Judging Freedom - Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: How Soon a Wider War in Middle East?

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: How Soon a Wider War in Middle East?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, January 25th, 2024. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. Colonel, thanks very much for sharing your time and your expertise with us. It's much appreciated. I want to start with Ukraine, Colonel. Earlier today, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, made sort of an offhanded comment that British troops are prepared to fight against Russian troops in Ukraine. What do you think of that? Very frankly, I think he's an idiot. He certainly has no military experience and no experience of the British military right now,

which is, shall we say, somewhat lacking, particularly in its ability to fight on the ground. They simply don't have the numbers. They have similar problems that we do in terms of in-strength. So that was a ludicrous statement. One wonders why he would make that statement, you know, as we speak, not literally as we speak, but this week, President Biden is still trying to negotiate with the Republicans in the House of Representatives for this $61 billion aid to Ukraine, accompanied by a $13 billion aid to Israel. And, of course, he's still meeting with resistance. Republicans are demanding other concessions involving immigration, not a topic for us to discuss.

But one wonders, do you think Ukraine is on its last legs? And if it is, where would that $61 billion even go? I do think it's on its last legs. And I think the answer to your question is no one knows, but I could make a really good guess that it would probably go into every criminal network or criminal enterprise or otherwise offline enterprise in Ukraine and maybe in some of the surrounding areas. I think it's becoming more fundamental in the Congress. I'm hearing some people say things, staffers mostly, but that their members are really not very content with this whole thing. It's not just the idea of politics, domestic politics and border security and trade you this for that. That's a lot of it. But there are some people who are really growing tired of throwing

money at something they are increasingly becoming aware is not something you should throw money at. It's a losing proposition. You know the neocon mentality well. You worked with those people on a daily basis for many years. We don't even have to mention any names, but those people that always want to see somebody else fighting a war, those people who think that we can, the American government can use Ukraine as a battering ram with which to drive Vladimir Putin from office, they've been proven profoundly wrong. I think this adventure in Ukraine has been a catastrophe.

500,000 deaths of Ukrainian young men, 10 million refugees, Ukrainians who've left the country, a government on its last legs, a government that doesn't even have the people with which to operate this equipment, even if we sent more of it there. How did the neocons take a loss? Will they just divert our attention to Israel and Gaza? What will they do at such a disaster as Ukraine? It's an excellent question. I'm wondering the last 24 hours what Victoria Nuland is thinking right now. She sort of epitomizes the neoconservatives in power right now for me. And the battle between her and the other gentleman who might be the deputy secretary of state is becoming a battle Royal.

It looks like she's going to be beat out and we can blink and nod, nudge. My characterization of the administration is going to turn out without a nudge. I hope that's true. If she's disappearing, if she's departing, then that's a good victory for those who think the neocons are just simply insane. But it's not the end of them. They are very resilient. They'll keep on going.

I mean, you and I have watched Senator Graham, who I think epitomizes the neocons in the Congress. I don't know if epitomize is the right word because he's so extreme on this. But anyway, he publicly advocated to the president, did so on Fox News, that the president should attack Ukraine, not attack Hooties, but attack Iran. Not attack Hooties, but attack Iran, not attack Houthis, but attack Iran. So these people really never met a war that they didn't like. And I want to see Lindsey on the front lines. I want to see Lindsey somewhere near the front lines. He is, I'll say it outright, he is a coward par excellence. People who stand up on their soapboxes and ask for young men and young women who increasingly come from, because of the

recruiting challenge that the Army has in particular, the lower classes in America. Not that that hadn't been who goes into the infantry throughout our history, but those people ought to stand up and tell Lindsey Graham to shut his damn mouth. All right, I'm going to get under your skin. Here he is, Senator Graham, Victoria Nuland in flat shoes. Secretary Austin and the Biden administration's failing our troops in the field. I admire him. He's a patriot, but he's not doing a good job protecting the soldiers. THE PRESIDENT IS A PART OF THE PEOPLE'S PARTY. HE IS A PART OF THE PEOPLE'S PARTY. HE IS A PART OF THE PEOPLE'S PARTY.

HE IS A PART OF THE PEOPLE'S PARTY. I ADMIRE HIM. HE IS A PATRIOT BUT HE IS NOT DOING A GOOD JOB PROTECTING THE SOLDIERS. I ASKED HIM A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO, JOY, WHAT YOU WERE TALKING

ABOUT. IS THERE A RED LINE? WOULD YOU TELL OUR ENEMIES PUBLICLY THAT IF YOU KILL AN AMERICAN, WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU? WITHOUT IRAN, THERE ARE NO HOOTIES. THE HOOTIES ARE COMPLETELY BACKED BY IRAN. I've been saying for six months now, hit Iran. They have oil fields

out in the open. They have the Revolutionary Guard headquarters you can see from space. Blow it off the map. Blow it off the map. I guess the neocons around Joe Biden share your view of Senator Graham. What do you think can be gained by attacking the hooties? Apparently that part of this advice the president has taken, there have been nine attacks on the hooties in the past two weeks. According to the president himself, they're not working, but they will continue. What has he gained by this? What has American national security gained by this? What a preposterous proposition when he says they're not working, but we're going to continue. The Congress has a movement right now. I don't think it's going to succeed. We tried to do it

with the Houthis before when we were backing Saudi Arabia, fighting them and killing people left and right, including blowing up a school bus with 48 children on it with our Raytheon-made bomb, by the way. We've been trying to get the Congress to bring the War Powers Act into the situation. Easily done. It's privileged legislation. It doesn't stand debate. It goes right to the floor. We got it done under Trump. We got it passed in both houses, but Pelosi knew it would get passed in the House, but knew Trump would veto it. So that's the only reason she backed it,

scarlet woman that she was. So we got it done, but we didn't get it passed because Trump vetoed. That's what the Congress needs to do because this is an illegal act in accordance with the Constitution and the War Powers Act. So what you are discussing is this abominable piece of legislation vetoed by President Nixon because he thinks it cramped his style. In reality, it transfers war-making power from the Congress to the president, an absolute and profound violation of the Constitution itself. You're the first person I've talked to in a long time

that realizes that that's what it did. Yes. That's what I used to teach. Right. Hey, this was not a good act that the Congress put together. No. They surrendered their war power. And when the president fights a war or puts American troops into harm's way and tells

them to act violently, and there is no declaration of war, he has to give War Powers Act notification to the Congress, and they can enact legislation to negate what he's doing, to order him to stop. He then, of course, can veto that, and then they need two-thirds to override it. It's a rigged, rigged system that transfers constitutional power. James Madison said, if the president can both declare war and wage war, he's not a president. He's a prince. Madison wrote the Constitution to keep those powers separated, but that's not what we have today. But yeah. Madison also said the sure parent of forever war is a president who can do that. Correct. Correct. Are there any serious defenses,

I mean, military defenses, Colonel, remaining for Ukraine? Do not the Ukraine military leaders and President Zelensky himself recognize that they're on their last legs? They have to. They simply have to. But it's very difficult, given the political situation surrounding him, to do any kind of backpedaling. He had an opportunity to when he was looking at a possibility of a stalemate that could be turned into a negotiated ceasefire. But he's gotten past that point now. Russia is past that point too. I listened to Sergei Lavrov at the UN yesterday. Sergei is always articulate in whatever language he's speaking, English, Russian, German, or French. And Sergei made some mention of what had just happened with the Isle 76, the Aleutian that was shot down with some 84 prisoners of war on it that were headed for for Balarusia in order to be an exchange for Russian soldiers. And I think Sergei was telling the truth as far as he knew it, and I suspect we're going

to find out that truth if we don't obfuscate it and hide it. That is that someone in Ukraine shot it down. Well, look what's happening now. They're getting desperate on the ground. There is no command and control to speak of, certainly not from Kiev all the way down to the ground and the battery. So some Ukrainian down there who's desperate, he's been shot at and droned and bombed and artilleried and everything else. And he sees this Russian plane flying and he lets loose and he brings it down. That's what we're headed for now. We're headed for this indiscriminate killing and maybe worse because people get desperate.

They'll do a lot of things they wouldn't do otherwise. Here's Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at his articulate best being interviewed by CBS News artic articulating his view that, it's a view that you and I share, the people watching us share, the U.S. is using Ukraine as an instrument of war. Would that we had a Secretary of State as intelligent, self-controlled, and savvy as this man. Anybody who is sincerely interested in justice, including justice being established in the relations between Russia and Ukraine, which would involve, of course,

stopping the Western policy of using Ukraine as an instrument of war against Russia, we would be ready to listen. President Putin repeatedly said that it is not true when somebody is saying that Russia is against negotiations. Actually, Antony Blinken said this in Davos a few days ago. It is not true. Russia was always emphasizing that any serious proposal which would include the discussion of the situation on the ground, of the origin of this situation, and of reaching a solution which would guarantee legitimate national interest of Russia and Ukrainian people, we would be ready to discuss it. Isn't that a very credible world leader?

You couldn't get any more explicit than that. He just laid out everything necessary for the other side to be as accommodating as he's being and to start negotiations. But we won't do it. We are simply caught up in this rhetoric and this imposition of domestic politics on top of whatever else is happening, because that's what's driving Biden. He doesn't want to do anything that might harm his chances of being reelected. It's nonsense. I agree with Sergei, his implication there, that Blinken is not his counterpart.

He simply is not. We need somebody with the acumen and the skill, diplomatic and otherwise, for Sergei Lavrov there. I don't see anybody in this administration that even comes close. Switching gears, the International Court of Justice will rule tomorrow on the complaint by South Africa against Israel. You and I and many of your colleagues who have come on the show, some of them your former colleagues in the military and the State Department, are of the view that South Africa made a very strong case. The ruling is going to come down at seven o'clock in the morning Eastern time. What will happen, as you know, is that this will go to the Security Council, and the Americans and probably

their British puppets will veto it, so that's where it will die. But I would think, assuming that they rule in South Africa's favor, I would think that if they do rule in South Africa's favor, this is just terrible for the Israelis and the PR war around the world. Don't you agree? It's another blow. I listened to Yossi Alper. His formulation was this way. And Yossi's not, he's not a bleeding heart. But Yossi says, okay, he's being harassed majorly by the Israeli people, even came into the command room, even came into the Knesset,

who want their hostages back. So he's saying to them, I'm going to get your hostages back. On the other hand, he's saying complete victory is all I'll accept. Complete wiping out of Hamas is all I'll accept. Those are incompatible objectives. They can't be met. And Avigdor Lieberman was right when he opined just a day or so afterwards. He said, it's all about politics. He doesn't want to go to jail. He wants to stay in office as long as it's an office, he can't go to jail. So he wants to stay in office. He wants to drive this war all the way to the next election that they hold. This is insane. I mean, now we've got domestic politics in Israel and Netanyahu, the worst possible aspect of those domestic politics, wrapped up in this bloody war. was chief of staff of the IDF. He's retired.

He's a major general. He's now in the Israeli war cabinet. He himself said, forget about the war. We need a major long-term ceasefire. That's the only way we're going to get the hostages back. And we need an election. This is back to what you were just saying, Colonel. We need an election in the next 60 days because Netanyahu has to go. He is just the wrong person at the wrong time to be leading Israel. I don't know

if that's going to happen, but that's a major fissure, I would think, in his cabinet. He, of course, is still, correct me if you think I'm wrong, captive of the extremists in that cabinet, who if they break away from his coalition in the Knesset, he doesn't have a majority anymore. And what you're saying there could lead to the fall of Israel as a state. I mean, that sounds, you know, I've been saying Israel won't be here as a state in 20 years, not if it continued on the same course it was on for the last year or two. But I'm looking at it now as if maybe my prediction was a little far out into the future. We could be looking at the combination of the South African case, the United Nations and the angst that's going to come out of there after this,

the Ukraine war and what that's doing to our reputation with four plus billion people in the world. We could be looking at what we're doing to the Houthis. We could be looking at what's happening in the region in general. And we could be looking at Israel having such an untenable future that even the great superpower being behind her is not enough to save her. And that worries me in another dimension too, because then they're going to look to make this a much bigger war. And I heard this morning that they're looking very closely, Netanyahu in particular, at making sure they start the war with

and pursue it vigorously Hezbollah. Well, they can't start a war against Hezbollah. They don't pick a fight against somebody that they can't beat, and they can't beat Hezbollah. Well, they can't start a war against Hezbollah. They don't pick a fight against somebody that they can't beat, and they can't beat Hezbollah. Hezbollah whipped them last time around. We'll see. We'll see. Here's what happened at the UN yesterday when the Israeli ambassador of the UN was reading a speech that Prime Minister Netanyahu's folks had written for him. The Middle East is suffering from a cancer, and up until today, the Security Council has only ever discussed providing aspirin.

Cancer, Mr. President, is not treated with aspirin. Can you imagine Hitler's foreign minister participating in a serious discussion on how to defend the Jews during the Holocaust? Without Iran, the Houthis would not have advanced cruise missiles or UAVs to target merchant vessels in the Red Sea. And as we all know, Iranian drones are being used by Russia to kill civilians in Ukraine. Iran's terror will reach all of you. I may have misspoken. That speech may have been written not by Bibi's people, but by Senator Graham. I'm not sure. I'm being a little sarcastic. But what you were seeing were diplomats and ambassadors leaving the Security Council meeting rather than listening to what he had to say. I don't blame them for leaving. Israel thumbs its nose at the UN all the time. And if the ICJ

rules against Israel tomorrow morning, I'm sure that Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to invoke the Holocaust and thumb his nose at the ICJ again. I'm sure he will. And I think that argument, just like the argument of self-loathing Jews and anti-Semites and so forth, is losing a lot of its steam. Most of the people in the world who are looking at Israel right now are not anti-Semitic. What they are is anti-hegemon, anti-killing, anti-murderer, anti-barbarism. That's what they are, and that's what they're seeing. And I'm really worried about how they get this to the point where they can hide it in a major regional war. I know for sure from my contacts in Iran that Iran does not want escalation.

Iran has been very careful to do tit for tat, tit for tat. They have not done anything that would look as if it were really aggressive. They do not want escalation. They understand what it would mean to suddenly have the United States unleash Lindsey Graham on them. We wouldn't win, but it would be a pyrrhic victory for both sides. We don't even have enough troops to invest in an invasion one quarter of Iran. So it would be all aerial bombing. Aerial bombing has been proven to be the worst form of waging warfare. All you do is make the people on the ground much more angrier at you and resolve

themselves to take you on no matter what. So aerial bombing is all by itself is nothing. If we wanted to take on Iran, we'd have to invade. We'd have to have a half a million troops at least, probably a million over time. And we'd have to stay there for at least a decade. Trillions of dollars. This is insane. Absolutely insane. If Senator Graham and company were to fly jets over, I'm being sarcastic about the senator, but if the Air Force were to begin

bombing Iran, wouldn't Iran attack Israel? That's a good question, too. They might send some pretty heavy missiles up there, and with Hezbollah in combination, Hamas in combination, that would be a lot to handle. Let me tell you something else right now. We have 11 aircraft carriers. The only way we're going to put major air power in there on a sustained basis, other than the AUD airfield, which if I were Iran, I would take out immediately with as many missiles as I can put on it. That's the one in UAE, is with aircraft carriers operating around the clock. You need three for that. We have 11 carriers right now, other than the one that's by the security agreement,

kept in Port Yokosuka, Japan, and can't sortie too far from there. We only have about three that are operational. Wow. Lindsey needs to go check with the Navy. Do we have a Secretary of Defense who is operational? Good question. Excellent question.

Yeah, I feel sorry for him for his physical ailments, but could you imagine General Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, being AWOL for three weeks and President Putin not knowing where he is? I can. And I can believe some of the things Austin has said, too. I'm sure he's saying it on Biden's behalf, but his remarks about Ukraine, we'll fight Ukraine to the last dead Ukrainian, is essentially how you interpret them. Yeah. Before I let you go, we put together a clip. It's a montage of Americans and one Western leader. I'm not sure who he is. He's a British voice saying that Putin has already lost.

You'll get a kick out of this. The answer is Putin's already lost the war. Putin has already lost in terms of what he was trying to achieve. In many ways, Putin has already lost. Putin has already lost in terms of what he was trying to achieve. In many ways, Putin has already lost. Putin has already lost this war. And that is Russia has already lost this war. In short, Russia has lost. They've lost strategically, operationally, and tactically.

The last of those is the one that galls me the most. The preceding ones are all politicians in various degrees. But for a general, more you say that. Jake Sullivan's the one, remember, who said that the Middle East was so quiet it hasn't been that quiet in 20 years, about a week before 7 October. Right, right. These political folks will say anything that suits them at a given moment. You and I know that. The people watching know it. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, it's always a pleasure, sir. Thank you for coming back. I hope we can make this a regular thing at a time that's convenient for you. Take care. Thank you. All right, my dear friends, Colonel Wilkerson was terrific. Bear with me for just a moment while I

get to the calendar for tomorrow, because tomorrow, of course, we have the roundtable at one o'clock in the afternoon and Professor Sachs at two in the afternoon. Professor Sachs will be devouring the opinion of the International Court of Justice, which comes down at seven in the morning. But at nine in the morning, we have Craig Murray. Craig was the only journalist permitted in the courtroom when South Africa made its case and Israel made its defense. And he'll be on giving his thoughts of what he saw and heard and what the court ruled right here at 9 o'clock Eastern. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.