[Music]
you
at the height of the Afghanistan
conflict or what sometimes get asked how
many people I’d killed I always
struggled with that question
I have a literal mind sometimes and part
of me would always wonder well how do
you calculate that does it only count if
I pull the trigger or does it count if I
approve a target while in a headquarters
far from the battlefield if you follow
that logic far enough the question can
be turned back upon the asker soldiers
don’t find themselves in places where
they can kill by their own design no
something has put them there their
country their government which after all
is representative of the people at least
it’s in a democracy so in one sense it
might be me who pulls the trigger but in
another sense we all pull the trigger
and that is how it should be decisions
to use force to decide who lives and who
dies or among the most serious decisions
we can make they go beyond one person
because of the cost both to those who
are killed but also to those who kill to
kill another human being is to stare
into an abyss as Clint Eastwood said in
the movie Unforgiven it’s a hell of a
thing killing a man take away everything
he’s got and everything he’s ever going
to have my profession the profession of
arms is all about the use of force that
is our area of expertise my profession
is not unfailing but one thing we do
understand is that there are limitations
to the use of force the fog of war is
real first reports are generally wrong
and when we decide to use force we must
purge non-essential information to make
the best decision possible in an
environment where the most we can
probably hope for is controlled chaos
there’s a drill we do call the a shoot
no shoot exercise we blindfold somebody
disorient them then expose them to a
situation where they have to make a snap
decision the goal is for them to shoot
who needs to be shot and to not shoot
those who do not need to be shot
people struggle with sensory overload
the distance to targets number of
targets facial expression postures but
over time they learn to parse out
non-essential information to make the
best to prioritize the most reliable
signs of a threat what’s in somebody’s
hands on a collective level we designate
main efforts supporting efforts things
to prioritize information because
priorities things that are regarded is
more important than others guide our
decisions but it’s easy to lose sight of
priorities isn’t it I decided to join
the military not because I wanted to
serve my country but because I wanted a
paid education that was my priority my
family wasn’t poor but nor did we have a
money tree and the world was pretty safe
in the mid 90s it was years before a
group of men would crash planes into the
World Trade Center in the Pentagon few
years later in 2002 I found myself in
Afghanistan with a whole new set of
priorities defeating the Taliban and
al-qaeda getting everybody in my platoon
home alive on April 17th of that year we
were doing a night firing exercise it
was a wonderful night the kind that
never makes it into war movies the sky
was clear and I was in the company of
soldiers who were more like family than
colleagues we’d eaten together stood
guard together shower together we even
burned our ship together at one point
that night I stopped to talk to another
soldier both of us unaware that two f-16
fighter jets were flying overhead also
unaware that one of the pilots had
assessed our training activity as enemy
surface-to-air fire and thus a threat
and equally unaware that even at that
moment a 500-pound bomb was hurtling
towards a point on the Earth’s surface
less than a few hundred meters from
where we stood Tim O’Brien once wrote
that in many ways a true war story
cannot be believed you see often the
actual events are so implausible that
the storyteller has to invent a series
of escalating normal events so that the
crazy stuff is more believable in this
case what’s crazy about a 500-pound bomb
being dropped on a hundred person
infantry company isn’t that so many
people were killed and wounded
but so few but violence is fickle it can
be a sort that cuts both ways after the
bombing there were many who wanted the
heads of those pilots understandably on
the one hand it was a tragic event a
dereliction of duty two resulted in four
heartbreaking funerals on the other hand
it was a mistake and if you think about
it
mistakes happen in the workplace all the
time but when the tools of your
profession are designed to kill mistakes
can be unforgiving this is the thing I
think many people don’t appreciate about
violence it’s why many professional
martial artists might say that the best
outcome of a violent encounter isn’t to
win it’s to walk away unharmed to
survive because at a certain point all
bets are off like the character who says
in the movie Black Hawk Down you can’t
control who gets hit or who doesn’t it
ain’t up to you it’s just war but
decisions have consequences the
consequence of a pilot deciding to bomb
an infantry company was at four good men
died more were wounded and many more
decided to live their lives to make sure
that those lives weren’t in vain for
right or wrong priorities changed and
not only do decisions have consequences
but there are unique costs to the use of
violence in 2011 I was back in
Afghanistan for my fifth tour in charge
of a unit one day there was a prison
break hundreds of Taliban prisoners
escaped we sent out teams to help
recapture them and they found himself in
a local village while they were there a
stray dog attacked was thin mangy very
possibly diseased the soldiers tried to
shoo it away and it wouldn’t go and at a
certain point one of the soldiers
decided to fire a warning shot
well the bullet ricocheted hit a cow
ruining it bad enough that it had to be
euthanized before the cow was pregnant
and before it died it gave birth to a
premature calf which died also and so it
goes as Kurt Vonnegut might say I wasn’t
there when any of this happened not that
it would have mattered I was responsible
I went to meet the village elders to
work out reparations
and I had all the answers our mission
was just we were supporting the rule of
law providing security so that
development could take place and yes it
was tragic that the cow had died but
that had not been our intent and at any
rate I was there to set things right
well the elders told me a story of their
own they said that in the battle between
bulls
it’s the Sheep who get trampled I asked
my interpreter about that later on I
asked him if he thought there had been
any Taliban in that village and he said
if there weren’t before there are now if
I can tell you one thing from a lifetime
of studying violence it’s that dr.
Martin Luther King jr. had it right
violence begets violence every instance
of violence bursts the seeds of new
conflict and it would be one thing if
those consequences were limited to the
first order but they’re not no there are
often second and third order effects
many of which are difficult to predict
like this one several years ago I had a
wonderful routine with my daughter who
was 4 weekend mornings we get up early
go to the basement she’d watch cartoons
and I’ve trained martial arts well one
morning we go downstairs and I stopped
to get her a snack we’re tired we have a
newborn who’d been up all night and as
I’m getting a bowl of strawberries my
daughter asks daddy little Kay for good
people to do bad things to bad people
now I hear the question and I have no
idea where it came from
it’s tired I’m tired you thoroughly and
I just want to get my daughter in front
of the television from a few minutes
just so I can wake up but she’s asked it
is only a four-year-old can equal parts
innocence and honesty and my profession
is what’s all about the use of force
it’s all about doing bad things to bad
people and it strikes me that if I can’t
explain this to a four-year-old then
maybe I don’t deserve the rank on my
uniform so I kneel down and I look her
in the eyes and the whole time the gears
are cranking I’m thinking up a vanilla
response but I’m also thinking that I
have two young
who I want to be 10 times stronger than
I could ever be because in the real
world there are predators no danger does
not lurk around every corner but it does
have a way of finding us especially when
we’re least prepared so I say sweetie
sometimes we have to do bad things to
people to stop them from doing even
worse things to us but that doesn’t mean
it’s ok to hurt people because when we
hurt someone else
we also hurt ourselves if I’d been more
thoughtful I might have said any man’s
death diminishes me before I am involved
in mankind therefore never send to know
For Whom the Bell Tolls it tolls for
thee but as I said it was early as it
was her eyes rolled up in her head and I
remember thinking I had utterly blown it
but after a few seconds she said ok she
asked me for a strawberry I said sure
sweetie I picked her up when we went
downstairs
so I’m sitting beside her on the couch
and I can’t stop thinking about this
she’s moved on long ago she’s worried
about who do you ask for help when you
don’t know where to go and I’m thinking
about her question and my response and I
realized I’ve missed half her life to
this point I’ve been busy playing army
and I could easily have missed this to
yet another consequence and then who
would have explained it to her who would
have explained how we as a society
justify the use of violence of killing
somebody and it’s important because
killing is wrong whether in service to
your country or as a crime of passion
whatever the context it is wrong no that
is not to say that violence and killing
aren’t sometimes necessary because there
are times when they absolutely are there
are people in this world who mean to do
harm to others and so we may at times
have to harden our hearts and cause harm
in order to prevent or stop even greater
harm and while our hearts must be
immovable made of steel that gives us
the resilience to endure and commit acts
that we know are wrong they must also be
supple enough to preserve our humanity
otherwise what are we fighting for but
if violence is wrong if killing is wrong
and we as a society continue to put
people into harm’s way with the
expectation that they will kill on our
behalf if necessary what kind of
position do we put them in an impossible
one how do we prepare militaries are
good at conditioning people to overcome
their resistance to killing partly
through training but also partly through
diffusion of responsibility as in it’s
not just them pulling the trigger but if
we all share a portion of the
responsibility for state sanctioned
violence then what the society do to
prepare itself for the cost of violence
done on its behalf this is not a new
question
Rosa Brooks in her book how everything
became more documents just a few of the
examples of how ancient civilizations
prepared their warriors and their
broader civilization for combat even as
late as the Second World War
forces marched off to war and society
turned out to watch not because everyone
loves a parade
we don’t know it’s because these are
societal symbols of collective
responsibility collective accountability
affirmations that when that sister
brother son or daughter must look down
the sights of their rifle and decide who
lives and who dies they do not stand
alone so they stand with the weight of a
nation behind them Richard Holmes wrote
that societies which ask soldiers to
fight on their behalf should be aware of
what the consequences of their actions
may so easily be and since we know there
are consequences and since we know that
the unique costs of violence is more
violence
we know the effects touch everything
from the policy goal being sought to the
reintegration of service members into
society for there are limitations to
what military force can accomplish
witness the conflicts in Iraq
Afghanistan Syria there will be a result
but any decision achieved primarily
through military force is not likely to
be absolute because it is a means to an
end
it is a tool to accomplish an objective
that a society wants bad enough that it
is willing to kill to get it but how can
those decisions be made if the society
doesn’t understand the costs involved
consider the reintegration of
servicemembers study after study has
shown that the nature of social support
can mitigate the effects of exposure to
combat and by social support I’m not
talking about military appreciation
Knights or military discounts which by
the way are all great and veterans
appreciate them but what I’m talking
about is social support as the
understanding from a society that what
those people did was necessary that
there was a difficult job to be done and
that society as a whole stood up and
said for right or wrong we asked you to
kill on our behalf and in doing so we
understood that you yourself might have
had to die we understand and we
appreciate it because in this case it is
the soldier who provides the hardened
shell of society is a moveable heart
doing what is necessary to survive
complemented with humanity’s compassion
and understanding is it possible that if
society better understood the cost of
violence that more thought and care am I
going to these decisions if that was a
case could we make more progress because
there must be something else to look
forward to than perpetual war and
conflict we talk about costs what’s the
opportunity cost of the money spent
globally on defense
I met a soldier once on his sixth
deployment and he told me that he would
be willing to go to war 20 times if it
meant his children wouldn’t have to
having tried to explain violence to my
own children I understand how he felt I
too would go to war 20 times a hundred
times if I thought it would spare my
children having to stare into the abyss
of killing another human being but for
the life of me I cannot see an end in
sight the military part of me accepts
that violence and war have been part of
our history almost forever and that’s
not likely to change but when I think
about the money spent on defense on
security on better ways to track and
surveil and destroy I despair of our
dwindling opportunities to address other
complex challenges
how will we tackle issues like why
change artificial intelligence
drug-resistant bacteria if we cannot
stop killing each other I don’t have the
answer for that all I am is a simple
soldier a grunt and violence is bigger
than me it’s bigger than all of us here
I’m a student and will never be a master
but I know enough to tell you that to
use violence against another human being
is to flirt with disaster it is to fight
with monsters there’s a scene in the
movie true romance where a hitman is
describing what it’s like to kill
somebody
he says now the first time you kill
somebody
that’s the hardest the second one second
one ain’t no Mardi Gras either but it’s
better than the first you still feel the
same thing but it’s better than the
third one third one’s easy
you level right off now now I do it just
to watch their expression change well
ladies and gentlemen the thing about
monsters is they fight back and just as
individuals who fight with monsters must
guard against becoming one themselves so
to do societies otherwise what are we
fighting for thank you
[Applause]
you
at the height of the Afghanistan
conflict or what sometimes get asked how
many people I’d killed I always
struggled with that question
I have a literal mind sometimes and part
of me would always wonder well how do
you calculate that does it only count if
I pull the trigger or does it count if I
approve a target while in a headquarters
far from the battlefield if you follow
that logic far enough the question can
be turned back upon the asker soldiers
don’t find themselves in places where
they can kill by their own design no
something has put them there their
country their government which after all
is representative of the people at least
it’s in a democracy so in one sense it
might be me who pulls the trigger but in
another sense we all pull the trigger
and that is how it should be decisions
to use force to decide who lives and who
dies or among the most serious decisions
we can make they go beyond one person
because of the cost both to those who
are killed but also to those who kill to
kill another human being is to stare
into an abyss as Clint Eastwood said in
the movie Unforgiven it’s a hell of a
thing killing a man take away everything
he’s got and everything he’s ever going
to have my profession the profession of
arms is all about the use of force that
is our area of expertise my profession
is not unfailing but one thing we do
understand is that there are limitations
to the use of force the fog of war is
real first reports are generally wrong
and when we decide to use force we must
purge non-essential information to make
the best decision possible in an
environment where the most we can
probably hope for is controlled chaos
there’s a drill we do call the a shoot
no shoot exercise we blindfold somebody
disorient them then expose them to a
situation where they have to make a snap
decision the goal is for them to shoot
who needs to be shot and to not shoot
those who do not need to be shot
people struggle with sensory overload
the distance to targets number of
targets facial expression postures but
over time they learn to parse out
non-essential information to make the
best to prioritize the most reliable
signs of a threat what’s in somebody’s
hands on a collective level we designate
main efforts supporting efforts things
to prioritize information because
priorities things that are regarded is
more important than others guide our
decisions but it’s easy to lose sight of
priorities isn’t it I decided to join
the military not because I wanted to
serve my country but because I wanted a
paid education that was my priority my
family wasn’t poor but nor did we have a
money tree and the world was pretty safe
in the mid 90s it was years before a
group of men would crash planes into the
World Trade Center in the Pentagon few
years later in 2002 I found myself in
Afghanistan with a whole new set of
priorities defeating the Taliban and
al-qaeda getting everybody in my platoon
home alive on April 17th of that year we
were doing a night firing exercise it
was a wonderful night the kind that
never makes it into war movies the sky
was clear and I was in the company of
soldiers who were more like family than
colleagues we’d eaten together stood
guard together shower together we even
burned our ship together at one point
that night I stopped to talk to another
soldier both of us unaware that two f-16
fighter jets were flying overhead also
unaware that one of the pilots had
assessed our training activity as enemy
surface-to-air fire and thus a threat
and equally unaware that even at that
moment a 500-pound bomb was hurtling
towards a point on the Earth’s surface
less than a few hundred meters from
where we stood Tim O’Brien once wrote
that in many ways a true war story
cannot be believed you see often the
actual events are so implausible that
the storyteller has to invent a series
of escalating normal events so that the
crazy stuff is more believable in this
case what’s crazy about a 500-pound bomb
being dropped on a hundred person
infantry company isn’t that so many
people were killed and wounded
but so few but violence is fickle it can
be a sort that cuts both ways after the
bombing there were many who wanted the
heads of those pilots understandably on
the one hand it was a tragic event a
dereliction of duty two resulted in four
heartbreaking funerals on the other hand
it was a mistake and if you think about
it
mistakes happen in the workplace all the
time but when the tools of your
profession are designed to kill mistakes
can be unforgiving this is the thing I
think many people don’t appreciate about
violence it’s why many professional
martial artists might say that the best
outcome of a violent encounter isn’t to
win it’s to walk away unharmed to
survive because at a certain point all
bets are off like the character who says
in the movie Black Hawk Down you can’t
control who gets hit or who doesn’t it
ain’t up to you it’s just war but
decisions have consequences the
consequence of a pilot deciding to bomb
an infantry company was at four good men
died more were wounded and many more
decided to live their lives to make sure
that those lives weren’t in vain for
right or wrong priorities changed and
not only do decisions have consequences
but there are unique costs to the use of
violence in 2011 I was back in
Afghanistan for my fifth tour in charge
of a unit one day there was a prison
break hundreds of Taliban prisoners
escaped we sent out teams to help
recapture them and they found himself in
a local village while they were there a
stray dog attacked was thin mangy very
possibly diseased the soldiers tried to
shoo it away and it wouldn’t go and at a
certain point one of the soldiers
decided to fire a warning shot
well the bullet ricocheted hit a cow
ruining it bad enough that it had to be
euthanized before the cow was pregnant
and before it died it gave birth to a
premature calf which died also and so it
goes as Kurt Vonnegut might say I wasn’t
there when any of this happened not that
it would have mattered I was responsible
I went to meet the village elders to
work out reparations
and I had all the answers our mission
was just we were supporting the rule of
law providing security so that
development could take place and yes it
was tragic that the cow had died but
that had not been our intent and at any
rate I was there to set things right
well the elders told me a story of their
own they said that in the battle between
bulls
it’s the Sheep who get trampled I asked
my interpreter about that later on I
asked him if he thought there had been
any Taliban in that village and he said
if there weren’t before there are now if
I can tell you one thing from a lifetime
of studying violence it’s that dr.
Martin Luther King jr. had it right
violence begets violence every instance
of violence bursts the seeds of new
conflict and it would be one thing if
those consequences were limited to the
first order but they’re not no there are
often second and third order effects
many of which are difficult to predict
like this one several years ago I had a
wonderful routine with my daughter who
was 4 weekend mornings we get up early
go to the basement she’d watch cartoons
and I’ve trained martial arts well one
morning we go downstairs and I stopped
to get her a snack we’re tired we have a
newborn who’d been up all night and as
I’m getting a bowl of strawberries my
daughter asks daddy little Kay for good
people to do bad things to bad people
now I hear the question and I have no
idea where it came from
it’s tired I’m tired you thoroughly and
I just want to get my daughter in front
of the television from a few minutes
just so I can wake up but she’s asked it
is only a four-year-old can equal parts
innocence and honesty and my profession
is what’s all about the use of force
it’s all about doing bad things to bad
people and it strikes me that if I can’t
explain this to a four-year-old then
maybe I don’t deserve the rank on my
uniform so I kneel down and I look her
in the eyes and the whole time the gears
are cranking I’m thinking up a vanilla
response but I’m also thinking that I
have two young
who I want to be 10 times stronger than
I could ever be because in the real
world there are predators no danger does
not lurk around every corner but it does
have a way of finding us especially when
we’re least prepared so I say sweetie
sometimes we have to do bad things to
people to stop them from doing even
worse things to us but that doesn’t mean
it’s ok to hurt people because when we
hurt someone else
we also hurt ourselves if I’d been more
thoughtful I might have said any man’s
death diminishes me before I am involved
in mankind therefore never send to know
For Whom the Bell Tolls it tolls for
thee but as I said it was early as it
was her eyes rolled up in her head and I
remember thinking I had utterly blown it
but after a few seconds she said ok she
asked me for a strawberry I said sure
sweetie I picked her up when we went
downstairs
so I’m sitting beside her on the couch
and I can’t stop thinking about this
she’s moved on long ago she’s worried
about who do you ask for help when you
don’t know where to go and I’m thinking
about her question and my response and I
realized I’ve missed half her life to
this point I’ve been busy playing army
and I could easily have missed this to
yet another consequence and then who
would have explained it to her who would
have explained how we as a society
justify the use of violence of killing
somebody and it’s important because
killing is wrong whether in service to
your country or as a crime of passion
whatever the context it is wrong no that
is not to say that violence and killing
aren’t sometimes necessary because there
are times when they absolutely are there
are people in this world who mean to do
harm to others and so we may at times
have to harden our hearts and cause harm
in order to prevent or stop even greater
harm and while our hearts must be
immovable made of steel that gives us
the resilience to endure and commit acts
that we know are wrong they must also be
supple enough to preserve our humanity
otherwise what are we fighting for but
if violence is wrong if killing is wrong
and we as a society continue to put
people into harm’s way with the
expectation that they will kill on our
behalf if necessary what kind of
position do we put them in an impossible
one how do we prepare militaries are
good at conditioning people to overcome
their resistance to killing partly
through training but also partly through
diffusion of responsibility as in it’s
not just them pulling the trigger but if
we all share a portion of the
responsibility for state sanctioned
violence then what the society do to
prepare itself for the cost of violence
done on its behalf this is not a new
question
Rosa Brooks in her book how everything
became more documents just a few of the
examples of how ancient civilizations
prepared their warriors and their
broader civilization for combat even as
late as the Second World War
forces marched off to war and society
turned out to watch not because everyone
loves a parade
we don’t know it’s because these are
societal symbols of collective
responsibility collective accountability
affirmations that when that sister
brother son or daughter must look down
the sights of their rifle and decide who
lives and who dies they do not stand
alone so they stand with the weight of a
nation behind them Richard Holmes wrote
that societies which ask soldiers to
fight on their behalf should be aware of
what the consequences of their actions
may so easily be and since we know there
are consequences and since we know that
the unique costs of violence is more
violence
we know the effects touch everything
from the policy goal being sought to the
reintegration of service members into
society for there are limitations to
what military force can accomplish
witness the conflicts in Iraq
Afghanistan Syria there will be a result
but any decision achieved primarily
through military force is not likely to
be absolute because it is a means to an
end
it is a tool to accomplish an objective
that a society wants bad enough that it
is willing to kill to get it but how can
those decisions be made if the society
doesn’t understand the costs involved
consider the reintegration of
servicemembers study after study has
shown that the nature of social support
can mitigate the effects of exposure to
combat and by social support I’m not
talking about military appreciation
Knights or military discounts which by
the way are all great and veterans
appreciate them but what I’m talking
about is social support as the
understanding from a society that what
those people did was necessary that
there was a difficult job to be done and
that society as a whole stood up and
said for right or wrong we asked you to
kill on our behalf and in doing so we
understood that you yourself might have
had to die we understand and we
appreciate it because in this case it is
the soldier who provides the hardened
shell of society is a moveable heart
doing what is necessary to survive
complemented with humanity’s compassion
and understanding is it possible that if
society better understood the cost of
violence that more thought and care am I
going to these decisions if that was a
case could we make more progress because
there must be something else to look
forward to than perpetual war and
conflict we talk about costs what’s the
opportunity cost of the money spent
globally on defense
I met a soldier once on his sixth
deployment and he told me that he would
be willing to go to war 20 times if it
meant his children wouldn’t have to
having tried to explain violence to my
own children I understand how he felt I
too would go to war 20 times a hundred
times if I thought it would spare my
children having to stare into the abyss
of killing another human being but for
the life of me I cannot see an end in
sight the military part of me accepts
that violence and war have been part of
our history almost forever and that’s
not likely to change but when I think
about the money spent on defense on
security on better ways to track and
surveil and destroy I despair of our
dwindling opportunities to address other
complex challenges
how will we tackle issues like why
change artificial intelligence
drug-resistant bacteria if we cannot
stop killing each other I don’t have the
answer for that all I am is a simple
soldier a grunt and violence is bigger
than me it’s bigger than all of us here
I’m a student and will never be a master
but I know enough to tell you that to
use violence against another human being
is to flirt with disaster it is to fight
with monsters there’s a scene in the
movie true romance where a hitman is
describing what it’s like to kill
somebody
he says now the first time you kill
somebody
that’s the hardest the second one second
one ain’t no Mardi Gras either but it’s
better than the first you still feel the
same thing but it’s better than the
third one third one’s easy
you level right off now now I do it just
to watch their expression change well
ladies and gentlemen the thing about
monsters is they fight back and just as
individuals who fight with monsters must
guard against becoming one themselves so
to do societies otherwise what are we
fighting for thank you
[Applause]
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