All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
I am Jim Fausone.
I'm the officer of the deck today.
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Well, happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there, certainly whether you are a veteran
or just simply a friend of a veteran, or maybe your kids are currently in the military
or have been in the military.
Thank you for your support for all that you do as your mom's chefs.
Never done it, never easy, so we certainly appreciate that.
I want to recognize that.
And so today we're going to have a special interview.
We're going to talk about Shannon Kent.
She was an incredible patriot, fierce warrior, a Navy cryptologist, ultimately gave her
life overseas assignment in Syria.
But she herself was a mother.
We're going to talk to her husband.
And you're going to find this a great story, inspirational story in a new book out called
Send Me, which is taken from Isaiah 6-8 where it's asked, whom shall I send?
And Shannon Kent answered that call.
I've got to say my sound quality on this interview makes me sound like I'm deep in the tunnel,
but I wasn't.
But the sound quality is excellent as to both of our interviewees.
So I think you'll enjoy this, even if the sound quality sounds more baritone than normal.
We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today two veterans themselves.
We're going to talk about a book that's coming out here in May of 2024 called Send Me, the
true story of a mother at war.
We were fortunate to talk to her husband, Joe Kent.
Joe, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thanks so much for having me.
Great to be here.
And Marty Soklavend, Jr., who is the editor-in-chief of Task and Purpose, and probably the guy
who put pen to paper here is a former Army Ranger, which surprises me he could put pen
to paper, but maybe it's all that time he was a experienced conflict reporter and working
at Task and Purpose.
Marty, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thanks for having me on.
And I'll jump right up and say, I'll give Joe a lot of credit here.
He put a lot of pen to paper as well to make this book what it was.
So, you mean a guy who spent 20 years as an Army Ranger in a green parade, has editorial
and writing skills?
Way to go, Joe.
Lots of repetition there when I was working on the intel side, but that was definitely
a challenging skill for me to learn while I was in the military.
Normally when I'm talking to the Marine writers, they always start, well, my first draft was
with crayons.
So, you get a little bit of that.
So, this is an amazing story of an amazing woman, Shannon Kent, who grew up in New York.
Her dad was a state trooper.
Her mom was a teacher.
Early on she demonstrated linguistic abilities.
Tell me a little bit about the early years and why Shannon decided, hey, I'm going to
join the Navy.
So, 9-11 was the big catalyst.
She had thought about joining the military before.
She was very interested in the world beyond her small town in New York state.
She wanted to eventually join the Foreign Service and the State Department.
Something along those lines.
She taught herself French and Spanish as a kid.
So, she knew that she could learn languages.
But then after 9-11, like you said, her father and her uncle also was a New York City firefighter.
So, they were both ground zero first responders.
So, once 9-11 happened, Shannon knew exactly what she needed to do and she felt called
the serve.
So, she found the first recruiter who would listen to her and that was actually a Navy
recruiter.
So, she went to all the different services and said, hey, I can learn Arabic.
The tower has just gotten knocked down by people from the Middle East.
I can learn that language.
I guess the Army and the Marines gave her the run around and said, hey, you scored really
high.
We want to teach you Russian or Chinese.
And the Navy was the first one who said, like, you want to learn Arabic?
Okay, sure.
Yeah, sign right here, young lady.
Well, a lot of these stories, you get recruited just sort of that way.
It wasn't maybe exactly what you were thinking.
Her brother was a Marine, I believe.
So, her and her brother actually right after 9-11, her brother's about a year younger than
her.
They both went and found recruiters.
And Mike knew that he wanted to be a Marine because the Marines have probably the best
recruiting propaganda out there.
So, Mike had his mind made up.
He joined the Marines and Shannon settled on the Navy.
But they actually both, because of their father and their uncle, went out and sought out recruiters
right after 9-11, like so many warriors of our generation.
Joe, you went into the Army.
Ultimately, you became a Green Beret.
You've also done a number of other classified special app units.
What compelled you to join?
You know, I was in before 9-11.
So really, I like to say it was a combination of the A-Team and G.I. Joe growing up.
I don't know, as far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a commando of some sort and
read every single Vietnam book.
I could get my hands on.
Eventually decided I wanted to be a Green Beret because they always seemed like they were
involved in conflicts and adventures, even if America wasn't necessarily at war.
So I was already fully committed by the time 9-11 happened and that just really, you know,
heightened my resolve to stay in and to continue to fight.
Larry Philiston, why did you join up as an ultimate Marine Ranger?
You know, I did come in after 9-11.
I was a freshman or sophomore in high school when that happened and certainly that solidified
the idea that I was going to go directly into the military after I graduated high school.
But similar to Joe, I grew up reading those Vietnam memoirs and, you know, almost every
male in my family had served in the military.
So I grew up around those people.
Even in high school, one of my uncles who's an Air Force, he was like an OIF one guy.
So I still remember sitting on the phone in the kitchen talking to him overseas in Iraq.
And it just, the entire, I think my entire world just kind of pushed me in that direction
and there was never really any idea other than I'm going to go join the Army.
And I think it was a, specifically wanted to be a Ranger because of a combination of
seeing Black Hawk down and then reading the news reports about Tucker Garr.
I wrote a high school report on Roberts Ridge or the Battle of Tucker Garr and that really,
I think between that and Black Hawk down really solidified the idea of like, I don't want
to just join the Army.
I want to be an Army Ranger and, you know, go, they seem to be where the fight is.
And I wasn't wrong.
Well, veteran radio listeners, so we're talking to two real committed patriotic men here.
But the real emphasis on this discussion is an incredible one, Chan Kent, who joined
the Navy and had this incredible career as a linguist and cryptologist.
Joe explained to the regular folk out there what a Navy cryptologist does.
Yeah, it's a really long way to say that she steals enemy signals.
So basically if it comes out of a cell phone, it comes out of a computer or radio transmission,
she was trained to attack into it, to steal it, to decode it.
But then a big issue with that is that usually it's in a foreign language.
And so you'll get cryptologists that have the ability to do all the stuff with the ones
in the zeros and actually steal the signal.
But then you get people like Shannon who are dual trained to not only steal the signal,
but then if it comes through in Arabic and multiple dialects of Arabic, that she can
then translate it into actual intelligence.
She went and this is typical in the military, right?
The defense, the DOD has a looping, whistics, classes that they put you through.
But these were the things that she amazingly excelled at.
Talk to us about some of that training and commitment to really go in depth as an Arabic
speaker.
Yes, she went to the Defense Language Institute out at Monterey, California.
And it's interesting, you always hear about the training that Rangers go through and Green
Braes go through, but you don't really hear about things like DLI because it just doesn't
make for a really cool video.
However, it's some of the most challenging training that I think people in the military
can undergo.
It's 18 months of intensive language instruction where they take people from all over the United
States of America who might not ever heard one word of a foreign language before and
they take them and they make them not just proficient, but they make them fluent in reading,
writing and speaking in about 18 months.
And so that was, I think, Shannon's kind of dream job.
So she got to be very deeply immersed in Arabic.
But as most people know, Arabic is a very complicated language.
There's modern standard Arabic, but then there's different dialects.
And Shannon really found a niche in the different dialects.
When she finally got over to Iraq, she got pretty obsessed with how Iraqis actually talked
versus modern standard Arabic that she had learned in Monterey.
And she had that ear.
It's the same ear, I think, that musicians have.
She was also musically inclined.
I think Green Braes, we have to learn language as well.
We don't need to learn it quite to that level.
And one time when I was studying Arabic, I asked Shannon, like, what's the secret?
How are you so good at this?
And with a straight face, she said, well, you just listen to someone, a native speaker,
say the word, and then you remember it and then you say it exactly like they said it.
I was like, OK, our brains are not exactly wired the same way.
That's not how mortal men learn language.
Yeah, you learn how to order a beer and a few other things.
She is actually, it was incredible in reading the book, Send Me, that is coming out here
in May of 2024, the focus that she had and her ability to pick up different dialects.
And this isn't a sit at home job, is it?
This isn't in a nice comfy office in D.C. or in Monterey, California.
Tell us about her overseas assignment and multiple deployments, Joe.
So it's interesting.
You know, she initially volunteered right out of language school to go over to Iraq.
I'm what the Navy calls an individual augmentation.
So her, she wasn't part of a unit that all deployed together, like Marty and I deployed.
She deployed as an individual and she basically could have gotten put anywhere, but she ends
up at the Special Operations Task Force and they essentially say, hey, your job is to
help us intercept enemy communications and then to translate them.
However, at the time, there was a high demand for people to go out and actually interact
with Iraqis on the ground.
And that was not what a lot of people wanted to do.
They wanted to go kick in the doors and do the sexy type of direct action missions.
But Shannon said, hey, I actually really enjoy talking to these people.
I've got an act for the language.
And so because of that ability to go out and talk with actual Iraqis and collect human
intelligence, she got put right on the front lines and a SEAL team eventually put her with
them as a part of their element to actually help them go out and track down bad guys.
So really, I mean, Shannon's career is just a story of her volunteering to be at the tip
of the spear and improving her worth, usually based on her ability to understand the language,
but then also to really understand the human factor.
And because she got so good at human intelligence, she really became quite the threat because
usually human intelligence collectors are separate from signals intelligence collectors
that sometimes even separated from linguists.
Shannon basically was a one-stop shop.
And that's why she ended up down there on the ground level with a special operations
task force way before women were even allowed anywhere near combat arms.
Marty, maybe you want to expand on this.
She was an incredible woman warrior, fierce, focused, intelligent.
Talk to us about how unusual it is for a cryptologist, a woman cryptologist, to find
herself at the pointy end of the spear with special operations.
You know, I think that the way we have to look at Shannon's trajectory through the military
is put it in context of what was going on within the larger special operations world
at that time.
Shannon came in at a time when special operations was evolving from very siloed units like SEALs
stuck with SEALs, Rangers with range, you know, so on and so forth.
And basically what happened throughout the Joint Special Operations Command and some
initiatives that happened in the mid-auts there was they started bringing everybody
together and they needed intelligence to be that connective tissue throughout the organization.
And so if you had somebody like Shannon come along, like Joe said, that was kind of a one-stop
shop could speak all the different languages, not just literally Arabic or French or Spanish,
but the languages of the different special operations units and their cultures and that
sort of thing.
Shannon was able to be that connective tissue and she was able to get into these positions
and get so close to the tipy point of the spear there and going out on missions, doing,
you know, taking part in direct action raids, all this sort of stuff because she was able
to get there before anybody was even asking if this is okay.
You just had commanders on the ground over there saying, hey, this is a value add to
my team.
Our organization is changing to be more like we need to have the people in place, share
intelligence and have people that are enabling the mission to be as effective as it could.
I mean, they were, it was an industrialized scale of network-centric warfare happening
in Iraq back in the mid-auts and somebody like Shannon, you skipped right past, oh,
can we have a woman with us straight to, oh my God, she's somebody that can directly impact
our mission and make us more successful on the battlefield.
And so just, I don't think people even asked the question if it was okay.
She just went right into it.
It's one of those things where I think once you demonstrate yourself and that ability
to respect funds, she had a focus always to keep earning that respect and train hard both
in physically to be in physical shape to stay with special operations, but also linguistically,
she would listen Joe to Arabic news broadcast at home when she was stateside to keep her
language skills sharp.
That's incredible to me.
And you know, the physical side is really interesting in that a lot of times Joe and
I have probably worked with a lot of guys and gals that come on as enablers or support
and you know, there's questions on whether they can keep up, right, from a physical perspective.
And Shannon was one of those people from what I understand, there was never any question
on whether she could keep up and in fact, helped out a lot of folks as far as that making
them better runners better at swimming, better at some of these things that she was, you
know, physically gifted in.
So it's not like she was just a great Intel analyst or a great human Intel collector or
any or great linguist.
She had all the physical attributes that you expect out of somebody that's working at the
highest levels of special operations.
The thing that I think is important to get across here is something that I read, Joe,
you first met Shannon, I think in like 2007, I think it was.
And she was all business, no flirtation.
She was there for the mission and focused on the mission.
If I'm reading this right and I'm trying to look find the date.
And a while you ended up bumping into each other stateside somewhere along the line before
anything else happened.
But the importance of having respect and being all business is one of those messages that
I think is important for some people to hear and it probably impressed you as well.
Yeah, it really did.
I mean, she was all business despite my best efforts.
I should caveat that.
She was professional, I probably was a little bit less professional.
But yeah, no, I actually met her at the embassy complex in 2007.
I was over there just trying to match up some of the intelligence that my human sources
were reporting back with some of the signals intelligence people.
I literally just walked into a brief that Shannon was giving on target that I was chasing.
And I was really impressed, not, you know, obviously by how she looked, but also the
fact that she really knew her stuff.
And she was, I would say doing much more common sense analysis than usually I would find at
a an intelligence centric organization like she was working in at the time.
And actually met her about a week or two.
We figured this out years later.
I met her a week or two before the SEAL team brought her down to where the actual the teams
were deploying every night going after bad guys.
But she was there and she was putting to get she was tying together the pieces in a way
that really impressed me.
And that was my fourth combat deployment.
So I kind of thought that I knew what was going on and the way that she was taking the
human factor and overlaying that with her knowledge of Iraqi culture in order to hunt
down bad guys to put them into time and space so that we could kill them was incredibly
impressive to me as somebody who had just really dedicated my life to the Iraq deployments
at that time, just seeing that Shannon was equally as committed to me was was really,
really impressive.
And something that stuck with me for many years until we actually ended up stationed at the
same unit together years later.
And I mentioned earlier her intelligence and her focus, but I think there's also as you
read the book, there's this positivity, but humility and humor that she had Joe that
that kind of took her to another place in terms of how people viewed her.
Yes, certainly.
I mean, she just had a very humble personality, but very, very humorous always had a joke never
really took herself or a situation too seriously, which, you know, I think a lot of people who've
never been in a high stress, high performing environment like a special operations task
course, you kind of tend to think that it's a very serious environment and it is.
But I personally think the true professionals are the ones who can usually rise above the
situation and keep a certain degree of calm.
And Shannon just exuded that in spades.
I could tell from the time that we met and then to once we met again later on in life
and started dating.
I mean, she had, I would say almost the same demeanor as a lot of really experienced special
operators who had just kind of been there and done that.
And that was the way that she carried herself, never had any ego.
She was always quick to mentor, you know, the sailors and other troops below her.
That was actually really one of her hobbies.
She'd had people over to her house who were struggling at work.
She started a swim program and a run program for some of the people that were below her
in rank that were having a hard time in that realm.
So that was just her nature, I think, as a human, but then also as a mother and as a
wife and everything that she was.
Maybe Mari, I'll ask you to talk about it.
Shannon did, I think it was five overseas deployment, Joe did, I think, 11 combat deployments.
Mari, tell us what happened on the last deployment for Shannon.
Yeah.
So I really think the way that I look at her different deployments, her fifth deployment
was really the pinnacle of her professional career as far as what she was doing.
I think she was at the very highest level doing things that so few people can or will
do in a very dynamic environment.
I mean, Syria in 2019 was kind of unlike anything we'd ever seen before as far as like a geopolitical
environment.
It was a very complicated place where a mistake could cause a lot of problems at an international
scale.
We've got it in the book somewhere where one of the guys that we talked to that was
also working at theaters, we're literally looking at Russian flags right across the way.
I mean, it was a very dynamic environment.
A lot of places for things to go wrong and you needed trusted professionals like Shannon.
Shannon and Joe both were people that were a little bit of an anomaly even within special
operations and the fact that they stayed at the tactical level throughout their entire
career.
I mean, it was usually people move on to sort of administrative leadership sort of positions.
They were both very much at the ground level like doing the job.
And so for Shannon, that was her deployment.
She was doing key leader engagements.
She was doing source meets.
She was very involved in shaping what was going on in Syria at that time in regard to
a post ISIS sort of mess that was there.
And yeah, I mean, ultimately, you know, on January 16th of 2019, a suicide bomber came
in to walk into the middle of their element as they were getting ready to leave an area
that they were working in in Manbij, Syria.
And it took the life of her as well as three other Americans and injured many more and
killed many other Syrian defense forces as well.
And it's a very and as you read it in the book, even it was a very tragic but very abrupt
end to an incredible person's life.
And that's one thing, you know, for Joe and and the rest of her family, I imagine it's
very like it's the last thing they expected you.
You consider when a family member goes off to war that that's certainly a possibility,
but the odds are in your favor.
Most people who go to war, at least in the 21st century, they come back from war, right?
Like maybe not in one piece all the time, but most of them are coming back alive, usually.
And so you just figure the odds in your favor.
So her dying after such a long career of doing incredible work and as a mother and kids and
it just it was very abrupt.
And so we tried to one of my hopes with the book as people come to know Shannon throughout
the book is that they experience even one 1000th of the pain and just lost that Joe
and her family felt when they found out.
You know, incredible person and we always like go out of our way and that's great.
Hey, hey, honor to those who are lost and along with Shannon that day was Jonathan farmer
of we've raised Scott Wurz, a civilian intelligence officer.
She worked with a lot and Godara Tara Syrian born contractor who had returned to Syria to
being an interpreter for the US military all for those folks lost their life on the suicide
bomb event on January 16, 2019.
The recognition that this doesn't do the family any good, but it's important, I think for
for society, the recognition Shannon got in in death is substantial the country on her
the Navy on her the chiefs in the naval honored her she was the first enlisted service person
to be in state at the Naval Academy.
She's buried in Arlington, the number of speakers and commentators about her incredible patriotism.
And I'm sure it as I say it doesn't do any good for the family at the time, but I think
it's important and certainly one way society recognizes these airlines who have been out
there working so hard now I had to read 200 pages to get to the title of the book.
And then when I got there I went, it's so obvious.
And the book send me the true story of a mother at war send me comes from a biblical quote,
Isaiah six to eight, where it's asked whom shall I send Lord and the responses send me.
And that really captured up Shannon spirit right she could have ducked out six different
ways on these deployments.
But she really responded with that.
Send me approach didn't she Joe.
She did I mean that was how we lived our lives I mean that's why I was really what attracted
me to her in the first place and then why we decided to get married.
I mean it's we cover in the book one of our first dates we just sort of talked about like
a wire wire.
Why are we doing this you know why are you still in the military because that we you
know establish we both had multiple deployments and we're both just very much committed to
to our country to our fight to the our brothers and sisters on our left and right and we both
figured hey if someone's gonna go it should be us and as we were talking about Shannon's
final deployment we talk about this a lot in the book that was very challenging for
our family she had another path that was kind of carved out for her that would have left
her back in the states that didn't work out because of some catch 22 types of reasons
and but she could have gotten out of that final deployment and I know I know there was
a lot of her and me that was saying hey we should you should just get out of this deployment
I mean you're a mom now it's completely different no one's gonna think any less of you if you
get out of it but at the end of the day Shannon said no if people are gonna go and they're
gonna be in harm's way why am I any different I have all the skills I should be the one
that goes forward and fights for our country and so that's that's why we title the book
that way and that's just how Shannon lived her life selfless sacrifice it's it's incredible
Marty as the executive editor in chief of task and purpose this has to be you see many
stories but this one just have to be right at the top of the list and it's not even my
work in journalism I mean that's certainly part of it I've seen all these stories I've
been to a lot of memorials for fallen service members there's you know I know this world
pretty well when I went down to meet Joe in the in Virginia or the Maryland Maryland
Virginia DC area there where they lived and I still very vividly remember sitting down
at a table to talk to Joe and one of their family friends Ali and kind of doing the
initial interview and then it was I think the next day that we went to the memorial
at the Naval Academy and that was when it really hit me how much of an impact Shannon
had had on this world on the military on the special officer me on this but this world
you know she had had such an impact that the people that came out for that the the it was
unlike anything that I'd seen you know like I said it's not the first memorial for a fallen
service member I'd ever been to it was unlike anything that I'd ever seen and even through
writing that initial article about her you go through some of it and there's times where
I'm just like man I couldn't make this up like this is this is something that you almost
like if you're writing trying to write like a Jason Bourne character or something like
that you would maybe come up with some of this stuff like she was but this is a real
person that really possessed these capabilities but also the capacity for for being a mother
for being a wife for a sister a friend a mentor like all these other things that you don't
typically associate with the you know the cold-hearted killer special operator right
like but she was able to do all of those things and I really you know when I first saw the
first news report when it came out obviously I have to follow the news pretty closely and
I saw the first articles come out on January 16th at the about an explosion in Syria and
then a couple in you know in the days after where they released the names after the families
have been notified and they were framing this as like they were out to lunch or something
like like this was some sort of like joy ride that they were doing in Manbij but even I
knew at that time looking at okay Scotty Wurz, Shannon Kent, John Farmer, Gadir like this
isn't the John I've said a couple of different times this wasn't the going out to lunch crowd
like this wasn't the people that were just messing around in a war zone like you just
those types of people aren't together in a war zone for for messing around you know it's
all it's all business it's all business and again it's an inspiring story I hope many
many young women pick this up and read it and are inspired by Shannon's focus dedication
and intelligence, passivity, humility, all of those things which come through in the
book send me gentlemen if you've got a few more minutes I'd like to go to the third
area that I want to talk about it but but it totally up to you if you don't have time
I understand.
Yeah, no, no, no, this is this is sort of above and beyond the book if you will but it comes
out through the book and I think it's an important message for the civilian community
to understand and Joe you really lived it here with Shannon and that's the importance
of family both both you have two boys both as parents the importance of being able to
deploy and take care of the kids but also sisters mothers friends cousins talk to us
a little bit about the importance of family for those who are deploying.
Yeah, I mean it's it's incredibly important especially if you you have kids I mean I was
pretty fortunate I did the vast majority of my deployments before I was married before
I had kids and so that definitely gave me a different view of deploying and I actually
had I've gone back in years since and kind of apologized to some of my teammates who
had kids and had families and like I was living this great adventure and wondering why they
were you know having some sort of struggles at home and things like that but it is very
challenging so if you don't have a spouse that that understands why you're in the fight
and it has equally committed to you it's going to be very difficult and I was very blessed
to have Shannon in my life because she understood exactly what I was going to go do whenever
I deployed when we were married and had kids but then also having a family support system
and my parents were absolutely amazing they would always fly out if I was gone or Shannon
was gone to help us out with the kids and just to be there Shannon's sister lived with us
for a year after our first son was born and was basically you know when when Shannon and
I were both off at work or I deployed for a big part of that year and it was Shannon
and her sister there with my first son with our first son Colt and then you know once
once Shannon deployed again both my parents came back out Shannon's parents came down
quite a bit we did and then just a robust network to the friends I mean the longer you're
in the military the more people you know get married and have kids and those types of things
and so you do end up really supporting each other and Shannon had a really great community
up there in the Fort Meade area of other working mothers you know who were going through some
of the same struggles as well as her and so they were able to support each other and so
it's just it's something that doesn't get talked about anywhere near enough I think
as we discuss going off and deploying to war how important that home structure is and just
how vital the family is.
We have a recruiting problem in this country that's well documented and part of it I think
are you know parents who don't have any exposure to the military lifestyle think in part they're
their kids whether it be a boy or a girl a young man a young woman are going to be lonely
that they're not going to have family that there's not going to be this community or
network around but one really develops and Marty I'm sure you saw that as well in your
time in the service.
Yeah I so on the tail end of my military career I was a recruiter and there is a big gap between
what parents think the military is and families think the military is and what it actually
is but ultimately at the end of the day it is service you are going to go do something
that is not always going to be comfortable that is going to make complications for you
at home and family and to Joe's point if you've got people in your life that understand that
and are able to support that and support you that makes all the difference in the world
it really does I you know I didn't do any of my deployments with kids I was with my
wife through four out of my five deployments but we didn't have any kids or anything like
that I look back on it now I totally know what you're saying Joe like I have I look
back at the guys I deployed with who had families and kids I'm like I don't know how they did
it I literally cannot understand what it would take to be able to go through that and Joe
even at the tail end of your career with you still deploying having to say you know
kiss the kids goodbye like I mean that is that is a level of service that I don't think
most people will ever ever understand.
We don't give a product to the mothers who do this right Joe everybody's focusing on
what an incredible warrior Shannon was and selfless she was but she brought that thing
sort of energy to being a mother didn't she?
Yeah she most certainly did I mean Shannon somehow squeezed 25 to 26 hours out of every
single day I mean that was just her personality she really just went all in on everything
that she did including being a mom I mean she she carved out a ton of time for our sons
she was there you know when they woke up in the morning she was there when they would
go to sleep at night that's another reason why her fifth deployment was just it was so
painful for her to actually say goodbye and leave the boys and it was a much bigger conversation
that we had and just a very hard lift for her but I mean she put a ton of zeal into
being a mother I mean it's crazy now that I look back on it there was so much that
Shannon was doing to make memories to document our memories she made these great family albums
and these family books that when she was doing it I thought she was a little bit like obsessive
it's like what's the timeline why do you have to do this like right I mean she would make
sure that she did them you know basically every year on the year she was just really
good about making memories making every meal special decorating our house of artwork that
she made that was you know that represented both of the boys I mean she was just she
Shannon did not do anything halfway she did everything all the way and she loved our sons
and was a great wife you know 100% of the time so it's just she's just an amazing human
and loved everyone in her family and then also just her military family as well.
And some of this is just again I think the civilian world doesn't get this it's perfectly
normal stuff that military moms are doing they're making the garden out back they're
cooking special meals they're she had an artistic talent with the mosaics as you mentioned
I'll call it scrapbooking I don't know if that's the right term but all that normal
mother stuff that should that civilian and military moms have together and we need to
kind of get it across to folks that if it can be a great life and you can do all these
things can't you Joe?
Yeah you certainly can I mean our neighbors in our neighborhood really they knew that
Shannon was in the military I think they thought that she was like a translator that worked
at Fort Meade and kind of had an office job it wasn't until she deployed she was killed
they really understood what she did because she was out there you know pushing the stroller
with with all the other moms I mean they were all making gardens together just you know
very normal everyday nine to five stuff I think they they knew that I had this neat title
of like being a green beret or whatever so they assumed I was off doing you know commando
type of things but they thought that Shannon was just the normal housewife working mom
just like the rest of them but yeah you're you're right I think as the military has such
a I just a male forward-facing appearance for obvious reasons people do forget that women
in the military are going home and cooking meals and making photo albums and just doing
all the regular mom type of stuff and they balance all of that and I think that's a much
more difficult balancing act than it is being a working dad in the military just because
I think that you know most of society understands what a working dad is but this working mother
also being in the military is something that's that's relatively new look at that a macho
reburace recognizing how hard working mothers work that's that's good stuff right there
I want to thank both you guys for taking the time today to talk to veteran radio listeners about
sending the incredible two story of a mother at war it's really the shanin 10th story
as I said at the outset a hell of a mother hell of a warrior hell of a patriot and really great
that we can pay honor to her here on mother's day military veterans touch everyone's life
I'm guessing right now you're thinking of a veteran a close friend relative maybe it's you
even the toughest on us sometimes need help but don't know where to turn for support you don't
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we want to welcome to veterans radio today carry philip eddie she is the executive director of the
vandenberg coalition which we're going to talk about but she also was involved in writing a
op-ed piece for the washington examiner which is where i saw it earlier about how civics education
maybe could help solve the military recruitment crisis so you'll want to listen to her here carry
welcome to veterans radio thank you so much for having me jim excited to be here well you have a
very interesting career path out of the university of virginia with your degree and then on to work
at the united nations as a senior policy advisor for the united states mission you advised then
ambassador nickie haley on issues related to counterterrorism in the middle east and things in
the western hemisphere you've done work for the state department in a lot of things down south of
venezuela for example and now find yourself as the executive director of the vandenberg coalition
can you tell us a little bit about the vandenberg coalition sure i'd be happy to and and i've been
very fortunate to have great mentors like ambassador haley and others in the last administration
that that helped establish my career path so the vandenberg coalition we started it in 2021 i was
just leading the trump administration and was concerned by what i was seeing as this rise in
a sentiment of american retreat the sense that a longer a powerful nation and should not um
seek to promote its interests and its values around the world and as someone who grew up on the
outskirts of new york city you know on 9 11 i'm very much aware that no matter how much we want to
retreat from the world our enemies are going to try to attack us and it's going to cost far more
american lives if we wait for that then if we address the threats in smaller ways before they
get to our borders so that was generally the impetus for the coalition we wanted to create
a network of conservative thought leaders people who had served in government before
who could really create a new foreign policy for 2023 and going forward not looking back at what
previous presidents did not saying everything that reagan did with right or bush did was right or
truncated was right but really recognizing that we're in a completely different threat
environments than we've ever faced before and how do we appropriately confront that threat
environment using both these new opportunities that technology provides us as well as the new
challenges and obstacles that we have with things like the rise of of communist china
so the coalition exists to push for that kind of an agenda to push for an american people first
foreign policy that better serves american interests and promotes american prosperity american freedom
and and american strength well i have to admit that i didn't know who senator vandenberg was
uh when i started researching hey how do i how do i talk to the author of this interesting idea
only to learn that arthur van der berg who who died in 1951 uh was a senator from my home state
here in michigan and that he studied law at the university of michigan but made his mark in journalism
before going on to the united states senate tell us a little bit about arthur vandenberg and why that
became the the name of the coalition absolutely and it's not unusual i mean i'll be honest with you
when we started this group and we're trying to come up with the best name for it i also was not
familiar with arthur van denberg up until you know meeting with some folks and and then demanding him
to me so as you mentioned um arthur van denberg was a senator from michigan he served from 1928
until 1951 which is of course a very pivotal moment for american foreign policy he was a um uh a true
conservative a true republican and for much of his life as a political leader he was an isolationist
and then pro harbour happened and he had what is known as this sort of massive public conversion
the quote speech heard around the world where he subsequently said that our our oceans have
seats to be most which automatically protects our ramparts essentially acknowledging that
no matter what we want here no matter how much we want to avoid war we have enemies and they are
going to try to attack us unless we put up stronger defenses and he ultimately became the chief
architect for some of the most sort of modern forms of conservative foreign policy so he was
the chief legislative architect of the marshal plan of nato of the un and the truman doctrine
and he really established what it means to be a republican leading in foreign policy
in that post world era and really set the stage for uniting conservatives around a strong foreign
policy so what we appreciated about him and why we chose his name is because he understood what it
was like to be an isolationist he understood why he needed to shift from that man and the kind of
threat that were in front of him he remained true to his conservative roots but at the same time
was willing to work across the aisle to do what was best for the united states and those are things
that we all try to bring into the vandenberg coalition so i'm hoping that part of what we do
can help spread the word about this fantastic michigan senator who really had an outside influence
on conservative foreign policy and american foreign policy and yet very few people are
familiar with his story well and i would encourage anybody who is interested in that story or the
history if you will go to vandenberg coalition dot org go to the about us tab and check down to who
is arthur vandenberg there's a nice explanation of all this including the speech heard around the world
after pearl harbor and sort of how he converted from hey united states be an isolationist just
worry about your own area to this recognition that hey we have an internationalism here we have to
deal with the whole world so very interesting and and i'd encourage people to look at it carry but
before we lose too much more time i want to come back to what caught my attention which was uh your
or peace and restore in restoring america about quote how civics education can help solve the
military recruitment crisis tell us a little bit about that sure well um and somebody who works
in national security obviously you know having a a declining military capacity is essential
in too many of my conversations and of course many of your listeners will know that the united
is experiencing one of the most significant recruitment crises.
And by the way, retention crises that it has seen since the end of the draft.
So the question is what's spurring that forward?
And there's a few different things.
One thing is just, you know, medical records are now online.
So while people in the past will be able to join the military and maybe they wouldn't
divulge that they had, you know, ADD or they broke some part of some bone at some point,
now it's all online and so the military has access to it.
So some of those things need to be updated.
Other things are just the physical fitness of our youth.
So the stats that we've seen from 2020 suggest that only about 23% of Americans between the
ages of 17 to 24 are even eligible for military service.
And when you think about that number, then the question is how many of those want to
serve?
And that's where civic education really does play a significant role because civic is all
about teaching people about why our country was created, what we stand for, what our principles
are and why it's so important to preserve those things and fight for what it means to
be an American and understand what it means to be an American and to integrate into America
if you are, you know, immigrating here from another country.
And so I think it makes sense that we're seeing a decline in interest in the military, you
know, in the last year in 2023, the only branches that met their recruitment targets
were the Marine Corps and the State Force and you had about a 41,000 person shortfall
in the Army, Navy and Air Force.
And so it's critically important that people understand why service matters so much.
And I think that's where there's really been this gap.
Throughout the last few decades, we've seen declining civic education in universities,
declining civic education in K through 12.
Nobody is being taught why being an American matters and the good that it does to the world
and then therefore why would anybody want to serve.
So I think making sure that people are educated in those things is critical to inspiring them
to want to serve their country, whether it's in the military or frankly, whether it's through
a corporation that can bring economic benefit back to the United States as well.
Yeah, I think it's an interesting thought here because this recruiting and retention
problem is ultimately a national security problem.
We've been talking about it with a lot of different thought leaders and writers and
military men and women on Veterans Radio and we're talking to Kerry Phillip Petty, who's
the executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition.
And I think some of this is related to, well, you know, that 1% of the population or less
takes care of us.
I don't have to involve my family, whereas during World War II, certainly it was every
family during the Vietnam draft because of the draft, it became almost every family.
So we've really gone generations now where we think, well, we don't think about it.
Somebody else takes care of it for us and it really, people aren't taught and this
is the, you know, I grabbed the yellow marker when I read this line that you guys wrote,
which is, if people are not taught why their country is worth defending, they are less
inclined to serve in the military or contribute their skills to its success.
It's really that simple, isn't it?
I think it is.
I mean, again, what people are being taught today in schools, particularly universities,
that even at the K through 12 level now, is that America is bad, that America has a scary
problematic history.
And rather than reading America through the lens of this, what Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. called the promissory note, right, this idea that we would always seek to be a more
perfect union.
Instead of understanding that as the root of what it means to be an American, people
are trying to say that what it means to be an American are, you know, accepting and being
a, you know, racist or being opposed to other cultures.
And that's not at all what it is about.
That's not what it has been about.
And I think there's a way of teaching the reality of, you know, American history with
a very clear understanding of what a beautiful system the United States has created and how
different and unique it is among all of the nations in the world.
There used to be institutions that would do these, you know, I was a Girl Scout.
I'm sure many of your listeners were Boy Scouts.
And by the way, the correlation between those who were Eagle Scouts and those who serve
in the military or the essential things is unbelievable.
Absolutely.
Yep.
So, and we no longer have an emphasis on those sort of civics minded organizations.
We don't teach it in schools anymore.
We don't teach the Pledge of Allegiance anymore.
We don't teach the founding documents anymore.
And giving people the tools to understand how the United States has grown and developed,
if you really understand our history, you will be inspired to serve this country, whether
it is through the military or some other capacity for whatever reason you don't meet the fitness
requirements.
But people today are just not excited to be American.
People today don't think that their children are going to have a better future than they
will.
They are all part of this broader cultural decline and cultural malaise where we just
no longer have confidence in the United States anymore.
So why would somebody young decide to put their life on the line for the country?
And that's where civics education, I think, can make a significant difference.
Yeah.
We don't teach history at all.
And a little bit we do teach is often slanted against this idea of why your country is worth
defending.
You had a co-author on the article, Hans Zieger, I believe, from the Jack Miller Center.
Can you tell us a little bit about that relationship?
Sure.
So Hans is the leader of the Jack Miller Center, which is a fantastic organization that builds
and sustains a higher education community that's focused on the teaching of civic education.
So they create resources and teacher education for those individuals who will be teaching
others about what it means to be an American.
So they're very much involved in this, what they call the civics knowledge crisis.
They focus on teaching about the American political tradition.
They host a summit on civics education and have something called the Constitution Day
Initiative, which I think would be fantastic for.
I'm trying to get more people to celebrate Constitution Day, which is September 17th,
which marks the signing of the U.S. Constitution.
They work very, very hard on trying to promote civics education and have been involved in
this space for many, many years, a lot longer than I have.
So Hans is a brilliant leader of this organization and also the co-author of this op-ed.
So Europe becomes the important question.
Okay, guys like me read this and said, hmm, that's a really good idea.
How has it been received by the educational world?
We're saying, hey, we have to teach this down in the lower grades.
Any feedback from the educational world yet?
You know, I think there is this recognition and it's growing as we start to see how some
of these initiatives that were intended to sort of recognize issues within the United
States, things like the, you know, DEI initiatives and so on.
Lately, there's been a lot of pushback against those things as we're seeing it play out,
you know, with respect to the crisis in the Middle East and how it seems people are unable
to kind of differentiate good versus evil at this stage.
And so the education space, I think, is ripe for change and now is the moment for us to
focus on this aspect.
Regardless of your beliefs on, you know, DEI or other things, I think civics education
is essential pillar of making good citizens, citizens that want to contribute.
So so far, we've started to get a little bit more interest as that community, the educational
community is opening itself up to recognizing, you know, maybe we've made some mistakes and
seeing how different leaders of universities are being forced out because of those mistakes.
So I'm hoping that now is really the moment, but it does require people like you, people
like your viewers, people like me, as we, you know, if we have children to push for civics
education there, to try to get our children enrolled in things like, you know, the South
Program to be involved as community leaders, because those are the types of people that
will be inspired to want to serve the country as well.
So there's a lot that we can be doing at the local level.
Well, that's a really great interview and you can hear the full interview on Veterans
Radio's podcast, which you can find at all the normal outlets, Spotify, Google, Amazon,
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