What War Teaches Us About Courage | Captain Donovan Campbell

Life Audio.

On today's episode of Timeless Wisdom.

I know you will want to hear this. Donovan Campbell is a graduate of Harvard Business School, where he also— and he also finished first in his class at the Marines basic— at the Marines Basic Officer Course, served 3 combat deployments, 2 in Iraq and 1 in Afghanistan, was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon and a Bronze Star with Valor for his time in Iraq. And he has this book out which is just extraordinarily well received, Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood. You're a religious man. Would you make— did you pray before each battle?

As a matter of fact, we did. I personally prayed because I was terrified I would make mistakes and screw things up.

What did you pray for, or what did you pray?

I prayed for humility. That I would know when I was making a mistake and correct it quickly. I prayed for wisdom, the ability to see myself and the world as God sees it. And I prayed for unselfishness, the ability to put aside, you know, my daily desires in favor of serving and taking care of my men first. And that was hard. And then when we— before we went into battle as a platoon, we prayed the 23rd Psalm and we prayed the beginning of Psalm 144. Blessed be the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for battle and my fingers for war. And and that was sort of our pre.

In your Hebrew studies at Princeton, did you study the 23rd Psalm in Hebrew?

I did, but it's been a long time.

Do you remember any of it?

No, I'm ashamed to say. Perhaps I didn't study as hard as I should have.

Adonai ro'ilo echsar binote sheyarvitzeni al meiminu chotina haleni. Does that ring a bell?

Vaguely, and I'm I'm humbled and impressed. I don't know what else to say.

Well, I I'm more impressed that you studied Hebrew than that I did. You're a remarkable man. It's, it's a, it's, it's just a joy to, uh, to have you on.

That's coming up on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

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Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Hear thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to dennisprager.com.

And hello everybody, and welcome to the Dennis Prager Show, where I don't have my normal Powerful voice, but it's, uh, it's, it's good enough. And I, I wouldn't miss what I'm about to do anyway because I have in studio a remarkable man. And, uh, he's one of those people, if I wax a little too enthusiastic about, I know I'm gonna embarrass him. So I will just give you a, a, a little information about him and his book. I know you will want to hear this. Donovan Campbell is a graduate of Harvard Business School, where he also— and he also finished first in his class at the Marines basic— at the Marines Basic Officer Course, served 3 combat deployments, 2 in Iraq and 1 in Afghanistan, was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon and a Bronze Star with Valor for his time in Iraq. And he has this book out, which is just extraordinarily well received, Joker One. A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood. And I feel funny calling you Donovan. What is your rank in the Marines?

When I left, I was a captain, but Donovan is just fine.

I'm sure you, you feel that, but I don't know. I have great respect for those of you in the military. I'll alternate between Captain and Donovan.

How's that?

That's fine. Thank you.

I have cited— I wonder if you ever saw this— the New York Times years ago made a blunder. It praised those of you fighting in Iraq, the young men in particular fighting, as— and I almost have the direct quote— if I compared— this is the New York Times embedded reporter— if I compared a 21-year-old here in Iraq to almost any 21-year-old back in America. The 21-year-old here is sharper, more sophisticated, more mature, more of a leader. And, you know, the New York Times, which never goes overboard to praise the military, and to its great shame in my opinion, spoke that way. Would you agree with that general assessment?

I absolutely would. And one of the things That I think is so amazing about our military and the young men and women who serve in it is that even in these tough times that America is having, we can look to these young men and women and take great pride in what we produce and in the young leaders that we produce.

Now, is it that better quality people enter, or generally speaking, it's the— it's a gamut of great to mediocre even, and the Marines or the Army or the Navy make you I think it's probably both.

All services screen their entrants, so you do have some higher selection. But at the end of the day, the, the training is phenomenal, and then the expectations we place on these young men and women are phenomenal. For example, I regularly ask my young men who are 18 to 20 to strap on 60 pounds of gear, to put on a rifle, to walk for 20 miles— no kidding— in 120-degree heat, and to fight when we got there and to make life-and-death decisions in 3 seconds or less, and they did it correctly every time. It was amazing to me.

Now, you were a junior at Princeton, and you, I assume, were atypical. Did any other kids from Princeton enroll in the armed services?

There were 3 others that I know of, 1 other Marine and 2 others that went into the Army, and my Marine friend was wounded very terribly in Afghanistan on his 3rd combat deployment, for which he volunteered. And he is okay now, but he took a very, very tough IED essentially to his lungs and had to be discharged as a result.

Now, how did your fellow students at Princeton look at you? As an aberration? As almost a humorous aberration, if you will? Or with respect? With contempt? Or all 4 of those?

There was no contempt. There was definitely the sense I was an aberration, but there was also a lot of respect. And I think a lot of what the students felt was, I'm glad someone is doing this. I'm also glad it's not me, but I respect you for doing it.

Now, do they have enlistment at Princeton? Do they have the armed forces coming on campus? They don't at Harvard.

They do at Princeton. Princeton has an ROTC course, and they also allowed them into the career fair. And it was actually at the career fair my senior year where I ran into a recruitment officer, and I ran into a friend of mine, and they— and that was what convinced me finally to make the decision.

What was the biggest surprise? Because we're going to talk obviously about your combat in Iraq, and, uh, which is apparently riveting, uh, reading. Uh, you got a starred review in Publishers Weekly. That doesn't tend to give a starred review to To guys in the military. Just want to comment on that from, from my audience. What was the biggest surprise, if any, when you entered the Marines?

The biggest surprise when I went to OCS was how boring the training became at the end, because they shave your head and make you run around and scream, and then you get used to it. But when I got my Marines, I think the biggest surprise was the amazing acts of good that regular people, people are capable of. Watching what my men did for each other every day, literally trying to lay their lives down for each other every day.

Oh, that's once you're in combat, right? Okay, that I can well imagine would be the biggest surprise. But in the Marines itself, in basic training, etc., you got what you expected?

I got more than I expected. I think the biggest surprise in training when I first got in there was how thinking a service the Marine Corps is, because They told us that the best weapon in combat is an agile and flexible mind, not, not this piece of technology, not sort of your platoon, but it's a creative and flexible mind that adapts to chaos, exists within chaos, and then overcomes it.

What about the— isn't the Marines the one service that does not have women in combat?

The Marines is the one service that does not allow women into a combat arms specialty. That doesn't mean they're not in combat, because in an insurgency There are no front lines, and so a female who is a support mechanic has as much chance of being mortared as an infantryman inside a base. But we do not allow women into combat arms specialties, so they can't be in infantry, they can't fly planes.

What is your position on that?

I think that women are probably best off out of the infantry simply because of the morphological and physiological differences. in the sexes, and when I say that, I mean you need a lot of upper body strength to carry a wounded man with 60 pounds of gear, and it's really hard to carry a limp—

What about for group cohesion? It's not better to have all male?

It's definitely better to have all male. I don't know what it is, but single-sex environment is definitely better for group cohesion.

Okay, that to me is the biggest argument. It's politically incorrect, but it's— it just, I would assume, corresponds to reality. Which is what political incorrectness is, means corresponds to with reality. But that's for me to worry about on another hour. All right, folks, I'm talking to Donovan Campbell. He was a junior at Princeton when he decided to enter the Marines, went to Iraq. You were twice deployed to Iraq.

That's right.

And once to Afghanistan.

That's correct.

Now let's talk about arriving in Iraq. Oh, again, on this notion of surprise, what was your biggest surprise? Was it the heat?

The heat was a big surprise. The lack of anything around, just the barren moonscape of the desert, was a big surprise. And the third surprise was that during my first deployment, I literally sort of had to hitchhike my way into the camp where the intelligence offices were set up because there was just no real organized convoys going to and fro to take people in a sort of systematic manner. So you literally just said, okay, who's going here? Can— do you have an extra space in your vehicle? How about, do you have an extra space in the helicopter? Can I get on it? So that was, that was eye-opening for me. I was 23 at the time.

Did you know anybody who was killed?

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm almost sorry to raise it, but I see you're the— I wish folks you'd have seen his face when I asked that. What is that like to know somebody who's killed, especially your age?

Well, it's really hard.

Well, I know that. I'm not asking a silly question in the sense that— I'm asking it not emotionally. I know the answer emotionally. Philosophically, do you at any point think, is it worth it? Do you see life differently because peers have died? That's what I'm really asking.

You absolutely see life differently when you realize that some of your friends have bled their lives out, or some of your men have bled their lives out in just some street that no one will hear of. And, and I think the way you view life differently is that you take a lot more heart in each day that you are given. You understand the precious value of time because you never get time back. And once you see your friend— No longer with us, and if you see his grieving wife or you see his grieving mother, you know to yourself, I can't— I cannot afford not to make the most of the day I've been given. Life is a gift. It's not— it is not an obligation, and I've got to do my best.

How old are you?

I just turned 30.

Back in a moment. I'm Dennis Prager. The book is Joker One.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

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Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

All righty everybody, you're listening to The Dennis Prager Show, and I am just delighted beyond words to be in the presence of this man, Captain Donovan Campbell. At Princeton, he decided to enlist in the Marines, not something that typical Princetonian today does. There was a time when they did, but life has changed, values have changed, and he has written this remarkable book about his tours. Does it include Afghanistan, or is it all Iraq?

No, it's all Iraq, and it's all the second tour. It's all focused on my Marines and telling their story.

And you, you were in some bad fights.

We were, we were the most engaged unit in Iraq for the summer, most of the summer of 2004.

When it was really bad.

It was really bad, and it got pretty bad in 2006 as well, and 2005 wasn't much better. But when we came back, we were told that we had suffered more casualties than any battalion, Marine or Army, since Vietnam. It was about 1 out of every 3 wounded in the battalion, which is, which is about 1,000 folks, and then it was About 50% wounded in my company, which was—

The book is up at prageradio.com. I guarantee you, you will thank me if you get it. And by the way, I have no financial interest in any of these books, just want you folks to know. Uh, it's up at prageradio.com at the blog area. It's called Joker One, about his experiences. And I, and I love— you see, you're a thoughtful man aside from all the wonderful things you've done patriotically and the experiences you, you've had. So it fascinates me to talk to you about this. Did you have any interaction with Iraqis other than fighting bad guys?

We did. The unfortunate thing was that we didn't have a lot of translators to begin with, so it was hard to talk to them on a regular basis. But we did interact with them. We interacted with various different government officials. We interacted with various different police officials, and when we could, with the people on the street. But it was hindered by the fighting that we did all the time.

Now, let me ask you, I still believe that one day, even though gratitude is the rarest of the human characteristics, I'm not big on humanity. Humans are great, humanity stinks.

That's my view.

But I still believe one day Iraq will thank America for deposing Saddam Hussein?

I think they thanked us quite a bit at first, especially in the south where the Shia, who had been tremendously persecuted under Saddam Hussein, were. And I'm very encouraged to see that we plan to leave 35,000 to 50,000 troops there to continue to stabilize the country. And I really hope that in 20 or 30 years, when a new generation rises up and takes the reins of power, a generation that's not been abused essentially by Saddam Hussein, that they will say, you know what, thanks for giving us a shot at running our own country and having a say.

Did any of your— you were there in a very difficult time— did any of your comrades in arms verbalize the question, what the hell are we doing here?

Yes, quite a bit, because it's very important for officers and for the enlisted Marines to know that they're risking their lives in the service of a cause that is of life-and-death importance to the nation. And so a lot of times there were pretty lively debates about whether we should be there or shouldn't be there, but at the end of the day, that's not the call of the Marine Corps. Our job is to go and do our best wherever we're sent, and that's what it boiled down to day after day after day.

Did you feel though that you were on the right side of Well, I was with the U.S.

Marines, so it's hard to be on the wrong side with them.

All right, that's fair.

But there's—

it's theoretically possible that, that even U.S. Marines could be sent into a wrong war. It's possible. We're not a perfect country. I think that our wars have all been morally legitimate, but that's, that's a separate issue. But knowing that you're fighting— and I don't want to put any words in your mouth, but, but It would seem to me, let's put it this way, 10,000 miles away, that knowing the depths of evil— I wrote, and I'm going to give this to you later, I wrote an open letter to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and especially specifically Iraq actually, and which was quite widely sent out. And I wanted to say, you are fighting people who are the most evil since we fought the Nazis. And I still believe that. Did you have that sense?

When it came to actually the day-to-day fights?

Yes.

Absolutely. Let me tell you this, Dennis. My first street fight came when someone fired an RPG at our patrol and the back half of my patrol disappeared in smoke. And I thought, oh my goodness, I've just lost 4 of my, you know, Treasured Marines. They were okay, as it turned out. The RPG had missed. But then we started taking machine gun fire, and it turned out that we were taking machine gun fire from 2 men who had surrounded themselves with a crowd of probably 7-year-old children.

Uh-huh.

And we never fired back for fear we'd hit the children, but that kind of tactic was routinely employed. And so when you fight people who do that, or when you fight people who go into ordinary Iraqis' homes and say, listen, we're gonna put our weapons here, and when we come back, if they're not still here, we're gonna behead the father in front of the family, and we're just gonna keep going if we get any resistance after that. It was, it was good to fight people like that.

Yes, exactly. And it drove me nuts that, that we were not clear back here. Did the anti-war sentiment among a significant percentage of Americans bother you?

No, because when you're overseas, America seems almost like a dream or, or a reality that doesn't exist because there's nothing like it there. All that matters is doing your mission with honor and integrity, doing your best every day, and taking care of your guys. That's all that matters.

Was your platoon or regiment ever in, uh, ever in hand-to-hand combat?

We occasionally threw grenades over one wall And then the enemy would throw their grenades back. Occasionally there were battles where our enemies were sticking their machine guns inside of windows and spraying a room, and our guys were, you know, putting their guns outside of the same windows and shooting them back. But we never actually, to my knowledge, you know, actually engaged in knife fights and stuff like that.

This is an elementary question, I admit it, but having not been in combat, I'm still gonna ask it, however It looks or sounds. The vast majority of humans never experience a moment where people are trying to kill them. You experience that regularly. There are people who want to kill me, and they have the weapons to do so, and I may get killed. What is the— what is the mindset then? Do you walk around in fear, or do you walk around with an adrenaline rush? Are you in denial? What do you do with that?

I was always afraid before missions I knew would lead to fighting, and I was always afraid after. But during the missions, I was so busy just trying to take care of my guys and trying to figure out where the bad guys were and who had been hurt and where I needed to move my men that I didn't have time to feel really anything except what is the next decision. And for my men, the most powerful emotion wasn't fear, it was How do I take care of Corporal Bowen? Or how do I take care of Brooks? How do I save them so they don't get hurt? They didn't care about themselves.

All right, the book is Joker One, Captain Donovan Campbell. Take your calls, 1-800-PRAGER-776.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

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Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

It's got a star review Which is pretty rare, in Publishers Weekly. It's called Joker One, and it is about Captain Donovan's— Donovan Campbell's time in Iraq, and he also served in Afghanistan. This was 3 separate deployments, is that correct?

That's correct.

Yeah, and he's now back home in Dallas, Texas with his wife and his daughter. Uh, uh, it's, uh, he was in Princeton and decided to enroll. It is not common, unfortunately, uh, but, um, so be it. He is not common, obviously. Now, we were talking about, uh, the many of the issues of the war and the way people reacted and the daily life, and you spoke about having fear before and fear after. Did anybody Because this would be pretty natural. What is it that enables a person to, to go into combat for the first time? When you grow up in the United States, the only combat you see is in movies. Is it the training? Is it that you're with your buddies? Is it, is it just you compartmentalize the reality? What do you do?

I think it's all of the above. The first is that you know that you need to do it. There's just— there's no other option. You joined— you joined the Marines to do it. The Marines sent you overseas. There is no quit. There is no I can't. There is only here's the mission, we will accomplish it. And then there's definitely the sense that, at least for the young lieutenants, my men are depending on me. My men are gonna go out there whether I'm there or not. So if they're gonna go out there, I had better be ahead of them, and I'd better be protecting them and serving them because I do not want them out there without me. And then I think the third thing definitely is that your training has simulated those conditions to the extent that they can. And you know, therefore, that you're not going to crack and you're not going to bow underneath the pressure that—

The training is really good.

The training is good. Nothing can quite prepare you for your first big firefight.

I would only imagine that that's the case.

Yeah, the training is, is excellent, and it really does kick in as soon as the bullets start snapping by your head.

Did you ever capture any of the enemy?

We did.

And did they turn out to be Iraqis or foreign, uh, usually Arabs?

There were both. I would say probably the majority of the people we fought were Iraqis. The best people we fought were probably foreign.

Usually from where?

All over. Some Jordanians, some Syrians. I think there were some Egyptians in the mix.

Did you ever meet any of these who were captured?

The only ones I personally saw that I knew were foreign were—

No, foreign or Iraqi. Did you ever meet any of the enemy?

Yes.

And any thoughts about them?

My first thought when I saw them was, one, they look like normal, just sort of like we do. Just, they look like, like Arabs. And 2, for some of the, the younger, younger folks, I thought, my goodness, they are young like my Marines. They're about the same age. War is still to this day a young man's game.

Did I—

I always wonder when they're captured Do they, do they just yell obscenities to the infidel? Do they, do they crack? Do they plead for mercy? What happens?

They were always pretty quiet, as far as I could tell. I didn't really notice much, but generally by the time that I saw them, they were, they were handcuffed, and so there wasn't a lot of drama surrounding the event.

Are you surprised by the turnaround after the, after the increase in troops? After the surge?

I was a little bit, but the turnaround started before the surge got there. The turnaround actually started in my old city, Ramadi, under, I think, a man named Colonel McFarland, who took a counterinsurgency approach to heart and really focused on using the troops he had there, and he had a decent bit, to focus on securing the people of Ramadi and making sure that they were protected first and foremost, not that his men were protected first and foremost. And that was a, that was a remarkable shift, and that started the Anbar Awakening. And then I think Petraeus brought a terrific mindset to the fight, which was one that accepted that counterinsurgency mentality, accepted that he had to get his people out there and take greater casualties and put themselves at more risk so they could protect the people of Iraq. That was his huge impact.

We'll find out why the book is titled Joker One when we come back, but that is the title of the book. It is up at prageradio.com. at the blog area. Captain Donovan Campbell is my guest, and we will take your calls, including what he thinks about the military now.

Hi, Dennis Prager here. Well, as you know, I've been off the air since my injury in November 2024. Thank you for your prayers. Believe me, I've missed talking to you. I'm starting the Ask Me Anything episode On the Timeless Wisdom Podcast, and I'd love to hear from you. Whether your question is about faith, morality, politics, history, relationships, happiness, or even my life, give me a call and leave a voicemail. The number is 877-243-7776. That's 877-243-7776.

Thank you.

Please include your first name and where you're calling from. I will answer as many questions as I can on future episodes of the podcast. Obviously, I can't respond to every question, but I will listen or read every question.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for listening.

You're listening to the Dennis Prager Show, and I just want to say that it is such an honor for me to be with Donovan Campbell, this Marine captain, and who went from Princeton to the Marines and wrote this book, Joker One, about his 2 deployments to Iraq and one to Afghanistan. And I'll tell you, folks, if we could produce a lot more like him, then the country is secure, and if we don't, we're in trouble. It's really as simple as that. The point is not to flatter him. The point is to make a statement about my worries about the future of this country. I'll talk about that later, because I had a very interesting dialogue recently on that very issue. Anyway, the book is up at prageradio.com. Let me take a couple of calls here, and I'll get back to— actually, before I take the calls at 1-800-PRAGER-776, what is Joker about that? Is that the name of your group? What is it?

Joker One was my platoon's radio call sign. And when I began to write this, I wasn't writing it to write a book. I was writing it to give to my Marines, because when I was talking to them afterwards when I got out, they were saying, sir, we don't ever tell our families about what we did. And I thought, my goodness, what we did was so remarkable. That is, that is a shame. And I thought, you know, I I need to make this right. I didn't write my guys enough awards. I, I really failed them at that. And I thought, well, this is some way to make up for that. I will write their story down for them. I will then email it to them, and they can give it to their wives and to their mothers and to their fathers and say, this is what we did. I don't have to talk about it, but now you can read this, and now you can be proud of us.

Are you still in touch with the guys you fought with? Alongside with?

Many of them, yes.

You are?

Yes.

All right, let's take, uh, let's take some calls here, and, uh, we begin with Mesa, Arizona, and Tony. Hi, Tony. Dennis Prager and Captain Donovan Campbell.

Hi, Dennis and Captain. Hi. It's an honor to speak to both of you. Um, I have a question about the presidency. Um, while President Bush, who I, uh, consider to be a, uh, Pretty good president, if not great. The troops got slammed in the press, and I like the captain's opinion about the press. Do you think there'd be more, more in favor of the military and come out with stories like the captain under President Obama? And thanks. Thanks.

Okay, thank you for calling. Any thoughts on that? Will there be more favorable representation of the military?

That's a good question. I, I don't know. I think that there's always going to be a bias in the press towards reporting stories that focus on combat and death and destruction, mainly because stuff like that sells better. So regardless of what the ideological component is, there's definitely a business rationale for reporting stuff like that because people will read it and people will buy it. So I think that stays constant under every president. I will say this: I met a number of journalists, some of whom were excellent and very brave and wanted to report exactly what they were seeing, so the truth, and some of whom had their own agenda and had made up their mind what they were going to write before they came and visited us, and it was quite obvious that—

Can you name a journalist whose work you do appreciate?

There was a photojournalist who was with us. His name was Magahitsu Gambarini. And he was a German and he was phenomenal. And he wasn't writing, he was taking pictures.

Who was he shooting for? Der Spiegel or—

The Associated Press.

Oh, oh, oh, he's a German working for Associated Press.

And he was amazing. I mean, he was very brave. He went out of his way to be kind to us. And in fact, one of his friends called him and said, you know, Gamba, are you scared when you go out there? And he said, you know what, I have 40 of the best bodyguards anyone could ask for. No, I'm not. So we loved having him, and there was a Philadelphia Inquirer writer who was out there with us, and he was, he was phenomenal. I don't remember his name, but he was amazing, very brave.

And did you know when you were with reporters who did have another agenda?

Often, yes, because they wouldn't leave the gates with us, and, and you could tell they prioritized safety over reality, and they often asked our men questions that were very leading, like You know, why do you disapprove of this war? Instead of a little bit more open-ended.

You're a religious man. Would you make— did you pray before each battle?

As a matter of fact, we did. I personally prayed because I was terrified I would make mistakes and screw things up.

What did you pray for, or what did you pray?

I prayed for humility, that I would know when I was making a mistake and correct it quickly. I prayed for wisdom, the ability to see myself and the world as God sees it. And I prayed for unselfishness, the ability to put aside, you know, my daily desires in favor of serving and taking care of my men first. And that was hard. And then when we— before we went into battle as a platoon, we prayed the 23rd Psalm, and we prayed the beginning of Psalm 144, Blessed be the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for battle and my fingers for war. And that was sort of our pre—

In your Hebrew studies at Princeton, did you study the 23rd Psalm in Hebrew?

I did, but it's been a long time.

Do you remember any of it?

No, I'm ashamed to say. Perhaps I didn't study as hard as I should have.

Adonairo ilo echsar binote sheyarvitzeni almeiminuchotina haleni. Does that ring a bell?

Vaguely, and I'm humbled and impressed. I don't know what else to say.

Well, I'm more impressed that you studied Hebrew than that I did, but it's remarkable. We were actually talking Hebrew during the break here. And he wanted to read the Bible better. You're a remarkable man. It's, it's a, it's, it's just a joy to, uh, to have you on. All right, let's go to, uh, a tough question here from Brian in Los Angeles. Thank you for calling Dennis Prager and Captain Donovan Campbell.

Uh, good morning, uh, Captain. First of all, thank you. I, I honor your work and your service to the country. Thank you very much.

No thanks necessary. It's just my duty.

Well, that's why I thank you, because—

It's our duty to thank, and it was your duty to serve, okay? So we both have duties.

Okay.

Okay, go ahead.

Here's the question: did you ever get used to killing a human being?

Yes, and I think the reason is because 99.9% of the time When we were shooting at others, they were shooting at us first. So it really became a matter of self-defense more than anything else. And most of the time when we were patrolling, the way we knew people were there was that there was an explosion in the middle of our patrol and someone started screaming. And we thought to ourselves, okay, well, now we've been attacked and we need to— Get out of there. We need to fix this.

All right, final segment coming up.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

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Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

I cannot overstate how much I've enjoyed this hour with Donovan Campbell, whose book His book, Joker One, is listed up at prageradio.com at the blog area about his time in Iraq and Afghanistan. And what is the difference in the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan?

There's a couple big differences. The first is that the literal— literally the geography of the countries are quite different. And what that means is that in Afghanistan, it's hard to take something and make it national Because geography literally prevents you from doing that. Each valley is different. Often the dialects between valleys are different. So that, that's a big one. The second is that the social systems under— in Afghanistan have been really destroyed by the Soviet invasion, by the civil war that occurred thereafter, by the Taliban, and are only slowly beginning to recover. So it's a lot harder to work through some of the networks. Like the tribal networks or perhaps even the religious networks in Afghanistan than it might have been in Iraq. The third thing is that I don't think that particularly the Pashtuns in the south and east view the al-Qaeda presence or the Taliban presence in their midst as a life or death threat in the same way that the Sunni tribesmen in the west of Iraq viewed the al-Qaeda presence in their midst as a life or death threat.

Right.

threat in 2007.

Why not? It is. Why not?

I think in part because they share tribal or ethnic affiliations.

They don't look back at the Taliban rule as a nightmare?

They do. The problem is that the rule in Kabul is so weak right now, and the corruption is so endemic, and the national institutions, particularly the police, are so widely distrusted That it's almost as if they'll turn to anyone that can provide them with order. That's right. And there is no love lost for the Taliban that I can tell. No one liked having them there, but they really—

Better to have bad people run a country than chaos.

I think that's, that's the thought. That's why people loved Stalin, that the fear of chaos is greater than the fear of I think the fear of chaos might be one of the most primal fears in human nature.

Understandably so. I mean, look at the Congo now. It's funny, I say the world will be, uh, in our century, it will be either Muslim, Judeo-Christian/American, secular European, or chaos. Chaos is the fourth.

I think you're right, and I think one of the great questions of our time is what religion is China going to adopt?

Yeah, well, it's adopted secular leftism. That's of the 4 it has adopted. That's, that's it. You're right, man. I'm happy I met you, Donovan Campbell. And the book is Joker One. You give Americans faith in this country, my friend.

You know, there are thousands and thousands like me in the military. I'm nothing special.

Okay, then you You all do. God bless you.

Thank you.

Tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

Yeah, yep, it's a big one. Now, today is going to be different than all other Happiness Hours, of which there are hundreds and hundreds. Yes, that's how many we've done. They're meant to be life-changing, these hours. And in light of that, I have today's question topic.

So I need, I need your help here.

If you have heard this program, or you heard this hour, or read my book on happiness— my book is Happiness Is a Serious Problem, and it is a deliberately chosen title because it is—

if you have read my book and/or heard this hour and, and one or two ideas have in fact affected your happiness. I would like to know them, them, and I would like all of my listeners to know what they are. This hour is going to be driven by you.

And also, thank you for this tip. It really helped with my parenting. And I heard you say one day that you have an obligation to be— to the people around you to be That's right. And where this really helped me was with my son, who, shall we say, is not the sunniest, by his disposition, kid in the world.

Right.

And he was unfortunately born into a family of really sunny people. And, you know, I was pretty distressed by his moodiness, shall we say.

Yes.

And I tried a lot of things, you know, understanding him, working with him, and those things all worked, and the gratitude thing was helpful. But because he's a good boy and he loves us, he really got the fact that he had an obligation to us and his family to try to be happy.

Wow.

Oh, you've made my day.

How old— how old was he when he got it?

Um, he's 15 now, and I think I've been saying this to him probably for the last at least 5 years.

Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. We want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the podcast. Go to LifeAudio.com to find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network, including shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, And more.

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