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Dec. 3, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
33:21
COL. Douglas Macgregor : Can Biden Extend the War in Ukraine?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, December 4th, 2024.
Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now.
Colonel, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for joining us.
I want to spend some time with you on discussing the efforts of the Biden administration to extend the war in Ukraine into well beyond January 20th, 25. But before we get there, Can we explore these bizarre events in South Korea?
What, in your view, is the significance of this six-hour declaration of martial law?
And what, if anything, was the reaction of the American embassy and American troops in South Korea?
I think it's a good thing to stop and consider what did happen in the Republic of Korea.
The Republic of Korea is treated in the United States as essentially a military colony of U.S. imperial interest and influence.
We don't really treat South Korea as a truly sovereign state, and that's because we have certain agreements that give us effectively military control of the entire peninsula.
Now, the man that was responsible for the martial law is President Yoon.
He came to power a few years ago after a very, very tight election.
In fact, it was razor thin, his margin of victory.
And at the time, there were rumors that the CIA had played a significant role behind the scenes in helping him to achieve a victory.
The losing party was the Liberal Nationalist Party.
And the Liberal Nationalists have been trying to chart a course toward independence from Washington and true national sovereignty.
And one of the first things they wanted to do was appoint a Korean four-star as the commander-in-chief of all forces on the peninsula.
That's something that I argued for in 1997 in my book, Breaking the Phalanx.
And as a result, they brought me over in 2010 to examine what the implications would be if they became independent and how they would go about restructuring their armed forces.
This all, of course, was anathema to a series of U.S. administrations who have continued to try and work hard and keep Korea, so to say, under the thumb.
I think there was a brief moment with President Trump when he was willing to see things differently.
But once he left office, they elected a new president in Korea, and this man could have been handpicked for all intents and purposes by the CIA.
Who knows?
But he's widely regarded in Korea as a colonial lackey.
He knows now, several years later after he was elected, that there is no chance for his party to win any future election.
Now his party is currently called the People's Power Party.
Prior to that, it was the Grand National Party.
It's had several names, but it's effectively the facade behind which the United States orchestrates He saw what was happening with the electorate.
The electorate was turning decisively against him and his policies.
Now, one of the things that came up for discussion was this insistence that there were North Koreans in Ukraine fighting, and we know there are none.
That's just a bold-faced lie.
But he and his intelligence services, and his intelligence service is almost an appendage of the CIA, Well, that did not go over well.
Most Koreans didn't really believe the North Koreans were there, but whether or not they are, they took the position that they don't want to go.
They don't think Koreans should fight anywhere in the world outside of Asia and certainly, for all intents and purposes, not outside of Korea.
So he's in a very weakened position.
He decided that he would declare martial law because in addition to the leadership of the intelligence services, he has the backing of the military, the Korean military, because most of the top generals are effectively, what's the right word?
I guess you could call them lackeys of the U.S. Armed Forces for all intents and purposes.
Now, all of this did not go as planned.
But what's really interesting about this attempt to declare martial law and set himself up as a dictator is effectively what we've seen happen in Ukraine with Zelensky.
He's made himself a dictator with our backing.
This is what Yoon wanted to do.
But the Korean people would have nothing to do with it.
And the parliament itself rebelled.
And he does not have a majority in parliament at all.
He's a minority party in the parliament.
The parliament said, no martial law, we will lift it immediately.
The Korean military was reluctant to act.
They did stir a bit.
It looked like they might intervene in parliament, but then that did not happen because there was so much public opposition to the notion of martial law since there was no requirement for it.
There's no emergency that would justify it under any circumstances.
At the same time, our government doesn't seem to have...
waiting for this to happen, and assisting in any way they could.
In other words, this was something that we potentially would have welcomed as solidifying our continued control over the peninsula.
How many American troops are in South Korea, Colonel?
About 26,000 to 27,000.
And it is your view that the head of the CIA station in Seoul, the United States ambassador, and whoever's in charge of those 27,000 or 28,000 troops knew that this coup was going to take place, attempted coup.
Yeah, I'm quite certain they did.
And Ambassador Goldberg, you know, has been an ambassador twice before and was linked to attempts to essentially replace the legitimately elected government with a government that was, let us say, conformed to our interests strategically.
So Korea has no interest in becoming another Ukraine.
And the Korean people stood up against this and stopped it.
And I think this is another manifestation of the kind of thing that you see at the, quote, end of empire.
As the empire crumbles, the people that have been living within the empire recognize that they can strike out on their own.
This was an attempt to prevent that.
So this President Yoon probably will face impeachment or worse, may well end up in prison.
As president of Korea, he's not like a president of the United States.
He doesn't have, per se, a vice president.
Someone, some form of deputy will step in.
But in Korea, the prime minister is really the second person in line to govern the country, and that's the person in the parliament.
So the president of Korea is more or less an elected khan or king or emperor.
I say con because that word is probably the most descriptive one for Korean politics.
Whatever the president said happened.
No.
No, I mean con as in Genghis Khan.
Oh, K-A-H-N.
Pardon me.
I have to tell you, Colonel, I am ignorant of the ironclad grip as you describe it.
That the American military and CIA have on South Korea to the point where you have characterized it as not truly an independent or sovereign nation.
I guess it's been that way since the so-called armistice between North and South.
Exactly.
And a lot of people were very, very excited when President Trump came into office in 2017.
And one of the first things that President Moon at that point, this was the liberal nationalist, raised with President Trump was, we'd like to have control of our forces on the peninsula.
In other words, we're not asking you to leave, per se, but we really think a Korean four-star should be responsible for the defense of Korean national territory, airspace, and waters.
And President Trump was completely unaware that that was not already the case.
And so there was some hope for a brief period that that might actually happen.
And if you go back to the discussions in Hanoi, that involved the denuclearization of North Korea that ultimately President Trump did not sign, unfortunately.
That was all aimed at creating the conditions for a peaceful unification.
But like everything in Asia, it's a slow, ponderous process that takes many years.
Civilization, or I should say Confucian civilization, nothing happens quickly.
And that's by design because the populations don't want chaos.
They want order.
That didn't happen.
And now we have a clear mandate for the population that says we don't want to be America's imperial lackey anymore.
So this man, Yoon, has opened Pandora's box for himself.
And I think also for the United States Armed Forces that are there in the country and for US interests.
Do you think that the American officials who are responsible for this ironclad grip, whether it's CIA, fill in the blank, whoever that person is, or the head of the US troops there, or even Tony Blinken or Jake Sullivan, were aware of the coup and wanted it to happen?
Well, first of all, I don't know with absolute certainty that they wanted it to happen.
I find it hard to believe that they weren't aware of it.
They may not have paid much attention to it.
You know, Washington, sadly, Judge, is pretty much a one crisis, one conflict town.
It's never been very good at managing multiple crises and conflicts.
So I think a lot of things have probably slipped through over the last several years because of events in Ukraine.
And now increasingly because of what's happening in the Middle East.
The key thing is this.
The United States is behaving in most ways like reactionary Austria did after the Napoleonic Wars.
Everything that happens after 1815 in Austria is about keeping things under control, maintaining the status quo.
That's really what we are about.
When we talk about this post-war The truth is, it's an order that favors us.
And we're interested in maintaining it and preserving it.
And we are on the verge of, I would say, world war to try and keep it as it is.
And that's not going to work.
It didn't work for Austria-Hungary when it went to war in 1914.
And it's not going to work for us.
But Korea is just another example.
in any form.
We want to remain in control.
Colonel, are we on the verge of a regional war in Syria?
I think it looks grim right now.
That depends on us and what we do next.
It also depends a great deal on the Russians and the Iranians.
The Russians and the Iranians are now pouring into Syria.
The Russians do have Ground forces entering the country.
They have committed their air power.
I don't know if you were aware of it, but the Russian commanding officer who was responsible for Syria, as far as the Russians are concerned and Russian interests, was removed by President Putin, ostensibly because he was asleep at the switch.
He didn't have a particularly distinguished career anyway.
A new man is now on the scene who has a very good combat record.
And it's widely viewed as someone that is going to aggressively pursue the destruction of this force of the Islamists' mix of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other unsavory characters that we have been funding and supporting along with the Israelis that has taken Aleppo.
And they're still ensconced in Idlib.
I think the real shock for Russia, though, in the midst of all of this, was the duplicity of President Erdogan in Turkey.
That's really the dramatic strategic change, if you will.
So can we conclude, I've been asking this for the past three days, that Turkey's application to join BRICS will either be withdrawn or denied, and can we foresee Turkish forces fighting Russian forces?
Answer the last one first.
No, the Turks are not going to fight the Russians.
Mr. Erdogan is now in serious trouble at home.
The Turkish population sees two major threats to Turkey and to the Middle East, to the region.
One, of course, are the Kurdish rebels, the PPK, which is originally an old Stalinist insurgency that has grown into something much greater and is dangerous to Turkey.
And the other danger to Turkey, of course, is Israel, the Israeli state and its disruption of the region and its potential as a catalyst for broader war.
The Turkish population is firmly opposed to both, very firmly opposed to Israel because of its murderous behavior in Gaza, which continues unchecked.
Now, Mr. Erdogan has essentially taken off his mask because, on the one hand, he was trying to posture As supportive of and protective of the Palestinians.
But at the same time, he was still smuggling oil through the region to Israel.
He was still doing deals under the table with the Israelis for all sorts of things.
And now the population knows it.
So I'm really curious to see just how much longer Mr. Erdogan lasts.
And for the Russians, this was incomprehensible because Mr. Putin had worked hard to help him.
When he faced a coup inside his own country and stood by Erdogan and has tried to foster the best possible relationship with Turkey that he could get.
At the same time, you have the Iranians who've been talking to Erdogan, who's made nice noises, but now we see he has done the opposite of what he promised.
So I think both Iran and Russia are committed to preserve the Syrian state under Mr. Assad.
And I think they will commence to wipe out this 15,000 to 20,000-man force that's in Aleppo and around Aleppo and reaches over to Idlib.
It's going to be a bloody affair.
It's not going to be nice, but I think they both decided that that's unavoidable.
Is the IDF involved in the actual fighting, either on the ground or from the air?
You know, I've heard discussions from people that say that the Israelis have launched air strikes, I think that's over now.
Whether or not they're doing it at the moment, I don't know.
But clearly the Mossad, the CIA, and the Turkish intelligence forces, those three have worked to bring about this atrocious outcome.
And this is atrocious.
these Islamists are as bad, if not worse, than ISIS.
And after all, they are, you know, frankly, These organizations are radical Islamists.
The sort of thing that the Iranians worked with us to destroy, frankly, when we were fighting ISIS.
How can the American intelligence community justify funding, supporting, and supplying a group like this?
And number two...
Well, the answer to the first question is we've done this before many times in many places.
You can go back to the Contras in Nicaragua.
You can look at various entities that we've supported in the Philippines or Vietnam over time.
We have a habit of repurposing people that were previously hostile to us.
In an attempt to harm someone else who opposes us.
This is part of the problem with the CIA.
I mean, the CIA is regarded widely by many people in Washington as a rogue organization.
I mean, you heard Chuck Schumer as the senator say, be careful of what you do with the CIA and the intelligence agencies because they can do horrible things to you.
It's a rather dramatic statement from a sitting senator.
Who's also the majority leader?
One would think he's at least as powerful, if not more so, than the director of the CIA.
But I guess that's not the case.
So I don't think that's surprising.
It's depressing and disappointing.
Now, from the Israeli standpoint, it's a different picture.
The Israelis have always viewed opportunities in the Arab world to foment discontent, to promote division as something that they could not resist.
They saw it as being in their interest to keep the Arabs in a state of hostility with each other.
They have worked with the Balukis in southern Iran for the same purpose.
Anything that promotes division.
The Israelis are working with the Azeri Turks in the hopes that that too is going to redound to their benefit against Iran because there is a huge Azeri Turkish population in northern Iran.
And the Turks in Azerbaijan, obviously, are very close to them, and the hope has been in Israel that this will be the undoing of the Iranian state.
So what they're doing, I'm not saying it's good, I'm not condoning it and trying to legitimate it, but I understand what the Israelis are trying to do.
The question is, what are we trying to do?
It doesn't make any sense for us to promote this kind of instability.
And, you know, we've had war in Syria now since 2010.
There's hardly been a break.
The population there is being brutalized.
Why are we doing this again?
Well, if we can't control it, and we're not in charge of it, and we're not setting up a puppet government that serves our interests, then at least we can make it miserable for everyone.
I think that's the philosophy.
Back to my question about 1,000 American troops.
Well, the 1,000...
But as we know, his attempts to do that were met with tremendous resistance.
The CIA, the intelligence services.
The State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy, the various bureaucracies with an interest in things like regime change, all cooperated against him.
And ultimately, the general officers that were in charge, along with the diplomats, simply lied to the president and told him that we were pulling out when we were not, that we'd reduce the numbers when we hadn't, because they decided that we were going to stay there because their policy – This is the problem.
We have a government in Egypt and a government in Jordan that are effectively puppets of U.S.-Israeli interest.
They would like another such puppet in Damascus.
The Russians and the Iranians have made that impossible, as has Hezbollah and the Shiite Arabs on the ground in Syria.
This was seen as another opportunity, particularly in view of the fact that Hezbollah has been hurt, harmed, damaged, not fatally, but certainly harmed.
And it was a cheap and easy way to disrupt potential adversaries in Syria because Syria is unambiguously tied to Iran and Russia.
Will American troops...
Did you discuss with President Trump in your time in the Pentagon the desirability of getting troops out of there?
And did he understand the reasons for which you made those arguments?
Well, we discussed a number of issues.
That was just one of them.
And he was, in general, in favor of withdrawing troops from most of these overseas garrisons.
I mean, one of the questions he asked me was, "How long have we been in Korea?" I said, sir, 70 years.
He said, that's ridiculous.
That's too long.
So he had a very different mindset at that point.
Remember, he was also arguing that the Europeans had to be their own first responders.
Right.
So he was very interested in scaling back the overseas presence, which made a lot of sense.
It still does, even more so now because of the precision strike capability.
That you've seen demonstrated by the Iranians and also primarily by the Russians, which is possessed also by the Chinese and increasingly many other countries.
So the only thing you do when you put thousands of troops forward in an area or large numbers of ships at sea right off the coast of some state that you're trying to influence is that you're presenting them increasingly with a target array that's easily destroyed.
That means that you end up at war.
Well, I think that's ultimately what happened after he left office.
The decision was made, we're going to keep them there, and these forces are going to operate as a quote-unquote trigger for action on behalf of Israel.
I mean, I had people tell me in the building, Colonel McGregor, you don't understand.
Those troops have to stay there for Israel.
I said, why?
He said, well, they have to have us there as an early warning.
I said, early warning?
The Israelis know more about what's happening over there than we do.
They'll know what's going to happen to us before we do in the region.
They say, well, that's why they're there.
They're a tripwire.
You know, this was simply done and it continues right now.
And I suspect that someone in Washington hopes that some of our soldiers may ultimately be embroiled in a fight that brings us into wider war.
I mean, that's the only thing I can conceive of.
It justifies the position there.
It doesn't justify it, but at least it explains it.
Colonel, tell me, this is not a trick question, tell me who you think said this, those responsible for taking hostages will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America.
Well, I think President Trump made that statement, and I think he's, He's not simply talking about Hamas and the population of Gaza.
I think he's talking about Iran because he's bought the argument, the Israeli line is, everything that's wrong in the region can be traced to Iran.
Iran is the primary satanic state that makes life miserable for us, and we in Israel will never be safe until Iran is essentially removed from the chessboard.
Like Woodrow Wilson running for peace and dragging us into the least useful war.
I'm beginning to think that Donald Trump is a secret neocon and wants to start a war with these people.
Well, you know, frankly, I don't.
I don't think he does.
I think he's someone who, on one hand, wants to appear to be strong and wants to signal strength.
And there's nothing really wrong with that, depending upon how you do it in the context.
I don't think this was a good context, frankly.
But on the other hand, he really does want to avoid a major war.
And so he vacillates between those two poles, peace and prosperity and war on the other end, for all sorts of reasons, Israel and anything else you want to come up with in Ukraine.
So I think he has to sort this out in his mind, and he was led to say that because, let's be frank, his biggest backers are part of the Israeli lobby.
Right.
And he very much wants to validate them, and he genuinely supports Israel.
I genuinely support Israel.
I just don't support destroying much of the region for Israel's benefit.
That's a different matter.
Add to that...
Trump has a predecessor, the incumbent president who is doing his damnedest to extend the Ukraine war so that it all collapses on Trump's watch.
I mean, they announced yesterday that beginning today another 725 million in American stockpiled arms, drones, anti-personnel mines, portable Well, portable anti-tank missiles, I assume they're talking about Javelin again.
The Russians have several hundred Javelins that they've captured.
The Army, I'm told, the United Department of the Army is supposed to move $4 billion worth of equipment and ammunition to Ukraine no later than the 5th of January.
Wow.
That was a note that I received this morning sent to me from someone who was in the building.
I think it's very clear that the so-called deep state, the permanent bureaucracy, or these foreign lobbies, like the Israel lobby and others, that are committed to using American military power for Their benefit overseas.
All of these forces are coalescing to keep the war in Ukraine going and, frankly, to prepare for wider war in the region, in the Middle East.
That's a fact.
Now, what will President Trump do once he takes over?
You know, he's in a position that people should not underestimate in terms of its potential because President Trump always can step forward and say two things.
First of all, I did not start this war in Ukraine.
Someone else did.
I don't like the war in Ukraine.
I want to end it.
And I'm prepared to do that.
That's the first thing.
The second thing he could turn around and say is, I love Israel and I want to support Israel, but I think this war has gone far enough.
It's harmed Israel.
It's harmed too many people in the region.
And I think it should stop.
Those are things that he could legitimately say and act on.
Whether or not he will, I do not know.
Boy, do I wish you were there to whisper into his ear every morning, Colonel, because he's surrounding himself with folks who have that neocon bellicosity to them from Sebastian Gorka to Mike Walls.
Hopefully my predictions will be wrong and he will be a president of peace, but boy, he should really articulate something like you just said.
How much longer can Ukraine possibly hold out no matter what Joe Biden sends there in the next 45 days?
You know, we've been trying to answer that question, you and I, and many others for months.
This is not a new question.
You know, I've argued for a long time this war is over.
It ended last year.
Under any normal circumstances in a civilized world, the fighting would have stopped.
It would have been abundantly clear to all the great powers that this was a no-win situation for Ukraine and an arrangement would have been made that would have granted Ukraine neutrality and there would have been an exchange of prisoners.
And ultimately, a new border would have been agreed to.
This has gone on for hundreds and hundreds of years in Europe.
We seem to have halted that process and insisted that the Ukrainian nation die on our behalf.
When I listen to people like Romney and others who think that this has damaged Russia and this is a great deal for America, it's appalling.
We haven't damaged Russia.
Russia is stronger now than it's ever been.
We're not helping ourselves, and we've destroyed Ukraine.
But getting people to understand that seems to be impossible.
You know, Judge, I was thinking the other day, you remember Ambassador McFarlane.
He was appointed under Obama to go to Moscow.
Right.
And he related a story where, I guess he presented himself to Putin, and certain things were said, and then Putin went over to him.
And whispered to him, ostensibly in his ear, you don't listen.
And that was Putin's point.
We don't listen.
We're not listening to anyone.
We don't even talk to the Russians today.
Yeah, but it's not unique to the Russians.
We're not listening to anybody anywhere about anything.
We are simply careening down the side of a mountain, headed into the ravine.
And we are in denial that we will ever end up in the ravine.
You know, right now you have people, I think, in Israel who think what's happening in Syria will work out brilliantly for them, that this is all good news.
Their enemies are killing each other.
They think that what's happening in Ukraine is a good thing because their enemies, quote-unquote, are killing each other.
None of this is true.
And none of this is going to work out to the benefit of the United States or Israel.
And it's sad that we can't see beyond the ends of our noses, but that's where we are.
Colonel, thank you very much.
A gloomy picture indeed, but no doubt an accurate one.
I still wish you were there in the Pentagon, but maybe Trump will surprise us and bring us a level of listening and understanding that has been bereft for a long time.
Thank you, Colonel.
All the best, my dear friend.
Thanks.
Wonderful conversation with a brilliant analyst of military and geopolitical forces whose voice should be heard and should be paramount, in my view, my humble opinion, in the Pentagon today.
Coming up later today at 3 o 'clock, Phil Giraldi on much of this, and at 4 o 'clock, Aaron Maté on much of this as well.
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