Judging Freedom - Col. Douglas Macgregor: How ill-equipped is the US for two wars?

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Are Big Donors Trying to Buy this War? About Col. Douglas Macgregor:Col. Douglas Macgregor USA (Ret.) is a decorated combat veteran with a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Virginia. He is the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration and the author of five books.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, October 25th, 2023. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now. Colonel, always a pleasure. My dear friend, thank you for your time and your insight. What is likely to happen if the Israeli Defense Force conducts a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza? Well, I don't know what a full-scale ground invasion is. That's hard to estimate I think they they're talking about the use of 10 000 troops I imagine most of them are very very carefully trained and they'll go into northern Gaza I I think you're going to provoke an enormous reaction from the Muslim world virtually everybody everybody from Indonesia to Morocco is going to be extremely upset. And I think we're going to see the front

against Israel in the region begin to coalesce into a real military alliance against Israel. And I think that's probably now going to include Turkey, which has always been my greatest concern, not Iran. I want to talk to you about Iran, but you mentioned Turkey. The president of Turkey, President Erdogan, just a few hours ago, gave a very incendiary address to the Turkish parliament. We've picked what we think are the most illuminating two minutes of it. I'm going to run it now. He's obviously speaking in Turkish, so I will be reading the English subtitles.

You'll be able to see them. Everybody watching us will be able to see them, but a lot of people hear this show rather than watch it, and I want them to be able to understand what President Erdogan has said, so here we go. Israel's attacks on Gaza and those who carry them out in terms of those who support them are a situation that signify both murderousness and mental illness. We have no problem with the Israeli state, but I don't approve of its cruelty in carrying out its style like an organization instead of a state.

In this picture, the tears that Western powers shed for Israel while turning a blind eye to the cruelty in Gaza is nothing but the biggest example of fraud. Hamas is not a terrorist organization, but a liberation group, a group of Mujahideen that is fighting to protect its soil and its citizens. It is fighting to protect its soil and its citizens. First of all, all sides need to take their hands off the trigger and a ceasefire needs to be declared at once. Both Israel's attacks on Gaza and other areas need to stop, as well as the missiles fired on Israeli soil. Direct or indirect talks for the release of hostages need to begin, and this issue needs to reach a conclusion rapidly. The Rafah border gate certainly needs to be kept open continuously for humanitarian aid.

For the war not to spread, all actors need to act responsibly, and forces outside the region need on Netanyahu's government for the Israeli state to return to common sense. I would like to remind of the need to not continue these developments with an understanding of the cross against the crescent. Are you surprised at his bellicosity? No, actually, I was very pleased with his restraint when he first came forward and offered to mediate. And I was hoping that Washington, if not Israel, would take it seriously and accept his offer. Now what he's done, setting aside his actual words,

is he set the stage for eventual Turkish military intervention into this regional conflict. He's warning the Israelis and he's warning us that you're playing with fire and you're going to get a full-scale war. That's the message. I hope we get it. Are we, by putting an aircraft carrier and support vessels, one of them has 2,000 Marines in it, we understand, or on it,

in the eastern Mediterranean, and another one either in the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea, attempting to provoke people like President Erdogan and the mullahs that run the government of Iran? No, I think we think, inaccurately I would argue, that the presence of our offshore naval power will act as a deterrent to the Turks, to the Iranians, to others in the region that might otherwise become involved in a confrontation with Israel it's not going to make any difference and no one ashore is going to pay much attention to what we do at sea there's only so much that Naval power can do we have 90 Jets that means that probably 30 or 40 at any given point in time can be kept in the air,

especially over northern Israel where Hezbollah is located, because that's, I'm told, the plan to use our air power to reinforce that. Now, we have some B-52s in the region, and conceivably they could be employed. But we have to reckon with the very high probability that the s-400s which are sitting in syria effectively northern lebanon will be turned on in which case the air defense capability will be substantial and we would lose aircraft but losing aircraft is one thing it's really setting the stage for a larger regional war that's the issue right now. And we always tend to forget the Turks have the largest army in NATO,

very large air force. They don't have as many missiles and rockets in their arsenal as Iran does. But if you put Iran together with Turkey and they end up in a coalition that includes the peninsular Arabs, ultimately Egypt, even Jordan, which has, like Egypt, tried to develop and cultivate a good relationship with Israel, then the stage is set for something that I think could end up destroying the Israeli state. And that's my greatest concern.

That's why I've said we've got to intervene to save Israel from itself, because Mr. Netanyahu is on the path to Armageddon. How do we save Israel from itself? Does Joe Biden call up Bibi Netanyahu and say you can't do this? Does Secretary of Defense Austin say to Defense Minister Galland, we're going home because we think you're shooting yourself in the foot? Well, the issue is this. You have, on the one hand, an understandable and entirely justified interest on the part of Israel to destroy Hamas. I don't know of anybody who disagrees with that. I certainly don't.

I'm 100% behind whatever can be done to destroy Hamas. I don't know of anybody who disagrees with that. I certainly don't. I'm 100% behind whatever can be done to destroy Hamas. The only person that apparently disagrees with that is President Erdogan, who thinks they're a liberation organization. Well, a couple of days ago, he took a different position. Now, suddenly, they become holy warriors defending their ground, which I think is very scary because that makes it very clear that he has unambiguously aligned himself now with the opponents of Israel. He had not done that before. But I think it takes a president who has the authority and the strength to tell the Israeli government, no, you cannot go into Gaza and execute the plans that you

currently have. Now, we've had this before. Richard Nixon made it abundantly clear that we would not tolerate an Israeli presence on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal. Some of you may remember that we crossed, or the Israelis crossed that canal, and then were withdrawn back to the other side and eventually produced a very good agreement between Egypt and Israel. And of course, you know, that's another concern. Why would you want to put that at risk right now? The Egyptians have tried very hard to work with Israel. In fact, we know that the Egyptian general in military intelligence alerted the Israelis to the possibility of this Hamas attack. At least that's the public record says that.

So that's another problem. You know, if you've got a population that's enraged, and that's the case all over the Muslim world right now, certainly in Egypt, how do you, General Sisi, who's leading Egypt, suppress the tendency to say we must defend and protect our brothers in Gaza? Egypt doesn't want a war with Israel, but how do you keep them out under the circumstances? I think it's the same thing for Jordan. I mean, the king of Jordan has done the same thing, tried to cultivate a good and positive relationship with Israel. But they all say the same thing, tried to cultivate a good and positive relationship with Israel. But they all say the same thing. Collective punishment does not equate to Israeli security. It destroys it. That's the problem. So you've got to have a president that calls up and simply says, we can't do that.

If you insist upon this, we will withdraw our naval forces. You are on your own. On the other hand, if you pull back, we'll reconsider what our options are, what can be done, then we'll remain and continue to support you. That's a tough thing for him to do, given the power and influence that the Israelis have in Washington, D.C. Do you think that the neocons who have heretofore prevailed upon President Biden in the Russia-Ukraine confrontation are itching, like Senator Lindsey Graham, to have a fight with Iran? I think it's very obviously the case. I mean, when you look at somebody like Lindsey Graham, and there are many, many others, you can go back and look at someone like Norman Poteretz, who used to advise John McCain when he was in the Senate, and he said every morning he

woke up and prayed that war had broken out and we were going to destroy Iran. I mean, there's been this obsession, this fixation with the annihilation of Iran. Now seems to be the moment that the neocons, globalists, so forth, have chosen to attack Iran. And they're in a full court press. As I think I mentioned, former Senator Joseph Lieberman has been on beating the drums for essentially the same thing, although he talked about targeted missile attacks or something, which, of course, is ridiculous. Once you go to war, you go to war. And there are no holds barred. So the notion that you're going to attack two or three targets and you don't get a full-scale war is absurd. Is there a propaganda campaign in the West designed to push the Biden administration toward war with Iran, led by people like Senator Graham and former Senator Lieberman? Of course. But this has been ongoing. This is not new. All of these people have expressed this wish repeatedly for years they simply think that now they have the

opportunity to finally unleash it they think they've got an administration that they can manipulate that they can push and bully into action and indeed they don't really have to bully they've got plenty of people inside the the biden cabinet that are absolutely hard over to attack iran and this this obsession with attacking iran obscures the other things that are going hard over to attack Iran. And this obsession with attacking Iran obscures the other things that are going on in the region, as we've discussed. You attack Iran, that's going to do you a lot of good when you've got a quarter of a million Turkish troops moving through Syria to engage the Israelis on the Golan Heights. I mean, this is what nobody's thinking about. What happens when the Turkish forces at sea attack our forces at sea?

And by the way, remember that we're not really moving our forces into the eastern Mediterranean at this point because they'd be at risk of attack from a whole range of weapon systems that are ashore. So at the moment, the safest place for the carrier battle group is somewhere in the vicinity of Sicily. And that's a long flight in a jet carrying ordnance to drop on top of Hezbollah. And of course, everything hinges on Hezbollah. In other words, the assumption is, and I think it's an accurate one,

that if the Israelis strike decisively into Gaza with whatever size force they develop, they're going to get a two-front war. And Hezbollah is going to take the gloves off and launch its 100 plus thousand missiles and rockets into Israel. So then you're dealing with other actors, Syria, Turkey, Iran, and obviously Russia. Russia is not going to sit idly by and watch Iran be destroyed and Russia will be disinterested in going to war with us but and doesn't certainly doesn't want to war with Israel Russia's been very accommodating to Israeli interests but remember the Israelis have helped in Ukraine to kill Russian troops they've provided a lot of intelligence they've had a lot of Assad officers in the country

working with the Ukrainians so at this point it may be that Moscow says look we don't have any choice we've got to support Iran we can't allow it to be destroyed uh you know we we wish this did not happen but the Americans are making it impossible to stay up it's why I keep telling people that the best analogy for this is really 1914. Because in 1914, when the various actors on the continent decided to go to war, there was really no reason for Great Britain to involve itself in that war. And the prevailing opinion when the news came that war was going to break out inside the British cabinet, with a few exceptions, was that we should stay out. We have no reason for hostility to Germany. No German-speaking soldier had fought or shot at an English-speaking soldier in the previous 300 years. On the contrary,

they were very close. So the assumption was, let's stay out. Well, all of that changed over time. We don't need to go into the reasons why over the space of 48 or 72 hours, the assumption was, let's stay out. Well, all of that changed over time. We don't need to go into the reasons why over the space of 48 or 72 hours, the decision was made to go into the war. But when they did, they also misread the whole thing. They thought their fleet in the North Atlantic, the greatest, most powerful fleet of battleships in the world, was going to win the war. Nobody bothered to stop and think that that's not going to make any difference at all to the advance of a million German troops into France. All right, back to Israel. Is the American military prepared

to be engaged in a war there involving some of the actors that you mentioned? Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Turkey? Yeah, I'm worried about the American soldiers who are already on the ground over there. You've got a thousand in Syria. You've got probably as many in Iraq. And on top of that, you have all these American bases in Turkey, and we actually have nuclear weapons stored in Turkey. And this is something that came up in the last months of the Trump administration, and I made an argument for their removal to get them out of there as soon as possible because we didn't know what the future held. And Mr. Erdogan is like no one else who's who's ruled in turkey certainly since the fall of the ottoman empire but what do

we do about our bases interlake is one there are others we we've got aircraft we've got soldiers airmen sailors on the ground over there do they become hostages? Do the Turks take these bases over? Do they surround them? Then you've got a much larger problem than the problem you have with hostages right now inside of Gaza. There are no upsides right now to this whole business, frankly, for the United States. We'll just be dragged into something, and then we have to react. And I don't think we're prepared for that. Do we have special forces on the ground in Gaza? And have any of them been casualties? Well, I'm told that we do have special ops forces, and I don't think that's a surprise.

We had an unfortunate photograph of American special ops soldiers being fatigued and celebrated in Israel. And eventually that particular photo was removed and we managed to obscure their faces. But sure, they're there. How many? I've heard various estimates. Do we have some American casualties already? Well, we know that some of our special ops soldiers and Israeli soldiers from their presumably special ops made a joint reconnaissance into Gaza. And they ran into some very heavy fire. A lot of people were wounded. At least one person was killed.

But this is the sort of thing we don't talk about. And that's one of the reasons that when you deal with special operations forces, you don't bring it up. Because if something goes wrong, you don't want anybody to know about it. If something goes right, frankly, you don't want anybody to know about it. But yes, they're there and they're absolutely involved. Would this have been an order only from the President of the United States that American boots be on the ground in Gaza? Oh, yes. I mean, the president is obviously aware and he gave permission to do this. And I'm sure that Special Operations Command was just extremely excited about the prospect of doing this. For them, this is sort of a dream opportunity.

Obviously, I don't see it that way, but I'm sure that's the attitude in the Special Operations Command. The Israelis seem to have delayed their invasion. Do you think Prime Minister Netanyahu and his military commanders are having second thoughts, or is it standard to bomb first and then enter? No, I think they would have already gone in, except that we insisted on deploying more capabilities to the region. We're bringing over Patriot missiles, theater high altitude air defense radars and missiles, and they are going into different locations in the region, not necessarily into Israel. And they're supposed to deal with this Iranian missile threat, obviously. So they have to be there.

And you're adding more. You're adding another carrier battle group that creates a task force. And once those are in place, I suspect that the plan is to send the troops into Gaza. And how does this play, I can only imagine, in the Arab world that Israeli troops backed by American special ops using American-made weapons and American ammunition are invading Gaza and killing, whether intentional or not, innocent civilians. Well, let's answer the second question first about innocent civilians. The truth is that when you go into that environment, it is so complex and so dirty. And I mean, when I say dirty, I'm not talking about filth. It's just hard to understand how you can go into an environment where a city

has literally been turned into an imitation of Dresden in 1945 and then try to root out thousands of of enemy that are armed with a whole range of different weapons everything from shoulder fired anti-tank missiles to large-scale mortar rounds, you know, all sorts of things, you name it. You can't pick and choose your targets carefully. You know, if you think there's someone out there that's moving, your predisposition as a soldier, Israeli, American, British, anybody, is going to open fire because you want to kill the enemy and survive. And from experience, the best way to survive a battle is to kill the enemy before he can kill you. So that's the first part, the first answer to your question.

I think the other answer to the question is it's open season on us everywhere in the Muslim world, period. There's no question about it. Colonel, is it open season on us in the continental United States? I think so. I think so. I think we're about to learn some hard lessons from open borders, uncontrolled immigration. Everybody forgets that the people that flew those aircraft into the buildings on 9-11,

into the towers in New York, had all come to the United States legally, they'd overstayed their welcome and they had become illegal aliens inside the United States. But nobody tracked them. And if you didn't track them, they were essentially free to go and do whatever they wanted. And we know that now. We know that they went and took flight lessons in Florida. And the only lesson they were interested in is how do you take off? Nobody cared about whether or not you landed. You would have thought somebody would have sent you kind of a red flag. But the bottom line is that's true. We're going to see it. And we know that Hezbollah and Hamas have very large presences in Mexico of the two. Hezbollah is much larger, better financed, better organized than the Hamas presence.

But there are a lot of Sunni and Shia Muslims in Mexico. There's a very large community. We have to assume, in fact, I've been told that they have cells inside the United States. And when they attack, we'll find out how lethal they are. Here's Admiral Kirby, number three, Chris, stating the obvious that in war, innocent civilians die. This is war. It is combat. It is bloody. It is ugly, and it's going to be messy. And innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward. I wish I could tell you something different. I wish that that wasn't going to happen, but it is going to happen. And that doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it dismissible. It doesn't mean that we aren't going to still express concerns about that and do

everything we can to help the Israelis do everything they can to minimize it. But that's unfortunately the nature of conflict. Your observations and from your sources, do you believe that the Israeli military has done its best to minimize civilian casualties, or are they just carpet bobbing? Historically, the Israelis, the men that I know, have always done everything within their power to avoid killing civilians. I have never seen any evidence that an israeli pilot or an israeli officer has deliberately attacked a church a mosque a hospital now perhaps that's changed but that was my experience and i mean that and we do the same thing contrary to popular belief do we make mistakes sure you saw that during the kosovo air campaign when we struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

Someone looked at the targeting information, the photographs, mixed things up, and ultimately we attacked a location that we shouldn't have. I would also say something else, though, about Admiral Kirby. I hope he has a similar explanation ready if we end up with dead Americans in mall malls in minnesota pennsylvania texas and ohio where muslims could suddenly show up and gun everybody down that they see or engage in knife attacks which is what we've seen in great britain and in europe this is very possible it's very plausible i don't think the american people are going to be very happy to discover that these enemies that are killing people over in Israel or in Europe are also here inside our population. What will it take, aside from old Joe talking to Bibi, to dial this back? I don't think that there is anyone in Washington currently interested in dialing

anything back. If anything, I see the opposite. There are very, very few voices urging caution. No one is saying, you know, emotions are running hot. This is not a good time to make these decisions. We need to think carefully about the consequences, look at the strategic as well as the operational implications, take seriously what the president of Turkey has just said, take seriously what we're finding out through the intelligence systems about potential attacks against us as well as Israel and in Europe. No one is doing that. So I don't see that that is possible. What I do see is an enraged American population and probably enraged European populations when they are drawn into this, when their societies who've been penetrated by the same terrorist organizations and elements fight us because

we're supporting Israel. Now, that doesn't mean that we should abandon Israel. It simply means we need to think very carefully about what we can and can't do, because we still have an obligation to protect America first. We're not doing it. We're not doing it on the border. We're not doing it in our cities. We're not doing it anywhere. I would hope that Americans will become enraged about that quickly. Colonel McGregor, thank you very much. It's a difficult subject to discuss, and your candor, as always, is so refreshing and illuminating. We'll see you again soon.

Thank you, Judge. Of course. More as we get it coming up as the week progresses. Scott Ritter, Professor Mearsheimer, Professor Sachs, the Intel Roundtable, and the Q&A with me, which seems insignificant, quite honestly, after listening to what we just heard from the great Colonel Douglas McGregor. But thank you for watching.

Thank you for subscribing. We're up to 220,000 subscriptions. Our goal is a quarter of a million by two months from today, Christmas Day. I have every belief that thanks to you, we'll be there. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!