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Jan. 6, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
31:15
COL. Douglas Macgregor : Will Germany leave NATO? Will Israel Invade Egypt?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, January 7th, 2025.
Our dear friend, Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now.
Colonel McGregor, thank you for all the time you spent with us in 2024.
Belated Happy New Year to you and your family and welcome to the show and I hope you can give us as much time as you can find in the coming year.
I thoroughly enjoy and the audience does too.
All of our time together.
You and I have no secret to exchange emails to each other and it often generates ideas in my mind for speaking to you and I want to speak to you about the consequences of Germany potentially leaving NATO depending upon the outcome of the German elections and Israel potentially invading Egypt,
if I can look for an excuse to do so.
But first, breaking news.
Down at Mar-a-Lago, in the past three hours, President Trump said he would not rule out American military in order to use in Gaza, in order to extricate Israeli hostages.
I don't know if he's thought about this.
He didn't mention anything about Palestinian hostages.
There were 100 Israeli hostages.
There were 10,000 Palestinian hostages.
How dangerous is a statement like that?
Well, it's not an informed remark.
I'm sure that whatever he said was taken out of context.
We don't know what the rest of it was about.
Clearly, as Professor Sachs has pointed out on numerous occasions, and many of my colleagues, We're already complicit in this tragedy in Gaza, but the idea of putting U.S. ground forces, whether they're special operations troops, which I imagine is what he's talking about,
or not, puts them not simply at risk of being killed themselves, but it identifies us with a cause that, frankly, I don't think Americans want to be identified with, and that is a cause that is the destruction of a whole people.
I think they need to step back and think very carefully about the implications of our soldiers on the ground, shoulder to shoulder with the Israelis, involved in operations which...
Most of the world that we live in regards as criminal.
To your knowledge, have American troops ever fought side by side with Israeli troops?
Do they even want us there?
Well, in the past, the Israelis have not wanted us there because they saw us as a potential constraint.
And in fact, that's one of the things that people like myself and others have said was a virtue, that the Israelis did not want ground forces inside their country.
They wanted to be responsible for their own defense as much as possible.
But of course this war has run out of control.
They're overextended.
They don't have forces that are required to be everywhere.
And this is only going to get worse with the introduction of Israeli forces into Syria and potentially further in Lebanon, along with the likely confrontation with Iran.
So I'm sure that there's some pressure.
Being applied by Netanyahu's friends in Washington to get American soldiers into the action.
But I don't think it's in our interest.
It's not in our national interest.
And I don't think it's going to help Israel very much.
One of Netanyahu's friends in Washington, whom some have called Netanyahu's lawyer, but who calls himself the Secretary of State of the United States, recently gave a very long...
Do you, Secretary Blinken, worry that perhaps you have been presiding over what the world will see as a genocide?
No. It's not, first of all.
Second, as to how the world sees it, I can't fully answer to that.
But everyone has to look at the facts and draw their own conclusions from those facts.
And my conclusions are clear.
He didn't seem very comfortable to me with his own answer.
Did he seem comfortable to you, Colonel?
I don't know.
I've long since lost any real respect for the man.
The man does not represent the interests of the American people.
He's not the Secretary of State for the United States.
He's representing a foreign country with alien interests.
This is the problem.
We have no interest.
In the mass expulsion and murder of millions of Palestinian Arabs from their lands.
That is not in the interest of the American people, and we don't want to do it.
And this is after decades of systematic propagandizing of the American people to ultimately hate Muslims and Arabs in particular.
I don't think the American people want our forces on the ground there.
So I'm not really surprised at what he said.
I'm just disappointed once again.
I'm disappointed when President Trump says that he's Israel's best friend.
I think that's dangerous.
I think it's sending a signal to Netanyahu, I'll give you even more than what old Joe gave you.
What do you think?
Well, I think if he wants to be Israel's best friend, he ought to be interested in essentially re-escalating and disengaging.
You know, this is not the time to escalate this war.
Israel is already overstretched militarily, economically, it's in ruins.
It has no chance of holding all of the terrain that it aspires to conquer, and it's amassing enemies at a rate that boggles the mind.
Virtually everyone in the Arab world, everyone in the Islamic world, and increasingly people in Europe and Asia are all turning against Israel and unfortunately us as a result of our unconditional support.
So I think if he were a friend to Israel, he would warn against this overextension leading to Israel's destruction.
But that doesn't appear to be on his mind at this point.
No, and he doesn't appear to be surrounding himself, Colonel, with people who think the way you do, at least in the national security sphere.
The person who thinks closest to you and me and our colleagues on this show in the national security sphere, Tulsi Gabbard, is nevertheless herself an ardent Zionist.
Do you think Israel will look for an excuse to invade Egypt?
I think the Israelis, and first of all, remember, their general staff is very competent.
The people at the top of the Israeli Defense Force, though they may not always express their views publicly, privately, they make their views very well known, and they are not happy with this overextension.
Many of them are greatly concerned about it, because they understand that everything depends upon our unconditional support for whatever they want to do.
And they also know that their forces, it is today, We're good to go.
A member of the Muslim Brotherhood to rule Egypt.
Let me just stop you for a second.
When you say led to victory, you mean he won an election.
Yes, he did.
And we were unhappy with the outcome.
And ultimately, there was a coup for all intents and purposes, subsequently validated or legitimated in the future by another election that obviously was tainted.
But the bottom line is that we got what we thought we wanted, and we have bankrolled.
General Sisi and his regime, without the money that pours into Egypt, not only would there be general unrest, but he'd have difficulty paying his armed forces, particularly the army.
He's not the only one.
That's also true for King Abdullah in Jordan.
But right now, his position in Egypt, that is Sisi's, is very fragile.
And the public, the millions of people who live in that country, it's almost 100 million people, are desperately unhappy at the failure.
of Egypt and the other Arab states to raise any hand whatsoever against Israel in view of its mass murder and expulsion campaign in Gaza.
So I think that they're worried that he could be removed.
You get a new government that is probably either the Muslim Brotherhood or close to it.
And then the Suez Canal falls into the hands of people who are ostensibly enemies of Israel, the United States and the West.
And so there is some thinking going on about intervening in Egypt to seize the canal if it looks as though Sisi is going to be run out of power.
Now, we all know that we went through something similar to this in 1956 during the Suez Crisis against Nasser.
Eisenhower intervened, put an end to it.
The Israelis were forced back into Israel.
The British and the French had to withdraw their forces.
But now we have a different set of circumstances.
Today, the Israel lobby controls the United States government, and it also wields powerful influence inside London and Paris.
And it's not impossible that the French and the British could be persuaded to compensate for the lack of Israeli ground force in seizing control of the canal.
This, of course, would be adding insult to injury on a strategic scale that's hard to even describe.
The rest of the world will be horrified.
This would represent a complete revision and return to imperialism and colonialism.
Wow. How unstable is NATO today?
And how would that instability be exacerbated if the United States or Germany withdrew?
First of all, without Germany, there is no NATO.
Let's be frank.
Germany is a nation of 80 million.
In economic and military terms, it is indispensable to the survival of not only NATO, but the European Union.
And I would argue that both organizations are in very, very fragile condition.
NATO presents a good front with the help of a media that is largely controlled by intelligence services in the West, designed to portray success in places like Ukraine.
Where there has been nothing but failure.
But this is all falling apart because of the economic reality.
Germany has been essentially subjected to pasteurization on the model of the Morgenthal plan at the end of World War II, a plan which we considered and then rejected, but was put forward by Morgenthal.
The combination of deindustrialization with the influx of millions of non-Europeans, primarily people from the Middle East and North Africa, has turned Germany into a catastrophe.
The population knows it and the population is now ready to change horses and to remove the people in Berlin that are responsible and to put in a new government.
This new government has made it very clear that they do not necessarily agree with the assumption that Germany's membership in NATO is a benefit to Germany or that Germany's membership in the European Union is necessarily a benefit.
Germany is the convenient whipping boy who's blamed for everything that everyone everywhere in Europe doesn't like.
And it's stupid and they're sick of it.
And I think we're going to see a rising tide of German nationalism that charts a fundamentally new course.
And that course will take Germany back to where it spent most of its time over the last 300 years.
And that is as a partner, strategic partner for Russia.
Do you see similar events unfolding next door in Austria, the government of which collapsed shortly after Chancellor Scholz's government collapsed in Germany?
Oh, absolutely.
The Austrians are different from the Germans in many of their views of foreign policy, and they have a different vision for the future from the Germans, but they share a similar interest, and that interest is in good relations with Russia and in avoiding war in Europe.
And so, yes, what's happened in Austria and in Germany is just the beginning, I think, of a dramatic change across Europe.
Stop and think.
We are the people that destroyed the North Stream pipeline.
And I remember in 2019 and 2020 discussing these things when I was in the Trump administration, brief though it was, and I actually wrote a memorandum.
That said, whatever you do, stop treating the Nord Stream 2 as some sort of security threat to the United States or Germany because it isn't.
But everyone insisted that it was and said this would make Germany permanently dependent upon Russia.
Well, we destroyed it.
We destroyed the economy and we destroyed industry in Germany as a result.
And now we're going to see the Germans make a 180-degree turn to the east, which is where it has spent its time for the most part over the last 300 years.
Certainly economically and increasingly politically.
If Donald Trump called you and asked you to advise him on whether we should stay in NATO, what would you tell him?
I think what we need to do, and he certainly, I think, thought in these terms.
I don't know what he thinks today.
It's not a question of us staying or leaving.
NATO is in a very, very fragile condition.
And whether we stay or leave and what role we play in Europe is a matter for decision by the Europeans.
We act as though whatever we do is consistent with whatever Europe wants.
That's not necessarily the case.
The views of us, our strategic utility to them, vary from country to country.
So I think what has to happen ultimately is that Europe...
Europe has to Europeanize NATO.
Right now, without us, without our intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, command and control, communications backbone, NATO is moribund.
So you've got to have a recognition in Europe that if they're going to be viable at all, whatever alliance structure they choose, and you may see in the future regional alliances different from NATO based on regional interests.
That diverts sharply from errors.
And if that's the case, that's fine.
But we should step back and say, we will support you in what you want to do.
But you must command NATO.
In other words, a European four-star, not an American four-star, should be in Mons.
And the Europeans should dominate this structure, not us.
They have to take control or take responsibility for themselves.
This is something that Chancellor Merkel...
I would say from time to time, so has Macron, but nobody's been willing to step up and do the job.
They've got to do the job because the nature of our financial situation and frankly theirs mandates it.
We simply are not going to be able to afford to do in the future what we've done in the past.
Europeanizing NATO has to happen.
That's something they've got to do.
We need to step back from it.
And that involves a reduction of our profile, a reduction in our forces over there.
No question about it.
This is the kind of thing that we had an opportunity in 2021 and 2022 with the Russians to discuss a comprehensive reexamination of the security structure in Europe.
We're just concluding an administration that refused even to speak to the Russians.
We both know that.
But General Kellogg...
General Keith Kellogg, pardon me, who President Trump has indicated he wants to be his principal emissary and advisor on Ukraine and Russia, sounded the other day like he had just had breakfast with Tony Blinken when he is reported to have said,
I didn't hear it, I didn't see it, but it has been reported and not denied, that he said if Putin doesn't discuss quickly the concept of a ceasefire, We'll send more ammunition, military gear and equipment to Ukraine.
How crazy is that?
Well, it's worse than crazy.
There are three things.
First of all, we are risking a direct confrontation with Russia.
We don't understand and don't care to listen to people who tell us that the Russians are at the precipice of going to war against us.
In other words, they're asking themselves, what's the point of trying to talk to the Americans, to negotiate anything with them, because there's no evidence that they will keep their word.
There's no evidence that they will honor any agreement we make.
So under these circumstances, why not just mobilize the country and strike to the West, all the way to the Polish border?
This is frightening, and it should upset people.
It's not something that the Russians want to do.
But when you hear the kind of thing that you just mentioned uttered by General Kellogg, that suggests that they may not have any choice.
Again, it's a failure to admit that Russia has any legitimate interests whatsoever.
And they do have legitimate interests.
And we ought to recognize that we need to stop treating them as the red-headed stepchild that has no rights, no opportunity to speak.
And then we also need to look at Europe and understand Europe.
is rapidly slipping from our grasp.
If you listen to Elisa Weidel, who leads the Alternative for Germany, and she's a very competent person, she's very smart, and she's absolutely right.
She says the Germans have to stop being serfs, stop pretending that we're slaves, obligated to do whatever everybody else tells us to do, particularly Washington.
We must be Germans.
We must take...
Some sort of understanding of our own interests and instrumentalize those.
In other words, we have to pursue what we think is in our interest, in the interest of Europe, in the interest of Central East Europe, because we don't want a war with Russia.
Now, under those circumstances, the idea that we should now increase sanctions or find new ways to punish Russia and harm it is sheer lunacy, unless we want to accelerate a gradual Disengagement from Europe,
which I think is inevitable, and turn it into a route where we look ridiculous on the way out.
Not to aggravate you, but here is another...
Why not?
Why as well?
We're already there.
I love you, Colonel.
You know that.
Here's another clip from Secretary Blinken, arguably as detached from reality as the last one.
It's a little bit...
But I need your views on it.
Chris, cut number one.
Where the line is drawn on the map, at this point, I don't think is fundamentally going to change very much.
The real question is, can we make sure that Ukraine is in a position to move forward strongly?
You mean that the areas that Russia controls, you feel, will have to be seated?
Seated is not the question.
The question is, the line, as a practical matter, in the foreseeable future, is unlikely to move.
Ukraine's claim on that territory will always be there.
And the question is, will they find ways, with the support of others, to regain territory that's been lost?
I think the critical thing now going forward is this.
If there is going to be a resolution, or at least a near-term resolution, because it's unlikely that Putin will give up on his ambitions.
If there's a ceasefire, then...
In Putin's mind, the ceasefire is likely to give him time to rest, to refit, to reattack at some point in the future.
So what's going to be critical to make sure that any ceasefire that comes about is actually enduring is to make sure that Ukraine has the capacity going forward to deter further aggression.
And that can come in many forms.
It could come through NATO, and we put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership.
It could come through security assurances, commitments, guarantees by different countries.
To make sure that Russia knows that if it reattacks, it's going to have a big problem.
That, I think, is going to be critical to making sure that any deal that's negotiated actually endures and then allows Ukraine the space, the time, to grow strong as a country.
How detached from reality can he be when he says we put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership?
Keep in mind, Judge, that there are many people like Mr. Blinken inside the beltway at the moment.
They're members of the so-called Uniparty.
They were telling us back in January of 2022 that the Russians would not dare to intervene in eastern Ukraine to protect Russians from Ukrainians, that they would never challenge NATO.
Then they told us once they did move into eastern Ukraine that they would be defeated, that the Ukrainian army was superior, and they were winning every engagement.
We now know, if we look back on that track record, that they were 100% incorrect.
The Russians have won this war.
It's not a question of, can the Russians move further west?
The question is, will they?
And have they decided to do so?
And if they do, how far will they go?
I think that this line could move.
It could move right up to the Dnieper River, and it could eventually include Odessa as well as Kharkov in the east.
He's dead wrong.
But then he's been dead wrong about everything.
And the notion that somehow or another we can't trust them is absurd.
Look at the arms control agreements that we abandoned, that we walked away from.
Look at the understandings that we had with the Russians about a whole range of things, and we walked away from them.
And we've tried to punish them and harm them, when in fact they've done nothing to us at all.
This is what makes no sense.
He lives in a...
In a world that's not simply divorced from reality, it's not in the same universe.
But this is why debating or discussing or developing any dialogue in Washington with anyone about the subject is impossible.
They don't have the same facts.
In fact, they don't have the facts at all, nor are they willing to listen to them.
Colonel, is a long-term peaceful relationship between the United States and Russia even feasible?
Given the mentality in the West?
It is absolutely feasible.
And it's a more natural state of affairs than anything that we've seen thus far.
The problem we have is not with the American people.
The average American, if you pull him aside in Kansas City or Phoenix, Arizona, it doesn't make any difference.
And you say, what do you think about what's happening in eastern Ukraine?
Assuming he even knows where it is.
His real question is immediately, what are we doing there?
We don't live there.
Eastern Ukraine is not Kansas.
It's not Missouri.
It's not Colorado.
It's not Oregon, Washington, or Pennsylvania.
What are we doing there?
And then if you tell him, well, we're trying to help the Ukrainians, well, why?
What have the Ukrainians done?
Are we allied with them?
Why are we fighting with the Russians?
Well, the Russians are bad.
He said, well, why are they bad this time?
In other words, this doesn't make any sense.
It's all irrational.
The challenge is to get rid of the people inside the Beltway.
We have to expel them from office.
We've got to move them out.
And they inhabit and populate not just the government, but all of the supporting cast of characters and the various so-called think tanks.
Which are really not think tanks, they're advocacy tanks, because they're owned by donors who pay these various places to advocate for their policies, whatever they are.
When is that going to happen?
We've got to get rid of them.
Now, a lot of people went out and voted for President Trump.
I certainly did, and I think everyone who did voted for him for the same reason, because they saw in him someone who would disrupt the money flow.
Who would put an end to a lot of this?
Who would say, no, we're not part of this.
We don't want this.
I don't know where these remarks are coming from that he's making so casually, but it's not consistent with what I know President Trump to actually believe.
I don't know if you know this retired Army Colonel Layton.
But he's a strong supporter of General Kellogg.
I want to play this clip for you as well.
Cut number five.
If Russia does not agree to some kind of a ceasefire or at least a cessation of hostilities, then I could see the potential for the Trump administration to actually ramp up aid to the Ukrainians.
In fact, Lieutenant General Kellogg, the special representative for Ukraine, has made such a statement.
So if that does in fact happen, it could actually put more pressure on the Russians to end the war or at least end their participation.
I don't think Ukraine will be able to regain the territory that it has lost about 20% or so of its country to the Russians since the February 2022 invasion.
But if that is in fact the course of events where there is a...
All right, my bad.
Maybe explains his detachment from reality if he thinks that President Putin would accept an armistice like on the Korean Peninsula.
Well, Colonel Leighton is on contract with CNN, and CNN's positions are very clear, and he's aligned with those, and those are consistent with the statements that he made.
They are divorced from reality.
In fact, the foreign minister of Russia, Sergei Lavrov, as well as President Putin, have made it very clear.
There will be no Korean-style outcome from this war.
We need to understand that they're in it for the long haul.
They want their country to be secure.
They are not going to allow rump Ukraine to metastasize in the future into this cancerous tumor aimed at Russia.
They want peace.
They want an end to the war.
They're not interested in marching any further west.
But again, as I said earlier, people need to take them seriously.
If they see no alternative to it, they will do it.
They're prepared to fight.
And the Russian people are squarely behind President Putin.
Forget all this nonsense about regime change and people are unhappy with this or that policy that President Putin represents.
No head of state in any country in the world is 100% supported by everyone all the time.
But I can tell you the Russian population is very definitely behind him on this.
And we should not underestimate that.
So I would just dismiss that as worse than fantastic.
That is very dangerous thinking.
Colonel McGregor, thank you very much for your time.
Thank you for letting me play these clips that I knew would get under your skin.
But sometimes they bring out the best in you.
The best in you is always here.
And I thank you very much for it.
I hope we can see you again soon.
Okay, Judge.
Thank you and Happy New Year.
Right back at you and to your family.
Thank you.
And we have a full day for you tomorrow coming up at 8 in the morning from Beirut.
Former British Ambassador Craig Murray at 1 o'clock in the afternoon from Antiwar.com, Kyle Anzalone.
At 2 in the afternoon, our good buddy Aaron Maté.
And at 3 in the afternoon, career CIA.
And always here on Wednesdays, no matter how much snow they have in central Virginia, Phil Giraldi.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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