Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and today's episode is an interesting topic we're going to be tackling, and we've kind of done it before in the past once, and it's using fictional writing to address real topics, whether they're Current or past, you know, we recently had on Tommy quells for the horseman's tail, and he was a Vietnam veteran who wrote a fictional story to talk about military mental health, especially for the Vietnam era.And today we have another military veteran who is addressing political events through his fictional writing. Mr. Robert Cook. It's great to have you on the show, and I'd love for you to introduce yourself, starting with your military service. Thank you. I'd be happy to. I joined the army as a second lieutenant in infantry a long time ago.Spent a couple years in Germany, a year in the Pentagon, a year in Vietnam, maybe a little longer, total of five and a half years. So I have a good sense from childhood of the military. I was in the high school rifle team, so I ended up on a college rifle team, learned about shooting. And a lot of the verisimilitude that comes in writing fiction is Knowing something about the background.So I went from from college where as a math major up through Vietnam got out and Started to learn about people who didn't have the mission as their primary focus in life and it was a an interesting drill worked out fine, but Uh, it was fun. And so I started a company in 19, 2000, when was it? 1981. And, uh, took it public on the NASDAQ by 85 on the New York Stock Exchange by 1988.Sold it by 1993. So that was just sort of a 20 year pass through the high tech public market. And what, when I was in 96. It was 98. I was in a cruise back to Vietnam just to see what it felt like after 20 years and 30 years. And, uh, when we were leaving the Saigon River, coming down from Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City, to back to the Gulf, there was a typhoon.We had 60 knot winds, 40 foot seas across the bow. I was in a bow cabin, so they bolted it all up. And I was the only one in the boat, other than the crew, that wasn't sick.So we slowed things down a lot. He surfed these huge waves with this huge boat and ship, cruise ship. And I had nothing to do, so I sat down and wrote my first novel, Cooch, named for Coohoolin, who is a legendary Irish warrior. Anyhow, that's the story. That's how it all got started. Yeah, so, if I'm understanding correctly, you voluntarily went back to Vietnam on civilian terms.Um, so, let me ask you about that because most Vietnam veterans, as far as I would assume, wouldn't want to go back there. You know, because of PTSD, because of the memories and the trauma. So, why did you choose to go back to a place that was, you know, very traumatic for a lot of the veterans who served there?I suppose I'm hopelessly curious, and so, uh, I wanted to see what it was like after 30 years of semi communist rule, and the city had changed a lot, but we were living on a cruise ship, so I could go out during the day and look around, just jammed, and motorcycles and push carts everywhere, so it was very robust, and I was curious, but it brought back a lot of memories, too.On the way up the river, up the Saigon River to Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, I was on a bow deck just sitting there crying, you know, for the people that should have been and were no longer, and for what. I took a lot of grief for being in the military at that time and going to Vietnam, and my feeling was that, uh, if they sent me to Newark, I'd go.That wasn't my call. I was just a soldier. I was an infantry officer, and I had a job to do. It wasn't my job to figure out what was right or wrong. Of course, Hitler's people might have said the same thing, but I think, I think there's a difference. Yeah, I was just about to say, you know, I was thinking about how the Vietnam Veteran era is well known for its controversy for the treatment of the soldiers.We had an episode on it actually with Robin Bartlett and we talked about Vietnam combat and he talked about how his personal motto is to say not thank you for your service to a Vietnam veteran but welcome home. And he talked about how he and other Vietnam veterans weren't welcomed home with parades and awards like they expected it was, it was with hatred and negativity over, you know, the, the support or lack thereof for the war.So you kind of answered the question I was going to ask ahead of time, which was, you said all for what? So when you went back to Vietnam and looked around, did you feel like you felt like, why did we even contribute to that? Why did we lose so many young? Men, I mean men who were 18, 19, 20 years old, and then you're looking at modern day Vietnam at that time and thinking, was it worth it?Can you tell us a little bit about those emotions? Well, those emotions I think vary from person to person, and for me, I, I knew why we were there, you know, that's what I did for a living, part of the domino theory, you know, that, uh, if South Vietnamese, if South Vietnam or Vietnam and Polk. fell. That would be a Cam, uh, Cambodia, Thailand on through the Southeast Asia corridor domino effect.And I didn't think that was right. I didn't like the way the war was being waged, but that wasn't my call. I was at the end of it. I was an army captain. So. You do your job, you keep your mouth shut. When you get home, people spit on you. Throw five pair of jungle, jungle fatigues in the corner and two pair of boots, pull your jeans and your tops out of your zone and hit the road.Yeah, I, I still can't believe that treatment because at the end of the day, the way I look at it is like that. Try to have that neutral perspective of focusing on the soldiers as people, not focusing on the war. At the end of the day, you're a human being. You went out there. You lost people, you did what you had to do, and so many people just want to associate you with the war, and I, and I get that, but the Vietnam era especially, there was a lot of people that were drafted in, you know, who didn't even want to fight, you know, I mean, there are people who You know deserted and left or refused to go to Vietnam So it was a very interesting time period in our country and it's uh, it's a very somber one in my opinion You know, it's a very somber one.It is indeed and it was the people that Dodged a draft Still get in trouble with the law and the people that got home and get spit on and now thought I was pretty good people veterans You know, you get a lot of people, uh, that weren't Vietnam, you know, the new vice president, Maureen. Things are different now, but we just have a different set of bigotries.And we're coming out of that, that phase where if you were woke, you didn't tell anybody they said anything wrong. And, uh, we're coming out of that, so it'll be interesting. In my book, I try to bring common sense and a global look at what's going on in Vietnam. When I started thinking about the book, I read something in The Economist that said, uh, that Israel was confiscating, uh, Jewish citizens land if they were Arab on the basis that they simply weren't Jewish.You know, that's sort of a theocratic non starter, but they've been getting away with it, and it's happening more now. And so I wrote the book through the eyes of a veteran American, a kid that grew up, uh, in South Carolina with a Bedouin mother and a marine father who had a metal lawn and had a wheelchair as a reward.And you know, that's Wow. You can make those little statements, you know, hit a wheelchair plus fifty bucks a month extra for the medal, and, uh, you think about that. So anyhow, this kid goes off and spends summers in Morocco and Tangier, learns about being an Arab, and his grandfather works at great cost at great lengths to get him educated in Islam as a Muslim.So that's the look at the book, and I'm seeing quite a few, uh Most of American names float by in my book promotion, so it's probably catching on. And the reason I think it should catch on is the narrative. The narrative is so much better. than the narrative that they're trying to put in place today.Syria has fallen, Iran is in trouble, the Houthis are being attacked, and we have two feet and one arm in that battle. And back to the Vietnam thing, I would hate to see one American put on the ground over there. And that's what I read about. Yeah, no, I, I'm of the opinion that I, I feel like America does this kind of in between role where they don't fully get involved in conflicts, but they're kind of getting involved in some ways, and it's like, it's kind of this gray instead of black and white, and I've never really approved of that.It's kind of always just detrimental in some way, and that's my opinion, and you know, I don't keep up all that much with the Middle East conflict, so I don't want to get, you know, Put out any opinions out there that aren't, you know, evidence based and back, but as for you, you know, Mr. Cook I mean, what would you like to see with all the conflict in the Middle East?I mean, what's your ideal, you know, world looking like one of I would assume of peace where Everyone gets their land. Everyone's happy and everyone respects the borders. Is that kind of what you're looking for? Well, that and Santa Claus comes down the chimney every time. Uh, you know, that there is no solution to that Middle East cauldron without religion.And Netanyahu is trying to create a Jewish theocracy spinning in the face of 200 million. Muslims. And I'm not, I don't have a dog in this fight, but there are only six million Jews in Israel in a country the size of New Jersey. That's just a non starter if you don't find a narrative that works. In my book, The Mahdi, I ended with, went through quite a bit of turmoil in the meantime, the usual sex and dialogue and violence you find in thriller, but we should, we should talk about how fiction enables reality.Right now, reality is a bad place. The fiction had Saudi Arabia, United States, and Israel funding a third each of building the Middle East to modernity, and the role the Jews had, Israel has, is one that they have in our country today, one of intellectual leadership. You know, they provide, in my book, the education, the medicine, the engineering, the technology required to build a society from scratch, and it starts with teaching K through 6.So, it's a fun, I thought the whole thing through, I think. So, why did you, we'll talk about, you know, fiction and reality, because my question is, Why did you choose to do a fictional narrative to express, you know, your opinions and the ideas you want to put out there and some of the common sense, as you call it, for people to see and open up their eyes?Why not do, you know, non fiction blogs or journalism or, you know, TV guesting? Why go through this fictional narrative route? Well, it was 100, 000 words, so that was a long time to say what I wanted to say. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, and I got to edit it before I let anybody else see it, so. Yeah. Um,the answer has to be found in Israel not taking over, uh, Lebanon and Iran. They've already invaded 6 million people. They're having a lot of trouble, and I happen to be a fan of Israel, but they're having a lot of trouble. taking people out of their jobs for as long as they have because they have a high tech society.And when those people come and drive a tank, or fly an airplane, they're not at home building stuff. So Israel's economy is suffering. And I think that they just have to back away from where they're going. I don't believe you can solve this problem, at least in a 10 year horizon. I think you can solve it for the next two years.But that's a very humanizing mystery. I'd like to see Israel survive for a hundred years, but so would many other people in the Middle East. I think they can get the king of, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia on board, you know. Fiction is useful because you can invent what you need to make your narrative come true.Right. And I invented a quantum cell phone, a quantum computer held within a cell phone. Well, that's 20 years away. You know, they haven't built the first good quantum computer yet. And they cool it with liquid nitrogen, that kind of thing. And the second was taking the electromagnetic magnetic pulse that's so widely discussed in literature as turning on to lights in Central America or all of America, from a nuclear blast in the atmosphere.Well, I found in my research that Boeing had taken a nuclear part out of an EMP attack and had it on Wikipedia, which where I found a lot of things. on their website, uh, flying the Tomahawk, turning out to lights in southern Utah. So I made, I just took another step from there to shootable, fusible EMP stuff.So you could go have a guy throw some 3D printed rocks around the apartment complexes in the West Bank, blow them up whenever you feel like it, all the lights go out, all the equipment stops, you know, all that. So those are the two pieces of fiction that enabled the story. And you have to be able to. In fiction, you need something to enable the story.Yeah, yeah, I get that. So what is the main message and purpose you're trying to get across with this book? Is it you're trying to paint a dystopia that is horrific and people don't want that, so they'll change their actions in the modern day? Or you're trying to paint a more ideal resolution that people should try to follow through with?I tried to paint the, the, uh, benign real environment and not the dystopian one people think exists. Okay. You, uh, well, that's what I tried to do.Yeah. So, like, if, if someone's, for people who read the book, what are they, they walking away with? Like, what kind of ideas and thoughts should they be having? Uh, whether, you know, whatever their bias may be, whether they're, involved with the Middle East conflict or have no knowledge of it, you know, where are they going to be leaving with when they read this book?I think that they will end up a lot better off than we are today. They end up in the book, and the readers of the book end up with a 10 year look of very difficult rebuilding the Middle East, but certainly possible, certainly optimistic. And one of the things presented in the book, enabled by the quantum cell phone, is online teaching of K 6 throughout the Middle East.And there's a lot of evidence that if you teach up to age 12 children to read, write, reason, and calculate at age level, at grade level, the rest of it will pretty much take care of themselves. Some of them will choose to be plumbers, other electricians, others will dig with a shovel all day long. I mean, it's just, but you need to give everybody a head start.And I do that in the book, so I think they bring away a feeling of optimism, what could happen. And probably today, a feeling of pessimism as to how it sorts out from here. Israel has created itself an existential threat. They gotta win. So, is this book for Americans or for the people of the Middle East, or both?Well, it's for the thinking into the population, but I'm, I'm trying to sell books in the U. S. There are 3. 5 million Muslims in the U. S. and, uh, you know, if I sell 10 percent of those, I'll be happy. Uh, nobody is reporting, uh, situations in the Middle East through the lens of a Muslim American or through the lens of any Muslim.The poor crown, crown prince of Saudi Arabia had agreed to the Abraham Accords at the end of Trump's administration, first administration, and he was preparing to, to bring that forward. And then Hamas attacks Israel pretty ugly, and it all falls apart. Now there's genocide going on in Gaza, and it looks like the Israelis are going to settle Gaza and West Bank.We'll see. So, I know you've written a couple other books as well. Do you plan on continuing to write this political fiction narrative based thriller style in the future as conflicts around the world continue to develop and close? Well, if you get back to the first book, which is Cooch, I got an Ippy gold medal for that one.Uh, and that was where I introduced the kid and he went to Morocco. Learned all this stuff, and the second one was in Yemen, the third in Iran, and the fourth in Israel. But I would guess I'm going to continue writing about, uh, the Middle East in general. And one of the things that my protagonist does is preaches about the schism between the Shiite beliefs and the Sunni beliefs, and they made those up after Muhammad.Those didn't come out of the box. Right. And, uh, he says that That schism is an apostasy in the eyes of all, of course, I may call that up, but it seems to me it is. You know, I, I read my versions of Koran and they're in English, there's so many translations, but they read theirs. And I think the only realistic approach for society is to have a liberal Muslim society, a liberal view of Islam.Hmm. Okay. And. When you say a liberal view of the Muslim culture, what exactly do you mean? A lot of us hear liberal and we think of everything associated with that political sense, but in what context are you using it? When people, when Muslims say, you know, that the Quran requires them to kill all non believers, it doesn't say that.You know, it just doesn't. There's places you can quote to make it seem like it does. It just doesn't. But in general, there was some scholars that I, I listened to, uh, say, hey, it's a lovely religion. I have a friend right here who's married to an Egyptian guy for 10 years, turned Muslim. She says it's a pretty religious, lovely religion.No hate, help everybody out. And that might be part of the problem. Yeah. Well, what you're talking about is a problem and an issue across. All the religious boards that people aren't educated in the word, they're educated in what mainstream media tells them, what social media tells them, what fear mongering is, you know, I've read the Bible and and I'm trying to read the text of other religious, you know, organizations and Believers to understand as well, because I actually am friends now with a co worker who is Muslim and I asked her, I said, I'd like to have a conversation with you.And she went through everything with me. And it's a very, very different perspective than what you see online. You know, with that, there is a small portion of that out there. Culture and that religion who are terrorists, but then there's a whole population outside of that of normal people trying to live peaceful lives Same with you know, the Catholic religion, you know, people have labeled the whole organization pedophilic and this and that whereas again You're taking that incident of a small group of the people and putting it to the whole religion so I think that the issue you're addressing here is across all religions and it is a huge issue where The mainstream media, social media, and just years of history and twisted religion and twisted history has created so much hatred, uh, across the world.I couldn't agree more. You're exactly right. And as a critical thinker say, what therefore shall we do? Yeah, yeah. It's not easy. Yeah, I, I believe, I'm very against the public education system. I think it's become a political indoctrination machine. Not great at all at setting our youth up for adulting in real life.One of the things I'd love to see, there's a few things I'd love to implement into the American education system. One of them is firearm safety and training. For everyone, if it's our right to bear arms, I think everyone should be trained at least once in their life on proper handling and safety because there's so much fear in America about guns from people who have never seen one or been taught about one.And then the second thing would be, I thinkThere's a separation of church and state, uh, so I don't know how to go about this, but I think that there should be like a world culture class that is mandatory for all students to read and learn about every religion, just reading their text, not pushing it, right? I don't want the teachers trying to push one religion or another because what children believe, you know, that's Their choice and what their parents at home want to teach them, that's their religious choice.And I don't want the schools interfering in that. But unfortunately, parents aren't taking the initiative to properly educate their children in religion. Even their own religion that they believe. Um, so, I think there needs to be some kind of system set in place to go over that. But, again, it's one of those situations where we can't force religion on people.We can't necessarily teach them about it without there being controversy. Uh, so, I think, like, what you're doing with your book is one of those ways where we can kind of teach. religious open mindedness and actually teach about the truth of the religions without crossing those boundaries. Yeah, I mean, I'm where you are, except on the, on the teachers.You know, the teachers unions are the ones who really, uh, caused the problem, I think. And the, I get involved, I've been in education involved for a long time. I get involved in a city springs elementary in Baltimore. I'm making a video of five years of teaching inner city kids to read and write. And it was really quite an experience, and they can learn the same as the rest of us.But I have stuck in my memory a video of a five year old at the end of his kindergarten year reading from a, uh, text in front of him. He was struggling with the words and sounding them out, but he was five years old. And his father was in the front row, right where I could see him. He was a big guy, all scarred up and ugly.He was crying. He never had a chance to learn how to read, and his kid was going to have it. You know, and that is the social contract that we have to maintain. It's sad about religion that the Abrahamic Accords, the Abraham Accords is part of the Abrahamic religion, where there's monotheistic between Jerusalem, uh, between Judaism, Muslim, uh, Islamism.And Christianity, the same gods, way back when, the angel Gabriel is a bigger deal for the, for the, uh, Muslims than he is for the Christians. And, they don't have any trouble getting along. But as you point out, you gotta teach them, it's their responsibility to get along, pretty early. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And, uh, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna have The website in the description below, robertcooknovels.com, so you can find his latest book, The Mahdi, as well as his other books, The Cooch, Patriot, and Assassin, Pulse, all of those are going to be on there, and you can find more information about Mr. Cook, uh, on the website as well, and Mr. Cook, I want to thank you for what you do, I know not everyone is receptive to it, uh, but I know you're trying to do something good for the world, Uh, through your writing.And I think that's the best we can do is try to put out value into the world and help educate others and create peace. So I appreciate what you do. And I thank you for coming on the show and sharing that with us. We tried, don't you're welcome. I enjoyed it.
