Quote: (02-08-2019 06:18 AM)Green-On-GO Wrote:
Guys joined the military to fight.To be on the frontline .I did..Before the cult of SF took off.
And I'm not American so don't get your knickers in a Twist
Goggins sets off certain alarms for me.Maybe he wasn't asked to try for DEVGRU cause he wasn't into warfighting.
Every unit has an ultra fit dude that is drawn to the PT side of the job..
So they never go out field leaving their mates to carry the extra load.
Then when the unit gets back from field ,PT dude is there waiting to beast them.PT dude slept ,ate well he wasn't out field eating rations and not sleeping for days.
Goggins never talks Ops ,he talks courses..This is another type of dude that sucks up to rank, is super fit , a poster boy and gets sent on courses cause the headshed knows he will blitz the course..He will make the unit look good.
Course dude is another one that never goes out field.
So the guys who do go out field start hating cause PT guy and Course guy is not in the fight with them and has no interest in the fight..Yet PT and Course guy want to hold the field soldier to standards to prove they are better almost..This pisses guys off who are working on their bush or field craft.On their fucking Art ...of war...
I go no disrespect for the dude .I pass his motivational vids onto to my son..I love his stuff plus he does alot of charity work for veterans
But my Grunt dinosaur senses tells me Goggins was one of the 2 types if not both..which is maybe why the hate..
Take Jocko Willnik and Tim Kennedy those 2 are more my style ,bushcraft ,Ops guys..
These are some wise observations which still hold very true. Appreciate your deference in regards to not being from the US, "so not talking shit," but it is totally unnecessary because you are 100% correct. Having served with many, many nations' militaries (including and, thankfully, Aussies), I can say, "Spot on, Mate." Humility recognized.
Let's talk about this phenomenon first, then I'll take a stab at answering some of the difficult questions about Goggins.
Every Team has these two characters you describe, "PT Guy" and "Course Guy." "PT Guy" can go both ways, though. There are some hard-as-nails, solid combat professionals, who are just what we referred to as "mutants," but then there are the guys you described, who are
just good at PT and they fall apart in the field. By the 3rd day of eating MRE's, not hitting their "macros" or drinking their Myoplex shakes, they fucking nosedive so hard they become "combat ineffective," which means they are more of a liability on the battlefield than an asset.
I had a C.O. who once said something, to me and at the time, to be so counterintuitive, but proved to be absolutely accurate, when talking about leadership to the up and coming NCO's: "Don't be so harsh on your heavy drinkers and hard partiers because these guys are your toughest, most dependable guys when you're in the field." Sounds ridiculous, but it was a fact. Dudes who consistently showed up to work a little rough from the night before were the "hardest" in the field. They were used to feeling like shit and still getting the job done. By day 2 in the field, they were completely sober and finally got a few hours of sleep, despite being in the field, because they weren't out getting drunk and chasing pussy. As time moved on, they just got better and better. "PT Guy" and "Triathlon Guy," as I said, were not getting their usual nutrition, were suffering instead of benefitting from only getting 4 hours of sleep, and they usually started complaining--not because they were pussies, but because in spite of their best efforts to build this finely tuned machine, and in the face of being outperformed--here and now, in the field, instead of on the O-course--by guys who did exactly the opposite of take care themselves. So, there's that.
"Course Guy," is a more rare, but existent, creature brought forth to go to other services "tough" schools, just to crush them and throw dirt in the faces of inter-service rivals. And, yes, the SEALs do it on the rare occasion, such as in Goggins' case, when he went to Ranger school, but let's be clear: he WANTED to go and had requested to go several times. He wasn't
sent there. Some SEALs are sent to Ranger school as a punishment for some infraction they committed at the Team... Nonetheless, you are often told, when you go to an inter-service school, you
will be "Honor Man" of the class or you will not get another school for a very, very long time.. It's just a "pride" thing.
Moving on to Goggins, specifically. He did go to war. He did fight in combat. I have never heard anything bad about him in regards to his performance in the field, at all, so he's, not necessarily, "PT Guy," but more "mutant." The problem is, he had some medical issues beyond his control, cardiac problems which excluded him from combat operations, fuck, he would've been kicked out of the navy if he wasn't such a PT stud, and I'm going to say it here, because I'd say it to his face, and even he admits it: if he wasn't black. Period. He was kept in the navy because he is black. No if's, and's, or but's. He had a medically disqualifying condition, but because of his superior and stunning performance in high-profile athletic competitions and the fact that he is black, he was kept on as a recruitment tool. There are very few black SEALs. There are very few people with Goggins' abilities, although he'd have you believe "anyone can do it if you put your mind to it." And, he's absolutely right, but the
incredible irony, that he does not explain so well, is: the exact ability to 'just put your mind to it' and plow through anything is what most people lack.. It's an entirely circular argument. Think about... You can do anything if you just put your mind to it, so if you just put your mind to it, you can do anything. What the fuck does that mean, right? What it means is,
everyone has the ability, but only a very few rare people will find the compulsion and fortitude required to extract that ability. That is to say, yes, you can do anything. But, only if you posses whatever "it" is inside you to compel you to do so.
Kinda on a similar note, Kennedy was taken back into the folds of the SF community, for precisely the same thing as Goggins'; he's now a high-profile recruitment ploy, after having become a famous UFC star. And, good on him, for doing so because the SOF community is having a terrible time recruiting from the current population of soft ass-soy boy-Nintendo generation-lazy-fat-crybaby millennials, while the role of SOF has expanded beyond its scope of practicality.
Jocko, also similar to Goggins', has his haters in the Teams. He boasts his actions/decisions in Ramadi as successes, but let's look at the facts... He took the "special" out of being a SEAL. He made his men "conventional" instead special. A lot of people hate him for it. He suffered some terribly high casualty rates in the SEAL community. He says it was because of his environment. Okay. Some SEALs say it's because of his tactics which were solely up to him as force commander. And, then, what happened? After his staggering "success," all the west coast SEALs (Teams 1,3--Jocko--, and 5,) were unceremoniously sent packing from Iraq-- which was, originally, their fucking area of operations--and it was given entirely to the east coast SEALs whose AO's were, originally, and at the time, Europe, N. Africa, and S. America. So, you be the judge. Did he kill a fuck-ton of insurgents? Yes. Did he suffer a, previously unprecedented, number of casualties, for a SEAL Task Unit? Yes. Now ask, would another SEAL team in that same environment had killed just as many or more insurgents? Would they have done it with fewer casualties? No one will ever know, but what we do know, is not only Jocko's SEAL team, but that entire fucking warfare group--all the west coast teams were booted out of Iraq and the mission was turned over to the east coast teams. Now ask yourself, if his tactics were so successful, why did this occur?