Judging Freedom - Col. Douglas Macgregor: How Israel is Isolating the US.

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Today with @DougAMacgregor we venture into an enlightening discourse on the Arabic term 'asadiyah', ('asabiyyah') concept of social cohesion and group solidarity. Borrowing from the wisdom of esteemed Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, we dissect the resurgence of this ideology in the Arab world as a counter to the ongoing conflict. We explore how this unity among historically divided states and people signals a strategic shift that could prolong the conflict. Don't miss out on this compelling narrative on the Gaza conflict.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 Tuesday, December 12th, 2023. Colonel Douglas McGregor returns to the show. Colonel, always a pleasure. My dear friend, thank you very much for taking the time to join us. How isolated has the United States become in the international community due to its being wedded at the hip to Israel and the perception that it is wedded at the hip to the policies of the Netanyahu government? I think that we have become increasingly isolated over a long period of time. I would not attribute it exclusively to Netanyahu's dominance of the policy-making arena in Washington. We have to go back and look at the last 30 years and the trouble that we have caused in many cases on a regional basis in Europe, as well as in the Middle East, to understand why our supposed partners and allies are increasingly silent and walking away from us.

And now, of course, with Europe in turmoil, thanks to the economic policies directed at Russia that failed miserably, you add that to the situation in the Middle East where any of the Muslim states that had previously worked with us are now completely unwilling to do so. You have almost a global disaster. Certainly everyone in Latin America, Africa, in the Far East, no one really is pleased with us or the way we do business. And we continue to insist that that's not true, but it is. Well, can you put your finger on one or two or three causes of this? Is it our unbridled support for Israel and the perception that

it is engaged in indiscriminate slaughter? Is it our, going back to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, view of American exceptionalism? Is it the $2 trillion we spent killing people in Afghanistan and Iraq, supposedly, to bring Western democracy there? I think you're describing our foreign policy, which essentially amounts to playing risk with democracy. Everything we do is, at least in theory, designed to promote liberal democracy wherever it does not exist, to go to quote-unquote ungoverned spaces and impose order and ultimately liberal democracy. Well, all of these have failed miserably. And ultimately over time, people say, well, why are you really where you are? Why are you in Iraq? Why are you in Syria? Why are you in iraq why are you in syria why are you in lebanon why are you in libya it doesn't

make any difference why are you interested in what's happening in taiwan there are no armies prepping to invade taiwan there's no interest in taiwan or china in a war with anybody all of this revolves around an ideological construct that views the world through the lens of democracy the way the Bolsheviks viewed the world through the lens of communism. And ultimately, like the Bolsheviks, we've taken a position that anything we do is morally justified. And that certainly is the position that Mr. Netanyahu has taken, and we have eagerly adopted it. Let's bore down a little bit. Since you and I last spoke, the Security Council of the United Nations voted 13 in favor, one against, since it was the U.S., it was effectively a veto, and one abstention on calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The abstention, of course, was the Brits,

who you know better than I will always do what we ask them to do. The U.S. explanation for vetoing this was why give Hamas a chance to regroup. How does that play in the international arena? If you look at the actions that have been taken, look at the words that have been spoken, and you are an Arab, a Turk, an Iranian who lives somewhere in the Near East, North Africa, you conclude the following. All of us are effectively animals, subhuman. We all deserve the worst. And we are in a war today against Israel that is not anything like the wars that have been fought in the past. This is not 1973 or 67. This is not a short-term expedient to either expand the country or, for that matter, to simply have more defensible borders, which Israel has always wanted and every nation state does. This is now, in the minds of Arabs, Turks, and Iranians, a war for Jewish supremacy in the Middle East. Full stop. That's the war. If you are in our way, you die. No compromise. There is no negotiation, and there will be none.

Anyone who does not succumb to our power, who does not ultimately submit to what we want, is the enemy and will be destroyed. Now, this is enabled by the United States, let there be no doubt about it. Remember, most of us in the United States, I include myself in this category, are very sympathetic to the Israeli state. We're sympathetic for reasons that go back 50, 60, 70 years. But this is a fundamental change in the way the Israelis have done business in the past and the way they're going to do business from now on. And that's why this war can only escalate. This is not a war that's going to end in a couple of weeks or another month from now.

This is going to escalate well into next year, and it's going to be a do-or-die proposition for everyone involved, especially Israel. Here's the statement by the deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N. when he cast his veto, and then we will follow it with the statement of three Arab leaders who were in D.C. at the time. All this is in English and quite compelling. Although the United States strongly supports a durable peace in which both Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and security, we do not support this resolution's call for an unsustainable ceasefire that will only plant the seeds for the next war.

We believe there is a moral obligation toward the international community to stop the killing of the Palestinian civilians. And it's the first time, at least in my lifetime, that I have seen that calling for a ceasefire became a controversial issue. I'm not sure how deep is the understanding here of what's happening on the ground in Gaza. I mean, this war has broken every record. Largest number of journalists killed.

Largest number of hospitals destroyed. Largest number of medics killed. Largest number of UN employees killed. Our message has been very clear. There needs to be an immediate ceasefire. There needs to be a cessation of hostilities, and we need to have immediate access for humanitarian aid. It is not acceptable. Probably the opinions of a billion human beings who live in that part of the world. Well, here are a couple of things for consideration. The first is that our actions speak much louder than our words.

We talk about a just peace for the Palestinians, a secure and just peace for the Israelis. That's not possible. We can't create it. We can't impose it. We've been compelled to choose sides. We've chosen the Israeli side. But in doing so, we did not set any limits on what the Israelis could or could not do. We simply unconditionally said, by all means, we support you.

And we've sent, what, 15,000 bombs, precision munitions, including 102,000 pounders that can be lobbed at will by the Israelis wherever they like. We didn't say, we're only giving you so much. We're not going to support these kinds of actions. It's really unconditional support. So for us to talk about a just peace for the Palestinians and the minds of Arabs, Turks, and Iranians is essentially to say, we will give you a just peace. It's called the cemetery. We'll give you the peace of the grave, and that's about it. Now, that satisfies the current government of Israel,

but it puts us in a very difficult position globally as well as regionally. Now, the second point I want to make, and I think this is very important, there is a concept or a word in Arabic called asadiya. This is a word you don't hear much anymore, but it's a word that refers to social cohesion, group solidarity, or unity of action. It is a word that was used by Ibn Khaldun, probably the most famous historian of the Middle Ages, who happened to have been an Arab from Tunis. His work had a profound impact on the West. Everyone from Toynbee to Oswald Spengler all studied and read his works. You could actually call him the father of modern historianism if there's such a thing. And in it, he says, those who have not seen the power of

Islam do not appreciate it. Today, we have historically viewed, and today we view Islam as weak, a loose grouping of states that are more interested in killing each other than they are doing any damage to anyone else. There have been a few exceptions, but that's essentially the analysis. Asadiyah, however, is emerging in the Arab world. It's emerging because of this war for Jewish supremacy in the region that we are supporting. And it is bringing states and peoples into coalition now that historically have not cooperated in any meaningful way for centuries. I think we've reached this dramatic strategic inflection point. That's another reason why this war is not going to end anytime soon. There may be a lull, there may be pauses,

but ultimately this regional coalition that is emerging is going to strike back with a vengeance unlike anything we've ever seen what military benefit is there to the israelis military colonel to the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians well historically the israelis when they did attack uh areas where terrorists had operated from talked about quote-unquote mowing the grass in other words we've got to go into the west bank we've got to go into southern lebanon we've got to go into gaza and we have to exact a price for what has been done well this last attempt to destabilize and destroy israel on the 7th of oct October was so horrific and so shocking and surprising that the Israelis have frankly reacted with something more than just vengeance. If this

were simply an object lesson, if this were an attempt to restore deterrence or what they think is deterrence, which is you kill some of us, we kill a lot more of you, we've long since passed that point. When you start talking about flattening Gaza, and effectively that's what's going on, driving out the population without regard to how many people are actually killed or not killed, and we've reached that point now where large numbers of people are simply being killed because they happen to be in the way of the flattening process. That's something well beyond mowing the grass, well beyond restoring deterrence, well beyond a simple object lesson.

This is the message. We are supreme in this region. Challenge us and we will destroy you. And oh, by the way, right behind us, we have the United States Armed Forces, and those armed forces will be brought to bear against you. And it's one of the reasons I think the next step, frankly, as they finish flattening Gaza, is to turn on Hezbollah with the goal of ultimately bringing us in. Because Hezbollah is a very large and powerful force. It's not going to be easily knocked out. In fact, I don't think it'll be knocked out at all.

It can be damaged seriously, but the Israelis have already taken very heavy casualties. We don't know how many. I sent you a couple of things that came from Haaretz, Israeli newspaper, and from a journalist who talked about 3,700 killed Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza. If that's true, that's a horrific number. Those are higher losses than Israel has ever taken in any of its wars. And given the small population of a little over 6 million Jews who serve in the IDF, that's not a minor issue in Israel. That means that your neighbor, certainly, or your neighbor who's one or two doors down from you has lost someone.

But I think the fact that they can call upon us to step in is enormously important. And I think that Mr. Netanyahu wants to exploit this while he can. Because, again, and we've talked about this before, most Americans are watching football. Most Americans are trying to figure out who Taylor Swift is dating next week. They're not paying attention to this, just as they ignored Ukraine. And the Ukrainian war was a war not quite, but close to something on the scale of the Korean War or World War II. And we effectively just continued to play and ignore what was happening and essentially told the government, well, you do whatever you think you have to do.

And I don't think most people ever believed all the ridiculous assertions about Russian aggression and Russian threats and so forth, but they just don't care. Well, right now, the theater has shifted to the Middle East. The images that are coming out are much less easily controlled, much less easily suppressed. They're reaching us, they're reaching everyone in the world, and Americans are just beginning to say, gee, look at that. Isn't that awful? At some point, and I don't know when this is, there will be a growing majority opinion that this is enough. It has to stop and it can't go on. I don't know when that happens, but when it does, I think Mr. Netanyahu fears that he'll lose the kind of access to our military power and support that he wants to use to the maximum extent possible right now. You spoke earlier about the aid that we give them, which is unconditional. There's no strings on it. I would argue, now I'm on the legal side and there's no court of law here, it's a moral judgment as much as it is a legal one, that when we knowingly give them instruments with which they carry out obvious

war crimes, we are as morally and legally complicit as they are. I asked Max Blumenthal not too long ago, what would Joe Biden have to do to stop this? Here was Max's response. Well, the Biden administration could end the occupation of Palestine tomorrow. They could have a Palestinian state while we're doing this live stream. All they have to do is say no more spare parts for your F-16s, no more F-35s, and it's over because Israel depends, its occupation depends entirely on its direct line to Washington. And Biden won't do that. And Tony Blinken won't do that because Tony Blinken comes from a long line of Israel lobbyists. Well, I think Max is right about halting the aid and the delivery of the aid. That's true. That would bring everything to a halt. As far as the two-state

solution, I think people are now delusional if they think there is any future for the two-state solution. I don't see it. The Israelis won won't accept it and now unfortunately given the horrific actions in gaza i don't think anyone in the muslim world is going to go along with it and here again we got to go back and understand the governments sitting in cairo in amman and jordan even in damascus in leban Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, doesn't matter. None of those governments want a war judge. They're all opposed to war, but their populations are enraged. We talk a lot about democracy, but we don't practice it, obviously. And what you've got in the East is a wave, democratic wave, if you will, of support for all-out war against the Israeli state. And by definition, because of our complicity, as you point out, us. I'm an American. I'm concerned preeminently about the United States.

I still think we have an interest in the survival of the Israeli state. And that's one of the reasons we always said we would not allow any force to develop that might overwhelm, destroy, or drive the Jews and Israel into the sea. But that force is building. It's real. And Americans have trouble with this because they say, well, why hasn't it happened? What about next week? What about next month? No, it hasn't happened, but it is building.

And that's why I mentioned this asadiya. This is not a hollow term. It's not meaningless. And I think it's coming back into vogue right now in a dramatic way in the Islamic world. So over the weekend, the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, exercised emergency authority under the Arms Export Control Act. No need to get into the weeds on that. of Defense can spend money unauthorized if it is an emergency and directly vital to the national security of the United States. And before that money can be spent, the Secretary of State or defense of the president has to certify to the emergency nature and the media see nature under oath, which Tony Blinken did. Question, of what conceivable American national security

benefit is the need to send 2,000-pound bombs to Israel without asking Congress's permission, knowing what they're going to do with those bombs? Well, you say we know what they're going to do with them. I would urge you to reconsider that because the real basis for this legislation, if you want to call it that, this granting of essentially limitless power to the executive branch to effectively arm and equip and fight whomever they like, is really the overriding determination to wage war against Iran. If Israel attacks Hezbollah and tries to destroy it, they know that they will come into a conflict situation with Iran. Iran will not stand by and allow Hezbollah to be destroyed. They know it, and we know it,

and you have people on the Hill that desperately want this war with Iran. They've convinced themselves that Iran is evil incarnate, that all the problems in the Middle East stem from Iran, even though Iran hasn't invaded anybody. Iran has no military power that it can actually project with any great success. It just has an enormous arsenal of missiles and rockets and now increasingly unmanned systems that it can use against an opponent. That's something else. And that's dangerous. But the Iranians have demonstrated remarkable restraint. So have the Russians. Everyone has restrained themselves vis-a-vis us. But if you get a war with Hezbollah and you promise to deliver whatever is needed, you're really taking a decisive step in the direction

of widening this war to include Iran. And in some respects, I think Mr. Netanyahu is seriously considering the widening of this war. I think he wants to, quote unquote, settle accounts. It's back to the issue is what are we Israelis really fighting for? He'll tell you, we're fighting for our lives. Well, there are many ways to save your life. Attacking your neighbors isn't necessarily one of them. There are many ways to pursue diplomacy. They'll tell you that's all a waste of time and it won't work.

Therefore, the only thing we could do is kill everybody that doesn't like us. Well, that's a tall order in the region because Israel doesn't have any friends there. But now it has serious enemies, and the populations are going to shape the destiny of Israel in the future. Is this an American national security interest or an American domestic policy reality? Domestic politics reality, excuse me. I think it is a reality of domestic politics. The American people have been conditioned for decades to see Iran exclusively as some enemy that had to be destroyed. I mean, I could take you into Walmart or, you know, CVS and ask somebody, well, what do you think about those Iranians? Oh, they're bad. Yeah, they're terrible. It's worked. It goes back to our discussions about why are all of these people so quick to

swallow the line about Russia being evil and corrupt and dangerous and invading everyone? Well, you fell back on the Cold War. There's still that underlying consciousness, and there's a willingness to accept what's being taught in academia, what comes across the airwaves on television. Americans used to be people that would sit there and say, wait a minute, what's this got to do with us? They don't do that anymore. They have been quote-unquote brainwashed, conditioned intellectually, socially to say, Iran is evil and bad, therefore get rid of it. Now, there are younger people who don't necessarily share that assumption. And I don't think Americans really understand what war

means. A friend of mine who fought in Vietnam, he was a helicopter gun pilot as a warrant officer. He's a great person and worked for years in the Intelligence Committee, worked with me when I was at Supreme Headquarters of Light Powers Europe. And he was telling me, he said, you know, Americans have no idea what's going on. You know, we had army groups in Europe between 1944 and 1945, from June of 1944 until the war ended, that sustained 756,000 casualties. More casualties, more losses than we could replace. We've forgotten that war involves a lot of killing. The Israelis are experiencing that now, and they are not insensitive to it. But imagine it on a regional scale, an industrial scale. We lost 19,000 casualties a month from June of 44 until the Battle of the Bulge broke out, and then it went up to 100,000 a month. I'm just talking about American forces

in Europe. We never bring these things up. That's war. And we have played with this war thing, and now we've watched what the Russians have done, who understand war. They have a grasp of it. Look what they have done. And they build a force for war. This is not some boutique, specialized army or Marine Corps designed to go into third world countries where nobody has air defense, where nobody can defend themselves effectively, where they have very little organized military power. That's a force capable of waging scientific industrial war in the 21st century. We don't have that. And if we drag ourselves into this thing by provoking a war with Iran, this thing will spread because the Russians will not stand by and watch us destroy Iran. China has enormous interests in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian

Peninsula. It imports most of its oil and gas from there. Russia has tried to make up for some of it when it could not reach it. But today, it's impossible to feed the Chinese industrial machine without the Persian Gulf, without the Middle East. They are not going to stand by and watch us annihilate Iran. And we've talked before about the Turks. The Turks are, you know, that nation is ready to fight. Mr. Erdogan has talked himself into a real corner, in my judgment, because people there are enraged and ready to fight. This is a large gasoline storage site that simply needs the right match at the right time and the right location, and it will blow up. That's the problem. I want to talk with you later in the week about Russia, Ukraine, and about China.

But before we finish today, and thank you for that superb analysis of where we stand, here's a clip from a former colleague of yours, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who shares your views and my views on nearly all these things, being pretty critical about Prime Minister Netanyahu. I wonder if you agree. Since Netanyahu took over, indeed, probably since Ronald Reagan had to really bash the Israelis when they went into Lebanon in 1982. But it's certainly been their policy since Netanyahu took over. He is the most draconian leader Israel has had in its short history since 1948. How do you see that? He is the Fuhrer. He is the Fuhrer. Fair? Well, that may be true. And I don't think at this point it's terribly relevant because this situation has moved well beyond Mr. Netanyahu. The forces in play now will not be

easily arrested. They will not be contained. The so-called genie is out of the bottle. Even if Netanyahu were to go for domestic political reasons, your view is the genie stays out of the bottle. Yes, I think we're in a position now that I tried to describe in the regional sense with all of the Islamic world. And I don't see an easy way through this at this point. If we were to stop supplying the Israelis, that might have an impact in the short term. But in the long term, their strategic position now requires support or they will go out of existence. And even with our support, potentially in the next 12 months, given what I see emerging on the horizon, that may be

very questionable. Colonel, thank you very much for your time. I think you're going to come back. I hope so. Later this week, I want to talk about Russia and Ukraine and China's silently getting involved in this while people on Capitol Hill are beating the drums for war in Taiwan. We'll talk about that when the time comes. Thank you very much, Colonel. All the best. Thank you, Judge. Wow. What a terrific and terrifying analysis. Coming up later today, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Matthew Hohen at 4.30 this afternoon, Scott Ritter. We're at 247,000 subscriptions. Our goal is a quarter of a million by Christmas. You've been so generous. I think we're going to hit that goal by late this week or early next week. But thank you very much for subscribing. And if you haven't, please do. And if you're at cocktail parties or wherever this season, say, hey, take a look at that judge. It's something different. It's a version of events the government doesn't want you to hear. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.