Judging Freedom - Col. Douglas Macgregor: Forecasting Global Security, The Israel Question and WWIII

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

Colonel Douglas Macgregor takes center stage as we delve into the intricacies of global security and its intersection with the Israel question in a dialogue titled "Forecasting Global Security: The Israel Question and WWIII." Drawing on his extensive military expertise, Colonel Macgregor provides unique insights into the potential implications of the Israel question on the broader landscape of international security.#GlobalSecurity#IsraelQuestion#WWIII#Geopolitics#MilitaryInsights#InternationalRelations#StrategicForecasting#SecurityAnalysis#ColonelMacgregor#GlobalAffairs#MilitaryExpertise#PoliticalRealities#GeopoliticalDynamics#FutureOfConflict#securitydialogue #IsraelEthics#MoralJustifications#ThoughtProvoking#EthicalDebate#IsraelPolitics#HistoricalAnalysis#PoliticalInsights#SocialContext#NuancedExploration#EthicalConsiderations#MoralDilemmas#CriticalThinking#IsraelDebate#globalethics #Israel#Hamas#Gaza#IsraelPalestine#MiddleEastConflict#PeaceInTheMiddleEast#GazaUnderAttack#Ceasefire#Jerusalem#PrayForPeaceSee 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 Monday, November 20th, 2023, Thanksgiving week here in America. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now. Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for coming back to the show. Sure. So last week, late last week and over the weekend, the Israeli Defense Forces surrounded and destroyed the major hospital in Gaza, telling us everyone ahead of time that they would discover a Hamas command and control center underneath and catch Hamas fighters. It wasn't a control center and they didn't catch anybody. Is this a failure of intelligence or a deliberate effort to destroy Gaza by destroying a hospital? Well, you know, Judge, to sit here and speculate is probably pointless.

We know what's true and what isn't. It didn't turn out to be what the Israelis anticipated or what perhaps they wanted to find. But in the meantime, the hospital is gone. And I think that's a precursor for what's coming across the boards. I mean, the idea is to now make it impossible for anyone to come back to Gaza who formerly lived there. I think that's the operation. And I think that mission is probably going to be accomplished.

And the goal of the IDF is to extricate and save hostages or to make Gaza unlivable? Well, I think making Gaza unlivable is the top priority. And that's not because they don't care about the hostages. They very much do. The problem is they don't have the knowledge regarding where they are. It's a tough situation to be in. In fact, I would argue that they've been playing catch up from the 7th of October. The whole intelligence apparatus has performed very poorly. So that's where they are. I don't know that there's much more to say about

it other than, yeah, Gaza is going to be flattened. Does the Israeli government not see that the IDF's continued massive cruelties against civilians is likely to produce a regional war, which might very well be detrimental to Israel? Well, what you're asking is whether or not the Israelis believe that they could be the target of a regional war. In other words, that they would have to face a whole series or a group of capable opponents. I don't think they believe that.

And I think this is one of the core problems. Just as we took the position early on, first of all, that the Russians would never invade Ukraine. Secondly, when they did, they didn't know what they were doing and they were in over their heads. Third, that they were incompetent and inept and could never recover from their alleged mistakes up front. And then finally, that the Russian economy was doomed and the society would collapse and revolt and remove Putin. I think you have a similar phenomenon right now in Israel, in Jerusalem. I think the attitude is we're surrounded by mediocrities. They can't organize themselves. They're not capable. We just have to stay the course and get this job done. And we need to get it done quick because we

understand that the support for us around the world will vanish the longer this takes the more hazard it is for us and they're betting very heavily on us obviously that we are their backstop and that our presence offshore and in the region with air and naval power will be enough to persuade the various actors in the region to do nothing, to stand by and watch the population of Gaza either killed or driven out of Gaza. Do you think that the presence of American air and naval power sitting there is enough to deter Hezbollah, Turkey, Jordan from doing something militarily to restrain the Israelis or resist the Israelis? I think that the truth is as follows. No one in that region, neither the Turks nor the Iranians nor any of the Arabs and their governments want

to go to war. It's not just with Israel. They're largely disinterested in war, period. They see their societies as fragile, their economies as fragile. They don't want to sustain the damage to their infrastructure that they know a war with israel and ultimately the united states would entail however they are not fools and they are watching what's happening and they know that this is the first stage in a multi-stage operation designed to create greater israel from the jordan river all the way to the mediterranean they know this the israelis have made that abundantly clear off and on for many years this is not a secret now it's happening it's happening because mr netanyahu judges this is the opportunity opportune time to strike his view is he's got us

as his allies that he effectively is calling the shots and And I think he is. I don't see much evidence that the Biden administration is doing anything other than talking. In the meantime, they're standing by with air and naval power to support the Israelis in the event that things get out of control. Now, I think they probably will. Will they get out of control this month, next month, or in three months? I don't know. But I think that the Israelis are, so to say, burning all of their bridges behind them in the region. Whenever they decide they've done enough, there will be no return to the former set of conditions that they lived under. I want to ask you to speculate as a professional and career military officer, how officers feel and react, not talking about reservists, I'm talking about career military, when they are told they have to kill civilians not as collateral but as a target well i've never had that experience and i don't know that many of us alive today have

i am unconvinced that that's an order being given to the israeli defense force my experience with the professionals in the israeli defense Force is that they are actually very careful to try and minimize civilian loss of life and damage. Now, in this setting, that's an impossibility. It doesn't matter whether or not you're trying to avoid killing or harming civilians. You can't help but do that. It's the density of the population, the numbers of human beings that are essentially lost at sea now they they have nowhere to go except to run and i'm sure that the israeli officers know that but i don't i don't believe in my heart that the israeli officers under any circumstances want to deliberately murder them now i can't speak for every Israeli soldier, reservist, or otherwise carrying a weapon. I'm just saying, based on my experience, the Israeli officers do not feel that way.

Well, they're not doing a very good job of failing to kill civilians. They've killed 13,000 already. Well, let's face it. If you're going to attack from the air in a densely populated area, that's inevitable. There's nothing discretionary about it. And once you move in with ground forces and you take fire from a building above you or you take fire from something in front of you, your predisposition is to immediately swing your gun to forward, load the round and put it in the direction from which the fire came. You're not going to wait around and ask, well, I wonder who else is in that building. And by the way, perhaps that person didn't really mean to shoot at me. That sort of thing doesn't occur to you, Judge. You want to stay alive. So I don't think it's a case of somebody who said, I want to go in and kill as many Arabs as I can. I think it's a case of a lot of soldiers that want to go in there and survive the experience. Why do they drop six 2,000-pound bombs on a refugee camp? That's a different matter. That's a decision at the very highest levels.

That's not something that people on the ground were asked about. That's an Air Force matter. We've done things like that too, Judge. Oh, yes, I know that. Yes, we have. We carpet bombed Germany. We did a lot of carpet bombing. Yeah, but we also did a lot of damage in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

I mean, you know, we had these wedding parties that were attacked and people were killed that had absolutely nothing to do with one of the individuals invited to the wedding. What is the value of international law if it's not going to be enforced and there's no accountability for its patent violation? You just answered your own question. International law is irrelevant unless it's enforced. Who is going to enforce it? Right, right. The problem with the United Nations. We haven't paid much attention to international law over the years.

We're not signatory to UNCLOS, you know, the law of the sea. We haven't signed on for any of these things. So, you know, it's what we choose or choose not to do. And I think that's the case with the Israelis at this point. All I'm saying is that my experience with Israeli army officers is that they do not deliberately kill civilians. But I, if I were in command and I had tanks and armored fighting vehicles and dismounted infantry moving down a street and we took fire from a couple of buildings, I would be very reluctant to send American soldiers or Marines into those buildings to take out the enemy. I would say, the hell with that, and I would level it.

You think we're going to see American Marines on the ground in Gaza? I don't know. I think anything is possible at this stage, and I think that's something I'd like to say because I don't think people understand certain things. First of all, from the standpoint of most American, well, not most Americans, but from the United States, we have no particular strategic interest in who lives in or controls Gaza. I mean, we need to understand that. It doesn't make any difference to us. Why do we care about what happens? Well, that's a different matter. It's now a question of, do we regard the operation that is ongoing as morally appropriate or reprehensible? And I think people are watching this film footage, seeing these images,

and as much as they want to support Israel and think that Israel is justifiably angry at what happened on the 7th of October, they do not think that essentially forcibly expelling 1.7 million Arabs from their homes and destroying the infrastructure that supported them is justified. You know, in foreign affairs, a man named Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a great deal, and he used to say, paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, that the challenge in American foreign policy was to link the contingencies of power with the principles of justice. That's what Americans are trying to do in their minds. I'm not sure the people in Washington are. I'm talking about the American people.

Right, right. I understand what you're saying, but how much killing is too much killing? Well, that's a good question. If Americans could have seen the things that we did in previous wars on television, in other words, in real time, the way you watch it in Israel, I think the Vietnam War would have been over in a couple of years because people would have demanded the withdrawal of our forces, but they didn't. So as we speak, there's growing anxiety in the White House that Israeli military action in Lebanon may be exacerbating tensions there. And the White House has sent an emissary, a fellow that works in the

White House, who was born in Israel, to negotiate with the Israelis. The Israelis are firing as deep as 40 kilometers, 25 miles into Lebanon. So we'll start with the second part of this. Are they trying to provoke Hezbollah or degrade Hezbollah or both? I don't think they're necessarily trying to provoke at this point. I think they're trying to dissuade Hezbollah for entering the conflict more than anything else. There are those voices in the Israeli leadership that would like to make war on Iran, but they are not going to do that unless they can be certain of dragging us into it. They're not fools. If they can't drag us into the war against Iran that they would like to conduct, then that's not going to happen.

So I think it's really, at this point, an effort to dissuade them from going any further. And frankly, that's a message to everyone north of the Latani River, everyone in Lebanon, everyone in Syria, that if you're thinking about involving yourselves in this dispute, you know, we can lay waste to your country as well. This is the way the Israelis think, and this is the way they behaved over many decades, and it's generally worked for them. I don't think it works this time. I think it's backfiring badly. What does this fellow, Amos Hochstein, who is Joe Biden's emissary there, born in Israel but raised in the U.S. and with dual citizenship, what is his goal? What is he trying to negotiate? What is he going to tell Prime Minister Netanyahu? Use smaller bombs, take a few hours off, stop killing people?

We don't know because we're not privileged to whatever instructions he was given. I'm not sure Joe Biden issued any instructions at all. Again, I'm not sure who's in charge. I don't think Joeiden is necessarily truly in charge having said that i i'm very uncomfortable with anyone who is a dual citizen of both israel and the united states representing united states interests i i would have felt more comfortable with someone unconnected to the region either ethnically or religiously we've been down this road before with people of Ukrainian ancestry in Ukraine uh it's it's best that you pick people who are as remote from the area as possible they may know something about it and they should you know one of the reasons that when I was

in graduate school I I chose to look at essentially Soviet military strategy towards Europe and and Europe in general was because I have no connection to it in other words I I wasn't going to be biased in any particular way for or against Poles Russians Germans checks I think it's best if you find someone like that that's a true diplomat. This man is caught in a very difficult position. He's going to be reminded that he is a Jew, like the people on the ground that he's talking to. Well, he's not only a Jew, he's an Israeli. Yeah, of course. But he's going to be reminded of that. Don't you understand us? Don't you understand what's at stake? So I don't know what he's being told to do,

but thus far, whenever the administration has spoken about problems on the ground that they don't like, it's been talk, no action. No one has stood up and said, my dear friends in Israel, if you persist in this course of action, I'm going to have to withdraw U.S. forces from the area. Should Joe Biden do that? Should he pick up the phone and tell that to Netanyahu in an effort to stop the slaughter in an hour? That he could, and I think he probably should. I think he should essentially say, look, we've come as far with you as we can. You know, we have moral obligations. We are not insensitive to the sufferings of people who may not be Israelis, who are in fact Arabs, Muslims, and Christians. We're not siding against you. We're simply telling

you that we've come as far as we can. We cannot move any further. I think Israelis in the past have heard that argument. They haven't always liked it, but I think they understand it. Mr. Netanyahu has never heard that. I don't think he will from this administration. I think whatever they say publicly is just irrelevant. They are going to stay the course and try to give the Israelis the time to wipe out Gaza as a living space for the people that were there and try to herd whoever survives into Egypt or somewhere else. Colonel, if what the Israeli military is doing in Gaza is a war crime, in my view it is, you're on the military side, I'm on the legal side, and if it's being done with the knowledge,

consent, and support of the American government, And if it's being done with the knowledge, consent, and support of the American government, and if it's being done with American weapons and ammunition, is not the American administration as liable for war crimes as is the Israeli? I suppose you could make that argument, but as we said from the very beginning, it's meaningless. We're not a signatory to a whole range of treaties that would involve this. We don't support the international court of justice in The Hague. You could find plenty of reasons to prosecute Americans for things that were done in Iraq and probably Afghanistan. We're not signatories. We don't believe it. We don't

support it. It's never going to happen. So I think the question is not relevant, Judge, to be perfectly blunt. Well, we are signatories to the UN Charter, which we wrote. We are signatories to the Geneva Conventions, which we wrote. So these are basic rules of behavior for the military, and they prohibit the active aggressive support of what the Israeli Defense Forces are doing, and we're supporting it. But the argument that will be launched in your direction is a very straightforward one. What are we supposed to do about the building that was destroyed? What are we supposed to do about these things? Now, you brought up the 2,000 pound bombs dropped on a refugee camp.

That's a much different animal, let's face it. But having said that, in the rest of these things, you're going to do whatever is in the interest of your force to minimize your losses, and you try not to kill civilians who happen to be there but you're going to get the argument well if they if they had any sense we warned them to leave they shouldn't have been there and i just i just don't think that you can make that argument in a court of law against the israeli defense force well i don't think this is ever going to get to uh to a court of law primarily because it just doesn't work that way. Is Vladimir Putin going to be prosecuted in the ICC? Of course, the International Criminal Court, of course not. But when you talk about right and wrong and common decency and morality, the Israelis have lost that argument, have they not? Oh, I think if they haven't lost it, they're losing it pretty fast.

Now, what's really reprehensible to me, though, are the people that say, well, they're winning on the ground, but they're losing the moral high ground. I don't see how you can do one and not the other. You know, it's incomprehensible to me. If you're losing the moral high ground, then whatever fight you're pushing is not going to work anyway. And again, this is my point at the beginning. In this sort of no holds bar, we've had it. Gaza has to go. The people there have been a permanent threat to us.

We're not going to tolerate this anymore. They've all got to us. We're not going to tolerate this anymore. They've all got to go. That is the end of any future relationship that Israel could possibly have with anyone in the region. That's the problem. There is no way forward after that. And at some point, and I can't predict when, the region will rise up and they are going to have a tough time surviving it. Over the weekend, an op-ed appeared in Washington Post with the president's signature on it, in which he stated effectively, I think I'm summarizing him fairly, we are wedded at the hip to Israel. We are their greatest ally.

Oh, by the way, we want a two-state solution. Now, you talk about not being able to have it both ways. I mean, this is inconceivable with the present government of Israel, is it not? Absolutely. And I think that's one of the things that Mr. Netanyahu set out to permanently destroy, Judge, the two-state solution. I see no evidence for that in the future at all. And since we know that the two will never live together within the framework of one state, well, it's over. This is now a war between two implacable enemies, and neither will ever reconcile with the other.

So when Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel will provide the security for Gaza, that's not what he wants. He doesn't want to run Gaza, to govern Gaza. He wants the Palestinians gone so that Israel can be extended to the Mediterranean. And he views this as the opportunity to do it. And by the way, as long as the war keeps going, he stays in office and he stays a free man. Well, the last point is one that you've made frequently. And I just don't know enough about him to make that assumption. I have to believe that whatever he is, he's an Israeli patriot.

I think he believes he's acting in the interest of his people in his country now as far as the rest of it is concerned you're correct this is this is over uh and what you will have is israeli security in gaza and it won't be a giant problem because there won't be anybody there who's an Arab is their life beyond Revenge well someone said if you're going to embark on Revenge you'd better dig two graves and I think this is the problem for the Israelis this is why I I've argued for a ceasefire you know I'm one of these people I've been several times. I can think very highly of the Israeli Defense Force. That's where I've spent most of my time. I like these people. I'd like to see them survive. And I'm afraid that they are, they're killing the two-state solution, and they're trying to dig one grave. They don't realize they're digging another one, and that's for them. Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure, my dear friend.

I'm glad you see it that way, Judge. Here's how I see it. Here's how I see it. About a quarter of a million people are watching, and they deeply appreciate the analysis from your very cultured, educated brain and from your lifetime of experience in the military, and I am foremost among those who appreciate it. I also enjoy, of course, our camaraderie and our friendship, no matter what we're discussing. Well, I think lots of chickens are coming home to roost here in the United States. And it may not be this administration that signals their intention to pull out.

Right. Mr. Netanyahu to fend for himself. But our economy may fail to perform. The financial situation may deteriorate ahead of that. And right now, we have a foolish administration that continues to talk about, as you heard Janet Yellen the other day, oh, we can afford two wars. I listen to people saying, well, we can afford three wars. We can always go to war with China over Taiwan. We can go to war with Russia. We can go to war with the entire Islamic world if necessary. This is all insane. It's nonsense. And we're governed by people who are the captives of magical thinking. And frankly, I think they're all whistling past the graveyard. And the graveyard is where these people are going to end up. I'm talking about the people in Washington,

as well as the people right now in Israel who are pushing this. You know, I was going to say thank you and we'll see you next time. Give me a few more minutes. Give us a few more minutes. There are other graveyards here. So as we speak, the Secretary of Defense of the United States is in Kiev meeting with President Zelensky. On Friday, the Foreign Minister of Great Britain, who is the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, made his first official trip as foreign minister to Kiev. What are they telling him? Surely they can't be telling him we have your back,

because what he needs, the Congress is not going to give. The British can't give unless they're going to send British troops there. He needs human beings more than anything else. Am I right? Yeah, well, he needs more than that, because you just can't put a human being into uniform. It takes time to train somebody and make them effective inside a unit. I think what they're telling him is designed to do two things. First, they want to put a happy face on the dead rat. The war is lost. It's over.

Avdivka is going to fall if it hasn't already. The Russians are going to sweep up to the Dnieper. They may well drive right into Kiev or Kiev. And so I think the second thing is that they're going to tell him, it's time for you to step down, Mr. Zelensky. You are the face of the war. Someone else has to come in here, pick up the pieces, meet with the Russians, sign the document that turns over the terrain, territory, whatever that Russia wants and end this war because we are not in a position to support you anymore. I think that's what's being said privately. And if he does that, does he face a threat from the

Nazis on his right and in his military, a threat to not only his tenure as president, but his life on earth? I wouldn't be surprised. I don't see a great deal of sympathy for him. He's standing on a mountain of lies. That's the problem in Washington. People are standing on a mountain of lies. They haven't told the American people the truth about anything. And that's the problem with Zelensky. Only the people in Ukraine have figured it out. Ukrainians have discovered what's happening. They know. They see the press gangs.

They know how many people have died. And they want an end to it. So his problem is not just satisfying the desire of his countrymen to end the war. He's going to be the target of retribution. I'd be surprised if he survives this. Even if he manages to get out of the country, I rather suspect someone will give him the Trotsky treatment, in other words, an ice pick through the skull. Correct. Correct. Colonel, a happy Thanksgiving to you and your family, and much gratitude from the audience and from your humble correspondent.

Oh, leave the ice. What are you talking about, humble correspondent? Leave the ice pick alone, whatever you do, and have a good Thanksgiving. Thank you, Colonel. All the best. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye.

He is a great man, and I deeply appreciate his candor. And I know all of you, all of you do. We're up to 237,000 subscriptions. I think we'll hit 240 by Thursday, which is Thanksgiving. But of course our goal is 250 by Christmas. My gratitude.

That's a three day week. We have some surprises for you on Thanksgiving and the day after, but we're trying to get you. And I think we'll succeed all of our regulars Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of this week. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!