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Dec. 2, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:32
LtCol Karen Kwiatkowski : Is Trump a Neocon?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024.
Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now.
Karen, always a pleasure, my dear friend, and thank you very much for being here.
So in the past three or four days, the Israeli government and Hezbollah and Lebanon entered into a peace treaty.
Or at least a ceasefire for 60 days, not a peace treaty.
The war in Syria has broken out full blast.
American troops are involved.
And the president of South Korea declared Marshall Loy eventually back down when the legislature voted 192 to nothing to condemn his behavior.
Is there any lesson to be drawn?
From the unbridled exercise of power by these individuals?
I mean, what business does the United States have being involved in Syria?
What right would the president of a democratically elected country have declaring martial law?
Everybody knows that Netanyahu wouldn't have entered into a ceasefire unless he had to do so for his own domestic.
Political purposes.
You can take it from there.
Any people, any country that America touches, it seems like war, conflict, and totalitarian seem to follow totalitarianism.
This is very the opposite of how we as Americans think of our country.
We think of ourselves, and we are told constantly, we are a beacon of self-government, light of freedom.
You know, principle, rule of law.
This is what we celebrate and this is what we think of ourselves as Americans.
But our government apparently doesn't share those values.
And all of our friends of our government, you didn't mention Europe trying to overturn elections that don't go their way or outlawing political parties that they don't like.
You know, it seems like we're in the wrong crowd for some reason.
And I don't know how we got here, but we need to wake up to that.
Well, what is the United States interest in Syria?
We've been trying to overthrow the government there since Eisenhower, but more intently, intensely, intentionally, since President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unleashed the CIA to pay various militia groups that we once said were terrorists, but now they're on our side.
To try and overthrow Bashar al-Assad because Netanyahu wants him overthrown because he accepts money from Iran.
I think I have this right.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the Project for a New American Century, work that they've done back 25 years ago, and also the famous This document that kind of preceded and set the outline for the countries we would interfere with back in 2000 on behalf of Greater Israel included, I think Major General Clark had revealed this inadvertently in like 2007, but included Syria.
And Libya was on the list, you know, Iraq, all of these countries that we have very much.
In some cases, destroyed.
I mean, destroyed certainly their government and their rule of law.
Syria, we haven't.
It's always been on the list, is what I'm saying.
It's always been on the neocons list, which is to say, unfortunately, Syria is a place that Israel wants to see weakened, for sure.
It's seen as, you know, an enabler and a sister of Iran.
They want to see it gone.
So it's not our war.
It's not our wars now.
We are occupying.
The American military, we know, is occupying part of Syria in the north and a little bit on the east.
And we're protecting Conoco oil fields.
This is well known.
This is what Trump wanted to pull the troops out when he was president the first time.
And they lied to him and indicated they had removed those troops when, in fact, they had no intention.
The Pentagon defied the civilian control of the president when he told him to move the troops out.
We've been involved and engaged in this, as you said, for far longer than a decade, but certainly over 25 years.
And why?
Why?
It's not in America's interest to do that.
It is in Israel's interest, though, because Israel cannot tolerate a strong and opposing government around them.
They've got Golan Heights, which is Syrian property.
I think they'd like to move a little farther into Syria, just as they're doing with Lebanon, just as they're doing with Gaza.
And a stable, popular government under Assad, a government in Syria, is a problem for them.
So Israel's problems then become our problems.
Why?
It's certainly not constitutional.
Israel is not the 51st state.
We don't elect Israelis to make American policy, but in fact, And it's very ugly.
It's very wrong.
Let me take you back to 2015.
The commanding general of CENTCOM, which includes the Middle East, was Lloyd Austin, who is now the Secretary of Defense.
He was being interrogated by Senator Kelly Ayotte.
Then a senator from New Hampshire, and they had just finished discussing the fact that the American government had spent $500 million, a half a billion dollars, to train fighters and transform terrorists into so-called freedom fighters.
And then Secretary Ayotte, excuse me, Senator Ayotte, asked then General, Austin, how many fighters did you train for $500 million?
Watch this.
Cut number four.
It's a small number.
And the ones that are in the fight is, we're talking four or five.
As I see it right now, this four or five U.S. trained fighters, let's not kid ourselves, that's a joke.
Half a billion dollars and they trained four or five people.
And there's no remorse over this.
It's like, oh well, we spent the money and this is what we got for it.
This is why they can't pass an audit.
Say again?
This is why the Pentagon cannot pass an audit.
And also it indicates that what they're doing with that money and where that money goes is something they're not going to tell the senator and they're not going to tell the American people and they're not going to tell anybody.
If $500 million was taken to...
So it's criminal, is what it is.
And, you know, I try to be optimistic about this new Trump administration.
If they are serious about going after fraud, waste, and abuse in our government, Pentagon President-elect Trump has said he wants to increase the Pentagon's budget.
I mean, the Pentagon should be ground zero for their efforts to cut fraud and waste.
The American military budget is greater than that of the next 10 countries combined, even though one of them has a bigger army and one of them has a better navy.
I think both of the major competitors you're referring to have better leadership.
So we're in trouble.
Sorry to say that's true.
But while we're talking about old clips...
You've got to see this.
I know you've seen it many times.
I won't even tell you who's in it, but you'll know.
It goes back to 2013, cut number five.
But what was going on and why they were doing what they were doing?
No, no, no.
Again, we were misled that there were supposedly protests and then something sprang out of that and assault sprang out of that.
And that was easily ascertained that that was not the fact.
And the American people could have known that within days, and they didn't know that.
With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans.
Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans?
What difference at this point does it make?
This is the woman who decided that Assad had to go, and this is the woman who...
who decided that Gaddafi had to go, and she and her boss, the then president, Barack Obama, orchestrated the use of American taxpayer dollars, the Central Intelligence Agency, and locals to succeed in one case, Gaddafi, who was publicly butchered, and to fail, but to attempt to succeed in the other case, Assad, who, of course, is still there.
How much longer is the United States going to risk blood and treasure just to please the Prime Minister of Israel?
And yet that is the very nature of our foreign policy.
For really almost 30 years.
Some would go back to 50 years.
I don't know if it's a disease, an addiction.
It's certainly a bad habit.
How do we change our foreign policy in this regard?
We're actually, you know, we're mutually captured.
I mean, Israel is functional because of us, but our government, So we're each other's captive.
How do we break out from that?
We have a constitution.
That should be a starting point.
And I'll tell you, I have an online class of government, young students, and it's just basic introduction to American government.
But I always make the point, always, that the government, our Congress, has not declared war.
It has not done its constitutional duty to declare war when we, Not since World War II have we had that declaration.
And yet, you know, I point out to them, as they probably, many of them know, we've been at constant war ever since then.
And our Congress doesn't do its lawful and highest duty.
It ignores that.
We the people tolerate that.
So how do you fix that?
I don't know how you fix it.
Well, let's jump over to Ukraine.
If the war is being fought for any reason, it's to keep NATO out of Ukraine.
It's to return the Russian cultural and historical and linguistic areas back to Russia where they were going back to 1730.
But yet here's President Zelensky, going to show you two clips, both very recent, November 29th, suggesting seriously that.
So, Chris, back to back.
Cut number one and cut number six.
If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control.
That's what we need to do fast.
And then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically.
The fact is that it is a solution to stop the hot stage of the war.
Because we can just give the NATO membership to the part of Ukraine that is under our control.
Yes, it could be possible, but no one offered.
But the invitation must be given to Ukraine within its internationally recognized border.
You can't give invitation to just one part of a country.
Is he delusional, Karen?
He strikes me as exceptionally delusional.
Delusional and also desperate.
Of course, he's been desperate for a while.
You know, the reports of what's happening to the military, the Ukrainian military, you know, they can't recruit.
They're forcing people off the streets.
I think a couple hundred thousand of their recruits, so to speak, their draftees, have deserted.
And there's a huge industry that, I guess, a black market in helping people escape.
Serving in the Ukrainian military.
It's a lost war.
Ukrainians know it.
Most everybody knows it.
And this guy is sitting unelected at this point.
I mean, he's overstayed his welcome by almost a year now or three quarters of a year.
He is not the legitimate elected leader of Ukraine.
The surveys show that if he ran, he would have 17% of the vote.
This is a very desperate and unfortunate character.
Honestly, I don't know what you get, you know, it's like he's living on another planet.
And he must understand, I mean, he is a Ukrainian.
He's been involved in this from the beginning.
He knows what the American interest is.
This proposal of his, oh, NATO, NATO offered to all of Ukraine, but we'll just take it in the part we own now.
We'll get the rest later.
That is insanity.
I think in some ways it may be a sign that his American sponsors don't have a plan.
And I think that's pretty clear from Biden's activity and what Jake Sullivan is saying.
You know, these are guys on their way out.
Whatever their plan was didn't work.
And they really have two months, less than two months left.
They have no plan.
So he's reflective of that.
What he's saying is very much reflective of a dead end.
He is a dead end leader to a dead end war.
And yet General Keith Kellogg, whom President-elect Trump has indicated will be his emissary for Ukraine and Russia, is talking about stopping the Russian military.
And Mike Waltz, whom President-elect Trump has indicated will be his national security advisor, is saying the same thing.
I mean, here's the question, Karen.
Is Trump a secret neocon?
Yeah, well, he certainly has the great potential to become a neocon overnight, and that's very scary and very frightening.
He's going to have a lot of unhappy people in this country who supported him in the face of being debanked and deplatformed and ridiculed by the other half of the country.
And all these people stuck with Trump, and they wanted Trump.
And they bought Trump's message.
And a big part of that message, to heal America, to put America first, is to fix our foreign policy and to not be at war.
He promised that to them.
He promised that to the country.
If he fails in that, I think the anger in this country that we saw in that last election is, it's not buried.
It's just below the surface.
It's true to what he said he would do, but these appointments do not support that.
Here is General Kellogg in March of 2022.
Putin is not winning this fight.
Putin is losing this fight.
And he would look at ways to say, well, let me get, where's my off-ramp?
And my off-ramp is, with all this economic problems I've got, there may be a way to do it.
And if the United Nations comes in as a world body and says this is going to be a UN no-fly zone, then we honor what Zelensky has wanted.
We keep NATO out of the fight.
Now, is this high risk?
Of course it is.
Is it a perfect plan?
No, it's not.
No plans are perfect.
But there's a way to do it, and we should at least explore it.
I don't know how any, like, sounds like Joe Biden.
I don't know how any of these guys can say Putin is losing.
He wasn't losing at any point during the war.
No, at no point.
At no point in the war.
And we also have ample evidence, in the military, the Pentagon is totally aware of this, that the sanctions, first off, the sanctions rarely work, if ever, but these particular Russian sanctions, which were amazingly extensive, they had existed for a while, they were expanded upon, none of it worked.
Putin's economy, Russia's economy, growing.
Their military advancing far more rapidly than ours is in terms of technology, productivity, reliability.
I don't know where these guys are getting their information.
If that's Kellogg and he's the guy coming with two years ago, two and a half years ago, he said this, that's not good.
He's not able to comprehend reality.
If he believes what he said there, At the time that he said it, when anybody who cared to find out would know that what he's saying, even in 2022, was incorrect, and he said it publicly and he stands by that, he's not able to learn.
We need people who can learn, people who have the ability to take in facts and process those facts with an America First perspective.
And this guy doesn't look like he has that.
Here's the smartest guy in the room, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, yesterday.
Cut number two.
We are concerned about what we are hearing lately, particularly from the West, in Brussels, London, Paris, and Washington.
There is increasing talk about a ceasefire as a way to give Ukraine a break and provide time to arm it with modern, long-range weapons.
This approach is certainly not the way forward.
Western leaders, it seems, are catering to Zelensky and his demands.
Their stance has been, not a word about Ukraine without Ukraine.
Yet they have been discussing Russia without Russia for over two years within the framework of Zelensky's proposals.
As President Putin pointed out, Zelensky's Western backers should first compel him to cancel the decree that prohibits negotiations with Putin's government.
Russia is ready for negotiations, but they must be based on a comprehensive and legal consideration of the legitimate interests of all parties involved.
That means that Zelensky can't do the negotiating because he's not the legal head of the government, right?
That's right.
That's right.
And also, he's not the popular head of the government either.
The Ukrainians want this war to end.
There is no survey of any Ukrainians, in or out of Ukraine, that don't want this war over.
And they don't care about the dumbass.
I mean, this is, to them, these are Russians.
These are Russians who are not loyal Ukrainians anyway.
This is part of the beginning of that whole problem.
How close are they to the end?
How degraded is the military and how destabilized is the Ukrainian society?
I mean, here we are in early December and they don't even know that they're going to have heat in their homes and businesses in the next three months.
Yeah.
I would have thought this war would have ended through exhaustion at least six months ago.
At least.
And it has not.
It's continued to be aided by the West and weapons are being used.
The people are drying up.
The soldiers, they don't have the soldiers.
The soldiers they have aren't trained.
The soldiers they have aren't properly armed with what you would need to do to actually fight.
So their army is literally gone, I think.
I don't think that is existing.
Their population, the people that were smart enough to leave Ukraine left.
Many of them are not coming back.
Those that remain, think about what it's like to live in a zone like that.
Your economy is shattered.
You're in a war zone in many parts of Ukraine, but also there's not reliable energy.
Black markets take over.
This is the nature of all countries at war.
You have the alternate market, the gray market, the black market.
And so the historic and well-known Ukrainian What do we call it?
Corruption.
That's one label for people that take care of themselves in hard times.
That is being exercised and strengthened.
So is their society okay?
Well, the worst parts of their society are fine.
But the better parts of their society are they've either left or they are gone.
And, you know, I'm reminded of folks that have been to Kiev last summer.
Anatoly Levin went there and he was very surprised.
He shouldn't have been probably, but he was very surprised at how wealthy Kiev was and all of the luxury stores and the cars that were being driven there.
And that kind of corruption is kind of what we see in a lot of non-democratic governing situations.
So throwing more money into Ukraine, as we've been doing for the last year, long after this should have been over.
That money is lining pockets.
That money is helping various parties prepare for the next phase, hopefully which would not be war, but it will be very corrupt.
Nothing that we have done has helped Ukraine, and nothing we have done has helped Ukraine.
Let's assume they really want to be part of NATO.
Let's assume they really would like to be part of the EU.
Everything we have done has pushed them farther away from qualifying.
From being able to sustain or even get on a list for membership.
The country is a wreck.
And we wrecked it.
No, I'm interested in why we wrecked it.
Because I think when you follow the money and you look at the people involved and their objectives, I mean, this Ukraine is a pawn.
proxy war certainly has some usefulness against Russia, but I think people thought, uh, We're going to get those.
I think there's very much an exploitation aspect to it.
And I'm not one to go around talking about, you know, colonialism, but this has a lot of characteristics of old-style great power colonialism, and Ukraine is the victim.
Colonel Kwiatkowski, thank you very much, my dear friend.
We've been all over the gamut from South Korea to the Middle East to Ukraine.
It's a pleasure to be able to do this with you.
Look forward to seeing you next week.
Okay.
Thanks a lot, Judge.
Appreciate it.
Of course.
Of course.
Coming up tomorrow, Wednesday at 11 in the morning, Max Blumenthal at noon, all times Eastern as usual.
Colonel Douglas McGregor at 3, Phil Giraldi at 4, Aaron Monte.
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