Dave Rubin hosts Colonel Allen West and Chad Robichaux to examine veteran PTSD, foreign policy failures, and the spiritual resilience required for recovery. West critiques premature withdrawals from Iraq and Syria while highlighting NATO's financial disunity, whereas Robichaux details his near-fatal suicide attempt stemming from eight Afghanistan deployments. Together they founded the Mighty Oaks Foundation to offer faith-based healing beyond clinical limits, arguing that true hope stems from a Creator rather than secular structures. Ultimately, they urge Americans to move past superficial gratitude and actively integrate veterans into their communities through genuine support and shared purpose. [Automatically generated summary]
I am glad to have you guys here because, as I mentioned to you right before we started, we haven't done enough generally on military and veterans issues and all of those things, so we're going to dive into all that, talk about your nonprofit and why you guys are here together and all of those good things, but first off, what Well, for me, it was a family tradition.
15-year-old Allen West wanted to, you know, follow his dad's lead.
And I think that that is why positive, strong role models, male role models, are so important in the black community, because my dad gave me a direction and a goal and objective.
So on 31 July 1982 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, he was on my right shoulder, my mom was on my left shoulder, and they penned Second Lieutenant Barr is on me.
And now today, his grandson, dad passed in 1986, but his grandson is a major in the United States Army.
My father served as a combat Marine in Vietnam as infantryman.
And my son is now in Afghanistan right now, part of 3rd Anglico, supporting the Georgians in Afghanistan.
So, and I was a Marine as well with eight deployments to Afghanistan.
So I, my father being a Marine, probably suffered with a lot of things that we helped our warriors with at our foundation.
And he came home, he's an angry guy, a lot of alcohol and physical abuse.
And so I grew up in a very dysfunctional home.
I had a brother who was a year older than me, and when we were about 13 to 14 years old, we decided we were going to join the military to escape that life.
And so we started running and swimming and teamed up to prepare for that goal in life.
And unfortunately, about a year after that, my brother was shot and killed.
And so it put me in a very... what I had left of a family dissolved.
It put me in extreme isolation and in that isolation I just continued to focus towards that goal of being in the military and when I was 17 years old I met a Marine Corps recruiter named Staff Sergeant Brown who I hadn't even, I wasn't going to graduate high school.
I was living on my own by that time and I wanted to be in some type of special operations and I expressed to him You know, what I wanted to do, and he told me about being a reconnaissance Marine, so I set my sights on that, and so the Marine Corps for me, joining at 17 years old, was a clean slate of life, a brand new chance, and at that young age, I was aware enough to embrace it, and it's been an amazing part of my life.
Yeah, what do you think that regular people that don't serve, who love America, you can see I've got a giant American flag in the control room, we've got another one right over there, we've got the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in there, what do you think that regular Americans should know about you guys, people that serve, that maybe we don't know?
Well, one I don't, I don't think people often realize how special it is for someone who serves in the military.
Currently we only have a half a percent point 5% of our population, United States serves in the military, and, you know, stands in the gap, not just to protect the The freedoms that we have in America, but to protect the interests of others around the world and stand up for people that can't stand up for themselves.
That's one of the things I always loved about the military.
And I think people don't understand is the fact that we do serve as strength for the world, not just our nation, and are able to protect these people around the world that don't have the ability to defend themselves.
I think the most important thing and, you know, my Christian faith is very strong in my life.
When you go to John chapter 15 verse 13 where it says that no greater love has another man that he would lay down his life for another.
Then also in Isaiah 6 and 8 when Isaiah is there with the host of the Lord and they're saying, whom shall we send?
Who will go for us?
And Isaiah says, here am I, send me.
You have to understand that the freedoms and liberties that we have here in the United States of America is that we Because we consistently raise generations of these young men and women that are going to continue to give that last full measure of devotion.
And that's why Abraham Lincoln talked about the increased devotion that a nation should have for those in the Gettysburg Address.
And so when people come up and say, thank you for your service, I mean, that's all fine and well.
But I think the real tribute and the real honor to people like Chad, myself, and all the generations that have worn the uniform, We want you to understand why we took a note to support and defend the Constitution.
Do you guys think that there is a little rebirth of that happening right now?
Because it's not a coincidence that I put the flag there in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
I don't think it's a coincidence that as people have watched me sort of evolve politically and Talk about these things and pride in the country and those things.
I don't mean blind pride.
I mean, you know, really understanding where we came from and where we're going.
And I said this just recently at a speaking event.
I think when people turn on the news, they think, you know, The country's lost its way, but that's just, I think there's a loud invoice and the loud few.
When I go around the country and speak about the work that we do and supporting our warriors, I get to witness firsthand a grateful nation of Americans who are patriots, they love their warriors, they love their country, and they would kind of have the same views that you have, that this is a special place, and it's a sacred place that we need to uphold the values that we have in this nation.
Yeah, I know you have no love lost for the mainstream media, but do you think that it partially is that?
That they've sort of gone so bananas in making it seem that America is so evil and we're patriarchal and racist and all these ridiculous things that eventually you push good people to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
And now we're sitting here having a great conversation.
And I think all of us, if we really understand the objective truths about this country, we come to realize what America really is.
It's a beacon of liberty, freedom, and democracy.
That's why people come here.
When I lived in South Florida, I never saw anyone get on a boat to go to Cuba.
I saw the opposite.
No one is leaving Guatemala.
They don't leave.
They don't leave Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras to go to Venezuela.
So, you know, this is a very simple thing.
So when you have someone like a Governor Cuomo that stands up and says, ah, you know, America has never been great.
Tell that.
Tell that to those men who 75 years ago landed on those beaches in Normandy and jumped in, you know, the night prior.
Tell that to your dad and my older brother who fought in those jungles in Vietnam.
Tell that to my dad.
Go to his, you know, final resting spot.
A man that fought for this country when this country did not afford him all those rights and privileges it did others, yet he wanted his son to still be an officer in that exact same army?
So how do you balance that, which I think we obviously all agree with, with that also we do make mistakes, also we're flawed, also depending on political leadership there might be times when you're really all gung-ho about all of our policies and sometimes you're not.
What do you think it is fundamentally about the military that allows it to keep America strong despite having administrations that can wildly go in different directions?
I mean, just look at the last two.
The policies of Barack Obama versus the policies of Donald Trump are vastly different, but we haven't had a coup, you know.
The military is still functioning, still doing its job.
Well, if you go and you read the Constitution, you know, the founding fathers talked about moving toward a more perfect union.
So, we're not a perfect country, but we understand that we have a foundation, we have a fundamental values, we have a rule of law that enables us to move in that direction.
That's how we continue to amend ourselves.
And that's the interesting thing about our military, Dave, is that we don't take an oath to a political party.
We don't take an oath to a person.
We take an oath to that document that, you know, I'm carrying right here, that unifies
us as a nation.
That's our rule of law.
That's our standard.
And so our military is focused on that and nothing more.
And we are the guardians of the republic.
That's how we really see ourselves.
And it's important that our country sees us that way also.
So no, we're not going to go in and throw a coup because one administration to the others.
But you know, maybe there are going to be some orders that are not exactly ethical that
we will stand up and challenge.
And that's why we have these generals and that's what we expect them to do as the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
But we take that oath to the Constitution and I think that's important.
So let's talk a little bit about your service specifically.
So you served in Afghanistan and you served in Iraq.
You know, Afghanistan seems to me to be the weirdest military adventure or war, whatever you want to call it at this point, because it's the longest ongoing war that we've ever had in the United States.
It's still going on now.
People seem to be very confused as to why we went in the first place.
Well, I think, I feel a lot clearer, more clear about Afghanistan, why we went there.
I mean, great, September 11th, you know, planes were flown into World Trade Center, and it was done so by the Taliban, and we had an obligation to go and hunt down Osama bin Laden and the Taliban that were responsible for it.
And part of that meant to align with the Northern Alliance, which would have been a Masood,
would have been the leader of the Northern Alliance, which bin Laden cleverly killed
at the same time, assassinated at the same time.
And so as we went to Afghanistan, we had to, you know, not just go after one person, but
we had to go at the infiltration of the, out of Afghanistan by the Taliban, the occupation
And so, going after the Taliban meant an occupying of Afghanistan, not to overtake the country, but to eradicate the Taliban.
And obviously, that's still going on 20 years later.
I would have never thought after eight deployments there, my son We're there fighting the Taliban right now.
Well, I mean, you think eight years, for eight years of doing this, of that 20 years, the military was completely handcuffed.
They cut resources, manpower, and rules of engagement that were not favorable to our troops.
I'm talking about the Obama administration at the cost of many American lives and I truly believe that an administration is responsible for that.
And luckily now the rules of engagement have changed and we're able to go after and more offensively go after the Taliban and I think we're having a more effective footprint there.
However, I think Americans should understand that we're not there as a In the same capacity we was in the early days.
We're there to support the ANA, the Afghan National Army.
We're there to support other allied forces, such as my son right now is assigned to the Georgians, who are out doing combat patrols and presence patrols.
So we're there in more of a support and advise capacity right now.
And I think, even with my son, Aaron loved him to come home, but I think we belong there in that capacity to support, advise, and help for our nations.
Because these nations like the ANA, they can't.
If we left the ANA, Afghan National Army, to do this themselves, they would fail.
So that actually is a good segue to talking about Iraq, because one of the things that happened in Iraq, you served in Desert Storm, but after this last Iraq war, there was this big debate, when do we leave?
And basically Obama took us out.
With just announcing the day we're going, and they were having free and fair elections.
There was actually the beginnings of a democracy there.
Now, you could argue that we maybe should have never been there in the first place.
You could argue that we had to leave no matter what.
All those things.
But democracy was spreading, and then we left, and now it's gotten much worse.
So actually, first, why don't you talk about Desert Storm, just in general?
Because that's the forgotten one now, because people only think about this second Iraq War.
You know, it's incredible that that has happened, and one of the committees I sit on is to establish a National Desert Storm War Memorial in Washington, D.C., because it has been forgotten.
But it was an important bridge for us coming from Vietnam to once again reestablish that respect and regard for our military.
But there will never be another desert storm.
No one is ever going to take on the United States of America in a wide open desert of conventional warfare.
You know, two of the best training facilities for our military is right here in California, Two Niner Palms and then also the National Training Center.
We are experts in open desert warfare and the Iraqi Army learned that.
in 96 short hours. But the real thing was that we built a coalition. We held to the
objective that we were going in under the United Nations mandate, it was to get the
Iraqis out of Kuwait. But what you have seen metastasized now is a world that understands
you don't fight the United States of America up front, face to face.
Now you have this ideological war against Islamic jihadism.
They don't wear uniforms.
They don't openly declare themselves.
They are non-state, non-uniform belligerents.
And that's what, you know, Chad had to deal with in Afghanistan.
And even after I retired, I was in Afghanistan for two and a half years as a civilian military advisor down in Kandahar.
We have to, we have not done a good job of understanding this modern battlefield.
understanding this enemy that we're facing.
Even Russia, you know, when they went into the Crimea, they didn't go in as the Russian military.
They went in as a paramilitary force, and you see what they're doing in Ukraine.
China, when you look at what they're doing all over the globe,
they do say that this is our strategy, the one belt, one road,
but they are covertly doing things that we don't understand.
China is in Venezuela, as a matter of fact.
Iran, the number one state sponsor of Islamic terrorism in the world.
But, you know, Hezbollah is not out there really, you know, declaring their state, or what have you.
They're flying a flag, but, you know, Hezbollah doesn't have a country.
And so I think that we—the incredible thing, I got to be at the tactical level.
And then also I got to be at the strategic level, having sat on the House Armed Services Committee.
And just the same in Vietnam, we lose strategically.
We don't lose tactically on the ground.
It's at that level with the policies and everything where we make some really dumb decisions, you know, rules of engagement, not understanding the enemy, their goals and objectives, that, you know, it filters down and we set our warriors up not for success.
He said, war is about imposing your will upon another.
You just don't do half will.
Now, with Desert Shield, Desert Storm, we would have lost credibility, though.
If we had continued on, but I think that we did not do a good job of degradating the complete capacity and capability militarily of Saddam Hussein, because we had two, the Republican Guard divisions just right ahead of us.
We could have taken those guys out and maybe brought him to an even better position at the table.
That then will probably make Turkey is not exactly our friends under Erdogan, but if you go back post-World War I, the Sykes-Picot Treaty, when the great powers of England and France went in, they just divided the Middle East up arbitrarily.
So with all that in mind, if we look at Afghanistan today, and now you're saying some of the rules of engagement have changed, we're doing things a little more effectively, how do we eventually not be in Afghanistan?
Is there any road that you can see to getting us there, Don?
They love the fact that America was there because they had been truly oppressed by the Taliban.
When I first went, I deployed like every other warrior after 9-11.
We were going there to right the wrongs of 9-11.
That's a very patriotic cause.
That's what motivated us.
But very quickly, I went from that to understanding what these people had endured from the Taliban, to see their hurt and their pain and what the Taliban had done to the women and the little kids, little boys and little girls, and seeing this and hearing about stories and understanding this, it really turned my heart from this patriotic sense of retaliate for 9-11 to these people are oppressed and we need to be there to help these people.
This is where I'm torn today because I still have a heart for these people.
I mean, I lost Afghan brothers in combat, and so I still have a heart for these people.
I couldn't imagine.
I was there for the 2004 election.
I remember sitting in the living room.
Everyone's like a Super Bowl party.
Everyone's tuned in TV because John Kerry and Bush is up and everyone, these guys, these people are having this food everywhere, they're having this giant party.
I've never seen anything like, no one in the United States excited for a presidential election like this was.
And when Bush won, they were so excited.
Because they were so terrified that if Kerry won, he would withdraw the U.S.
troops and what would happen to them.
They know what will happen to them if we leave.
And so it really changed my perspective on being there.
Again, as a father now, I'm like, does my son belong there?
It made me ask these questions all over again.
But I do believe that we don't belong there in a in conventional capacity, but as a support
So what do you think just broadly, because we're sort of talking about this at a personal level from your perspective, what do you think broadly just a sane foreign policy looks like?
It's about having a force that is able to make sure that these Islamic Jihadists are not able to have a defined sanctuary, a base of operations.
And what we have been doing up to this point, Dave, we've been playing whack-a-mole.
And you can't win playing whack-a-mole.
So what we need to be able to do is, instead of having this massive, forward-deployed military, you have a power projection platform.
And so you have, you know, a Bagram, you have a base, you know, somewhere close in Iraq where you can launch troops very quickly.
And you have a strike operation, you hit a critical capability capacity of the enemy, and, you know, then you pull back.
But you stay in that very basic region to let them know that we can quickly respond once again.
And that's what you just saw when we brought in the carrier group into the Persian Gulf area to stand up against Iran, to say that we do have a credible military deterrent.
So your foreign policy It's worthless unless you have that deterrent.
And they teach you in the Staff College of War about the four elements of military, I mean, national power.
Diplomatic, informational, military, and economic.
And I think that what we have to do is continue to use the diplomatic, the informational, the economic means first and foremost.
But we have to show that, you know, if push comes to shove, we can do this if you're not willing to So with that in mind, do you regard the Obama red line in Syria as just, like, the biggest blunder of three years?
Well, I think, you know, all four areas that you're talking about, particularly in economic sanctions right now, I mean, a lot of people, you know, continue to, every time the president says something that he's going to impose these imposed tariffs or do economic sanctions, people laugh and mock him.
What do you think about his decision-making abilities when it comes to selecting certain people?
I remember when Bolton got put in, it was like, all right, now Trump's going all neocon, and the base, which was very anti-war, was very pissed.
And I remember sort of thinking, well, it's like, that doesn't mean you're going neocon, because you bring a guy like him around.
It actually means you're bringing somebody around that is known as a threat, and that kind of keeps the enemies going, we don't, and then you have Trump who says anything, so it's kind of like, wait a minute, the combo here is a guy who we think likes war, or who does like war, let's say, or however you want to phrase that, plus a guy like Trump who says whatever he wants, now we don't know how to react, basically.
Well, I think it's sort of, I always say, it's sort of like he's just kind of, and I don't even mean this, I don't even, truly don't even mean this negatively necessarily, but he's kind of just a crooked New York businessman, but you gotta do a lot of stuff within that.
I mean, if you listen to the media, it sounds like, you know, any moment World War III is going to happen or something's going down with China, Iran's going to get the bomb, this, that, the other thing.
But do you really feel that there's empirical proof that actually things are safer or more stable?
Well, I mean, we have, I mean, what's North Korea going to do?
What's Iran going to do?
We have no No way to predict what they're going to do, but I think the actions that the president and the administration has proven that they are responding.
North Korea has responded in a way that we never thought they would respond with the relations to the United States.
Iran has backed down.
Mexico, who's really taken advantage of the United States for many, many years, is finally coming around.
These things may seem extreme because people aren't used to it.
But I think they're, I believe the world is in a better place right now.
Well, that must be why Trump, within two months of being elected, he dropped that mother-of-all-bombs and people were like, oh, now he's going all Warhawk.
But your argument would be he did it because it's like you show a little bit of erratic behavior.
What do you guys make of our alliances and the way they've really sort of shifted over the last five years, let's say, and just what's going on with NATO and the United Nations?
I mean, Trump has basically obliterated the United Nations.
NATO is shifting.
More than that, that if we don't do anything, nobody does anything.
And that is the sort of bargain that the United States is in that's very difficult.
Do you think that's a fair thing to say?
If we don't do anything internationally, no one does anything.
Because we've been that security blanket for them for so long.
My first tour of duty was over in Europe and I was part of a NATO unit and when you looked
at the other airborne units that were part of that NATO unit, you just kind of scratch
your head.
Like, dudes, what are y'all doing?
Do y'all even train?
I mean, you can't hit the broad side of a barn.
But these collective body politics, United Nations, European Union, I think they're being
rejected.
rejected.
And now when you look at these security organizations like NATO, President Trump has gone in and said, hey guys, whiskey, tango, Foxtrot.
When he called out Angela Merkel for having a deal with Russia for natural gas, and now you're asking me to protect you from Russia, but yet you're doing economic deals with Russia.
Come on!
Does that make sense?
And furthermore, you're not owning up to your 2% responsibility of financing in NATO.
I will tell you, when I was in Afghanistan, the biggest problem for the German army was obesity.
because they were just sitting around, they were eating lotion, you know,
good sausage and bread and everything.
They weren't getting out, they weren't fighting anyone.
In Southern Afghanistan, we had the Brits, we had the Canadians, we had the Romanians,
and we had the Dutch.
And they each had a separate province.
And each of them had their own rules of engagement or, you know, orders from the Ministry of Defense.
They didn't coordinate within each other.
And so the Taliban would just easily understood, well, we can do this in this province
'cause the Dutch are not gonna drop bombs on us, they're just gonna fly over our heads and, you know,
So, I mean, how are you going to win against an enemy when you have your ministry of defense dictating all of these different, you know... Is that changing under NATO now?
Well, I haven't been back to Afghanistan since 2008 or 2007, so I wouldn't know, but I think that, you know, maybe when you look at the Georgians who are going out and doing patrols, maybe it is different.
But these major NATO member countries, they're not stepping up.
And I would even begin to question why we have Turkey and NATO, because Erdogan is not a friend to Western civilization.
But the other countries are stepping up, because of what you said.
I mean, as the U.S.
comes back and moves to that support and advisory capacity, They have to.
They have to do their part.
I mean, this is a strong presidential administration saying that, hey, you guys are going to do your role.
We're not going to go out there and do all these combat patrols, send our American warriors to do all these combat patrols while you sit back on the base.
This is a strategy and shift of the military and the administration.
You see a big surge in the special operations community and that support and advisory role too.
We're in the same circles of people, and we have mutual friends, and we both have a very, I mean, obviously we're both patriots and love our warriors, and outside of uniform, we're both still serving.
I tell you when I first, like, I was, that anger intensity worked really well in Afghanistan.
Like I said, the Afghans that I worked with, they hated the Taliban.
The task force I was on had a Viking kind of war culture mindset, and so it worked really well in Afghanistan.
But 24 hours later when I'd be home, wife and children, it didn't work well there.
I couldn't like flip a switch and turn it off.
So I recognized that, but it was a moment that I came home From Afghanistan.
I made it home for my daughter's birthday.
She was so excited I was going to be there.
And I remember she's very opinionated.
She still is.
And she didn't like the icing on her cake.
And just saying that, like, I flipped out and I grabbed my little girl's birthday cake and picked it up and threw it against the wall and destroyed my little girl's birthday.
And I remember in that moment thinking, like, what kind of person does that?
What kind of dad does something like that?
And that was one example.
At that moment, I realized that I had to just back off.
Instead of fixing the behavior, I just kind of distanced myself.
And so between these eight deployments, I would just stay busy at schools and training and workups and just stayed busy and isolated myself from them.
And over time, that anger started turning into anxiety.
I started having these physiological symptoms.
My arms would go numb.
My face would go numb.
I'd feel like my throat was swelling shut.
Sometimes I'd feel like I had like a thousand pounds on my chest.
I started researching what this was and learned it was panic attacks, but I didn't want to say anything to the guys I worked with in this little special operations group.
I figured the guys would think I was weak, maybe I'd lose my clearance, and so I didn't speak up.
I tried to push it down and do my job, and eventually those symptoms got much worse.
I actually started having these moments where I almost felt like a detached, like out-of-body experience.
I'd wake up by these fogs and realize I didn't remember the last few weeks, and so I had to speak up and say something because I wasn't only putting myself in danger, but I was putting other people.
and danger as well.
And so that's when I was brought home and I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
And that began-- that wasn't my rock bottom, but that began a very downward spiral in my life.
My wife and my psychologist were trying to help me move forward.
And I was in such a state--
the only way I really know how to describe the state of panic
that I was in, I just recently kind of came up with words for it.
It's like if your ankle was handcuffed to the bottom of a pool drain, and the surface was
about a foot above your head, and you at just how desperate you would be for one breath of air,
You never die.
Like, that's how I was like 24-7.
And on top of that panic, I felt totally ashamed because I was so proud of the job I was doing, and my whole identity was wrapped in that job, and now it was gone.
And so my wife and my counselor were trying to find something for me to do and that's where the MMA and Jiu Jitsu came in.
I'd say I did it since I was little but I'm still little.
I did it since I was five years old and so I was already a professional fighter so I dove into that and just invested my time in that and I had a great deal of success.
I ended up being 18-2 as a pro fighter.
I won a world title belt from Legacy FC and fought in Strikeforce and all these shows but really what I did was I never got well.
I found something to hide in, like somebody climbing a bottle of alcohol or drugs.
Do you think that's where most people are at when they start getting into MMA?
Because as you know, obviously, it's absolutely blowing up, and Joe Rogan's talking to all the fighters all the time, and there really seems to be this thing about getting your shit together, that that seems to be the beginning point.
I was telling Alan West today, he's like, you still compete?
I compete in jiu-jitsu tournaments.
I'm doing the World Championships in August.
And the reason why is because it helps me regiment my life.
It's something I put a date on the calendar, and everything in my life becomes disciplined.
The way my family life is, the way I eat, the way I sleep, the way I manage my schedule for traveling and speaking, everything becomes regimented.
So I try to compete twice a year for that.
When you live in the lifestyle of a professional fighter and competing at that very high level like I competed at, it really helped me manage my life.
And my life was still dealing with panic attacks.
I was still angry.
My life was still kind of in disarray.
And my marriage really began to deteriorate because I wasn't addressing the problem.
And so eventually I ended up in an affair.
I didn't care.
I was so callous at that point.
And so we sat our kids down and said we were getting divorced.
In fact, my wife filed for divorce.
We sold our home, moved into separate apartments, like signed 12-month leases.
And my wife and I had two very different reactions.
And my wife went into a church, and I don't mean like on a Sunday, she went like every day, got connected with a group of people, and she said she started praying for me.
And at that time, I was probably as far away from God as you could possibly be.
But I asked her now, of course, what was she praying for me at this time?
And she'd just pray, God, let me see Chad the way you see Chad.
And so you have this woman that's like fighting for me.
Meanwhile, I'm in this apartment, Immediately, like, I'm separated from this woman I don't have to deal with anymore.
I don't have to be responsible for the problems I was causing anymore.
And so, I had a big fight on Showtime, Strikeforce.
And that's what I was focused on.
And when that fight was over, I ended up winning that fight.
But as I won that fight in the Toyota Center, there was like 10,000 people there.
And I remember thinking when my hand was raised, like, my wife wasn't there.
And she'd always been my cheerleader before.
Something about that, I went back to my apartment that night and I started thinking about all the problems I caused, the people I hurt, my family mainly.
And I thought, well I blamed everyone else before, like I was the common denominator, like the problem was me.
And when I came to this thought, this idea came over me that somehow my family would be sad
without me, but they would be better off.
Now, if you know anything about the veteran suicide rate, that same hopeless thought finds
a home in the hearts of 20 plus veterans every day.
That not I'm going to kill myself to escape my pain, but somehow you think that people
around me would be sad, my family would be sad, my friends would be sad, but they're
going to be better off.
And so that decision really seemed like it made sense to me, and I made a decision to take my life.
In that apartment, I had all my family pictures.
I'm ashamed to say, but it's true.
I had all my family pictures in my closet because, you know, girls coming over and whatnot.
And so I would sit in my closet with my... I'd shut the door, I'd put my family pictures on the floor, and I'd try to build up the courage.
I'd put the pistol to my... I had a Glock 22 pistol.
I'd put it to my head, I'd put it in my mouth, trying to build up the courage.
And I don't know to this day if I had the courage to actually pull that trigger, because I didn't.
But what did keep me from doing it was my son Hunter, the one that's in Afghanistan right now.
He had the only key to my apartment, and I knew he'd be the one to either find me or open the door for someone to find me.
And that Kept me from actually doing it and one morning. I called my
wife. She says I call she says I was frantic I don't really remember the call, but she came to my
apartment and when she came I was actually in the closet with that pistol and
And she knocked on my door and unwittingly you know intervened and saved my life
I remember hiding that pistol under my blanket I didn't want her to find it and and she I answered the
door and we got in this confrontation And she asked me a question that it radically changed my
life She asked me how I could do everything I did in the Marine Corps.
She saw me become a recon Marine.
She saw me train for these deployments and all these things in Afghanistan, and train for MMA fights, cutting weight, and all the discipline it takes to do that.
She's like, how could you do all of that?
And when it comes to your family, you'll quit.
And that question for me, to be called a quitter, which is one of the most soul-cutting words to me, it just impacted me, and I knew I had to make a change.
No, me personally, you know, it was just different for me.
I have a very supportive wife who, her dad was career military also, did 24 years in the army, in Vietnam, two tours, and he's buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
So we always tried to have that very strong support.
And as a battalion commander, I remember before we went to Iraq, I tried to tell the soldiers that the person that you are here When you put that first step on those stairs to go into that airplane, you gotta leave that person here.
And the person that you are over there, somehow, you've got to leave that person over there.
And I think that that's what the struggle is for our warriors, to be able to make that switch.
It's not saying that you're, you're cold and callous to be able to do it, but you just
understand what's required of you.
You know, your nation is calling you to be a certain person, but your family is also
calling you, calling you to be a certain person.
And that's what veterans and that's what our military men and women are struggling with,
because we put them in these very intense combat situations and then we extricate them
from them and we put them back into the family.
And I don't think we do a really good job of the decompression time over there before they come back home.
I think that you need a good two to three weeks before, you know, as you're coming out of those combat zones of operation before you come home.
I mean, real-time over there, and, you know, instead of rushing, we've got to get them back home.
You know, we've got to get all the equipment loaded and get them back home.
Take the time, a couple of weeks, to just let God sit around and talk and get that opportunity to leave that person over there and start mentally preparing themselves to go back.
Because a lot has changed in your families.
You've been gone, you know, your wife, your kids, they've continued on with their lives.
You're kind of the one that's coming back in and you're kind of the guest.
Yeah, but I think that in the long run, it will be so beneficial.
You know, I remember I did a year in Korea in 1995, and my daughter, my oldest daughter, when I left, I think she was a little over a year.
And, you know, that was the day before Skype and everything like that, and so you're sharing VHS tapes and what have you.
But when I got back from Korea, you know, she was there and she looked at me and she was like, I think I know who you are, but I'm not really sure who you are.
And so it was all about redeveloping that relationship, you know, taking her out, you know, daddy daughter time, just, just whatever.
And then finally she realized, okay, this is a guy I've been seeing, you know, on those video tapes.
Yeah, he's my dad.
He's not leaving.
He's not going anywhere.
So I think it's important that we allow our guys to have that time, but we are putting them in such a constant deployment cycle.
And that's why I get so upset about how we have reduced the strength of our military, because we're running these warriors, we're running their families into the ground.
Well, in that reaction to my wife's question, you know, why would I not fight for my family and my own life?
I had to respond to that, and through that response, I found the solution that many of our warriors face, not just me.
I knew I couldn't make those changes by myself.
I knew I needed help, and so I asked my wife, was there someone at this church she was going to?
Because I knew I couldn't do it with the people around me as well.
I had some great friends, but there were more people that were telling me what I wanted to hear, not what I needed to hear.
And so I met a man named Steve Toth.
And Steve is a Texas state legislator now.
And at the time, he was the elder at the church my wife was going to and a small business owner.
And we met at a Starbucks coffee shop.
And I had the perfect plan of how I was going to fix my life.
I was probably slid it over to him really smug.
And he put his hand on it and slid it right back over to me and told me I was going to fail.
And I remember being, like, remuneratedly really offended, because I'm like, this is pretty good, and really what I was trying to do was manipulate him to say, take this plan, show it to my wife, because I'm trying to fix things.
And he tapped on that paper and he said, if this thing doesn't have anything to do with your relationship with God, I'm not going to waste your time, and I'm not going to let you waste mine.
And I know a lot of people may not agree with my faith or what I believe, but I'll tell you this.
I tried everything.
I'd been through all the counseling, all the programs.
I'd been on the pills.
I tried professional success.
I'd been successful financially and in my career as an athlete, as an instructor.
I had a thousand students in my school that I was teaching.
And so I had tried all those things and nothing had worked.
And so it was time for me to try something different.
We have a saying at Mighty Oaks, if what you're doing isn't working, then why not try something different?
And so I trusted this man, Steve.
I surrendered my life to God through his leadership and his mentorship.
And things in my life started to radically change.
I found a restoration, a hope.
For the first time I had hope in a very long time.
And I found ultimately what I've been searching for the whole time, my whole life, and that's purpose.
And that purpose was to share what I discovered with other people.
And that was how Mighty Oaks began.
Through that process, I learned something really important.
It sounds so simple, but to me it was so profound.
That all these things that happened to me, my childhood, Afghanistan, losing one of my best friends, Foster Harrington, we served together for 10 years when he was killed on our first deployments.
All these things that had happened to me didn't lead me to be in that closet with my pistol in my hand.
What led me there were the choices I made in response to those things.
And I still had control of that.
I still had the control, the ability to choose differently.
And as cliche as it may sound, I didn't have to let my past define my future.
I could choose a different future moving forward.
And in doing that, part of that future I chose moving forward was to take what I discovered and share it with others.
It was like if I was dying of cancer and this guy Steve gave me the cure, I had to share it.
I felt obligated to share it.
And so that's how we started Mighty Oaks.
We went ready at the time.
My wife and I were still bleeding as a family trying to heal, but we both felt passionate to do this mission.
And I'm so thankful we did.
I mean, to date, I've spoken to over 100,000 active duty troops at bases around the world by request to share a message on resiliency.
I go to Marine Corps boot camp.
The Marine Corps allows me to speak at Marine Corps boot camp.
to young warriors about resiliency and spiritual resiliency, and we run a program called a Legacy Program.
It's a recovery program.
We have four ranches in California, Ohio, Virginia, and Texas, and we pay for everything.
Travel, flights, all the program is totally free.
Active duty veterans and spouses come to these programs.
We do 30 camps per year, and we've had 2,600 graduates from those camps.
And so it's been absolutely incredible to take the lessons I've learned and realize that I wasn't the only one.
I wasn't alone.
22 veterans every day were taking their lives at the same time I was going through this.
Divorce rates in some bases are up to 80% for combat veterans.
A lot of people having the same issues I had.
I had the solution.
And now we have the most amazing team.
People like Colonel West on our board and General Boykin.
And I think that, you know, in the Bible it says that you can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens you.
And that's the message we need to get out there.
You and I were talking earlier about, you know, the victim mentality.
And I always tell people, you've got two choices in life.
You either be a victim or you be a victor.
And that's why I hate progressive socialism, because it tells people they're going to be victims.
And that's not what America's about.
And even more so, Dave, when you look at what is happening with our young people in the United States of America right now, the suicide rate, it's because they're searching for something.
And they're out there trying everything.
They're on the internet.
They're on the social media.
They're playing the video games.
They want to be cool.
The drugs and everything that the world says that you can have to make you accept it.
But there's just one thing that can really fill that emptiness in your heart.
And I think, you know, we talked about an awakening in this country.
I also see a faith awakening in this country as well.
You guys probably know, I've been on tour with Jordan Peterson for the last year and a half or so, and he's not trying to sell religion on anyone particularly, but he is trying to show the power of religious stories and the meaning and all of the things that I think you're talking about.
And I do see a rebirth of that.
And it's been, well, I've actually seen it all over the world, because we've traveled all over the world, and it's pretty fascinating to see firsthand, because it's not what the media shows you.
And he's moved me on this.
You can't be around that for a year, year and a half, and not be moved personally on that.
Well, that's one of the things, you know, leftism is about secular humanism, because they don't want you to believe that you can have faith and hope in something other than the government.
And when you look at what, you know, our founders created, when you look and read John Locke's second treatise on government, Natural Rights Theory, your inalienable rights are not dictated to you by man.
And you see, I mean, there is hope on this because those people that are coming to us, half of those people in active duty military, orders coming, being sent from the military, they don't agree with the fact that we're a faith-based program, but they're looking for solutions.
15 years ago, the DOD and VA began just pushing clinical programs.
We've had We have 1,100 VA and DOD clinical programs.
At the time, the suicide rate was 16 a day.
It's only gotten worse.
And so the military, the VA, the veteran community are looking for answers.
And faith-based programs like Mighty Oaks have proven to be successful.
We just finished a three-year longitudinal data, a doctoral study.
And I could bore you with the numbers from it, but we did outperform clinical trials in this independent study.
I assume there are some secular organizations that are doing very similar things that probably have decent success rates.
You're just saying that for you and for people that are like-minded that this works for you, but you don't have any inherent problem with people doing it from a more secular perspective.
When people go and are inspired or motivated, inspiration and motivation tend to fade.
Faith and the God that created us tend to sustain.
It gives you the resiliency to bounce back.
I do believe that personally.
However, I've seen some other great programs out there.
I just believe that That when people make the decision to align their lives with the lives that we were created to live, they find true resiliency and true strength and real hope and real purpose moving forward.
And we've seen that firsthand, and thousands of guys, and not everyone that comes to our program, or matter of fact, about half of the people that come to our program, would say they share our faith when they come, but they're looking for something that they hadn't found anywhere else.
So if I was giving you guys each a closing statement here, How is it that you'd want that average person out there to get involved, help some of these wounded warriors, help you guys get the mission out there?
I think we did a little of it again.
A little of it here, but what would you want people to do?
I'd say, you know, if you are a patriot and you want to be part of a grateful nation, when you are going to meet that veteran and invite them into your home, have a place to point them to.
And there's plenty of places out there.
Mighty Oaks Foundation is a place that they can point people to as a resource to help our warriors that are struggling with suicide, divorce, PTSD, all those issues.
And we're not only a resource, but a free one.
We cover all the costs of that.
So, free tool at your disposal as a grateful nation to serve our warriors.
Any warriors listening?
Our spouses?
Just visit our website, and again, we'll take care of you.