Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: Is Europe Preparing for War?

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Alastair Crooke: Is Europe Preparing for War?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, March 25th, 2024. Alistair Crook is here on what does the intelligence community likely think about what happened in Moscow?

And is the United States about to divorce Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel? And is Europe getting ready for war? But first this. How do you really feel about your financial future right now, today? Stable or uncertain? Despite all the happy talk that the Fed and the banks want you to buy into, I believe that 2024 is going to be a very unstable year, politically and financially. That's one of the reasons I decided to buy physical gold and silver. And I suggest you should do the same and do it now. Why?

Because throughout times of economic uncertainty, gold and silver have rightly earned a reputation for stability. Owning precious metals has made me feel more stable, and it can do the same for you. Reach out to my friends at Lear Capital and get their free wealth protection guides. You can reach them at 800-511-4620. Lear has earned an excellent reputation by helping thousands of customers just like you move portions of their retirement savings into Lear gold and silver IRAs. It's easy to do and it's tax and penalty free. Don't be caught off guard. Experts predict the markets may tank again. You'll be happy if you have protection in place. So call Lear at 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you. Alistair, good day, my friend, and welcome here

as always. Let's start with the tragedy in Moscow over the weekend. From your experience dealing behind the scenes with governments, do you think that any intelligence community consensus seriously believes that this was just ISIS-K on its own? I'd be very surprised. The ISIS-K is clearly a sort of cover story, I think, because really, ISIS-K is not real. It was a parallel to ISIS that was created by the Western services, as Saudi Arabia stopped, if you like, supporting the mainstream ISIS because of the bad publicity that was coming from the jihadi actions. And so they needed something. And what it is is essentially it's a corridor that exists

going from sort of really from Turkey past northern Syria and into Iran. And it was basically aimed for infiltrating sabotage groups into Iran and some jihadis into Syria. Just to be clear, Turkey has a training ground and has been training, if you like, jihadists. I mean, and some of them have gone to Ukraine, particularly the Tatars of Crimea, but also others have been.

It's part of, if you like, a process that Erdogan has overseen to see a sort of pan-Turkic group emerge across the southern part of Central Asia. So no, I don't think so. It's just really a funnel and it also is a source of mercenaries. And these four people that took part in this crocus operation were clearly mercenaries, they weren't jihadists. The concept that MI6 and CIA might have known about this and either facilitated it or looked the other way, is that realistic? I mean, MI6 and CIA, do they get involved in slaughtering innocents like this? We're not talking about overthrowing a country. We're talking about slaughtering young people at a concert. Look, I can't say categorically who knew and who knew what.

It is very strange that the United States came out literally almost within minutes, within 55 minutes or something, and said, oh, it's not Ukraine. It's not Ukraine. Get that. It's not Ukraine. But have said nothing about why they think it's something else, why they think it should be the so-called ISIS-K. And equally, they gave on the 7th of March, I think it was, this warning to keep away

from any concerts. Now, what's emerged, which is quite interesting, was that one of those assailants that participated this Friday in the attack on the concert thing was there on the 7th of March and photographed by one of the security staff there. And they've matched that up. And it looks a little bit as if maybe the act was intended for the 8th of March, when a very famous singer, Shaman, was due to sing sort of icon of russian nationalism he's famous for his rendition of the national anthem it really is striking if you ever listen to it anyway um what happened was that at that time the son of the owner came and uh he's nazarian he had bodyguards and so the front was sort of full of armed men which it isn't normally

and it looks as if they sort of planned it for the 8th march and then postponed it until this weekend but we don't know for sure but what i think has happened you asked me what's happened i and this is guesswork speculation uh but i remember when i was dealing with afghanistan and i was involved there quite closely um with the mujahideen and i remember at one point i went to washington and gave a talk in Washington. And I said, look, you know, this firing up of these Islamic radicals in order to hurt Russia, some of those groups, some of those Islamic movements, okay, but others are going to be a huge danger to us in the future,

these Islamist radicals. And it'll end up in our cities too. You need to differentiate between the ones that are okay and the ones that are dangerous to their own people, let alone dangerous to us. Anyway, a senator took me by the shoulder and he said, thank you for this warning, Alistair. But, you know, those groups you're warning us about, they sure kick communist ass. And I think probably, you know, it's quite possible that someone in the intelligence community in America has been saying, look, this thing is going out of control. We have, you know, attacks into Belgorod. We have attacks into Crimea. We have attacks on refineries in Russia. We have these drones hitting Moscow. You know, this can get out of control and get very dangerous. And that's why we had these warnings coming and saying suddenly, you know, the White House is saying, you know, these bizarre actions by Ukraine have got to stop. These attacks on the refineries have got to stop. And I think someone was saying,

maybe this is getting out of control and something bad might happen. And something bad, it looks as if it has happened. And that's why we see such panic in America and Europe. I mean, they are not doubling down on the ISIS-K story. I mean, they're absolutely going flat out on the ISIS-K story. And I can tell you these people were not jihadists because I've looked at the videos. And I know what these jihadists are like.

I've actually, you know, I've worked, been with jihadists, so I know. First of all, you know, jihadists generally go on shooting until they're killed. They are martyrs. They want to be martyrs. They don't plan an exit and grab a car and head off down south. I mean, that's very much unlike it. Secondly, you know, this is Ramadan, and they don't usually do this during a holy month, start killing civilians like this. Anyway, it's fairly clear these people did it for money. They were recruited, first of all, in Tajikistan.

Incidentally, there's a major, not only a U.S. embassy in Tajikistan, but there's a Ukrainian embassy there. And the ambassador is the former head of Ukrainian intelligence in Kiev. Now, I'm not suggesting anything because we don't know at this stage. But I would say it's highly unlikely these were jihadists. They didn't act as jihadists. They didn't operate in that way. Clearly, the whole attack was pre-planned, was organized. The weapons were put in.

And apparently, all of this was done by telegram channel. It wasn't done directly. There wasn't any direct interaction between the actual perpetrators and the people who were behind the scenes providing the weapons and other parts. And when they headed off and the Russians let them go, I mean, it was, I mean, bizarrely badly organized in some respects. I mean, you know, they arrived in a white Sigma car with a black roof, which is quite rare, I'm told, in Moscow. And then they arrived in that with their weapons and started shooting wildly.

And then they tried to escape in the same car. Well, of course. I mean, you know, a white car with a black roof and a Renault Sigma was quite obvious. And the Russians just followed it. They wanted to see where it was going, who they might be contacting, who they might meet. And then finally, when it was quite clear they were heading through Bryansk down to Ukraine, at that time they stopped the car in a forest because they didn't want these people getting out

and taking hostages or shooting civilians in the process. So they stopped it in a forest, and then one of them was detained then, and the others ran into the forest where they were subsequently caught alive. I think they'd already dumped their weapons by that spot, by that point. So a very badly executed, but obviously carefully planned, pre-planned operation, I would say. Can you draw a line between the statements of Victoria Nuland two weeks before she resigned?

We have some nasty surprises for President Putin. And this, or is that a bridge too far? Well, I think you can even go a little bit further because you have, on the day after this happening, you have Alexei Danilov, who is the secretary of the National Security Council. He's like the National Security Council of Kiev on Ukrainian television. And he said, and this is the day after, and he said, is it fun in Moscow today? I think a lot of fun for you. I think we ought to do this sort of fun more often.

You are, after all, brotherly people, and maybe we should visit you more regularly. And it's, you know, that seemed to me almost on a par with, you know, Biden's comments about Nord Stream and saying, well, you know, I assure you, it won't continue to exist, your Nord Stream pipeline. How unprofessional and lacking in credibility was it for the U.S. to say within 55 minutes of the end of the attack, it wasn't Ukraine? I mean, do intelligence professionals scoff at that?

Look, it's very serious. I mean, I think that, you know, and this is why people in Russia is being very, very careful not to say too much. Even as we're talking now, just before I came on, I saw there being hypersonic missile attacks in Kiev, and there are rumors that the intelligence building has been completely destroyed. I'm sure the leaders of the intelligence service are sitting in some bunker elsewhere, but clearly the reaction has started. So people are being rightly very cautious, but it could end up as being as much of a fiasco as a bay of pigs. I mean, you know, this was, I mean, you know, it looks as if something was out of control. How much people knew, we can't say.

How often, but certainly they, someone almost certainly had an inkling that this was going badly wrong. You know, much as I had that inkling long ago and saying, look, these Islamist groups, some of them are going to end up, you know, in our cities and you need to take, be aware of it. And I was told, forget it.

You know, this hurts the Russians badly. All right, forget it. You know, this hurts the Russians badly. All right. Switching gears, you have an interesting piece out this morning or maybe two days ago, which asks, is the United States divorcing Netanyahu? What do you think? On the surface, that was what was trying to be portrayed when Schumer gave his quite celebrated address now. But actually, they've got it back to front because really Netanyahu divorced, just to be clear, the Democratic Party about 10 years ago.

This was at the point 10 years ago. I remember it quite clearly. It was believed, you know, it's now time to leave the Democratic patronage of liberal, if you like, reformist Jews, because they are going on a completely different path. At this point, Israel, Likud, were going very much to the right. This was Netanyahu's great achievement, as he saw it, of taking Israel far to the right. And what they saw as the Democrats embraced, or at least part of them embraced, wokeism. Wokeism was all about, if you like, rectifying and retribution for the ill treatment of minorities and of identities, and that they needed justice and they needed to be, if you like,

reclaim their position. And quite obviously this was one day was going to be applied to the Palestinians. And this didn't fit very well with Likud moving in another direction. So at that point they decided that they needed to shift and they shifted to, first of all, they saw the new entry point was through the evangelical movement in the United States. And it was indeed through the evangelicals that the American embassy in Israel was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It was under their patronage, not the patronage of the Democratic Party. So it's the other way around.

So they have moved away from the Democratic Party, and the Democrats are struggling. There was a long piece in the New York Times, I think only yesterday, which was saying how difficult it is for many reformed Jews to cope with their liberal world and the liberal values, and Israel as it is today, moving far to the right and what's happening in Gaza. And before it was possible to conceive of the idea of liberal Zionism, but now that's become an oxymoron.

There's no such thing as liberal Zionism any longer, is there? I think, in America is that many of these young Jewish Jews living in America are now becoming supporters of Palestinians because they're liberal and because they support the Palestinians. And this is creating quite a tension, not only with the older generation and the past structures, which haven't moved at all. The past structures in the United States are stuck. But, you know, we have a real problem because, as one person said, wrote in that article, and I was quoting it, he said, you know, for Reform Jews living in America, Israel had become,

if you like, a divine project. It was actually a substitute God. I mean, this is what he was saying. This was the head of the Reform Jews. And, you know, all of this project, therefore, all of the things that have happened was really about, you know, keeping Israel safe. I mean, that goes back to the Iraq war. It goes back to Syria. It goes back to all of these things in the region. sort of Richard Perle and David Bormser's clean break strategy that they wrote in 96,

precisely suggested, you know, this process. And today we have in Israel, there was a talk given by Rod Dahmer, who is a former Israeli ambassador in Washington, and he's a member of the war cabinet, and he's the minister for strategic planning, etc., etc., very close to Netanyahu. And he said again, and he said, listen, you know, what we really do, you know, not only we're not looking for demilitarization, just demilitarization in Gaza, we want de-radicalization. Now, what do I mean? What does de-radicalization mean? It means transformation, psychic transformation. And then he goes on to say, well, you know, World War II, look, they're still pro-Americans. They're still in the right camp. This is the message for Israel, that we have to do this massive, if you like, this massive process of transformation.

It's exactly what I was told when I complained about the war that was imminent then in 2003 in Iraq. And a senior figure came to me and he said, listen, Alistair, the point is that the destruction of Iraq, the annihilation of Saddam Hussein, who was an icon for the Palestinians, would send a strong message. It would be transformative for the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. It would be a bitter, bitter message and they would be thoroughly demoralized. In other words, peace for Israel could come through the destruction of Iraq, of Baghdad. And, you know, Rodolphe was saying the same thing two days ago, three days ago. In the two or three weeks since Senator Schumer's speech on the floor of the Senate, personally denouncing Prime Minister Netanyahu, it has developed that he didn't just make that speech, he ran it past the White House, and he ran it past major Jewish donor groups in the United States, including purportedly the king of those groups, AIPAC. What does that tell you, Alistair, if those, and I assume they did, groups signed off on the speech? Well, what it tells you is they're not prepared to move.

They can't, they are stuck because they know, and they know very clearly clearly and it's in their writings that the younger generation the um young jewish people at university and elsewhere generation seven and so on are going in a completely different path and if you look at the polling it shows that a majority of the young generation up i think i can't remember the exact details, up to 35 or something, a majority of them now favor the Palestinians. And this is very worrying to the older generation who are still the same in the people who control, if you like, this project in the United States. Is this the attitude of just young Jews in America and the West, or is this also the attitude of young Jews in Israel?

No, not in Israel. The opposite. In Israel, they have become much more eschatological. They are much more radicalized. And this is, you've raised a very important question, because really, one of the things that's going on in Gaza that we see is that actually the army commander are somewhat losing control over the ground, by which I don't mean the Hamas because of Hamas, but because of the IDF troops on the ground that are doing things that they deeply, you know, killing wantonly.

They are looting shops. They are just shooting people on the ground. And the Israeli armed forces don't have the equivalent of, in the U.S., NCOs, you know, the middle tier of the command structure. They only have the commanders, you know, who sit far back. And the young people on the ground are becoming, you know, I mean, they're in a frenzy. Are they out of control? Are they out of control?

Are they out of control with killing? Yeah. A lot of this is that. And this is one of the reasons why I don't think we're seeing the Rafa project advancing very far, because the Israeli leadership, command leadership, has problems with these young people. They are talking about Amalek, the iconic figure

that was completely massacred on the instructions of God in Isaiah, all of these things, and they're dancing. I mean, you see there are TikTok videos of them dancing about talking about Amalek and how we're going to destroy all the Palestinians and kill them. And they have parties and sort of set up pretend settlements inside Gaza to sort of reinforce the point that we're taking this over and you're all going.

So the Israeli military command has some real problems there, apart from the problem that they're not being very successful, haven't been, particularly in Khan Yunus. They were not successful in their military operation. Anyway, most of these military operations that are justified to the White House are nonsense, because Dermot also, in his account of it, he explains what they're telling the White House, and they say, well, you know, 14 out of 19 of these Hamas battalions have been dismantled. And then when he explains what he means by that, he says, well, we've killed quite a few people in Khan Yunus or something like that, which are people they think may be Hamas, they're not sure. And therefore, he says, well, when you get a certain point of

attrition and degradation, then they can't operate as an army any longer. Well, since when was Hamas a conventional Western-type army? This is asymmetric, irregular warfare. Nothing like that. I mean, it really was nonsense, but this is how they're selling it to the West, saying, oh, no, we're having great success because maybe we've killed 13,000 people. How do they know that they're Hamas? I mean, how do they know they're not just civilians? I mean, these figures are ridiculous. My sense is still Hamas is very much intact as a military organization. Let's call it the Haska.

It's by its real title because it's important to see the distinction. The Kassam Brigades, that's who they are because they have a different ethos than the people sitting in Doha, the Hamas political leadership. Different people, different ethos. Their ethos is victory or martyrdom. And we find it very difficult to understand these things. We find it very hard. You know, we are typically utilitarians and rationalists,

and we find it very hard to understand this. And equally, we misread what's going on in Israel because, you know, the Israelis are becoming more and more, you know, the eschatological fervor is growing there. They're talking, and as I said, this very westernized Ron Dermott, who was the ambassador in Washington and obviously a very polished figure, was talking in West Bank and Gaza, the type of de-radicalization, a complete psychological transformation so that they are docile, rather like the Japanese were after the way in which the war was ended in the Second World War. What on earth does this mean?

What are they talking about? I mean, actually actually on the ground they're doing everything to do the opposite people people with the mindset that i just described either victory or martyrdom i mean have a different have a different you know willpower have a different if you like determination we are completely in my view we're really not reading you know the ground very well we go on treating as it as if it's the usual sort of you know secular type of you know on one hand we have these interests on the other hand we have those interests and we find the middle ground in between

the two. As we speak, there is a significant Israeli delegation in Washington, D.C., including Mr. Dermer, who was raised in New Jersey, by the way, who was totally Americanized, and including Defense Minister Gallant, do the Americans with whom they're negotiating understand what you've just explained to us? And what are they trying to do? Are they trying to persuade the Americans of the wisdom, desirability, morality, and lawfulness of invading RAFA? Yes, precisely.

Rondema said that. He said, listen, if we can really give this sort of hammer blow, like the Japanese experience, this transformative de-radicalization of West Bank, he said, specifically, as well as Gaza, this will be good for the United States. This will strengthen the United States, and it will also strengthen some of the Gulf states too. So this will be a huge benefit. And we need, there's no peace without this de-radicalization of the Palestinians. They have to be totally, there's no peace, no future for Israel

without this transformative de-radicalization taking place. And the point I'm trying to make is, you know, we are not equipped to understand the sort of the language, these biblical impulsions to human behavior because we've moved away from it. We don't even understand when Sinhua writes in his novel about how, you know, it's either for the people, if you like, for the people and the willingness to give their lives, or even to understand how they could conceive that sometimes the people may have to lose a large proportion of itself in order for the people as a whole to survive. This is a concept of sort of what I call meta-history that is so alien to Western thinkers that they don't understand it. So they apply the wrong measures. They think that just by pushing on with bombing Gaza and things, eventually Israel will get there and somehow Hamas will be removed and then they can think about putting in some proxy force that is going to run the country. I mean, they are complete, these measures they're proposing,

in my view, I think are irrelevant to the situation as it's changed and as it's changing now and becoming much more sort of apocalyptic in its, certainly in Ronderma's view, about how, you know, only with that sort of transformative change in the Palestine. But the point is this was exactly what I was told, you know, back in 2003. This was what was going to happen. After Saddam Hussein was utterly bombed and destroyed, like Dresden or whatever you want, and turned into dust,

then the Palestinians would become docile and would agree to a peace on Israel's terms. And I was told this specifically in no uncertain terms, that this was the path to Israeli safety ran through the destruction of Iraq. Transitioning again, and just before we go, were you surprised to hear over the weekend the president of the European Council

say it's time for europe to engage or move toward a war economy i i no i wasn't shocked by this i you know it's a blatant and scam, try and bamboozle Europeans into forking out huge sums of money for the European Union to sort of upgrade itself to a sort of a power center and to reconfigure a defense industry. Let me be quite clear. I mean, the defense industry in Europe, there are fragments of it that still exists, but it's been hollowed out through competition from the United States. You'll understand why. I mean, you know, the United States has a huge defense industry.

Secondly, the United States is never going to allow Europe to become a competitor in a serious way. And so it's all pie in the sky. But what it is really after, as I said before, is they're desperate to get a new source of money coming into it. The financing is really tough at the moment for the European Union. They haven't got, they need, they're like in America, you know, the dependency on zero rate funds, free money flowing into the system to keep it afloat, keep it liquefied, is the same in Europe. They need to liquefy their banks, they need to liquefy all their projects and they haven't got free zero interest rate money flowing in and so war bonds is a good idea that they're going to try and bamboozle everyone into thinking oh yes we better do this because the Russians are coming um and then they all the money will disappear into these great projects in Europe and never seen again.

There's an old phrase, the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. Alistair, you never, ever, ever fail to give us such wonderful, gifted analysis today on three very, very weighty subjects. Thank you, my dear friend. An early happy Easter to you and your family. We'll see you next week. Thank you. Same to you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, coming up at 10 o'clock Eastern, Ray McGovern. At 11 o'clock Eastern, Larry Johnson. And at two this afternoon, Kevin DeMerida on what is a war economy. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.