Judging Freedom - Col. Douglas Macgregor: Wrongheaded US Military Priorities.

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Col. Douglas Macgregor: Wrongheaded US Military Priorities. Join Judge Napolitano and Colonel Douglas McGregor as they dissect the complexities of US defense spending and global military strategy. Are we overcommitted? #USMilitary #DefenseBudget #GlobalStrategySee 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 Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024.

Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us. Colonel, a late Merry Christmas and late Happy New Year to you. Thank you for all the time you gave us in 2023 and all the information and insight you gave to all of our viewers and listeners. I hope we can continue picking your brain, your big brain in 2024. And thanks for coming back today. Sure. Happy New Year to you and everyone. Thank you.

How dangerous is it for the United States to have a defense budget of nearly $900 billion? Well, it's dangerous on many levels. Obviously, our economy right now has a very small manufacturing sector. But if you look at what we actually manufacture in this country, most of that sector is taken up with military equipment. So I think the military industries now represent a significant chunk, if you will, of our gross national product, and of course, or GDP, however you want to do it. And I think that's something that both Blinken and President Biden pointed out in their speeches. So that's the first thing. Second part is that the more you spend to sustain unneeded presence around the world the more likely you are to attract attention and the wrong kind

of attention that we're seeing that right now in Syria and Iraq there there are no missions for those soldiers on the ground over there so what are we doing there well we're magnets for attack and one wonders whether or not this is supposed to draw us into something larger that we would otherwise want to avoid, because there's just no real mission for them on the ground. Is this some sort of a reverse false flag? I mean, put people somewhere where you know they're going to be attacked, and then claim that because they were attacked, we have the right to start a war with the people we think financed the attackers? Well, in the summer of 1940, when the Pacific Fleet completed its exercises,

which normally consisted of fighting a mock war with the fleet, with an enemy that resembled the Imperial Japanese Navy, the decision was made by Franklin Roosevelt to keep the fleet in Pearl Harbor. Historically, the fleet would come back to Pearl and then move from Pearl to their permanent berths, if you will, from Puget Sound all the way down to San Diego. And that's what the admirals wanted to do. And he said, no, we're going to leave the fleet there. And the answer that came back from the CNO at the time was, well, they're a sitting target. They could become targets for the Japanese. And the reason for that was that at the same time that FDR wanted the fleet to remain in place, he also announced his embargo on oil and so forth.

And so the, you know, the fleet commander in Hawaii was apoplectic. He said, this is wrong. You can read all of this. This is all available. And he said, we've got to get the fleet back home. Well, we know the rest of the story. And FDR's argument was the fleet's presence will deter anybody from attacking us. Of course, the opposite was the case. It was an invitation. And I think you have the same thing going on today in Iraq and Syria. I can't resist commenting on FDR, even though I didn't intend to go there. We interviewed a professor this morning, David Beto of the University of Alabama, who wrote a terrific book about FDR's assault on civil liberties. And at the end, I asked him if he thought that FDR knew that Pearl Harbor was

coming, and his view was sort of halfway. He knew that something was coming. He didn't know it was Pearl Harbor. I think the research today shows clearly he knew, and clearly he expected, and clearly even wanted it to change public opinion so that we could enter World War II and save Great Britain. Yeah, I think there's a mountain of evidence to support it. Because the other place that everybody was looking at the time was, of course, Manila and the Corregidor. They were looking at the Philippines. And for years, everybody publicly had said, oh, yes, we can defend the Philippines. But privately, everyone, including MacArthur, made it abundantly clear. So did George Marshall. We cannot defend

the place. We need to get the forces out of there. Let's make it neutral. Let's do whatever we can, but we're overreaching. We can't defend it against the Japanese. We know the rest of that story. FDR was amenable to some extent if they could make the place neutral, but when it could not be made neutral in the eyes of the Japanese, he poured resources into the place to defend it. A disaster. So the Second World War for the United States opens with strategic decisions in the Pacific that were absolutely catastrophic. And made against the advice of nearly every senior military person in the region. Can anybody today name or state the reason for the 800 to 900 foreign military bases that the Department of Defense mans? Oh, yes, there are justifications. A lot of them are classified.

No surprise. Yeah, you have to keep in mind that large numbers of these bases are intelligence-oriented in terms of collection and surveillance. So you might want to set some of those aside because they do provide critical insights into what's happening around the world. They also provide us with support for global communications, and that's also important for our forces. But then you have large numbers of forces overseas. I don't know what it is right now. It used to be over 300,000. It may be at that point now, given all the forces we've stationed in Europe

and the additional forces we've been sending over to the Middle East and the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean. But scaling these back is something that I think is desperately needed because we live in the 21st century. This is not the 19th. By placing someone that far forward in close proximity to a potential adversary consigns them to certain destruction. That's the problem now. What was bad in 1940 in the philippines and pearl harbor is now absolutely far far worse so putting them out there to begin with in most cases is a mistake and all you have to do is look at the mediterranean and the indian ocean we just

withdrew the carrier battle group uh ford for many reasons it they said well it was scheduled to go that that may well be the case, but the logistical problem of supporting those forces at sea for months at a time is enormous. And we really weren't prepared for it in the Eastern Mediterranean. And the same is true down in the Indian ocean. You look at a place like Bahrain, and if you were to lose the facilities there, that would put the fleet out of business, probably in that, not just the Persian Gulf, but in the Indian Ocean as well. There just aren't that many ports that we can fall back on where we can execute the repairs and the resupply. Again, this is part of the change in warfare that we haven't come to terms

with, and I hope we don't have to learn it the hard way. So other than a corrupt reason, like wanting to feed the military-industrial complex, why are we in Syria? Why are we in Iraq? Why are we in Africa, of all places? Last place in the world they want to see American troops in the streets? Well, these are the questions that President Trump asked. And I answered, we don't need to be there. And I explained how long we had been in these places, anywhere from 30, 40, 50 to 70 years, including Korea and Okinawa. And, you know, there was no good answer. I think a lot of it is inertia and complacency. Well, we've been there this long. What difference does it make? We've been there for X number of years, and it becomes part of the bureaucratic structure in the services.

It becomes a mission factory. Now we have something for everybody to do. We can expand the command structure. And all of a sudden you walk up and say, well, I want you to vacate 400 of these bases overseas. And here's the list I want you to get out of. And everyone is apoplectic. The same thing is true in Europe at a place like Germany. What are we doing there? Anybody who tells you that we're there to deter the Russians should immediately be dismissed and sent home. That's nonsense. There's nothing to stop the

Russians if they want to do whatever they want to do. We found that out in Ukraine. And we're not interested in going to war with Russia. So again, what are we doing with forces there? Are we encouraging belligerence on the part of our allies, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland? Sometimes it looks that way. That's what we've done in Ukraine, and we've gotten a half a million people killed over there. This is insane. But it's complacency, it's neglect, it's ego. You know, everything is mortgage divanity. That was the problem with the British Empire in 1946-47.

You know, and suddenly the Brits were told, well, we're broke. You know, our debt-to-GDP ratio is 240%. We can't maintain ourselves in India anymore. People stopped saying, well, we're broke. You know, our debt to GDP ratio is 240%. We can't maintain ourselves in India anymore. People stopped saying, well, we've always been in India. You know, what are you talking about? You know, this is our country. And it wasn't their country. It was someone else's country.

That's why they had to get the hell out. So, you know, we're in the same kind of boat right now. So if Donald Trump is re-elected president and asks you if we should stay in NATO, if we should insist over and over and over and over again that the chief military person in NATO should be an American general or admiral, how would you answer those two questions? Well, assuming that NATO holds together between now and the election, and I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that it may not, NATO and the EU to a large extent have been crumbling in various ways for years now. I think NATO in particular, assuming it does survive into 2025, I would tell him that these are the terms for our continued membership in this alliance. Number one, you're going to have to pick a four-star from the European countries to become the supreme commander of Allied Powers Europe. Number two, we're withdrawing our forces. You're going to have to be your own first responder now we can come in and support you if

you get entangled in something depending upon what you do because the danger of course whenever a large power like the united states commits itself to a very small power the small power then is in charge of your military capability that's what happened to the czar of russia in 1914 he went to the aid of serbia it destroyed his country, and he lost the war. We don't want to go down that path, so we have to be discerning about what we will or won't do. But the first step is to say, we want to support you and assist you in whatever way we can, but we're not staying in Europe. We're going to go home, and we've got other fish to fry here, and you're going to have to pick somebody who's a European four-star. Now, once you say that, I doubt very seriously that the Europeans will want us to stay, to be honest.

Well, that would be a good thing if the departure were amicable and if they assumed a moral, legal, political responsibility for their own military defense. Do they still share, the Europeans, Colonel, the fear of Russia that Joe Biden has tried to instill in Americans with his condemnations of Vladimir Putin? It's astonishing to me, but when you go to a place like Finland and Sweden, two places where, frankly, they should have no fear whatsoever of Russian attack, they are both hypersensitive to the possibility, even though you point to the map and say there are no Russian forces interested in invading your country. There's nobody in Moscow that's even brought it up.

What are you doing? And now we've already put some of our forces on the ground in Finland, and I suspect that if we're allowed to, we'll put missiles in that country. And that turns Finland into a magnet for attack because the Russians are going to sit there and feel threatened. It's stupid. I think the polls are coming around to understanding that the Russians aren't coming. You know, remember the movie, the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming? Well, I think most of the rest of them have wakened up and figured, no, the Russians aren't coming. But in the meantime, the globalist elites or neocons, whatever you want to call them, continue to tell everybody, yes, the Russians are coming. The Russians are coming.

It's absurd. Do you think the globalist elites, the neocons, the Biden administration, the State Department has recognized the abysmal failure it produced in Ukraine? Privately, yes. Publicly, no. And they will not admit that failure, because to do so would essentially say, we are bankrupt. We never had a strategy.

And they never did. There was no strategic aim, this nonsense of we're going to harm Russia, or we're going to make Russia so miserable they'll throw Mr. Putin out. That was absurd. Those were just emotional outbursts. Those were not tangible, concrete objectives. Nobody said we're going to hold the line against the Russian juggernaut which is hurtling forward. It didn't hurdle forward. It moved into the areas where the Russian-speaking population lives. It

set up defenses. And the Ukrainians obliged them by hurling their forces at them, basically on our advice. We were the ones that told them how to fight. If I were a Ukrainian soldier, I'd shoot the first US or NATO officer I came in touch with. Thanks for your advice. Now get the hell out of here. But, you know, I think they're not going to admit to doing anything wrong. That just doesn't happen in Washington. But do they know it privately? Absolutely. And the world knows that this is evidence for our weakness, our equipment, our technology, our advice, even our assistance on the ground and in the air. It's all failed against the Russians. The only thing we've done is boost Russia's prestige, power, and influence in the world, the exact opposite of what we said we wanted to achieve. How bad is America's influence in the world when Joe Biden can start out by saying Putin's finished, Putin's done, Putin's lost the war. We're going to help you for as long as it takes. We're going to help you for

as long as we can. Oh, if Putin takes Ukraine, he'll likely attack NATO, and then there'll be a land war with American troops on the ground. Who would believe that? Well, a lot of foolish people, I think, have signed on for it. But more and more people are realizing two things. Europe, much like us, is doing everything it can to destroy itself they open their borders they brought in millions of people who will never be Europeans can't be Europeans don't want to be Europeans and they're being told that if you object to this well then you're an evil racist Nazi they bought that line Europe's in a lot of trouble internally as a result and on top of that by joining this stupid crusade against Russia they've shot themselves in the foot

economically we don't need to go through the oil and gas problems and energy problems to make that case it's across a range of issues in the economies right europe is crumbling we're we're doing more damage to ourselves every day on the border and across this country by failing to enforce the law by allowing anyone who wants to come in to come in without regard to what they may or may not be interested in doing. And this is killing us. It's killing our country. It's killing us as a society. It's destroying our societal cohesion.

All of these things are happening. you might as well sit back, light up a smoke and have a beer and watch the stupidity unfold, because there's nothing they can do to us that is worse than what we're doing to ourselves. Since we were together last, Secretary Blinken has signed two emergency declarations, both of which give some cash and military hardware to Israel and to Ukraine. In order to sign both of them, he had to swear under oath that these were American national security emergencies. Now, I would defy him to explain that under oath. It is inconceivable to me, and I think to you, that whatever is happening in Gaza and whatever is happening in Ukraine is an American national security emergency sufficient to justify under the statutes bypassing Congress. Question, does this surprise you that they have stooped to this level?

No, not at all. Why would anybody be surprised? You saw, of course, the dozens of members of the House and several dozen senators stand up and object that this was effectively unconstitutional. Simply bypassing these houses was unacceptable. People had to explain this and justify it. We were not going to unconditionally support anybody this is essentially a blank check and we americans don't provide blank checks wrong you didn't hear anything neither did i everyone is in the same corner in the same corner as well we give israel anything at once because they're killing people that we would kill too i don't know how many times

i've listened to that i think we have to come to terms with the reality that for a very long time, the kind of dehumanization of people that we went through during the Second World War, especially towards Japan, for instance, has taken hold towards Arabs in the Middle East, and probably Muslims in general. Remember, you're dealing with a population that is not highly educated. It doesn't have much experience beyond our own borders. It's predisposed amazingly enough at this point to believe whatever its government tells it. I don't know how many times people say, I can't agree with you.

Nobody else says what you do. And I say, well, just because nobody else is saying exactly what I am doesn't make me wrong. Right. Can you consider that as a possibility? Well, I'm not sure. I mean, this is what we're up against. And if you can dehumanize the Arabs, which is what we've been doing, then you can sign on for Mr. Netanyahu's program.

Now, I don't think it'll work. And I've told my friends in Israel, I see nothing good resulting from this for Israel or for us. But the American people don't realize how isolated we are in the world. And you've listened to Jeffrey Sachs, and you've listened to virtually all of us at one point or another, Alistair Crook's another, explained the extent to which we are isolated. And we're taking it because it doesn't matter.

Who are these minor players in the world? Well, the rest of the world is not a minor player. We don't live in 1960 or 1970. This is a very different world now. And what you used to call minor players are now major powers. And they don't have to use dollars. They can de-dollarize. They can circumvent our financial system. They don't have to use dollars. They can de-dollarize. They can circumvent our financial system. They don't have to do business with us. They can live on their own. And this is very dangerous for Israel because Israel does not live where we do in the Western Hemisphere. We can sustain ourselves. We're not going to thrive, but we can sustain ourselves. They cannot. Colonel, isn't it also dangerous for us? Aren't we isolated? Aren't we in a quagmire with Israel?

Well, I think we are. I mean, certainly, I'm sure I've not seen any of the plans. And I have very high respect for the Israeli senior military leaders. But I think they fell victim to the same emotionalism that carried away the whole state back on 7 October. Everyone was so horrified. Their initial instincts were, hammer everything in sight and we'll show these animals. They'll never be able to do this again. They won't be able to do anything for 30 years. After the 1967 war, Ariel Sharon said something very similar similar the defeat we've inflicted on the syrians the jordanians the the egyptians is so profound and so complete we may not see a war again for decades and you know the rest of the story right six years later you got the 73 war well i would say you have

a similar mentality now only it hasn't worked nearly as well. The whole thing tactically, I think, has been abysmal. I don't know the exact numbers, but I'm being told by people in the region that the Israelis have sustained more casualties in the last 90 days than they did during the 73 war. I get similar reports from many different sources. And, of course, you have Haaretz and journalists there who are saying similar things. And then, of course, Israel is in deep trouble right now economically. It's a small country, and you've got most of the manpower that would otherwise be working tied up in the reserves. So you have to pull some people out, especially skilled workers in the tech sector, send them back to work, give the ones you've got to rest before you go back in again and continue this war, because this war is not ending. This temporary withdrawal is just that. It's temporary.

It's not going to end there. But they've got a problem. It's up north with Hezbollah, and there's a potential that that can blow up and ultimately widen the war. And they seem to be doing everything they can with their strikes and their assassination program to essentially invite that disaster. And if that happens, then the Israelis are in a lot of trouble. We will be drawn in to bail them out. That is inevitable. There will be no debate on the Hill. We will simply commit forces as soon as we can to help them.

And then we are bogged down in a war for which we are not really prepared. It will also be a war that doesn't in any respect affect American national security interests whatsoever. Hasn't Israel already lost the PR war internationally? Doesn't the United States stand alone with Israel? I'd say for all intents and purposes, but as long as they have us in their corner, I think their attitude is it doesn't matter. Israel is now officially transforming into Fortress Israel. And that's unavoidable given the policy path that they're on. Can they sustain that?

How many months can they go through this? How long can they fight? Well, how much money can we ship there? I mean, one of the reasons the Republicans don't want to send any more money to Ukraine is that they recognize that's a lost cause. Nothing can be salvaged from it, so let's just walk away. So they want to turn that money that would otherwise go to Ukraine, which is now 60 billion,

they're going to need that to sustain Israel, to sustain its economy, keep its forces flush with ammunition, you know, build up their capability and at the same time prepare ourselves for a fight that is going to go regional. And this is unlike the Eastern European crisis with Russia. Russia's aims were always very limited. Russia had no interest in attacking NATO, still doesn't. Russia doesn't even want to manage or control or govern Ukrainians. They just want whatever remains of Ukraine to be neutral. And whether or not people in the East, or excuse me, in the West, the Poles or the Hungarians or Romanians want a piece of Ukraine that is rightfully theirs based on history that doesn't matter to them they just want to make sure whatever remains is neutral that's not the

case now when when you go to the region and I've been sitting with a lot of people that have just returned from extensive visits to all the major capitals that have talked to many of the elites and they all say the same thing first Sy, Sykes-Picot is over. That's the first thing out of everybody's mouth. What is that? Well, Sykes-Picot was the agreement signed in 1918 that ultimately divided up the Middle East into the states that you see today.

Right, the Balfour. And the Balfour piece was part of that larger puzzle that created the foundations for the state of Israel. So we're not talking about, we're not going to tolerate this, and we're going to strike back. No, people are saying that's over. Now, having said that, they also talk about a post-American Middle East and a post-Israeli Middle East. In other words, they're saying, you know, we think it's now time to consider the possibility that the Americans are out permanently and Israel no longer exists. Now, that's something that, you know, the elites are saying. And the elites are restrained.

The elites don't want a war. What they want to do is they want to patiently sit by and watch israel exhaust itself against all of these low intensity opponents if you will and then at some you know appropriate time move in well that's going to be tough to do because the populations in the region want war jordan's on the edge of collapse judge it is all is all that Abdullah can do, the king, to hold that place together. They know what's happening on the West Bank. They know what's happening in Gaza. There are millions of Palestinians in Jordan. They want to arm up, cross the river, and fight. You have a similar attitude growing in Egypt. Now the Israelis have just demanded the Philadelphia corridor. This is the stretch of terrain between Gaza and Egypt.

They say the Egyptians are not controlling it enough, and that's probably true. Things are slipping through, people, supplies, and so forth. So they say, we're going to go in there and take it. If they do that, they will be at war with Egypt. Now, Sisi doesn't want war because he's trying to renegotiate his debt, and he's trying to keep a nation of 109 million people afloat. But if they take the Philadelphia corridor, there will be war. So he'll end up, so we're talking about Israel with the front with Egypt,

which has been stable for 50 years, now becomes entirely hostile. Jordan collapses into chaos, and that becomes another front. We haven't even begun to discuss what happens with Hezbollah and ultimately Iran, since we seem to be working overtime to find ways to provoke Iran into war. And then finally, you have Mr. Erdogan. And the people that I talked to who just came back from Turkey and said the hatred in Turkey for the United States and Israel is so thick you can cut it with a knife. Everywhere you go, people want nothing to do with you if they think you are an American. And the people I was talking to were all fluent in Arabic and had origins outside the United States with one exception. So the bottom line is the situation in the region is explosive.

And what has happened in Gaza is not going to go away. This has left a permanent mark on the people of the region. After all, they were told that they too are animals that deserve the worst, that they too deserve to be exterminated. They will not tolerate this. This is going to blow up in everybody's face. Here's President Erdogan using extremely harsh language about Prime Minister Netanyahu. It sounds, we'll hear it in a minute, but it sounds as though he is encapsulating what the Turkish people think about the Israelis.

Cut number nine, Chris. And right in front of our eyes for 80 days, all virtues relating to humanity have been shot at. At stadiums, we saw the Nazi camps of Israelis. How does this happen? They used to talk about Hitler, but how are you any different than Hitler? This is even worse than Hitler. What Netanyahu is doing is no less than what Hitler did. So, Hitler was not as rich as he was. He is richer than Hitler. He takes support from the West. He receives every kind of support from the US

and with all that support, more than 20,000 Gazans were killed. ve 20 bin Gazze'nin öldüğünü gösteriyor. İkiz ve yüklü olanın, Müslüman Türklerin sesi. Wow. Is he under pressure to mobilize what I think you've told us is a fairly substantial military? Not yet, but close. I think that it's a mistake for people in the West, for people in Israel, to simply dismiss Erdogan as a hot air machine. And I hear that frequently. Oh oh Erdogan talks he does nothing he talks he does nothing well taking the decision to commit the Turks to a war is a very serious one he knows that I don't think he any more than Mohammed bin Salim the uh Saudi Prince who is currently governing Saudi Arabia I don't think either of them want a war.

I don't see any evidence that people in Tehran want a war. But they're being pushed because their populations are infuriated. Their populations want to fight. And they're prepared to suffer whatever is required to put an end to this Israeli state and its hegemony in the region, which is really what it amounts to in their eyes. It's very dangerous, and I don't know how you get out of it except to stop what's been happening, and that's not going to stop. What's going on in Gaza will continue. They are not finished.

Anyone who thinks that this is over is very much mistaken. I think Mr. Netanyahu made that clear. The longer this lasts, the more the anger frustration builds, the more likely a regional explosion is. Here's what the people in the Middle East are seeing. This is from our friend Max Blumenthal about events in Gaza on Christmas Eve, number 11, Chris. While much of the world celebrated the holiday of Christmas, the Israeli military was carrying out yet another massacre in the Gaza Strip, this time in the Maghazi refugee camp in the center of the besieged enclave,

killing at least 70 civilians with missiles supplied by the United States. The Gray Zone obtained this exclusive footage filmed at the site of the Christmas Eve massacre. Does Joe Biden feel any complicity for this slaughter? Well, how could you know that? You can't get in his head. Shouldn't Joe Biden and Tony Blinken and the others feel complicity for this slaughter? I would think so.

But I think they are all, and again, let's exclude President Biden. I don't know how much he understands. So I'm willing to consider the possibility that he's not fully aware. But everyone else has chosen sides. It's over as far as they're concerned. And they're working overtime through the media and all the instrumentalities thereof to promote the notion that this is justified and that nothing will be safe and no one will be safe in Israel until all of these enemies are disposed of. You know, this never works historically. Mass expulsion and destruction

of life and property always reaches a high point and then it recedes because it can't go on. And ultimately, you precipitate alliances against you. And I think that's where we are right now in Israel and the United States, because we are very much part of this. There's no question about it. Colonel McGregor, it's a pleasure. No matter what we talk about, thank you for your insight, and thank you for your analysis, and thank you for your time. I hope we can see you again next week. Sure. Thanks, Judge. Of course. All the best. Happy New Year. Well, smart as a whip and insightful as the day is long, and we're deeply grateful that he's able to be on the program and that all of you, and I can see the huge numbers,

are watching. Coming up at three o'clock, Phil Giraldi, and at four o'clock, all times Eastern, the aforestated Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Altyazı M.K.