Judging Freedom - Ukraine and American Decline w/Col Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Ukraine and American Decline w/Col Doug MacgregorSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, September 19th, 2023. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us today. Colonel, always a pleasure. Thank you very much. I had the ability to view a talk that you recently gave at the Ron Paul Institute on the Labor Day weekend, which was a marvelous, marvelous dissection of the problems facing America today. And I thought we'd sort of start with the big picture stuff before we focus on the latest in Ukraine. You used phrases like America has no moral compass. We are a runaway train. Atheism, nihilism, Marxism, globalism are assaulting us. How do you put your finger on this? When did this start? How did we get to

where we are? Joe Biden is not the cause of this. He's a symptom of it, though his colleagues may very well have caused it. You know, that's a $150,000 question that demands hours of response. I think what we can say is that we've always had a certain number of people in our country that have rejected the country, rejected the republic, rejected the essential values of the republic, and rejected American national identity. And numbers of these people embrace atheism. And there's certainly nothing in the law that prohibits that. That's fine. But when you embrace atheism wholeheartedly, and you end up in a position of power and influence,

which is what we have today in Washington, that leads you down a very dangerous road. And that was really my point, that if you believe that there is nothing higher than you, that you make all of the decisions that count, and those decisions can be made essentially at your whim. If you believe that if it feels good, do it, that there are no moral values or judgments that affect you, that you operate independent of all of those things, well, then, you know, you're a potentially dangerous person if you have power. And I think right now, a pretty substantial number of the people running this country fundamentally reject everything that 90% of the American population takes seriously. How dangerous is the military industrial complex and the,

trying to think of the verb, whatever transforms a four-star general into a member of a board of directors of a corporation that is sort of rewarding the general post-military for his craven behavior during military. You know, it's interesting. The other day, I watched one more time, Seven Days in May film. And what was striking to me is how fundamentally disengaged from us that particular film is. I mean, today, the notion that you have strident military leaders with extensive combat experience who are so concerned about the country and security in the face of a dangerous opponent like the Soviet Union, that they feel that they'd have to take the reins of

power to prevent us from being destroyed. Well, those people don't exist. What you have is something very different. You have a selection system that routinely eliminates anybody, that shows a predisposition to independence, to thinking differently, whether that is in training or on the battlefield. In fact, what you reward now is the shameless conformist, the person who finds it possible to agree with everything and anything that the officer's superior says or does. In other words, a firm belief in the readiness to obey dumb ideas, knowing that in their minds that if they do, it doesn't really matter, because in their minds they believe no one out there can really challenge us. It's the exact opposite of

what we saw in seven days in May, where people had a genuine fear of war, what it could do, its devastating consequences. Now we have, you know, a class of people in the senior ranks of the military who think that we're invulnerable and invincible, that no one can touch us. And that view is shared by many of their civilian superiors. So they'll go along with whatever the civilian leadership wants on the ground, said, well, if I want to be advanced, if I want to make lots of money in retirement, I've got to do this. No one stands there, as was the case 60, 70, 80 years ago,

and says, look, I didn't join this organization to become rich. That was not my motivation when I became a professional soldier or sailor, airman, or marine. So that seems to be gone now. So there's no George Pattons out there, but plenty of Dave Petraeuses. Yeah, I think that, you know, first of all, Patton is a very different sort of personality. Not sure he's the one I'd pick, but let's simply say that somebody like Eisenhower MacArthur is acutely absent from the ranks. You're not going to see anybody like that. And I think you get the opportunist who rationalizes his behavior as well. They're my

superiors and, youiors and who can challenge us? What danger is there? Doesn't make any difference anyway. I might as well go along with it. Is race a problem in the military today? As we speak, a lawsuit was filed just within the past hour in federal court in New York against West Point because the Supreme Court's recent opinion prohibiting colleges and universities from using race in admitting standards, that's a footnote in there written by the Chief Justice expressly excluding West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy, and the Coast Guard Academy from the effects of the opinion. So those who have filed the complaint, same people that sued Harvard and University of

North Carolina, which resulted in this Supreme Court opinion, have now said there should be no exception to the military. Does the military, what we know it admits people based on race, does it promote based on race? Absolutely. And it has for a very long time, certainly since the early 1970s when Richard Nixon implemented affirmative action. And as you'll recall, Nixon said, this is temporary. This is not a permanent condition. We're going to do this because in the past, we have failed to advance qualified officers who were Black to the extent that we should have. And so he said, I'm temporarily implementing this to try and advance officers of quality and competence who happen to be Black. We know that, you know, that was

the genuine intention of President Nixon. Instead, it was transformed into an entitlement to the point where ever since we've had a certain percentage of officers at each promotion board who have to be black, regardless of whether or not they're qualified. And that's very hard on the black officers who are very competent, because you show up at your duty station, you're given a task, and people, frankly, have historically assumed there's something wrong with you, that you're not really qualified to do what you're doing. And so the competent black officer has to prove himself over and over again. Now, of course, those who are not competent could care less and they'll be pushed along anyway. And they know that. And I think that's a huge problem in the armed forces. It's been more permanent than a temporary government program. And the Nixon decision, like many of his decisions, taking us off the gold standard,

but we won't get into that now, obviously. Just to elaborate a little bit, my experience in the Army was that everyone wanted a meritocracy. Right. That's what they wanted and we always knew that even if we practiced it to the best of our ability it would only work about 80 percent of the time because you have to deal with the sons of generals right in law of four stars you know oh i'm sorry but uh major so-and-so or lieutenant and so or Lieutenant Colonel so and so his father in law is the CENTCOM commander

or 3rd Army commander or how about the son in law of the West Point Superintendent you know who that was I think that's part of it but you've also got to understand that someone like Petraeus has mastered the art of really

satisfying the interests and the egos of everyone above him. You're going to be hard pressed to find a senior officer, at least when he was on active duty, as I know it, when he was a major lieutenant colonel and colonel, who did not say immediately, oh, he's the most talented officer I've ever met. He's wonderful. Right. Because we have a problem in the Army and we have had this for a long time. I don't think we're unique. I suspect this exists in the other services, but it's a very acute problem in the United States Army. And that is that the man with the most stars is always the smartest man in the room.

It's rare that you have a senior officer who's smart enough to understand he's not and never was. I mean, one of the first things I remember when I was selected to command in the command course, we had a brigadier general instructing us and he said, remember, there is no one in your unit that knows more about your profession and your unit than you do. You are the most experienced and competent man in your unit. Well, I sat there quietly and I know from experience and I know because I had wonderful mentors, Americans, Germans, British, who always reminded me that no matter how smart you think you are, there's always someone in your unit that is smarter than you and if you find people that are smarter than you be grateful put them to work listen to what they have to say so i took a very

different approach but that kind of narcissistic mentality is very common at the top of the army so if you think someone like general millie or general petraeus is going to listen to anybody unless they think that person is going to amplify them. In other words, that they'll benefit personally. They're not going to pay attention to anybody. It wasn't always that way, which is the way we started this conversation when you were reminiscing about seven days in May. Let's segue into Ukraine. Does Russia have a new weapon that so far is unused that's not nuclear, but that might enhance its lethality in its war against Ukraine that

Putin has not yet authorized the use of? I keep hearing this rumor. I don't know if you know about it, know of it, or can comment on that. I really don't know because I don't have access to any of the top secret compartmentalized intelligence. I mean, I've still got the clearance, but I'm not activated. So unless somebody activates it, brings me in and says, read this, I don't know. What I would say is that we were rather surprised at the performance of the hypersonic missiles that the Russians have employed. We were surprised because they were not just effective in terms of speed, but they were unstoppable and they were accurate and precise. So we know now that they have an arsenal of hypersonic missiles that are very lethal and very effective. They're all carrying high-end explosive conventional

warheads, but obviously some of them could carry a nuclear warhead if necessary. You say unstoppable. You mean that literally? Yes. In other words, let's put it this way. We have a wonderful set of missiles. We call them standard missiles. The standard missile three developed by the Navy is brilliant. And it will shoot down a hypersonic missile if the missile's path is predictable. coming missile is going to follow a precise trajectory, you can coordinate and calculate the intercept. The problem is that the hypersonic missiles the Russians are employing do not always follow a precise trajectory that is predictable. If it's not predictable, you can't hit it. It's just moving too quickly. I want to play a clip for you of President Biden at the United Nations earlier today. The camera angle is such that about half of the time that he's speaking, this is only about a minute, 20 seconds, the camera is on President Zelensky, who was seated right there in the

General Assembly when President Biden spoke, but I'll be anxious for your thoughts. There's nothing new here. It's just the way he says it, the audience to which he says it, and his statements at the end make this even more troublesome, I think, to your way of thinking and to mine than he's been in the past, And we strongly support Ukraine in its efforts to bring about a diplomatic resolution that delivers just and lasting peace. But Russia alone — Russia alone bears responsibility for this war. Russia alone has the power to end this war immediately. And it's Russia alone that stands in the way of peace, because Russia's price for peace is Ukraine's capitulation, Ukraine's territory, and Ukraine's children. Russia believes that the world will grow weary and allow it to brutalize

Ukraine without consequence. But I ask you this — if we abandon the core principles of the United States to appease an aggressor, can any member state in this body feel confident that they are protected? If we allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure? I'd respectfully suggest the answer is no. We have to stand up to this naked aggression today and deter other would-be aggressors tomorrow. That's why the United States, together with our allies and partners around the world, will continue to stand with the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their sovereignty and territorial integrity and their freedom.

Well, it's pretty much vintage Joe Biden, but what did you think? Actually, I would suggest it was a little different. And he starts off by saying that we applaud and support the diplomatic efforts by the leadership of Ukraine to bring an end to this conflict. There are no diplomatic efforts whatsoever. Right. In fact, they were rejected by Ukraine. Absolutely. I mean, the Russians have tried to pursue diplomacy. They have made proposals. And the answer has always been until all Russians leave, quote unquote, what they call Ukrainian soil, including Crimea, there could be no peace. So there is no diplomatic

effort whatsoever. That's just nonsense. The second thing is that he goes into this business about, well, is anyone here really believe that if Ukraine has to capitulate to Russian demands, that this won't affect all of you? Well, this is the old adage. If until all men are free, no one is free. Well, that's a lot of nonsense. That was never true. That was the sort of Jeffersonian mentality that Washington and Hamilton rejected because he wanted to take us into war on behalf of the French Revolution, which would have resulted in our total destruction. So, you know, this is just more vintage stupidity. And it's inaccurate. If you look at Zelensky, he's angry,

he's scowling because privately, I think what he's being told is you have to agree to freeze the conflict. That's what we want. We can't go on privately. I think that's what he's been told. And there will be, because the Russians. If he's, if he's been told, if he's been told that, Colonel, then old Joe is looking for an off-ramp. He's probably going to get the $28 billion he wants because the Republicans in the House indicated that they'll go along with it. But not all of them.

The great ones won't. But if there is that type of a string attached, Zelensky might as well just not go home. He might as well go down to Miami to one of his homes. Well, I'm sure he's considered that, but it's a little early. He's got a right wing there that's probably not going to tolerate any decisions he makes that in their minds ends the conflict, even if the purpose of ending the conflict is to save human lives. Well, this is back to the essential question. Thus far, President Putin has exercised

enormous restraint. Thus far, he's held 300,000 Russian combat troops in reserve. He's kept only the forces necessary forward in defensive positions. He has held troops in reserve also in Byelorussia. And he has allowed the Ukrainians, simply because it worked to his advantage, to destroy themselves in attack after attack after attack. The Ukrainians have now effectively run out of manpower. They have almost nothing left. Every time they talk about having broken through somewhere or advanced, it's been a lie, completely untrue, carried by all the Western news media. So at this point in time, the Ukrainians

are turning exclusively to long-range strike weapons that they can get from the British and us and potentially the Germans and French. And we saw that there were 11 storm shadow missiles fired by the Ukrainians against Russian targets. Of the 11, three managed to escape destruction. The other eight were shot down by the integrated air defenses. And those found targets in the harbor at Sevastopol. At the same time, the British provided unmanned underwater systems, in other words, underwater drones or surface drones,

to attack the harbor from the ocean side. Those things had an effect. They effectively destroyed a submarine. That submarine is probably not going to be repaired. It'll probably be effectively junked. And then two other surface ships that probably will be repaired in time, although there's no repair facility in the Black Sea for them. But the truth is, this war is not going to be won or lost on the basis of attacks on the harbor in Crimea. It's not going to be won or lost on the basis of any long-range attacks on targets inside Russia. It's going to be won or lost on the ground in Ukraine. The question is, will the Russians finally say enough is enough?

We can't go on anymore. We have to end this ourselves and act. That's the question. Do you have a feel for how much longer this goes on? You know, I think this could go on to Christmas. It could even drag into next year unless the Russians act. They have the force. they have the capability, the Ukrainians have nothing to stop them. And they know that this will not end until they go to the Dnieper River and cross it. They're going to have to cross that river. They're going to eventually have to take Odessa and they're going to have to enter Kiev. I've had more than one Russian general quoted to me by sources on the ground over there say this war will not end until our tanks are driving down the main street of Kiev. So I think they understand that.

The problem is that President Putin is concerned about two things. Number one, he doesn't want to do something that he thinks will precipitate U.S.-led intervention in western Ukraine. He does not want a war with us. He doesn't want a war with NATO. Secondly, he wants to end this war in a way that will allow everybody to eventually do business together. In other words, put the war behind us and get on with normal life. He's trying very hard to avoid the kind of destructive action that would make that impossible. We, on the other hand, are doing everything in our power to make sure there can never be any sort of normal relationship between the United States and Europe and Russia. He doesn't seem to understand that. He's got to understand that. And that's what most of his commanders in the field

know and their view is you want to stop these long-range strikes then let us go let us attack and let us crush these Ukrainians once and for all Colonel McGregor thank you very much over the weekend we hit 200 000 subscriptions on this show in large measure because of all of your generous, informed, and so well-received appearances. Thank you again for all your time, Colonel. We'll see you again soon. I thought it was all the great jokes that you and I traded. I keep trying to think of something positive that we can say that will move us down the road towards something better. But unfortunately, we're not, as you saw with President Biden, we're not left much choice. And I don't think President Biden is really in charge. I think he's doing what they tell him

to do. I think he's reading whatever he's given. And I wish that the people behind him would recognize that the longer this lasts, the more dangerous it becomes. And at some point, the Russians are going to lose patience. And we need to get out of the way. We have nothing at stake in Ukraine. Ukraine is not some sort of gleaming, shining city of liberal democracy on the hill. Far from it. It's much closer to Stalinist Russia. And the Russians are not evil. They're simply trying to protect themselves against what they thought would be an existential threat to them posed by us, because we would put our missiles in eastern Ukraine. So we need to come down and understand these things. And we can end this war.

But the map will change. Territory will be exchanged. End of discussion. But what about the millions of Ukrainians who are living in Western Europe and around the world? How do we get them back to Ukraine if we cannot end this? It was so disingenuous for the President to be saying Russia can end this war. He can end the war with a phone call or the stroke of a pen within 24 hours. But it's sad, Colonel, because I wonder if he even knows that. I don't know. And the American people should be more sensitive to it because thus far, we have not had Americans in direct combat. But as long as this lasts,

there's always this outside possibility that severe misjudgment in Western Europe, in the United States, could lead to that confrontation. Over the weekend, in an offhanded comment, the president made reference to the War Powers Resolution. He didn't cite it by name, but he said, you know, I could put combat troops on the ground and I don't even have to go to Congress. Unfortunately, that is accurate under the law, profoundly unconstitutional, but it is the law, never been reviewed by the courts. But it would be crazy because it would be the prelude to World War III. Well, remember, we'd end up with all of these U.S. forces isolated, without reinforcement, without adequate sustainment, without support.

What are the Europeans going to do? What have they got to send? Very little. The only force right now in the neighborhood that's even remotely capable is Polish. So you put the Polish forces together with our own, and that still pales before what the Russians can field against us. And we're not going to get across the Atlantic because of something called Russian submarines. So you can't reinforce as we did during World War II. And everybody forgets that it took us three, four years to defeat the German submarine threat so that we could move across the Atlantic. It would be much worse now. So no one seems to be thinking strategically.

Everyone is thinking about what is politically appealing. We have a wish list, not a strategy. Colonel, thank you very much. All the best. We'll see you again soon. Thank you. There you have it, my friends. A brilliant dissertation from Colonel McGregor, truly one of his most thoughtful and one of his most powerful. Here on Judging Freedom, thank you again for helping us get over that threshold of 200,000 subscriptions. Our next goal is a quarter of a million by Christmas. I know Christmas seems a long way away, but it's not. It's just three months and a week away. Thank you for your time.

Thanks for watching. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. We'll see you next time.