4min chapter

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474: Building More United Communities. With Force Recon Marine, Jake Harriman

Jocko Podcast

CHAPTER

Intro

This chapter recounts a platoon commander's traumatic experience in Iraq and his subsequent transformation into a humanitarian leader. It highlights his efforts to combat extreme poverty and address the roots of violent extremism, weaving together lessons from both warfare and social impact initiatives.

00:00
Speaker 2
This is Jocko podcast number 474 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. It is early morning, April 2003. The fog is lifting along Highway 7 in southern Iraq. A small car blazes up the road. Jake Harriman, the platoon commander, fires a warning shot. The driver of the car immediately bolts from it frantically waving his hands and starts sprinting towards Harriman's position Harriman's face and those of his men are as drawn and depleted as the vast rock desert that surrounds them taking the man for yet another suicide bomber they train their sights on him as they do another vehicle a black truck, roars up, weapons shredding the man's car like Sonny Corleone's Lincoln Continental and the Godfather. The man screams and turns back. Harriman orders his men to open fire on the truck. The six Fedayeen members of Saddam's brutal special forces have no chance against the overwhelming American firepower But it's too late At the car, the man who is trying to flee across American lines sobs uncontrollably There is blood everywhere In the passenger seat, his wife dead, shot through the head. In the back seat, their six-year daughter bleeds from the stomach. Her baby sister is already dead, a mangled bloody stump where her arm once was. A few feet from the car, Harriman stops running. The Marine Corps officer and the Iraqi father embrace and begin crying. There are no words. There never will be any words. And that right there is an excerpt from an article written by Robert Strauss for Stanford Magazine. And the article is about a graduate from the Stanford School of Business who, previous to that, attended the Naval Academy and was commissioned as a Marine Corps officer. An individual that did four tours, including two combat deployments to Iraq as an infantry platoon commander and force recon platoon commander and following his service in the Marine Corps he created a successful organization Nuru International which sought to eradicate extreme poverty in the world's most unstable regions in order to help end violent extremism and in doing so he lived overseas in impoverished areas for over a decade while spearheading that organization and eventually turned it over and returned to america where he's involved in a new project called more perfect union whose goal is to help unify our country. And he's learned a lot of lessons along the way, and it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to share his experiences and those lessons learned. Jake Harriman, thanks for joining us, man. I'm a humble brother. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, I guess I'm thinking that the last time you and I saw each other was at Leif Babin's wedding. Yes. That's where I met you. That's correct. And last saw you. It was a good time.

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