reSee.it Video Transcript AI Summary
Interviewer: This decision to follow your conscience, give us a little backstory. How did that happen?
Guest: Without getting too much into detail, I did a long-form podcast with Tucker, laying out the entire politics of the issue. After serving twenty years, mostly deployed to the Middle East, fighting the wars over there, and seeing how our country had been lied to and brought down the wrong path in those wars, and that we were getting sucked into another one and that the American people didn't have the full story and our country did not have a vital national interest in this current fight. I said, hey, in good conscience, I can't do this because that was a promise I made to myself probably twenty plus years ago when I was deployed to Iraq. Once I realized after my first couple deployments that we weren't there for the reasons that our government told us we were there for, I said if it's ever my turn, if I'm ever an adult in this situation, I ever have a position of responsibility, I will not, in good conscience, send young men and women off to die on foreign battlefields.
Interviewer: So we're Catholics here, baptized Catholic. We saw just on Sunday... Does it help you to have other members of your faith community or religious leaders speaking up on your behalf?
Guest: It's been huge. I didn't think when I submitted my resignation it would get the traction or attention that you talked about. Having support from friends, family, but really, I’ve been asked a couple times, was it a hard decision to make? It wasn't made lightly. I put a lot of thought into it, and I had been thinking about it for quite some time. But having faith, I think I heard God's voice, that I was exactly where I was supposed to be and it was my time to take action, which made taking the action incredibly easy and liberating, making me feel like I was in the right spot.
Interviewer: Do you have hope for America? And if you do, why so?
Guest: I have a great deal of hope for America. This is a very exciting moment. The fact that we're seeing people who speak out on behalf of their faith or who are willing to speak truth to power, and that the people who support them can have a voice because of technology, which can be used for a lot of bad, but in connecting like-minded people and getting our word out, that technology is a very powerful weapon. The young people—the young men and women—there are plenty in this room; I was overwhelmed by the young folks who came up to shake my hand. I have hope for the next generation. As we head into this midterm season and as the war progresses in the next few weeks, the most important thing is to be on our knees and pray, but once we're up from our knees, we need to take action. Our leaders will hear us if we all speak out. We're at a critical juncture in the war in Iran; we must let our leaders hear that we do not support this war, that there is no vital national security interest, that we want to bring our troops home and work toward peace in that region, and that we do not want twenty plus more years of bloodletting. Heading into this next election cycle, demand from everyone, from every political party, go to your representatives, and say I will not vote for you if you are going to vote for the continuation of these wars overseas. If our country is attacked, we will attack; if there's an imminent attack, we will attack; if there's an actual threat, we will attack and fight that. However, we cannot continue to go down this path. We have to make that clear to our leaders. That's what gives me hope.