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Dec. 18, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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COL. Douglas Macgregor : America’s Next War of Choice
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, December 18, 2024.
Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now.
Colonel McGregor, it's a busy time of year.
We deeply appreciate your coming on the show, and thank you very much for your time.
I do want to speak with you at some length on a terrific essay you have recently published at the American Conservative.
Called America's next war of choice.
But before we get there, some of the more pressing news.
The assassination of General Kirilov in Moscow, a brazen murder on a public street right outside of the building where he was residing.
Is there political or military significance to this?
Yes, I think there is.
Ukrainians have been after him for some time.
General Kirilov was the first, even before the special military operation began, to point out the biolabs that we helped to fund and create in Ukraine.
Ultimately, there were 46 of them.
Most of them located along Ukraine's border with Russia.
And he urged the army to go immediately into these biolabs.
So that's the first thing.
At the same time, he was also instrumental in pointing the army in the direction of the Kharkov Institute, which was the one facility in Ukraine where there was serious work going on to develop nuclear weapons.
Specifically, they were trying to create the equivalent of a suitcase nuclear weapon.
The Russian authorities did get to the institute.
They shut it down.
But unfortunately, they don't know how much was rescued from destruction and whether or not the Ukrainians got something out of it.
Both of those were very horrific events as far as the Russians are concerned because they found tangible, concrete evidence that the Ukrainians and these biolabs, with our help and assistance, were trying to develop weapons that were targeted.
Targeted genetically against Russians.
Now, how they did this is anybody's guess.
I don't know.
I mean, genetically, Russians and Ukrainians are not that far apart.
There are differences.
So that they could do something like that.
But how far they got, I have no idea.
In addition to which, there were other indications that organs were being harvested in these places from people as young as six months, eight months, and sold.
On the black market or utilized for experimentation.
There are a lot of horrific things that came out of that discovery.
But it really shocked the Russians that we and the Ukrainians would do such a thing.
And it made this special military operation all that much more important.
And obviously the Ukrainians were not happy about the fact that this information was discovered.
So killing him right now isn't going to make much difference.
In terms of the inevitable victory of the Russian state in this war, but it's a way to punish someone who got to them, if you will.
What does this do in the mind of the Kremlin?
Is it just, oh, another general, or is it he was a scientist as well as a general?
He devoted his life to the Russian state.
This has to be avenged in a serious and profound way.
Yes, this is a person who fundamentally is a national hero, and I'm sure he will be honored as such.
So his loss is something that people take very seriously, particularly at the top of the political structure.
But the point is, why he wasn't adequately protected is a question I can't answer.
Perhaps, once again, the Russians underestimated the ability of the Ukrainians to penetrate the borders and reach targets inside Russia.
I don't know, but I'm sure a lot of hard questions are being asked, and others who may be involved in similar things will now receive more state security than they've had in the past.
Colonel, was the fall of President Assad a strategic defeat for the Kremlin?
I think it was a strategic embarrassment and setback.
My perception is that ultimately the Russians will leave Syria entirely.
They'll abandon Latakia, which is a very important base for them, and they'll move elsewhere.
I don't think that they want to be hostage to whatever the Turks may try to do to people in Syria.
In other words, if you remain in Syria and you recognize that Syria as such no longer exists, it's disintegrated, what's the point of staying there?
And I think that's being seriously considered.
I think the Russians will find another port and another base elsewhere where they will be welcomed and probably more secure.
Well, to your point, Colonel, the Guardian of London is reporting that Russia is moving their defense systems out of Syria and into Libya.
If that is accurate, what does that tell you?
Well, it tells us that Libya will be a home that they can depend upon.
They'll have a base there.
Which is kind of interesting when you stop and think how hard we tried to eliminate Qaddafi and then destroy the place.
The place ultimately ends up being friendly to Russia.
I'm sure Hillary Clinton and her gang are very unhappy about that.
Remember that for the purposes of the Russians, they were simply looking for a base for ships as well as aircraft where things could be refueled, rearmed.
It's kind of a stop-off point on your way down into Central Africa, where the Russians have a number of positions.
But beyond that, it was not a vital strategic necessity.
The Russians are not fools.
They cut their losses quickly when they see no point in further investment.
I wish we would.
Whether it's the part controlled by the Israelis, the part controlled by the Turks, or what remains under Al Jelani's control.
Safe for Christians.
That's a mixed bag.
Numbers of Christians have already been decapitated, murdered.
I think we're going to see more of it.
Remember, these are jihadists.
These are not moderates by any stretch of the imagination.
The word tolerance does not exist in their vocabulary.
I think Erdogan has undoubtedly advised them to exercise some restraint.
Not that Erdogan particularly cares about Christians or Jews or anybody who's not a Muslim.
But long term, I see no future for Christianity in Syria, sadly.
And that's a tragedy because Syria is probably the first place Where a Christian church was established not long after the demise of Christ.
So it's another tragic event, but Christians have been steadily either killed or driven out of the region for several years right now, and this is probably unavoidable.
The Shiites historically, and you may be surprised by this, or viewers are, have protected the Christians.
The Shiite militias protected Christians in Iraq from I think similar things have gone on inside Syria.
And that's not a criticism of Sunnis because in many, many states there were Sunni Islamic.
There was a general tolerance for Jews and Christians as well.
But in this case, that's over.
I think we have to assume that the jihadists will behave as they have in the past in terrible ways.
You mentioned beheadings.
Has this occurred?
Since Assad was driven out and al-Jelani took over?
Yes.
I mean, all of this information, a lot of this information, not all of it, you can see on Telegram.
You've got to go on and watch the videos that are posted there.
The jihadists themselves post many of these videos.
They're very proud of the fact that they're murdering people, and especially if they're Christians or accused of being former Assad supporters, whatever.
This is an act of terrorism that they know strikes fear in the hearts of others in the region, and that's why they're doing it.
Would I be accurate in concluding that the CIA has no remorse for what it unleashed there?
Look, I don't think the CIA has remorse about anything.
It could care less about human life.
If we had any interest at all in human life, we would have stopped this fiasco in Ukraine a long time ago.
Instead, they continue to lie about everything.
Everybody does in the West.
MI6, CIA, Mossad.
It's all the same thing.
Oh, no, no one's dying.
Oh, no, we're winning, etc., etc., etc.
Look, you just had this Ambassador McFall tweet out that Ukraine can still win.
He must be on crack.
There's no chance of that happening under any circumstances.
But this is typical for the regime that currently controls us.
How close to the end is the Ukraine military?
I don't know how much closer they can get to it than they already are.
Certainly some people will put up resistance, but to do so is reaching the point of suicide.
There are a few pockets left in densely wooded areas where there's some hills and rock and cover that make it harder to get at them, but for the most part, it's effectively over.
And the Russians are clearly building up for and planning for some sort of major operation.
I don't know if this is just to clean everything out all the way up to the Dnieper River and then to cross it into Kiev.
I have no idea.
But the longer this takes and the more evidence they see that we have no intention of honoring two critical conditions which they regard as non-negotiable in Ukraine.
One, it must be neutral.
On the model of, say, the Austrian State Treaty, which I've been writing about for years.
The second is that the territories that they have annexed to Russia will be recognized as legitimate.
That's Crimea plus, obviously, the oblasts in eastern Ukraine.
Beyond that, they're willing to negotiate.
But if you're not going to recognize the realities of those two things, then there's no point in talking.
So I think the Russians are prepared for the possibility that we won't do that.
We will not recognize those things, that we will insist on the impossible, putting Western troops on the ground in Ukraine, any number of things to buy us time to further enhance or build up another apparatus in Western Ukraine that will be hostile to Russia.
In the meantime, Zelensky is still between a rock and a hard place.
The rock of a military collapsing, the hard place of a hardcore right wing in that military, which will assassinate him if he tries to bring about and end the hostilities.
I suppose so, although the hard right wing that you're talking about is well paid.
That's where a lot of our cash goes.
50% of the cash and equipment obviously disappear into the black market.
The rest of it is used to pay this dying state and the military apparatus and security apparatus that surrounds him.
As long as that cash flows, he'll probably hold out, certainly until he sees evidence that the Russians are coming for him.
I understand that his wife's Bugatti has been driven to Western Europe to be serviced.
That may indicate something.
Who knows?
I would imagine that that flow of cash will stop around noon on January 20th.
What do you think?
Well, we can hope.
I think that the quickest way to end this war, as President Trump has argued, is number one, suspend all further military aid.
Period.
Done.
Out.
That will put an end to the war because without it, they can't operate for 48, 24, 18 hours.
The second part of it is to get all Americans out of Ukraine, whether they're in or out of uniform.
Whatever their purpose is, pull them out.
You do those two things, this war will end.
And then the Ukrainians and the Russians can sit down, and if the other European players like Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, if they want to come in as co-signatories to whatever final agreement is reached,
they can do that.
That would be the easiest thing, but right now we have plans to send General Kellogg over with, I think, something that is probably not going to fly.
What does he have in his briefcase or in his thoughts?
Well, I don't know about any thoughts, but I don't imagine that we have a clear picture.
We've listened to all sorts of suggestions that involve some measure of pushing the Russians back off of what they've got.
We also have things about bringing in non-NATO European forces or non-European forces as a security zone, on and on and on.
All of that is nonsense that the Russians are not going to take under any circumstances.
Switching gears, Colonel, does Iran pose any national security threat whatsoever to the United States?
No, and it really never has.
Unfortunately.
So I don't know what to tell you.
Iran is the next chosen enemy of the United States.
And I'm sure that we've adopted Israel's perspective.
And the Israeli perspective is quite clear.
Iran is the source of all evil and must be destroyed.
So I see a lot of evidence for that thinking right now.
It doesn't matter which party.
It doesn't matter who is governing in Washington.
I think you're right.
I think the president-elect has bought that argument, and certainly the people around him have articulated that argument from Marco Rubio to Mike Waltz to Sebastian Gorka.
I don't know that Tulsi Gabbard has, but certainly the people that will have the president's ear on this.
Is Prime Minister Netanyahu in a hurry to commence?
I think there's pressure on him to do so.
Some of it is self-generated and some of it comes from people around him and sources, intelligence sources that he has.
I think we have to understand something first and foremost.
President Trump is someone who is very transactional.
And if he asks you to sit down with him and hammer out an agreement, he means it.
And he thinks of himself as a brilliant dealmaker.
Now, this scares the Israelis.
It scares lots of people because there's always the danger that President Trump offers some sort of arrangement, some sort of agreement with Iran, and that he's willing to sit down and come to an agreement.
If he thinks it's reasonable, if he thinks it's fair, he thinks that we and they and everyone profits from it, because that's really...
How you get a good agreement in international relations, I think President Trump's likely to take it.
President Trump is not someone who is bloodthirsty and can't wait to push the button and go to war.
That's not his inclination at all.
I think the Israelis know that.
And so if you're an Israeli surveying the territory right now, thanks to us and the support that they've gotten from CIA and MI6, As well as all the military support and technology that we provide, Syria no longer exists.
It's gone.
It's a region, not a state, not a nation.
Now, we can argue whether it ever was, but the point is, it's nonexistent now.
The clear and unambiguous winner in all of this is, first and foremost, Turkey.
We talk a lot about the Israelis.
This is a big win for Mr. Netanyahu.
Maybe.
But the big winner in the region right now is Turkey.
There are only two real great powers in the region who've controlled events there for the last 1500 to 2000 years.
One is Persia, or what we call Iran today, and the other is Turkey.
The Turks have won this particular round because Syria is part of their empire, as is most of northern Iraq.
The Kurds are an enormous problem for the Turks, and they want to put this problem to bed.
They're going to clean out the Kurds that are in northeastern Syria.
That's inevitable.
They're going to do that come hell or high water.
Now, while that's going on, I think Mr. Netanyahu has to decide if he's going to attack Iran or not.
And I think he's probably inclined to do it for the reasons, first of all, that I mentioned earlier, perhaps President Trump changes his mind.
President Trump is an independent thinker.
He can do things differently from what he originally decided to do.
If he decides to go for a deal or an agreement, I don't think that's something that the Israelis want.
I think they want to eliminate Iran as a major contender for power in the region.
Secondly, not that I think it's possible, but that's what they want.
Secondly, the Turks are going to be busy up in northeastern Syria with the Kurds and reining in the Islamists, preventing them from doing any more damage than is absolutely necessary.
So that means that the Israelis are going to sit on the terrain they've captured in Syria.
They're going to maintain this so-called security zone, which is not hard to do.
Most of it in southern Syria is just an open desert.
We are certainly not going to abandon the Israelis.
The question in Erdogan's mind is, what are we going to do with the Kurds?
Because the 900 soldiers that we have sitting on Syrian soil are under the Kurdish administration.
In other words, they're in the Kurdish area.
There are also some Arabs there.
But it's overwhelmingly Kurdish and anti-Turkish.
That I don't know.
I don't know what the plans are.
And as you know, we've flown airstrikes in support of these jihadists.
Not all of them.
Some of them are jihadists, rebranded al-Qaeda al-Dusra.
And the Israelis have done something similar, and the Turks have done it with unmanned systems, drones.
So I don't know what's going to happen there, but if you're Mr. Netanyahu and you think the Turks...
Are going to go into northeast Syria, that might be a good time to go after Iran.
Now, once they go after Iran, Iran will respond.
I'm surprised they've done nothing this far, but that seems to be their modus govendi.
They will respond, and as soon as they do, then Mr. Netanyahu can say to Washington, wait a minute, where are you?
Aren't you going to help us?
And we will.
He used an interesting phrase to describe how the Israelis view Iran.
You didn't call it a nuclear threat.
You said they must be eliminated as a major contender for power.
So when Netanyahu says we want to eliminate their nuclear capability, he really means we want to eliminate their offensive capability.
Whether nuclear or otherwise.
Absolutely.
Right now, their conventional military power, as it pertains to missiles, is enormous.
That's bad enough.
The possibility that they might build nuclear weapons and be a nuclear-armed state within the next three weeks is an absolute nightmare for Mr. Netanyahu.
And he's already extracted, I think, from President Trump the promise that we'll do everything we can to stop this.
The problem is I'm not sure there's much we can do to stop it.
And I do not have access to the special compartmentalized intelligence that tells us exactly where they are on plutonium and where they built warheads and how they fitted them onto missiles.
I have no idea.
But the Iranians are quite capable.
They have the human capital, the brainpower to do it.
And I think Mr. Netanyahu knows that.
So again, that's more pressure.
But you want Iran out of the business.
I think the assumption is that if we'll come in and help the Israelis against Iran...
When the time comes and the Turks turn on the Israelis, which I think is almost inevitable, then we too will come in and support them against the Turks.
Now, all of this, in all of these discussions, I haven't mentioned Russia or China or anybody else.
And those are things that we do need to address.
Well, Russia, I believe, has a defense treaty or an agreement of some sort with Iran, does it not?
Yes.
And we don't know all of the components of that treaty, but clearly, now that Mr. Erdogan has betrayed Russia, remember, they had agreements in Astana and Solchey that they made with Erdogan trying to bury the hatchet that left Mr. Erdogan with the 15,
16, 17,000 armed insurgents in and around Idlib, as well as our rebranded al-Qaeda al-Nusra types down further to the south and the west.
Roughly 11,000.
When the Russians and the Iranians and the Turks made this deal, the idea was that this would grant Syria some pause to rebuild itself.
Well, that was nonsense because we had no interest in seeing Syria rebuild itself.
We finally wanted to rid ourselves of Assad.
And that's now happened in a whole number of different and interesting ways.
But that means that the Russians are out.
And they're not angry or embarrassed, per se, as we think, with what's happened as much as they are now very, very fed up with Erdogan.
And I think Mr. Erdogan now has Russia for an enemy.
That doesn't mean that the Russians and the Turks will go to war, but it means that if this war breaks out with Iran, Russia will stand by Iran, and behind Russia will stand China.
Stand by and stand behind.
Provide defensive weaponry or attack Israel?
It depends on what Israel does.
Again, if the Israelis were to use a nuclear weapon of any kind, launch from one of their diesel submarines in the Indian Ocean or the Mediterranean, or if their aircraft or missile force were to deliver one, I think all bets would be off at that point.
It's hard to tell what the Russians would do.
But as long as the Israelis rely exclusively on high-end conventional weaponry, then I suspect the Russians will stand by Iran, provide it whatever it needs, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance.
They will do for the Iranians, effectively, what we have done for the Ukrainians and the Israelis.
Now, beyond that, it depends on conditions and the situation.
But we should not exclude the possibility that we end up confronting the Russians directly.
That can happen very easily at sea, and it can happen on land.
I want to go back to your comments about President Trump and his independent thinking, with which I am in personally full agreement.
At a news conference two days ago, he was asked about Ukraine, and in the middle of this rather brief answer, He says something you never heard out of Joe Biden, which is, we'll be talking to President Putin very soon.
Chris, cut number two.
Everyone's being killed.
It's the worst carnage that this world has seen since World War II.
I've had pictures of fields where bodies are lying on top of bodies.
Looks like the old pictures of the Civil War, where just bodies are all over.
If you saw those pictures, you'd feel more strongly about it.
It's got to stop.
And we're trying to get it to stop.
Well, we're going to see.
We're going to be talking to President Putin and we'll be talking to the representatives, Zelenskyy and representatives from Ukraine.
We've got to stop it.
It's carnage.
We'll be talking to President Putin.
I wouldn't be surprised if they've spoken already, and if they haven't, if the call is made as soon after 12 noon on January 20th as possible to say, hey, Vlad, I'm back.
You and I are friends.
We're going to talk.
We're not going to be shooting at each other, as has been going on heretofore.
Well, listen, I'm very gratified that President Trump said those things.
He's right.
Although this war, this battlefield looks more like World War I than World War II.
I agree with you on that.
Because, you know, now the space-based and terrestrial-based intelligence surveillance reconnaissance assets linked to strike formations on the ground have effectively paralyzed the Ukrainians, stripped away the air and missile defense, made it impossible for them to maneuver.
I simply wish that someone would show him the pictures and the videos from Gaza.
Then perhaps he would reach a similar conclusion about Gaza and why that should be stopped as well.
A committed Zionist.
Before we go, President Putin two days ago, Colonel, made what I thought was a very, very articulate and accurate statement about the relationship of Russia to the West and in particular the United States.
I'd like your thoughts on it.
Chris, cut number 12. Today, the military and political situation in the world remains difficult and unstable.
Bloodshed in the Middle East and high conflict potential remains in a number of other regions of the world.
We see that the current U.S. administration, almost the entire collective West, does not give up trying to maintain its global dominance and continues to impose its so-called rules on the world community.
Which at the same time changes over and over again, distorts facts because it is convenient for them.
But in fact there is only one stable rule, no rules for those who do this, for those who consider themselves at the head of the whole world, those who representatives of the Lord on earth, although they themselves do not believe in the Lord and wage hybrid wars against undesirable states and implement a policy of containment,
including in relation to Russia, the desire to weaken our country to cause a defeat for us.
What do you think?
In the essay that you referred to, James Carden and I tried to make the argument that we've supplanted this phony phrase of rules-based order with one word: chaos.
You have to think of the United States and its Israeli ally.
As essentially arsonists.
We've decided to burn down everything we don't like.
We've burned down Syria.
We're burning down Gaza.
We'll burn down the West Bank.
We may well burn down Jordan before we're through and even parts of Egypt all the way to the Nile.
Who knows?
Look at Lebanon.
Same thing.
Destruction and chaos.
That's the problem.
We behave like arsonists.
We're not imposing any We're not working to create any order.
We're currently interested in joint Israeli-Turkish hegemony over the Middle East.
Now, how long that lasts depends heavily on what happens between Israel and the Turks in the near future.
It's not going to be easy, because while the Turks are happy to cooperate in the liquidation of Syria, they are very uncomfortable with the idea that they are A lies of the Zionist Jewish state that is killing tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands of Muslims.
So I think we are seen as arsonists.
We're not seen as anything constructive.
I don't think that's going to change in the near future.
So that's the first comment.
The second is there's no interest really long term inside the United States and what happens there.
I know that seems strange.
We would like to control the flow of oil and natural gas.
If we can divert it from the region through Syria or, better yet, through Israel into Europe, we'll probably do that.
And that's going to put us into a difficult position with the Turks, who obviously would like to control that flow as well.
So this thing is at the beginning, not the end.
We're just glimpsing the beginning of this regional war.
Can Turkey stay in NATO and can Turkey join BRICS?
Turkey has been a paper ally in NATO for a long time.
Nobody deludes themselves about that in Europe.
But I think the attitude is, as long as we are the international guardian of Israeli interests and Israel is going to be protected by the United States, most of the European states will follow suit.
And if they have to become hostile to Turkey because we don't like what the Turks are doing, they'll probably go along with it.
And that's the danger with all of this.
We are siding with a particular group of people in the region without regard to the interests of anybody else.
There is no interest in trying to find out what it is that everybody else wants.
Hence, we just impose things.
Colonel, thank you very much, my dear friend, for your extraordinary analysis of a broad range of issues.
If we don't see you next week, Merry Christmas to you and your family.
If we can see you next week, all the better, and we'll wish you Merry Christmas again.
Okay.
Thanks, Judge.
Same to you and everybody else.
Thank you.
All the best.
Coming up later today at 3.30.
This afternoon, Eastern Time, Phil Giraldi, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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