Scott Mann

But Afghanistan was the most glaring example of it for me.

And it really set me forward to put this book out.

It does.

And honestly, you talked about the churn.

So, you know, with special forces, and I think this is true with all special ops and even combat veterans in Afghanistan, but special forces by doctrine, you know, they get dropped into low trust

at-risk areas where there is a ton of conflict right and that's by definition why they're there and it's usually a strategically relevant area then that green beret team will go in and they should work by with and through the indigenous people in that area to build social capital or relationships rapport trust over time and then ultimately as you said inspire those people to go up on rooftops and fight back right to fight back from the inside out the bottom up um

And that is the nature of unconventional warfare.

That is the bread and butter of Green Berets.

That's what they do.

And there's a lot of, I think, a lot of confusion out there on the different special ops groups.

But at the heart of Green Berets, that's what they've done since World War II with the OSS teams working with partisans in Europe.

They would go in, the Jedburgh teams, and they would mobilize these partisans, build trust, and then

combat advised them shoulder to shoulder against infrastructure and the things that we talked about earlier.

So I had the privilege, you know, when I went into Afghanistan in the beginning, it was payback from my buddy Cliff, like a lot of Americans.

It was walking the enemy down for 10 years, but then halfway through the war, we realized we were losing, and we started doing this program called Village Stability, where we lived and operated in these villages, and we worked alongside tribes to do that, and other Afghan communities

And in doing that, Sean, I was one of the ones fortunate enough to be a program director for that.

So I bounced between different villages and I saw these different teams doing this work.

And what really stuck out to me every time is they were going into these low trust areas.

I mean, they just churn of conflict.

And then they would establish trust and rapport at a local level, just using old school interpersonal skills.