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Oct. 10, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:14
LtCOL. Tony Shaffer : Is the American Empire Over?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, October 10th, 2024.
Colonel Tony Schaefer joins us now.
Colonel Tony, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for joining us.
I want to spend a fair amount of time with you on the feudal American efforts in Ukraine.
We have a dynamite clip of a Hungarian President Orban challenging the European Union to rethink its attitude about Ukraine, and we'll get to that in a minute.
But I've been asking everyone this week the same question at the outset having to do with Israel and getting a lot of different, interesting responses.
How has the landscape of the Middle East changed, in your view, in the past 365 days?
The American hegemony for the region has been lost, essentially.
There's no effective influence on any side of any issue at this point because of what I see as The Biden incompetence.
Now, I'm not taking a position on it.
I'm not saying anything about what the effect has been.
I know at times there's issues that relate to Hamas and Hezbollah and the Palestinians that certain folks want the U.S. to do.
There's certain things people on the right want people to do regarding offensive operations against Iran.
What I'm saying is it's all moot.
It doesn't matter.
Nobody has any leverage over anybody from this nation to the Middle East.
It's chaos.
Now, I'm not judging it.
I'm just saying, to answer your question, that's what I see.
Tony, it's your own observations that I'm interested in, and I appreciate them.
Well, let me follow up with this.
Israel today, is it...
It's clearly not as stable because it's in a state of war.
So I think by all measures, if you are at a state of war, stability is a point of sacrifice.
You're just not going to have stability.
Are they stronger or not?
Militarily, they're stronger.
I haven't studied their economy to understand the consequences of being engaged in combat operations, but militarily, yeah, because they are now seen as the strong horse, to use an Arab term, and the United States is seen as essentially not relevant, I think they've filled that vacuum that the United States used to fill.
Remember, my premise is, You know, you can agree with me that our ability, United States' ability to leverage things, either side, it's gone.
You know, I think even Kamala Harris was asked about this in her 60 Minutes interview.
It was like, hey, do you guys have any influence over Netanyahu?
And the answer was a very, like, a five-minute answer that got to no.
It's like, no, we don't.
And I think that vacuum has been filled by Israel, the vacuum of our leadership.
Very interesting observation.
So, since you were on last, Professor Gilbert Doctorow, who's on right after you today, put forth a thesis that I think you will find very interesting, Tony, which was profoundly challenged by many of our people, Colonel McGregor, Scott Ritter, Professor Mearsheimer, Professor Sachs.
Not Matt Ho, interestingly, with his military background like yours.
And Professor Doctorow's thesis is that the United States does not control Israel.
Israel, excuse me, that the United States is using Israel as a battering ram.
to kill Arabs, just as the United States is using Ukraine as a battering ram to attempt to weaken President Putin.
Now most of the people on this show take the opposite position, that the donor class in the United States is so strong that Prime Minister Netanyahu has a lock grip on the executive branch and the legislative branch of the federal government.
Professor Doctorow says it's the opposite.
Where do you come down on this?
So, well, I don't think anything's ever black and white.
Look, gray is my favorite color because that's what I live in, and I think most of the world is covered by shades of gray.
I thought of you when I put this shirt on this morning, Tony, but go ahead.
Thank you.
So, are there influences going back and forth?
Yeah, I consider it much more tribal than uniformly along political lines.
And come on, Judge, you and I both know that political deals are made all the time that cross over these tribal lines of certain politicians see benefits.
So, at this point, do I believe the Israelis have great influence over the United States?
Absolutely.
I mean, my goodness sake, you've got members of Congress who are basically tied to the outcome of whatever happens in Israel.
It is what it is.
And I'm not taking a side.
I'm just saying I see it myself.
With that said, though, at the same time, the U.S. does have some level of influence.
That influence in the past has been to essentially mitigate, moderate, or otherwise mollify the Israeli efforts within the context of their own future.
That's something that has happened.
Every president has done that in some form.
For better or for worse, Joe Biden was so bad at it, the Israelis finally said, yeah, we're done with you.
In extending its hegemony back to where we started with your interesting comment a few minutes ago, by funding the Israeli killing of people in the Middle East.
So you'd have to presume that they have some level of intellect that would allow them to get to that point of conclusion.
I don't mean Biden.
I mean the foreign policy establishment, whether it's Victoria Nuland, who survives Republican and Democratic administrations, Brett McGurk, who survives both administrations, Jake Sullivan, who used to work for Mrs. Clinton, Tony Blinken, who has worked for Biden for 20 years, whoever it may be.
Those are all neocons, and neocons simply, I don't think, promote any concept specifically.
Of eradication of humanity or elements of humanity.
It's all about power.
Again, Stalin didn't care how many people he killed.
Mao didn't care, you know.
So, you know, if you have leaders like Mao, Clinton.
Oh, I didn't mean that.
Sorry, Ms. Clinton.
If you have people like Mao and Stalin willing to kill their own people, it's not necessarily genocide.
It's just evil.
It's just death.
And I think they see the murder of millions as a statistic.
As Stalin did.
And they don't care who it is.
It's not a rational thing, Judge.
It's about the constant thirst for control and power, as far as I'm concerned.
We've been bashing Hillary all week because of her comments attacking the First Amendment.
By the way, I think she looks really great.
She's modifying the Mao jackets now to make them more stylish and space-like.
No comment on appearances, but I wonder what she got in constitutional law at Yale Law School if she thinks the government can suppress speech because of its content.
Same for John Kerry.
He was talking about the climate.
How great is the danger?
In the Middle East for a regional war or even a world war.
Usually.
So I'm a student of the Cold War.
I've both fought it and study it now.
It's kind of get it coming and going.
And one of the dangers, and you probably remember this too, one of the biggest dangers of peace during the Cold War was miscalculation.
Either side making an error in judgment regarding what the other side was doing.
So I think that, again, is front and center.
So you have a number of nations with very powerful militaries that aren't necessarily expeditionary.
That is to say, the Israelis can't invade Iran.
The Iranians can't invade Israel.
So much of what we're seeing now has to be played out regarding cyber, conventional rocket missiles and aircraft, and potentially nuclear.
So I would argue if you have an issue that relates to aggression.
That aggression will have to be expressed in some form relating to one of those other forms other than physical invasion, which means that shipping is in danger.
Issues relating to civilian targets.
You hit a civilian target that turns out to be something of value, like leadership, like what's going on in Lebanon.
I think there's definitely a potential of things ratcheting up.
And I'm going to say this for the show here.
I think the Iranians are way further ahead than the West has acknowledged.
I think they have nuclear weapons.
I think they've tested them.
I think that's one of the things that's holding back the West from hitting nuclear sites in Iran right now, because I think they hit one of those, and you may have plutonium-210 floating around a battlefield from something that explodes.
I think people are afraid to face that.
Can Israel defeat Iran?
I mean, they can't even reach Iran without stopping for refueling.
No.
So that's why the Israeli response is so problematic regarding what they can do to Iran.
And by the way, that's why I think the Biden administration has the largest show of force during its time in office, ongoing right now, with two carrier battle groups right there in a region that theoretically serve as control rods.
That is a nuclear term, and I'm using it purposely.
Control rods to slow down the potential nuclear outcome.
Why are 5,000 Marines on those two battleships?
Is that for a land invasion or is that to evacuate Americans?
What are they there for?
It's to evacuate.
Yeah, a force like that, Judge, is all about securing embassies and pulling people out.
You could barely invade Guam with 5,000 people.
Trust me, that's not an invasion force.
If you start getting 50 to 100, then you start looking at hitting something.
Always remember, whenever you see us doing something, if you've got five, you have to have at least seven times that in support of it.
If you've got 5,000, you've got a lot of people supporting that.
We're not doing anything.
I appreciate that insight.
Last question before we move over to Ukraine.
Clip from Victor Orban.
Do you see the United States, a la John Bolton, Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, actually attacking Iran, attacking its nuclear capabilities, attacking its oil refineries?
Attacking its oil refineries would be insane.
Gasoline would be $8 a gallon the next day.
But do you see the United States doing this?
So, the answer goes back to your original question about what I see the U.S. role, Israel, U.S. influence.
It's tribal.
Mark my words, Lindsey Graham and the neocons, most of the folks you've listed out today, Hillary Clinton and all, you know, they all want the war.
They've wanted the war for decades.
If they get their way out, they'd have the war.
I think they'd launch on Iran tomorrow if they had a general in charge who'd be willing to do it.
Going to the movie Spies Like Us, I mean, you know, certain generals would be happy to start a war if they were given that opportunity.
But I think most people don't want that war.
I'm not a neocon.
And so while I do recognize that there's a threat by the Iranians, that they're trying to do things to develop nuclear weapons, that I think there's a chance they may use them because they...
Every other time the Iranians get something in the way of a weapon or a resource, they use it in a way to upend and terrorize their neighbors.
Just saying.
So I do believe there's a threat.
With that said, I don't believe that military force is the vector to do it.
I'm a Reagan guy, and I think that our best bet is encouraging the Iranian people to rise up against their own government.
The Green Revolution in 2009.
Switching gears, why are we spending $200 billion in Ukraine to fight a war that can't be won?
Well, I think there's two basic reasons.
First, the same people who we just mentioned, the neocons, wanted to remove, for economic reasons, Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence.
I think this is all about the Benjamins, Judge.
This is all about the gas and oil-rich regions which have been discovered in the Donbass and the Black Sea.
These are all things that the globalists want for the EU.
That's why you keep hearing Ukraine entry into the EU.
That's why you keep hearing about this NATO stuff.
So to me, it's all about resources.
And on the other side of that, Putin knows it's about resources and that they don't want Ukraine to be a next competitor regarding resources.
So that's why you see them fighting so vigorously in the Donbass and other places to retain that.
So that's the first reason.
Secondly, the second reason has to do with essentially the neocons self-loathing.
I know they're all Trotsky eyes, but maybe they're kind of...
But they hate Putin.
They hate the Russian system.
So I think this is another way they really believe they can destabilize and take out Putin.
That's why.
This is not rational.
It's all anger.
And they don't want to give it up.
And so, you know, the resource thing is a justification.
Semi-rational.
But the emotional issue of, we just want to get Putin and destabilize Russia.
It's the second reason.
And they'll continue to do it if you give them the opportunity.
Okay.
I'm going to play a clip for you, which is a young reporter by the name of Liam Cosgrove grilling the rather inept State Department spokesperson.
We've made a lot of fun of this guy, but he deserves it.
Matt Miller.
Much of what he talks about is Israel and Gaza.
That's not the part I'm interested in your view, but he does weave in there Russia and nuclear weapons.
It sort of degenerates at the end because Miller doesn't want to answer the question, but the young man is extremely articulate and the way he weaves in fear of Russia and nuclear weapons, I think, is brilliant.
It's about a minute and a half long, but I want your thoughts on it, Tony.
Cut number seven, Chris.
So 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, they've struck deep within Russian territory several times, as deep as 300 miles from the border.
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, and it could very abruptly mean the end of 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 risk kind of brazenly.
So my question for you, As 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.
And you are risking nuclear war in Ukraine.
What do you think, my friend?
So, look, what people won't talk about, which we've talked about a little bit, is the target of the Kursk incursion by Ukraine was a nuclear weapons plant where they generate power.
They wanted to capture that and hold it hostage.
And, more importantly, A nuclear weapons storage dump, which had probably about a thousand warheads, by what I've been told.
I don't know how people don't understand.
It's like, you start going to grab nuclear plants and grab weapons, people can take that real seriously.
And if you've reached that, if they had captured any of that, we'd be having a completely different conversation right now.
Because, I mean, Judge, I said this the other day on another show, we have not seen the military use of a nuclear weapon since August of 1945, for better or for worse.
We, the United States, have been the only country that ever used nuclear weapons in war.
And at the time, they were experimental.
Now, they're not experimental.
We have weapons which are literally 100 to 200 times more lethal than Hiroshima weapons.
We're talking about 13 kilotons of destruction.
Now we're talking about 50 megatons of destruction.
And I don't think people understand how big that is.
And what he said is correct.
We could see that the end of civilization as we know it, in pretty short order, we have created a civilization so dependent on interoperability.
Everybody works together, everything from things made in China, being shipped over on trains.
I'm a big fan of trains, Judge.
I love trains.
You see all these big old locomotives pulling all these 52-foot, 53-foot trailers across the nation.
That's all full of goods.
Well, you take that out.
You take out gas.
People in big cities especially aren't going to last very long.
So he's correct.
And we just seem to be dismissive of the potential because of the politics.
Nobody wants to talk about the fact that the Ukrainians tried to pull something that could have been a civilization-ending event.
And I know that people are going to say, oh, that's over the top.
It's like, no.
People don't understand how quick you go to nuclear weapons.
Once they're used, there's no going back.
It's only escalatory.
It's only going to go up.
And every exercise we've ever run where people are confronted by this, it always ends in total nuclear exchange.
I don't think people understand how dangerous this really is.
So Victor Orban spoke for about 17 or 18 minutes at the European Parliament earlier today.
Towards the end, he was drowned out by all the members of the Parliament, which is pretty left-wing.
Singing a song, trying to silence him.
not going to play that part, but we are going to play the guts of what he said, which is just about a minute long, basically challenging the EU to recognize that there should be negotiations and the negotiations should result in a ceasefire and the continual pouring of cash and weapons into Ukraine is only going to result in...
I think it took a lot of courage for him to say what he said, but the audience didn't receive it well, given who they are.
Here's cut number 12. The European Union has a mistaken policy when it comes to this war.
If we want to win, then we need to change this losing strategy that we are currently implementing.
It was a poorly planned and poorly implemented strategy.
If we continue on that route, we're going to lose.
If we don't want Ukraine to lose, then we need to change strategy.
And I think that you should consider that in every war.
There needs to be diplomatic work.
We need to have communication, direct and indirect contacts.
If we don't do that, then we will go even deeper into war and the situation will be even more desperate.
More and more people will die.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died.
Thousands of people are dying while we're talking here and here now.
And with this strategy, we won't find any solution in the battlefield.
So I think we need to stand up for peace.
We need to focus on a ceasefire and create a different strategy because otherwise we will all lose.
I could just storm out on a statement as rational as that.
Look, it's obvious the strategy hasn't worked.
And I think...
It's not going to work.
And literally, you know, Judge, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
This is insane.
And those people are all insane who decided to stand up and walk away because they don't want to hear it.
for some reason they are mentally compromised.
I don't mean to speak ill of It's not rational that you're ignoring facts as they are, not as you want them to be.
And right now, as we speak, the town of Vugladar has fallen to the Russians.
There's every indication that the Kursk incursion, which we've spoken about, is going to be a huge loss of force.
Those forces that the Ukrainians used to go into Kursk.
We're pulled off their other military missions, which means that degradation has resulted in faster Russian gains.
So Orban is correct.
The EU is committed to a course of action that, at best case, they'll lose Ukraine and see a rump state established.
Worst case, we'll see tactical nuclear weapons reintroduced to the European battlefield.
Oh, by the way, I don't think that's a good thing.
I mean, the Europeans seem to be bent on this expansion of nuclear weapons on the battlefield, to include Germany.
Germany, at the time when I was a kid, there were protests against nuclear weapons being there.
I mean, I was deployed there several times.
And in the 80s, like, they wanted weapons out.
Now they're asking for them back?
Are you kidding me?
That's not rational.
Thank you, Colonel Schaefer.
Always a pleasure, my dear friend.
We were all across the board, but I appreciate you letting me pick your brain.
I hope you come back again soon.
Absolutely.
Thanks, Judge.
Sure.
All the best.
Thank you.
Coming up at 9 o 'clock this morning, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at 3 o 'clock this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
At 4 o 'clock this afternoon, the Intelligence Community Roundtable.
And at 5 o 'clock this afternoon, from midnight in Moscow, Pepe Escobar.
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