Dr. Michael Vlahos & Col. Douglas Macgregor: Is the war in Ukraine entering its decisive phase? Pt.1

Some Comments:

Among Friends 1 day ago Well done. First class dialogue and analysis unavailable anywhere in the main sewer media.

elly maloba 1 day ago Absolutely spot on! The two analyzed it to a dot 👏👏

David Jack Smith 1 day ago (edited) If only Col. Macgregor was US Secretary of State, the world would be a better place.

Gerard 9 hours ago Great talk, can't wait to listen to the other two, thank you.

Conrad Stone 1 day ago Col.macgregor....fellow fan from Toronto. Thank you for your daily output without you we wouldnt have many places to get the truth with whata happening. God bless and happy holidays

Croc Meister 21 hours ago (edited) Superb conversation and analysis from experienced and knowledgeable professionals. Thank you gentlemen! 💯

Paveway IV 1 day ago Absolutely outstanding videos, Dr. Vlahos. Col. MacGregor, insightful as always, was the perfect first guest. People are starved for this kind of accessible, intelligent, critical consideration of where we were, where we are and how we got here. Looking forward to Pt. 3 and more of your work. Hope you have Col. MacGregor back as well. Who else do you plan on having on in the future?

Dana Peck 1 day ago Many thanks. Informed, non-ideological commentary. Much appreciated

Susquehanna80 19 hours ago Great admiration for Col Magcregor

AjiNMoto 20 hours ago Thanks for the interview, loved the analysis if col. McGregor, always a joy

1skcusebutuoy1 1 day ago Looking forward to part 2.

LOL, Douglas Macgregor the anti-Semite? Who will you reference next? Scott Ritter the pedophile or Armstrong the convicted swindler.

The Anti-Semite on Your TV

Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s favorite foreign policy expert has a history of echoing anti-Jewish ideas.

. What they may not know is that he’s also a longtime purveyor of anti-Semitic ideas.

“We have a huge problem with a class of so-called elites, the people who are wealthy, very wealthy in many cases and they are, as the Russians used to call certain individuals many, many years ago, rootless cosmopolitans,” he told the Serbian American Voters Alliance in an October 2021 speech uncovered by Matt Gertz at MediaMatters.

For those understandably unfamiliar with this terminology, “rootless cosmopolitans” is an anti-Semitic euphemism for Jews that was popularized under Stalin in the Soviet Union. Adolf Hitler also repeatedly referred to Jews as disloyal cosmopolitans, lamenting in his manifesto Mein Kampf that “it is no longer princes or their courtesans who contend and bargain about state frontiers, but the inexorable cosmopolitan Jew who is fighting for his own dominion over the nations.” In other words, there is exactly one type of person who uses this sort of language in everyday conversation.

In case his audience missed the point, though, Macgregor added: “They live above all of this, they have no connection to the country. There is nothing there that holds them in place, and they are largely responsible, in my judgment, for the condition that we are in today.”

https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/6232acc89277230021b0891c/douglas-macgregor-jewish-tucker-carlson-purim/

The anger of the angry neoconned spews forth.

You're contemptible, son.

Do better, propaganda peddler.

The man has more credentials, military experience, etc., etc., than you, your mother, father, and the last 3 generations of your family blood have.

Go figure huh?

Of course they’re contemptible. But, in their defense they are also stupid beyond compare. As I have said before, intelligence is not an accomplishment, it is a gift.

And unfortunately, it is not distributed equitably. It is like height.

Some people are very, very tall. Some people are very, very short.

Some people are very, very intelligent. Some people are very, very stupid.

When I read their pathetic posts I think, “Oh well, maybe they are very, very tall...:-)

The tlozo dogsqueezins is quoting The Atlantic.

No different than quoting Der Sturmer.

You mean, tloser.

Ahahahaha, burn!

Where you been Cathi? I missed your big patriotic brain.

bump for later

Thanks Cathi!

Thanks for your efforts. I’m off to see part 2/3. I’m sure the neo’s will be there spewing trash.

It’s funny how the truth is ALWAYS “racist”, “anti-Semitic”, “homophobic”, “xenophobic” or something.

You keep posting that, but it does not mean Col. Macgregor meant that in the old Soviet sense. There are plenty of rootless cosmopolitans in this era of globalism. And I suspect he’s smart enough to know anti-Semitism does not play well before a Serb audience. Serbs did their best to rescue and protect Jews when the Nazis invaded, and risked their lives doing so. They despise everything Nazi and anti-Semitic.

Little-known facts: Serbs saved the odious neocon Albright (who is of Jewish descent) and her family not once but twice. Her father was attaché to the Czechoslovakian embassy in Belgrade when the Nazis invaded. Serbs saved them from being deported to a concentration camp and helped them escape to Britain. The second time was after WWII when her father became ambassador to Belgrade. Back home in Czechoslovakia after the communist coup in 1948, the commies were rounding up all the liberal democrats, of which her father was known to be one. They were given protected refuge in Serbia until they escaped to the US. We all know how she repaid their kindness.

No, Madcow did not turn Serbs against Jews, not at all. When the KLA drove every last Jew out of Kosovo in 1999 (what few were left after the Nazis and their Albanian allies got done with them during WWII), they were welcomed in Serbia.

Mcgregor has also been accused of anti-Semitism because he slammed “neocons” — as if all neocons are Jews. You can guess who is so eager to smear him. Yes, neocons and globalists (who are almost always both things at the same time).

I have always called out anti-Semitism when I have seen it on FR, and have a record of doing so. I haven’t noticed you doing that, but perhaps I missed it.

Another little-known fact. Neocons turn to PR firms, among other things, to gin up support for their wars and win over influential groups (including Jewish groups) who might oppose those wars.

While we’re on the subject of Serbs and Jews:

**********
Among the public relations firms that played a crucial role in demonizing the Serbs was Ruder & Finn, a paid representa- tive at one time or another for Croatia, Muslim Bosnia, and the Albanian parliamentary opposition in Kosovo. Ruder & Finn’s director, James Harff, boasted of disseminating sensationalistic reports that caused a dramatic increase in public support for US intervention in Bosnia. As Harff told French journalist Jacques Merlino in April 1993, he was proudest of how his firm had manipulated Jewish public opinion.

It was an achievement of some delicacy since Croatian president Franjo Tudjman “was very careless in his book, Wastelands of Historical Truth,” for which he could be found guilty of anti-Semitism.” Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic also posed serious image problems because his book The Islamic Declaration, “revealed too much support for a Muslim fundamentalist state.” Moreover, the pasts of Croatia and Bosnia were marked by real and cruel anti-Semitism,” Harff admitted. “Tens of thousands of Jews perished in Croatian camps, so there was every reason for intellectuals and Jewish organizations to be hostile toward the Croats and the [Muslim] Bosnians. Our challenge was to reverse this attitude and we succeeded masterfully.”” After Newsday published Roy Gutman’s stories about the reputed Serbian death camps, Harff’s people were able to mobilize several major Jewish organizations — the B’nai Brith Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress:

“That was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations entered the game on the side of the [Muslim] Bosnians, we could promptly equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind. Nobody understood what was happening in Yugoslavia. By a single move we were able to present a simple story of good guys and bad guys which would hereafter play itself. Almost immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with use of words with high emotional content such as “ethnic cleansing” and “concentration camps,” which evoke images of Nazi Germany and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.”

When Merlino pointed out, “When you did this, you had no proof that what you said was true. All you had were two Newsday articles,” Harff replied: “Our work is not to verify information.... Our work is to accelerate the circulation of information favorable to us ... We are professionals. We had a job to do and we did it. We are not paid to moralize.”

Without wishing to diminish Harff’s sense of achievement, I would point out that Ruder & Finn was so successful not primarily because of its “masterful” promotional ploys. It did what many public relations firms would do: manipulate images, bend information in serviceable ways, send out press releases, try to plant stories, target key groups, lobby Congress and the like. What made the firm’s efforts so effective was the eager receptivity of Western media, who —taking their cues from officialdom — were themselves creating an anti-serb climate of opinion many months before Ruder & Finn‘s PR campaign.

[Above quote from To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia
by Michael Parenti, pp 91-93 — It’s available on Google Books, but the url is so long it would mess up the page here on FR and I don’t feel like messing with html at the moment.]
********

See how it works? Why do you think Kuwait hired Hill & Knowlton and six other American PR firms at behest of neocons in our government in 1990? And why Croatia, the Bosnian Muslim leadership and the narco-mafia KLA thugs of Kosovo hired Ruder-Finn and other such firms, also under the guidance of American neocons in power during the 1990s wars in former Yugoslavia? And why Hillary! was so eager to hook up her pet Libyan terrorist barbarians with an influential Beltway PR and lobbying firm and ensure they had the money to pay them well in 2014? The Ukrainians use Yorktown Solutions and KARV Communications, among others. Mercury (which also represented our CIA Libyan pet, Haftar, and had up until recently lobbied for Russian interests) has now scrambled to switch sides and represents a pro-Ukrainian organization.

And yes, various American PR firms, lobbying firms and individual lobbyists are being paid very big bucks by Ukraine for their services. (Your tax dollars at work — send more and more billions!)

Finally, here is a defense of Macgregor published in The Jerusalem Post:

******
Macgregor believes that Israel must have defensible borders and that President Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem was long overdue.

It is upsetting to discover that former US colonel Dr. Douglas MacGregor has been accused of antisemitism. This, to prevent his appointment as US ambassador to Germany. Some American Jewish groups echoed these accusations, but they are misinformed and are being exploited for partisan political purposes.

More at link:
https://m.jpost.com/opinion/antisemitism-accusations-against-dr-douglas-macgregor-are-deeply-upsetting-639119

*********

euram, tlozo, why don’t we agree to disagree and wait until, say next June, and then discuss whether Col. Douglas Magcregor’s prognosis and predictions were accurate. That is, if we all haven’t been obliterated in a full-scale atomic war by then.

Thank you for posting this. Col. Macgregor is a true treasure. I *love* the way he answers the questions in this interview:

Asked how realistic is Blinken’s statement that “US policy is to return Russian troops to the pre-February 24th border”, and how unwise it was it, Macgregor replies “Well, if his intention is to ensure there can be no negotiations, then he’s succeeded.” Brilliantly succinct!

Then the interviewer continues to press him on the issue, saying “But is it realistic that any amount of force, realistic amount of force, introduced by NATO or United States dollars could have as a realistic goal the removal of all Russian forces to where they were on February 23rd?”

The good colonel’s reply was a gruff “It’s the impossible dream. We ought to just forget about it. It’s an irrelevant statement. It’s unworthy of any attention.” Gotta love Col. Macgregor. He has no time for nonsense.

(This exchange occurs at the very beginning of the video.)

H/T Pelham

Oops! I forgot the link!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qRsoVK99x4U

“Col. Macgregor is a true treasure.”
____________________

I couldn’t agree more!

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.

Maybe trolling gives them the only attention they ever get 😂

Wow, how did you learn of Hiddigeigei? I first knew of him from Säckingen. When I was a young girl, my family lived in Switzerland for awhile, and we sometimes took day trips to Säckingen and Waldshut on weekends. We had a black tomcat at the time (whom I loved very much) and so of course I loved the sculpture of Kater Hiddigeigei.

I bought a charming little book of von Scheffel’s Der Trompeter von Säckingen in a second-hand bookshop; it had white cover embossed in silver and black. It seemed antique to me at the time, but could not have been all that old. I was still learning German, and the little book helped me in that as well as being entertaining. It’s hard to believe von Scheffel was only in his late twenties when he wrote it, isn’t it?

Anyway, nice to meet a fellow fan of Hiddigeigei!

"Wow, how did you learn of Hiddigeigei?"
I grew up in a semi rural area living in the maternal family home. I had few amusments, but the old house had a large library, mostly 19th Century. In my early teens I did a lot of reading. There was a copy of Scheffel's Der Trompeter von Säckingen translated by Mrs. Franz Brünnow (it is on gutenberg.org) and later read it in German. I enjoyed the poetry and felt a certain identity with the cat's detached and somewhat jaundiced-eye view of humanity.

What a great story! I identified Hiddigeigei with our very cool old black tomcat, of course, whose personality was so like his. He could give this deadpan look when he thought you were being foolish or doing something stupid that could wither you, and also used that look on our other cat to good effect, which was sometimes quite funny. He was a big part of my life from age 1 through 24, and I adored him, never known another like him.

How wonderful to grow up in a house with such a library. And how I would have loved that. I have had a thing for old books/antique books since childhood.

I have a copy of Ecce Homo I bought as a young teenager at a thrift shop that was not printed, but engraved. Yes, engraved, words just on one side of the thick paper with lots of leading between the lines. You can feel the letters on the backs of the pages with your fingertips. Of course I bought it just because of that. I had no interest in (or business) reading Nietzsche at 13! I just thought it was too cool to pass up for less than a buck.