Judging Freedom - Col. Karen Kwiatkowski : US Empire’s Impending Suicide

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

Col. Karen Kwiatkowski : US Empire’s Impending SuicideSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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but it's a peace offer for an immediate ceasefire as soon as they agree to jurisdictional issues and dropping the demand for NATO. Were you surprised when the West immediately denounced it? No, not surprised. The West is invested in destroying Ukraine and putting up some sort of show of anti-Russian value system, whatever that is. And the media is invested and the current set of leaders that the West has, including, of course, Biden, but many of the European leaders, not all, but many of them, they're wholly invested in this storyline. And they're afraid to walk it back because they're not, you know, they're not mature adults. They can't admit that they made a mistake and that they have wasted the wealth of their people in this mistake. And until they are either replaced by those people, by those taxpayers, or, you know, turn into adults and decide, hey, to admit the mistake that they've made and actually look to a way to correct it.

Until they're ready to do that or they are replaced. We're not going to see anything different out of the Western leaders. Some of them are close to being replaced by the voters. You saw, I am sure, the European Parliament elections, which rattled Great Britain, France, and Germany. France so much so that President Macron called for a snap election for the General Assembly, the lower house of France's parliament. And the polls show an enormous lead, greater than 20% by the conservative coalition of parties there. Yeah, yeah. The people are upset with their leadership, much as they are in the United States.

I mean, you know, if Biden, granted, he's incapacitated in many ways, but if he had not launched this effort in Ukraine and supported it, and of course, he did it under Obama as well. But if this effort had not been made and Ukraine was at peace and we didn't have this war, he could focus better on what's happening in Gaza. And I think he would be much closer to the numbers that he needs to stay in office. But he's not. He's he's at the he's disastrously unpopular in the United States. The voters are not going to return him to office. I think that's that's pretty clear.

And a big part of it is they're sick of what he's doing in Ukraine. And also, I think they're sick of the lying. And I think this goes for the Europeans as well, because I believe the average European has a better sense of what is true regarding the status of Ukraine, regarding the rationale behind this Ukraine proxy war, they have a much better sense of what is true than we do, and they don't like it. Americans have been lied to consistently, but we are starting to wake up as well, and we don't like it. So yeah, it's bad politics. It could destroy the world, but right now it's bad politics. Here's a very serious President Putin, cut number eight, Chris, arguing we are inching toward the point of no return.

Lastly, the self-centeredness and arrogance of Western countries have led us to a highly perilous situation today. We are inching dangerously close to a point of no return. Calls for a strategic defeat of Russia, which possesses the largest arsenals of nuclear weapons, demonstrate the extreme recklessness of Western politicians. They either fail to comprehend the magnitude of the threat they are creating, or are simply consumed by their notion of invincibility and exceptionalism. Both scenarios can result in tragedy.

It is evident that the entire system of Euro-Atlantic security is crumbling before our eyes. At present, it is practically none-existent and must be rebuilt. To achieve this, we must collaborate with interested countries, of which there are many, to develop our own strategies for ensuring security in Eurasia and then present them for broader international deliberation. This is the task set in the address to the Federal Assembly. To outline a vision for equal and indivisible security, mutually beneficial and equitable cooperation and development on the Eurasian continent in the foreseeable future. A notion of American invincibility and exceptionalism is crumbling.

The Euro-Atlantic security is crumbling. The future is Eurasia. And of course, he's talking about economic future as well as military and diplomatic. What did you think, Karen? Pretty strong, pretty articulate. Yeah. And if we, you know, there's so many people that in the United States, certainly our leadership and Europeans' leadership, they cannot listen to the words that Putin says, and he's been quite consistent, but they need to, perhaps, if they will, listen to what's driving his words. And what's driving his words is our actions and our threats to the very existence of Russia. And we can say, oh, well, we didn't want to make a

Ukrainian proxy war against Russia to destroy Russia. We can say that, but that's actually not what we've been saying. You know, American politicians have been saying that we are precisely involved in Ukraine in order to weaken and destroy Russia, to break Russia up into smaller and smaller pieces. That's what we're saying with our words. So our words have, and our actions have, an impact. And if nothing else, we should emotionally react to what Putin is saying to try to understand where he's coming from. And he actually sees it quite clearly, and he understands what our actions have been, and he listens to what we say. We should start listening in turn to what he is saying. Switching gears for a moment before we get to your piece on the American Empire, Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel has disbanded his war cabinet. Is there any significance that you can read into that? Is he facing some political realities or is he

consolidating his power? I'm not sure what he's effectively doing, but I think he's attempting to consolidate his power. I mean, the whole strategy, if you want to call it a strategy that Tel Aviv or Jerusalem has had in this Gaza attack and also what they're doing in Lebanon, this strategy has been a political strategy to keep Netanyahu in power and to keep Netanyahu out of jail. I mean, this is where he was going, to lose power and to very possibly be put in jail and very possibly be fined and impoverished because of the crimes that he has committed, you know, as a politician, as a leader. So every decision that he makes, including this one, relate to that. They don't relate to the security of Israel. You know, if you wanted to make Israel secure, there are many different

things that one might do. It's all about Netanyahu. And I think increasingly, you know, he is isolating himself. This is something we've seen with a number of political leaders in times of political duress. Wow. Switching to your article, does the American empire have a death wish? You know, it's what made me write that article. And I do think that it does. I don't know if it is self-aware enough to admit that it does. But, you know, I saw an article just the day that I wrote this article about how we are going to feed our soldiers artificial lab-grown meat

so that they will then use less carbon in the conduct of their activities, which is to burn, destroy, eliminate life. Wait a minute. Doesn't the Pentagon cause more pollution and use more energy than any entity on the planet? It's the top organization, including countries, in terms of consumption of gas and fuel. And it's, I've read, the fifth largest polluter. And so that means, you know, you have large countries like China, large industrial countries, but the Pentagon is number five in terms of sheer pollution that is put out. It's a very, I mean, I was exposed to it to some extent. I'll share this little tiny story. Maybe the Navy people know this, but I was shocked when I went to a six fleet headquarters in Italy, went on a visit to the fleet ship, and I stayed overnight

on that ship. And the water around the ship was not very clean in the fish. And I said something about it. And someone said, well, yeah, well, you know, it's when we're at port, we don't go out to sea to dump our waste. Normally we dump it in the ocean and out to sea. But when we stay in port for a long time, we have to dump it here. And I was just like, what? Are you kidding me? But of course, you know, cruise ships do the same thing. They dump their garbage. But but, you know, the U.S. military, I mean, we burn things that have toxic chemicals as a matter of a normal process. extraordinary pollution, but feed the people that work for it lab-grown meat on the theory that it produces less of a carbon footprint. This is just insane. I mean, and what, the bookend to that, of course, has been reported early on in the Biden administration, and that's the push to have battery-operated tanks, electric vehicles instead of diesel and gas. And this kind of thing is, again,

a nod to political fantasy, I guess, really, which is what most of this environmental, you know, global warming or climate change, you know, human caused climate change. It's just lip service to it. And obviously, many people connected with government will make a ton of money, a ton of profit in pursuing government subsidized energy systems that really don't reduce pollution, but we're told that they do. So here, we'll subsidize this. Military is not immune to this. And of course, the military is a hugely, a wholly dependent on government spending.

I mean, this is, you know, we talk about the military industrial complex. Well, they're all in. They're all in with taxpayer funding of whatever they can get. And the taxpayers, particularly of the liberal side, who are concerned about the environment, I say that, you know, I'm joking about that they're concerned, you know, because they back the war in Ukraine. Well, you're concerned about the environment. You just destroyed, you know, millions of acres of productive farmland. You've

polluted water. You've damaged atomic energy plants. But no, no, we love the environment. We love the environment. So if you love the environment, the very first thing that you have to care about is making peace, facilitating peace, ensuring that differences do not elevate to the point of destroying the environment, much less people. You know, because I'm not sure the Democrats care much about people either. I shouldn't pick on the Democrats. You know, it's a whole global class of people who will tell us we should not pollute. And many of those same people are heavily invested

in destroying the planet. So I just find that kind of funny. Why does the American ethos love war? Yeah, well, it's hard to say, but we have been at war in this country one way or the other, not often declared, very rarely declared, certainly not since World War II has it ever been declared. We've been at constant war, and our biggest export in this country is not shale oil or anything like that. It's military weapons and war. So why do we like it so much? Well, there is, I think, I don't really know the answer, but I think we've kind of warped the idea of the independent cowboy type personality. Because I think there's a cherished American kind of ego that is free, that loves freedom, protects its property, really wants to be left alone and that kind of thing. And in order to do that in a complicated world, you need to fight. You need to be willing to

fight. You need to be brave. And I think a brave American ethos is part of that. And then they warp it and say, oh, it's very brave to use a proxy to fight your battles, which we have been doing since World War II and even before then. We have been, you know, overthrowing governments, picking sides in civil wars, doing things like we've done in Ukraine. And then, of course, the full-on invasion of countries like Iraq and other places simply to control their resources. Okay, that's theft. That is government theft. Government is not a stranger to theft, but when it goes internationally, it usually requires the use of force. So we have taken an idea of a brave and bold, independent American ethos, because I think many people love America because you have this idea of a cowboy or a city on the hill even, something that's very proud that should be protected.

We've taken that. And then we've said, well, how can we make more money with it? Or how can we get what we want? Well, war is a wonderful thing to get what you want domestically. Because if you scare the population, and we've seen this happen over and over again. I mean, our entry into World War I, very much an exercise in propaganda to frighten people so that they would then submit to many things the government wanted to do that were not, you know, that didn't really conform to the American ethos of freedom and liberty. So, you know, we've got a good, we had a good thing going. And governments, like all governments, like all states, seek power. They seek to grow. And they cannot be satisfied with only limited power. You know, our Constitution is in shreds. Why? Because it, on paper, limits power of government. Well, that can't be tolerated. You know, the government should be limitless. And, you know, we hear a lot about George Orwell's

quotes from George Orwell and the things like that coming back to us. Well, you know, it's the nature of the state. And we have that here. We have that sick state disease in this country. And honestly, we're not going to have peace until we are able to change the state or minimize it to a major, major extent. That's going to be very difficult to do. Here's Foreign Minister Lavrov, often referred to as the only adult in the room when the foreign ministers are together. As you listen to this, it's a little under a minute, Karen. I'd like you to think about whether the West understands what he's saying. Cut number one, Chris. No, we don't ask the West to trust us. Trust is not something which is

illustrating the Western positions, the Western actions, and today there were many examples. I don't want to recite those failures to deliver on the promises, those failures to deliver on the legal obligations. Frankly, I don't care whether the West trusts us or not. The West must understand the real situation. They don't understand anything except real politics. Let them go to the people. You are a democracy, right? Ask the people what the West should do in response to Putin's proposals. West understand people like Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov.

No, they don't, but I thought that's a good touch with ask their people what they want, because Lavrov and any global observer knows very well that the populations in many of these countries that are fomenting war and fomenting conflict and spending the wealth of their nations on destructive weapons and threats and hostility, if you ask the people in those countries, that is not what they want to do. And, you know, it's funny that the democracies are the ones that aren't listening to their people. Not at all. Well, a little bit in the EU parliamentary elections, right? They listened to the people and they were shocked. They were shocked to hear what the people really thought, that they don't want war. So Lavrov is

reminding, you know, the West and all of us that there is some goodness out there and it is in the hearts of individuals. And if we would listen to that, if governments would listen to their people, then we wouldn't be in these situations. And the globe, the planet, might actually be able to prevent its own destruction. When George W. Bush entered the White House, the federal government's debt was $2 trillion. When he left, it was $7 trillion. It's now $37 trillion at this rate in 2035, 11 years from now, it'll be $50 trillion.

Is American winter coming? Oh, yeah. And I think the people that know that are those that are really printing and spending all this money. There is no, absolutely no intention in our government amongst politicians, none at all, to ever pay back any of this spending that's borrowing. This debt is not going to be paid back. And it's the acceleration that we've seen really in the last 20 years, the acceleration of spending, of debt accumulation that can't be paid back. I mean, it physically, there's not enough wealth, not just in our country, but in the world to pay back this spending that we've done. All of the people doing that spending are basically racing each other to the cliff. They want to get as much as they can. And then ideally, you know, as the car races to the cliff, you know, they'll jump out right before it goes off the edge.

That's apparently their plan. But there is no intention. There's no honor in any of this debt. This is something that is going to crash. It's going to crash the economy, certainly. It's going to crash the currency, no doubt. But it could crash actually our lives, what we've come to understand as America. This country, four time zones, 50 states, could crash as well. And they know this. I think many of the politicians really deep down, they know this and their excuse is, well, you know, it doesn't make any difference. It's going

to crash. I might as well enjoy the ride and get as much as I can out of it. This is the kind of corruption that you see at the end of really every empire. They, you know, they've chipped away at their coinage. They've bankrupted their countries. They've lied to their people. They've chipped away at their coinage. They've bankrupted their countries. They've lied to their people. They've created war after war after war that they can't afford. They've destroyed their productive capacity. That's what all empires do. That's where we are. So yeah, it's coming to an end. You know what's so terrible about this is our mutual friend, Gerald Salenti, likes to say, when all else fails, they take you to war. Yeah. I mean.

And this is why I think I'm, you know, I'm not a person that always stays up at night worrying about nuclear war or attacks. I really don't. But the aggression of the people, the politicians, the political survival of our state may depend on something like a nuclear attack where they can then write off all the debt, consolidate power, very much as Netanyahu is doing in his very tiny little country of Israel, like 7 million people, he's going to consolidate power. Okay. But for the United States and for the West to seek to do the same thing would require great destruction. And we need destruction to destroy the debt, but they also need destruction to frighten the people, to seize control of resources. And, you know, there are other solutions, but I don't think most politicians really can see those. They don't see it. They see it like Netanyahu. He's a bad guy, but a great example of a politician. Karen Kutkowski, thank you, my dear friend. Always a pleasure. I look forward to spending this time with you again next week.

Absolutely. Thanks, Judge. Of course. Coming up at five o'clock this afternoon, Ryan Dawson, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.