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Aug. 11, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
21:31
[SPECIAL] - LtCOL. (ret.) William J. Astore : US Is Failing and Flailing
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom with my froggy voice today.
Today is Tuesday, August 12, 2025.
Colonel Bill Astor joins us now.
The colonel is a veteran of the United States Army, has a degree in philosophy, a PhD from Oxford University, is a historian, a former professor of history, and a very serious critic of military excess.
The colonel has written a spectacular piece about which those of you listening now may have heard me speak called An Ailing, Failing, Failing Empire Lashes Out at antiwar.com.
And when I read that piece we decided to track the colonel down and it turns out he's good friends uh with some of our regulars not the least of whom uh is colonel lawrence wilkerson so colonel astor welcome here welcome to the show i'm looking forward to chatting with you yeah thanks so much judge sure does the united states possess moral authority does it possess virtue when it goes around the world looking for monsters to slay.
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think when I first went into the military in, well, 1980, kind of during the tail end of the Cold War, as a young second lieutenant, I believed that we did have moral authority.
I knew I knew my country wasn't perfect.
Obviously, I'd read a lot about the Vietnam War and the disasters there.
I was familiar with the Pentagon papers and all the lies.
And yet, you know, I still thought our country was on the right side of history in the sense that we faced the Soviet threat and the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe that I thought, you know, had to be met.
And so, or at least very much contained.
But now I think when the passing of 40 years, when I look at what the United States is up to, our global empire, what we're doing in enabling a genocide in Gaza is probably the worst example.
But all of our arms shipments around the world, the fact that back in the 1930s, we used to call them the merchants of death.
The United States was proud to say that we weren't like these bad European countries exporting all these awful weapons.
Now we dominate that global trade.
you know, 40% of it is from the United States.
So unfortunately, sadly, I think we can no longer say that we have the moral authority, you know, that we had, say, 40 years ago or back during World War II.
Is that accurate?
The president bombs Iran for two weeks.
He doesn't go to Congress.
The CIA is fomenting some sort of a civil war or revolution in Georgia, not the American Georgia, but the Georgia adjacent to Russia, nobody says anything about moral virtue.
They just go ahead and do it.
They just go ahead and start killing people.
Right, right.
And that's, I think that's part of the spread of militarism in our country.
You know, this, when you become dominated by the military, you know, when you make the military into a band of virtuous heroes, you put morality to the side.
And I think we've become a country.
This is something I've been writing about for about the past 20 years.
You know, when we extol the virtues of warriors and warfighters.
And when we basically argue that the way to obtain peace is through military strength, all of a sudden, I think we've abandoned moral authority.
I was going to say that I really appreciate the way that your show starts.
You know, your show starts with peace, that word.
So, you know, that is something that I deeply appreciate.
Well, you don't see that word in the Defense Department today.
In fact, my former Fox colleague, who now runs the DOD, told another colleague of ours, former colleague of ours uh laura ingram last night he wants to change the name of the defense department to the war department he wants to glorify the warrior ethos he is ecstatic colonel that he has one trillion dollars to spend in a
year you know these numbers better than i by the way forgive me i said army before i didn't mean to degrade you your air force No, I know, you know, I worked in the Army and the Presidio at Monterey was my last assignment.
I know a lot of good Army guys.
So no, my family has.
histories at both West Point and the Air Force Academy, so I'm familiar with the collaboration between the two.
And our dear mutual friend, the great, brilliant Professor John Mearsheimer, is a graduate of West Point, but transferred to the Air Force.
But a trillion dollars a year, Colonel, you know this better than I, is more than the next 10 countries combined.
Russia probably has a better army.
China probably has a better navy.
They don't waste the money that we do.
Why?
Well, you know, part of it is, well, as XCIA, you know, Ray McGovern always reminds us, it's the Mickey Matte, right?
The military-industrial complex combined with the intelligence world and the media, academy, think tanks, I mean, even sports in Hollywood now celebrate the military.
So we as a culture.
have come to embrace the military in a way in which we no longer ask questions, you know, where the money is going and what we're getting for the money.
And this is, of course, what Eisenhower challengenged us to do.
President Eisenhower in 1961 warned all of us that we, our country, was increasingly falling under the control of the military industrial complex, to which he added Congress as well, although he kept that out of the speech to keep Congress on his side.
And he told us, you know, he said, look, we need to be alert and knowledgeable citizens.
It's the only way we can keep this complex in check.
And unfortunately, to a certain extent, you know, the use of propaganda and all that to suppress our knowledge of the military industrial complex.
And then just the fact that we've all been encouraged no longer to be citizens, right?
I mean, most of us, I mean, at least if you live in America, you're sort of encouraged to be a passive consumer rather than exercising, you know, your rights to free speech and dissent and all the rest.
Right, right.
The President of the United States is meeting with his Russian counterpart in Alaska.
on Friday.
We all know this.
I don't know what's going to come of it.
It's an odd meeting, I think, because as you may know from your studies of history, normally the agreements are made well in advance.
and these meetings are just the public ratification of them and the patting on the back and the taking of credit.
I don't think any agreements have been made, but maybe we'll be surprised.
But while Donald Trump is meeting with Vladimir Putin, the United States continues to wage a proxy war against Russia.
American intelligence assets in Ukraine and in Russia are aiming Americans.
As I mentioned earlier, the CIA is fomenting some sort of a disturbance, a coup, a revolution, whatever you want to call it, a civil war in the country of Georgia in order to deflect the attention of Vladimir Putin from the special military operation in Ukraine.
What conceivable benefit to the United States is there for this?
One last part of this, and you can run with the ball as long as you want, Colonel.
You're a historian, and you explain these things beautifully.
Two weeks ago, President Trump signed an order declaring Russia a national security threat to the United States.
I would argue that Russia is not a national security threat to the United States.
And if anything, it's the other way around.
Watch Colonel Christopher Donahue, who commands 100,000 American troops in Europe and Africa, threatening a land invasion.
of this exclave, Kaliningrad, which is as much a part of Russia as Moscow is.
It's just not contiguous to the mainland.
Chris, the Colonel Donahue, said.
If you look at Kaliningrad, and it's, you know, you can argue back and forth, but it's about 47 miles wide.
surrounded by NATO on all sides.
There's absolutely no reason why that A2AD bubble to deter Russia, we cannot take that down from the ground in a time frame that is unheard of and faster than we've ever been able to do.
We've already planned that.
We've already developed it.
What conceivable benefit to the United States of America is there to saying that?
to planning to do it and even ultimately doing it.
Well, he's a real warrior, right?
He talks good game about war.
Uh, and this is part of the problem that our country faces today.
Yeah.
I mean, the Russia-Ukraine war, I've always been concerned from the very beginning about Mission Creep, right?
I mean, when, when Russia invaded, uh, obviously, uh, you know, there was, I think, justification for the United States to provide defensive weaponry, uh, to Ukraine.
Uh, but the way in which, you know, the Russia-Ukraine war has escalated over the last three plus years, and in each time, it seems as if, you know, there's a new offensive weapon, uh, instead of defensive, uh, that we need to send to Ukraine in its struggle.
I remember back in 2023, there was a lot of confidence, a lot of hype, way too much hype about how all these American wonder weapons, Abrams tanks and Leopard tanks from Germany and so on, that Ukraine was going to launch a decisive offensive and defeat.
Russia.
And I was like, I don't think this is going to happen.
You know, I think Russia is formidable on the ground.
They have superiority in numbers.
You know, it looks like a much more like.
like a stalemate, but a stalemate that could escalate into a wider war.
And so my writing, when I write about the Russia-Ukraine war, that's what I've been worried about.
I've been worried about the rhetoric of that officer when he says, Oh, yeah, we can invade Russia, we can do that.
I mean, this is escalatory rhetoric against a country, Russia, that has just as many, if not a few more nuclear missiles and bombs than the United States has.
So I'm hopeful, you know, I'm hopeful that this meeting between Putin and Trump this week, if nothing else, can help deescalate.
some of the rhetoric and some of the dangers of a potential nuclear war.
Think about what General Donahue said.
You spent 20 years in the Air Force, the generals in the Army.
Could he have made a statement like that without General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or Secretary Hegseth, or even President Trump knowing about it?
I don't know, but none of the three of them corrected him.
And two months ago, Pete Hegseth was in Japan looking towards China and threatening them.
So why do these people do these things?
Yeah.
No, I mean, I think part of it is posturing.
You know, part of it is this, an expression they like to use is, you know, putting on the big boy pants, right?
You know, they like to come across as forceful.
They like to come across as tough.
But then I look at the last major wars that the United States has fought, whether it be Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.
our other military misadventures.
I mean, these have been disasters, right?
And there have been disasters that there's been no accountability for these disasters, no accountability for the lies, whether it be the Pentagon papers, WMD in Iraq, the Afghan war papers.
I mean, the military has been lying to us consistently.
And yet, you know, here they are posturing for possible invasion of Russia.
it's the sort of craziness that definitely is more than a bit concerning does does I mean, they're there.
We would have to send troops 10,000 miles from here.
And the same thing with China.
How could we possibly defend Taiwan and expect to prevail?
Well, I mean, anyone who knows military history, I mean, the first thing you remember is, you know, never get involved in a land war in Asia.
And the second lesson, if not even before that, is never invade Russia, right?
Right.
Just ask Napoleon or Hitler.
Right.
ask Charles XII, Napoleon, Hitler, anyone else who's tried to invade Russia, except for the the mongols uh and even then the russians eventually threw off the mongol yoke after a 250 years or so One of the whisperers in, I don't want to drag you too much into politics.
You can say what you want about this gentleman.
But one of the regular whisperers in the president's ear, usually in a golf cart that played golf together, is Senator Lindsey Graham, who really is over the top beating the drums for war.
Here he is two days ago.
Chris, cut number three.
No, I'm very okay with President Trump meeting with President Putin in Alaska.
I think everybody knows that how this war ends can be a good thing or a bad thing.
If it ends in a way, it looks like that Putin's overly rewarded, there goes Taiwan.
You can't end a war without talking.
I do hope that Zelensky can be part of the process.
I'll leave that up to the White House.
But I have every confidence in the world that the president is going to go to meet Putin from a position of strength, that he's going to look out for Europe and Ukrainian needs to end this war honorably, and it's time to end this war honorably.
But how we do it will be historical.
How we do it, President Putin has been consistent in his demands.
Crimea and the four oblasts, which have been Russian since the time of Catherine the Great, will return to Russia and NATO will not be in the remainder of Ukraine.
That's it.
What else could Trump possibly negotiate?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, you know, Lindsey Graham is interesting.
I think he was a jag in the Air Force.
I mean, Trump, as we know, the United States has been using economic sanctions against Russia, depressing the Russian economy.
I'm sure there's some leverage there.
You know, I'm not an expert on sanctions, but certainly I think you're right.
If there's going to be any kind of a peace between Russia and Ukraine that the United States is going to be involved in one way or another, it's going to involve some kind of exchange of territory, some kind of,
I know that Ukraine is very reluctant to do this, but I don't see Putin saying that, well, we're just going to withdraw and give back all this land that we've captured with all the lives expended over the last three plus years.
Colonel, why is there so little outrage in the United States over the genocide and slaughter by starvation in Gaza funded?
almost exclusively by the American taxpayer.
Right, right.
I think, as you know, Judge, I think there is outrage.
tends to be expressed on shows like this or, you know, I write on Substack, you know, I see a lot of people who are upset.
I think most Americans are upset.
But sadly, we've been rendered, you know, powerless, whether it was under the Biden administration or right now under the Trump administration.
And unfortunately, even though I think Americans, most Americans, I think want to stop the flow of arms from the United States to Israel.
I mean, we want food to get in.
We don't want women and children and everyone else starving to death in Gaza.
We don't want a genocide there.
And yet, unfortunately, our government just doesn't listen to us.
And meanwhile, I think all you listeners know, you know, the power of Israel, the APAC as a lobby, the way in which Congress is basically subordinate almost.
to the whims of BB Netanyahu.
As I said in my piece, my wife and I, this is kind of like dark humor.
But when we Americans can't get health care or we can't get our roads fixed, you know, my wife and I joke to each other, well, that's because BB needs bombs.
And then that's a sad commentary.
You know what, Colonel?
That is not a joke.
Well, it is a dark humor, but it's also true.
I mean, the American government never says no to him.
Never.
And he's a war criminal.
In fact, he's a monster in terms of what he is doing and what he is permitting to happen to the poor people next.
Senator Bernie Sanders, left-wing Jewish member of the United States Senate, calls Netanyahu a disgusting liar.
I mean, and I'm sorry to say that's true.
Sanders is right.
Right.
And yet, as you know, our Congress stands and applauds him almost as one.
you know, 30, 40, 50 times during the last time he gave a speech to the joint session of Congress.
I mean, it's obscene.
Well, Colonel, I've enjoyed this conversation.
I hope you'll come back and visit with us again soon.
And you have my producer's email.
If there's something you want to tell us, please do so.
And the next time you read another fantastic piece like this one I read at antiwar.com, please send it to us right away.
Right.
Thanks so much, Judge.
Thank you, Colonel.
All the best.
Wow.
Great guy.
Terrific.
Terrific.
Fearless.
Courageous guy with a sense of humor.
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