Judging Freedom - Ukraine's F-16 Dream Comes True - Does it Matter? w/Col Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Ukraine's F-16 Dream Comes True - Does it Matter? 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 Monday, August 21st, 2023. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us today. Colonel, as always, a pleasure. Thank you for coming on the show. Colonel, how badly is Ukraine losing the war with Russia? Well, let's put it this way. I suppose it's somewhere between disastrously and hugely. In other words, Ukraine has got roughly 37 brigades. I've heard people say more, maybe 39, stretched from one end of the Russian defenses to the other. They've been trying to break through down in the southwest corner. They've made some progress to a village, but again, they haven't even approached the real defensive lines.

All of those brigades are understrength. Then, theoretically, they have six or seven brigades in reserve. That would mean perhaps 25,000 to 28,000 soldiers. So 27,000 to 28,000 soldiers in reserve. And then the rest of this, somewhere around 130,000 stretched. You know, the press gangs are operating day and night trying to pull people into the armed forces. And if you look at the videos of Ukrainian soldiers being captured, many of them are men in their 40s and 50s. I've been told they've even captured someone in their 60s. And then, of course, you have the usual young boys, 15, 16, 17, who may have been roped into it.

It's a pretty desperate situation, Judge. Is there a point, Colonel, where war becomes so one-sided and the losing side, for whatever reasons, politics, chutzpah, whatever you want to call it, but won't give in, that it becomes a humanitarian crisis? Oh, I absolutely think so. But of course, remember that there is this theory that if a good man is down, you kick him. And so nobody wants to give up fighting on the assumption that some miracle will occur and the Ukrainians will get up and replenish their forces. I hate to say it, but it sounds as though not enough Ukrainians have died yet for Washington. Wow. Aren't the Ukrainian troops demoralized to the point of defecting because their lives as Russian prisoners of war will be a higher quality than their lives as active duty Ukrainian military fighting at the front line?

Yes, I think we've already seen that. And the Russians have, of course, cultivated that. They've done everything in their power to make sure that the Ukrainians understand that they will be well treated. So there's no doubt that that's already in play. But again, the majority of people, the majority of whatever this force is, if it's 160,000, 150,000 left, that is going to stay in place. And the interesting part is militarily, it doesn't make a lot of sense. You can't break through these defenses. You would think that someone would make the prudent decision to fall back, find some terrain that may be more defensible. It'll shrink the problem strategically for the Ukrainians, find a front that's not quite as long and wide and vulnerable.

But that doesn't seem to happen either. But then again, we haven't seen much that makes sense militarily from the standpoint of tactics and operations in Ukraine. We've talked about this many times. I'm going to assume that there's no change in this. Of the three rungs of the defense that the Russians have, the Ukrainians have yet even to approach, much less breach the first, the outermost of those rungs. Still the case? Yeah, they've gotten close to the outer one down in the southwest,

down towards Kherson. And it looked as almost it was a photo op where people reached a village, they got out the Ukrainian flag, ran it up, cheered, and then took the flag down and everybody disappeared back to Ukrainian lines. I mean, I think it was a photo op to try and convince people in the West, see, there's still life left in us, and we can win. That's a terrible way to fight a war. Earlier today, President Zelensky spoke outside the parliament in Copenhagen, in which he thanked the government for F-16s, which, as you know, will not arrive for a long time.

If they arrive tomorrow, they can't be used because there's nobody in the Ukrainian military trained or capable of using them. But take a look at this speech. It's almost as if it was Hollywood produced. When Ukraine needs weapons, you help. And I thank you and the whole of Denmark, all the weapons you are giving to protect freedom. And for F-16s, we agreed it on. Thank you so much. Today we are confident that Russia will lose this war. I mean, do they even know what they're applauding about? NATO is demoralized. The West is losing. And these people are standing up and giving him an ovation. NATO is demoralized. The West is losing.

And these people are standing up and giving him an ovation over weapons that they're supposedly going to give him that he wouldn't even be able to use. It's almost ridiculous. Well, here are a couple of points for consideration. The Danes, of course, sent several thousand Danish troops with Napoleon into Russia in 1812. Most of them did not return. They weren't the Lone Rangers. Out of a force of maybe 450,000, only 200,000 were French, and you had 250,000 non-Frenchmen under Napoleon's command.

It was a catastrophe. You would think someone with some sort of common sense would even reflect on a thing like that, but they don't. The second thing is that the situation in Ukraine right now on the ground is very similar to the situation the Germans were in in the fall of 1944 in the West. As you'll recall, we had absolute air supremacy, largely because what German aircraft were left were defending towns and cities from massive bombing offenses by the British and the Americans. And at the same time, they simply didn't have much fuel for anything else. Even on the Eastern Front, they might have enough fuel for aircraft to fly two hours

or three hours. The result of that was that without any tactical air cover, the German ground forces, even when they were well equipped with brand new equipment, brand new tanks, fresh off the assembly lines, could not stand up on the battlefield and fight effectively because every time they came out of cover, whether it was move out of a forest, move out of the dark, they would immediately be attacked and destroyed. That's what's happening with Ukraine. Only this time, instead of manned aircraft, it's missiles and rockets and artillery. So this thing is over. And you'll recall

von Rundstedt, who said in 1944, well, what do we do? We have no air cover. We have very few forces left. We can't move forces around in the daylight. He said, make peace, you fools. Well, they didn't make peace, and Germany paid a horrible price. I think the same thing is happening now in Ukraine. So if the United States set out to do all this, to use Ukraine as a battering ram against Vladimir Putin, to enhance its leadership of NATO, to enhance the unity of NATO, to enhance the public perception of NATO as a serious military force, it's fair to say the United States has failed miserably. Oh, absolutely. I increasingly see us as being very much like Austria-Hungary in World War I. You know, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was very fragile by the time World War I

broke out. They weren't strongly united. And the theory was, well, we have all of these various constituent peoples in the empire, a war will unite them. And I think we've taken the same position vis-a-vis NATO. We have all of these allies, none of whom on any given day can completely agree to anything. However, we have an advantage the Austrians never did. And that is we have the media. And the media is 100% in the globalist camp and repeats ad nauseum lies about what is true and what is not true and reinforces this picture of evil in Moscow. So I suppose as long as that continues, people like the Danes and Dutch and others will run out in the streets

and cheer what they think is the inevitable victory. And there is no inevitable victory. It's not going to happen. This, again, puts Moscow in a different difficult position, because I think, frankly, President Putin has been waiting for the economic conditions in Europe to catch up with the situation. Germany is going to have negative growth this quarter. Germany is being de-industrialized. It's at a severe economic recession. 56% of the German population says that they want a new government. Only 32% of the German electorate approves of Scholz. These are pretty grim facts. I think the situation in France is just as bad. The problem, though, that President Putin doesn't understand is that the globalists are dug in very deeply. Even the people that want to you know, says, I'm sure the Russian generals

are saying, look, you know, this has worked thus far. These foolish people are impaling themselves on us. We're slaughtering them. But at some point, we're going to have to move and end this. Well, doesn't President Putin know that NATO is significantly weaker today than it was 16, 17 months ago. And there can't be very much respect for President Biden's leadership. Well, I'm sure that no one takes Biden seriously at all. They know that he's not really in charge. He's an empty facade who's manipulated. But on the other hand, Putin does respect the economic power that the West represents in Europe. And I think he also desperately wants to end the war. This is the strangest part of it. Moscow doesn't want the war to go on.

We interpret that as evidence for weakness in Moscow. Moscow looks at us and thinks that we're insane. Why would you want to risk a major war between the United States and Russia over this place called Ukraine? They can't figure it out. It doesn't make any strategic sense to them. And indeed, they're right. It's a very strange set of circumstances. We're saying these evil Russians won't negotiate.

Well, that's absurd. They will. But they're not going to back out. They're not going to bend down and subordinate themselves to the demands of the globalists running Europe. Why did one NATO member attack another when the United States destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline, which is going to cause another very bitter cold winter in Germany, whose economy was once the Iron Man of Europe, and it's becoming the old man of Europe.

Oh, no, that's definitely coming. We don't know what the winter will be like. I mean, they could, I guess, have another mild winter. But the probability of another one like last year is low. These things don't happen repeatedly. They tend to move in cycles. I suspect the one coming will be worse. That will simply hasten change politically and economically in Europe.

Whether or not it comes quick enough, I don't know. But what are we going to do? We don't seem to care. You asked about a humanitarian impulse to end the war. There's no such thing inside Washington. And they're still drinking the Kool-Aid. There are people walking up down the streets that think, oh, the Russians are going to be destroyed. Any further attempts will be met with fierce resistance by the Ukrainians. In truth, Vladimir Putin doesn't want to kill large numbers of Ukrainians. He can do that. He's got the forces.

He's got 300,000 men in reserve, Judge. He can pull the string on that thing, and it'll be hell on earth. But he doesn't want to do it. So here is one, maybe the principal puppeteer pulling the strings of President Biden. That's Jake Sullivan, his national security advisor. I want you to listen to what he says. He's ostensibly speaking about F-16s, but he uses a phrase in there, but we can't handicap the war. We can't predict the outcome. When his boss said with certainty a few months ago, Putin is lost, Russia is lost, no matter what he does,

he's lost. I will say that over the course of the past two years, there have been a lot of analyses of how this war would unfold coming from a lot of quarters. And we've seen numerous changes in those analyses over time as dynamic battlefield conditions change. So what we have said from multiple podiums and multiple briefings remains the same, which is we're doing everything we can to support Ukraine in its counteroffensive. We're not going to handicap the outcome. We're not going to predict what's going to happen because this war has been inherently unpredictable. What we did this week is formalize through a letter from Secretary Blinken to his counterparts in Europe that upon the completion of that training, the United States would be prepared in consultation with Congress to do that. So to put all of those questions to rest, that in fact, the training will be followed by the transfer as we

work with Congress to effectuate that and with our allies. So he's not being honest. He must know from the Defense Department how long and arduous the training will be before any Ukrainian pilot can fly an American-made F-16. He has changed radically, but in a subtle way. The administration's mantra, Putin has lost, Russia has lost, when he says we can't handicap the war and we can't make any predictions. Is he recognizing, well, is he aware of reality, but afraid to acknowledge it? Well, first, let's dismiss this F-16 business up front. Whatever F-16s they get, whenever they get them, and I don't think they're going to arrive in time to make any difference, but let's assume I'm wrong and F-16s show up. They've got several problems. First of all, they have no airborne

warning and control system that actually has to queue and target places on the ground or enemy aircraft for the F-16s. In other words, the F-16 flies, but it has to have direction from the airborne warning and control system. Secondly, you've got to have an infrastructure that allows you to maintain all of these aircraft, which they don't have. And finally, you have to have airstrips. Most of the airstrips in Ukraine can't support an F-16. They're not long enough. So this is silly nonsense. We just throw that out. As far as the rest of it is concerned, I can't handicap. I can't predict. I think a blind man could predict. And I'm not blind, but I did. And many others did. I shouldn't't say many but several of us did certainly before

this thing began in january and then later on in february and march whatever the ukrainians did they would be crushed everybody knows that you this is this this is not something i have to laugh he says it's a dynamic battlefield well tell that to the the Ukrainians that are mired up to mud to their ears, that are under constant uninterrupted artillery fire. And every time they stick their heads up and try to move as a group, they're slaughtered for the reasons that I explained earlier. This is not dynamic. This is defeat. I've been trying to think, I've been scratching my head about why there is so little outrage here. I mean, there is amongst libertarians, there is amongst the more serious military and intelligence folks like you

and our friends, and there's even some disgust with the war amongst progressives on the left. Is it because the media is 100% in lockstep with the government? Or might it be because war is so profitable to so many people in the United States that it no longer outrages? Well, both are correct. You hit on the two principal reasons. Again, you and I both know that most Americans on any given day don't care what happens beyond the borders of the country. They really don't. They've got their own problems to deal with. And they find all of this very strange, but they don't feel the pinch. You know, $14 trillion is currently the estimate of what's been spent since 2001 on military interventions in war. $14 trillion. Incomprehensible. These sums vastly, vastly

outstrip anything we spent during World War II or Korea. So that's the first thing. It's funny money. Nobody notices it. There's no war tax. Right. It's all borrowed. It's all borrowed. Yeah. Well, it's a Fugazi money. You know, I think somebody said that. I think that's a good way to put it. It's sort of like telling everybody that mortgage interest rates are up to 10%, but everything's just fine. You know, we have less than half the refineries we had 30 years ago, but everything here is fine. You know, the bond market yields are up, the prices are down, and suddenly people all over the world, banks all over the United States hold how many thousands of these treasury bonds that were purchased when they were what what, 0% or 1%? They're now worthless. At some point,

you've got to offload these things or you're going to go under. Well, the Fed will buy them up. Don't worry. It's Fugazi money. The Fed will buy it. Well, good luck with that. This is not 1990 or 91. We're not looking at a few million or a few trillion. We're looking at almost, what, 34 trillion at this point? So the whole thing is insane. Europe is much worse off at this point. And I suppose some people are running around saying, well, look at this. We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory. You know, the glue factory is full of Europeans. They have to go through them first before they get to us. I don't know.

But you're absolutely right. This has been very profitable for all the wrong people. And when this becomes clear, and it will at some point as things collapse here, and I think they will, I think they're going to crumble. I can't say when. I can't say specifically how. But when they do, there are going to be a lot of angry Americans. And God help these people that have brought us to this point.

Could you imagine if Joe Biden is reelected somehow, and if the same crowd is still pulling the strings in the State Department and the Defense Department, maybe not the same human beings, but the same mentality, the same attitude, the same goals, how much more horrific this will be three or four years from now? Well, judge will be. I think that's going to be initially, unfortunately, the outcome. If you look at this is back to the Uniparty, the swamp, the deceit, the deception, the greed, the arrogance, the ignorance. All of these things are bound up together. So you're ultimately replacing one set of globalists in the swamp with a new set. These people are not going to change immediately. They won't change until we are in the gutter.

And I think we're going to end up on the road to Sri Lanka over the next several months. But Sri Lanka or the experience of Sri Lanka is going to hit Europe first. It's going to hit Japan. Japan has debt to GDP ratio of what, about 640 percent. That's insane. Now we're hearing about the great threat from China and people are starting to admit that, oh, look at China. They've got real problems. Of course they do. Has the war kernel, in an odd way, put China and Russia closer together?

I know I hear everybody say that all the time. I mean, certainly you can make the argument that it's absolutely persuaded China, that Russia and China are each other's partners of last resort strategically. However, there are good reasons for the Russians and the Chinese to cooperate. Strategically, they both have the same interest. They want Central Asia to be stable. And most Americans don't understand Central Asia. They don't know where Kazakhstan is. They don't know where Uzbekistan is. They don't know where Turkestan is. Forget it. They don't know any of it. But there is an Islamist threat in those areas that is not to be taken lightly. Both the government in Beijing and the government in Moscow want to make sure that

Islamist threat never comes to fruition. So they're going to control that and keep it safe and stable. They've got governments there that want that to happen. So they're going to, that and keep it safe and stable. They've got governments there that want that to happen. So they're going to, that's one reason. The second reason is that Russia has everything China needs. China desperately needs energy. China desperately needs food. And this isn't going to change anytime soon. And if what's happening in China continues to worsen, and I think it probably will, you have hundreds of millions of Chinese that can't get jobs because many of the industries that once flourished are not flourishing anymore. They have to move back to the countryside. The government is trying to figure out how it's going

to avoid internal disruptions, massive upheavals. So if you talk to people in Korea and Japan, they're not worried about a war with China. We're the only crazy people out there that keep talking about a war with China. Nobody else buys that. Well, what does your gut tell you about how much longer the violence can continue, the actual shooting at each side before there's a standstill or the Zelensky government collapses or there's such massive desertions that it effectively is a collapse of the government? It's hard to tell. We've seen this sort of thing before. The last six months of World War II was the period when the Germans took almost 75% of the casualties they sustained throughout the war. Stop and think about that. So I suppose it could go on for another few months. Again, I can't handicap or predict it with absolute precision,

but the Ukrainians are finished. And the humane thing for us to do is to intervene and put a stop to this. I continue to hope, but maybe I'm misguided, that the Europeans will wake up to this first. And if they do, God bless them, because they don't want this war to drag on in the East. It's destroying them economically, socially. They don't need it. We, on the other hand, are sort of sitting here in splendid isolation, you know, playing dominoes, pretending that everything's just fine, don't worry about it, we'll send over some more material. I don't see that people in Washington, the people sitting in Congress, there are exceptions. You have somebody like Chip Roy, he understands this is a catastrophe. Sure. You do have a few Democrats that come close

to that. You have RFK that obviously has figured this out. But remember, none of them are in power. Right. That's the problem. Once these people have dug themselves in, and they really have, the federal bureaucracy plus the uniparty leadership is not going to give up easily. So I think they're going to continue to drag this thing out in the hopes that maybe something will happen in Russia. Oh, it'll happen all right. You'll have four or 500,000 more Russian troops, more weapons, more capability. In other words, this war has produced the exact opposite for which it was supposedly fought. GENERAL DURANT WELLES Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure,

my dear friend. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Judge. Well, if you like what you saw, and of course, we always have more coming, tell your friends, like and subscribe. We have 185,000 subscriptions. Our goal is 200,000 by Labor Day, which is just about 12 days, well, two weeks from today. Tell your friends what we do here. We look out for your liberty. Thank you.