Judging Freedom - COL. Douglas Macgregor : Would An Attack on Venezuela Be a War Crime?

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

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Discover why there's more to imagine when you listen at audible.com slash best of the year. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, December 4th, 2025. Colonel Douglas McGregor will be here with us in a minute on this topic. Would it be a crime, a war crime, to attack Venezuela for no legitimate military purpose? By first this. History tells us every market eventually falls. Currencies collapse. And look at where we are now.

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Colonel McGregor, welcome here, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule today. Before we get to your thoughts on Venezuela. I'd like you, if it's all right with you, to weigh in on the latest embryo involving Secretary of Defense Pete Hegeseth. Is it a crime to attack or order the attack of non-combatant, non-violent civilians on a speedboat in the middle of the ocean? Yes. Unless you have some sort of tangible concrete, evidence for their intent to commit an act of violence against your country, against your forces, against your ships. It doesn't make any sense. That's why we have something called the United States Coast Guard and law enforcement to deal with these kinds of ambiguous situations.

What about this? I assume your answer will be the same, this issue of the survivors of the attack. Is there not a legal? and moral imperative, and you know this from your expertise in the history of war. This wasn't always followed in World War II, and sometimes the people, I think, correct me from wrong, who didn't follow or punished, to rescue survivors. Yes, of course, there's no question about it. We had something called the Law of War and we had the Uniform Code of Military Justice And all of the law of war classes that are taught inside the military to all ranks address these issues.

So there's no real question about that. We have to understand something that historically in all wars, there are always atrocities. There are always mistakes. Atrocities are mistakes, but they're deliberate as opposed to accidental killings or harm that's accidental. during world war two for instance it was standard practice in the imperial japanese navy that any american sailor soldier airman or marine who was captured at sea was interrogated and then immediately dropped overboard and sent to the bottom that was standard practice so there was no exception that that was something the japanese practiced as you can imagine

when the opportunity presented itself during world war two for the united states navy to take revenge, it did so. And so Japanese sailors that were in the water were frequently machine gunned by pilots in order to turn them into effectively shark bait. Now, all these things were wrong. After we came out of the Second World War, we revisited everything. We had to do it again, frankly, after the Korean War because of the way prisoners of war were treated in North Korea. The point is that we know what's right, we know what's wrong. And the I'm sure that the people on board ship in the Caribbean, whether they were in small craft or larger vessels or you were talking about someone flying a drone, it doesn't make any difference.

Seeing two people survive a strike on a boat that managed to cling to life and the wreckage of the vessel were not deserving of extermination or annihilation by any means. They could have been picked up. there's something else here that we need to keep in mind it's always a good idea to get prisoners the notion that taking prisoners is more of a burden than an asset is misleading prisoners are a source of information uh you have an interest in in capturing prisoners when you kill prisoners in which you kill somebody who's defenseless in in face of your military power that's terrorism you're committing an act of terror against your opponent now there are

armies that have done that historically the japanese the mongolian armies sometimes the soviet armies sometimes the german military we know that but historically it makes sense to take prisoners then you begin to find out a little bit more about the network why the people were where they were you know what they're likely to do in the future and so forth so this was a very unnecessary act finding two survivors that were on board this boat that allegedly was carrying drugs and killing them was stupid. You have a terrific understanding of law enforcement, colonel. Prosecutors will tell you the same thing you did.

Don't kill. Bring them in. Charge them. They'll negotiate for a lesser charge. And in the process of that negotiation, we'll learn about their trafficking and where this stuff comes from and who pays them and who they deal with and all of that. Now, of course, the evidence is destroyed, and the people involved, if they were even drug dealers, of course, are dead. What about Admiral Bradley?

If the Secretary of Defense said kill them all, I think he should have said no. If that, in fact, is what happened. And again, you and I have a lot of experience with the mainstream media. In the military, we say the first report is always wrong. in other words whatever you're told first about the sighting of the enemy or the interaction with the enemy that first report is usually emotionally charged and inaccurate so you tend to take the first report with a grain of salt i i'm trying to do that in this setting because i don't know all the facts now if what is being reported is true and he received that order from the secretary of defense

he had a number of choices really not just one or or two he could have said uh you yes sir thank you very much and ignored it all right he's a four-star admiral he is in command if the secretary of defense is telling him to do something he thinks is wrong or misguided or counterproductive he can simply choose to disregard that order and continue on with what he thinks is correct he can subsequently tell the secretary well mr secretary i understood your order but i felt at the time it didn't make very much sense and i think uh you can understand my position blah blah blah he could have said frankly that's an illegal order mr secretary i'm not going to do it we don't know what he said if he said anything if he said nothing and simply

passed the order down then he's committed uh an infraction of the law of war he's committed a crime there's no question about it i'll be frank with you my concern right now and this has always been based upon my experience in the military both in war and in peace time is the plight of the people at the lowest level, the sergeant, the lance corporal, the boatswain's mate. These are the people that have to do the dirty work. They're the ones receiving the order. Very difficult for a man at the bottom who knows that his first obligation is obedience. That is true. Obedience is critical to the disciplined military. He's very reluctant not to obey an order and he has to think this thing through carefully. and he's probably going to conclude that, well, I better do what I'm told because if I don't,

I'm going to be court-martialed. Right. I'm going to be ground up by this machine. The military is a machine. It grinds you up and spits you out if you don't understand how it works. So I'm not terribly interested in crucifying anybody at the lowest level. I'm always interested in where this started. And, you know, the fish rots from the head, judge.

Well, Colonel, we know. where it started. It started either with the President of the United States or it started with the Secretary of Defense, who calls himself the Secretary of War. Chris, I'm looking for the montage of the three, starting with Secretary Hegseth, at a time when I worked with him almost every day in 2016, answering in my view, and I'd like your view, truthfully and accurately, what to do about an illegal order and then progressing on to what he said two days ago. There are some guys at Leavenworth who made really bad choices on the battlefield. And I do think there have to be consequences for abject war crimes.

If you're doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, then there is a consequence for that. That's why the military said it won't follow unlawful orders from their commander-in-chief. There's a standard. There's an ethos. There's a belief that we are above what some. many things that our enemies or others would do. I watched it live.

We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing, and we knew exactly who they represented. I watched that first strike lot. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs, so I moved on to my next meeting. I did not personally see survivors, but I stand, because the thing was on fire. It was exploded and fire or smoke.

You can't see anything. You got digital. This is called the fog of war. He since then posted a meme of a cartoon character called Franklin the Turtle, shooting a military weapon at people in a boat and saying, on top, this is something destined for children. to read, for your Christmas wish list. I think this is a twisted way of thinking.

Let's make one thing clear, he tweeted. Admiral Mitch Bradley, that's the Admiral in charge. Is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support. I stand behind him on the combat decisions he has made on the September 2 mission and all others since. America is fortunate to have such men protecting us. when this department of war says we have the back of our warriors we mean it uh-huh well it sounds not like the fog of war but the fog of fear and i think the fog of fear is closed in

there has to be an investigation if the investigation turns up evidence that says yes he was explicitly told this is the admiral explicitly told to do this and the admiral unhesitatingly obeyed that order. Then the Admiral is guilty of a war crime, just as the Secretary of Defense is guilty of a war crime. There's no discussion at that point. We need, frankly, to suspend both of these men from active duty pending an investigation, to be frank.

If this is wrong, it has to stop immediately. It must not, under any circumstances, be repeated. You know, there's a big difference between coming on Fox News, or speaking to an enthusiastic crowd of Trump supporters or MAGA supporters or something, and making comments about annihilating this or destroying that or killing this or killing that. And what happens in wartime?

War is a very difficult thing to control. There's nothing, we talk about precision strike, and that's a real thing, but there's not that much in war that is truly precise. It involves thousands of people. you've got to be very careful what you tell people to do or not to do and you've got to make something else clear that if somebody is injured or wounded who may have been your opponent but is in no position to harm you you have an obligation to rescue that person's life unless of course it

puts your life at risk we don't expect our soldiers sailors airborne or marines to put their lives at risk to rescue uh enemies who are wounded but if they can do so without becoming a casualty themselves, then that's what we expect them to do. That is humane, and that's what we want. I think people on active duty understand that, and from personal experience, I can tell you, having seen American soldiers kill the enemy with absolute professional excellence, at the same time, turn readily to someone who holds up a white flag or beckons for help who's severely it was formerly the enemy and they all moved to that person and saved their lives i saw it happen i

saw it done someone on on my own tank i mean we were this is uh about two days two and a half days into action and we were moving through an area we were taking a lot of fire uh this particular member of my tank crew uh wounded uh some soldiers that were shooting at us from not more than maybe 50 yards to our left front next thing i knew they they produced a white flag i didn't see it i was doing something else as the as a tank commander at the time and he briefly stopped the vehicle went over there administered first aid water uh took their weapons away of course said just wait here more will follow after us got back on the tank and we went on i was happy about it at the time because i didn't think we should stop under any circumstances

but i was so busy with the squadron trying to direct people uh where they needed to go and what they needed to do that I had lost sight of what was going on. But my point is, American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are predisposed to be humane, even to the people that formerly tried to kill them. That's the way they're trained. That's the way they're educated. The military must have changed its plans after this, its orders after this, because a similar event occurred a month and a half later. And they rescue. the survivors. And then they called the Department of Justice and said,

what do we do with these people? And the DOJ said, we'll hold them for two days until we decide what to do if we prosecute them or not. The president says they're drug dealers. They sent them home. Yeah, well, that's, again, that's why we have the United States Coast Guard. And this is always a problem when you commit the professional military to these kinds of police operations.

Those of us in the professional military are there to destroy the enemies of the American people in the United States. We understand that. But you do need a capability that it's somewhere between us and the enemy, and that's usually a policing force. That's why the Coast Guard is so important. Switching gears to something,

a topic I know you're fascinated with, can a country long exist as both an empire and a debtor? Yeah, that's a great line. And I love it because there's so much truth in it. Empires exist because the empire is designed to enrich the home country. If the empire is not enriching the home country, then it's a waste of money and therefore should be essentially abandoned. You know, this was the problem that the British had. After World War I, the British were no longer extracting the same levels of profit and resource from its colonies as it once had.

it began to make sense for the British and ultimately the French and others to to bail on these on these colonies to get out but they didn't because empires inevitably end up being mortgaged to vanity you know I've heard it in the halls of Congress I've listened to people say our soldiers stand in every country in the world our soldiers are here they're doing this our Navy is here well all right well why Congressman why are they there what doesn't matter as far as he's concerned is This is an expression of national power. But if the expression of national power is a dead end, it's costing you a lot of money and producing really nothing in terms of national security, then you ought to stop doing it. But it's very difficult to do that. And so over time, debtors become debtor nations. By the time World War II ended, the debt to GDP ratio in Great Britain was 240%. When you hit 240%, you have to shed responsibilities, shed obligations.

And so what did the British do? They left India. Wow. You and I could talk about this, and you could educate so many of us on this at great length, but of course, time is limited. What's the real reason that the Trump administration is threatening Venezuela, and is there any bona fide, legitimate military reason to justify an attack or an invasion? Well, sadly, justifying the use of military power for any great power that wants to use it

is not very difficult. It doesn't involve a careful analysis of whether or not it makes sense. It doesn't involve whether or not what happens in the country that you're interested in has any impact on you. You could argue that in 1965, there was absolutely no reason whatsoever for us to attack Vietnam, North Vietnam, or the Viet Cong. Quite frankly, what happened there was not a vital strategic interest. But look, what did we do? We went in massively and spent 10 years, did a lot of damage, bankrupted ourselves in the process to the point where we had to go off the gold standard and then we left and what happened nothing i mean it eventually the place recovered but we think we may have killed a million two million vietnamese in the process and the

question is for what we lost 48 38000 10 excuse me 100 000 plus wounded for what and so forth so when you ask does it make sense militarily i can't find any strategic rationale that makes any sense for a military assault on Venezuela. And I always invite everybody to go to the websites for the Drug Enforcement Agency as an example. Look at what it says there about the distribution of narcotics and drugs, where they move to, where they come from. And there isn't anything coming out of Venezuela right now that would justify the use of military power on the scale that we have assembled in the Caribbean. It just isn't there. Without a national security or military justification for invading Venezuela, would such an invasion itself be a war crime?

I think you could make that argument. You can make the argument that most of the wars that had started could have been avoided, and they were war crimes. I mean, we could go through European history over the last 300 years and find plenty of examples of that. You know, why do states go to war? Well, there are a lot of reasons. Remember, I think it was Thucydides at the beginning of the Peloponnesian wars that said states go to war over questions of honor they go to war in order to acquire gold and wealth and territory and population and they go to war because they feel threatened i mean there goes through and lists these things not much has changed since thucydides enumerated those reasons but the sad part is that remember no one at the top bothers to ask anyone at the bottom they just do it

and then the people that are at the bottom, they're the ones that end up having to do the fighting and the dying. And at some point, they get tired of it, which is what happened to us in Vietnam, and they demand that we get out. Colonel, we only have a few minutes left, but there is a prime minister in Tokyo supported by a good number of United States senators

who want us to at least express a willingness to go to war over Taiwan. against China. Yeah. Wouldn't that be insane? Oh, absolutely. Completely insane. You know, one of the things that's very clear, both Beijing and Moscow have told Maduro and Venezuela that if he's attacked by the United States military, that he's on his own, because it's

strategically, you know, lunacy for the Russians or the Chinese to come over and try to challenge us in the Caribbean over Venezuela. Well, it would be lunacy for us to go to Taiwan and challenge the power and might of the Chinese armed forces over Taiwan. Again, it sits back to what have we done in Ukraine? You know, we fought a war on Russia's doorstep. How dumb can you be? Well, pretty damn dumb. That would be the same thing as challenging us in Mexico. It's impossible. So I think on one level, just from a strategic rationality perspective, it makes absolutely, absolutely no sense. Now, what happened in Japan is interesting because this prime minister

represents what I would call conservative right of center interests in Japan. She has a lot of support because she is seen as leading Japan down a path that is the restoration in many ways of the Meiji system, the imperial system in Japan, the way that countries organized and run. And she has the backing of what I would call the imperial bureaucracy, the large standing bureaucracy in Japan that is ultimately loyal first and foremost to the emperor. She spoke out of turn, however, and they had to bring her back on side and make it very clear that Japan is not going to go to war with China, period, ever. They did that once. That was a huge waste of time. They're not going to repeat that folly. And so she's had to go out and recant

and say, look, I misspoke. And we want good relations with China. They do. China is the Japan's largest market, or if it isn't now, it will be soon. They don't want a war. The Chinese don't want a war with Japan. It's complete insanity. And I think the message that she is now sending at the behest of the bureaucracy that runs the country and the ruling class is if the United States thinks that Japan is going to put itself at risk in a war with China that Japan does not need to fight, the Americans have lost their minds. And I think the Japanese increasingly behind closed doors would like us to leave, just as the Koreans would like us to leave, but they're too polite to tell us to get out. One last topic, Colonel, I can't resist playing this for you. It's relatively brief.

This is a statement made publicly by President Putin shortly before he met for five hours with Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner. I'd like your thoughts on it. Chris cut number 12. We are not planning to go to war with Europe. I've said that 100 times already. But if Europe suddenly wants to go to war with us and starts it, we are ready right now. There can be no doubt about that.

The only question is, in what way? If Europe suddenly starts a war with us, I think it will be over very quickly. This isn't Ukraine. With Ukraine, we're acting in a surgical, careful manner. right so that well you get it right you get it right you get it right yeah he said some very important things judge that really deserve attention let's start with the last one his comment about the special military operation all the great luminaries here in the west that have been

complaining about russia's failure to advance more quickly and the slow deliberate methodical process that they've adopted towards the Ukrainian armed forces have always missed the fact that President Putin views the Ukrainians Orthodox Slavs, much like the Russians, as a kindred people. He's not interested in killing Ukrainians. The Ukrainians have sacrificed themselves in enormous numbers by impaling themselves on a strategic defense. They cannot defeat at our behest, obviously. So the first thing is he's telling you, If we go to war with you, you are not Orthodox flaws. We do not regard you as a kindred people.

Then we will wage total war against you. And he's not kidding. And he's absolutely right. The next point that everybody needs to pay attention to is that Russia now, today, is in a state ready to go to full mobilization. They can bring up hundreds of thousands of more reservists, more soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. They can go to a full war footing within hours.

All of their production facilities can be operational. They can protect most of it with a much improved, integrated air and missile defense network. The point is that Europe can't do any of that. It's astonishing when you listen to these retired British and American general officers who make the fatuous statement, oh, well, Europe, look at it, in terms of raw capability, and size and power, it is so much more economic strength than Russia. Why is anybody hesitant about going to war with Russia? Well, all that economic strength doesn't amount to a hill of beans

if you can't translate it quickly and immediately into effective military power. And Europe can't do that. It's not organized for that. It would take years to change that situation. And frankly, it's not necessary, but that's something that nobody wants to admit that Russia has no aspirations to conquer. Europe. Russia doesn't even want to move beyond the Neupper River and deal with Ukrainians on the other side. When it acts, as it acts, it does so because it feels it's compelled to do so.

I think the Russians will ultimately take Odessa. This recent stupidity of attacking tankers carrying Russian fuel, and the Ukrainians did this in the Black Sea, have convinced people in Moscow, we have to seize Odessa. Otherwise, Odessa remains a lot of war. an open wound in the side of Russia continues to be a place from which sustenance and military support come from. So we've got to go in and shut it down. So I think the Russians will go into Odessa and turn whatever is left of Ukraine into a landlocked country. We've got to figure out what's really happening. The truth is, number one, the war is won. Russia has won. If you want to stop the bleeding, if you want to have some sort of impact on how much further the Russians go in terms of absorbing territory, then sit down and admit that the war is over, that they've won and hammer out some sort of solution.

Because if you don't, this nonsense sponsored by MI6, the CIA and Mossad and Kiev is going to continue. And as it continues, the Russians will move forward until they're confident that they have secured enough. space, not just territory, but space, frankly, that allows them to feel secure as a nation. We should do this. President Trump understands this. That was something that I think both Wittkov and Kushner probably made very clear to President Trump. And President Trump also knows that we have more important issues to resolve with the Russians, everything from what we're going to do with Arctic exploration and trade routes and commercial interaction and businesses to a new modus vivendi in Europe regarding who has troops where and when and where they're

going to train and so forth. I'm confident that President Trump has heard that there are still people urging him to support this travesty in Kiev, but it's over and he just needs to declare it over and the europeans look at berlin look at london look at paris look at the unrest in those countries those governments are on their last legs that they're over with so we need to we need to turn the page on ukraine we need some measure of stability and quiet there and that could be achieved with a with a reasonable agreement with the russians again i think president trump knows that he just needs to do it colonel i can't thank you enough for one of the more gifted and thorough analyses we've ever heard on this show all across the board coming from you.

Thank you, my dear friend. I must run to another obligation, or we would continue this conversation. We'll resume it next week at your convenience. Thank you, Colonel. All the best. Great. Thank you, Judge. Sure.

Coming up next, if you're watching us live, in about two or three minutes, we'll hop to another link, of course, Max Blumenthal, after Max, Professor Deason, Colonel Wilkerson, Professor Mearsheimer, Pepe Escobar. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.