'Make Peace, You Fools!' - With Special Guest Col. Douglas Macgregor
Former senior advisor to President Trump's Secretary of Defense and decorated war hero Col. Douglas Macgregor joins today's Liberty Report to discuss the state of the US/NATO proxy war with Russia through Ukraine. Is there danger of further escalation from the Biden Administration and what might that look like? When and how does this war end?
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Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well and very interested in our visitor, our guest today.
And I just want to mention a couple words about him, and then you can introduce some of the ideas that we're going to be talking about.
Now, today we're very lucky to have Douglas McGregor, a colonel in the Army for 24 years, I believe a long time.
He knows a lot about the Army.
He probably knows a lot about diplomacy.
And he had a short-term period of time when he was working with Donald Trump.
And that's a story in itself.
But we're very glad to have you with us today, Colonel.
And I appreciate it very much.
Happy to be here.
Well, good.
You know, before we start and ask you the really hard questions, I'm always fascinated by people who have had experience, have precise views, challenges to status quo, and how ideas evolve.
But if you could just briefly just tell me yes or no, was there a time in your life where something happened that shifted your views on militarism and foreign policy and this thing?
Or do you think that you've had this position when you graduated from college?
Well, I missed college.
I went to West Point.
In my day, it was hardly a college.
But after, I would say if I look back on the 28 years of service after I graduated, I think the seminal event in my life was the Gulf War in 1990 and 91.
And that's because I watched the whole thing unfold in very strange ways.
I fought in it and saw some of the real action that there was to be seen at the time, and then was horrified at the decision to simply suspend operations and halt out of the blue.
And I began to wonder what was the real purpose.
And I began to understand the criticality of judging things from the standpoint of, first of all, what's the objective?
What's the purpose?
How are you going to achieve that purpose?
And what do you want things to look like after it's over?
Right.
And I discovered that nobody really answered those questions before we started to do anything.
Right.
That's an eye-opener on the job.
Daniel?
Well, thanks so much for joining us, Doug.
We've known each other for a long time.
You were gracious enough to join us on Dr. Paul's famous Thursday lunches when he was back in Congress, and we needed someone who was not on the left to tell us that what we were doing in Iraq and Afghanistan was stupid.
So you did such tremendous work there, and we appreciate you being there.
And also, we appreciate you speaking at several of the Ron Paul Institute conferences, including our upcoming conference, as I understand.
So we're going to be really happy to see you again.
Now, you have a great piece in the recent American Conservative called Make Peace, You Fools, with an exclamation point.
U.S.-NATO Shift: Russia, China, and NATO's Future00:15:42
And it goes down the list of what's happening in the very shifting landscape when it comes to the U.S.-NATO war against Russia through Ukraine.
And one of the points you make toward the end is the reason why you say make peace, you fools, which is your recognition that the neocons have no reverse gear.
They only know how to escalate, and things aren't going according to plan.
Now, you bring up the topic of a Polish-led division, including the Balts and some mercenaries, going into some areas of western Ukraine.
Do you think that might be the next chapter in escalation?
And if so, how do you see that playing out?
Well, I think unfortunately it's plausible.
You know, one of the things that we need to keep in mind is that this is another unnecessary war.
This could have been avoided very early if we had simply listened to the Russians and treated their security interests seriously.
There was no need to advance beyond the eastern border of Poland.
Some people would argue there was no reason to advance NATO beyond the borders of Germany.
But at this point, having gone into Ukraine and then worked tirelessly to turn it into a platform for attack against Russia, we have essentially consigned Ukraine to destruction.
And that's where we are now.
Ukraine is actually in ruins.
And this brings us to a point in this crisis or conflict that I think is more dangerous than ever.
It was always obvious to anyone with any common sense that Russia would prevail, that the Ukrainians had no chance of winning anything against the Russian military.
But what we have now is the grim reality that things are falling apart.
The Ukrainians are in serious trouble, as I point out.
Effectively, eastern Ukraine, in particular, has become a graveyard.
We don't know how many Ukrainians have been killed, but estimates vary from 300 to 350,000 dead.
That doesn't even begin to address the thousands and tens of thousands, maybe a couple of hundred thousand wounded.
We know the hospitals are full.
We know the battlefields are littered with dead.
We know Ukrainian forces are now beginning to effectively desert or surrender whenever they can.
So this thing has reached a point of inevitable collapse.
And the reason I say this is so dangerous is the temptation in Washington, in NATO, in the West, to now intervene with the hope of somehow or another salvaging the situation is very, very great.
And unfortunately, the Poles have always had an agenda in Eastern Europe.
Their agenda goes back to 1794 and earlier.
They want to recapture and regain control of territory that lies in Ukraine, and for that matter, even in Belorussia.
And they seem to think, I fear, that they are the Polish tail wagging the American dog, that we could be dragged in involuntarily into Western Ukraine by the Poles if they go in there and get into a scrap with the Russians.
I think this is out of control potentially, and it's very, very dangerous because the Russians will not tolerate it.
You know, the propaganda machine is obviously very important.
And leading up to this, it was, you know, the anti-Russia propaganda, and that's continuing.
It's there.
You know, Russia did it, Russia did it.
NATO is totally innocent.
They're saving humanity and democracy and protecting our national defense and that sort of thing.
But already in the last month or so, it seems like there's been a shift.
Not that everything you said is absolutely true and it's going to continue until it really collapses.
But I think the propagandists have shifted, at least the noise I hear, is it's China, it's China, it's China.
And this to me means, you know, maybe they have to shift.
They blame Russia for everything.
Who knows?
They're not going to blame NATO.
And maybe they can get away with saying, well, it was all Ukraine's fault for getting us involved in that over there.
But right now, this China bashing, how do you see that in context of what's going on in Ukraine?
It just seems like they're preparing.
Well, we have to have another enemy.
And when you see it, when you talk to the politicians and listen to them, the right and the left, the Republicans are probably worse than the Democrats, but they're all terrible.
But they're pretty much together.
We've got to go for China because they are the real enemy.
They've sort of diminished, you know, the attack on Russia for the moment.
Well, I think there's much truth in that.
Let's face it, they failed miserably to, quote-unquote, weaken Russia.
If anything, Russia is stronger now, more capable militarily than it has been since the 1980s.
So the whole operation in Ukraine from a purely American standpoint is a total failure.
And no doubt, there is a desire to distract attention from this inevitable failure that's going to creep into the news and eventually find its way into American consciousness.
So there are two things going on.
I think, as we pointed out, you have this lingering potential for a terrible, terrible regional war in Ukraine that persists.
And at the same time, it's obvious that people are looking privately for a way to sort of disengage by saying, well, look, we did everything we could.
We gave these Ukrainians everything.
They just couldn't make it happen.
So it's their problem now.
Meanwhile, let's look at China, the new boogeyman.
And, you know, the Chinese problem, most of the problems that we have with China are economic, business, a result of our open borders, a result of the fact that we don't pay any attention who comes into our laboratories, who works in our government, who enters into partnership with our corporations.
And then we're unhappy to find out that 100,000 Americans are dying every year of fentanyl poisoning.
And we point the finger at China as though the Chinese have sat down and said, great, let's send more fentanyl to America.
In reality, the Chinese are doing what we all do.
They're selling to the highest bidder.
If you pay them, they'll sell it to you.
It ends up in Mexico, and then it is shipped north, but it's not being shipped north by the Chinese.
It's being shipped north by the drug cartels.
But how often have you heard anybody talk about the drug cartels or the open border and 7 million people that have now poured in since President Biden took over about whom we know absolutely nothing?
I mean, what's to stop any of these people from staging an incident at a nuclear power plant?
What do we say the answer is then?
Oh, well, this is obviously Chinese.
Let's go to war with China.
I mean, this is insanity.
It's stupid.
It's pointless.
But, you know, it's sort of, remember, we used to say that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel?
Well, right now, I think the threat industry is the last refuge of most of the scoundrels in Washington.
It's interesting you mentioned the cartels, Doug, because there was that recent picture that was shocking with one of the cartel members holding a javelin that obviously they got from Ukraine.
So I think your discussion of the threat of this open border is real and it's existential having these weapons come over.
Now, Dr. Paul, you mentioned a propaganda shift and a media shift, and we talked about it before the show started, Doug, is this extraordinary New York Times article.
It was titled Ukrainian Troops Trained by the West, Stumble in Battle.
You never would have seen that just a few weeks ago.
And if you go through the article, it talks about how, well, Ukraine started off fighting the way NATO trained them, but then they changed and went back to their old ways, and now they're getting slaughtered on the battlefield.
I don't know.
This almost seems like a narrative shift.
How do you read this, Doug?
No, I think so.
I think there are multiple factions right now inside the White House that are saying, we've got to get out of this.
This is a loser.
We've got to disengage.
Sometimes I think it's similar to Vietnam.
Certainly in 68, 69, after Nixon became president, there was a recognition that we had to end the war.
And at the time, privately, lots of people said, well, the answer is to just leave, to simply say we've done all we can do.
Let the South Vietnamese have whatever equipment there is.
We'll continue to send them aid.
But fighting this on our own is a waste of time, and it's not going to lead to anything.
But then you had others that said, well, we can't just leave because that will be seen as a defeat.
Therefore, we have to launch a new offensive into Cambodia and kill thousands of Americans and God knows how many Vietnamese and Cambodians in order to conceal the truth of our failure in Vietnam.
I mean, I see something similar going on in this White House.
People don't want to admit this is being a terrible disaster.
We were wrong.
We miscalculated.
We said Russia was weak.
Russia is strong.
We said that we would prevail.
We haven't turned out to prevail at all.
And in the meantime, we've sacrificed a nation of people called Ukraine.
So I think there is a shift in that direction.
But as I said before, I often wonder if anyone is really in charge.
Because instead of getting a true, unambiguous direction, in other words, some sort of coherent strategic response, we're seeing multiple moves in different directions.
And one of them is what you've said.
A new narrative to conceal the disaster, blame it on the Ukrainians, and get out.
But there's this other one that says, well, let's let the Poles and the Lithuanians give it a shot.
Maybe they can go in, and if they can grab some portion of Western Ukraine, we can point to this and say, see, it's not all hopeless.
We've gone in to rescue what's left of Ukraine.
Who knows?
I just don't see any clear thinking in Washington.
And of course, as Dr. Paul has said so many times, there's nobody thinking clearly in Congress on the Hill, because if you were really responsive to your constituents, if you really cared about the American people, you'd be up in arms about what's happening on the border.
You'd be up in arms about the people pouring into our country who are not vetted.
You'd be up in arms about the state of our armed forces.
You know, 40% of the submarine fleet's in dry dock because it's not working properly.
How many other ships are undermanned?
Aircraft that can't fly.
And the Army.
I mean, the Army can't even recruit.
And the people that would join it and want to fight are people that this government doesn't want.
So I don't see how it could get much worse, but, you know, I've been wrong before.
As you mentioned, Congress would be a little more concerned, not only about the things you mentioned, but they might be a little bit concerned and passed Senator Rand Paul's amendment saying, hey, can't we just get an inspector general, a special inspector general, to look at where the money goes?
Nobody seems to be interested in that either.
Nobody wants to know where the money goes as long as it shows up in their pocket.
You know, these military operations, they do end very often because of stalemate and they're running out of steam and running out of body bags or something like that.
And empires end, you know, because of bad policy and very often debt.
They can't afford it anymore.
And we're facing that.
I think our preparedness for a true defensive war is diminished at the same time.
The debt is skyrocketing.
So every year, you know, the military budget comes up.
They just passed it in the House and the Senate.
They haven't had it signed yet.
But my effort to try to diminish that was a proposal I want you to comment on.
And that is that maybe we could agree on cutting the military because we don't need it if we had a slightly different foreign policy.
Now, in a practical sense, you wonder if you think that's a possibility, or you think the politicians would ever do that to actually cut back.
But, you know, the Republicans and the Democrats are really kind of, oh, that is like a sacred bill, you know, in the Congress.
Although we see signs that the number in opposition is growing right now, and hopefully that will put them in a position where they think, well, maybe we will have to cut.
But the budget eventually, I think, will be a limiting factor for the war.
Well, I think you're absolutely right.
Unfortunately, history suggests that politicians would rather go under than admit that anything is wrong or should be adjusted.
I mean, the problem with defense spending is it's just too profitable for too many people inside the beltway.
And I don't know how you change that.
And of course, whenever you look at the defense budget, how much of it is simply redistributed income?
Income that goes to donors, income that goes to selected constituents in specific districts and states.
I mean, you know that from your vast experience coming from Texas.
But I think there's another factor here.
Every time I bring up the dead, I'm told, well, Doug, you just don't understand modern economics.
That doesn't matter.
Well, I think we're about to get an education, one that you tried to impute or impart to people back many, many years ago.
It's going to happen.
But look at the British Empire.
When did the British ultimately leave India, the great crown jewel in the crown of the British Empire?
It left when the debt to GDP ratio was 240%.
That was after World War II in 1947, when the British had effectively bankrupted themselves during the war.
That's when I think we will finally give up the ghost and walk away.
The bad news is that when that happens, the military establishment is almost dissolved or liquidated in a fire sale.
Now, some people will say, well, that's just fine.
My argument has always been that's not a good thing because you do need a military establishment, but you don't need what you have.
And you need to do this prudently and intelligently.
But I fear that won't happen.
I mean, just trying to explain to people that, you know, you don't want large numbers of U.S. forces at sea or on land overseas in forward bases anymore because the world has changed.
Precision-guided munitions that can be launched over thousands of miles make that sort of thing self-defeating.
It means that if you do have forces anywhere and somebody shoots at the people where you happen to have troops stationed, you're going to be dragged into something that you may want nothing to do with.
So this whole business of forward basing needs to go away.
Nobody wants to admit that you can't rapidly reinforce across the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans.
There are these things now called submarines.
They are the king of warfare at sea.
In the Navy, people talk about two kinds of ships in the Navy.
One class, submarines, the other class, targets.
I mean, things have changed in terms of technology.
We don't want to come to terms with that because if you start recognizing what you cannot do in the future that you did in the past, well, then people say exactly what you did, Dr. Paul.
Well, perhaps we don't need X, Y, and Z anymore.
And they're right.
Submarines: The New King of Warfare00:02:45
We don't.
We need other things.
But that's a different process.
And we can get involved with that.
But we're not going to get anywhere with the status quo right now.
So I think we're going to hang around until we're broke.
I'd like to ask a little bit about the actual preparedness of the military because you hear a lot about it.
Of course, if you had a different foreign policy, the preparedness would be defensive and not in many ways that it is an offensive force.
But they're talking about the draft and this sort of thing.
First, have you observed with your career and what's going on currently a definite decrease in our ability if we had to fight a truly defensive war?
And also, what do you think the significance has to contribute to this problem of preparedness and finding people who want to be in the military by making the military woke?
Well, the first thing is that remember, most of what the generals and the admirals want is force structure and things.
In other words, weapon systems, ships, aircraft, and so forth.
They're not thinking in terms of force design.
They're not thinking really in terms of capabilities in most cases.
They're all engaged in trying to refight some version of the Second World War.
So that's problem number one.
That's one of the reasons that the top echelons all need to go away, frankly.
The second part of it is the wokeness.
Well, you can't recruit right now for the Army.
And the Marines, they have a different way of doing business.
And they are actually actively recruiting large numbers of so-called illegal aliens to serve in their force.
But the Army has a different approach.
And the Army is now saying, well, if you're not a Christian and you're not a white man, the world is yours.
Come to us, and we'll give you a job.
I think that's also true in the Navy and increasingly in the Air Force.
That's not a prescription for success.
It may make people temporarily happy in Washington, D.C. They'll point to this and say, see, we've now created this new politically correct woke military force, but it won't fight well.
Its morale is low.
Its equipment is old.
If we've seen anything in this war in Ukraine, it's the performance of much of the Western equipment, which has its roots in the 1970s and 1980s, hasn't performed very well.
But we've squandered opportunities over decades to make prudent changes.
And now you have a force that the people that really need to be there to fight don't want to join.
Western Equipment Lagging00:10:20
I mean, if you turn to some strapping young man in high school in Texas and Dallas or Austin or somewhere, and you tell him, look, you're fine.
We like you.
We're great.
We're happy that you're a good athlete and did well in school.
But see Susie Q over there who weighs all of 90 or 100 pounds, she can do everything you can do and probably better.
Well, if you tell that to young men, young men say, fine, then I don't need to be part of your organization.
That's great.
You know, Doug, I listened to a lot of your interviews, and there's something you've been saying recently in a couple of them that I found very fascinating.
Because you said earlier on, I really don't know what to do about these problems.
I don't know what's happening.
You've said in the past that if you look at the different segments of society that we have, they're all really controlled by a certain class of people.
You talk about the media and the government, the military-industrial complex, et cetera.
For the benefit of our viewers, if they haven't seen you in other circumstances discussing this, could you kind of give us an idea of what you were saying?
No.
Do you have any easy questions that you want to go over?
Well, you were talking about the donor class and how they run things.
No, that's right.
I talk about this all the time because I've seen it in action.
Dr. Paul did.
I'm sure you have, Dan.
Donors tend to decide most issues.
I thought one of the clearest and most depressing examples of this came with Governor DeSantis.
He was somewhere campaigning for the presidency, and someone asked him about Ukraine.
And he immediately said, well, let's be frank, the United States has no vital strategic interest in Ukraine.
We never have.
Clearly, I don't think we should be involved in what's happening in Ukraine.
Legitimate answer, in my judgment.
Two days later, someone asked him again, Well, what do you think about this?
You said the last time you said, Well, I spoke hastily.
I think we really have to be there.
It's about defending democracy.
And he repeated all this nonsense that you hear from the mainstream media.
And at the time, I was asked, Well, what has happened?
And I said, Well, he received some calls from his donors.
And the donors are very wealthy people.
They control the finance system, the finance sector, much of Wall Street.
They control the media.
We can talk about how much of academia they influence by putting people into key positions that determine what's going to be taught, what brand of history, what narrative is acceptable, and so forth.
These things are disastrous for the United States because at the end of the day, people begin to figure out finally, well, who represents me?
Who cares about the Americans?
Why are you listening to these donors?
Well, that's because the donors control everything, and they send people to the Hill to write lots of the legislation.
I mean, we know that with the pharmaceutical sector, with the military sector, defense sector.
All sorts of people show up and said, Well, I can't do this.
I can't write this.
I need help.
We'll send you help.
And in come people who write legislation that is favorable for all sorts of reasons to the wrong people.
This has been going on for years.
This is not working.
The government doesn't work.
I mean, to be frank, our government was designed in the 1780s by a group of very thoughtful people who frankly thought that we'd be lucky if the whole thing held together for 20 years, at which point in time they anticipated another convention to revisit everything.
Well, here we are, hundreds of years later.
We're still dealing with this old governmental structure.
I think it's kind of reached a point where it's going to become obvious that it simply doesn't work, and we're going to have to go to different systems.
I realize that's heresy, but you know, I really think we're going to get there.
You know, I think the answer you just gave, Daniel, on this is going to apply to what I'm going to ask you, because we're real interested, and I know you have a concern about, you know, the whistleblowers, the people who are on the inside and they know what's going on and they want to tell us the truth.
And sometimes they get into a lot of trouble over that.
And the whistleblower, the laws that are supposed to protect them, really doesn't.
And we, of course, know the story of Ed Snowden.
But right now, in the news, is the story about Assange, who's an Australian citizen.
And we just blocked that.
We were disappointed that Trump didn't do a little bit more to help, like he didn't do much at all.
But this to me is so important.
But I was wondering if you had any idea why there was a shift in Australia.
Was there a new president over there or just what happened?
Because they weren't helpful at all.
But in this last six months or a year, there seems to be a better attitude by the government of Australia.
Well, first, let's point something out that's so important that it can't be overstated.
I know people talk about the Constitution, but as I say, we're going to have to change the way we govern and administer this country in the future.
But there's something called the Bill of Rights, and that is sacrosanct.
My great disappointment is the failure of members in the House and the Senate to enforce the Bill of Rights.
That's the single most important document, in my estimation, in the United States.
It sets us apart from everybody.
And I can't stress that enough.
I would have someone read the Bill of Rights every day over the radio to make sure people understand what it means, because it's the fabric of our lives.
And that brings us to somebody like Assange.
He has been treated, just as all the others have been, abominably.
And I think what happened in Australia is what's happened in Western Europe.
You had people come to power in these countries who were aligned with the larger globalist network, and they were funded in many cases by wealthy oligarchs.
I call them oligarchs in the West, just as they do in the East, because they can insert people into positions all over the country.
Look at what Soros has been able to do with attorney generals all across the United States.
And I think a lot of money has gone into building these governments that are frankly antithetical to the interests of the people they govern.
And Australia was a good example.
The Australians are still trying to come to terms with several realities, one of which is that they're too far from Great Britain to be rescued by the British, and they no longer expect that.
But at the same time, they've also lost their cultural identity or national identity because of immigration.
And there are serious problems inside Australia with immigration.
And then finally, there's the United States.
We want them to join us in every conceivable crazy scheme that we come up with.
And they feel, well, if we don't join the Americans, they may not come and help us when we need it.
Look what they did for us during World War II.
But again, I think there are more and more people in Australia who are beginning to figure out that's not a reasonable expectation anymore.
And that joining us may be a very bad idea.
Remember, Harold McMillan's great achievement as prime minister was to tell, give JFK, Jack Kennedy, very good advice about Southeast Asia, about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
He was a voice of reason.
But his successors have all turned into little mouthpieces for whatever Washington wanted.
And that's the current status right now.
I think we're going to have to wait for more bad news before the governments, not just in Australia, but also in Europe, turn over.
Colonel, we're about to run out of time, but Daniel has a question before we finish.
Well, Colonel, first, I want to say thanks for giving us some of your time.
And we certainly look forward to seeing you in September in D.C.
And I'm sure everyone's going to want to get tickets after listening to what you've had to say to our conference and come listen to more of what you have to say.
My last question is something that you honestly do not have to answer if you're not comfortable answering.
But it took a long time for President Trump to get you in his administration and to benefit from your good advice.
Do you think he's learned his lesson?
He had a lot of bad people working for him.
Do you feel confident he's learned his lesson?
Again, don't answer if you don't feel like it, but that's what everyone's sort of wondering.
Well, I think it's a legitimate question.
And I have not talked to the president for a long time.
He is very deeply embroiled in this legal problem that he's got with the administration and the attempts by the administration to drive him to jail.
And I'm very sympathetic to him.
I can't imagine any other country in the world behaving this way.
Certainly not in the Western world, but we do.
So you're asking an important question, and I don't know.
We'll have to see who else shows up around him.
He still keeps people close to him that in many cases I think are not the right ones.
But that's a matter for him to decide.
I just don't know.
I really don't.
I would hope so, because the thing that Senator Ranpol tried to tell the president over and over and over again, which is very right, is that personnel is policy.
And the president told me, he said, I should have brought you in earlier, but I didn't know you existed.
I heard that from Jeff Sessions and other people.
A lot of these political figures don't know who else is out there because they're spoon-fed the answers.
And remember, I think President Trump said, well, I'm going to get the best people.
And his assumption was, well, if I just go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Stanford, or the service academies, I'm going to get the best.
But we've learned over many, many years that the people that come out of those places are, in fact, a big part of the problem.
I hope he's figured that out.
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse00:01:14
Very good.
I want to close by giving you a thank you, a big thank you for visiting with us today.
And we're anxiously waiting for our meeting in September.
And if you'd like to say a farewell comment to our listeners, because I'm positive that they appreciate hearing from you, and they'll be anxious to hear you in September.
Well, in September, I want to talk about a few things, one of which is the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
And I identify those as being atheism, nihilism, Marxism, and globalism.
And those four horses are running all over the West and trampling our civilization beneath their feet.
And that's what has to end.
And the only people that can do that are us.
I mean, if there's one thing I keep trying to tell people over and over and over, well, do you think so-and-so is going to be elected and he will save us?
He will lead us out of this.
And I keep looking at them and saying, stop looking for someone to save you.
Organize.
Become active.
You've got to save your souls.
Yeah, very good.
And I want to thank our viewers today for tuning in.