Judging Freedom - AMB Chas Freeman : The Domestic Cost of Endless War

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

AMB Chas Freeman : The Domestic Cost of Endless WarSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Fragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish

fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, February 3rd, 2006. Ambassador Chas Freeman joins us now. Ambassador Freeman, thank you as always. Thank you for your time. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. I want to talk to you about the domestic

costs of endless wars, financial cost, and cost and freedom. But before we get to that discussion, do you think that Trump's neocon advisors will suggest a war with Iran just to divert the attention of the American public

from his dismal ratings and dismal performance domestically? No, I think they're very serious about pursuing the Israeli agenda in West Asia, which means trying to establish Israeli egemony by bringing down Iran, possibly breaking up the country into its component parts. It has many minorities with a substantial population, some of whom seek independence or association with others across the border. I think they're very serious.

I think they did persuade him to send an armada in the direction of Iran, and he has belatedly realized that the use of that armada to attack Iran would very likely be extremely counterproductive not only in terms of losses to American bases and ships and lives, but in terms of an inability really to protect Israel from an Iranian counterattack, which is certain. I mean, the Iranians have said that they've basically had it with, putting up with intermittent attacks of a limited nature, or I should say, not necessarily a limited nature that fail, and responding to those attacks with limited constrained use

of force themselves, and they'll go all out if they say, if they're attacked again. So we have talks going on, or maybe about to go on in Turkey, and the real question is, between the United States and Iran. And the real question is, are those talks another cover for a surprise attack, like the talks in Muscat turned out to be? What is the agenda? The Iranians say they're perfectly happy to talk about nuclear weapons, which they claim they have no intention of building.

But they will not talk about military power, generally, their ability to defend themselves or counterattack with missiles. and they're not prepared to disavow their regional clients and allies. So we don't know what will happen. But I think this is much more than a political diversion, although it certainly serves that purpose. What would Trump tell the American people was the reason for, fill in the blank, an attack, kidnapping, a decapitation of the,

leadership, whatever he decides to do. I mean, stated differently, the Iranian public policy of its government does not pose one iota of a threat to the average American. How could Trump sell this? Oh, that it's against Iranian nuclear program. That's how he sold tearing up the deal that we did with Iran to limit that program, that Iran is doing to its citizens something worse than what we're doing to ours in Minnesota and has to be stopped, that Iran is evil and so forth and so on.

And so I, and of course, underneath all this is the argument that Iran is a potent rival to Israel in the region and needs to be eliminated. So many, many arguments for many people, none of them really with any validity. So the Iran's strategy is just to do whatever Netanyahu wants. That appears to be the case. Although isn't he saying don't attack now because we're not ready to defend? Well, that is apparently what happened. There was a meeting at Mar-a-Lago between Prime Minister Netanyahu and, President Trump, and they agreed, among other things, on a bite-past the Congress with a $6 billion infusion of weaponry to Israel,

interestingly not related to defense against an Iranian reprisal for an American or Israeli attack on Iran. It's all related to ground warfare in places like Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the continuation of genocide, basically. We just supported that without going through the normal legal procedure for authorizing arms sales. But I think after the Mar-a-Lago meeting at dawn on the Prime Minister Netanyahu in consultation, with Israel's very able military that the 12-day war in June had ended with Israel, basically having lost the self-defense capability against Iranian missiles. And Iran has been saying that it would respond to an attack on it with a salvo of as many as 2,000 missiles, which would utterly overwhelm any defense.

of Israel by the Israelis or of the United States. We apparently have moved that at the inter-high altitude air defense system into Israel. I suspect that would be the first thing to be targeted by Iran. But I think Netanyahu had a sober moment and that led to the deployment of the Abraham Lincoln in an aircraft carrier from the South China Sea

to the region. and it's now loitering in the Arabian Sea, apparently. It's really in range of Iranian attack, and it'll be interesting to see what happens if we actually come to blows. How will the average American be affected if the Straits of Hormuz are closed by the Iranians in response to an attack by the Americans? Well, the price of O'Well is determined. the price of gasoline that the pump is determined on a global level, not by the United States

and domestic supply. The immediate result would be a huge increase in the price of energy. If you're paying too much now for electricity, which most of us feel we are, you can expect those rates to go up. The price of the pump would go up dramatically. The only people who would benefit would be the shale manufacture, shale oil people, who would see a price for their product that incentivized them to increase production. Let me segue a little bit to American domestic issues. Do you see any geopolitical response to the release of 3 million pages of the Epstein files?

Well, I'm not sure at this point. I think they're so devastating in their implications for American moral probity internationally that they just add to the sense that the United States is decadent and in decline. They don't enhance the credibility of our president or our elite because many in our political economic elite are one extent or another. fingered by the files that are now public. And I want to make a point here, and that is that I think raw FBI files have to be approached with a great deal of caution because the FBI is basically more in its usual mode

when it's not doing counterintelligence is collecting evidence, forensic evidence, for use in a court. and so it's collecting testimony. It's not rendering judgments on that testimony. It's not questioning what the people that's inter-interrogating are saying. So what we have in the Epstein files

is a lot of very disturbing accusations by victims, by participants in Epstein's evil empire, but we don't have a smoking gun yet. So former President Clinton and former First Lady U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have agreed to be interrogated by the House Oversight Committee. It's almost inconceivable to me what they're going to ask her. but he, of course, is shown in these photographs, so they're probably going to ask him a lot of embarrassing questions

and try and elicit a lot of embarrassing answers. I don't know what this has to do with any legitimate legislative purpose. These photographs were taken and his involvement with Epstein all occurred after he left office. I'm not defending Bill Clinton, but I'm just wondering what's going to come of this other than embarrassing him. I think embarrassment, political harassment, disparagement of both of them

is the objective. Reminds me a bit of the Benghazi fiasco where Hillary Clinton was pilloried for not having defended a CIA operation, taking weaponry from Libya and shipping it to the opponents of the Assad government in Syria.

And somehow that was the responsibility of the Department of State and Hillary Clinton, not the people who operated the facility where our ambassador, a very fine man, perished during an attack. So more of the same. This partisan warfare conducted by Congressional Committee, And if you doubt that, ask yourself why the similar hearing, you're not being held in the face of the numerous violations of the Constitution and the law that the Trump administration is guilty of.

You have ICE agents arresting people because of their emails and because of their photographing ICE, both of which are absolutely. protected under the First Amendment and standard Supreme Court jurisprudence from which there's been no deviation. You can photograph any cop you want as long as you're not physically interfering with what the cop is doing, local, state or federal. You can say anything you want about the police or the government, as long as you're not threatening harm, physical harm, you can threaten and political harm in your emails. ISIS is still arresting these people. And the powers that regulate and that control Congress,

that would be the Republican leadership, doesn't seem to give a damn. Well, it's not just that, but the people who are doing this in the name of law enforcement, in fact, they're enforcing lawlessness in many ways, are asked. But what kind of police force is it that has to hide behind a mask? Let me, you know, we should ask ourselves,

if your wife was on the street and a bunch of masked men pulled their guns and said, get in this car, what would your advice to her be? I mean, that is this dischoice that American citizens are now faced with. No warrants. You know, I wonder what Stephen Miller would think if a bunch of masked men, man turned up at his house and tried to break down the door. This is lawless.

It is, and it is making our country so unattractive that for the first time in our history, there is a decline in our population. Immigration has tripled, has reduced itself to a trickle because we're no longer seen as a desirable location for people to live and work. I wonder if there's any substance. I'm getting back to Iran now, to the rumors. I'm going to pick these up in the alternate press this morning, or alternate media, including from some of my European friends,

of U.S. Russian discord in Abu Dhabi over Trump's threats to attack Iran. I mean, the Russians do not want Iran attacked. The Chinese do not want Iran attacked. And apparently they made that known in no uncertain terms to, but Woodkoff and Kushner, even though Iran is not the stated reason for their being there. Does that make sense to you? It does make sense the Russians are not at all at odds with international opinion, I think more significant in the region itself, we see Saudi Arabia joining Iran in warning

against the implications of an American attack, declaring that it will not facilitate, will not allow American forces in its territory or in its airspace to participate in an attack. that is a position that it seems to be more general in the Gulf. But the whole focus on attacking Iran has also led to the formation of an informal coalition against Israel. And it's being formalized. We had a Saudi agreement with Pakistan on mutual defense, which Pakistan at least implicitly extends a nuclear umbrella extended deterrence to Saudi Arabia against Israel.

Now we have Turkey actively engaged in joining that Saudi-Pakistani framework for two reasons. One, out of concern for Israeli efforts to roll over all the countries in the region and annexed territory and continue the genocide in Gaza. But also, more importantly, to form a coalition for the development of military industries. Turkey has a formidable military industrial base. Saudi Arabia has a lot of money. Pakistan has a lot of Chinese technology and an army that has shown itself to be very able. And this is a coalition directed at reducing dependence on the United States and protect of the region from Israeli efforts to establish a Germany.

That should be of concern. Right, right. It absolutely should be of concern. I may have asked you this before, and if I have, forgive me, although we know more about it now than we did the last time we discussed it. Can you draw a line? It will be an ideological or philosophical line between the government's murders of people along the high seas claiming their drug dealers,

and these killings and these breaking down doors and these warrantless arrests in Minneapolis. Yes, there's a combination of two factors that are similar that are related. One is determined lying by the government about what is happening efforts to make falsehoods appear to be truths, the generation of threats that don't exist. People in their houses in Minneapolis do not pose a threat to anyone.

We know that immigrants, legal or illegal, actually have a far lower rate of crime commission than those of us born in the United States and therefore American citizens. So the whole business that immigrants represent the front of a crime wave or some kind of terrorist threat to the United States is very far-fetched. It's a form of paranoia. The same is true of charging people in boats, leaving Venezuela probably for Trinidad or in the Eastern Pacific moving up in Central America with something called narco-terrorism, which is an invention that sounds formidable but isn't no evidence whatsoever provided so that's the

second factor after creating a false paranoia about a threat we then suspend due process that is there is no legal process whatsoever applied to authorizing the the abuses that we conduct murder in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific the murder sometimes in Minneapolis. And the attacks on witnesses, as you mentioned, those seeking to document abuses are themselves subject to abuse. And the suppression of free speech,

the effort to stop the right of the people to petition the government, to assemble to petition the government for change in policy, both aspects of the First Amendment, Amendment, the abuse of search and seizure restrictions in the Fourth Amendment, and also, very ironically, overriding the Second Amendment right to be armed against the government and to defend yourself by possessing a gun. If you have a gun, apparently, and you're in a protest, that's somehow illegal. It's a sad state of affairs. I mean, I'm, I'm,

I've drafted my column for the week, and I'll refine it today. But the working title is, do we still have a constitution? And you're a lawyer, and you know that formally we do. But functionally, we don't. It no longer serves as a restraint on the government. Unfortunately, that is the case. We had a good run, 250 years of independence, 234 years of, of Constitutional Republic and both are now subject to severe strains.

Well, thank you for the intellectual honesty and personal courage that you bring to these discussions. I almost called you Professor Freeman because you are professorial in your encyclopedic knowledge ambassador. It's a pleasure to be your friend and your colleague. I enjoy these Tuesday mornings immeasurably and look forward to seeing you again soon. You're very kind. I do look forward to them too. Thank you. All the best to you, my friend.

A busy day coming up for you. At 10 o'clock this morning, Professor Jeffrey Sachs on all of these topics. At 1 o'clock this afternoon, Aaron Mote, at 2 o'clock Matthew Ho, at 3 o'clock, Colonel Karen Koukowski. at 4 o'clock, Scott Ritter. Judge the Palatano for judging freedom.