Judging Freedom - Col. Douglas Macgregor : What the Media Won't Tell You

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Col. Douglas Macgregor : What the Media Won't Tell YouSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, May 20th, 2024. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now. Colonel McGregor, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. Sure. A number of breaking news items in the past 24 hours that

I'd like to get your thoughts on. The first is the revelation by the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court that he will ask a panel of judges there to authorize the filing of an indictment against and thus arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, Defense Minister Galant, and three leading Hamas leaders, one of whom, according to Alistair Crook, our friend and colleague, is a friend of Alistair's and is the chief Hamas negotiator who travels back and forth between Doha and Cairo. Your thoughts on where this could go? Well, the first thing that springs to mind is the even-handedness of the court. They're not restricting their attention to the top Israeli leadership,

which is a blessing. They're also turning their guns on the top Hamas leadership. Now, whether or not any or all of these men qualify as war criminals is something that will have to be decided in a court of law. But, you know, you can't sit at the top of any power structure that involves the use of force and distance yourself from responsibility for what happens on the battlefield. You know, Israeli soldiers have done things that we regard as criminal acts, but they've done them because they were told to. They were encouraged to do so. They were propagandized to do so. I think you can make the same argument about the Hamas types. So in the final analysis, I think this is a more reasonable approach than any other that I've seen. Now, will it make any difference to us? I think that's doubtful.

We're not going to pay much attention to it, and I don't think Israel will either. You have argued very articulately, Colonel, that Israel has isolated itself. Does this add to that isolation? Is there a level of credibility to an indictment and arrest warrant coming from this court? They indicted and issued an arrest warrant for President Putin, not for waging the war, but for seizing children. He says he seized them to save them, and the court says he seized them to take them away from their parents. I don't know the facts.

But the point is, will these charges isolate Israel further? Oh, absolutely. I don't think there's any question of that. The problem is that as long as Mr. Netanyahu and his colleagues control what happens on Capitol Hill in the United States, frankly, it doesn't mean much. The Iranian government announced that the president of Iran is dead, traveling in a convoy of three helicopters, two of which landed safely, the one that contained him and his foreign minister or defense minister, I'm not sure which, I think foreign minister, crashed and everybody aboard died. Is this of any significance? Will he likely be replaced by a like

mine? We've heard no evidence. There's cheering in Israel, I understand that, but we've heard no claims opposing this, nor evidence that it was anything other than some weather-related catastrophe. Well, I think that's true, Judge. And unfortunately, there's a predisposition to begin to spin off all sorts of conspiracy theories. I've been reading people claiming this is the equivalent of killing Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. We're on the precipice of World War I. That's all nonsense. People need to understand something. There's only one state in the region that wants war. That's Israel.

And then secondly, the only other state that's interested in war in the region is the United States. Now, I don't think the American people are, but clearly much of Washington is interested in involving itself in a war against Iran. So that's true. But in order to have a World War I scenario, you've got to have multiple actors that are ready and waiting to pull the trigger. That's not the case. The Egyptians right now are prepping and ostensibly mobilizing their forces for action, but they're taking their time, they're being very deliberate, and they're waiting for the Israelis to complete what they've begun in Rafah and the Philadelphia Corridor. I think we're going to see more of that, but no one is in a rush to go to war right now. The court in London, which everyone thought was Julian Assange's final appeal, ordered him extradited a month ago if the United States satisfied the court that he would be tried as an American citizen, would have all the rights guaranteed to him by the Bill of Rights, would make a First Amendment defense and would not be

exposed to the death penalty. Rather than sending Department of Justice lawyers into the courtroom to make that representation, the United States had a political appointee in the embassy in London send a letter to the court, which the court rejected. So they said he's not being extradited, and he's entitled to appeal to our bosses, our seniors, on these issues. Well, you and I have talked about him before, and I think we concluded that he was probably in a lot of trouble, and if he returned to the United States, he probably wouldn't survive. He'll end up hanging himself in a jail cell or something. So I think it's a blessing that he's not being brought back here. I regret that President Trump did not pardon him because I

don't see him as a criminal who deserves to be killed, which I guess was something that Pompeo argued as head of the CIA to President Trump. I think the court made a good decision. We were stupid, but we are also extraordinarily arrogant. And we think that whatever we say, whatever view we express, should be taken to heart without question. We should be embraced and our will obeyed. I think it's pretty clear that even the British, who are one of the leading vassal states of American military power in its bid for hegemony, is unwilling to do that, thank goodness. Talking about vassal states, is Israel a vassal state of the United States, or is the United States a vassal state of Israel, or is neither of those the case in your view? Oh, I think that we can make a good

argument that this is a wag the dog scenario. Israel is very much in charge. All you have to do is look at the senators, the self-described Republicans, people like Tim Scott, I think Cruz and others who are heaping abuse all over the Biden administration for even considering any delay. And now they've got legislation waiting to be passed to ensure that Israel effectively gets whatever it wants it immediately. So I think it's pretty clear that the Israeli government, at least supported by the diaspora in the United States and the wealthy oligarchs that are here, is pretty much getting what it wants. I don't think there's much question about that. So we're responding.

The senators you mentioned, there were about 12 of them. I don't know if Senator Scott was on there, but Senator Cruz was one of those who led the charge, signed a one-page letter, which sounded like it was written more like by a mafia don, except the mafia is smart enough not to threaten a prosecutor in writing. They threatened this prosecutor who brought the indictment to the court, the International Criminal Court this morning, and basically saying, if you go after Prime Minister Netanyahu, we'll go after you. That turned my stomach, especially since I know some of them. Two of them are graduates of Harvard Law School. They certainly know what the law is, but they're still willing to engage in this kind of a thuggery. And I'm happy that the prosecutor seemed unmoved by it. Doesn't the United States have sort of an iron grip on this court?

Well, I know that Senator Cruz, at least a year ago or two years ago, had an Israeli citizen as his national security advisor. And I think there are many like that on the Hill. They're everywhere. And now maybe they're dual citizens, which is another unfortunate development in the history of our country. But nevertheless, that's been the case. And I think many of these people are simply sort of hanging a neon sign on the door saying, please send more money to me if you're thinking about preserving and enhancing the power and the influence of the Israeli state, because I'll do it. I think that's about it.

Colonel, the last of the breaking news over the weekend, I won't even describe it, I'll let you listen to it. Cut number eight, Sonia. If we are to continue to fight shoulder to shoulder, the Cabinet must approve by the 8th of June an action plan that will lead to the realization of our strategic goals. That, of course, is Benny Gantz, who was the former head of the IDF,

now a leader of one of the opposition parties in the Knesset, a member of the war cabinet, threatening to leave the war cabinet if Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn't come up with a plan for peace. I don't know how he can come up with a plan for peace without antagonizing the right-wing thugs in his group, and they leave and he doesn't have a government anymore, but I'll let you take that ball and run with it. Well, recently Thomas Sowell was reminding me and others of Winston Churchill's warning that once you embark on a war and the fighting begins,

the political leadership has almost no influence to prevent the war from moving in unanticipated directions. In other words, betting on a short war that is decisive is usually a serious mistake. And I think that's what the Israelis did. I think this Israeli governmental leadership or coalition, whatever you want to call it, was really quite convinced that 7 October was a gift and they should make the most of it. Now, some people think that they may have allowed this to happen. I don't have evidence for or against that. But I think it's very clear that 7 October was viewed as an opportunity to be exploited. And so the real purpose thus far

has been mass expulsion and murder, if necessary, to rid Israel of its population in Gaza. By the way, there are a lot of things happening in the West Bank right now to the Palestinian Arab population that are not being reported in the Western media. So I think we need to take Benny Gantz's comments with a grain of salt. He's part of the organization. He's part of the problem. We know what the purpose of the mission was. That was to wipe out Gaza, eliminate it. We know what the method was, really massive bombing. If you simply wanted to root out Hamas fighters and essentially administer an object lesson to halt further attempts, you would have handled things very differently. You know, you could have immediately filled those tunnels with seawater, but you would not have bombed recklessly because any urban area that is heavily bombed becomes a haven for the insurgents or the fighters that are against you. It becomes easier to defend a ruin. But they really wanted to make sure that Gaza was ruined to the point where no one would try to come back. So all of that has kind of fallen apart because they haven't attained their desired end state.

We talk in terms of strategic purpose, method, end state. We understand the purpose. We've seen the method. The end state has not been achieved. And that's why Mr. Netanyahu has said we may be at this for 10 years. Well, I don't know of any modern state that is willing to spend 10 years at war, particularly against something inside their borders that is as resilient and determined as Hamas and the population are, especially since every day

Hamas grows in stature. I imagine that many of their losses have already been made good, that they've had no trouble attracting recruits. And I'm quite sure that Egypt and Jordan and the other Arab states, as well as Turkey and Iran, they're all standing there watching this catastrophe, and it is actually encouraging them. So instead of restoring what the Israelis used to call deterrence, I think the Israelis now look very weak in the eyes of people in the region.

And as a result, we're going to see a greater coalition emerge, more resistance, more isolation. And ultimately, I think we're going to see more war. Do you think that if General Gantz became the prime minister, there'd be much difference in the manner in which this slaughter is being conducted in Gaza? Well, he was part of the decision-making process that brought us this far. Right. I think the only thing he would do conceivably is argue that perhaps I can find a better way to get this done. In other words, perhaps I can arrange some sort of ceasefire. I can slow down the process of defeat, which is what the Israelis are confronting in Gaza. I can make peace with Hezbollah. I can

somehow or another avoid a wider war. I don't know. I don't know that he can't. The only way to avoid more isolation and ultimately more warfare is to end the operation completely. I don't think he can do that. I don't think anyone in Israel could do that. Do you? is happening in either Gaza or the West Bank that the mainstream media in the West is not reporting? Well, who controls the mainstream media in the West? I think that's the question. And the control over the media indicates an unambiguous support for current Israeli policy and whatever the Israeli state wants to do. If you go public and you start hurling abuse at the Israelis and criticize them for what they're doing, you're going to be cut down to size pretty quickly in the mainstream press of the West. You'll become an anti-Semite, a bigot. You'll be tarnished as pro-Hamas, which of course is absurd.

But that's where we are. So I'm not surprised that it's not being reported. Look at the way we have omitted consistently over and over and over again, the catastrophe in Ukraine from accurate reporting. I mean, how many hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have to die? How many millions have to be wounded before the truth sinks in? And apparently there's an almost insatiable appetite for Ukrainian blood in Washington. I do want to get over to Ukraine with you, but before we do, are there events, military confrontations between Hezbollah and the IDF in the West Bank that the mainstream media is not even telling us about?

Well, there's a lot of evidence that Hezbollah has done a pretty good job of shaping the battlefield, as we call it, to their advantage, systematically attacking what we call command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance capabilities. They've managed to make life unbearable for the Israelis on the other side of the border from where they are to prevent anybody from returning. So I'd say, yes, we haven't been told a great deal about that. And I'm not surprised because the media wants to create the illusion that Washington has things under control. It doesn't.

Washington has lost control everywhere. I'd like to segue over to Ukraine, Colonel, and I'd like to do it by running a clip for you. I won't even tell you who this is, but you'll know her. You haven't seen her in a while. Cut number six. She's back. I think if the attacks are coming directly from over the line in Russia, that those bases ought to be fair game, whether they are where missiles are being launched from or where they are, where

troops are being supplied from. I think it's time for that because Russia has obviously escalated this war, including, as you said at the beginning, attacking Russia's second city, Kharkiv, which is not on the front lines and trying to decimate it without ever having to put a boot on the ground. So I think it is time to give the Ukrainians more help hitting these bases inside Russia. Crazy woman wants American armaments and ammunition to attack inside Russia. Well, I was surprised when you said we haven't seen her for a while. And I thought you were going to run a clip of I Love Lucy or something. I Love Lucy would have made more sense.

Oh, absolutely. No question about it. Unfortunately, you shoved Victoria Nuland at us. This woman is a committed ideologue. She's never going to admit the truth. She's never going to come to terms with the truth. She is going to continue to cling tenaciously to the mountain of lies that she and her ideological fellow travelers have created who are currently running our country it's it's tragic but that's the way it is and frankly she she would be delighted if she could pull us in but i've got

news for her we're not coming we don't have the capability everybody knows it now it's no longer a secret judge the united states army is a pitiful remnant of what it was 30 years ago. It's in terrible condition. What are you going to do, hurl the dwindling Marine Corps designed for amphibious warfare in 1943 at Sevastopol? Of course not. They're not going to do anything. Then you turn to the Air Force that has, what, a readiness rate of only 40 or 50 percent in its newest aircraft, can't find enough pilots, is trying to recall pilots to fly aircraft. And then there's the Navy. My goodness, you know, we need to decommission carriers. We need to take a new direction in the way we develop and build our naval power.

There is no coherent strategy in Washington. Everything is impulse-driven. It's all emotion-based. She is a perfect example of that. She believes that her ideology tells her that Russia is evil and must be destroyed. Therefore, it will happen. You just continue to scream obscenities at the Russians and scream lies at us, and eventually that's what's going to occur. No, it's not. She's just wasting her time, but more important, she's making us look ridiculous.

Also making us look ridiculous, I would submit, is General Christopher Cavoli, excuse me, four-star general, commander of CENTCOM. Correct me, I believe that's all American military in Europe. Yes, he's the commander of Europe. Okay. He commands all forces, not just U.S. forces, but he's the titular head of all forces in the NATO alliance. Wow. He's the successor of Eisenhower, a Supreme Allied commander, more or less.

Right, right. That's exactly right. And that is the title that he possesses, the same one that Eisenhower had at the end of the war. Wow. So General Cavoli, notwithstanding that nice last name, couldn't resist. This must be painful for you, Judge. Well, it's not painful for me to introduce you to disagree with him because he says Russia lacks the number of troops and skills, lacks the capability for a breakthrough, and his buddy Admiral Bauer, of whom I've never heard, says Russian troops, this is crazy, are of an inferior quality to American and to Ukrainian

troops. I don't know where these two fellows come off with this. Well, I haven't heard much from Admiral Bauer lately. His name would indicate he's German, but perhaps he's Dutch or Danish. I don't know. But I assume with the name Bauer, he's a German. And obviously he feels compelled to weigh in because the current German leadership in Berlin wants to maintain the fictional facade that we've been discussing for most of our interview. As far as Cavoli is concerned, he's a very disappointing member of the four-star, three-star community.

All of these people have sold themselves to whomever was willing to promote them. They have eagerly embraced terrible policies that have been detrimental to the interests of the American people and its armed forces. They're presiding over a disaster. He's helped as much as anybody to bring on this catastrophe, and he's routinely lied about the truth. The truth has always been the same. Ukraine can't win. And now, in light of the Russians' success and the obvious quality of the Russian force and its weapons and capabilities,

tell us that their inferior or substandard or lacking in anything is absurd. He ought to be grateful that the Russians are completely disinterested in marching to Brussels and Mons to meet him personally, because right now there isn't a hell of a lot out there that we could throw into the fight that would make any damn difference to this Russian army. Colonel, how does the Russian army compare to the American army? Well, I should think that would be obvious at this point.

The Russian army is a very tough, disciplined, and currently reasonably well-led force. Now, like all armies, when they first take the field, whenever you go to the field for the first time to fight, you run into all sorts of problems that you may or may not have known in advance. The Russians have already been through that. This is three years later. These are battle-hardened formations, battle-hardened troops. They have high morale, total confidence in their commanders and leaders. The ones that were poor or weak have been discarded. So they're in a brilliant position. We're in the opposite camp. We have a lot of people that have never done a damn thing, who are pretending to be great men, pretending to

be the heirs to Patton's Third Army or Merrill's Marauders or any number of outstanding military formations that performed brilliantly during the Second World War. They aren't. And for them to publicly castigate the Russians, I think it's stupid. It's stupid because once again, we want the war to end. You know, you want it to end and you want to get on with life. And you would like to have some sort of amicable solution with which both we, the Russians, the Ukrainians, and others in Eastern Europe can live. But if you behave this way, this indicates that you have no interest in peace, no interest in a negotiated solution. That's a very dangerous signal to send right now. We are at an all-time low point. I haven't seen our forces and our capabilities at such a low point of strength and power since the

early 1970s, Judge. How did we get to such a low point? We're spending a trillion dollars a year. You know, I don't want to sound like a member of Congress because they equate all this money with the defense of greatness. So it's obviously not going to build up the morale and the strength of the troops. Let me alter my question. What you just said, comparing the American military to the Russian, do NATO countries understand this, or do they really think that they can help Ukraine beat Russia and that Putin is bluffing? You know, that's a good question. I can't give a definitive answer for everybody in Europe. I think it's mixed.

I know a number of Germans and some Poles, some Czechs, Hungarians. I don't think that they are delusional. Now, I'm talking about people below the rank of a full colonel, people who are largely captains or majors. And I think they have a more realistic view of just what a tough adversary Russia is. So I don't think that's the case. You know, Friedrich Nietzsche, the great German philosopher of the modern world, he said something that we should always keep in mind. War makes the victor stupid. And in 1991, we had, by any stretch of the imagination,

certainly by modern standards, a relatively easy victory. Now, we can say that that victory was more easily achieved than we thought because we were so much better equipped, better organized, better trained, and so forth. I think that's true, partially. We also did not fight one of the best armies in the world. It was large and had a lot of capability that it never used very effectively. But it also wasn't the Soviet 3rd Guards Tank Army. It was certainly not the Waffen-SS Panzer Corps. So we came out of that war and we decided, and of course, this is

reflected in Wolfowitz's famous memorandum that we now refer to in retrospect as a sort of unipolar strategy. We came out of it with the view that we could pretty much bully anybody we wanted to, that no one out there could really stand against us. But at the same time, the force itself atrophied. Not only did it grow smaller, although we never reduced the numbers of generals, obviously. We, in fact, added numbers of generals while we were reducing by hundreds of thousands people that could actually fight and deploy and fight. But I think we then tinkered with the force. We made decisions that were short-term, that were designed to pour money into silver bullet technology, most of which never worked. I mean, just within the last couple of days, articles are coming out indicating that the Army, much like the Navy some time ago, concluded that investing in laser technology was probably a waste of money. Well, there were a lot of people that looked at this and said, yes, for the moment it is.

And we shouldn't hang much on it. But the generals have behaved as children in Toys R Us. You'll remember that old store? They could go into the defense industry and they would be handed limitless quantities of cash by Congress to go buy whatever they wanted. In the meantime, the forces themselves grew smaller, remained anachronistic, if not antiquated. And today, if you look at the Army in particular, it wants to refight World War II again. It wants to default back to organizations and ways of doing business that we had in 1944. It's unbelievable. The Navy isn't much better off. And I think the Marines, they've now gone down to dream world to become rocketeers. And they're trying to organize

against one enemy that they may likely never fight. I could go on and on. Then the Air Force, of course, pours enormous quantities of money into super manned aircraft and they're not performing up to expectation. So it's a large problem and we're in no position right now to go into a major war with anybody.

If we do, we risk almost certain defeat. A brilliant off-the-cuff analysis, Colonel, if I may say so, of the deplorable state of American defenses. Does the West understand, I alluded to this earlier, does the west understand i alluded to this earlier does the west understand that when president putin makes a threat he is not bluffing you know i i would hope so but clearly there's still evidence that people don't get it and this is not new uh sometimes no matter what kind of evidence is presented, to the contrary, threats are not taken seriously. Genghis Khan famously attacked states and peoples across Central Asia who had injured or murdered or mistreated his ambassadors. He never struck without a reason to do so.

But what he found over and over and over again was that his victims fell to the same tactics that had worked so brilliantly previously. And the capability and the power of his force was never fully appreciated until it was too late. So to some extent, I think we are viewing the rest of the world through the same lens. In fact, I hear it all the time when you talk about economics and finance.

Oh, don't be ridiculous. Why would anybody take the BRICS seriously? We're the financial hegemon. No one can do business without us. Our dollar is indispensable. Well, I think we're finding out that that's not true. You're right, Colonel. Thank you very much. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your analysis on such a broad array of issues, my dear friend. Look forward to seeing you next week.

Okay. Thanks a lot, Judge. Thank you, Colonel. Have a good Memorial Day weekend. Oh, thanks. You too. God bless your family, Colonel. Same to you. We have one guest remaining today at 4.30 Eastern, Scott Ritter. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!