Judging Freedom - Col.. Douglas Macgregor - Russia Ukraine latest

Episode Date: July 20, 2022

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, July 19, 2022. It's about 2 o'clock in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. I welcome back my favorite military consultant, Colonel Douglas McGregor, whose lifetime experience in the military is spectacular, as well as his knowledge of history and his knowledge of the military and the intelligence communities as they operate today. Those of you who have seen Colonel McGregor know that he's a warrior for peace, not a warrior for war. Colonel, it's always a pleasure, sir. Welcome back to Judging Freedom. Sure.

Thanks a lot, Judge. You published a fascinating article last week in the American Conservative, which I commend to every lover of freedom to read, particularly the fans of Judging Freedom, called Worshipping Dead Horses. Can you tell us what it's about? It's not really about horses, but it's about worshipping things that are gone. Right. Well, you know, the principal dead horse at the top of the menu is NATO,

which continues to be treated as this sacrosanct holy relic. And frankly speaking, internally, it's in complete disarray. It's falling apart. And Americans, I think, sense it. And it's falling apart for all the obvious reasons. You've got economic problems in Europe compounded by all the sanctions imposed on Russia. And while our sanctions have no doubt had some impact, let's be frank, the blowback from the sanctions we've imposed on our European allies has been horrific. Now the Russians have simply announced that they will stop exporting any oil or gas to Germany until further notice. I think that's going to hit a lot of other Europeans.

There are problems inside NATO. The Italians were trying to help the Germans with oil and gas, and they too are in a difficult position. And as a result, Draghi has been under severe criticism and is probably going to be forced out. Macron is always being on thin ice, and I think more so now than ever. The problem is that the European peoples are suffering. They're overwhelmed with the immigration problem. We've got eight, 900,000 more Ukrainians pouring in on top of millions of Muslims. Criminality is out of control and it's not being reported in the press, but the people that live there know what's happening. And there's a sense that why Russia? If you're an Italian or a German

and you look at Russia and say, well, wait a minute, I don't see Russia as evil incarnate, and it doesn't pose a threat to me. And of course, they're right. So what does President Biden and what do the internationalists around him, Tony Blinken, Secretary of State, and his colleagues in the foreign ministries in Europe. What do they really want NATO to do? I mean, do they want to see NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine or, God forbid, in Poland or Estonia fighting Russian troops because they see this as a means to either degrade the Russian military or get rid of Putin once and for all? Well, very quick answer on the first one. No one in Europe is interested in committing its forces to a fight with the Russians. They don't see any reason for it. Most of what we call military establishments in Europe are

gestures. They're facades. Most of these forces haven't seen any real action against anybody for decades, and they're certainly not up to taking on the Russian military. I mean, remember, the Russian military was this hopelessly inept, incompetent organization that has now withstood 150 days of continuous fighting and crushed the Ukrainian military establishment virtually out of existence to the point where the Ukrainian government's going to have a tough time just surviving especially if we stop funding it which is what we're effectively doing we've made ukraine the 51st state so no that first part is nobody wants wants anything to do with this war and they know they're not prepared to fight it as for the rest of it i think they they have went along with biden's notion that somehow or another this would force

Mr. Putin to resign and create a catastrophe in Russia, and they believed it, and now they've gotten an education. Russia has an abundance of resources. It's probably the country in the world that is richest in resources. It's not going to go out of business, and Mr. Putin's popularity ratings are through the roof in Russia. All the Russians see him as defending Russia. Does there come a time when the American government recognizes that the sanctions were a disaster, that they're hurting American business enterprises? They're insufficiently, they're not insufficiently, they're not at all deterring Putin. All these Russian oligarchs' yachts that were seized, that was just for show. Is there a time when Tony Blinken and company realize we're on the wrong track and we got to

get out of this? I think privately they recognize that they are very much on the wrong track. I think they are taking alarmist phone calls from everywhere from Stockholm to Berlin to Rome, Paris, Madrid. So I think they know that. The problem is they have no plan B. There was never any serious thought given to this whole process. In other words, what was the objective to begin with? No one had a stated objective except to build up the Ukrainian military to not only present a threat to Russia, but to potentially recapture Crimea and harm the Russian military. Well, this is fanciful nonsense that never made any sense. So there is no plan B. So I think they're going to do what you would expect these ideologues to do, which is double down on what they're already doing, and then hope against hope that they can outlast this. And I'm not sure that they can. I mean, my recommendation, frankly, is to send Nancy Pelosi to Kiev and let her sort it out and just

leave her there until it's fixed. She's threatening to go to all places, to Taiwan. And, of course, Beijing is not very happy about that, and they're threatening some severe response to that. We'll talk about Nancy later. Tell me about the actual war. I mean, you don't see it on television anymore. You don't even see it on the front pages of The New York Times. So a couple of questions.

Are the Ukrainians holding any ground? Have they won back any ground from the Russians? No. Have they actually used American military hardware to attack Russian hardware that is already inside Ukraine? So part of Ukraine is bombing another part of Ukraine. And where does Zelensky stand in his stability as the head of the Ukraine government? Well, as you know, Zelensky now fired Bakunov and several other people that were in charge of the security services. Very senior people. Yeah,

it looks like, you know, the last days of Pompeii, the volcano has erupted and now he's looking for people to blame for the lava flows that are pouring through the streets. So I think that's part of the problem. I don't think Zelensky is really in charge of a great deal anymore. He's got a force out there. The nationalists are trying to control what's left of it. They're rounding up deserters and either shooting them or forcing them back into action. But the truth is the Ukrainian forces are defeated. They can't regain what's lost. Most of the Russian army has been withdrawn, Judge. I'm talking about the combat force. They have been resting and refitting for the last few weeks. And the fighting in Donbass, which was always the critical portion of this operation,

because that's where the Ukrainian forces were located, has been done by Chechen forces, separatist forces that have taken heavy casualties, and mercenaries. Those are the ones backed by massive Russian artillery, regular army artillery, but the regular army combat force that we saw at the beginning, that's been resting and refitting. And I think they're preparing for a massive offensive to finish off this war once and for all. And again, Putin is not interested in crossing the Dnieper River and going into Western Ukraine, but I think he will roll up to the Dnieper to a certain point. And I think he still wants to gain control of Kharkov and Odessa. All right. But as you point out in your piece, Worshipping Dead Horses, Putin cannot tolerate

a free and independent Ukraine, much less the Ukraine that's a member of NATO, because that's a permanent 24 seven threat to Moscow. Am I right? Have I, have I grasped properly what you wrote in this piece? Well, not completely. I mean, it can be free and independent as far as he's concerned. It cannot be a puppet of the West. It can't be a platform for attack against him. Or if it's a member of NATO, he views it as a puppet for the West. It can't be a platform for attack against him. If it's a member of NATO, he views it as a puppet for the West. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, privately, he's told many people he doesn't care if Ukraine's part of the European Union, could care less. His concern from the very beginning was this massive NATO-trained and equipped army funded largely by us. That's no longer in the picture. But what I'm concerned about,

what many Europeans privately are concerned about, I know Berlin is very much so. And remember, Berlin is still the elephant in the room economically. And right next to Berlin is a somewhat smaller elephant called Italy. Both of these states are concerned that what will happen is that we will go back into Ukraine in a subversive way and try to continue to use the Ukrainian people and the rump Ukrainian state as an opportunity to attack and threaten Russia. what berlin and rome don't want no european ones that means literally in our lifetimes perpetual war to the point where finally putin decides i don't want to go there i don't want to border with nato remember that's one of the things he doesn't want he doesn't want a border with nato he's already got a small one way up north on in estonia he doesn't want it so if he can't live with the the situation because we make it impossible, well, then, you know, you're forcing his hand again. I think it's time for this to end. And I think the Russians are going to try to do that over the next 30 days.

What are U.S. intelligence senior members of the intelligence community advising the president? If you know, are they telling him what they think he wants to hear? Or are they telling him what you've just described, that this is a lost cause, it's over with, you better get the hell out and get out now? Judge, the thing for all of your viewers to keep in mind is that presidents always get the intelligence they want. Even if it's not truthful. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Because we've lost our sense of proportionality. If you think that you are invulnerable, invincible,

and more powerful than everyone else, then you think you can afford to ignore things like the truth when it suits you. This has gotten us into a lot of trouble now, I think, with Russia, because Russia is not Iraq. Russia is not Afghanistan. It's not Libya. And, you know, we're talking now, I listened to the former Secretary of State Pompeo essentially describe the apocalypse, the unification of Russia, China, and Tehran into one iron alliance that we should then set out to crush. I mean, this is the sort of madness that is rampant in Washington, and it presupposes that we are more than we are. In other words, we are not the nation, Judge, as you know that we were

in 1991. 30 years ago, we were a very different country than the country today. And there doesn't seem to be any willingness to admit that and figure out that we've got serious problems here that need our attention. By the way, that's true for Western Europe. One of the problems that you point out in your piece, Worshipping Dead Horses, you sort of pivot from explaining the uselessness and weakness of NATO into serious problems with the American military, which have been visited upon it by the attitude of current leadership, the Biden administration, with respect to promoting people on the basis of race and gender who are not the most qualified, and establishing the sort of woke atmosphere in the military that people like you and I and people watching us today laugh at

when we see happening on college campuses. Now you're telling me and telling your readers that this is happening in the U.S. military. Have they considered the long-term effect of this nonsense? Yes. Unfortunately, I think they have, and I don't think they understand just how debilitating it is. On the one hand, you have a president who is more warlike, frankly, more aggressive, more bellicose than any president I can remember in my lifetime when he talks about Russia. Not China, but Russia. It's unbelievable. George W. was bellicose, but not with respect to Russia.

Never. Absolutely not. And the key thing here is that while we have all this bellicosity on one side, we're systematically devastating the armed forces on the other side. Tell us how the armed forces are being systematically devastated, the American armed forces. Imagine you have a group of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, doesn't matter, but I would think certainly soldiers and Marines, and you announce that the commander has been removed and you have a new commander. Your new commander is tiny Tim, you know,

with the ukulele in the flower shirt and the long hair kind of a uniform on, but you know, this is crazy Colonel. Yeah. But that's, that's essentially what you've got and says, look, a tiny Tim is one of the finest people we've ever met.

And by the way, he's transgender, but you've got to take showers with him because he deserves the opportunity to take showers with you, even though he's transgender. And he may not wear a skirt all the time, but he's wearing one today. You have to tolerate all of this. This is important. And this is what makes us free. This is what we're talking about with diversity. And then the other thing is, I'm sorry, you're not a woman. You're not black. You're something else.

You may be white. You may be Asian, Northeast Asian. We're not interested in you. We don't care how well you have performed. We don't care how many years you've served. We don't care about your performance under fire and combat. We're interested in Sheila over here and moving her forward because we want a new force, a new force that is radically different from the one you're in. All right. When the government, and I realize there's some metaphors and exaggerations in there, but it's largely a

summary of what's been happening. When the government does that, does it think in the long term, hmm, we don't use a draft anymore. We really need volunteers. We need thousands of volunteers every year. And our base for volunteers are young, virile men who really don't care about woke and don't want wokeness imposed on them, whether the young men are white or black or Hispanic or brown or whatever they may be. My point is, does the Biden administration leadership in the Pentagon recognize that imposing wokeness on the military will have a catastrophic effect on recruiting in the long term? I think they've already seen it. We're already confronting this catastrophic impact on recruiting. We can't recruit the people that we want. And their attitude is it doesn't make any difference. We'll just drop the standards. We'll start recruiting people that we normally never

take into the armed forces, people that are far below the desired IQ levels, people that have criminal records, people that may have serious problems, drug problems or something else. This is already happening. So again, I think they view it as none of these things matter anymore. We live in the era of push-button warfare, fire a missile. We're still the biggest, most powerful, richest country in the world. We can do pretty much as we want. And the important thing in the backs of their minds is that we're building a force that reflects our leftist ideology and values. And we're replacing the values that were historically

motivating inside the armed forces with our new values. One of my viewers just texted us, who wants to die for Biden and Zelensky? It's just so appealing. I mean, no American wants to do that. Does Tony Blinken, does Austin, Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, do they think American troops want to die either for wokeness or for Zelensky? Lloyd Austin is a mystery to me. I've never met the man. And looking back on the years that he served, he certainly was an enormously, let's put it this way, he benefited enormously from the system that we have in place, affirmative action and other things. And yet he's turned on the institution and seems to

be turning on the American people in the country with incredible hatred and distaste. It's hard for me to fathom and imagine. It's even more difficult for me to look at senior officers who stand around and act as though this is perfectly normal. And when you say, what the hell are you doing? Their answer is, well, I've got orders. Orders to do what? Destroy the force? Right. Ruin morale? Destroy cohesion?

Destroy discipline? We don't even have the authority today in the chain of command that we did 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago to take action when it's required. What is the level of wokeness? It's hard for me to ask this with a straight face in the Russian army. Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. The last time I looked at a recruiting video, I'd say about zero. Everybody there understands the Russian army exists to kill enemies of the Russian state. and all the soldiers, sailors, airmen,

and Marines understand that's their number one task. We go to where we're ordered, and we defend the country, and we kill the enemies of the state. All right. We're now at the end of July. Where will we be by Labor Day in the war in Ukraine? Still sending billions of dollars in cash and material there, or recognizing the folly of what we've done? I'm glad you brought that up because most Americans don't understand, Judge. If you look at this $40 billion package that we passed back in May, almost universally, only about half of that is for military assistance. It's still $20 billion, but it's enormous. What's the other half? Well, the other for military assistance. It's still $20 billion, but it's enormous. What's the other half?

Well, the other half is unclear. It goes into aid and assistance that we would term nation building, support the Ukrainian state, humanitarian assistance, medical support, and so forth for the war. But most of the money for military equipment and military assistance really doesn't leave the United States. And this is what most people don't understand. When we say we're going to give the Ukrainians, for discussion purposes, let's just say 100 artillery pieces, we turn to the Department of Defense and say, send 100 artillery pieces to Ukraine. And they say, yes, sir. Then we send money over to the Pentagon to pay for the 100 artillery systems that we've taken and shipped. They then take that amount of money, whatever it is for those artillery systems, and they turn and give it to the defense industries and say,

give us replacements. So it's kind of a circular system because at the same time, remember, when all this money moves from Capitol Hill to DOD to the military industrial complex that we know as the defense industries, that money also involves donations for people on the Hill. That money involves making constituents happy, providing them with employment and jobs and so forth. Which might explain why the Congress voted actually to give more money than Uncle Joe asked them for, because they're all looking for their next contribution. The late great Justice Scalia used to say, it doesn't matter why members of Congress say they voted for anything. They only vote for anything for one reason and one reason only, to get reelected.

Yeah, and that involves a lot of money. The equipment that's on its way there or that's there, this is not brand new, just built in North Carolina stuff, is it? Is this stuff that's been surplus sitting in Warsaw or in a warehouse somewhere outside of Warsaw? It's a mix. You know, some old things have been sent, but a lot of this is relatively new equipment. And remember, we're also depleting our ammunition stocks. So you've got to replace those ammunition stocks. When you talk about missiles, we've been saying the Russians are going to run out of missiles. Miracle of miracles,

they've never run out. But that's because, for instance, if you shoot at an incoming ballistic missile, you have a Patriot missile battery, you're shooting two missiles for every one that is shot at you. Right. Well, that implies an enormous surplus of missiles on hand in peacetime. Well, we don't have that. In fact, we need a much larger surplus of those weapon systems. So a lot of mine is no. And then the other thing to keep in mind, Judge, I'm glad you mentioned this. We have been trying to get control of where both money and equipment is going in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians have not been helping us. And what we happens in eastern Ukraine. They know the country. They've been together for hundreds of years. So anything that's really new, like HIMARS that comes in, once it shoots or fires, it's a target. We know we've already lost two or three HIMARS systems very, very quickly. We lost the Caesar artillery systems that the French provided. But then we're also hearing that the Ukrainian forces themselves,

elements of it, are selling some of our equipment to the Russians. Oh, boy. Colonel, has the American government, has the Biden administration jeopardized the national security of the United States by its profligate distribution of military assets from our own arsenals? Yes, I think they have, perhaps not on the scale that many people think, because right now I don't see any evidence that anyone wants to attack us militarily per se, but whenever you run down your stocks of equipment and ammunition, you're vulnerable. I mean, you know, everyone who's watched the various movies about the Battle of Midway all understand that everything revolved around how many aircraft do you have,

how much ammunition do you have, when is it uploaded, when is it used, and how do you replenish it? That's warfare. In that sense, we're vulnerable. And in that sense, it's being, in my judgment, irresponsible. Colonel Douglas McGregor, always a pleasure. We hope you come back and visit us again soon. Okay. Thanks, Judge. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!