This is Jocco Podcast number 481 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink.

Good evening, Echo.

Good evening.

In January 2006, I stepped off a C-130 in Talafar, Iraq.

As I began my 13-month deployment, I imagined an American public following our progress

with the same concern as my family and friends.

But since returning home, I've seen that America has changed the channel.

Young investment bankers spend their impressive bonuses on clubs in Manhattan, and many

seem uninterested in the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a Princeton graduate and former financial analyst, I was once part of this world and I like

returning to it putting the Spartan life of Talafar and Anbar province behind me but even as I enjoy time

with friends who have welcomed me home my thoughts wander back to other friends who continue to

fight as the city parties on serious problems

with the war in Iraq are well chronicled but I am struck by one that does not seem to trouble

the country's leadership even though it is profoundly corrosive to our common good the disparity

between the lives of the few who are fighting and being killed and the many who have been asked for nothing more than to continue shopping.

Those who rationalize this disconnect have argued that our soldiers are volunteers, happy doing what they signed up to do.

While it is true that most soldiers are devoted to country and comrades and are focused on their mission the

assertion that soldiers are cheerfully returning for multiple combat tours is grounded in

statistics and arguments that are misleading.

Supposedly impressive re-enlessment rates are cited as evidence that soldiers enthusiastically support the war effort.

In reality, these retention numbers are more the result of the stop loss policy, where

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