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Aug. 28, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
29:55
Col. Douglas Macgregor : US Foreign Policy Delusions
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, August 28, 2024.
Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us.
Before Colonel McGregor and I begin our conversation, please let me invite you to go to JudgeKnapp.com.
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Colonel McGregor, my dear friend, it's a pleasure.
Thank you so much for joining us.
I want to talk to you.
About an interesting topic, a topic I find interesting, and I think you do as well, and that's propaganda and delusion in modern foreign policy.
Is propaganda itself, has propaganda itself become a goal of modern warfare?
I don't think it's an end in and of itself, but it's a critical tool.
You know, Napoleon Bonaparte.
used to say that one or two opposition newspapers in any of the countries where he was going to fight were probably worth 30,000 troops.
So I think this has always been true.
Whatever disinformation can be disseminated, designed to confuse or obscure the truth, those things have always been valuable in war, and they are valuable right now in what arguably is an unending war with this administration.
I remember another one-liner from Napoleon with which you, as a military historian, are no doubt familiar.
History is not a record of what has happened.
It is a record of what people think has happened.
And, of course, he, like Joe Stalin, believed that they could mold history after it happened.
I think, you tell me if I'm wrong, Blinken and company, I can't say this is the president, who knows what he knows, are as interested in molding opinions of the slaughter in Gaza and the likely defeat in Ukraine as they are a victory.
Well, of course.
Remember, for these people, whether it's Netanyahu or the Biden administration, its members, Blinken and so forth, free speech is only...
And so they're looking for a specific message and they want that message to drown out everything else.
The media is a critical component of the current ruling political class in Washington.
The media is as important as anyone sitting in the Senate right now in terms of shaping American perceptions, which is why alternative media and the kinds of things you and others are doing are so vitally important.
When the Israelis and Hezbollah had their 20-minute battle in the wee hours of Sunday morning, I'm not sure who started it, but it occurred in darkness.
The Wall Street Journal had about a quarter page top of the fold a photograph of what it said was an Israeli missile exploding a Hezbollah one in midair.
Unfortunately for the Wall Street Journal, the sun was out when that picture was taken.
And when Alistair Crook saw it, he said, oh, I know that picture.
It's about nine months old.
And I'm not picking on the Wall Street Journal specifically.
This photo was also reproduced on a smaller version, but the same photo in the New York Times and elsewhere.
Is mainstream media, does mainstream media collude with American intel to present the narrative that the government, unlike Vietnam, to present the narrative that the government wants?
Yes, in fact, this goes way beyond manufactured consent, as Noam Chomsky called it.
I think your other guests that are intelligence officers who are better qualified to address this than I am can readily tell you that these narratives are spun up in London and New York City.
And Washington, D.C., collectively.
And they put them out.
And this is the truth as preordained by the respective political leaders.
And this is now a class thing.
In other words, I keep talking about the ruling political class, and it's why we talk about a uniparty.
Because the uniparty, the ruling political class, the media, finance, all of it is inextricably intertwined now.
So it's very difficult to get to the truth.
You have to dig for it.
And you know, Judge, it's not that Americans are lazy.
Most Americans are busy worried about putting food on the table and keeping their mortgage payments up.
They don't have time to dig as much.
And so a lot of people are still too easily influenced by the mainstream.
Shortly after this back and forth for 20 minutes between the IDF and We have the clip, but it's a little too long to play, basically saying we shot down all of their incoming missiles.
Well, if you shut down all of their incoming missiles, why did you impose a press blackout on exactly how many missiles you shot down?
Here is our friend and colleague Alistair Crook commenting on this on Monday morning.
So this is just a few hours after.
One of the reasons we can't give more detail of this is immediately at five o 'clock in the morning, the Israeli government issued an absolute ban on any reporting of any damage or any attacks.
A complete censor Was imposed on what happened in Tel Aviv, what happened at the airbase, which they also attacked, which is where the drones flew from.
Absolute ban, no reporting, no photographs, no visuals.
And so they put a complete blackout on any news of any damage to any infrastructure, any defense sites or to the intelligence bases in Tel Aviv.
Do you have any insight from sources about what damage, if any, was caused by these Hezbollah rockets on Sunday morning in Israel?
No, my sources are still very good on the ground in Ukraine and in Russia.
But I do not have the kinds of sources that Alistair Crook has in Israel and the region.
But I think we can say a couple of things.
First of all, not to defend.
One side or the other, but let's be frank.
In war, there isn't much reward for a government in power to tell the truth about what's really happening, especially when the truth is bad.
You know, during World War II, we slow-rolled casualty numbers.
We did the same thing during World War I, because as soon as the casualty numbers start pouring in, you're going to have very unhappy people.
Those unhappy people are never really going to say, how did this happen?
And why don't you end this?
So in fairness to Netanyahu, he's trying to immunize himself against those tendencies, and they're very real.
So I don't expect to get the truth out of anybody right now, not only out of Israel, but out of our own government.
We're not going to hear the truth about anything.
Just imagine if we lost, say, 4,000 or 5,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines in the space of an afternoon.
Would we tell anybody?
I don't think so.
We didn't tell people the losses we were taking in Normandy.
What we told them is that we had come ashore and that we had gained a foothold.
And that was it.
And the bulge, they only really recently released the true numbers, the true casualties.
You know, we had fighting the Germans in the main attack area.
We had about 120,000 casualties, 23,000, 24,000 killed.
The Germans had only 68,000 casualties and only 11,000 killed.
But what did we say at the time?
We said the Germans had lost 200,000, which was nonsense.
There's no reward for the truth in wartime, frankly.
Well, what happens if the Houthis sink an aircraft carrier with 5,000 troops aboard?
5,000.
I don't think they can do that.
I think they could damage it and they could turn it into a, All you have to do is destroy the flight deck, and you've pretty much achieved that outcome.
I don't think they have the wherewithal to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier.
Carriers are very hard to sink, by the way.
Before we transition over to Ukraine, here's Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday evening.
Cut number eight, Chris.
They started saying there will be a stop to the aggression and that there was going to be a ceasefire and to hold off, and that is why we took our time.
We didn't tell anyone we would take our time, but honestly, we took our time to give room for these negotiations.
Our main goal in this front and all the blood lost and all these sacrifices is to stop the aggression in Gaza.
See, naive enough to think.
That Netanyahu is seriously negotiating and negotiating toward the goal of a ceasefire as opposed to negotiating toward the goal of obliterating Hamas and all of Gaza?
No.
I think he always knew what the outcome of these negotiations would be, and we've seen that they failed.
I think you've got to go back several weeks and remember when President Putin essentially...
And his message to everyone at that point was patience, restraint.
And they listened to him because his argument, I think, was based on certain assumptions.
Not only was time on their side and not on Israel's side, simply because the Israeli society is hanging by a very slender thread, which involves billions of dollars from the United States being poured into what is probably a population of four and a half to five million Jews nationally.
now living in Israel because so many have left.
But the other thing I think has to be borne in mind, there's still this hope in the back of people's minds that a new government could come to power after the election.
I think people still believe that that might make a difference.
And then finally, the Russians have been very busy assisting and supporting the Iranians in particular, and some of that has also ended up having a positive impact on Hezbollah.
And I don't think they wanted to launch until they were certain that they had the most effective integrated air defense and missile defense that they could build.
All of those things play into this, and I think he's telling you the truth as a result.
As foolish as that may seem to us in retrospect.
Before we came on air, you and I were talking about the problems in Israel, the domestic political problems, the economic problems, in an op-ed on Sunday in Haaretz, which a lot of us in the U.S. read in the English version, a retired IDF Major General Yitzhak Barak.
Wrote the following.
Now, these are arguably the most incendiary lines from this.
Quote, Israel will collapse in a year.
Quote, Netanyahu has decided to die with the Philistines.
Quote, Netanyahu has lost his humanity, morality, norms, values, sense of responsibility.
On the same day, Ronan Barr, who is the incumbent head of Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic spying agency, referred to Ben Gavir and his folks.
He's a member of Netanyahu's cabinet as fomenting Jewish terror.
How unstable is the Israeli government and the Israeli military as we speak?
Well, let's go back to General Barack's statement first, because...
That's all.
And he's giving them a voice, and he's trying very hard, I think, to make it clear to people that bother to listen that there is, in fact, a difference of opinion and attitude between the military.
And what Mr. Netanyahu is doing.
I think in previous conversations, I pointed out that, contrary to what people would expect, the most Palestinian-friendly, or let us say at least those who are most sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians that I met in Israel over many years, were IDF officers, particularly those that had served continually for many, many years on the West Bank or in Gaza.
Now, that's the first thing.
I think we should listen carefully to him because I'm sure there are voices like that inside the Israeli Defense Force.
The second is a bit different.
Ben Gavir is a lightning rod for everything bad that you can conceive of right now in Israel in the view of many, many Jews.
On the one hand, he's a Jewish patriot and a Jewish hero because he wants to expunge, eliminate, annihilate all of the Arabs.
In Gaza and on the West Bank.
And he's popular for that reason.
He's always spoken very ferociously about that topic.
He wants a pure Jewish state.
And he wants a state that has no enemies on its borders.
That sounds great.
But in fact, it'll never exist in the future without many, many enemies on the border unless there is profound change.
I don't see any profound change coming.
So the idea that Gavir is being attacked is not surprising.
It's not surprising because the head of Shin Bet, he has a very good feel for public opinion inside Israel.
Then finally, the business of gangs, armed gangs, imposing their will on Israeli citizens who may not be supportive of or excited by what they're doing is not new.
That happened in 1948 and on some other occasions since then.
So this is not new.
The notion that Jews are monolithic anywhere is always wrong.
This is the problem with anti-Semitism.
It's collective hatred.
We should not engage in that.
Nobody advocates that.
And inside Israel itself, opinion is not monolithic.
whether or not those who are genuinely opposed have a snowball's chance in hell of influencing anything.
That's another topic.
And right now, I think it's pretty clear they don't.
Trent.
Transitioning, Colonel, to Ukraine.
Do you think the United States helped to orchestrate the invasion of Russia at Kursk for propaganda purposes?
Look, there's nothing happening on the ground in Ukraine that we, and specifically I point at the Central Intelligence Agency, And MI6 in London are not fully aware of.
So anybody who suggests that anything that happens there is a surprise to us, it's just nonsense.
Now, what was the original goal?
I think we've got to go back to that.
It was the desire to reach that Kursk nuclear power plant.
And they thought in their wildest imagination that this would somehow or another provide them with a bargaining chip.
Well, that's failed miserably.
And they're in an area that's pretty desolate in terms of population.
There aren't very many Russians living in these areas.
These are vast areas of dense forests, rivers, streams, hills.
They don't control anything.
In fact, Ukrainians are now hunkered down in little last-stand redoubts along the main route, and they're being gradually ground into bits.
They can't get out, and they can't go forward.
They're stuck.
But no one is getting that report for the reasons that we discussed in the previous segment.
The media is not telling anybody the truth.
Here's what President Zelensky had to say.
Now, President Zelensky, you and I talked about delusion, really sounds delusional in this clip, Colonel.
And, of course, you'll have your own opinion of it.
but he's offering a peace plan which presumes negotiation.
Now, we know that this invasion of Kortsk, even though it is rough terrain and not heavily populated, nixed all opportunities for invasion.
But here's what he said, cut number 15. The second part is Ukraine's strategic place in the world's security infrastructure.
The third part is a pressure package, a powerful package to force Russia to end the war diplomatically.
The fourth part is economic.
It was just 24 hours ago, but does this make any sense to you?
No, and I doubt seriously that anybody in Moscow is paying any attention.
Keep in mind that during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected to office in 1864.
And that was hugely important because it fundamentally legitimated his position and determination to fight the war to the end.
The same thing was true during World War II.
FDR was re-elected in the middle of the war, even though he died 60 days afterwards.
Nevertheless, that legitimated what we were doing.
This man has not subjected himself to the ballot box.
Right.
He abolished it.
And having abolished it, he's now trying to pretend that he's legitimate.
He's not legitimate in the eyes of the Ukrainian people or in the eyes of Moscow and the Russian people.
We're not hearing the truth, frankly.
The Ukrainians have had it with him, his regime, and this war.
But they have no voice because no one in the West will admit to any of this.
So I think we have to understand, I think for all intents and purposes, Mr. Zelensky is widely regarded as a criminal element.
Here's a not very happy view from Moscow.
This is just 24 hours ago.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
It's two minutes long, but it's captivating.
Cut number 14. Americans have this direct association, these conversations, this talk of a world war.
They think that if this happens, it would only concern Europe, which is a very showing thing that reflects the mentality of those geopolitical strategists in the U.S. because they are confident that they will just be safe across the ocean.
And in this situation, one has to understand that we have our own doctrine, a doctrine of using nuclear weapons, among other things.
And we are now making adjustments to this doctrine and the American government.
And, you know, these are Freudian sleep.
World War III is a bad thing because we do not want Europe to suffer.
That's the mentality of the Americans, mentality of masters that are sitting on the other bank across the ocean.
They are certain of their safety and security, and they are confident that there would be someone else.
To die for them, to do their dirty job for them, not only Ukrainians, but now Europeans as well.
So we heard these speculations regarding allowing to use not only the term shadows, but also American missiles, long-range missiles.
And in Washington, an anonymous source said that there is an ongoing effort, that they are looking into a request from Ukraine in a positive light.
I do not want to add anything to that.
The president has already spoken on this on many occasions, and we reaffirm this once again, that playing with fire, and they are like little kids who are playing games with matches.
It's a dangerous thing for adults who were trusted with nuclear weapons.
That's about as bellicose as I've heard him.
In the post-Ukraine time period, what do you think?
Foreign Minister Lavrov is a foreign minister in the tradition of Neserota, Gorshikov, the great czarist foreign ministers that served for many decades.
He's been in office now for 20 years.
This is incomprehensible to us.
We go through something that our mutual friend Chaz Freeman likes to call a massive lobotomy every four years in Washington, D.C. There is no continuity of governance.
There's no certainty of anything continuing without being disrupted by squabbling politicians.
This is not the case with Lavrov.
When he speaks, he's speaking for the Russian state.
As well as for President Putin.
He's not going to say anything that President Putin would not also say, but he's frequently more eloquent.
And in this case, he's pointing to some very straightforward things that you and I have discussed before.
We don't seem to understand it.
Number one, that the United States on the North American continent in the Western Hemisphere is not invulnerable, invincible, or invisible.
In other words, it can be attacked.
Now, there are many, many ways to do that.
We've talked previously about horizontal escalation, and the Russians have relations with Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, and others that can cause enormous difficulties for us, although it's hard to imagine things getting much worse than they already are in our country thanks to these open borders, but I think they could, and that's one thing.
But he's also essentially implying, look, We have submarines.
We have a large submarine fleet.
They're cruising off your shores.
You think that you can just consign Ukrainians and other Europeans to destruction on the battlefield?
You're wrong.
If you think you can get away unscathed, that's not how this will play out.
And then finally, he's mentioning the nuclear dimension.
Now, President Putin spoke recently and said, we have no need for the use of nuclear weapons.
And he's right.
They don't need them.
The problem, though, is that there are people inside this administration that think we may need them in order to assert our dominance.
And that's the real danger.
And that's what he is by inference referring to.
What do you think he meant when he said we are recalibrating or engaging in adjustments to our nuclear doctrines?
Their doctrine was no first strike.
Are they now no longer following that?
I think they are looking carefully at what we do and our actions.
And if they think that we are moving nuclear weapons closer to Russia, that we are readying nuclear forces in the continental United States or at sea for use against them, they are effectively telling us that they reserve the right to preempt us.
But they would only do that if they were convinced 100% that we were preparing to pull the trigger ourselves.
So we should avoid that, Judge.
The point is, we should avoid this.
If we want to avoid Armageddon, we need to stand up and say, we are removing the nuclear weapons from the naval combatants.
We are removing nuclear weapons from any of our aircraft.
We are standing down from a high state of readiness in the United States.
We are not going to use nuclear weapons.
We refuse to do that.
In fact, Biden has signed, I don't think he ever understood what he was signing, has signed a doctrine into existence.
It's just the opposite.
And you have these dangerous, foolish warmongers inside Washington, D.C. that think this is wonderful.
They're out of touch with reality.
They don't understand how dramatically war has changed.
They don't understand how vulnerable we are.
They refuse to accept those arguments.
And right now, we're in a position of extreme danger.
And that's what Lavrov is telling us.
And does the State Department and does the Pentagon not understand this?
Because they seem still to be hell-bent on American global hegemony, notwithstanding any of the reality that you just summarized.
You know, I can't speak for quote-unquote the Pentagon.
You've got Lloyd Austin over there and the people behind him.
What he's saying privately is unknown to me.
I know that on previous occasions he's pointed to some realities that did not go down well with the White House.
I cannot imagine that he is not warning against this very dangerous proposition that we should be prepared to use a nuclear weapon.
I hope.
I hope.
I have no way of knowing.
Now, inside the force itself, we do have more than a few delusional senior officers.
And this business of, you point out, global military hegemony, when you've lived all of your life at the center of the so-called universe, which is where most Americans have lived, at least for the last 60, 70 years, it's very hard to adjust to the idea that we are now one of several great powers.
And we are a great economic power, but so is China.
So is India.
And these places matter.
In a world where we think only we matter, and Americans are fed the diet of what I would call national narcissism, no one speaks realistically to the American people.
That's not because the American people won't listen.
It's because they don't want to admit the truth, which is that we are no longer the hegemonic power.
And by the way, we don't want to be the hegemonic power.
That's a very dumb idea.
It's costly.
It's impossible to maintain.
We don't need it.
But no one in Washington will stand up and say that.
Colonel McGregor, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for your thoughtful analysis as ever.
All the best to you.
I hope we can see you again next week.
Okay, Judge.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Coming up on Judging Freedom later today at 3 o 'clock this afternoon, Phil Giraldi.
At 4 o 'clock this afternoon, Scott Ritter.
At 5 o 'clock this afternoon, the always worth waiting for, Max Blumenthal.
Remember to go to JudgeKnapp.com if for any reason you can't find us.
Remember to go to JudgeKnapp.com and like and subscribe to Judging Freedom.
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Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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