EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,063 words- 0:00 – 3:41
Elk camp catalyst and culture shock: Afghan norms vs American assumptions
- NANarrator
(drum roll) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience. (drums)
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) What's up? What's going on, brother? Good to see you again.
- EHEvan Hafer
(laughs) Good to see you.
- JRJoe Rogan
So this conversation was ... Well, anytime you wanna come on, I'm always happy to talk to you, but this conversation was birthed out of that crazy conversation we had at elk hunting camp.
- EHEvan Hafer
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
We get-
- EHEvan Hafer
Which one?
- JRJoe Rogan
You- Well, yeah, we had a, we had quite a few of them-
- EHEvan Hafer
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... where you just ... Y- you opened up my eyes to some of these. First of all, I never understood the extent of the man fuckery in Afghanistan.
- EHEvan Hafer
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
When we were talking, remember we were hanging out in front of the trucks-
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and you were telling me about Mumbles?
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
There's a few conversations I've had-
- EHEvan Hafer
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... with friends that for the rest of my life, now things are different. Like now I look at-
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and I'm like, that one conversation, that one hour conversation we had, like, "Okay, the world's different now."
- EHEvan Hafer
I, you know, I always assume people have heard these stories from Afghanistan.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, cheers. Cheers, cheers, bro.
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Cheers. (glasses clink) You gotta drink that. You can't cheers with-
- EHEvan Hafer
Oh, yeah. Sorry. You can't cheers with that?
- JRJoe Rogan
You can't cheers with alcohol. Yeah. Buffalo Trace.
- EHEvan Hafer
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- EHEvan Hafer
So yeah, it ... The amount of man on man buggery in Afghanistan is significant, and-
- 3:41 – 4:40
Living with partner forces: assimilation, fatigue, and the less-glamorous realities of war
- EHEvan Hafer
Oh yeah, there's a lot of things you give up, right? You're ... Y- you're taught in SF, drink the tea, eat the food, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EHEvan Hafer
... do everything that they do.
- JRJoe Rogan
Assimilate.
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah, just completely assimilate. And honestly like a lot of that is really good because it does teach you to be a lot more open as far as listening to what they're going through from their tribal plights, like what are they going through from a combat experience? What do they need? And you want, and you want to build rapport. That's what you want to do. And, but rep after rep in a war zone, you kind of get fatigued with that, and then you're like, "Yeah, let's just get to the dirt here, man, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- EHEvan Hafer
Like who do we want to kill? Like let's, let's get to that."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- EHEvan Hafer
And got it, you don't like that tribe, we don't like that tribe. We don't like this, you don't like that. Cool. Okay, so I'm not gonna eat with you because every time I eat with you I can't shit for like-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
... a normal shit for like a year. So we're just gonna not do any of that. And-
- 4:40 – 8:32
Two years of stomach problems: combat ops, exhaustion, and a humiliating Kabul moment
- JRJoe Rogan
You're telling me you literally didn't shit-
- EHEvan Hafer
... bypass it.
- JRJoe Rogan
... anything but diarrhea for, you said more than a year?
- EHEvan Hafer
Dude, yeah, it was years, man. I was-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
Because I was living and working with the Afghans and, and I, I went from Iraq and I did the invasion with Special Forces from the South, and I did multiple rotations in Iraq both with SF and then with the, the agency when I went over there. And then when we did the ... When we shut down Iraq in 2009, I turned around and basically went to Afghanistan in 2009. So I went from Iraq to Afghanistan and I went from Afghanistan, kind of finished up my, my CIA, uh, combat, I guess, experience, and then went back to the States to do a training thing. But by the time I got to Afghanistan, I had lots of time in Iraq. I had like four years on the ground. And Afghanistan was way different, but I was living and, and working with the Afghanis. I was eating with them. And your job is to not only train, assist, and advise, build rapport, but you're trying to figure it out, so you need to be on the ground with them living, eating, breathing, sleeping, like the whole thing. And they're-... what we call the chow hall facilities aren't the cleanliest. You're trying. Like, you're working with them, you know, you institute different things, like soap and water is, like, a good thing. Um, and it doesn't really matter. You're still gonna get sick based on, you know, the water, where is it coming from, where, what type of well source.
- NANarrator
Right.
- EHEvan Hafer
Like, there's, there's lots of different variables, obviously. But, dude, I, I didn't have a solid shit for two years.
- NANarrator
Whoa.
- EHEvan Hafer
And I was just kinda got normalized to the point where, you know, you're, uh, it's (laughs) it's such a gross thing to think about, man. You could not trust a fart, ever.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
And (laughs) I got this great, I got this great story. So I came in off the gun trucks.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
And, uh, and I'm tired. I'm, I'm, like went into the embassy and I had a meeting with somebody in Kabul, and, uh, I had this, like, titanium mug that was like the size of a toilet bowl. And I'm filling it up with coffee, and I haven't slept for, I don't know, let's say 20 hours at the time, I'm, I'm fucking dirty. And I'm filling up this, this, uh, this coffee toilet bowl basically, 'cause I'm getting ready to go into a briefing. And I let out a fart, and it wasn't a fart.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
(laughs) And, and the dude behind me was like-
- NANarrator
Oh.
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah. I didn't even turn around, dude.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
I, I knew there was somebody waiting for me.
- NANarrator
Ugh. Ugh.
- EHEvan Hafer
And I shit my pants.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
And I didn't even turn around. Didn't even blink an eye. Didn't even, like, lift up the handle, 'cause it was just normalized.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
And he goes, "Did you shit your pants?" And I was like, "Yeah."
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
And I just turned around and walked off. It was like-
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
It was the deputy ambassador or somebody. It was like the, it was like the ambassador, right? And I was just like, "Whatever, dude. I got, I got shit to do. I'm outta here."
- 8:32 – 16:29
‘Man love Thursday’ and the darker revelation: Bacha Bazi and child exploitation
- NANarrator
So when did you find out about the buggery?
- EHEvan Hafer
Um-
- NANarrator
Was it something that you need a lighter?"
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah. It was ... So it started in Kuwait. And I had a, I had a, a Arabic linguist, and he was a younger kid. Um, you know, he was blonde hair, blue eyes, he's a Mormon kid. And he literally joined the army at 18, you know? Two years later, after going to the Defensive Language Institute in Monterey, California, you come out and you're speaking Arabic, basically. And young kid, blonde hair, blue eyes, good Mormon kid comes out, and he's with us. And the Kuwaitis r- kept talking about how they wanted to take him camping. And we're like, "Why do you wanna take that dude camping?"
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
Like what's so special about that guy, you know? And you're like, after a while, you realize like that's not what they wanted to do, right? They were like talking about it-
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- EHEvan Hafer
... in like either a joking way or a serious way. But that's the first exposure.
- NANarrator
They wanted to fuck him.
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then-
- NANarrator
Did it take you a while to figure that out?
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah. Yeah, because you're so naive.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
Like, dude, I'm like (laughs) I'm 26 years old. Like I don't fucking know. I don't, I don't think this is a thing. I, I-
- NANarrator
Right.
- EHEvan Hafer
I grew up in Idaho. Like I know, yeah, it exists, but I'm so, you know, blithefully like moving through the world, like thinking everybody's a, an, an American male, right?
- NANarrator
Right.
- EHEvan Hafer
Like, "Yeah, this is weird." And then, you know, you go to Iraq, and where I went, you know, I went to Iraq and multiple, multiple rotations over there. And you start to assimilate with y- the Iraqis you're either working with or you're training with. And then it kinda starts to, to, to fall apart, where it's like, "Oh, this is somewhat normal, uh, for them." Now, they don't talk about it, and I'm not saying it's like everyone, by the way. I'm saying like it's, it's at least relevant enough culturally where it's somewhat normalized and not talked about. It's very strange.
- NANarrator
Is, is the, is it similar in Kuwait-
- EHEvan Hafer
Mm-hmm.
- NANarrator
... as Afghanistan or-
- EHEvan Hafer
Mm-hmm.
- NANarrator
... do they vary? Iraq is different?
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah, they're all a little bit different. Um, and the Afghanis we had to have, um, depending on where we were in their barracks, living situation, like you had to put really hard restrictions, like, you know, no butt-fucking, guys, for the majority of this. Because this is a health issue. We weren't like ... (laughs) It's not like we were, we were putting Bibles on their beds or something.
- NANarrator
Right.
- EHEvan Hafer
We're just saying, "Hey, this is really unhealthy. You guys are gonna spread a bunch of different diseases to one another. And like we've got a mission to, to accomplish here."
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
And every SF guy, every guy that's like been in Afghanistan knows what man love Thursday is, and it's kind of a, it's kind of a thing that they do.
- NANarrator
Is it just Thursday, or is it ... It's, that's just a thing to say.
- EHEvan Hafer
It's by, it's just a thing. Yeah, yeah.
- 16:29 – 19:43
National Geographic clips and the impossibility of ‘fixing’ a broken culture overnight
- NANarrator
Can I say one thing?
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah, there you go.
- JRJoe Rogan
Inside the lives of girls dressed as boys in Afghanistan, the cultural practice of ba- bacha posh? Po-
- EHEvan Hafer
Bacha posh, that's a, I think that's the flip that's the reverse.
- JRJoe Rogan
... encourages parents to dress their daughters as sons for a better future, but often it only makes life harder.
- EHEvan Hafer
That's a different ... so it's boys is dressed as girls.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, so that's the opposite?
- EHEvan Hafer
That's the opposite, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Girls dress as boys.
- EHEvan Hafer
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
So this is a different thing.
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why do they do that? What's that about, girls dressing as boys?
- EHEvan Hafer
Well, I think because, well, one, there's, there's a very low education rate, and when I come back to, uh, Afghanistan-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, so they can get the kids educated if they pretend they're boys?
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah. And women are, are really seen as ... in Afghanistan who I'm, I'm generalizing, right? I'm, I'm, I'm taking really big-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- EHEvan Hafer
... swaths of the Afghan culture.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EHEvan Hafer
So, I know this isn't every Afghan, I've got lots of different Afghan friends and I've hired a lot of Afghans. This isn't everybody.
- JRJoe Rogan
Look. What the heck is this?
- EHEvan Hafer
Um, yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is the dancing boys-
- EHEvan Hafer
This is in their-
- JRJoe Rogan
... they're in Afghanistan. Go back up again, show what's going on. These guys are throwing money-
- EHEvan Hafer
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
... at this dancing boy. Back that up, Jamie.
- NANarrator
I don't ... yeah, it was, I just clicked somewhere random kind of, trying to go back towards you guys.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh. What the fuck, man.
- EHEvan Hafer
Yes. So, those-
- 19:43 – 27:16
Taliban rule, failed-state dynamics, and emotional callusing in prolonged war
- EHEvan Hafer
That's, that's like how many generations would it take? And there's lots of different things that you can talk about, because y- y- the history of Afghanistan is, we'll say post '80s and Soviet, uh, intervention, and then, you know, with the Taliban pushback, the Mujahideen, and like, they completely destroyed the education, the progress and evolution of Afghanistan. I mean, they, they had decades of war. Then you had basically a, um, a failed state with Taliban in extremist control. I mean, as the Taliban moved in, fundamentally, it, it's an evil organization. Uh, I went... There's a soccer field in, in Kabul where the Taliban used to stone women to death because they weren't wearing their hijab. Or the, the rule of a woman would be raped, and she would be accused of infidelity on her husband, and they would stone her, or they would beat her with a stick. And I- they turned the soccer field into a place where they could have public displays for execution. It, it was completely insane. When you, when you think about it from where we're coming from and then where we're going and we're-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EHEvan Hafer
... we're trying to, uh, uh, nation build, which I've, like, fundamental disagreement with that as well. But you, you eliminated the educated portion of your population. You swung to a very extremist fear-based religion, and then there was all, uh, based on the Quran as far as their education system. So they completely separated the women away from being able to evolve. They treated them as beasts of burden. You had to be Islamic extremist to be acceptable. There was a completely, uh, uh, hegemonic, the radical state, or, um, it, it had hegemony as far as, like, it's the theocracy ran everything and it was a very extremist version of Islam. And as we came in, and I wasn't there in 2001. Uh, I came there much later. I came there in 2009, was my first real rotation there. It, it had been seven years, but really it, it was almost like going back in time almost a thou- It felt like you were going back in time like a thousand years.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's one of the things we were talking about in camp, that when you hear about Socrates and all these ancient cultures, the Spartans, all these people that, like, had boys.
- EHEvan Hafer
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you, you, you see what's going on in Afghanistan and you realize, like, how old a culture Afghanistan is. It's like one of the oldest civilizations in terms of like the way they behave. It's almost like they never caught up with the Western world. I think it was, um... Michael Shermer might have wrote a book, uh, uh, paper about this. He wrote an article about how, um, Islam's the only religion that didn't go through the Enlightenment-
- EHEvan Hafer
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and that it's, essentially maintains the same values and, you know, the same cultural values as when it was created. So, you know, what, how old is Islam?
- EHEvan Hafer
Uh, 1600. I think it's, I think it's like, uh, 500 years past Christianity, so let's call it 1,500 years.
- JRJoe Rogan
1,500 years old.
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whatever it is. Th- that, that's how people behaved back then. That's what it is. And when you think about, like, Alexander the Great, Alexander the Great who was gay-
- EHEvan Hafer
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... right, who conquered much of Afghanistan and-
- EHEvan Hafer
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... giant swaths of the world. Um, he probably, like, his army and his behavior, and what he probably stained that area with like a type of behavior.
- EHEvan Hafer
I, I, I think you're 100% right. I think that you had, um, portions of the world were culturally cut off from being able to evolve at the same rate as some of the other places within the Middle East. And those tribes essentially haven't had the opportunity to evolve because they've been very isolated. I mean, look at Afghanistan. It's an extremely isolated area of the world. And, uh, e- e- if you go back to the '70s, it was relatively progressive, somewhat secular, and then...... the Soviet intervention, the collapse, and the failed state led to the rise of the Taliban because they had eviscerated-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EHEvan Hafer
... uh, all of the, the intellectual and the economic class. And in order to succeed or live there, you had to completely capitulate to the theocracy and the fascist state. So, you had to go back in time to live.
- JRJoe Rogan
(exhales)
- EHEvan Hafer
You had to grow a beard. I, and when I say this, isn't everybody is 100% no. I'm saying like, this is the way people lived. They lived under tyrannical rules that provided zero opportunity for ... You know, if you had girls, sorry-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EHEvan Hafer
... they're a beast of burden. They treat goats and donkeys better than their girls, their children. The homelessness of children in a war zone is so heartbreaking. Like, it is, it, it strips away at the goodness in your soul watching desperation and, uh, when you see homeless children every day in these cities that are dirty, starving, uh, and there's really not a lot you can do because, you know, you have a war to ... you have a war to fight. And you not only think about it from the homelessness position, you think about the exploitation position. Like, these kids are so fucked. They're homeless. They don't have parents because maybe their fathers were either, you know, killed in the war. Their mothers can't ... they, they can't afford to keep them, and they continue to have more kids. And especially if they've been raped, then there's a cycle of not only exploitation and violence, but then it's also, uh, it- it- it keeps them down economically. So, you have, uh, massive amounts of children that were homeless and exploited, and they're starving. And it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
(exhales)
- EHEvan Hafer
... y- y- you know, you ... From my perspective, when you live in that environment and ... you can't think about it. Like, you have to shut that stuff out.
- JRJoe Rogan
(exhales)
- EHEvan Hafer
'Cause if you think about it, it's like opening the door of the submarine, it-
- JRJoe Rogan
All the water's coming in.
- EHEvan Hafer
All the water's coming in, and it's gonna fucking sink ya. So, you have to, you have to build a (laughs) , for a lack of a better term, man, you have to build a callous on your soul.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oof.
- 27:16 – 34:00
Veteran suicide crisis and psychedelics: ibogaine, ayahuasca, and the VA’s limits
- EHEvan Hafer
I- time and repetition, which is one of the big problems, I think, with the GWOT community, or at least what we've had in the last 20 years. I mean, there's lots of different compounding factors that, I think, contribute to the acceleration of veteran suicide, which I, I, I don't wanna, like, launch into some, like, rant about the issues that we're, I think we're, we're all faced, but it's, it's definitely something that I'm extremely passionate about.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I'm really hoping, um, and we've talked about this a bunch of times on this podcast, but I'm really hoping that something's gonna change with RFK and about, uh, psychedelics and veterans. I really, really am hoping that they open their eyes to this stuff.
- EHEvan Hafer
Well, (exhales) like, I was talking to Marcus Capone, and he runs VETS, which he's the guy ... His organization is the organization that takes the guys to Mexico to do ibogaine. And Marcus is a retired SEAL. I was talking to him yesterday, actually. And we (exhales) , I- I- I'll go off on this, which is, you know, we as a subculture from the, the global war on terror community, the veterans, we're under an epidemic of suicide and depression. And the VA has not been a help to us, like, especially the war fighters, like the guys that are ... We have rogered up time and time and time again. They've gone overseas. We've done the bidding for the country. We've watched our friends get killed and fucking torn in half in, like, very ultra-violent ways. You know, we've been exposed to overpressure, and chemicals, and all these other things. And then we come back, and within the VA system, their answer is, "Here's your pills. Here's your retirement. Shut the fuck up." And it's not working. You know, Marcus and I were talking about this yesterday. He was on antidepressants for seven years, seven years, like, antidepressants, and they weren't working. And he, just by chance, his wife, I believe, um, said, "This might work. We need to go to, we need to go to Mexico and do ibogaine. This might work." So, here's a guy that went, did it one time, has never been on an antidepressant since.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did he have to get off them before he went there-
- EHEvan Hafer
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and did it?
- EHEvan Hafer
I, I, I, I don't know exactly what the protocol is as far as, like, you have to get off, and then you have to get back down there. I know that most of my friend group now, they've- they've done it, and they have an extremely high success rate. Uh, you know, VETS has done a thousand, uh, former war fighters, and they have an extremely high success rate, where they're eliminating pharmaceuticals. So, they'll go down, they'll do it one time. Maybe they've done, you know, subsequent sessions, and they have this really high success rate. And this is part of the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Better than anything?
- EHEvan Hafer
Yes. This is part of the issue-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EHEvan Hafer
... is we're under an epidemic of veteran suicide, like, uh, more so than we ever have. And the worst thing about this, too, is it's also affecting our family and our kids.... like our kids are four times higher to commit suicide than our peer set. So it's not just, it's not just the GWOT veteran community, now it's our families and, and our, and our children. You have something that has such a proven track record to help heal vets, and we can't do it without breaking the law. We have to leave the country?
- JRJoe Rogan
(scoffs)
- EHEvan Hafer
It's insane. So, you can send me to Iraq under false pretenses and, you know, you can have Wolfowitz and Cheney and Rumsfeld and all these, this, like, orchestra of fucking idiots can send us all to Iraq, but with, for weapons of mass destruction. We can go fight in the wars, come back, and now we have to break the law to go fix what's wrong with our, our heads or our, you know, our emotions, our, our, our, not only our psychology, but... Dude, we're broken. Like, we've been beat up and kind of shoved in a closet, and then we're sedated and told to shut, shut the fuck up. And meanwhile, you know, Wolfowitz and Bremer and all these other guys, they get to walk around and provide, you know, public speeches about how fucking great they are because they're, you know, strategically important, whereas my peer set were under an epidemic of suicide, our kids are committing suicide, the, the VA's no help to us, and we have to go break the law.
- JRJoe Rogan
True.
- EHEvan Hafer
It's like, you get to go flip a fucking coin and paint some paintings, and you think that everything's okay?
- JRJoe Rogan
And that one doesn't make any sense.
- EHEvan Hafer
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
Out of all the ones, that's one that... Mushrooms, you can do recreationally. No one's doing recreational ibogaine.
- EHEvan Hafer
No. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I've never done it before. Have you done it?
- EHEvan Hafer
No. Huh-uh.
- JRJoe Rogan
I've never done it-
- EHEvan Hafer
Huh-uh.
- JRJoe Rogan
... but everybody that I've talked to, th- that they said it is one of the most, like, ruthlessly introspective journeys in your life. You don't... It's not fun at all.
- EHEvan Hafer
Mm-mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Dakota Meyer told me, he's like, "I fucking hated it. I couldn't believe someone made me do it. After it was over, I was like, 'What the fuck am I doing?'" It's not a fun time. It's not a recreational drug. It's not a drug of addiction, and it's not a drug of dying. It'd be... It's not... What's the El- Let's find out what the LD50 rate is for ibogaine. It's probably bananas. It's probably-
- EHEvan Hafer
Dude-
- JRJoe Rogan
... just like psilocybin, probably can't really overdose on it.
- EHEvan Hafer
No, I-
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know, though.
- 34:00 – 48:28
Iraq as the defining trauma: adrenaline bandwidth, fear control, and ‘psychology is contagious’
- EHEvan Hafer
I mean, I've got lots, I got lots of issues with, you know, Iraq (laughs) at this point, right? I mean, it's fundamentally, uh... And I've told this to people. Like, Iraq is with me every day, right? Afghanistan was, was a part of my life, but Iraq fundamentally changed me for the rest of my life, and I think about it every day. It's not going away. It'll never go away. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
What about Iraq that was much different than Afghanistan that changed you?
- EHEvan Hafer
Um... Well, it's the first war experience I had, and, you know, for me, I was like hook, line, and sinker, regime change, you know, move, w- we've, we've gotta find weapons of mass destruction, we've gotta eliminate the threat, we gotta fight them there so we don't have to fight them here.
- JRJoe Rogan
Everybody thought it was real.
- EHEvan Hafer
Hell yeah. Yeah, I mean, there was nobody more motivated to go to war than, than me. You know? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there was, but you know what I'm saying, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
So you were in that group.
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You were gung-ho.
- EHEvan Hafer
Oh, 100%. It's not only, "Hey, we're gonna go to war, we're gonna do something good for America." These guys attacked the United States. "We're, we're going to eliminate the terrorist threat." Uh, and (laughs) , you know, war is a, is a, such a strange and surreal circumstance because it changes you for good, it changes you for the bad, and I've looked at this a lot, and I looked at, like, life experience like a, a radio wave almost, like a band where you have highs, you have lows, and most people, we'll, we'll call it 90-plus percent of the United States, their, their frequency only gets so high and only gets so low, and it li- basically stays within, we'll say, a, a fairly small band within the center. Combat, what happens is you go really high and you go really low and it forces you outside of social norms on a second to second basis, and then you do that over and over and over again. And so one person might get in a car wreck in their life and that goes really low, so it's a really high adrenaline dump, and it goes really low because they have an injury. That's like one thing. Well, going out in a combat zone multiple night, like, not only multiple nights a week. Sometimes you're doing multiple targets a night. You might go on, you might be getting in a, what, what the rough equivalent of an adrenaline car wreck-... what, the rough equivalent of a car wreck from an adrenaline dump and a high and a low. You weren't doing that three or four times a night. (exhales) And then, you're doing that night after night, week after week, and it fundamentally changes you because you have to chop all of this down. Because if you get too ramped up and too chaotic, you're gonna lose control and you won't be able to complete your mission criteria. If you get too low, you also won't be able to achieve your mission criteria. Your survival instincts kick down, so it chops your ability to feel all the way down to a normal person's bandwidth because it's a survival mechanism. And this is just my own-
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm.
- EHEvan Hafer
... assessment. So, from a combat-experience perspective, the first time you feel it, and I'll tell you, I mean, the first time I was, uh, in an ambush, I was losing my shit (laughs) . I mean, anybody who tells you they're not fucking scared, well, they're either, like, fundamentally flawed. They're like Travis Pastrana. He doesn't have, like, a fear portion of his brain, or they're just lying. Like, you're scared out of your fucking mind. Like, going north, like, driving north into Iraq, you're s- you're looking into the deep, dark abyss of the unknown, and you're like, "What the fuck? Am I gonna be a coward?" You know, "Am I gonna live? Am I gonna die?" I mean, our casualty, projected casualty rates was that we were gonna lose most of our ODA.
- NANarrator
Jesus Christ.
- EHEvan Hafer
So, you're, you're stepping into a situation where you're going, "Okay. Well, I know out of this six-shooter that I'm gonna play Russian roulette with, there are four bullets in this."
- NANarrator
Oh, my god.
- EHEvan Hafer
And you're driving north going, "Okay. Let's fucking do it." So, you've already capitulated and given yourself up to die, which is, it's actually a, a very cathartic and I think personally an experience that you can evolve from. Because at that point, if you're dead, you can live uninhibited. Like, everything I do from this point forward is just gravy on (laughs) on, on the steak, man. I'm already dead.
- NANarrator
Right.
- EHEvan Hafer
I was driving north in, in Iraq, and I, like, through, like, the desert, and, uh, my best friend and I are, are, like, driving north. And, and you have, like, hours to stare off into the fucking sand. You know, your, your, you've got night vision goggles or whatever. I had a whole fictionalized funeral for myself.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
(laughs) I just fucking... What else am I gonna do, right?
- NANarrator
Right.
- EHEvan Hafer
You're just, like, driving north, you know, and there's nothing going on. So, I had a whole fictionalized funeral. I buried myself, and so I was already dead, or at least I felt like that. And then, we get in our first engagement, and the world starts cracking apart, and your mind can't keep up to what, what's actually happening. You, you'll hear the gunfire, and, you know, I felt, I felt the explosion. I looked in the rearview mirror of the Humvee, which is, sounds crazy. I looked in the rearview mirror, and, um, I saw this, like, car-sized chunk of fire flying behind the vehicle. Like, so distinctly remember this. And I'm turning to my, my, my team leader and I'm like, "We gotta get the fuck outta here." You know, I'm like, losing it, right? (laughs) So stupid. It was so stupid. "We gotta get the fuck outta here."
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
You know, I'm like, losing it, dude. I'm just fucking losing it. And he's like-
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
And he's cool, man. He's, like, calm, cool. He's on the radio. You know, he's like, "You know, vehicle one, you know, or vehicle three, this is vehicle one. Vehicle three, this is vehicle one." And we're checking to see if we have comms between us and the other vehicles. And I'm fucking losing it. I'm like, "We gotta get the fuck outta here!" You know? And it was like, "Okay." 'Cause I mean, you know, you're used to, like, watching movies or whatever, and it's the first time anything like this has ever happened.
- NANarrator
Right.
- EHEvan Hafer
And, and at this point, you know, the full insurgency hasn't kicked off that we're hunting .......................... These, these guys weren't the most sophisticated cats on the planet. They, they weren't that good. So- but we end up pushing through and then consolidating at the end of this. And fundamentally, this, this, like, changed my tactical experience in combat forever because my team leader, who I respect and loved, he was killed two years later. He's one of my best friends, was my best friend. Um, he turns to me and he goes, "Hey, man. If you don't have a solution to the problem, just shut the fuck up." (laughs)
- NANarrator
(laughs) That's great advice.
- EHEvan Hafer
I know! And it was-
- NANarrator
That's great advice across the board.
- 48:28 – 1:07:37
Neocon decisions and on-the-ground consequences: Sadr, de-Ba’athification, and creating the insurgency
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah, exactly. (exhales) Yeah. (sighs) So Iraq, so going back to what, what I, what I was talking about with Iraq, I'm supercharged and, uh, my reality started to kind of crumble as, uh, we met- we went up, we were on the first ODAs when we, we did this joint op with the CIA to go meet this guy, Moqtada al-Sadr. And this is early on, this is like March of the war. And Moqtada al-Sadr became a, uh, prominent figure later on in the, in the war. He was really- relatively a well- like not, not known at all in the beginning of it. (sniffs) And I was working with the, the CIA case officer at that point, not just me, it was like my entire team. And Moqtada's like, he- he's a, he's a bad guy, like he's just a real piece of shit. And at that point in- and Najaf was this town, and, uh, we went out, had a meeting with him, and we came back and all of us on the military, paramilitary side were like, "This guy needs to die." Like, "We need to actually go and ... He has a small armed force. He's basically gonna be a instrument of the Iranians." And we're having this big debate in the team room, and everybody that carried a gun, like we speak (laughs) , we speak animal kingdom.
- NANarrator
Uh-huh.
- EHEvan Hafer
We know when there's a threat.
- NANarrator
Right.
- EHEvan Hafer
And then we have this case officer who's like a, you know, adjunct professor at fucking Georgetown, the guy didn't n- know his ass from a hole in the ground. And we're like, "This guy needs to die. We need to go like get on him now." And, um, case officer was like, "No, he- he's gonna work with us," you know. And we're like-
- NANarrator
They wanted him to be an asset.
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah. We're like, "This guy is fucking stupid." Like, "This guy's a Sh- he's a Shia, supposedly Shia cleric." You know, if you know Iraq, you got 60% of the country's Shia, it's typically gonna answer to Iran. You've got, uh, 15, 20% is up north, it's the Kurds. And then you've got the rest, is- is Sunni. And we're like, "This guy's not gonna fucking work with us. I mean this guy's a real piece of shit, and he's already spinning up a militia. He's gonna be a problem." "No, no, no, no." And we're like, "Okay." Like, "You're the, you're the big brain on Brad, you know? You're the, you're the PhD, man." Like, "Sure." You know? So, we acquiesce and years later, I don't know how many guys died going into, going back into Najaf, trying to find this fucking guy. I don't know how many. I mean, it was a whole basically surge, push, of probably a division to try to go find this guy. But we had the opportunity to kill him right there, like literally we could've ... Like he had less than 40 guys in the compound and we could've like gone out and got him right, like that night. And, uh, and then he became a problem. And not only did he become a problem, uh, it was like the, the decision-makers were so poor at that point in the ear- early in the war, it started to really affect me in the sense of like I- I was still bought and sold, but it- I started to really think these guys might not know what the fuck they're doing when, um, it was like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and, um, Brennan, um, when they de-Ba'athified Iraq. So after we invaded, they s- they did this thing called de-Ba'athification which was basically, they fired the military and everybody that was involved in the Ba'ath Party. And we're- we're- once again we're in the team room (laughs) and we're watching CNN and it's Rumsfeld talking about, "We're, we're, we're de-Ba'athifying Iraq, we're ta- we're, we're firing everybody." And I'm not exaggerating, everybody in the f- everybody in the team room was like, "What the fuck?"
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
Like, "You guys, like you guys are, you guys are gonna create the insurgency." Like it was on the ground, that moment, that second, like I wanted to throw, like I- I- I wanted to throw a fucking brick through the TV. Like I- I (laughs) I was like, "These guys are paint by numbers creating an insurgency. They have no fucking clue what they're doing." And that was like that moment, which was fairly early, where I- I lost a lot of confidence in the decision-makers. But okay, you know, then the, the question is well, why'd you keep going back? Well, because you want to try to search for meaning and you're trying to find the, the actual purpose, like what is the purpose? Like are there WMDs here? Like are there, you know, like legit, um, direct traces back to 9/11? Are there things that we're doing that are gonna directly affect and protect America? And you're kinda searching for it. And not kind of, you are. Like that's what you're doing, or at least that's what I was doing. And by the time, by the time I left in 2009, um, uh, I just figured I was gonna die. Like I was like, "Fuck this place." Like, "Fuck," like, like, um, I lived Iraq, right? And then it was like, well, I think time and repetition and thinking that you're dead for that long and then searching for not only some, some what I would say is good in the war itself, because there is good. You have your buddies. You have the comradery, you have the adrenaline-... but you also think you're gonna fucking die every day for years on end, and that's not, uh... Fundamentally, it turns out, it's probably not good for you psychologically, I guess. And so I went to A- Afghanistan thinking, "Well..." And I went to train Afghanis for, um, a force up there. And when I went to train those guys, it was, "Hey, if I can train Afghanis to take on the war, uh, maybe I can protect 18-year-old kids from getting their fucking legs blown off. You know, maybe I can protect the, you know, the 20-year-old kid from Nebraska from getting a, a fucking RPG stuffed through their face." Um, and I was older, and I was also willing to die, so the kids, when I say the kids, you know, 18, 20 years old, like, man, it's not, you know, it's not fun to watch those g- when I say that, that's an understatement. It's so heartbreaking to watch a kid that's never been to fucking combat, like, die. It, it changes everything in your life. And so you go from, you know, Iraq to Afghanistan (laughs) you know, and I'm watching all this stuff unfold, and there's like, there's... And I don't want to say it's all negative because there's, there's, you know, there were things that were very positive. But, uh, I'm so jaded by the time I get there that I'm like, "Well, if I can save some Americans, I'll save some Americans. And, you know, if not, at least this will be an interesting experience." Uh, and then, you know, and, and there's a laundry list of other things (laughs) we, we could talk about. I, I don't wanna get so fucking d- down, I guess.
- JRJoe Rogan
It seems like it's impossible not to once you're going back on it. I mean, how, there's... How could you not? A- and the, the overwhelming negative experiences, the over- overwhelming horrific experiences.
- EHEvan Hafer
Well, I think that's where I have this massive distrust in politicians. Like, they... And I think that's part of the reason. They, they have, they have squandered the courage of the American servicemen in these, these forever wars that we've entered in under lies. So like, you know, Wolfowitz and W and Rumsfeld and, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Colin Powell.
- EHEvan Hafer
Yeah. And... Sorry, man, I don't, I don't have any respect for those guys. Like, I don't... Not only do I not have any respect for those guys, I have a, I have a profound amount of hatred for their arrogance. 'Cause I'm in my 20s. I'm, I'm, uh, I'm not making excuses, but, you know, there's plenty of guys like me that were not only hooked, line, and sinker, and I still would. I'd still sign up for this country. I think service is a remarkable, uh, courage... And, and it's courage and service back to our community is something we have to cherish. Like, we do. But when you have an orchestra of idiots that are manipulating the courageous men and women of our country to go into these wars based on a Neocon pipe dream and there's no consequences. You know, you can pull out of Afghanistan and leave billions of dollars of, of equipment. Who the fuck got fired? But if I made a mistake, if me and my buddies made a mistake, we, we fucking... We lost our lives. We go to jail. Like, we lost our clearances. And I'm not trying to sound like a whiny bitch. I'm just saying, like, no consequences for these guys.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nothing.
- EHEvan Hafer
Nothing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nothing.
- EHEvan Hafer
You know, they get to go paint paintings, and they think it's okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Imagine no consequences for lying about weapons of mass destruction. And has there ever been a large scale investigation as to what led them to either believe or to push the narrative that there was weapons of mass destruction?
- EHEvan Hafer
Well, I think if you r- you read... I mean, I, uh, I mean, there's, there's a lot... There... I think there's a lot of, like, um... There's a lot of books out there, obviously, and, and whether or not you have to kind of sort through the actual documents and figure out, like, where these guys were at. And I've, I've spent a little bit of my life trying to understand from their perspective. And I honestly think big part of it is the guys who were making the decisions, um, their hubris, their utopian belief that they were going to be able to rebuild Iraq like Houston.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
You know? Like, "Oh, it's an oil country," you know? And, you know, they really believed that if they didn't rein in this rogue nation of Iraq, that Iraq was going to eventually contribute to terrorism. And you had guys that were so consumed with their intelligence when it flipped to not only hubris, but they didn't have wisdom. They had intelligence. The... Wolfowitz is a smart guy. He's, he's not an idiot. The problem is he's not wise. These guys weren't wise men.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- EHEvan Hafer
There's a difference between having a high IQ and having the experience and repetition, seeing death and destruction, seeing people's lives fucking torn apart, and then understanding something from reading a book or thinking about it from an economics perspective. And, you know, I think Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, they had this belief that they could do anything they wanted to validate this. And they did. They had to data mine information and pull and pluck from different analysts that agreed with them. But most of the intel community didn't agree with them. They're like, "We had defeated the Iraqi Army to the point..." When I say defeated it...... like, if we go back to the '90s, we say Desert Storm was '91. And then from that point forward, you can basically say, you know, H.W. to Clinton administration, Clinton administration with the economic sanctions, and with the integrated bombing campaigns that they had led throughout the '90s, we had essentially stuffed that guy back into a hole where the only thing he could do is sell oil on the black market. And he had to really, he had to, he had a fascist state where he, he, he and his family had, you know, complete control out of the country, but he wasn't going to be a threat from an international terrorism perspective. That's just false. It's not only false, but it is patently false. And they had to mine the data to validate it. They had to lie. They had to, uh, sift through and find and pick and pull the pieces of information, and they really thought this was gonna be a fucking cakewalk. They did.
- NANarrator
Because of Desert Storm, you think?
- EHEvan Hafer
They thought because of Desert Storm and what they ... And they were listening to these assets, like, um, uh, Chalabi and some of these Iraq, uh, former Iraqi exiles and they were listening to these guys who, by the way, were also manipulated by the Iranians and paid for by Iranian intel guys, uh, uh, uh, their Iranian assets. They're listening to these people and they were living in their own echo chambers, validating this, this idea that it was better for regime change, for the international, not only the international economy, but it was gonna be, uh, uh, uh, a stable, uh, petroleum-based country where we could integrate democracy. And none of these guys were Arabists. None of these guys actually understood the Middle East, not one. They didn't have any combat experience. They didn't really have any combat experience from the long-term, low-intensity conflict, uh, guerrilla warfare perspective. They were given not only the information, but they were given, uh, uh, most of the information they were given was, was saying, "This is going to be much more complex than you think it's going to be." And they denied not only the opinions, but the information, and they went ahead with their fucking plans anyway. Rumsfeld chopped- single-handedly dictated how many people were gonna participate in the war. Like, he was dictating how many divisions it was gonna take. And he's like, "Actually, I think you could do it for half that." Like, he was, like, trying to negotiate how many guys that Tommy Franks was gonna use to invade Iraq. And Tommy Franks didn't have the balls to say, "Actually, I need two more divisions." So a lot of this is just, like, fundamentally these are professional politicians and bureaucrats drinking their own piss. Like I was saying earlier, you know, like, you can drink your own piss once or twice before your kidneys start to shut down and it'll fucking kill you, right?
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- EHEvan Hafer
These guys are all sitting around in their echo chambers, talking to the same types of people, defining how they were going to send servicemen and women to Iraq, and they were wrong. Not only were they wrong, but they were told otherwise by lots of different people to include, I mean, uh, Tony Blair had a lot of different issues with this. Colin Powell essentially sold this and got the dominoes to fall on the entire thing, because he, they knew that Colin Powell was so respected that if he sat in front of the UN with Tenet, who was the director of the CIA, right behind him and held up this little thing of, of, you know, VX or whatever it was, that they could push it across the line from the international community. I mean, these guys were crooked, man. And, uh, not only were they crooked, they were so fundamentally wrong. And there's no consequences.
- NANarrator
Nothing.
- EHEvan Hafer
Zero consequences.
- NANarrator
They put Martha Stewart in jail.
- 1:07:37 – 1:29:12
Politics after war: distrust, endless wars, and the ‘robot’ problem in leadership
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you ever see that, um, speech with, uh, Mike Pence and Tucker Carlson?
- EHEvan Hafer
No. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Tucker Carlson essentially ended Mike Pence's political career.
- EHEvan Hafer
Really?
- JRJoe Rogan
In one speech, yeah. Because, uh, this was when Pence was running for president. And Tucker was sitting there with him, and Pence was talking about getting helicopters and tanks and weapons to, to Ukraine, and he was explaining how, uh, they were being incompetent because they weren't providing them with what they needed, and Tucker went on this rant. See if you can find it. It- it's pro-... I bet you could find it under that... Here it is. Listen to this.
- NANarrator
Well, this is the whole thing. You just want me to show the Tucker part? 'Cause it's, uh, four, it's four minutes long.
- JRJoe Rogan
Let me hear what he says. L- just start right where your cursor is. Click where your cursor is.
- NANarrator
January, we'll let somebody transfer some jets.
- NANarrator
I'm sorry, Mr. Vice President, have you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. (clears throat)
- NANarrator
... uh, I know you're running for president. Uh, you are dist-
- JRJoe Rogan
Thank you. Thanks for noticing.
- NANarrator
... you are distressed that the Ukrainians don't have enough American tanks. Every city in the United States has become much worse over the past three years.
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- NANarrator
Drive around. There's not one city that's gotten better in the United States.
- NANarrator
Right.
- NANarrator
And it's visible. Our economy has degraded. The suicide rate has jumped. Public filth and disorder and crime have exponentially increased. And yet, your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people can't find on a map-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- NANarrator
... who've received tens of billions of US tax dollars, don't have enough tanks.
- NANarrator
Right.
- NANarrator
I think it's a fair question to ask, like, where's the concern for the United States in that?
- NANarrator
Well, it's not my concern.
- EHEvan Hafer
(laughs)
- NANarrator
Tucker, I've heard-
- JRJoe Rogan
What?
- NANarrator
... that routine from you before, but that's not my concern. I'm running for president of the United States 'cause I think this country is in a lot of trouble. I think Joe Biden has weakened America at home and abroad. And as president of the United States, we're gonna restore law and order in our cities. We're gonna secure our border. We're gonna get this economy moving again. And we're gonna make sure that we have men and women on our courts at every level that will stand for the right to life and defend all the God-given liberties enshrined in our Constitution. Anybody that says that we can't be the leader of the free world and solve our problems at home has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on Earth. We can do both. And as president of the United States, we will secure our border. We will support our military. We will revive our economy and stand by our values, and we will also lead the world for freedom under my administration. I promise you. (applause)
- NANarrator
Amen. Vice President Mike Pence, thank you very much.
- JRJoe Rogan
Just that, "That's not my concern. That's not my concern." What the fuck are you talking about? Why- (laughs) How would you ever answer anything that way? "That is not my concern." That's not your concern?
- EHEvan Hafer
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
You don't, you don't think he just made a really good point? That we're, we're really confused as to, first of all, aren't we, like, a trillion dollars in debt? How do we have-
Episode duration: 4:31:27
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Transcript of episode hCepzIrkbDE
