Jan. 7, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Tuesday, January 7th, 2025. | |
| Ambassador Charles Freeman will be with you in just a moment on Is Israel Destroying Itself? | |
| But first this. | |
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| Ambassador Freeman, welcome here, my dear friend. | |
| A belated Happy New Year to you and a deep expression of my gratitude, our team's gratitude, the audience's gratitude for all your work here during 2024 and our hope and expectation we can continue it in the new year. | |
| Thank you so much. | |
| Thank you. | |
| President-elect Trump has designated retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who worked for him in part during his first term in the White House as his envoy to Ukraine. | |
| General Kellogg has been reported as saying that if President Putin is unwilling to talk ceasefire, he can expect more heavy military equipment delivered to Ukraine. | |
| What kind of sense does this make? | |
| Well, this is something that General Kellogg has fairly consistently advocated. | |
| That is called escalation to de-escalate. | |
| In other words, put more pressure on the other party to force them to come to the negotiating table or to make concessions at the negotiating table. | |
| Of course, there's no problem getting the Russians to the negotiating table. | |
| It's been their consistent demand from December. | |
| 2021 on that there be negotiations and there were negotiations, which actually resulted in an agreement in March of 2022, just a few weeks after the war began. | |
| And it was we who bollocks that. | |
| So this is a fairly common theory. | |
| It doesn't work. | |
| It basically says, if you don't succeed, just do more of the same. | |
| At a higher level. | |
| It's the Washington playbook. | |
| And the idea that somehow the Russians, who do have a glorious history of resistance to foreign pressure, whether from Napoleon or from the Kaiser or from Adolf Hitler, whether there's a theory that they will somehow capitulate when they're winning on the battlefield, | |
| or that additional weaponry is the key. | |
| To some sort of Ukrainian victory is nonsense. | |
| Ukraine's problem is it's run out of manpower. | |
| We started out saying that we would basically, our objective was to isolate and weaken Russia, and we were prepared to fight to the last Ukrainian to do that. | |
| And we are now down pretty close to the last Ukrainian. | |
| So this is, I think, an empty bluff. | |
| If it is, in fact, the thinking of the new administration, I think they're in for a nasty surprise from the Russians. | |
| Secretary Blinken revealed over the New Year's holiday that the Biden administration actually sent heavy artillery to Ukraine before the special military operation began and before it was authorized. | |
| And I said before it was authorized. | |
| The president has the authorization to dispense military equipment at his discretion. | |
| So this is before the express authorization for Ukraine by the Congress. | |
| It was not illegal what he did, but it was, in my view, deceptive. | |
| Are you surprised, A, that this happened, and B, that he revealed it now? | |
| No, on the first point, I'm not surprised, because... | |
| There was an eight-year effort from 2014 when the coup occurred right up to the war to strengthen the Ukrainians sufficiently militarily so that they could take the Russian-speaking areas in eastern Ukraine back from the rebels who had rebelled when their use of Russian language and efforts to preserve Russian culture were made illegal by the new So, | |
| obviously, on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine had the largest armed force in Europe other than the Turks and the Russians. | |
| It was almost as large as the Russian army. | |
| It was trained to NATO standard. | |
| It was equipped with NATO weaponry, and it was massing in the east to carry out a campaign against The Donbas rebels. | |
| This is what was happening. | |
| So not at all surprised by that. | |
| Nor am I surprised by the revelation now, really, because we're seeing a lot of self-exculpatory revelations from the outgoing administration trying to justify its frankly miserable record and the fact that it's leaving. | |
| Mr. Trump, its successor with a mess, not just in Ukraine, but in the Middle East, and arguably in Pacific Asia as well, with a war brewing with China. | |
| The danger of a war in the Middle East is a wider war, a war with Iran, has never been as great as it is now. | |
| And Ukraine is losing the war, so the West is being humiliated. | |
| And we don't seem to have an answer to any of these issues, and I don't think General Kellogg's answer, if that is indeed his proposal, is going to get us what we need. | |
| Ambassador, given the deep and long-standing attitude of the American foreign policy establishment in the post-World War II era of hatred for Russia, | |
| given the Yes, | |
| but I think it will be very, very difficult. | |
| And I'm glad you raised the question of a long and durable peace because That is exactly what the Russians demand. | |
| They will not accept a ceasefire, a demilitarized zone dividing Europe into hostile blocks, or the presence of NATO forces in Ukraine. | |
| What they want, and have said from the beginning they want, is what we ought to want, which is a Europe that is not divided, that is cooperative. | |
| In which Ukraine plays the role of a buffer and a bridge between Russia and the rest of Europe. | |
| And so I think the idea that you can get into a ceasefire discussion and that's it, and you don't deal with broader issues of European security architecture is simply wrong. | |
| That isn't going to happen. | |
| And the only result of trying to make it happen will be... | |
| The fighting continues. | |
| The Russians continue to advance across the broad front that they are advancing in. | |
| And you don't get any kind of peace at all. | |
| I want to ask you about the European elites, Ambassador. | |
| The government of Austria collapsed. | |
| The government of Germany collapsed. | |
| The government of France... | |
| Changes prime ministers every six months. | |
| What do the European elites want vis-a-vis Russia? | |
| Do they share the view of American neocons that Russia is the evil empire and needs to be resisted militarily? | |
| Or did they just go along with Joe Biden because of all the money the U.S. brings to Europe? | |
| Some do share the view. | |
| Many don't. | |
| The fact is that Europe suffers from some of the same forces that we do. | |
| It has political systems that are not delivering the economic benefits, the security, personal security and the prosperity that European voters want. | |
| And so Europe, like the United States, is in the grips of right-wing populist movements. | |
| Which are on the rise there, as they have been here. | |
| So, as far as Russia is concerned, many Europeans who do know something of European history understand that the historical record strongly suggests that there can be no peace in Europe, | |
| there can be no stability, unless Russia is part of the equation and a participant in making decisions about European affairs. | |
| The best example of the failure of the consequences of excluding a European great power from participation in the management of Europe is World War I. After World War I, we excluded, | |
| we excommunicated Germany and Russia in the form of the Soviet Union. | |
| And the result was World War II. | |
| World War II did not end in a peace. | |
| It ended in... | |
| A prolonged confrontation called the Cold War. | |
| That is not what Europeans want. | |
| And I think the doubts that Mr. Trump is sowing about transatlantic relations with threats against the Europeans on economic grounds just add to the skepticism that many have. | |
| Of course, I should add that some, like the French, Naturally, I try to exploit concerns about Russia to extend their influence within Europe. | |
| And they're not alone in this. | |
| The Germans at the moment are very confused. | |
| The Austrian government, as you said, has just collapsed. | |
| The Alternative Deutschland, which is the equivalent of the right-wing party in Austria, that is on the move. | |
| It is gaining in the polls despite all the efforts to block it. | |
| And European confusion is pretty great at the moment. | |
| You add that to the confusion in U.S. relations with Europe that is implicit in Mr. Trump's threats. | |
| And I think you have a very unstable situation. | |
| Wow. Here's a very interesting clip from your least favorite Secretary of State. | |
| Gave a long year-end interview to the New York Times. | |
| This is not the most incendiary thing he said. | |
| We'll save that for a few minutes yet. | |
| But he does acknowledge that the war in Ukraine is essentially in a stalemate. | |
| Cut number one. | |
| Where the line is drawn on the map? | |
| At this point, I don't think it's fundamentally going to change very much. | |
| The real question is, can we make sure that Ukraine is in a position to move forward strongly? | |
| You mean that the areas that Russia controls, you feel, will have to be ceded? | |
| Ceded is not the question. | |
| The question is, the line as a practical matter in the foreseeable future is unlikely to move very much. | |
| Ukraine's claim on that territory will always be there. | |
| And the question is, will they find ways? | |
| With the support of others. | |
| To regrain territory that's been lost. | |
| I think the critical thing now going forward is this. | |
| If there is going to be a resolution, or at least a near-term resolution, because it's unlikely that Putin will give up on his ambitions. | |
| If there's a ceasefire, then in Putin's mind, the ceasefire is likely to give him time to rest, to refit, to re-attack at some point in the future. | |
| So what's going to be critical to make sure that any ceasefire that comes about is actually enduring is to make sure that Ukraine has the capacity going forward to deter further aggression. | |
| And that can come in many forms. | |
| It could come through NATO, and we put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership. | |
| It could come through security assurances, commitments, guarantees by different countries to make sure that Russia knows that if it reattacks, it's going to have a big problem. | |
| That, I think, is going to be critical to making sure that any deal that's negotiated... | |
| Actually endures and then allows Ukraine the space, the time, to grow strong as a country. | |
| Boy, is he in a different frame of mind from what you articulated and from reality. | |
| Did you catch the parenthetical, Ambassador, and we put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership? | |
| Man, if there's any lesson to be learned by the past three years, it's that what he just said is absurd. | |
| Well, first of all, there is no stalemate the Russians are advancing. | |
| And they have the capacity to take a great deal more of Ukraine if the fighting goes on. | |
| Ukraine's capacity to resist is not dependent on the massive support in weaponry that we are supplying, but on manpower and willpower. | |
| Ukrainians have had a tremendous demonstration of willpower to resist as long as they have. | |
| We're coming to the end. | |
| What is most notable to me about that statement, which the New York Times correspondent appeared to just accept without challenge, is that this was military reasoning. | |
| The answer to Ukraine's security is military. | |
| It's not diplomatic. | |
| There is no talk of a peace. | |
| There is a ceasefire. | |
| That's what we're talking about. | |
| And it's taken for granted that the Russian objective is The removal of Ukraine as an independent state. | |
| No Russian has ever advocated that. | |
| Or that Russia would go on to conquer Paris, as it did in the Napoleonic Wars, with others. | |
| That is not what is in the offing. | |
| So there's no diplomatic strategy here from our top of Dipperland. | |
| And that is a microcosm of the problem that the Biden administration has put us in for the last four years. | |
| I want to transition to Israel, Ambassador. | |
| President-elect Trump said as recently as over this past weekend that he is the best friend Israel has ever had. | |
| Is that a dangerous statement to human decency and to American national security? | |
| Well, it's grotesque. | |
| It's like somebody who gives a drunk a lot of money to buy more liquor. | |
| Saying he's the drunk's best friend. | |
| Israel is in the process of destroying itself. | |
| There is a quote in Mark, I believe, in the New Testament. | |
| What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul? | |
| Israel has lost its soul. | |
| It's lost all moral authority. | |
| It is the most hated society on the planet. | |
| And we're just beginning to see the consequences of that. | |
| For example, there are now 50 efforts around the world to arrest individual Israelis who participated in the genocide in Gaza. | |
| And the reasoning legally in this case is very similar to that that is applied to prison guards at Auschwitz or Treblinka or other death camps operated by the Nazis. | |
| Maybe they didn't kill anybody themselves, but they participated in an operation. | |
| Designed to kill people. | |
| They knew that was the case. | |
| And they are accessories, therefore, to the most egregious of all war crimes, namely genocide. | |
| So Israelis are going to find that they can't travel around the world, and maybe they can come here because we are ardently pro-Israeli, apparently. | |
| But elsewhere, they're subject to arrest for crimes against humanity. | |
| And, of course, we haven't seen the... | |
| The International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice procedures play out to their fullest. | |
| So, Israel is going to end up internationally isolated and it is overextended militarily. | |
| It's trying to generate a war with Iran as we speak. | |
| And the argument which we're hearing from the administration that somehow or other the fall of the Assad government in Syria It represents a major step towards stability in the region, lacks all credibility. | |
| The instability has never been as great, and it is caused by Israeli reactions to things. | |
| Secretary Blinken seems to feel that the Israelis have not engaged in genocide and that he's not there for. | |
| No. It's not, | |
| first of all. | |
| Second, As to how the world sees it, I can't fully answer to that. | |
| But everyone has to look at the facts and draw their own conclusions from those facts. | |
| And my conclusions are clear. | |
| Seeing somebody as uncomfortable with their answer as that. | |
| You know, when you say you're Secretary of State, Your job is to understand the world beyond our borders and manage our relations with it. | |
| And you say you don't have any idea what the world thinks. | |
| Everybody has to make up their own mind. | |
| And you ignore the International Court of Justice findings and the International Criminal Court findings. | |
| And you ignore the fact that every poll shows that even Americans understand that there is genocide being committed by Israel and don't want it. | |
| The United States to be involved in it. | |
| You should be worried because you are complicit. | |
| And what is happening to individual Israeli members of the IDF reserve around the world now can, theoretically at least, happen to you. | |
| So this is a statement that demonstrates the utter moral blindness of the Biden administration on this issue. | |
| That moral blindness has destabilized our campuses, and it has generated, in my view, the most potent threat to freedom of speech and academic inquiry in our history. | |
| If you use the word genocide, as the New York Times correspondent didn't really do, you are deplatformed. | |
| You are defamed. | |
| And yet that is what is happening and everybody can see it. | |
| So I think this is a pathetic, pathetic, pathetic effort to exonerate Mr. Blinken from his behavior by himself. | |
| Are we going to see the same thing from Secretary of State Marco Rubio with respect to Israel? | |
| I certainly hope not. | |
| I think we need to let the new administration take office before. | |
| Jumping to conclusions about what various members of it may do, I would hope that Mr. Rubio, Senator Rubio, will have a finer sense of morality than Mr. Blinken has displayed. | |
| Ambassador Freeman, thank you for your time, my dear friend. | |
| Much appreciated, and I hope you'll come and join us again next week. | |
| Try to do that. | |
| Keep well. | |
| Thank you. | |
| You as well. | |
| I am reminded that in the Orthodox world, today is Christmas. | |
| Merry Christmas to our friends who celebrate that great holiday today. | |
| We have a busy day coming up for you at 10 o'clock this morning. | |
| Pepe Escobar at noon. | |
| Kevork Almacian at 2 o'clock. | |
| Matthew Ho at 3 o'clock. | |
| Karen Kwiatkowski at 4 o'clock. | |
| Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. |
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