Part Of The Problem - Col. Douglas MacGregor

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave is joined by Col. Douglas MacGregor to discuss the approaching potential Venezuelan regime change war, the historic weight of America's relationship with Israel, and more.Support Our Sponsors:CrowdHealth - https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/promos/potpKalshi - https://kalshi.com/daveMonetary Metals - https://www.monetary-metals.com/potp/Quince - Get free shipping on your Quince order and 365-day returns athttps://www.quince.com/POTPPart Of The Problem is available for early pre-release at https://partoftheproblem.com as well as an exclusive episode on Thursday!PORCH TOUR DATES HERE:https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/porch-tour-2025-4222673Find Run Your Mouth here:YouTube - http://youtube.com/@RunYourMouthiTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/run-your-mouth-podcast/id1211469807Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4ka50RAKTxFTxbtyPP8AHmFollow the show on social media:X:http://x.com/ComicDaveSmithhttp://x.com/RobbieTheFireInstagram:http://instagram.com/theproblemdavesmithhttp://instagram.com/robbiethefire#libertarianSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello everybody and welcome to a brand new episode of part of the problem. As I have mentioned in the past, one of the coolest things about my job is that I get to meet and talk to people who I really admire, who I've learned a lot from over the years. And this episode is about as good an example of that as we could get. We're joined once again by Colonel Douglas McGregor. How are you, sir? for taking the time and joining us. I'm tempted to say I'm happy to be part of the problem, but it sounds good.

Well, there you go. Well, you have, I mean, technically, I suppose you've had a long career. I'm sure you've been part of the problem and the solution at different points. I don't know. We haven't found a solution yet. We've recommended many, but they don't seem to have adopted any. Well, that is true. That is true. A good solution to an American war is something that has eluded us for, you know, going on a century. But that's, we'll get into a lot of that. And you have an event this weekend in Dallas, Texas, if I'm correct. Yeah, I didn't realize we were competing with Dave Smith. That's it's too bad. But I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun. I think ours will be fun, but it's going to be serious. We've got,

we've sold out, which is nice. And it's a VIP reception and dinner. These are people that really wanted to talk with us. We have three, three of us there that are going to be talking to the people that are coming. It's called the National Conversation. And we basically got together. I had been, at the time I was still with the Our Country, Our Choice. And we decided we were frustrated because we just could not justify supporting Democrats or Republicans because it struck us that, you know, not to make it simplistic, but it struck us that, yeah, you go out, you vote. And inevitably, you get John McCain and the budget continues to explode and more money is spent and nothing is solved. So we said, why don't we found this thing called the National Conversation and start

holding events all over the country, one every 90 days or so, and get a panel of people together each time. This time, it's Natalie Brunel. I know if you know her. She's a really known as the Bitcoin person, but she's much more than that. She's a very fine financial analyst. Judge Napolitano, we have to drag him in because we need somebody to tell us what the law says, because it's hard to tell what's real it isn't anymore. And, of course, I'll be there. And we have a wonderful moderator. Her name is Dr. Olga Rabazi, and she's taught at the university level.

She's got command of a lot of information, particularly in international relations. Anyhow, we've invited all these people not to lecture them, but we'll answer questions as they're put to, us by the moderator and then the audience will have a chance to engage and tell us what they think. Because we want to get to the answer of if we want to chart a third way in politics, something other than what we're hearing to the mainstream media, what are the core issues that we think we can unite around? That's really what we want to find out because we need desperately to unite around key things

to hold the country together. You know, Lenin used to say, every society is three meals away from a revolution. Yeah. He wasn't wrong. And we think about that. No, that's absolutely right. And I do think particularly in this moment right now, you know, as somebody, like I've been, I've been involved in the Libertarian Party before for years.

I, you know, I was supporting the Republican Party when Ron Paul was running for president, but that was kind of not really supporting the Republican Party. that was kind of a third party candidate, you know, running within one of the parties. And then, of course, in some ways, Donald Trump has kind of been a third party candidate running in the Republican Party in 2016, 20, and 24. And I did vote for Donald Trump and endorse him in this last election. And for many reasons, it seemed to me that Kamala Harris losing was like a must for our country. Also, forget even any policy, but just the pure humiliation. of Kamala Harris being the commander-in-chief.

It gives one shivers in their soul. Well, remember what we were talking about before we came on air, you know, Lincoln said ignorance is no bar to advancement in politics. Man, did he get that one right? That, yeah. But, of course, then we're back to the John McCain problem, aren't we? Yes, we sure are. But even maybe with as awful policies and even more ignorant than John McCain,

if that's possible. But I do think that at least at this point, now. And I really don't, I don't want to downplay say, like, look, there has been tremendous success in terms of the border crisis compared to where we were a few years ago. And I think the Trump administration should get some credit for that. That is a big deal. And I'm not trying to downplay that. However, I do think almost now in the culmination of the Trump experiment, where Donald Trump did get two terms, I mean, he's in his second, but he did win two terms. And I think for a lot of us, people like myself, were kind of here before Trump and are coming

back around to this now. We go on these very fundamental issues that are destroying the country, namely being forever wars, perpetual debt, and debasement of the currency. Both parties are in lockstep. And in some senses, Donald Trump might, when it comes to say unconditional support of Israel, might be actually a substantial click worse than the Democrats would be on that issue. There's also another topic, though, that I think is very important to everybody. And people don't get this. This crosses all the racial lines. I don't care what anybody says.

It's public safety. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. And the Republicans might be a click better on that. But the problem is still not turned around. It's not nearly enough. And so in a sense, if you start to chart this thing out, like as if we're a car driving toward a cliff at 100

miles per hour. You're like, just voting in the Republicans is clearly, empirically not enough to stop this car from heading toward this cliff. And in that case, I do think, as you're saying, we have to start exploring alternatives. Like, what is there? I'm not asking for much. I'm just asking for a candidate who says, let's not get into stupid wars of choice and aggression. And let's be fiscally responsible. And yes, as you pointed out, too, hey, maybe let's have some policies like you're not allowed to do heroin on the street. You know, like, you have to go inside. You know, like, I mean, I'm not even, I'm not a war on drugs guy at all.

I'm just saying, like, we can't allow, you know, this crime to take over all of our big cities. And we have nobody in this country who is running a serious campaign on those issues. No, it's, and we, you know, the idea that the solution is to attack other countries to solve the drug, problem that exists inside your borders is a very dumb idea. Yeah, that's that's right. I'm really glad you said that, too, because, and maybe we could just do that topic first, but it has been, it's almost heartbreaking to me to see how many people who I think are good patriotic Americans who do when Donald Trump or even other people who I like very much,

like Vivek Ramoswamy and other people talk about how we got a, you know, we got a drone bomb the drug cartels are we and you sit there and you go so are you telling me that you would like to combine the wonderful results of the policies of the war on terrorism with the war on drugs you think that those two mixed together are going to end up being what like this is going to be a good solution somehow and then of course as you know the the onus seems to be i mean there seems to be no onus to even demonstrate like for example with those boats off the coast of venezuela that they were drug dealers, or they had drugs, or they were on their way to us. Venezuela is not even one of the major contributors to our drug problem here.

It's much more Colombia, Mexico, China. There's lots of other, you know, it doesn't even make sense. And then, of course, as you know, led by the head of the State Department right now, Marco Rubio, there's been a major effort to flirt with a regime change in Venezuela that seems to be kicking up again. Yeah, how many times do we have to play this film about regime change? to discover that it's a dead end. It doesn't work. It leads you nowhere.

This really goes back to the Bolsheviks. Once they took power in Moscow, then they had this notion of perpetual revolution. They were gonna march all the way across Europe and then stole new communist parties and power everywhere. Didn't work out. And it brought on the Second World War, frankly. I think we have to step back and ask ourselves,

what are our real problems and what are the threats against us that we should be concerned about. I can't find existential threats beyond our borders. I'm sorry, I just don't see them. I see no evidence for mendacity and determination to attack and destroy us or Europe on the part of Moscow. Absolutely not. Completely disinterested in that over there. The Chinese, how do you persuade people that Xi is not the evil foo manchu that he actually wakes up every morning and hopes that he can hold 1.4 billion people together for another 24 hours. That's his top priority. And he spends most of his time fighting internal corruption, which is overwhelming. By the way, that's an ageless problem in

China. You know, when the Japanese invaded the place, they bought off half the Chinese and marched ashore. People don't realize that. All the bankers in Shanghai cut a deal with the Imperial Japanese Army. So the Imperial Japanese Army marched in, killed large numbers of Chinese, but they didn't touch the banks. We don't understand the reality. So I think we have to face the fact that most of the problems that we have are generated here at home by us. We create them. And the budget's a perfect example of it. You know, we've reached a point where nobody on the Hill wants to cut a dime out of anything for fear they won't get reelected. That's not a good sign.

It means that people pay attention to one thing and only one thing, the check in the mail, the freebie they get, the food stamp or something else. We've lost sight of everything else. And then you have the small group of people in Washington that enjoy these regime change wars. And effectively, the war with Iran is another regime change war, waged by Israel and us. the possibility of war with Venezuela, which looks very, very real right now, unfortunately, is another regime change war. And if you go back and listen to Joe Biden and the people that surrounded him and the neocons

that were advocates since, I would say, easily since 2014 when we installed this puppet regime in Kiev to wage war in Russia, they've all been about regime change, at least on the surface. Obviously, they wanted to get into Russia, divide it up, strip it of its resources. The bankers were anxious to see that work so they could all get rich. We have a similar situation potentially in Venezuela. You know, Venezuela has great oil and gas, emerald mines, gold mines. Gosh, of course, it's a big problem. You see, it's almost the size of Germany and France together.

It has 1,700 miles of coastline. It has 1,180 miles of border with Colombia and roughly 1,380 miles of border with Brazil. Oh, that should be easy. Yeah, let's go change the regime. What are you going to do with? 2,000 Marines, some special ops. And, of course, the old problem with all of these things, it's the problem in the Middle East, it's the problem with Russia.

What do you do when it doesn't work? Well, historically, what have we done? Escalate until we can't because the American people finally wake up and say that we've had enough. Get out. And that's what happened in Vietnam. Nobody talks about Vietnam anymore. You don't talk about defeats, do you? Do we talk much about Iraq?

I don't think so. They threw us out in 2011. And the few that stayed on, they want to get rid of them. And I think most of us have pulled out as a result. Where is the big success story in Afghanistan? How many times do you have to have strategic failure before someone inside the United States notices? And that's the biggest problem.

that the American people have been insulated from all these disasters. As long as, you know, they can go out and get a case of beer, you know, drive home, watch the game Monday night. Hey, it's not my problem. And we have no draft, so no one fuels the pain except the less than 1% that are in the armed forces. And, you know, they're expendable. What are we worried about them for? It's a pretty terrible situation.

I don't think it can go on much longer. And, you know, I think what's what may rescue us, this is a terrible thing to say, but it may be bankruptcy that rescues us from ourselves. But we have to admit to the blame, don't we? We're Americans. We voted for this stuff. We shut up. We said nothing. We said, fine. Go ahead. And we're in a mess. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Kalshi. Kalshi is a prediction market where you can bet on just about anything, or you can go there and just see what people are betting on. Like, for example, there were bets raging about whether the government would or wouldn't shut down all last week.

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All right, let's get back into the show. Yeah. No, that's that there, look, there is something to that. We have to take some responsibility for it. And of course, this is what Ron Paul used to always say, is that the system, this system is fundamentally unsustainable. And so it will not sustain itself. And that end is going to come one way or the other. And then I think the question is, what do we do with that and what is the response to that?

You know, as you said, as you were talking about this, I'm thinking, I'd mentioned this on my last show. But so recently on Pierce Morgan, he had a panel where there was a one of our mutual good friend, Scott Horton, was on. And your old colleague, General Wesley Clark, was on the show too. And there was one point where it was the end of the show. So like Wesley Clark made this point and then Scott didn't get around to respond to it. But I found it like truly striking. At one point, Scott was he was condemning. Donald Trump's support for Israel's destruction of Gaza.

And then General Wesley Clark said once at the end, he said, yeah, but what's the alternative? What does Israel pull out now and let Hamas say that they won? And I was really taken back by that, that I went, so you, like at this point that Mr. former four-star general, you still have not learned the lesson of like, yes, that is, I mean, okay, technically that is true. And I guess that is one of the bad parts of fighting an occupation war where there's an insurgency and eventually you can't beat the insurgency. Yeah, all they have to do is not lose.

And then they get to say that they won. But that applies to Afghanistan. That applied to Vietnam. That applies. Yes, but essentially the thing that's so frustrating about it is that obviously, if you just think about this, what the situation, the corner that you're painting yourself into now is saying, what you can't leave. until what? There's not one young man with a rifle who wishes to avenge his cousin or father or son or

like until none of that. So until under current conditions, Gaza becomes Denmark. That's when this can end. Like it's just you've set an unreal. It's an obvious recipe for forever war. And it's shocking to me that somebody who, you know, like, look, I don't agree with Wesley Clark on a lot of things. He's a Democrat and I don't agree with his politics. But you would think that here's a guy who was like the leader of the NATO forces, a four-star general, a guy who's got to have, you know, like a head on his shoulders. And it was just stunning to me to hear that you're still working within this paradigm that means we bleed ourselves into bankruptcy and your boys get slaughtered, like the ones you're supposed to be responsible for. It's just, I just, I guess the question is more

like, how were more people in the military not able to see the things that you're able to see, I guess is the question. I think a lot of the trouble starts at West Point because you go to a mixer in the old days. We were all male, and they would bus in these girls from all over the place. And somebody would walk in and say, well, you know, I'm not really very impressed. Everything else. Somebody said, here's a beer. Put your beer goggles on.

And after enough beer, suddenly everything looks really good. But I think West Clark, by the way, I know him and I like him personally very much. He's a very intelligent man. He and I always got along well, though we did not agree on a lot of things. But to his credit, he tolerated me when I disagreed with him. I think because he knew I would always be honest with him and I would be loyal to him. And I have been and I will be. But he was wounded, almost died in Vietnam.

They had to fly him on an emergency basis all the way to Japan. And they thought they were going to lose him on the table. His wife flew into Japan and it was almost nothing short of a miracle that he survived. And so you would think, in retrospect, as you reflect on that, that you would question exactly what you brought up. But it's deeply ingrained in him, this idea, well, you have to win. we haven't won anything for a very, very long time. And we forget how terrible the Second World War was. I listened to people on, well, we won the Second World War.

Well, actually, 50 plus million people died in it. We happened to be on the winning side. But we were all really, really happy. We came in late, and we were really, really happy when we only fought for about three years and it was over. And we don't want to go back there and experience it again. But that's not what you hear. I'm so glad the president was tough and told those Russians to get with the program.

What? Have you lost your mind? This is a sovereign state. It has its own national security interests. They're legitimate security interests. What's wrong with treating them as legitimate security interests? They don't have any interest to compare to ours. Well, what are our interests in Ukraine?

Explain this to me, please. haven't figured it out. And oh, by the way, what driving strategic interest compels us to support the Israeli extermination of people in Gaza? I don't get it. Now, you may not like the people in Gaza. That's fine. And the Israelis, it's their country, obviously, if they want to do these things. But what are we doing supporting it? Is that consistent with our values? I hear all this crap all the time about, well, our values dictate. Okay, what are those? Mass murder and expulsion? Where's that on the list? I don't see it. I wouldn't want to do that inside my own country. So, you know, what are we doing it overseas for? It's all very, very odd stuff. And

the biggest problem, though, I think it's not just the Americans who on any given day, Dave, you and I both know, the average American doesn't care what happens overseas. You know, as long as he has a case of beer, he can watch the game, he's happy. As long as he has a car, he can drive and can afford the gas, he's happy. As long as he has, you know, wife and kids to play with, he's happy. I mean, this is kind of where we are. We're not an overly demanding people, and we are rather simplistic. We're not complex people in that sense.

but the problem with this very inward focus is that we allow things to happen in our name beyond our borders that are catastrophic you know Dave Petraeus I talked to him back in 2005 when he was at Leavenworth that's the last time he and I spoke he was a couple of years ahead of me at the military academy and I had come to the staff college to speak and we talked he talked about Iraq what do you think and everything else and I said well these raids, checkpoints, and patrols. I said, this is just a steady grind. It's not going to take us anywhere.

The British gave this up in Ulster. It didn't work. We don't want to do this. And he said, well, I agree with you, but we need to do these and these things. And finally, I said, well, why don't we just leave? And he said, we can't do that. On Bar Province will become a platform for the projection of terrorism all over the world. Uh-huh. I said, well, in Vietnam, we just left. We just pulled out. And it made no difference to us at all. But 58,000 men died. Another 100 plus thousand were wounded. And what, two, three million Vietnamese were butchered as a result?

He said, this is insane. You know, it's this mentality that, you know, we can't do this. We have to, we have to. We have to. to have a surrender ceremony on the battleship, Missouri, and Tokyo Bay to end every conflict or we're unhappy. But that's not realistic, and that's not necessarily why you fight a war. You don't fight wars to exterminate people. I mean, maybe Stalin did and Hitler did, but we don't do that. So, you know, it's very frustrating, and I run into this all the time with many people who I served in the military with. And then you have the problem of people that were in Iraq or Afghanistan for long periods of time in the last 20, 30 years. And of course, they're not very fond of anybody they think is a Muslim. You know, okay, well, there was a time when we felt that

way about anybody who came from Northeast Asia, you know, especially after the Second World War with Japan. But that's not, you don't allow that kind of thing to shape your policy and your thinking. And I think politicians play to audiences too much. Yeah, for sure. What was it that H.L. Mankin said if a politician found out he had cannibals in his district, he'd provide them with missionaries for dinner. It's not far off. Hey, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is crowd health, longtime sponsor of this show.

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Opt out, take your power back. This is how we win. visit join crowdhealth.com and use the promo code p oTP today all right let's get back into the show no it's it's certainly not and i think that there's i guess even even for someone like me who i you know i think a lot about these things and i enjoy reading you know this is kind of my world i have been really shocked by the recklessness and irresponsibility of the leadership within the military and the political class, like even for, even for a group of people, I understand, there's going to be some corruption, there's going to be mistakes made and things like that.

I mean, but look, even, like, even in the George W. Bush administration, John Mearsheimer covers this in his book. It's a very interesting little detail in American history. But immediately after 9-11, it was Colin Powell, probably the wisest member of the Bush administration, although he still fell in line and sold the war that he knew was based off lies. But that's between him and his maker at this point um but so colin powell went to george w bush and was like you got to push for a two-state solution i mean that's the you know we got to go right to the core of this this is why we deal with this terrorism problem you know you got to and then ultimately it was tom delay and other forces who were like oh no you can't go against the lobby like that you'll be a one-term

president and so he backed off of it but just the point being that like there was an understanding by some wise people at the top of the military that like look this is why we deal for with this terrorism problem and there seems to be almost no thought of what for even if you could remove any feeling of humanity for the poor Palestinians and what they are going through the national security risk that this imposes on the american people to be it's not as if like the world isn't so stupid to not know that this is america's genocide not israel's like i mean yes it's israel doing it but they could never get away with this if it wasn't for the the full support of the u.s government Again, like Tucker Carlson, our friend last night, was breaking down.

Israel, like going back to basics here, Israel is a teeny little country in the Middle East. Like they always like to say, they're the size of New Jersey. They don't often mention they don't have the GDP of New Jersey, okay? This is like, this is not, they are in no position to get away with any of what they're doing, including maintaining the occupation. There are no position. You know, Netanyahu goes around and talks a big game about what Israel can do. this is your this is your baby brother talking about how he can win every bar fight knowing that you're behind him ready to crack skulls if anyone messes with him like you know and so but but the fact that there seems to be either there's no feeling for this or everybody is so controlled one way or another that they just can't act on it but if just maintaining the occupation was this big security risk because it engendered all this hatred in the Muslim world against us well what is this

What have we seen over the last two years? And like the blowback doesn't always come within, you know, 18 months or something like that. Like we are opening ourselves up for a whole other generation of young Muslim men to be radicalized toward hating us, even worse than we've already been dealing with. And there seems to be almost no thought of like, oh, that ought to be the concern of the American government, the national security of our country. Well, unlike New Jersey, Israel also does not have any good pizza. These guys haven't grown up in Philadelphia, I mean, that's very disappointing. Having been to Israel several times, that's something they lack. On the other hand, I think, you know, we have to understand something.

People like me, I was raised, I grew up as a Quaker, my family and my mother's family being in the country since 1881. In Philadelphia, I went to one of the oldest, well, I guess the old. oldest Quaker private school in the country. We were all male. Once again, this is before, you know, mixed everything. And Israel was treated as this triumph of the Second World War that in view of what had happened. And remember, the Jews collectively at one point or another have been thrown out of almost every country in Europe and the Middle East over 2,000 years. Now, we don't want to go down that road and ask that, why is that? But that was taught to us. We heard that and, you know, they were murdered and

and butchered during the Second World War. We now have a state for them. So for most of us, everything began in 1947-48 without any understanding of what had happened in the previous 80 to 100 years and how this sort of Israeli state crept into the mix thanks to the Rothschild banking cartel and people like Benjamin to Israeli,

the Prime Minister of Great Britain has always been one of my heroes. So we saw Israel as this very virtuous place that had lots of smart people that could do interesting things and were a blessing to humanity. And, you know, I've been to Israel several times and all of my dealings were always with the IDF. People who were either in the military or had been, and I liked them enormously, got along with them. There was always this undercurrent, especially in Gaza. I visited Gaza, the Israeli headquarters down there. in 2020 in February and I saw everything that they did and the Israelis had that place locked down so tight you can't even begin to imagine. I mean, the quality of their intelligence

that they did. I mean, if somebody on the other side shot at someone an Israeli soldier in a tower or something on the outskirts of Gaza, they would know within, I would say, 90 seconds, who it was. They had everybody's picture, everybody's cell phone number. They knew her everybody lived. They had all the tunnels met. I mean, this is a brilliant operation. And I remember asking a couple of officers that were there that were escorting me. I said, well, what are you going to do about this long term? I mean, is there nothing can be done with these people? I mean, surely they have this nice, you know, as Trump said, nice property sits on the Mediterranean. Is there something? Oh, no, it's hopeless. Have you tried to, oh, no, yeah,

it's hopeless. Can't do anything. So I didn't say anything more. But when the attack happened on 7 October, one of the things I began thinking about immediately is how did this happen? And within two weeks, it became pretty damn obvious to me that this was not an accident. This was deliberate. They let it happen. Now, when I say they, who are we talking about? We're talking about the leadership of the military, the state, the intelligence.

And now we have women. The Israelis are very smart the way they employ their draftees. take six or seven very brilliant young women and say, your whole focus in life, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the next two years, whatever, is Gaza. And everything that happens there in all the intelligence, they monitor everything. They picked up that this was happening, and they've said so publicly, and they reported it. Then you have the deputy chief of staff for intelligence in the Egyptian military who gave a personal phone call to the head of intelligence, I guess it was Shinbet, or could have been,

Mossad, I don't know which, and said, look, you've got an attack coming, this thing. And of course, by that time, a lot of people knew they'd watch them, you know, practice. Then this horrible attack happens, but the attack was horrible enough. But then as Max Lewenthal points out, it had a lie about all of it. And it became much worse than it was. Not that it wasn't bad. Of course, it was bad. And, you know, this was very tough for me to deal with because I had this very positive picture. And then it became very obvious. This is a trigger to unleash. this massive murder and expulsion campaign. And that's what it's been. Now we know there over 600,000 people have died, an estimated 70% of them are children. I don't know what the

ages they're giving. It's unbelievable. It is something that I could never conceive of in the modern world, particularly involving Israel, because I saw this state in a very different light from the way I see it today. And I think this is hard. It's hard. You know, I'm a boomer, right? So all the boomers, you know, they immediately say, well, the hell of these people in Gaza. But people are people. I don't care what they look like or whether you like them or not or what the religion is. I don't see that the average human being on the planet deserves to be exterminated because another person somewhere else says so. This is very tough. This is very hard. And I don't know that there is any solution that we could embrace other than to cut off the aid and stop it.

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, that's, yeah, I mean, I think it's the obvious, you know, it's, you know, one of the kind of parallels in a way between Israel and Ukraine is that you see that, and this is, I guess, goes kind of to the heart of why the founders of this country never wanted us to be an empire. because even when you get in these entangling alliances and you realize that even if well-intentioned, and I certainly am not claiming that I think any of this stuff is well-intentioned, but even if well-intentioned, there's just a tremendous moral hazard that comes along

with these security guarantees and blank checks where you give, you know, you put people in a position. Again, it's like saying to your little brother, like you're going out to the bar and you go, you get in a fight with anyone, I got your back. Well, the problem with that now is that you're encouraging him to maybe get in some fights that he otherwise would have talked out and not came to fisticuffs. And obviously, in Ukraine, that's just clearly true, that there would have been a negotiated piece at the very beginning of this, which almost undoubtedly would have been more in the Ukrainian favor than what the final agreement whenever this thing ends will be. Well, you know, there's a question, if I could say something real quick, when, if there is no accountability, there is no performance. And we really haven't held people accountable, military or political, for a very long time for doing anything. And as a result, they think they can do anything.

In other words, there are no constraints. And that's really what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. You know, and my grandfather, my maternal grandfather was in the First World War. he came back on active duty in the second but in the first world war he was in the army he was a private he enlisted after he graduated from the university of pennsylvania so did most of his classmates you won't see that happen anymore and in fact he used to say to me he always wanted me to go to annapolis which i absolutely did not want to go to because i don't

like going to see really bothers me i don't like to be out of sight of land i'm happy flying and I figure if it fails, well, it'll be quick. And I don't want to feed the sharks or something else, you know, from a ship. So I didn't ever want to do that. So he would say to me, though, he said, you know, Doug, I was in the Army and in the Second World War, I was in the Navy. And I became, I was a private, and then I was a master sergeant in just a few months. And then I became an officer. And he said, but you know, in the Army, in a war, you know, you don't get much to eat.

whatever you get to eat is cold, you freeze, you live in the mud, it's nasty, and people shoot at you all the time. You said, so if you're in the Navy, you know, you're aboard ship, and most of the time you have nice, clean, dry clothes, and everything's warm, and the food's excellent, and you always have coffee, and you don't really, you're not really under fire very much. So I really think you should go to Annapolis, and I went to the Army. He wasn't entirely wrong. I found that out to Hartley. But having said all of that, That his, my family on both sides, everybody was violently opposed. I mean, almost to the point of violence against war in 1917.

And, you know, the first point was, what has Germany or Austria-Hungary done to us? Nothing. You know, what's the basis for this? Who made them the enemy? Why are we committing the national treasury and two or three million soldiers to this war? And, of course, you know, the casualties we took were terrible. people don't realize that. In 110 days of fighting, we had 318,000 casualties. You don't realize that. That's far more intense than, frankly, most of what happened in the Second War. Second War was episodic. And we had 110,000 killed. And if you do the math, that comes down to about a thousand dead for every day of fighting. Now, I don't think most people in this country would tolerate that. sort of thing. But yet we have a lot of people right now talking about war, war potentially with the

Russians, war potentially with Iran, which could inevitably, or I would argue, will inevitably bring in Russia, China, and other states in the Middle East now. And on top of this, we're talking about Venezuela, a place about which most of us know absolutely nothing. And I don't see any serious existential military threat emanating from Venezuela. We are out of touch with reality. We don't know what this word war means anymore. And that's the greatest danger because, you know, in Europe, in 1914, that was the problem in Germany, France, Britain, Russia, everywhere. They hadn't had a major war for 50 years or almost 50.

And people thought, oh, this will just be, you know, a few months, it'll be over. And, you know, we'll trade some territory and we'll be back to them. normal. Well, that's not what happened. And if we get involved in this war as we are now in the Middle East and potentially in Europe, because even though President Trump has said, I really don't want to do this anymore, so I'm just going to give you weapons and you can pay us for them and then you go do whatever you want, we're still there. We still have 100,000 men along the border. You know, if this thing is pressed by the Europeans, you're going to see widespread destruction in Germany, Poland, Great Britain, any number of places.

We're not going to be able to stay out of that. So we've lost the sense that our number one priority in foreign and defense policy should be avoid war. Instead, we seem to be in the hunt for it. As you and I were talking before this began, two wars aren't enough. Don't worry, we got a third one over here. This is nuts. It's crazy.

And none of it is affordable. And we're on very fragile financial grounds right now. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Quince. It's time to break out the fall and winter wardrobe. And if all of your clothing from last season is falling apart, stock up with quince with staples like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at just $60 and real leather jackets without the crazy price tag, you can refresh the whole wardrobe. I will tell you, I've gotten a couple articles of clothing from Quince, and I love them. I got one of their cashmere hoodies, and it's beautiful, and another sweater that's really great,

and they're very reasonably priced. You're getting top-tier stuff at half the price you'd pay with other brands. Go check them out at quince.com slash P-O-T-P for free shipping on your orders and 365-day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash P-O-T-P-O-E for free shipping on your orders and 365-day returns. T.P. Free shipping, 365 day returns, great quality clothes, very reasonable prices. Definitely go check them out. All right. Let's get back into the show. Yeah, no, absolutely. And then I will say, of course, particularly with the situation with Israel, it's also now creating enormous turmoil within our own country. And that people, you know, it's, we saw mass

protests through 2023 and 24 about the destruction of Gaza. I'm not sure as school season is just starting up here again now. We might be in for more of those. Of course, you also see it's one of the things that's interesting, and I'm curious to kind of get your take on this, because this is what a lot of people speculate about. But one of the things that seems to be interesting and somewhat different about the relationship with Israel than any of these other conflicts is that you have these situations like say, okay, Joe Biden's running a presidential campaign and then, of course, as we know, then he dropped out and Kamala Harris came out, or he dropped out and then Kamala Harris came in. He was escorted out and then Kamala Harris came in. It was clearly, just politically speaking

here, right, which is something that politicians care about. It was an enormous political albatross around Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's neck that they were on the hook for support in this policy in Gaza. A huge portion of the Democratic base was just appalled by it. I remember seeing polls where it was like 70% of Democrats considered it a genocide. So you got 70% of your base thinks you're funding a genocide. And it really hurt them enormously also in the sense that there was no protesting against Donald Trump's campaign from the left because the left was all too busy protest in the genocide in Gaza. And so it really was a political problem for them this year. Obviously in Donald Trump's administration, we've seen

time and time again where it's a real political problem for him. Not just that his base is divided on this. He's losing, you know, he's got guys like Tucker Carlson and, and Megan Kelly and Candace Owens and even Charlie Kirk to some degree before he died, you know, like who were really like divided, like the most influential people are divided over. We don't really want to get in this war with Iran. Then when he tries to take the Iranian off ramp that they give him and pushes for a ceasefire, Israel goes and bombs him again and he's furious about this. You can just tell. And obviously, it's in Donald Trump's interest for this thing to be wrapped up. And yet, so with both major political parties, even though this thing is in their

interest to get rid of their very immediate political interest, they still are giving unconditional support to Israel. And they still will never, we'll just kind of, it feels like at least, we'll never see a moment with Trump that was like the moment he had with Zelensky, as much as that didn't work out. And now he's back to not as good a place. But it just seems like, like, this is, this, I think, mixed with the fact that our government and our media class has lied to the American people about every major crisis for the last 30 years and they've all been exposed, the mix of those two things leads people to jump to conspiratorial conclusions. Like, why is it that this tiny little country halfway around the world who we do not rely on

for anything at all? Why is it that both major political parties seem to be completely controlled by this country. Well, it's a measure of what you're discussing that most people polled today are convinced that the Israelis had a hand in killing Charlie Kirk. Now, I have not, I mean, I know who Charlie Kirk was. I think we spoke three or four times in short interviews. He asked me to come on, and I did. But also, when it became clear that I was an opponent of this policy,

in Gaza, that was it. I was out. I don't know if you go back and look at one of his turning point USA events, and I think this was, oh gosh, maybe a couple of years ago, Michelle Bachman was there as a representative of the Maga Wright or something, and she stood there and said, yes, the Israelis should kill all of them. I'm 100% for this. They should all be killed. I almost fell out of my chair. Who the hell is this woman? Does she know what she's saying? Does she have any idea what she's saying? This is a terrible thing. And I know, having worked with President Trump briefly face-to-face, and I liked him, I gave him enormous credit in 2019 for resisting the pressure to go to war with Iran when we had this global hawk shot down on the air defense

identification zones periphery. And if you know international law, any military aircraft that flies along that A-DIS, air defense identification zone. And in the case of Iran, that runs right down the middle of the Persian Gulf. And General McKenzie, who was a CENTCOM commander, had specifically asked for that global hawk. Then he plotted the route for the global hawk right down the middle, right along that air defense identification zone. And the Iranians looked and they went back and forth and asked, what do we do? What do we do?

What do we do? Finally said, shoot it down. well under international law they had the right to do that that was legitimate it was unmanned it was not manned and so president trump's question at the time was was it man no it was unmaned said so no one was killed no and he said well then i'm not prepared to launch a war and they had this thing ready to go this strike package was there because you had bolton in the white house you had pompeo over at state. You know, the neocons were there with, I'm sure, McCain and Cotton and everybody else on the phone, go, go, go, let's go, get him now. And he wouldn't do it. And he actually

asked the question, well, if we do this, this strike, how many people are we going to kill? Everybody sat there and well, six, seven hundred, something like that. And he said for an unmanned aircraft. So I'm not going to do it. The other question that came up later, but it was in the undergrowth, I would say, of the discussion. What do we do after we strike Iran? All right. You kill six or 700 people. You destroy batteries of missiles or radars or something. Then what? And this is the biggest problem right now. Whatever you want to do with Russia, whatever you want to do with Iran, whatever you want to do with Venezuela, after you do it, the question should be, now what? And that's never asked.

Well, we got to go to Vietnam and fight communism. Okay, we go over there and we fight. It doesn't work. Then what? This is the problem. There's no second question. There's no serious debate. What are the implications?

And nobody stands up and says, well, it's really not in the interest of the American people in the United States government to be drawn into a war. Just as it wasn't in our interest to go. into world war one yeah well it seems to the extent that the question then what even gets mentioned it almost seems like they just like uh like they just write a fairy tale and that you know it's it's the we'll be greeted as liberators and it'll be a cakewalk you know so they they just assert that everything will be sunshine and rainbows and in fact there were uh around the 12-day war which we'll see if

it's referred to that in history or not but around this this this recent war with Iran, there were Israeli officials who were posting pictures with the son of the Shah kind of implying that like that's the then what, that will just waltz in with the, because everybody will embrace hereditary monarchy that was imposed by the West to begin with. And I remember just being blown away by how far-fetched the idea that the son of the Shah would come into power and that would calm everything down. And then Iran would turn into a liberal democracy or something and you just sit there like after after the last 20 years of results that any adult wouldn't look at that and go okay but you know what if maybe that doesn't

work out quite like that and what if actually there are several different factions who would like to seize power and what if many of those factions are more radical than the current people in power And what if it takes a full military occupation to actually ensure that the people you'd like to see in power, get in power, because that seems to be what it always takes. Like if you could do a regime change like you did in Libya, where you do a drive-by regime change, and the country becomes a failed state and is an absolute disaster. But if you actually want to have a say over who you're putting into power next, and you're going to have to be occupying that country, and of course, as you know better than most, that often is only maintained. for the extent that the occupation is maintained, as in Afghanistan, where it's literally as a matter of days. Well, stick your hand in a bucket of water.

You displace the water. As soon as you remove your hand, the water returned. There are cultural means all over the world in regions. If you want to know what Iraq is going to look like in 20 years, don't look at the United States. Don't look at Great Britain. Don't look at Sweden. Don't look at Japan.

Look at the other states that border Iraq. they're going to be a little bit of Iran, they're going to be a little bit of Syria, they may be a little bit of Turkey. In other words, this is reality, and these things are not easily changed. Jenghis Khan used to say, occupations turned soldiers into jailers. The Mongols didn't occupy anything. After they took over, they stuck a new bunch in there and said, all right, this is the deal. you can rule I'm leaving a small contingent of Mongols here to make sure that you don't get out of line like four or five hundred people but you've got to pay these this tribute to us

on a routine basis otherwise you're free to do pretty much what you want well that actually worked and of course all you had to do was slaughter a few hundred thousand people everybody got the idea clearly but my point is that he was smart enough not to occupy right occupations are bad news. And we have this terrible problem with wishful thinking. If China becomes prosperous and successful has a wonderful economy, they'll all become liberal Democrats. No, they're Chinese. Right. They have a culture and a civilization that's 5,000 years old. What do you expect them to do? They're going to be Chinese, and Chinese are not like us. Sorry, it's not the same group of people, not the same set of values.

And by the way, their values are not necessarily wrong. Neither is their civilization or their way of life. We've got to get out of this business of sort of declaring ourselves the model for everybody else. We're not. And we really, really need to focus here at home. You know, we have this thing we talk about on the Chinese side, the one belt, one road. And if you go to the Department of Defense, oh, that's a danger. Really?

Oh, yes, they're building all this information. infrastructure across Central Asia down into the Middle East and every they're linking everybody by roads and rail and this is a danger I said well why everybody's going to trade and this is going to be successful they hope maybe we ought to plug into it what do you mean by that you know we're a maritime and aerospace power we're only a land power in the western hemisphere in other words we don't own anything in the eastern hemisphere I'm sorry that's that's that's that That's a big wake-up call that we don't own a damn thing over there. So we could plug in.

We have not looked at the things that we can do. You know, we can cross the ocean from Rushford in France to the east coast of the United States with fast sea lift. I mean, brand-new ships that are faster than anything anybody's seen. We can get everything that comes into Rush for on rail. We can put it right on a ship. We can rush it across to Philadelphia, New York, Boston. Charleston, Corpus Christi, wherever you want to go, offload it onto super fast rail and ship it lightning speed across the United States to Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego,

Puget Sound, and then send it from there to Japan or China or Indonesia or Southeast Asia. We can actually do it faster and better than the Chinese can across Central Asia. because they've got to go through multiple countries. And every country you go through, what happens? Hey, pay me, pay me. Now you have to secure it. But we speak one language from the Atlantic to the Pacific, at least in theory. And we have one set of laws, one country.

There are no extra payments. So we could do a land office business if we saw ourselves that way. But is anybody talking about it? No, no, no, we want to invade Venezuela. It doesn't make any sense. And what happens to the heartland? All the people that bought into the MAGA story and voted for Donald Trump, if we built what I just described, the people in the heartland who've been abandoned,

who've been de-industrialized, they would profit. It would spur growth there. But we need to invade Venezuela. All right, guys, let's take a moment. and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is monetary metals, an amazing company that is revolutionizing the way you invest in gold in silver. They have been paying interest in silver and gold for over eight years, helping you grow your wealth in real tangible assets. Finally, there's a true alternative to saving in dollars, a yield on gold and silver with monetary

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I can't help but think that all of it seems so communistic in theory. Like just the, and I mean just like, look, like the neo-conservatives themselves, the original real neo-conservatives were ex-communists. They were Trotskyites who came over. That's why they were neo-conservatives. And if you really look at it objectively, they weren't very conservative about anything at all. And of course, as you were talking about, like, you know, the occupation going from, you know, fighters to jailers, they also, essentially, the ask of them is to become a communist government.

They also, they have to go in there and basically become the state that's going to dictate everything for these people. And you're asking your military to do something that isn't possible to do, which is to be a true socialist government that's deciding what resources go everywhere. and just the basic idea that we, like even if you were going to say that, hey, I reject cultural relativism, and I think that American culture is superior to Chinese culture or something like that. It's like, okay, but then the question really becomes, what are you going to do? Enforce that at a barrel of a gun. I mean, if you believe that you could set an example and you could say to the rest of the

world, like, hey, I think you guys would be better off having a bill of rights and doing liberty the way America does liberty. But the idea that we are going to go around the world and stamp out every other way of life and impose hours is frankly, if nothing else, utopian. It's just not of this world. You know, I remember there was one point shortly after October 7th and Israel began to launch its offensive in Gaza. And Joe Biden, president at the time, kind of debatably, in name was the president at the time, he was asked, he goes, you know, you are. already have this conflict in Ukraine, can America afford to be backing another war now in Gaza? And Joe Biden went, of course, this is the United States of America.

We can do it all. And I do think it's like, wow, you talk about being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple. You were this corrupt Delaware senator in the, who happened to be lucky enough to be in the unipolar moment and you just still are living, because you don't even know what year it is, you're still living in this idea that like America can do whatever it wants to. And like, do you not just look at the 37 trillion in debt and the massive crisis that we had at the time at the southern border and the massive crisis of homelessness and that we have the worst racial and political

and tribal divides of my lifetime? And you still have the attitude that we can remake the entire world, even staring in the face of all the failures that you've supported over your career. It's hard, it's just hard to imagine that these people haven't been, haven't snapped out of this. Yeah, well, good luck with snapping them out. Yeah. You know, I, you know, Washington said when he left office, give us 20 years of peace, and we will become so prosperous and economically strong that no one in the world will challenge us. That was his answer to the military question.

And then he also argued, along with Alexander Hamilton, that we can be the engine of prosperity, not just for ourselves, but for others. And if we're successful, others in the world will want to imitate us and emulate us. That was the answer to Thomas Jefferson, who wanted us to join the French Revolution. think about that Jefferson believed that you know we were the model and that would have been wonderful as Alexander Hamilton and Washington said we like Thomas Jefferson but he doesn't understand the the Austrians the Russians the Prussians the British everybody will land on the North American continent to crush us we don't want anything to do with that they were right then they're still right now we can turn this thing around but we're not going to get there where

that's for damn sure and it doesn't matter at this point i think who's in power it's not going to work yeah well that's why i think it's so important that you continue your efforts and explaining this stuff to people because it really is no you really do have such an important such an important knowledge base and kind of you you really are uh somebody who has the knowledge and the wisdom to it to explain this to people and i'm super super grateful that you took the time to spend with us. I'd love to do this again real soon. Please, before we get out of here, let my listeners know where they can go to find you and follow you and anything else that you're going on.

First of all, on 4-4 October, when we had this VIP dinner in the evening, your friend and my friend, Scott Horton, is going to be there. So if you can break away and stick your head to the door, we'll tell you where it's going to be, and we'd love to see you. You can at least show up and have a free drink, whatever. Okay, absolutely. Now, beyond that, you know, you can plug my name into anything, and generally you'll find it on YouTube, or you'll see something on the net, and I've written a lot of things. I've got a paper right now that I wrote for RFK Jr. at his request back in the fall of 2024, actually started earlier than that, because I was supporting RFK Jr.

Then he went to the Trump team and so forth. And, you know, that paper is worth looking. I think I sent it to your producer. It's called Taming the Warfare State. You know, a lot of the things that the Secretary of War mentioned, those are all addressed in some detail. And so anyway, bottom line is just Colonel Doug McGregor. You'll see anything you want, but I do have a website.

It'll take you there if you just plug in my name. But the bottom line is the national conversation is our attempt to begin a movement in a fundamentally new direction. And we hope it will be successful with it's just the beginning. Yeah, well, it's something the country desperately needs, so I am rooting for it. Thank you again, sir,

and thank you to everybody for listening. We'll catch you next time. Thanks you, Dave.