Judging Freedom - Biden’s Demand of ‘Unconditional Surrender’ to Russia Will Fail

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

Joe Biden’s Demand of ‘Unconditional Surrender’ to Russia Will Fail by Douglas Macgregor https://libertarianinstitute.org/arti... #Biden #Putin #UkraineSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, August 30, 2022. It's about 1 o'clock in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. My guest today is a Judging Freedom favorite who really needs no introduction, Colonel Douglas McGregor, who after a career in the military spent some time in the Pentagon under former President Donald Trump, and who we are very fortunate to have enlightening us at Judging Freedom with a true, fair, military jeweler's eye, Colonel, on what's happening on the ground and what's happening in what we don't see on the ground in the military conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Colonel, always a pleasure.

Welcome back here. Since you were last on, some of your former colleagues, each of whom wore stars on their shoulders, have had some comments to make which have disagreed with yours. General Petraeus, a well-known politician, even though he wore four stars, had the following to say, we'll run the clip on CNN, about the status of really difficult this winter is. In the southern area, it may not be as difficult as certainly it is in the north and the northeast. I think the fighting will continue, however. And the Ukrainians, of course, are also showing something here that is crucially important, and that is that they are generating forces. They're recruiting, training, equipping, organizing, and then employing additional Ukrainian forces much more effectively and efficiently and impressively than are the Russians. As the

ambassador mentioned, the Russians are struggling just to find replacements, much less to find organized, equipped, and trained units. Comment, Colonel? Well, the comments on the Ukrainians, I think, is fictional, to put it bluntly. It's a spinning fiction. Ukrainians have long since scraped the bottom of the barrel. They've lost their best troops. You just don't instantaneously regenerate them. In this latest counterattack in Kherson, there were three Ukrainian brigades. Two hardly made it across the limit, you know, the line of departure,

and were driven back with heavy loss. One in the center made a little bit of progress, was then subsequently stopped, enveloped, pinned down, and took heavy losses. The Russians are, frankly speaking, they've taken losses as well, but they've maintained their core force. If you have a 10,000-man formation or a 5,000-man formation and you have 500 to 1,000 casualties, as long as you have that core formation, you can fill it out and go back and fight with it. Ukrainians have lost core formations. That's why this whole notion of regenerating a force at this stage is frankly absurd. So I don't know what the basis is for his judgment. I suspect that he's doing what he did when he was on active duty, which is take the position of the status quo, whoever is

in power, and he aligns with it and repeats ad nauseum whatever his bosses tell him to do. Well, let's remember, and again, I don't want to get into a psychological or character analysis of General Petraeus, but he not only was a general, he was at one point, I think for about a year and a half or two years, until some personal issues got in the way, the director of the CIA. So he probably belongs to that same cadre of people that our friend Phil Giraldi has warned us about, the CIA propagandists. Well, I think he was in that category long before he arrived at the CIA. If you go back and examine his comments about the quality of the Iraqi army, which he took personal responsibility for building. He tells you that it's a marvelous formation that can knock down anything that's thrown at it. We all know what happened to the Iraqi army when it met ISIS.

And then in Afghanistan, after he'd been in command of Afghanistan for about six to eight months, he made a statement that he turned everything around and seized the initiative from the Taliban and arrested their movement and expansion. So this is not really new. He's going to do what he does because of the people that he is with. Remember, there's an old expression,

you go home with a girl you brought to the dance. Well, he's a girl they brought to the dance. He's going to go home with the people that brought to the dance. Well, he's a girl they brought to the dance. He's going to go home with the people that brought him there and got him the four stars. Lieutenant General Retired Hertling also says that, I don't know where he gets this from, the Ukrainians have several hundred thousand new troops and they're waging a second front, which will put the Russians on the horns of a dilemma. I think I am fairly characterizing what he said, Colonel. Where in God's name would Zelensky come up with several hundred thousand new troops? Well, that is undoubtedly part of

the script that is passed out by the Pentagon and the White House to everyone who's quote-unquote on the team. Usually General Keene makes those kinds of statements. He's backed down quite a bit in recent months, but now I think Hertling is picking up the slack and he's trying to be the man on point to keep the crusade going. Look, when everything else fails, and I've seen this before in the United States government, unfortunately, you certainly have. We saw it in Vietnam. I saw it, unfortunately, during the Kosovo Air Campaign and subsequently when we ended up bogging ourselves down in Iraq. When all else fails, you lie. And that's what we do. And I'm sure Phil Giraldi would tell you the same thing. We're just spinning fiction. We're putting mythology on the street and hoping

that that will substitute for substance until we come up with some better answer. And there is no better answer for Ukraine right now. This war is really at an end point if we want to reach an end point, but we don't seem to want to. And we're perfectly willing to sacrifice thousands of Ukrainians that are forced into action, who are not adequately trained, who aren't adequately equipped, who don't know what they're doing, and push them into trench lines and defensive positions so that they can be slaughtered. You know, this is going to be like the Confederacy at the end of the war between the states, with very, very few able-bodied males in their 20s and 30s even existing in the society. What will be left after Joe Biden keeps extending this war in terms of able-bodied males in Ukraine?

Well, we know that we've got at least 10, 11 million that have left the country since this whole business began. I don't know how many millions of young men that includes. They had lost population long before the war broke out because people became fed up with the corruption, the lack of competence in government, and just left. I don't know that there will be too much of Ukraine left, and this has been the concern from the beginning. Ukraine is effectively a failed state swimming in criminality, subsidized by Washington. We have certainly subsidized the black market on a scale that no one, I think, in Ukraine ever imagined was possible and made lots of people rich. But we haven't changed anything in the interest of the Ukrainian people. So I think you're staring at a failed state, Judge. That's all there is to it.

Let's look at and try and predict things a year from now. Will Putin have achieved the geographical dominance that he wants? What does he do? He can't bring his troops home. He's going to be fighting a guerrilla war. But can he Russianize in terms of culture and economics and education and local government those areas that are not already Russianized by their own history, and begin to treat those parts of what Zelensky says are Ukraine as parts of Russia? And can he do that in a peaceful environment? I think the answer is, first of all, if you look at the map right now, look at the areas where the Russians are in control. Those were precisely what you described, largely areas that were Russified anyway. They were already Russian and Russian speakers. He's going to expand that somewhat more. I've always said he will not stop until Kharkov and Odessa, both of which are historically Russian-speaking cities, were never Ukrainian-speaking areas, are firmly under his control.

So I think that's yet to come. So I imagine that when you look at the map of Ukraine, it'll be something between 25 and 30 percent of the territory that was within this Ukrainian state construct, which was always artificial. It was not historically consistent with the people that lived there. And I think he's going to stop because the last thing that he wants to do is to incorporate millions of Western Ukrainians who judge really are Ukrainian. He knows that. He said that publicly. He said they'd be happier with the Poles than they would be with us. He's never wanted to cross that river.

Militarily, can he just stop? I think he can. Will he not have to defend a border from Ukrainian invasion and defend the streets from Ukrainian guerrillas? Well, it depends on a couple of things. First of all, in today's world, with overhead surveillance, space-based as well as terrestrial, it's quite easy for him, between the Polish border and where he draws this line for the area that he's going to retain, to monitor everything that moves, everything that exists, and target it, which means he can move forward weapon systems that can reach out a couple of hundred, 300, 400 kilometers to deal with any serious threat that manifests itself in those areas. Now, I know he doesn't want to do it because he'd like to get back to the business

of building up the area he currently owns and expanding it and incorporating it, as you point out, into the larger economy. But he can do that. He can sit there using standoff weapons and destroy pretty much anything that shows up. Now, the real question is, what happens in Kiev? Ah, you read my mind. What does Kiev last? How long is it going? Not only what happens in Kiev, what do Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tell the president and tell Zelensky about the stability with which the Russians have

maintained control over these areas? In other words, do they say at some point, hey, we're not helping you anymore. They've already made it clear privately and the Ukrainians inside Zelensky's government have effectively admitted they cannot retake the territory that is now under Russian control. So that's about it. Remember we were talking about, you know, Petraeus and Hertling about these fanciful counteroffensives. No mention was made of retaking any territory. They can't do it. It's impossible. So as long as that is the case, and I think it is right now, I'm sure that Biden has been told that. But let's go back and look at that original purpose. We are there, according to Biden and his administration to quote-unquote damage Russia

and then quote-unquote make it impossible for the Russians to do anything like this in the future assuming of course that the Russians are even remotely wanting to do that well this is a very expensive proposition we are we have problems here at home and we don't need to spend a lot of time on it I'm not an economist but you know how I feel about economists. They're about as competent as astrologers when it comes to long-term forecasting. But I see disaster on the horizon here at home economically, and I think the pressure will ultimately be brought to bear after the midterms to end this. Now, will we formally stand up and say we accept what's happened and we end it? No, of course not. We never do. We'll just act like it's over and we've left. What did we do when Vietnam ended? We left. We left. All right. The mainstream media in America has reported in the

past week or 10 days that Putin sent out directions to those who work for him to find 175,000 more able-bodied young men to join his military. Why is he doing this? Why is this public? First of all, is it true? Why is he doing it? Why is it public? Do they use a draft or do they pay them to join? Well, first of all, I don't even know whether or not that's true. They were scheduled to pick up an additional 132,000 young men through their draft system this year. Does he want more? He may. Does he have the ability to bring in more? Of course he does. But remember, this is a man who does not want to put Russia on a war footing. He doesn't want a war with the West. He knows that if he suddenly decided, well, to hell with this, I'll mobilize the country and we'll just march across Ukraine, that is mana from heaven to the people in Europe and in the United States who

want to depict him as some sort of evil conqueror. He's not interested in that. Right now, I know that they have stood up a number of formations for administrative policing and control of the areas they currently have. That's totally natural. That makes lots of sense. They brought in reservists to replace the regular army formations that have been doing most of the fighting. And now that regular army is back in the battle, as we've discussed. Beyond that, I would be very hesitant to believe what I cannot confirm through official channels, and I can't confirm that. I think I've asked you this before, and I'm going to keep asking it.

What effect, if any, we're now at Labor Day, will winter have in this battle? Well, I'd like to point out that contrary to Petraeus' expectation, it gets very cold in the Crimea. According to General Petraeus, the southern part of Ukraine is not cold in the wintertime. I'm afraid he's dead wrong on that one. I've talked to too many German veterans, Russian veterans, Ukrainians. That part of the world is cold. Is this as cold as the Arctic Circle?

No, but it's very, very cold. I don't know what the weather is going to be like this winter. But if it's a normal winter, it's going to have a big impact on Ukrainians who are going to have a lot of trouble keeping themselves warm. And I say that not about the Ukrainian population in general, although that may be an issue, I don't know, but for their soldiers. It's going to be tough to maintain yourself in that field. Remember, this is wide open territory. This is not jungle. This is not heavily forested. This is not mountainous. It's wide open rolling countryside where, you know, you get to maneuver with all sorts of tanks and self-propelled guns and assault

guns. And you've got lots of overhead surveillance linked to rockets and missiles and loitering munitions. It's very difficult in the winter to hide from all of that. So I just don't, I don't have an easy answer except that I think that Putin will at some point step forward, draw a line when he's, when he thinks he's got everything he wants and call it a day. And I just think he's going to try until the mud, muddy season begins in mid October to finish this thing up and then essentially defend what he's got. I think that's where we're headed. And no one is negotiating. Remember, we wouldn't let anybody negotiate. I mean, you would think at this point the Ukrainians would say, that's it, we've got to negotiate some sort of end to this thing and see what we can hold on to. There aren't even

back-channel negotiations going on in Geneva? Well, not between us and the Russians. And you see the Russians rightly identify us as the people behind everything. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't discussions behind the scenes between Berlin, Moscow, Paris, and Moscow. I'm sure there are. But it's Washington that really calls the tune in the West. Washington is behind Zelensky, and Washington is telling Zelensky to keep fighting. Colonel, are there high-ranking American military who agree with you but cannot speak it out loud? It depends upon your definition of high- high ranking. I'm sure you'll find some officers at the one or two star generals.

Colonels and one or two star generals. Sure, I think you'll find some of them. But they're not going to open their mouths and jeopardize their existence because if you speak out against this stupidity, you're identified as the enemy in the current regime and you'll be expunged.

Whatever future you thought you might have is gone. That's the problem we have at the moment. The people that are leaving us are the seed corn of future victories. Those are the soldiers, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels. They're leaving us. They've left over the stupid vaccination business. They're leaving over the CRT and this affirmative action on steroids, the destruction of any meritocracy. And they're leaving because they're watching this unfold as another disaster that's ultimately going to rebound to our disadvantage. And who or what is replacing them? Well, that's the point. My impression is not the best, you know, because the Army's attitude, in fact, I think most of the services take this attitude. All right, you don't like it here.

Fine, you're out. Next. And we've already said we're dropping standards. We're relaxing standards across the boards to accommodate people that we normally wouldn't take. You know, I see nothing good coming out of this. Not a pretty picture, but certainly, as always, an intellectually honest one. Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Judge. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.