Judging Freedom - COL. Douglas Macgregor: Can Israel Survive Itself?

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

COL. Douglas Macgregor: Can Israel Survive Itself?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, September 18th, 2024. Our dear friend, Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now. Colonel McGregor, thank you. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you for your time. Colonel, about a week ago at this time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Kiev with his British counterpart, Defense Minister David Lemme, and the two of them at a press conference with former Ukrainian President Zelensky were intimating that President Zelensky's request for the West, NATO, Great Britain, and the United States are at war In fact, the White House specifically said on Friday morning, late last week, that there would be no such announcement on Friday to date. No announcement has come. What do you think happened? Do you think the Defense Department said to the President, don't be out of your mind, we're not ready for this? Do you think people listened to what Vladimir Putin said and thought- Oh, I think they very definitely listened to what Vladimir Putin said and thought oh I I think they very definitely listened

to President Putin there's no question about it he made it unambiguously clear that if targets inside Russia were now struck with uh whatever long-range strike weapons we give the Ukrainians that that would essentially be a war with Russia between Russia and NATO and of course between Russia and the United States my impression is that this administration would like to keep this what I would call diminishing phony war going because it is phony right now you've got over 600,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers untold damage to the power grid. The hospitals are overflowing. The place is a catastrophe.

But we want to keep this going through the election. But beyond that, I think people right now in Washington are genuinely afraid. And I think they told the Central Intelligence Agency and MI6 to back off because they're really running the war. How serious was the threat? Not how serious was it perceived, but how serious was it in reality? What do you think President Putin would have done? Would he have considered striking the American mainland? Yes, I think he would, but I don't think he would have done it initially. I think the first wave of attacks would have been hypersonic missiles launched against targets in Europe that are NATO and U.S. targets. Everything from Ramstein Air Base to Grafenwoehr to any number of, you know, supply depots, railheads, and other aerodromes where aircraft can be assembled for use against Russia. So I think that's what you would have seen, not nuclear weapons initially, but hypersonic missiles.

And of course, we can't shoot them down. They're coming in at roughly 5,000 miles per hour or more. So there's no defense against them. Colonel, you were once an official in the Defense Department. Do you think that officials in the Defense Department actually went to the White House and said, stop listening to intel? We can't deal with this. Putin is serious. It's possible, but I have no way of knowing. And, you know, thus far, Secretary, the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin,

has been a go-along, get-along guy. He really hasn't raised strenuous objections to very much. But it's possible. I certainly know that senior officers in the Air Force and the Army, I know, absolutely have raised questions about the wisdom of this. And it probably pointed out what you just said, that we have no defense against these hypersonic missiles. Colonel, yesterday, Ukrainian drones, this may actually have happened early today, European time, destroyed a Russian missile warehouse in a place called Toropets, T-O-R-O-P-E-T-S, Russia, destroying 300 Iskander missiles and other anti-aircraft munitions. The explosion was so enormous, it was detected on seismograph meters in the area. What does this tell you? Does it tell you that the crushing defeat the Ukrainians suffered

in Kyrgyzstan was not enough to teach them to stay out of Russia, or do they really think they're going to accomplish something by an offensive attack like this? Judge, I think we have to understand that this is a war that is largely being conducted today by the CIA and MI6 in London. Now, they've had NATO senior officers give them extraordinarily bad advice, starting with the man at the top all the way down to the two-star and one-star levels in the U.S. Army. So there's no question about that.

But the war at this point is really in the hands of the CIA. I don't think the Ukrainians per se are doing very much except dying in great numbers. And remember, this is more evidence for what President Putin mentioned when he spoke publicly about what would happen if we struck targets deep inside Russia. He said, we know that without United States intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities in space, without the communications capabilities, without trained technicians on the ground, intelligence and uniformed military personnel, the Ukrainians couldn't do very much. He knows that. So this is just another nail in

the coffin of our relationship, not just with Russia, but I think with everybody in Europe. We're making things worse at a point in time where, in the interest of the Ukrainian people, this should be scaled back dramatically, and we should be concerned about humanitarian aid for Ukraine, not more weaponry. But the CIA is operating this almost in isolation from any strict guidance. So I hope seriously that Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Blinken, President Biden and others have made it emphatically clear

that we will not tolerate the use of these strike weapons against targets inside Russia because if it continues, we will be treated to a hail of those hypersonic missiles and they'll come quickly, suddenly and dramatically. And they can't be shot down? No. It's over 5,000 miles per hour.

The fastest speed at Mach speed is about 7,600 miles per hour. We rarely see that. But right now, from 4,500 up to about 6,000 miles per hour, those missiles are untouchable. By the time you have acquired it, it's vanished. You know, you saw the Houthis who fired a missile 1,300 miles and it reached its target inside of 12 minutes. I mean, that's astonishingly fast. We just can't keep up with it. We can't track it because your radars have to operate at light speed to stay ahead of the missile that you've detected. So right now, no, we can't shoot them down. Is Ukraine on the verge of collapse? Is it limping? I'll use this phrase, limping toward Election Day. in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your

schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Oh, I think the place is on life support. It's worse than that. This is a comatose patient, very nearly, and the doctors are now trying to breathe for the patient. That's essentially what we're trying to say. Nothing would be happening if it were not for our intelligence networks, our technicians, intelligence officers, and military advisors on the ground. This would your side, and you are welcome to brush his hair. Cut number seven. As for the role the Ukrainians could themselves play in stability and security in the Euro-Atlantic area, it's obvious. Thanks to the heroism of the Ukrainian

forces, they've been fighting for more than two years, almost three years. They are the most accomplished armed forces in the whole continent. It's easy to see how they could play

a very, very role in in peace and stability on the european continent one of the arguments i think we should make to our american friends is if they want to if they want to take back some u.s troops from the european theater and and save a few billion a lot of billion uh mike uh then I'm sure the Ukrainians, having defeated the Russians, and there's nobody more effective at defeating the Russians than the Ukrainians, I'm sure the Ukrainians would be only too happy to backfill in Europe. Anyway, those are some of the things, some of the ways in which I think Ukraine can be a force for stability. Mike, to whom he refers, is seated next to him,

former CIA director and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Delusional? Well, let's put it this way. I think that Boris Johnson is by far the most accomplished clown in the NATO circus. There's nobody who is capable of more outrageous statements and behavior than Johnson. You know, there's a funny sidebar to this whole thing. If you notice his hair,

sadly, that's very common in Great Britain. And we used to see British officers when I was at Supreme Headquarters of Light Powers Europe would show up for group photos, and you'd have all these British officers mixed in with the rest of us. And I remember the photographer, who I think was actually a Belgian, and he said, can you please ask the Englishman with the fuzzy hair to move a little to the right? And then everybody looked at him and he said, which one? You know, everybody looks like Boris Johnson in uniform. It's really bizarre.

No, this is absurd nonsense. The man is completely outrageous. He's reading from a script. He doesn't know anything, doesn't know what he's talking about, and he doesn't care. And unfortunately, I think Pompeo falls into the same club. These people are shameless warmongers. It pays them. It rewards them. The people that want war pay them very well. That's the catastrophe we're dealing with right now. Let's not forget the role that Boris Johnson played in this war, perhaps more significant than anybody else in Istanbul because we and the Americans have your backs. We'll give you what you need and we'll take out the Putin government with you.

Well, if there was a shred of humanity in Zelensky and he cared at all about the people of Ukraine, he would have long since thrown us overboard and declared an immediate ceasefire because his country, his countrymen are being destroyed. His nation is being destroyed. I don't know that there will be much of Ukraine left when this is over. Everybody seems to think that millions upon millions of Ukrainians will return home from abroad. I don't think so. This is a catastrophe. Is the number of dead soldiers, Ukrainian dead soldiers, up to 600,000? That's a whole generation. Yes, absolutely.

These are numbers that we haven't seen since the First World War. And that's the kind of battlefield damage that's been inflicted on Ukraine. And you've got one side that has perfected the system of linking strike forces, rocket artillery, tactical ballistic missiles, conventional artillery to overhead surveillance and drones. And the other side doesn't have that capability. The other side is effectively blinded in most cases at any given point in time and depends entirely on our space-based surveillance.

So they've been slaughtered in great numbers. And again, you know, who would let this happen? Who is a head of state? It's incomprehensible. What has become of their invasion and occupation of 500 square miles in Kursk? Well, first of all, there was never any occupation of four or five hundred square miles or kilometers or anything else. These areas are densely forested and largely devoid of population. Most of the Russians who lived in those villages have been pulled out,

and what's left is being slaughtered. I mean, at least two or three hundred tanks, hundreds of armored fighting vehicles. In fact, the Pentagon, or 300 tanks, hundreds of armored fighting vehicles. In fact, the Pentagon, I'm told, has now been asked to order another 200 Bradley's armored fighting vehicles for potential delivery to Ukraine. 200 more. I mean, this is an unending catastrophe. We're just pouring more and more money, resources and equipment and blood into a bottomless pit, all to prevent people like Biden and others in Washington, Lindsey Graham and the rest, from standing up and admitting we were wrong. We made a terrible mistake. We destroyed Ukraine. And we've now helped to make Russia into the most powerful military state probably in the world, certainly as far as its army is concerned and its rocketry and missiles.

Transitioning to Israel, Colonel, yesterday the Israelis caused about 3,300 or so pagers to explode in the pockets, pocketbooks nearby Hezbollah people and people in Lebanon and in Syria. About 2,700 have been injured, about 12,000, excuse me, about 12, 12 are dead, including two children. This morning, there were about another 200 of these exploding in a different part of Lebanon. Is this the beginning of a major regional confrontation between Lebanon and its allies and Israel? I think so. The Israelis have said that the reason they initiated this cyber attack, probably one of the largest in history, was because the Arabs were beginning to catch on. In other words, people in Hezbollah and in Lebanon and probably the Iranians had begun to figure out or at least detect that something like this could happen. And so they felt that they had to initiate it quickly in order to

derive some benefit from it. I think that was an unfortunate decision because this attack will not now necessarily benefit from what just happened. Nobody who was killed is indispensable. You know, Charles de Gaulle used to say the cemeteries are full of indispensable people, and he was right. But this is a setback. But on the other hand, this is a capability that's been with us for some time. People need to understand this. I mean, it's not difficult to cause these lithium batteries to explode. There are ways to do it. We have a case, at least in 1989, of a Palestinian Arab who was identified as having something to do with a bombing in Israel. And he picked up his phone in 1989, and the phone exploded, almost blew his head off.

So this has been with us for a while. The problem with these kinds of capabilities is that once you use them, it's over. You've gotten about all you're going to get out of it. In other words, there's no surprise left. There's no real benefit. And once you use it, everybody knows about it. So you have to be very judicious when employing these kinds of things. We have a lot of programs in the United States and in NATO that can do these kinds of things. But you've got to be careful when and how you use them. What did the Israelis gain from what they did yesterday? Gain

for them? Well, I think they thought that they were going to do a lot of damage to Hezbollah and its fighters and some of its leaders, and they probably have done some of that. I think they've also made new enemies. People that were not terribly interested in them in the past are now resolute enemies forever. This is the danger because from the standpoint of the people that pick up the phone or have the pager in their pocket and the damn thing explodes, this is a terrorist attack. This is not seen as part of warfare as we understand it. So from the vantage point of people on the ground in Lebanon that are suffering, this was another, quote-unquote, Israeli terrorist act. Colonel, General Kirilla, the commander of CENTCOM, visited the Israeli defense minister and Prime Minister Netanyahu twice last week.

What does that tell you? Is it, we got your back no matter what happens in Lebanon, or is it, we don't have your back if you're going to move into Lebanon? I think the issue right now is not whether or not we're going to support them. We've made it very clear that if they go into Lebanon and this war widens, that we will support them. So I don't think there's much question there. The problem is, how long can we keep all the ships at sea? You know, people seem to think that aircraft carrier battle groups are self-contained entities that can sail around for months at a time. That's not true. They have to be routinely provisioned with food, fuel, repair parts, everything that you can imagine. And I

think the timing is very, very acute right now. And I think we're going to see this offensive in the Lebanon start fairly quickly now because we're telling Mr. Netanyahu, we can't sit around waiting for you to do something. So if you're going to do something, you'd better do it quickly because we can't be out here much longer. So I think that's really the rub. The other thing is that we're worried about resupply, about the numbers of missiles that we have and replenishing those. Remember, we have lost a lot of materiel and missiles and equipment in Ukraine that we cannot easily replenish right now. So I think all of those matters are playing into the discussion. But no, we're going to support the Israelis. There's no

question about that. Colonel, between Ukraine and Israel, how low are America's military supplies? You know, Judge, I'd have to speculate. but I think they're probably dangerously low, given the destruction that we've witnessed. And I'm not sure that they were ever that high. You've got to understand that when, for instance, Desert Storm occurred back in 1990-91, we were sitting on mountains of munitions and equipment. Those mountains have largely gone away. We've either disposed of them because they were obsolete, or we've used them up in Ukraine in particular. So I don't think we have the limitless stocks that we once did. In fact, I think they're very low. And again, you're now pushing the Russians and potentially others into a position where they may feel they have to intervene to protect

themselves. In other words, at some point, if you push hard enough, you get what you've seen in eastern Ukraine. Everybody knows this was not an unprovoked assault by Putin. He went in there as a matter of self-defense for Russia and to protect the Russians that were on the ground in eastern Ukraine. He discovered that what he thought was bad was infinitely worse than he anticipated. And so he's had to go through

a massive military mobilization and buildup. Now he has a tremendous capability that he did not have in February of 2022. But we don't. We don't have that. We have no surge capability. If the president of the United States directed the Secretary of Defense,

you know, produce 2,000 missiles, 2,000 ATACMs, 2,000 Patriot missiles, 3,000 strike systems, SM-3, whatever it is, we can't do it very quickly. We don't have that ability. Going back to Israel, the Israeli government leaked the fact that Prime Minister Netanyahu is contemplating firing Defense Minister Gallant and replacing him with another right-wing oriented person like Smotrich or Gavir, not Smotrich or Ben-Gavir, but someone like that. Do we care? Is it going to make any difference? At the same time, this retired Major General Gadi Shamni says, our soldiers are winning every tactical encounter with Hamas, but we're losing the war and in a big way. This is a recently retired IDF Major General.

What's your take on all this, Colonel? Well, I think in broad terms, the General is right. But I think it's a mistake to assume that every encounter is a win for the Israelis. It's not. And remember that they have very few people that they can afford to lose at any given point in time. The last time they went to war and suffered casualties on the scale that they're suffering or have been suffering to date was in 1973. They had 2,000 dead at that point, and that was a severe setback to Israel. It only has a limited manpower pool based on the 6.2 million Jews that lived there. Now we've had this issue of forcing portions of the Jewish population that don't want to fight to fight as part of the IDF. So I think he's essentially correct.

I don't think Galant's departure will help Netanyahu. I also am not sure that it's going to make much difference to him. He's really in charge. And unless you remove him, I don't see much changing. And even then, the Israelis are in a tough position. They've essentially said that whatever happens, they can never accept a Palestinian state. And I think they all know that if they back away from their original goals, which is to essentially eliminate the Arab populations in the West Bank and Gaza, that's really where they want to go,

and now in southern Lebanon, that they're going to have to accept something else. So I think the Israeli government, the Israeli people, the Israeli Defense Force, everyone is in the same boat. It's either we win or we go down with the ship, which is a terrible position to be in, and no one in Washington seems to be interested in helping them out. I mean, we think we're helping them by giving them anything they want. In fact, we've put them on a road to suicide, in my judgment. Foreign Minister Gallant appears to have become, excuse me, Defense Minister Gallant, the one that Prime Minister Netanyahu was contemplating replacing, seems to have become the voice of the IDF to the prime minister. We're exhausted. We're not winning. We're not ready to go into Lebanon. Are they ready

to go into Lebanon as a fighting force? Well, without the hard data, in other words, to look at the equipment sets and the numbers of people who've been killed and wounded as a result of the war in Gaza and whatever else has happened in terms of the Hezbollah strikes, I can't be absolutely certain, but I think I can say that this has lasted longer than any other conflict in which Israel has been engaged. Their economy is very definitely in ruins. They are subsisting on billions of dollars of American money to stay afloat and money from the diaspora, wealthy Jews overseas. So we know that. And then if you look at the numbers of people that they can mobilize and have in the IDF, a substantial number of these people have been wounded or killed. So I would say they probably aren't ready for what Hezbollah has to offer.

But, you know, I don't have the hard data. No one does. I mean, they're not going to volunteer the hard data to us. Colonel, two nights ago on MSNBC, the former United States senator, former Secretary of State, former Democratic candidate for president, and graduate of Yale Law School, Hillary Rodham Clinton, told Rachel Maddow that it was acceptable for the Justice Department to prosecute Americans who, traffic and propaganda. I guess that's Orwellian for speak a language and utter ideas that the government doesn't want to hear. Is the freedom of speech under attack when Mrs. Clinton can say something like that with a serious face? Oh, indisputably. Remember that the people that we're dealing with right now on the left, people like Hillary Clinton and her colleagues, the closest analog that I can come to them

involve people like Trotsky and Lenin, Kamin-F, Radek, these Bolsheviks who reached the conclusion early on that they had a monopoly on truth, that theirs was not simply the right way, it was the only way. And that's very much the mentality of the hard left. And so anyone who stands up and contradicts anything that they consider to be truth, objective truth, remember that's what the old Soviets, the old communist part of the Soviet Union used to talk about, objective truth, then they're the enemy. And, you know, this is not new, Judge. This has been going on for a long time. And shutting down anyone who doesn't agree with you is ultimately the goal. And so, yes, free speech is very much under attack. There's no question. I mean, the federal government just obtained indictments against Russians for being in Russia, working for a Russian network, and articulating

views on that network. It's inconceivable to me how those human beings violated American law. Ah, but they're Russian and American citizens, and they own real estate in Virginia. Yeah. Well, look, the law doesn't mean a great deal to these people. They're only interested in power and gaining power, retaining power, never giving it up. They're very unhappy with the way things are going right now and are desperate to cling to power long past November. So they will opt for any device at their disposal to stay there. And they're convinced that they're right and everyone else is wrong. They're the ones who've opened our borders and allowed millions and millions of people we know nothing about

to enter our country. These are the same people who are releasing criminals onto the streets, which incidentally is something the Bolsheviks did when they took power. In fact, they not only released criminals, but organized them to help them kill their enemies. So this is not new. This is sick. It's deranged. Every American should be very concerned about this and up in arms about it. It's not just free speech. Free speech is, you know, a keystone in the edifice of our rights, the Bill of Rights. We all know that. It's more than that. It's the destruction of our republic. It's the ruin of

our country. And so we have to stand up against this. I hope that we will. Colonel, what have you been up to lately besides your many appearances here and on other venues that mainstream media doesn't want to hear about. Well, that's quite a question, Judge. You know, you and I met at Fox when we were both welcome there. Neither of us is welcome there any longer. No, no, you don't want to go in the green room there anymore. You may never come out. There'll be somebody cuffing you and carting you off, I guess. Look, we at Our Country, Our Choice have made the decision to fully join this

new social media platform called Republic. And you can see it on the screen. And it has a discount code that you can identify because this new social media platform is a grassroots free speech platform. This is a place where you can go and express your views about things that are happening where you live, in your county, in your town, your city, your state. And you can see what other people are saying and you can plug into organizations of like-minded people. Now, this is not all free. You can go on and look and see what's there for nothing. But if you want to join this and actually become an heroic figure, a courageous figure in your own right, in your community, and begin the process of taking back

control of our country at the lowest level, we're talking about grassroots, county and city, state, township, then this is a good place for you to go because you can do that. You can organize on this and you can speak the truth and you will not be canceled. You will not be censored. Republic has control of its own servers. There is no big corporate money involved. They don't take any advertisement from the big corporations. So if you're not paying for advertising and you're completely self-funded, you can't be shut down easily. Now, I'm sure that the powers in Washington will be very upset with this as it grows in size and impact. But right now, I think this is a very important instrument for us.

This is the defense of free speech. I hope people get on it. When you go to sleep at night, do you worry about World War III? Well, I think we should all worry, as long as we have nuclear weapons in the ground at sea or in the air, and we do, that there's always a chance for a nuclear exchange. But I do think that Washington right now, especially in the White House, they are genuinely afraid. I think they realize they've pushed this envelope far enough

and can't go any further. And I think President Putin made that clear. You know, the worst part of all of this is that I've begun to think that the only adult in the room right now is President Putin, because he's the one who's exercised the restraint. He's the one who has limited this war, contained it, and prevented it from becoming a regional conflict. We seem to be still intent in flirting with this regional war in Europe, and we're pushing hard for a regional war in the Middle East. I think it's very dangerous, and we should back off. Colonel Douglas McGregor, as always, thank you very much. Thank you for letting me pick your brain. Thank you for telling us about Republic and the benefits of that venue and that program,

and I hope you'll come back and join us again soon. All the best, Colonel. Thanks, Judge. Appreciate it. Of course. Coming up later today, another Colonel, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at two o'clock, Phil Giraldi at three o'clock, and at four o'clock this afternoon, Aaron Maté, Judge Nap the Politano for judging freedom. I'm