Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: Western Thinking About War.

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Alastair Crooke: Western Thinking About War.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, April 8th, 2024. Alistair Crook joins us as usual on this day and at this time. Alistair, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. You have a rather remarkable piece that you published just a few hours ago about the unhappy consequences from the Israeli perspective of its war against Hamas and the manner in which it has been waging that war. So just to give our audience a little teaser of what is coming, has Israel been waging its war

against Hamas using AI, artificial intelligence, and has it been a catastrophic failure? The answer to both is yes, very clearly. It was in, I think, about 2021 that the head of the secretive intelligence service called 8200, which is basically the same as GCHQ or NASA, it's the intercept service, but it's very secretive and highly regarded in Israel. And the head of it seemed to become mesmerized by this idea that he could merge human intelligence and AI algorithmic linked processes to create a kill list for killing people quickly. And the whole point was that normally it took so long for them to select targets and get it right.

And this one could just generate them in large numbers. And so that is what they were using, what they employed. And it was supposed to be, I mean, they were very excited and obviously sold it to the leadership because this is, you know, this was going to be the I mean, they were very excited and obviously sold it to the leadership, because this is, you know, this was going to be the wonder weapon, that they would eliminate Hamas easily and quickly with this new AI led war. Now, but the only thing about this AI war was that, I mean, first of all, the main Hamas operatives are deep in their bunkers,

and they don't come up, and they're not easily, you know, they're not open to sort of facial recognition or instruments like that kind to identify them. And other than that, they're down below. You can't see them. You can't identify them. So what's on the surface are mostly civilians in Gaza, I mean, ordinary civilian members. And then they try to identify all of these as being somehow Hamas operatives. And they do that for a sort of variety of ways. But

basically, as the operatives of them said, you know, the margin between saying this man is Hamas and this one isn't was very, very fine for good reason, because everyone is Hamas, more or less, in Gaza. I mean, when I used to go there, I used to work in Gaza at that time. And Hamas dominated. They'd won the elections and they were there. And everyone knew someone from Hamas. Everyone was in touch with someone from Hamas, of course. I mean, you know, like, you know, it's like saying, you know, that you're going to sort of target the Democratic Party.

Who is it? Well, there'll be some people that are really sort of central and some people have really nothing to do with it. So the list just exploded. 37,000 in the first few days were put on the list as Hamas. And then this is the worst of it. There was no check. There was a sort of quick check to make sure they were male and not female

because there are no known women in the Hamas military wing. Just that. And then what they did in the second part of this was that then they found it easier. Rather, they didn't actually try and attack these targets where they worked or in a military context. They went for doing it at home. It was much more efficient, they said, for doing it at home because you could be sure of getting it. So they dropped a bomb on a whole family. And many of these were, you know, were very dubious. They said themselves, they changed the categories marginally this way or this, you add someone else, and then you have another huge explosion of targets,

all of whom at five in the morning, they would destroy their house. And additionally, they would also have what they called deterrent bombings, whereby they take down a whole apartment block as a deterrent bombing. And all of this was effectively unchecked. They went automatic, as they say, from the early days. And they devised this criteria that if he was a really low level person, way down the list in terms of closeness or distance, according to these artificial measures of closeness or furtherance from the central political power, then it was acceptable to kill up to 20 civilians in order to kill this one. If it was a high ranking Hamas, someone according to this machine, machine producing these kill lists called Lavender,

if it was a high risk then you could kill up to authorize 100 civilians would be killed during this process. So what I describe it, I mean, you know, to be very blunt about it, it sounds rather brutal, but this was AI machine genocide taking place with these. And you've seen it. You've seen the results of what it was. It wasn't destroying Hamas. It was destroying these sort of people who came into the target field because, you know, over the last few years, they've been in touch with someone from Hamas. And as I say, you know, I worked in Gaza. I was always in touch with someone from Hamas.

It would be very difficult not to be. So, I mean, this thing just exploded. And this AI has produced a huge defeat for Israel because they haven't defeated Hamas at all. They've just created mayhem and they massacred people. And really, my question was, you know, I mean, this has been a disaster for the whole concept of international law. Because what do you say when people, is it acceptable, therefore, you know, that because they haven't been killed at the instruction of a human being but as a machine, are they somehow absolved

from moral and legal responsibility because it's not, you know, someone pushing the button as such, it's a machine churning out these lists for people to be killed every day at 5.30. And also, how do you get, what is the legal basis? Because you have to have some form of legal morality in this. the legal basis for saying it's okay to kill 20 civilians for every one junior Hamas-linked affiliated person? Is it true that this program called Lavender actually evaluated thousands and thousands of people by putting a number on their head from zero to a hundred of whether or not they were a worthy target. And is it also true that the Israeli commanders

choosing weapons chose the heavy dumb bombs, which do a lot more destruction but cost less money than the smarter bombs, which aim at a precise target. That's right. I mean, they were using gum bombs on the sort of lower ranks of people who are tenuous in their connection. They probably had nothing. You know, maybe someone had used their phone. They said, okay, okay, you know, lend me your phone for a moment. I'm just, I just want to call my daughter or someone else like this. Don't forget, this is not the underworld of Hamas, 70 meters down. This is just civil life on the surface. People swap phones. They listen, they talk to people, you get in touch with it. As I say, you know, I mean, pretty well everyone in Gaza supports Hamas. So how do you say he is closer, he is Hamas, or he isn't Hamas?

Well, we're not talking about the military wing at all. We're just talking about civil society, because the military wing was right down underground. They don't go home at night. There are living quarters in the tunnels underneath. They are very well equipped. They have hospitals in these tunnels too. So they don't come up. They're not in al-Shifa. And what you've seen was really a complete, I mean, rupture of the whole legal structure by which international humanitarian law can be administered. What do you say for this? And I think just let me just say one final thing

because we've seen almost a deliberate attempt to camouflage it, at least to surround what's been happening with this AI algorithmic genocide because actually Israel has been breaking every, if you like, norm and precedent and legal system. I mean, attacking hospitals, assassinating people inside hospitals, damaging schools, all of these things, bombing diplomatic premises of Iran, all the norms and all, if you like, the legal structures, I believe, are being deliberately damaged. Firstly, to try and create enough of a chaotic situation in the region and elsewhere in order to push further for Biden to join in with a war on Iran and a war in Lebanon by making it much more less clear-cut, shall we say, less obvious. And look what happened with the embassy, the consulate that was bombed in Damascus last week.

I mean, even then, the West couldn't say, at least three states wouldn't say that it was in breach of the Vienna Convention. The United States, Great Britain and France wouldn't agree to condemn, you know, an attack on a diplomatic premises, which has been, these are things that have been sacrosanct through the First World War and Second World War. I mean, very rarely has this happened. But the aim is to push everyone by moving just a bit beyond a sort of legal sanction like that, also to take the West, but also it gave camouflage for the failure. Today, the Israeli forces have left Gaza.

I don't know if you've seen that, but they've withdrawn. And all that's left is a few hundred troops that are on this. They've cut the north off from the south by a great big road that they bulldozed through Gaza from the sea to the interior. And that is a barrier so that the people that are sort of refugees in the southern part of Gaza can't go up to their homes in the north. So they have just a few hundred people and they've taken all the rest of the division, the division out of Gaza. And it's effectively a defeat.

I mean, yes, the war goes on. They'll tell you there's going to be print-prick types of attacks on Rafah and elsewhere. But basically, it's effectively saying, you know, the war that failed, the intense war has failed. They haven't defeated Hamas. Even Gallant, the defense minister, who's, you know, always been saying, and here's the important thing.

This is how they've been, you know, they've been smoking Washington, telling them that, oh, yes, we've actually defeated 19 out of 24 Hamas battalions. It's baloney. It's not true. They've killed lots of civilians that have been targeted for having something to do with Hamas. Here's, I want to play a clip of Leon Panetta, the former director of the CIA and the former defense secretary

in the Obama administration. Cut number five, Chris, basically saying, don't kid yourself, Benjamin Netanyahu. You're not going to destroy Hamas. Netanyahu keeps saying we're going to destroy Hamas. Look, you're not going to destroy Hamas. Netanyahu keeps saying we're going to destroy Hamas. Look, you're not going to destroy Hamas. Hamas is going to be around. What you can destroy is the leadership that was involved by Hamas in the attack on October 7th.

And I don't think he's made that clear, that ultimately this is about killing the leadership of Hamas, not just wiping out Hamas. If we had a better sense of mission here, I think we'd have a better sense of how this war could come to an end. Do you think that the Netanyahu government takes some solace, some refuge in the argument that Lavender, that's the name of the software that they've created that animates the AI, chose the targets rather than they, the Israeli leadership, chose the targets? I mean, this would be an absurd abnegation of their moral responsibility. But do they embrace that argument, Alistair? Yes. I mean, you know,

this was a wonderful solution from their point of view. They didn't have to go down tunnels and face the real Hamas on the surface. They persuaded themselves. I mean, it said, you know, it was like an addiction. This man who was the author of Lavender, the head of the 8200 Institute. I mean, he was, I mean, it's not an institute, it's a intelligence service. I mean, he was enthusiastic and his enthusiasm

obviously, you know, infected Netanyahu and others who thought, we can win this war. I mean, the great victory is easy, just a little bit more and we'll have done it because they have not got into the deep tunnels. They've only touched a few surface type tunnels. They haven't got to the Hamas leadership. And Leon Panetta is right in one sense that they've been focused on killing all these people that have some sort of score from 1 to 100, but who are really civilians, probably a baker or someone else like that.

But they haven't got the leadership and they can't do it because they can't get down to the tunnels and they don't have the troops who are willing to do it. The troops are not. I mean, the IDF in Gaza are both tired and frightened and they've had huge losses. The losses are coming on the Israeli side, not on the Hamas side, apart from civilians. I mean, thousands, tens of thousands, women and children killed. But I mean, the Israelis have lost a lot of people in Gaza, and they are not trained for that type of warfare. They're not trained to go into the tunnels. We had a lot of happy talk about how they go into the tunnels and eliminate

the Hamas leadership. And Leon Panetta suggests it was very easy. It's just a choice you made. You could either go for the less important or you could go for the very important. Unfortunately, it's the... I mean, for Israel, it hasn't been like that. Hamas prepared it, planned it, provisioned it for at least a year. They have enough food and armaments and weapons down there for at least a year's fighting. So it's not going to – it was never that easy. They thought it was a great wonder weapon. And this is behind also – I mean, of course, they were going to use this in

Lebanon. We'll take a break for a commercial announcement. When we come back, we'll transition into another fascinating area with Alistair. Does the West understand the mentality of Hamas? Does the West understand the mentality of Russia? Does the West have the patience to wage war against these groups? 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.

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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, transitioning a bit, and thank you for that analysis or revelation as well as an analysis about the use of the Lavender software by the Israeli government. Transitioning to Russia, does the West have an image of Russia that is realistic or does the West have an image of Russia that fits its prejudices generated by the Soviet Union days? Unfortunately, the latter. Unfortunately, very much that sort of prejudice that came out of the sort of Cold War. But it was also fueled by ideology. It's not just the prejudice and the sort of old habits of the Cold War. I remember at the time, you probably do too, when Dick Cheney formed this Team B. He didn't

like what the CIA was saying about Russia and the fact about their armaments program at the time. So we instituted a sort of a Team B to sort of outthink them. And, you know, when the official CIA came up with certain data, Team B would sort of come and say, but that doesn't matter because, you know, actually, you know, it really is the nature of Russians and they lie a lot. You've heard that with Iraq. They lie and they tell truths and really they're much weaker than you think them to be. So it was about thinking, you know, what is the nature of people and that you don't need to know anything about them. I mean, the person who came to Iraq after the war, who was going to be the sort of governor general, I forget his name now, the American, he came there and he arrived there

and he very proudly said, and he said this in so many words, he said, look, I know nothing about this country. I haven't studied it. I know nothing. But this is a great advantage. Really it's a great advantage because I come with a clean slate and I can, I'm going to help you and because you know neoliberalism is something, he didn't call it neoliberalism but virtually called it neoliberalism, is

something that I can use to help you in the future. And even when I came to Washington around that sort of time, and I asked people in the counter-terrorist branch, first of all in Congress, I met with some of those, but also subsequently I met with those in the FBI who are in charge of it. And I kept saying, but, I mean, you know, aren't you confusing things? I mean, do you know the difference between Sunni and Shia? And they said, no, it's irrelevant. It's irrelevant.

We just regard this as law and order matter. We don't know. So I said, do you know if Iran is Shia or Sunni? Is Egypt Sunni or Shia? No, they didn't know. So, I mean, it was an ideological point and ideologically secular. So we wouldn't understand, therefore, things like eschatological positions or even understand sort of Hamas. Hamas, you asked me just now, what is, you know, what is Hamas?

How does it think differently? Well, Sinwar, who is the leader of the Qassam Brigade, has written a novel, and he's one of the people of the camps. His family was from Ashdod. It was a Palestinian village there, which was destroyed in 1948. And all of the people in Gaza are basically people who've already had their homes and their villages and their old buildings destroyed and have been moved into these refugee camps. There are other refugee camps even up in Aleppo of the same way. They were put on trains and they've left there.

And these people, I mean, he puts it very clearly. It's either, you know, it's either victory or martyrdom. We are going to be victorious or it's martyrdom. And he says this throughout. And that's the spirit. And it's very hard for the West to understand that they can say, look, even if we are all destroyed and we are killed, the Palestinian project will, because of our spilled blood, continue and the Palestinian people will survive. We will not live to see it, but they will survive as a people, their civilization, their way of being will survive in this way. And we find these sort of sentiments, like some, I gave the example of

some Iranians during, I mean this was under a Sunni, if you like, put down. Every time they went to the mosque, which they were forbidden to do on a Friday prayer, a finger would be cut off or a thumb would be cut off. And then they went back to the mosque and another finger, another thumb, and then they started on the toes and eventually it would be the hands or the feet that would be removed. And still they went. These sort of ways of thinking, these sort of things really are very, very hard, I think, for us in our separate cultural sphere to sort of really fully comprehend. And we don't understand. The Russians are not in that quite in that same way. But they

understand war very differently from us. They understand war as something organic, holistic, and unlike us, who only start at the immediate point. So for us, the war in Ukraine started on the 22nd of February, when the Russian invasion began. But of course, the war has been going on for a long time. It's almost the point Putin was trying to make. And so they see it and they don't believe that you can resolve war except by understanding how it came into being and why it came into being, and not just sort of treat it as a sort of tactical event that has suddenly popped up on your screen, and we need to sort of push it back down and get it out of the way,

whether it's in Yemen or in Russia or elsewhere. If you asked the average Israeli when the war with Hamas started, they would probably say October 7th of last year. In reality, Alistair, when did it start? In 1948? Well, even before that. But 1948 was certainly. I mean, that was the time when particularly those areas that Senua came from, there was these great massacres. And, you know, the Ergun people went into some of these villages and killed a lot of people. And then many Palestinians fled at that point.

And that was the start of the Arabs or the Russians do? I think we've gone through this great change and we've become very much a nihilistic society. A nihilistic society. Nihilistic. We donihilistic society. Nihilistic. We don't believe in any basic values. Anything beyond. And we negate anything that, you know, pretends to have anything other than material value or something that is, if you like, feeds our utilitarian needs, our sense of comfort and needs to consume and live a consumer life.

And we find it very difficult to think that for remiss of the world, there is another, there's a whole new realm of the immaterial that exists, and there's a sort of membrane perhaps between our material world and an immaterial world, but that most of the ethical values, certainly for Iranians and others, you know, the values of the world are not set by your parliament or your government, but they are embedded, if you like, in the immaterial world. And they are available and they're part of every human's ability to tell justice from injustice. And they are discoverable by the exercise of human reason,

as our friend St. Thomas Aquinas argued. I want to switch gears for just a minute. Last Friday afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was, of course, the chief of staff to the Secretary of State Colin Powell for many years, when I asked him if he had any views on the invasion, the destruction of the Crocus Concert in Russia startled us by saying he believed that the CIA was behind it. I'm going to play this clip from Colonel Wilkerson three days ago and ask you what you think. This looks a lot like what Nord Stream turned out to be, a U.S. operation. Only the CIA led it. Let's face it, we have done as much to create and to nurture ISIS as anything else on the face of the earth, whether it be Aba Moussa Belzarqawi or any of the

instigators of the so-called ISIS consulate in the beginning. We've used ISIS, and when I say we, I mean that agency called the CIA, the same agency that does so many nefarious things in our name. And they have worked ISIS and worked operatives from ISIS in order to do other things. And I'm hearing, and it makes a lot of sense to me, and I'm watching the behavior and the signals coming from Moscow, which are usually very indicative of the truth when it's something like this. And I think that's what Putin believes. And I think the intelligence community in Russia, whether it's the GRU, the NKVD, the KSB, the FSB or whatever, they believe it too.

And that makes this Ukraine conflict a different conflict as of that killing of that many Russians that close to Putin and blame lying, at least in part, with the people who orchestrated it being the CIA. If Colonel Wilkerson's sources are correct, is it conceivable to you, Alistair, that CIA and MI6 would engage in an act of war like this against civilians right outside of the Kremlin? Well, a few minutes ago, I just said to you about nihilism and about the sort of breakdown in our moral values as a society. And so, very regretfully, I have to say that I agree with what he said exactly. And I think it is the case that happens. And it's fairly easy to understand what was going on, my view, is that the military war was lost. People could see that it was lost last summer with the inability to make any progress in the front.

And the overall aggregates are all working against Ukraine. It's obvious. There are not enough men. There are not enough weapons. There's not enough finance. And so in order just to keep things going, to keep it going, and to keep people in Ukraine with enough of a sort of hope for the future, they go to what they call asymmetrical war.

As I said to you, I don't call it as asymmetrical war. I think it's just terrorism. And it's intended to sort of undermine the leadership. It still goes back to the whole old story that, you know, that if only, you know, Putin can be shown to be weak. Don't forget, I mean, look at the background. We were told by Budanov, the head of intelligence in Ukraine, he said, deeper and deeper into Russia itself. That is the strategy for the future. He said that after his meeting with Ms. Mewland. And then, first of all, we were going to have two things happening together.

If you recall, this was on about the 7th or 8th of the month, there were these groups of supposed Russian dissidents who were going to come in to Russia proper, into the Belgorod area of Russia, and seize some towns or villages, small towns and villages, and hold them hostage. And on the same day, and this was just before the presidential election, this was on the 8th, was clearly a first trial run at the Crocus Concert Hall, in which was postponed, had to be postponed for two weeks till after the election because of the security at the time Shaman was going to do to sing there on the 8th or 9th, I think it was in the Crocus Hall. And they'd obviously wanted to, to use that as the peg for this attack on the concert basis, because he's known as a nationalist and attracts huge audiences.

So they would have had, first of all, these villages and parts of Russia itself being held hostage, and then the big attack in Moscow. And in the imagination of these intelligence services this would be enough to shake the Russians confidence in Putin security services and there would be all sorts I mean it would be a would have been a major sort of scandal just before you know just before the election to have you know the crocus thing happening and these people coming in and seizing part of Russia and holding a whole series of Russian citizens in their own villages and towns hostage.

I mean, the Russians dealt with the first one. They obviously had information and dealt with it immediately. And then we had Crocus and that happened. But I think you can see how they think. I mean, this is yet another way of thinking. This is the Western way of thinking in terms of how to weaken Putin. It would have been a major sort of scandal if it had happened at that time. It could have happened, but very fortunately, it didn't happen. Do you think that this was the nasty surprise

to which Mrs. Newland referred in one of her final speeches before she left the State Department? Look, I think someone had an inkling that something was coming like this. So it could have been. I don't know what she was thinking about. But you know how these things are done, because I've heard people talk about it a little bit sometimes in your shows. I know the paperwork and these things.

I mean, people don't go into too much detail about specifics because they don't want the politicians to start playing intelligence officers. Let me just stop you for a minute. Here she is. With the $60 billion supplemental that the administration has requested of Congress, we can ensure that Ukraine not only survives, but she thrives. With this support, in 2024, we can help ensure Ukraine can continue to fight, to build, to recover, and to reform. With this money, Ukraine will be able to fight back in the east, but it will also be able to accelerate the asymmetric warfare that has been most effective

on the battlefield. And as I said in Kiev three weeks ago, this supplemental funding will ensure Putin faces some nasty surprises on the battlefield this year. So she does say asymmetric. We all know what that means. She said it in late February when it was obvious to everyone, including her, she's not dumb, that the Ukraine war was lost. I don't want to put words in your mouth, my dear friend, but what do you think? I think it sounds exact parallel. Do you remember when Nord Stream and President Biden at that point was asked, but how are you going to, you know, how can you be sure that that pipeline will not function? And he said, well, I can tell you it won't happen. And I think it was, you know,

it was pretty obvious then. And I mean, she laid out something very clear. And I just want to say to you that generally these things pass through governments in a way which is the general framework, but they don't go into too much specifics. One, because they regard politicians as being a bit squeamish, to be frank. And secondly, they don't want politicians to start thinking that they're intelligence officers and they can say, why don't you do this this way and why don't you do it that way? So the framework is cleared politically, but they probably don't know exactly what that means,

what is going to be the result. Alistair, it's been a wonderful and revealing conversation. I know you're going to be doing some traveling. We hope we'll be able to reach you from wherever you are. Thank you very much for your time and especially for your intellect and letting me pick your brain on these profound issues. All the best to you, my friend. Thank you very much. Thank you. See you.

Of course. Bye. Bye. Coming up at 10 o'clock this morning, Ray McGovern. At 11 o'clock this morning, Larry Johnson. And at 2 o'clock this afternoon, from antiwar.com, Kyle Anzalone. We have all of your regulars coming up this week. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.