Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté: Who Won In Syria? Who’s Losing In Ukraine?

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Aaron Maté: Who Won In Syria? Who’s Losing In Ukraine?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, December, sorry, December 10th, 2024. Aaron Maté joins us now. Aaron, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for coming on the show. Is the fall of Assad necessarily a victory for Netanyahu? I think Netanyahu thinks it is. He went to the Golan Heights and basically took credit in part for the fall of Assad by pointing out that Israel had dealt a crippling blow to one of Assad's key allies, Hezbollah, inside Lebanon, and also to its backer, Iran.

So then you have the fact that Israel for years has been bombing Syria, bombing Assad's allies, bombing Syrian government forces themselves, and also years of arming the insurgents that fought the government as part of the dirty war to overthrow it, and even treating them in Israeli hospitals when they were wounded. So Netanyahu can take credit for Assad's ouster, and I do think he's happy about it. Now, does that mean they're 100% satisfied? No, because now you have an issue where the former leader of Al-Qaeda in Syria, Mohammad al-Jalani, is the leader of the rebelling that ousted Assad. And if you're Israel, even though you aided this insurgency that al-Jalani's Al-Qaeda

forces were a part of, you still have to be concerned about that on your border. And we're seeing Israel take full advantage of this, of the chaos, by basically wiping out what's left of Syria's military, just bombing areas across the country, including the port of Latakia, wiping out Syria's navy, and taking more land. They've just seized a mountain in Syria that is, I believe, the highest point in all of Syria, looking directly down on Damascus. So they're taking full advantage of this opportunity that Assad's ouster has created, and they can take credit in part for making it happen. Here's Netanyahu on Sunday expressing glee and boasting, just as you characterize it.

I'm going to ask you when this is over, when this clip is over, it's about 90 seconds long, if Paul Jelani and his crew even recognize Israel's right to exist. But here's Netanyahu. Cut number one, Chris. This is a historic day for the Middle East. The collapse of the Assad regime, the tyranny in Damascus offers great opportunity, but also is fraught with significant dangers. This collapse is a direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran, Assad's main supporters. It set off a chain reaction of all those who want to free themselves from this tyranny and its suppression. But it also means we have to take action against possible threats.

One of them is the collapse of the separation of forces agreement from 1974 between Israel and Syria. This agreement held for 50 years. Last night it collapsed. The Syrian army abandoned its positions. We gave the Israeli army the order to take over those positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel. This is a temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found.

Equally, we send a hand of peace to all those beyond our border in Syria, to the Jews, to the Kurds, to the Christians, and to the Muslims who want to live in peace with Israel. We're going to follow events very carefully. If we can establish neighborly relations and a peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that's our desire. But if we do not, we'll do whatever it takes to defend the state of the Assad government still existing, Israel has attacked more than 100 targets in the past 12 hours. And my understanding was that the true Syrians don't even shake hands with an Israeli in public because it shows an acceptance of Israel's right to exist. Can you educate me? Well, what we know for sure is that Syria was targeted with this dirty war in which the U.S.

and their allies spent billions of dollars arming an insurgency that they knew was dominated by al-Qaeda. And that's been confirmed given that the former leader of al-Qaeda in Syria is the head of this insurgency that toppled Assad. And they targeted Syria with this dirty war because they wanted to weaken a critical part of the axis of resistance to Israel. Syria, by being a part of the axis of resistance, although it's been inconsistent over the years, sometimes it's been hostile toward Palestinian factions, but for the most part, it was a part of this acts of resistance that crucially Syria's role was letting Hezbollah have a land bridge to receive weapons from Iran. And that's why when the Arab Spring broke out in 2011 and these protests against Assad quickly turned into an armed

sectarian uprising, Israel and the U.S. took advantage and supported the insurgency. They said this at the time. Ehud Barak, I'll quote, he was the Israeli defense minister in 2012. I'll quote him for you. He said at the time, the toppling down of Assad will be a major blow to the radical axis, a major blow to Iran. It's the only kind of outpost of the Iranian influence in the Arab world and will weaken dramatically both Hezbollah in Lebanon and

Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. So that's why Israel and the U.S. were so determined to ostracize because his country was being used to help support Hezbollah in Lebanon. And Israel hates Hezbollah because Hezbollah can fight back against Israeli aggression. So Jolani took part in an insurgency that directly benefited from Israeli and U.S. support. So is Jelani now, whatever he says rhetorically about Israel, is he really going to pose a threat to Israel? Already, has he said anything about Israel taking so much of his territory under the new Syria and bombing its military outposts into the Stone Age? He hasn't. And I think that indicates, I think that suggests that Jelani is not going to be a threat to Israel because his main goal initially as a part of Al-Qaeda and ISIS was basically to

establish a caliphate. And then after that failed, he switched and became just more determined to be the ruler of Syria. He's achieved that goal now by toppling Assad. And therefore, I don't think he'll be posing any kind of threat to Israel after benefiting from its help. He has a bounty on his head offered by the United States State Department, even though we know the CIA helped fund and train his troops and his comrades. Is he a new man, like he told CNN on Sunday night, Or is it the same guy that cuts people's heads and hands off? Well, we'll see. I mean, it's possible anybody can change. Maybe he has undergone some magical epiphany

where he realizes the errors of his ways and being the founding leader of Al-Qaeda, which committed countless atrocities in both Iraq and Syria. And he's also the former deputy to al-Baghdadi, the former leader of ISIS. Maybe he's undergone some magical transformation. Anything is possible. I'm personally skeptical. I don't believe it works like that. And I see no evidence of his transformation beyond him saying some nice words. Now, he talks about not respecting minorities, but has he repented for the fact that under his watch, al-Nusra, which is the former name of his group, the initial name of al-Qaeda in Syria,

al-Nusra took part in massacres in places like Latakia, where according to Human Rights Watch, they conducted the systematic killings of entire families. And that's because Latakia is an Alawite area, one of the minorities inside Syria. Has he ever apologized for that? Now he's saying he wants to protect minorities. So he's saying the right things, but what will he actually do? And also not all of Syria is under his control. There's all sorts of militias that exist now as a result of this dirty war that we fueled that he does not control. And there's already reports now in places like homes of militias carrying out atrocities against minorities.

So Jelani is not someone that I personally trust. I hope he's undergone this radical transformation because, and I hope he's sincere and will act on his vow to protect minorities. But his record suggests that that will not be the case. And what we're already seeing with these reports of attacks on minorities says that not much has changed with these militants that have now taken over Syria. Here's the UN Syria envoy, Mr. Peterson, not very happy with the Israelis. Cut number 12.

No one, absolutely no one saw this coming. I believe even the armed groups that are now in control of Damascus have been surprised at what has happened. The conflict in the northeast is not over. There have been clashes between the Syrian National Army, the opposition group, and the SDF. We are calling obviously for calm also in this area. And then, a very troubling development. We are continuing to see Israeli movements

and bombardments into Syrian territory. This needs to stop. He's obviously making it publicly known what the Israelis are doing. I don't know that this needs to stop is going to result in it stopping. What are your thoughts, Aaron? Look, the reason why we had all this chaos in Syria, I mean, we can say all the bad things in the world about the government of Syria. They practice torture. They were repressive. There's a lot of corruption. But the carnage we've seen in Syria is the direct result of a global coalition led by the U.S. flooding Syria with billions of dollars worth of weapons to an

al-Qaeda-dominated insurgency. Joe Biden blurted this out years ago when he was speaking as a vice president to a Harvard audience. He said, there was no moderate middle in Syria. The weapons that were poured in went to al-Qaeda and ISIS. So that's why we're seeing so much carnage. And that's why Israel now is taking full advantage. Israel has always wanted to see Syria destroyed because it was one of the states that resisted its occupation, that was a part of the acts of resistance to Palestinians. And so this is what Israel does. They have a monopoly on force and now they're just simply deepening it because they have the opportunity. So we should- What is the consequence to the,

to Palestinian statehood, if any, to the fall of the Assad regime? Well, it just means that the forces in the region that resisted Israeli aggression, and the main one is Hezbollah, have been weakened even more, which makes it easier for Israel to carry out its genocide and occupation. It was already doing it pretty swimmingly, but now it has even more free reign. And that was a major point of flooding Syria with all these weapons and targeting it for regime change. And one more point on Jelani, whether he's rebranded or not, or changed his ways. You're already seeing in Washington the usual talk that happens when someone is, even though he's literally on, as you said, the U.S. terrorism list, there's a $10 million bounty

on his head. But because he served U.S. interests in leading an insurgency that toppled the government that we wanted to overthrow, you're already seeing talk about, all this talk about how he's reformed. And U.S. officials are saying they're, you know, they think some U.S. officials are saying they do think he's more pragmatic now and he's changed his ways. And that's the talk of people who have used someone they knew was a part of Al-Qaeda, they knew has committed atrocities,

but he was useful. He was our guy. He was useful for our interests. And therefore, I think it's quite plausible that he'll be rewarded by being welcomed as a moderate. Oh, good Lord, even though he's cut people's heads and hands off. Well, I can't speak to what he's done personally, but certainly his forces have committed heinous atrocities.

Like I mentioned, people can go read it. There's a Human Rights Watch investigation of just one operation that Jelani's forces conducted in Latakia in August 2013. And as Human Rights Watch said, they conducted the systematic killings of entire families because this was an Alawite region. And these are sectarian insurgents. This is known by the US from the start. There's that famous or infamous Pentagon intelligence report written very early on in the war saying that the insurgency is dominated by the Salafis, including Al Qaeda, and their goal is to establish a caliphate, which is exactly what happened a few years later with ISIS. Jake Sullivan wrote to Hillary Clinton, February 2012, just months after

the unrest in Syria broke out, he wrote, Al Qaeda is on our side. And given that the former leader of al-Qaeda has now led the insurgency, our side won. Well, President-elect Trump over the weekend said Syria fell because its benefactor abandoned it. And then he identified, in his view, the benefactor as Vladimir Putin. A simplistic or a serious analysis? Well, there's some truth to it. Russia did not intervene to save Assad. And there's a lot of speculation as to why. There's so many conflicting reports. There'll be a lot of, I think, bickering over this. I don't know what the truth is. I can guess that basically, look, Syria was hollowed out not just by over a decade of a dirty war, but then by a U.S US military occupation that plundered

Syria's oil and wheat. This was acknowledged at the very top. Trump acknowledged this, that we were there in Syria to take its oil. He said that only after his subordinates undermined his order to withdraw US troops. He wanted to pull them out, but his generals ignored him basically, because the imperative of punishing Syria for resisting our dirty war was just that much greater than even obeying the, uh, the order of the commander in chief. And after that happened, Trump backed down and he said, okay, we're there to take the oil.

And other, uh, officials have said this to Dana Struhl, who worked under Joe Biden as a senior Pentagon official has said that, you know, we're there in Syria to take the oil and wheat because it gives us leverage to impact Syria's future, aka regime change. So Syria was decimated by years of dirty warfare, by the plunder of its resources, by U.S. military occupation, and by sanctions, which no one ever really talks about because they're invisible. You know, just with a stroke of a pen, you can sentence many Syrians to deprivation because you're blocking access to vital supplies. You're destroying their currency. That's what U.S. sanctions did. The Caesar Act, which Trump signed into law, deliberately targeted Syria's reconstruction, which made it really difficult to rebuild. U.S. officials under Trump bragged about how the sanctions really just

destroyed the Syrian currency. It was already really destroyed, but it made it even worse. It made it very hard for people to buy the basics. Andrew Tabler, who was a director for Syria under Trump in Trump's administration, he wrote that U.S. sanctions have, quote, exacerbated food and fuel shortages for everyday Syrians. So in a situation where you've been decimated by war, plundered by U.S. military occupation, and are targeted with crippling sanctions that prevent rebuilding and decimate your economy, plus you have all the corruption that was endemic in Syria long before the war, which only works under sanctions. Everybody who cares about corruption should oppose sanctions because when you oppose sanctions on a country, you're just guaranteeing that corruption will get that much worse. So you have all these horrible conditions plus the corruption.

You had a decimated country and soldiers not willing to fight anymore. And I think Russia recognized that. And my guess is they concluded that if Syrians are too worn down to fight anymore, then we're not going to fight for them. And that guaranteed that Assad would not survive. I know you've done more research on this, Aaron, than probably anybody else. But did the Assad regime use chemical weapons on its own people? Well, they've been accused of carrying out chemical weapons attacks dozens or hundreds of times by insurgent groups. Let's look at the main cases. So the first main case is Ghouta, August that if we see chemical weapons being moved around and used in Syria, that would change my calculus when it comes to U.S. military intervention. Now, the part of Obama's statement that people don't pay attention is he wasn't just threatening the Syrian government.

He said, if we see chemical weapons being used by the Syrian government or other actors on the ground, that would change my calculus. And I think that reference to other actors reflects an acknowledgement on Obama's part that he knew, as we know now from the reporting of Seymour Hersh, that Al Qaeda was developing a chemical weapons program and was trying to access Sarin. And so I think that's also he was warning. Now, putting aside what actually happened in the evidence for a second, let's just think about things logically now. Assad, Obama has just laid out the one condition under which he would intervene militarily, which is the use of chemical weapons. So therefore, he's incentivizing people who want U.S. military intervention to stage a false flag. That's just logical. If there's only one condition under which Obama will intervene militarily in Syria, like directly by bombing Syria, not just the CIA arms program, then that incentivizes someone to carry out chemical weapons to frame the government.

That's just obvious. who's a veteran journalist wrote a great article in Harper's Magazine a few years ago. This former ambassador who's unnamed said, Obama's red line was an open invitation to a false flag because why would Assad do the one thing that he knows would invite U.S. military intervention, especially at a time back then when he was winning? His forces were actually pushing out the insurgents. So this red line by Obama incentivized the false flag. And then you have Ghouta happen in August, 2013. Hundreds were killed. Sarin was the weapon. And initially it looked like Obama was going to enforce his so-called red line and bomb Syria. But then he pulled back. And the official reason why he pulled back is because Russia came in and brokered an agreement where Syria would destroy all of its chemical weapons.

And Obama said, okay, that's going to get me to stand down. But what was actually happening on the inside, and now we know this, this is reported by Seymour Hersh, and it's been confirmed by the main players, including James Clapper. James Clapper, who was Obama's director of national intelligence, went to Obama as Obama was trying to decide what to do. And he said, the intelligence of Syrian

government guilt here is not a slam dunk. Now he said those words, not a slam dunk, deliberately invoking what George Tenet told George W. Bush about Iraq WMDs saying that this is a slam dunk. So what Clapper was saying to Obama is that you have another Iraq WMD scenario here where you're going to take military action based on false intelligence. And that's actually why Obama pulled back. And there were other U.S. officials who leaked similar things at that time because they'd seen the intelligence and they knew that it didn't point to Assad. Later on, and I've reported on this, people have done studies showing that the range of the rockets could not have come from government-controlled areas, that they actually came from insurgent-controlled areas. Ted Postel, MIT physicist, former consultant at the Pentagon, he's done studies on this, which nobody has disproved about the range of the rockets and

how they likely came from insurgent territory. So just logic and the available evidence, including U.S. leaks, shows or undermines the case that Assad was guilty. And then you have Douma in 2018, April 2018. That's the last major alleged chemical attack by Syria. And that's when we got videos from Douma of dozens of dead bodies, people foaming at the mouth, and gas cylinders at the scene. And based on that, Trump bombed Syria without even waiting for the OPCW,

the world's top chemical weapons watchdog, to get in and do an investigation. Then the OPCW did get in. And about a year later, they put out a report. And that report did align with the U.S. narrative that Syria was guilty. But that was not the last word of the OPCW. After that, we got a series of leaks

given to journalists like Peter Hitchens in the OPCW. After that, we got a series of leaks given to journalists like Peter Hitchens in the UK and also WikiLeaks showing that the actual OPCW inspectors who went to Duma, they wrote up a report which said that there was no evidence of a chemical attack in Duma. And if you read their language, they raised the possibility that this was staged by insurgents on the ground. These leaks also show that that critical finding was doctored and censored. And senior OPCW officials basically took out the evidence casting doubt on the chemical weapons allegation and replaced it with unsupported claims and then sidelined the original inspectors who wrote up the original report and who had actually gone to Syria. So this was a massive coverup. And I've reported on this since based on leaks that I've gotten. And if you read the reports that were censored, it's pretty clear to me what happened, that this was indeed staged. And that's why the OPCW, and unfortunately, the OPCW, rather than dealing with it, rather than dealing with this, rather than accounting for the cover-up of an investigation, has basically disparaged the whistleblowers there was a cover up here and the censored findings

do undermine the allegation lodged by the U.S. and their allies that there was a chemical attack in Douma by the Syrian government. Your analysis and your knowledge is just encyclopedic. Last question. Is Netanyahu on trial as we speak or was he earlier today forced to sit in a courtroom and give testimony on one of his bribery trials? I apologize, Judge. I apologize, Judge. I have not followed Netanyahu's internal troubles recently. But yes, I do know he's testified, but that's all I can speak to. And certainly, the main overarching point about his domestic troubles is that they incentivize him to continue fueling war everywhere else because war keeps him in power and war distracts from all the corruption allegations that are engulfing him. Aaron Mate, thank you very much, my dear friend. A brilliant, brilliant recitation and understanding of the problems in Syria and deeply and profoundly

appreciate it. All the best. Thank you, Josh. Of course. Wow. That recitation on the use of chemical weapons was absolutely second to none. Coming up later today at 3.30 this afternoon, 3.30, Karen Kwiatkowski, and at 4.30 this afternoon from Tbilisi, Georgia, you're going to see some clips of some pretty exciting developments as people threaten him, Patrick Lancaster. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.