Macgregor On The Looming Crisis

We have an appointment tomorrow morning which will break up the usual day, so I spent this evening doing a partial transcript.

Doug Macgregor was in fine form talking to Judge Nap today. His focus was on the likelihood of new conflicts in the post-Syria Middle East. However, the session begins with the situation in South Korea. Incredible that we’re hearing essentially nothing at all about it.

COL Douglas Macgregor : SYRIA - a looming crisis awaits

Is it your understanding that American intelligence was involved and helped to exploit the presidential declaration of martial martial law in South Korea recently, as a result of which the defense minister, former defense minister has been arrested and attempted suicide in prison, and the president has been restrained from leaving the country?

Well, that's the unconfirmed rumor that's very widespread inside Korea. We've had a presence in that country now for 70 years and we certainly have a very large and effective intelligence network on the peninsula, so what happened could not have been a secret in Washington. There's no doubt that our government was aware of what was going on and it seems reasonable to assume, as they have in the past, that the CIA would work to support the people in power. And the people in power are those that have historically supported whatever the United States wants in terms of foreign and defense policy.

And the opposition party does not support what American defense and intelligence want, correct?

Oh, absolutely. These are the so-called liberal nationalists. We usually try to tar them as socialists or leftists and that's not really accurate. They are simply people who want a liberal society, but they're nationalists and, since the mid to late 1990s, they have been trying to persuade us to give them control of their troops on the Korean Peninsula. That would involve replacing the US Army four star on the peninsula, who commands all forces--this is a legacy of the United Nations presence in Korea during the Korean War. This Army four star commands everything on the peninsula, and the Koreans in the liberal nationalist party have wanted to change that. Their argument is, how do we pretend to be a truly sovereign state with its own independent National policy as long as we are subservient to the United States military and are therefore viewed in Asia as a military colony of the United States? So they want that Korean four star to replace the US Army four star. We have dug in our heels and tried to, as politely as possible, obstruct that change.

I forget why Judge Nap played this next videoclip. It’s Assad describing American governance so that even Americans can understand it:

Assad: For me, dealing with [Trump] as a person, it could be, but can that person deliver? No, and the United States president cannot deliver the whole state? The Deep State only is the one who can deliver, and this is the problem. This Deep State doesn't accept partners around the world--they don't. They only accept puppets, they only accept followers, they only accept proxies. That's what they accept. We're not any of these.

Dude never got the memo? Or he got it and tore it up? Back to Mac:

We're watching something that we have not seen yet in the 21st century. We've seen it in the 20th century and earlier in European history, which is a formal partition of a third country by at least two other partners, maybe more, and that's Syria. This has an uncanny resemblance to the partitions of Poland in 1795 and the partitions of Poland later on again in 1939. Between 1795 and 1939 in both cases the Polish state vanished and only came back later as a consequence of new powers emerging and demands made by the new winners of the Second World War. What we see in Syria is something similar, and we already know that the Israelis have forces on the outskirts of Damascus. We also know from the map that President Netanyahu held up in front of the UN when he spoke to it, showed effectively his greater Israel plan, and the greater Israel document includes the lower half of Syria, much of Jordan, and reaches all the way over into Egypt as well as most of Lebanon. This is very real.

Mr Erdogan has made no secret of his Ottoman aspirations or ambitions. He's got maps floating around on Turkish television that show Greece and Bulgaria as part of Turkey along with most of the Caucasus, parts of Northern Iran, and most of Syria and most of Northern Iraq. So these are two states with two leaders right now, Netanyahu and Erdogan, who are determined to realize their dreams. And we have simply said, 'Go for it!' The problem with all of this is you've unleashed a tiger, at least two tigers, and you don't know where this is all going to end up. That's why people in Egypt are now very uneasy about the potential for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to become another disciple of Erdogan in this great game. And we don't know what could possibly happen in Jordan, how long we will tolerate that State under anybody other than Israeli direction. And now if you move to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates they are genuinely fearful, and they're not going to want to bet very heavily on any guarantees that we give them. It's a very strange situation. It's something nobody expected to see. We have always listened to people with aspirations and shown us maps with new territory, but now these aspirations are realities, and the realities are dangerous for the entire region and--potentially, depending upon how the rest of the world acts--to the world.

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There's not much in southern Syria, frankly. It's mostly open desert once you get off the Golan. There's really nothing much until you get to Damascus, and it's very obvious that Mr Netanyahu wants to claim Damascus. Now, once that's done and this line is drawn they will gradually realize, I think, in Israel--if they haven't already--that they have moved Turkish power, influence, military capability, subterfuge--you name it--much much closer to Israel than it has ever been before, and the Turks are formidable. In other words, whatever we're seeing now that looks like a honeymoon between these two groups that both want hegemony, it's not likely to last.

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The Israelis demonized Iran and saw to it that Iran was the Ultimate Evil that had to be crushed. We have adopted that position. Let's assume that you're successful and eventually this results in the destruction of Iran. That we and the Israelis, along with help from the Turks, because the Turks, of course, are also in Azerbajan--Azerbajan and Turkey regard themselves as two states in one nation. Azerbaijan borders Iran and has provided the Israelis with platforms with support, with airfields from which they can strike Iran, and of course the Israelis have conferred enormous advantages militarily with drones and other equipment on the Turks in Azerbajan who were trying to drive out what remains of Armenia from the Caucasus. I think we're going to see that play out, too, in the near future. That'll be a second front for Iran, and God knows what will happen to the Armenians in the Caucasus, but the point is that we're so focused on the destruction of Iran as the principal problem--that's something I've never signed up for and don't agree with it. Doesn't matter what I think or you think. We see that very myopically to the point where we don't look at the peripheral consequences, the collateral damage.

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Erdogan was willing to work closely with Israel because Erdogan has his own agenda and, again, this is the problem. You empower an alliance like this--the Israeli - Turkish de facto alliance for hegemony in the region, right--and you end up with problems, with serious problems over which you have no control anymore. I remember a line from JFK's inaugural address: 'Foolish people have tried to gain power by riding the back of a tiger and have ended up inside.' We'll see what happens.