Oct. 23, 2023 - The Tucker Carlson Show
27:33
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| We seem to be heading to war with Iran. | ||
| Certainly the Biden administration is pushing us in that direction. | ||
| What's new and interesting and ominous is that very few Republicans, the opposition party, are pushing back. | ||
| Instead, some of the party's leaders are encouraging it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here, for example, is Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina from last weekend on NBC. You said this week that the only way to keep the war from escalating is to hold Iran accountable, part of what you're talking about now, and that it might mean bombing their oil refineries. | |
| Have you had any discussions with the Biden administration about this? | ||
| A bit. | ||
| Here's my message. | ||
| If Hezbollah, which is a proxy of Iran, launches a massive attack on Israel, I would consider that a threat to the state of Israel existential in nature. | ||
| I will introduce a resolution in the United States Senate to allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the oil business. | ||
| Iran, if you escalate this war, we're coming for you. | ||
| Are you effectively poised to declare war on Iran? | ||
| That's very strong language. | ||
| I am poised to use military force to destroy the source of funding for Hamas and Hezbollah. | ||
| No, that's Lindsey Graham. | ||
| Few others in the Republican Party will be that open about their intentions, but very few disagree with him. | ||
| Certainly not in private. | ||
| They agree. | ||
| So what would war with Iran mean? | ||
| Well, it's hard to know because virtually no one who's talking about it in public is operating from a deep interest in America's interest. | ||
| Is this good for us or is it not? | ||
| Former Colonel Douglas McGregor is the CEO of Our Country, Our Choice, and one of the first people we turn to for analysis of events like this because he is interested in what happens to the United States. | ||
| He joins us now. | ||
| Doug, thank you for coming on. | ||
| Do you think that we are moving toward war with Iran? | ||
| Yes, I do. | ||
| And it looks like the chosen destination is indeed Armageddon. | ||
| There doesn't seem to be any real appreciation for the implications for us. | ||
| And frankly, for Europe and the world, as well as the Middle East, of such action. | ||
| Take for an example, just on the economic side, about 20 percent of the world's oil passes through the Straits of Hormuz every month, probably 25 percent of liquefied natural gas. | ||
| And you're talking about shutting down two to three million barrels a day of oil from Iran. | ||
| You know, this entire region is involved in the war. | ||
| This is not an Iranian monopoly by any stretch of the imagination. | ||
| But the point is that when we're looking at 10-year Treasury yields up over 5%, and people are increasingly convinced that the Fed has lost control, the economic side of the house is catastrophe. | ||
| Then when you look at the military side, you have to look at the arsenal of missiles that Iran possesses. | ||
| And they can reach out 1,200 miles with great precision, very high-explosive conventional warheads that would do enormous damage, destroying whole city blocks in places like Haifa, Tel Aviv, even Jerusalem, though I doubt they would attack Jerusalem. | ||
| The bottom line is that we need to think this through, and everyone right now is emoting. | ||
| There is no thinking anywhere, as far as I can tell. | ||
| Maybe, amazingly enough, Mr. Erdogan in Turkey, who came out this morning and indicated he was willing to mediate the dispute between Israel and Hamas. | ||
| Whether or not anyone in Washington or Israel is interested in talking, I don't know. | ||
| But if we could sideline Turkey and keep Turkey out of the fight, that would ultimately help Israel enormously. | ||
| So what would happen to the United States if we followed Senator Graham's advice and just began bombing? | ||
| Critical infrastructure in Iran. | ||
| What would happen then? | ||
| Well, all of the bases that we have in Iraq and Syria, unfortunately, where we still have over a thousand Americans, all of those would be targeted. | ||
| And this time, they would target them accurately. | ||
| And this destruction would be wholesale. | ||
| I would expect trouble here at home and in the United States because of the open border. | ||
| Hezbollah has a very large operation in Mexico. | ||
| There are no doubt many, many, many Hezbollah agents inside the United States. | ||
| We can only begin to imagine the kind of trouble they could cause. | ||
| The missile and space program in Iran is very, very advanced, as is their cyber warfare capability. | ||
| All of these things would be brought to bear against us. | ||
| But what's most important, I think, for Americans to understand is if we attack Iran on the basis of Hezbollah's alleged willingness to attack Israel, if Israel invades Gaza, we will end up in a fight with Russia. | ||
| Russia will not sit by quietly and watch Iran destroyed by the United States air and naval power in the region. | ||
| And once Russia enters this... | ||
| It becomes much more than just a local conflict, maybe more than just a regional war. | ||
| We haven't thought this through. | ||
| We need to do that. | ||
| And I doubt seriously at that point that the Turks would be able to stay out. | ||
| The Turks are Sunni Muslims. | ||
| They are the de facto leaders in the Sunni Muslim world. | ||
| They have the largest armed forces in the region. | ||
| They are in close proximity to Israel. | ||
| They could move forces south through Syria very rapidly. | ||
| And I'm sure Bashar al-Assad, assuming he even survives the opening of this campaign, would not obstruct them. | ||
| So, so many questions. | ||
| But just to back up one click, you described Iran's missile arsenal. | ||
| But Iran is a country that's been the subject of a very intense sanction regime from the United States, increased by the last president, Donald Trump. | ||
| But for a long time, how is Iran still such a powerful country militarily given those sanctions? | ||
| It sounds like maybe they didn't work. | ||
| Well, no, I think that's an important point, Tucker, and you're absolutely right. | ||
| We place so much value on these sanctions and assume that they have this profound impact. | ||
| Normally, sanctions harm the population in terms of lowering its standard of living, making life more difficult for the everyday citizen. | ||
| But it doesn't fundamentally alter the policy or the goals and objectives of the government. | ||
| And this is something that I don't think we understand. | ||
| The same thing is true for Hamas and Gaza. | ||
| You know, you want to go after Hamas. | ||
| You want to destroy it. | ||
| I think everyone with a sound mind is interested in the destruction of Hamas. | ||
| But do you want to kill hundreds of thousands of people in order to get at Hamas? | ||
| That's the question. | ||
| We have the same problem in Iran. | ||
| Our sanctions have not harmed the regime's ability to develop and build very, very complex and sophisticated missiles. | ||
| These missiles are very accurate now. | ||
| There are hundreds, if not thousands. | ||
| And the long-range missiles, the 1,200-mile-range theater ballistic missiles, are a very serious threat to us in the region and to Israel. | ||
| And the sanctions have had no impact there, if anything. | ||
| The Iranians have pulled together the best human capital in their country, the best engineers, the best thinkers, and put them to work primarily on missile technology and on cyber warfare. | ||
| And that's where we stand right now. | ||
| We have to expect the worst as a result if we strike Iran. | ||
| How is the US military, do you think, having spent your life in it, leading troops in combat and at the Pentagon? | ||
| No, I don't think we're in a strong position. | ||
| I think we're probably at the weakest point in our recent history. | ||
| I think you've got to look at the realities of new weapons systems, new capabilities. | ||
| The United States Navy, if it's going to preserve its capability at sea, is probably going to be compelled to operate somewheres north and west of Sicily. | ||
| If it comes within closer range, then it falls into this envelope where the Iranians can strike it. | ||
| And as I said before, we have to assume the Russians will come into this. | ||
| Once you move into the eastern Mediterranean, you are vulnerable to the Kinshaw missiles and other missiles, cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles that the Russians have. | ||
| This makes it very difficult to fly strikes in support of the Israeli Defense Force against Hezbollah because now you're flying a very long distance. | ||
| You deliver your ordinance. | ||
| You have to land in Israel in order to refuel. | ||
| Israel is going to operate under a hail, if not a rainstorm of missiles and rockets, making it very, very dangerous to do so. | ||
| So our naval power, while substantial, may not have the desired impact on the ground that we would like. | ||
| And then finally, we have no... | ||
| Real army anymore. | ||
| The army is down to perhaps, what, 450,000. | ||
| How much of that is ready to fight is open to debate. | ||
| Much of it is sitting in Eastern Europe right now. | ||
| We don't have the means to rapidly ship a large force of 80,000 to 100,000 troops on the ground into the region, which means that we're reliant on special forces and right now 2,000 Marines and perhaps 2,000 special forces and special operations forces. | ||
| That's not going to make much of a dent. | ||
| And as we've seen quite recently, within the last 24 hours or so, some of our special ops forces and Israeli special ops forces went into Gaza to reconnoiter, to plan for where they might want to go to free hostages and make an impact. | ||
| And they were shot to pieces and took heavy losses, as I understand it. | ||
| I think that's where we're headed. | ||
| And I don't see that as a win for Israel in any way, shape, or form, and I certainly think it's very dangerous for us. | ||
| You know, as I've tried to point out to a number of people, until Britain entered World War I, it was just another European war. | ||
| Once Britain entered it, it became a global war. | ||
| Well, once we are a co-belligerent, we enter this thing, it's going to be very difficult for Russia and Turkey not to also come into this fight against us, because they will not tolerate The sort of collective punishment that Israel plans for Gaza. | ||
| The U.S. military does have an awful lot of generals, however, as you pointed out, multiples of the number we had, the absolute number we had during World War II. And they're paid to think about this stuff. | ||
| Why has it dawned on no one, apparently, who's spoken publicly anyway, that this could really harm our country gravely? | ||
| Why is no one saying that? | ||
| Well, I'm sure there are people in the U.S. military who are aware, but let's be frank. | ||
| Most of the people at the top of the military have never operated under artillery fire or rocket fire. | ||
| They haven't seen direct fire combat. | ||
| They haven't seen real war, per se. | ||
| Remember, we've had the luxury of sitting around forward operating bases. | ||
| And striking opponents that were armed with AK-47s and command detonated mines, an occasional mortar or rocket. | ||
| Very, very low intensity combat. | ||
| This is a high-end conventional war that we're looking at with the potential to go nuclear, which obviously... | ||
| I don't think we or the Russians want to happen, but we have the wild card in Israel. | ||
| They do have a nuclear capability. | ||
| We don't know what the tripwire is for them to employ such a weapon. | ||
| At that point, of course, all bets are off, and I think most of the world would turn against Israel. | ||
| Right now, they just have to worry about the Muslim world against them. | ||
| It would certainly widen if they went that far. | ||
| There are too many unknowns and uncertainties here. | ||
| And you know, everyone always assumes at the beginning of such a conflict, well, it'll be contained. | ||
| We'll only have to fight these people, Hamas, maybe Hezbollah. | ||
| It never works out that way. | ||
| These things always last longer than everyone thinks. | ||
| The resources required are much more profound than what we anticipated. | ||
| And remember, we've already used up many of our war stocks in Ukraine, and we've left Ukraine in a state of ruins. | ||
| Places on life support, a half a million dead. | ||
| What are we going to do to Israel if we press ahead down this road? | ||
| And it seems, listening to Secretary of State Blinken this morning, who more and more sounds like our commander-in-chief, that there is no room for negotiation, no room for mediation. | ||
| Hamas must be destroyed. | ||
| We must go into Gaza. | ||
| If so, I think we're on this very dangerous road to Armageddon. | ||
| What is the objective of the IDF and of Blinken, of the United States and Israel, in this short term? | ||
| Destroy Hamas, but what does that mean? | ||
| Well, to destroy Hamas in the minds, I think, of policymakers in Washington, as well as in Israel, is to systematically root them out and kill them in Gaza. | ||
| Now, let's be frank. | ||
| When you go into an urban environment, you can't pick or choose your targets very easily. | ||
| First of all, no matter how well-trained you are, you're moving into an area that is rubbled. | ||
| They're ruins. | ||
| When I say negotiate, I mean negotiate the terrain through the rubble. | ||
| You don't know where the enemy is going to pop up. | ||
| Once you destroy all these buildings, he can be anywhere. | ||
| So you're going to take losses going in. | ||
| But more important, once you start going in there, you're going to end up killing whatever you find. | ||
| Because the soldier, the Israeli soldier, the American soldier, very much the same, they want to live. | ||
| They want to survive. | ||
| When in doubt, pull the trigger. | ||
| They're not going to stop and say, now wait a minute, before I shoot, I really need to think about this because that may be a civilian or there may be a family there. | ||
| That's not going to happen. | ||
| You can't expect that. | ||
| So the notion that this is a kind of warfare that is so precise that it can avoid so-called collateral damage is just nonsense. | ||
| We can't expect miracles from the IDF or our own troops, which means that you're going to annihilate everything in Gaza. | ||
| And remember, the Israelis would like to push the population out. | ||
| The problem is, when you push the population out, if you did, into Egypt, you're going to run into trouble with the Egyptians. | ||
| But even if you manage to get them there, you're only moving the problem that confronts you 20 miles, 30 miles away. | ||
| In other words, killing people isn't going to solve the problem. | ||
| But it's very attractive at the moment, and it's very difficult to talk people out of it. | ||
| Do you believe American troops will be engaged, physically present, in the invasion of Gaza? | ||
| I'm sure they will because we have American citizens who are hostages. | ||
| And we've already made it clear that we will assist and support the Israelis in freeing those hostages. | ||
| Again, the problem is, how do you get the hostages out when you're fighting in this extraordinarily dirty and complex environment? | ||
| What's to prevent the hostages from simply being executed as soon as you move in force into Gaza? | ||
| I think the Israelis know that. | ||
| I think our leadership in Washington knows it. | ||
| They may have even decided that if that happens, that's tragic, but the ultimate goal of destroying Hamas demands this. | ||
| Again, it's the issue of collective punishment. | ||
| I would encourage Americans everywhere to listen to King Abdullah of Jordan's speech in Cairo just a couple of days ago, where he made it clear that he agreed with the abhorrence of what had happened in Israel and loathes Hamas for its barbarity and savagery. | ||
| But he also goes on to point out that collective punishment meted out to two million people. | ||
| is unacceptable, both under international law and for humanitarian reasons. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| And as Americans see more destruction and more and more film footage and photographs come out of Gaza showing children, women, old men dying, being killed, the support for Israel is going to erode. | ||
| And at the same time, the anger and hatred inside the region, which already dislikes Israel, is going to be phenomenal. | ||
| So Israel is doing something that I think no one has ever accomplished, at least not in my lifetime, and that is uniting Sunni and Shia against itself. | ||
| That's why I think we have an obligation to save Israel from itself, but that's not a popular position. | ||
| Right now, it's bombs away and everyone is cheering. | ||
| What about the argument often articulated, including by leading presidential candidates recently, that considerations like the ones you just raised, like the long-term effects of decisions or global public opinion, downstream terror attacks, thinking about any of that is a violation of principle and you're basically giving in to the terrorists by weighing any of it. | ||
| How would you respond to that? | ||
| Most politicians follow public opinion. | ||
| Right now, public opinion supports violence against Tomas, and if that includes the destruction of Gaza, so be it. | ||
| We support it. | ||
| Very few people look beyond that and understand the larger consequences. | ||
| In the last century, or I guess I should say in the early 20th century, the great powers intervened on more than one occasion to prevent Turkey from being destroyed, not because they loved the Ottoman Turks, but because they saw the alternative being chaos. | ||
| Turkey had a role to play. | ||
| Therefore, we want to preserve it. | ||
| We have to think about Egypt. | ||
| Egypt has been a good strategic partner for Israel. | ||
| They've kept the peace there for decades. | ||
| The Egyptians are now in a very difficult position. | ||
| At least 100,000 Egyptian troops have been moved towards the border with Gaza, involving several divisions. | ||
| Under great pressure from public opinion in the Arab world, in the Muslim world, they may have to engage the Israelis because no one will protect the population in Gaza. | ||
| That's a terrible, terrible possibility. | ||
| One that we don't want. | ||
| Because if that happens to Egypt and Hezbollah attacks from the north, that will bring in everyone else. | ||
| And we're suddenly confronting a war. | ||
| On a regional level that is going to harm us economically, physically in many ways, but could threaten the very existence of Israel, which I think is the root problem here. | ||
| We don't want Israel's existence threatened. | ||
| We want to save Israel. | ||
| We want to keep it intact. | ||
| But we may not be able to do that if this war runs out of control. | ||
| And let's be frank. | ||
| Historically, wars run out of control. | ||
| They move in directions you never anticipated. | ||
| So if you think you can plot this route forward as Lindsey Graham thinks, you're crazy. | ||
| Once this is unleashed, it's not manageable anymore. | ||
| You made reference a couple of times to the American citizens being held by Hamas. | ||
| What do we know about them? | ||
| Well, I think most of them are American citizens who happen to be Jewish, who are there to celebrate. | ||
| During the holiday period or participate in this music festival we've heard so much about. | ||
| I don't think they ever anticipated anything like this happening. | ||
| The problem is, as we've said before, extracting them from this haystack is nigh on to impossible. | ||
| What about the concerns about terrorism in the United States in the wake of all of this? | ||
| Well, I think they're very valid. | ||
| Yeah, I think these concerns are very, very valid. | ||
| We've had open borders now for the last two and a half years, but we've had an illegal migration problem for the last three-plus decades. | ||
| We don't know who's in the country. | ||
| We really don't. | ||
| No one at Homeland Security can tell you who is here. | ||
| The Europeans faced something quite similar. | ||
| They were bullied into admitting... | ||
| Millions of Muslims from the Middle East and Africa. | ||
| We've been bullied by our government to open the borders and let in effectively anybody who wants to come. | ||
| So we don't know who's here. | ||
| But we do know that Hamas, as well as Hezbollah, have positions in Mexico. | ||
| Of the two, Hezbollah is much stronger, much larger, and much better equipped and financed. | ||
| So we have to expect that once Hezbollah is in the war and we are against them and Iran, that much of our infrastructure will be at risk. | ||
| Something as bad or potentially even worse than 9-11 could happen here. | ||
| This brings us back to the whole issue of immigration and border security. | ||
| We've essentially ignored it. | ||
| The same politicians who are pushing for war against Virtually everyone in the Middle East, which is what it boils down to in the final analysis, don't seem to have thought carefully about protecting us or our borders from all of the terrible things that we've seen in Israel. | ||
| How much damage could these same people do to us in a shopping mall in the space of 15 minutes? | ||
| It doesn't take much imagination to understand how dangerous this is. | ||
| Do you think that this war, if it comes, and as you said, it seems like it is, how will that affect American domestic politics? | ||
| War traditionally has been used by the people in power to shut down dissent. | ||
| Can you imagine that happening in this case? | ||
| Well, I think they'll try. | ||
| Fortunately, thanks to people like Elon Musk, who bought Twitter and ended the censorship or suspended it. | ||
| The truth does get through and reach Americans, but Americans will figure out pretty quickly if two things tend to happen at once. | ||
| You have the war overseas and the war here, but remember the economy and the financial condition right now. | ||
| If you turn on any of the business channels for the first time in my memory, lots and lots of analysts are coming on and talking about the Fed having lost control. | ||
| The rising interest rates, the inability to manage and cope with the sovereign national debt of $33 trillion. | ||
| And that's the tip of a proverbial iceberg. | ||
| We already have Americans who are struggling with inflation anyway. | ||
| Now we're looking at potentially scarcity. | ||
| We've drained our strategic oil reserve for all intents and purposes. | ||
| If the Strait of Hormuz is shut down, if the Suez Canal is closed, we're in a lot of trouble. | ||
| In the short run, that's for sure. | ||
| How rapidly can we recover from all of this? | ||
| How many refineries can we put back into operation? | ||
| How much drilling can we do quickly? | ||
| The answer is not very much. | ||
| So draining that strategic oil reserve was a very serious mistake. | ||
| But we'll be, as we become impoverished and chaotic and subject to these terror attacks, we'll be winning important moral victories, don't you think? | ||
| Well, in our effort to... | ||
| Stand at Israel's side and help protect Israel, we have taken a different route and cast moral turpitude to the side. | ||
| In other words, how do you help one without committing a war crime against the other? | ||
| This is the problem with collective punishment. | ||
| This is the problem with annihilating Gaza and trying to sweep out its population. | ||
| That's unacceptable to us as Americans. | ||
| I don't think if you sat down any of Israel's most ardent supporters in the United States and said, are you willing to trade the lives of several hundred thousand people in Gaza for the lives taken in Israel by Hamas? | ||
| After all, Hamas and Palestinian Jihad were the fighters. | ||
| They lost 1,500. | ||
| There were 3,000 involved in the several waves of the attack. | ||
| They're dead. | ||
| Now we're looking at perhaps 5,000 civilians dead. | ||
| How many more will we witness? | ||
| Is that somehow or another justified morally? | ||
| And I think a lot of Americans will struggle with that. | ||
| That's why I say it would be best if we had a cooling-off period. | ||
| I'm glad that the Israelis are waiting for additional... | ||
| Naval power to arrive on station in the Mediterranean and also for additional equipment, theater ballistic, missile defense, and so forth. | ||
| But we need to use this time to think carefully about how far we want to go because right now it's a one-way street to regional war. | ||
| And I don't think anybody really wants that if they think about it carefully. | ||
| Therefore, you know, looking at someone like Erdogan, however slippery we may consider him to be, His willingness to mediate is a bright light in an otherwise very dark sky, and we should look to that because we don't want the regional war. | ||
| It will destroy us economically. | ||
| We're already in bad shape. | ||
| We've already suffered because of the foolish intervention in Ukraine to try to destroy Russia. | ||
| Now we have Russia more powerful militarily than it's been since the 80s, and it's poised to enter on the side of Iran. | ||
| We should all give that some serious thought. | ||
| Last question. | ||
| Do you know of any leaders in the United States, political leaders at the Pentagon, within the Biden administration, who are thinking clearly about this, which is to say who are framing their thoughts on it around what's best for the United States long term? | ||
| Is anybody thinking that way? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes, there are. | ||
| The problem is none of them hold high positions in government, and none of their voices or their analyses Or their viewpoints are going to reach anybody in power. | ||
| I think you have to listen carefully to what Secretary of State Blinken said. | ||
| He was absolutely unambiguous. | ||
| We are going to destroy Hamas, whatever that takes. | ||
| That means regional war, frankly. | ||
| And anybody who thinks that people are going to say, oh, no, we're afraid of America. | ||
| We're not going to risk that. | ||
| They're wrong. | ||
| They are not afraid to risk attacking Israel for fear of coming into confrontation with us. | ||
| We are not the power we were in 1991, and they know that. | ||
| And economically, our position is very fragile. | ||
| Let's face it. | ||
| So the bottom line is, yes, there are people out there, but they're not being heard, and they're not going to be heard in the current environment. | ||
| Doug McGregor, thank you so much for that. |
Export Selection