Middle East Conflict
Israel expand operations in Gaza
Edited to include only Colonel Macgregor's interview:
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Monday, October 30, 2023
Stephen Gardner 10/30/2023
Col. Macgregor Shares BOMBSHELL Intel on UKRAINE and ISRAEL!
Backup Video:
Friday, October 27, 2023
Steak For Breakfast 10/27/2023 Audio Only
Episode 286 of Steak for Breakfast
We inch closer to WW3 in a conversation with Colonel Macgregor.
Colonel Macgregor's interview begins at the 1 hour and 39 minute mark.
Backup Audio: Edited to include only Colonel Macgregor's interview.
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom 10/25/2023
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: How ill-equipped is the U.S. for two years?
Video Backup:
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Redacted with Clayton Morris 10/23/2023
Israel tells Hezbollah that Iran would cease to exist if they attack the IDF in Gaza. Col. Douglas Macgregor joins redacted and warns we are watching Armageddon unfolding before our eyes.
Video Backup:
Tucker Carlson 10/23/2023
Ep. 33 Looks like we’re actually going to war with Iran. Are we ready for this?
Video Backup
Friday, October 20, 2023
Daniel Davis - Deep Dive 10/20/2023
with Colonel Macgregor
Israel's Survival - The Strategies of 2 Camps
Thursday, October 19, 2023
Wednesday, October 18, 2023
Avoiding Armageddon - The American Conservative 10/17/2023
The U.S. must consider encouraging a ceasefire before stumbling into another complicated large-scale conflict.
https://www.
Limited war is a form of warfare constrained by the exercise of deliberate restraint in the application of force and the pursuit of political-military goals that exclude annihilation. In Ukraine, all sides shared an interest in avoiding the use of nuclear weapons, and contrary to the Western narrative, Moscow’s goals were arguably confined to the destruction of hostile Ukrainian forces (“denazification”) and the establishment of a neutral Ukrainian state.
In the Middle East, the situation is very different. When Hamas fighters attacked Israel’s heavily fortified border at daybreak on October 7, the first wave of roughly 1,000 fighters advanced behind a curtain of rocket fire using motorcycles, pickup trucks, paragliders, and speed boats, Israeli forces were surprised. Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official, said in an interview on October 8, “We made them think that Hamas was busy with governing Gaza, and that it wanted to focus on the 2.5 million Palestinians [in Gaza] and has abandoned the resistance altogether.”
In the days that followed, 3,000 fighters, including an unknown number from the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), penetrated Israeli territory, killing at least 1,300 Israelis and wounding approximately 3,500. Subsequent cross-border raids into Gaza revealed that some of the Israelis who were kidnapped were executed after entering Gaza.
The speed, coordination, and effectiveness of the Hamas operation was unexpected, but the horrific damage the Hamas fighters inflicted on Israel’s population was not surprising. Hamas exists for one purpose: to terrorize and kill Jews with the goal of destroying the State of Israel.
In response, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war and mobilized 360,000 reservists to form an army of between 470,000 and 500,000. Netanyahu is obviously determined to impart a lasting object lesson, one that will crush Hamas in Gaza and probably eliminate any more talk inside the Palestinian population of a “two-state solution.” Having already pulverized Gaza from the air, the stage is now set for a battle of annihilation. The question is: whose annihilation?
Israeli rage is justified and widely shared by Americans. Like the Israelis, Americans are inclined to see terrorism through the lens of 19th-century piracy: “no quarter given, none expected.” In this total war setting, the Geneva Convention cannot apply to Hamas’s terrorist forces. But how long can the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) wage total war, depriving Gaza’s Arab population of food and water, without creating an enormous humanitarian disaster that will play for years in the news?
Can Hamas and its leadership be destroyed without killing large numbers of civilians who may hate the Israelis but have nothing to do with Hamas? Does it not serve Hamas’s purpose for the IDF to become bogged down in an open-ended, full-scale ground invasion of Gaza because the urban conflict will unavoidably entail loss of innocent life? Does it not seem ominous that Hamas is urging the population of Northern Gaza to remain in the ruins of the city?
Americans stand behind Israel, but many are unconvinced that killing more Arabs in Gaza will solve Israel’s security problem. Americans also have doubts about the Israeli government’s ultranationalist officials, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. These men are widely seen as emboldening Jewish extremists.
These questions and concerns may explain why Israel is rushing to carry the war into Gaza. If Russian forces arrive to help Egypt and Turkey establish a humanitarian corridor, there will be Russian and Turkish troops in Gaza to defend the distribution of humanitarian aid. Outpacing the arrival of Russians, Turks, and Egyptians makes sense.
These points notwithstanding, the Middle East today is very different from the Middle East in 1973. Technologies have altered the conduct of warfare, but more importantly, the societies and states of the Islamic world have also changed. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, and Turkey are different in character from what they were in the 1970s. None of the states bordering Israel will tolerate population shifts that introduce large numbers of Palestinian Arabs into their societies. Europeans want them even less.
Iran’s national leaders have already called on Islamic and Arab countries to form a united front against Israel, but Iran’s influence in these matters is more limited than most Americans realize. Iranian military power is largely restricted to Iran’s use of proxy militias like Hezbollah and their cooperation with the Pasdaran, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran is simply incapable of adding high-end conventional military forces to such a front. Tehran’s government also knows that the use of Iran’s formidable theater ballistic missile force against Israel risks almost certain Israeli nuclear retaliation.
The governments of Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Lebanon are very probably opposed to a general war against Israel, but their enraged populations could easily trap them into doing so. Scenes of celebration across the Middle East showing people waving Palestinian and Hamas flags, dancing, and singing in the streets are being shared on social media.
Turkey’s President Erdogan has offered to mediate between Hamas and Israel, but Erdoğan himself has warned that the war won’t just stop “in a week or two.” However, Turkey, a nation of more than 80 million, is the one actor in the region with the societal cohesion, martial culture, and military power to lead the Sunni Arab states in a confrontation with Israel.
In a regional war, Turkey can field large armies and air forces equipped with modern weapons, manned by disciplined and determined fighters. The advent of a regional Sunni Muslim alliance guided by Ankara and financed by Qatar resurrects the specter of advanced conventional warfare for the IDF, a form of warfare known to only a few of today’s IDF leaders.
Sadly, the region has not advanced much beyond the conditions described by Ramsay MacDonald, Britain’s Prime Minister in 1924 and again from 1929 to 1931:
We encouraged an Arab revolt against Turkey by promising to create an Arab Kingdom from the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire including Palestine. At the same time, we were encouraging the Jews to help us, by promising them that Palestine would be placed at their disposal for settlement and government, and, also at the same time, we were secretly making with France the Sykes-Picot agreement partitioning the territory which we had instructed our Governor-General of Egypt to promise to the Arabs. The story is one of crude duplicity, and we cannot expect to escape the reprobation which is its proper sequel.
Both the Jews and the Muslims continue to live inside civilizational conflicts that have defined Jerusalem since World War I.
With American offshore naval power, Washington is certainly poised to stumble into the conflict if it widens, but the use of American naval power will not end it. Although it is distasteful to the ruling political class in Washington, the Biden administration should consider taking the lead in supporting a ceasefire, even if it means cooperating with the Turks, Egyptians, and Russians to secure the arrival of humanitarian aid.
https://www.
Limited war is a form of warfare constrained by the exercise of deliberate restraint in the application of force and the pursuit of political-military goals that exclude annihilation. In Ukraine, all sides shared an interest in avoiding the use of nuclear weapons, and contrary to the Western narrative, Moscow’s goals were arguably confined to the destruction of hostile Ukrainian forces (“denazification”) and the establishment of a neutral Ukrainian state.
In the Middle East, the situation is very different. When Hamas fighters attacked Israel’s heavily fortified border at daybreak on October 7, the first wave of roughly 1,000 fighters advanced behind a curtain of rocket fire using motorcycles, pickup trucks, paragliders, and speed boats, Israeli forces were surprised. Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official, said in an interview on October 8, “We made them think that Hamas was busy with governing Gaza, and that it wanted to focus on the 2.5 million Palestinians [in Gaza] and has abandoned the resistance altogether.”
In the days that followed, 3,000 fighters, including an unknown number from the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), penetrated Israeli territory, killing at least 1,300 Israelis and wounding approximately 3,500. Subsequent cross-border raids into Gaza revealed that some of the Israelis who were kidnapped were executed after entering Gaza.
The speed, coordination, and effectiveness of the Hamas operation was unexpected, but the horrific damage the Hamas fighters inflicted on Israel’s population was not surprising. Hamas exists for one purpose: to terrorize and kill Jews with the goal of destroying the State of Israel.
In response, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war and mobilized 360,000 reservists to form an army of between 470,000 and 500,000. Netanyahu is obviously determined to impart a lasting object lesson, one that will crush Hamas in Gaza and probably eliminate any more talk inside the Palestinian population of a “two-state solution.” Having already pulverized Gaza from the air, the stage is now set for a battle of annihilation. The question is: whose annihilation?
Israeli rage is justified and widely shared by Americans. Like the Israelis, Americans are inclined to see terrorism through the lens of 19th-century piracy: “no quarter given, none expected.” In this total war setting, the Geneva Convention cannot apply to Hamas’s terrorist forces. But how long can the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) wage total war, depriving Gaza’s Arab population of food and water, without creating an enormous humanitarian disaster that will play for years in the news?
Can Hamas and its leadership be destroyed without killing large numbers of civilians who may hate the Israelis but have nothing to do with Hamas? Does it not serve Hamas’s purpose for the IDF to become bogged down in an open-ended, full-scale ground invasion of Gaza because the urban conflict will unavoidably entail loss of innocent life? Does it not seem ominous that Hamas is urging the population of Northern Gaza to remain in the ruins of the city?
Americans stand behind Israel, but many are unconvinced that killing more Arabs in Gaza will solve Israel’s security problem. Americans also have doubts about the Israeli government’s ultranationalist officials, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. These men are widely seen as emboldening Jewish extremists.
These questions and concerns may explain why Israel is rushing to carry the war into Gaza. If Russian forces arrive to help Egypt and Turkey establish a humanitarian corridor, there will be Russian and Turkish troops in Gaza to defend the distribution of humanitarian aid. Outpacing the arrival of Russians, Turks, and Egyptians makes sense.
These points notwithstanding, the Middle East today is very different from the Middle East in 1973. Technologies have altered the conduct of warfare, but more importantly, the societies and states of the Islamic world have also changed. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, and Turkey are different in character from what they were in the 1970s. None of the states bordering Israel will tolerate population shifts that introduce large numbers of Palestinian Arabs into their societies. Europeans want them even less.
Iran’s national leaders have already called on Islamic and Arab countries to form a united front against Israel, but Iran’s influence in these matters is more limited than most Americans realize. Iranian military power is largely restricted to Iran’s use of proxy militias like Hezbollah and their cooperation with the Pasdaran, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran is simply incapable of adding high-end conventional military forces to such a front. Tehran’s government also knows that the use of Iran’s formidable theater ballistic missile force against Israel risks almost certain Israeli nuclear retaliation.
The governments of Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Lebanon are very probably opposed to a general war against Israel, but their enraged populations could easily trap them into doing so. Scenes of celebration across the Middle East showing people waving Palestinian and Hamas flags, dancing, and singing in the streets are being shared on social media.
Turkey’s President Erdogan has offered to mediate between Hamas and Israel, but Erdoğan himself has warned that the war won’t just stop “in a week or two.” However, Turkey, a nation of more than 80 million, is the one actor in the region with the societal cohesion, martial culture, and military power to lead the Sunni Arab states in a confrontation with Israel.
In a regional war, Turkey can field large armies and air forces equipped with modern weapons, manned by disciplined and determined fighters. The advent of a regional Sunni Muslim alliance guided by Ankara and financed by Qatar resurrects the specter of advanced conventional warfare for the IDF, a form of warfare known to only a few of today’s IDF leaders.
Sadly, the region has not advanced much beyond the conditions described by Ramsay MacDonald, Britain’s Prime Minister in 1924 and again from 1929 to 1931:
We encouraged an Arab revolt against Turkey by promising to create an Arab Kingdom from the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire including Palestine. At the same time, we were encouraging the Jews to help us, by promising them that Palestine would be placed at their disposal for settlement and government, and, also at the same time, we were secretly making with France the Sykes-Picot agreement partitioning the territory which we had instructed our Governor-General of Egypt to promise to the Arabs. The story is one of crude duplicity, and we cannot expect to escape the reprobation which is its proper sequel.
Both the Jews and the Muslims continue to live inside civilizational conflicts that have defined Jerusalem since World War I.
With American offshore naval power, Washington is certainly poised to stumble into the conflict if it widens, but the use of American naval power will not end it. Although it is distasteful to the ruling political class in Washington, the Biden administration should consider taking the lead in supporting a ceasefire, even if it means cooperating with the Turks, Egyptians, and Russians to secure the arrival of humanitarian aid.
In Ukraine, Washington underestimated Russian resolve and military power. Washington should not repeat this mistake by underestimating the potential for a regional Muslim alliance that could threaten Israel’s existence. The possibility that Israel could end up like Ukraine should not be discounted.
Thursday, October 12, 2023
Daniel Davis - Deep Dive 10/12/2023
Col. Doug Macgregor: the truth behind building Ukraine combat pwr & IDF's prospects in Gaza
Monday, October 9, 2023
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom 10/9/2023
Can the US Support Two Wars? w/Col Doug Macgregor
Backup videos:
Thursday, October 5, 2023
Stephen Gardner 10/04/2023
Ukraine in Crisis: Col. Macgregor Shares Ukraine's Fate Under Putin's Military Assault
Wednesday, October 4, 2023
The American Conservative 10/4/2023
Washington on the Knife Edge
Will faltering support for the Ukrainian cause at home and failures on the battlefield make the uniparty warmongers reconsider?
Douglas Macgregor
Oct 4, 2023
12:05 AM
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has gone from hero to zero in the space of a few months. The mélange of Western military equipment, from tanks to missiles, in the hands of courageous but unprepared and poorly led Ukrainian conscripts has failed to improve Ukrainian battlefield performance. The resulting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians killed and wounded are reportedly inducing thousands of exhausted Ukrainian soldiers to surrender. Ukrainian soldiers are tired of dying, and their feelings are justified.
Russian military power rests on the systematic integration of strike assets—rockets, missiles, artillery, drones, and aircraft—with space- and terrestrial-based persistent surveillance. Once Russian forces halted their advance and established a defense in depth in eastern Ukraine, the Russians’ accurate, devastating firepower began swatting the attacking Ukrainian ground and air forces like flies. In the words of a Ukrainian military official, “The sheer number of drones operating in Ukraine, as well as battle-management systems that provide real-time imaging and locations, mean that troops and tanks out in the open have just minutes before they're targeted.”
Without any serious evaluation of Russia’s true military potential, particularly when committed to action on Moscow’s doorstep in Eastern Europe, Washington’s globalist-neocon leadership assured Zelensky that he and his government would have the financial and military backing of the United States and its NATO allies “for as long as it takes.” Like the Poles in 1939 who thought their flight to London had purchased protection from Germany and the Soviet Union, the Ukrainians swallowed the lies. Yet, geography has made it impossible for Washington to assert its dominance in Eastern Europe.
Thanks to the compliant and supportive Western media, Zelensky and his political backers in NATO promised mountains, but delivered molehills. Claims of Ukrainian battlefield successes from the popular “Ghost of Kiev” to the recovery of Bakhmut turned out to be flatulence on steroids. When NATO members met in Vilnius in July 2023, the mood had changed. Ukraine’s fate, let alone its membership in NATO, would be determined by the outcome of the Ukrainian Army’s celebrated counteroffensive.
As Ukrainian losses mounted and Ukraine’s counteroffensive failed catastrophically, things went seriously wrong for Washington, D.C. American political and military leaders callously criticized Zelensky and his senior military leaders for deeply flawed strategic decisions leading to heavy losses of men and equipment. The hunt for an exit strategy from Ukraine without openly calling it such was underway.
The behind-the-scenes split between the national leaders in the U.S. and Europe who embraced the myth of Russian backwardness and those who privately questioned the wisdom of backing one of the most corrupt regimes on the planet against a nuclear-armed Russia began breaking into the open. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s wise and canny prime minister, always rejected Washington’s assurances that Russia’s weakness meant certain defeat for Moscow. Now, more European leaders are adopting his policy stances. Why?
Orban argues that the conflict between Kiev and Moscow “is not our war.” His insistence that Europeans should strive to “isolate it, separate it, prevent it from spreading further” now resonates with Europeans as it becomes painfully clear to more and more Europeans that Putin was not and is not interested in making Ukraine a part of Russia. Moscow’s strategic goal was and still is to prevent Ukraine from becoming a platform for the projection of American and Allied NATO military power against Russia, not to conquer Eastern Europe.
For many of the American and European critics of the dangerous fiasco in Ukraine, it is the breakdown in civil order across the United States and Europe, not Russia, that presents a clear and present danger to Western civilization, not Russia. As seen recently in Philadelphia, the lawlessness in America’s major cities is reaching a new boiling point. Americans want the U.S. judicial system to protect Americans and punish criminals, not mollify them.
In Sweden, the breakdown in law and order is now so acute Sweden’s prime minister has called for the use of Swedish troops to restore order. Europeans and Americans know that the millions pushing through their borders are not asylum seekers or political refugees. The masses are being invited to dilute American and European national identity and culture, overwhelming the American and European capacity to assimilate them.
In their haste to benefit from Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine, the West’s politicians, corporate bosses, hedge fund managers, and media moguls made a serious mistake. They cast their lots with the Washington uniparty; the radical left’s woke agenda and the globalists’ permanent proxy war against Russia. It was a serious miscalculation.
Washington and its allies are running out of ammunition, equipment, and domestic support for Ukraine. European armies are without exception boutique forces designed for low-intensity conflict. The Washington uniparty’s feeding frenzy at the public trough has left the U.S. Armed Forces in poor condition to fight enemies other than insurgents. Frankly, it’s a wonder that any young men with both brains and character would want to enlist and live inside today’s armed forces.
The stark truth is that the proxy war in Ukraine is lost, but the habit-forming drug of endless conflict overseas enabled by frenzied defense spending at home seems too strong for Washington’s uniparty to resist. Short of a miracle on the Potomac, Washington’s uncompromising globalist political ideology founded on fear—fear of alleged enemies abroad and fear of free thinking and free speech at home, will drive the Ukrainian nation to its total destruction.
Thus, the descent of the collective West into a Hell of its own making continues. Washington and its NATO allies confront a distasteful choice: Acknowledge Moscow’s legitimate national security interest in Ukraine and end the bloodbath, or risk dragging Europe into a devastating regional war for which Europeans and Americans are not prepared.
"Zelensky is planning his eventual exit" JOACHIM SCHEFFER 10/4/2023
UKRAINE HAS BECOME THE 51ST STATE OF THE US IN A FINANCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND MILITARY SENSE
"Zelensky is planning his eventual exit"
JOACHIM SCHEFFER
04.10.2023 12:23 p.m
Volodymyr Zelensky owns substantial homes and bank accounts in the West. He is undoubtedly planning his eventual departure with these in mind, Douglas Macgregor said in an interview for Magyar Nemzet. The retired US colonel says Ukraine has already done all it can and that the war has entered the "Biden phase".
The Ukrainian counter-attack has failed to deliver what was hoped for, and the rainy weather of autumn is approaching, making it impossible to carry out ground operations. Could the Ukrainians be capable of one last major offensive in the coming weeks?
Kyiv's forces are exhausted. They can do no more than launch, small, limited attacks designed to create the illusion of remaining strength. Meanwhile, Moscow is building at least 200-300 kilometers of new rail lines according to open sources including imagery: one leg begins at Burne [in Donetsk] and terminates in Malovodne.
This will shorten the distance from Rostov on Don to Mariupol, eliminating exposure to Ukraine frontline shelling.
The new line will run directly from Mariupol to Berdiansk on the coastline. The line will then run from Berdiansk to Melitopol. In summary, these improvements will provide redundancy to the rail logistics support to Donetsk by avoiding the Kursk bridge. Russian military rail lines (logistics) will be beyond the range of the [US] HIMARs, but still vulnerable to the [British] Storm Shadow, and, potentially, the [US] ATACAMS. However, this activity also suggests their ability to sustain an offensive on a much larger scale in the future.
The first Abrams tanks have recently arrived in Ukraine. Can these, or even the F-16 fighters, make any difference?
No. Armies cannot be built on the fly. Armies require years of investment in human capital, as well as in force design, modernization, and training.
Expectations of Ukrainian battlefield success were never realistic.
In addition, the training and advice provided by NATO were a poor fit for the warfare in Eastern Ukraine. Russian military power rests on the systematic integration of strike assets—rockets, missiles, artillery, drones, and aircraft—with space- and terrestrial- based persistent surveillance. Once Russian forces halted their advance and established a defense in depth in eastern Ukraine, the Russians' accurate, devastating firepower began swatting the attacking Ukrainian ground and air forces like flies.
You recently said that "Biden's phase" of the war is beginning. What do you mean by this?
Ukraine has done all that it can do. The Biden phase means that Ukraine has become the 51st
state of the United States in a financial, economic, and military sense.
There's a lot of talk about the "Ukraine fatigue", which is real and more serious than at any time since the outbreak of the war. Developments in Poland and Slovakia indicate this, and Washington is sending signals to Kyiv that unwavering support is under threat. Should Zelensky be worried?
Zelensky owns substantial homes in the West and has bank accounts to support them. I am sure he's planning his eventual exit with these things in mind.
How will the upcoming US presidential election campaign affect aid
to Ukraine?
Americans are rarely interested in anything beyond the borders of their country and, if consulted, would refrain from all overseas interventions and entangling alliances. Woodrow Wilson in 1917 and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 had to maneuver Americans into war with Germany and Japan, two states with which the United States had enjoyed good relations for decades. Americans wanted nothing to do with either World War One or World War Two.
The situation is no different now.
This time the potential for bankruptcy, and debt-fueled inflation, as well as the frustration and disappointment with the Biden administration's destructive policies, argue for an end to the conflict in Ukraine, adopting something similar to the Vietnam model. But it's premature to assume that rationality will prevail in Washington DC.
https://magyarnemzet.hu/english/2023/10/zelensky-is-planning-his-eventual-exit
Tuesday, October 3, 2023
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom 10/2/2023
Zelenskyy: From Hero to Zero w/ Col Doug Macgregor
backup videos:
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