Lethal Minds Volume 32
Volume 32, 01 MARCH, 2025
Letter from the Editor
I took an oath in 1994; one I see as conferring a lifetime obligation. Regardless of whether you view the state of our nation as one of finally being corrected after years of imperial overreach or as authoritarians dismantling the world’s greatest experiment in democracy brick-by-brick, our oaths matter. We all swore “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” I see that as enduring for all of us. Thereafter, there are distinctions. Commissioned officers swear “to take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.” My friends and compatriots who enlisted swore to “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” What our oaths mean varies according to a military law expert with whom I consulted. But legal distinctions notwithstanding, we all take off the uniform and go home to the farm to live our lives, just like George Washington did. Sometimes that’s where the wheels come off. Away from the barracks, common haircuts, and uniforms that render us all persons in common, it’s possible to lose sight of the unspoken obligation we held while in uniform: Don’t be a piece of shit. A piece of shit revels in another’s misfortune, gleefully increasing the suffering of the afflicted. A piece of shit fails to recognize the cracks in their own foundation. A piece of shit loves all the rights and hates all the responsibilities. I’m watching this unfold “in the comments” during the elimination of thousands of federal jobs. I acknowledge that the federal government is bloated, that our federal debts and budget deficits are represented by numbers so high that I am unsure how many zeros are even required to type them. That is a vulnerability and burden I can’t in good conscience pass to my child. Selfishly, I hope that doesn’t impact my benefits as a veteran, but I am an American, and I’ll pitch in to help just like I did for twenty-seven years in uniform. Because I don’t want to be a piece of shit. What I won’t do is giggle at the real impacts on people who chose to serve the nation in a different way, 30% of whom are military veterans. I won’t diminish my humanity by dehumanizing fellow Americans at a low moment in their lives. If people must be let go, they deserve the respect of a face-to-face explanation, not a tweet. They deserve a thank you for their efforts on the nation’s behalf, even if we decide those efforts are no longer needed. They deserve respect for their simple status as our fellow citizens. I was once unrelentingly against mandatory national service. I’ve reversed completely because I think unifying experiences are fundamental to national unity, be they in the Marine Corps, the Peace Corps, or the Civilian Conservation Corps that we ought to bring back. I think working hard with people unlike yourself, from places different from that in which you grew up, and making it work develops people who are not pieces of shit. They develop into tougher, more thoughtful people with perspective who can also pick up a BAR and kick the Nazis back across the Rhine. We try to host an array of voices here at Lethal Minds Journal as part of our obligation to not be pieces of shit. Don’t be a piece of shit. Join us. We want your thoughts, opinions, and creativity. Submit them to lethalmindsjournal.submissions@gmail.com. Fire for Effect, Russell Worth Parker Editor in Chief - Lethal Minds Journal
Dedicated to those who serve, those who have served, and those who paid the final price for their country.
Lethal Minds is a military veteran and service member magazine, dedicated to publishing work from the military and veteran communities.
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In This Issue
Across the Force
Hydra Hunting: A Framework for Special Operations Employment against Drug Cartels
The World Today
Why I Started This Week Explained: My Mission to Explain the World
The Written Word
Deployment Disorder
Poetry and Art
Letters
“His Hands Remember the Rifle”
Transition and Veteran Resources
Warrior Rising - Part 3
A Veteran Founded Writers Retreat in the Shadow of 29 Palms
Health and Fitness
Training for Special Operations, Part 3: Emotional
Across the Force
Written work on the profession of arms. Lessons learned, conversations on doctrine, and mission analysis from all ranks.
Hydra Hunting: A Framework for Special Operations Employment
against Drug Cartels
Hunter KeeleyThe American psyche’s particular swirl of myths, truths, fears, and grievances about the Southern Border have given new life to a continuum of strategic thinking that advocates the application of uniformed military forces against the mass of issues metastasizing along the Rio Grande. Manifesting itself in the previous and current administration’s policies in the deployment of Marines to assist border patrol, the allure and pitfalls of employing uniformed forces against drug cartels have also begun pinging on the radar of military bloggers. Anonymous blogger Secretary of Defense Rock’s recent piece, 'The Cult of Sicario', reported on the notion, gaining traction in Washington D.C. policy circles, that direct action raids might serve well against Mexican drug cartels.
The appeal of the direct action approach is clear. A series of actions targeting cartel leadership and their caches of arms and drugs, a lá the Abbottabad and Rawah raids, could theoretically decimate a cartel’s ability to plan and operate. This paper will explore the costs, risks, and probable outcomes associated with such a Sicario-style strategy and advocate for a framework of special operations employment that clearly protects U.S. national interests with regard to drug cartel activity on the southern border.
Note that irregular warfare and special operations are often vague and catchall terms which can apply to any sort of operations which fall beyond the purview of conventional forces. The special operations playbook is deep and varied and its potential applications to the cartel problem are limited only by one’s imagination. This paper restricts itself to specifically analyzing direct action, defined per Special Operation Command’s website as the “short-duration strikes and other small-scale offensive actions employing specialized military capabilities to seize, destroy, capture, exploit, recover, or damage designated targets”- as it might advance the following political objectives.
Political Objectives
A successful counter-cartel strategy will start with clearly defined objectives, both to prevent mission creep and to provide a feedback mechanism to facilitate strategic refinement in stride. Loosely, the current administration has outlined three. First is to decrease deaths by drug overdose in the United States. Over a quarter of a million Americans have died from fentanyl overdoses since 2018. Recognizing that a robust solution to the fentanyl issue is probably better found on the demand-side, disrupting and weakening the supplying organizations would nonetheless theoretically reduce fentanyl flows into the states.
Second, the current administration seeks to decrease illegal immigration across the southern border. The connection between illegal immigration and cartels is twofold. On the one hand, cartel omnipresence in cross-border smuggling means few illegal immigrants are able to cross without being extorted for the cartel's “assistance”, or being suborned into the cartel’s own drug smuggling operation. On the other hand, it is cartel-related violence that as many as 88% of illegal immigrants are fleeing in the first place.
Third, particularly following their designation as terrorist organizations, the administration may seek to attrit cartels because their existence, in and of itself, is a threat to national security. The Mexican government itself declared war on the cartels in 2006, and at least in theory might welcome increased American involvement. However, Mexican governments have vacillated over American support due, at least in part, to the conflagration of gang violence which usually ensues after eliminating cartel leadership. As well, the contrary “hugs not bullets” policy of the outgoing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) did little to curb the general surge of cartel violence. Today, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and other cartels openly advertise their military capabilities with videos of heavily armed convoys, and it is clear that it was the Mexican government which ended up opting for hugs over bullets.
To be clear, without the cooperation of the Mexican government, a plurality of direct action raids across the Mexican border would constitute a grievous breach of Mexican sovereignty and risk serious retaliation from that country, while dulling the blade of the raids themselves.
Taliban-esque vs. Al-Qaeda-esque Organizations
Whether aiming the United States’ direct action machine at the cartels would in fact advance these three goals is not immediately clear. The United States’ special operations community honed and refined its direct action playbook over the course of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), with deployable teams and their host of supporting establishments now capable of executing hundreds of raids, day in, day out, in varied conditions and diverse terrain. A watered down non-DOD version of this capability has been directed towards cartels in the past, in domestic sting operations, or in high profile cases such as the hunt for Pablo Escobar in which the DEA assisted local forces in locating and killing the head of the Medellin Cartel. The full force of the post-GWOT direct action capability has not yet been used in this manner, however.
Assisting in estimating the impact of raiding cartels en masse are the similarities between contemporary cartels and the “terrorist caliphate cum quasi-government cum drug empire” organizational form that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban took during the early GWOT. Al-Qaeda was a group of international Jihadists, capable of and willing to perpetrate heinous acts across borders. The Taliban, on the other hand, represented a locally oriented force, descending from Afghan warlords who had fought back and forth over the same mountains since time immemorial, albeit with a shade of the same religious extremism as Al-Qaeda. Cartels are similar, minus the religion. They have regional organizations that are responsible for extortion rackets, bribing local officials, subduing the populace, and fighting for parcels of territory against rival gangs; and, distinctly, an international component of hitmen and mafia-style dons who both keep discipline internal to the organization and traverse countries in order to form requisite contacts with other black organizations.
Unfortunately for direct action advocates, the use of raids or kinetic military action against the ‘Taliban’ style organizations has a poor track record. After withstanding twenty years of American military pressure, the Taliban’s organization is actually estimated to be 20,000 members larger now than in 2001. History is replete with examples of this sort of organization sustaining itself in the face of overwhelming military force. Following a truce, Hamas, certainly weakened by Israel’s onslaught, has returned to the streets and remains the governing force of Gaza. In Vietnam, no matter the quantities of ordnance expended or villages inkspotted, the Viet Cong persistently maintained some level of presence and control up and down the Ho Chi Minh trail and throughout South Vietnam.
These organizations’ resilience probably owes itself to cultural memory and economic realities. That is, in the absence of novel opportunities, some young men will revert to the path their families know and join the local ‘force’ for its economic security and relative prestige- a balance that, it would seem, no amount of raids can alter. In fact, kinetic action can entrench this type of organization when the recruitment boost caused by the raid's inherent damage to local society outweighs the damage the action does to the Taliban/local cartel style groups. There are few better recruiters than “collateral” damage.
It might be tempting to target the relatively mundane Taliban-esque side of the cartels with special forces. However, the drug mules and local dealers, like IED emplacers or Hamas’ foot soldiers, are rapidly replaceable. Under conditions of direct assault from a superior military, this style of organization often manages a positive replacement rate. The infuriating experience of fighting them is akin to fighting the mythical hydra which continually regrows its heads the moment they are struck off. It is a slower and less numerically-appealing process to find the IED makers, but we know from experience which approach generates lasting change. American policymakers should resist the urge to set SOCOM’s sights on the low hanging fruit, which would admittedly generate high numbers of immediate arrests, and reserve their focus for the Al-Qaeda-esque side of the house.
Direct action does have a more successful track history against the Al-Qaeda style organization. It may have taken ten years to find Osama Bin Laden, but Al-Qaeda as a fighting force was devastated in the early years of the GWOT, and its ability to affect its aims was severely limited by years of follow-on raids. Bin Laden had to stitch together Al-Qaeda over decades, and, reliant on exogenous funding, the organization could not be sustained by local communities. Only through savvy recruiting and continued international support can this sort of organization survive the decapitation of its leadership. Al-Qaeda exists today, but is a shadow of its former self, as much of its force has spun off into ISIS, and then into Al-Nusra and ISIS-K, and so on.
The history of international cartels shows analogous effects following the removal of leadership. Consider the Sinaloa Cartel following the death of Pablo Escobar. While it, like Al-Qaeda, does exist today, the Sinaloa Cartel was rapidly displaced by the Cali Cartel, which, in turn, lost its place at the top when its own leaders, the Orejuela brothers, were arrested. When highly charismatic and brutal leaders are removed from Al-Qaeda-esque organizations, there tends to be a splintering effect as subordinates compete for the leadership role and often can’t maintain as complex an organization as their predecessors. In these cases, lopping one head off the hydra may result in two heads sprouting in its place, which may well resume whatever illegal activity the hydra was doing in the first place, although theoretically less effectively.
The splintering effect, and its subsequent violent infighting, has previously been cause for hesitation when the impulse to “go kinetic” against the cartels has arisen. From the perspective of the Mexican government, such hesitation is reasonable. Indeed, if illegal immigration were the sole metric driving American decision making, kinetic action of any sort would be ruled out as its associated violence, the primary driver of illegal immigration, will increase the number of those trying to cross into the United States. However, with 70,000 annual fentanyl deaths, it appears that something has to give. If what does give is that American special operations start operating against the cartels, the direct action machine should be calibrated to target the Al-Qaeda component of cartels, as opposed to the Taliban component. The splintering effect can be managed, whereas pouring shells and bullets into drug mules is unlikely to change the underlying dynamics that give local cartels their life force.
Break the Supply Chains
The introduction and dominance of fentanyl in the illicit opioid market has wreaked two fundamental changes on the cartels. First, it severed their dependency on Colombian coca plantations. Second, because of fentanyl’s tiny relative size, it made smuggling all the more simple and scalable. In past decades, fighters in the war on drugs sought to destroy the coca plantations and convince the coca farmers to plant different crops. Futile as this effort was, a similar approach is yet to be taken towards the supplier of fentanyl’s chemical precursor.
China, a country in which drug smuggling is a capital offence, is the leading producer of the precursor chemicals for fentanyl, which are then processed in living-room size labs across Latin America. Due to the massive quality of transpacific trade and the minute quantities of precursors required to manufacture fentanyl, physically sifting or filtering for fentanyl is a losing proposition. Instead, American policy makers should target the human networks that link Chinese (or Indian, or Turkish) chemical manufacturers to Mexican cartels. The ability to forge and maintain a trusting relationship with a criminal organization from an entirely different continent is characteristic of the charismatic leaders atop Al-Qaeda-esque organizations. These are the guys who should be scared of things, aka American special operations forces, that go bump in the night. Despite the internet’s ability to anonymize and democratize communication between criminal networks, the individuals who can be identified as those making illicit deals across language and cultural barriers should feature highly on the capture/kill target list, certainly above the hitmen and the smugglers.
Still, because of the immense economic incentives of the illicit drug trade, even the head of the hydra that the dealmaker represents will regenerate itself, given time and space. However, given the nature of the fentanyl precursor trade, direct action, if paired with a separate, diplomatic, line of attack, has a chance to burn the severed neck, which in the Greek myth prevented regeneration. At the same time that special operations forces capture or kill the identified cartel representatives, a campaign of sanctions and economic coercion should be applied to the precursor producers. It is relatively low effort for precursor-producing Chinese companies to rebrand and deny association with past transgressions, or to put a layer of deniability between themselves and their cartel partners- but the fentanyl supply chain is naturally evasive, robust, and persistent, so targeting identified precursor producers in tandem with the cartel’s globe-trotting negotiators, as opposed to ramping up screening processes at the American border, is the best bet to put a dent in the fentanyl trade.
Here emerges a principle that should guide the American approach to the fentanyl issue, whether with regard to direct action raids or not. Because fentanyl and its precursors are so cheap, concealable, small, transportable, and untraceable, efforts to plug holes at the border, or even post-production generally, are likely to fail. The smugglers and dealers will find a new means to get the drug into communities. High level efforts, particularly the likes of special operations forces, should be directed at the pre-production phase of the supply chain, before the precursors are combined into their final product.
Peru doesn’t want to become Ecuador
Without formal cooperation from their government, direct action raids on Mexican soil will be extremely difficult to conduct successfully. For some drug lords, such as Nemesio “El Mencho” Cervantes, the current don of CJNG, it might be reasonable to execute an Abbottabad-style sovereignty repudiating raid. However, at scale, cooperation is required, and it is not clear Mexico will appreciate or permit U.S. military action within Mexican sovereign territory.
However, the United States may find more willing partners farther south. Cartel violence, always transnational, has had significant spill-over effects in recent years. In Ecuador, Presidential Candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated in a hit planned by an Ecuadorian gang, but executed by Columbian hitmen hired by CJNG, a Mexican cartel. Subsequently, the homicide rate in Ecuador increased by 75% in 2023, putting the country in the unenviable position of most dangerous Latin American country for the first time.
Other Latin American countries are undoubtedly watching the violence transpiring in Mexico, Ecuador, and in their own streets, and worrying. CJNG kills with impunity in most countries where it operates, and many Latin American governments may feel they lack the tools or resources to deal with the threat. Enter USSOUTHCOM and its SOCOM partners with a fresh mandate. Understanding that the American military already has a presence in, and trains with, many South American partner forces, further integration which meets Latin American country’s need to secure themselves against rampant cartel violence would facilitate the prompt execution of direct action missions across Latin America. Additionally, establishing a successful anti-cartel program in one country will precipitate invitations to emulate in other countries.
The author recognizes that the reckless expansion of American military infrastructure in South America reeks of the interventionist ethic which is so unpopular today. This analysis remains an effort specifically to optimize the theoretical application of direct action against cartels, and doesn’t make recommendations regarding foreign policy in its whole.
Chop only the heads you can also burn
The three guidelines that should guide the design of strategy which seeks to employ direct action raids against the hydra that is modern drug cartels are therefore:
It’s a waste of time to swing at the drug mules or foot soldiers. Don’t worry about numbers and focus on the globe-trotting deal makers.
It’s a waste of time to raid fentanyl production sites. Disrupt as high up the supply chain as possible, and if direct action is not an option because the target is a Chinese National, follow up with the rest of DIME: diplomacy, information, and economic means.
It’s a waste of time to perseverate about Mexico only. These cartels are international, therefore calibrate the direct action machine in one of the many other countries that would actually request some help in the cartel department, then turn towards CJNG in Mexico.
A central theme of the “Sicario” movies is the unforeseen and human consequences of violence. Direct action raids, as appealing as their theoretical upside may be, will always be shadowed by the risk that their impacts spiral and twist in unintended ways that leave the situation worse than it started. An understanding of direct action’s record in the Middle East, the fentanyl precursor supply chain, and the Latin American geopolitical moment provides the aforementioned principles to guide its application. With prudent and thoughtful planning, host country-sponsored direct action could theoretically successfully target the cartels, reduce American fentanyl deaths, possibly lessen the violence that many illegal immigrants are compelled to flee, and strengthen the rule of law in Latin American countries.
The World Today
In depth analysis and journalism to educate the warfighter on the most important issues around the world today.
Why I Started “This Week Explained:” My Mission to Explain the World
Kervin Aucoin III
When I decided to create a podcast, it was an attempt to find purpose again. I wanted to create a platform of substance that would connect the complex world of intelligence and geopolitics with the everyday lives of people who are trying to make sense of it. As a veteran and an intelligence analyst, I spent more than 20 years assessing the world’s most critical challenges, most of the time inside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, more commonly known as a SCIF. When I left public sector intelligence work, I wanted to share with people what I had learned. I wanted to assist people in understanding the factors that affect their daily lives and the world we live in. “This Week Explained” was born.
The Origin Story
I started my intelligence career, in a way, both before and after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. I had agreed to join the Army as an Imagery Intelligence Analyst in August 2001, and I signed the early enlistment contract on October 16, 2001. That was what I wanted, to serve my country and be part of something greater than myself. Over the years, both in and out of uniform, I found myself in critical situations where information was crucial and decisions based on that information could change the world. Even though this work was inspiring, it was also frustrating because much of what I learned could not be passed on to the public.
Then, in 2020, the whole world stopped and everyone was perpetually online. That year I sat and realized how society had become detached from reality. The news cycle was often dominated by sensationalism or oversimplification, with little room for the nuance and context that was required to understand global events. I wanted to change this. I wanted to use the skills that I had learned in the intelligence community to analyze information, look for patterns, and then reduce it all into intelligible information. The goal then was the same as it is today: to help others.
I wanted to create a podcast that would analyze the week’s major geopolitical events, but for the general listener, not the so-called expert or decision maker. I wanted to create something that would be easy to understand and interesting to listen to, based on facts and analysis, not on sensationalism or unfounded opinion.
The Essence of the Discourse
When I started really thinking about the shape of the podcast, I knew I needed a co-host. I did not want to do a solo show - I wanted interaction. That’s where Tiana came in. Tiana is not just a co-host, she is much more than that. She is a wife, a mother and the force behind “This Week Explained,” making it more than just a podcast. She has a unique ability to make these episodes sound like you are having the discussion over the dinner table. Tiana ensures that the podcast is a place to hear from more voices in the conversation. She has a unique skepticism and curiosity that explores multiple points of view and questions assumptions, helping ensure that the information is both understandable and comprehensible.
Tiana brings a unique perspective that bridges the civilian and military worlds, shaped by her experiences as a civilian first and later as a military spouse. This dual perspective allows her to approach complex topics with a depth of understanding that resonates with a wide audience. As a military spouse, she navigated the challenges of deployments, TDYs, and raising a family, all while living in a community that wasn’t fully immersed in military culture. This gives her the ability to connect with both veterans and civilians, offering insights that go beyond the battlefield to explore the human side of geopolitics and fostering a deeper understanding for listeners from all walks of life.
The Challenge of Making Complexity Accessible
One of the biggest problems with the podcast is trying to make the world of intelligence and geopolitics, which is often detailed and complex, accessible to a broader audience. Intelligence reporting is usually riddled with terms, acronyms, and background information that are not easy to understand. Then, of course, there is the issue of the amount of information that is generated by the 24-hour news cycle and social media analysis that only serves to confuse or alienate the viewer.“This Week Explained” was born to cut through this noise of information.
Each week, I go through hundreds of reports, articles and analyses in order to identify the most important geopolitical stories. I then attempt to explain these events in a straightforward, specific and useful manner. This is not about reducing complex issues to simple answers, but about making them understandable. It is my hope that by the end of each episode listeners will not only be informed, but also motivated to think critically about the world around them.
However, this process is not without its challenges. It is a constant balancing act between simplification and oversimplification. In addition, I always have to take into consideration the subtlety of geopolitics. I do not aim to tell people what they should think; instead, I try to equip them with information so that they can draw their own better informed conclusions.
A Mission That Continues
At its core, “This Week Explained” is an attempt to make sense of a confusing world. It is an attempt to bring the experience and knowledge that I have gained from my work in intelligence to help others navigate geopolitical complexities. Secondly, the podcast is an attempt to bridge the gap between the information that is given to leaders and the conversations going on in the living rooms of citizens around the world.
For me, the podcast is more than a medium; it is a way of still helping people, a way of giving back to society and to help people see the world in a different and more clear way. I firmly believe that a well-ordered democratic society depends on having well-informed citizens. That only happens with a range of perspectives. The goal is to empower the audience to analyze the information and reach their own conclusions. No matter who you are — a policymaker, a veteran, or an everyday civilian who just wants to understand the forces that are shaping the world — I hope that “This Week Explained” can be a go-to source and a guide in an otherwise chaotic world.
The Written Word
Fiction and Nonfiction written by servicemen and veterans.
Deployment Disorder
Frank Gonzales
Night. Al Qaim, Iraq. We have been here way too long. After clearing the city and retrograding from the train station, our platoon consolidated with the rest of the battalion command and other supporting units at the tactical assembly area. And our brilliant leadership could not have picked a worse location, with dust so fine it gets into your boots through the drain holes, mixes with sweat, and becomes mud.
The only useful activity for a firefight hungry infantry platoon here is perimeter security, so we coordinate with the colocated Army unit to man the posts day and night. I volunteer for the night shift as the sergeant of the guard. As the most senior squad leader, this surprises my peers, but they have no idea its benefits are twofold: not only will the command stay out of my hair because they are getting their precious sleep, but if we are going to be attacked, it will be at night. My boys will be the first to get some.
Another setback the platoon is facing is Staff Sergeant Gordon. Although I had been the platoon sergeant for most of the workup, that role belongs to him now. Coming straight from drill instructor duty, he felt the platoon was undisciplined and disorderly and that it was his job to set them straight. Given that I, as the prior platoon sergeant, was presumably the one responsible for their disorder, I have no idea why he has taken a liking to me. Tonight, he decided to come tour the posts with me - so much for my peaceful walk through the desert.
We don our gear and helmets equipped with a monocular night vision device. The Marine Corps infantry, seventeen years into the war on terror, still cannot afford two lenses for each grunt. As we leave the tent, I view the world in the green, staticky wash of the device that is no larger than a toilet paper tube. My field of view is maybe twenty degrees. Abysmal.
We begin walking to the first post, the main entrance for vehicles. The post is equipped with several grenades, a shotgun, and an M2 .50 caliber machine gun. As I walk, taking silent steps in the soft sand, I use my non-firing hand to check my pocket. Yep, the headspace and timing gauge is still there. And so is the ranger bar I'm going to eat for dinner. Thank god for those things.
We get closer to the post and I look towards the gate, and past it, at the desert that leads to a larger base. And showers. I take another silent step. But this one isn't silent because of the sand. It's silent because my boot doesn't make contact with anything. I've stepped right off an edge I didn't know was there.
My heart drops slightly slower than my body, which is only airborne briefly. The fall is about six feet and I slide down a slope for another four. If it weren't for the suddenness of it and the 35 pounds of gear I'm wearing, it wouldn't have been bad at all. Where the hell did this ledge come from?
Then it hits me. The excavator had been digging a pit for a new latrine earlier that day. Apparently, they dug pretty close. I land on my back and as I look up, through that green wash of my night vision toilet paper tube, I can see more stars in the night sky than I will ever see anywhere else, under any conditions. They far outnumber the grains of sand in my boot at this very moment.
"What the fuck?!" The angry voice of Gordon pierces the moment of peace I have found at the bottom of this pit. "Are you alright?!" I'm the one who fell, but somehow he is more annoyed about it.
I laugh a bit, and I can tell that exacerbates his anger. That makes me want to laugh more. "Yeah, fine. Fell in a pit."
"Can you get up?"
I take stock of the pit as I rise. "Yeah, shouldn't be an issue."
He breathes heavily as he stomps off toward the post. I look back up at the stars in the sky. My cigarettes are back in the tent. Even if I had them, I can't smoke one because at night, it easily gives away your position. Especially if the enemy has night vision. Theirs probably isn't a toilet paper tube either.
I check my other pocket, this one containing a can of Copenhagen. I'm going to need it. It's going to be a long deployment.
Poetry and Art
Poetry and art from the warfighting community.
Letters
Evan Young Weaver
They span seven years and a few trips. I could lie and say that I read them all. I could lie and say I read each one fully and not say I only made it partway through. Maybe I have told that lie before. I read most of them, that is for sure, when time and mind allowed. Handwritten letters, cards, and early morning emails that people who loved me wrote when I was here or there. I imagine they were at their kitchen tables with lean morning light or with a heavy sunset when they made the time, return address and all. I feel guilty when I glance at my one big tough box that still houses them all. I assume one or two might even be unopened. I should sit down on the floor and open it all up and deal with that one of these days. Many of those letters and cards were written by people who I can no longer write back to, at least not in pen-on-paper way. I should probably send some replies to those I can. “Magnan”, my mother’s side, is the name many would be addressed to. The practice of quickly stenciling letters to spell last names with cheap paint evidently did not change a bit between 1942 and 2012. Right next to my uninspired, rugged, modern Army tough box is my mother’s uncle’s Navy World War II chest...E. C. M A G N A N. Metal, brass, with a papered wooden top tray. I can’t help but think that it is the one that should be full of letters, small pocket Bibles, leather things, old things, real things. Stencils might not change, but the letters do and the wars do. Weeks or months between send and receive. A letter could be penned, mailed, received, and read, but the writer was dead and gone for some time. Everyone was a writer, and they all knew war in some way. Not combat, but war. They all knew letters, and war, and sunrise, and sunset, and they knew it because it was what there was to know.
“His Hands Remember the Rifle”
Stan Lake
He remembered the moment, But not the date and time. A distinct instant, When he crossed an invisible line. From war back to safety. Back home in comfort. With no one left to save him. The enemy is now abstract. No longer an insurgency, Just conflicts back home Made up of memory. His hands remember the rifle, He cradled her like a lover, And held her like no other. She was his savior, Now she is gone. His hands remember, What time won’t forget. The fog of war now settled. His purpose is now unclear. The war didn’t end, It just came and went. Changing locations, But still charging rent. Marching out of step, No cadence was called. His war has invisible enemies, Lobbing those emotional IEDs. Triggers aren’t pulled, They are felt in deep sobs. Anniversaries and memories, The things with closed eyes He still forever sees. The war is never over, It just takes a new shape. His hands always remember. The rifle, its heft, and the life it gave. That black weapon of death, No longer is his salvation. It just takes his breath. The war never ended, It just takes new forms. Battle lines drawn, And nothing feels as warm. As a rifle in his hands.
Transition and Veteran Resources
Career and civilian transition guidance, geared towards helping servicemembers plan their careers and help transitioning servicemembers succeed in civilian life.
Warrior Rising - Part 3
Benjamin Bunn
After two months, my gym was break-even; after six months, I was able to start paying myself. After two years, I bought my first home, and in three, my second. Along the way, I continued to give back to the veteran community wherever I could. I regularly volunteered my coaching and the facility to groups like Team RWB, a veteran transition organization dedicated to health and wellness. I hosted community workouts that were free and open to the public several times a week. I built a relationship with the local VA hospital and again volunteered both my facility and coaching to their poly-trauma and domiciliary programs.
The poly-trauma program was dedicated to active-duty personnel convalescing at the James A. Haley VA Hospital here in Tampa. Our specific VA is one of the most sophisticated and, as a result, hosted active duty personnel, many from special operations units who had been wounded terribly in combat. The term “poly-trauma” refers to the multiple mechanisms of injuries that require several departments to work in concert with one another in order to help these men and women return to some semblance of a normal life. Orthopedic surgeons, experts on traumatic brain injuries, counselors, and various doctors of physical therapy would all work together with hopes of helping these soldiers, marines, airmen, and seamen return to a life similar to what they had once known.
I would greet these men and women at the bomb bay doors where they would often lumber in. Some would have canes and walkers, while others would need to hold the hands of an occupational therapist who would follow them around like a bodyguard. They had all been hurt so terribly—so much had been taken from them. I could see a softness around their eyes from having endured so much, a vulnerability that looked like it did not belong there. Occasionally, I would see the more familiar and welcome glint of hardness and vigor that I knew was more commonplace among these personnel in better days. I would spend most sessions just talking to them in the same familiar banter they had grown accustomed to after years in the military - coarse and crude humor that would usually shock the staff from the VA who accompanied them but would garner chuckles from the cheap seats the veterans sat in. Most days, I just wanted them to walk away feeling like they could still do hard things. Sometimes, I would sit alone in my office after working with them and feel heart wrenching guilt knowing that I had so much, while they had so little.
The domiciliary program was similar. Individuals who were transitioning from long-term imprisonment, homelessness, or drug abuse—in most cases, it was all three, what I called the trifecta. They were a difficult group to work with. Most suffered from mental illness so severe they could never participate in normative adult life, and in most cases couldn’t be around other adults, children, etc. It was real charity—not some white woman handing out sandwiches for a picture on Instagram, but hard and frustrating work. I often felt exhausted after working with both groups, but I desperately wanted to give back to the community I missed so dearly. Were I to walk back onto a military installation, I’d be treated less like a guest and more like a pest—a passing tourist taking pictures while the locals impatiently waited for me to leave. But the volunteer work I did was well received, and almost everyone was thankful for what I provided.
The local Lululemon recognized me for my good work in the community and made me an ambassador, and I even caught the attention of their global ambassador program. I was flown out to Whistler, Canada for their global ambassador summit, where I was treated to a week of workouts, spas, and VIP treatment with roughly 100 other individuals doing incredible work across the globe. I was flattered to be there and was later invited to work on their professional development programs for retail associates and future ambassadors. My work there led me to lead ambassador programs with a consumer goods startup. I later showed a propensity for business development and partnerships. Working in that capacity across several startups, I earned the title of founder several times over.
I had successful exits and notable failures but learned much and was never afraid to try. Having previously put myself through the gauntlet during my active service, I pushed forward, stretching myself to learn and do more. Over time, a veteran nonprofit named Warrior Rising approached me to help them with marketing efforts. Warrior Rising is dedicated to helping veterans start their own businesses through education, coaching, mentorship, and, in some cases, grants. They have an ethos of not providing a handout but a hand up—encouraging veterans to earn their futures in business through hard work and personal effort. I admired what they were doing. Although I was not a marketer by trade, while working in startup industries, I had learned just enough to be dangerous, as they say. I took on the role, which later grew into partnerships and fund development, and I now serve as their deputy executive director. I’ve helped shape every aspect of the organization, touching the website, apparel, programs, and partnerships, and have even helped create their current mission statement.
The organization to date has helped more than fifteen thousand veterans through its programs. It has helped fund more than forty-two veteran-owned businesses, provided more than twenty-two thousand volunteer hours, provided more than two point seven million dollars in services,and distributed more than five hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars in grants to veterans. I look back on everything I’ve accomplished and wish I would have had access to an organization like Warrior Rising. What I might have accomplished had they been in my corner? Being in the military was the greatest honor of my life, and I used to wish I was back in uniform daily. I still wish that occasionally, but more often than not, I’m convinced the best is yet to come.
Along the way, I married my beautiful wife, Samantha—a soulful, quiet, and sometimes broody brunette who has fiercely loved and supported me for years. Were it not for her support, I could not have accomplished half of what I've done. I also have a six-year-old boy—a wild and feral child who always greets me with a running hug and proudly tells me that when he grows up, he wants to be a Green Beret. I have two rescue dogs: a grumpy, medium-sized, mixed-breed rescue named Jolene, and a sweet but dopey staffy-pit bull aptly named Sue. I also have ten chickens and a garden. Roughly a year ago, I bought my third home—a two-story corner house I would have never dreamed of having when I was younger.
I have a great life but make no bones about it—I have seen fire, and I have seen rain. When I look back at all I have accomplished, the shadow of my military service sometimes casts shade on some of my recent accomplishments, but most days are bright enough that the light touches everything in my life.
A Veteran Founded Writers Retreat in the Shadow of 29 Palms
Jessica Danger
The Joshua Tree Writers Retreat welcomes writers and artists to 1 - 2 week-long residencies in a secluded, rural 2.5 acre property in North Joshua Tree, California.
JTWR is founded by born-and-raised California author Jessica Danger, and Army veteran and founder of Dead Reckoning Collective Keith Dow, who saw a need in the literary space for working parents, who might not otherwise be able to afford the time and expense of a writing retreat.
“We really wanted a no-frills, bring your family and dog if you want to, kind of place where you had enough space to spread out, enjoy your family, but also get down to work,” shares Danger. “I never would have finished my own book if it wasn’t for places like Joshua Tree Writers Retreat. We want to give back in that same manner.”
So, when the two found the property in Joshua Tree two years ago, about as much as by accident as fate would allow, they crossed their fingers and got to work.
“We really are doing all of this ourselves, which has been a ton of fun. Our kids help us with everything, and we get to teach them things they wouldn’t learn anywhere else,” Dow said. “We put them all to work, then we pay them in s’mores at night.”
The purpose of the Joshua Tree Writers Retreat is to deepen the quality of the creative process, enabling writers to explore their own creative resources without distraction in the majestic and magical Mojave Desert.
Residency stays in the main property may be one or two weeks, based on availability. Pets and family are welcome. Residency fees currently start at $595 per week.
“Eventually, we plan to be able to donate at least one week a year to a working parent and host veterans creative writing groups on site with such a large veteran and active duty population close by,” said Danger. A registered 5013c, you can donate to the Joshua Tree Writers Retreat directly, if you feel so compelled.
There are two bedrooms in the main house, which residents have to themselves for the entirety of their stay. There is one designated work space in the front room, writing desks in both bedrooms, and a well-stocked kitchen and dining area.
One recent resident, Madison Zuniga, shares, “The Joshua Tree Writers Retreat is so thoughtfully designed for those seeking a peaceful location for productive writing time. Every detail on the property fosters inspiration and joy, and there are so many quiet places to settle down with your creative work!”
Writers and artists interested in staying at Joshua Tree Writers Retreat can request an application via email (JoshuaTreeWritersRetreat@gmail.com) or via social media. For more information on applying to or supporting the Joshua Tree Writers Retreat, please follow them on Instagram @JoshuaTreeWritersRetreat or on their SubStack.
Health and Fitness
Guidance for improving physical and mental performance, nutrition, and sleep.
Training for Special Operations, Part 3: Emotional
Building The Elite - Craig Weller & Jonathon Pope
Special operations selection courses are not exercise competitions. The stereotypes of jacked bodybuilders and D1 athletes quitting SOF selection courses surprisingly early exist for a reason.
Physical preparation for SOF selection is predictable if you follow an intelligent process. It’s a math formula. Train smart, hard, consistently, and long enough to build the necessary adaptations, and you’ll have the physical capabilities to excel in your course. Your physical fitness is as much a generalized measure of your capacity for long-term thinking, delayed gratification, and self-discipline as it is of your ability to do an arbitrary number of pushups.
Physical fitness, however, is only the entry stakes. In any selection course, passing some kind of screener or entry test is necessary to ensure that you have the minimal physical fitness to undergo high-risk training safely. That’s all the screen test is - proof that you can begin. It benefits nobody to have candidates going down with heart attacks on the first day of the course.
Beyond this, the physical stressors of selection training are ways of seeing into a candidate's mind. Physical stress is a tool to reveal mental and emotional resilience and specific behavioral characteristics like conscientiousness.
Cognitive skills - also known as mental skills - are an important piece of this. Successful SOF selection candidates rely heavily on using their minds to steer their body through incredibly challenging events using skills like segmenting, compartmentalization, and self-talk management.
However, conscious cognitive skills alone are not enough. SOF selection is not just physically stressful. It’s also incredibly emotionally challenging. Emotions happen faster than logic, and we can’t outrun them. Selection courses are designed to put candidates through extreme levels of self-doubt, discouragement, and emotional distress. These are filters that keep only the ones who can experience those things and keep going anyway, navigating by their own internal compass when the entire outside world is telling them to give up.
This is the limiting factor when seemingly physically fit, capable athletes voluntarily withdraw from selection courses, saying things like, “It just wasn’t for me” or “I didn’t feel like I was good enough.”
Essentially, SOF selection is designed to make each candidate feel that they don’t belong there or that other people in the course don’t think they belong. The breaking point, when people who are physically capable of continuing but choose to quit anyway, is when they believe this narrative and act on it. The self-doubt imposed by the course breaks them emotionally.
This decision wells up suddenly, like the urge to scratch an itch. It’s an impulse. It will feel right at the time. You'll tell yourself that you've thought it through. As Daniel Kahneman said, a remarkable aspect of your mental life is that you are rarely stumped. Intellect is a tool for the rationalization of impulse. So, quitting will make sense - to you, in that moment.
The cognitive rationalization that you come up with at that moment to make the act of quitting make sense and feel like the right thing to do because you don’t belong here or deserve to be here is just the result of an upstream emotional process. It feels like an independent thought, but it’s not. You lost the battle when you lost the ability to recognize and regulate your emotions, not when you started finding rational narratives to justify them. The emotions came first.
So, to reliably develop a resilient, capable special operator who can withstand the physical, mental, and emotional challenges of SOF selection, we must treat emotional intelligence and regulation as a trainable skill of the same importance as running fast and being good at carrying heavy things around.
The first step in managing your emotions is recognizing them. Just like thoughts, they are always in the background. The same underlying skill (mindfulness) that allows you to monitor thoughts is how you monitor your emotional state.
Mindfulness can be defined as 'non-judgmental attention to present-moment experiences.' In other words, it’s tuning into what’s happening in your mind and body. You don’t always need or want to ‘be in your head.’ Your reactions during performance situations should be primarily automatic, rooted in previous training.
But how you perform when it matters the most depends on your practice.
When you are aware of your emotional state, you maintain the capacity to adjust your thoughts and reactions to those emotions. Instead of running on autopilot, you can notice a mood or feeling and your thoughts about that feeling before deciding to act upon it. There is a moment between impulse and response - your goal is to practice identifying those moments.
We’re going to walk through a series of steps for developing better emotional intelligence, or EI.
These are pretty quick overviews based on our mental/emotional skills curriculum in our coaching app.
The first practical exercise focuses on better emotional awareness:
As you move through your day, periodically check in with your emotional state using the following prompts:
Name your emotion. If unsure, look at an emotion wheel (Google it).
Try to avoid big categories. You’re rarely just happy, sad, or neutral. Try to be as specific as possible. Challenge yourself to expand your vocabulary.
Notice where you’re feeling it in your body. Emotions are felt experiences. By tuning into how you’re experiencing that emotion, you can learn to associate specific bodily sensations with emotional experiences.
Where, exactly, and what does it feel like?
Notice what thoughts are accompanying the emotion (especially stronger emotions)
Ask yourself if this emotion seems like it’s helpful or reasonable.
Being happy, sad, bored, frustrated, excited, or any other emotion is normal and healthy. Our emotions can help us understand the current situation and navigate social situations (connecting with others and building relationships).
Does your emotional state feel like it’s helping you perform whatever task you’re doing?
Is it a repetitive emotional response to a familiar situation?
At first, you don’t need to do anything with this information. Just practice tuning in and expanding your emotional IQ. This skill is the foundation of other emotional skills.
The second step in developing your EI is regulating emotions.
Managing emotions doesn’t mean controlling or ignoring. Much like our thoughts, the goal is to steer and interact with them skillfully to improve our capacity to connect with others and perform our best.
When you experience difficult emotions that are classically represented as ‘negative’ (think discouragement, frustration, anxiety, worry, dread, fear, resentment, anger, rage, contempt, etc.), your goal isn’t to shut down or avoid these emotions. Instead, you should follow these steps:
Identify the emotion and name it. Be specific and detailed.
Separate your identity from the feeling, just as you can separate yourself from pain and fatigue. You can feel something without it BEING you. You can easily do this by telling yourself that you are FEELING “fill in the blank” emotion. You are not sad. You are not bored. You are feeling annoyed. Just like the weather, your feelings are part of your environment. You can choose to react to them or not.
Identify the corresponding thoughts and be curious:
Is this a normal and healthy response to your situation that will motivate your desired behaviors?
Is this the repetition of an old and stale emotional response that you go to repeatedly and which doesn’t seem to facilitate positive outcomes? *
Accept and feel the feeling. Don’t ignore or fight it. Like a thought passing through your mind, you can let an emotion roll through you without acting upon it if that doesn’t seem helpful.
Following this process cuts the half-life of your emotional experiences drastically. Repressing or ignoring emotions doesn’t mean they just disappear - instead, they hijack your mood, thoughts, and actions without conscious awareness. You ride the wave of annoyance or frustration for however long that emotion persists. And, when thoughts go unchecked, they often persist for a long time as you enter a positive feedback loop of righteous indignation, rage, or any other emotion.
The third step in developing EI is recognizing emotions in others.
One of the primary roles of emotions is building a connection with others through shared experience. Emotions let us know who our friends are and what situations and people are not to be trusted.
So, to build strong connections, we must be capable of recognizing and mirroring emotions in others. This skill is known as empathy.
There are multiple forms of empathy: cognitive and emotional.
Cognitive empathy, also called social intelligence, is the ability to understand the emotions another is experiencing without experiencing them yourself.
Emotional empathy is feeling the feelings of others.
We want to harness and cultivate both types of empathy but be selective with the form we deploy depending on the situation. In our romantic and familial relationships, we want to employ emotional empathy. Feeling your partner's feelings (at least sometimes) is extremely important for building strong bonds.
However, in many situations, we want to attune to others without the cost of feeling the same feelings. Communicating that we understand and appreciate someone’s emotional state makes them feel safe and connected, which builds solid bonds and helps create the social capital you need to form strong relationships with peers and friends.
When you experience intense emotions, your capacity for cognitive or emotional empathy evaporates. And, when you’re unaware of your emotional responses, it’s easy to have them hijacked by others via emotional empathy. This is why maintaining the capacity to monitor your emotional state is vital for attuning to others and deploying cognitive empathy.
The fourth step in developing EI is managing relationships.
Active listening—truly focusing on the other person rather than simply waiting to speak—is vital for building meaningful connections. You create a foundation of trust and openness by regulating your emotions and using empathy to understand different perspectives. This skill also supports more productive group interactions, especially under pressure, by encouraging people to feel heard and fostering a collaborative spirit.
Providing feedback in a constructive manner—focusing on actions and consequences rather than character—further strengthens relationships and paves the way for honest communication.
Emotions inevitably influence decision-making and team dynamics. While some choices might hinge on pure logic, emotional intuition still plays a role in how we interpret facts and respond to others.
Developing emotional intelligence involves tuning in to your feelings, knowing when to set them aside, and adjusting how you interact with those around you. By skillfully navigating your relationships, you enhance your ability to motivate, offer balanced feedback, and maintain goodwill—even during disagreements. Continual practice and seeking honest input from trusted contacts will help you refine your approach. Embracing feedback, both positive and negative, accelerates personal growth and deepens your capacity to lead effectively.
Putting it together: Knowing requires doing.
We’ve covered a lot of concepts related to the physical, mental, and emotional development necessary to train successfully for special operations selection. Knowledge is helpful, but it’s of little value without daily action. This is as true of mental and emotional skills as physical training. What we know is only useful to the extent that it informs what we regularly do. If you’re interested in a comprehensive coaching process that combines the physical, mental, and emotional development processes we’ve discussed in this article series, check out our coaching app.
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This ends Volume 32, Edition 1, of the Lethal Minds Journal (01MARCH2025)
The window is now open for Lethal Minds’ thirty third volume, releasing April 01, 2025.
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Thanks for sharing Joshua Tree Writers Retreat! Can't wait to have you out some day!