“War Is Chaotic — and We Went In Without a Strategy'" with General Mark Hertling.

“War Is Chaotic — and We Went In Without a Strategy'" with General Mark Hertling. Plus: Iran, Hegseth & 'Fitness Cultism’. Why His Son Chose to Serve. A Father's Wartime Journal — and a Gut Check for This July 4th

War is chaotic and complex. You really never know which way it's going to go — and you especially don't know if you go in without a strategy. That's the line General Mark Hertling keeps coming back to in this no-BS conversation with Paul Rieckhoff, recorded as the Trump administration careens deeper into a war with Iran that Congress never authorized and the American people never signed off on. Hertling — former commanding general of US Army Europe, 36 months in combat, and author of the new book If I Don't Return: A Father's Wartime Journal — lays out exactly why this moment feels more like Vietnam than anything we've seen in a generation, and why the silence from both parties is its own kind of sucking chest wound.

Paul and the general get into the levers that could still slow this thing down, the cowardice gripping Congress, the very real threat of election interference and attacks on the homeland, and the demented, steroidified version of "fitness" and manhood being pushed by Hegseth, Kennedy, and the rest of the MAGA machine. They also go somewhere most cable news won't: the human cost. Hertling shares the story behind the Army-green notebook he filled with life lessons for his two young sons before deploying to Desert Storm, convinced he might not come home. It's a conversation about war, yes — but also about character, courage, fatherhood, Mr. Rogers, and what it actually takes to be the kind of leader this country is starving for.

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