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July 4, 2024 - Human Events Daily - Jack Posobiec
49:07
THE FUTURE WAR: FOURTH OF JULY SPECIAL

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This is what happens when the fourth turning meets fifth generation warfare.
A commentator, international social media sensation, and former Navy intelligence veteran.
This is Human Events with your host, Jack Posobiec.
Christ is King!
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
It goes well beyond what was needed in order to declare independence.
It establishes a philosophical basis for a civil democracy.
Your husbands, your children of all sorts, have kept from America, so far, remember that word, so far, the horrors of war.
We must continue to keep it.
May we profit from the experiences of our brother Republicans across the water and go forward steadily avoiding all wild extremes.
May our ultra-conservatives remember that the rule of the Bourbons brought on the revolution.
And may our would-be revolutionaries remember that no Bourbon was ever such a dangerous enemy of the people and of freedom as the professed friend of both Robespierre.
There is no danger of a revolution in this country, but there is grave discontent and unrest, and in order to remove them there is need of all the wisdom and property and deep-seated faith in and purpose to uplift humanity we have at our command.
We are now in the process of...
Defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, those that are lying about our history, those who want us to be ashamed of who we are, are not interested in justice or in healing.
Their goal is demolition.
Our goal is not to destroy.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard today's special edition of Human Events Daily.
Today is the 4th of July, 2024.
Anno Domini.
Today is Independence Day.
And so, what should we be thinking about today on Independence Day?
What should we be reflecting on?
And so, we understand that What were the ideals of the original Independence Day?
The ideals of 1776?
The ideals of America back then?
Well, that was the ideal of the revolutionary spirit of those Americans.
The revolutionary spirit, Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, but also the understanding that this was a bloody and brutal war.
A war that took the lives of many of the signers of the Declaration.
That also took the lives of many of their families, even many of their sons.
On those British torture ships, the prison ships.
They knew that by unplugging from the global system, the system of global empire and forming America as a nation state would be America's birthright.
But of course, that's not the America that we have today.
Because the America that we have today is intrinsically linked to a global hegemony around the world.
That America and that system of globalism Is now coming into contention with the rise of multipolarity and the rise of a global South in conjunction with China and Russia and the rise of the BRICS nations.
The question before all of us, will this spill over into a global conflict?
We know that Joe Biden is not all there.
We know that Joe Biden is in a situation where he is not able to call the shots.
For this government that he's not able to defend freedom.
If you are one of America's adversaries, you got a free shot on goal right now.
So what does that look like?
What is the future of warfare?
What future threats are there?
How do we prepare for those threats?
What is the future of war?
Well, we've put together a program here.
We're joined by very esteemed guests.
Eric Prince.
The military historian Patrick K. O'Donnell, where we're going to be talking about those specific steps, what we should expect to see next in the coming threat.
Because the truth is this, folks.
Independence is not guaranteed.
Freedom itself is not guaranteed.
That freedom must be fought for, and once achieved, it must be defended.
And that means constant and eternal Vigilance.
As Jefferson taught us, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Internal and external.
Foreign and domestic.
And once you understand that, once you understand what we're up against, what you understand that the stakes couldn't be higher, then you will be ready to maintain your independence forever.
Stay tuned.
We'll be right back.
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Today, you know, you talk about influences.
These are influences.
All right, we're back here, Human Events Daily, 4th of July special.
Very excited to bring on once again to Human Events, Eric Prince.
His podcast is Off Leash.
He's the author of Civilian Warriors.
Eric, thanks so much for joining us again.
Nice to be here, Jack.
How are you?
Well, Eric, I'm concerned.
We all saw that debate last week.
We saw our commander in chief, the way you before and about your hypothesis that we're living through a step change in military, military warfare, a step change in warfare itself around the world.
And with the status, the current status, Of the leader of our military, the leader of our government, being what it is, it seems that the warning that you put out just a few weeks ago might be coming all too real here.
And as people I know are celebrating their 4th of July, they got the hot dogs, they got the kids running around the barbecue, they're gonna be doing some fireworks later tonight.
I have to say, I'm concerned.
Walk me through, if you're our adversaries right now and you saw that, What are some of the things that they could be doing next?
Look, uh, our problems start from the top when you have leadership that does not inspire any kind of confidence or any kind of fear, any kind of confidence in our own people and any kind of fear from our opponents.
It means they start to get creative with, uh, let's say adventurism.
And when you see the massive, uh, change in how warfare can be done, With lessons learned from the Ukraine-Russia battle, where you truly democratized the ability to deliver precision weaponry out to 10, 20, 30 kilometers.
And then, you know, when Russia invaded in February of 2022, old weapons, new weapons were used in a desperate attempt to stop the onslaught.
And one of the most innovative things was taking a small racing drone, a 7 or a 10 inch racing drone with a little goggles that you wear called an FPV drone, and they took a either a grenade, an RPG round, or a fabricated beer can size charge that you could then drive into the enemy target.
You know, the US military spends hundreds of thousands of dollars per missile To deliver a precision weapon onto a target, and now you can do that with a $500 to $1,000 racing drone out farther than what a U.S.
anti-tank missile fires for a fraction of the cost.
So true firepower has been democratized.
And even Israel, as much as they have been on guard with very high-end air defenses from From the Iron Dome to literally shoot down incoming rockets, to knock them out of the sky, to their anti-ballistic missile capability.
But with the loitering munitions, effectively a higher-end kamikaze drone that Hezbollah has been launching, they're only intercepting 50% of those.
And so they might have built a magnificent fence, but the gap at the bottom of that fence are the smaller, cheaper drones With 1 to 5 to 10 pound warhead capabilities, and it's causing real problems and real damage to the IDF forces.
And so amplify that.
So that's obviously the Iranians sponsoring, stimulating Hezbollah to do that on the northern border.
But it doesn't take much imagination to see where else you could take that capability and make the billions of dollars of high-end weapons obsolete.
What the Houthis have done in Yemen, Again, with Iranian sponsorship, they're using a Shahed 136 drone, which is $20,000 to $30,000 in cost.
They've launched hundreds of those at U.S.
Navy, British, French, Italian warships, trying to keep the Red Sea open, which has been a total fail.
The U.S.
Navy has acknowledged that they've spent a billion dollars in missiles.
That's also a false number because it's a billion dollars based on a cost from 20 years ago when they bought those missiles, not the four or five billion that they're going to have to spend to replace those missiles.
So it's really bad math.
It's unsustainable and it's a complete fail of the Navy, our beloved Navy.
I know you and I were both in the Navy and the mission of the Navy is power projection and sea control.
And right now they have lost sea control.
Because you have one of the major waterways, one of the major shipping ways of the world completely shut off because of a bunch of dudes in flip-flops that have been supercharged by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the administration lacks the spine or the resoluteness of purpose to school these guys.
And really the Navy has also lost the innovation Or the ability to think creatively of how to use smash this unconventional, asymmetric threat as practically and cheaply as possible.
Because the Navy's answer is just more shooting more one and two and $5 million precision missiles.
And there's certainly, you know, and that's another reason the US military has made itself more obsolete in these kind of theaters, because they provide only the most expensive solution, which over the duration of Iraq, And what we're seeing now is potentially the first naval blockade that's ever been successfully conducted from land.
and putting these fires out. - And what we're seeing now is potentially the first naval blockade that's ever been successfully conducted from land, and in addition, an asymmetric, as you say, naval, just on that question, naval, just on that question, actually, Eric, let me pick your brain for a little bit,
What would you suggest to the secretary or to the COCOM commander who are looking at that situation yourself, at that threat package?
Rather than missiles, what are some possible counter-insurgency or counter-asymmetric methods that could be used?
Other than, say, electronic warfare, which doesn't quite seem to be there yet.
Look, the Houthis are going to continue to shoot missiles until someone goes and puts a boot on their neck.
And there's historical corollary for how this was dealt with in the past.
In the 60s, actually, Egypt invaded Yemen, deposed the monarchy, and that really ticked off the Brits, and it really ticked off the Saudis.
And they hired David Sterling, who is the founder of the SAS, the British SAS, and he took a 30-man or so unit and went and worked with the other Yemeni tribes, the Sunnis, and supercharged their capability and they pushed Egypt out.
There is a way to do that now that would not require any US forces and could solve that problem for a fraction of the economic damage being done.
Egypt alone is losing $800 million a month just from no toll fees from the ships not going through the Suez, let alone the other knock-on economic damage.
So again, you've allowed a rogue state of Iran, working through their proxy of the Yemeni Houthis, To shut off one of the major waterways.
In fact, Jack, they haven't even, it's not only that they shot ships in the Red Sea, or in the Gulf of Aden, they've actually, two weeks ago, they hit a ship that was in the Mediterranean.
So, they are striking targets at very long distance, with the uranium-provided weapons, until someone goes and smashes them in the face.
Uh, for doing so, they will continue to do so, and they're gonna feel ascendant, and they will feel even more adventurous.
And, um, You know, deterrence matters.
Deterrence and credibility matters.
I guess one of the reasons my podcast is called Off Leash is because our military should be like a big, scary attack dog waiting to be let off leash.
And sadly, they're not that scary anymore because we've over-lawyered and hyper-bureaucratized the command structure to where we have a military that doesn't want to hunt.
Now, you mentioned the, the strikes on ships in the Mediterranean, uh, the targeting of these vessels.
Do you think at some point, and this is something that I think about in, and we'll talk more after this over the break and in other cases, but do you think that these types of drones, drone swarm attacks, or these other various types of even if they create a threat to the naval vessels themselves?
Sure.
Well, so the U.S.
so far, that we know of, has had a success rate of knocking down all these incoming aerial drones.
The Russians have not had as great a success in dealing with naval drones.
And in fact, the innovative, effectively hot-rodded jet skis that the Ukrainians have been using has driven the Russian Navy out of the western half of the Black Sea.
That's a fact.
And they did that Cheaply and asymmetrically, and that worked.
Sea drones have also been used against commercial vessels, with effect, just off of Yemen now.
So, the look of a US Navy vessel getting hit by a cruise missile, a drone, a ballistic missile, Is going to be a very, very bad look.
And, and the fact that we continue to put sailors in harm's way and really preventing them from shooting back and hammering effectively to me is disgusting.
And, and certainly the, the first thing that the U S could do, uh, because the Yemenis are not targeting all these drones and missiles and everything else from land alone.
They have, uh, there are Iranian naval vessels.
There has been an IRGC Intel vessel.
Floating around that area, and those ships need to go away.
When in the 80s, when the Iranians were mining the Persian Gulf and blocking oil ships, oil carrying vessels from exporting crude from Kuwait and from Saudi Arabia, Reagan took very decisive action over a few days and annihilated pretty much all of the Iranian Navy that cared to put to sea and taught them a lesson.
That kind of lesson needs to be taught to the Houthis and the IRGC again in a most decisive, most kinetic manner.
Folks, we're talking with Eric Prince.
We've got a quick break coming up.
This is the Fourth of July special.
We're talking about the future war.
rolled with bloods and them boys had a saying you can't be listening to all that slappy whack trim out his outlet's a bam ship nippy bam bam like human events with jack posobik jack live independence day fourth of july special the future war we're talking about the impact of drones naval drones and air drones particularly on naval
because as our guest eric prince has been walking us through they've been devastating on many fields including in the red sea Now, Eric, as you and I were discussing, one piece that I want to add on there as well is that the U.S.
Navy has already in the past faced asymmetric threat in the Middle East, in that very same neighborhood, because this was the Gulf of Aden attack.
On the coal that took place 24 years ago.
Why is it that we're still here a quarter of a century later worrying about asymmetric attack when we know the threat that it causes to U.S.
naval vessels?
Of the military-industrial complex and the Beltway, I think, is to always go for the highest cost, most sophisticated solution for some of these problems.
And I have a lot of familiarity with the Cole attack because the Navy came to us.
That was actually at Blackwater.
That was our first government contract, our first big one.
Because the sailors that were guarding the ship that day were holding unloaded weapons that they hardly ever fired before.
And it was so bad that a Navy boot camp, firearms were considered too dangerous.
So they were shooting blanks or a laser simulator.
That's how they were preparing to defend their ship.
They'd optimized to fight at a hundred miles, not at a hundred meters.
And so we ended up training almost 100,000 sailors after that to defend their ships vigorously from that kind of threat.
Again, they default to that playbook of full-on state conflict naval warfare.
It's up to the squadron, the Desjardins commanders, to drill and to force their crews to be ready Or the myriad of threats, not just the one that comes with their playbook, but it requires them to be a bit devious and to think how else the enemy could slip one by.
And certainly, those crews that have been very diligent in the last six, eight months of this conflict since the Houthis started taking potshots at us, Uh, and that's the problem.
The hooties are allowed to take pot shots and they're not suffering consequences because when they shoot one, we should deliver tons and tons of weaponry back on everything that matters to the hooties so that they pay a price and they, and they understand what those consequences that you don't just get your shoot at a Navy ship and not expect you're going to get a two boy, a two by four in the face.
That situation.
The fact that the U.S.
military is in the U.S.
Navy are fighting the way they are fighting with almost like both hands tied behind their back at this point.
And I want to take this out of the CENTCOM AOR and now into the Indo-Pacific AOR because all of the things that you're talking about, naval drones, air drones, cruise missile attack, swarm attack, the devastating impact this has at sea.
I have to wonder, And I'm no for a fact that China is taking a look at what's happening at the Red Sea right now.
They're clearly paying attention to what's going on between Russia and Ukraine right now.
And they see that Joe Biden is in a almost catatonic state.
What does all of that equal for Taiwan?
Well, you can almost see some coordination between Iran and Russia and China.
On these moves that they're making because the conflict brewing between Hezbollah and Israel over the northern border has pulled the carrier battle group away from the Gulf of Aden and pulled that back through into the Med.
They've now pulled the entire carrier battle group away from Taiwan to try to cover down on the Red Sea.
So, look, as we're seeing, precision weapons have become the most prolific thing ever in the battle space, so that any target that is known can immediately be targeted by lots of cheap drones, lots of expensive high-end hypersonic cruise missiles, you name it, all kinds of stuff.
You have a picture of a Predator B flying there.
The Hooties have shot down five of those.
So that system worked great over Rock or Afghanistan, where you had a very unsophisticated enemy, not so great when your enemy has surface-to-air missiles.
So five of those PredBs have been shot down by the Houthis, really with no consequence.
What Taiwan needs, the best method of deterrence in a realm of a massive naval power and missile and rocket capability of the Chinese Communist Party, is first a A true home guard.
If you truly democratize force and the ability for individuals to defend their house, their community, their town, that becomes a very difficult thing for the CCP to calculate in terms of taking Taiwan, because you have a lot of urban area and you have a lot of very rugged, steep jungle.
And the thing that the CCP cannot afford is a long campaign, because they could not withstand The inevitable embargoes and blockades of energy and of the other things that you could expect to be put against them if they have a go, a kinetic go, at Taiwan.
They should also, Taiwan should be investing in the same kind of naval technology.
This has been referred to, I was going to say this has kind of been referred to as the hedgehog strategy, isn't that right?
Yeah, exactly.
Just be extremely unwelcoming.
And be unwelcoming and be unpredictable.
And that's the recipe for deterrence.
If you don't let your enemy know that you're gonna be an easy target, it gives them pause.
Because if Xi Jinping decides, we are gonna go for Taiwan, he's all in.
Because if he goes for it and fails, then he's done as a leader.
And he will get the, The $0.13 invoice from whoever succeeds him.
And this is the big question, of course, is does he decide to go for it or not?
And look, I've said this for a long time.
I think it's a question of the inverse relationship between whether or not he feels threatened in his position or not.
I don't think that he particularly does feel threatened in his position.
I know there's some other China analysts who say otherwise, but at this point, he's remade the party by and large in his own image.
He's had the most massive purge since Chairman Mao in those days when in the days of the Cultural Revolution.
And he's done the same thing with the highest echelons of the People's Liberation Army.
And so the question that I would say is that the only thing I could think of is if Taiwan were to go into some kind of independent scenario, if the president there was going to declare independence, if they were attempting to – if they were trying if they were attempting to – if they were trying to generate some kind of provocation, at that point, you might see it.
But then again, he could also want to be looking at his legacy and looking at that idea of I was The leader of the party, the leader of the country, who brought Taiwan back into the fold.
Yeah, look, we wonder, we as Americans wonder, why is Taiwan, why are they so obsessed with it?
Because Taiwan is effectively Han China culture, but on freedom.
A bit of freedom of speech, freedom to move around, a freer economy, and it is not under control of the state.
The Chinese Communist Party is all about 100% control of the 1.3, 1.4 billion people versus like 24 million people in Taiwan.
So it's nothing.
There's like 200 cities that are as big as Taiwan's population almost.
I guess we as Americans will never fully understand that.
The best deterrent strategy is to make Taiwan very prickly, not with high-dollar weapons, but with the most basic stuff that would make an invading, occupying force exceedingly unwelcome.
And again, in America, as perfect as we're celebrating, as we're talking about this on the 4th of July, 30% of the American population of the colonies in 1776 were pro-crown.
40% in the middle were just trying to survive.
30% were pro-liberty.
10% of that 30% or 3% of the population actually took up arms against the British forces.
So if you take just 3% of the Taiwanese population, the marathoners, the civil defense people, the firemen, the most motivated parts of their reserve forces, the crossfitters, the The hardcore part of their society.
And you give them the taste of, a taste of the Second Amendment, not even really Second Amendment, more of almost like a Swiss model, where they have access to the weapons, not even necessarily in their home, but they could be stored at civil defense centers, at certain caches around the community.
If you have the ability to disperse, disperse power down to the people.
Because remember, when Ukraine was invaded, February of 2022, The smartest thing the Ukrainian government did is they literally opened all the government arsenals, just said, Hey, come and get it, come and get an AK, an RPG, an anti-tank missile, whatever, but take it and get it on.
That really helped stop that initial invasion because it was not the Ukrainian army that did it.
That's a great point.
And I'll throw out that, um, we actually talk about the, the, the, Backstory of how Taiwan and the People's Republic have their split in the book on humans here, how Taiwan was the last redoubt of the Republic of China, the nationalist forces who were totally cut off by Marshall and by Truman after the war.
They flee to Taiwan.
The Soviets are backfilling the Chinese Communist Party, the Red Army at the time.
It was the Soviets who were given complete privilege there at Yalta because of a special top secret deal that was signed by FDR when he was basically an invalid and all of his chief advisors and chief negotiators at Yalta were led by Alger Hiss, who was himself a Soviet agent.
Eric, I'd love to talk more about this, man.
I could talk all day.
Gotta run.
Where is the best coordinates for people to follow everything you're putting out?
Real Eric D. Prince, I'm on X, and they should also check out Unplugged, our new phone, especially on a celebration of American liberty.
This is our independent phone platform outside of the Google and Apple universe.
You need one to communicate securely and freely without Big Brother looking into your business.
Folks, it's as simple as that.
Unplugged.com.
Go check it out.
Eric Prince, the one, the only, the man, the myth, the legend.
We'll be right back here with more The Future War Special, Human Events Daily.
Jack, I want to see you.
We'll be right back.
Great job, Jack.
Thank you.
What a job you do.
You know, we have an incredible thing.
We're always talking about the fake news and the bad, but we have guys and these are the guys should be getting Pulitzer's.
Jack Posobiec back live, the Future War Special here on Independence Day.
So why are we talking about future wars?
I'm doing great, Jack.
States, supposed to be about 1776, right?
Well, something for people to consider is that 1776 was in its own time a future war.
And in fact, a number of American wars have been future wars.
And who better than to explain that to us is the resident and preeminent military historian on these matters, Patrick K. O'Donnell.
Patrick, how are you?
I'm doing great, Jack.
It's great to be back on the show.
Happy Fourth of July, man.
Happy 4th of July to you too.
So in what ways, so we're going backwards, we just had Eric Prince on and we were talking about what the next wars are going to look like, but in what ways was the War of Independence itself a form of a future war?
Well, the most important thing is that there was a seismic shift In 1774, there was a political revolution that takes place.
And that revolution is the idea of America, which revolves around freedom and liberty.
And that's an exceptional thing because at this time, the world was dominated by empires.
There were kings and queens and you had, you know, people that were subjects rather than citizens.
And it's in America, That the idea of freedom and liberty is born and it's an exceptional thing that will change the world.
The most important thing in any conflict is the idea itself and why people are fighting.
And that can be more powerful than any weapon system or anything else.
And the United States, which was, it wasn't the United States, it was America at the time and the colonists, Come up with these ideas of freedom and liberty.
It's the founders that are our greatest generation.
It's their ideals of, of also virtue on how they believe it's important to rise above yourself and do something that is, that is greater than yourself.
There's all these different things that are imbued within freedom and liberty that they look back on the classics in many cases.
Um, Well, and Patrick, as you say, though, at that time, the kings and queens of the empires, these empires weren't just far away.
So they were living in the British Empire.
Right next door was the French Empire.
They didn't have as many forces there, but it was French imperial territory.
The Spanish Empire is in control of the entire West, what is now the West, Texas.
Exactly.
and then Florida, and even then all the way back up to the Yukon territories and the Alaska territories are controlled by the Russian empires.
So you've got all of these empires on the North American, and they had been carving up the North American landmass.
And then all of a sudden you get these group of guys who say, no, we're going to form a republic in that neighborhood all on our own.
Exactly.
It's this political revolution that starts to take place.
And what happens is that the British are terrified.
And General Gage, who's ostensibly the governor of Massachusetts and North America, is in charge of the forces in North America, realizes he has a massive problem on his hands.
And the way he intends to defang the Americans is to take their gunpowder away.
There are plenty of weapons left over from the French and Indian War, the Seven Years' War, which is also a global war, and the American insurgency will emerge as a global war as well.
But it's the 1774 political revolution that takes place, and there's an incredibly important event Called the Somerville Powder Raid and Gage raids the Somerville.
There's still the remains of this powder magazine in Somerville, Massachusetts, right outside of Cambridge, which Gage and his pick men raided and steal the powder barrels.
There's about 200 of them in there.
And the colonists are immediately alarmed because they don't have gunpowder or a means to defend themselves without gunpowder because the, the colonies had, um, It produced a tremendous amount of gunpowder during the Seven Years War or the French-Indian War, but it was all then outsourced to India where they could develop saltpeter in a much cheaper fashion.
There was no organic production there, and they knew that the existing supplies that they took away would be defenseless against the British.
And once this took place, it became a series of powder alarms, as they were called, where Gage was going in and surgically removing the powder.
And it ultimately goes to Lexington and Concord, where there are powders, powder supplies, as well as cannons and other weapons that were, um, that were stashed there in a weapons cache, uh, that Gage surgically removes.
It's interesting to note in 1774, in November, in October, Our first foreign aid comes from Spain and Portugal, where the members of the book I wrote, The Marbleheaders, which had this incredible set of fishing boats and trading vessels, are trading with the Spanish.
They're able to get our first weapons from a foreign power, as well as powder coming through, and they smuggle it into the colonies.
But things kick off at Lexington and Concord and then everything changes.
It becomes a kinetic war where they have to go up the what's called battle road between Lexington and Concord and it's a bloody gauntlet that 750 British soldiers, grenadiers, have to somehow navigate and it's, you know, they're surrounded by
The militia forces of the time, which were extensive, there were thousands, upwards of 10,000 or more, that come to the aid of the Minutemen, if you will, and they start to surround the road and basically take Potshat to the British, and the British are exchanging fire and making this bloody retreat back to Boston.
And that begins the American Revolution, which is a revolutionary war, which is a bloody nearly eight year struggle for our independence, which is never a situation where it was preordained.
It's actually a miracle that the United States was born.
Well, Patrick, I always tell people that.
So I grew up very close to Valley Forge.
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania plays a huge role in my life.
Every weekend, my family took us there.
My sledding experience with my family.
The toboggan was right under the statue of General Matt Anthony Wayne.
And it even got to the point where my parents were married in a church at Valley Forge.
And And later I proposed to my wife, Tanya, in Washington Chapel at Valley Forge.
Then we got married in a church at Valley Forge as well.
And so for people to understand the importance of Valley Forge, the valor of that, the suffering, the hardship of that winter where they didn't have shoes, They're living in wooden, practically lean-to type situations.
These huts that are basically built out there in the middle of completely exposed field, by the way.
And they build in the remains of some of the fortresses that are still there, the earthen encampments.
But it's still, and they've got the cannons pointing towards Philadelphia.
And they said, why are the cannons, and when I was little climbing around on the cannons, I would say why are the candidates pointed towards Philadelphia?
Because they had lost Philadelphia.
Because they had lost New York.
They had lost Boston.
They had lost every single major city on the eastern seaboard at that point.
That's how bad the war was going.
And then the winner almost kills them at Valley Forge.
It's only Washington and it's only his leadership and Martha, by the way, going and stewarding to the soldiery that gets them through that winter.
The entirety of the United, thank God, by the way, that the British never attacked during that winter because this would have been a failed coup, a failed military uprising, they would have called it, and it would have been a footnote to the history of the British Empire.
That's absolutely true.
And in so many cases, it's the endurance of the American soldier that not only has to fight the greatest army of the world at the time and the greatest Navy, but fellow Americans.
This is a situation where, you know, the colonists are divided up into three parts, In some cases, maybe the 40% were undecided, and it would be the battles or the kinetic warfare which would push people in one direction or another.
In my book, Washington's Immortals I've got one soldier that changes sides three times based on, you know, being captured and he's given a choice.
You could go rot on a, you know, a prisoner of warship, which is a floating concentration camp, or you can join the British army.
And it became a situation where he had no choice and then he would be recaptured again.
And then he was able to, this guy was able to talk his way out of it because a lot of times if you did join the other side and turn code, if you will, you would be executed.
Discipline was pretty severe, but this is the miraculous part of the American Revolution.
This is why this is the greatest generation.
They not only formed the idea of America, our principles of freedom and liberty, which are more important today than ever before, but they also are the men of iron and women of iron.
Their constitution is exceptionally incredible.
I mean, the suffering that they have.
They're not paid.
They're not, you know, clothed properly.
There's no shoes.
I mean, there's so many battles where these men are literally walking hundreds of miles without shoes or boots.
In Washington's Immortals, The Marylanders and the Delaware troops march an epic over 2,000 miles on foot.
Most of the time, they're out in the open.
They're fighting the British.
There's no tents or any kind of creature comforts.
This is epic stuff without pay in most cases.
They are believing in the cause.
Which is an epic cause, and it's what will change the world.
As the American Revolution pushes forward, it becomes a global fight.
Eventually, we win a number of battles, such as the Battle of Saratoga, where the French then recognize that this nascent United States is capable of going toe-to-toe with the world power, and they throw their lot with the Americans.
They provide, most importantly, financial aid and money to the cause because hard currency is very hard to come by.
Gold and silver We're printing paper money.
Inflation is off the charts.
There's hyperinflation.
The British actually have an operation where they're printing our money to devalue the currency.
There's a lot of things that are going on here.
The British were printing our own money to devalue our currency by flooding the market with extra money printing.
My goodness, I can't think of anything, Patrick, that that might be similar to right now.
Stay tuned, folks.
We're coming up right back.
The Future War here, Cuban Events Daily, 4th of July special.
Buzzing in my ear about the boring people at your office.
I'm trying to listen to the new human events with Jack Pazovic.
Fourth of July special, Human Events Daily.
So, Patrick, we've walked through how the American Revolution was in so many ways a revolutionary I do.
form of warfare rather than just a political revolution.
But then fast forward because we get to a new step change and that's what we've been talking about since Eric Prince was on earlier, these step changes in warfare, about the step changes in warfare that are faced in the civil war.
And you have a brand new book all about this. - I do, it's "The Unvanquished," which is a best-selling book.
And it's an entirely new look at the civil war.
It's a look at the Civil War from an irregular warfare standpoint and information warfare standpoint, which is at the time, it's 1864.
And let's just go back to that time period.
Like the American Revolution, you know, 91 years earlier than the summer of 76, it's a disastrous summer for Lincoln.
Grant is on the offensive on all fronts.
But it's on the crucial front in the Shenandoah Valley, where at the Battle of Lynchburg in June, the Confederates rally.
General Lee sends an entire force under the command of Jubal Early, 14,000 strong or more, into Lynchburg, reinforces it, and then forces General Hunter out of the valley.
And he doesn't retreat to Washington, D.C., which is a major strategic blunder because it opens the pathway for the nation's capital.
And he retreats into West Virginia.
The men have to suffer a baton-style almost death march because they're not given enough water and food.
Many men die on the road.
But the pathway up the Shenandoah is wide open And so is the nation's capital and early with his force is marching towards it.
And General Grant makes a mistake strategically.
He realizes that this is a diversion to draw the troops that are surrounding Petersburg.
But he doesn't reinforce Washington, and Jewel Early is marching towards Washington, DC.
There's an incredible special operations mission to not only take the nation's capital, but also free the largest prisoner of war camp At Point Lookout, where there's over 10,000 prisoners of war.
And it's here that the Confederate Secret Service conducts kind of a really amazing op that they try to pull off.
They plan to amphibiously land several boats, boatloads, steamboats full of weapons.
And then Jubal Early's army will pull off an entire brigade from the main force and march down to Point Lookout to free the prisoners.
And all sort of is starting to go to plan.
But There's word that the amphibious operation had been blown, the cover on the Op, so they cancel it.
But, um, the, the, the pathway to Washington is wide open because Grant doesn't know if he's going after Baltimore City or the Capitol.
And it's, it's at a place called Monocacy near Fredericksburg where General Lew Wallace, who's the future author of Ben-Hur, the classic, makes this epic stand and it burns hours, about eight hours of time.
And it's crucial because there are no reinforcements in Washington, D.C.
The Capitol is wide open.
And if they take the Capitol to the South, we'll win the war.
And time is bought preciously.
There's also this march that's, you know, in direct sunlight, which beats down on the men.
But they get to Washington, D.C.
John McCloston, who's in The Unvanquished, is a Calvaryman.
He rides up to where Current day, American University is located and there's a fort there and it's completely abandoned because there's not enough troops there.
They're all down in Petersburg.
And he sees the lights of Georgetown.
The path is open, but the bulk of Early's army is still not there.
And they're at the gates of Fort Stevens.
And it's here that, you know, Lincoln is desperate.
He knows that Washington will fall.
He's there at the fort.
Somebody yells at him to get down as he's under fire from Early's men.
But in the nick of time, the men of the 7th Corps jump off the boats of the Washington Navy Yard and march up Georgia Avenue to Fort Stevens and save the day.
But this is just the beginning, Jack, because the Confederate Secret Service is all over all this stuff.
They're literally, you know, information warfare.
They recognize that the Northern press is occupied completely by Democrats.
And one of my favorite quotes in the book is that the press, that the democracy controls the press.
And the democracy was the self-aggrandizing term that the Democrats like to call themselves.
And they influence press operations.
And they still do.
They still do today.
Patrick, we are running up on our hard break here.
The book is, tell people again, the title of the book, Where They Can Go, because these are the stories that formed the world we live in today.
The Unvanquished, it's available on Amazon.com, best-selling book.
Reviews on Wall Street Journal, it's at the front of the store at Barnes & Noble.
At Combat Historian on Twitter and X and Getter, you know, and my website is Patrick, my name, PatrickKODonald.com.
Thanks, Jack, for having me.
The one, the only, Patrick K. O'Donnell.
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