The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Colonel John Spencer - Is Israel's Army the Most Moral in the World？ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.840 Hi everybody, this is Gadsad. For all of you guys who hate Israel, you're probably going

00:00:06.500 to get more angry because I have another person on today who's going to perhaps give us a

00:00:12.600 justification for the title of Israel being the most moral military. I don't want to put

00:00:17.120 any words in his mouth. John Spencer, how are you doing, sir?

00:00:21.740 God, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm a huge fan of your work.

00:00:25.880 A real big honor for me. Oh, you're too kind. Okay, let me just mention a few highlights from

00:00:31.100 your bio that I jotted down from your website, which I'll put in the description section of our

00:00:36.540 chat. Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point. There's always a mystique about West Point. It seems

00:00:42.540 quite a cool place. I'm still waiting for my invitation to speak there. I'm sure it must

00:00:47.480 have gotten lost in the mail somehow. Host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast. Author of three

00:00:54.640 books, Understanding Urban Warfare, Connected Soldiers, and the mini manual for the Urban

00:01:00.760 Defender. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we drill down?

00:01:04.520 No, I'm excited for the conversation and that works for me.

00:01:08.400 Oh, great. You are, by the way, I think in two separate services, and you'll correct me,

00:01:14.740 you're both a major in one service and a colonel in another, correct?

00:01:19.840 Um, so I retired from active duty after 25 years in the U.S. Army as a major, an amazing career. And

00:01:27.980 then after I retired, I went into more service with the California State Guard and became a full

00:01:34.540 bird colonel in that. So it's not separate services, it's just different types of, I guess,

00:01:40.800 statuses. Got it. And, and you both had, so my understanding is if you're, if you don't go down

00:01:48.680 the, you know, the officer track, you know, you start as private, go up, and I think the highest

00:01:54.240 rank there is sergeant major. And then if you start through the, the, the commissioned officers,

00:01:59.580 you start, you know, lieutenant all the way to general, and you seem to have titles or ranks in

00:02:04.740 both services. Did I read that right? And if so, explain it to us. Absolutely. Well, again,

00:02:11.120 not services, but, um, definitely I'm what they call a Mustang. So I graduated high school, joined

00:02:16.860 the army, started as a private in the enlisted rank, and then went up to sergeant first class,

00:02:21.720 and then went to one of the three ways you can become an officer. You can go to West Point if you

00:02:26.020 can get in, which is, um, I didn't, I taught there, uh, full time faculty and still work there doing

00:02:32.540 research. But I went to officer candidate school, which is a program where they want those enlisted

00:02:37.880 soldiers who have done well to become officers. And I became an officer and you really restart

00:02:43.000 in the officer tracks. You have an enlisted track and the officer track, uh, a great honor for me to

00:02:48.760 see and live both, both worlds basically. And we've had a lot of great officers, even the,

00:02:54.240 the greatest decorated U S military person, Audie Murphy started like that and did a battlefield

00:03:01.060 commission. Um, there there's actually in many ways, you can become an officer of the three

00:03:05.560 commissioning sources. Very few actually go to the service academies like West Point. And we have,

00:03:10.840 I live not too far from an academy. I won't say which one because of the service rivalry,

00:03:15.780 but, uh, you can go to an academy or you can go to college, which is most people, which is actually

00:03:20.800 the biggest way go to any one of our colleges and join the officer training cadet corps, basically

00:03:27.400 ROTC. ROTC. Exactly. Yes. Which is the biggest producer of officers. So you go to college,

00:03:33.400 you get a bachelor's, you join the military, you start as an officer. And then the last way is my

00:03:39.100 way, which was the officer candidate school where you're in the, already in the army doing college

00:03:44.640 on your own time. Um, and then you can become through this other track, an officer through the

00:03:49.800 officer candidate school. Well, thank you for that explanation. A couple of interesting sort of

00:03:55.260 personal anecdotes. Number one, when I came from Lebanon and after the first year of the civil war,

00:04:00.960 which we can get into because you're the, you're the urban warfare expert in terms of practicing

00:04:06.360 warfare. I'm the urban warfare expert in terms of having lived it. But, uh, I mean, at least as a,

00:04:12.780 as a sitting duck, as a young child, 11 years old, but in any case, when I moved to, uh, the West,

00:04:19.220 uh, my, I very quickly acclimatized, became a huge fan of the Dallas Cowboys at the time.

00:04:25.840 And my favorite player was Roger, the Dodger Staubach. I don't know if you know where I'm

00:04:31.020 going with this. Now he, he came in late into the league because after he finished his,

00:04:37.380 I guess, undergrad, uh, he then went and served in the Navy. So he was a rookie quarterback,

00:04:43.640 I think maybe 26 or 27 years old. So that was the first time that I kind of, I can remember

00:04:50.020 knowing about these programs. The second personal anecdote is when I was, as I, I did my, uh, MS and

00:04:56.940 PhD at Cornell. And so they had an ROTC program. And I used to always love seeing the young,

00:05:02.440 the young students come with their, you know, spiffy, uh, uniform. So there you go. Uh, okay.

00:05:09.100 So let's talk about, uh, what, whatever you want, but we could start with something very

00:05:14.340 in French, you say, which means contemporary, something that has blown up the internet,

00:05:20.540 the Joe Rogan versus Douglas Murray versus God sideways in versus, uh, take it wherever you want.

00:05:28.140 What are your thoughts on this thing? Who's right? Who's wrong? Oh, and I guess David Smith,

00:05:32.180 Dave Smith is the other guy. Take it away.

00:05:33.820 Well, one, I'm a huge fan of, of Joe Rogan's. I know he's a friend of yours and I've been following

00:05:40.540 him as somebody who was in the military, uh, within that fight community. I've been following

00:05:45.100 Joe since UFC one. So, uh, now the, the conversation that, that really took many tentacles and so many

00:05:53.660 people have made it, which is great. Let's have the conversation about, uh, which I appreciate your,

00:05:59.400 your, which really the academic lens of like, you know, anybody can do their own research. How did you,

00:06:03.820 how did you come to that conclusion and then try to convince the world that your conclusion is the

00:06:09.620 right one, whether it's historical revisionism or just you did your own work and you found something

00:06:16.800 new, which I, which I'm a big fan of, of doing their research. Um, I had issues with a couple of

00:06:22.840 the parts of it, of course, and Douglas is a friend as well, um, who does amazing work. I actually met

00:06:28.180 Douglas in a Hamas tunnel in Gaza. Wow. Yeah. Um, I didn't know who he was at the moment. I was like

00:06:35.640 in his, uh, but he was doing that thing that for some reasons, I do believe you, you gain a different

00:06:43.540 perspective, different amount of knowledge as I'm going to battlefields. My type of research,

00:06:48.300 depending on whether I'm doing case study, uh, approach or ethnographic or doing interviews in

00:06:54.280 general, but actually walking the ground, you do gain knowledge that you might not, if you hadn't

00:06:59.460 been there. So I met Douglas in a Hamas tunnel. Um, I of course had a, uh, a conversation with Dave

00:07:06.300 Smith, who I, I view as, I don't attack the person, like you said, attack the veracity of the,

00:07:12.620 the statements, um, just so many comments for some reason. And I agree commenting on Douglas of 18 months

00:07:19.880 of commenting about the, about Israel, the status of the nation and its history, or in this case for

00:07:26.500 me as a, you know, a war researcher on Israel's operations in Gaza, whether you believe there's

00:07:32.960 a different way or you have your own position of what's been done. And for Dave, and I've written

00:07:39.680 a piece because that's what I think people do. If you want to actually form a logical, which I love

00:07:44.420 writing, um, writing is like thinking on paper for me, you might have a good idea, but okay,

00:07:49.720 I'll run that logically, um, and create a, a convincing argument on paper. So Dave's position

00:07:56.680 that he has reiterated on Candace Owens, uh, Lex Friedman, Joe Rogan multiple times. Now

00:08:02.920 Piers Morgan is this wanting to question the morality of war by using this false analogy of

00:08:09.120 comparing it to law enforcement, which is like the analogy he keeps using, no matter how much

00:08:14.940 I tried when I was talking on Piers, like it's not, not right. You know, let's define words.

00:08:21.080 Let's, let's define morality, right? How does the analogy for those folks who don't know what

00:08:25.840 you're referring to? Yeah. Dave, Dave Smith, um, analogy he continues to use where he says that

00:08:32.180 if somebody came into your home and killed your child, um, and then he, that person went back into

00:08:38.980 a building, um, where he has his family and there are other families and you bomb that building

00:08:44.640 knowing in order to get to that person, it would be intentional, cold-blooded murder.

00:08:50.960 And then there's no difference just because he says, just because a politician calls something a

00:08:56.060 war and there's been lines drawn. It's the same thing in war. If you know, there are, um, non-combatants

00:09:02.720 or, or civilians. And he likes to, and I really appreciate your analogy of the two babies. Like

00:09:07.320 there is not moral equivalency in this context. Morality does have a social construct. Laws

00:09:13.960 are a embodiment of morality and legality, which is like, what is right and what is wrong.

00:09:20.960 So yes, even in a civil setting, which you shouldn't compare to a war setting, which has its own

00:09:25.900 body of work. Um, and as a researcher, you know, like, how did we get to the point where we have this

00:09:31.700 framework? If you want to argue, if you think you're Immanuel Kant and you want to argue the

00:09:35.900 morality of war, do that, do that research. I'd love it. And we can have that conversation,

00:09:40.980 but you can't argue by just continually saying the words, which you almost have a princess bride

00:09:46.740 moment. I don't think, you know, what that word means. You keep saying it, but I don't think,

00:09:51.200 you know, even what morality means or how it applies in a civil setting, right? So in this scenario,

00:09:57.020 you know, and I, I, I articulate in this article that I have out for publication is in that civil

00:10:01.700 setting, the morality is all within the law, whether it's in the codification of, of actual

00:10:07.940 civil law, or even religious, cultural, other aspects of right and wrong and murder, right?

00:10:14.660 So in self-defense, it's not called murder. You can actually kill people in self-defense,

00:10:19.760 even not the person you're trying to, and it not be considered murder. There's involuntary

00:10:25.400 manslaughter. There's all these other, and we have courts that adjudicate that in that scenario

00:10:31.100 for vigilantes, you'd send the police, like use the social construct that is required. And then

00:10:38.800 you get tried by a judge and all these things in war. It's not that that's not the same construct.

00:10:45.260 So you have to judge it, which evidently, you know, everybody from Piers Morgan to Dave Smith can be

00:10:50.920 the, the judge of war actions, um, to include people that take a small clip and say, look,

00:10:56.380 clearly this is wrong. I've had to come now. I hope we get to talk about it. I've spent more time in

00:11:03.460 the last 18 months teaching war one-on-one, like to people outside of even the urban warfare context of

00:11:11.480 like, what can you, and can't you do in a war? What are the rules that we've all agreed upon?

00:11:18.120 How is it done? All these things. And I had a small conversation with Dave about this, which was just

00:11:23.860 out of the, the conversation with Joe and Douglas, um, about this. And he just was going in circles

00:11:30.900 saying, you're, you're not understanding logic and morality. Like, no, I understand it. You're

00:11:35.780 misapplying it. Um, and we didn't even get to the other things. There's so many other things where

00:11:41.280 um, which is really crafty, right? We live in this world where the court jester becomes the,

00:11:46.200 the arbitrator of narratives where he takes a tidbit of information that, that is true.

00:11:52.600 And then weaves a really convincing comical even, but just really convincing narrative of something

00:11:59.740 that isn't true, whether that's Israel's supposed blockade, um, and then, or apartheid, all these

00:12:07.320 Joe, Dave Smith tried to argue that Israel is not a democracy because the people in Gaza

00:12:13.320 don't have the right to vote. Like it's, there's just so many ways to approach. I try to stay

00:12:18.280 in my lane, God, uh, of, of war, warfare, urban warfare strategy, but sometimes like, that's

00:12:25.560 ridiculous. I gotta, I gotta take that on.

00:12:28.420 Well, so a couple of things I want to add to your wonderful explanation. Number one, and

00:12:35.240 I've repeated this, you know, on several occasions recently, because it was, it stemmed from a

00:12:40.700 conversation I had with a British psychiatrist who had invited me on a show about a year ago.

00:12:45.020 And he asked me for the first time ever, someone had asked me this question. I thought it was a

00:12:48.840 great question. You know, what is the most, uh, surprising thing that, you know, you've, uh,

00:12:56.120 uncovered about, you know, human nature. And so I had to pause for a second. I thought probably

00:13:01.700 the inability of people to alter their positions once it is solidly anchored. And so I think what

00:13:09.300 David's Dave Smith is doing is it doesn't matter how many wonderful, you know, explanations John

00:13:16.100 Spencer or anybody else might offer him. It's la la la. There is nothing that you could ever say

00:13:21.120 that's going to shift me from my position, which is one of the reasons why I'm very tepid to ever have

00:13:27.020 debates with some folks, not because I'm afraid. I mean, as you probably know, I'm hardly one to walk

00:13:34.380 away from a fight, but at least the fight has to be done in a, in a proper honest spirit, whereby we

00:13:41.500 both agree what the rules are. We get into the ring. And by the way, I have enough epistemic humility

00:13:47.080 that if you teach me something that causes me to change my position, I go, you know what? I never knew

00:13:51.060 that, John. That's a great point. Thank you. And I think I'm going to revise my opinion. But if I'm

00:13:55.120 going to speak to certain people that I know a priori, there's nothing I could say that can ever

00:13:59.480 get you to change your mind. What's the point of them engaging in the, in the exchange? But my

00:14:04.280 second point, I was going to, this is actually a question. So what would be some metrics? I mean,

00:14:11.060 you're a researcher, you have to quantify things, you have to operationalize things. One metric that

00:14:15.840 we've seen is the ratio of combatant to innocent people. Is that the right metric? Are there other

00:14:23.900 metrics? What is the metric by which we could definitively say the IDF are the biggest butchers

00:14:30.520 in the history of humanity since the Nazis, or they are actually the most moral military in the world?

00:14:37.060 It's a great question. Actually, I was hoping we could get to it because it's what I've had to,

00:14:41.520 I didn't know that the small little book that I used in grad school, because I didn't do

00:14:47.020 quantitative analysis, you know, research and others more qualitative. But this book called Lies,

00:14:53.060 Damn Lies, The Statistics. Oh, yes. I love that book. It's just some, I highly recommend it to

00:14:58.620 everybody. Especially in the last 18 months, because people were struggling to find a number

00:15:05.000 and as it's just such a great book where one of my favorite quotes out of the book, although I

00:15:11.160 paraphrase it is that figures don't lie, but liars sure do figure where they'll take that number.

00:15:17.320 So to answer your question, and I actually got told this in Jerusalem,

00:15:21.580 not too long, your last month that you're that civilian to combatant ratio guy. Like, no, that's

00:15:27.860 not me. Because I pushed back against it. It is not the correct metric. Matter of fact, I try to point

00:15:35.680 out that I've been studying war for over a decade academically writing case studies and books and

00:15:41.860 articles, and that's never come up. Actually, because I use case study methodology, I'll have

00:15:48.160 another one published tomorrow on a fascinating battle. Well, I actually look for the quantitative

00:15:52.840 data in both the qualitative experience of a battle of, okay, how many people do have died,

00:15:59.560 how much destruction was done, because in urban warfare, it becomes a big part of the conversation.

00:16:04.080 But as soon as the war in, you know, against Hamas and Gaza came out, that was interestingly

00:16:11.700 sticking in the kind of court of public opinion. Look how many people have died. And well, who's

00:16:18.960 saying that? Well, Hamas says that. Like, okay, we should take that with a grain of salt. And then as the

00:16:25.780 war continued for months, the number was just being used of like, just in a disproportionate, which again,

00:16:33.760 words have meaning and proportionality and what the law of war says about proportionality. And when

00:16:38.540 does it change? And when it can be a different, it is not the metric, because that's not the way

00:16:44.080 war works. If it was a number, right? And I actually got this, I think I was on Ana Cabrera and MSNBC when

00:16:49.340 it was supposedly the Hamas number was 10,000. She's like, John, when is the when is enough enough?

00:16:54.600 When have enough people die? Like, as you have pointed out about past wars of like borders and

00:17:01.140 populations and all of that, like, I want us to all have the shared framework. And this question

00:17:07.020 of, but what's your civilian to combatant ratio is never been asked in any of my research ever

00:17:12.820 during a battle. And one of the reasons that is because it is not, it is a historical for any nation

00:17:20.140 to ever believe that you could have a number on a day-to-day basis with any type of validity,

00:17:26.480 right? Where did you come? How did you get that number? And I've tried to point that out by saying,

00:17:31.620 okay, look, we shouldn't be trusting the number that Hamas is giving. And lots of people have done

00:17:35.860 research. I mean, from a historical case study analysis, I can show you that in almost every

00:17:41.060 battle that I've ever studied, there was definitely not during the battle. And it was months, if not years

00:17:47.860 or decades afterwards where there was a number. And one of the great examples I love-

00:17:52.660 By number, you mean the ratio of civilian to combatants?

00:17:56.660 Any number.

00:17:57.480 Okay.

00:17:58.280 Right. Okay. Go on.

00:17:59.620 Great question. Well, let's take on the civilian to combatant ratio, right? So in order to have that

00:18:04.320 number, you would have to have some type of validity on who is the determinant of whether somebody was a

00:18:10.260 civilian and whether somebody was a combatant, right? When you're in a war like this one or others,

00:18:16.660 where there's the combatant purposely doesn't wear a uniform, violates the law of war, doesn't

00:18:21.100 distinguish themselves. And the example I give is like Ukraine, which I've been early in the war,

00:18:26.980 every one of the civilians who joined to resist for their freedom tied a yellow or blue tape around

00:18:32.520 their arm. I don't know where they got that much tape, but they were doing the right thing on

00:18:36.980 designating themselves as partaking in the hostilities. So in a place like Gaza, where they purposely

00:18:42.840 try to blend in with the civilians, so who is the arbitrator? In this case, the world wants it to be

00:18:48.920 Hamas, Gaza Health Ministry. And I don't know if you've read Natan Sharansky's book about when a

00:18:58.300 government lives in fear. I haven't read the book, but go ahead.

00:19:02.280 And I know you know from like in Lebanon, like in a society under fear where they'll say

00:19:07.720 he had something, I forget what he called it, but you're basically, you're trusting the populations

00:19:12.080 who lives in fear. So there's no number that's going to come out of Gaza that isn't approved by

00:19:17.600 Hamas if it's not legitimately Hamas that's giving it. But who is saying on the ground looking at a

00:19:23.520 body, okay, that person, that person wasn't, was not a, you know, combatant. And then, well, of course,

00:19:29.080 well, John, what about the women and children? I'm like, hey, I don't want to be, you know,

00:19:33.040 heartless about this, but who says that women can't be combatants? And who says that, okay,

00:19:38.340 what's the age in which somebody is considered a child? According to the United Nations, it's 18.

00:19:42.820 So when we say this is the number of children that have died, they're saying 18 and below.

00:19:47.740 I joined the military at 17. And I try not to get into all these numbers, but the biggest thing is

00:19:53.440 I want people to get out of the numbers game. That's not how, even the law of war is not effects

00:20:00.160 based, right? So lots of really amazing professors have talked about this of like the entire construct

00:20:08.840 of war isn't effects based on, look at the damage that had been created. That means you

00:20:13.640 weren't following the law. You were immoral, all these things. One of the examples I like to use

00:20:19.140 about the numbers, right? These are all just lies, damn lies and statistics is that Bernie Sanders

00:20:24.800 about, you know, when the Hamas number reached 25,000 said, you know, Gaza, the bombing of Gaza is

00:20:30.940 worse than Dresden. And the reason that he did that, I'm sure somebody told him that

00:20:36.120 was because he had tied a correlation between 25,000 dead to the 25,000 that had died in the

00:20:44.040 bombing of Dresden during World War II. Now, what he didn't know is that for over 50 years,

00:20:49.620 the number was 250,000 because immediately after the bombing, no other than Goebbels himself and the,

00:20:57.440 in the department of propaganda put out the number 250,000 had died. And it went unquestioned

00:21:02.760 for decades until the wall fell, until some German researchers went in and started doing the

00:21:08.560 numbers. That's a bad, you know, that's a, I thought it was ironic that he was using that

00:21:13.280 comparison. For me, you know, I started in the beginning going, look, if, even if you use these

00:21:19.560 numbers, right, which I try to get people out of the numbers game, but if you took Hamas's number,

00:21:25.260 which is fraught with craziness on how they got to the number, right? People believe they're

00:21:30.620 counting bodies. They're not, but it's irrelevant. If you took the number, Israel actually took about

00:21:36.680 six months to come out with a combatant number, like what they believed in targeting and everything

00:21:41.780 through their, their after actions report, commanders assessments of what they believe

00:21:46.040 were the, the combatants that they were targeting. And then I said, well, if you took these numbers,

00:21:51.200 which they're both highly problematic to believe that you could have a number in the battle,

00:21:55.760 then it would be this ratio to push against what people were saying as the ratio is awful.

00:22:01.520 Although I should, I, you know, like you said, learning, um, I was trying to show, show people

00:22:07.360 that in comparison, if you want to do comparisons, although there was no comparison, right? So I had

00:22:12.200 written the battle of Masul, which is the biggest battle since World War II was this battle in, in Iraq

00:22:19.060 against ISIS, who had taken a city of over a million and held it for two years because the Iraqi

00:22:24.360 government couldn't get it back. Uh, but for two years, really done a lot of work to prepare

00:22:29.300 to defend it. And it was a nine month long battle involving over a hundred thousand Iraqi security

00:22:35.740 forces to take the city back just from three to 5,000 combatants. And I, I used that as a compared

00:22:41.280 early on, like that was like a one to one, a two to like all this ratio stuff. But I also highlighted,

00:22:47.820 it was a year after that battle before anybody had a number. And the number was from 10,000 to 40,000.

00:22:53.700 So no, to the answer, I know a long answer, but that is not the metric of assessment. You could

00:23:00.280 have a very high number and it isn't that you're illegal or immoral. You have to view it in the

00:23:07.900 context and the law of war accounts for that context, right? This is the whole, the, the number

00:23:13.140 of, in a single strike or an operation, the civilian collateral damage, or that's both the death of

00:23:19.820 civilians, but also the destruction can't be excessive to the concrete military advantage,

00:23:24.280 which we could argue like, is it, is there a concrete military advantage to Israel pursuing,

00:23:30.980 getting its hostages back, destroying this, what this terrorist army that invaded Israel,

00:23:37.860 an existential threat, which actually matters a lot when you start talking about what is excessive

00:23:42.900 and disproportionate. And then you have to do this other thing in modern wars, which is the other

00:23:48.760 thing I've written a lot about is that it is the, the legal and moral ethical responsibility

00:23:54.740 to try to limit civilian damage. And there's this thing called feasible steps. And this is where I've

00:24:00.840 argued that Israel, and it really doesn't sound good, right? Cause they, they take this number and

00:24:05.560 like, I don't care what John Spencer, this, this researcher in urban warfare says, look at the numbers,

00:24:11.040 look at the damage, look what I can see on my cell phone. One, there's, there's problems with all of

00:24:18.020 that, but it's a responsibility in the military in a war to take all feasible steps to limit civilian

00:24:24.700 damage. And this is where I've said again, quantitatively in comparison to everything that's

00:24:30.680 come before that Israel has done more to limit civilian death and destruction than any military in

00:24:37.280 the history of war. Now I won't go as far as to say that Israel is the most moral military in the

00:24:41.920 world. I served in a moral ethical military, but it is one of the Western militaries, which is a,

00:24:50.320 I'm sure we could talk about like, you have these Western militaries, democracies where legitimacy,

00:24:57.420 moral, ethical, uh, following the laws that we all agreed to is really important to us.

00:25:02.780 I can also compare it to the ones that don't like, I can compare it to Russia's operations in

00:25:07.920 Chechnya. I could compare it to the Syrian war, to the Yemeni war, but I don't. So I'll give you

00:25:13.680 comparisons because everybody seems to want to feel better if they can compare it to something else.

00:25:20.100 But Gaza on many levels from a war research perspective has no comparison.

00:25:25.800 Well, I'll, I'll add a few types of currencies that don't necessarily calculate, you know, how many

00:25:35.060 each party have killed, because that's a ridiculous comparison. I mean, to your earlier point about

00:25:42.520 Dresden, uh, by that metric, then the United States is officially the most evil country in the world

00:25:50.020 because they dropped two atomic bombs on two cities where the overwhelming majority were not

00:25:58.580 combatants. So by that ratio, then we really need to get rid of the United States because I mean,

00:26:04.340 there's never been anything so cruel. Of course, that's not how you do it. Now, the other thing I

00:26:08.440 would mention, I'm, I discussed this, uh, and not my last appearance on Joe Rogan, but the time before,

00:26:13.920 where I tried to explain the concept of intent in the law, we know, for example, that someone who

00:26:22.780 commits involuntary vehicular manslaughter and kills five people. So it's five people. So let's

00:26:30.560 use the counter of death five, but it was involuntary manslaughter. Maybe it was negligent. Maybe he was

00:26:36.580 driving too fast. I mean, of course it would be more problematic if it, if he had also drank, but let's

00:26:41.160 remove the alcohol. Now, so that person who just killed five people might get a certain sentence,

00:26:48.340 whatever it is, let's call it four years, five years, eight years. Okay. Another person, a wife who

00:26:55.120 wants to get the, uh, through pecuniary means, uh, I want to get the insurance policy on my husband. I,

00:27:03.180 I contract a hit man. The hit man turns out to be a undercover cop, but it was, you know,

00:27:10.800 it was completely contracted on Tuesday. He will be here. You kill him. I will get the money. I'll pay

00:27:17.080 you $10,000. And then they stopped that person because they arrest her. Zero people were killed.

00:27:24.300 And the other one, five people were killed. Oh, surprise, surprise. The person who, who led to

00:27:30.340 zero killings, even though it's a lower number than five is going to receive a much larger penalty.

00:27:37.580 It could be up to the death penalty, even if there wasn't a death. So the idea that we somehow remove

00:27:45.860 intent from these moral calculations is insane. So that's number one number. So now let's apply that

00:27:52.080 metric to the intent of one group of people versus the other. The, the noble, peaceful Palestinians

00:28:01.920 wish to eradicate this other people called Jews, not Israelis, not Zionist Jews. If they had the means,

00:28:12.200 they would certainly do it. Regrettably from their perspective, they don't have the means.

00:28:17.340 So we will butcher orgiastically and with complete orgasmic glee at 1200 people. And as we know the

00:28:25.980 guy, and oh, by the way, I do speak the language. It's my mother tongue. When the guy calls his dad

00:28:30.900 to get his approval, Hey dad, I just killed 10 Jews with my own. Well done, son. Good. Well done.

00:28:37.260 We're all proud of you here. That intent matters. Israel could eradicate every single person living

00:28:46.600 in Gaza in less than the time that it took me to say the sentence, but they didn't. And since 2005

00:28:54.900 till October 7th, 2023, they didn't bother anybody, you F off us, we won't bother you. So intent matters

00:29:04.560 in this calculus, but imbeciles only see five is greater than zero. Therefore they should receive a,

00:29:12.140 what do you think of this analysis? Oh, a hundred percent. And you've covered it in many analogies,

00:29:17.840 which find if people want analogies to help them understand. Um, but don't refuse to accept the fact

00:29:26.540 that intentionality is factored into multiple social constructs from morality to the law of

00:29:35.000 civil societies, to the laws of war. And they're there on purpose to account for this really hard

00:29:42.360 decisions and intentionalities in morals and ethics and all this in war a hundred percent. Um, from,

00:29:49.100 for me that, you know, in that for me on October, when I watched the video, uh, of just segments of

00:29:56.260 what happened on October 7th, I use pattern recognition of saying, this is something very

00:30:01.300 different. I've led men into war. Uh, and I've never seen the, the, the psychopathy. And that's,

00:30:08.160 I know that's your world. That was the Hamas fighters in the glee and what they were doing.

00:30:13.940 Like I've seen awful things and I've seen evil around the world. That was a very special type

00:30:19.420 of evil. And people are trying to kind of do away with it. And then they battle like what they uploaded

00:30:25.480 it and they say they want to do it again. But for me, like everybody wants a framework. And I know

00:30:31.780 you analogies is one, they want a framework to understand, even if they aren't already anti-Semitic,

00:30:37.700 anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, they believe that Israel shouldn't exist. They want to go back to,

00:30:42.580 you know, changing the borders. Like, yeah, I want to, you know, 1947, 67, 73, like all these times

00:30:49.140 that all these Arab nations have attacked Israel. I don't care what the outcome was. It's just wrong

00:30:53.340 that Israel exists. I got 1956. I mean, I, and for Gaza, I don't forget, you know, not just 2008,

00:31:01.500 2014, all the times that Hamas, the elected and whatever, uh, attacked Israel. Uh, and there was

00:31:10.320 a ceasefire. I was there in 2021 when the last time Hamas had launched a Sabo of rockets. Um,

00:31:17.220 it's, it's, the intentionality is accounted for there. That was a special type of evil that, that

00:31:22.380 was, you know, basically invaded. And even I have problems with words like terrorist attack. Okay.

00:31:30.920 Yes. They use terrorism, awful tactics of fear and mutilations and all this thing, but it was an

00:31:36.500 invasion. That was as much of a military invasion as I can define it. And with the intent, like you

00:31:43.820 said, what was the, so this is the idea of people. And I had this conversation with Jordan Peterson,

00:31:48.680 right? This, this human nature concept, like everybody has universal human interest, right?

00:31:54.800 We all want safety for our children. We all want human rights and not Hamas. And that's not me

00:32:02.420 saying that that's their statements. What they intended to do on October 7th, wasn't just to

00:32:07.220 achieve freedom and to lift the, the so-called, you know, barricade, you know, you name, all these

00:32:14.340 things. They said they wanted to destroy Israel and their actions met that intent and their statements

00:32:20.560 and everything. The framework though, after October 7th, right? One, let's classify October 7th, what

00:32:25.860 it was, everything that's come afterwards should be viewed through a war analysis. Israel as a

00:32:32.880 sovereign nation, you know, again, this is where Dave Smith's want to go back to like, I don't care

00:32:37.760 what the framework is, it's just wrong. Like, look, after war two, awful things happen, right? War two,

00:32:43.920 even, you know, the, the fire bombing of Tokyo, we killed more in one night of fire bombing Tokyo

00:32:50.960 than we did in two nuclear bomb drops, right? We killed 180,000 a single night, 300,000 in the

00:32:57.660 bombing campaign. But after war two, we say, okay, look, these are the things that we will, won't do

00:33:02.640 based on shared frameworks. So October 8th, Israel, a sovereign nation declares war against Hamas,

00:33:10.960 the political and military entity of Gaza with, that's just war. And then we could argue whether

00:33:18.700 it's justly executed, but by every metric it is, but I've come to find out that there, it doesn't

00:33:24.780 matter what John Spencer says, there's this double standard and I call it an Israeli standard if we're

00:33:29.820 looking at, but yeah, okay, I know that applies everywhere else, but this is Israel who is in,

00:33:34.660 in, in, in its very nature, if not evil, intentionally trying to eradicate people.

00:33:42.520 Well, what's amazing. So, you know, I, I grew up, I lived it, I breathed it, I bathed in

00:33:49.720 unbelievable Jew hatred. And this is in quote, what was then the Paris of the Middle East,

00:33:56.060 progressive, progressive, modern, cosmopolitan Lebanon, every fabric of society, every nook

00:34:02.920 and cranny, every strand of social DNA is fueled by orgiastic Jew hatred. The Western mind cannot

00:34:15.020 understand this. What you saw on October 7th is exactly what happens to people when straight out of

00:34:24.240 the womb. They are taught a hatred like no other. Now, look, sometimes people get upset at me because

00:34:31.500 they say, oh, you know, you're trying to win the victim. You're, you're the guy who's against

00:34:36.380 victimology poker. And you're the guy who now wants to, for everybody to say that, oh, that's something

00:34:41.960 unique about the Jews. All bigotry is terrible. I mean, right. But we can't, two people can be

00:34:49.320 overweight. One person could be 20 pounds overweight. Another person could be 200 pounds overweight.

00:34:53.520 Both are called overweight, but there's this thing called scale. Scale matters. Jew hatred has many

00:35:01.040 different sources. It's a multi-pronged, you know, monster. There is academic left Jew hatred. There is

00:35:08.880 neo-Nazi Jew hatred. Islamic Jew hatred is a unique creature. Now, let me just draw, I mean, I'm sure you

00:35:19.360 already know a lot of this, but I want to kind of reiterate it for our viewers and listeners.

00:35:24.380 When I teach about the ethics of targeting children and advertising, one of the ways that you decide,

00:35:33.560 one of the moral frameworks, moral and psychological frameworks that you decide whether, what age you

00:35:38.440 should target them, is if the child has the cognitive awareness to understand that the advertiser is trying

00:35:47.940 to persuade him of something. That way I can erect a defense against your persuasion strategy. And we could

00:35:55.640 debate what that is at 10 years old, 12 years old, 13 years old, right? Now, imagine that on the one hand, I can't

00:36:02.720 sell you chewing gum or cereal as a child because you don't yet have the cognitive apparatus to protect

00:36:08.960 against my advertising approach, but straight out of the womb, under the guise, under the cloak of

00:36:16.040 religion, I can teach you that the most vile, the most disgusting, the most diabolical, the sub-human

00:36:24.920 species called the Jew is something to be eradicated. That's how you get October 7th. Now, many

00:36:32.600 people will say, but my friend Ahmad is married to a Jew. He's lovely. Of course, there are millions

00:36:38.520 of beautiful and peaceful and kind Muslim people out of 2 billion Muslims. But does Islam offer the

00:36:45.940 trajectory for October 7th? Absolutely yes. What are your thoughts on that? When I look to your research

00:36:53.360 and your statements for a lot of that, from my lane of this small piece of the pie, from a research

00:37:00.000 perspective and when the war happens, the radicalization of the enemy is very factors into

00:37:06.080 it, right? Because there is this strategy, war is a contest of will. You're trying to impose your will

00:37:10.960 and compel your enemy to do what you want it to do. In this case, surrender, give up the hostages,

00:37:17.220 you know, de-arm, de-militarize. But when I started watching the Palestinian Sesame Street,

00:37:22.700 so I think it's beyond religion. As a father of young children, that's a special type of

00:37:28.880 evil. Talk about it because people might not know what you're referencing.

00:37:34.080 Right. So in Gaza, on top of the education system, so it's beyond religion, right? Religion being the

00:37:39.380 Islamic radical fundamentalist view on Islam. Beyond that is the cultural social aspect of,

00:37:46.340 in Gaza, not only do all the textbooks teach Jew hatred and all the analogies are through this

00:37:54.480 killing of Jews, but there's Sesame Street that they developed basically with like TiVo,

00:38:00.760 like these characters literally teaching the child from birth, like you said, but you have to get into

00:38:07.120 what their parents are telling them as well. But everything they consume is to hate the Jews and

00:38:11.520 that their poverty is the cause of the Jews. Another factor, right? The Israel and the Jewish

00:38:17.020 people are the cause of their poverty. And then we could talk about, well, in Gaza, when the leaders

00:38:22.220 of Hamas are billionaires sitting in Qatar, the ones in Gaza are multimillionaires. But for me,

00:38:28.360 so that factors into it because when you talk about radicalization, like separating Hamas from the

00:38:32.860 population, like, okay, yeah, in war, we account for that. Are you partaking in the hostilities or are you

00:38:38.160 not? If you're not, then you're a non-combatant and you're protected. If you are in any way,

00:38:42.700 and there's very criteria, like if you're holding hostages, you're partaking in the hostilities.

00:38:48.440 But when you're trying to convince the enemy that he has been defeated, if they're so radicalized,

00:38:54.060 and then for this case, as a political apparatus, where I've tried to highlight,

00:38:57.760 it's very unique when a moral, ethical, legal following, where legitimacy is important,

00:39:04.060 all these things, you're fighting an enemy who uses not just human shields, which I think people

00:39:09.120 overuse. Hamas uses human sacrifice. Because of, again, with that religious cultural mindset,

00:39:15.400 their entire war strategy, which is the pursuit of political goals, is to get as many of their

00:39:21.140 population killed as possible.

00:39:23.300 You love life as much as we love death.

00:39:27.420 Yes. So that's the saying and the intent, but the actions, right? So the 400 miles of tunnels,

00:39:32.640 very unique in war, 400 miles of tunnels in Gaza, dug under every structure, ranging from just

00:39:39.800 underneath buildings to 200 feet underground, the entire population could fit in that tunnel

00:39:44.720 network with ease. But since Hamas says, like they actually say, we need the death of our women,

00:39:52.120 children, elderly to achieve our goal to destroy Israel, they also act that way. So how do you fight

00:39:58.020 that is very different, right? The Nazis didn't do that. They didn't say like, I need the whole

00:40:03.100 German population to die so we can achieve this vision of the Third Reich. ISIS, Al Qaeda, like all

00:40:09.460 these other evil organizations didn't deploy this human sacrifice strategy. That's very unique. You're

00:40:16.740 right. It has a very religious bent to it. But I think it's beyond that cultural, social, from birth

00:40:23.560 perspective that you get to what you saw on October 7th, which was the level of dehumanization,

00:40:29.760 psych, you know, and really psycho, like, how do you build, I made an analogy that it was more like

00:40:35.900 Hamas had developed and released 2000 Jeffrey Dahmers into Israel.

00:40:42.780 I think Jeffrey Dahmer would be peaceful compared, because there's a lust of violence that's difficult

00:40:49.520 for people to understand. And I really, I mean, in your case, you've been to the field both,

00:40:54.600 you know, as a warrior and as a researcher. So you're certainly closer to it. But you really have

00:41:00.960 to come from that culture and be the target of that hate to really understand it. For most people

00:41:08.660 that come from the West, they simply can't relate to it. I'll give you a great story, which I originally

00:41:13.980 discussed in The Parasitic Mind. But there is a sequela to that story, which I'm not sure if I've

00:41:20.780 mentioned this publicly. So we may be breaking new ground here. So at one point, it was probably around

00:41:26.660 2010, a friend of mine, whom I originally had met at the university that I'm, my home university,

00:41:34.300 I'm currently at a Michigan university, but my home university, Concordia University in Montreal,

00:41:39.260 she had reached out to me, she's Jewish, and she reached out to me to say, hey, you know, I know

00:41:46.500 you, you know, you come from the region, you're a big expert on all this stuff. I'm friends with this

00:41:51.860 woman, a Muslim woman, who is doing her PhD in Islamic studies. And she's telling me that it's

00:41:58.460 absolutely, it's absolutely untrue. There is no Jew hatred in Islamic theology. So what are, what is it,

00:42:05.600 God, you know, tell me, is it yes, or is it no? So I decided, John, to instead of, you know, sending

00:42:12.320 her a long email with the 73,000 pieces of evidence that would suggest that this other woman is fibbing,

00:42:19.140 I just shared a montage, which I wonder if you're familiar with it. It's about a 20, 20, 22 minute

00:42:25.580 montage of Islamic leaders and scholars and television shows and Sesame Street and the rest of it

00:42:32.500 from many, many different countries, all Islamic, highlighting what is being said about the Jew

00:42:39.880 and using Islamic doctrines. And, you know, these would be, you know, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the head of

00:42:47.380 Sunni Islam from Al-Azhar University. So we can't say he misunderstands Islam. He doesn't know Islam,

00:42:55.280 but your friend understands Islam. One of the last parts, snippets from that clip, John, was an Islamic

00:43:05.420 scholar or imam showing photos of the Nazis killing the Jews and, you know, taking bulldozers and putting

00:43:16.920 their emaciated bodies all into the, you know, the unmarked graves. And the guy is using this kind of

00:43:26.460 religious lamentation and incantation saying, Oh God, Oh Allah, why do you hate us so that you didn't

00:43:36.100 give us the pleasure of killing the Jews? Why do you hate us so that you gave that pleasure to the Nazis?

00:43:43.620 Please. It's a level of diabolical hate that's difficult for most human minds to understand.

00:43:50.720 Okay. So let's put that aside. When I shared that clip with her, with no other editorializing,

00:43:58.500 this is a Jewish woman who, by the way, some of her ancestors were part of that bone rubble in the

00:44:04.960 Holocaust. She writes back to me, well, I guess you're no different in your extremism than they are.

00:44:12.440 So my sharing a clip of their extremism meant that I too was an extremist. So of course I never spoke

00:44:20.960 to her again. I didn't want to have anything to do with her. About a year ago, I received an email

00:44:26.880 from her saying, I can't believe how I reacted to you so many years ago and you were so right.

00:44:35.540 So the point of this is not to say, good boy, God, you were right. But number one, here is a Jewish

00:44:41.980 woman who was perfectly parasitized, that she wasn't willing to distinguish between me showing

00:44:47.880 her the clips of the extremism and the extremists. And then on a more hopeful note, people do sometimes

00:44:56.280 change. It took her 14, 15 years, but she came around.

00:45:01.240 It reminds me of a quote that Jordan hit me with as well. And when I try to come back with this

00:45:07.840 evidence, like my belief that for the Jewish state, Israel, there's a different standard in war,

00:45:13.960 right? And that's historic. And that's historical. We do case studies on every war,

00:45:18.300 what happened and when did it end and why did it end? Usually because I'm an international

00:45:23.460 community saying, look, I know you were attacked. I know you were attacked by five nations,

00:45:26.980 but you need to stop, period. Stop here, right? Jordan said, well, what's your evidence?

00:45:34.340 That evidence convinces anybody of anything, right? When it is, and this is again, your world of the

00:45:39.940 feeling and the emotion, and no matter what you present them with, the heuristic biases and all

00:45:46.120 these things are factoring into their decision-making. But for me, it's like, what argument do you want

00:45:52.980 to use? Comparative, case study, ethnographic, like for war perspective, I believe that, and this is the

00:46:00.680 evolution of nations. And again, the Dave Smiths don't want to have that conversation. Like, I don't

00:46:04.440 care about that. Like, but that's how we in this global, how we all thrive. And there are wrongs and

00:46:11.720 people do wrong all the time. Um, but we have to have a shared framework and then we elect people

00:46:19.040 in democracies to make those decisions for us. Um, but that story really resonates with me as

00:46:24.660 like, I almost like, uh, you know, why did I become the guy to make these arguments is because I,

00:46:31.220 maybe I knew some information to others, or I could just say like, hold up a minute. Like that's never

00:46:36.520 been asked of a nation in war before. It's, it's insane. Uh, how do we know these numbers,

00:46:42.240 like all these things and like, um, where the, the tactics are working. Um, and, and so from a

00:46:49.380 psychology perspective, I'll tell you this in, in war, you know, when we teach war, there's always

00:46:54.220 three populations that really matter. If you, if you care about the construct, you have the militaries

00:47:00.340 that are fighting each other, right. And that's their will to continue to fight. And you're always

00:47:04.500 trying to, you know, you know, morale, will, all these things, you're trying to degrade that to

00:47:09.560 make them surrender. Then you have the will, the two political apparatuses that, that war is

00:47:14.340 and their populations. Um, unfortunately we live in this world now in very unique for wars where the

00:47:22.300 populations can make up their own mind, right? They can see it on their own algorithm driven videos

00:47:29.360 and, and, and pictures of destruction and damage and say, like, I don't care what you say, John

00:47:34.280 Spencer. I don't care what came before. I can see it from my own eyes. I don't know if there's a

00:47:38.580 psychological term for that of like, I don't know. Well, it's the vividness heuristic, right? Uh,

00:47:45.240 something that is vivid that I can link up with, with my own eyes carries a lot more weight than all

00:47:54.660 of the statistical inferential evidence that I could ever show you to the contrary.

00:48:00.400 Yeah. And this is, I mean, this is the, again, I, I am, I, I'm actually anti-war. So this is the

00:48:06.260 thing where, you know, some people say they're anti-war. I'm actually anti-war, but I also understand

00:48:11.120 what is preventing wars. Um, and consequences is a big part of that. You have deterrence.

00:48:17.600 So this is the ideal that just ceasefire now, right? I, as somebody who's anti-war understand that if

00:48:23.960 somebody violated all the things that we put in place to not have wars, like wars of aggression,

00:48:29.420 or like what Hamas did in a genocidal invasion, like truly trying to genocide somebody, then there

00:48:35.420 has to be consequences. Like you don't get to say, oopsie daisy. And then, you know, just put the wall

00:48:41.220 back up. That wasn't, and just say like, you know, I won't do it again. I promise. No, if you start a

00:48:47.720 war, there are consequences so that other people don't start wars. And, and you can still do that

00:48:54.360 in a just way, like Israel is executing the war, trying to separate the population who aren't involved

00:49:01.600 in the war, which is really hard to do when there's another country, Egypt. And I know you've talked a

00:49:06.840 little bit about that, who says also violates all the international norm going, look, I don't care about

00:49:11.320 the Palestinian people, not one of them into which is unique in war, right? So even if, even if you

00:49:19.300 really care, then you should be protesting Egypt's actions since October 7th, they launched a division

00:49:26.760 almost a brigade, a whole tank element to the border to make sure that no Palestinian civilians came out

00:49:34.240 of Gaza and they put up a new wall with razor wire and everything. Not one civilian is going to come

00:49:41.040 out of Gaza. You need to stay in there with a war that the political apparatus created. So yeah,

00:49:46.680 let's protest Egypt. Nope. No, no Jews, no news, as they say, right? By the way, the crown prince of

00:49:53.320 Saudi Arabia has gone publicly and said, I don't care about the Palestinian plight. I care about my own

00:49:59.520 people. So apparently he must also be a Islamophobe. I wanted to spend a few minutes. Can we go a bit

00:50:06.360 longer? Are you okay? Absolutely. I love long form. Actually, that's another thing I enjoy about

00:50:12.200 Joe is like, you're not going to come on here with your talking points. Let's talk this out.

00:50:16.180 Yeah, that's great. That's wonderful. Thank you. So that's, I know you're at West Point. So I don't

00:50:21.980 know if, if I ask any question that you're uncomfortable with, you can kind of say, I'm not

00:50:28.000 speaking. But prior to Pete Hegseth, of course, under Joe Biden, you know, the military went super

00:50:35.940 woke and that's something that you really don't want. And now, of course, Pete is trying to reverse

00:50:41.260 that. Now you've been in that setting, both as a warrior and as a professor at West Point and so on.

00:50:47.300 In your day-to-day practice as someone who is at West Point, do you see wokeness or not? And if you

00:50:59.620 have seen it, do you see it as having been somewhat reversed now that the new administration is up?

00:51:05.180 Take it wherever you want to go. So that's a hard one, God, as you know. I say I don't do politics

00:51:12.680 and I really try to stay apolitical like our military is. But I also do war, which is politics

00:51:19.800 by other means and it factors into wars greatly. I will say on that, West Point's a very unique

00:51:26.240 location, right? It's our best of our best. Designed very uniquely that people understand,

00:51:31.900 you know, two cadets or two basically of the best of every state having to be approved by their

00:51:38.200 senators in order to get admissions. So it's like this, it's not a good sample size.

00:51:42.680 It isn't a good test of the greater multi-million person military that we have. I will say that

00:51:50.200 this idea of social evolution and social ideals being incorporated into the military is not new

00:51:57.200 either. You know, from don't ask, don't tell to other aspects. It's a part of it. So I always had

00:52:03.980 that there. I will say that there were trends and you could see them at the United States Military

00:52:11.800 Academy or others. I'm speaking for myself only. I don't want to get you in trouble. Yeah, it's really

00:52:18.500 hard. Where the trend was going to, and I am absolutely for, the purpose of the military is to

00:52:25.920 deter war and when deterrence fails to win in combat. And you need the best, really by performance,

00:52:34.860 by, you know, metrics of not just the social designs, but the actual best warrior who can do

00:52:43.460 the job. And there was a, there have been swings. That's about as far as I'll take it.

00:52:49.320 Okay. Just question. It won't, it won't bother. It won't get you. Don't worry about it. So as a war

00:52:58.040 expert and military expert, are you telling me that having twerking drag queens in the military

00:53:05.780 doesn't increase the efficacy of the military?

00:53:11.580 I will say it's a, the answer that, that is simply yes. I wasn't, of course you want your

00:53:20.140 military to be trained to, to actually, and I think where people get the words wrong, we actually,

00:53:26.880 and let's talk about what we would have done on God with Gaza after October 7th, we would have used

00:53:32.140 overwhelming force to dominate the enemy quickly and to get it done. In order to do that, you have

00:53:37.760 to have a joint force that's made up of your best of your best. Um, that is a political focused on the

00:53:43.260 mission and the requirements of the mission from the infantrymen. Like I was ability to carry heavy

00:53:48.740 stuff over great distances and do almost on, you know, no, no, no, it's not.

00:53:56.880 It's job performance. Um, right. So this is the, like the, the genderless standards, right? So

00:54:03.800 there are two genders. I do believe that, but I've also believe in the military historically

00:54:09.360 and by basic, and again, research, there are physical requirements to do certain jobs.

00:54:15.580 And you gotta bear you, sir. How dare you gotta be able to do that. So if it's a, if it's a policy

00:54:22.120 that is beyond that, I agree. It was damaging. It was doing damage and know each one job. And then

00:54:29.020 you didn't get to a lot of debates, but I, as a career infantryman who had to carry really heavy

00:54:34.960 things for very far distances and do certain things, each one of these jobs and they're different,

00:54:40.560 have very specific physical and cognitive requirements. And if you don't meet those,

00:54:45.760 then you don't do the job. That makes sense. All right. I want to talk about a couple of cool

00:54:50.140 things because I am with a military expert. So, uh, I hope you enjoy it, but I certainly do. And I know

00:54:56.500 that my son will, but most young boys, you know, love guys in the military and the ranks and so on.

00:55:02.200 So first I want to talk about a study. I think it was done at West Point. Uh, and I could probably

00:55:07.520 get you the reference. This is a fantastic, this is a very serious academic study where they took the

00:55:12.900 photos of incoming, as you said, sort of very selective incoming, uh, folks. I can't remember

00:55:19.900 the year it was probably 60, 70, something like that. And based on their photos, which had deferring

00:55:30.740 markers of testosterone, they could then predict the, the likely trajectory of success going up in

00:55:41.260 the ranks much later in their career. So that's kind of linking some of the evolutionary stuff that

00:55:47.000 I do in my scientific research to the military. Are you familiar with that study, by the way?

00:55:51.880 I am not actually. Um, that's interesting. I thought you were going to go with the grit study.

00:55:54.960 There's a really, uh, Oh yes. That's the grit that's covered in the book called grit by Duckworth.

00:56:01.360 Yeah. Yeah. Duckworth. Yes. Yes. I know that study. That is very cool too. Uh, second point

00:56:06.420 of all of the militaries, I've always, sometimes my son and I would sit together, you know, he,

00:56:12.160 he wants to know what are the ranks and so on. Uh, he's now 13. So, okay. You've got the, the,

00:56:18.280 the, the, the army, you've got the air force, you've got the Marines, you've got the Navy. Am I,

00:56:24.180 am I missing anybody? No, I mean, Coast Guard. Okay. Okay. Fine. Uh, no, no disrespect to

00:56:32.020 anybody who's serving there. Do not send me hate mail. I'm on your side. Uh, I always oscillate

00:56:38.340 between who's the coolest. That's easy. Oh, okay. You got to say it's the army. Of course. I mean,

00:56:44.880 I don't have to say, I mean, it's, it's just fact. Why is that? Okay. Hey, tell, tell me so Colonel,

00:56:50.240 why is that? By the mission, by the history, by the diversity of the size and scale, right? So

00:56:58.660 there's a, there's a scaling problem, right? So, um, even if you understand the difference

00:57:02.620 between the U S Marine Corps, which are hardcore warriors, but the, also the scale of it and their

00:57:08.060 pyramid of mostly, it's mostly people that only have done one rotation of service, but based on

00:57:14.240 the pyramid that is the U S Marine Corps, the U S army is much larger, um, and has a more diversity

00:57:20.300 of goals and units to achieve from our elite forces down to what wins wars, which is a joint

00:57:29.320 force, which has to evolve. You want to really, so I'm a land-based guy, right? So I don't believe

00:57:34.360 in certain people that believe you can, you know, bomb your way to achieve a certain goal. You do have

00:57:38.900 to move forward and seize what the enemy cares about most his ground and his, his power to include

00:57:46.140 over his population. Um, to say who's coolest, uh, we could go through different types of units

00:57:51.980 and the scales and the requirements. Can I give you my, my, uh, layman approach, which probably you

00:57:58.800 could predict, come on Navy, Navy pilots landing on the aircraft carrier. That's gotta be the coolest.

00:58:05.420 No, no. I mean, this goes again, like the air force, which was in the army. So it started in

00:58:12.980 the army. Yeah. The army started as the U S army air Corps, which is the great study. I mean, the army

00:58:19.080 is, or the military is so fascinating as a study of sociology and other cultural aspects to the, their

00:58:25.880 bureaucracies. They think a certain way, but we rejected the airplane. We rejected the tank. If you look

00:58:32.060 at that history, but the air force began in the U S army air Corps. So it's our baby, a redheaded

00:58:36.720 stepchild now. And, and, and all those evolutions of air power started, you know, in, in, in the U S

00:58:43.860 army. Um, I thought you were going to quote a study, which I think is fascinating as well about

00:58:48.240 openness. So they've done a lot of studies of an individual's openness in like our war colleges and

00:58:55.360 stuff, like where it actually is. The system creates a thinker. Who's not open to new information

00:59:02.420 because you're the commander. You're supposed to make a decision. You're supposed to know it all.

00:59:07.360 Um, but that's actually counterproductive to the complexity that is war, which is uncertain and

00:59:14.020 complex. And you need all kinds of expertise.

00:59:15.860 You need some malleability, some flexibility, malleability in our greatest. This is where

00:59:20.640 going back to that credentialing thing. Now I'm given my own personal thoughts again, is that I

00:59:25.160 don't give, of course, I give a lot of respect to generals, of course, um, and their service and

00:59:30.920 their dedication, but I also don't automatically give them, um, not even knowledge because we,

00:59:37.720 you can do a job and achieve a certain level. Um, and you can also not do a job. I mean, Eisenhower

00:59:42.940 wasn't somebody who commanded every formation up to the rank of five-star general, but your openness

00:59:49.520 and then your ability to do study. Some of our greatest, for me, actual generals once who don't

00:59:56.220 just, you know, that experiential knowledge, but they studied everything in the past, right? Whether

01:00:02.400 it's General McMaster, Petraeus, even Mad Dog Mattis were, were readers and learners of everything

01:00:10.320 that's come before in our profession. Um, but you know, this is even like Dave Smith's like, well,

01:00:15.740 this four-star general told me this. I'm like, okay, but that doesn't necessarily mean they,

01:00:21.860 they, they are, you know, like, cause we don't have a, we have credentialing systems within the

01:00:26.740 military, but it isn't necessarily the way people believe it is. Right. Wow. Uh, I was going to ask,

01:00:32.720 since you talked about openness, I I'm sure this has been done, but maybe not, if not,

01:00:37.260 maybe this is an opportunity to study this. Are there any studies that look at the typical

01:00:44.040 personality profile of people who choose each of those different, you know, Air Force, Marines,

01:00:53.520 whatever. Uh, so for, I mean, obvious one, a sniper, uh, which by the way would be one of my other cool

01:01:00.100 ones for obvious reasons, uh, you know, has to have a set of unique skills that others don't share.

01:01:07.620 Otherwise it wouldn't be possible to be a sniper. So is there a psychological profile that is more

01:01:15.040 likely, you know, if I, if I administer this to John Spencer and I look at it, I go, Oh, I see Marine

01:01:21.580 written all over you. All right. Or, or, or has that been studied? Do you know of any such studies?

01:01:26.480 Um, I I'm sure it has interesting. And I've done this research, a little bit of research, again,

01:01:32.260 my field of what are the tests for entry, right? What are the entry tests for, um, the U S military?

01:01:39.920 Most of them are, um, aptitude tests, right? So like all the sciences to, and then they'll,

01:01:46.300 based on that, they'll place you in professions. Each one of the services have, have their own

01:01:51.740 requirements, but no, that I'm sure somebody has done that personality typing. Although there's,

01:01:56.420 you know, whether it's Myers-Briggs or all these things, I know there's issues with all these tests.

01:02:00.600 Um, interestingly, although, you know, did you know that Dr. Ruth, uh, uh, was an Israeli sniper?

01:02:08.940 The little one? Yes. Dr. Ruth, the sexologist?

01:02:11.920 She was a, she was a Israeli sniper. Um, you know, but then you get into the conversation

01:02:17.840 of what is the Haganah and all these other things before the creation of the Israeli state.

01:02:22.000 So there is a little of what a sniper is today. Um, but also the work that has been done by Israel

01:02:28.380 about psychological testing for military personnel, because the greatest test, which I tell people,

01:02:33.920 again, I've studied a little bit of the biggest predictor of trauma. So we call it PTSD.

01:02:41.920 Now is previous trauma, not the experience that you went through. Uh, but a lot of the testing

01:02:48.160 for our super elite. Now that testing is multiple phases of psychological testing before you get

01:02:56.820 into certain types of unit, which get to who is the best of the best, um, is this filtering system,

01:03:03.360 because that's what testing for us is. It's a filter system. Like who do we let in? And then all

01:03:08.700 these things that are a part of the filter system. And I think there should be more of it,

01:03:11.760 but also believe, which is the problem when you have an all volunteer force, like the U S military,

01:03:16.460 there is a, and we actually will change the, the requirements based on our needs. And I wrote about

01:03:24.860 this in my first book and connected soldiers. Like when we really needed things, one of the things we

01:03:29.320 dropped was the felony. Um, like if you are, if you are convicted of a felony, you can't even carry a gun

01:03:34.820 in the United States. But at one point we were so desperate for personnel. We dropped that as one

01:03:39.880 of the disqualifiers. Oh, yeah. I don't know. Is it back on or is it? Yeah, absolutely back on,

01:03:46.200 back on. Um, but there are, you know, there's medical, you know, all these other things that

01:03:50.680 are these predictive analysis on the personality types. I'm sure it's been done. Um, yeah, I don't

01:03:56.480 cross service is harder, right? Each one of the services have their own, um, you know,

01:04:00.880 whether it's behavioral sciences or whatever, uh, this story might interest you. So you mentioned

01:04:07.660 earlier, the, the heuristics, uh, research, which is Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.

01:04:13.260 Yeah. So there are two Israeli psychologists. Now the story of, I think it was Amos, it was

01:04:20.580 Tversky, if I'm not mistaken, he was, I think, uh, captain maybe in the Israeli military. Uh, and

01:04:28.300 there was some fight happening, you know, whatever, close to Jerusalem. I, so based on

01:04:34.040 the timing, it would have been the six day war of 67, I'm assuming. And he's sitting in

01:04:39.200 his tent solving mathematical problems. Uh, and you know, he's being annoyed when, you

01:04:45.820 know, his, his subordinates are, you know, don't interrupt me unless it's a serious

01:04:50.080 problem. Have you heard that story before? I've heard a little bit of it, but go ahead.

01:04:53.740 Yeah. Yeah. And so that also remind me of another, I guess, great warrior, Marcus Aurelius,

01:05:00.800 which that's when I knew that he was my guy because Marcus Aurelius really wanted to sit

01:05:06.580 and read and think and, and be a philosopher, but he had to do those emperory things, you

01:05:12.220 know, like the emperor stuff. And he would get pissed when sometimes he'd be interrupting,

01:05:17.680 he'd be interrupted when he wants to, to be thinking. And I'm thinking, you know, a guy

01:05:21.800 who's emperor of the Roman empire who is annoyed because he can't sit and read, this

01:05:27.180 is probably a guy that I should follow somehow. And that's how I originally got into Marcus

01:05:31.900 Aurelius. So I love the, the juxtaposition, as you mentioned earlier about some of the generals

01:05:36.760 who are great readers, you know, you could be brawn and you could be brain at the same

01:05:41.600 time. So, yeah, so I love that. Uh, what I wanted to say something else. Oh, point number

01:05:46.620 two of sort of personal anecdotes. I think you are. And I, I hope if I forgot someone,

01:05:52.900 they won't be offended. Maybe my third military guy on this show. And I'm wondering if you know

01:05:58.200 the other two, uh, the, the more recent one was general Tata. Do you know him?

01:06:04.420 No general. Well, I'm sure there's a, there's a million generals, but I thought that you might

01:06:08.320 know him if only because as subsequent to retiring from the U S army, uh, he, he writes books himself,

01:06:16.260 although he's not writing, you know, research-based books, he's writing fictional books that are of

01:06:21.140 course, based on the fact that he's got this experience. The other guy, which I think you

01:06:25.480 would know of, which would certainly score in my high coolness is Rob O'Neill. Do you know who that

01:06:31.300 is? I do know who Rob O'Neill is. Yes. Yeah. So, uh, now the, the, for those of you who don't know,

01:06:36.600 Rob O'Neill, uh, is purportedly the guy who killed bin Laden. Okay. You, you, you just did a

01:06:43.860 nonverbal cue, which I'm going to drill down. I am the psychologist who can read these things.

01:06:49.720 Take it away. Colonel Spencer, what's going on? Why did you make that face? No, I, uh, one of our

01:06:55.860 great warriors, right? So I, I know the requirements to become a Navy SEAL. Um, I know the details of the

01:07:02.040 Osama bin Laden raid. Um, I know that there's some contention of who was the trigger poor,

01:07:09.300 but it's irrelevant. Um, I've heard the same thing recently. Okay. So that's what you're alluding

01:07:13.900 to. Yeah. That's what I'm alluding to. Like the, the, uh, it's, it's its own killer. We don't

01:07:21.140 necessarily know that's what you're purporting. Right. So the whole group, there's just some people

01:07:26.300 that became more public, let's say. Got it. Yes. There are other ones that they could be my

01:07:32.420 neighbor. I wouldn't even know it. Absolutely. Wow. Uh, I guess one or two more points and then

01:07:37.520 I'll, I'll, I'll let you go. So one of the things that we often hear about brother in arms, right?

01:07:42.720 You're using a kin term and certainly from an evolutionary perspective, that makes sense

01:07:47.520 where, you know, you, you become so close to these people who are in the trenches with you

01:07:52.720 that oftentimes when they go back to their real families, their biological families,

01:07:58.820 they can't get the same sense of affiliation that they do with the guys that, I mean, literally

01:08:05.440 were looking out day to day for their lives. Right. It, it, I'm sure that's what you probably

01:08:13.000 would say that that's absolutely the case, right? Once I have gone into this firefight, I could

01:08:19.160 never feel that same bond as I did with the guy that literally had my life in his hands. Yes.

01:08:25.580 Absolutely. That's a big part of my first book, Connected Soldiers. I wanted to dig into what's

01:08:29.280 the research of that. Like why do soldiers fight? You know, we call it a primary group cohesion and

01:08:34.920 there are task cohesion, social cohesion, other things I write about this. Cause I, I kind of struggled

01:08:39.100 with it myself. Um, really, really good book called Tribe by Sebastian Younger. Although for some

01:08:45.040 reason, tribalism is a bad thing. Um, but he really dips into that on different societies that go to

01:08:49.680 war. Um, it makes me think of my, so I have small children who often ask you very thought provoking

01:08:56.760 answer questions. Oh, did you kill anybody? Daddy? Not that, that one, they, they pretty much know the

01:09:02.980 answer to that one. Um, one was when my son at 11 years old came home and said, dad is Hamas, the good

01:09:09.380 guy. Um, and based on what it is, but the other one is my daughter says, why do you call everybody

01:09:15.320 brother? Cause she, she will hear me talk on the phone. And I will say that often like brother.

01:09:20.880 And it's a, you know, it's not just a term of endearment, but like you said in battle, it's,

01:09:25.960 it's really hard. Um, when, and it's, it's beyond, of course the person's fighting because of the people

01:09:33.560 that they, they can not like them, but they love them because they know their survival depends on

01:09:38.700 them. And it creates a very, uh, biological physiological, everything response. And then you,

01:09:44.740 you bond with that, you imprint with that person and it becomes not a part of your tribe, not a part

01:09:49.640 of your, your brotherhood. That's why we call it a brotherhood or sisterhood or whatever, is that

01:09:54.480 that's like family to you more than your actual family and nobody who can ever understand because

01:09:59.680 it didn't, they weren't in that moment with you. And then when you return society, which is a much

01:10:05.880 larger conversation, which I think is important is that we don't have community, right? Um, this is

01:10:11.620 my book, Connected Soldiers. We're more connected than we've ever been in human species, but we're

01:10:16.880 also in many ways more alone. Right. Right. So that leads to a lot of negative behaviors, right? Increasing

01:10:23.540 all of these things. We call them negative behaviors, like a drug addiction and all of the, you know,

01:10:28.220 all of these things, suicides, all of these things. And the military uniquely gives you,

01:10:33.320 people think it's an awful experience, but they give you so many elements of community and then that

01:10:38.780 highest level of purpose, which is protection of, of your fellow soldier identity. And that other one

01:10:47.120 of, of just being in a, in a tribe. And when you return to your societies, especially the U S

01:10:53.620 today, where less than 1% of our population ever serves in the military. I mean, it just,

01:10:59.320 it's just crazy that you won't, we say thank you for your service, but you won't, very few will

01:11:04.520 actually know a veteran or know somebody as opposed to World War II, which is kind of our romantic kind

01:11:10.000 of, you know, with the greatest generation when they returned, every community had veterans in it

01:11:16.460 and they often banded together. And that was part of how they dealt with the war, which really leads

01:11:21.680 into this research about how do you, not only how do you function in a war, but how do you live with

01:11:27.120 the war, which is awful situations? I call a lot of people brother. Um, and my kids like how many

01:11:33.660 brothers you have, uh, it's a term of endearment really unique to the military, but there's a lot

01:11:39.380 of history to it. Uh, very, very beautiful answer. Uh, I'll end it with the following, uh, which kind of

01:11:46.760 builds on what you're saying, uh, probably no fan emails gives me greater pleasure than when I receive

01:11:56.400 it from military guys. And so by proxy, I'm, I'm not a military guy, but when you're getting the

01:12:04.460 imprimatur from a military guy saying, God damn, I love you or whatever it is that he, they write,

01:12:11.880 uh, it immediately transports me to being part of, as you said, that, that band of brotherhood.

01:12:18.240 Uh, so I get a lot more sense of pride and satisfaction from a military guy writing to me

01:12:25.360 with nice words. As a matter of fact, I had one who sent me a whole bunch of stuff like medals and

01:12:31.220 he went, and this was more to, to share with my son with a beautiful letter. Uh, I get a lot more

01:12:38.180 pleasure from that than some highfalutin professor from the ivory tower, you know,

01:12:43.900 appreciating my work. Not, not, not to imply that I don't appreciate that, but there is really

01:12:47.560 something that naturally makes me banned with those guys, even though I, I never served in the

01:12:52.800 military. So maybe in another life, I could have been a warrior with the John Spencer. Uh, one other

01:12:59.860 point, uh, I will now rectify the fact that I don't follow you on X and I will ask everybody else

01:13:08.160 to go follow you on X cause you're doing some really good work. Can you tell us what is your

01:13:11.980 X feed and your, uh, website so that people can go and follow your work? Sure. My X feed is at

01:13:17.760 Spencer guard. Um, I put all my publications and everything in one place on my website,

01:13:22.420 johnspenceronline.com. Uh, and that's, that's what it is. Wonderful. Uh, Colonel, what a pleasure it

01:13:30.700 is to meet you. Uh, please try to achieve this for me. I do have a fantasy. Maybe I'm too old now

01:13:37.700 of actually riding shotgun, so to speak. And one of those two men, air force, air force things I'm

01:13:45.760 in the back. I'm sure I'm going to drop dead and have a heart attack, but assuming that I cleared

01:13:50.800 the medical thing, I am in good shape for my age. If you can make it happen, you'll even go up higher

01:13:56.780 in my, I would rather God bring you to West point, which is like Hogwarts. Um, but the history of that,

01:14:03.040 that ground predates, you know, America, um, the honor and all those values, like you said,

01:14:10.940 service, you need to come to West point. Um, hopefully to, we'll make that, I can do that

01:14:18.100 rather than have you fly around. I can try to do that. Let's say I can try to do that.

01:14:23.060 Fair enough. I'm holding you accountable to that rotation. I look forward to meeting you in person.

01:14:28.360 Thank you so much for coming on. Stay on the line so we could say goodbye offline and come back

01:14:32.760 anytime you'd like. Thank you so much, John. Thanks brother.

01:14:35.420 Cheers.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - April 25, 2025

Colonel John Spencer - Is Israel's Army the Most Moral in the World？ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_826)

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