Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: Washington’s Theater of the Absurd!

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Alastair Crooke: Washington’s Theater of the Absurd!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 Monday, February 5th, 2024. Alistair Crook is with us in just a moment on why do Western governments use war as a justification for their existence. But first this. Judge Napolitano here. Do you know that we the people have reached 34 trillion plus in debt? It's unsustainable and it's growing. Our government is addicted to printing money and it's not going to stop. And if you believe that, as I do, then you need to understand why gold prices will continue to rise along with our staggering debt. In this report called $3,200 Gold, it explains how rising debt will cause the value of gold to rise and it could reach $3,200 an ounce.

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And when you talk to my friends at Lear, tell them the judge sent you. Alistair, good day, my dear friend, and welcome here. We have a lot to talk about. Big picture, the Western world using war as justification and the continued annihilation of Gaza. But before we get there, just a couple of questions on Ukraine. Since last we spoke, the president of Ukraine has made it known that he plans to fire General Zelensky. Sounds like he can't seem to do this. But when an announcement like this is made, and when it was preceded by his commander, General Zaluzhny, saying, I need another half million men who simply don't exist, what does this tell you about the state of affairs in the Ukrainian government and militarily between Ukraine and Russia? It tells us the center is coming apart. I mean, the central part, the command structure, the sort of inner core of Ukraine in Kiev is coming apart. They're fighting on all levels. They're fighting with each other. Yeah, there is a big fight on. Victoria Nuland, the great fixer

of Ukraine, made a hurried rush there and everyone thought that after that you know it would be fixed because she'd lay down the law but it wasn't still going on and as far as i know solution is still the commander-in-chief and zielinski is still in his office but forces are massing around poroshenko, around Zelensky, in the Rada, in the parliament, to form, if you like, to be in waiting to take power when the moment is right. So we're seeing really the coming apart, the fragmentation of the core element to Ukraine. Is there any question but that this will end either in an obliteration of the Zelensky government or in a negotiated settlement,

and that will probably, one of those two events will probably happen this year? When you talk about negotiated settlement, it will be capitulation. I mean, you can call that about negotiated settlement, it will be capitulation. I mean, you can call that a negotiated settlement, but basically Russia will set the terms for the political future. Is it going to happen? I think, you know, effectively the war, I mean, the war is over, but not quite finished. It is settled. I mean, we know who has won the war. We know that it can continue in the same vein. Russia is gaining ground all the time.

And it's really a question of whether there will be, if you like, a decision to capitulate in Kiev, which would be very difficult under Zelensky, or else Russia will continue until there's really no choice but to capitulate. And that's been made pretty clear by Putin. The government, the existing government with the extreme ultra-nationalist is not acceptable to Russia. It has to go in their view. And so that will be the final point. They're not going to negotiate with the leaders there unless they take a very different stance and understand that the outcome of the war is settled.

Settled, but not quite over. It's still going on a bit in Avdeevka, but even that war is settled. Settled, but not quite over. It's still going on a bit in Avdevka, but even that is almost settled. What will it take for Victoria Nuland and her neocon colleagues to recognize that this whole experiment was an unmitigated disaster from day one to the present?

You know, I don't think people like that ever admit it. And they will go on with the justifications and say, well, it would have been, it was a great idea. It was just Zelensky let us down, the Ukrainians let us down, everyone let them down. I think if you recall, I mean, it was exactly the same with Vietnam. At the end of it, I remember, you know, all those sort of senior officers that were at West Point and training the troops wrote all those books. I saw some of them which said, actually, you know, we could have won in Vietnam. We were winning, but the politicians let us down. It'll be the same.

Right, right. Why do, well, one last question. If the United States Congress comes to some sort of an agreement and adds 50 or 60 billion, either in cash or military equipment to the 13 billion a year for four years that the EU is now giving Ukraine where will this money go I I would think I love it some of it will even probably come to new Estates in Italy's um we heard that the mayor of Kiev has bought some huge property in Germany. I mean, you know, at the end of these projects, when everyone can see that it is crumbling, the aim is to steal as much as you can and run for it. And I think that's basically what will happen. You know, you can see the money is already dried up at the outer periphery, and it's getting closer and closer to the central core. And now the central core can barely survive

on what's coming. And in Europe, there's panic because they've realized, you know, they're going to be left having to finance Ukraine for the foreseeable future if things are as they are with the idea they fear that Mr Trump might win the election it looks fairly likely and so they're in a in a panic about that and I don't think they're very confident that the money is going to come from um from Congress for Ukraine so they're left you know holding the baby and they're left, you know, holding the baby, and they're not very happy about that, and they can't sustain it, frankly. You know, the day it passed, the 50 billion,

and Hungary folded on it, you know, there were agricultural protests across Europe, in Brussels, in Italy, in France, really major protests. Why? Because, you know, they've lost all their subsidies that, you know, for agricultural use of diesel, all these things, the tax breaks. So, you know, at the same time that they were skimming it off the farmers and reducing them to penury, they were busily sending $50 billion or committing $50 billion to Ukraine. It didn't go very well. It didn't look very good.

None of that was explained in mainstream media in the U.S. This is the first I've heard of the suffering of farmers and the reduction of their tax credits. Switching gears to what's going on in Iraq, what do you think is Joe Biden's goal with these 85 or 90 attacks on people in a country we spent $2 trillion to liberate from Saddam Hussein, theoretically, 20 years ago? Well, you know, I've described it, I suppose, somewhat rudely, as psychotherapy missile attacks. You know, these are not intended to inflict great hurt. They haven't touched Iran, by the way, nothing. IRGC bases, Iranians haven't been touched by these. It's been very clear that they've decided. There's obviously been a long

debate in Washington, and they've decided they don't want to do anything against Iran. So these are minor attacks. It hasn't affected any of the militia because they emptied all their bases beforehand. And so mostly the attacks have been, some of them have been on ammunition storages belonging to the Iraqi government and on other things of very little consequence. And that's why I call it psychotherapy. The aim is really basically to sort of like in Yemen, is to say, look, you know, here we are. We could hurt you, you know, but we're just doing a little slap in the wrist for now. But we want quiet in the region. We want to lower the level so that we can get Gaza sorted out and then everything will go quiet and we can go back to the world as it was.

Only that's not going to attack, if they get hit, if they don't move, they're really the world's dumbest militia. Cut number four, Chris. Militia leaders can't say they weren't warned, and if any of them were still around the target areas, they are the world's dumbest terrorists. Was it too much of a delay? Two thoughts there. First, it's not like we held back any notification that we were going to respond if our troops were attacked. I mean, the president's been clear. We will respond. So it's not as if prior to the attack last weekend that the militia groups and the IRGC and folks in Tehran didn't know that we were going to take seriously any attack on our troops or on our facilities. And then with the specific attack that we struck, the targets we struck on Friday night, I mean, you want to do this in a deliberate way.

You want to do it. You want to carefully select your targets. You want to make sure that all the parameters are in place to have good effects, including factoring in the weather. I mean, these attacks were using manned aircraft. You want to make sure your pilots can get in and get out safely. So there was a lot of planning that went into that. And again, the Pentagon believes we had good effect that we hit what we were aiming at. What is their purpose in your view

with the so-called pinprick attacks as numerous as they were? And remember, they're using B-1 bombers, which are enormous and can drop a 2,000-pound bomb if they want. Well, the parameters were the opposite. The parameters, quite clearly, were not to cause any really serious damage. I mean, none of those militias were really hit or hurt. Yes, some warehouses, some empty sheds were. I mean, it was a very expensive demolition of property, but nothing has really affected the capabilities. The weapons that were damaged were mostly Iraqi official weapons rather than militia weapons. Now, what's going on, as I say, is

simply really trying to signal that the US really, the U.S. really doesn't want a big war, doesn't want a wider war. But if only you just be quiet and stop your attacks on U.S. bases, then we can all get along together. Except that it's ended up with the Iraqis being very angry. I mean, even if they were not killed in large numbers, I mean, it was mostly night watchmen, poor people who suffered rather than the troops or anything like this. But they're angry because they think about Iraq as a sovereign country, incorrectly, but they feel that they should be sovereign. And they don't like, you know, suddenly being, having B-1 bombers drop bombs over them, even if it didn't hurt very much. It hurts their esteem. It hurts their pride.

It hurts their nationalism. So they've reacted and they've already immediately, the bombings finished. They attacked Ain al-Assad base in Iraq. They've attacked the Conoco in Syria. So the attacks are going on. It's just the same as in Yemen. You know, America goes and does this sort of psychotherapy with a few missiles and says, now you must understand the message. But they don't get it.

In fact, what happens is they get angry and the retaliation, the reaction is the greater. One example of that was the Iraq has now cut off the oil supply to Jordan because they say Jordan was involved in the attacks with its aircraft. Tell me how this works from the diplomatic side. Would Secretary Blinken or National Security Advisor Sullivan call up the French president, the German chancellor, the British prime minister, the Polish president, et cetera, and tell them what's going on and say, look, we really don't want to start a war. This is going to be very limited. The president's under a lot of pressure. We have to do something.

How do you suspect, what do you expect happened diplomatically in the two weeks between the deaths of those three American soldiers, the injury of the 38 or 39 others, and these attacks over the weekend? Oh, yeah. The message will have been passed by the Swiss embassy in Iran. That is the conduit to Iran for the United States. So they will have passed the message. And the Iranians would have informed the Iraqis.

But I'm sure that Washington, through its ambassadors, will inform the Iraqi prime minister and the Jordanians and other interested parties. I don't know if they informed the Syrian. I'm sure they did in some way, but I don't know about that. But yes, the word has gone out. We don't want no widening of the wall, no raising of the flames of this war. We want all of this to be quat so we can concentrate on trying to get peace in Gaza and sorting out Lebanon so that we can all go back to the old normal, the status quo, actually. But if you wanted to start a war using a sort of inverse false flag, if you will, wouldn't you just put your troops into harm's way as sitting ducks and wait for the adversary to attack or kill them, as immoral and reprehensible as that is, and use that as an excuse to attack. Isn't this something that Victoria Nuland and Lindsey Graham would love to confront? Well, that's why they've always tried to keep the troops there. And you remember that Trump, when he was president, tried to remove them and wasn't allowed to do that. He wanted them out of Syria and out of Iraq, and he wasn't allowed to do that. And of course, they want them there. But now there's a new factor

in it. I mean, the overall message coming out of the White House is we do not want a replay of Kabul. We don't want to see American troops in humiliation being sort of hurried out of Iraq or Syria with the militia sort of fighting on their coattails, firing at them planes as they take off and go. So that's the overriding political message, is we can't afford another Kabul in an election year. planes as they take off and go. So that's the overriding political message is, you know, we can't afford another Kabul in an election year. Let's transition over to Israel. As far as you know, is the United States still beating a drum for the two-state solution as unlikely or maybe as impossible as that seems in the near future? Yes. I mean, this is where we effectively are. I mean, we're doing, the United States is really

doing an exercise in posture, in trying to say, you know, that we can get everything quiet and down, the level of violence down, by massaging it and massaging it politically. But the means that they're using are really nonsense. I mean, the two-state solution, they talk about it. They talk about recognizing a Palestinian state now, according to Tom Friedman and to David Ignatius. But you can't do just that. I mean, first of all, there are sort of rules about recognizing a state that has to control its territory, control its people, and have a real government. And of course, Palestinians don't have any of that. But more than that, I mean, you know, what is the main block to a Palestinian state? Is the settlements in the West Bank.

And these settlements really came into being after 73, the 73 war, when at that point Israel was forced to hand back to Egypt the land that it had occupied during the 60 earlier 67 war but as part of that when they had to hand back the land that they had been occupying to Egypt to sign up they it started a process by which these nationalist groups and others said, no more. We're going to grab and we're going to hold everything we can of the occupation. We're not going to go down this route ever again.

And so we've moved further and further away from any political solution, any ability to have a two-state solution. Look, you know, there are, the figures vary, but say 700,000 to 800,000 settlers. And I think I've mentioned before, Sharon actually sent me to meet them. And he sent with his top aide, Rafi Etan. And I went to the settlements. And they were told to speak to me freely.

And I was Sharon's guest, the prime minister. And my goodness, they did. And it was shocking. What did they tell you? They were fanatics. They hate the Palestinians with a degree of fervor that really was shocking. And they hate anyone that interferes with them. They were quite clear even then. They would fight to the end against the Israeli army, Israeli government, anyone that tried to remove them. And I mean, these people are real

zealots. I mean, I see, you know, one of those sort of articles from being put out by the White House briefing, you know, oh, well, we just displaced them somewhere else. Oh, come on, it will be a sea of blood. And the Israeli army, who have a great deal of settlers in their midst, most of their senior command are settlers. I mean, I'm not going to do this job. 800,000, how are you going to get rid of those? It's just fantasy. This is just what is being spun out of the White House in order to try and say we're managing the difficulty and in fact what they're not doing they're not only not managing it or managing it in a particularly stupid way by trying to pretend that a Palestinian state is possible when the

whole point of the settlement action was to stop a Palestinian state coming. And by doing this, they ignore the real thing, which is that Israel has lost the principles, the structures, the system on which it existed. Zionism was, if you like, exploded. The principles on which it lay were exploded on the 7th of October by the Hamas explosion out of Gaza at that time. Security went. And so, you know, Israel is in an existential bind. And they know that, you know, simply repeating the mantra of a two-state solution, which is impossible

to actually implement, talking about Saudi Arabia and, if you like, normalization will be solve everything. Everyone knows this isn't the case. And so Israel is getting closer and closer to this point where there's a big collision between the rejectionist of a Palestinian state, rejectionist of what happened in 73 with Egypt, and the Arab objection, and the Iranian rejections who say, you know, we can't, how, you know, peace with Israel could be possible. But how can we live with a potentially genocidal state that uses overwhelming violence to resolve all of its problems and wants to grab as much land between the river and the sea and leave no Palestinians in the way. I don't think, you know, this is the fundamental problem.

And Washington and the Europeans are simply producing unworkable palliatives and saying, oh, well, we're managing it very well and we've got plans for this. First of all, we'll hurt Iran, which didn't get very far. And then we will come up with a Palestinian state. I mean, and what they are suggesting is that they will have some sort of pseudo recognition of a Bantustan that is posing as a state. It'll have a flag and a stamp, but none of the attributes of a state. It will be demilitarized. It will be without political power. It will be, if you like, at the mercy of the security forces of Israel. Before we go, I would like you to weigh in on Prime Minister Netanyahu's dilemma about the hostages and a ceasefire, combined with the threat of one of his two extreme right-wing partners, Ben-Gavir, who basically said if there's a ceasefire, we're out of the government. And if we're out of the government, Likud does not have a coalition that is a majority,

and it's time for new elections, and Bibi's out of office. What do you think he'll do? I don't think it's so difficult for him, actually. I saw, you know, that this was supposed to be, according to one expert, a sort of frog in the throat for Netanyahu. What's the frog? I mean, he's been against a two-state solution from the beginning. And many Israelis are against a two-state solution.

And many Palestinians and Arabs in the Islamic world don't believe in it either. And so what's the problem? He's already announced, and which has serious support in Israel, of taking a military, putting a military, if you like, net across from the river to the sea to secure the entire area of greater Israel and to react to any opposition to that with, as usual, absolute violence. What about the hostages? Are they no longer on the front burner for the Israeli government? They're not in the front burner because, I mean, first of all, we have to see the deal that was orchestrated, which was managed by the head of CIA and by Qatar

and Egypt, I mean, is one that I don't think is likely to survive very long if it's ever accepted by Hamas, because it's full of holes. I mean, first of all, Hamas is supposed to give up women and young people and elderly. At the outset, there isn't a ceasefire then. The ceasefire only comes after they've given these hostages. And then the ceasefire goes along. And at any point in this process, then Israel can go back to military action. It's said at the end of any one phase, Israel has the right to go back to bombing Gaza.

I mean, it's not exactly a political settlement. It may be used by Hamas to find some sort of tactical advantage. I think that the whole of this process that is going at the moment with Qatar and Egypt trying to persuade Hamas, put a lot of political pressure on Hamas to do it, really is because the Israeli army and Israel needs a break. It's tired. It's suffered a lot of losses both in Gaza and in the north. And they need to reconstruct some of their military before they turn their attention to pushing Hezbollah back across the Litani. Can the Israeli army slaughter in Gaza and attack Hezbollah at the same time without

fear of bringing in another state actor to resist them? You know, and I've said this before, when and if, and I think it's inexorable that sooner or later, because this is the only way out of their dilemma. They haven't succeeded in Gaza. They're not succeeding in the West Bank. A Palestinian state is not desirable from their point of view. How do they break out of it? They're looking for something that will confirm a victory for the government and for Israel that they can rejoice

in, and a victory over Hezbollah would be a great achievement. And I think this sort of catharsis is seen to be necessary by many Israelis in order to bring Israel together. But by doing that, they may be setting their own demise because a war with Hezbollah is not at all predictable as to the outcome in the way in which it's thought. It is something that could bring about the end of Israel. Alistair Crook, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your insight.

We'll see you again next week. Thank you very much. Of course. Another brilliant analysis of the Middle East mess. Coming up later this morning, Eastern Time, Ray McGovern and then Larry Johnson, and this afternoon, Eastern Time, Colonel Douglas McGuire. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.