is the alternative there's an assumption that isis is the the hardest

00:39:01.380 example to absorb by this line of thinking but generally speaking people think that our own

00:39:07.240 selfish behavior on the world stage our own unapologetic theft of or just commandeering of

00:39:13.560 resources has created people with quote legitimate grievances all over the world especially in the

00:39:19.420 muslim world now and isis is on some level an expression of those legitimate grievances and if we were

00:39:25.440 better actors if we were more apologetic if we shared more wealth more of the time if we just

00:39:32.260 got out of muslim lands entirely right if we were not protecting the saudis we were not over there in

00:39:38.460 any sense if we just kept our culture to ourselves then we would discover that everyone wants the same

00:39:44.700 thing out of life on some level and that the this violence would would no longer be directed at us we

00:39:49.580 have created this because we are in some sense i mean literally people say you know the the u.s is

00:39:55.180 the greatest terrorist organization in world history again this is like this is the center of joe's

00:40:00.160 demographic i mean this is this is the kind of thing i get thrown at me whenever i talk to him on his

00:40:03.780 podcast this is what noam chomsky has done to the human mind at the global scale so the thing i wanted

00:40:10.260 to bring you back to is this notion that you can't bomb an idea as you pointed out with joe nazism was an

00:40:16.900 idea slavery was an idea in the united states held to tenaciously that the military nationalism of

00:40:23.380 japan was an idea after those wars which were as you point out bombing on a scale that now we can't

00:40:30.540 even contemplate right and probably shouldn't contemplate germany and japan are our friends

00:40:36.060 right i mean the idea of nazism was successfully bombed out of germany yes and let's not forget that

00:40:42.840 both imperial japan and nazi germany would never have stopped their drive to take over the entire

00:40:51.980 world they didn't have a border that they were going to they were going for world domination so

00:40:58.240 yeah we had to stop them and there was only one way that they were going to be stopped and that is

00:41:03.680 through the use of force and violence the other thing to point out there is that you could see our

00:41:10.640 intentions are fundamentally benign intentions for the world and even for our enemies in the aftermath

00:41:17.380 of those wars because what do we do to germany and japan did we just go in and start raping people

00:41:22.180 and steal their land and we rebuilt them into financial superpowers we wanted peaceful collaborators

00:41:28.420 economically and culturally and there's no question that's what we want in the middle east too

00:41:33.880 so let's just zero on the notion of pacifism here because i find it very frustrating to encounter

00:41:40.560 pacifism

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - January 19, 2016

#26 — The Logic of Violence

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