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Oct. 9, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:02
Phil Giraldi : Who Calls the Shots in the Middle East?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, October 9th, 2024.
Phil Giraldi joins us now.
Phil, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for joining us.
What is your view as to how, if at all, the landscape in the Middle East has changed in the past year since the events of October 7th and afterwards?
Well, I think we're approaching something like a crunch point in terms of what are the possibilities that would come out of the current situation.
I certainly have heard a lot of people that I greatly respect in terms of their analysis telling us that Israel, with its highly touted five-front war, is basically On the path to losing this one.
And if it loses this one, it could probably be fatal for the Zionist program, the Zionist agenda.
And Israel would no longer be Israel.
I think that's good news, though I don't particularly want to see a war take place to have that happen.
So that's one possibility.
The other possibility is that Israel will succeed in getting the United States.
Drag into this war and the United States will wind up with the casualties and doing the heavy lifting and attacking Iran and other states.
This, of course, could get complicated because Russia has indicated that basically they will be backing up Iran.
So again, we're looking at nuclear war.
In a situation that never had to go this way, in which the United States has been playing the flunky for the monster Benjamin Netanyahu, who is both a war criminal and is managing a genocide.
And we are part of this process.
We are more than part of this process.
we're complicit and enabling it.
So this is something...
It's so bad.
And presumably this might be on track in one of those directions in the next few days.
Colonel McGregor argues that B.B. Netanyahu will soon be like General Custer at the Little Bighorn, searching for a small group of enemies and finding a huge number of them who will decimate.
Do you foresee military action by the governments of the countries in the Middle East, the populations of which have had enough of the Israeli slaughter of innocents?
No, I don't necessarily see a united Arab or Muslim front.
But I think there are going to be enough countries involved.
For example, obviously, Lebanon is already involved.
Syria is de facto involved and could use its forces.
And of course, there's Iran.
But the interesting player, I think, in this, having spent three years in Istanbul as a CIA officer, is Turkey.
I think that Erdogan is sincere in his warnings that he's basically been dropping to the Israelis and the United States about where this might lead to a Turkish intervention because Israel has been working to destabilize Syria and Turkey,
as most people who follow the issue know, has a How stable is the monarchy of the King of Jordan?
Well, it kind of depends on who you talk to.
If you talk to the...
The people who are close to the monarchy, in other words, the people who benefit from it, they will tell you that the monarchy is rock solid and is loved by everyone.
But apparently there is a lot of popular resentment.
Bear in mind that the bulk of the population of Jordan is Palestinian.
There's a lot of resentment for the role Jordan is playing, or rather is not playing.
In terms of putting pressure on Israel and putting pressure on the United States.
So it depends which way you want to go with it.
I tend to believe the people who are saying that there is a popular resentment up to such an extent that this could explode.
Is Israel as a nation state?
Stronger and more stable today than it was a year ago, or weaker and less stable than a year ago, or somewhere in between?
Well, I would say it's weaker and much more unstable.
It was unstable because of the political problems with Netanyahu a year ago.
But that has been coming across the screen and disappearing, and now he's apparently popular because he invaded Lebanon, and the Israeli public really likes that.
But I think, on balance, Israel has left itself very vulnerable, and they could be coming for a fall in terms of what they've done.
It may not matter in the long run whether the United States keeps sending them money and weapons.
They might just be on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of the numbers in the Middle East.
Do your sources indicate whether there is validity to these leaks that Biden and Netanyahu are not getting along, much like Bill Clinton?
I had it up to here with Ariel Sharon, and I think George W. Bush also complained about Netanyahu.
It's hard to pinpoint when he was in office and when he wasn't from this vantage point.
But are they adverse to each other, at least behind the scenes?
I would add Barack Obama also had problems with Netanyahu.
Correct, correct.
So that's the ruin of all our presidents, the last four.
So anyway, yeah, I would imagine there is some irritation, but given the limit of, shall we say, Mr. Biden's mental acuity, I would rather suspect that Biden is only thinking in terms of the election coming up.
And he's thinking of what the impact of of Netanyahu killing some thousands more Palestinians and Lebanese, how that will look, particularly as he will continue to supply the weapons that are being used to do the killing.
So this creates a dilemma for Mr. Biden.
I think if it weren't election time, Biden would have no idea That doesn't seem to come across the screen at all.
And this is one measure of the kind of leadership that we have in the United States now.
And I have no expectations of either Trump or that horrible woman doing any better.
Given Biden's well-known mental defects, who are the major players?
In American foreign policy right now?
Well, that's a good question.
And the answer would have to be that on the surface of it, it very much looks like we have our Secretary of State who is experienced in working for the diplomatic service, but seems to have no...
He's been serving as a cover for Israeli war crimes and has been lying to both Congress and to the American public about things like the Israelis' specific attempts to starve the Gazans to death.
So he would look like an obvious one.
William Burns would be another one you'd have to consider, head of CIA, and this is kind of a tricky one.
Traditionally, certainly when I was in the agency, the CIA was not supposed to be involved in policy.
It was supposed to provide objective and accurate information to policymakers, and the policymakers were the ones that would sit down, that would be the president and the various cabinet members, and would use that information to create a policy.
Now, we don't have that anymore.
We have the head of the CIA going all over the Middle East and Ukraine, serving sort of like as a middleman for the president.
He goes and he tells the foreign leaders what Biden is allegedly thinking.
Difficult concept.
And he brings back to Washington on his return trips what the leaders in these foreign countries are saying to him.
So he's another player.
But the fact is, who's really calling the shots on the policy is hard to say, particularly as you have these rolling people, Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, who have They have agenda-driven missions to be roving ambassadors of some kind.
Hochstein in particular was supposed to resolve the problems going on with Lebanon.
And of course you see where that's wound up.
And McGurk also has been going to various capitals in the region trying to get the Arabs again They have been telling or spreading the story that the United States has been in favor of a ceasefire or peace agreement in Lebanon and throughout the region.
But at the same time, they've been secretly encouraging The Israelis to attack Lebanon, saying that the time is right to do this, whatever that's supposed to mean.
So here we have these people that are kind of setting the policies and are involved in policy up to their eyeballs, and you can't trust any of them.
They're all liars.
They're all pulling their own agendas.
They're all probably in the pockets of the Israelis.
I mean, Amos Hochstein is an Israeli, and he served in the Israeli army, and yet he's sent as a special emissary of the President of the United States.
How do you get that?
Isn't it very odd that the head of the CIA would be engaged in public diplomacy and would be making public comments about the progress of the diplomacy?
Isn't it odd that he and Secretary Blinken, who I suppose are equals since they're both in the cabinet, have been telling the American public for months that a ceasefire is getting closer and closer, knowing, as they must have, that it was not?
Yeah, that's the interesting aspect of it, why you don't want an intelligence source.
To be sitting in and talking about your policies because it's two different roles.
And so you have this kind of playing out business going on.
And the mystery is what is the policy?
If the United States really wants to end the fighting in the Middle East.
It could do it in a minute.
You pick up the phone, Joe Biden, and tell your counterparts in Israel that no more money coming and no more weapons coming.
Let's have a ceasefire.
And they would have to do it.
Have the U.S. players in American foreign policy, whether it's Blinken or Burns or Hochstein or McGurk, been duped?
By Netanyahu into believing that there was a serious effort or would be a serious effort on the part of the Israelis to negotiate for peace and an exchange of hostages?
Or have they been willing dupes?
Have they participated in Netanyahu's deception knowing that they were deceiving the American public?
Well, their number one job is to cover up for Israel and for Joe Biden.
I would suspect that, well, first of all, the facts are that Netanyahu has been sort of a, in a way, I hate to say it, an honest player in terms of what's been going on, because he's never favored a ceasefire until Hamas is wiped out.
So that's been a pretty unequivocal position by him.
And to talk about ceasefire or close to ceasefire, Netanyahu never agreed to any of this stuff.
And this was just, again, another lie coming out of Blinken and out of the president, that we were on the verge of a ceasefire.
And remember when they were saying that Israel had approved it?
That was a complete lie.
And it was a lie that was so blatant that even Netanyahu had to deny it.
So this is the kind of stuff we're confronted with, again, in terms of the leadership of this country and where we've been going for the last year and before that.
So what is the goal of the American foreign policy besides giving Israel whatever it wants?
Well, it seems to me the goal right now is giving Israel whatever it wants.
That is our foreign policy with a little bit of Ukraine thrown in.
But the fact is the role of foreign policy, as discussed by the founders 200-plus years ago, Was basically to benefit the American people, American citizens when they were traveling, Americans who were doing business with foreign countries and with foreign people.
We were supposed to be there to defend American interests.
And now we have a situation where Israel has been, without any concern, taking that one step further.
They're killing American citizens.
What does the State Department say?
It says nothing.
And it does nothing.
And the State Department spokesman will come out with some lines about, oh, Israel is doing an investigation.
Israel has never condemned anybody for anything for killing an American.
And so we had the State Department because it was supposed to protect Americans and help Americans overseas and so on and so forth.
And yet it's been turned on its head.
Help and we enable the killers of Americans.
This is outrageous.
The spokesperson for the State Department was just confronted with one of the best questions I've seen put to him.
He is a goofball, this fellow, Matt Miller.
I'd like you to comment on the question by Liam Cosgrove, who is a reporter for the Gray Zone.
The question is a long one, but in my view, it brilliantly crystallizes the defects in American foreign policy.
Cut number seven.
Israel is still poised to strike Iran.
And in July, Blinken said that Iran was one to two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon.
So I guess for all we know, they might have one by now.
And meanwhile, in Ukraine, And in that case, we don't have to guess.
We know that Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, as many as 6,000 warheads.
And so one of the risks of arming militaries that are striking in the territories of nuclear powers is that one of those gets deployed, and then it could escalate very quickly from there.
So it's rarely discussed, but it's important to address that the nuclear risk is real.
It could very abruptly mean the end of, you know, what humans have worked for thousands of years to collectively achieve.
And us today are very lucky to live with the fruits of that achievement, and I feel like we're treating the risks kind of brazenly.
So my question for you is, you know, we often hear in response to these concerns that, well, Putin, Khomeini, you know, they're war criminals, they're terrorists, as if they're too inherently evil or immoral for us to negotiate with.
Meanwhile, this administration has financed a genocide in Gaza for the last year.
And every day you're up there denying accountability for it.
So, I mean, what gives you the right to lecture other countries on their moral...
If you want to give a speech, there are plenty of places in Washington where you can give a speech.
Yeah, but people are sick of the bullshit in here.
I mean, it is a genocide.
You are abetting it, and you are risking nuclear war in Ukraine for this proxy war.
Plenty of other places to give a speech.
Go ahead.
What did you think of the young questioner, Phil?
It was a brilliant question.
It nailed him on both counts.
I should have mentioned before that Obviously, the nuclear issue is a major issue and war is a major issue.
And another reason why we created a State Department was to negotiate with other countries and discuss things.
And this is what we refused to do for the last couple of years.
So the question was brilliant.
All of this stuff could easily slide into a nuclear exchange with good.
I would like the question maybe to throw in the fact that Israel is nuclear armed and Israel has the Samson option, which is a part of its policy, which is that if it's on the losing end of a war, it's going to take out the rest of the world with it.
This is something that Seymour Hersh wrote about years ago.
So you push these things to the point where somebody is going to use a nuclear weapon.
How do you stop it, Mr. Biden?
How do you stop it, Secretary of State?
How do you stop it?
Where are all the clowns in Washington?
Are they just going to head for their fallout shelters?
What are they going to do?
Not sure how this ends up, Phil, or where it's going to go.
In the meantime, Ukraine is hanging by a thread, almost holding its breath until November 6, because Biden can't pull the string or pull the trigger, whatever analogy you want to use.
Yeah, that's the way it plays out.
I think that's all that they're thinking about.
And they don't think of consequences.
And they don't think of, as that questioner put it, accountability.
When did the word accountability disappear from the U.S. government lexicon?
There is no accountability anymore.
I mean, what does Blinken do other than represent Israeli interests to the United States and United States' willingness to help the Israelis?
John Mearsheimer refers to Secretary Blinken as Netanyahu's lawyer, going back and forth, back and forth from Washington to Tel Aviv.
Yeah, that's a good expression.
Actually, it's an expression that's been used before for secretaries of state, that they were Israel's lawyers.
And, you know, it's unfortunate, but the Israel lobby, or if you want to call it the Jewish lobby in the United States, exerts or has...
tremendous power over our political system.
And I also wrote an article a week ago about how I was talking about the possible October surprise, which means if the lobby fears They would turn on that candidate and support the other one and maybe, as a result, turn the result of the election.
So this is a real concern on the part of politicians.
They're owned by these people, they've been bought by these people, and they're controlled by these people.
Just for laughs, here's Matt Miller really at his worst, talking about Hezbollah's terms for a ceasefire, cut number nine.
Hezbollah now wants a ceasefire.
Delinked from Gaza.
Yeah, delinked from Gaza.
They just want a ceasefire on its own terms.
And I think my initial response to this is, where have they been for a year?
For a year, the world has been calling on Hezbollah to stop the attacks across the border into Israel.
And for a year, Hezbollah said they would not do it unless there was a ceasefire in Gaza.
They linked the two when the international community was saying, stop the fighting.
And Israel was saying, if...
Israel would stop its attacks in response against Hezbollah.
So for a year, you had the world calling for this ceasefire.
You had Hezbollah refusing to agree to one.
And now that Hezbollah is on the back foot and is getting battered, suddenly they've changed their tune and want a ceasefire.
I guess he's as credible as his boss, Secretary Blinken.
I think actually he exceeds the Blinken test for incredibility.
That was astounding.
And this is the typical line.
See, Israel is always the victim.
And they always take their facts out of context.
Now, the context of this is that Israel was carrying out a genocide in Gaza while this was going on.
And the response from Hezbollah was in support of the Gazans to try to get a ceasefire or something to stop the killing.
And so Hezbollah is made to look like the bad guys because, of course, they're terrorists.
And Israel is the innocent party here, really wanting a ceasefire.
Well, Israel has never wanted a ceasefire, and they don't want it in this case.
Phil, thank you very much for your time, my dear friend.
These are irritating subjects that we discuss, but your analysis is vital to our understanding of them.
All the best.
I hope you'll join us again next week.
Thank you very much.
Of course.
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