Full transcript: Colonel Douglas Macgregor on London Real
3:02 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Colonel Douglas McGregor, the decorated combat veteran, author, and foreign policy expert. You are widely recognized for your leadership of cavalry troops in the 1991 battle of 73 Easting during the Gulf War, which was the US Army’s largest tank battle since World War II. Following the completion of the 1999 Kosovo Air Campaign, you were awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal and later retired from the military in 2004 after 28 years of service.
3:30 You’ve been a regular commentator on CNN, the BBC, and Fox News, most notably on the Tucker Carlson show. And in 2020, Donald Trump appointed you as senior adviser to the Secretary of Defense. You have said that any attempt by Israel to eradicate Gaza will lead to total war in the region and that if the US and Russia get involved, this could lead to World War II. Colonel McGregor, welcome back to London Real.
3:55 Douglas Macgregor: Thanks.
3:55 Brian Rose: Colonel. We usually spend a lot of our time talking about the battlefield in Ukraine and the fight with Russia. And yet in three and a half weeks, we now have potentially a more concerning battlefield opening up right here in Gaza. And I wanted to jump right in and get your thoughts on what you see happening here. Where, in your opinion, are we right now when it comes to Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza?
4:20 And what are the global implications of what happens in the next few days, the next few weeks, the next few months?
4:28 Douglas Macgregor: Sure. [clears throat] We should just briefly take a minute and point out that the war in Ukraine is militarily over and the $60 billion that Washington is planning to send to the Ukrainian government is really life support to pay the government, pay [clears throat] what’s left of the Ukrainian armed forces maintain some semblance of services. Right now there are 14- and 15-year-old boys being captured by the Russians on the ground in Ukraine. That [clears throat] situation is really dire.
5:00 So it will continue but it’s effectively over and at some point I think that recognition will be announced, but at the moment nobody wants to admit failure. Now, when it comes to the Middle East, [clears throat] it cannot be viewed in complete isolation from Ukraine, and I’ll explain that in a second. What we need to know now is that there are two things that have happened. First, we had this horrific attack on 7 October. 3,000 fighters, primarily from Hamas and also Palestinian Islamic Jihad, came into Israel, committed atrocities against the Israeli population, murdered 12,300 Israelis in the process, including some soldiers.
5:44 How this came about is a huge question. No one has answered it. I was in Israel in 2020. I actually went down to Gaza. I saw the Israeli security measures along that border.
5:56 They were excellent. And it is inconceivable to me that this happened. So if I were an Israeli, I’d want some answers. Right now, of course, Mr. Netanyahu is not interested in providing any answers. He’s too busy driving this war.
6:12 Everyone who has looked at what Hamas did agrees that Hamas needs to be eradicated. I haven’t run into anybody who disagrees with that. That includes, for instance, King Abdullah of Jordan, who spoke very eloquently on this in the Cairo conference. General Sisi in Egypt feels the same way. Even Mr. Erdogan, although he’s recently changed his view, spoke out against Hamas initially.
6:38 I don’t think anybody disputes that. The problem is that the campaign to eradicate Hamas has rapidly turned into a campaign to effectively eradicate the whole Gaza population. The first step in that direction is to move a million people out of northern Gaza, forcing them south, and then to move into northern Gaza with troops and root out and destroy whatever is left of Hamas. Meanwhile, we have a bombing campaign going on that’s killed 5,000 Palestinians.
7:11 No one in Israel is shedding any tears over that. But that’s not going down well in the rest of the region. And people oppose this notion of collective punishment. So, whatever moral high ground the Israelis have is eroding quickly because they’re seen as taking out these measures against the population. They would like to see the whole population pushed into Egypt.
7:35 General Sisi has said no, not because he hates Palestinians, but because he’s got his own problems. Egypt has an enormous population living on a relatively modest infrastructure. Adding another 2 million people is not a good answer. By the way, he also knows that these 2.2 million Palestinians, if they moved into Egypt just to 20 miles or 30 miles away, would not solve the problem because they would continue to be anti-Israeli and probably continue to be hostile.
8:07 So this is a difficult problem to solve, because in the final analysis Hamas is not just a group of disgruntled people. It’s an idea. and the idea is what you want to destroy or defeat. You want to rob it of its strength. No one is giving that much thought right now because everyone is emoting.
8:27 Emotion is driving everything. Kill all the Palestinians. Solve the problem. This mentality. At the same time, we’re essentially providing Mr. Netanyahu and his government with a blank check.
8:40 In fact, Secretary of State Blinken, who comes across increasingly as the commander-in-chief as opposed to President Biden, since he’s obviously far more articulate and coherent in his speech, has essentially said, you know, we’re in this to the end with Mr. Netanyahu. And this sort of unconditional support, or what some people are calling a blank check, is very dangerous because the United States is weakened from its previous state. This is not 1991. We do not have the enormous military power that we once had at that point.
9:16 And the military power we have is still useful, but in many cases, it’s not the right military power for today and the future, because technology has changed. Capabilities have emerged that are new and different. And we’re hurling the same old World War II force structure back into action. Only this time, we have practically no army at all. We’re talking about 450,000 people in the active army.
9:41 More recently, I read that 70% of the soldiers are supposedly overweight. That sort of thing was incomprehensible when I was on active duty. And their training is being widely questioned. And we have these very divisive policies pitting one racial group against another inside the force. All of these things work to our disadvantage in any confrontation that we have to be drawn into.
10:05 The Navy has a lot of capability, but it too has difficulty manning its ships. It has a huge morale problem. Nevertheless, we’re going to bring together two carrier battle groups to build a task force. That includes some submarines as well, obviously, and at least 2,000 Marines floating out there in the Mediterranean. But in order for this to work and survive, they have to operate somewhere north and west of Sicily because the range of weapons that could be used to engage them is so great that they are at very high risk if they close the distance between Israel and themselves.
10:46 So this is a very strange set of circumstances. Now, right now, American forces in the Middle East, in Syria, in Iraq, elsewhere are being attacked. We’ve had at least 24 wounded, one dead, maybe more. We just don’t know, and no one’s really telling us the truth. But in Syria, for instance, we have a thousand soldiers sitting on top of Syria’s only access to oil and its most useful agricultural area.
11:14 Ostensibly, we say to harm Mr. Assad. Well, all of our attempts to harm Mr. Assad have failed. And right now, this puts us in a position where we could be attacked by the Turks, because just a few days ago, or I think a couple of weeks ago now, we shot down a Turkish drone surveillance aircraft. Needless to say, that did not endear us to Mr. Erdogan and the Turks. And what is now happening is Mr. Erdogan has suddenly turned around after condemning Hamas and said the Hamas is not a terrorist organization.
11:47 They are mujahideen fighting for land that is theirs. Suddenly we’ve transformed Hamas into holy warriors. That’s not a good sign. And I bring up Turkey because Turkey is the 500-pound guerrilla in the region. It has the largest army, the largest air force.
12:06 It has a substantial navy. It has a lot of capability. And the Turks are ferocious fighters. They’re excellent soldiers. And they could mobilize a million men in a few weeks.
12:16 They could probably put 2 million in the field as long as they can equip them. This is a new and different threat from anything that Israel has ever faced in the past. Now, on top of that, you have the Egyptians. They could be drawn into this because the more damage that is inflicted on the population in Gaza, the more pressure there is on General Sisi to intervene to protect them. If Egypt is drawn into this, the Turks will most certainly come in to support the Egyptians.
12:41 They too are Sunni Muslims. It is very doubtful that Mr. Assad would essentially reject a Turkish request to move its forces through Syria towards Israel. Then there is Iran, and we have very dangerous people in my judgment on the Hill and in the United States and the media pushing for war with Iran. Iran has an enormous arsenal of missiles and rockets. They have missiles, accurate, precise missiles with large conventional warheads.
13:12 Those missiles can absolutely shower multiple warheads on top of Israel and do more damage in 10 minutes in Haifa, in Tel Aviv, and other major Israeli urban centers than Israel has ever contemplated in the past. So now you have basically the two major powers in the region who historically have been opposed to each other, Iran and Turkey, aligning together against Israel. And we want to attack Iran. Well, if we attack Iran, Russia is not going to sit by and watch Iran be destroyed by us.
13:49 It has strategic interests in Iran. By the way, so do the Chinese. It all revolves around oil and resources. The Chinese are not going to enter militarily, but they’ll provide support as well, whatever they can, probably via Russia. And then if the Turks weigh in, as I fear they will, the Russians are going to look at that and now they’re going to have to decide, what do we do?
14:10 They’re not anti-Israeli per se and never have been. Mr. Putin, if anything, has been very accommodating towards the Israelis, but the Israelis have supported the Ukrainian government and shipped not only weapons and equipment, but also MOSSAD advisers over there to wreak havoc wherever they can against the Russians. So the Russians may not want to enter it immediately, but given what we are planning to do, as I understand it, if we attack Iran, it’s going to be hard for them to stay out.
14:39 And then, of course, de facto all the other Muslim Arab states, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, probably North Africa, certainly Algeria, potentially Libya, and then of course distant Pakistan has already promised the Turks nuclear warheads if they need those to deter the Israelis from employing a nuclear weapon against Turkey. Well, what a wonderful picture. And we don’t seem to have anyone in the United States making the effort to diffuse anything.
15:09 If anything, Mr. Blinken traveled all over the region and announced that he too is Jewish, and as a result, he’s sympathetic to Israel, and as Secretary of State, he wants to do everything he can to moderate views and opinions, but unambiguously, we’re with Israel, and so we’re in the position of the blank check. And understand something. In 1914, as World War I was developing, Britain, who had no history of conflict whatsoever with Germany, Britain had no real reason strategically to involve itself on the continent.
15:49 And until it did, the war between Germany, Russia, France, Austria, Hungary was just another European war. But when Britain entered it, it became a world war because Britain was a world power with global interests. Once we are in this thing, this regional war does have the potential to go global and spread. And that’s the problem. No one is exercising restraint right now when we absolutely should.
16:17 No one is calming the waters. Everyone is provoking everyone else. This is a bad way to go because right now, financially, we’re in trouble. You know, when Madeleine Albright, as Secretary of State back in, what was it? I don’t think she was Secretary of State then, but she may have been, 1992.
16:36 She was in a conversation with General Colin Powell, and she was listening to him and she said, “Well, you must understand, we are the indispensable nation. Nothing on the globe can happen without us. We’re that important.” Well, that was effectively Britain’s argument in 1914. More or less, we are the indispensable nation, the great empire with all this money and all this capability.
16:58 Of course, the British had no army. And today, we have virtually no army, and without armies, not much is going to change on the ground in the Middle East. But the other thing is that we are no longer the indispensable nation. We’ve become the inexhaustible bank account for everything and everyone. We’ve poured billions into Ukraine.
17:20 That’s a dead end, a bottomless pit that has produced nothing. No return on our investment at all. Russia is now stronger and more capable than it’s been since the 1980s. Secondly, we’ve alienated people all over the world, particularly in the so-called global south, the developing world. Everybody looks upon us as a destabilizing catalyst for war and conflict wherever we go.
17:43 And we’re broke financially. We’re ruined. All you have to do is look at the Treasury market. You had something similar to this happen a few months ago in Great Britain with the gilts, the inability to find people to buy them. Well, no one wants to buy our bonds.
17:58 Our last bond sale went nowhere. Our Treasuries now have a yield of almost 5%. It broke the 5% mark. It will undoubtedly do so in the future. Our national debt doesn’t seem to be on anybody’s mind.
18:14 It’s almost 33 trillion. We’re spending almost a trillion a year now to service this enormous sovereign debt and we have weak, undermanned armed forces. What a terrible picture. That’s where we stand. And all of a sudden we’ve got the entire region and plus potentially Russia standing against us in an armed conflict over the collective punishment plan that Israel is implementing against Hamas.
18:45 And bear in mind, I understand how the Israelis feel, but I’m an American and I don’t think we want this regional war. I don’t think we ever wanted to go to war in Ukraine against Russia. It has been a disaster for us and I think that at this point we need to take another road, but no one in Washington seems interested.
19:04 Brian Rose: Right? Because everyone is acting emotively as you said. Um, looking directly on the ground in the short term, I mean, Israel continues to step up their bombing. I think yesterday was the worst day when it comes to bombs. Uh, they’re carpet bombing the place and now potentially going to lead a ground assault.
19:25 I mean, urban warfare never turns out for well for anyone. And yet, they seem committed to do that. And even if they are successful, it’s only going to lead to more turmoil in the region. And so, two questions for you. If you were you advising the US, what would you tell Israel to do?
19:42 Would you try to just calm it all down, no invasion, and just dial all of the tensions down in that region? And then what happens when they do go in, Colonel? Is it going to be bloody? Is it going to be ugly? I mean, I’ve been reading about the tunnels.
19:56 I hear that the more they bomb, the more it’s actually set up to be in Hamas’s interest if they go in. What are some of the tactical issues of that ground war?
20:07 Douglas Macgregor: Well, the answer to your first question is that historically when we thought that the Israelis were going too far or had gone too far, presidents usually intervened and said, “Enough. Stop.” We had that experience 50 years ago in October of 1973 when Richard Nixon said, you know, you crossed the canal, that’s too much, pull back.
20:30 And the Israelis ultimately did, but it came close to a confrontation with the Soviet Union at that point. The interesting thing about that confrontation is that we actually went to a nuclear alert status. and when that information was brought to Brezhnev, he looked at it and he said, “Over Egypt?” He wasn’t prepared to go to war with us over Egypt. He couldn’t understand why we would even consider it.
20:57 So he handed a note back and he said, “Thank you.” It all diffused largely because the Israelis pulled back and halted their advance. We know how the rest of the story worked out. Egypt and Israel came together and forged what I think was a very good agreement that has worked to the advantage of both of those states. So, as president, my first effort would be to try and restore that, because the worst thing, in my judgment, that can happen is for Egypt to be marched involuntarily by its own population and the regional rage into war against Israel.
21:33 But no one is interested and no one is thinking about that. We think of ourselves as invincible, invulnerable. So, that’s a huge problem. Now, the tactical issue in ground warfare in a place like Gaza is enormous. You can train and train and train, but when you move into urban terrain, you are abandoning many of the advantages that you would have in open terrain in terms of range and accuracy and precision and knowledge and understanding of what you’re up against.
22:07 And bombing the daylights out of Gaza has done for Hamas. What the German air force did for the Soviets when they bombed Stalingrad. And of course, the Germans at the time, the army understood that and begged the German air force, “Don’t bomb it. It’s easier to take a city intact than it is to take the ruins.” Well, we know the rest of the story.
22:31 This is not going to be easy. You’ll see engineers and technicians who will use satellite arrays and every conceivable form of intelligence to track these people. But we’ve already found that even when we do that, we’re surprised. A small reconnaissance element of US and Israeli special ops went into Gaza searching for hostages, obviously, and they were shot to pieces. They had some wounded.
22:56 They may have had some dead. No one’s talking about it, obviously, but it happened. I think that’s the tip of the iceberg. And you’re talking about a mobilization system that is bringing a lot of people on active duty that just haven’t trained for a very long time. My Israeli Defense Force friends tell me that the readiness to fight that existed in 1973 was much higher, because those reservists had seen action in ’67.
23:22 They’d seen action in sort of a mini war in between ’67 and ’73. They were better trained. They were more capable. It’s not that these people are not good people, but you cannot suddenly squeeze a great deal of professional experience in a few weeks into untrained civilians. So, I think if the Israelis go in there, they will definitely take casualties.
23:48 Now, they’re willing to do that because they say it’s worth it if we can get rid of Hamas. [clears throat] I’m sure they’ll use some fuel-air explosive, which is what I would do. And that’s a vapor initially. When the bomb detonates, the vapor then spreads and sinks into various areas. And in the space of a second, or a fraction of a second, the vapor is ignited in a cloud of fire, and you suck out all the oxygen and you incinerate everything under the fuel-air explosive.
24:17 We used that in Vietnam. Of course, we lost in Vietnam. You could do that obviously to some extent, but again, if you’re promising people that you’re going to exercise some sort of care with regard to who you shoot and who you don’t shoot, well, that’s out of the window. But it’s out of the window anyway because every soldier, British, American, Israeli, when you go into this environment, the first thing that you say is, “I want to kill the enemy, but I want to survive it.”
24:47 Which means when in doubt, pull the trigger. So if there’s anybody left there, and we think there are 500,000 civilians, they’re dead. [sighs]
24:59 Brian Rose: I mean, you said Hamas is an idea even more so than a militia. And then Gaza itself is a Palestinian place. It’s a terrible economy. And so Palestine itself is breeding these young people that are going to grow up and adopt this idea. I mean, it’s just seems like this terrible unbreakable cycle.
25:24 I don’t understand how you ever get past this issue.
25:28 Douglas Macgregor: Well, there are faults on both sides. I mean, the Israelis are blamed and are accused of maintaining, you know, the world’s largest open-air concentration camp. There’s some truth to that. But they also, you know, people neglect to see what the Arabs have done to themselves, their resistance to modernization, their unwillingness to cooperate under any circumstances because they are wedded to this Palestinian idea of a separate state. The Israelis are unwilling to even consider that.
25:57 And one of the things that I think Mr. Netanyahu wants to do with his campaign is drive a stake through the heart of the two-state solution. And the Palestinians are not fools. They know that ideally the Israelis would like to control everything between the Jordan River and the ocean because in the Israeli mind that’s considered truly Israel. Well, I’m sure that 2,500 years ago that was the case. I don’t necessarily think that’s the case now.
26:27 And this puts again Americans in a very difficult position. Are we prepared to underwrite that kind of campaign? I mean, we attacked in Bosnia Herzegovina on the grounds that there was ethnic cleansing by the Serbs. We re-engaged in Kosovo on the same basis, the same argument, which, by the way, was fallacious in Kosovo, but nevertheless we did. Are we now going to cast all that aside and back the unconditional eradication of the population in Gaza?
26:57 Because from the narrow standpoint, that’s a pretty accurate picture of what’s going on. So again, unless a president showed up and said, “Enough. That’s it. You can’t. Your timing is terrible.
27:10 We are in no position to support this, even if we wanted to. This is the worst thing that could happen to us. You’re going to have to back off.” No one will do that. The government is quite frankly unresponsive to that kind of thinking right now.
27:27 Brian Rose: Is Biden partially doing this because it’s the best way to get reelected now that Ukraine is looking worse and worse? Is this a way to be supporting a volatile situation in a wartime environment that potentially brings votes? I hate to say that, but is that possible? And also, how do you think Trump would handle this? He’s been very pro-Israel in the past.
27:46 Douglas Macgregor: I’m not quite sure what he would be doing here.
27:49 Well, here’s a news flash for everybody in Europe and Great Britain that listens to you. Americans don’t care about Ukraine. Most Americans never cared about Iraq. We certainly didn’t care about Afghanistan. So then why were we there?
28:05 Well, we were in these places doing the things that we did because a small minority of people that govern in Washington decided to do it. And Americans sadly paid no attention. I mean, they haven’t paid attention to the profligate spending. Americans have just said, “Well, do I get my food stamps? Do I get my social security check?
28:28 Do I get my free Medicare? Well, I don’t care what they do overseas.” This is coming back to haunt us. I mean, we spent $14 trillion plus over the last 21 years in the Middle East to no avail. Now, we’re prepared to spend a heck of a lot more potentially if this blows up into the regional war that I fear.
28:49 [clears throat] But there’s something else now with Israel. Americans largely, with almost no exception, I include myself in that category. We have a positive view of Israel. I certainly do. I would like Israel to survive.
29:03 I don’t want it to be annihilated. I also don’t want to be party to mass murder or mass expulsions either. So, we’re in a difficult position. But here’s the rest of the story. If this becomes a regional war, are Americans going to go along with this?
29:22 You know, if you listen to Biden, he imagines that he’s FDR. He imagines that he’s talking to an American population still reeling in shock from Pearl Harbor. Listen to all of the metaphors that he uses and the things to which he alludes, World War II things. You know, he talks about the arsenal of democracy. That doesn’t resonate.
29:44 People don’t see it that way, especially if you get into a regional war. What they’re going to say is, “How did this happen? Are you out of your mind?” So, I think to some extent, people in his government and in Israel decided, “We might as well give it our best shot and leverage everything that America has because it may be our last best opportunity.” I think they’re wrong.
30:07 I think this will have the opposite impact. In fact, my greatest concern at this stage is that Israel will be destroyed
30:16 By Iran and all these powers coming together when they push it too far.
30:20 Brian Rose: Right.
30:20 Everyone, everyone and we’re 12 months until the election. Is it in Biden’s interest to have this activity there? Probably.
30:30 Douglas Macgregor: Uh, I don’t think so.
30:30 Brian Rose: Really?
30:31 Douglas Macgregor: You know, really don’t. I mean, if you want, you know, Americans historically don’t like wartime presidents. When FDR died, he was under tremendous pressure. I mean, Americans wanted an end to the war in Europe especially. Remember, a third of the American population descended from Germans.
30:48 Americans even after World War I. I know my family was in it. They all came back with very positive impressions of Germans. People did not want to fight in Europe. People had no objections to fighting in the Pacific because of Pearl Harbor.
31:03 You had this desire for vengeance. In January of 1945, Eisenhower described 40 or 50 women who were wives of members of the armed forces of the army in particular being sent to see him by FDR. He said FDR wrote him a note. He said, “You’ve got to end this war. Talk to these people.
31:23 You’ll understand why these people were [clears throat] enraged. “Why aren’t my husbands home?” you know, and Eisenhower, you know, said it was the most shocking, it shook him up more than any other single event that he encountered while he was supreme commander because these people were violent. These were women. I want this to end. We’re not, contrary to popular belief, a warlike nation.
31:48 On the contrary, we’re very much like the British. We’re a commercial power.
31:52 Brian Rose: Yeah.
31:52 Douglas Macgregor: What we’ve done best in history is make money, build prosperity. In fact, you go back to Washington and Hamilton, these people who founded the country, they said America’s mission in the world is to be its economic engine of prosperity. If the world sees us as successful, they’ll want to emulate us. And they adamantly opposed exporting American Republican institutions or thinking at gunpoint. It was the last thing they wanted.
32:20 We were exporting prosperity. That’s what they wanted to do. We haven’t been doing that and we haven’t been building prosperity in our own home. And remember, our borders are open. Not just allowed into the country, but actively recruited by this government in Washington.
32:36 We don’t know who they are. We don’t know who any of these people are. We’re not vetting them. But we do know that Hezbollah and Hamas have very large operations in Mexico. We fully expect to have trouble here in the United States as this war develops.
32:51 And are we going to take necessary action? I think we probably will. But I wonder how many people will be hurt here before that happens. This government doesn’t seem to have any coherent strategic picture of what’s happening. It’s all wishful thinking.
33:08 It’s imaginary thinking. We’re the arsenal of democracy. We’re the greatest power in the world. No one can stand against us. It’s all nonsense.
33:17 Brian Rose: You know, for me, I can’t believe that potentially Hamas and Hezbollah are inside the borders of America. Like, you told me that 5 years ago, that would have been a movie out of Hollywood. And I still watch some of the things happening on the borders. You know, I grew up in San Diego next to Tijuana. The only people coming across the border were Mexicans.
33:36 Now, it seems like there’s every nation under the sun that’s literally flying to Mexico just to get into the US. And the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah could be in there, it’s [snorts] inconceivable to me. And that they might be activated if the US continues to pursue this action in the Middle East. I mean, that is a possibility. Is that what you’re saying?
33:56 Douglas Macgregor: I think it’s a probability. Uh, and 5 years ago, they were inside the United States, but we tracked it. We contained it. We had it under surveillance. We’re now overwhelmed because the majority of people coming in now are young men.
34:13 They’re eligible for military service. Chinese, South Americans, Africans, Middle Easterners, people from Pakistan, Afghanistan, so forth. We don’t know much about them. We haven’t vetted them. And they arrive, they’re immediately handed a check for $2,350.
34:33 And then they’re given a free ticket to any destination they want to go to inside the United States. What?
34:39 Brian Rose: I can’t believe it.
34:40 Brian Rose: That’s insane.
34:41 Douglas Macgregor: They show up in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, elsewhere, and they are then thrown onto the streets to the generosity of the public, which really means taxes and money that might otherwise be used in the United States is now spent on the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people. We’re building literally settlements, small towns to house these people. And how are we going to employ them? There are very few people now.
35:08 If you, if you turn on the business channels, everybody’s saying we’re headed into a very deep recession or worse, we’re not on the up and up. We are not recovering. There will be no soft landing. I mean, even people that previously like to present happy talk are now talking in those terms. What do you do with all of these people that you can’t employ?
35:30 There are very few people coming over here with degrees in applied mathematics, engineering, and science, which is what we normally say we want. So, we’ve got a real problem inside our country. And how many of these people could do things to us that are foreign agents is anybody’s guess. But now, I think instead of dealing with hundreds, we’re dealing with thousands. And all you have to do is look at Europe.
35:54 Look at the demonstrations that you’ve got going on in London and across Europe. All in support of the Palestinians, violently anti-Israeli and frankly violently anti-Western. We have similar potential here in the United States. It’s beginning to manifest itself, but it could turn violent. All of these things are our fault.
36:14 The Israelis didn’t do this to us. We did it to ourselves. I understand that. But it has an impact. It impinges on decisions about what to do in the Middle East.
36:25 Brian Rose: You know, Trump and both Bobby Kennedy and Trump have said one phone call they could end the conflict between Ukraine and Russia because they would basically cut off the aid and probably encourage Ukraine to settle some territories. Do you think both of them could make a phone call or a plan that would diffuse this situation in Israel? Do you think Trump could say, “Look, I understand, but we’re not going to be doing some of these actions and we’re going to have to quietly do this.” or do you think this has gone too far to where that it won’t be that simple to diffuse this conflict?
36:55 Douglas Macgregor: Uh, the first thing that will happen, whether it happens because we’re bankrupt and can’t afford it or because we wise up, is we will suspend aid to Ukraine. Period. Only humanitarian aid will go in there. When we do that, then you can pick up the phone and you can call Moscow and say, “We’re out. We will not provide any more military equipment under any circumstances.
37:19 Uh, we are not supporting this government any longer. That’s all you need to do. And at that point, you, I imagine, Mr. Zelensky will fly to one of his villas in Italy or perhaps in Miami and vanish from the scene. I think most of his government will run. They’re hopelessly corrupt.
37:37 You’ve got officers commanding in the Ukrainian armed forces that still carry dead soldiers on their rolls so that they can collect the income from their dead soldiers’ pay. I mean, the criminality over there and the corruption is out of control. That will all fall apart very quickly. And then I would hope that uh Moscow will intervene and say, “All right, these are the new borders and these are the conditions.” Then it’s up to the Europeans, and I think you’re going to see changes in governments in Europe.
38:09 Uh, you’re going to see Europe move to the right. Uh, today Germany, Austria, Scandinavia is all moving right. I’m surprised that Macron is still there. I’m surprised Scholz has lasted this long. When those things happen, I think Europeans will then say, “That’s it.
38:27 We’re going to come to an agreement with the Russians.” Then you’ll get something that makes sense that ends the killing and the destruction. Whether or not anybody bothers to pay attention to us at that point is open to debate.
38:39 Brian Rose: And how would you def, how would Israel get diffused?
38:43 Douglas Macgregor: Again, the secretary of state and I would argue the president, the vice president, they need to have a meeting and agree that this cannot go on and he’s got to fly to Israel and tell Mr. Netanyahu, we are not going to underwrite and support unconditionally the destruction of Gaza. Won’t do it. We will withdraw our forces if you don’t stop. That will cause change. Now, the Israelis in many cases won’t like it.
39:09 Brian Rose: Although, to be fair, opinion in Israel is divided, right?
39:13 Douglas Macgregor: Anybody who thinks that everyone in Israel is universally behind this is wrong. But then the Israeli government will probably fall and you’ll get somebody other than Mr. Netanyahu and the coalition that he leads, then they’ll have to make a decision as to how they want to proceed. There are people out there who are willing to mediate. There are people out there who will cooperate with them under those circumstances inside the Muslim Arab world. Uh, you know, at some point someone in there, in Israel, has to say if we cannot kill everyone, we have to live with everyone.
39:48 Brian Rose: Yeah.
39:48 Douglas Macgregor: Whether we like it or not.
39:50 Brian Rose: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what needs to happen. I understand they’re angry.
39:57 I understand they’re emotive, but it’s actually not in their best interest even to go in and do what they’re going to do. Just like it’s not in Ukraine’s best interest to do what they’re doing. It’s just more people are going to die, more conflict. Uh, well, I hope we get some level heads in there to do that, but I guess we might have to wait till the next election. Just to finish on the election, and then I want to ask you about our country, our choice.
40:21 Brian Rose: Uh, election-wise, are we going to make it to the election? Are Trump and Biden going to be the ones? Do you have any thoughts on that before we just find out about the rest?
40:31 Douglas Macgregor: At first, I [clears throat] don’t think you can say today with certainty who will be the candidates of the parties in November of 2024. I have said before that I’ve always been concerned that we might not get to that election. And by that I mean that there will be turmoil in Washington. I would not be surprised given the direction of the economy, the failures overseas, the problems that have developed there for us and what’s happening on the border with immigration that you might see Biden resign, simply be ushered off the stage.
41:05 Kamala Harris is someone who’s unacceptable to the American people as president. She will resign. Now, normally in our succession scheme in the Constitution, the likely candidate to step in as president is the speaker of the House. And we haven’t been able to get one, largely because the right is divided because a substantial portion of the right is really indistinguishable from the left. They vote for the same bad policies, the same wasteful spending.
41:39 So you’re talking about perhaps a third of the body or less that is truly on the right. And even then there are disputes. But it would have to be someone who stepped into that job that replaced what I’m talking about right now. Now the Democrats, if there is no speaker of note, are certainly in a position to try to jury-rig the system, as we say, and bring in someone from the outside they think will be acceptable.
42:07 Brian Rose: How will that work?
42:08 Douglas Macgregor: I don’t know. But my suspicion is that we and Europe are going to go through a succession of governments, and you’re not going to get some new stable government that acts decisively to deal with all the issues. Everybody right now in the political arena is accustomed to punting. In other words, we’ll let this go and we’ll only do X, Y, and Z. I don’t want to offend anybody.
42:36 We don’t want to be too harsh. But the problems that we have are terrible. They’re significant. They require decisive action, decisive executive leadership. I don’t think we’ll get that right away.
42:49 Now, Mr. Trump wants to be president. He may yet end up being reelected. I don’t know. He’s not the only one. You mentioned RFK Jr.
42:59 Who I think is a very able man. Even though I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, any more than I agree with everything anybody says, but he’s right on foreign and defense policy, I think, on defense policy better right now than Mr. Trump, because Mr. Trump has no plan to deal with the defense behemoth and the spending problem. And I think that he’s more reassuring to many people in the United States as a balanced character. Trump enjoys a lot of love and affection.
43:29 I know the man. I liked him. I thought he was a solid person, and I saw him personally, and the personal Trump is not the same as the public Trump. Uh, but is he ruthless enough to get the job done? He was, believe it or not, far too nice when he was president.
43:46 He put up with too many people that were not loyal that he should have literally thrown out quickly. You know, when Eisenhower left as president and he didn’t particularly care for President Kennedy when he came in, but Kennedy asked him, “Do you have any last uh advice for me?” He said, “Yes.” Said, “Be a good butcher.” And Kennedy looked at him and said, “What do you mean?”
44:08 He said, “Anyone who doesn’t do what you tell them to do, you must get rid of them. If they’re disloyal, get rid of them. If you don’t do that, you will fail. And if you can’t do the firing because you’re too nice, find someone else to do it for you. It must be done.
44:28 Donald Trump didn’t do that. And that was, in my judgment, his greatest failing. So the next man that comes in, whoever it is or woman, has got to be that way. Tough, unyielding, demanding, and ruthless. The last person we had who had those capabilities along with high intelligence, in my judgment, was Richard Nixon.
44:49 He knew how to do that and he did that very well. Unfortunately, we know what happened to him for other kinds of reasons. So, I don’t know where we’re going at this point. I wish I could tell you something better. Maybe we should consult the psychics and astrologers.
45:03 They could tell us more.
45:05 Brian Rose: And is it really at all possible that an independent candidate wins the election? I mean, that’s… that’s hasn’t happened in a long, long time, right?
45:16 Douglas Macgregor: Well, you know, that’s how actually Lincoln was elected. He only won something like 24-26% of the vote. He won the electoral college.
45:25 It’s not impossible. And that’s why someone like RFK Jr. could end up being president.
45:32 But of course, you know, someone said recently, I don’t know if it was Elon Musk or someone else, said, “Anybody who wants to be president, you know, should be seeking psychiatric counseling.” Uh, why would anybody want to take over the mess? You know, it is just horrendous. And uh, you know, there are expectations everywhere that somebody’s going to step in and fix things. It doesn’t work that way.
45:57 Brian Rose: Yeah, I appreciate your insights there. Uh, Colonel, can you tell us a little bit more about Our Country, Our Choice? You’re the CEO, and uh, what is this organization all about?
46:06 Douglas Macgregor: Well, it’s, you can find it on the internet. It’s uh, our country, ourchoice.com. I would encourage uh your listeners to go and look at the website. That will tell you a great deal. I am not a founder.
46:19 I was asked to come in and do this job and I looked at it and I decided that yes, it needs to be done because the people that founded it and are building this organization, which is designed to support a nationwide movement, are determined to unite Americans across party lines. Now, people say, “Well, that’s impossible.” No, it isn’t. It’s not impossible at all. Uh, Americans share a lot of values and they agree on lots of things.
46:46 We just never hear about it. Americans want an end to these overseas interventions. Unquestionably, Americans want their borders defended. They want the illegals expelled and they want the rule of law restored. They want the criminality to end.
47:02 They don’t like the sexualization of their children. They’re appalled. They want that to stop. They want financial integrity. In other words, they want a system that works and they recognize that there will be pain involved with that.
47:17 And then finally, they want electoral integrity, which we don’t have right now. So those are things on which we can agree, and those are the cornerstones of the edifice that we’re trying to build. And we’re trying to say stop the Republican versus Democrat nonsense. If you look at the last 30 years, what’s the difference? You know, we walk in and we vote against these same things and nothing changes.
47:41 So, I think there’s real potential there for something positive to emerge in our country, and we’re getting a lot of inquiries from Europe and as far away as India who are saying we want similar chapters. People are tired of being divided, you know, tired of being encouraged to hate, and we have a big problem with that politically in our country. We want to pull together Americans, American citizens, people who are first and foremost Americans and believe in their country.
48:14 And that’s what it’s all about. We want to save this country. We’re tired of watching it deteriorate and fail.
48:20 Brian Rose: You know, Colonel, I ran to be mayor of London in 2021. Spent about 7 months campaigning as an independent because I was tired of watching the city that I love and live in being run into the ground.
48:32 And um, I got an education that it’s very hard to break a two-party system because it’s a bit like two corporations that are there to survive and grow and take as much money as possible and control things, and it becomes less about the city, less about the candidates. Uh, and it just becomes a kind of a power struggle that really doesn’t have anything to do with the good of the city or the citizens’ choice. So I kind of understand what you’re talking about here.
48:58 These things get so powerful that they actually trump everything around them, including the policies themselves and the actions themselves. Uh, do you think that this will lead to the abolishment of the two-party system?
49:11 Douglas Macgregor: No. But what I think you’re going to see is something similar to 1861. Uh, and what I’m talking about is we’re in a national crisis much as we were then. Americans feel that and it’s not going to get any better over the next several months. And the worse it gets, and I predicted it will get very bad, certainly on the economic side.
49:32 You know, people have to put food on the table. Everybody says, well, it’s inflation. It’s more than that. We’re watching the distribution systems which work brilliantly in this country deteriorate. We’re watching the delivery of services vanish.
49:45 We’re watching crime run out of control. We’re, we’re, we haven’t faced this kind of thing. It’s an existential crisis for us. Our war, the war we need to win, is the war for our future, which is here at home, not in the Middle East and not in Eastern Europe, and I think Americans are coming around to understanding that, believing that. So I do think there is a chance for this third way, if you will, to triumph.
50:12 I’m not saying it’s going to happen instantly or it’s going to be easy, but there’s a lot of discontent with the old structures, the old ways of doing business. And we Americans are different. We can suddenly turn on a dime in ways that most people in the world don’t understand. And somebody said, “Well, what are the Americans really like?” I said, “Well, we’re halfway between the Germans and the French.
50:37 We can suddenly become revolutionary like the French, but we’re also very wedded to the rule of law, like the Germans. You know, Lenin said, you know, the Germans are hopeless. How can you have a revolution with Germans? They all go to the train station, buy a ticket to get on the train, and ride to the revolution. He said, Russians knock over the railroad station, kill the engineer, take over the train, and ride to the revolution.
51:01 He said, “Germans are hopeless.” Well, we’re not quite hopeless, but we’re like that until it becomes clear there’s no alternative. So, I think we can see a blend of the best of both, French and Germans, and see real anger manifest itself in positive change. Anyway, that’s the hope. Not violent.
51:23 We don’t want a guillotine sitting in downtown Washington. That’s not the goal. But we can still have real fundamental change, and then enforce the law.
51:35 Brian Rose: I read some study that said recently, Colonel, that, you know, whether you were a Democrat or Republican, that most of the people that identified that also agreed with say 90% of the policies on that ticket. And I think the point of that study was just to show that statistically that’s so improbable. which means that once you kind of get branded red or blue, you end up taking on this identity where you end up arguing for the policies without ever having thought them through.
52:03 And so, say take a Democrat, they’re all of a sudden they’re for climate change and they’re for abortion and they’re for all these things. Yet they’ve never actually thought through those concepts, and because of social media, it gets reinforced. But if you really strip all that away, you could probably find that these people have real opinions. They have common ground with each other, and it seems in some ways this two-party system kind of gets people to stop thinking, and then identifies these two groups and then fight with each other when in fact that’s not really in anyone’s interest.
52:35 Brian Rose: I don’t know if that makes sense, but uh
52:37 Douglas Macgregor: Listen, I think you that’s a brilliant summation, and I think you’re absolutely right, but I think we can break through that. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have taken the job.
52:44 Brian Rose: Yeah. Well, I think it’d be amazing. I’m on the website right now. It’s our country, ourchoice.com. Uh, and I’ve, I’m all for this.
52:52 This is a fantastic idea, and I hope we adopt it here in Britain as well. Uh, Colonel, I appreciate your thoughts on this global situation. I spent a good 25 years living in America and I can agree with what you said. When you’re in America, at least when I was there in the ’80s and the ’90s, you know, it’s a place that’s very America-focused. People used to joke that most Americans don’t have passports is because we focus on our commerce.
53:16 We focus on everything that’s between our two coasts and over there is over there, and at the end of the day we don’t really care or can place on the map where Afghanistan is or Ukraine is or these other places. We want our system more to work. We believe in promoting the country and the commercialism, and so many people have really showed that, and with these terrible withdrawals out of Afghanistan and all these other questions, it would be great for America and the government to align back to what those citizens really want, and I hope we see that going forward.
53:50 Douglas Macgregor: So do I.
53:50 Brian Rose: Yeah. Colonel, thank you for coming on. I really wanted to get your take on this situation in the Middle East. Uh, and as always, you give us a great unfiltered look into what it looks like, some realities on the ground. Uh, I hope someone out there is listening.
54:04 I hope someone can have a conversation uh with the Ukrainians or at least do what they have to do there and with the Israelis to where these things stop happening, because if they continue, there’s going to be some problems and mistakes, and with nuclear armed countries, we only need one of those, and it’s a terrible conclusion. So, thank you, Colonel. Look forward to our uh next conversation.
54:28 Douglas Macgregor: Thank you.
54:28 Brian Rose: All right. All the best.
54:29 We appreciate you. Thank you for watching. We’ll see you next time on London Real. Take care. Bye.
