Judging Freedom - Weakening Russia still a Good Idea_ Col Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, March 15, 2023. It's a few minutes after 4 o'clock in the afternoon here on the East Coast. Colonel McGregor joins us. Colonel, always a pleasure. Thank you for being here. Let's start with the news of the week. Not the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, but an event that occurred at the same time that the collapse did. The conflagration, if you will, between an American drone and two Russian fighter pilots over the Black Sea. We can talk about whether the timing is a coincidence after you tell us your understanding of what happened 10,000 feet above the water. Well, my impression is,

based upon the reports I've received from friends on the inside, is that we turned the transponders off that are normally attached to the unmanned vehicle. As a result, we were trying to move in close within the air defense identification zone that belongs to the Russians. Everybody has these. When you move into that ADIZ, you're supposed to acknowledge that you're there, identify yourself. Obviously, we didn't want to do that. So without the transponders, it was trying to be stealthy and gather intelligence on the Crimean installations, installations on Crimea that belonged to the Russian military. It didn't work out. And the Russians were within the legal bounds of international

law to take it out, which they did. Whether or not they actually did it in the way that's described, I don't know. That sounded suspicious. I haven't heard of planes colliding with other planes to take them down. Have you heard of planes emptying their fuel on drones, almost as if to mimic a dog urinating? No, I haven't heard that either. I mean, quite frankly, I don't know how it happened, but I do know that the Russians disposed of it and it crashed into the sea. And I know why it was there.

It was there to collect intelligence targeting data for installations in Crimea. Oh, my. They also used it, I'm told, to target the bridge that we tried to destroy. Is this any different from a Chinese balloon? Well, it is different in the sense that this is inside the air defense identification zone of Russia. And, yes, you're right. The Chinese balloon was inside our air defense identification zone of Russia. And yes, you're right. The Chinese balloon was inside our air defense identification zone, and we were within our legal rights to shoot it down. So absolutely, that's true. But I think this is not the first time that this has happened. I think

the Russians have simply sent a message. We're not going to tolerate it anymore. How effective, you know, I just estimated 10,000 feet. I mean, do you know how high it was and how effective these drones are at gathering data about Russian military activities in Crimea? Well, I think they're very effective in terms of collecting data. Whether they're more effective at 10,000 than they are at 5,000 or it makes no difference, I don't know. But I do know that all these unmanned collectors, whether it's Global Hawk or the one that we're talking about, are all excellent and do a great job. I heard a statement from President Putin the other day, I heard it translated into English, about the relationship between the United States and Germany. I think you know where I'm going. President Putin said, Germany is still occupied. He didn't finish the sentence, but I think he obviously meant occupied as it was by the Allied forces after World War II, an historic event with which we're

all generally familiar. He was basically mocking the German government for putting up with the American government, telling it to sit down, be quiet, be a good boy while we destroy your pipeline with Russia. Yes, I wouldn't quite term the condition of our influence in Germany as equal to an occupation. That's over the top. But clearly, Mr. Schultz has behaved as though he were a vassal of the greater American empire. Today, I received an email about a firm in Germany that is involved with metal work. They make alloys, they build alloys, and they also bend metal and so forth. This firm has been in business since 1380 as a result of the loss of cheap energy. In other words, energy they can afford, which was the natural gas that came out of Russia, this firm, for the first time since 1380, is going out of business.

And thousands of people are going to suffer as a result of this. And this is completely unnecessary. This shouldn't have happened. But that's just one more piece of evidence for the stupidity and the folly of destroying the Nord Stream 2. That was a monumental mistake. It's an act of war by the United States against the Germans. I don't think Mr. Scholz and his friends are going to be in government too much longer. I can't predict when, but I think the German people are going to object to this and they've had enough of it. Well, they're going to find that guy on the sailboat. It's like the minnow, the boat that got lost on Gilligan's Island. I mean,

this is absurd. Well, actually, I think we have to give Gilligan more credit. He'd have done a better job, at least, of creating fiction. Now, this is utterly absurd, but this is the CIA. And you're making an important point. If you look at the recent articles that have come out in the New York Times and the Washington Post, just within the last 48 hours, we're now beginning to see the truth actually creep into articles about the Ukraine war. And what I'm talking about are the horrific casualties that the Ukrainians are taking, the devastating impact of Russian artillery and Russian rockets and missiles,

the terrible conditions for life for the people in Ukraine. It's actually being mentioned now. So that's a good thing. You recently wrote that well-regarded estimates show that between 150 and 200,000 Ukrainians have been killed in action. These are military people killed in action. And you saw another estimate that was as high as 250,000. How big is their army? How much longer could they tolerate a loss of 200,000 in 12 months? Well, this is another important question. And I think Ukraine has actually built three armies. They had one that we destroyed, or actually the Russians destroyed early in the war, I would say between February and July. A second army was configured, equipped, and sent into action after July, and that one was largely destroyed by Christmas. And then a third one was constructed.

This is all based on waves of mobilization, inducting people forcibly and otherwise. It's gotten so bad with the manpower shortage in Ukraine that just yesterday I received reports from people in Odessa that told me they were watching as Ukrainian men of various ages from 16 up to 50 were being apprehended in cafes and restaurants in Odessa. Shoved into trucks and disappearing. Literally, no questions, no discussion. Get on the truck, gun in your face. You're going to the front. And we know from the reports we're getting from Ukrainian soldiers that post these things on the internet,

that the average life on the front for a new recruit is about, what, three or four hours because these people have no experience. They may get, if they're lucky, three or four weeks of training, some time on a rifle range. That's absurd. So they're getting more and more people killed needlessly. Colonel, even if they have three or four weeks of training, if they don't have ammunition in their weapons, the training is moot.

They're just a body being sent out there to slaughter. Well, they are receiving small arms ammunition, maybe not as much as they would like. And, of course, if you're in a combat zone, I can tell you from experience, you never have enough ammunition. You've got it piled up all around you. The last thing in the world is you don't want to run out of it. The problem for the Ukrainians is they've run out of artillery ammunition. And so they're not giving artillery support to their soldiers.

Now you're talking about a war, which the Russians already have a 10 to 1 advantage in firepower from artillery systems. Now their own artillery can't fire because they don't have any more 155 shells. When you look at the losses, they range into thousands for howitzers, tanks, and other equipment. The Russians are killing these things as fast as they show up. And a lot of it is done in the following way. A small drone is flown over Ukrainian lines. They discover that there's an artillery system, an air defense system, a radar. Then come a different set of drones that literally fly right into those pieces of equipment and disable them. And then if that's not enough, rocket artillery rains down on what's there and kills everyone. So this is a sort of procedure that goes on again

and again and again. Let's talk a big picture in a piece you recently published with apologies to Winston Churchill entitled The Gathering Storm. Great title, Colonel. You actually give a little bit of praise to Secretary of State Tony Blinken, whom you referred to as a rabid supporter of the proxy war. We all know that. But one who recognizes that President Zelensky's insistence that we assist them to recapture the Crimea is A, absurd, and B, is a red line, which would result in disastrous consequences from President Putin. Right. Well, it's too bad he didn't reach that conclusion many months ago, when we could have said that in January or December of last year and avoided that pointless

discussion. The other thing is, I think William Butler Yeats was the first to talk about the gathering storm. So I don't think it originated that. But having said all of that... You mean they taught English courses at West Point? I couldn't resist. I love Yates. We did have some pretty good English instructors.

I've got to give them credit at West Point. Actually, the best one I had was at VMI, but that's a long story. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that people inside the administration, not just the Secretary of State, are realizing this is an unwinnable war for the Ukrainians. They know that. They know the true picture, the real losses. Remember that when Zelensky and his generals Zeluzhny came over here in private, they were very frank and open about the seriousness of the situation. They were afraid of an immediate

Russian offensive. This is in January. That didn't happen, fortunately, because of the weather. That gave them a new lease of life through the spring. And so they hoped that they would get this massive influx of equipment. But we've reached the point now where even if they received laser pistols that everyone could use, they don't have people trained to use it. They don't have the trained manpower. The losses have been so bad, there's no combat experience. People like that just show up and die. And that's exactly what's happening in Eastern Ukraine. so that what he does get will be enough to achieve realistic goals? Or does he really and truly believe that the West would help him invade Crimea, no matter what the cost? And we can all only imagine what that cost would be.

I think that he's been told several times over the last several years as this war approached. Remember, this is not a surprise. The Ukrainian military was built expressly for this purpose of fighting Russia. We thought that the Ukrainians would have the initiative and attack the two so-called breakaway republics first. That didn't happen. Putin preempted them and went into the area. But I think they have been told this over and over and over again. Now, we know that's not possible, but it may be he's also being told to maintain this fiction to the bitter end. If you say anything other than what we have been saying for months,

we won't support you anymore. That's a distinct possibility. He did recently ask for cluster bombs. Now, cluster bombs have been defined as a war crime. I don't know how he knows we have them. I didn't know we have them. I don't know what we're doing with them. I'd be extremely dismayed if we gave them to him. Why would he ask for something like that?

Well, I don't think he's concerned about damage to civilians because the Ukrainian artillery in Donetsk has been firing artillery rounds into urban areas populated by Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk now for months and months and months. Remember, they killed 14,000 people between the coup and the invasion of Ukraine by the Russians. That's one of the reasons they went in. They wanted to put a stop to this. And it's now stopping, not completely, but they're getting closer to it on the Russian side. So I don't think he's worried about that. But we, under no circumstances, should supply it. I can tell you from personal experience with these munitions, they have a big problem with the dud rate. If you have 10, 15, 20 percent of the bomblets that do

not explode, then they end up in the hands of children who don't know what they're looking at. Looks like a baseball. Then you have horrific injuries. And then beyond that, then your wheeled vehicles, if they drive over them, they'll be destroyed. It's a dumb idea. I would get rid of it. Well, we all signed, certainly the U.S. signed a treaty in 2004. There are unmistakably, indisputably elements of war crimes and prohibited, but who knows if we really have them. A good friend of mine interviewed a good friend of yours. John Stewart interviewed Dave Petraeus. So here's General Petraeus, in fairness to him, at his ridiculous best. The security challenges that face us right now are more complex and actually greater than any that we have faced actually during the post-Cold War era. It's just hard to see the evidence of a learning curve manifest.

It still feels like our foreign policy is everything, everywhere, all at once. Well, I think the argument there is going to be that, look, if we don't do it, someone else will. If you think of us as the guy in the circus who puts a plate on the stick and gets it spinning, the biggest plate, I think bigger than all the others together, is China. It's the U.S. relationship with China, the U.S. with our allies and partners. They help us keep some of these plates spinning. But then you have still North Korea with its nuclear program. But perhaps maybe the issue is we're not going to solve it. Maybe it's American understanding.

Just keep the plate spinning so john stewart is trying to make uh the argument against the use of american military to advance american exceptionalism an argument you have made i have made people that agree with us have made people watching us now have made what the hell is Petraeus talking about? Plates spinning. Do you know? Can you guess? Oh, yes. Yeah, absolutely. First of all, of the two comedians, I thought that Jon Stewart was far more persuasive, obviously. Yes. You know, we can't afford to be everywhere doing everything all the time. He could have added one more point that no one wants to admit in Washington. We don't need to be everywhere doing everything all the time. See, Petraeus lives in this fantasy world where the world is full of threats.

Everyone is a potential enemy. And there are only certain people who are friends and everyone else is an enemy. Therefore, there are lots of enemies. So we have to be everywhere. And we can't succeed. He knows that. We can't win. But that's all right. You just stay

there in perpetuity. In other words, it's like Afghanistan. You could stay in Afghanistan for 50 more years and have no impact whatsoever on the place. That's okay. The point is to stay for 50 years. So what military or what American benefit is there to follow the advice that General Petraeus had offered? None. Why he says stuff like that, I guess he still wants to be considered relevant with his successors in the Defense Department or the Central Intelligence Agency, but it obviously has no credibility. And you're right, even though they were talking over each other, unlike you and I. And I'm not critical of John.

That's his style, and he is my friend. And I spent a lot of time with him on his show, The Daily Show. But for the general to say we're spinning tops or spinning plates like a guy in the circus, and that's really our goal, is absurd, meaningless, and indicative of just send the troops in and let them stay there. Do I have that right? Yeah, absolutely. Because remember, large numbers of people in Washington, in the defense industries, in the political structures, they're all making lots of money. They're benefiting enormously from the largesse that flows from these military commitments. You know, Britain took an estimated $40 trillion in wealth out of the British Empire,

especially India. Most of that wealth came from India india was the jewel in the crown now by the time you get to world war ii india is no longer producing that kind of wealth and so in fact some people would argue it wasn't producing that kind of wealth by world war one but when did the british finally leave india when their debt to gd GDP ratio was 240% in 1946. Correct, right after the war, right. They were broke. And we ran them into bankruptcy, by the way.

Now we are running ourselves into bankruptcy. And what you are seeing unfolding, I think, has a very high probability of becoming far, far worse than anything we saw in 2008. Now, I could be wrong. There are lots of people who said, oh, no, that's impossible. We will master this crisis. And of course, at the end of the discussion, the answer is always the same. We'll buy more treasuries and we'll print more money. Well, God bless and good luck with that. I think those days are over. And I think we're going to watch this entire house of cards collapse. Now, when that happens, no one in Washington or anywhere else is going to give a damn what is happening in Ukraine or Southeast Asia or South Asia or

Northeast Asia or anywhere else. We're going to bring the troops home because we can't afford to keep them there. You're going to see fleets of ships docked on the east and west coast because we can't afford to keep the surface fleet at sea. And then the question is, well, if we don't do that, the world will end, right? No, it won't. We're going to discover that it didn't make that much difference to begin with, that we've been scammed, we, the American people. But we're not there yet. But I think that's where we're headed. I'd be surprised if President Biden is still in the White House in 90 days. Colonel, brilliant as always. Thank you very much for joining us. Sure. Thank you, Judge.

Or as we get it, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.