What do all you good folk make of this?
Not only does it put a very different spin on things but I was also intrigued by where the interviewee was taking the conversation right at the end
The clip stopped a little too soon
Douglas Macgregor is a pathetic remnant of an American army officer. I should also add that he and I served at the same time. My comments are not an opinion but an informed observation.
During Desert Storm, as a 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR) squadron (armor battalion) S3 he performed competently at the battle of 73 Easting where the 3rd ACR destroyed a BDE+ of the Tawalkana Republican Guard mechanized Infantry division. The lead elements initially in contact with the Iraqi division were commanded by then Captain HR McMaster (Trump's first National Security Advisor and retired 3-Star). The battle was orchestrated and conducted by then Colonel Don Holder who would later retire also as a Lieutenant General.
In writings and interviews after the Gulf War, Macgregor took ever more credit for the performance of the the Regiment during the battle. He even eventually published a book further glorifying his heroics. The Army and many of us who were there have a very different view.
In the late nineties as a serving Colonel, he wrote a book called "Breaking the Phalanx." It argued that the Army's organizational model built around brigades and divisions was outmoded and that the whole army should be reorganized around battalion-sized battle groups. The Army leadership found the thesis interesting, but not particularly compelling - particularly since the author had no experience commanding at the Brigade or division level.
Self promotion, particularly at the expense of other fellow warriors, is not a characteristic much admired in my army. Macgregor was never selected to command a brigade or for promotion to general officer. The esteem with which he held himself was incompatible with the Army's view of his qualities. Upon retirement, he created a role for himself as a critic of the institution whose self evident corruption was demonstrated by his failure while less deserving men like Holder and McMaster were rewarded.
Over the years he became a regular on Russian R1 where he provided criticism of the American way of war and lauded Russian reorganization reforms that created the Battalion Tactical Groups that greatly resemble the recommendations in his book. At the start of the war, he was a regular guest on Tucker Carlson where he would intone in his John Kerry voice that Ukraine "had already lost;" that the Russian Army was the most competent in the world, etc., etc. ad nauseum.
Along with his friends in the Russian propaganda studios, he has become an "expert" source for the isolationist wing of the American right.
He is also repeating a classic bit of false history with respect to Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor.
I have no use for him.
www-aljazeera-com.cdn.ampproject.org
