Was It Worth It? A SEAL's Honest Reckoning With Combat, Sacrifice, and Afghanistan | Ep. 290 | Pt. 2

Mike Drop

Mike Ritland

News, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Politics

4.9 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Randy Rozzell—retired Navy SEAL, 22-year veteran, and former Chief of Naval Special Warfare Combatives—goes deep on the missions that defined his career. From a grueling five-day firefight in Marjah to covert operations he still can't fully detail, Randy pulls back the curtain on what it truly means to serve at the tip of the spear. He also wrestles with the harder questions: the cost of war, the weight of leaving Afghanistan the way we did, and whether it was all worth it. Raw, honest, and unapologetic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:29.6	Can you say what part of the country you were in?
0:32.6	Yeah, so we were in Kandahar, but we were considered decree, so the crisis response element,
0:39.8	and we responded all over Afghanistan.
0:44.3	Probably the most, the mission that we did that kind of got the most fame was we hit Marja out in the Helmand province before the big Marine Corps push.
0:59.6	So it was six months before the Marines pushed through Helmand and went through all that.
1:05.4	So we hit a Taliban safe haven there and we caught $1.2 billion in amino narcotics.
1:12.3	Wow.
1:13.0	Was it all opium?
1:14.5	Yeah, black tar opium.
1:15.9	Wow.
1:16.0	Have you seen it in the bags in the black tar?
1:18.2	1.2 billion?
1:20.2	So you remember the bazaars.
1:22.8	Yeah.
1:23.2	Right?
	...

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