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In Iraq in 2006, I was in charge of a SEAL task unit. And our job was to help conventional forces secure and stabilize the city of Ramadi from evil insurgents who were torturing, raping, and murdering the local populace. And it was a complete war zone at the time. And my SEAL Task unit, Task Unit Bruiser, we conducted hundreds of operations to support coalition forces on the ground. And our operations consisted of reconnaissance missions, presence patrols, direct action raids, and sniper overwatches to help out and support the US army and the Marine Corps troops who had the insanely difficult job of clearing the city house to house, street to street, and neighborhood to neighborhood. And the fighting was brutal. And there were many brave soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who took the fight to the enemy. And many of those were wounded and many were killed. And the civilian populace in the city, they suffered heinous crimes against humanity committed by the demonic insurgents. And a couple of months into that deployment, we received some intelligence about a specific Al Qaeda insurgent leader. And he was one of the worst of the worst. He had a reputation of absolute brutality. He was a blood thirsty boss in this evil death cult. And the intelligence that we received about him gave us a window of time and place and an opportunity to kill him. But the window was small, and it was extremely high risk. And the window was small because this particular insurgent leader traveled frequently and he never settled in one place for any length of time. And the risk was high because he traveled with significant security detail of would be martyrs who were ready to kill and die for this homicidal maniac. And due to those parameters, I made an extremely uncommon request up the chain of command. You see, in Iraq, we followed very strict rules of engagement. And the rules of engagement required that an individual, a potential enemy individual, must display either a hostile act or they must show hostile intent before we could engage them. And to put that in a layman's term, what that meant was before one of my seals could shoot, they were required to determine with reasonable certainty that the individual they were shooting was either committing a hostile act or was showing hostile intent. And my seals had to confirm that before they could shoot. And the soldiers and Marines had to follow those same rules of engagement. And these rules of engagement, they are in place to protect the civilian populace and to mitigate collateral damage. But in this particular case, this insurgent leader was not likely to be committing a hostile act or displaying hostile intent in the location where we predicted he was going to be. He was simply scheduled to pass through a specific location. We had intelligence about that. And so what I asked my chain of command was for this individual to be declared hostile and declared hostile. This is a legal term. You can declare an individual hostile. And this can only be done by appropriate high level US Command authorities. And what that means is senior flag officers with the responsibility to weigh all of the available intelligence, all the legal obligations, the political considerations, and they have to think about the consequences for U.S. interests. And then they have to make this decision to declare an individual hostile. But from my perspective, this was the perfect time for the use of this type of declaration, because after all, to restate at this time, Al Qaeda and the insurgents had the upper hand in both Ramadi and in Alhambar Province. They were killing and wounding, wounding coalition forces on a daily basis. And they were wantonly butchering the civilian populace day in and day out. And so this high value targeted individual that we wanted to kill was a leader of this savagery. So if we had the chance to kill him, it made perfect sense to me that we should do just that. So I sent that request up the chain of command that they deem this individual hostile so that we could shoot on site. And quite frankly, I figured that we would get the approval. So the platoon prepared to conduct the operation. They put together a plan, they rehearsed the actions, they dialed in their weapons, they prepared the vehicles, and then waited. And it was a tight timeline as we stood by to execute this mission. So we were a little bit impatient. But finally, just before our drop dead time to launch the operation, we finally received word from our higher headquarters. And the answer was no. The answer was no. They would not allow us to declare this Al Qaeda leader hostile. We would not be able to shoot him when we confirmed in it was him. When we made positive identification, we would not simply be able to engage. No. In keeping with the standard rules of engagement, we would only be able to engage him if he committed a hostile act or displayed hostile intent. Now, this threw a wrench into what our plan was. And unfortunately, due to the tight timeline, due to the restraints of the rules of engagement in this particular situation, we did not execute the mission. We canceled the mission. And of course, at the time, it was very frustrating. I was frustrated. But I know that we can't let our emotions drive our decisions that can have catastrophic results. But seeing so many brave Americans wounded and killed, it was hard not to get emotional when an opportunity to kill enemy leadership like that was missed. So I was frustrated. But at the same time, this was something that reinforced an idea in my mind about who we are. We are Americans. And even in a devastating war zone where American lives are at risk and a clear enemy is present, and even when a targeted individual is without question a targeted individual who is a sadistic, deranged, remorseless, depraved monster, even then, we seldom declare people hostile. We, as Americans, we are supposed to value human life that much. We aspire to live up to our own ideals, the rule of law, and that's what we did. We take and we maintain the moral high ground, even at great risks to ourselves and our American brothers and sisters on the battlefields. But we remember our American values, and we do our utmost to maintain those values and those standards. Now, right now, we have seen those standards and that ideal shattered. Here at home, murder is rampant. Destruction is commonplace, and assassination, assassination. One man, Charlie Kirk, declared hostile by another man and executed for his beliefs and for the words that he spoke. And we see this in our country, on our hallowed homeland, and we see some people cheer and celebrate this execution. And that's sickening. And I ask myself, what have we become? Where does this come from? And I've been asking myself that question. How do people become so depraved? And when I think about that, I think it's important to remember how pliable and impressionable the human mind is, how people are influenced by what they see and what they hear. And if you just look at just normal pop culture trends in music or fashion or language, the words that we use, these things, they change all the time. They grow, and then they fade, and then something else grows. And people follow each other and they follow trends. It's part of our psychology. We as humans, we like to be part of a group. It's an instinct for us. We want to feel secure. And when we don't have those things, that's how brainwashing happens. People in moments or situations of isolation and fear and confusion, those are fertile grounds for manipulation. And once it is recognized that someone is in a bad state, an isolated state, a confused state, then it's just exposure and repetition and reinforcement and group pressure and social influence and indoctrination. And eventually people change. Eventually, people change. They change what they think, and they change what they believe. And that's brainwashing. And in the old days, and by old days, I mean 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, in order to brainwash someone, you had to physically control them. You had to physically remove them from their community. You had to forcibly expose them to the information that you wanted them to accept. And this is pretty challenging to do because it's difficult to get physical access and physical control of another human being at that level. But it's very different now. And everyone is carrying around and glued to a conduit of brainwashing. And we're carrying around that conduit all day, every day in our hands. And it's our phone. And you only have to go on that phone for five minutes to realize the kind of destructive and manipulative and divisive content that's on there. And when you subject a human being to that for 4 hours or 6 hours or 8 hours or 10 hours or 12 hours a day with an algorithm that is specifically engineered and tailored to keep them watching and keep them listening and keep them scrolling and keep them feeling, keep them feeling emotions based on 30 second clips that are curated to make them emotional, to make them frustrated, to make them angry, to make them spiteful, to make them hate and clicks and likes and shares. As stupid and meaningless as we think they are when they happen over and over and over and over again to someone that is insecure, to someone that is alone, to someone that has a pliable young mind, the result is very predictable. Isolation, polarization, dehumanization, radicalization, radicalization. The rejection of societal norms, the adoption of the most extreme views and the abandonment of reason. And it keeps going until it reaches a point where one disturbed and twisted soul believes that he has the right and the authority to declare another man as hostile and execute that man. This is a devolution. This is a regression. This is a decline of our culture. And we cannot accept this behavior. This is. This is tribal murder and what caused it. It's an infection of the mind. And we cannot accept that either. There have to be rules. There must be rules. And I'm not talking about rules to be imposed by our government. I'm not talking about rules to be imposed by the technocrats. I'm talking about rules that we need to apply to ourselves as humans, as individuals, as families, as communities, as Americans, as individual Americans. Do not allow yourself to be manipulated by electronic emotions. Do not allow yourself to be possessed by digital demons. There is darkness in the world. There is evil in the world. And it has never been easier for that evil to crawl inside your head. It has never been easier for that evil to grab a hold of your heart. And it has never been easier for that darkness and that evil to get control of your soul. You must cast it out. You cannot accept that, Master. Listen to your friends, not your feedback. Talk to people, not to the pixels. Connect with your family, not with firmware. And steer away from the darkness that surrounds us. And as strong as the lore of temptation might be, do your utmost, your utmost to walk in the light. In the principles that founded our great nation. Our great nation. Ours. Our country is us. It's us. It is what we do. It is how we behave. It is what we allow and it is what we forbid. Not the legislation, not the political class, not the elite, but us. It's us. You and me. Our forefathers fought for freedom. Many in my generation did the same. We have fought for freedom. And we will do it again. We are not afraid. And we will not tolerate those who aim to destroy us or destroy our way of life, or harm our families, or infringe on our freedom. Freedom is our God given right. It's ours to protect. It's ours to cherish. That is our choice. It's on us to carry on. To stand up for what we believe in. To be better people. To be better people to each other. And to be better people for each other. This is America. We are Americans. Brave, we are strong. We are free. We must not be hostile to each other. We must not be enemies here in our own land. That is unacceptable. Too much blood has already been shed. We need to make bridges instead of blood. For God's sake, and for the sake of our country. We are Americans and we must act like Americans. One nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.