Jack Carr: My Journey Through America’s Long War

Summary

CONFLICTED – Episode Summary: Jack Carr: My Journey Through America’s Long War

Podcast: CONFLICTED (Message Heard)
Date: April 23, 2026
Hosts: Thomas Small (filmmaker, ex-monk), Aimen Dean (ex-Al Qaeda jihadi/MI6 spy)
Guest: Jack Carr (former Navy SEAL sniper, bestselling novelist, military historian)

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Main Theme

This episode features Jack Carr, whose life bridges America’s post-Vietnam military trajectory: from a childhood steeped in WWII lore to Navy SEAL sniper, to bestselling author of both fiction and nonfiction. Through firsthand experience and literary reflection, Jack provides nuanced insight into the psychology of war, institutional failures, and the cyclical lessons of conflict spanning from Beirut in the 1980s to today’s Middle East. The discussion moves fluidly between personal history, the realities of elite military training, US military interventions, and Jack’s historical writing on the origins of modern terrorism, especially as it pertains to the Middle East and asymmetric warfare.

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Episode Outline & Key Insights

1. Jack Carr’s Military & Family Origins

[05:49] – [09:58]

• Family’s military legacy: Carr’s grandfather was a Corsair pilot killed off Okinawa in WWII. Tangible artifacts and family stories seeded Carr’s interest in service and history.
• Early vocation: At age seven, inspired by war movies and 1980s encyclopedias, Carr was drawn to the Navy SEALs after watching the black-and-white film The Frogmen.
• Quote:
  “I just knew my path was the military… at the ripe old age of seven, I find out about the SEALs.” (Jack Carr, [09:58])
• Importance of military history as formative, mentioning role models in film and television, connection to a “Gen X” upbringing.

2. Path to Becoming a Navy SEAL

[09:58] – [20:20]

• Research-driven ambition: From a young age, Carr studied special operations, counterinsurgency, and the Vietnam War, shaping his intent to become a sniper.
• Enlistment: Chose the enlisted route to qualify as a sniper and avoid the “officer’s curse” from Vietnam movies.
• Navy training pipeline:
  • Boot camp, then intelligence school, and finally BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training) in Coronado.
  • Hell Week — legendary for attrition, sleep deprivation, cold, and demanding teamwork; Carr describes shared hardship as mental rather than physical.
  • Quote:
    “Any average high school athlete… can make it through. It’s…more about that mental fortitude.” (Jack Carr, [15:23])
    “First night, I remember people quitting in droves, and then after that, you’re… a zombie.” (Jack Carr, [17:26])
• On never considering quitting and the centrality of historical perspective (“relative thinking”).
  • Quote:
    “I put things in relative terms…those guys did that [Normandy, Iwo Jima]…I can do a few more pushups in the sand.” (Jack Carr, [24:46])

3. Evolution to Sniper and Early Post-9/11 Operations

[26:19] – [35:11]

• SEAL team entry: Pre-9/11, new SEALs did “new guy stuff”—proving themselves in the unit before earning their trident insignia (“I liked how we did it”).
• Sniper school: Shooting skills, stalking, target acquisition, and the transition from the Vietnam “lone sniper” model to urban sniping after 9/11.
• First deployments:
  • Initial missions were maritime, enforcing UN sanctions via “ship boardings” in the Gulf (boarding Iraqi tankers, dealing with countermeasures).
    • Quote:
      “I thought of it as a police officer…you don’t really know what you’re walking up on.” (Jack Carr, [33:18])
  • Carr describes these as “the only time I got to do any Navy stuff in the actual Navy.”
• Transition to Afghanistan: Felt he “barely made it” before the action ended—then realized conflicts would last decades.

4. Combat Experience in Iraq and Afghanistan

[37:08] – [44:54]

• Afghanistan (2003): Direct action raids, hunting Taliban and Al Qaeda.
• Iraq:
  • Urban sniping in Najaf (2004) and Mosul (2005): shift from old-school sniping to fast, urban combat, often providing overwatch for teams.
  • Discusses the heightened IED threat in Ramadi and the necessity of focusing as a leader (“resign myself to fate”).
  • Closest call: Narrowly missed being killed by a mortar in Najaf.
    • Quote:
      “…as soon as the last guy hits the ground, a mortar lands exactly where we were standing just seconds earlier…” (Jack Carr, [44:54])

5. Reflections on the Cyclicality & Psychology of War

[46:20] – [49:42]

• Connecting Beirut 1983 to current events:

  • The US’s failed responses in Beirut and Operation Eagle Claw (Iranian hostage rescue, 1980) cast long shadows over US military doctrine.
  • Carr connects “lessons learned” from WWII, Vietnam, through to the recent successful pilot rescue in the Middle East—an arc of growing professionalism and cross-service learning.

• Quote:
  “All of those lessons learned culminated in that operation over the weekend to rescue this downed pilot and his weapon system officer…” (Jack Carr, [48:04])

6. The Value of Recovering Soldiers

[50:44] – [51:58]

• When asked about the massive resources devoted to rescuing downed pilots, Carr rejects monetary calculus:
  • Quote:
    “No, they’re just thinking about recovering our personnel... It sends a message to our allies, to our enemies. It was a bold decision and the right decision.” (Jack Carr, [51:05])

7. ‘Targeted Beirut’ – Rethinking the Origin of Modern Terrorism

[52:22] – [59:43]

• Why Beirut ‘83? Chose the US Marine barracks bombing for his first nonfiction because it was formative in American-Middle East relations and “taught the enemy that terrorism works, especially through proxies.”

  • Carr collaborated with Pulitzer Prize finalist James Scott to ensure historical rigor, focusing on personal stories and generational trauma.
  • Key insight: Real policy lesson isn’t force protection—it’s what the enemy learned: the West tolerates “an acceptable level of violence,” thereby incentivizing future attacks.
    • Quote:
      “It taught specifically Iran…that terrorism works. More specifically, it works through proxies.” (Jack Carr, [56:29])

• Personalized storytelling as a way to combat abstraction in casualty statistics:

  • Quote:
    “When you HEAR something like 241 US servicemen killed…that’s a big number. But you personalize it…you get to, oh, this has multi-generational effects…” (Jack Carr, [56:29])

8. American and Global Amnesia about the Realities of War

[59:43] – [60:34]

• Discussion of public/civil-military disconnects—how “rose colored” peacekeeping narratives often mask the ugly realities and persistent violence required to sustain world order.

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The Fourth Option – Jack Carr’s New Novel

[60:34] – [63:09]

• Jack introduces his new series character Chris Walker (ex-SEAL, CIA), diverging from his previous James Reese novels.
• Modern “Stranger Comes to Town”: A Western motif meets contemporary espionage and moral ambiguity.
• Themes: The meaning of justice, “does justice mean breaking the law?”, and the tension between legal order and personal morality.
• Quote:
  “…it’s really about what is the meaning of justice? And sometimes really, does justice mean breaking the law?” (Jack Carr, [62:49])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the psychological challenge of BUD/S:
  “It’s definitely more about that mental fortitude…[many] show up in phenomenal shape…and they quit the first night of Hell Week.” (Jack Carr, [15:23])
• On surviving a near-miss:
  “If anything…had delayed us by a few seconds…we would have all been standing there when that thing hit.” (Jack Carr, [44:54])
• Institutional learning curve:
  “All of those lessons learned culminated in that operation…to rescue this downed pilot and his weapons system officer.” (Jack Carr, [48:04])
• On the implications of 1983 Beirut:
  “There’s an acceptable level of violence…it taught the enemy that terrorism works.” (Jack Carr, [56:29])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro/Jack’s family legacy: [05:49]
• Discovering SEALs—call to service: [07:00]
• Hell Week/BUD/S training: [12:35]–[20:20]
• Mental fortitude/historical perspective: [24:30]
• Sniper school transition: [26:19]
• Ship-boarding in the Gulf: [32:00]
• Combat: Afghanistan, Iraq, urban sniping: [37:08]–[44:54]
• Discussing Beirut, lessons of terrorism: [52:22]
• The Fourth Option – new novel: [60:34]

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Tone and Style

• Camaraderie & humility: Guest and host share self-deprecating humor about beards, their backgrounds, and making military ideas accessible.
• Reflective and personal: Jack Carr is candid, positive, and concerned with the human and institutional costs of modern war.
• Historically grounded: Establishes clear links between past and present, showing how lessons accrue and sometimes go unlearned.

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Closing Thoughts

Jack Carr’s journey—from inherited military memory, through the crucible of SEAL training, to combat and then to authorial reflection—encapsulates America’s long confrontation with Middle Eastern violence and the evolving face of terrorism. The episode bridges personal, historical, and policy narratives in a way that underlines both the cyclical nature of conflict and the importance of individual stories. For listeners seeking a deeper context to ongoing Middle Eastern wars, the resurgence of terrorism, or simply a firsthand account of elite military culture, this episode delivers both the broad picture and the human detail.

Transcript

[Commercial Narrator]

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[Jack Carr]

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[Commercial Narrator]

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[Thomas Small]

taste, some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe [e-mail]. Modern history has a way of repeating itself. The same pattern returns. A sudden act of terror is followed by a limited or hesitant response. And because the US and its allies will accept a certain level of violence, the enemy learns that terrorism works. Jack Carr has lived inside that story. A former Navy SEAL sniper in childhood, Jack was shaped by the rise of IRGC terror, in adulthood by the wars after 9 11. Now a best selling novelist, Carr brings what he's learned about terrorism, war and the limits of power to his fiction and now also to his nonfiction as well. In this conversation we move from his early sense of vocation through the brutal reality of SEAL training and combat to the deeper questions his work raises about institutions, institutional failure, about the psychology of war, and about what enemies learn when nation states get it wrong. I'm Thomas Small. This is my conflicted conversation with Jack Carr. Jack, it's nice to meet you. Jack Carr. My goodness, I think you might be the most famous person to be unconflicted.

[Jack Carr]

Oh come on, come on.

[Thomas Small]

I'm super happy to meet you, Jack. It's a real honor. Thanks for coming on.

[Jack Carr]

Oh, honor's all mine. And I don't usually get beard envy. Very rarely does it happen, but man, you've got me beat there. How long has that been a part of your whole thing here?

[Thomas Small]

Well, I've had a beard since I was in my late teens, more or less. This is probably, I don't know, two years ago, I decided I. I'm gonna go full on a midlife crisis and just let it grow and see what happens. So this is two years in, more or less.

[Jack Carr]

Nice. Okay. Very good. Yeah, I had the beard before beards were a thing. You know, they. They went away for a long time. And then in the mid-90s, before I went into the SEAL teams, I went backpacking around Alaska. And so I grew out of beard for three months and then I came back and it was interesting cause I had like, you know, jeans and kind of like an army jacket. Almost like that first blood Stallone look when he's walking into, you know, hope. And I remember people following me, like looking at me in stores, kind of like, oh, this is. Who's this guy? Is he gonna rob us? Is he gon steal something? I definitely looked like a vagrant. Kind of how I describe some of my characters in the. In the novels. But. But then had to shave it, of course, for boot camp and then going through training and then got to get it back when I went to Afghanistan and had some good pictures in Afghanistan, a little less white in the beard at that time back in 2003. But. But man, it. It. Then it came back as like a style thing, you know, I liked when I was the only one, you know, I liked in the mid-90s and I was the only one to have one. Like, I didn't know anybody my age that had a beard. And it was good, you know, it was a solid beard and I liked being. And now that became. I don't know.

[Thomas Small]

Well, it's nice to be talking to a fellow. Not just a fellow American, but a fellow Gen Xer. You know, there aren't enough of us around. I lived through the 90s too, during that brief kind of grungy phase when beards were in. Then as you say, they did go away. I started growing mine.

[Jack Carr]

Really.

[Thomas Small]

In 2000, I left home. I backpacked. Not around Alaska, I backpacked around the Middle east and the Mediterranean. That's how I got involved in Middle Eastern stuff. But let's talk about you, your Jack Carr. You. You are a Best selling novelist. And a couple of years ago your first nonfiction book came out, Targeted Beirut, which tells the story of the disastrous 1983 terrorist attack against the US Marines in Beirut. Before we get into all that though, I wanna learn a little bit about you. You mentioned that you were a Navy seal, but even before that you were born into a military family.

[Jack Carr]

Well, the military family was my grandfather. So my grandfather was killed in World War II. He was a Corsair pilot, which is the plane that had the gull wings that would fold up so you could fit them on the aircraft carrier. There's a TV show in late 70s syndicated in the 80s, which is where I saw it with my dad. Started out as Baa Baa Black Sheep with Robert Conrad playing Pappy Boynton, Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, who was also a Marine fighter pilot who flew the Corsair like my grandfather. So I was watching that, but in syndication they called it Black Sheep Squadron. And I was fortunate enough to meet Pappy Boynton when I was a kid, got to meet Robert Conrad who played Pa Boynton in the show. But I had my grandfather's. The maps that they would give aviators back then because if you hit the water with a paper map, it would just get wet and eventually disintegrate. But a silk map just got wet, you could still use it. So I had those maps of the Pacific region, the Pacific theater of war, had his medals, had his wings, had pictures of him in his squadron. So I had those tangible assets that were my connection to him and that generation. Because this was obviously before any sort of social media or any way for even my dad to. To find someone who had served with his father. So he never really met his dad. His dad was killed in May of 1945 off Okinawa when two kamikazes hit his aircraft carrier. Wow. And took it out of the war. It limped back to it did survive. There's a great book called Dangerous Hour that talks about really it follows the kamikaze pilot who hits and there's two of them, but he follows one in particular. And then like the building of the aircraft carrier and how they came to this point in the Pacific and collide. How those fates collide. But anyway, that was in my blood, I think, even before I had any conception of who my grandfather was. I think there was just this innate, I guess, draw to serve and to test myself. Probably that happens with a lot of young men, has throughout history, but then become aware of who my grandfather was and watching all the World War II movies with my dad, Vietnam movies with my dad, Westerns with my dad, all those sorts of things, just like a young red blooded American male does. And I just knew my path was the military. And then at the ripe old age of seven, I find out about the seals through old movie called the Frogman. And that's because those who remember, we talked a little bit about our generation. But a lot of people don't realize that before remote controls, we were the remote controls in our homes. And so on Sundays my dad would be watching football. And also people don't remember there were four channels when we were growing up. There was cbs, NBC, abc. And then there was like, well, I guess PBS was in there, so maybe there was five. And then there was this outlier channel, this like strange one. And so that one was always playing a war movie on Sundays. And so during football, when it was a commercial, my dad would look at his watch and say go. And I'd run up to the tv, switch it to that war movie, watch that for two and a half minutes. And then my dad say flip it back. And I'd flip it back to football. And we'd watch football till the next commercial. But during one of those, there was the Frogman. It's a black and white film, guys crawling up over the beaches, blowing up obstacles in advance of a conventional force landing type of a situation. And so I asked my dad, who are these guys? And he said, these are, these are frogmen, because that was the name of the movie. And I said, well, who's a frogman? This looks amazing. And he said, ask your mother. My mom's a librarian. So we went down to the local library shortly thereafter and started researching frogmen. Found out about underwater demolition teams, naval combat demolition units, the Navy SEALs. And my takeaway from that research back then, when you could find the end of the Internet. And for those that are watching this, not listening, you can see that's the Internet right there. So that's the encyclopedia right there. So I have a World Book encyclopedia. Another level, that was the Britannica.

[Thomas Small]

I haven't seen the World Book for a long time.

[Jack Carr]

Yeah. Yes. I'm collecting each decade. So those are both from the 80s right there. But so you can see how views on things changed over time. So you look at something, how it's described in the 1920s and how it's described in the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, and see how that view morphs over time. But that was our Internet back then. And there were a couple other books out There a couple magazine articles, a couple mentions that we looked at in the library when we went down to do that research. And my takeaways were that seals were some of the most elite commandos in our nation's arsenal and that the training was some of the toughest ever devised by a modern military. So at age 7, that's all I needed. I was in.

[Thomas Small]

You thought, sign me up. So how old were you when you joined the SEALs? What was your way in?

[Jack Carr]

Yeah, so I knew I wanted to be. I wanted to be an enlisted sniper because officers weren't snipers. From some of that research. And I continued to research. I didn't just do that research at 7 and then lock in, you know, I was then collecting everything I could possibly find on special operations on. And terrorism, counterterrorism, insurgencies, counterinsurgencies. A lot of the stuff written back then was, of course, talking about Vietnam, started these autobiographies, started coming out, these memoirs started coming out from guys who had served in Vietnam. So I'm reading all those and collecting all those. And through that research before, obviously, the Internet, I found out that, hey, if you want to be a sniper, you're going to come in and enlist it. So I wanted to do that. And also from reading these books and from the power of popular culture, here's once again, Gen X Power of popular culture. Every Vietnam movie shows this brand new offer show up in Vietnam and lead his men right into an ambush. Like every single one. And so I'm like, I don't want to be that guy. I want to be that grizzled old sergeant who knows what he's doing. He's on his third or fourth rotation through Vietnam, type of a thing.

[Thomas Small]

Just to make sure I understand, since you decided from a young age you wanted to be a sniper, you needed to enlist because snipers aren't officers. Why did you want to be a sniper? What do you think made sniping particularly appealing to you?

[Jack Carr]

That is a very good question. And a lot of times they don't question the call. You know what I mean? Like, sometimes when people question that call, they start questioning it too much and then they get talked out of it or they talk themselves out of it for life in general. So I've been, throughout my life, I've just listened to that innate call and follow that. So for whatever it is, probably wanting to be on my own, not being part of a smaller unit, being either, you know, in my mind at the time, I pictured myself alone, crawling through the jungle, or just with One spotter crawling through the jungle, being behind enemy lines, you know, on like, that sort of a thing. So I think that was probably appealing to me. The skill that it takes, the patience that it takes, the being good in the woods, as they used to say. Good tradecraft, I guess you would say, and having that ability, having that capability.

[Thomas Small]

I am as far away from even wanting to be a Navy seal, certainly a sniper, as you can possibly get. I like being at home. I like my books. I don't want to kill. I don't mind other people killing, actually. I'm grateful that some people do want to, you know, fight for me. But I'm a coward. I'm not an outdoors kind of person. So I am totally fascinated by the whole idea of becoming a Navy seal. What was the training like first? What is the general training for a Navy SEAL before we even talk about being a sniper?

[Jack Carr]

Yeah, it's morphed a little bit over the. Over the years and over the decades or since I came in. But when I came in, you had to go to boot camp first. And that's like everybody who joins the Navy goes to boot camp. And you go, you know, you learn to fold T shirts and underwear and make your bed and, you know, those sorts of things. Follow instructions, get shouted at by sergeants and stuff. A lot of yelling. A lot of yelling.

[Thomas Small]

What was the most humiliating punishment you had to participate in? I'm thinking, like, cleaning shitty toilets with toothbrushes and stuff. Anything like that.

[Jack Carr]

Yeah, it's just the normal stuff. That's not really. I mean, it's just what you do, you know, it's not a. It's just what everybody goes through. So what's good about that is that, you know, supposed to break you down and all that stuff. But you share something in common with anyone who's ever been through Navy boot camp or even someone who's ever been through boot camp in general. You now share an experience in common. So you do that. And then at that time, you had to go to a SEAL source rating, a school, they called it, so a military specialty type school. So I went to intelligence school at Damneck, Virginia. I think it was like 16 weeks or so, but you have to wait for your class to start up. So, you know, that's a couple weeks of mornings, mopping the floor and the bottom level, going to lunch, working out, going back in the afternoon to the upper level, mopping that floor, then going to back to work out again, have dinner, Ron, do that on repeat. So that was a few weeks Then into that intel school, go through that and then go to buds. So BUDS is basic underwater demolition SEAL training and that's where you show up in Coronado, California. That's what they've made the Discovery Channel specials about and that sort of thing. And that's what I've read about since I was a kid is the toughest training ever devised by a modern military. So I never think about boot camp. I rarely think about intel school unless someone asks me because it's like lost time for me. I was just like need to get through these things to get to buds.

[Thomas Small]

Compared to buds, boot camp and intel school must have been like a cakewalk because suddenly you're being put through your paces in a real way.

[Jack Carr]

Yeah, but this is what you're building up toward. But you have to do those other things, you have to pass all those other things, you have to pass those tests. It's just what you have to do. So now you're at BUDS and you have to wait for your class there to class up too at the time. It's different now. And so waiting for the class to class up it's called. And so you're just getting in shape. You're learning how to do the O course. You're running in the soft sand, you're building up those muscles that are a little different when you're running on hard pack. You're learning how to the log PT that you see maybe in videos.

[Thomas Small]

No. What's this? I don't know what that is. What's the log pt?

[Jack Carr]

It's like telephone poles that you have and you all carry it as a team. It's supposed to instill teamwork and camaraderie and it's also difficult and that sort of thing. So you're carrying it and you're carrying it above your head and you're running with them in the soft sand and you're getting into the water with them and doing sit ups with them. And so it's like a telephone pole, it's a little shorter.

[Thomas Small]

I guess you must have achieved a level of physical fitness that would be impossible for a schlub like me even to imagine.

[Jack Carr]

You know, I don't know. You know, any average high school athlete I think can make it through. So it's not really about that. I think it's more, it's definitely, I don't think I know it is definitely more about that mental fortitude. That's what we're looking for. Like yeah, you have to be in good shape. But guess what, you're gonna get in good shape in your first couple weeks of getting yelled at. And it helps if you show up in great shape, obviously. But a lot of people show up in phenomenal shape. Super strong, incredible endurance, and they quit the first night of Hell Week. That happens fairly typically.

[Thomas Small]

Okay, here we go. Tell me about Hell Week. What happens on hel week. How is your mental fortitude tested?

[Jack Carr]

Yeah, so this is really what you're building up towards if you're. If you've, you know, studied this and you want to do this. And of course, now there's tons of information out there online, but back then, there. There wasn't. It was just what you could glean from books and magazine articles. And you just know that this is where most of the attrition is going to take place. And that attrition is going to be around 80%. And. And you're building up towards this thing. And it's going to start on Sunday afternoon. So when you wake up on Sunday morning, that's the last sleep you're going to get for a while. And then it goes till Friday afternoon. So it. You're going to be moving the whole time, and you're going to be at the edge of hypothermia the whole time. And you just essentially never stop moving. And you sit down to eat, of course, because they have to feed your body because you have to. You're burning calories like crazy. But, yeah, Hell Week is where you get most of the attrition. And. And it starts right away because people think in their minds like, hey, I cannot do this for another five days. Sunday night, whistle drills in the sand, and it's dark and the waves are washing over you. They do surf torture, which they now call surf conditioning, because that's more politically corre. And you're in the surf zone, but it's the same thing. And you're just in the surf zone, my arms linked with your class and leaning back, and the water's going up in your nose and all that stuff, and you're shivering, and then they pull you out, and I think they shine a flashlight in your eyes to make sure you're not about to keel over. And so it just gets. Yeah, it gets a lot of people there. So first night, second night, third night, that's when you're losing most of your guys. But the first night, I remember people quitting in droves, and then after that, you're kind of a zombie, and you're just working your way through Thursday and

[Thomas Small]

then to Friday and you Made it through. Did you ever think about quitting ever? Did you think, I'm not gonna make it?

[Jack Carr]

No. You know, people say, you know, you think about quitting only in the. Only in that it's an option that's like, hey. And they make it very clear because if you quit at any other time during the program, you have to find your way from wherever you are to the first phase classroom. There's a bell outside that classroom. You take your helmet, you put it on the ground, and then you ring the bell. And so all the quitters have their helmets with their names on them lined up around what's called the grinder, which, where you do your pt, which is kind of like a Roman. What do they call it? Like the Roman Coliseum, I guess, because up above there's a second level where people can look down on you and you're in that kind of square doing your push ups and sit ups and getting hosed down with fire hoses and all the rest of it. It's the wheeze.

[Thomas Small]

I can't believe it.

[Jack Carr]

But during Hell Week, they take that bell and they put it in a trailer hitch of one of the trucks that follows you around everywhere. So it never leaves your line of sight. So we make it very easy to self select out of this program and move your way from that surf Z run up the beach or stumble up the beach to the truck that's sitting right there with medical personnel to make sure that, you know, no one keels over and dies. And then you ring that bell and that's it. You can have some coffee, some hot chocolate, some donuts, and be warm and comfortable again.

[Thomas Small]

So how many men joined, you know, Hell Week and how many men were left at the end of Hell Week? How many. What are the numbers here?

[Jack Carr]

It's been a while, so I'm not entirely sure, but it was around a little over 200. We started with and then. But I forget exactly, it was like 26 we ended with or something like that somewhere like, I don't know exactly. I hate doing the numbers because it's a little foggy at this point.

[Thomas Small]

It gives you a sense, as you say, of that attrition rate.

[Jack Carr]

And then some people roll like I rolled after that into the next class because I had some. My legs just wouldn't work after Hell Week. And so anyway, I rolled in the next class so my legs got better and I never had a problem with them ever again. So a lot of people roll there and then a lot of people roll in what's called Po So when people talk about their class numbers, the original people who started with the class that make it through to the end is different than the people that will roll into that class, if that makes sense. Because you have people rolling for injuries, rolling for performance. So if you fail this thing called pool comp, which is where you lose the largest amount of people other than Hell Week, I believe, then they'll roll to the next class, get one more chance. If the instructor staff wants to keep that. Like, if they're a great guy, they're strong, they prove they have that mental fortitude by making it through Hell week in that first phase. And then they just couldn't quite get this pool comp. And I'll describe that in a second. But that's to show that you're comfortable in the water, so you'll get another chance there. And if you don't make it again, then you're out. And unfortunately, a lot of people that are great guys just can't get comfortable in the water.

[Thomas Small]

When you say that, what do you mean? Like, you're put in the water for like days or something? What's going on there?

[Jack Carr]

No, no. So you've already done things like a underwater knot tying and breath holds. And so anyway, these things that are supposed to get you comfortable in the water, you've learned this open circuit scuba diving stuff. But then they want to test how you are with like essentially emergency procedures underwater. So you go into the water in this pool and then instructors pounce on you and you're crawling across the bottom of the pool and they, they rip that thing out of your mouth and it's an old school type regulator with the two hoses that go back to two twin eighties on your back. And they rip that out, they tie it in knots. They hit you in the gut so that you get the water out of your, out of your lungs. Oh, they rip off your mask, they rip off your, off your fin, smash you on the bottom of the pool a few times, and then they back off. And then you have to go through the correct procedures in the correct order to get your air back on, to get your, your, your, your 20 tanks back on if they've been ripped off or whatever happened to you when they pounced on you, and then to start moving again at the bottom of the pool and then they pounce on you again. So it's like 15 minutes of them testing you to see just how comfortable you are without air going through emergency procedures on the bottom of the pool. And for me, I loved it. I. I grew up in the water. I was very. You loved it? Yeah, because there was. Because during this training pipeline where it's you against an instructor, usually you're just getting yelled at, being told you're worthless, that this is the worst class ever, we need five more quitters, and then we'll get. Everybody can be warm. Like, all that sort of thing. You're just getting yelled at constantly. And I shouldn't say that. Not constantly, but it's like, there's not you against anybody. It's just like, you doing things and performing, being a good teammate, showing that you have that team ability, that mental fortitude, those physical attributes, all those things that we're looking for in the SEAL teams. And this is one of those times where it's you against an instructor. So I looked at it that way, and I was comfortable in the water. Have been my whole life. So that was great for me. I loved it past the first time. That was fantastic. But there's other things, like life saving, that's another one where you get to put your hands on an instructor. You don't get to put your hands on an instructor when you're doing this pool comp thing. You just gotta show them like, it's me against you. I can do this. I'm comfortable here. Bring it. But when you're doing life saving, they have instructors out in the pool and that you actually. So you have to save them. And each one kind of mimics a different kind of drowning. And so some will fight you, others are just like dead weight. And they're all different body types and that thing. But that was fun because I got to swim out there. You grab some huge instructor, some guy that's been yelling at you for whatever you grab, and start swimming them back to shore. And then they take you down and start smashing you on the bottom of the pool. But you can just relax. You just hold them. So I can just. Because I've done some jiu jitsu or whatever else before that, so I was very comfortable with kind of, I don't know, grappling, I guess. And so you just kind of hold on. Okay, take the ride. They're expending all their energy right now. I need to relax so I can just ride this out. Come up to the top, take a breath, and then start swimming towards shore again. They'll get a couple of breaths of air, and then they'll take you down again. And so I really like that because that's when you're putting your hands on an instructor. So anyway, Those things were few and far between in training, Jack.

[Thomas Small]

I mean, were you basically the same guy then that you are now? I mean, you're just so upbeat, you're so positive. You seem like super friendly and yet you're talking with great relish about these experiences that a normal person would never be able to do.

[Jack Carr]

Yeah, no, I was talking to a friend from first grade the other day and she said you're the same kid that was on the slide back in first grade or kindergarten or whatever it was. And so, yeah, I've just been, I don't know, just me. I would be hard to be anybody else.

[Thomas Small]

Tell me about this mental fortitude here. I mean, really try to explain what's going on inside your mind because here you're presenting as this very varied, optimistic, friendly, open hearted, open guy, right? Very appealing, but clearly there's a steely core to you. So when you're in the midst of some terribly harrowing experience that is being. And you can tap out at any moment, are you wrestling hard with a desire for this suffering to stop or did you just. Were you always able to just take it? You know what I mean? What does it take there at the center of your will, your freedom could move towards rain ringing that bell. But you're like, no.

[Jack Carr]

Yeah. I mean, there are a few things. I mean, like most Gen Xers, I learned most of my lessons about life from television and films of the 80s. So you have, let's see, Dalton from, from Roadhouse. I bet you weren't expecting the conversation to take this turn.

[Thomas Small]

No, but I'm very pleased that it has. I can tell you.

[Jack Carr]

Yes, it's, you know, you be nice until it's time to not be nice, you know, otherwise you'd be exhausted, I think, you know, you go through life exhausted, trying, but. So I put things in relative terms and being the son of a librarian and having studied my whole life and been a student of warfare my whole life, I've always approached things as a student. I put things in relative terms out there on, let's say the beach in Coronado, California, because I thought about the guys who stormed the beaches at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and I thought, you know what? Those guys did that to preserve, give me the freedom to follow whatever my dream was in this life. And it happens to be testing myself here on the beach in Coronado, California, to see what I have with it takes to become a Navy seal. And wow, you know what? I can do a few more push ups in the sand because those guys were on Landing craft. Whose landing craft door dropped, and they were immediately engaged with machine guns from elevated positions. And they had to work their way across this beach and work their way up to these cliffs. And the Rangers had to use ladders and ropes to climb up to take out these positions. And guess what? You know what? They did that. And I can certainly. So I put things in relative terms, thinking about things from a historical lens. And so I think that really helped while I was there.

[Thomas Small]

Very impressive. Now, let's just sort of say you made it through, you're a Navy seal, whatever, and then you move towards being trained to become a sniper. What is that training like? Cause I imagine it's very different. Very calm, cool, Very much about concentration. I mean, how does that work? How do you learn how to. And what are we talking about? What is a Navy SEAL sniper doing, as opposed to another kind of sniper?

[Jack Carr]

Sniper. It's pretty much the same. Each service will have its own sniper school. Some have multiple sniper schools, like the army does. But let me take you back before that. So this is pre September 11th. Got to my first SEAL team, 1997, and we all thought we were gonna get issued pagers, walk across the quarter deck, and start going on secret missions right away. And that was not the case. We walked across that quarter deck and did new guy stuff. So that means taking out the garbage, painting walls, changing light bulbs, making sure the beer was stocked for the guys that had more than one plat in our fridges and the platoon spaces, you know, doing that sort of thing like any new guy in any kind of unit has to do. Probably in professional sports, too. New guys that show up and, you know, there's like a rite of passage. And when I stretched the SEAL teams, you weren't yet. Just because you passed buds didn't mean you were a seal. And I like. It's different now, but I liked how this happened because you got to your SEAL team, and now you had to prove yourself to the guys in your platoon who you might go to war with. Because the job of the military isn't to go to war. It's to be prepared to go to war when that call comes. And so. So you have to prove yourself to these guys who you might be next to essentially in the foxhole. And so I like that now guys show up with their tridents. So they show up as SEALs, and I think it's a little different of a mindset, and, you know, it's probably better and more professional and more efficient and all those things. But, you know, once Again, I liked how we did it. And once you get to your team, then you go through the SEAL qualification or SEAL tactical training and do that for a few months. You have to pass that as well. But now you're actually learning something. Instead of just in buds or where your first phase, just proving that you have the mental fortitude to make it. Second phase, you're proving that you're comfortable in the water. You learn the open circuit scuba diving stuff, you learn the closed circuit stuff, which is the pure oxygen loop, so you're not giving up any bubbles when you go into an enemy harbor or whatever. And then third phase is land warfare phase where essentially you're just proving that you're safe with demolition and with firearms, safe with explosives and with firearms. That's the basics. Hence the basic and basic underwater demolition SEAL training. Then you go on to the SEAL qualification training or SEAL tactical training. And then you're actually okay. We're moving beyond the just proving that you're safe and are tough enough and comfortable in the water. And now we're starting to learn some things a little more on the tactical side and lessons from the past and all these. So now you're, you're starting to essentially build your repertoire. You're build your, on this foundation of the basics. So you're taking it to the next level, I guess like your master's degree or something like that. And then you get to your, then you pass that, that you still don't get your trident. Then you go to your platoon. And then during the six months with your platoon, they're evaluating you right there. And each team might have had back then its own little kind of mini evaluation. I guess over a day or a couple days was three days where you have to pass certain tests or whatever to once again prove to the leadership of the team that you have what it takes. And all that training that you did to get there was. It's stuck, I guess is a way to put it. But then your platoon gives you the thumbs up and then you, they give you your Triton and then they pound that thing into your, into your chest. And so that's pretty, that's pretty cool. So, so that's the, that's the lead up, that's the part we, we skipped over. And then, yeah, then your platoon, your chief and your lpo, your leading petty officer and maybe one of the officers or whatever kind of evaluate, hey, who's interested in becoming a sniper? Who has the aptitude for it? And then they pick somebody, buddy, and you go to Sniper school, if there's a slot for you. So I went there after my. My first platoon, and I forget how many days it was. I think things are starting to. To morph, but it was a few months. It was like three months or two months or two and a half months or something along those lines. And when I went through, it was a portion of just shooting. And you're learning all your. The different types of rifles. So you're starting off with like an M14, then moving up to a 7.62, then going to a.300 win mag, which was like the war course at the time time, then to the 50 cal, and you're doing all sorts of different tests, just shooting with those things, working with a spotter, and also like learning how to sketch and do distance stuff and unknown distance stuff and doing all that. And then you're stalking. You're learning how to stalk.

[Thomas Small]

Oh, my God. And how far. What was like, the longest distance you could. You could snipe on, you know, like, accurately?

[Jack Carr]

Yeah, back then it was a mile with the 50 cal. So 1600. Yeah. So is that 1600 yards or. Anyway, things are getting a little foggy now. I find myself in my novels. I have to check everything that I thought I knew. I have to check because I'm a little dated now in my time. I've been out for a little time, and people shoot farther now, by the way.

[Thomas Small]

How far can they shoot now?

[Jack Carr]

I don't know, but farther than that. I mean, things evolve over time. I was back in 2000 when I went through sniper school, and then September 11th happened about two weeks into my second deployment. And that's when we started to get to do the things that we thought we were going to do when we walked across that quarter deck. So then it became real, and that's when we were called up to actually go to war. And then. And it was pretty busy from then on out.

[Thomas Small]

What were some of those things? I mean, you were in Afghanistan, I guess, right away. Were you sent right away? When did.

[Jack Carr]

No, not right away. And we thought we missed it, so we thought we were going right away. We got on the planes in Guam, which is where we were deployed, and we started flying towards the Middle East. But we ended up taking over shipboarding operations for SEAL Team 3. And those guys ended up being some of the early troops into Afghanistan. And before September 11, there wasn't. Pretty much the only game in town was shipboarding, meaning you're going to enforce the UN Embargo against Iraq. So they're Trying to sneak out oil in Class 3 tankers. Daos A bunch of things, but mostly these Class 3 tankers that would wait in Iraq and wait for bad weather, obviously at night just makes things a little more difficult. And they'd head out of Iraq and then take a sharp left hand turn towards Iranian waters. And we only had a certain amount of time to get on board, take over those ships and turn them back into international waters, turn them over to a prize crew who actually, actually knew how to drive these huge gigantic tankers and then go wait for it to happen again the next night. And they'd have countermeasures up like they'd take barbed wires, put them all over the deck so you couldn't fast rope in. It would foul the ropes from, from helicopters. And usually they were going in bad weather anyway, but they do that. They'd put up kind of sheet metal over doors and, and windows or hatches or I think they call them in the Navy, I don't know. Like I said, I'm a little dated, but so they'd weld those in place. So then you had to take an exothermic torch or a quickie saw or both and to get inside before they got so raining waters, otherwise you had to get off.

[Thomas Small]

What a fascinating insight into how the US Navy actually policed these things like sanctions against a country. So you're there just doing it. You're kind of a policeman, as it were, for that Atlantic world order we're always hearing about. In this case, Saddam Hussein was prevented from shipping oil. He would try to do it. If he could get into Iranian waters, then you couldn't go in there because those are, I guess, those, those are sovereign territorial waters. But you've gotta be. Did you actually do that? You landed on ships, helped them, turn them around, send them back to Iraq?

[Jack Carr]

Yep. We couldn't use the helicopters because of that. The countermeasures they had in place, you know, some, sometimes other units could, but the ones I was with didn't. But you explained it just right. That's how I thought of it too, as a police officer. Because when a cop pulls somebody over, you really don't know what you're walking up on. I mean, you can run the plate, you know, you can get a name, that sort of a thing, but you don't know who it's actually behind the wheel or who's actually in that car. And on a dark street, street, you pull somebody over and you're walking up to that thing and you're alone like you don't really know what's you're walking up on and saying, that's kind of how I looked at these ships. Like, okay, we think there's oil aboard. We think they're just trying to get to Iranian waters. But you don't really know. It's a dark of night, the seas are bad, it's stormy and. And you're heading out there to climb on these things and then bust inside and turn them around and all that. So you don't really know what you're walking up on. So there were a little bit. A little bit dicey just because of the weather for the most part and getting close to Iranian waters and would

[Thomas Small]

you sometimes be met with fire from the people on the Iraqi ship and that they would just. They'd basically give up once you got on board. They would just say, okay, fair enough.

[Jack Carr]

My terminology might be a little off because once again, it's been a while, but that would be an opposed boarding. And that wasn't really what they were doing because what would happen was they knew that if we got on board and if we turned them around and got them in international waters and turned them over to a prize crew and all that stuff that those ships I believe would then get off, auctioned off on some open market or whatever, and anyway they would end up getting those ships back and just doing it again. So it's got. It was amazing.

[Thomas Small]

Twilight Zone life, my goodness.

[Jack Carr]

So there was no reason for them to oppose the boardings. But you didn't really. But once again, in our minds, or in my mind anyway, we didn't really know exactly what you're kind of wanting, what you're walking up on like a police officer.

[Thomas Small]

Well, you have to be prepared for the worst, obviously.

[Jack Carr]

Yeah. So it was interesting. So it was interesting. That's the only time I got to do any, like, Navy stuff during my time in the actual Navy, because the rest of the time was, you know, racking Afghanistan well.

[Thomas Small]

So there you go. So you're doing this when you thought you might be in Afghanistan, but eventually you were deployed to Afghanistan. So what were you doing there? I mean, I don't know if you can say so, but I'm. Now I'm imagining you on like a, a dusty Afghan like ridge with a, with a sniper's rifle, like shooting some Al Qaeda guy a mile away. Are you doing stuff like.

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[Jack Carr]

Not really. It was my sniper stuff came into play in Iraq not long thereafter. But I went to Afghanistan in 2003 and that was the time I thought, wow, I barely made it here just in time. Because we all thought when we didn't go right away to Afghanistan, when we started doing the shipboardings, we thought, oh, we missed it because after Vietnam, really, really. The. There were flashpoints. There was, let's say Grenada, there was Panama, there was Mogadishu. First Gulf War wasn't very long. So there were these flashpoints that didn't last very long. And so that was our kind of more, more recent history to fall back on.

[Thomas Small]

You didn't know the US would be there for 20 years.

[Jack Carr]

We certainly did not at that time. We thought we barely made it. Amazing. Because you, because you want to go as a SEAL or as a, if that call comes, this is what you've been training up for and you want to be that person that goes. And when we didn't go right after September 11th, I mean we still got through the ship warnings, which, like I said, was cool. Before September 11th, after September 11th, not as cool. But we thought we missed it. Dang it. We missed it. And everybody that wasn't deployed at the time and didn't go thought they missed it. And that obviously ended up not being the case. Yeah. So I got there and it's mostly like direct action missions. So compound assaults, that sort of a thing. Working up intel packages. Some people were looking for bin Laden, other people were looking for people that were associated with him, trying to, trying to build up that network and get intel and do all that sort of thing. So it was mostly direct action missions in Afghanistan, then ended up in Iraq not long after that. So 2004 got to Iraq and ended up being in Iraq.

[Thomas Small]

And then you get to start sniping.

[Jack Carr]

Yeah, yeah, there was some sniper action going on there, different than we trained up on. So you're working off in 2000 in sniper school, you're working essentially off the Vietnam model. So you're working off going out with a special spotter and working your way into a position and setting up there for hours, days, that sort of a thing. Waiting for your, your target, gathering intel, maybe not even taking a shot at a target, gathering intel, sending it back via radio, or maybe just taking notes and bringing it back yourself. So that was the model that, that model definitely changed after September 11th. And working in an urban environment, going in with a team, making sure you have somebody out there with you who has an automatic weapon. If you're just two people out there and you both have bolt action sniper rifles or even you have an SR25 like a auto loading, so it looks like a, let's say an M16 M4, but just bigger, more accurate and shoots farther type of a thing, that really became the workhorse because it would lead up to September 11th. That's that.300 win mag bolt action we're making.700 sniper weapon system was amazing. And it still is. I still, I love that round. But when you, when it comes to moving through cities in an urban environment, I found that I wanted something, and I think most people did that. You wanted something a little more versatile. And so that SR25 Mark 11 sniper weapon system became really the workhorse because it was an autoloading weapon system. So you could carry a lot more ammo and you could engage like you would with your M4. But then you could also set up and provide overwatch or do whatever your sniper mission was. So did that in Najaf 2004, that Mosul in 2005. Anyway, so it was a good run.

[Thomas Small]

So in that period, when did you come like, closest to dying? Like, when did it become super hairy for you?

[Jack Carr]

Yeah, so 2005, 2006. Time frame, you're out there in Ramadi and the ID threat is, is, is pretty, pretty significant. I'm an officer at this point. I'VE become an officer, gone to OCS once again, did the exact same things I did in boot camp as an enlisted guy. So folding underwear, folding T shirts, getting yelled at again. So once again, I never think of it unless I'm asked about it ever. It was just a blank spot, just awful. So anyway, so I became an officer. So now I'm thinking, okay, we're heading out at night in let's say, Humvees or some non standard type vehicle or whatever we're doing to do whatever mission we're doing, whether it's direct action or sniper mission, whatever it is. And I'm thinking, wow, I can be worried about everything being an IED here or I can focus on the mission. I can kind of resign my, myself to fate and know that we have some countermeasures in place. I have people up in the turrets that are looking. And my job here as a leader is to make sure that we get to the right target and that I'm controlling these assets, whatever they they may be. Air assets, qrf, whatever else. I know my responsibilities and I need to, to be the best leader and operator I can possibly be. And that doesn't mean worrying that every piece of trash on the side of the road could explode and, and take out one of our vehicles. So that's, that's inside the Humvee or whatever vehicle we're using. That's bandwidth that is better spent focused on my actual job. And so, so that generally is, is something when you think about getting close to dying, but that's not. But the actual closest one was in Najaf in 2004. When I have a sniper team and we're moving through this city and it was 11 days, you have pitched urban combat kind of like the movies I was watching with my dad when I was a kid. You know, it's like everything's exploding. You have Abrams tanks and, and Bradley fighting vehicles, and you're bringing in air helicopters and fast movers and, and you're pushing the J Sha muddy militia back toward the Imam Ali mosque in Old Town Najaf. And you're moving forward every day by, you know, a couple blocks. And then the army's bringing that logistical train up two seven Cav and a bunch of other supporting elements. They're bringing up the water, they're bringing up the ammo. Then you're talking back to the colonel in charge of 20 and talking about, okay, what are we going to do next? Okay, we're putting Abrams here, we're doing, putting Bradley's Here, going to drop us off here, we're going to go into these buildings here, we're going to clear these, we're going to take up our sniper positions in here and you know, right after that we're going to fast movers come in and do whatever. So you're talking, you're working through all that stuff, but it's non stop. For, for us it was 11 days. I think other people were there for a little longer but. Because they started earlier. But that was pretty intense because it's August 2004.

[Thomas Small]

Hot as hell. Holy moly.

[Jack Carr]

Very hot. Very hot in the ja. For those who, who remember. So, so at one point we're moving through the streets in the middle of this gun battle and the four, four of us, because some of snipers would stay up in the overwash and then we push forward and all that. So I think I had four, four guys and we were in this courtyard and we look at each other and we're. It's very hard to tell in an urban environment like where shots are coming from. And it's like a lot chaos of going on because the echoes things bounce off the buildings and stuff. But we're in this courtyard and we're kind of like, can you believe this? Like this is crazy because usually we're going out in the middle of the night. We're choosing the time, the place of our engagement. We have the target packages all built up. Some intel trigger that says hey, so and so some ID makers at this house right now having a meeting and then you go in and grab them type of a thing. This was not that, this was the opposite of that. This was 11 days on the move.

[Thomas Small]

Psychologically it must be so weird because obviously you're like kind of terrified deaths around every corner. But the adrenaline rush must mean that you're actually quite excited. It must be weird.

[Jack Carr]

I guess there was a little excitement in there because it was so different than what we'd been doing up to that point. And so yeah, we're in this courtyard and we're looking at each other with that exact kind of thing. Like can you believe that we're doing this? This is crazy. Where do we go next? Because I said there's all that confusion type of thing. Are those those buildings that we're trying to get to type of thing. And okay, yeah, let's go. And so we jump over this wall and for those who remember there were some walls there that were like thick kind of, I don't know, like mud and maybe some other stuff in There, that made them, you know, pretty robust. So we go over this wall, drop to the other side, and as soon as the last guy hits the ground, a mortar lands exactly where we were standing just seconds earlier on the other side.

[Thomas Small]

Oh, my God.

[Jack Carr]

So that was. I mean, if so, if anything. So once again, fate. So if anything, that day had, like, delayed us by a few seconds, you know. Oh, hey, hold on. I forgot my, you know, whatever I'm going to grab. Go grab it real quick from the whatever and that. Anything, anything like that. Let me grab us another sip of water. Everybody ready? Okay. Anything that had delayed us by like a few seconds meant we would have all been standing there when that thing hit.

[Thomas Small]

Talk about an adrenaline rush. Were you immediately aware of how close you'd come to death, right, Right then and there? Like, holy shit.

[Jack Carr]

Yeah, it was like one of those things. But then you're in the middle of the fight, so you got to move off and make sure you got cover and make sure and just turn your back on the enemy or something. Cause it's so crazy with all the echoes and everything else going on. So it was crazy.

[Thomas Small]

Jack, I gotta tell you, man, as a bookish beta male, I am in awe of all of this. I cannot imagine doing any of this. How exciting. Now listen, we've gotta talk about your book, Targeted Beirut. And in fact, the whole time I'm talking to you now and I'm thinking, what a remarkable coincidence. And it really wasn't planned that I should be having a conversation with you now, because it all links up. Like right now, right now we're talking about amphibious assaults on islands in the Persian Gulf in order to secure the Strait of Hormuz. You wrote a book about the IRGC's attack against the US Marines in Beirut in 1983. If it was the IRGC, Hezbollah, proto Hezbollah. It's very confusing. You might tell us about it.

[Jack Carr]

It is confusing. It's what would become Hezbollah.

[Thomas Small]

Hezbollah comes out of the sort of shadows and I think 1985, but was pro to Hezbollah back then. But all of it's kind of linking up and then you're flashing back to 9, 11 and the initial years of the war on terror and all that stuff. And so you must feel an eerie sense of kind of deja vu, but also like you've lived through this long story both as someone in the military and as a world famous writer. But it's like one big story and it's still unfolding. In fact, right now it's unfolding right now.

[Jack Carr]

It's unfolding. And it's interesting as we're recording this, yesterday was the press conference where we got a little more information about our downed aviators or the pilot and his. His weapon system officer who were rescued over the weekend. And when I heard some of those details, I mean, we have C130s landing in the desert, just like we did in April of 1980 with the. With Delta Force going in to try to rescue the hostages as part of the Iranian hostage crisis. And that mission is really one that has the shadow of that failure in the desert. Desert One has loomed large over Special Operations ever since. And so to hear that landed the C130s and then had to leave them behind, but this time blew them up and no servicemen were killed, which is different than April of 1980.

[Thomas Small]

We did a whole episode on Operation Eagle Claw. So it is kind of amazing. It's like the circle just continues. It's a long story. So, yeah, just yesterday we heard all about that.

[Jack Carr]

Yeah, that was amazing. But the lessons of Eagle Claw were directly applied to, well, missions going forward to different units that were set up, different command and control structures, working together as a combined force, Joint Force to go do these. These things. Joint force, I should say.

[Thomas Small]

And.

[Jack Carr]

And those lessons were directly applied to what happened over the weekend. Just absolutely incredible taking. But that's what we always do. It's. We can go back further, but let's say World War II. I mean, what happened over the weekend is really the culmination of all that experience. All those lessons learned from not just special operations, but from. From military operations in general. Lessons from the. The oss, from pilots going down over Europe, from the Naval Combat Demolition un, From the Scouts and Raiders, from the Rangers then into Korea. What we took from World War II and applied to going over the beach and specifically to Naval Special Warfare moving a little farther inland, then Vietnam. And that's really a watershed moment in special operations history. What we did to rescue downed pilots in Vietnam or across the border in Laos and Cambodia, North Vietnam, and what Green Berets and seals in particular learned during that pivotal time in Special operations history. And then we move in and we have Desert One and we have Grenada and we have Panama, we have Mogadishu, and we have the first Gulf War. And then we have nine, 11. And then we have everything that we Learned over those 20 years leading up to withdrawal. And then we have other Amalar operations that take place in Syria, other places around the world. We have Venezuela. All of those things. All of those lessons learned culminated in that operation over the weekend to rescue this downed pilot and his weapons system officer. And you know right away that they are taking the lessons from that operation, as successful as it was, and applying those to the next one, taking those lessons learned, incorporating them into training, seeing what other technologies were available, how we can morph certain things, what went right, what went wrong, and how we can do it better next time.

[Thomas Small]

It's particularly poignant because Operation Eagle Claw cast such a long shadow. It was considered such a disaster. In fact, from what I understand, lessons, as it were, that were learned in Vietnam were applied to that operation, but ultimately in vain because the terrain was so different, the conditions were so different in it was an egg on your face moment for the US military. So to think all those decades later, in a way it's like we've redeemed ourselves doing something similar. But something else, Jack. I saw a lot on X and even I, in my cold dead heart sometimes allowed myself to think like, gosh, the amount of money the US government just spent to save those two guys, it's crazy. And you might think a lot of people were saying this is crazy, you know, they're sacrificable. Surely we shouldn't be doing this. So help me understand, because you were there, you're like in the fraternity of elite warriors. What actually is a government like the United States thinking when it spends all those resources to rescue two guys?

[Jack Carr]

Well, certainly not thinking about any of the financial aspects of it, that's for sure. I mean, one day of fraud in Minnesota or California should pay for most of that, whatever was left to behind. But no, they're just thinking about recovering this, recovering our personnel, rescuing, I should say, our personnel.

[Thomas Small]

It's like honor. It's the soldier's honor, a warrior's honor.

[Jack Carr]

And it sends a message to the rest of the force. It sends a message to our allies, it sends a message to our enemies. It was a bold decision and the right decision. And every single service man and woman know that if anything happens to them downrange, that this particular group of leaders in the military, these elected representatives that we have in other parts of our government, that they will come and get me. And that's a huge part of this. That means that they're not wasting bandwidth. But as they're doing whatever they're doing, whatever the mission may be, they're not thinking, oh my gosh, if this goes bad, I'm going to get left behind, I'm going to get beheaded or whatever it might be. They're like, I know they're going to come get me, and I can focus all my bandwidth on whatever my job is at this particular point in time. So I see it's immeasurable. The value of what happened across the force is really immeasurable.

[Thomas Small]

So when you think about Targeted Beirut, your nonfiction book about the US Marines barracks bombing, what would you say? Like, you know, that bombing is kind of historic now. It was the origin point, really, for, like, modern asymmetric terrorism. But I don't think people at the time really understood what was going on. It was sort of shocking. So, technically, tell us about that.

[Jack Carr]

That's it. Anytime you look at something from the historical perspective, you have to put yourself in the shoes of those at the time and realize that they only had their life experience up to that point in order to make the decision. That's the only factors that they have, they don't have, in this case, 40 plus years of hindsight to apply to a book that's analyzing their every move and every decision. But for me, I knew that I was going to go into the nonfiction space at some point. Unfortunately, there's a long list of different terrorist events that I could have stood, studied and could have focused on for this first book. But I kept coming back to Beirut, 1983, because it was such a seminal event in the history of our relationship with the Middle East. It has loomed large over US Foreign policy ever since. But I kept coming back to that one in particular. And I was young at the time. I remember the Newsweek and the Time magazine covers that came across our kitchen table. I remember the Walter Cronkite, of course, from 1979. I remember him talking up the days that are sort of men had been imprisoned in Iran, had been hostages in Iran. Then a few years later, I see this bombing and see the Newsweek and the Time. And I have those magazines in the other room right now. They're part of the research for Targeted Beirut over here. But I kept coming back to that one as the first one in a series of books about terrorism. And I wanted it also to be history. I didn't want it to be pop history, if you know what I mean. I didn't want it to be me reading a bunch of books on the Middle east on this event and giving my take on it and then just getting, getting it out there. I wanted this to be an actual work of history done the right way. So teamed up with an amazing guy, James Scott, historian, Pulitzer Prize finalist, who I've learned so much from about research, about the proper way to research going into archives properly and legally annotating primary sources and all the, all the rest of it in the notes section of the, of the book. So he's just an incredible guy. I got so lucky that he wanted to work with me on these. But, but kept coming back to April. Well, first April 83, then October 83. So April 83 we have the embassy bombing and we do 17Americans in that one. We have a very bloody summer. And I wasn't aware of just how bloody that summer was because from the administration perspective, they keep talking about the Marines in place as peacekeepers. They see peacekeepers, peacekeepers, peacekeepers over and over again. But what they really did was drop a bunch of Marines who are trained up to destroy the enemy and they dropped them into the middle the of, of what we can term, we can I guess, look at as a civil war, drop them in the middle of it and then tell without any training to go along with that and say kind of, hey, keep the peace here. And with all those factions, you have Israel coming in here, of course they're in Lebanon, you have the Iranian side of it, you have Syria, you have all these different factions. By neighborhood, the change by neighborhood, it's just to drop these guys into the place there, I think looking back, we can say was probably a mistake. And I talked to Michael Reagan before he passed away and he said it haunted him, his father, till the day he died. This incident that happened In October of

[Thomas Small]

83, I bet, you know, I found it very kind of resonant because as that tension between this sort of official idea of what's going on, peacekeeping, but what's actually happening, which is like a brutal war and American personnel can't but be involved in it and ultimately are victims of it. And I felt that it really resonated, resonated with the disconnect that seems to be the case now like with the war in Iran that people, a lot of people, a lot of Americans, a lot of non Americans, they sort of, they have a kind of rose colored view of the world order. And so when things are pushed in the direction of military action, when you basically are like, okay, we gotta do something and it's not always pleasant, but people think like that's kind of crazy, like they had no idea that that was even on the agenda. Agenda, because I thought it was all about peace, love, joy, free trade, blah, blah, blah, they don't actually understand the degree of, you know, martial violence that is always present to keep the show on the road. So I felt that that tension was being dramatized in your book.

[Jack Carr]

Yeah, I wanted to personalize it. When I started down this, this path in the nonfiction space, I wanted to personalize these events because when you HEAR Something like 241 US servicemen killed in Beirut in 1983, in October, that's a big number. But then you say, okay, you kind of chalk it up. You hear a number like over 58,000 killed in Vietnam, like, that's a big number. But you personalize it and you tell the story of the event through the eyes of those who were there, some who made it and some who didn't. Then you get to, oh, this has multi generational effects, not just in the Middle east, but personally across families. You lose a brother, you lose. Lose a son, you lose a husband, you lose a father. That is multi generational effects that don't just affect the next one, but it affects the next and the next and the next. And those ripples, they go out across time. And so I really wanted to personalize. It was very emotional to write, to meet with the guys who survived and who were digging through the rubble with their bare hands, with K bar knives, with a crowbar, a shovel if they could find it, trying to dig as many survivors out as they could, to talk to the survivors who were trapped under the rubble for hours and hours. Some who dug themselves out, some who were. Were eventually pulled out by their comrades digging them out. It's just so emotional. It's emotional for those guys and a lot of them. It's still October 1983 for those guys. To talk to the, the leadership, to talk to the, the family members who lost loved ones, it is just. It's heartbreaking. And the Marine Corps wanted to move on fairly quickly in the aftermath of this event. They lost more men in a single day than they lost since Iwo Jima in World War II. And so a lot of the guys who were there felt like, and rightly so, that the Marine Corps wanted to move on from this. It wasn't a bright, shining moment in the history of the corps. Now with 40 years of hindsight, now we can look at those lessons. And one of the big lessons of Beirut, 1983 aren't lessons for us. There weren't really lessons as far as force protection. And should you or shouldn't you put people into a certain situation? There's not one model that ever fits another situation exactly. But it's what the enemy learned from us. And by enemy, I mean it could be a super empowered individual, it could be a terrorist organization, could be could be a nation state, but it taught specifically Iran, in this case, that terrorism works. More specifically, it works through proxies. And there's an acceptable level of violence. It seems that changes based on administrations and what else is going on in the world, the geopolitical situation at whatever given time. But seems like for both US and Israel, there's an acceptable level of violence. And if one side doesn't exceed that level of violence, then the repercussions for an attack, for an event are minimal. And in the case of Beirut 1983, there was a lot of tough talk from the administration. And then we left in early 1984 as quietly as one can. And that taught the enemy that terrorism works. And then we can fast forward to other events. We can fast forward to the attack attacks on our embassies in Nairobi, Tanzania. And once again, not much of a response. We can go to USS Cole. Not much of a response. 9, 11. Unacceptable level of violence. And now there's repercussions. And the same thing has happened for with Israel as well. So it's a very strange thing to think about there being an acceptable level of violence, but that's what the enemy can take away from Beirut, 1983.

[Thomas Small]

It's really interesting. It's linked to that Operation Eagle Claw too, because that was a radio. Real awkward period for America's foreign policy. America's military, they didn't really know coming out of Vietnam. Plus this sort of 60s generation was coming into power. They were a little bit more skeptical maybe about the virtue of American leadership. And it all became very complicated. And yet now we see it's still going on. I mean, that's the thing. This war that's going on now is really old. This is the latest phase in a really. Now listen, Jack, we gotta bring this to a close. I just do want to talk about your new novel, the fourth option. So until now, most of your novels, your hero James Reese has featured. But you're introducing a new hero now, Chris Walker. How is he different from James Reese? And where are you going with this new character?

[Jack Carr]

That's right. Yeah. The first seven books are all James Reese. He's a Navy SEAL background very similar to mine. Prior enlisted, sniper becomes an officer, that sort of a thing. But then for the eighth one, I went back to 1968. It's called Cry Havoc. And I went to the dad. 1968, Vietnam, Mac V. Sog really took an espionage story and dropped it into the heart of Saigon because I hadn't seen someone do that since. Let's say Graham Green's the Quiet American or Charles McCarry's the Tears of Autumn or Jean le Carre the Honorable Schoolboy. And those are very old books. And so I wanted to take that, but add this, this authenticity, this foundation that I have in all my novels. Meaning when I think think about a character taking a sniper shot, I go back and remember what that was like to press that trigger. When I talk about a character being a completely fictional ambush could be in Los Angeles, California, I go back and remember what it was like to be in an ambush in Baghdad in 2006. And I take those feelings and emotions and I apply them to the narrative. So even if a reader doesn't know that I was in an ambush, it feels real for some reason because they come from a real place and my heart and soul goes into every word. But after that I thought, you know what? I need to I want to branch out. I have all these other ideas and I'm going to branch out outside the terminalist universe and start this new series, Stranger Comes to Town Western. I mentioned watch watching Westerns with my dad actually at the beginning of this and this is really my modern interpretation of have Gun Will Travel, which is the 1950s, 1960s Western. Of course, there are elements of Magnificent Seven in there. Shane High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider, and a little bit of the equalizer from the 1980s for the Gen Xers and and this is the Stranger Comes to Town, but instead of being on a horse, he's in a 1980s Volkswagen Westy Pop Top Camper and comes to town. And it's really a story about exploring justice through the eyes of him. Chris Walker, former Navy SEAL and CIA operative. And then the guy who's tracking him, this FBI agent, Jared Stanton, who is the the family man who has been to college to law school, who's been an FBI agent, has never had to shoot someone in the line of duty because he's a dad of guys building cases. And it's his vision of justice and Chris Walker's vision of justice as they get closer and closer and closer to this ultimate confrontation. And it's really about what is the meaning of justice? And sometimes really, does justice mean breaking the law?

[Thomas Small]

Well, what is the meaning of justice? I think we're all asking that a lot these days. So everyone should go out and buy

[Jack Carr]

your new book coming out May 12, and it's called the fourth option. And a lot of people always ask, is it available an audiobook? And yes, it is. Ray Porter, amazing narrator is is reading it. And he's an incredible guy. So ebook, audiobook hardcover May 12 okay,

[Thomas Small]

so that's the fourth option. And also dear listeners, it's really worthwhile reading the earlier book Targeted Beirut, especially in the context of this Iran war. It does fill in a lot of the details and it does make you see or helps you to see that this is a long story. This is just the latest chapter in a much longer, larger story. Jack Carr, thank you so much for coming on Conflicted. It's been a real a privilege and a pleasure. That was novelist and historian Jack Carr. You will love his book targeted Beirut, the 1983 Marine barracks bombing and the Untold Origin Story of the War on Terror. And his latest number, the fourth option is available for pre order now. And remember, for deeper dives into the ideas we explore on this show, including extended conversations and Q&As with my CO host Eamon Dean. Check the show notes for details on how to join the conflicted community. I'm Thomas Small. Conflicted is a Message Heard Production Our executive producers are Jake Warren and Max Warren. This episode was produced by Thomas Small and edited by Alan Lear.

[Jack Carr]

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