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Oct. 13, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
37:50
Alastair Crooke :
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, October 14, 2024.
Alistair Crook will be with us in just a moment on why is Israel fighting seven different wars at once.
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Alistair Crook, good day to you, my friend, and welcome here.
Thank you for your time, as always.
We have much to discuss.
The theme that I want to discuss with you is the theme of your most recent and tantalizing article, Why is the United States Israel's Partner for War?
But before we get there, let's talk about the latest breaking news.
And that would be the reports of IDF killed and injured in southern Lebanon.
It appears that at least four IDF have been killed and that about 68 have been injured.
Now, these are very small numbers compared to the number of people that the IDF has slaughtered in Gaza.
But these may be very significant numbers for the Israeli people.
How do the Israeli people perceive this news?
I think it's a shock.
I'm real concerned.
Because they've largely been spared any real pain in this.
Not true, of course, for their forces.
The forces both in Gaza have suffered great losses.
And increasingly, there's a lot of gaslighting going on.
But the Israeli forces are still on the border with South Lebanon.
They're not really crossing it at all.
They've entered three villages.
Maroon.
Which is about 800 metres from the border where the Irish Post is.
And then two other places which are about 600 metres and another place which is about quite close.
So they've just gone in and they're suffering enormously from ambushes and from anti-tank measures.
They're losing more, certainly.
They're losing more men than Hezbollah in the South.
They have not been able to really penetrate into the South.
So it's not a success.
It's painful.
People who've been there say it's a grim, grim process.
I'm talking about Israelis who've been there and said, you know, it's not nice at all.
It's not going well at all.
Then you've got Gaza.
Another terrible event taking place this morning in Gaza, an attack on hospital-like buildings by Israel and Palestinians' children being burnt alive.
There are pictures of them being alive in a sort of absolute, engulfed in flames and just impossible to reach and just dying, being burnt alive.
And this now has come.
And as you say, much smaller in terms of casualties, but psychologically hugely important, because it's south of Haifa.
And this was in a dining room of the Golani Brigade, which is an elite brigade of troops.
And in their training base there, they were all at dinner.
And two drones came from across the Mediterranean, not directly over the land.
And this one, One of them, we don't know quite why it was so successful in avoiding it.
The Israelis say that somehow they thought they had it on the radar, and then it just dropped out of sight.
Now, it may be a new form of drone, or it may be that it was guided by some sort of laser, but that's unlikely because of the distance from Lebanon for it to reach this.
But it's caused a great fright to both the authorities, but people generally, this large loss.
Well, it's quite a large loss of life, but the injured, I mean, the death rate is likely to go up from four, which it is at the moment, because there are 68 injured and some of them seriously.
Does the IDF typically reveal the true and accurate numbers of its forces that have been killed and injured, or does the Netanyahu government choose to keep this from the Israeli public?
Kept from the Israeli public, firstly, but also from the United States, from that, if you like, that segment of the population that is pro-Zionist in the U.S. So they're kept from them because what's happening in a sense is,
and I call it, and this is a metaphor, of course, is that there's so much gaslighting, so much propaganda coming out of Israel.
It's really like a Ponzi scheme.
You know, when you have a Ponzi scheme, You always have to have new money coming in, which more than compensates for any money going up.
So the propaganda, so the gaslighting has to be kept going and it has to keep going.
And as soon as someone sort of suggests there's a problem or a difficulty, it gets doubled down because otherwise the Ponzi scheme collapses.
If too much is sort of lost, and I'm talking here about Not about money going out, but, you know, bad news comes in.
Because at the moment, the news is, what is the Ponzi scheme?
The Ponzi scheme is, Israel's on a winning streak.
It's set to remake the Middle East.
It's set to take on and land a blow on Iran.
That is the Ponzi scheme.
That is the narrative.
So anything that goes against it says, no, that isn't actually what happened.
That isn't what happened at that time.
as well as to indicate when it's heard.
You track it as it's coming.
And it seems very certain that Iran actually used possibly a hypersonic missile, but a fast-flying missile, and took up this expensive main X-band radar, is the sort of, if you like, the jewel in the crown of Israel's defensive.
And then the 20 missiles landed on the airbase.
This is the cash going out of the Ponzi scheme when people start talking about that.
No, sorry.
I'm saying that's when people start to get anxious.
And we saw Netanyahu very anxious when he said, oh, and we had Biden as part of this, too, because he said, oh, no, they defended, they defeated it all.
And they defeated those Iranian missiles.
They were totally ineffective.
Just not true.
Right.
When the United States gives a very expensive and unique piece of equipment, like this radar you're talking about, to Israel, and then it's destroyed by Iranian or Hezbollah missiles, do they tell the United States or do they keep that?
The Pentagon will know about it.
Does it penetrate properly into that sort of inner circle of pro-Zionists around the president?
It's not clear that he knew that because, I mean, what he was saying, and he repeated it several times.
All of the missiles from Iran were eliminated, were shot down.
They were ineffective.
They were defeated.
And it's the opposite.
They didn't shoot down any of them, nor did the American vessels who were in the offshore.
They fired 12 missiles.
They took down none of the Iranians.
I can't tell you exactly how many got through, but we're talking about something of the order of 90%, something substantial, if you like.
some of them were decoy missiles not intended to cause damage or to destroy things but to deflect any air defenses It was, in short, a major failure of Western air defense systems, not just Israelis, but Western air defense systems, which is why suddenly we have the United States prepared to send an air defense system, a THAAD system.
With a hundred American troops to Israel.
And this is a major success, of course, because what I've been saying all along is Netanyahu's aim is to pull the United States into the war.
Well, they're very vulnerable.
And if Israel attacks Iran, Iran will have every reason to attack that air defense system wherever it's located, probably in that stream in the Negev Desert, I should think.
Would the American troops, we understand the number is around 100, sent ostensibly, I underscore ostensibly, to operate and maintain this equipment.
Would they be a tripwire?
Is this an excuse?
Are they out there?
When they are attacked, Joe Biden and company have an excuse.
Benjamin Netanyahu has an argument for more American troops.
Precisely.
I mean, this is the whole plan dating back a long, long time to gradually bring the United States in to a war with Iran.
And this is precisely the first step.
Because if that missile system is attacked by Iran in retribution for what Iran suffers from Israel in this next period, which is promised, we don't know what it will be exactly.
But yes, because also it's not a very effective system.
It is fairly limited.
It can have, I think, something.
I'm not an expert in these things, but it has about a full battery, such as is being sent to Israel, has about, I think, 27 interceptors are available to it.
You fire two at every time, at every target.
So it brings it down quite considerably.
The Iranians only have to send probably twice that number of decoys.
And even that, even if they don't use a hypersonic missile and take it out directly as they did with the X-band radar.
So it's a very different situation, very dangerous, because, of course, a red line for America has been when its troops are killed in the Middle East, and this will be a red line crossed and justifying in the view of many...
Big picture.
What has made the United States Israel's partner in war?
Is it the influence of the Israeli donor class on American politics?
Or is it America's lust?
For oil, or is it something else, or is it a combination of those things?
Well, as I wrote about, and I was drawing on the experience of Professor Michael Hudson, who worked in the Hudson Institute in the 70s, 74 to 76, and he was there at this time where it really started, and everything we've seen since.
It really began around about that time, between the Hudson Institute, Herman Kahn, who was in charge of it, and Scoop Jackson, who was a very celebrated senator, represented the military-industrial complex.
He came from Washington State, but he was also the Democratic contender for presidency twice.
So a formidable presence then in the Democratic Party.
Although many of the, if you like, Stoop Jacksonists then went over to the Republicans, which is why you've got, if you like, the confluence in the uniparty of the neocons are both in the Democratic and in the Republican Party.
That's how it happened when he split from the Democrats and he's moved across to the Republicans.
But the aim of it, Uzi Arad was a formidable, really hard line.
You know, you talk about the right on Israel now.
He was absolutely in line with Ben Gavir and Smotrich and all of the rest.
Was he Mossad?
Yeah, and then he became head of Mossad.
Not just Mossad.
He was head of Mossad.
And his view was, you know, and he kept saying this then in the 70s, you know, the solution to where we are is we have to kill the Arabs, kill the Arabs.
kept saying this all the time.
And what Herman, what Herman Kahn did was say to Senator Jackson, look, this is the solution for how we are able to sort of We must have the oil, and we've got to have the oil.
And this is the way to do it.
We can't field an army.
Really, after the Vietnam War was quite clear, because at the time, the presidential aspirant had to drop out of the competition because of the anti-war sentiment.
Having conscription, a draft was just no longer acceptable.
So war had to be, if you like, supported by not actually occupying and invading.
There was a small affair in Iraq in 2003, but it wasn't really a fighting force because the Iraqis had already surrendered.
They'd already accepted monetary compensation and other things.
So it had to be done by bombing.
And by, if you like, terrorism, or by actually subjugating people.
And so the plan from 73, 74, was, if you like, so to make life so unbearable for Palestinians that either decide it wasn't worth living and just go and find somewhere to go to.
Or if they wouldn't go, you bomb them, and you bomb them and you kill them because you don't have to lose forces.
If you bomb, you don't lose your own men in this process.
This is what was said.
And Professor Hudson says, I was in these meetings.
I was there in Hudson when all of this was discussed.
And Scoop Jackson bought into this.
And so then he made sure to put Zionists in the State Department.
And he made sure to put the Zionists in the National Security Council.
And so they were there to make sure that this idea and this thinking was, if you like, built out and developed and embedded so that it couldn't be easily rolled back.
And so for all these years, it's done.
And what happened to the Palestinians was an exact copy from Vietnam.
The Hamlets, the dividing of Hamlets, the dividing of the Palestinians.
A lot of the Vietnam theory came in through that period and through Stoop Jackson and the Jacksonites, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, all these people who then became the sort of the neocons.
And the aim was not just to take the Palestinian area, but to take Lebanon.
To take all of the, if you like, if you think of the Middle East divided East and West, East is sort of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, which weren't difficult for the United States to manage.
But the other part in the West, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, all of these had to be, if you like, a treaty.
By bombing and by force so that they could be brought to some form of surrender.
On one side you had the jihadists as a proxy force and the other side you had Israel as the other proxy force.
But the aim was to go right through.
The question is, is it going to work today?
Is there going to be pushback in the United States that will, you know, stop it?
Clearly there's some in the Pentagon.
Who are sort of questioning this and saying we're overextended as it is.
I mean, can we really sort of contemplate?
Because, you know, not only is Israel talking about invading Lebanon and then now the White House says it wants to completely change the political disposition of Lebanon.
They want to actually put in a proxy.
President of Lebanon.
But they've started, they've even invaded Syria recently.
Invaded with forces in Syria.
Only about 500 meters or so.
But they've made it clear that, you know, this isn't just about the Palestinian.
It is about taking a whole swathe of land.
And what's the White House reaction?
Full support for what they're doing in Lebanon.
You know, we can change the whole character of the region.
Is what, you know, Blinken is saying and Hochstein is saying in Lebanon.
We want General Aon to be the new president and we want to make sure that Xi are removed from politics altogether.
Very dangerous process because it could start a civil war again in Lebanon.
You know, this was after the civil war that these things were sort of divided up and the president is.
How does Europe.
Well, I mean, firstly, I'd say what they understand very clearly, that this is, you know, what we're seeing is a sheriff.
This is good cop, bad cop.
America says, oh, no, no, I mean, we have values, we have the values of the United States, and we're pursuing those.
Israel is, you know, and it's all Netanyahu, and Netanyahu is out of control.
this is just a charade because they both have there's a confluence of interest American influence is So they want to weaken Iran, and they want to get Iran through Hezbollah and through Syria.
And so there's a confluence of interest.
One plays a bad cop.
That's Netanyahu's role.
And if you like, the White House is saying, oh, no, well, we're trying to get restraint.
But the reality is everything that...
Money, the bombs.
You don't see any real pushback except something from the Pentagon.
That's true.
You see something from the Pentagon from there.
But is it enough to stop this embedded?
I mean, these are deep-seated policy initiatives in the United States.
These are what I call these, you know, these are the, And if they can get at Iran, of course they crush China, because then China loses its own source of fuel and oil.
It's heavily dependent on Iran.
It would be a major blow to China.
Strategically, and of course, would weaken Russia, which depends on Iran for the whole of the, if you like, Central Asia corridor, because Iran has that experience.
Russia has a certain drawback there.
So it all makes sense, and that's why we see this confluence of interest.
But for presentational purposes, of course, we're trying to dissuade.
Israel from going ahead.
But America's interest has been, for 50 years, this project in the Middle East to bring it under the US government control.
This is a neocon project.
It doesn't belong to this or that, but it combines, if you like, parts of all the parties.
Will Russia ever allow the United States, without resistance on the part of the Russians, to damage Iran?
No, I don't believe they will.
And I believe that's why they've been providing...
And I think they're very determined.
I don't think, and I think there's been a big, big change.
And I think, you know, with the killing of Hassan Nasrallah marked a big sort of shift in thinking.
You know, because before that, we were in the era of sort of careful calculation, incremental moves up the escalatory ladder.
And I've said that before, and I know that it was all being carefully calibrated.
I think, you know, what's understood in Russia is we're no longer playing chess.
We haven't got an adult on the other side of the chessboard.
What we have to do now is to get the message across is you have to take a hammer and smash the chessboard.
That's the change that's taken place in this recent period.
I'm going to play a little clip from, actually two clips, from the very public meeting of President Bazeshkian of Iran and President Putin.
of Russia and ask you for your thoughts.
Chris, please play consecutively number two and number three.
There was I'm very glad, dear Mr. President, that there is an opportunity to meet you personally and discuss our current issues.
Relations with Iran are a priority for us, and they are developing very successfully.
We have many opportunities now.
We should help each other in many areas.
Our viewpoints and positions in the world are much closer to each other than to those of others.
God willing, we will take part in the BRICS summit and will do everything to sign agreements that will allow beneficial mutual cooperation.
Did they sign a mutual defence pact?
No, they didn't.
Not then.
But I just want to say about this, I mean, we don't have much detail of what was the substance of the sudden meeting.
And so only guess what?
And I have my guesses.
But it's certainly he's not the man to talk about neutral defense or defense pact.
Because Ashkian, I mean, knows nothing about the military.
He's a heart surgeon and has always been, you know, a doctor.
And he's not served in the forces.
He's not the interlocutor for having a discussion with Putin.
This was being done by Shoigu with the National Security Council.
What is your gut feeling as to why this sudden ostentatious public meeting?
And here's my gut guesswork, is that recently you've heard quite a lot from Iran.
About needing to change its doctrine about nuclear weapons.
And that it's thinking of it, and about 39 members of parliament then wrote to the Supreme Leader saying they wanted it sort of considered.
Look, if that happens in Iran, the Supreme Leader is not opposed to it.
I mean, it's, you know, this is a little bit of theatre going on.
Clearly something is changing in terms of the doctrine.
My sense is that when Iran gets to the point where it's talking about changing the doctrine, it's already almost at the point where that doctrine can be implemented by just putting fissile material into a receptacle or something like that.
But don't forget that Russia, Putin is a lawyer, but Russia is against proliferation, and so is formerly the BRICS.
And so I would think that probably, possibly, but guess what, is that they were discussing how to manage the question of proliferation if it happens, and the doctrine has been changed.
After all, Russia's just changed its doctrines.
So, you know, there is an understanding that circumstances can change, and you may need to change your doctrine.
So I would think that it may be that he was called to really talk about How to manage the sort of diplomacy, the big diplomacy, BRICS and Russia, about if it were Russia, were Iran to change its doctrine on nuclear weapons.
How do you see the resistance coalescing to stop Israel from continuing to slaughter innocent civilians?
First of all, I mean, as I tried to indicate, really, we're in a new phase.
And in this phase, there's still the desire to not let things get out of control.
I mean, that's the desire on all members of the resistance to do this slowly.
We still see that Hezbollah are not using, they're still using rockets and sort of...
They haven't used their big, very accurate long-range and medium-range missiles, which they could do.
So Iran has not used it directly against the infrastructure of Israel, although that might be the next step that's going to happen.
But the Hussies have said they're going to really escalate the war.
By taking much firmer action and widening the level of interception and intervention to prevent vessels moving towards Israel and perhaps even to end the sort of land corridor to undermine the rat route that is run by UAE through to Israel over land in trucks.
Which still continues.
So maybe something like that will come under a greater effect.
Eilat Port has already had to file for bankruptcy because it has no business any longer.
And as you will have seen, and this recent drone attack underlines it, this barracks, Binyamin barracks, is just south of Haifa.
And Haifa has been under continual Rocket fire from Lebanon, from Hezbollah.
Every day, 100, 200 missiles landing in Haifa.
So the port doesn't function either.
Do things like a non-functioning port or the deaths of 4IDF, Chris informs me, All of them were 19 years old, have a political effect on the Netanyahu government.
Yeah, that's why, I mean, it links into the two things that I said.
These were recruits.
I mean, I know they were recruits and they were young recruits, but it was a big base.
And the Golan is the Special Forces base, if you like.
And they landed in it in that way.
It has a big, when I say it has a big psychological effect, it's huge.
But, you know, this is what I talk about the Ponzi scheme, in the sense.
Netanyahu has to keep the language going.
The Ponzi scheme saying, we're on a winning streak.
We're beating them.
We've beaten them in Gaza.
We're beating them in Lebanon.
We're not going to land.
Terrific.
They won't know what's hit them when we strike in Iran.
And when something like this happens, people start to say, well, you know, are you sure this narrative holds?
Is it really valid?
Is this true?
And so there's a sort of swirling of anxiety in Israel.
Beginning people say, well, you know, we're not sure all of this.
I mean, are we really winning?
Or are we losing?
And so he can't afford that.
And that's why, really, in many ways, an attack on Iran has become now or never in terms of Israeli politics.
And I think the politics of some of those in the White House.
It's now or never.
Now's the time we've persuaded everyone that, you know, We can have a new Middle East.
We can get rid of all the problematic parts of it.
And we can go on and win.
And then suddenly people have this great fear.
They see what's happening in South where they're saying that the public line is we're slicing through Hezbollah in the South.
Of Lebanon.
And the truth is, they're only a few hundred meters into it and losing lots of men.
And so people start to say, well, now you want to take on Iran?
A big country like Iran?
Is this really wise or is this going to finish us?
Or is this going to destroy us?
And I think that is on one side.
I mean, really deep division in Israel like that.
And I think there's an element of this also in America, too.
And Europe doesn't count in this thing.
But in America, it's happening with the Pentagon.
I think there are people in the Pentagon who understand exactly what happened.
On the 1st of October with the Iranian missiles coming in, and it completely overwhelmed the air defences of Israel.
But it also showed that America doesn't have air defenses that are really substantive.
I mean, this is a major strategic thing, that if they don't, can't...
Then, you know, does America have that ability in principle?
And the answer was, you know, a great big sort of question mark.
So I think, you know, the Pentagon is also having these sort of questions.
But against that, and this is where I'm pessimistic, I think it's, Now is the chance.
We've got the public support at the moment.
It could evaporate at any time.
Let's go on.
And of course, you know, in America, I'm sorry to put this sort of rather crudely, there's a big pot of money that is sitting there and is being doled out to Congress, aspirants on both sides, large sums of money for fighting.
It's campaign contributions from this huge pot.
So everybody is, we're supporting Israel.
Everyone on left or right, yes, we're supporters of Israel, because they need a big slice of that pot of money.
And it's most unfortunate this is happening at this time.
Alistair Crook, thank you, my dear friend.
Always fascinating for us in the east coast of the U.S. An eye-opener at breakfast listening to you.
Thank you.
We'll look forward to seeing you again next week.
Thank you very much for having me.
Thank you.
Of course.
Coming up later today, at 10 in the morning, Ray McGovern.
At 11 in the morning, Larry Johnson.
At 4 o 'clock this afternoon, Scott Ritter.
At 5 this afternoon, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
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