Col. Douglas Macgregor on Interventionism vs the American Way
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And there's something else here that we need to keep in mind. It's this word occupation. I remember listening to everybody saying, oh, we're going to be a huge success. We're going to transform Iraq into a liberal democracy. The first Arab liberal democracy that will be friendly to Israel. Yeah, well, whatever you're taking, continue to take it because that's never going to happen. So you might as well stay happy. Quaaludes, whatever you're taking. It was insane. It had no chance of happening.

Occupations turn soldiers into jailers and it turns the people that live there into prisoners. No one wants to be policed by a foreigner. I kept trying to tell people before I left the army, I'm from North Philadelphia. If you sent the US Army or the Marines into my neighborhood where I grew up, after two weeks, we'd probably shot at you because we didn't want you around.

You understand what I'm saying? There was no sense of that. And somebody actually said to me, well, we should have studied the Battle of Algiers. Well, they're still digging up thousands of dead Arabs in mass graves. They killed at least 20,000 people in Algiers. And what good did it do? Is Algiers now under French rule? Absolutely not. So these things we need to avoid.

And we need to get rid of the people who are especially civilians who think that's a great idea. Let's do it. And then we need to get rid of these generals who will not stand up and say, wait a minute.

But Lindsey Graham said that a dead Russian is a good thing. And he said that we're there for the treasure. Don't we need those treasures over there in Ukraine? He said that's what we're over there. He just said that on Fox News. It's another stupid remark that somehow or another we all sat around and said we're going to fight this war and weaken the Russians so that we can control the resources that are allegedly in the Donbass. Listen, I'm sure there are some of those things there. There may not be as many. There's a lot of offshore oil in the Black Sea.

But we didn't go in there with the United States Navy to conquer the Black Sea so that we could steal the oil. I think these are retrospective attempts to justify stupidity. First of all, we don't live there. It's not ours. What are we doing there?

Well, if you're a nihilist, then you can do whatever you want. Do what thou wilt. That is the whole of the law, Aleister Crowley. You have to remember that most of these people are Crowleyans. Well, they take the view that all human life is fungible. You and I are just clay that they can mold into whatever they like. I don't believe that. I don't believe that's true for the people in Iraq or Syria or Israel or Italy or anywhere else. Human beings have value. We may not like each other,

but they all have value. And it's not our affair to go into someone else's country and decide who lives and who dies. These things have to end. Do you believe in the just war doctrine, St. Augustine? Well, I think it's a good idea to review that before you do anything. And that's something we should go back to and consider it. The problem is I don't see anybody considering anything. There's no deliberation about anything because there are two ways to look at everything. First of all,

Reinhold Niebuhr, you've heard of him. Reinhold Niebuhr used to quote Abraham Lincoln, who roughly said, "The challenge in American foreign policy is to link the contingencies of power with the principles of justice."

In other words, his point was, if we're going to do something because we think it's important, that's one thing. We should also ask ourselves at the same time, is this morally justified? We don't ask either. We just have lobbies that tell us to go somewhere that beat our politicians to death with stacks of cash. And the politicians say, oh, sure, let's go to country X and do this. Did anybody stand up and say, what are we doing in Libya? Yeah.

And then, of course, we make stuff up.

And what do you make stuff up? Oh, they have nuclear weapons. Oh, they have nerve gas. Oh, they have this. I think the universal principle and what you're echoing and what you're talking about is this universal moral principle of the human being, the human person. Because here's the thing. When you have things like Iran, you get these right-wing voters and Trump voters and Republican voters that still say, well, Iranians need to be destroyed.

And if it means killing thousands or millions through sanctions or proxy wars, their lives don't matter as much as somebody else's life. And then the left says, well, hey, don't do Iran. The left is still ostensibly not big on Iran-Hawk talking points, although they're moving in that direction. But with the left, they turn around and say, yeah, we're not into the Iran story, but

Those Russians need to all be killed. So anything we can do to, you know, perpetuate the grinding machine of the Ukraine war, let's do it. And it's like, no, the human beings matter, whether they're Iranians, whether they're Russians, all of them. It has to be one principle. The narrative is based on the false assumption that if we don't do something, country X will destroy us or our alleged Allahs.

So the argument with Iran is Iran wants to destroy Israel. Therefore, we must destroy Iran. Well, have the Iranians talked about that sort of thing? Sure, they have. So has everybody else in the Middle East. Don't show me any country in the Middle East where people have not said Israel should not be here and Israel should be removed. Ariel Sharon.

and some people like him some people don't i liked him at least insofar as the man was very blunt and straightforward and when this statement was made that israel should be eliminated or will eventually vanish something like that from colmeni the original ariel chiron left and he said so what are we worried about he said something out loud that everybody in the region agrees with okay so it's a solution then let's just nuke everyone because little israel with seven million people demands it

I mean, that's literally what it comes down to. I don't think that we, with military power alone, can make the world safe for Israel. There has to be a change in behavior and thinking that rewards some measure of diplomacy and compromise in some way. Right now, there is no willingness to compromise on anything in Israel.

they see what they're doing as absolutely justified. They believe they have the moral high ground and they're morally justified in murdering, killing the so-called Amalek, the subhumans that live on their borders and live around them. That's one position. Iran takes the position that it could live with Israel and they have a president who has expressed that view as some of his predecessors have long after the Iranian revolution.

but it can't live as a vassal state of Israel. It cannot survive and be what it is as a vassal state of America. It's back to this earlier discussion that we had that can America be a partner or does America demand that if you partner with them that you become a puppet or a vassal state? In other words, do we consult?

with the british with the french with the germans with anybody or do we simply say this is it get on board or get out i think we're on the get on board bit or get out and i don't think that's the way to run the show and i don't think if we run that way anymore simply because we're not the only center of power we are one of several centers yeah and my great fear is we could face a nuclear confrontation because people finally say enough yeah

That's the last thing we want. Well, America can't co-sign to any foreign policy that starts with the principle that some people, because of their ethnicity, are subhuman. That can't happen. That's not America first. It will have no place in the future of America. Yeah, of course not. And we should treat all states with dignity, just as we think all human beings have dignity. All work has dignity.

We should take that into foreign relations, but we don't. Well, that was fantastic. And I think it's important for us to continue to highlight with folks like yourself, people who've lived and had active combat to tell the cost of war and the reality of war. So we don't see this as just another entertainment device. It's not. Human beings matter. They're real, just like you. And they're not figments on your screen.

Even though I'm coming to you from a screen, this is not who I am. I am a human being. You're watching me on a screen, and we can't lose sight of that when it comes to war. I'm David Gronowski. Godspeed.