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June 24, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:04
AMB. Charles Freeman : Why Presidents Love War.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, June 24th, 2025.
Ambassador Charles Freeman will be with us in just a moment on why do presidents love war.
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Ambassador Freeman, welcome here, my dear friend.
Were you surprised when Donald Trump sent 30,000-pound bunker busters over Iran on Saturday night, only to find that he was bombing areas that had been evacuated of nuclear material and centrifuges?
Yes, I was surprised.
It's not clear what this accomplished other than a symbolic assault on Iran.
It was certainly a violation of international law.
It has left a mess.
We now have an uncertain ceasefire apparently proclaimed by President Trump.
Not clear what the terms are and what may have been promised to Iran or Israel or Qatar as the intermediary for this ceasefire.
But it leaves a huge number of questions and it hasn't really answered anything.
Is it clear to you that the United States of America is subordinated to the national security whims of the government of Israel?
It appears to be the case, yes.
We've seen quite a battle inside the administration between America firsters, those who believe the president's commitment to putting American interests before all else, and Israel firsters.
And of course, the president himself is torn on this issue because he is beholden to wealthy Zionist donors to whom he may have promised various things during the campaign.
Here's one of those Israel firsters.
This is really reprehensible.
I don't know if you've seen it.
This is Tammy Bruce, whom I know.
We worked together at Fox for a number of years.
She is the official spokesperson for the State Department of the United States of America.
Hear what she thinks about the relationship between the United States and Israel.
Chris, cut number nine.
The pride of being able to be here and do work that facilitates making things better for people.
And in the greatest country on earth, next to Israel.
In the greatest country on earth.
Next to Israel.
It's an honor to be able to make a difference and to be able to speak in this regard with an administration that I love so much.
I couldn't imagine somebody saying that and keeping their job as recently as 10 years ago.
No, it's really shocking.
But then, of course, we're seeing our government enforce censorship on behalf of Israel, a foreign country, deport people for saying things that are critical of Israel, a foreign country, acting on behalf of a foreign country militarily at the risk of American servicemen and women's lives, threatening the national security of the United States on behalf of Israel, a foreign country.
It is a foreign country.
And the effort by Israel to confuse itself or to equate itself with the world's Jews is a menace to them as well as to Israel itself, ultimately.
What...
What was gained militarily by the American attacks on Iran?
You're a former Assistant Secretary of Defense.
From that perspective, what was gained?
I don't think anything was gained.
It's pretty clear that the enriched, highly enriched uranium, that is the uranium enriched to 60%, was taken away and it's been kept safe in other locations.
You cannot destroy a nuclear program by bombing facilities or even by assassinating nuclear scientists, as Israel has done in the case of about 20 people.
And so from a military point of view, although Israel has proclaimed that it accomplished its war aims, it really accomplished nothing.
And the war leaves Israel aware of its own vulnerability to Iranian reprisal.
It leaves the United States aware of its vulnerability to Iranian reprisal.
Although the Iranians signaled to us ahead of time that they were going to strike the air base in Qatar, Al-Ajaid air base, and therefore no one was killed or wounded, they still demonstrated that they can reach out and touch us whenever they want, and that they're willing to take the risk of doing so.
So I don't think militarily anything was accomplished.
And I think, as I said, a huge number of uncertainties were created.
Will Iran remain in the Nonproliferation Treaty?
Will there ever be any kind of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency again permitted in Iran?
What is the effect on the internal politics of Israel and Iran?
And now we have a situation where the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the Arabs on the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, all have good reason to doubt whether the presence of American forces on their soil protects them or in fact constitutes a sort of threat that
attracts attention to them, an attractive nuisance, if you will, that draws attacks.
So I think the future of those bases is now up in the air.
How long will they remain if they do?
And finally, I think Israel is not more secure as a result of this.
Iran's nuclear program has not been ended.
In fact, most likely a result of this whole episode, the 12 days of Israeli attacks and Americans joining them in assaulting Iran, is that Iran is now very, very likely actually to make a weapon, make a nuclear bomb, which it didn't plan to do before.
And the whole fabric of the nonproliferation effort globally is in doubt.
And we're left in a confused state with a ceasefire that has no published terms.
No one knows what.
If it's just the president spewing out what he wants the state of affairs to be, or if there really is a ceasefire, I smiled when you said attractive nuisance shades of the first year of law school.
For both of us, which for both of us was a long time ago.
Your argument about you can't kill a nuclear know-how by bombing was echoed by a former Secretary of State of the United States with whom you and I don't agree.
This is very interesting what he said.
Chris, cut number 11. Christian, it's impossible for me to speculate as to exactly what's going on in either the president's mind or the national security team.
I do think people have to be realistic here in understanding what the choices are.
You cannot bomb away the memory of how to make a bomb.
You can't bomb away the knowledge that they have developed.
You can't bomb away the broad array of technicians who've been working on this for years who will go back to work if that's the mission they're given by the leadership of the country.
And one of the dangers, one of the dangers here is that the more this goes on in a military way, the more power goes to the worst defenders within Iran, the IRGC.
Yeah.
I agree with him.
Right, right, right.
You made an interesting question about the ceasefire.
Congressman Thomas Massey, who's receiving a lot of verbal fire from the president because he is the premier defender of the Constitution in all of the United States Congress, and the president doesn't give a damn about the Constitution, nevertheless asks if the United States is part of this fire.
Chris, number 13. He's called you a simple-minded grandstander.
MAGA doesn't know him, doesn't like him, that you think it's a good idea that Iran have the highest nuclear level weapon while at the same time yielding death to America, that you're disrespectful to our great military, that you're a pathetic loser, and the like.
What do you think of that?
Well, you know, I tweeted his message to me and I said, you know, the president's declared war against me so much, I think he needs an act of Congress to validate this.
In some sense, I have the Trump antibodies.
And I do want to point out that the ceasefire so far doesn't mention anything about what our bombing of Iran was predicated on, which is destroying its so-called nuclear program.
Well, does this mean that Trump's a party to the ceasefire?
He says that Iran and Israel are.
I hope the United States is as well, because if it's not, we're going to have to push this through Congress.
Well, that isn't, you know what, Congressman Matsey, I will say it.
You make an excellent point.
He's always on point, Matsey.
I'm not sure how much he actually does, but he says the right things.
And very clearly, this attack on Iran was not only a violation of international law, but a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
It was not authorized by Congress.
In fact, Congress wasn't even briefed on either the alleged intelligence supplied by Mossad and Israel, undoubtedly doctored for a fact, or the, which was the rationale for the attack, or the purposes of the attack, or what happened during the attack.
And at this point, we don't know much of anything except that Israel clearly was running out of the ability to intercept the incoming missiles from Iran, was hurting, and beginning to talk about the need to bring the war to an end.
And the Emir of Qatar evidently took advantage of, perhaps at American instance, the long-standing Iranian statement that they would, in fact, engage in a ceasefire if they weren't shot at.
So if Israel stopped attacking them, they would stop their reprisals.
And that's apparently the basis of the so-called ceasefire.
Well, we'll see how long it lasts.
I thought Congressman Massey made an excellent point.
Is the United States part of the ceasefire?
Is the United States going somehow to enforce the ceasefire?
From my observations, and I think yours, Donald Trump doesn't manipulate Netanyahu.
It's the other way around.
Netanyahu manipulates Donald Trump.
But how can you enforce a ceasefire that has no known terms?
Correct.
And, you know, if Donald Trump has a view of what the ceasefire entails, it's pretty clear from the initial fumbling and violations of alleged violations of the so-called ceasefire that there is no common understanding between Tehran and Israel.
And so I think this is a very unstable situation.
And the only thing that the war really accomplished was to obscure the continuing genocide in Gaza and take attention off that.
So here's a question.
What happens now to Gaza?
What happens to the hostages?
What happens to the Palestinians who are hostage to Israel and who are being devastated by Israel, murdered?
I don't know.
Why doesn't Donald Trump insist on a universal ceasefire?
Why doesn't he stop the genocide?
Why is he still paying for it?
He can't answer these questions.
By what conceivable legal or moral authority did the United States attempt to destroy a lawful, monitored, examined, and internationally recognized nuclear enrichment program subject to an international treaty, which every country that has nuclear weapons except one has signed.
Well, that, of course, is the key question.
You also have to address the damage to American credibility and diplomatic potential when twice the United States has used an alleged commitment, an apparent commitment to negotiations as cover for a surprise attack.
And one might even argue that in the case of Ukraine's surprise attack on the Russian bomber force, there too there was the use of a negotiation at Istanbul as cover for a surprise attack.
So apparently Pearl Harbor is now the norm.
I don't think that's an improvement in the world affairs.
Wow.
What is the damage done to Israel by Iran compared to the damage done to Iran by Israel?
I'm going to guess that from all the reports we get from our military folks that Israel is running out of the projectiles that it uses to shoot down incoming missiles, that it was the Netanyahu regime that implemented their request for a ceasefire, not the Iranians.
I think that's probably correct, although the battle damage, the physical damage, the murders of scientists and military officials clearly were far greater on the Iranian side than they were on the Israeli side.
But the importance of this is that this is the first time, really, that Israel has had to take its own medicine, which it deals out routinely to all its neighbors.
It has been bombed.
It has been shown that it cannot defend itself against attacks from the air, in this case, attacks largely from space.
So this is a fundamental shift in the balance of perceptions, at least, in West Asia.
And I don't know where it's going to take us.
It doesn't leave us more secure in any respect.
And I think, again, we have to ask the question, why are we doing this?
You asked the question at the outset, why do presidents love war?
One reason presidents love war is that it augments their authoritarian tendencies and their ability to control things at home.
And we've already seen statements that, well, there's sleeper cells from Iran in the United States, and we all have to be vigilant and we have to up the level of police control and behave more like a police state.
This is what happens during wars.
This is what James Madison was afraid of when he insisted that the Congress rather than the president have the right to declare war.
Wow.
I don't know if you have seen this.
It's a few years old.
It's an interview of General Wesley Clark talking about his reaction when he first learned of all the countries that the United States, the UNIPARTA, because it doesn't matter who the president is, is committed to undermining.
It's not very long and it's fascinating.
Watch this, Chris.
He said, I just got this down from upstairs, meeting the Secretary of Defense's office today, and he said, This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.
I said, Is it classified?
He said, Yes, sir.
I said, Well, don't show it to me.
If you were Iran, you'd probably believe that you were mostly already at war with the United States anyway, since we've asserted that their government needs regime change.
So, and we've asked Congress to appropriate $75 million to do it, and we are supporting terrorist groups, apparently, who are infiltrating and blowing up things inside Iraq, Iran.
And if we're not doing it, let's put it this way, we're probably cognizant of it and encouraging it.
So it's not surprising that we're moving to a point of confrontation crisis with Iran.
Five years ago, yeah.
Well, since then, of course, pretty much in line with that scenario, we've seen Israel take on with us that entire agenda.
And now we hear Israelis saying, well, ultimately, all this is preparation for our need to take up Turkey, a NATO ally, a country that is a middle-ranking power in world affairs, much more powerful than Iran or any of the others that have been savaged.
So where does this end?
This is a real question.
Wesley Clark mentioned the notion of regime change, which seems to have been the primary objective here, since you can't bomb a nuclear program out of a distance and you try to change the leadership.
But the fact is, historically, whenever this has been done, usually the successor leadership has been more nationalistic, more determined, and often less competent, or at least less respectful of human rights than its predecessor.
And inside Iran, nationalist forces have been greatly strengthened.
The arguments of those in Iran who've been advocating the development of a nuclear deterrent have been greatly strengthened.
So if the 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei, who is the supreme leader, indeed yields to a successor, that successor is likely to be more troublesome than he was.
So what have we accomplished?
Well, what damage has Netanyahu done to himself with this war against Iran?
Well, he's clearly in the short term, we've seen the usual rally around the flag reaction from many Israelis, varying of the severe divisions in Israeli society.
There's been a huge exodus, by the way, out of Israel.
The Israelis prohibited departure from Israel, but people did manage to make it to Cyprus as a way out.
I think the divisions in Israel have not been repaired by this.
They've probably been aggravated.
And again, we come back to, you know, what are those divisions?
A collapsing economy.
That economy has just been subjected to huge stress under amazingly large daily expenditures to defend against a counterattack from Iran to a war that Israel started.
The issues inside Israeli democracy have not changed.
The theological thugs who inhabit the Israeli cabinet are still there and sounding off.
The divisions in Israel, which are multiple and include the hostage issue and the desire of the hostage families to have their loved ones back alive, or unfortunately, if they're dead, at least have the body back, has not been satisfied.
And again, I come back to what happens to Gaza, what happens to the West Bank, what happens to Israel itself now that it's identified itself to the world as an utter outlaw, a country.
One of the commentators in Israel in the press described Prime Minister Netanyahu as the most despicable Jew in history.
And the damage that has been done globally and to the Jewish reputation and to our reputation is immense.
Well, we'll end at that, Ambassador.
Thank you for your courage and your intellectual acuity.
Thank you for sharing your time with us, my dear friend.
It's 100 degrees here today in New York.
I hope it's a little cooler in New England where you are.
Not much.
Not much.
All right.
We'll see you next week.
Thank you, Ambassador.
All the best.
And coming up later today, the heat notwithstanding, at 11 this morning, Aaron Mate and at 1 this afternoon, I've been waiting to hear from him since the bombs first fell on Saturday night.
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