Judging Freedom - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson: Are US Troops Combat Ready for Israel?

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson: Are US Troops Combat Ready for Israel?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 Thursday, September 26, 2024. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. Colonel, a pleasure, my dear friend. How much of a gambit is it, as Cy Hersh has referred to it, is Netanyahu's threats to invade, beginning of invasion, random assault and killing of civilians into Lebanon? How much of a gambit? Before I answer that question, let me say I watched your speech at the Rand Paul Institute. Bravo, bravo. Oh, thank you, Colonel.

I think Bibi is hoist to a certain extent upon his own petard right now, and the fuse is burning. I got more insight into Sorella's visit. The first time he was rebuffed, he couldn't see Netanyahu. You're talking about the four-star general who is the commander of CENTCOM. That's all the troops in that part of the world going to visit the prime minister of Israel and they wouldn't let him in? Wouldn't let him see that he couldn't get an audience. So he spent his time with the IDF leadership. And as you can imagine, even before U.S. personnel like this general,

whom they know is essential to their defense in a crisis in particular, which this is big time, they're very non-deferential. They will argue, they will talk, and they will try to get everything they can out in the air around him and with him. And in this case, there was dissension. There was dissension, and he came back and reported it duly. And of course, the White House, I don't know whether Biden did it or Sullivan or whomever, said, get your ass back there. And what is the message that he was sent initially and secondarily to deliver? Do we know?

I'm told it was we had to bail you out in 82, 83. It cost us dearly. We're not exactly sure how we could contribute. We're willing to, perhaps, if it's an extremist for you, but how would we complement your bombing rocks on the ground and killing babies and children and everybody else in 11? How would we add to your ability to deal with Hezbollah if you're doing it strictly from the air. And what we're doing is providing you with air power, which incidentally is all we're going to provide you with. There's nothing to bomb. It's kind of like when we got to Afghanistan and Roosevelt said, I need another country to bomb because we bombed Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.

That was part of the conversation. And a part of the conversation was the history of it and the last time you did this with a reek chiron is your minister of defense you got yourself in a real mess and we had to bail you out and it cost us 300 people dead and a lot of losses and some embarrassment for ronald reagan when he had to essentially pull out so the conversation and i can imagine this happening with the idea of leadership that was there, as I'm told, they had a pretty good conversation. And I've got to imagine now, I don't know this. I wasn't in the room, but I got to imagine that the IDF essentially told him their dilemma with regard to Netanyahu. And to a certain extent, with regard to their own circumstances, as they have been set up by Netanyahu. They're losing on the one flank, if you will.

They really are losing to Hamas. They don't see any end to that other than more and more and more killing until there's no one left to kill. And Hamas is still going to be around and popping out of those caves and out of those fortifications and everything else. And they're going to have to man it in perpetuity in order to keep any kind of security while Ben Gevier builds settlements. Meanwhile, they're also watching this happen in the West Bank or on the West Bank. And so they're conflicted in their own leadership, and I'm sure they let some of that out to our commander. What he said, in essence, I think was that we are going to prepare for a noncombatant evacuation operation. I'll watch CNN and everybody else today try to deal with that. We're sending troops to Cyprus. Of course, we're sending troops,

moderate number of troops and particular troops, in order to do a noncombatant evacuation operation, certainly from Beirut and maybe from Lebanon and maybe from Amman and maybe from Cairo. If you watched the Jordanian king yesterday, you know he is deeply concerned. Let me take you back in history. When we did the first Gulf War and Powell was chairman and I was his assistant, when we did that war, we put together 625,000 people, Arabs, Syrians, French, you name it. We had a coalition, but Jordan did not join. Why did they not join? Because his predecessor, King Hussein, was a smart man. And he knew he was sitting on top of six and a half million

Palestinian Arabs. And he was not about to join against Saddam Hussein and that. H.W. Bush was a little bit miffed at first, but then he understood the situation. Jordan held out. Well, Jordan is sitting there now on even more restive people with very little capability to take care of them and maintain their monarchy. So they're looking at the potential for real disruption in Jordan. Sisi's looking at the same thing for different reasons in Egypt. What better way to deal with that in a very forceful, forthright way than to marshal your forces and tell Israel, we're going to march on you. Sisi could say, I'm going to clean the Philadelphia quarter out. You either get out of there or face my tanks. So we're looking at the

potential not only for a regional war getting much bigger, we're looking at the potential for a lot of people coming into it who would never have contemplated coming into it because Netanyahu's created the circumstances for them to do so. With whom did General Carrillo have his ultimate conversation, with Netanyahu or with the head of the IDF? I'm told the second trip he got an audience, but it was sort of like, what the screw are you doing here? Right. You mentioned King Abdullah. I'd like your opinion on this. My apologies to the audience. We've been playing it all day, but I want you to see it, and I want you to give me your thoughts on it,

because your colleagues on this show have very negative opinions of him, and their opinions are that he's not long lived in his kingship. But here he is in front of the UN, cut number five. In the absence of global accountability, repeated horrors are normalized, threatening to create a future where anything is permitted anywhere in the world. Those who continue to propagate the idea of Jordan as an alternative homeland. So let me be very, very clear. That will never happen.

We will never accept the forced displacement of Palestinians, which is a war crime. For years, the Arab world has extended a hand to Israel through the Arab Peace Initiative, offering full recognition and normalization in exchange for peace. But consecutive Israeli governments, emboldened by years of impunity, have rejected peace and chosen confrontation instead. Does people believe him? It does not matter what we think of him and his Bedouin rule that he's telling the truth. The words that he

just uttered and the applause that he just garnered are valid. What's going to happen because of that and what his motivations might be for doing that are another matter altogether. It's the circumstances that are presenting themselves right now. Sissy's even more disgusting than he, and if your other interlocutors were saying he's as bad as Sissy, I'd differ with them completely. No, they're not saying that, but they're saying that the king is in danger of being deposed, or having cooperated so much with Israel in the past, and having refused to do anything for the Palestinians, and he's not a Palestinian. Well, that was my point about bringing up his predecessor,

who was smarter than he, in my view. That's his father. Yeah, he stood up against the entire coalition and against H.W. Bush. And H.W. Bush could get on the phone and really be persuasive with you. He was the last real diplomat we had in the Oval Office. So, yeah, he's been too much of a colluder too much of a uh i will be with you through thick and thin too much of a i have a peace treaty and i will keep it just like egypt and been paid royally for it been paid royally for egypt gets three three three billion a billion a year just as a matter of course. What does Jordan get?

I thought Jordan was independently wealthy. They have problems with their economy. They have problems with their ability to deal with the competition, if you will. And the competition is principally Israel. And we give them a lot of the, we give them a lot of help in that regard and he knows it. And the money that pours down the pipe, a lot of money takes place between the two intelligence entities because CIA

and the Jordanian intelligence group, you may recall the incident where the Jordanians actually, some would say got our CIA contingent wiped out by Al-Qaeda because of the failure to identify the double agent. But they're like, you know, they're thick and thin. a chance in prevailing in a land war against Hezbollah in light of what you told us General Carrillo told Prime Minister Netanyahu, which is basically fight a land war you're on your own. In terms of fighting it on your own, he meant there would be no U.S. troops to help him. Right. Now, if Israel got in there and got into the kind of mess or even worse than they did in 82, 83 and couldn't extricate themselves, so to speak, and were being destroyed.

I can't see that happening, actually, because I don't I don't think the IDF would be stupid enough to do that. My I have to back up, though, and tell you that under Sharon, they were pretty stupid. And when they came out and conducted the massacres at the two refugee camps, they were even stupider. But Netanyahu has leaked, and maybe this is just for PR purposes, that he has ordered them to be prepared, 10,000 of them, to march into Lebanon. Is this another deception on Netanyahu's part, or are they really preparing to do this, unaided by American troops on the ground? Yeah, I have no doubt that Netanyahu might give such an order. I wait for the IDF and the saner heads in the IDF to respond to that. If they don't, then I think those 10,000 troops are

going to be handed their heads on a platter. Does Hezbollah pose the slightest threat to the national security of the United States? Not a bit. Not a bit. They've made that very categorically clear, and Judge, they made that categorically clear to us in spades right after 9-11. They are local terrorists, is essentially what they said. We are not taking on you. We don't want to take you on. We sympathize and empathize with what's just happened to you. We don't like Al-Qaeda, and we're local. We got that from a lot of terrorist groups. Judge, the most potent intelligence we got in the first months post 9-11 was from Syria. Give me a critique of American preparedness. Supposed Netanyahu persuades Joe Biden and Lloyd Austin and Tony Blinken that we should have 10,000 Marines join 10,000 IDF in a land invasion.

Are American troops combat ready to do something like that? No, not really. They're not only not combat ready, they're not psychologically ready for it. There's a lot of argument right now in the ranks about, and when I say the ranks, I'm talking about major on down through the enlisted ranks, about what's happening in the Middle East and about whether we should be doing what we're doing. Whether or not we should be condoning Blinken being a war criminal, for example, by violating all the laws with regard to constitutional laws. I mean, congressionally passed laws that say if this country A does this with this weapon B, which we gave them, then we have to punish that country A or we have to cease operations with that country. Colonel, this is the United States military. It's not the IDF. Do American soldiers have conversations like that? Oh, yes. Yes. All the time.

Powell used to say, and I agreed with him 100%, the difference between the American Army, even this all-volunteer force, and any other army in the world, the possible exception at times of the British, and I would say those exceptions are gone now, that questions what it's doing, seriously questions it, and has a conscience about what it's doing, is ours. And God help us if that ever goes away. Colonel, switching gears, if we can, do you have any more insight as to what Secretary Austin told either Secretary Blinken or the president himself that caused the president very angrily to change his mind and not give consent to the Ukrainians to use British and American long range missiles that could reach deep into Russia? I think it was a brief prepared by C.Q. Brown. And I think that briefing. That is the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And I think it encompassed everything from the bigger picture as, and China plays predominantly in that bigger picture, but Russia too.

And increasingly so as she becomes closer and closer to Beijing and Iran and the axis that's building up between those three countries. We now know, for example, I think I'm convinced now that Russia and China both are providing the Houthis with the high technology they're getting. And we're going to see some more of that in their missiles and their impact on the Red Sea and on Israel, ultimately. And that bigger picture said, we need to get out of this. We need to get out of this quicker than slower because we've got bigger problems, much bigger problems. And we see those problems developing even more rapidly

because of what we're doing in Ukraine and to a lesser extent, but to some extent, what we're doing in the Middle East. That was the big tapestry. And the second part of it was the reputational damage that's being done by the Middle East. And ultimately the damage that's, I think it's beginning to dawn on them, some of them anyway, being done to the NATO alliance by the fact that it's going to lose. It has lost. And that's going to be a shattering blow as governments change across the countries, especially the newly found countries. And they have different views, political views, and their populaces have different political views about what we're doing. I said long ago, NATO is short-lived. It is not going to be here much longer. I think that's even more true today and accelerated in terms of its happening. Colonel, the current occupant of Secretary Powell's job said the following.

Tell me if this is good diplomacy. Cut number two. Iran has been providing armed drones to the Kremlin since 2022. It built a drone factory in Russia just a few weeks ago. It transferred hundreds of short-range ballistic missiles to Russia. And Tehran has trained Russian military personnel in Iran how to operate these weapons. Meanwhile, the DPRK has delivered trainloads of weapons and ammunition to Russia, including ballistic missiles, launchers, and millions of artillery rounds.

Support from Tehran and Pyongyang is helping Putin inflict carnage, suffering, and ruin on innocent Ukrainian men, women, and children. Boy, if you change proper names, he could have been talking about the United States. Couldn't he? Flying arms that's bringing about carnage on innocent men, women, and children. In 2013 and 14, when we were getting reports from the Swedes, the Finns, and the Norwegians from the battlefield in the training field in Russia, one of the first reports was that they didn't know how to coordinate their corps-sized and army-sized operations in terms of ISR because they didn't know how to use drones. Guess who sold them the drones and gave them the training in order to fix that? Israel. Israel. Israel. Guess what happened when

we forced the president of South Korea to send 500,000 155 millimeter rounds to Ukraine? Putin said, okay, I'm going to Pyongyang. And Putin has developed a relationship where he gets arms from Pyongyang, tit for tat. I'm sorry, Mr. Blinken. You need to take a history lesson. Is there ever recompense for war crimes? It was the last time there was, aside from some of these Eastern

European people, Nuremberg and Tokyo. Will there ever be recompense for what Netanyahu was doing? The way we have eviscerated the United Nations and the Security Council in particular, that's a hard question to answer because as we do that to them, so we do that to the ICC, the ICJ, and everything at the Hague for that matter, International Court of Arbitration, the whole group.

When empires go down, they do these sorts of things. If there is some kind of international regime for doing things, whether it's interregional as with Rome or even a little bit more than the interregional with the British Empire, when the empire goes, you take a lot of this stuff with you, especially when you start trying to preserve your empire as the British did in 1946 and 47 and up to 56. And I think we're going to do that too. We are going to take the trappings of international criminal law and international justice and international humanitarian law with us. Here's the foreign minister of Great Britain trying to outdo Tony Blinken. Cut number three.

Vladimir Putin, when you fire missiles into Ukraine hospitals, we know who you are. When you send mercenaries into African countries, we know who you are. When you murder opponents in European cities, we know who you are. Your invasion is in your own interests, yours alone, to expand your mafia state into a mafia empire. What are they gained by that? Listen to who's saying that. What did Britain do in Africa? What did France do in Africa? What did the United States do in Africa of late? We've been kicked out.

All of us virtually have been kicked out for what we did in Africa. The gall of that man to sit up there and say that sort of thing. Africans would say, if you gave them a one word possible answer to their problems, they would say, sort of thing. Africans would say, if you gave them a one more possible answer to their problems, they would say, Britain. It's just colossal hypocrisy, just colossal hypocrisy. Our regular guest and colleague, Professor Gilbert Doctorow, who's supposed to be on vacation but is apparently working because he's emailing us

says that the Kremlin does not believe that Joe Biden has not given permission for the use of long-range nuclear weapons and fears that it's just a temporary delay or a PR move on Biden's part to help Vice President Harris. What do you think? He may be right. Here's what he said. Quote, aggression against, this is Putin, aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state will be considered a joint

attack on the Russian Federation. We will consider all manner of responses. You can't get any clearer than that. And at the same time, he said that Foreign Minister Lavrov effectively said we're locked and loaded. Hypersonic and nuclear are ready to go. Exactly. Do you believe that? It's really, it's bordering on being stupid now, Judge. It really is. I just looked at the latest polls. The latest polls show 70% of the GOP, 71% of independents, 60% of Democrats are turning sour on Gaza. Roughly the same percentages are turning sour on Ukraine, with the only real difference being it's only 41% of Republicans. It's still 67% of Dems and 65% of independents. So there is room, there's political space opening up

for Kamala, for Joe, if he's not totally demented, to make some changes here. Well, you'll know if those polls have resonated if you see the vice president in Michigan in the next five weeks. Yes. There's a huge Democratic base that is now voting uncommitted or not voting at all because they can't possibly support

the administration that has slaughtered the Palestinians. Bear with me. It's a shame that our political lapse time takes that has slaughtered the Palestinians. It's a shame that our political lapse time takes weeks to register. Here's the quote from President Putin with a translator that you just read from, cut number 21. The updated version of the document proposes that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear weapon state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear weapon state, should be regarded as a joint attack on the Russian Federation. The conditions for Russia's

transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly defined. We will consider such a possibility as soon as we receive reliable information about a massive launch of aerospace attack means and their crossing of our state border, meaning strategic or tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic missiles, and other aircraft. We reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression against Russia and Belarus as a member of the Union State. All these issues have been agreed upon with the Belarusian side and with the President of Belarus. This includes cases when the enemy, using conventional weapons, poses a critical threat to our sovereignty. Before you respond, Foreign Minister Lavrov, please listen to the… weapons poses a critical threat to our sovereignty. No one wants nuclear war.

We said this time and again. Let me assure you that we have weapons which, if used, will cause grave consequences for the masters of the Ukrainian regime. These weapons are available and on full alert status. Mentioned earlier, these weapons are available on full alert status. What does that mean, Colonel? Well, he has weapons like the Avant-Garde, which is just blindingly fast, 32,000 miles an hour, I'm told, kilometers per hour, 19,000 miles per hour, and whose warheads are so colossally large that they have the impact of 0.5 or even a half or two kiloton nuclear weapon, but without the radioactivity and without the censure of using a nuclear weapon.

So if he were to send a couple of those into Kiev, Kiev would pretty much cease to exist in terms of human population and human actions for at least a week or two, and casualties would be tremendous. So he doesn't have to go to nuclear weapons to do this sort of thing. But what strikes me about this whole situation, Judge, I've made and my students on two campuses have made a really exhaustive study of the 62 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 61 Berlin Crisis. I think the Berlin Crisis was even more serious than Cuba. But in both instances, we never shut down multiple means of communications with the GDR, with Russia, the Soviet Union at the time of the Berlin crisis, and with Cuba, and with Russia at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We never shut them down.

Bobby Kennedy had his own channel. Jack Kennedy had two or three channels. The Pentagon had a channel. The State Department had a channel. We have nothing now, Judge, nothing. These people are utterly incompetent. Does Secretary Austin speak to his opposite number in Moscow from time to time? He does, but I'm told it's on emergency basis.

So it's kind of like when Milley did it with China, if you recall. Got it. Colonel, thank you very much. Really, really very, very insightful. You're so insightful that many of my questions were not in my notes. They were just provoked by the answers to your previous question. Deeply appreciated, my friend. Thank you.

Have a great, well, have a good week, and I hope we can see you next week, Colonel. Yeah, take care. Thank you. You have a good weekend, too. Thank you. Have a great, well, have a good week and I hope we can see you next week, Colonel. Yeah. Take care. Thank you. You have a good weekend too. Thank you. Just a reminder about the Peace and Freedom Rally. If you're going to be in the Northeast part of the United States in Kingston, New York, this is about two hours north of New York City. It's a beautiful, beautiful town. It's the original capital of the state of New York City. It's a beautiful, beautiful town. It's the original capital of the state of New York going back to the 1600s when it was a colony whose borders weren't even

the same as the state of New York is now. Anyway, I will be joined by Scott Ritter, Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampol, Gerald Salenti, and several others, my friends, Joe Luria and Randy Credico, all fierce anti-war orators, and we will be giving it our best. Coming up later today, Professor John Mearsheimer at 3 o'clock, Max Blumenthal at 4 o'clock, and we finally have a time from sleepyhead in Moscow. I'm kidding. He's wide awake. Pepe Escobar, four 45 judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thanks for watching!