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March 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
12:50
COL. Douglas Macgregor : Is Trump For Peace?
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Well, these people are lunatics.
Let's not even discuss lunacy at this point.
Let's just say Prime Minister Salisbury of Great Britain, one of Britain's best prime ministers, frankly, once observed that the biggest mistake in politics is to cling to the carcass of dead policies.
The Ukraine policy, the policy of arming Ukraine to the teeth and hurling it at Russia is dead.
It was a mistake.
It should never have happened.
These people are clinging to it.
If they insist on doing so, their voting electorates will turn them out.
There's no question about it.
Now, secondly, when you listen to the Prime Minister of Denmark, I've listened to, I think, the lady leading Estonia.
Another prime minister in Finland or president.
These people have lost all sense of proportionality.
They don't know what war is.
All of these people do not understand war.
They haven't looked carefully at what's gone on in Ukraine.
This is the kind of war that can be brought to them if they insist on persisting in this hostility to Russia.
At a point in time where Russia is not interested in hostility to them.
I mean, this is the real tragedy here.
We're not dealing with a Stalinist Russia that is bent on territorial conquest and expansion.
There is no common turn.
That's ridiculous nonsense.
If anybody has something like the common turn, it's USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy.
Those things are gone.
They've got to wake up and come to terms with reality.
And as long as we seem to be allied with them and underwrite them, they will behave stupidly.
It's the same problem with Zelensky.
That's why President Trump needs to say to them, if this is what you want, you are on your own, you will get nothing from us.
And this notion that we have some holy obligation to do anything the European leadership wants us to do, It's ridiculous.
It's nonsense.
We came there after World War II and we stayed because of the threat that was represented by the Soviet Union.
It's all gone.
There's no reason for us to be there now.
That's not contemporary Russia.
They need to wake up and get on with things.
Switching to the Middle East, Colonel.
The Israelis have stopped all food, water, medicine, and electricity into Gaza.
President Trump has dispatched Steve Witkoff, the same Witkoff that we mentioned a few minutes ago because he's also going to Moscow, to negotiate directly with Hamas over the severe but not publicly revealed objections of Prime Minister Netanyahu Not too long ago,
you warned about the likelihood of a regional war in the Middle East.
Do you still have that view, Colonel?
Oh, absolutely.
And by the way, just to backtrack a little bit, if we do not act in a more sober and realistic manner towards Moscow, the war in Ukraine could also unravel.
In Eastern Europe.
So I think it's very important that we act swiftly to put an end to the fantasy island trip that these people in Great Britain or Denmark or France are on.
That should end as soon as possible.
In the Middle East, there are many potential triggers that could lead to a regional civil war.
I've mentioned this before.
There's something called avacia, which is a word that...
That seems to mean, in the Muslim world, a sense of solidarity, a coalition or coherence of Islamic peoples.
That's always been very weak in the past, but that's changing.
If Mr. Netanyahu does what I think he will do and resumes bombing in Gaza, that will bring Egypt into conflict with Israel.
When that happens, all bets are off.
The entire region is going to gear up and go to war with Israel in some form or another.
It may not happen in the first 24 hours, but it will spread.
The same thing is true in southern Syria.
If the Israelis are only perhaps 30 kilometers from Damascus right now, insist on annexing all of that territory, inevitably they will confront the Turks.
The Turkish military will confront them.
That's not going to be tolerated.
Damascus is one of the great cities of Islam.
The idea of the Israelis marching into it is anathema to every Muslim.
They've already lost Jerusalem.
Cairo is the other great city, and then Damascus in the modern world.
They're not going to give those up.
So I think it's a question of where does this begin?
What triggers it?
What causes it?
What about a Turkish confrontation with the Israelis at sea?
I don't know.
And then, of course, there is Iran.
And Iran has pledged support to Egypt, as has Saudi Arabia.
And I think the Iranians will stand by Egypt.
And if Egypt gets into a war with Israel, they will be supported by Iran.
The whole thing is a house of cards that could collapse very suddenly and then erupt in fire.
And the fire will not contain itself.
It will spread and spread and spread.
So the only solution at this point for the President of the United States is to rein in Mr. Netanyahu, which I think he will not do under any circumstances.
One of the, well, the one question that I put to Foreign Minister Lavrov, which he chose not to answer, Colonel, was if the Israelis bomb Iran.
Will Russia come militarily to Iran's defense?
He just sort of looked at me with a little bit of a smile and went on to finish answering a previous question.
He chose not to address that.
Do you think Russia will come to Iran's defense if the Israelis attack Iran, particularly with American assistance?
The short answer is yes.
I do.
I think Russia, China, Iran, all the states in the Middle East, and beyond that, frankly, in the world, many, many other nation states are watching all of this.
And I think they've concluded that a failure to act against Israeli aggression and against us, if we join, directly join, Israeli aggression.
You know, at some point, no matter how weak you may feel or be, you decide that it is no longer in your interest to do nothing.
And frankly, the Arabs for a very long time have taken the position, it's in our interest to do nothing.
That's no longer the case.
I think the Arab states understand, at this point, it's do or die.
And right now, the two leading powers in the region who are prepared to act against Israel And us, if necessary, are Egypt and Iran.
So I think the Russians understand it.
The Chinese understand it.
You've seen the Russian-Chinese naval drills off the coast of the Straits of Hormuz.
That's not an empty gesture.
That's a very real statement.
And I think we can expect more of that as the time goes on.
So that's why my great concern at this point is...
The only person, the only individual who has the authority and the power to intervene and stop this is Donald Trump.
But I don't think he will do that.
I think he's caught up in a web of his, not necessarily of his making, a web that constrains him in terms of what actions he can execute.
Colonel, you and I have a mutual friend who used to appear on this show and now has his own, Colonel Daniel Davis, who recently the Director of National Intelligence,
Tulsi Gabbard, announced she was going to appoint him as Deputy Director, a position for which, I think in your view and mine, he is eminently qualified.
What happened to...
Colonel Davis, when Director Gabbard announced she was going to appoint him.
I think a number of things happened.
Keep in mind that whether you like or dislike Dan Davis, I happen to like him.
This is someone who is always scrupulously honest in all of his dealings.
This is a person who absolutely rejects deceit and is a man of complete integrity.
In addition to that, He has great courage, not just physical courage on the battlefield, which he demonstrated back in 1991, because I was able to see it.
He also has moral courage.
He's willing to stand up to those who are doing things that he thinks are wrong.
What he's done that has deeply offended the people that control Washington is that he has said he cannot support what the Israelis are doing in Gaza.
That this is inhumane, and it is beyond the pale for him as an American and as a Christian to support this.
That's unacceptable today in Washington, D.C. Everyone in Washington, D.C., with very few exceptions, has decided for personal reasons that they are going to support whatever Mr. Netanyahu's government wants to do,
regardless of how many deaths that means among the populations of Gaza.
Or for that matter, the West Bank, or ultimately anywhere else in the region.
Unconditional support for whatever he wants to do.
That's something that Dan can't publicly do.
And he's honest about it.
And I think that's done him in.
And it's unfortunate that we've reached a point now where that's the attitude.
It's not a healthy one for the United States.
It's very sad.
You and I and our colleagues on this show were harshly critical of the influence that the Israeli lobby had in the Biden administration.
It apparently has the same influence in the Trump administration.
Well, John Mearsheimer has talked about that in great detail, and I certainly would defer to him.
That's not something I've studied in detail as he has.
But let's keep in mind that money buys a lot inside the Beltway.
And that's not a new development.
It's always had an enormous impact.
There are reasons people want to sit on certain committees.
You know, the Securities Banking Exchange Committee in the House is a good example.
You go there, you are someone who is in a position to interact with the banks and they find ways to reward you for your support of their interests.
This is an old game.
It's nothing new.
It's just better organized.
And more subversive, I suppose, to our foreign policy and our defense than ever before in the history of our country.
Colonel McGregor, thank you very much.
Thank you for your time, for your insight, for your personal courage.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
It's always a pleasure, my dear friend.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Sure. Thank you, Judge.
Of course.
Coming up at 1 o'clock, I'm not sure where on the planet he is, Pepe Escobar.
At 3 o'clock, the aforementioned by Colonel McGregor, Professor John Mearsheimer, and at 4 o'clock, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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