Doug Macgregor Speaking Truth To Power

A remarkable interview by Glenn Diesen, with Doug Macgregor. It’s always remarkable when a person in Macgregor’s position speaks the truth. Here are transcript highlights. They’re a bit rough. I’ve done the punctuation, but not caps:

Diesen frames the basic question:

has Israel and the United States overplayed their hand or have they walked into something they can't control? what do you see the strategy being—and the risks, of course?

Macgregor:

whenever a nation state involves itself in conflict they need to immediately shed the illusion of control. it's very difficult to to foresee all circumstances and that's why even the best strategist recognizes that goals and objectives have to adapt and change. I think the problem we have right now with both the government in Israel and the government in United States is there really is no strategy per se. the Israelis are reacting to the events of 7 October ...

three and a half weeks later we're now watching as over 8,500 people in Gaza have been killed, of which at least 3,500 are children

the question is first of all can [the eradication of Hamas] be done under the circumstances--is it realistic to do that? and then secondly, how is Israel's case helped when with each passing day whatever memory there is of the horrific acts of Hamas against Israeli citizens is gradually erased by new horrific acts in Gaza caused by Israeli fire?

there's the [Israeli] view that there are no such things as civilians ... if they don't want to be combatants then they should leave and go somewhere else. but we know that there are at least a half a million people located inside Northern Gaza, because that's where they live, and they really have nowhere else to go. and many have decided that they'd rather die at home in dignity than die in the desert somewhere. I don't think that particular set of circumstances really helps Israel's case at all.

the problem now is that in the United States for many many years--I would say decades--there has been a careful cultivation of not just support for Israel but the readiness to effectively do whatever the Israelis think is appropriate. in other words, unconditional support for Israel without much question. this is a combination, I think, of two things. one is certainly money that is poured into the pockets of politicians on the hill and into presidential campaigns by Israeli supporters who want to ensure that, whatever we do, we always support Israel. and, on the other hand, I think there's also the role that is played by Christian evangelists who are convinced that they have a holy obligation to fight for or support Israel. but the truth is we do have an obligation to think about the United States and its interests, and I don't think we're giving that much thought at this point.

[Discussion of how US military preparedness has been degraded, "exhausted," by our war on Russia, and the fact that the US military is simply not the same force it was in 1991. The DC Establishment doesn't seem to get that. Our military simply lacks depth.]

the Israelis are going to be supported by us almost entirely by Naval and air power and we don't have the thousands of aircraft Fighters that we once had we don't have hundreds of bombers our inventories of missiles are not endless ...

there has to be some thought about what the means and ends are and, by the way, if we're supporting the Israelis ... are they doing things that would inadvertently bring us into conflict with other nations that, frankly, we don't necessarily want to fight. where is our end in all of this?

today is different [from 1973 or 1991]. the forces that the Israelis face are far more sophisticated, more complex. the populations in the region have changed in so far as they are more educated, more capable. there is new technology, new ways of waging war, and new actors on the scene. it's not just Iran--which is, in its own right, a large Regional power--it's also turkey.

[The governments of Iran and Turkey issued a joint statement on Palestine today.]

the region strategically has evolved, and I don't think people are taking that into account.

Diesen: I got the impression that the Biden Administration was pulling a little bit back after the meeting with with Egypt, because it looked for a while that the US and Israel might be pushing for, well, pushing the entire Gaza population, well, cleansing it out of Gaza.

Macgregor:

the more hundreds each day of Palestinians who are killed or wounded the worse the situation becomes regionally. ... the entire Islamic World from Morocco to Indonesia can all watch in real time what's happening.

normally we Americans do not support ethnic cleansing. that's not something that we promote or accept. so the longer this goes on the tougher it is to to sell the idea of simply pushing these people out.

in Washington there is almost a non-stop drum beat for war with Iran. it's really quite disturbing. again there's no thinking--it's all emotion. Iran is, at least in theory, the source of all evil. therefore it must be attacked and destroyed. the Russians are not going to sit quietly in the corner and watch Iran be destroyed by the United States armed forces. that's just not going to happen. and today Iran is much more capable in terms of air defense weaponry and theater and tactical ballistic missiles, unmanned systems. you name it. so Iran is in a position to launch enough theater ballistic missiles that cities like Haifa and Tel Aviv could be reduced to ruins.

Hezbollah has 140,000 of its own rockets and missiles and could easily destroy the city of Haifa.

now the expectation is that between our air power and offshore cruise missiles and so forth we can support the Israelis against Hezbollah. well, if we do that then you're bringing in Iran and potentially turkey, because the Turks, as you know from Mr Erdogan's comments, regard this as a war crime--what Israel is doing in Gaza.

we see a lot of evidence for readiness on the Turkish part to intervene. they have a very large Navy. in fact they have the same submarines--diesel electric submarines that are built in Germany, very fine submarines some of the best in the world--that the Israelis have. ... so you've got these submarines also in the Mediterranean and that's a very lethal threat to any surface fleet. and we have our own submarines in the Mediterranean. I don't see how you get past some sort of confrontation at sea, and once you begin sinking one another's ships, once you begin shooting down one another's aircraft, it's only a matter of time until the armies move. and I can tell you something--the IDF ... cannot withstand the assault of the Turkish Army. ... the Turkish military is excellent.

[Discussion of Russian accommodation of Israel vis a vis Syrian and Iranian forces in Syria. What will Russia do now?]

[Russian accommodation of Israel] is not going to happen in the future, for the very simple reason that Israel cast its lot with Ukraine. and the Russians are not going to forgive or forget that. they remember that the Iranians stood with them and supplied them with equipment, supplied them with unmanned systems, supplied them with raw materials. and Israel did everything in its power to help Ukraine.

many Israelis who are astute observers of of the scene point this out. Hamas is not just a group of fighters ... it's an idea. killing an idea is much more difficult than killing people. you can kill people for a very long time, but killing off ideas doesn't work nearly as well. the way you defeat an idea is by offering a better alternative and, right now, from the standpoint of the Palestinian Arabs and from the standpoint of many of the people in the region, there is no better alternative to fighting and dying. ... that's a no-win situation for the Israelis.

[When will Zhou exert some leadership? This is a dangerous situation, and the US military isn't the solution. Discussion of nukes--including Pakistan and Turkey.]

where is the leadership from the United States? all I see is reaction emotion and the readiness to essentially do unconditionally whatever the Israelis ask us to do. and I don't think that's a good policy position to be in.

[22:00 of 49:19]

[Re Ukraine, our only option at this point is admitting we made a mistake and asking the Russians to meet with us. No sign of that.]

The rest of the interview revolves around the lost war in Ukraine and problems in Europe. Until about 37:00 when Diesen reverts to the question of whether there is any political solution in Palestine.

Macgregor:

Solzhenitsyn, before he died, stated publicly that the war between East and West was over—the war between North and South was only just beginning. I hope not, because I think that's another War we can avoid. but you're not going to avoid it by forcibly integrating Israelis with Muslim Arabs. that's not going to work, so that's off the table. but you've got to have a conference involving the United States and the other great powers where the United States listens to what the other great Powers have to say, and listens to the other states in the region. we have a bad habit of tuning out whatever we don't want to hear and listening exclusively to what the Israeli leadership says it wants and then doing it.

Since Macgregor has already described how the Israel Lobby and its money governs much of our Middle East policy, this view of his boils down to Israeli and its Lobby being willing to listen to the what others have to say. That would be a first. Even in our comments here, we see no willingness to listen or to learn. The alternative would be for the other Great Powers to give American politicians more money than the Israel Lobby does—a reversion to the American baseline of “the best government money can buy.” But that does seem like a very good solution, either, does it? It looks more like a classic End of Empire scenario—which may be what we’re seeing.

if we continue down this road I fear for Israel's existence, because I just don't think that there's enough military power available to deal with the inevitability of the kind of War we just described.

Then Macgregor shifts to some broad brush—and very interesting—commentary about the 40:00 point. He starts with China, and I will say that fwiw I’m in Macgregor’s camp here—not Mearsheimer’s:

in the background people people mention China. China has its own internal problems. it's got severe economic difficulties right at the moment. Chinese have no real martial history at all. [That’s a big overstatement.] they do not have a history of invading other people's countries. there's no appetite for it but what the Chinese do want is peace and stability because they're very dependent upon the oil and natural gas that comes out of the Middle East as well as much of the food that comes out of Africa. so their interest is in finding a solution and helping to subsidize that solution if it can be found.

at the moment no one is in the listening mode in Washington, and it's very clear that Mr Netanyahu is not going to listen to anything except more more ammunition, more support to kill more of his enemies. so until Mr Netanyahu vanishes from the scene and the Israelis change their direction I don't see any change, period, because we have a government that seems to be feckless.

our government is just, ‘there, you want more we send you more, we want you to kill Russians, we hate Russians.’ which makes no sense. now we're saying, ‘we'll give you whatever you want because we hate your enemies, too. your enemies are ours.’

that's not really true we've had very good relations with many many countries in the Middle East for a long time. I certainly don't want to go to war with the Turks or the Iranians and I think we could have good relations with those countries, as we've had them in the past, but there are people in Washington that are dead set against it.

Again, it’s about the Benjamins—until Americans wake up and make themselves heard to DC.