November 12, 2022 Responsible Statecraft
Macgregor, a West Point graduate, is an acquired taste: outspoken and controversial. He has flagged reporters with his statements about immigrants (we need martial law at the U.S.-Mexico border), Iranians (we need to look for areas where we can cooperate), Afghanistan (we have no business being there) Iraq (we should have left, long ago), and Syria (we should get out immediately). Those views aren’t to everyone’s liking, but they’re especially controversial in the military, whose staid stance on foreign interventions does not countenance the kind of dissent in the upper ranks that Macgregor represents. Macgregor, it is said, has refused to “stay in his lane,” has been too outspoken, too vocal, and not really a team player.
Yet, senior military officers quietly admit that in terms of sheer intellect, no one quite matches Macgregor. Several years ago, I asked a senior U.S. Marine Corps officer to name each of the services’s most creative thinkers. His answers were entirely predictable to anyone with even a passing knowledge of those in uniform, except when it came to the Army. He didn’t hesitate: “It’s Doug Macgregor,” he said. “He’s the best thinker they have, living or dead.” Retired Gen. Tommy Franks would probably disagree.
Franks, the former commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom, brought Macgregor (then still in uniform), to U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa in the run-up to the Iraq War in early 2002 to brief his war planners. Macgregor took a roundabout, but effective route, in getting there: he had briefed Newt Gingrich on his own war plan for Iraq, and Gingrich was so taken by what he had to say that he recommended him to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who insisted that Franks hear him out.
Macgregor’s appearance in Tampa is now a part of Army legend. The U.S. military can take Baghdad with 15,000 troops, Macgregor announced to the room of uniformed experts. The statement stunned Franks, as did Macgregor’s advice on “Phase IV” (postwar) operations — which had not been mentioned in his briefing. Why wasn’t it there? Macgregor was asked. “The reason it’s not there,” Macgregor said, “is because we’re not going to need it. We’re going to turn the governing of Iraq over to the Iraqis, then we’re going to get out.”
Whereupon Mike Fitzgerald, one of Franks’ most senior planners, got up from his seat and left the room. “I think it was at that point that Doug’s career ended,” a fellow West Point graduate says. That’s probably true, but only in part.
While Macgregor retired soon after his Tampa appearance, he did so only after talking with then-Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki. Macgregor told Shinseki that the Army needed to get lighter and faster, cutting away its logistic tail and its top-heavy officer corps. Shinseki not only agreed, he was planning his own Macgregor-like series of reforms. But the talk with Shinseki wasn’t the first time Macgregor had made his mark. Shinseki’s immediate predecessor, Army Chief of Staff Dennis Reimer, required his senior staff to read “Breaking the Phalanx,” Macgregor’s 1997 book on how the Army should fight. Reimer helped to put Macgregor’s innovations on the map. This is where we need to go, Reimer told his staff.
And then there’s 73 Easting.
Arguably, none of Doug Macgregor’s later influence would have been possible without the Battle of 73 Easting (named for its map coordinates — its “phase lines”), which is still studied by armored officers as one of the most significant, and most lopsided, tank victories in the history of American warfare. The battle took place on February 26, 1991 — when elements of the U.S. 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, under Macgregor, took on the tanks of the Tawakalna Division of Saddam Hussein’s vaunted Republican Guard. Macgregor expertly maneuvered his tanks through the enemy lines — directing his tank leaders, one of whom was H.R. McMaster, through the enemy lines. Macgregor lost one man killed, but his tank squadrons destroyed dozens of armored vehicles. The battle had a deep effect on Macgregor, who remembers talking with one of the Iraqi prisoners after the battle: “Why do you not go to Baghdad now?” the prisoner asked him. “You have the power. Your army rules the heavens and the earth. Do you think we love Saddam?” In the years that followed, the Iraqi prisoners’ words haunted Macgregor. The road to Baghdad was open — but America didn’t take it.
Ironically, in one of those odd twists of history, Macgregor’s role as the commander of his tank squadrons is often ignored, while McMaster is remembered and celebrated. Then too, as any senior Army officer will testify, Macgregor’s outspoken and often too-public critique of his own service hurt his chances for promotion. Macgregor questioned everything: why are we staying in Afghanistan? Or Iraq? Or Syria? Why are we prosecuting these endless wars? Doug Macgregor had lots of time to ponder these questions, particularly during Operation Iraqi Freedom, as his kinsman and fellow officer, McMaster, was adding to his laurels during the Anbar Awakening, where he performed brilliantly. Macgregor, meanwhile, was sidelined and marginalized, with a position at the National Defense University.
And so, it seems the McMaster-Macgregor narrative was set. McMaster got his stars, while Doug Macgregor went on to a career as a military historian. McMaster became the acolyte to greatness (the up-and-coming friend of David Petraeus), a controversial president’s national security advisor (one of the “adults in the room”), a gruff-voiced patriot (warning us incessantly of looming threats in Russia, China, Iran, etc.), and all-around “team player.”
Macgregor has always shrugged this off: his old friend deserves his stars, deserves his praise, and has proved his courage. Team player? It’s true: McMaster has been so fitted to his uniform that he looks like a throwback, a latter-day Patton. He’s the quintessential team player in a service that prizes staying in your lane, that rewards teamwork. And Macgregor? Oddly, and ironically — and for all of his outspoken views on ending America’s endless wars, Doug Macgregor has also been a team player.
He’s just been on the wrong team.
So you think Macgregor is so smart. If he were smart he would have kept his mouth shut. Like Trump should do, and like DeSantis will learn to do once we get Trump out and bring DeSantis to heel. Just because they are smart doesn't mean they can say what they like. Sheesh.
The Macgregor who said the war was over for the Ukrainians? Okay
"The war is really over for the Ukrainians," Macgregor said. "They have been grounded to bits. There's no question about that despite what we report on our mainstream media.
.@TheStudyofWar said #Russia had set up a new military base, approximately 70km south-east of #Kherson, describing it as “an effort to protect their equipment from Ukrainian #HIMARS [artillery rocket system] strikes," reports @FT.https://t.co/4L9wCvMf15 pic.twitter.com/gbMR478nT4— ISW (@TheStudyofWar) November 13, 2022
MacGregor has been on the radio since early March predicting a Russian takeover of Ukraine for nearly 10 months now. I’m still waiting….
He’s like the other prognosticator Gordon Chang, who has been predicting the imminent collapse of China for almost 20 years.
The Colonel said a convoy of American troops drove from Poland to Romania and had to avoid Hungary so they went through Moldova is pure nonsense. Just look at a map of Europe to see that would be physically impossible unless the Americans drove right across the heart of Ukraine meaning they would not even need to approach Moldova. Pure nonsense.