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of BLEUTE FOR US. Special Operations Military News and Straight Talk with the Guides in the Community.

Hello everyone, welcome back to Software of BLEUTE FOR US. We have a very special guest with us this afternoon.

Pete Blabor, who was a special mission unit commander. I guess we could say Delta Force, right? It's in your bio.

I always worry about personal security there, but it's in your bio. Pete's going to join us today. He served quite a few years in Delta.

We're going to talk about, you know, his military career. We're going to talk about his new book, The Common Sense Way, a new way to think about leading and organizing.

He's written a couple of books and we'll also mention his earlier book, The Men, The Mission, and me because I think they all kind of tie in together.

But before we go any further, let's welcome Pete to the podcast. Pete, thanks for taking the time to join us this afternoon. We really appreciate it.

Great to be here, Steve. So let's talk a little bit about this. You started off in the military. What possessed you to get down and write a book about it?

Yeah, it's a great question. And I, of course, I'm still piecing that one together. I think same thing is, is everyone who wins up or a lot of people who end up writing a book, it's a combination of, you know, your experiences, driving you toward putting it on paper and memorializing it.

For me, I got out of the military in 2006. The Global War against terrorists was, you know, I don't know how to describe the ebbs of flows of it, but it was obviously still ongoing in 2006 as it is today.

And, you know, as, as I got out, I think anyone who who's gotten out during the Global War against terrorists experiences the same thing. It's kind of like, you know, you just finished a marathon and you're catching your breath. And now you're thinking about the race and trying to learn from it.

And, you know, when I get out almost all my friends were still in. And so, obviously, I was in touch with what was going on in all the different theaters, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa.

And, you know, one of the things, one of the main takeaways was, we don't appear to be learning anything.

You know, where are these foundational lessons, not complicated, not tactical, just the simple foundational principles that so many great soldiers have learned over the past few years.

In many cases, paid the ultimate sacrifice to learn. And, you know, it had an effect on me. And, you know, I was, I learned to write early in my career, not to write, write, I guess is the quote, but I was taught in my very first unit as a lieutenant, you know, to write things down and always carry a notebook.

And I did, and I wrote everything down. You learn right away that by writing it down, you remember it. And you pressure test it, you learn from it, which, you know, is the main reason for writing it down in the military, you know, combat experience only matters if you learn from it.

So, you know, I was already in that habit of writing things down, writing these foundational principles. And, you know, I had this great experience in the military, especially in the unit of being just about every continent and being in combat and almost every continent.

And, you know, every time, every place I went, every group of people I worked with, there was one or two lessons, big foundational lessons that I took away. And along the way, I wrote them all down and aggregated them.

We got to Afghanistan in 2001, you know, it was, it was probably a unique period in modern warfare and maybe in warfare in general, because the way that that conflict started was less than 500 American special mission unit members, and that's all the special mission units along with the few government agencies, handful of guys from a few of the government agencies.

We're on the ground and we're able to drive out the entire Taliban government along with all their foreign fighter allies. And, you know, I, I remember when we first got on the ground.

Because everything happened so fast in the country, country collapsed so fast, there was no connectivity anymore to Tampa or DC or Bragg.

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