Davis And Macgregor: US Troops Killed In Jordan - NOW WHAT?

This video discussion between two former military officers—Danny Davis and Doug Macgregor—is a good follow-up to Larry Johnson’s video (the last post). Macgregor hammers away on the issues of why our foreign policy is such a mess and what we can do about that. I’ve done a partial (edited) transcript of the first 18 minutes of a 34 minute video, then I pick up a small part at the 25 minute mark or so. The transcript begins after Davis asks about the usual war mongering comments made by prize goof John Bolton. Of particular interest, Macgregor addresses a concern that I’ve had: What if Israel uses nuclear weapons? Macgregor doesn’t mince words:

Col Douglas Macgregor: US Troops Killed in Jordan - NOW WHAT?

A couple of things before we even touch on Bolton. First of all, the United States right now does not have any foreign policy. Our foreign policy is what Israel dictates so, we are essentially at this point in time an instrument of Israeli foreign policy. When Bolton was in the White House it equated to essentially putting Netanyahu on the National Security Council staff. Whatever Bolton said was what Mr Netanyahu wanted him to say. That's where we are and the ultimate goal now for many years--you and I remember this when we were on active duty--there was a a concerted effort, year after year after year, on the Hill, to essentially bring on a war with Iran. And you know the argument was, well, Iran is evil incarnate, it's responsible for everything. Well, that was never true and it's not true right now. What unites all of the Arabs in the region--and remember, the the Shiite militias that he's referring to are Arabs, the Houthis in Yemen are Arabs, the Hezbollah consists of Arabs--all of these Arab entities that are armed to the teeth are angry because what the Israelis are doing in Gaza, and we are seen as supporting it--and we are! We are essentially supporting a campaign of expulsion and murder in Gaza to drive the entire population out or kill it. That's where we are. Whether Americans like it or not, that's what we're doing and, frankly, most Americans as you know aren't paying much attention. The danger now is that we are finally going to cross this line.

On one side you always had effectively weak opponents--people with no armies, no air forces, very few air defenses, no navies. We're going to cross that line into regional war which involves real armed forces, real nation states like Iran. Now the notion that you can sink another country's naval combatants, that you can strike its forces and kill its people without compunction and without consequences, is of course insane. This man [Bolton] has never been balanced. He is an instrument of Israeli foreign policy. Remember, this is the man who is named a [Defender] of Israel, or something, and was given a million dollars for his efforts--so just turn him off, because you're just listening to Mr Netanyahu. The problem is that Mr Netanyahu controls everything. Capitol Hill is under Netanyahu’s control because of the Israel Lobby. We have no policy. Our policy is to do whatever they want us to do.

If we do these things that they want us to do we will be involved in a very large regional war that stands an excellent chance of destroying Israel. I'm somebody that thinks Israel deserves to exist. I've always told my Israeli friends, This is not going to work. What you're doing will produce nothing good good for Israel. And this government in Israel is absolutely committed to regional dominance by Israel, and we're supposed to underwrite and support this hegemony. The assumption is that if they can't dominate the region they have no security.

I think that's where where we're headed right now with the Israelis. They want absolute dominance. They will accept nothing less because they see that as equating to their security, and we are supposed to make this happen because they know they can't do it on their own. So the next step is to attack Hezbollah, try to make it look like Hezbollah brought it on--and we go from there. In the mean time the West Bank erupts, the Gaza war is not over, they may have killed tens of thousands of people and driven hundreds of thousands out. It's not over. ... nobody around Israel wants a war.

DD: No one thinks about, What's next? How does this help America?

DM: Well, what's next is the regional war that, right now, Mr Netanyahu and his government want. They want that because they're losing. They've made a mess of Gaza, their country is at high risk of destruction, so their answer to everything is escalate. If you escalate you inevitably pull in your vassal state--the United States--and the US Armed Forces will do your bidding. That's where we are. The Israelis are not difficult to figure out--I understand completely what they're doing, and why the larger problem is for the United States. What are we doing? Well, we have been bullying, sanctioning, and bombing everyone who doesn't agree with us for years--easily for 30 years. We bombed our way through uh the Balkans, we waged war in Somalia before we went to the Balkans. That didn't work. What we created in the Balkans is an unsustainable status quo. Then we moved on to the Middle East. We've created a disaster in Afghanistan, we created another one in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya. So what's the answer? The answer is always the same: escalate, bomb some more. This won't work. It hasn't worked. It's not going to work.

It is not neurosurgery to figure out, Stop what's happening in Gaza and most of this will stop right now.

You need to distinguish lies from truth. All you're getting from [Netanyahu's] side is one lie after the next. First of all, the whole campaign from the outset had remarkably little to do, I would argue, with the hostages taken on 7 October. As we've seen recently, much of what happened on the 7th of October ends up being debunked--in other words, these allegations of mass rape and mass murder and so forth. That that's part of the problem, but nobody pays attention to that.

Remember, journalists always write--for better or worse--the first draft of history. That first draft said all sorts of terrible things, therefore it stands--even though it may not be true. And what we're finding out is, a lot of it isn't right. [Netanyahu's] real purpose, and what the Israeli people want--and I know this for a fact and I understand why they feel this way--is the complete removal of all the Arabs ...

Who controls finance, who controls the media, who controls what we hear and what we don't hear? If you don't go on to alternative media, if people don't turn on these podcasts, all they're going to get is this sort of nonsense you heard from [General, retired] Kellogg. Now Kellogg of course is also advocating that we break our own laws--which I guess is par for the course. What that means is that you are assassinating the leaders and members of other people's governments. By the way, Suleimani was a member of the Iranian government when we assassinated him. We broke our laws. I don't care how much you like or dislike any of these people. Under our law we are prohibited from killing the leadership of other governments. What people here do not understand--the American people don't understand--is, what goes around comes around. We are not going to escape damage as a result of what we're doing, and especially if we go into a regional war. We will not sit here untouched. Enormous damage will come our way. I guess that's the only way to awaken the American people to the reality that we cannot act with impunity anymore.

[Iran's] current arsenal of missiles--and the Israelis have been saying these things for years, and they're correct, but they're ignoring them on the assumption that we are somehow or another going to magically remove all of this--they're theater ballistic missiles, they're tactical ballistic missiles. We have not been exposed to a fraction of that capability. They carry thousand and two thousand pound warheads. They have enough missiles to overwhelm the air and missile defenses that the Israelis have--and, for that matter, they can overwhelm ours, as we've already seen. These missiles can fall like rain on Israel's major cities. The Israelis say, Well, that's fine, then we'll use a nuclear weapon against them. I don't think Israel would survive the use of a nuclear weapon against anyone. I think all hell would be turned loose against Israel. [Israel has] already hurt itself badly in the international environment by its actions in Gaza. [Use of nukes] would finish Israel. So, if you want Israel to survive--I certainly do--then we ought to stop underwriting these disastrous policies. But we've got to have our own strategy. We have none. Our strategy is to do whatever Israel wants us to do that. That's not a strategy. That's the path to destruction for the United States and Israel.

18:00 out of 33:50

At about 25:00

We have to rebuild our country, restore the rule of law. You don't restore the rule of law by breaking it overseas and killing people that are heads of foreign governments. We hear so much about this “rule-based order”—the rule-based order must prevail! Whose rules? Who are we kidding? The rules-based order is a joke. It is worse than hypocritical—it's criminal, it's nonsensical. … There are no no one running right now will stand up and say that that is the problem.

Next, at about 30:00, responding to Davis’ question, What advice would you give?

The first thing you have to do is immediately tell Israel that either they stop their operations in Gaza or we will end our support for them. That's vital and essential. We need to put this to bed. That's the real catalyst for the regional war. The second thing is, we need to get those American soldiers and airmen, sailors, marines whatever who are sitting in Iraq and Syria, who are just targets at this point, that haven't even been up against the the real capabilities that are arrayed against them, and get them out of there before they're killed pointlessly. And idiots in the United States—and I hate to say idiot, but I can't come up with a better word right now—who think that bombing more will solve something—we got to get them out of there.