Judging Freedom - Col. Douglas Macgregor: Investigate US Foreign Policy Disasters

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Col. Douglas Macgregor: Investigate US Foreign Policy DisastersSee 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, March 19th, 2024. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now. Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure, my dear friend. As we speak, the Congress of the United States is investigating publicly, holding hearings on the disastrous, excuse me, evacuation of American troops from Afghanistan. And I know you've been doing some research on that and have some thoughts on it, and I want to get to it. But before we do some other issues that are of relevance to those watching us now, what is your take on the comments by Senator Charles Schumer that it's time for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go, that he personally is an obstacle to peace in the Middle East and even the survival of Israel when he said that Israel cannot survive long as a pariah state?

You know, I don't know the context. My assumption is that the pressures inside the United States on the Israeli lobby are enormous. Large numbers of people, Americans who care about Israel, are genuinely concerned that Netanyahu is leading Israel down a very dangerous and destructive path. There's no question about this. How serious is Senator Schumer in his remarks? I'm not really certain because if he was serious, he would put together a sense of the Senate urging President Biden to take immediate action to stop the destruction in Gaza. He hasn't done that. And I'm a little less impressed with words and more impressed with real action. Here's a little clip of what he said.

A lot of his statements are statements I think you and I would agree with. But as you say, they're just statements. This is just about 45 seconds long. It's the guts of his comments on the Senate floor late last week. Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take the precedence over the best interests of Israel. He has put himself in coalition with far-right extremists like Ministers Smotrich and Ben Gavir. And as a result, he has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide

to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah. As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of israel after october 7th i mean some of those statements are are uh truthful and accurate israel is becoming a pariah and he is in bed with the most dangerous right-wing elements in the government we know why he's uh done that but he's still there,

and they seem to be pushing him. The White House has let it be leaked that this was run past the president and past the leaders of APEC, which is surprising, if they go along with this. So here's my question to you, and I apologize for it being so long. You're not Jewish. I'm not Jewish. But do you think most American Jews are of the views expressed by Senator Schumer and don't want to say it and now waited for him to say it?

Well, I missed some of your last few words of your question. I think there are two things we need to keep in mind. First of all, Mr. Netanyahu is by no means alone. He calls this a far-right coalition, but the truth is that 85%, roughly 85% of the Jewish population in Israel strongly supports what he's doing. That may be disturbing to people in the United States. It certainly worries me, but those are the facts. And trying to meddle in Israel's internal politics is something that I would object to. Having said that, the extent that what is happening impinges on us and has an impact on us, I would hope that the

president would still pick up the phone and say, we are not going to support you as long as you insist on this strategy of annihilation in Gaza. We're Americans. We don't do those things. We have fought those things historically. We oppose those things. I don't think what Mr. Schumer has said is wrong. I agree with him. But I think we need to understand that from our standpoint, Mr. Schumer needs to act. He's not acting. He's speaking.

And President Biden isn't acting. He's sitting there quietly while this carnage continues. Apparently, President Biden did call Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Jake Sullivan, the National Security Director, was asked about it this morning at a press conference. Here's the brief Q&A about their phone call. Cut number two, Chris. During the call, did the president threaten at any point to withhold military aid to Israel if Israel moves into Rafah or a famine does ensue in Gaza? The president didn't make threats. What the president said today was, I want you to understand, Mr. Prime Minister, exactly where I am on this. I am for the defeat of Hamas. I believe that they are an evil terrorist group with not just Israeli,

but American blood on their hands. At the same time, I believe that to get to that, you need a strategy that works. And that strategy should not involve a major military operation that puts thousands and thousands of lives, civilian, innocent lives at risk. And Rafa, there is a better way. Send your team to Washington. Let's talk about it. We'll lay out for you what we believe is a better way. And I will leave it at that. What is in it for Prime Minister Netanyahu listening to Joe Biden on military strategy, unless Joe Biden is going to hold back the funding for the slaughter that he claims he condemns. Well, that's the key point. If President Biden does not halt the funding, does not stop the transfer of thousands of weapons and munitions to Israel, then it doesn't make a great deal of difference what happens in Washington to

Mr. Netanyahu. Those are the facts. And right now he's in a position where he has two options. One is to escalate, go into Rafah, attack north into Lebanon. Those are appealing to him because he sees virtue in widening the war and in his mind, settling accounts with his neighbors. On the other hand, if he backs down, which is what we're essentially asking him to do, back off of Rafa, give up on the operation in Gaza that is designed to expel or kill or destroy whatever is left there, then his entire reason for being goes out of business. What's the point of staying in office? Everything he's done rests upon this foundation of eliminating Gaza and its population and attacking Hezbollah. So I don't see that anything Mr. Biden has said changes that. How risky is it for him? You and I have talked about this before, to take on Hezbollah, a far stronger force than Hamas, if you've told us, an enormously stronger force than Hamas, and one with, if he doesn't finish what he started in Gaza, and he does not move against Hezbollah, then the game is up in his mind for him and for the Israeli state. He sees risk in attacking Hezbollah, but he also believes that we can be drawn into the fight on his behalf.

He would not attack Hezbollah unless he was not certain that we would supply the air and naval power to support him in that fight. So I think for him, while he has the enormous power and influence that he does over the Congress, over the House of Representatives and the Senate, it makes sense for him to press ahead. Now, if that support were to be cut out from under him, then that would be a different story. Then he would have to write it off as too dangerous and unworkable. But I don't see that happening right now. I don't see any evidence that President Biden is going to change his position, withdraw support, halt funding, or anything else. And I don't see any evidence that the Senate and the House will take on any substantive position urging the president to do that. How risky is it, though, militarily for the IDF to attack Hezbollah? We know what happened the

last time they tried that. Well, again, the risk is obviously very high. It could result in serious damage to Israel. But he's betting on our unconditional support for what he wants to do. In other words, he expects large quantities of U.S. We've set up logistical support structures in Israel for the use of the Navy offshore. So there's every reason for him to believe that if he goes into this, we will be with him. The question is, will we be with him? I don't think anybody in Washington plans on deserting Israel, but the American people are another matter. Do the American people want to be drawn into a wider war in the Middle East? And if so, what are the costs to the American people? What are the costs to the United States? What are the costs to our armed forces? I don't think anybody sat down and carefully calculated what that could be,

but you and I have talked before about the potential for this once Hezbollah becomes part of the fight to become a wider war involving many other powers, not just Iran, but also other powers in the region and globally. What is the likelihood of involvement by Iran, Turkey, even Russia? Well, Iran absolutely will not allow Hezbollah to be destroyed, which means that Iran will intervene in one way or another to help and assist and support Hezbollah against Israel and against us. That means that we end up at war with Iran at some point. How will this occur? Will it happen at sea? Will it happen on land? I don't know, but I think it's almost a foregone conclusion that we will be drawn into that war with Iran. In the meantime, you have Egypt and Jordan, which are barely holding themselves together and could easily become part of the conflict. The Turks will not allow Egypt or Jordan to be destroyed. They will certainly not stand by and watch Syria fall apart. Neither will the Russians. looking for a path to peace, stability, to some sort of solution? I don't think so. We're looking

for a wider war right now. That's what Mr. Netanyahu is intent on unleashing. And that's what Mr. Biden has agreed to support thus far. Unless Mr. Biden intervenes now and says that's it, this far and no further, no more money, no more supplies, no more equipment, no more troops, no air and naval power, unless he does that, I think Mr. Netanyahu will have his way. He will escalate, and this will become a wider war. That war could easily destroy Israel. There's no question about it, but in his mind, he may view that as a temporary price to be paid for the destruction of Israel's enemies in the region. I don't think in those terms, but I think he probably does. He may also view it as a temporary boost to his campaign running for re-election as a wartime president.

I mean, I don't buy that, but there are a lot of political people out there that do, when all else fails, fight a war, Joe. Yeah, I think people have to take Mr. Netanyahu seriously and at his word. I would not cast that aspersion on his character to suggest that it's all about him, and he doesn't give a damn what happens to his country. I think he very much cares. Oh, no, no, I'm talking about Biden. I'm talking not about Netanyahu. I'm suggesting the advantage to Joe Biden of running for re-election as a wartime president. It doesn't strike you or me as advantageous, but Democratic operatives are talking about it. Well, that's territory where I am not expert, and I'm reluctant

to make that statement. There are other analysts that can observe the situation right now and reach that conclusion. I'm not sure I'm prepared to go there. I would prefer, obviously, as we've discussed before, that Mr. Biden do what his predecessors have done under similar circumstances and halted the conflict. I don't think that's going to happen, Colonel, and I couldn't agree with you more. He has an attitude about Israel that he and the United States are wedded at the hip to Israel. He's had that attitude for probably his 50 years in politics. My own view is that the Chuck Schumer statement, whether approved by the White House or not, was just pabulum. It irritated Prime Minister Netanyahu for a day or two. It didn't change his behavior and it didn't change the United States funding of the genocide in Gaza. And I think you probably agree. You've

said several times, it's just words. It hasn't changed the behavior of the United States government one bit. Not at all. And I think that's what we have to conclude at this stage. Let's segue over to Ukraine. I mean, how much longer can this go on, particularly if the $61 billion that the Senate has authorized is never approved by the House? waiting for the ground to dry and harden. That won't occur until probably mid or late April. They've had a lot of snow and rain this winter. Once that occurs, I think the Russians will surge forward to the Dnieper River. I would also expect them to cross that river and seize Odessa. That from the very beginning was made clear by Mr. Putin when he pointed to both Kharkov and Odessa and said, correctly, these are historically Russian cities and Russian speaking, they will be part of Russia again.

So I think that's going to happen. Now, can Zelensky sit quietly in Kiev and survive all of this? You know, I'm shocked that he is still there at all. I would have expected someone who cared about the enormous loss of life in Ukraine inside the Ukrainian military to step forward and say, enough is enough. We need to organize a separate peace between ourselves and the Russians. This cannot go on. But I've been wrong. None of that has happened. And so until it does, the war will continue. And I suspect that'll be through the summer. Now, what's left at the end of this? When does Mr. Zelensky get into an automobile or a jet and fly to the West, perhaps set up a new government in Lvov, where he can pretend that the rump Ukraine

still has the potential to join NATO? I don't know. I would hope not, because if he persists in that, then the Russians will have to press further west beyond what I've already discussed. And that would defeat the whole purpose of any negotiation that we might have with the Russians. We should be interested in rescuing what remains of Ukraine before it's utterly destroyed. The best way to do that is to accept neutrality for whatever emerges and then negotiate the territorial boundaries. But there's been no evidence for that thus far. Colonel, when it is obvious to the world that Putin has achieved his military goals in Ukraine, is this a military defeat of NATO? Oh, absolutely. No question about it. It never needed to be, but from the very beginning, we made it a fight between Washington, NATO, and Moscow.

As a result, we are definitely in the loser's corner. There's no question about it. And this facade of unity in NATO is crumbling fast behind the scenes. I think the Swedes and the Finns are both sitting there wondering what it was that they signed on to join. I mean, if anything, NATO is the Titanic. It's already struck the iceberg and is headed down to the bottom. And we have people scrambling to jump on the stern and go down with it. Doesn't make any sense at all. And I don't see any evidence,

regardless of whomever is elected in November, that this NATO alliance in the future will be what it was in the past. Will it be abolished? Will it be liquidated? I don't know, but I think you'll end up with something very different. And I doubt very seriously that the United States will be a major player on the ground in Europe in the future. Suppose Donald Trump is elected president and pulls us out of NATO. I mean, that really pulls the plug on it, does it not? Well, it actually shifts the burden to the Europeans to do what he wanted to begin with, which is to become their own first responders. The whole idea that the United States could propel all of its military power rapidly

into Europe in the event of a war with Russia and save Eastern Europe or even Central Europe from destruction and Russian forces was always an illusion. Eisenhower said that in the mid-1950s. He said, we cannot do what we did again at Normandy. We cannot do again what we did during World War II. We won't get across the Atlantic. There are these things called submarines now, long-range strike from ashore. You cannot penetrate those areas quickly. It took us almost four years, actually about three and a half, to suppress, not completely eliminate, the German submarine threat. Today's submarine threat from the Russian side is infinitely more lethal and dangerous. How rapidly would that occur? The whole point is it's

an illusion. Europeans need to come to terms with that illusion and begin to look for ways to defend themselves effectively. They haven't done it. They've talked the game, but they haven't walked the walk. Colonel, you have, in my opinion, quite properly been critical of the current Defense Department. And you've been especially critical of late when analyzing the disastrous, disastrous withdrawal, which included the deaths of American soldiers from Afghanistan. What advice would you give the Congress? What would you have Congress ask as they sit there and make speeches for the television cameras under the guise of trying to find out what happened when we evacuated Afghanistan? Well, keep in mind that when President Trump gave the direction to me to find a way to get us out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible, the Republican leadership of the Senate, and for that matter of the House, all lined up against him.

Yet President Trump understood, I understood, and everyone who was involved understood that if you were going to leave Afghanistan, the time to do it was in the winter, November, December, January, February. That winter period was ideal for the purpose of disengaging from Afghanistan, not just to get equipment out, which was going to take time in any case, but to put an end to the military deployment there. The second part of this is nobody thought through from where you would do this. And the original idea was that you would do it from Bagram, not from Kabul. Now, the reason I'm saying all of that is because the worst of all possible circumstances were created when the decision was made to leave in the middle of the summer, because the summer is the fighting season. That's when everyone comes out of the mountains, out of the hills and comes down to fight.

That was a disaster in and of itself. And unfortunately, I don't know what happened. I don't know what the backstory was, but I'm told that President Biden, for whatever reason, decided that he wanted us out before 9-11. But the truth is, it didn't make sense tactically, operationally, or strategically to leave in the summer. Your next best option was to wait once again for the winter, for the so-called fighting season in Afghanistan to end. Now, having said all of that, there are all sorts of questions about what went on, and all the answers look grim to be blunt. But let's keep in mind, all the senior officers from the top to the bottom had an obligation. If they made it clear to President Biden that leaving in the summer was bad and were told to do it anyway,

they then had an obligation to take precautions to ensure that what we witnessed did not happen. And that meant that you didn't leave primarily from Kabul, but from Bagram. And more important, that everything was carefully planned down to the last detail and then rehearsed. That means the senior officers involved rehearsed, and that the back briefings that occurred afterwards were then made available to Jake Sullivan and the president. Because when you go into these rehearsals, you talk about surging crowds. You talk about all the things you don't want to happen but know could happen. Those rehearsals, the detailed plans to support them, they don't seem to have happened.

And then finally, you have this notion of a national, or excuse me, an evacuation, not necessarily a withdrawal, where you are conducting a non-combatant evacuation operation. That is an animal that is very different from normal combat. You have different rules of engagement, but you also have to make available forces on standby that can rapidly intervene if necessary to protect actually the forces that are trying to evacuate the noncombatants. I don't know what happened, but everyone who has any experience, particularly in the 18th Airborne Corps or with other formations inside the Marine Corps, everyone has looked at this and said, this doesn't look right. None of it made any sense. How many people died? How many soldiers

were killed? Well, we know that we lost 13 service members. Most of them were Marines, but not all. We also know that Afghans were killed. How many, under what circumstances, I don't know. But the point is, when you want to conduct an operation like this, you have to go through systematic, detailed planning. And I don't think that was done. There are also plans in all of the regional unified commands for noncombatant evacuation operations. So it's not as though CENTCOM didn't have something on the shelf already. And then you have people that have sat down over many years and put together extensive checklists that have to be carefully studied and implemented. So I hope, I hope in the short statement that I made that went out over Twitter, that members of the House who are going to ask the questions will look at those questions and get to real answers. And finally, and this is very important, Judge,

remember that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Milley, is the senior military advisor to the president. His principal job is to advise the president. We don't know what he advised. Maybe he'll tell us. It will be interesting to hear. Did he advise the president. We don't know what he advised. Maybe he'll tell us. It will be interesting to hear. Did he advise the president of all these kinds of matters and suggest a different course of action or a different time or place to do it? We don't know. But those questions have to be answered. And General McKenzie, who was the U.S. Central Command commander, is the man who was ultimately responsible for the operation. It was done under his command. He has a lot to answer for.

I hope he gives us answers. Do you think anybody on the House committee or on their staff has the grasp of this that you do and can put these questions to the people that are in front of them today? Or is it just going to be political pabulum, as we always usually get? You know, Judge, that's a hard question. There are members, certainly Keith Self, who served in the Army for many years, and he actually worked with me at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers. Europe is on that committee from Texas. You also have Corey Mills, who saw some time in the military. I hope that these men with that kind of background will ask hard questions and try to get good answers. This is not so much about crucifying people for what went wrong. We need to understand what did go wrong, first of all.

Right. Everyone wants people to be held accountable. I understand that. I agree with that. If there's no accountability, there's no performance. But we don't really know the full story. We really don't. We need to hear more. We need to know more. And that's why you've got to get into these questions of how many rehearsals were conducted? Who did the planning? Who reviewed the plans? How many times, General Milley, did you sit in on these meetings? How many plans did you review? What did you advise the president to do? General McKenzie, if you did not feel comfortable with this, you as the CENTCOM commander under Title 10 have access to the president. Did you try to get that access and bring things to his attention personally? These are the things that

have to happen. Why was this rushed? Why was it done in the summer? Why wasn't done in the winter? To me, it sounds like doing it in the winter is 101, evacuation 101. It doesn't take a four star to know that the Winter is the better time To do it Before we go Your background Our country Our choice What is that Colonel

Well it's You know we're sitting in the new studio That we built in the headquarters down here In Orlando Florida For our country, our choice. I've talked to you about the organization before and its purpose. And we're very interested in this national security issue for the simple reason that Americans were killed. And we know that Afghans, some number of Afghans were also killed in the

process. And I'm not talking about the people who were associated with ISIS or the Haqqani Network or the Taliban. I'm talking about Afghan civilians. All of these kinds of things are of interest to us as Americans. I think all Americans should be interested. So that's why speaking on behalf as CEO of our country, our choice, I said what I did. But I hope Americans will watch this hearing and keep in mind that ultimately the people speaking, whether they're elected or appointed, these are the custodians of our national defense, our national security, the lives of our citizens, the lives of the members of the armed forces, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. They need to explain this to us. We need to understand it because that was a strategic debacle, a national embarrassment.

It must not happen again. Colonel, you're a great man. Good luck in all your work, and thank you very much for your time and your thoughts with us. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you, Judge. Of course. Truly a great man. Coming up later today, coming up this afternoon, Matt Ho at two o'clock, Karen Kwiatkowski at three, and at 4.30, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, All Times Eastern. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!