40 Years Inside America’s Military Complex (I Had Above “Top Secret” Clearance) - Vince Lewis

Lesson Transcript

I need to win this war. So I'm going to go in and kill a few hundred thousand people, justifiably. That's not genocide. But if somebody else does it, it's genocide. If somebody, if a man on the street kills another man, we call it murder. But if one army defeats another army, you know, we call it victory or defeat. We don't call it murder. We don't want to conceptualize that thought in people's minds. That's as much, on a global scale, murder as a man on the street killing another man. It's murder.

It's not justifiable. Well, uh, this is going to be interesting, Vince. I've never done an interview, uh, with someone that has your experience on this particular topic about the American military-industrial complex, which is a big bunch of words. Um, but before we get into that, just want to note you have extensive experience in the Air Force, the United States Air Force, um, and then also, uh, 14 years in weapons systems development with the Department of Defense, uh, and so on.

Why don't you briefly outline the kind of work you did before you, you left that world? You're part of the Anabaptists now. We did a whole other episode on, on your testimony and then one on the topic of non-resistance. So those will be separate things. People can look those up. Um, but give us a bit of context of the kind of work you did, and then we're going to get into this, into this topic.

Yeah, it, it, I think the, uh, the training actually started while I was in college, even in as a cadet, uh, so to speak, getting, uh, obligated to the Air Force for them paying for part of my tuition, going in, going, getting through the, the world's top flight training opportunity, a year long of intense, intense training, again, building capabilities and trainings that you're going to use eventually in some form or fashion against an enemy.

So I had flown in Vietnam, flying, uh, intelligence gathering, slow twin-engine airplanes with a few guys in the back. And, and that was intelligence gathering, uh, of the, of the days. Like we wouldn't even do it anymore. That would all be automated, maybe even from satellites. But then I got into B-52 bombers, which at the time the emphasis in Vietnam was, uh, conventional weapons, high explosives. We carried 22 750 pound bombs, did a lot of damage.

But then the real, the real, if you call it meaningful, or the, the largest, uh, effect you would have was carrying, uh, nuclear weapons. And, and the potential of getting involved in or triggering a global thermonuclear war, as it's called. Uh, interestingly enough, there was a, uh, strategy, uh, that we had dealt with. The Russians are our arch enemy, uh, called MAD, mutually assured destruction. And that capability to destroy each other. It's not you attack them and win the war.

It's you both attack each other and you both end up losers. But we had to be ready for any eventuality on the nuclear capability of wiping out whole parts of their economy or their society, key industrial capabilities with striking even terror in the people, a consequence, a deliberate consequence of war, putting terror in the hearts of their people, destroying their own morale. We had billions and billions of dollars put into what was called a triad there, of which I was part of.

Uh, we had the sea launch ballistic missiles, a submarine with tubes in it, uh, carrying, uh, a number of nuclear-tipped missiles could fire from underwater. We had bombers like I flew that could fly over a target, uh, in an area where, in areas where there weren't the air defenses as you would find today. And then we had, uh, missiles in silos, which effectively, uh, supposedly could, uh, survive a nuclear war, uh, yet be able to still launch as another one.

So as you knocked out any portion of the triad, you still had an incredibly powerful force with hundreds of nuclear weapons, not just a few hundreds of them. And almost all of them were named aimed over the North Pole, which is the shortest route, uh, to the Soviet Union, who was the enemy at the time. China was not involved. They were developing nuclear weapons during the Cold War, but it was us and them.

And the further you could spread out, uh, get those submarines out there into the ocean far enough, not just off the shore, but way out in the ocean, patrolling in places where the enemy doesn't even know. You could come in from different angles and confuse the enemy's, uh, defenses and do incredible things, damage to him. And he's doing the same thing. So there's no winners in a war like that. So that's why they call it MAD. That's, okay.

So, so you actually commanded a B-52 as well, um, Griffith Air Force Base, I believe it was, which, as doing a little research before this episode, that was one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the world at the time, um, which it's, it's not there anymore. Um, they've all been moved and, and so forth. To how, how long were you a commander of, of that B-52? I was in B-52 flying for, uh, nine years, and I was a commander probably, uh, two thirds of that time, six of those nine years.

And so we, I had command over six man crew. He had a navigator, radar navigator, electronic warfare officer, and of all things, a gunner, uh, who would fire an electronically guided, uh, gun that was on the back of the airplane. A co-pilot who was my assistant. He was capable of flying the airplane, but I was the commander that made the decisions. Ultimately, um, uh, it was my decision. I would get the advice from them and decide. And we were, uh, had weapons initially, a couple of nuclear bombs up in the bomb bay.

But then we started advancing even while I was in it, got the SRAM, which is a short range attack missile. And it was like a revolver that a rotating, uh, rack would drop a missile out. It would drop away from the airplane and then fire forward and fly, uh, many, many miles to the enemy target. Accuracy wasn't what it is today, but still it was a highly effective weapon. So you didn't have to risk the airplane flying over that.

And we went with under the wing mounted weapons in the bomb bay weapons, more and more destructive. So you had one airplane had the ability to destroy half the Russian economy, picking the right thing. One airplane. One airplane. Because you're launching nuclear weapons that are capable of destroying, um, we didn't, uh, destroy whole cities anymore. That wasn't our objective.

It's not as effective as hitting specified targets, high value targets we call them, where, uh, the return on investment, so to speak, is you risk a bomber, you risk in what's on board the bomber to hit a very, very important target. You may send a couple of bombers into one target in case the first one didn't get to the target. It's that important. Those are the things we attack then. I didn't realize, I mean, I knew those, those bombers you're flying carried an incredible amount of destructive power.

That was, that was more than I was expecting. Um, whoa. Uh, okay. So you, you're in the Air Force 24 years as an officer, commanded B-52, multiple combat missions to, to Vietnam. But after that, you go into R&D, research and development, uh, with Department of Defense. Uh, how long did you do that? Can you tell me a couple of projects you worked on? I don't know why you did that. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll, I didn't say it, but I spent 24 years as a pilot, uh, in the Air Force, 24 years to learn all that, uh, taken from my childhood right up into active duty school, then some of the, some of the most, uh, unique, uh, weapons, and then get into what we called a, uh, research and development, uh, specifically a system program office, developing a specific airplane. And I was in first in the B-2 stealth bomber, uh, program office, and then in the F-22, which is our top of the line fighter.

We don't even use that fighter today. It is so filled with classified information, so capable. We're not risking. We send in the F-35, which is a less capable airplane, but they're cheaper. We got more of them. It's, uh, not as dangerous to risk one of those airplanes. And by the way, those things now are called platforms. There's no such thing anymore as air-to-air combat, like, like World War II with planes flying against each other. The other plane is not the target.

It's, it's a waste of your airplane to kill one of the airplane. So this becomes a weapons platform that can go fast, get into the penetrate air defenses and get in, hit one target or two or three, and then, um, get out with a lot of precision, a lot of deception and, and doing that. So all this is coming together in a technological capability. And we would, um, we would not design airplanes. We would conceptualize. Here's what we want.

We want a long range bomber that's stealthy, cannot be detected, which by the way, stealth is not just the skin on an airplane. Like people think it's not non-reflective skin. Stealth is a whole, uh, order of things. And this is where, uh, classified information comes in. And I was, uh, I had had top secret clearance, uh, for years, but now we got into, uh, what we would call, uh, known unknowns. We know the Air Force is building a bomber, but it's unknown what it's going to do.

All we know is they're building a bomber. And those things go on today. And then you get what unknown unknowns. We call them unconks, where you had to be read into a specific program. They would, they would look at you and your background and they say, I want Vince Lewis in on this program. It's not just give me seven lieutenant colonels. I want this one and I want that one because they've got what we're after. You were hand-selected then.

Hand-selected and they would read, read you into the program, which meant you would be, uh, told what the program's about. You may not even see all the program.

But the other thing that's interesting, these, uh, spores or system program offices, as they were called, would be downtown in an office building with the military guys wearing a business suit and just acting like he's a banker in a local, uh, business tower in downtown, all that disguised in a, in a, a skiff, big rooms, uh, sensitive, sensitive compartmented information.

Uh, you can't afford this to get out of the room because, uh, you people can pick up radio signals, even voices within, um, a room, like, uh, easy to, uh, capture the vibration of a window, a single pane window from what's inside the room, pick that up with a laser reflecting off of it to a certain frequency and tell what's being said in the room. You can't afford that. You, you have a facility that's so, uh, intensely designed.

You might even be in on the building of that facility to know there's no embedded, uh, things. So enemies figured out, hmm, through his deception or, or, or hacking maybe to figure out, oh, they're going to turn this building into a skiff and the local community doesn't even know it. I mean, like this is like a lot of smoke and mirrors and murky world that, that you were in.

I mean, that's obviously the, the B, B-2 and F-22 are, we know they exist now, but like at the time you were working on stuff that, I mean, it was like some kind of futuristic tech or something, right? I mean, that's wild. You can't say what, uh, security clearance you had. I'm just curious. Well, I can't say what programs I was read into. I had above top secret. That's it. That's all I can say. Well, we don't, we don't want them to come after you. Top secret for what? No, I'm not going to say that.

And interestingly, so that those that have never heard this would know, uh, Congress has to appropriate billions of dollars to build an airplane. And it's so expensive that to tell, uh, Congress it's going to cost these many billion dollars, you're never going to get it approved. So you buy a basic weapon system. And this is, this is not trickery. This is, they know how this is done. The Congress has so many dollars to expend.

So you buy the basic airplane you wanted, and then you start modifying with, with, uh, really classified capabilities to bring it up to what you really wanted in the first place. But you know, Congress is never going to give you that much. And even politically, this is amazing that if you want this approved, this is what a congressman is saying to the Air Force or the Department of Defense. If you want this weapon system approved, I want some of the manufacturing in my state that I represent.

And because I want to get in on these billions of dollars you're spending. To create jobs in, in whatever. Jobs, influence, uh, the possibility of getting reelected because I've brought these employment. And most people, I'd say very few in this country realize what it takes to build a weapon system like that. You may have, this is incredible, a thousand contractors and 10 or 20,000 people building this thing because you've got whole facilities that are just into building an engine or building a cockpit.

But we go through design. We didn't design the specifics or turn that over to a contractor. And you got three major contractors, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, and just referred to as Boeing, Northrop, and Lockheed. And, and they build our weapons and the competition is between them. And they may, one of them, uh, may, maybe, I hate to admit this, one of them may be hurting financially. And we need to put our finger on the scale when we're selecting a large, uh, contract or do a split award.

You know, you do the engines and in Boeing, you build the airframe and, and, uh, Raytheon, you build the electronics. So we're spreading this out. And then you get into test and evaluation. I have to build a whole test facility to test this engine. I have to run it through all the rigors that it's going into flight training. So I've got an entire test complex. And I have a team in the Air Force that's a test team that approves what kind of test I want this to go through.

So in systems integration, which I was involved in, how systems of systems operate, how does hydraulics, uh, affect pneumatics, which are air, uh, activated systems? How do electronics and complex systems interface with each other to create an overall capability? So you may have a system over here that has a weakness, but that weakness is going to also impact upon this, this, and this system.

And then, uh, failure mode and effects criticality analysis for Mika says, what can I do with this weapon capability if it gets degraded? In World War II, I'd have just come home. But in today's warfare, if I lose capability due to this with proper predetermination, I can go over and do this, this, and this also with the capability I've retained and still bring that aircraft home to be fixed with a whole maintenance complex.

And so you see that just an engine alone may have 10 or 15 different companies working on that. And each company may have hundreds of employees. So it's an enormous, uh, capability to build this one airplane. And only 23, um, uh, B-2 bombers were built. One of them crashed. One of them is used for test and evaluation. Almost always 30% of the aircraft are in some kind of maintenance state, either standard, uh, maintenance inspection or refurbishment or adding a new capability to it.

So in reality, and this is, this is pretty well known within the military, uh, industrial complex, you only really got maybe half of these things available. So now you're down to 10 B-2s. They're capable weapons, but you use those sparingly and you, uh, the enemy knows their capabilities. You do them sometimes just for a show of force, as we've seen some recent stationing of the B-2s in Diego Garcia within range of, uh, Iran and other countries that we might take out.

And they know that the America, United States could use that against them without having to put it into harm's way right near the country. So they're held in reserve, but they're not likely to be used unless it's a high stake, uh, uh, game, war game that, so to speak, is being played. Yeah, you're, you're describing a whole world that I'm guessing a lot of people don't, don't know exists. And it's pretty easy to, oh, you see on the news or whatever, there was an airstrike in whatever place or something.

And to think of the, the massive machine and apparatus behind all of that to make this, to make that event happen is enormously complex. I mean, what you're very briefly outlining here is like, whoa, this war machine that America has is enormous. I think it's the one piece I'm pulling out of this.

Um, so, but let's back up a little and can you describe or, or define what do we mean when we would use the word, uh, military industrial complex comes from, I think the 1950s actually was when it first used, but what, what exactly is that? So the, the outcome of, of a weapon system is for a specific purpose. So you've got objectives, you've got a purpose, then individual objectives within that, and it takes a lot of capability. But you know, those companies are out to make a profit.

They've got stockholders, return on investment. They need this program. They need this capability. So they build up their own capabilities. So you get the two joined together almost in a, you can't tell where the line is. In fact, a lot of these offices are staffed with former military who, if nothing else, they look good on your advertisements with this, hey, we're bringing in a formal general, a former general officer. He's going to be on our team. And the kind of the people go, whoa, you know, you're serious.

You're bringing this kind of capability into the program. Mm - hmm. But so I've got all this, these back and forth benefits, the capability of the contractors handing to the war fighter and the war fighters handing the development expenses and activities to the contractor. And, and sometimes we have contractors forward staged with that weapon system, uh, doing a number of, of, uh, roles on the airplane to keep it capable.

A lot of people don't know that there, there'd be civilian, uh, support contractors in with that weapon system going forward like that. So that whole picture builds one mass of capability and, and, and contractors. That's the RFK. Wow. And so that's the complex. And so you don't want to lose sections of the military. In reality, you don't want to lose segments of that complex. So you're putting all that at risk when you go into a major warfare. And, uh, it's so many ways to look at that.

It's not just our airplanes against their planes, our bombs and rockets against them. It's an entire military industrial complex taking on this capability. And what are you fighting against? You don't know what you're fighting against. You don't know what the enemy's, uh, capabilities are, where, where they're held, located, and things of that nature. So there's a whole other intelligence gathering network that supports this industrial military capability. So you can see it just gets bigger and bigger.

And there are spies or people that have lived in foreign countries for years. Um, I tell you, you want something in the Middle East, uh, and you need, uh, you need a person from the enemy. If you can get in there and say, we will take you and your family out of your country and make you a citizen in the United States. Everybody on earth wants to be a citizen in the United States. We will secretly pull you. We will get your family out too.

If you give us this intelligence information, how many people in third world countries or even second world countries are going to turn down an offer like that? This is a dream for, I'd say, 80% of the people on earth to be an American citizen. You offer, I guarantee I'll get you in. Now, tell me where so-and-so is or where are these tunnels or where are these weapons held or what are these capabilities? Yeah, all of this is working together on a global scale. And it's not what the news is showing people.

You're describing again, like just a whole world, um, of infrastructure that to, from, if I'm hearing this right, is all tied up with power and money and politics and the, you know, war and, um, international relations, all this stuff getting all mixed and smashed and squashed together and entangled all up. Wow, it seems awfully complex, you know? Yeah. So it's well, so, so then I have another question here.

And as we think about this, we're trying to get that big picture look at, you know, the war machine, the American war system, uh, you know, from someone who was inside it for as long as you were. I have to ask, why do you think America has been involved in so many conflicts around the world? Like what's going on with that? Um, you know, proxy wars and the like. I know before we were recording, you were talking about deception and how worldview can affect these things. And why don't you dig into that a little?

The intent of a, of a combat engagement as seen by the public may or may not be like in, in World War II, um, we had a situation that's still not known by a lot of people where Admiral Halsey led a fleet of ships into a hurricane. Unbeknownst to him, or he overprioritized, he didn't trust the weatherman. And we lost over 700 men in that era. And I think close to 15 ships, one of the, uh, greatest losses of men and capability at a, at a moment of time that I think we ever had.

And yet that information was withheld from the public during the entire war. The USS Indianapolis, which took the, uh, nuclear bombs that were you going to use against, uh, Japan in World War II, they took them to, uh, two islands called Tinian and Saipan. That ship that carried those nuclear weapons to, uh, deliver them on the way home, uh, got, uh, sunk, uh, by a, uh, they, they weren't using evasive maneuvers. They were just, hey, we're headed home. No sense worried about being attacked.

They got attacked and the sink, uh, the ship sunk. The men were in the water. They were getting attacked by sharks. The ship, this highly capable ship went down. There's cases where men floated in the water 50 miles from where the ship went down because of currents and things like that. We kept that entire incident secret from the public for years, even until after the war.

People never knew that happened and how it happened and why is a horrible mistake on, on the part of, uh, some of the people involved, the, the decision makers, horrible mistake. And, and we didn't talk. So we lost all those men. We eventually got a few of them out, but less than a third of those people survived, uh, simply because we didn't want known what was going on. Um, and then we, we take all that and put it together into, there's a little bit of deception going on here.

So it ought to lead you to realize, hey, if there's a little bit there, how much deception is going on today? So you see, looking at a global perspective, the United States attacking like, um, uh, we did with North Vietnam and South Vietnam and the Vietnamese and the Vietnam War that, that I was originally in, in the first couple of years of my career where we just, uh, attacking, uh, communism and defeating, uh, parts of this communist mechanism and, uh, making the world safer democracy.

Or was there some other objective? Maybe there was a, getting a foothold into there for going up through China in a particular way, or maybe by knocking out this country, this other country would find that favorable and they would give us a priority in selling us oil. Mm - hmm. So you see, whoa, wait a minute, there's things going on that we don't know about. We think we're fighting the enemy here and we're doing good, but there's all these behind the scenes, um, decisions and capabilities.

I'm not talking about, about, uh, people exaggerating things and, and all these, uh, strange, uh, theories about warfare, uh, including, uh, some that are saying, you know, we never did go to the moon. That was all done in Hollywood. I think, and I know this sounds strange, but I call, uh, that the giggle effect. I said, you know how many thousands of people would have had to have been in on that?

And you look at what was called Cape Canaveral at the time, how many people would know that there was never a missile launch out of, out of there to get them to the moon? Well, you'd have a couple thousand people who supported that launch would know there was never anything launched out of here. So it's so obscene to think there was a rocket that never went to the moon and never landed on it. Uh, surely somewhere in those years, somebody would have talked. Maybe a couple of guys could have.

No, it's so obscene, uh, thought pattern that it's almost funny. I call it the giggle factor. Come on, give me a break. You're, you're dreaming. Uh, go talk to somebody else. Do something. Just stop pushing this stuff.

But like when it comes to the military industrial complex and, and war, I think that, that piece on the smoke and mirrors, the murkiness, the deception tactics that are used to achieve a certain direct, you know, um, directive or objective that they might have that maybe we don't know about this, that, whatever. I, I think when I was getting your story initially, um, I realized you did your bombing missions, but it was over Cambodia, not Vietnam.

And I'm over here scratching my head, me like, huh, you know, I thought the Vietnam War was against, you know, like Vietnam. And, and here you're running all these bombing missions that the president authorized, President Nixon, against a country that America never declared war on, that wasn't at war with the United States, did not have, um, what was not fighting American troops. I mean, Cambodia wasn't involved in that. Uh, and that just kind of got me, huh, you know, what, what's going on there, you know?

And so that comes back to some of that deception and, um, that military machine, it gets so big. And do you want to talk about that just briefly? Because at the time, I think I'm getting this right, you would have said, I'm a good patriot. I'm serving my country. You know, we're the good guys killing the bad guys or whatever, to make it ridiculously simplified. We're killing the bad guys here. But you were bombing Cambodia. So like, talk me through that a little. Okay.

First of all, how did Cambodia get to be, uh, a target? I was flying B-52s. We were stationed on the island of Guam. I did two short tours there. And we went into Cambodia and bombed. But President Nixon ordered that. President Nixon needed congressional approval to attack another country, almost as if we were declaring war. He did not have the approval on that. And that was a real big issue. Oh my God. That was kind of squelched afterward.

We kind of wanted to bomb Cambodia anyway, because we knew it was part of the way of winning the war. But he bypassed getting approval for that at the presidential level. That's the kind of thing that's going on. And you know, when you're flying a B-52, the maps you're looking at, the, the intelligence data, they don't have borders on them. They have coordinates. And you're told, go bomb this, these coordinates. Oh, I wonder who's down below that. You don't know.

Maybe you don't, may not even know today whether or not that was a city or, or some rice paddies. Uh, but you just bomb those coordinates. I must be in South Vietnam. That's where the war is. No, you're, you're attacking Cambodia. And you may not find out for a long time that you've done that. Wow. Again, uh, deception, unauthorized activities, looking that the means or the injustification of the means.

Our objective is to get these North Vietnamese soldiers who are going around Vietnam and coming in through Cambodia. That's our objective. Yeah. So we destroyed parts of Cambodia, but we won that part of the war and eventually lost the war. And well, I think that's the part that just, that gets me because it's like, you're getting all these Cambodians that have nothing to do with this conflict are also getting hit.

I mean, you bombs land where they land, you know, and, um, and in the end, you know, America loses the Vietnam War anyway. And so that must have been a little difficult for you when you realized all this, uh, of thinking we're the good guys killing the bad guys, you know, to use the propaganda phrases, um, that are, that are used. And then to realize, well, maybe it wasn't really the case. Um, was that unsettling when you learned that? It was, uh, nobody wanted to say it, but we lost that war.

That was the first war. Well, Korea, we also, uh, massive loss of lives there, not as many as Vietnam, but, uh, Korea basically came to a stalemate because you still have South Korea and North Korea as enemies. Today you have no, uh, South Vietnam and North Vietnam. We clearly lost, but the media had to do that. And the government was, was shuttling information and, and direction to the media to back off of this thing. Let's act like it.

Let's get it as far back in American memory as we can because this hurts American morale. Americans may actually start thinking, well, maybe this wasn't a good, maybe there's other wars that aren't good ideas. We don't want them thinking that. Uh, let's get this out of our minds, get it out of the media, public attention, and go on from here. Talk about other parts of the world. Let's ignore this part. It didn't work out the way we wanted it. Mm. Yeah.

We don't like to talk about, you know, the countless thousands of pounds of ordnance, you know, high explosive bombs that were dropped on Cambodia, for example. This huge, most powerful country in the world defeated by this little bitty country of Vietnam. I mean, it would have been kind of embarrassing for, for American interests, like even from a international relations or a political perspective.

Like this is kind of circling back to the, um, the deception stuff you're talking about when it comes to the military industrial complex. Well, there's certain objectives they have here and we don't like that. So we're not going to talk about that or we're not going to mention how we obliterated huge chunks of Cambodia or something. Again, it's just hard for me to get my head around that. And, and it's easy to touch of that and just think good guys versus bad guys when it comes to war.

And I think what you're really showing is like that's not the case. And that pivots with the next question I had here. Um, I'd heard you say, I think it was yesterday when we were talking, um, you know, America has done the same things that it would claim its enemies have done. Um, yeah, tell me more because I'm sure there'll be some people that, wait, wait a minute, we're the good guys. Um, you know, we're the good guys. That's not true.

But as someone who was in that world and has left that world now and says that, that wasn't right, uh, talk to me about that. Yeah. I want to, uh, first mention a book, uh, called, uh, just the name kind of makes you wonder. It's called Christianity War and America's Salvation Story. Salvation Story by Michael Lewis. No relation. And he spends about the first 120 pages on, um, non-resistance, surprisingly. The book is 600 pages long and has just shy of a thousand footnotes.

This is the best documented, uh, book I've ever seen. It has a lot of, uh, supported information. He can direct the book directs you to the sources. So this is not made up. It's not maybe this happened or it seems like it probably would have happened. The documents are there. For example, uh, there's clear evidence that we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II to defeat Japan when our intelligence told us Japan was on the verge of surrendering, surrendering anyway.

But we needed, uh, to not only destroy their capability to fight us, but for future years. So we took out their military, we took out their industrial complex, and we then eventually took out the people that worked in that industrial complex. And so those wars, those bombs, uh, done by the United States, directed by the United States, were actually targeting civilians. America targets civilians. Oh, can't be. And we, have we tortured prisoners? Yes. Um, I won't go into that much, but we have.

There's some public information out there, how, why, when, and where. That's, that's not going to be public. I don't think ever. There's, there's people that were in that and no longer around. They, they've passed on. Uh, they, they kept their mouths shut pretty well because they knew the damage could be causing. So we, we had summary, uh, as it calls summary executions where you didn't give an enemy soldier a trial. You've taken his gun away.

He's a prisoner of war or he's coming in with his hands up and he's, he's unarmed and you shoot him anyway because you're so angry at that enemy for killing your buddy in the trench or, or blowing up, uh, a group of your friends. So angry, you just shoot him even though he's unarmed and he's coming with his hands up. It's called, uh, summary execution and, and other things, uh, uh, good and bad. We did that. Mm - hmm.

And we, we used the weapons on, on places that, uh, oh, I didn't know our country did the, I didn't know that we used gas. I didn't know that we poisoned water and, and things like this. Oh, we're just as bad as the other guy. So when you say, um, this is for a good purpose, well, who's good purpose? Is it America's good purpose? Mm - hmm. Or is it another country? If my, if my, uh, religious, uh, upbringing is, for example, Islamic, they have a different worldview than I do.

They see themselves as good and us as bad. We are the infidels, the enemy, the unfaithful. We look at them as the enemy, perhaps. And you've got a lot of these interrelationships are creating a false sense of good and evil. Okay. Whose version of good are we talking about? So there's got to be some determination. And I think that's what some of the public is beginning to see.

Uh, like in Ukraine, even, even the well-known Elon Musk, uh, who created the, the Tesla and the, and the satellites that are giving us GPS, this amazing man, whether you like him or not, as immaterial. He said, you know, in the Russian-Ukraine war, which is going on right now, is the, is the topic or is the background of this discussion right now. Um, they are losing, according to his statement, and I think it's valid. They're losing at least 10,000 soldiers a week.

And they brought in North Koreans to support them, the Chinese to support them. And the North Korean Chinese soldiers going, wait a minute, most of the guys going to the, to the line to fight are getting killed and not coming back. I'm from China. What am I doing fighting for Russia? Yeah. And they, and they're still there. And there's a lot of defection, a lot of pulling back. But you know, in three years of fighting, the front lines have never moved. Mm - hmm.

Is it we pushed into Russia, or I should say we, the Russians pushed into Ukraine, or the Ukraine pushed way into Russia. Didn't happen. They're at a stalemate and they're still throwing thousands of men at that thing. And you're going, huh, why are we doing this? And people are starting to say, uh, let's just stop this. Even the world's beginning to say, uh, you know, this is insane. There's no benefactors from, there are, you know, uh, from a global perspective, but in this particular warfare, nobody's winning.

They're all, they're both losers. And so, uh, so some of what you're outlining here, you know, how, say again, America having done the things that we, we, uh, uh, you know, what the military industrial complex would say, well, the enemy has done that. And America has actually done those things as well. I have to ask then, when it comes to war, are we looking at a case where this is just the ends justifies the means? Or you could say situational ethics. It's like, well, this is war.

So it's okay to drop some nuclear bombs on some people, you know, in Japan and, and vaporize tens of thousands of people. Is that what we're looking at here? Situational ethics. I think so. Uh, there's an old phrase going around, all is fair in love and war, Mm - hmm meaning it, everything's fair game. And now what you said earlier, I don't want to portray the fact that America, uh, has this, uh, horrible strategy to torture prisoners and that I'm saying we've done it and we do it.

And, and we have men that go to church regularly, Christian churches. They are combatants. They're military. It's, uh, they're looked up to in America. And they have that fundamental morality that they're not on a, on a grand scale. They're not all this way. So I'm saying these incidents that we accuse the enemy are doing, we're doing some of those ourselves. So why are we doing those?

Because just what you said, the end justifies the means instead of around the other way where the means to get there are supposed to justify your, your way and your objective. And so we're using those mentalities, those mindsets to go after enemy and, and make our people feel good, good about, uh, what we're doing, eliminating the enemy. So, and then what is the real objective of the war? People may not even know.

They may see on television, uh, we're out here to do this, this and this, but really we may not, that may not be our objective at all. Sometimes we've, we've attacked company, countries just to deplete their ammunition stockpile or damage them financially to where they can't, uh, retaliate because they no longer have the means to do that. We've used a, a number of times we've used those tactics far beyond, you know, knock out a, uh, enemy's, uh, ability to transport, uh, petroleum.

Yeah, but it's winter and there's civilians that depend on that petroleum to heat their, their homes. But yeah, it has a military purpose. So it's okay if they, uh, you know, freeze to death in one perspective because we're killing the enemy and we're doing good for society as far as we see it. And that comes back to some of the mythology, I guess you could say around the military industrial complex of we're the good guys. We're doing the right thing here. So it's okay if, uh, there's collateral damage.

Do you want to describe what collateral damage is, by the way? Absolutely. Uh, interesting concept. Uh, on a, on a smaller scale, it's saying some of the bombs fall on people we didn't want them to fall on. Mm - hmm. Uh, civilians, non-combatants as it referred to, especially when you're spraying, uh, bomblets, small bombs, anti-personnel bombs out all over a, a section of a country. Uh, that's horrible. And that's collateral damage. The, the civilians, we, we know cases.

I've seen, uh, cases myself where 20 years after the war, those munitions are still there and they're still killing people and they may be there 20 more years. And because of some of the things we've done, uh, their food supply is cut off. We've spread, maybe caused disease to occur in a country. Maybe we've destroyed their economy and maybe we've changed the relationship between nations by doing this and this. We've made them vulnerable.

They're our enemy, but we've made them vulnerable to maybe a third enemy over here who's now more easy to go into here, which we didn't intend to happen, but it's a consequence of war. So you see, we're depleting a lot more than enemy soldiers, enemy capabilities. We're depleting a whole segments of a society, uh, in, in, uh, in ways that sometimes are hard, hard to describe.

There's so many ways that we're impacting non-combatants with collateral damage, as it's called, damage that, uh, was a result, but wasn't intended to be, uh, the purpose of the, of the damage that was created. And to go back to the Cambodia part of your story, I mean, that's a classic case of the collateral damage, which is really just sanitized language for these bombs fell on people that were just living their life in their village in Cambodia, having absolutely nothing to do with this war.

And they got wiped off the map, obliterated because, oops, that's where the bomb happened to land. Yeah. Is, is that, yeah. That's totally, uh, that's totally true. The, uh, in fact, uh, I know I experienced cases where, uh, we've dropped bombs, uh, from 30, 32,000 feet. And while that bomb is still on its way down and it may be killing children and nursing mothers and all those sorts of things, the bomb is still falling. We turn off the target and head for home.

And in one specific, um, case, I remember my pilot's name. I was the co-pilot at the time. Name was Bob. I said, Bob, I wonder what they're serving for dinner in the officer's club. And wait a minute, you just dropped bombs, multiple bombs that are undoubtedly going to kill combatants and non-combatants and their source of living and all this. And you're wondering, you know, I wonder if they're serving, serving steak tonight in the officer's club. It should be good to sink my teeth into a good steak.

What a contradiction of thought. And, and I had that mentality. I was typical. That was good. That was me doing good by taking care of an enemy of world security and world peace. Oh, obliterate your enemy and, uh. It's part, again, it comes back to the, we're the force of good here. We're, you know, we're defending, what was it like defending democracy around the world? So this is what we got to do. And, oh, well, that's unfortunate that we wiped out all these villages or whatever.

Again, making the world safe for democracy. Mm - hmm. And I'm wondering, you know, those people on the ground who had their village blown to bits, are probably not thinking about, yay, I'm glad we made the world safe for democracy. Yeah. You know, or, or maybe we're no longer friends of the United States who are sending us food packages and things like that. Uh, it, you changed political perspectives too, and, and just another, uh, consequence of war and collateral damage.

I think, I really think the ends justifies the means is, is a really core concept here when it comes to war and how the philosophy, framework, mindset, whatever you want to call it, is used for people to, to get to that place where that's okay. Like that's the right thing to do, to go drop bombs on a country that we're not at war with, you know, or have nothing to do with this conflict. And they just get swept into this, I don't know, this, the big churning wheels of the giant international war machine.

And it crushes a bunch of people that really have nothing to do with this war. And they just get caught into the system. Am I getting that about right? Yeah. Yeah. I can go back to my beginnings, even as a boy, uh, very popular in, in the fifties and in early sixties, uh, to have cowboy and Indian, uh, TV shows. And, and the cowboys and the cavalry, the, the soldiers of the, of the day, uh, were the good guys. The Indians were the bad guys.

And, and you would see scenes of horse chases when the, when the, you know, shooting the Indians like they were some kind of, uh, sport, uh, to do that. And, and so, yeah, that's good. We got Roy Rogers and, and whoever the, you know, the singing cowboy, whatever they want to call them, uh, the cavalry, all these guys killing Indians. That's good. You know, well, wait a minute, that Indian had a family too. And he had hopes and dreams. And also he had all the same things that I had. Yeah.

There were raiding, uh, sometimes, uh, forts and sometimes civilian communities. But why were they raiding? They had their own means, but we took away their means. So now they come and take away our means. And you've got this going back and forth where if we'd have helped them or, or done it a different way, we could have avoided the entire war. That mindset was never there. And so growing up, hey, the way to get what you want is blow away the enemy. Mm - hmm.

That's just part of the, the worldview, the culture that, that you're raising. It's like, I'm going to do my part. I'm going to join the Air Force and, and so on. Okay. So, so I'm going to go more big picture then when it comes to war and this idea of ends justifies the means, situational ethics. I, I think the ultimate, ultimate example I can think of is nuclear war.

The, the concept of nuclear deterrence, uh, nuclear weapons, um, the case of bombing Japan with nuclear weapons, uh, it seems like that's a very clear case of, well, we're going to obliterate, you know, what is it, a couple hundred thousand civilians, um, but it's, it's part of winning the war. So it's okay. Tell me about the American war machine and how it views genocidal. I mean, you could call them nuclear weapons, the, the ultimate genocidal weapon. You know, how, how does it view those things?

Uh, you were really involved with this, you know, I think you're part of strategic air command, right? Um, and, and the nuclear deterrence strategy of America.

You mentioned some of this at the beginning, but, um, dig into that a bit more and especially talk to me about in your mind, how was it justified at the time to carry these nuclear warheads in, in a B-52, knowing that, I mean, if you use those things, potential millions of, of people would die, millions, you know, and that's just, I mean, the numbers are so big, you know, we can't even really get our heads around that, but talk to me about that.

Well, interestingly, that word genocide, you would never hear that word discussed. That's kind of a, a new concept, genocide, wiping out whole peoples, people groups, uh, and, uh, and driving them out of their countries, so to speak, uh, forcing them out. Uh, we never heard that word. I would never thought of that. Interesting. You might be killing thousands of people, you and your other pilots. Mm - hmm.

And that triad I talked about, you may be wiping out millions of people, but genocide, this is, no, this is us doing good, uh, for the world peace. How though, like, can you take me, I don't know how much this is still classified, but like, can you take me into some of the mission briefings for nuclear war, say, and it's like, okay, we're going to fly these bombs and drop on such and such targets and, you know, wipe out millions of people.

Was there ever a point in your brain that's just like, wait a second, how is a war strategy that kills millions of people a good plan? Did that ever enter your mind at all? It may surprise you, but the answer is no. Okay. And there was so much of myself invested in this. We had, uh, not only everything we did flying was a training mission and, but we would have to certify in front of a board our knowledge of what was called the emergency war order or EWO.

And we would have to talk about where we were going to get to our target. And it's a long way. So I had to get additional fuel from an air refueling tanker somewhere out over the Atlantic or, or going up over Canada to get to my target. I had to know where that tanker was and how we were going to rendezvous and meet in the air so he could pump gas into my airplane while in there. We had, uh, so much as NALs, as they were called, natural alternate landing sites.

If you can't get to your target or if you use up your gas getting to the target, do you know down in Egypt, we've made an agreement with them to keep this runway for our landing and nobody knows about those. Really? So you had to, you had to certify all that. I mean, you're really into this thing mentally, emotionally. You can't talk about it. That gives you just a sense of, of, oh, that's, that's really. Oh, I mean the no. Yeah. I mean, okay.

Can, can you talk about what kind of missions you were, you were potentially looking at? Like what kind of plans are we talking here? Like we're going to have this plane with however many nuclear warheads and we're going to go strike what? I mean, massive targets across the Soviet Union. I mean, what, what are we talking about here? First of all, I want to describe the fact that, uh, through dec, not decades, but through many years, uh, we were fighting the Cold War with Russia and nobody ever shot a missile.

Although we, we came close to, uh, start, uh, the, uh, Cuba missile crisis where Russia had brought nuclear weapons into Cuba and, and President Kennedy, and it was, uh, he was on the verge of having to make a decision. What do we do about that? The Russians ended up pulling their weapons out of Cuba, but I was in a position, uh, we would call it nuclear alert. Our bombers were ready to go. The submarine missiles were always kept top shape as well as the, those.

And we would live in an underground complex near the airplane. We had a theater. We had a huge kitchen staffed with cooks. We had sleeping quarters downstairs, showers and nice beds, everything that you'd want. And we'd stay there for seven to ten days. The, my family at home, come here and do this. But, and there was, there was these tubes that would come out of the building and, and they had a horn called a klaxon.

I mean, if you were asleep, this klaxon would raise you up off the bed, but you would also get a, uh, order over a phone, special phone on a special frequency that, that, um, you would get that alert. And you had what we call quick donning boots and you had your flight suit arranged. So the instant that went off, you got maybe 30 seconds to get your clothes on and it's 10 below zero outside. And you grab your parka and, and your hat and maybe you're going to put it on later and check it with her, with it.

And you and another officer have to show a special code to an armed guard that's around that airplane. But that airplane was loaded with nuclear weapons. It was fueled. Uh, it had, uh, usually you park an airplane, you put big chocks are called under the tires to keep it from rolling. There was stuff like rollover chocks. They would keep the airplane from rolling, but if you used enough power, they would collapse and let you keep going. The engines were started in an unusual way.

There was an explosive cartridge in the two inboard engines that would, uh, ignite immediately upon an electrical signal from the cockpit. They would drive hot gas into the engine, getting it rotated, getting that fire going. With those two engines and pressure off of those, you activate a pneumatic system within the wing that would then spin up the other, uh, six engines. And you might be rolling forward towards the runway while you're still spinning up the engines.

And you've got from, from our strategies and tactics, you may have only minutes to get off the ground. And you wouldn't call the control tower for permission to take off. We had an angular taxiway onto the runway. You did what's called a rolling takeoff. You didn't pull out of the runway, stay in there and roll, run up the engines. You rolled on the takeoff and you just on the runway and you just kept going with everything you had in that airplane to get it off the ground on its way.

And no matter what happened, on its way to drop nuclear weapons on Russia. And you had, how fast on of alert would have this been from the moment that bell rings and you get the orders to you're off the ground? You know, interestingly, that used to be classified information. I thought it was, but, but you know, if you, uh, I mean, you could watch a video. I've shown you a video of something like this happening. I mean, I could start a stopwatch and tell you myself. It was probably in the four minute range. No way.

From out of a dead sleep in bed out to the airplane and maybe 30, 40, 50 seconds into the airplane, everything in there, your, your clothes, your helmet, whatever you're using is pre-positioned. You may end up taking off without even your helmet on, just with some, uh, earphones on, uh, minimum time on everything. It's been researched how to get this airplane off the ground to survive an enemy attack that may or may not be coming in. Well, yeah, because you're, this is Griffiths Air Force Base.

Um, I think we'd mentioned that before. You had told me that, which was a, a major part of the strategic air command, um, for, yeah, the nuclear, nuclear, uh, strategies of, of America. So I'm guessing it would have been a target in the event of a nuclear war. It would, it would. And my head is just spinning of, like, you were really in this world. I mean, you, and was it kind of this sense of, well, this is my job. I mean, this is just, this is what I got to do.

And you're not really thinking through when I unleash these weapons, what it's going to do. Mm - hmm. That didn't really hit your mind. Right. I'm telling you, this is, this sounds strange, but it's not only this is my job. It was exciting to do it. Mm - hmm. Because you were looked up to, you had this power. You were the reason the whole Air Force was there to make sure you were ready to fly and to fight, as we used to say. Mm - hmm. And it was a real ego builder.

Uh, you would just walk around feeling like you're on top of the world. Mm - hmm. And, and it was exciting thinking what you're capable of doing. Never thinking about the collateral damage, what I might be doing to non-combatants. So I was part of the force for good on earth. Mm - hmm. It was like, we're, we're the good guys and those are the bad guys, you know, and we're going to be ready and we're going to go get them. Was that, I mean, and they've got, they've got the same capability looking at us the same way.

Man, these are the bad guys. Yeah. And that's the part that, yeah. Cause if you flip it around back to the worldview perspective, you know, from an American perspective, they're the enemy. You flip it the other direction and they're looking at America saying, America's the enemy and we're the good guys.

And what's terrifying is both sides had weapons systems or have weapons systems, thermonuclear warheads, that if we ever have a nuclear war, if the world ever has a nuclear war, I mean, it almost certainly just about end civilization. I mean, it'd be so catastrophic. And so it's like, over these debates of who's the enemy and who's the good guy and all of that, we've, we've gotten to a point as a, as a human race that could about end the world. Not quite, but you know what I mean?

Like, yeah, it ended the world as we know it. There you go. As, as, you know, a lot of third world countries and South America, African, and, and many others, uh, of the people that are not in the belt of the rich people around the earth. Uh, you know, 80 percent of the world's wealth is in this narrow band around the world that encompasses Europe and that, that's where all the fighting goes on. Oh my. These third world countries, they may have local battles. They're not into this global thing.

And, and that's not even in their mindset. We have countries like Australia that support the United States. They're our friends. Australia may never get in a war, but they're part of our war machine and our relationships. And those, those things change. Yeah. This, this is just talking about the military industrial complex. This is at the most extreme form, I guess, when it back to, and as justifies the means, you know, uh, can you say how, how much of a nuclear payload you'd carry on average?

Like what kind of weapons? Uh, the kind of weapons varied from the original base in the fifties. There was a joke about what those weapons, a sad joke, uh, when you look back on about what those weapons were, but they were maybe could fit two of these big bombs in the bomb bay. And then the weapons got smaller.

And then we had, uh, got into this rotary launcher, like a, a pistol revolver, and it would rotate and drop a short range attack missile and that missile would take off on its own path, like if it were its own airplane. You rotate that, uh, cylinder and drop off another one that will go to a target over here. So now you've got each one of those is a nuclear bomb. But now I'm not wasting those bombs on cities like we did in, in World War II in Japan. I'm going after a very specific target.

I may want to eliminate the seaport. I could do that with one weapon. I'll probably put two or three in there to make sure I destroy that. That's where a country's fighting material, their warships are. That's also the, the place where food and grain and, and things sustaining life also coming in through that port. I may, uh, hit his electrical generating system. I may hit key oil pipelines that would just eliminate him. Uh, I saw in Saudi Arabia, extremely vulnerable.

I was stationed there once in Riyadh for a year. I got to know a lot of the, uh, uh, the ways of the Saudi life. They have a couple of pipelines that pump desalinized seawater, uh, from the Persian Gulf and pump it in, desalinize it, make it drinkable water, usable water within the capital. You knock out those couple of strategic water pipes and there's more than a couple now. They're dead. They have no water in the capital city. They're done for. Mm - hmm.

But Saudi Arabia is the location of Mecca and all the surrounding, uh, communities, including the Muslims that are in other countries in the world. They know you don't mess with Mecca. That's a holy place. Mm - hmm. And so you protect Saudi Arabia, even though they may not be your friends.

And, but they're very vulnerable because they put a lot of stock in a country like that, uh, we call dispersion, where in our own country we disperse our targets because you don't want to cluster them together, make them easy to hit. You bury some, you disguise them as buildings. You, uh, maybe hold them back for a second strike, uh, which by the way is just as destructive as the first. That's a, you go in with a wave of bombers and missiles and, uh, you then assess what happened.

Then you go in, if you got surviving nuclear weapons, you go in with a second wave and pick off what may be left. And it just, there's total destruction. I mean, we're talking, see, this isn't, I mean, this, this is like annihilation level type stuff you're, you're discussing here. Like what size of warhead was on one of those missiles? Originally we talked mega tons. Mega means millions of tons of, of equivalent, of it was equivalent to TNT, which is your standard bomb has, uh, gunpowder, so to speak, in it.

And then we got, as accuracy increased, we got into smaller and smaller weapons. And because we didn't need to wipe out whole cities, but smaller targets, the, uh, the weapons I was dealing with were, uh, you may not believe this, they were the size a little bit bigger than a basketball. Inside this, uh, this, uh, self-flying, self-directing capability. How, how many megaton, kiloton, like what size of yield is it? They're in kilotons, which is maybe one one hundredth of the size of a bomb dropped in Japan.

You don't need a huge bomb to wipe out cities. I just pick some strategic targets, toss a couple of these in there and, and I've obliterated enemy characteristics. Wow. But see, we are not in that scenario right now. The dangers we have, I mean, in those days it was Russia and the United States. That's it. We controlled the world of nuclear weapons. Then along comes China and then you, you get Korea. And now you're seeing India and Pakistan, uh, been in the news lately.

Uh, I think they've negotiated some kind of haul. Both of those countries have nuclear weapons now. And so, whoa, you may have a chain, uh, chain reaction where one of those countries attacks this country and that country starts losing. So they bring in another country to back them up and this country goes for more resources. And now that's how World War II got started. Nations started supporting nations, taking sides and, and the, the destruction just, um, just increased exponentially.

And that's what could happen in today's warfare. Not just obliterating everything, taking out key targets with very small, very accurate weapons. The more accurate it is, the smaller the weapon can needs to be. So we're talking about nuclear bombs this big. That's just hard for me to get my head around. And you're carrying like a lot of them. A lot of them. A lot of them. And just being ready at a moment's notice for, for the unleashing of just that level of annihilation, destruction.

Or let me give you a scenario where you take a, a ship and dry, and, and, uh, a cargo ship with grain going to, uh, England to ship grain. But in that ship is a nuclear weapon. And the British looking for the, you know, wanting to purchase the grain, they allow that ship into their port. Or something as simple as, as taking a semi truck and putting a nuclear weapon in that thing and driving. It can be done. It can be done with deception and, and, and tactics that are unknown to most people.

Drive that semi truck with a nuclear weapon in it, right into the middle of New York City, into the financial, uh, you know, Long Island and some of these places, financial capital, not of the United States, but the whole world. Drive one of these things in there. You knock that city out. One weapon would do it. And you could create chaos similar to what happened with the World Trade Center, the twin towers that went.

I mean, we, they struck fear in, uh, in the hearts of America and thinking that we're under attack. This is going to be the big one. Thank God it didn't turn out to be. But you strike fear in the hearts of people. So we're painting a picture here. This is a lot bigger than just trench warfare where you're shooting this, uh, you know, dilapidated old gun at the enemy that's a hundred yards away in another trench fight you. This is the highest tech.

We're not even talking yet about hacking into people's, uh, computer systems and some of that capability. That's beyond imagination. You get into that. And I read the journals. You say, hey, Vince, you haven't been in the Air Force for a long time. But if you know where to look, there's journals out there and you put some of these papers that this professor has written or this higher rank, you put that with this paper.

You know, it's unintended consequences, but nobody realizes you put this paper with this paper and you start getting a picture of, hey, there's something going on here that I didn't know about. Laboratory experiments you didn't know about. Maybe some guy publishes a paper. Maybe we turn it into a civilian, uh, capability. But where did that come from? It came from a nuclear or, or a, uh, weapon that was being designed. We found out the weapon or that the chemical was also good for, uh, curing headaches.

So we're doing that. But where did it come from? It came from that military industrial complex. That's kind of a spinoff thing. So, uh, if I can hack into those systems, uh, with, with some of the programming that we have, countries have now whole industries of, uh, uh, for lack of a better term, to hack into the other, uh, person's weapon system or sell them something that they want. But in that thing you sold them is a listening device, kind of a small example.

So you got all this going on way beyond what your average civilian is going to see on television or remember from his textbooks in school. It's massive. And understanding it is not, you can't do it on your own. A team of people operating together can begin to see this all how it works together. It's massive. It's huge. And the, the world is right now essentially capable of destroying itself as far as industry and population and those things. Mm - hmm.

And so there's maneuvering all the time with relationships that the public doesn't even know about. We may have relationships with our enemies that people would be shocked to know that we may be trading off some technology that people don't know exists. Mm - hmm. All sorts of relationships. The origin of all these things comes down to two words: money and power. Those are two ways, two words that motivate at the macro level, you know, not at the individual level. Money and power drives everything. Okay.

Cause I'm, I'm seeing a thread here because we're talking about the giant military machine and it sucks things into it and you end up obliterating a bunch of stuff in Cambodia, you know, for whatever reason. And then the deception, um, and then we're looking at the ends justifies the means. We're the good guys, quote unquote. So therefore, da, da, da. And then we're talking the ultimate example, which is nuclear war, um, which is just kind of mind bending, the stuff you were describing as it's just like, wow.

Where, as Jesus Christ said, what is truth anymore? What is truth? Who is good? Who is bad? Who determines that? Who determines what's justified in war? Does the United Nations, United Nations calls it genocide, but who cares what they think? I need to win this war. So I'm going to go in and kill a few hundred thousand people justifiably. That's not genocide. But if somebody else does it, it's genocide. If somebody, if a man on the street kills another man, we call it murder.

But if one army defeats another army, you know, we call it victory or defeat. We don't call it murder. We don't want to conceptualize that thought in people's mind. That's as much on a global scale, murder as a man on the street killing another man. It's murder. It's not justifiable because the end doesn't justify the means. The techniques don't, uh, justify, uh, what they're used to accomplish.

Well, but that's, uh, yeah, but then you look at like Hiroshima and, um, Nagasaki where the two atomic bombs were dropped. And again, you're just obliterating tens of thousands of civilians. Oh, but that, that was okay because that was an act of war, you know, and every, you know, it's okay. But if you'd kill all those people another way around, oh, that would be the most horrific, you know, murderous genocide, you know, of, of the whatever decade.

Worldview really comes into this or deception or I'm trying to think how we could even get to a place, uh, to where it's like, yeah, that was okay. Like where humans actually were like, yeah, it's okay to do this to other humans. Mm - hmm. Like somehow someone lost their way or I, yeah, I'm just, I'm not, it's just hard to get my head around things like this.

And that's, that's what's behind some of the quotes I gave, uh, previously that, uh, people are seeing, they're getting near the ends of their lives or their careers and they're seeing futility of warfare. Like has been said, you know, there is no, uh, you can't change morality with legislation. Mm - hmm. General Sherman himself in the Civil War said that famous quote, "War is hell." And that's what the people are finding out after the fact.

And some of them are going to their grave never, most of them are never even knowing some of these things, uh, occur. And, uh, it's, it's just the way it, uh, the simplest way to say it is soon a balance on this earth. And I've heard the example used of Japan. Japan is our ally now. What, you know, good, look at the good that came out of Japan. No, you know what? We picked up two enemies in place of Japan. Now we have two stronger enemies, China, who was our ally in World War II. Oh, wow.

We attempted to, to help them with, with flying food out of, out of what was then called Burma, flying the hump. It was called, uh, help and support them. Now there are arch enemies because we took away their, or, or we befriended Japan who they were looking at as an ally. So now we've triggered another relationship, an unintended consequence. And your average, uh, viewer is going to say, "Oh, look at those nuclear bombs and what good they did." Well, they didn't do good. In fact, we even know war begets war.

And so we've now got an entire global change of relationships that again, just generates more conflict, more wars, and this never-ending, and you know what? You're never going to stop it. Sin will bound on this earth until there is no earth. And yet we, and through Jesus Christ, we are the bright spot on earth. And, and if, if I wish I could, I wish I could tell that, uh, to countless people, all of us, that we could get through the gospel to, to enough people and show them, this is fruitless.

You're just harming your own selves, thinking you're defeating the bad. You're doing it to yourselves also. Mm - hmm. So it really, really supports, uh, the knowledge of, um, of salvation through Jesus Christ. Mm - hmm. So I'm wondering how does the church's involvement in the American, uh, war machine, how does that affect our testimony? And like when I say that, I, I'm saying there's so much patriotism, nationalism, support for the armed forces within the American church, just broadly speaking.

How does that affect our testimony? What would you say to, to that situation? We're battling a culture in America, first of all. And so we are counter culture. We're against, we're opposite that. We're not opposed to that culture. We have an alternate path because of sin and bounding. They're going to do what they do, but we have an alternate, uh, message. But when we are weak on that message, Mm - hmm, then we weaken their perspective of us. It hurts our testimony.

It ultimately defects who we think God is, who we portray God is, is bringing love and, and good to the earth and they use us. Well, look at you guys. We, we heard some of your, uh, youth are beginning to favor carrying of concealed weapons. Well, wait a minute, never heard of before. It's on an extremely small scale. Has it happened? Yes. What is that doing to our testimony? Hey, you guys are as bad as, as anybody else. So we have to maintain, uh, I'd call it nothing more than impurity.

We have to attain clean conscience. That's the joy of non-resistance. Purity, uh, the love of God, the knowledge, the knowledge you're pleasing him, and absolutely a clear conscience. Today, I don't have a clear conscience about, I know God has forgiven me. I asked the people of Cambodia, Cambodia. I don't have a clear conscience over that until I reconcile that with God through Jesus Christ. It's going to haunt me the rest of my life. Mm - hmm.

But I have this alternative path, you know, which has great reward both in eternity, but also right now. I can have a family that's clean. I can show them a clean way. We can have joy in a family instead of fighting as the rest of the world does. Yeah, we make mistakes. We fight too sometimes amongst ourselves at a much smaller scale.

That really hurts our testimony if we're not sticking to the commands of Christ, like Matthew chapter five, basic, basic commands of Christ, as well as the whole New and Old Testament, uh, New Testament in particular. But when we're not even following the basics, then we have nothing more to offer the rest of the world. Mm - hmm. And so we hold to those basics, core theology.

We display our lifestyle through our practices, our objection to, um, conformity, our, uh, objection to the ways of the world in many regards, and our stand on non-resistance. Those are the positions that in our practices and our beliefs are deeply held beliefs that have a testimony to the rest of society.

And without us maintaining, following scriptural approach to life and those practices, we're just as, we're no different from the, from the other folks a little bit, but not enough to make them change, Mm - hmm, their core theology, their core thinking. So it says something about, uh, sometimes the lackadaisical approach we take to it, cleaning up our own house, make sure we don't have all this, uh, these loose threads wandering around.

We need to, to be united as one for Christ, build each other up in our most holy faith. Yes, I can, I can sit down and eat a meal with a Christian who's not an Anabaptist, but I know that, uh, I've got something he doesn't have. And I want to share that with him. And I want to demonstrate that to him so he can see what I'm talking about through my life, through the words in my mouth, through looking at my family. And I say, wow, you got something there.

Tell me more about it as, as opposed to trying to win an argument with him on a street corner. The demonstration of my life as a much louder message and the things I do with my life is supporting causes, as we described earlier, hospitals, uh, hurricane, uh, recovery, tornadoes, helping the poor and the invalid and all those sorts of things. That's a different mindset. They see that as I did. I was, I've been an Anabaptist for 14 years. I hate to admit it, not really. Uh, I'm 78 years old.

I became an Anabaptist at, uh, 64 years old. Wow. That's late. Most people grew up in it, but you know, I see it now. I see that there's that side and there's this side, and I want to be on the right side, the kingdom of God's dear son and not the kingdom of darkness, which when you see it laid out, it's pretty clear that there are two kingdoms that Christ came to build one kingdom and to draw his people into that kingdom. The devil is in to draw people into his kingdom. You know, which one are you going to follow?

Which the lifestyle of which one are you going to follow? You're going to try to follow this one and you kill and use guns and bombs and rockets, you name it, and deception and all the things. You're going to go over here and follow Jesus Christ and his ways and his teachings. It's a choice. Take your pick. You know, you can't have people try. You can't have a little bit of both. You know, that's, that's compromise. That's not genuine, uh, to say I'm over here, but I want a few of those goodies over here.

I want, uh, television. I went to look at some, maybe just glance at a wrong magazine now and then. I want, I want to drink a little alcohol. Maybe not get drunk, but you know, get a little bit, get a buzz on. You know, that's okay. I'm out there in the fringes. I want some of these things, but I still want to be over here. That's compromise. And, and God doesn't believe in compromise. And you'll suffer for that. Good people still over here. They suffer bad things. But we're in this world. We are in this world.

We can't escape that until death. But we're not of this world because we are here looking at the spiritual and not the carnal, which our weapons are mighty through God. They're not carnal. That's those other wars. That's that thing we've been talking about this whole time. The killing, the deception, the maiming, the genocide, you name it. The mass weapons of destruction, huge capabilities.

And we haven't even talked about lingering effects like radiation from nuclear weapons, killing people many years afterwards, like Chernobyl, uh, the nuclear plant of Russia that blew up, spreading death and destruction through radioactive. We're not even getting into some of those things and medical stuff. But that's not the way of this path through Jesus Christ. Simple. Follow him. Do what he said. Yeah, we make mistakes. We stumble sometimes. But I'm on this path. And I'm not going back.

I've likened it many times to a B-52 takeoff, half a million pounds, almost 488,000 pounds, shooting down the runway. You get to a point where you can no longer stop in the remaining, you know, 12,000 foot runway, half a million pounds. You get to a point where you can't stop any longer in the remaining runway. And the pilot announces to the crew, he says one word, he says committed. That tells the rest of the crew, they're no, they're, they can't stop anymore. There is no going back. There are no do-overs.

And that's what I'm saying in my, in my life with Jesus Christ, I'm committed. I've announced to the rest of the crew, I'm committed in my heart, in my mind, in my life. There's no going back. I've seen, I've been on that other side, as we said, 40 years of that was my life. And I've now seen that. And I'm saying there's no going back. I'm not going back to that lifestyle anymore. Vince, would you give us, uh, some ideas here and some strategy and tactics?

Would you help build this building, uh, that supports warfare? No, I'm not doing that anymore. And there's no compromise. There's, I'm committed and there's no going back. As scripture says, I press towards the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. I'm pressing forward, but in that spiritual warfare, that new kingdom and not that old kingdom, death and destruction reigns. And, uh, that's, that's in a nutshell. Mm - hmm.

So instead of the glorification of the war machine, the American war machine, which is, I must say, really easy to do, you know, get it wrapped up in, oh, wow, look at that. Yeah, those bonds really killed the bad guys. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's easy to go down that road. And many churches in America are very tied into this, the, this thinking and the, the war machine concept. But instead of that, instead of the glorification of the war machine, what should our people be doing?

You've laid out some things of the, the dark, the darkness that's there behind war. What's something you can leave listeners with that says, what, what should they be doing instead of being involved in this mechanism for destruction? What do they do instead? We have a new experience in our society. First of all, Hollywood has just taken over a tremendous amount and, and athletes. They're now called influencers. That's a common word. You, why?

Because they're influencing the mindset of what their theology is, call it a theology, a theology of the devil. They're leading people astray through media, social media and everything they portray. And it's just getting worse and worse. And, and the, the movies are getting more, uh, gruesome and things like that. I want to use that same word. I want to be an influencer for my family. So what I do passes on a heritage to my children who pass it on to their children.

There are mistakes made, but I want to be an influencer, taking what God showed me and passing it on to the next generation and keeping them, uh, surrounded with God's protection and my oversight and, and not allowing the enemy to, uh, kill us spiritually by shooting over the wall of Christ's protection. I'm the influencer in their life using my, uh, approach to God's word, his word, not me. I'm following his word. I'm not making up my own rules. So I'm the influencer for them and passing it on.

I think that's an important piece to leave with people. Like what kind of influence do each of us have on the people around us? Like, is it for good or is it for, yeah, kingdoms of this world? Is it for Christ and what he's doing in the world? Or is it for praising the, the war machine or the, you know, like you were mentioning, entertainment or, you know, social media addiction? There are so many other things you could list in, in there. Wow. That's a powerful piece to leave us with, Vince.

Is there anything else you'd like to say as we close? Yeah. Be, be constantly alert. And that was a, a military concept. Be alert to what the enemy's doing. Know his strategy and tactics. Know that he's sucking in our children through social media, through, through YouTube videos and all the other things they can get to on the internet. You have to have some protection. You have to know the tactics of the enemy, just like I did when I was in physical combat, physical warfare. The same principles apply.

There's an enemy out there. I got to know what his strategies and tactics are and protect them for, uh, life with Jesus Christ in his kingdom. And, uh, I think you hit the nail on the head the way we have to be. And we both saying the same thing, the influencers for God's way in the life of, of us and the community around us and people saying, you know, that guy's, he may have a point there.

I look at his, at his children and I say, you know, maybe I want to hear a little bit more about that instead of being a door knocker and handing somebody a little, you know, logically worded tract. And there's, you know, that's not bad, but I'm saying, Mm - hmm, display Jesus Christ with our life, our families, and the things we do. That's where non-resistance comes along. I'm displaying, and there's other benefits too. I'm displaying what God told me, thou shalt not kill.

The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. Fight in the wrong war, but I want to do a spiritual battle for my family and those around me that I can influence, Mm - hmm, uh, influence them for the, for the, to the will of God through Jesus Christ. Mm - hmm. Well, Vince, I just want to say, um, thank you for your openness to talk about the previous experiences you've had and the lessons you've learned along the way. Those can't be easy parts of your past, of things that have happened and things that you've done.

And I appreciate you sharing that with us. And I, I think you've given us a lot to think about today. Thank you, Regan. Um, I'm glad I've been here, uh, showing both ways and saying there's a better way. Mm - hmm. Um, and, and here it is today. And I've had that other way. Say, I've been on that side. I've been on this side. This side is, I have to say it infinitely better. Mm - hmm. And, uh, I want to be on this side. Mm - hmm. The better way. Wow. I appreciate that, Vince. Thank you for sharing. Thank you, Regan.

Thanks for listening to this episode with Vince. As he mentioned in this interview, he has a whole story of how he was in the Air Force and ultimately found Christ and later the Anabaptist. We got that whole story in a separate interview, which you can find linked in the description down below. And of course, you can find all our content on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org. Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch you in the next episode.