How Killing a Man Changed Dakota Meyer

Yeah. Well, I think sometimes people need to hear it from someone like you, or someone like Jaco or... The beautiful thing about these podcasts is that you get to hear people's perspective and a lot of them are eye-opening. They literally can change the world because they change the way you behave and you interact with people when you listen to it. And that podcast that you did with Jaco when I was listening to it, it changed my whole day, it changed how I was going to look at my day. Instead of looking at my day like, oh, it's a normal day, I was thinking, goddamn, I'm lucky. Goddamn, I'm lucky. And goddamn, imagine experiencing what you... And how old were you at the time? I was 21. 21 years old. And experiencing what you experienced in that insane firefight being locked down. And how many guys did you wind up engaging with? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, every one day I got an opportunity with, right? And it was just so chaotic. I mean, I think about it all the time, obviously. It's something I could have never experienced. I mean, I trained for war every single day when I was in the Marine Corps. I mean, it was what my job was. And I still could have never imagined that day the way it was or anything to turn out. I could have never pictured it. I could have never... And I think every day it goes by, I think there's a reckoning of it, right? The way that I've seen it that day is not the way I see it today. And I think that comes with just sharpening and just your body. You change and you see different things in perspective. But yeah, I mean, that day, I mean, it's still. I mean, it's still. It's just... There's so many lessons that come from that day that... I look at people complaining about stuff here in America and it's like, I've seen them one day, the best of humans, the worst of humans, and everybody, nobody thought they were wrong. And it's possible, it's just one of those deals of that day was just... That's an important point where you just said, nobody thought they were wrong. Not them, not you. Yeah, and it changed me that day. I walked in there that day and I was the guy who was cocky who would tell you, I love fighting. Do you know what I mean? Like I just want to go fight. But every fight I had before that, it was like, I always had airplanes or helicopters sitting around. I always had... It was like, I'm going to go in there and start the fight and then I'm going to call in all this other stuff to win, right? And that day it wasn't there and literally I walked out of there and I just think about all the time today, I just think about all the time of how many generations just that day were changed. How many generations of people's lives were changed. All my teammates died, so they'll never have kids. That generation stopped. Their families forever. So many lives were changed that day by that piece. And guess what? And everybody in America had no clue what was going on. Like right now there are US troops, somebody wondering if they're going to be able to come home and see their family again. That's reality. Whether you want to ignore it or not, that's reality. And that was me September 8, 2009. And it was just a chaotic day. It's amazing how you could have thousands of days in your life and one day changes the way you look at everything. One day changes the way you look at everything. And you know, the further I go on, I look at it differently. I always talk about this story of whenever this guy came up behind me and I ended up killing him with a rock. And I always remember, I see it every night, I remember I just see his face. Because there was a point that I feel like anybody that, whether they're injured or anything, they realize they're defeated. I don't know, I just think there's a point when you look at somebody and they know they're going to die. And I'll never forget that. Now I look at it and I see it and I always think that like, this guy is a son to somebody. His mother and father are going to miss him. This guy, he believes in his cause as much as I do. He doesn't believe he's wrong. This guy, he could have had a wife or kids that are never going to see their father again. Just like, you know, my dad might have never seen me again if it was switched. And really, I don't even know, I don't hate him. I don't even know this guy. We're just here at this place right now because we were born in two different countries. Were you out of weapons? Were you out of ammo? No, he had came up and he started choking me. I had shot him once before and I was trying to pick my buddy, Dada Lee. One of my closest Afghans, Dada Lee, had been shot. He had been killed and I came around this terrace to get him and I was on my knee and this guy came up behind me. So he didn't have a weapon either? No, he did. He had a weapon and I ended up shooting him from the ground and I thought he was dead when he fell on the ground. I kind of moved down and got down with Dada Lee because I was still getting shot at from this machine gun up on this hill. I was trying to make myself as small as I could and this guy ends up coming up and choking me. I thought he was dead and he ends up choking me out. He starts trying to choke me out and eventually let up a little bit and I ended up getting around him and we were fighting back and forth. I can remember all I was thinking about was like, don't let his legs get on me. These guys, their legs, they've been crawling up mountains their whole life. He was a pretty big dude and I just remember getting on top of him and finally got on top of him. I was rolling on top of him. He didn't have all the gear on, I did. I remember getting on top of him like I was straddling him and I'm just reaching up trying to grab for anything I can and I'm holding him down with my forearm and I'm just grabbing anything I can. I ended up grabbing a rock and I just started beating this dude's face in and I just started beating and beating and beating. I remember just finally after hitting him, I don't know, three or four times, four or five times, whatever. I remember him finally just looking at me and it's like I'm just looking at him in the eyes, obviously closer than me to you right now. You just see all the, you can tell. He knows where this is going. I always think about that. I would kill him a million times over again. He was in him and he like I don't feel bad about that part of it. But I just think about in that moment, if I can find a way to relate to him in that moment, a man I'm taking his life, we all in America can find a way to connect with each other. If we don't connect with each other, it's because we choose not to. I don't care what your differences are. Find a reason why we can get along, not why we should not get along. I always think about that moment of this guy and obviously he ended up dying. What it showed me was is that no cause that you have that's built on hate will survive. I didn't hate this guy. I didn't even know him. But I was willing to take his life because of what I loved. That's what we have to build our lives and our foundation on, is not being angry and hating each other, but because we love the cause that we believe in so much. Does that make sense? It does make sense. I understand what you're saying.